 | I like to think I'm a decently empowering person. I believe in the possibility existing in all people to do great things. That includes myself. I didn't used to believe in myself very strongly, but I do now. In the last few years, I've come to realize just how much those who have done great things did so because they failed...and then persisted. It wasn't that they had more magic within them than others, they just learned from their mistakes and tried harder and |
smarter the next time. So when my voice starts telling me I'm "less than", I remind myself that so many brilliant people have felt that before, so this is my reminder to persist. Maybe tweak things a little and examine where I need to make some changes, but still, persist.
All that being said, last week, I took a nosedive. Deep into my perceived failures. My house is messy. The dishes are piling up and on every counter. I haven't posted a blog post since Christmas. Urine is splattered around the toilets (because 3 boys). I am not getting as much done on my website or blog as I thought I would during my slow photography season. I'm finally exercising again when I can, but the pounds aren't coming off like they used to and my muscles all feel weird and rebellious. The floor under my kitchen table ALWAYS looks like a landfill. Am I covering everything I need to with homeschool? Will my kid transition well when we switch from homeschool to regular school? My kids are watching too many screens. I managed to miss two photo deadlines, AGAIN. And is it really already time to cook another EFFING MEAL?!
All that being said, last week, I took a nosedive. Deep into my perceived failures. My house is messy. The dishes are piling up and on every counter. I haven't posted a blog post since Christmas. Urine is splattered around the toilets (because 3 boys). I am not getting as much done on my website or blog as I thought I would during my slow photography season. I'm finally exercising again when I can, but the pounds aren't coming off like they used to and my muscles all feel weird and rebellious. The floor under my kitchen table ALWAYS looks like a landfill. Am I covering everything I need to with homeschool? Will my kid transition well when we switch from homeschool to regular school? My kids are watching too many screens. I managed to miss two photo deadlines, AGAIN. And is it really already time to cook another EFFING MEAL?!
Sound familiar? I just bet it does.
I spiraled that week. I had a day of such strong self-loathing as I continued to survive the day and do everything at half of it's potential. All I could think was failure, failure, FAILURE. Everything I do is getting half done while I give my 100%.
And isn't that just it? It's not that the failure comes from a lack of trying. The feeling of failure is happening while I'm constantly putting in the effort. I mean, WTF. How demoralizing is that??
Sound familiar? I just bet it does.
I'm not going to single out just moms, because I'm tired of that old habit. Dads are getting their hands dirty in this parenting gig more and more these days, and we are all exhausted and doing our best. But that sense of failure can really distract you from a life that you are pretty damn well succeeding at.
We have SO MANY balls to juggle. First of all, I can't even juggle three balls. I'm going to have to start this metaphor with juggling two balls successfully. Pretty easy to juggle and feel a sense of accomplishment when it's just those two balls. Add a third, and everything collapses for a bit until you get the hang of what you have to do and after a lot of practice and embarrassing failure, you are juggling three balls (with a drop here and there, still, because juggling is effing hard). Can you picture how much work and practice it would take to juggle 8 balls? How many times you'd drop them? How many times master jugglers still drop 8 balls?
Parenting well AND being successful at everything in life is the equivalent of juggling 50 balls. While operating a unicycle. And playing a harmonica. While taming a lion.
It's a unicorn. Mythical. Unreachable but lovely to fantasize about. Until it makes you feel like crap.
The sooner we accept the fantasy that is "perfection" and get on board with juggling the balls that are the most important to us well, the sooner we can be okay with dropping the balls that don't matter as much.
Here are a few suggestions that really helped me when dealing with a strong sense of failure:
1) By yourself or with your partner, make a list of the things you want to be better at in your life and family right now. Be gentle with yourself and set very achievable goals. Then order them by priority. This list is HELPFUL but not FOOLPROOF. On a list like this, it's easy to put our kids at the top and choose them over ourselves sometimes. Be wise about taking care of yourself, even when you want to be the best parent you can be. Make sure your most valued personal needs are somewhere near the top of the list. The idea is not that you get it right every single time, but that you have a system to go to when you have trouble deciding what to do...one that will validate that you are choosing something important and valuable to you EVEN when you are forced to neglect something else.
