Sally Garozzo | Clinical Hypnotherapist Brighton & Online

In my twenties, I decided I wanted to learn to ride a motorbike.

It didn't go well.

On the day of my test, it was raining. I fell off the bike just before the exam and promptly decided that perhaps motorcycling wasn't for me after all. I went home, licked my wounds, and put the dream in a box. 

Fifteen years passed.

Then life presented me with another opportunity.

This time I had a boyfriend who rode a motorbike, which certainly added fuel to the fire. I signed up for lessons and convinced myself that this was going to be the year.

The problem was that reality looked very different from the fantasy.

The lessons were expensive, it was January, the weather was ice cold and the bikes were h.e.a.v.y.

And whilst nobody likes to admit it, learning to manoeuvre a large motorbike can be physically demanding, particularly when you're a relatively small woman trying to control a machine that seems determined to remind you of the laws of gravity.

But even so, week after week I turned...

Honey, you don't.... there's no such thing as self sabotage.  It's a constructed label. I'll unpack it for you, but first let's start at the beginning. 

“Why do I keep sabotaging myself?”

It’s one of the most common questions I hear.

And I completely understand why.

On the surface, it does look like sabotage.

You say you’ll go to the gym… and you don’t.
You plan to eat well… and you reach for chocolate.
You want the relationship to work… and you pull away.
You commit to the business idea… and then procrastinate.

From the outside, it looks like you’re getting in your own way.

But as the charming rebellious sagittarius that I am, I'd like to challenge this idea.

The Hidden Assumption Behind “Self-Sabotage”

The idea of self-sabotage rests on one very important assumption:

That there is a correct way to behave…
And that you are deviating from it.

But who decided what “correct” is?

Let’s take something simple.

You don’t go to the gym one morning.

Is that sabotage?

Or is it your b...