Why You Keep Getting In Your Own Way (And What’s Actually Behind It)

There’s a moment most people recognize.
You know what you need to do.
You’ve known for a while.
And yet you don’t do it.
Or you do it, but in a way that undermines it.
You speak up and then immediately walk it back.
You start something and quietly let it fall apart.
You get close to something good and find a reason to pull away.
Most people call this self-sabotage.
And they’re right.
But what most people don’t know is why it happens.
Or where it actually comes from.
That’s what I want to talk about today.

It’s Not a Willpower Problem

The first thing I want you to hear is this:
Getting in your own way is not a character flaw.
It is not laziness.
It is not weakness.
It is not evidence that you don’t want it badly enough.
It is a pattern.
And patterns, unlike character flaws, can change.
The reason this matters is because most people spend years trying to fix their self-sabotage with more willpower. More discipline. More motivation. More pushing through.
And it doesn’t work.
Not because they aren’t trying hard enough.
Because they’re solving the wrong problem.
Willpower can’t override a pattern that lives deeper than conscious thought. And self-sabotage does. It lives in the nervous system. In the automatic responses you developed long before you had language for any of this.
Which brings me to where it actually comes from.

Where Self-Sabotage Really Starts

Every self-sabotage pattern you carry started as something else.
It started as a strategy.
A younger version of you, navigating a world that felt unpredictable, or demanding, or unsafe in some way, developed a set of responses that worked.
Keeping the peace kept you safe.
Staying small kept you from being targeted.
Being perfect kept you from being criticized.
Staying busy kept you from having to feel things you didn’t have words for yet.
These weren’t weaknesses. They were adaptations.
Incredibly intelligent ones, actually.
The problem is that those strategies didn’t disappear when the circumstances changed. They followed you. Into your adult relationships. Your career. Your leadership. Your sense of what you deserve and what’s possible for you.
And now they run quietly in the background, activated by stress, by risk, by anything that feels like it might cost you something, doing what they were always designed to do.
Keep you safe.
Even when safe is no longer what you need.
We call this part of you your Saboteur.
And understanding it, really understanding it, is where everything starts to shift.

The Three Targets of Self-Sabotage

Here’s something that might surprise you.
Self-sabotage doesn’t just turn inward.
Most people recognize the internal version. The harsh inner voice. The I should have known better and the what is wrong with me and the replaying of every mistake until you’ve convinced yourself you’re the problem.
That’s real. And it’s exhausting.
But there are two other targets that don’t get talked about nearly enough.
Target one: yourself.
This is the one people recognize most. Relentless self-criticism. High standards turned into weapons. The belief that you are fundamentally the obstacle standing between you and the life you want.
Target two: other people.
This one looks like frustration. Disappointment. The slow accumulation of evidence that nobody shows up, nobody gets it, nobody can be trusted. It feels like a reasonable conclusion based on real experience. But underneath it is the same pattern, just pointed outward instead of inward.
Target three: life itself.
This is the quietest one and often the hardest to catch. It sounds like of course this happened and nothing ever works out and the odds were never in my favor. It takes real experiences and sometimes genuinely unfair ones and turns them into permanent conclusions about what’s possible.
All three are self-sabotage.
All three keep you stuck.
And all three come from the same place.
The question is, which one do you default to?

Why Naming It Matters

I want to be careful here because I’ve seen this go sideways.
Naming your pattern is not the same as fixing it.
A lot of people learn about self-sabotage, read the books, take the quizzes, identify their patterns, and then use that knowledge as a new way to criticize themselves.
Oh great, now I know I’m an Avoider. Add it to the list.
That’s the Saboteur using self-awareness as ammunition. And it’s sneaky.
Naming your pattern matters because it creates distance. A small but significant gap between the voice and the one who can hear it. Between the automatic response and the moment before you act on it.
You are not the voice.
You are the one who can notice it.
That gap, even just a few seconds of it, is where choice lives.
And choice is where everything changes.

What Actually Shifts Things

I’ve worked with a lot of people on this.
And the ones who actually change their patterns, not just understand them, but genuinely shift how they show up, have a few things in common.
They stopped trying to fight the voice and started learning to recognize it earlier.
They stopped treating self-awareness as the destination and started treating it as the beginning.
And they stopped trying to do it alone.
That last one is the one people resist most. Especially high-achieving people. Especially people who have spent their lives being self-sufficient because self-sufficiency kept them safe.
But self-awareness without support has a ceiling.
You can only see so far into your own patterns from inside them.
Having someone outside, a coach, a community, a space where the work actually happens in relationship, is what takes insight and turns it into something that sticks.

Come Do This Work With Me

REGISTER TODAY

On Thursday, April 23 at 7 PM MT, I’m hosting a free webinar called Why You Keep Getting In Your Own Way and How to Finally Break the Pattern.
In one hour together we’re going to:
Name what self-sabotage actually is and where it comes from. Take the Saboteur Assessment live so you leave knowing your specific pattern by name. Talk about what the three targets are and which one you default to. And begin to understand what actually shifts these patterns beyond willpower and good intentions.
It’s free.
It’s virtual.
And I think it’s going to change how you see yourself.

If you’ve been feeling like you’re working against yourself,
if you’re tired of knowing what you need to do and still not doing it,
this is where we start.
I’ll see you there.

Dean Rasmussen is a Positive Intelligence coach and life coach based in Edmonton, AB. He works with people who are ready to stop getting in their own way and start listening to the sound of their own voice.