65 Important Self-Sabotage Quotes You Need To Read

Self-sabotage quotes can be a powerful tool in combating your hidden behavioral patterns that keep you stuck in life.

If you have trouble expressing your thoughts about your self-sabotaging behavior, these quotes are just what you need to understand your actions.

Seeing that you’re not the only one who feels this way can be really helpful in changing your life.

As you’ll learn from this collection of self-sabotage quotes, many people prevent themselves from being happy because they’ve adopted unhappiness and self-abandonment as part of their identity.

Others have a fear of success, struggle with limiting beliefs about their worth, or feel undeserving of good things.

Whatever the cause of the self-sabotage is, I can’t think of a single scenario where it would be helpful. Can you?

Nope, I didn’t think so either!

Finally, don’t forget to share these quotes with your loved ones and anyone who needs a good dose of motivation.

Self-Sabotage Quotes You Need To Read

1. “Self-doubt does more to sabotage individual potential than all external limitations put together.” – Brian Tracy

2. “The most dangerous way we sabotage ourselves is by waiting for the perfect moment to begin. Nothing works perfectly the first time, or the first fifty times. Everything has a learning curve. The beginning is just that – a beginning. Surrender your desire to do it flawlessly on the first try. It’s not possible. Learn to learn. Learn to fail. Learn to learn from failing.” – Vironika Tugaleva

3. “Like most other creatives, I struggle with self-sabotage, self-doubt, and feeling like an imposter more often than not. I struggle with expressing myself, because it does sometimes feel easier or safer not to.” – Jeff Jarvis

4. “If you raise your standards but don’t really believe you can meet them, you’ve already sabotaged yourself. You won’t even try; you’ll be lacking the sense of certainty that allows you to tap the deepest capacity that’s within you…

Our beliefs are like unquestioned commands, telling us how things are, what’s possible and impossible and what we can and can not do. They shape every action, every thought, and every feeling that we experience. As a result, changing our belief systems is central to making any real and lasting change in our lives.” – Tony Robbins

5. “Sometimes we self-sabotage just when things seem to be going smoothly. Perhaps this is a way to express our fear about whether it is okay for us to have a better life. We are bound to feel anxious as we leave behind old notions of our unworthiness. The challenge is not to be fearless, but to develop strategies of acknowledging our fears and finding out how we can allay them.” – Maureen Brady

6. “What is required for many of us, paradoxical though it may sound, is the courage to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage.” – Nathaniel Branden

7. “Nothing will sabotage our happiness and success more thoroughly than the fear that we are not enough.” – Bill Crawford

8. “We make tactless remarks because we wish to hurt, break our legs because we do not wish to walk, marry the wrong man because we cannot let ourselves be happy, board the wrong train because we would prefer not to reach the destination.” – Fay Weldon

9. “This is how women self-sabotage and self-destruct. Unless we have constant witnesses to our hard work, we are convinced we pull off every day of our lives through smoke and mirrors.” – Sarah Breathnach

10. “Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.” – Steven Pressfield

11. “Cry wolf often enough and you eventually get eaten by the wolf, even if the wolf is you.” – Kris Kidd

12. “Withholding love is a form of self-sabotage, as what we withhold from others, we are withholding from ourselves.” – Marianne Williamson

13. “I decry the injustice of my wounds, only to look down and see that I am holding a smoking gun in one hand and a fistful of ammunition in the other.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough

14. “People who self-handicap purposely shoot themselves in the foot in order to protect themselves from having to confront their possible shortcomings.

Many self-handicapping behaviors are those small, subtle bad habits like being late, gossiping, micromanaging, behaving passive-aggressively, or being a perfectionist.

We may not recognize these self-defeating – and self-handicapping – traits for what they are. Or we may even wrongly perceive them as strengths. But in truth, they often get in the way of us blooming.” – Rich Karlgaard

15. “Ultimately, the biggest fear inside you is that you will be destroyed. You must ask yourself if this fear is rational. In certain situations, you may be faced with losing certain things or people from your life, but will this kill you?

Ask yourself, ‘What is the probability of this (name your fear here) actually happening?’

Generally, the unconscious, by denying you what you wish to manifest, is really trying to protect you. It is trying to keep you from being destroyed. The unconscious can sabotage you while all the while it is thinking it is helping you.” – Laurence Galian

16. “I am really fascinated by self-sabotage. I think that there’s not a person I know who doesn’t fall victim to it. It’s essential to the human condition, and relatable.” – Kit Williamson

17. “More than anything else, I wanted not to be alone — yet all my actions guaranteed I’d be lonely. Like wearing a vest of explosives when you’re coming in for a hug, insatiable need is a form of sabotage.” – Gina Barreca

18. “The reason that I can’t find the enemy is that I have yet to look within myself.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough

19. “I have a limited tolerance for feeling good. When I hit my Upper Limit, I manufacture thoughts that make me feel bad. The problem is bigger than just my internal feelings, though: I seem to have a limited tolerance for my life going well in general.

