So many of us have the best-laid plans and for various reasons we sabotage our own progress.

I realized recently that part of the reason I self-sabotage is somewhere in the realm of anxiety and control. If I sabotage myself, then I know when it’s going to happen and it’s within my control. If I don’t sabotage, I may still fail but I will be blindsided by it and it will be harder and more painful to come back from it.

This way of thinking is so bonkers, but it’s exactly what I do. If I stop paying attention to my fitness goals and actively decide to stay on the couch or just bail on a workout then of course I won’t meet the goals. But it’s not that I tried and failed, it’s that I tried and chose to fail.

Self-improvement is usually hard. And it makes us vulnerable. Vulnerable is about the worst word in the English language as far as I’m concerned. It makes us feel our feelings and be squishy and mushy on the inside and it’s sooo unpleasant. But it is also necessary in order to learn and grow and change. If every time we start feeling vulnerable we just change our mind about the learning and growing and changing thing we’re doing then it’s ok because it was our decision right? We chose to stop the progress. We chose different priorities.

That sabotage really comes down to fear and vulnerability. We aren’t in control of change. We don’t know the possible ripple effects in our lives – good and bad – so we give up on it. We don’t have the courage to keep going. We convince ourselves that we can’t do the thing we tried or we only give it a little bit of effort so that we don’t fail.

If we gave our all to something and failed, that could be devastating. But if we just dabbled in it and it doesn’t work out, well that’s because I wasn’t really trying so it’s okay. I haven’t actually failed.

So here’s the mental shift: We have to go all in. We have to TRY. And we have to get out of our own way. Try. Try for just a limited amount of time. If forever is daunting, then try for a week. See how that goes. Then try again for a couple weeks.

The thing we’re practicing is success. We’re practicing staying out of our own way. We’re practicing trying and succeeding. We are learning to tolerate risk and vulnerability.

Before you can make big change in your life, you have to be willing to facilitate big change. And that starts with little change and being willing to take little risks.

Baby steps to stay out of our own way. We can learn to be brave. It sure is a hard habit to break when we’ve been holding tightly to control for so long.