How to Stop Self Sabotage: The Beliefs that Quietly Hold You Back

For almost ten years, whenever I entered a fun run, I chose the shortest or second-shortest distance. Every time.

I loved the events. I loved having something to train for, the atmosphere on the day and the satisfaction of crossing the finish line. If the event raised money for charity, even better. Having something in the calendar also forced me to get out onto the footpath and train, which was usually a very good thing.

But no matter how many events I completed, there was a line I didn't cross. Long-distance running was not for me. Or, more accurately, I believed I couldn't do it.

Then, one year I registered for a 22km event. Not 5km. Not my familiar 10km. Twenty-two kilometres, a distance I had never attempted before.

To strengthen my commitment, I asked friends and family to sponsor me. Their support gave the 22km goal a different kind of weight. I knew I would trai - that wasn't the issue. The challenge was continuing to increase the distance beyond anything I had done before, when a very old part of me was still convinced I couldn't run that far.

I had deliberately made it harder for myself to retreat into what I knew, because that was exactly what I had been doing for years. I had a self-limiting belief that I could not run that far.

The interesting thing is that I didn't experience it as a self-limiting belief. I experienced it as a fact.

When a belief becomes part of who you are

As a child, I had asthma. I remember winter nights with a ventilator in my room and being held by my mother in a bathroom filled with steam while we tried to open my airways. Growing up in a small town, the adults around me were all aware of my asthma and, understandably, cautious about it. Parents, teachers and sports coaches reminded me that I couldn't run far and needed to be careful, because exertion could trigger an asthma attack.

At the time, those messages made sense. They were designed to protect me.

Somewhere along the way, though, a warning about what my body could safely manage at that particular stage of my life became something much bigger. "I can't run far" gradually became "I'm not a runner."

This is how many self-limiting beliefs take hold. They often begin with something real: an experience, a criticism, a failure, a difficult relationship, something somebody repeatedly told us, or a moment in which we felt embarrassed, rejected, unsafe, incapable or out of our depth.

We draw a conclusion from what happened, then begin living in ways that support the conclusion. I believed I couldn't run far, so I didn't run far. Because I didn't run far, I had no evidence that I could. Because I had no evidence that I could, the belief became stronger.

Over time, a belief can become part of our identity, and identity has an enormous influence over behaviour. We make choices that are consistent with who we believe ourselves to be, and those choices create more evidence for the identity.

Around and around we go, sometimes for years.

High achievement doesn't make you immune

One of the things I find endlessly fascinating about human beings is our ability to be enormously capable in one area of life and feel completely incapable in another.

You can lead hundreds of people and believe you are terrible at speaking in front of a room. Build a successful business and insist you are hopeless with money. Handle incredibly complex problems at work and believe you could never write a book, become more visible, start again or ask directly for what you want.

Being intelligent doesn't protect us from this either. In fact, intelligence can sometimes make a limiting belief harder to see because we become extremely good at defending it. We can produce the history, the examples, the evidence and a beautifully constructed argument for why our conclusion is entirely reasonable.

That doesn't necessarily make it true in the here and now. Sometimes it simply means we have been gathering evidence for one version of ourselves for a very long time.

An old truth is not necessarily a current truth

By adulthood, my childhood asthma was no longer running my life. I had grown out of it, stopped using medication and was perfectly capable of exercising. My circumstances had changed, my body had changed and I had changed.

The belief hadn't received the memo.

But here's the thing - working with a self-limiting belief isn't simply about deciding it is false and replacing it with something more positive.

Sometimes the belief wasn't false. Sometimes it was once completely appropriate. It helped you understand what was happening, kept you safe, prevented you from repeating something painful or helped you navigate circumstances you didn't yet have the resources to handle differently.

The more useful question is whether it is still true.

Is this genuinely a fact about who you are today, or is it a conclusion you reached a long time ago and have never seriously questioned since?

There is an enormous difference between "I have never done this" and "I can't do this". "I haven't learned how yet" is not the same thing as "I'm bad at this". Feeling uncomfortable the last time you tried something does not automatically mean it isn't for you.

And "I don't know whether I can" leaves an entirely different future available to you than "I can't".

For years, I had never thought to test the difference. “I can't run far” was simply something I knew about myself. Until, eventually, I had reason to question it.

The first kilometre

When I was around 30, I worked for an organisation that sponsored its employees to participate in fun runs and triathlons. I watched colleagues leave for lunchtime training runs and cheered them across finish lines. I wanted to join them, but, of course, I couldn't run. Or so I thought.

Then two things happened.

I began working with a coach and learned, for the first time, to question some of the things I had always assumed were simply true about me. And, I moved to another organisation where part of my role involved encouraging staff and members to participate in charity fun runs.

I was really uncomfortable asking other people to do something I had already decided I couldn't do myself, so I started training.

I ran one kilometre. Then two. Then three. I didn't wake up one morning having magically transformed into a runner. I created evidence.

Eventually I entered my first 10km fun run and finished it. I was incredibly proud of myself.

Then something interesting happened. Ten kilometres, which had once seemed enormous, became the new limit. I had expanded the identity, but only so far. I was now someone who could run 10km. Twenty-two kilometres was another matter entirely.

We do this in other areas of our lives too. We break through one ceiling and, without noticing, build another.