When I hit my Upper Limit, I do something that stops my positive forward trajectory. I get into a conflict with my ex-wife, get into a money bind, or do something else that brings me back down within the bounds of my limited tolerance.” – Gay Hendricks

20. “We each have our own ways of sabotaging and keeping ourselves down… Do we need to remain the victim so strongly that we pull the ceiling down upon our own heads? There is a comfort in the familiar.” – Maureen Brady

21. “More times than I can remember I look around and I ask why the hole I’m in looks so strangely familiar. Probably because it looks a whole lot like all the other ones I dug before I got around to digging this one.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough

22. “Most of us don’t fear that we are not enough; what most of us really fear is our own greatness. Most of us have a fear of success. Why? Because we don’t think that we deserve to be successful in anything.

This is why people recklessly spend their money or don’t work as hard as they could or do things that they know are wrong. They are hindering their own success on purpose, because they don’t think they deserve it. They cut their own legs out from underneath them on purpose. They are self-sabotaging.” – Lisa Bedrick

23. “The barrier to our future is often the very plans that we’ve created to get there.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough

24. “I manufactured the stream of painful images because I was feeling good! Some part of me was afraid of enjoying positive energy for any extended period of time.” – Gay Hendricks

25. “Those who say life is knocking them down and giving them a tough time are usually the first to beat themselves up. Be on your own side.” – Rasheed Ogunlaru

26. “The tragedy of too many people is that they cannot allow happiness just to be there; they cannot leave it alone. Their sense of who they are and of what their destiny is cannot accommodate happiness. So they are driven to find ways to sabotage it.” – Nathaniel Branden

27. “I’m doing everything I can to sabotage my career. It’s a little thing called ‘fear of success’.” – Jon Stewart

Quotes About Self-Sabotaging Behavior

1. “Human beings invent just as many ways to sabotage their lives as to improve them.” – Mark Goulston

2. “The biggest thing holding you back is almost always… you. Start there.” – Hunter Post

3. “Sometimes we don’t move forward because the people who love us the most unconsciously sabotage our efforts.” – Chip Espinoza

4. “Other people’s views and troubles can be contagious. Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.” – Epictetus

5. “Self-sabotage is when we say we want something and then go about making sure it doesn’t happen.” – Alyce Cornyn-Selby

6. “Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry, or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane.” – Eckhart Tolle

7. “The biggest disabilities are when you sabotage yourself mentally, those personal demons that get on your shoulder and you can’t shake ’em.” – Zach Anner

8. “I sabotage myself for fear of what my bigness could do.” – Alanis Morissette

9. “The question ‘Is this an act of self-love or is it an act of self-sabotage?’ is one you must consistently ask yourself if you are committed to having all that you want and all that you deserve.

When you love yourself you feel worthy and deserving of claiming the gifts of this world. Self-love gives you peace of mind and balance.

Self-love gives you self-respect and the ability to respect others. It gives you the confidence to stand up and ask for what you want. Self-love is the main ingredient in a successful, fulfilled life.” – Debbie Ford

10. “Procrastination is hands down, our favorite form of self-sabotage.” – Alyce Cornyn-Selby

11. “Most people sabotage themselves because they aren’t mindful in the moment. Let your daily actions be governed by your goals and dreams.

Whenever you are making an important decision, first ask if it gets you closer to your goals or farther away. If the answer is closer, pull the trigger. If it’s farther away, make a different choice. Conscious choice making is a critical step in making your dreams a reality.” – Jillian Michaels

12. “Our biggest enemy is our own self-doubt. We really can achieve extraordinary things in our lives. But we sabotage our greatness because of our fear.” – Robin Sharma

13. “Lack of forgiveness causes almost all of our self-sabotaging behavior.” – Mark Victor Hansen

14. “Doubt is most often the source of our powerlessness. To doubt is to be faithless, to be without hope or belief.

When we doubt, our self-talk sounds like this: ‘I don’t think I can. I don’t think I will.’… To doubt is to have faith in the worst possible outcome.

It is to believe in the perverseness of the universe, that even if I do well, something I don’t know about will get in the way, sabotage me, or get me in the end.” – Blaine Lee Pardoe

15. “We sabotage our creative possibilities because the world revealed by our imagination may not fit well with the life we have taken so much trouble to construct over the years. Faced with the pain of that distance, the distance between desire and reality, we turn just for a moment and quickly busy ourselves.” – David Whyte

16. “There are people who are brilliant and don’t work hard, and there are people who are brilliant and sabotage themselves.” – Sarah Silverman

17. “I’ve never trusted collaborations because most people in this world are not closers. They don’t finish what they start; they don’t live what they dream; they sabotage their own progress because they’re afraid they won’t find what they seek.” – Neil Strauss

18. “Having a low opinion of yourself is not ‘modesty’. It’s self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not ‘egotism’. It’s a necessary precondition to happiness and success.” – Bobbe Sommer

Quotes About Subconscious Self-Sabotage

1. “Complaining becomes a habit. Focusing on the negative also becomes a habit. It’s one of the most detrimental habits you can possibly have. It can negatively impact you socially, affecting your personal happiness, but it can also subconsciously sabotage your money and success.” – T. Harv Eker

2. “It’s a serious character weakness to think you can get something of value for little or nothing, to believe that life will flood you with abundance when you won’t commit yourself to delivering your best contribution in exchange.

