Self sabotage behavior is destructive and restricts you from finding success, peace, and happiness in life.
It reinforces negative thinking and behavioral patterns and leads you to believe you can’t achieve what you want in life.
It stems mostly from a low self-esteem and when you permanently make certain adaptive or defensive behaviors a part of your life.
This behavior can be either active or passive, conscious or subconscious.
In this guide, we’ve collected over 75 self sabotage quotes full of wisdom to help you rise above inner conflict and find inner peace and happiness.
You’ll also find quotes from wise individuals on finding your inner strength and overcoming your struggles in life.
Happy reading!
Top Self Sabotage Quotes
1. “Self-doubt does more to sabotage individual potential than all external limitations put together.” – Brian Tracy
2. “Nothing will sabotage our happiness and success more thoroughly than the fear that we are not enough.” – Bill Crawford
3. “This is how women self-sabotage and self-destruct. Unless we have constant witnesses to our hard work, we are convinced we pull off every day of our lives through smoke and mirrors.” – Sarah Breathnach
4. “Withholding love is a form of self-sabotage, as what we withhold from others, we are withholding from ourselves.” – Marianne Williamson
5. “I am really fascinated by self-sabotage. I think that there’s not a person I know who doesn’t fall victim to it. It’s essential to the human condition, and relatable.” – Kit Williamson
6. “I manufactured the stream of painful images because I was feeling good! Some part of me was afraid of enjoying positive energy for any extended period of time.” – Gay Hendricks
7. “Those who say life is knocking them down and giving them a tough time are usually the first to beat themselves up. Be on your own side.” – Rasheed Ogunlaru
8. “Other people’s views and troubles can be contagious. Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.” – Epictetus
9. “The biggest disabilities are when you sabotage yourself mentally, those personal demons that get on your shoulder and you can’t shake ’em.” – Zach Anner
10. “I sabotage myself for fear of what my bigness could do.” – Alanis Morissette
11. “Our biggest enemy is our own self-doubt. We really can achieve extraordinary things in our lives. But we sabotage our greatness because of our fear.” – Robin Sharma
12. “There are people who are brilliant and don’t work hard, and there are people who are brilliant and sabotage themselves.” – Sarah Silverman
13. “Having a low opinion of yourself is not ‘modesty’. It’s self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not ‘egotism’. It’s a necessary precondition to happiness and success.” – Bobbe Sommer
14. “More times than I can remember I look around and I ask why the hole I’m in looks so strangely familiar. Probably because it looks a whole lot like all the other ones I dug before I got around to digging this one.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough
15. “No matter how well-meaning your intention, doing too much is not always an act of love but of sabotage.” — Judith Orloff
16. “What is required for many of us, paradoxical though it may sound, is the courage to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage.” — Nathaniel Branden
17. “Chicken exits are self-sabotage. They give you a false explanation for why you don’t have something you want.” — Ali Vincent
18. “Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.” — John C. Maxwell
19. “We need to ascend beyond our own petty Resistance, our own negative self-judgment and self-sabotage, our own “I’m not worthy” mindset.” — Steven Pressfield
20. “Procrastination is, hands down, our favorite form of self-sabotage.” — Alyce Cornyn-Selby
Self Sabotage Quotes To Help Overcome Inner Conflict
21. “The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.” — Maya Angelou
22. “I'm silent when there is a war inside me. There's a need to keep the people outside intact.” ― Darnell Lamont Walker
23. “Winning and losing is not an external game. It is an internal battle over telling yourself the truth vs. lies regarding why you haven’t stepped into the life you dreamed of.” ― Shannon L. Alder
24. “Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
25. “Whether a man lives or dies in vain can be measured only by the way he faces his own problems, by the success or failure of the inner conflict within his own soul. And of this no one may know save God.” ― James Bryant Conant
26. “Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.” ― Karen Horney
27. “When we shrink from the sight of something, when we shroud it in euphemism, that is usually a sign of inner conflict, of unsettled hearts, a sign that something has gone wrong in our moral reasoning.” ― Matthew Scully
28. “I would rather be the child of a mother who has all the inner conflicts of the human being than be mothered by someone for whom all is easy and smooth, who knows all the answers, and is a stranger to doubt.” ― Donald Woods Winnicott
29. “The answer to any challenge you are having has nothing to do with God's willingness to help. It has to do with your acceptance of how the Infinite is already active within you, how it has already placed within you all that you need to solve and dissolve inner conflict through conscious communion with the Self.” ― Michael Beckwith
30. “We like Batman – we understand him, we suffer with him. On the other hand, we want to be Superman. But they're conflicting philosophies. Let's bring them together in one movie and see how we, as an audience, wrestle with our inner demons.” ― Wolfgang Petersen
31. “I'd been conflict-phobic my entire life because I didn't want to lose my inner core of peace.” ― Doreen Virtue
32. “When an individual does not become conscious of their inner contradictions, the world acts out the conflict and is torn in opposite halves.” ― Carl Jung
33. “Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.” ― Robert McKee
34. “I started meditating and as soon as I turned that lens of attention inwards, it was like, okay, game over. This is what I'd been looking for to resolve some of these inner conflicts and pains.” ― Mark Coleman
35. “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” ― Thomas Paine
36. “Years already I'd been trying to understand what was inside me, while the rest of the world was trying it to tear it out.” ― Kawai Strong Washburn
