Tag: discipline

Letter no. 5 – not a part-way girl

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[Note: this was written six months ago, while I was still pregnant.]

I think a lot about willpower and discipline, which might be because I wrestle so much with actually building them. I often act like a part-way sort of person: I build really good habits part of the way and then call them good enough, because that’s when it gets really hard to keep improving. 

I don’t eat sugar often. People like me say we’re “sugar free” and it really is true; but even though I don’t eat sugar and I DO eat tons of veggies, I also eat lots of heavy food. Like cheese. I eat a LOT of cheese. (And eggs. And sugar-free, flour-free scones, slathered in butter.) So my friends are always impressed when I order a simple coffee with heavy cream or an almond milk latte with sugar-free vanilla, or something. And they admire my willpower when I don’t eat pasta. But my zucchini noodles are literally dripping with alfredo sauce. It’s a healthy habit that’s been built up part-way and then left. 

I’ve done the same thing with writing. I get a few guest posts published, get paid for an essay I submitted to an outdoor writing site, and I think I’ve arrived. I stop working so hard. I write less and less frequently. And then suddenly my own blog is facing neglect and I’ve started using my toddler’s nap time for Gilmore Girls instead of a writing session (while I eat a low-carb pizza piled in pepperoni, because you can’t watch Gilmore Girls without eating.) And all the while people keep telling me what a great writer I am, so I don’t get bothered about the good habits that I haven’t kept developing.

In my more discouraged moments I think of myself as a part-way kind of person. I take on the whole persona and in an instant I can see a whole future for myself full of part-way plans that part-way succeeded. Maybe they’re enough to help me stand out just a tiny bit from the crowd, but I know that my habits and efforts will have more potential if I will sit down and put in the time. When I call myself a part-way person, it’s like claiming an identity. I don’t just picture that half-fulfilled future, I start to believe it’s all I’m capable of. I start to believe I’ll always quit just before the finish line, right when it gets the hardest. When I think of myself as a part-way person, I start to move in that direction.

That is exactly what I don’t want for us. There is never a reason to believe that we’ve failed until after it’s actually happened. And even then, failure at one step or stage or goal can just be a catalyst to the next one, if you respond to it that way. Why imagine the worst and subtly call ourselves back and downward in that direction? I don’t believe that whatever you imagine or believe hard enough will just happen to you, but I do believe that if we consistently tell ourselves we’re going to fail, that eventually we’ll stop trying not to fail. We’ll stop trying at all: there will soon be nothing left at which to fail. 

This letter is a tiny success story in itself. I set a goal to write every day. It’s an indefinite goal because I have a baby coming sometime who will absolutely interrupt that streak. But let’s just say right here that I plan to write every day until my baby is born. So far, I’ve reached day eight. I don’t think I’ve ever written for eight days in a row before. This is something new. This is me leveling up that writing habit I’d already created. 

I have goals to improve my eating habits – less cheese and butter, more healthy carbs. I have goals to improve how I spend my time – more reading, more cleaning, more time with my toddler; less social media. I’ve gotten stuck on these before, pictured that bleak future in which I’m only capable of part-way achievement. I don’t want to let myself walk that direction anymore. I’m sitting down with these habits and believing they can change, no matter how slowly and incrementally. 

Here’s to us, babe. Here’s to the habits we’re willing to cultivate beyond the part-way stopping points. Let’s do this.

a long direction – letter no. 1

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[I thought about calling this series “letters in the quiet” because I’ve been offline, writing the things I think I need most to hear: but it’s coming slowly home to me that maybe I’m not the only one who needs to hear some of these words and so now they’re letters to be shared. Don’t read this thinking I’ve reached all my goals. Really, I’m just a girl who needed this pep-talk too.]

It’s possible – just maybe possible – that what you needed to hear isn’t what you expected at all. You need to hear it right when you are waiting with expectation. Right when you are waiting for an expectation. You think there are rules to follow in this dream of yours. (and maybe there are, but there is a time for rules.) You think there is only one right way to get to the place you are going. (And maybe you are right about that too, but not the way you thought you were.)

I think the only way to keep going in a direction is to just keep going. And maybe that sounds stupid or simple or cut-and-dried, or maybe it even sounds like the rules you thought I was about to toss out the window. Well, like the hero of a movie always says when he gets caught with his pants down, I can explain. 

Of course there are rules: there is one big rule. Keep moving. If you want to be a writer, put your butt in a chair and write. If you want to be a runner, stop browsing Nike’s newest running shoes, lace up the ones you have and walk out the door. If you want to be a therapist, start by signing up for some classes. You can’t just talk to your own therapist forever about how you want to do this too, one day. But then your therapist, if they’re worth their salt, will tell you the same thing I’m telling you. It matters a hell of a lot more that you begin and keep going than that you have the same path to get there that everybody else does. 

A friend of mine wants to major in Psychology. A lot of people go to college knowing they want to major in Psychology, and a lot more go to college knowing they have to pick a major and they pick Psychology eventually. My friend started with cosmetology. She went to beauty school, which we have learned not to call it anymore, and has worked with her favorite and least-favorite clients in a salon in a city near where we grew up ever since. It doesn’t sound very glamorous because it isn’t. But tomorrow is her first day of classes at a new college and in a few years she’s going to have the exact same psychology degree as all the people who just graduated high school and haven’t had to hunt down their love of psychology through the hair-cut therapy sessions delivered compassionately to the soundtrack of a hair-buzzer and a scissors. Isn’t that worth something – that knowing? 

