The Art of Sabotaging Your Own Success

Note from Kimanzi: I will be taking a page from Michael Hyatt’s book, starting this week I will be going to a twice a week posting schedule. New post will come out on Monday and Friday with any guest post coming out Wednesday. Thanks for being a loyal reader of this blog I’m honored to have a guest poster today:

Mike Holmes a blogger and speaker speaker who heads the Simple Strategies for Startups community. He is also the author of How to Be Raised Up: Ancient Principles for Lasting Greatness.

Hi my name is Mike… (“Hi Mike!” you all say in unison) …and I’m…sigh…an unlearner. (You all clap!)

Yes…the road hasn’t been easy. And I wish I didn’t have to travel it. But at the same time I’m glad I learned what I learned from it. See…for years I learned how to sabotage my own success. Anytime I got close to the thing I wanted I found someway to lose it, got discouraged by “someone,” lost focus because of “something” and kept going back to zero. This is painful. But it’s necessary. Because there might be some saboteurs in the audience. As painful as this may be, let me give you some examples:

One time I got serious about my weight, gave myself completely over to health and wellness. I went twice a day, did boxing and weight lifting, and lost massive amounts of fat and put on lean muscle. I had approximately 5 more pounds of fat to lose…but then I stopped going, gave up my correct eating habits, got lazy, and well you know the rest.
I wrote my book and even got great testimonials for it. Did guest posts, promotions, and was even starting to make headway. But then I quit. It was too hard. It took too long. And even though people LOVED the book…I resigned prematurely, and well you know the rest.
I started “great” businesses and closed them down just as quickly when they got too “hard.”

So what woke me up

What woke me up. Two things…or one thing and one guy:

The Christ in Business Conference I put on


Kimanzi

Now I’m not just saying this cause I’m on his blog…no…I’m being completely honest. Let me deal with the first one. When I put on that conference it was HARD WORK. And during the middle of it the results I got were dismal…no where near what I had expected. It was 5 days before the conference and I was about to pull the plug. I got on the phone to tell my wife about the next failure I was about to encounter. She said this:

“Ok. Do what you have to do. But I want you to know: if you quit know you will NEVER be able to get these people back. And rightfully so.”

Whether she was wrong or right about the people I don’t know. What I do know is: she was right and I was wrong. I could no longer afford to bail out because things got “tough.”

Where does Kimanzi fit it? Well, he gave an awesome talk sharing his journey. And it really hit home to me. Something clicked in my head: if this guy can do it why can’t I?! So, this is personal. And introspective. And personal lol! But if my journey can help you…then I’m happy to share it.

 Have you ever sabotaged your own success? What’s your story?