Why Do I Self-Sabotage When Things Are Finally Going Well?

The confidence was slowly building with the second novel being accepted. 

A real publishing house. A royalty contract. Something I had worked toward for years — a dream for any writer… and it was finally, actually materialising.

It was tough — doing so without any actual professional mentorship. But it felt like finally I was feeling a little grounded.

But within weeks, everything shifted. 

A relationship that was breaking apart. A home atmosphere that was suffocating, that was forcing me to take up a full-time job. The momentum I had built so carefully — gone. 

Not dramatically. Just quietly, the way good things sometimes disappear when you’re too exhausted to hold on.

And I was back to asking myself, or rather blaming myself — why do I self sabotage when things are going good or life was being unfair to me?

Honestly. Maybe both… or simply my Karma hitting back.

If you’ve ever watched something good slip through your fingers — and wondered whether you let it go or it was taken — this one is for you.

But first — let’s understand why you ruin good things in your life without even realising it.

Why You Ruin Good Things in Your Life Without Even Realising It

Here is the thing nobody says directly — you are not ruining good things because you are weak, or broken, or cursed.

You are ruining them because somewhere, deeply and quietly, you were taught that good things don’t stay.

Not in a classroom. Not through a single moment. But through years of watching momentum get interrupted. Through working hard without guidance, and watching effort dissolve. Through finally building something real — and then having life step in and dismantle it before it could fully form.

And there is a deeper layer most of us carry quietly… as if somewhere you believe you don’t deserve the success you’re chasing. Rarely do we acknowledge that. Rarely do we see that.

Fear of success and happiness sounds like a therapy buzzword until you realise it’s not really about success at all. It’s about exposure. When things go well, more is expected. More is visible. And if it falls apart now — after everyone can see it — the loss feels unsurvivable.

So something in you intervenes first. Quietly. Without announcement.

Why do I ruin good things in my life is not a question about character. It’s a question about conditioning. About what you absorbed without permission — from circumstances, from broken atmospheres, from dreams that were interrupted so many times you stopped fully believing they could survive.

And the cruelest part? You blame yourself. 

And most times, there is no shoulder either. No one who would look at you without judgment and say — it’s okay. This doesn’t make you less. It happens… 

The mental snowball rolls on and feels like as if you chose this. As if the exhaustion that made you let go or choose something else was a decision rather than a consequence.

This is also why people who feel burned out even though they haven’t quit, often can’t tell the difference — because burnout and self-sabotage are often the same exhaustion wearing different clothes.

It wasn’t always self sabotage. 

Sometimes it was just survival wearing self sabotage’s face.

But understanding where the pattern came from is only half of it. The other half — the part nobody in the self help space addresses honestly — is what it looks like when it’s spiritual. 

When you’ve done the inner work, when you believe in karma and God’s will and surrender — and you’re still doing it.

What Self Sabotage Spiritually Actually Looks Like

And this is where it gets uncomfortable…

Spiritual people are not immune to this. If anything, they’re more vulnerable.

You can believe in Karma, you can surrender to God’s will (at least mechanically), you can chant daily — yet you regard yourself unworthy and pull back from good things.

Still lacking the courage to admit that you deserve more and better. Still find yourself standing at the edge of something real and stepping away.

It’s the same reason people who self-sabotage often describe feeling lonely even when surrounded by people — the distance isn’t geographic, it’s interior.

That is self sabotage spiritually. And it doesn’t look dramatic. It looks like hesitation. Like suddenly finding reasons why this opportunity isn’t right. Like unconsciously creating distance from the very thing you prayed for… maybe because you’re too scared to take the steps… too frightened to play the long game.

It can even be a form of what Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance” in his book “The War of Art” (Page 6). In Pressfield’s words, Resistance targets every act that chooses long-term growth over immediate comfort — and self sabotage is one of its oldest disguises.

The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 1, Verse 28, shows us Arjuna — not after the battle, not mid-fight — but before a single arrow has been released. Collapsing. Convinced he cannot do this. Convinced he is not the right person. Grieving a loss that hasn’t even happened yet.

That is the pattern. Mourning your own potential before anything has actually been lost.

I have read this verse many times. 

I understand what Krishna is pointing at — get up, this grief is not worthy of you. 

Intellectually, I even hold this and apply at times. But on the days when something good is finally within reach, and something in me wants to retreat — So, in short… I am still learning to stay.

You don’t need to fully understand why you do this to begin interrupting it. Sometimes just naming it —and noticing, Okay… here I am pulling back again — is enough to slow the momentum of the retreat.

That is where it starts. Not with complete healing. Just by noticing.

Because the goal was never to become someone who never self sabotages, because that may not be possible in the first place. The goal is to become someone who catches it a little sooner each time.

You Were Never Sabotaging Yourself — You Were Surviving

Maybe you will pull back again sometime. Maybe the next good thing will feel too dangerous to hold.

But something is shifting — even slightly. Because you are reading this. Because some part of you is tired of standing at the edge and stepping away… some part of you is wearied of giving up on so many previous occasions.

You were not broken. You were not weak. You were someone trying to create, to build, to love — in conditions that were never fully on your side.

That is not self sabotage. That is survival.

And survival, when you finally see it clearly, is not something to be ashamed of. It is something to build from.

The next time you catch yourself asking why do I self sabotage when things are going good — pause. That question alone means something is shifting.

The next time something good arrives — and it will — try to stay just a little longer than last time. That is enough.

If any of this landed somewhere real — don’t close this tab just yet. There is more here that belongs to you.