This morning I stumbled across this article: Why Can't You Just Deal With It published in the New Yorker. Not only was it an amazing salve for my own suffering, it was just a lit bit inspiring. There is a reason that we can no longer tolerate discomfort - or that we are worse at tolerating discomfort. Our world has given us just about everything we desire when we desire it, to the point that when a plane has a mechanical issue we feel entitled to a brand new plane gassed up and ready to go to take its place. We do not do the additional mental leap to discern whether that thought is ridiculous. We do not consider what would the cost of our plane ticket need to be to have two planes sitting at the airport waiting for the same flight just in case something happened to the other plane. We want our discomfort ameliorated in some way. When I grew up you went berry picking and you would not be leaving until all the berries were picked and the bucket was full. There was no reward or prize, you just did it because it was expected of you and if you didn't pick berries, you would sit in the car and wait for it to get done. No reward, no remediation if you were unhappy. So you did what helped get you home faster... you picked the damn berries and enjoyed the pie later. When you are an eight year old, it is understandable to not be inspired to pick berries on a weekend. A child's goal is to play with your friends. A parent's goal is about feeding a family healthy foods in an economical way. How do you develop the mental toughness to do the things you don't want to do?
Getting outside the comfort zone is an essential first step. Sometimes we are willing to step out of the comfort zone to get some end result we long for and sometimes we wait to be pushed. I see this frequently with athletes who have to make changes to how they move in order to develop better strength in order to prevent injury. But taking a step backward and retraining differently is hard to do... it doesn't have the same rewards as pushing through to the next level or staying on the level we have conquered. The athlete who refuses to retrain will end up with one of two consequences... they will plateau in performance or they will get injured. Both lead to no longer participating for a period of time. Persistence is a effort applied over time. That means there are two key elements to persistence, time and effort. To be persistent one must expect to put in continuous effort and be patient for the results. I know I certainly suffer from the inability to be patient at times. Angela Duckworth would add that the effort applied must also be deliberate and with the intention for improvement or increased understanding. It is not just putting in time. Acceptance is another big word thrown around the spiritual world. Sometimes there is no moving away. There is no fix. We cannot change the past, we can only move forward in this moment. As a human being I can tell you this has been a challenge. My son is off doing things I would rather he didn't, but he is an adult and he gets to make these decisions. As an aging person, my body's ability to do the things is could do are diminishing and it really doesn't make me very happy. So I can rally against these things or I can be with them as they are. I can sit with my son when I can and appreciate what I can do or be annoyed and upset by what I can't do. The same is true with anything in life. You can choose to see the good where you are or you can focus on what you resist. When you put your energy into resistance, you burn your fuel and perhaps you don't get where you want to go. I can put my energy into trying to change my son's mind and decisions, but that will probably not give me the relationship I want. I can put my energy into staying strong and the perfect body size despite menopause, but that is not going to mean I am happy. Because menopause is so much more than just body size, metabolism, and strength. It is also changing relationships, mental focus, relevance in ones career, it is gut biome, and so much more. And inevitably there will be death and quite probably illness before death no matter what I do about this menopause thing. Learning to make friends with where I am - that is the goal. The best athletes I have known have been able to make friends with where they are and just keep working from there. Persist some more once you make friends with where you are. Acceptance doesn't mean I should give up and wait to die. It means I book the flights to visit my son and plan fun with him while I can. It means I do the activities I enjoy while I physically can and I continue to eat properly and take care of myself as I can. It's all part of working with what you have when you are persisting. Working with folks who want to improve in a sport and balance family life and career, I would say the same thing... do what you can when you can and don't sacrifice the other things that matter too. There is no end. With mental toughness the game doesn't end when you get to the objective. The game continues with a next level objective. In other words, an objective is part of some much bigger picture goal which has a world reaching positive impact. The goal may be to reduce the numbers of people who suffer from cancer, one of the many objectives is to find a cure.
If your goals are small, they really won't be that meaningful or inspiring. Inspiration fuels persistence. If my desire for navigating menopause is to feel better, as soon as I start to feel better, I will stop persisting in the things that help me feel better. If my goal is to figure out how to best navigate menopause so I can help other women as they make this transition, then I am more likely to stay focused on doing the things which help and the continual discovery along the way.