Self-limiting beliefs don't always sound limiting

Some limiting beliefs are easy to recognise because they arrive with an obvious "I can't", "I'm not good enough", "I'm terrible at that" or "I could never...".

Others sound considerably more reasonable. "That's just not me." "I'm better behind the scenes." "I'm not a salesperson." "I'm too old to start again." "I don't need to earn that much." "I'm just not someone who takes risks."

Any of those statements could be true. They could also deserve further examination.

Sometimes what sounds like excellent self-knowledge is actually a well-rehearsed explanation for remaining inside an identity we already know how to inhabit.

There is comfort in the familiar, even when the familiar is no longer what we want.

You don't just change the belief. You change the person living it.

This is the part of the conversation that interests me most now.

Changing a self-limiting belief isn't simply about coming up with a more positive sentence and repeating it until you believe it. It is also about identity.

If you have spent 20 years being the person who "doesn't do that", suddenly doing it can feel strange. Not necessarily because it is wrong, but because it's unfamiliar.

Your mind knows the old version of you. Your patterns know the old version of you. Your nervous system knows the old version of you. There is a familiarity and predictability to being that person, even if being that person is now keeping something you want out of reach.

When you begin behaving differently, resistance can show up. You procrastinate, second-guess yourself, create unnecessary complications, suddenly decide the goal wasn't that important after all or retreat to something you already know you can do.

That resistance doesn't automatically mean you are moving in the wrong direction. Sometimes you are simply stretching beyond what has become normal for you.

This is why evidence is important. You don't need to convince yourself overnight that you are suddenly the boldest, bravest and most capable person in the world. Your system probably wouldn't believe you anyway. You need experiences that allow the new version of you to become increasingly familiar.

An assertive conversation. A boundary. A proposal. A courageous decision made without asking six other people whether they agree with you. Each time you act differently and discover that you can handle what follows, you expand what feels normal.

Eventually, the thing that once made you nervous becomes something you can simply hold.

There was a time when running 10km felt extraordinary to me. Eventually, it was just something I did.

That is part of identity change. Something that felt extraordinary, or even impossible, becomes ordinary.

Understanding how to stop self-sabotage starts with looking beneath the behaviour itself. Procrastination, avoidance, playing safe or repeatedly pulling back from something you want are often the visible part of the pattern. Underneath can sit an old belief about who you are, what you are capable of or what is available to you.

How to stop self-sabotage by changing the belief underneath it

The first step is to start listening to your own language. Pay attention to the things you say about yourself without thinking: "I can't", "I don't", "I'm not", "I've never been", "I'm terrible at", "people like me don't" and "that's just who I am".

Then get curious rather than immediately trying to correct yourself. Where did that belief come from? What happened? Who told you? What did you experience? Why did the conclusion make sense at the time? Did it protect you from something?

There is no need to ridicule an old belief. Understanding how and why it formed is far more useful.

Then test the belief against your life now. What has changed since it formed? What do you know now that you didn't know then? What capability, experience or evidence exists today that wasn't available to you then? How have you changed since then?

It can also be illuminating to ask what continuing to believe it is costing you. What aren't you attempting? What aren't you asking for? What decisions are you making because of it? What possibilities are you removing before you even have the opportunity to discover whether they are available to you?

From there, choose a more expansive possibility to test. Not a grand affirmation that every part of you immediately rejects. Something believable enough that you are willing to move.

"I can't do this" can become "I haven't learned how to do this yet."

"I'm not confident" can become "I can practise speaking before I feel completely confident."

"I'm not a runner" became, for me, "Let's see how far I can go."

Then comes the part that changes everything: Act.

You can think about a new identity for months, but at some point you have to give yourself evidence.

Eventually, you become the person who can

I completed the 22km. I didn't break any speed records and that was never the point. I made it to the end.

More importantly, the finish line contradicted something I had believed about myself for years. The woman who "couldn't run" had just run 22 kilometres.

Once you have lived an experience like that, you can't completely return to the old story. You now know something about yourself that you didn't know before.

That is why these moments are important, and it has very little to do with running.

All of us carry identities we have inherited, created or repeated until they feel like truth. Some of them serve us beautifully. Others quietly decide what we will attempt, ask for, create, earn, tolerate, pursue and allow ourselves to become.

Sometimes the next chapter of your life doesn't require more capability. You already have plenty of that. It requires you to stop asking an outdated version of yourself for permission to create what comes next.

So, what have you decided about yourself that you haven't tested for years? And what could become possible if you did?

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If you're ready to trust yourself more deeply, expand your confidence and step into an even stronger version of yourself in your work, life and leadership, The Unshakeable Woman Blueprint is a free place to begin.

If you've already achieved a great deal and find yourself wondering what you want the next part of your life and work to look like, Success Was the Warm-Up will help you explore what comes next.

And if there is a dream, desire or possibility you are ready to bring to life, The Soft Strength Salon is where we work on you so you can bring it to life. We look at what is getting in the way, expand what you can hold, and help the identity, beliefs and behaviours of the person you are becoming begin to catch up with what you want to create.

Janelle Ryan is a globally recognised personal, career and leadership coach who works with high-performing professionals and established leaders navigating growth, change and the next phase of their life and leadership. She is the founder of Sky High Coaching, an international speaker, retreat leader and published author, known for her work on internal authority, soft strength and sustainable success. Janelle blends deep insight with practical application to help capable women lead with clarity, confidence and precision.