We all have a dream of outperforming ourselves at work and staying consistent and moving up in our career.

However, we have difficulties bringing our wishes and expectations to life.

Furthermore, in the fast and highly competitive corporate world, some of our attitudes, assumptions, values, flaws often render us completely ineffective, come in the way of us being the best version of ourselves, from learning new skills, from developing our talents.

The reality is that, despite our best intentions, we are often our worst enemies, are unable to improve our career, to achieve our definition of success, to satisfy our higher purpose.

We thereby harbor dissatisfaction, self-defeating thoughts and resort to self-sabotaging actions.

Wondering how to become a better performer, a better contributor, a better leader in the workplace and control the self-sabotaging tendencies?

Most of the time, self-sabotage takes roots from collaborators sometimes abusing substance, striving too hard for materialistic success.

Self-sabotage also stems from an inability to control extreme negative thoughts and emotions such as anger, guilt or resentment, and an inability to control other people. Indeed, in the workplace, low performing employees and leaders tend to either:

• complain too much about circumstances,
• not take action or initiative,
• doubt their capabilities,
• be addicted to praise,
• struggle to live up to other people expectations. Not pursuing your true purpose and implementing somebody else dream cause you to subconsciously rebel against your current situation.
• act impatient,
• be unable to follow rules or respect authority figure,
• be unable to handle the pressures of responsibility;
• misinterpret the image they have of themselves
• be busy or lack time management skills,
• lack conflict resolution skills,
• fear the unknown,
• fear criticism, looking ridiculous or being embarrassed,
• fear change or fear success,
• feel rejected or reject their own being,
• fear failure. Failures are usually blessings in disguise.

How to improve these bad habits and become an effective member of the workforce?

Becoming a better performer and contributor in the workplace doesn’t end at solely executing your duties and providing acceptable results, it also means working on your character and core values. To enable effective performance in the workplace, it is necessary to:

1. Assess your strengths and weaknesses and ground them into reality. I cannot stress enough how self-discovery is an important and long life process that allows to:
   • upgrade your moral compass and create new ethical standards,
   • accept our unique distinctions,
   • evaluate your role and contributions at work,
   • assist, be assisted by coworkers or team members with a complementing set of skills.
2. Understand your interests and abilities. This way you are able to develop your core capabilities, to choose the work that stimulates you the most, the workplace in which you best fit in and the team that complements you the best.
3. Keep learning, grow your knowledge and your emotional intelligence that you may increase satisfaction at work, to envision greater possibilities, to overcome obstacles and to be successful in every area of your life by:
   • doing something new, something different, challenging your thoughts and your routine,
   • nurturing your natural curiosity about the world, about what you don’t know,
   • breaking routine and mindless actions to stimulate your imagination,
   • tackling your fears and negative emotions head and listing the consequences of your actions.
4. Adjust your self-image to reality by writing down:
   • the qualities you have about yourself and the ones you want to acquire,
   • your trigger points. Don’t let identifying your trigger points to get discouraged and give up on yourself. Noticing your self-sabotaging habits is actually beneficial to you: you are probably not in the walk of life that you wish or supposed to be in.
5. Act responsibility, be proactive, take initiative. Take on more responsibility and assignments, perform them with enthusiasm and motivation in order to become confident in your abilities, autonomous, dependable, emotionally mature and trustworthy. Indeed, the more you take on responsibility, the more you learn about yourself, the more you understand the consequences of your actions, the faster you admit your mistakes as soon as you notice them, the better you remain accountable especially when things go wrong, the more you grow, the more you gain competencies, the more you are willing to take initiative and even risks.
6. Discipline yourself by inspecting and readjusting your thoughts, actions and behaviors to set standards, and dominating your immediate desires and impulses.
7. Stay true to yourself. Avoid comparing yourself to others and competing with others.
8. Allow yourself to think. In silence, without looking for distractions, confront yourself, make peace with yourself, strengthen your decision-making skills, observe bad habits, and therefore learn more about yourself, find your true purpose, learn to trust your intuition and inner feelings. Meditation, quiet contemplation, introspection are the key to staying alert, to increase your performance at work, to develop and recognize good ideas, to stay engaged and more conscious of your life.
9. Define clear goals and seek better methods to become more productive, more competent in the workplace.
10. Learn to insulate yourself from the noise in the workplace.
11. Vary your experiences and get out your comfort zone.
12. Take care of your physical health. Exercise regularly.
13. Make a good impression, from day one, without overdoing it and running a political campaign, by dressing appropriately and being punctual.
14. Respect and treat people the way you would like to be respected and treated. Uplift people instead of bringing them down or being considered as a toxic coworker in the workplace. Develop relationships and properly manage people emotions, don’t impose your emotions on others, don’t create enemies where you can have a supportive friend. As a result, you can become a good contributor and a valuable team member.
15. Embrace change, renew your coping and self-defense mechanism.
16. Expect to make mistakes, to learn from them and keep it moving.
17. Avoid naysayers and haters like the plague. Change your circle of friends if they are the ones bringing you down.
18. Service others. Servicing others doesn’t mean to submit to everyone and to every order. It means doing your best to get along with one another.

Last words of advice!

If you happen to abuse substance or are in emotional distress in the workplace, don’t be ashamed, you are not alone. Please talk about it to your closest family and friends, or find the nearest Workplace Help Center.

Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!

Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.

Subscribe to Journey To Leadership

• Author
• Recent Posts

journeytoleadershipblog

Journey To Leadership retains and shares the tips for the workplace.
Journey To Leadership is the premier source for everything Leadership. It focuses on career advice, leadership and character development. Get the latest here!

Latest posts by journeytoleadershipblog (see all)

• Quote Of The Week #315 - 25 September 2023
• 6 Famous Principles For Effective Task Management - 21 September 2023
• Quote Of The Week #314 - 18 September 2023