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We named this condition post road trip depression, but really it is something anyone who achieves a huge goal will experience. The university degree is obtained and, when the celebrating calms down, the reality of not having a next big project begins to weigh on the spirits. Vacation has finally arrived. but upon getting home you find yourself faced with the reality of day to day life with no amazing thing to live for. This morning as I sip my coffee and listen to a climbing podcast featuring two men who are finding the challenge of busy lives and aging bodies something they need to contend with, it took me back to this post road trip depressive mood. I too have many other responsibilities, and a body in menopause, and I can say the aging body part is no small thing. The real bottom-line gut bunch of menopause is that a loss of confidence or trust in my body and fear of it's continued decline, leaves me vulnerable when I consider a much bigger question... What's the next big goal? As an athletic person my whole life, it is hard to muster up any kind of inspiration and motivation for a big goal other than financial stability - especially in our current economic situation. It's hard to pick climbing goals because just trying to get back to what one used to be able to do off the couch is not very interesting or inspiring. Career goals are also a little bit hard when the average coach or climbing guru is still sending hard and can flaunt their action on instagram. I have spent my career as a climbing coach, writer, kinesiologist, teacher, and Yoga instructor. Expansion or becoming more well known seems more daunting when it cannot be backed up with athleticism. Rod Stryker, in his book, The Four Desires, provides an exercise to try to help one get to the root of what one truly desires. The exercise involves the following steps:
Your goal will be the thing that feels hard and yet inspiring. It may even feel impossible, but to really seal the idea of the goal, imagine yourself having achieved the goal and what you are experiencing in that moment of accomplishment. Steep in the achievement and ask, "what did I just achieve?" Then make the goal SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, relevant to you, and something achievable in the next 6-18 months. There will always be some aspect of you which will work against you in the achievement of this goal. My desire to achieve hard grades was always disrupted by my fear of failing in front of others. If you read the entire book by Rod, there are more steps to the process to unearth how you will get in your own way.
The most important thing is that you will have some thought, some desire, which inspires you to keep moving forward in your life. To disrupt the mood of hopelessness. Start small if you must, but start.
You will never agree with everyone unless you make your world very small and only engage with someone who is exactly like you and you do not have any kind of deep conversation. To be in the world is to come up against challenge with the ideas others hold. Wanting to be right, wanting to change the mind of others is instinctive. If they join your thinking, you have been valued. Feeling valued, in turn, means safety. We do not need to agree on the what we believe. It would be silly to think we all can agree on what we believe because nothing is ever black and white. There are varying degrees of grey and the grey is where the seed of our disagreement stems from. I believe that environmental sustainability is important. And I still book flights, drive a car fuelled by gas, and eat meat. All things that some environmentalists believe are killing our planet. Those environmentalists may not drive gas guzzling cars, but some might eat meat. Some might choose never to get on a plane, and do not eat meat or drive vehicles which run on gas. We each have a different expression of a belief. How we express our opinions through words and actions will often make the difference in whether we influence anyone else positively or negatively. Yesterday, I was not skillful in how I experienced my opinion and today I am feeling the hangover of regret. My choice has influenced how I will be perceived and my future interactions with that person. More importantly, it is not how I want to be. I want to be more open to the ideas of others. I know that when I am not open to the ideas of others and I am so adamant about being right, it is coming from some broken part within me. When I feel my way is the only right way, I am feeling vulnerable and powerless and my need to be right is to give myself some sense of validation. How do I know? Because I am not a sociopath or a narcissist.
In the coming days, when you disagree with someone, consider their right to a different opinion which is informed by a very different experience than yours. Consider they have very different experiences informing their world. Ask yourself, "do I like who I am being in this exchange?" "How do I want to engage with others, even those I disagree with and how do I do that in this exchange?" Bottomline: you have to know your opinion counts, but then if yours counts, then everyone else is entitled to an opinion too. If I have been a little too intense with you - know that it matters to me and I will work on me. |
Heatherdr
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