Emma Gannon - Sabotage: How to Get Out of Your Own Way

Also by Emma Gannon

Nonfiction

Ctrl Alt Delete

The Multi-Hyphen Life

Fiction

Olive

To my fellow saboteurs

Contents

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 youre 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 Id be just fine. Lets just say that that response didnt 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 novela novel I hadnt 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 wasnt 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. Theyd scratch their head and say, But why arent you happier? Look at what you have. They had a point. Why couldnt I be a normal person and just be happy? Its disconcerting and exhausting when how you perceive yourself contrasts so aggressively with how others perceive youand 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: someones 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, Ive been made a fool of before and have been wary ever since. But this session Id booked from the rented house by the sea had come via a friends 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 wasnt 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 youre blocking it.

I am? I asked quietly.

You dont 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. Theres me at ten, in art class. Im wearing a navy-blue apron and wild hair. Im painting. My tongue is slightly poking out with concentration. I accidentally make a small splotch on the painting. Its small, but I know it is there. Instead of painting over it and moving on, I paint an even bigger splotch in the middle of the painting to make sure it is well and truly ruined. I ruin it the first time by accident, but I ruin it the second time on purpose. Its ruined, I say, throwing up my hands. My art teacher looks at me and sees right through what Ive just done. Oh, Emma. Theres no need to do that, sweetheart.

Life is full of challengesmostly external ones. When we leave our front door every morning, we dont know what well run up against. Other people and situations can sabotage our day, even when were doing everything right: Someone might spill their coffee on us; a flight might be canceled last minute; we might receive an unexpected bill that throws our budget off; we might not get the job we wanted because of prejudice, discrimination, or bad treatment. The world is not a meritocracy, and the world is certainly not fair. Each of us is in a roulette game of privilege and luck, with some talent and hard work also sprinkled in. Less talented people become more successful than better-skilled, harder-working people all the time. Its one big, random merry-go-round of Who Knows. As clinical psychologist Dr. Soph says, No amount of breathing exercises is going to change the societal structures that cause the pain in the first place (such as racism, patriarchy, poverty, and other forms of pressure and oppression).

But while there are so many things outside of our control, there is one thing we can control, and that is our relationship with ourselves. We can control the foundations we set, the choices we make, the things we do or do not do. We can choose not to self-sabotage in a world that can sabotage so much for no reason. I recently saw an artist share (on Instagram) a painting that he had ruined with a dark splotch by mistake and how he had turned the dark smudge into a spot on a Dalmatian dog. It was beautiful. It reminds me of the Stoicshow the obstacle often isnt in the way but in fact it is the way. That seems like a good place to start at least. If we help ourselves, its one less thing to struggle against. We can be our own worst enemy or our own best supporter. I was talking about my self-sabotage with a friend recently and how Ive slowly started to overcome these bad habits, and she said, You should write about this. We all do it.

So, I put pen to paper and wrote the first few hundred words of an essay, which was published by The Pound Project, a small independent press that supports and crowdfunds one writers work at a time. The essay resonated, and I adapted it into an online class with Skillshare about how self-sabotaging tendencies tend to crop up when were being creative or putting ourselves out there. But self-sabotage isnt just about the art we create or dont create. The project manager I was working with on the set told me that what I was saying about self-sabotage in creative work really echoed what she was going through in her dating life. The motivation behind not starting that project because youre worried it wont work out is exactly the same as not bothering to go on that date because youre convinced youll be rejected. We love to assume things wont work before even giving it a gotrying to avoid throwing ourselves into the scary unknown. In many ways, our behavior in work and personal life mirror each other. Maybe you turn down big job opportunities because youre dealing with imposter syndrome. Maybe you didnt go on a second date because he/she actually seemed pretty greatmaybe in your mind too good for you. I almost sabotaged my relationship with my soon-to-be husband eight years ago. The minute things got good was the minute my brain told me to get the hell away from it all. It was like my brain said, Uh oh, youre getting very happy and it might not last! So lets GET OUT QUICK! I had to literally train myself to stop running away from good things. I had to realize that good things were supposed to be scary sometimes. That life is about feeling things deeply. Its not always about riding it out, waiting for things to pass, but actually being present in the moment itself.