BE YOUR OWN FRIEND AND CHEERLEADER

Sometimes the person getting in the way of our success is ourselves, says writer Emma Gannon, who tells us how she overcame deep insecurity and impostor syndrome and is now thriving

We show you how

Whenever I tell anyone that I suffer from self-sabotage, they often look surprised. On paper, I seem quite productive. I’ve had four books published in four years, so how can

I be a self-saboteur? But self-sabotage is a very personal thing: it sits inside, it shows up internally and isn’t always visible to others. My inner critic has always been loud and the definition of ‘enough’ always morphs into something else and the benchmarks always move. So much so, I realised that if I didn’t change my thought patterns, I would be in danger of missing out on the whole ride.

Society has us believe that if we keep striving for more, climbing slowly up the ladder, we will reach a point of eternal contentment. Of course, there’s no such thing – it’s called ‘arrival fallacy’. We may never feel like we’ve ‘made it’ even if we do everything ‘right’, so surely we should stop giving ourselves such a hard time? Noting our self-sabotaging tendencies is all about cutting out unhelpful patterns and making life easier for ourselves day to day. We all experience self-doubt. And a little bit of self-doubt is healthy; it only turns into self-sabotage when it starts to get

Self-sabotage is a very personal thing

in our way. There are so many things that already get in our way (delayed trains, bad weather, inequality), so we don’t need to add sabotaging ourselves to this pile. There’s not much we can control, but we can control how we speak to ourselves and decide to treat ourselves as we would a friend.

Impostor syndrome has always been present in my life; it took me years to be able to say I was ‘a writer’. Whenever I am invited to speak at universities, my insecurities creep back in because I wasn’t a very good student and my teachers’ comments still echo in my head. It often feels like we are supposed to shed our habits and slide out of our skins when we grow older, but it’s not as simple as that. We carry our baggage with us and it can weigh us down.

Writing my book, Sabotage, helped me get over my own self-sabotage habits. The moment something is given a word or a label, I feel we are breaking free. I learned that impostor syndrome can come from our childhood because we are told grown-ups have all the answers and that ‘upper limiting’ is a defence mechanism for wanting to stay in our comfort zone.

Self-sabotage isn’t always a bad thing as it’s trying to protect us, but being overprotective can stop us from taking risks that could bring new opportunities.

Here are the four main types of self-sabotage I’ve discovered, plus some useful tips on how you can slay them…

Perfectionism

is not always about other people – invariably it’s never-ending competition with yourself. This is what is so frustrating about it, that ‘perfection’ is always slightly out of reach.

When I started writing fiction, I thought I had to perfect one sentence before moving on to the next. But this would mean the book would never get finished. A terrible first draft actually means you’re doing something. The fact you can finish it means there’s a story there. It’s about throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

This is why I still love blogging – you’re throwing imperfect ideas out there. Perfectionism is about the fear of actually finishing something and having to share it. It is similar to that little voice telling you you’re not good enough. Ironically, when you start ‘perfecting’ something, you end up making it worse.

Procrastination

We’ve all experienced that ‘reorganising your sock drawer’ moment, when you know you have to get on with something but you’d do anything to avoid it. Often it’s totally harmless and necessary to give ourselves a little bit of extra time, but procrastinating over big decisions can take us away from our true feelings and further from who we actually want to be. Prioritising short-term preferences can lead to long-term disappointments.

Procrastination often occurs when we think about the amount of work we have to do to reach our goal. To beat it, we have to take baby steps and start small.

The inner critic

inner critic is internal negative chatter about ourselves before anyone has said anything. We then suss out negative comments to ‘prove’ ourselves right. It’s a defence mechanism: if we hurt ourselves first, we think it’ll hurt less than if others hurt us. Our thoughts can dominate our minds, but I take comfort from comparison coach Lucy Sheridan’s maxim: ‘If you can think and feel your way into a problem, you can think and feel your way out.’

Fear of self-promotion

We are not only afraid of our failure but also of success. Getting what we want is scary, too. As Theodore Roosevelt said: ‘My happiness is so great it makes me afraid.’ When we’re on to something good, we can be scared to enjoy it. People engaging with you means taking a chance – it’s a new relationship that could be positive. Fear of self-promotion can be linked to wanting to ‘stay small’, such as when people pull out of a date at the last minute or don’t apply for a job they are well suited for.

• Sabotage: How to Silence Your Inner Critic and Get Out of Your Own Way (Hodder & Stoughton) by Emma Gannon, is out now