How Self-Sabotage is leaving Gengetone Artists Stuck in a Cycle of Doom.
What is self-sabotage? You may ask.
Self-sabotage refers to a situation where we passively and actively prevent ourselves from attaining our goals.
This behavior predominantly affect every aspect of our lives be it relationships, career wise or personal goals like body fitness. This behavior might be common but it is tremendously frustrating cycle of behavior that often lowers our self-confidence.
Whenever we lose confidence in self, we tend to feel stuck. Self-sabotaging behavior mainly comes from a place where one lacks self-belief, especially in times of uncertainty.
Most ambitious people who grew up in poor villages and slums often have nothing but confidence.
They believe in the unknown good happening to them anytime.
This is always good mindset to have because, otherwise, there are plenty of reasons for them to adopt the limiting beliefs kind of mindset.
I Gengetone, the lifestyle here is all about confidence. You make sure everybody in the room knows you have balls to do anything. This is always rooted in some deep insecurities which most of the time is covered by a mask of confidence.
The street lifestyle does not entertain the fact that you are afraid or unable to do something. Artists like the boy band Sailors Gang are going through this right now.
They went to an extend of sabotaging the relationship with their former manager Mwalimu Rachel just due to greed.
Read also: Ego and Hood mentality.
They chose money over loyalty and friendship with someone who would have given the the game in East African entertainment industry and now they are heading down the road where they are about to be fucked.
They are still fighting through the story and the values of the streets that they identify with but no longer serve them at the level they are in life
That is why all that the Sailors Gang default to is self-sabotage even though all they are trying to do is figure it out. Its just until they are willing to sit down and listen for once in their lives.
As much as we believe in a better future with plenty of things we anticipate for, we also need to emotionalize how we might feel when we get there.
Remember, the place of abundance where there is everything you have always wanted is pretty much an unknown place if you come from the poor ghettos and hopeless villages.
Most people don’t try to think about the effect of the place of abundance on them mentally. You might lose your shit.
Other people fall directly into self-sabotage and start messing things up so that they get back to poverty, their comfort zone.
People who sabotage themselves are always trying to match whatever is going on in their mind with what is happening in real life.
How do you self-sabotage?
Self-sabotage comes as a result of the following:
Procrastination.
You push away important tasks that are vital for your progress and focus on other self-distracting behaviors that give you immediate pleasure at the moment.
To progress in whatever field of your life you need to do things that are not pleasurable. It involves hard work and disrupting your comfort zone.
This is what makes people procrastinate.
Excessive use of drugs.
When you are struck by unfamiliar good and bad things, u feel like you cant handle them.
At this point, you feel like nobody understands you even when you try to explain how you feel. Since drugs (whatever the kind) gives you an illusion of good feeling and a break from your harsh reality, you indulge in it.
Sooner than latter you become addicted and you start failing to do your due diligence. You start messing up your relationships because you are no longer reliable.
The biggest shit load is that you mess up your finances because drugs are expensive and you want to have a good time.
A series of self-sabotage occurs until you find yourself in some deep shit and it will take some years before you un-shit that shit.
Ego and hood/village mentality.
This is a mental state that you feel some self-importance and you think that the world revolves around you.
You start taking people for granted, people who are there to support and push you to attain the success you have been yearning for.
You start handling things unprofessionally just like the way you used to do in the hood or the village. You see everything through a lens of limitations and poverty mind set (win or lose kind of thinking).
Sometimes thing can still happen as a win-win situation, but poverty mindset doesn’t think like that.
Read also: Ego and Hood mentality.
Fear of failure and success.
This is one of the big reasons why most people don’t even try to do something. Fear makes you feel comfortable in the comfort zone.
Failure and success is often scary and only courageous people are bold enough to face them.
Your poverty mindset makes you afraid of trying because you might fail, while your limiting beliefs gives you plenty of reasons why you will not succeed even if you try.
This is a real life prison in a free world.
Personal irresponsibility.
Pointing fingers and blaming other people for shit that was clearly your fault is what is sabotaging your progress.
The guts to take personal responsibility in the face of failure needs to be huge. Maybe it wasn’t your fault that things went wrong but at times its the belief that you are not going to do well that lead to the failure.
You begin acting in a way that will produce the outcome that matches what you believe in your mind.
Sometimes you spot faults somewhere along the way but you ignore the fact that you are supposed to fix it.
Taking personal responsibility makes you grow and evolve into a better person both to relate and work with.
Fear of uncertainty.
I know you like to be in control of everything. It a natural thing to feel like everything should be predictable.
This only happens to people in their comfort zone because everything is pretty much the same every single day.
For people like you who are out here making things happen, you don’t have that luxury. You don’t know what is going to happen. All you have is your courage and the tenacity to do what you have to do.
You are cruising through the un-chattered territories, so uncertainty is what you are dealing with all day. Your only savior is to let go of the urge to be in control and just go with the flow.
In conclusion, to avoid or minimize self-sabotage, you need to do some self-assessment and know yourself.
Understand your strengths and weaknesses and learn to listen to people who know what you don’t. Seek advice before you do things you don’t know.