37. “The irony of the human heart is that it’s tormented both by the presence and absence of its own soul’s counterpart.” ― Crystal Woods
38. “How shallow to presume war exists only within the physical world. Battles are waged for mind and soul, where things far from comprehension are confronted.” ― Christopher Hawke
39. “Rise in your mind and you can rise in your world.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo
40. “I never realized how literally we battle demons. Often alone. It is a relentless skirmish with vicious wraith-monsters devouring us from within. We fight. And resist for a time.” ― Richelle E. Goodrich
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Self Sabotage Quotes That Help With Your Inner Struggle
41. “To rise extraordinarily high you sometimes have to go extraordinarily low.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo
42. “It is easier to rise when you have love in your heart than to fall when you have fear in your soul.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo
43. “Negative thinking is contagious. Do your best not to dwell on negativity, it will consume you and prevent you from becoming your best self.” ― Germany Kent
44. “Don’t let anger control you. Don’t let hate enslave you. Don’t let negativity overcome you. Don’t let bitterness conquer you.” ― Matshona Dhliwayo
45. “Everything you need is within you, the strength, courage and confidence to change your life. You just need to look within yourself and find it.” ― Amanda Ray
46. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” ― Mark Twain
47. “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” ― Steve Jobs
48. “As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.” ― Vincent van Gogh
49. “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” ― Arnold Schwarzenegger
50. “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ― Khalil Gibran
51. “You have power over your mind―not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” ― Marcus Aurelius
52. “I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.” ― Anna Freud
53. “Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out.” ― Katherine Dunham
54. “You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.” ― Bob Marley
55. “You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner strength, and say, ‘I’m proud of what I am and who I am.’” ― Mariah Carey
56. “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” ― Plutarch
57. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ― Viktor Frankl
58. “Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.” ― Oprah Winfrey
59. “Calm mind brings inner strength and self-confidence, so that’s very important for good health.” ― Dalai Lama
60. “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” ― Buddha
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Self Sabotage Quotes To Help Bring Inner Peace
61. “Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” ― Siddhārtha Gautama
62. “Learning to distance yourself from all the negativity is one of the greatest lessons to achieve inner peace.” ― Roy T. Bennett
63. “I've made peace with myself. Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win. Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting.” ― Joe Abercrombie
64. “Acquire inner peace and a multitude will find their salvation near you.” ― Catherine de Hueck Doherty
65. “Having inner peace means committing to letting go of self-criticism and self-doubt.” ― Sanaya Roman
66. “Mindset is everything. Like the eye of a storm -find the sunshine and calm within you, even if there is chaos outside of you.” ― Brittany Burgunder
67. “Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
68. “When you’ve seen beyond yourself, then you may find, peace of mind is waiting there.” ― George Harrison
69. “Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” ― Hermann Hesse
70. “Cultivate peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally.” ― Robert M. Pirsig
71. “Learn to calm down the winds of your mind, and you will enjoy great inner peace.” ― Remez Sasson
72. “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.” — Eckhart Tolle
73. “There is no greater prize than a quiet, peaceful mind.” ― Rasheed Ogunlaru
74. “Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.” ― Eckhart Tolle
75. “In order to lead a meaningful life, you need to cherish others, pay attention to human values and try to cultivate inner peace.” ― Dalai Lama
76. “A balanced inner calmness radiates from a peaceful centre. It neither craves others’ approval nor rejects others’ presence. It neither pulls towards nor pushes away. It has a reverent attitude towards life and all its inhabitants.” ― Donna Goddard
77. “Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.” ― Saint Francis de Sales
78. “Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.” — Wayne W. Dyer
79. “I don’t know whether it is beautiful or sad, that I find such blissful happiness within the confines of my own mind, more so than I do in the reality that surrounds me.” ― Kendal Rob
80. “Never worry what others say when you walk away from all the drama. Be grateful you had the strength and courage to stay out of the conflict and be at peace with your choices.” ― Elle Sommer
81. “If there’s no inner peace, people can’t give it to you. The husband can’t give it to you. Your children can’t give it to you. You have to give it to you.” ― Linda Evans
82. “The greatest misfortune that can come to a human being is to lose his inner peace. No outer force can rob him of it. It is his own thoughts, his own actions that rob him of it.” ― Sri Chinmoy
83. “The quickest way to experiencing the peace inside, is to learn to recognize when I am not at peace.” ― Jim McDonald
What's Your Favorite Self Sabotage Quote?
In this guide, we put forth over 75 self sabotage quotes to help you find inner peace and defeat inner conflict.
These inspiring quotes, from those who overcame their internal conflicts and found inner peace, are bound to inspire and motivate anyone.
If you’re going through a tough time, we wish you good luck on your journey to find peace and happiness and hope you enjoyed reading these quotes!
Please share your favorite self sabotage quote as we really would love to know.
Thanks!
Alan is the founder of Subconscious Servant. He has a passion for learning about topics such as spirituality and the metaphysical world. The thing he loves to explore most though is manifesting with the law of attraction ✨.