As I’ve continued thinking through my last post about the
Olympics and work (and why, at the end, I said that I felt that I hadn’t come
full circle), this is the particular part that sticks out in my mind as “unfinished”:
Perhaps why I have loved watching the Olympics so much
these last few years is because Olympians have challenged me to see more
clearly my journey toward work I love. Specifically, these amazing
athletes have shown me the power of (A) try-try-trying again (also known as
“making choices”) and (B) refusing to be afraid (also known as “making
choices”).
When I first started writing about this topic several years
ago, I spent a lot of time contemplating fear and disappointment and how those
two ideas play a part in decisions about work. Over the last couple months, I've kept those paper-bound ruminations close by. I kept trying to find a way to adapt what I wrote in 2008 into a whole post, but it wasn't working. So instead, here are some snippets of the thoughts that I had.
Some of it will sound familiar since I used it in last
month’s post.
No longer do people
ask what you want to be. Now it becomes
what are you going to do? Not what do you
love, but what are you good at? (Thus
implying that those are mutually exclusive.)
And after you get cut from the varsity baseball team, your mom sighs and
says, “Let’s find something else to focus on.”
Inevitably, it’s working at the local sporting goods store or another
variety of “almost…but not quite.”
Perhaps why so many people hate high school is because it is when they
feel they should let go of “impossible” dreams and learn what the road to
practicality looks like. For four years,
teenagers find things they love – things they could do all day – only to
discover that “you can’t make a living doing that.” And that's when they hear the death knell to their dreams.
***
My job right now is
tolerable, but I can’t shake the nagging thought that I spend every day helping
someone else love work more while I love it less. I think it goes back to the idea that some of
us take it better than others that what we really want to do won’t make us
money. We trade the security of knowing
who we are and what we love for the security of paying our bills on time.
***
I figure I have to care about
working in some capacity, or I would do very little voluntarily. It’s not like I have a little man sitting on
my desk, bull-whipping my hands whenever they are idle. No, there is something else that keeps me moving
80% of the day – fear. Fear that I’ll
get caught emailing during work; fear that if I don’t finish tasks fast enough,
my boss will yell at me; fear that if someone caught me off-guard and asked me
what I was doing when I really was reading online news for the fifth time today,
I wouldn’t be able to answer in a legitimate work-related fashion; fear that
poor performance means I won’t get a raise.
Since when did fear become my primary motivational force?
***
I wonder how many
women are living with fear as their sole stimulus. We are afraid of getting fat, of being “old
maids”, of having imperfect children, of our mothers’ opinions, of being
unsuccessful, of ourselves. After a
while, we forget that we have a voice, as well.
We only have to hear the stealthy footstep of fear and immediately we
stand at attention…and do what we think we “should.” What a terrible word “should” is. There’s a touch of finality when that word is
uttered, even though the action technically hasn’t happened yet. So many people (including myself) say
it on a regular basis. How many things do we tell ourselves
we “should” do, when in reality it’s just the fear of what will happen (and
what others will say) if we don’t? Why
does fear get to win?
***
There are people who
have inspired me in one way or another. And
I maintain my stance that these people I put on a pedestal are not much
different than I am. However, I do
believe it comes down to this fundamental fact: amazing athletes, people who do
heroic things, and people who choose to live their lives pushing against the
norm have one thing in common – they have chosen to ignore the influence of
fear and “should.” Each incredible
person at one time or another has looked fear in the eye and chosen to walk
away. “Should” has no dominion over
them. And sometimes it doesn’t go as
planned. Muscles pull; mental toughness
gives way; life disappoints; heroes don’t always win. However, each time we see these incredible
people put fear back in its proper place, we must recognize that a crucial
battle has been won.
These sound bites have given me a springboard to evaluate (and re-evaluate)
what I wrote about the Olympics and work last month. In particular, by using them to think through last month’s “unfinished”
ideas, I realized that I needed to amend my words. I don’t think that “refusing to be afraid” is
feasible or even possible. I think what
I had hoped to (but failed to) convey is exactly what the group of quotes above
discusses: the idea that fear is real. It
can be a result of a variety of things – disappointment, failure, baggage,
childhood, or a lack of confidence (among other things). Whatever its origin, fear is a motivating
force. It can be hard to escape, and sometimes
it’s the loudest voice we hear. But we
don’t have to give in to it. We don’t
have to let fear control us. Despite that fact, I
do believe we cannot always control the fact that we feel afraid, and that’s
okay. Giving fear a name is an important part of dealing with it, and we can only do that if we acknowledge it exists. Furthermore, it can be difficult to make choices about how best to wade through fear if we haven't even admitted we're afraid. So, I stand by what I wrote (in
theory), because it is true that we have choices when it comes to fear. How we deal with fear is a choice. But I would like to adjust
my parenthetical claim that refusing to be afraid is always a choice. J
Not to be left out of the adjustments, “Try-try-trying
again” really should have been Point B up above and “Refusing to give in to
fear” should have been Point A. If someone is afraid of doing something they have just tried to do unsuccessfully, telling them things like "practice makes perfect" and "all you have to do is try again" can seem condescending. (Think of it like telling a recently single person that "there are other fish in the sea." Not helpful.) The fear of failing for a second (or third) (or fourth) (or more than fourth) time is one of those loud voices I mentioned above. That voice can halt forward progress and delay personal growth. It is a time usurper. Now, we each have to work at our own pace, and taking time to deal with fear is necessary and healthy; but I
believe that our ability to try-try-try again is a direct result of our choice to refuse to give in to fear. It is usually once
we decide that we are not going to be quelled by fear any longer that the prospect
of try-try-trying again no longer seems daunting and nearly impossible. And once we see fear for what it really is - one motivating force among many - it can become easier to see the benefit of trying
again, of choosing to be motivated by something other than fear, of seeing failure as a step in the process rather than the end of the process. I mean, when
it comes to the choices we make as adults, it’s so easy to see failure as a final
answer.
The truth? Sometimes failure is a final answer. Also the truth? Sometimes
it’s not.
Learning to determine if one failure “is” or “is not” is one of the
more difficult aspects of growing up (I think).
It’s the difference between a TKO and a slow rise off the mat. Admitting defeat takes courage, and giving
yourself the permission to walk away can be as frightening as continuing to
fight. Then again, if you decide that
you’re going to get up and keep fighting, you might have to face up to the fact
that you’ve lost some teeth. Your
trainer may need to squirt water on your face a second time before you’re
ready. The crowd may be heckling you into believing you're finished. But if you know that you have
fight left in you, ignore the naysayers – especially the naysayer that resides
somewhere inside your own head. If you
know it’s your moment to try-try-try again, you don’t have to explain it to
anyone except yourself.
The truth? You may fail
again. Also the truth? You might not.
I believe that I will someday find work that I love. For now, it’s worth the fight. A few lost teeth are a small price to
pay. At some point in the
future, that may not be true. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. However, as I
continue to evaluate my own progress in my own fight, I am thankful for the
Olympics and the thoughts that they have helped me to think for the last two
months. And I will continue to be inspired
by the choices Olympians make in order to live their own version of a
successful life – being who they are while doing something they love.
No comments:
Post a Comment