Were you able to think of something you’ve set your mind to? You don’t have to tell me what it is. Just keep it with you as we move on from here.
Before we get to the analogy that I posed yesterday and tying all those unsavory loose ends together, let’s tangent for a second. Just a lil bit. You can do it. I have faith.
What I want to discuss briefly is another topic that we’ve touched on before, but much like the topic of fear, is so pervasive that is begs a revisit.
How many of you have given up on something because it didn’t “work” soon enough for you? If you aren’t secretly raising your hand right now, I barely believe you. I cannot even count the number of times I’ve been flooded with disappointment because something didn’t work/gel.
Usually, my inner dialogue/narrative sounds something like this: I’ve cooked ______ one thousand times before so it doesn’t make any sense that I fucked this up. OR, I’ve been working on ______ for like three months so it makes no sense that I get winded when I do _____________. OR ___________ runs in my family so how is it EVEN POSSIBLE that I’m struggling so much with this?
Are you picking up on a theme? I like to call it rampant expectation syndrome. Based on some principle or reason(s), we’ve decided that we ought to accomplish or succeed in doing something. Sometimes there are pieces that are connected to this expectation, like time. I don’t just think I should master _____, I think it should be achievable in ______ months. So, when I “fail” outright or simply “fail” to accomplish what I set out to in a requisite period of time, I’m thrown. Disappointed. Dejected. What do we usually do? Well duh, we throw in the towel.
Fuck it. I’ll order that in when I want to eat it. It’s not worth the work. Clearly, I wasn’t meant to be a piano player. I’m obviously one of those people who is not flexible enough for yoga. It is NOT for everyone, after all.
Does any of that sound vaguely familiar? Some spin on that theme?
It’s not simply that we don’t have patience, though that is certainly an issue, it’s that we are so scared to fail that we self-handicap. When we start to get a taste of missing the metric, we jump ship before it gets “really bad.” I’d rather not face the possibility of missing the mark altogether, so when I see that I’m slightly veering off course, I’m going to bail altogether. Sure, I won’t get there, but at least I won’t be embarrassed.
Does this make sense to you? Do you know why I’m sharing this side note?
Well, if you don’t, no worries. I’m going to expand because flooding your page with words is what I do best.
Fear is a very complicated factor in assessing what we set our minds to do because it is layered and multi-faceted. I don’t just have the fear of not being able to do the thing. I have all the other fears that cushion that fear in a bubble of anxiety and to make matters seemingly worse, instead of digging in, I tip toe. I walk away. I avoid.
This is not the way to do anything in the world. You don’t have to go hard at anything. In fact, when we circle back to where we started this discussion, I will reiterate to you that the best approach, in my humble opinion, is measured and thoughtful. But, you do have to lean in. You do have to step forward. You do have to give it a go, whatever that looks like for you.
I am going to hop back to the running business for a moment and then tomorrow, we are going to get crazy and tie back to Monday. I know, insane. I can barely remember Monday and I’m fairly certain it was just yesterday.
Had I set an intention of running a certain timed mile or running ten minutes straight by a certain date, I’m fairly certain I would have given up. That’s not to say that I avoided challenging myself, because I didn’t. I set the bar somewhere but it was a vague, sort of fuzzy bar. It was the kind of goal that looks like: I would really love to run a 5k in the next few years. That was it. Not how fast, not how soon (outside of the years metric), just like ‘I have a dream-ish.’
Days when I was tired or grumpy or busy, I didn’t get pissed at myself. I also didn’t give myself a pass. I didn’t let a day or two turn into weeks on end. I just started back up again when I was ready. If you fuck up a recipe, you don’t need to give it another go the same night or even the next day. Maybe give yourself a week or so. Your mindset will be different, without question.
Something else to plug into is goal hopping syndrome (I know, these names/labels are pure gold). I feel dejected when it comes to ______, so I’m going to abandon that process and hop to something else. Maybe I’ll pick something more easily achievable or maybe not. Either way, I’m giving myself an out and that’s no good.
If I pick something equally challenging, I might find myself in the same spot or even worse off, because I’m now nursing the wounds resulting from two disappointing exercises. If I pick something easier, I’ll get a little lift because I’ll have been successful in something but I’ll still have that niggling feeling in my belly of the prior “failure.” Also, human nature usually drives us to gravitate towards the easier bit rather than killing ourselves for the tougher one. It’s just a thing that we do.
You should know a couple of critical “things” as follows: if it takes more time than you anticipated, that’s okay. Also, if you never master the thing, that’s okay too. I know, that’s a forbidden sentence in some folks world, but it is the damn truth. You might not get the hang of something ever. You gave it a go in the best way you know how to, and that’s something. That is not a failure, it’s just a moment of realization. Last, but certainly not least, it might not feel as you thought it would when you get there. That one really hurts. Sure, you might cry once you run that mile, or it might feel terribly anticlimactic. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen, so you have to get there and see for yourself. I know, annoying. It’s just the human way.
Sigh.
Talk to you tomorrow.
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 