Two Speeds
I have noticed that I have two speeds - full speed…and almost dead.
As a kid, I participated in summer swim team. I’ve heard stories about my first meets, where I would put my head in the water and swim frantically. Then, I would finally stop to breathe in the middle of the pool and continue on exhausted.
As a competitive swimming strategy, this was flawed. I’m not sure what was going on in my 4-year-old brain. I imagine it was something like “I can probably just go ‘all out’ the whole 25 yards and never have to breathe. Then I’ll win and everyone will celebrate! We’ll have giant pixie sticks and pizza..it will be glorious!”
However, as a human child, my lungs were not mature or conditioned enough to last an entire pool length on one breath. I had to choose to either drown or stop and breathe. Fortunately, not drowning is a basic human instinct. So, I stopped to breathe and continued on, embarrassed that I couldn’t maintain my former intensity.
This was potentially foreshadowing. I’ve done so many things in my life with maximum effort. I hoped that I would never need to take a break. I held onto this protocol for dear life, until I was literally forced to stop….and even then, I desperately tried to hang on to it.
I’m learning how binary my thoughts were and how I sacrificed my own wellbeing to try to earn approval from others. If I could go back and tell my 4-year-old self anything, it would be “I love you the same amount if you finish first, or last, or get disqualified, or if you don’t finish.”
The time I’ve given myself to stop furiously swimming has been the best gift I’ve ever given myself. Now, I’m trying to unlearn my habit of binary thinking by asking myself:
“If I don’t do X, can I still do Y?”
There have been so many times that this has helped me:
“If I don’t win my swimming race, can I still have fun and get some exercise?”
“If I don’t do intense exercise, can I still be healthy?”
“If I don’t deep clean something, can I still make it cleaner now or over time?”
“If I don’t help everyone, can I still help some people?”
“If I choose to say goodbye to my pet, did I still make their life better?”
“If I don’t become a mental health expert, can I still help people as I am right now?”
The answer is pretty much always “yes, of course.” My insistence on the “X” scenario is perfectionistic and I often procrastinate until that precise scenario can occur. Adam Grant has some wonderful points on this topic in this episode of the Ten Percent Happier podcast: Adam Grant on Perfectionism and Procrastination (1 hour 11 minutes).
Also, this is my first blog post…ever. This is also the first website I’ve designed. I’m going to try to use the FFT (F’ing first time) tool I learned from Brene Brown on her podcast Unlocking Us (~38 minutes).
This is the first time I’m doing a lot of things.
This is uncomfortable because it’s new. There are other things I’m more comfortable with because they’re less new.
I’m probably going to make mistakes. That’s how I learn and get better.
Thank you for reading this : )