2) Keep in mind that "perfect isn't healthy". Write it down somewhere if you need to (post it to the inside of your cabinet or your bathroom mirror) so that you can reflect on it daily. You can even go so far as to say "perfection is ridiculous" or "perfection is absurd" to help break down the instilled perfection idolatry we have in our brains.
3) If you find yourself really struggling with thoughts of failure, try making a list of things that you ARE doing well.
Mine would go like this:
-loving my kids
-teaching them to be good people
-finding time to read here and there
-being kind to my friends
-cooking meals that taste pretty decent
-keeping up on the news (I value this)
-creating things sometimes (even though I have a sense of failure over how little I do this)
4) You have to practice jumping off of your thought trains. Failure and self-loathing can run away with us, often, because we don't know how to disengage. I can't always achieve this, I certainly didn't last week, but when I recognize that I am hostage to a runaway Failure thought train, I practice jumping off and hopping on a different train. Gratitude, Humor, Ways I Can Donate To Others (get your mind off of yourself for a bit)...all good thought trains. And when I can't get out of my head while doing daily tasks, I make sure to turn on a show or podcast that steals me away from ruminating.
5) Try to focus on small goals. My goal for my weight is a big one. I've had three kids. Three c-sections. I also just love lazing around. Couches are the best, better with blankets. And they are best with no exercise. I kid. After I get exercising, yeah, it feels great, but it's always hard for me. So I have to focus small. I can't think "Failure, I haven't lost 10 pounds yet". I have to say, "Success, I worked out twice this week. That's twice more than last week. Keep going. You are doing what you can, when you can." Commit to small habit changes, and then keep adjusting them as you succeed. Once, I even committed to just get the exercise clothes on every day. Head to toe. No pressure to exercise. But once they were on, it was relatively easy to decide to go for a jog.
{Notice I am NOT going to tell you that eventually there will be less balls in the basket to juggle...they will be off at college or working or traveling and it will be much easier to juggle what's important to you successfully. Hearing this isn't super helpful, because it causes us anxiety, even when it's trying to be helpful. [See Parenting and the Agony of the Passage of Time for my thoughts on that particular anxiety.]}
Now back to our Failure Anxiety. I'm just going to dive into the deep end here.
WE, AS PEOPLE WHO WORK HARD AND LIVE WELL AND LOVE INTENTIONALLY, HAVE TO RECOGNIZE THAT DOING ALL OF OUR RESPONSIBILITIES AT 80%, 70%, EVEN 50% IS A JOB WELL DONE, DAMN IT.
And if you have a baby at home, any percentage of completion is success.
This quest for perfection is not new. As Jane Austen illuminated so well in Pride and Prejudice:
“No one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”
“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
“I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.”
Change "music" to "politics", "singing" to "HIIT workouts", "drawing" to "organic gardening", "modern languages" to "social media", "tone of her voice" to "her ability to be a whole, healthy person", and "extensive reading" to "JOB", and you've got 2019 staring at you straight from Netherfield Park. And Elizabeth Bennet is right as ever. That creature would certainly be a fearsome thing to behold. Centuries later, and we still fail to recognize that the failure is not our own, but in the standards of perfection we set for ourselves. The standards themselves are the failure.
Perfection looms always outside of our grasp.
And yet, we still we reach for it...and in that, there is SO. MUCH. PRESSURE. Do not lose your sense of self or success. No one is juggling those 50 balls successfully right now. Everyone is dropping some while juggling others...you just don't always get to see the ones they drop. Sure, some of us are better at juggling a few more than others, but it doesn't change that we all need to learn to live with a sense of failure in a healthy way. A way that allows us to see it, acknowledge it, consciously SHOVE past it (I say "shove" because it's hard), and look towards what we ARE accomplishing.
Because it's a hell of a lot if we can just push our self-loathing out of the way enough for us to see it.
