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Don't Be A Downer Tips to help you break free from self-sabotage

By Sean M. Lyden

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

You want your venture to make it big, right? Subconsciously, youmay not. Take, for example, Rand Stagen, 29, the founder andpublisher of The Met magazine, a Dallas publication thatcovers the local entertainment and nightlife scene. He started themagazine at age 23 with the aim of expanding it into a large-scalenational media company.

"When I started the business, I was unstoppable,"reflects Stagen, who has grown The Met into a $2.5 million venturewith 30 employees. "People said that a 23-year-oldcouldn't survive in a Top 10 media market [like Dallas]. But wedid it! We proved them wrong." After a while, however, Stagenfound himself engaging in self-sabotage. "As I developed mybusiness, I started getting complacent, thinking, `Yeah, we did it!Now I'm accomplished.' But what about the media empire Iwanted to build? As I started to realize how difficult it is tocompete on a local level, let alone trying to take on the world,the media empire was no longer the goal-it was to keepsurviving," admits Stagen. For the first time in his career,he began to have doubts, resigning himself to thinking that it wasmore realistic to be content with a successful localpublication.

Fortunately, Stagen recognized before it was too late that hisself-deprecating behavior was hindering his ability to achieve hisgoals. But what about you? Are you ambushing your own success? Hereare tips to help you break free from self-sabotage: