Maybe you fear succeeding because you know that once you hit the top someone will be there to throw you out of your pedestal. Your question led me into a spiral and I went to look for answers. That is when I found an article about self-sabotage. I have years of expertise in the field. Aristoteles wrote "Nicomachean ethics" to his son and one of the points he made is that all human actions have happiness as an end goal. I agree with him and believe we fear not achieving happiness once we succeed. It's like realizing that your unhappiness was not related to what you thought was wrong condemning you to restart your search for the root or deal with the thought that you will be unhappy forever. I will extend my rant a bit more and dare to add to my friend Aristotle's philosophy by saying; We look for happiness through love, but we fear giving love and being rejected. Once we refrain from loving we assume that others will do the same... it is a vicious circle of not loving once we fear not being loved
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Jul 18, 2024

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This is an interesting perspective. my assumption of why self-sabatoge happens is that we seek comfort/familiarity or some relative sense of peace in accomplishing a goal. When that gets done and we don't find the fulfillment or joy that came from it, or it becomes boring, we do anything in our power to generate conflict and get the goal posts moving again. I don't know how similar this is to Nicomachean ethics but the vicious circle rings true in some ways
Jul 18, 2024
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I think continually asking why you want something can help with this. When you do, you may realize the ā€itā€ you want is rooted in other people: how they’ll perceive you, if you’ll be accepted by them, etc. The older I’ve gotten I’ve been better at untangling some of my desires from the ego and I think it has lead to better self-satisfaction of where I am at and where I am going. it’s also allowed me to ā€let goā€ of some dreams. That’s sounds negative or sad but I don’t mean it so: sometimes you white-knuckle-grip an idea of yourself so hard that it destroys you! I think ā€letting goā€ doesn’t mean things won’t happen, it means they don’t have to and that pressure alleviation can make all the difference. That’s not to say to never let the drive of the ego take over…I’m not sure we would create art/great things without it. I guess what I’m saying is that knowing the root of our desires is a key to balance and self-assuredness.
Feb 18, 2025
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We have to feel it. It sucks. But if you don’t, I think it’s much harder to define success. This also makes it harder to define who you are and hope to be. This isn’t a super helpful answer. But I’ve failed a lot. Some of failure is out of our hands, some is not. Either way knowing how it feels is helpful to developing your sense of self.
Mar 31, 2025
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love myself, the choices I make, the people I let into my life and the lessons I learn I want to start doing things that center what brings me joy and not what is necessarily expected of me, I feel like I get trapped on the misery wheel, when I am consistently making choices that are not good for me but do not know how to effectively take back my agency. I feel like if I loved myself a bit more maybe then I would not feel like I deserve to be on the wheel at all, maybe I could feel like I can build my own wheel, a better wheel, a wheel built with love
May 29, 2024

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my phone broke and I was broke. so I had to go though 2 months of no phone. I have never been so peaceful. I now know the route to get to places (because I had no maps). Got the habit of only replying to texts at 6:30pm and make plans for the next day at that time. I read so many books and was so notinfluenced by social media. Even the things I was eating changed a lot, no more fast meals you can make in less then 5 min, instead I asked my grandma what to cook and guys it’s awesome. BREAK YOUR PHONE
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Getting to the checkout and realizing that the price on the shelf was wrong and you actually don't think the real price is worth it, but the cashier is looking at you.
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