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    Sabotage: How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    Sabotage: How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    Sabotage: How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    Sabotage: How to Get Out of Your Own Way

    By Emma Gannon

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A pocket-sized investigation into self-sabotage: what it is, why we do it, and how we can break our toxic patterns.

    How do we get out of our own way? With personal stories and research-based insights multi-hyphenate Emma Gannon explores her own relationship with self-sabotage and presents a quick, meaningful guide to help you recognize your own forms of self doubt, identify what is holding you back, and the steps you can take to loosen its grip.


     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAndrews McMeel Publishing
    Release dateSep 29, 2020
    ISBN9781524867423
    Author

    Emma Gannon

    Emma Gannon is an award-winning writer, speaker, Sunday Times columnist and podcaster. Her writing has been published everywhere from the Guardian to Glamour. She is the bestselling author of memoir Ctrl Alt Delete and The Multi-Hyphen Method, which became a Sunday Times bestseller. She is also the host of hit podcast series ‘Ctrl Alt Delete’, which has reached over 5 million downloads. Olive is Emma’s debut novel.

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    Reviews for Sabotage

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I was unsure from how it started, but it soon his its stride. I appreciate that the author's research and insight is conveyed in a clear concise manner that should be easy for most people to follow. We get some personal examples of each form of sabotage, which weren't particularly helpful for *me*, but not everyone will already be familiar with them, (and the book doesn't blather on and on about it), so it's perfectly fine. The pattern seemed to follow- name a sort of sabotage, give one or two examples, go a bit deeper into the motivations for it and what research says, and then give some concrete examples of how you can alter the impulse/behavior. I think it works well for this topic.

      Probably for me it was mostly just good reminders, rather than relevational, but that's helpful too, and I'm coming away with a few new bits. I think I probably just have the run-of-the-mill sort of unconscious self-sabotage impulses here and there though, so it would probably help someone that really struggles with this much more. Personally, for my own level of use and enjoyment, I would probably give it a 3.5 rounded down to a 3, but overall, I think it's well done and could really help others, so all together I'm giving it 4 stars.

      I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author, and she did a nice job of speaking as if she were discussing something in person, rather than trying to impress industry insiders, or giving a lecture.

      I received an advance copy from NetGalley for reviewing purposes. All opinions are honestly given, and my own.

    Book preview

    Sabotage - Emma Gannon

    Also by Emma Gannon

    Nonfiction

    Ctrl Alt Delete

    The Multi-Hyphen Life

    Fiction

    Olive

    To my fellow saboteurs

    Contents

    Introduction

    I Hope I Let My Dreams Come True

    What Is Self-Sabotage?

    Self-Sabotage Can Actually Be Useful

    Sabotaging Yourself to Appear Smaller and Therefore More Likable

    Preempting Your Own Rejection

    Distracting Ourselves to Death

    Don’t Ignore Your Inner Conflict

    Four Common Types of Self-Sabotage

    Time to Make a Change

    You Do Deserve to Be Happy

    Acknowledgments

    About the Author

    Introduction

    One good thing about the modern world is you can search for absolutely anything online and a few minutes later locate it, even if you’re in the middle of nowhere. On a whim last year, I booked and paid for a drop-in therapist session while I was staying in a remote town by the sea to write for a week because the streets of London were suffocating me. I had rented an apartment at the top of a five-story, skinny old house with a purple front door that had a broken lock. I emailed the owner of the house gently requesting that the front door lock be fixed, to which he swiftly replied that there was hardly any crime in this town and I’d be just fine. Let’s just say that that response didn’t help with my anxiety, so I drank wine every night and sprayed the strongest lavender spray I owned on my pillow in order to fall asleep. I was also getting up each day at 6 a.m. to finish the painful last drafts of my first novel—a novel I hadn’t sold yet. It was an old house, but it had a comfy bed of soft white linen, big white square pillows, and views of the sea (albeit gray). I was having a hard time with the book; my imposter syndrome was stomping around and breaking things like that giant creature in the film Colossal. Who did I think I was, trying to write a novel anyway? Why had I taken time off from my paid job to try this? Why should I bother? What if people laugh at me? What if I got rejected? What if it was terrible? Negative thoughts replayed on a loop.

    Despite everything on paper seeming good from the outside, I wasn’t feeling good. I was feeling like no amount of achievement would ever matter, because deep down my self-worth was the same as that nine-year-old girl on the playground who had been the last to be picked in the sports team and last to be picked by any group of friends. I could tell my struggles were jarring for other people. They’d scratch their head and say, But why aren’t you happier? Look at what you have. They had a point. Why couldn’t I be a normal person and just be happy? It’s disconcerting and exhausting when how you perceive yourself contrasts so aggressively with how others perceive you—and I felt like I was dragging myself down unnecessarily. If opening your palms to the sky means welcoming things in, my palms were scrunched up into tiny, tight balls of fear.

    I have always been skeptical of life coaches, therapists, and healers. I was once scammed in a basement clinic (read: someone’s ramshackle apartment) in New York where an eighty-year-old woman told me I looked gray and needed more sparkle in my life. She sold me some energy sprinkles for $100 and told me I should put them in my bed, under my pillow, and they would heal me. When I got home, I realized she had sold me a small packet of . . . confetti. So yeah, I’ve been made a fool of before and have been wary ever since. But this session I’d booked from the rented house by the sea had come via a friend’s recommendation, so that made me feel more at ease.

    Her name was Lulu and she was wearing MC Hammer pants. I went into her home-slash-clinic, lay down on the massage table type of bed in her living room, and she began her work. She wasn’t a straight-up talk therapy person, but she talked to me while doing some Reiki work with me. I closed my eyes and started thinking about my weekly shopping list. After some long minutes, my brain finally chilled out and started drifting into an imageless cloud of relaxation. My mind went black. Then I started feeling vibrations over my whole body, and it felt slightly uncomfortable. She had her eyes closed, her hands hovering over my chest, and she said:

    You want big things.

    Mhmm, I murmured back, nodding very slightly.

    You want it, but you’re blocking it.

    I am? I asked quietly.

    You don’t believe in yourself, she said softly.

    Mm.

    Things could be huge for you, Emma. But you really have to get out of your way.

    Her words rang in my ears, and I closed my eyes, having a sudden flashback. A vivid colorful memory began playing in front of me. There’s me at ten, in art class. I’m wearing a navy-blue apron and wild hair. I’m painting. My tongue is

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