In fact, it’s a safe bet that you’ll subconsciously sabotage yourself from being in such a place for long. You won’t allow yourself to receive what you don’t feel you’ve earned. To receive life’s bounty, you must know without a doubt that you deserve it.” – Steve Pavlina

3. “If you do not feel deserving of happiness, consciously or subconsciously, or if you have accepted the idea that happiness is somehow wrong or cannot last, you will not respond appropriately when happiness comes knocking at your door in the form of romantic love.

No matter how much you may have waited and cried, you will not welcome love when it arrives – you will find a way to sabotage it. What a challenge to resist this temptation! What an opportunity for true spiritual growth and transformation – to defy your negative feelings and honor the gift that life offers you!” – Nathaniel Branden

4. “No matter how well-meaning your intention, doing too much is not always an act of love but of sabotage.” – Judith Orloff

5. “Once you uncover the history of this pattern and trace its roots, you will see that your reaction in the present moment is really a reaction from the past, a shadow character’s attempt to protect you from reexperiencing an old emotional wound, which instead sabotages you in the present.” – Connie Zweig

6. “Art is a war – between ourselves and the forces of self-sabotage that would stop us from doing our work. The artist is a warrior.” – Steven Pressfield

7. “The ego mind both professes its desire for love and does everything possible to repel it, or if it gets here anyway, to sabotage it. That is why dealing with issues like control, anger, and neediness is the most important work in preparing ourselves for love.” – Marianne Williamson

Overcoming Self-Sabotage Quotes

1. “Forgiveness is mental floss! Build the capacity to forgive slowly – start with little unkind acts, otherwise you’ll sabotage yourself. When we forgive, we forgive the actor, not the action.” – Stephen Levine

2. “One simple thing to do and destroy the spirit of self-sabotage is to admire the beauty hidden in ugly circumstances.” – Israelmore Ayivor

3. “You can’t imagine just how much believing in negative thoughts is affecting your life…until you stop.” – Charles F. Glassman

4. “Much of your self-esteem doesn’t come from what happens to you on a given day or what somebody says, but what you know about yourself on the inside.” – Dr. Judy Ho

5. “Self-destruction and self-sabotage are often just the start of the self-resurrection process.” – Oli Anderson

6. “Focus on rewarding and praising yourself instead of degrading and punishing yourself. You’ll get far better results!” – Akiroq Brost

7. “We can all make powerful choices. We can all take back control by not blaming chance, fate, or anyone else for our outcomes. It’s within our ability to cause everything to change. Rather than letting past hurtful experiences sap our energy and sabotage our success, we can use them to fuel positive, constructive change.” – Darren Hardy

8. “We often want quick answers, quick results, instant rewards, and that’s normal in our high tech, instant, Google-driven world.

To take that first step towards reaching a goal or realizing a dream, knowing that there will perhaps be a thousand more steps to follow in order to make it happen, can be daunting.

It’s simple and yet complicated.

The simple part of achieving success is that it just takes work. For me, staying focused on my goals and envisioning my dreams every day, makes the work flow almost on its own.

The hard part is the mindset, and to not self-sabotage, because you don’t believe in yourself. We often think we can’t achieve our wildest dreams or that we are somehow incapable, and then we never, ever take that first step.” – Riitta Klint

9. “No more excuses. No more self-sabotage. No more self-pity. No more comparing yourself to others. Time to step up. Take action right now and start living your life with purpose.⁠” – Anthon St. Maarten

10. “The only reason I can’t jump in and engage in life is that I’ve told myself I can’t. Yet I can’t help wondering what would happen if I told myself I could?” – Craig D. Lounsbrough

11. “Stop standing in your own way. Stop making excuses. Stop talking about why you can’t. Stop sabotaging yourself. Decide which direction you are going in and take action. One decision at a time, one moment at a time.” – Akiroq Brost

12. “When we are succeeding – that is, when we have begun to overcome our self-doubt and self-sabotage, when we are advancing in our craft and evolving to a higher level – that’s when panic strikes. When we experience panic, it means that we’re about to cross a threshold. We’re poised on the doorstep of a higher plane.” – Steven Pressfield

13. “A well-defined backup plan is sabotage waiting to happen. Why push through the dip, why take the risk, why blow it all when there’s the comfortable alternative instead? The people who break through usually have nothing to lose, and they almost never have a backup plan.” – Seth Godin

Final Thoughts

I hope these self-sabotage quotes resonated with you and gave you enough motivation to dare to live the life you dream of.

I’m not going to lie – I recognized my past (and present) self in many of these quotes, which is why it’s so important to be in tune with our subconscious behavior patterns so that they don’t end up ruling our lives.

Feel free to save these quotes and come back to them later whenever you need a little pick-me-up!

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to be a replacement for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment by qualified medical professionals. Always seek the advice of your doctor, therapist, or other healthcare providers with any questions you may have.