Failure will never point to what we've accomplished. NEVER. So don't let it in the driver's seat. You don't have to kick it out of the car, because it can be a decent motivator when put in it's healthy place (and honestly, it will find it's way back in), but when it asks to drive, buckle it up in the back and tell it to shut it.
That's a skill we've got down pat.
Mine would go like this:
-loving my kids
-teaching them to be good people
-finding time to read here and there
-being kind to my friends
-cooking meals that taste pretty decent
-keeping up on the news (I value this)
-creating things sometimes (even though I have a sense of failure over how little I do this)
4) You have to practice jumping off of your thought trains. Failure and self-loathing can run away with us, often, because we don't know how to disengage. I can't always achieve this, I certainly didn't last week, but when I recognize that I am hostage to a runaway Failure thought train, I practice jumping off and hopping on a different train. Gratitude, Humor, Ways I Can Donate To Others (get your mind off of yourself for a bit)...all good thought trains. And when I can't get out of my head while doing daily tasks, I make sure to turn on a show or podcast that steals me away from ruminating.
5) Try to focus on small goals. My goal for my weight is a big one. I've had three kids. Three c-sections. I also just love lazing around. Couches are the best, better with blankets. And they are best with no exercise. I kid. After I get exercising, yeah, it feels great, but it's always hard for me. So I have to focus small. I can't think "Failure, I haven't lost 10 pounds yet". I have to say, "Success, I worked out twice this week. That's twice more than last week. Keep going. You are doing what you can, when you can." Commit to small habit changes, and then keep adjusting them as you succeed. Once, I even committed to just get the exercise clothes on every day. Head to toe. No pressure to exercise. But once they were on, it was relatively easy to decide to go for a jog.
{Notice I am NOT going to tell you that eventually there will be less balls in the basket to juggle...they will be off at college or working or traveling and it will be much easier to juggle what's important to you successfully. Hearing this isn't super helpful, because it causes us anxiety, even when it's trying to be helpful. [See Parenting and the Agony of the Passage of Time for my thoughts on that particular anxiety.]}
Now back to our Failure Anxiety. I'm just going to dive into the deep end here.
WE, AS PEOPLE WHO WORK HARD AND LIVE WELL AND LOVE INTENTIONALLY, HAVE TO RECOGNIZE THAT DOING ALL OF OUR RESPONSIBILITIES AT 80%, 70%, EVEN 50% IS A JOB WELL DONE, DAMN IT.
And if you have a baby at home, any percentage of completion is success.
This quest for perfection is not new. As Jane Austen illuminated so well in Pride and Prejudice:
“No one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”
“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
“I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.”
Change "music" to "politics", "singing" to "HIIT workouts", "drawing" to "organic gardening", "modern languages" to "social media", "tone of her voice" to "her ability to be a whole, healthy person", and "extensive reading" to "JOB", and you've got 2019 staring at you straight from Netherfield Park. And Elizabeth Bennet is right as ever. That creature would certainly be a fearsome thing to behold. Centuries later, and we still fail to recognize that the failure is not our own, but in the standards of perfection we set for ourselves. The standards themselves are the failure.
Perfection looms always outside of our grasp.
And yet, we still we reach for it...and in that, there is SO. MUCH. PRESSURE. Do not lose your sense of self or success. No one is juggling those 50 balls successfully right now. Everyone is dropping some while juggling others...you just don't always get to see the ones they drop. Sure, some of us are better at juggling a few more than others, but it doesn't change that we all need to learn to live with a sense of failure in a healthy way. A way that allows us to see it, acknowledge it, consciously SHOVE past it (I say "shove" because it's hard), and look towards what we ARE accomplishing.
Because it's a hell of a lot if we can just push our self-loathing out of the way enough for us to see it.
Failure will never point to what we've accomplished. NEVER. So don't let it in the driver's seat. You don't have to kick it out of the car, because it can be a decent motivator when put in it's healthy place (and honestly, it will find it's way back in), but when it asks to drive, buckle it up in the back and tell it to shut it.
That's a skill we've got down pat.
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