To go a little further, I offer you some examples.

[jrineakter]

And I really like this expression. We don't know its exact origin, but on the other hand, it's quite easy to visualize. You can imagine, you're on a tree branch, you're on the branch of a tree, so up high, a few meters from the ground, and you take a saw and you decide to saw the branch you're sitting on. And you saw it from the trunk side.

What's going to happen if you're sitting on a branch, you saw that branch? The branch is going to break, it's going to be sawn, the branch is going to fall and you're going to fall with it. And it's going to be your fault. So not only are you going to fall, it's going to be bad for you, but it's going to be your fault because you did it knowing that the branch was going to break and that you were going to fall. So you were conscious. You were fully conscious or rather aware of this problem. Or if you weren't conscious, it's because you don't know the laws of physics very well.

And today we use this expression… So you get the picture, right? You're sitting on a branch, you saw the branch, the branch falls, you fall and you hurt yourself, and it's your fault. And today, when we say that someone is sawing the branch they're sitting on, we're indicating that they're harming themselves. They're doing something and they're going to fail because of it. We also say that they're self-sabotaging, which means that they're creating a difficulty for themselves. Very often, difficulties come from others, well here, the difficulty comes from themselves.



The first would be someone who tells you: "I advise you to go and take your exam even if you don't feel ready. Don't saw off the branch you're sitting on." So here, the person says: "OK. You're russia whatsapp number data not ready for your exam. You have two options: Either you can go and take the exam and get the best possible grade, or you're not going to take the exam and you'll get the worst grade, you'll get a zero. So if you don't take the exam, you're going to hurt yourself, you're going to fail and it will be because of you, because you've made the decision not to take the exam." And to describe this phenomenon of self-sabotage, well we say that you're sawing off the branch you're sitting on. And this person recommends that you don't do it.

Another example: She is sawing off the branch she is sitting on by choosing to change jobs. So again, here, there is this notion of a person making a decision, and this decision, it is going to harm her, it is not a good decision. We do not know why here, but maybe the job she decided to leave is a great job or the job she decided to take is a very bad job. It can have really different meanings. In any case, here there is the idea that this person, by leaving her job, she is going to harm herself, she is going to do something, and because of that, she is going to fail, she is going to self-sabotage. We say that she is cutting off the branch she is sitting on.

And finally, last example: I should not have accepted his proposal. I clearly sawed off the branch I was sitting on. So here again, there is a notion of having made a decision that was very very bad for us. And here, we did it unconsciously. Unlike the branch that we are going to saw off when we are sitting literally, we are aware that we are going to fall. Here, when we use it in the figurative sense, we are not always aware that it is bad.

The person who says, "I accepted the proposal, I regret it now," at the time he accepted it, he did not think it would be bad, but he has wronged himself by making that decision, so ultimately it is his fault and it is because of that decision that he fails. So we can use the expression "sawing off the branch on which one is sitting."