The Problem with Boundary Lines

God gives us "boundaries," but some people have a harder time living with those boundaries than others do.

Self-sabotage.

If you type those words into a search engine, you'll get more than 380,000 returns. The Internet is littered with offers from "life coaches" and self-help gurus who, for a fee, will help you identify and (it is to be hoped) stop engaging in behaviors that inadvertently short-circuit your efforts to get ahead in your job, have happy relationships, reach your long-term goals, reduce stress in your daily routine, maintain healthy self-esteem and generally have a productive life.

Most of us stumble along in counterproductive ways some of the time, so these entrepreneurs who want us to purchase their advice and training have a ready market.

But the kinds of self-sabotage they're talking about are things we do without realizing they bring our forward progress to a halt - ways we behave that unintentionally reverse our good intentions. The assumption is that if we can just learn to recognize when we're "men (or women) behaving badly" in goal-derailing ways, we'll stop doing them.