“The art of being yourself at your best is the art of unfolding your personality into the [person] you want to be… Be gentle with yourself, learn to love yourself, to forgive yourself, for only as we have the right attitude toward ourselves can we have the right attitude toward others.” ~ Wilfred Peterson
Self care is at the top of my personal resolution list this year – driven, in large part, because I fell so totally off the wagon between Thanksgiving and New Year’s and paid the consequences.
Now… when I am resolved, I tend to be RESOLVED…
I have an inner critic who reminds me a lot of Louis Gossett, Jr, in An Officer and a Gentleman. He is BIG; he is MEAN; he wants me to PULL UP MY BIG GIRL PANTIES and get my butt ON THE TREADMILL. He wants me to PICK THAT WEIGHT UP AGAIN!!
He is also into denial – NO sugar, NO wheat, NO chai tea lattes!
According to Lou, self care is about hunkering down and doing what’s RIGHT; it’s about DISCIPLINE and, YOU, GIRL (that would be me) NEED TO GET SOME!
Beginning this week, the plan was to be back in the gym – with a VENGEANCE!
So I went, full of grim determination and grit, my New England roots showing all over the place. I had an action plan in hand and I was going to follow it through to the bitter end.
But there was a problem…
(betcha didn’t see that coming!)
See – this grand plan I had made for myself, sitting in my cozy apartment with the Drill Sergeant yelling in my ear- it pretty much picked up where I had left off when I stopped running, which, when I’m really honest with myself, was around the time softball season entered into full swing… in other words, JUNE.
In the spring, I could run 6.5 miles at a 7 mph pace and feel successful and triumphant at the end. I was considering training for a half marathon…
6 months later, 3 miles at a 6.8 mph pace left me gasping for air and feeling like a failure.
Oooh, you should have heard Lou – I was LAZY and UNDISCIPLINED, if only I had STEPPED AWAY FROM THE DESSERT TRAY, if only I had been a better person ALL SUMMER LONG…
Which is where I called a halt to the beatings.
NO ONE – not even the meanest, most hard ass inner critic there is – gets to mess with softball.
Because, really, if I had to do it over again, I would still choose playing short center, sliding into third, drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade on the bar patio after a tough won (or lost) game, and riding my bike home through the dark, quiet city streets over spending the summer in the gym.
Softball is fun and competition and companionship and a little bit of church all rolled into one… the treadmill is just… discipline.
And at the end of my days, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to wish I’d had less fun and more regimentation… so why am I trying to make it my life now?
So I took a big breath and a giant step back from all that self-berating and I re evaluated.
First, I had a big chat with myself (yet again) about the Perfection of Effort –
Being upset or disappointed with myself because I’m not where I could or should be fitness-wise doesn’t really help. And trying to stick to a plan that I’m just not up to is going to end with me dropping out all together, or worse yet and way more likely, sticking to it and getting hurt.
If I accept that I chose to make other things a priority over working out, and I agree that that was the right choice for me at the time, then I can accept responsibility AND treat myself gently.
Maybe self care doesn’t have to be about buckling down, and limitations, and denial… maybe it can be about expansion, and freedom, and affirmation…
The actions may look the same – I’m still going to not eat wheat, or sugar, and limit my chai tea lattes. I’m still going to go to the gym and I’m going to work hard…
But now I’m coming from a place of being ok where I’m at… of appreciating myself enough to want to take as good care of me as I would anyone else – which means good, healthy meals and enjoyable exercise that pushes me without killing me; it means enough sleep and a nap when I need one.
It also means embracing the joy and the fun and the grace that is always there for us – if only we loosen up a little and give ourselves permission to see it.
“Love yourself—accept yourself—forgive yourself—and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.” ~ Leo F. Buscaglia
Perfection can get a bad rap, but usually that is when we are referencing those times when it paralyzes us and allows us to feel less.
When we were young, we were all told “do your best”. Unfortunately the message received (and sometimes sent) was ‘be the best’, quantitatively, i.e., get the highest grade, win the race, be first chair, score the most points.
There is nothing wrong with any of those accomplishments. After all, someone has to be first, and the striving of the human animal produces a beauty that often leaves spectators with a lump in their throats, as they witness the possibilities we all embody.
Unfortunately, the damage comes when we take an all-or-nothing approach to our lives, so that if we do not win, score the most points, or are always loved, we fail, we are nothing. For many of us, because only one person can win a race, we learn early on to settle for less, to risk less, to stop trying in order to esae the pain that comes from failing to produce ‘perfection of result’.
‘Perfection of effort’ is really where it’s at, not as some feel-good pap to salve our failure to produce ‘perfection of result’, but rather because perfection of effort, after all is said and done, is what we have the possibility of controlling. In addition, when one is performing, be it on the stage, in the classroom, on the field, at work, or in a relationship, anything that distracts us from the task at hand, is to be avoided. The player that is thinking about winning, while they should be in the action, is distracted (see ‘choke artist’), and the odds of performing well diminish dramatically, not because she is not able, but because she is not in the moment, practicing perfection of effort.
If each of us practiced perfection of effort, I cannot imagine what we could accomplish. Every day, if we bring our ‘A game’, with whatever amount of health, energy, interest, time we can invest, the world would be a healthier, saner, more joyous and loving place.