Belly Button Lint

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Tag: self-sabotage

  • Theme:

    Fear of failure engenders sabotage

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    1–2 minutes

    Society 1: In a mad scramble to survive, every action must produce results, so any experimentation is out of desperation. If your risk pays off, you realize your lucky gains, consolidate, and undercut any competitors.
    Society 2: With a social safety net, your risk is mitigated. Knowledge (gleaned through failure) becomes a practice of re-application, collaboration is commonplace, and overall success flourishes.

    Fear of failure in an individualistic society engenders competition and sabotage. Support societies encourage communal progress rather than taking out your opponent.

  • Theme:

    boss sabotage

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    1–2 minutes

    Bosses like to issue vague decrees and demands with little clarity and articulation. 

    This paradigm allows them to decide later how to react: anger at your failure to intuit the invisible or grudging acceptance when you magically do. A dominance play keeps you reliant on their mood with no fixed rubric for success, which comes at the high cost of repeated check-ins and edits, increasing frustration on both sides. 

    Yet, bosses are often unable to give up control and shirk the hard work upfront, making them the sloppy architect of their sabotage. 

  • Theme:

    Sabotaging others is self-sabotage

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    1–2 minutes

    Self-sabotage gets attention. Passive-aggressive sabotage is the same thing. You do not let someone’s life go smoothly: you make yourself into a bump or barricade in the road of life.

    We then rationalize not helping as "help": they need to learn (i.e., submit to me).
    If we decide to help joyfully (rather than manipulate and protect), we can get the attention we crave, but in a positive sense over the long-term instead of the painful short-term tactics that further isolates us.