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Self-Defeating or Life-Generating Behaviors?
Self-defeating behaviors are those behaviors and attitudes that interfere with our health, productivity, relationships, serenity, emotional growth and happiness. Substance abuse, being disorganized, procrastination, excessive worry, alienation of others, indecision, perfectionism, and poor lifestyle habits (overeating, smoking, etc) are common self-defeating behaviors that my clients often want to eliminate.
Life-generating behaviors, on the other hand, are healthy alternatives to self-defeating behaviors because, instead of making us miserable, they nourish and guide us toward the results that we so desperately desire. Making the deliberate decision to make new friends, create more self-discipline, eat a healthy diet, develop clear goals and strive toward them, become more assertive when appropriate, and develop sobriety and serenity are examples of life-generating choices.
Given that self-defeating behaviors deplete us and wreck havoc on our life, why do we keep them going instead of eliminating and replacing them with alternative behaviors that would allow us to enjoy our life fully? And what would it take to repeatedly make life generating choices instead?
Drs. Greg and Lori Boothroyd (Lori is a friend and colleague) have developed a useful roadmap for doing just that in their book Going Home. They write that we return to self-defeating behaviors when we are in situations that appear to signal their need. We revert to a behavior that served us in the past because it protected us from something we feared. And even though we have grown, the circumstances have changed and the behavior is now interfering with us living our best life, we slip back into those old patterns almost without thinking. These flashpoints, as they call them, are the triggers that signal the self-defeating behavior to take over.
Here's an example. A coaching client stated that her habit of procrastination was affecting both her personal and professional life. When I asked her to identify where, when, with whom, and under what circumstances she procrastinated she realized that it was often when she was undertaking a big or important project (organizing her closet, preparing her taxes, doing the quarterly report.) As we talked about how procrastination served her in the past, she said that she often put off doing a paper or studying for an exam in college. She would wait until the night before something was due and then stay up all night to complete the assignment. When I asked her what she was afraid of, she said that she was afraid she would fail. By waiting until the night before a project was due she could push the fear out of her mind and then rely on the sudden energy burst of having to do it at the last minute to push past her fear. She also noted that her procrastination also gave her a good excuse if she didn't do well. She rationalized that a letter grade of "C" wasn't bad since she didn't start the project until the night before it was due!
Drs. Boothroyd state that our self-defeating behaviors came into our lives and rescued us during a time of need, but they now create the very grief they originally eliminated. So even though procrastination previously helped my client overcome her fear of failure as she took on a project, it was now causing her to do less than her best at work and at home. The process of identifying her fear and the types of situations that might cause her to revert to her self-defeating behavior of procrastination, was both freeing and empowering.
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