How do we self-sabotage

When it comes to your goals there are two really bad things that you can do that it will prevent you from accomplishing them.

You can either be lazy, if you are two passive and you don't take enough action because, your goals are obviously won't accomplish your goals.

The other bad thing people do is they become obsessive about their goals, obsession is the opposite of laziness, it s when you take to much action to the point that it is hurting your goals. There are many forms obsession can take, some of example of that might be: micromanaging, checking your results very frequently, expecting that you should have a constant climactic growth without any plateaus etc.

These two strategies of self sabotage might look very different on the outside but they are actually two different strategies that accomplished the same thing. The purpose of these is to control pain, laziness or apathy happens when people stop acting because their actions cause them almost exclusively pain in the past, so they stop taking any actions in order to stop suffering.

Obsessing about something it is another way to control your pain, instead of being to passive like when you are lazy, you are being to involved in that process you micromanage things you expend to much energy than it is necessary, It is most likely to take shortcuts or fall for scams.

The interesting part about obsession is that sometimes can get you some results, if you are a workaholic it will eventually pay off to some degree, but your progress and success is going to be very unstable and volatile, you are not going to enjoy your success because you are mostly motivated by pain to pursue it. So there is a constant dark shadow that lives inside of you following anywhere you go, and the only way to distract yourself from paying attention to it is by obsessing about your goals.

This is the stereotype of the externally successful people, but miserable on the inside. Like most vices they either lead to deficency like laziness does, or to excess like obsession does, either way no matter which one you predominantly practice they won't lead to happiness.

The virtue between laziness and obsession is relaxation, sadly we live in a culture that lost his capacity to relax, we relay on drugs like alcohol to help us "relax" almost in all situation. Sedation is not relaxation when you are drunk you are not relaxed, you are just numb. Relaxation means to accept the negative consequences that can hypothetically happen in any given situation, it requaiers presence, not absent mindness.