Hell, let’s just make it personal. I want to be a published author. And yeah, the only way to get there as I’ve been told again and again is to get my butt in the chair and write. I’m beginning to realize it doesn’t matter as much what I write as that I am writing. Can we agree on that for a second? Because sometimes I go around and around in my own mind, just trying to determine what I should be working on right now and instead of writing I think about writing and puzzle about writing and make writing complicated when it should be as simple as sitting down and getting out the words.

I’m a lot like everyone else trying to write. We all know the struggle: you worry about developing your own voice, but how are you ever going to do that if you don’t write? You worry about finding what it is you love to write but how are you ever gonna do that if you don’t write? You have to write. But who cares what you write? 

I think we are too lenient on ourselves because we are so hard on ourselves. I can explain that one too. You are hard on yourself for not choosing a direction. You don’t know what to work on so you worry about choosing a direction and because you’re so nit-picky about a direction you give yourself permission not to write until you have something figured out. But you’re not going to find success like that. Success comes at the end of consistent hard work. Greatness is out there and it will find people, but it will find those who’ve put in the years of behind-the-scenes training. Who’ve put their butts in chairs and written things nobody has ever or will ever read. 

The invisible work is the work that matters, do you hear me? The invisible work is where you’re going to be built. The invisible work is boring and unrewarding for a long time and everybody who’s somebody has had to deal with that. They’ve had to figure out what they love about this work so they can keep going when there isn’t a soul cheering them on, because for years and years there probably won’t be a soul cheering you on (except me, right here and right now) and you’ve got to be ok with that – you’ve got to get your butt in your chair and your fingers on your keyboard for different reasons than just the cheering. Trust me on this. 

So don’t self-sabotage. Don’t hold back and wait for a direction; don’t stop the habit just because you’ve finished one stage, don’t give up on a direction just because you didn’t start walking towards that degree the day after high school ended. It’s not how you get there that matters. It’s going in the same direction, day after day, until you arrive. I trust you babe: you can do that. And when you get there? That’s when the applause begins.

last year

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This is a story about last year. 2018. The year of New.

I have a page in an old art journal that I labeled just like that: The Year of New. Twelve months ago I sat at the faded yellow kitchen table and held my toes over warm air vent while I wrote down a long list of new things to try.

  • Recipes
  • Camp life
  • Try a new coffee drink
  • A new ethnic food

I set no stipulation on myself to succeed. I am already chronically afraid of failing. Somehow or other, I convinced myself that trying was succeeding. My only real goal was to find one thing to do every month that I’d never tried before.

I had already begun setting new goals for this year when I saw a post on Instagram asking people to share their best goals, memories, and reflections from 2018. Oh, this is easy… I typed “Trying new things!” and smiled as I sent it to her. “Great!” she responded, “What’s something you plan to keep?” I hadn’t thought of that. I knew all the courage last year required had changed me. I knew I’d learned things about myself that I never realized before, but I hadn’t paid attention to what those things were.

I’ve been thinking about it all week since then, and I have an answer. I realized it when I rolled out my yoga mat and began Yoga with Adrienne’s annual 30 Days of Yoga challenge. I did this challenge last year. It wasn’t easy; I was out of shape and my 6 month old had a thing for interrupting me for meals and attention. But when I sat down on the blue mat and started following the video this year, I remembered how good it felt at the end of January 2018 when I finished.

When February began, I had finished one new thing – I finished a fitness challenge. And I’d finished something I needed discipline for. I couldn’t rush through all 30 days of yoga practice; the videos were posted one day at a time. After half-an-hour I was too sore and shaky to keep going even if I could. I’m the classic work-ahead girl. You give me a book to read over a few months and I’ve got it done in a few days. But last January I was forced to pace myself, to accomplish something better by stretching it out.

That yoga challenge changed the rest of my year, really. I began to write more. I didn’t sign up to write a novel in the month of November, though that achievement sounds glorious. But I did sit down almost every day between May and December to write and edit, write and edit. I published blog posts here, submitted essays to competitions and judges, completed a writing webinar, got my work published on other blogs. The long slow discipline of practicing every day was paying off.

My New Year’s goal last year served its purpose; I was challenged to try new things and I had to try them slowly and consistently. That is what I love about 2018.

My goals this year are different. They’re more specific, for starters. But they’re written like torches lit in the dark, pointing me in the direction I know I want to go. So here’s to last year. Here’s to slow steps in the right direction. Here’s to discipline and patience, the much that is accomplished little by little. And here’s to 2019. Happy New Year.

I’d love to hear your goals for this year, or how last year shaped you! Chat with me in the comments!

discipline

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hiking, pancake rocks, colorado, fall colors, mountains, friends

“Discipline is supposed to serve you; you’re not supposed to serve the discipline.” She wasn’t talking to me but I heard and remembered.

Were we halfway through the summer when those words sank into my heart? I held on to them the rest of the weeks we remained at camp. Discipline is supposed to serve you. I could list the ways I discovered that this summer.

One day in May I finally decided that if I sat down every day for a long time then I could finish a big writing project. I counted out the days and set a count-down widget on my phone to remind me time was ticking. There are 152 of 258 days left until my self-imposed deadline. The goal I set for myself is almost met. I’m in awe, and a bit afraid of my own progress, and eager to set a new goal. I’ve always been nervous about writing, but discipline served the ball back into Fear’s court. I’ve written a lot this summer, with gratitude to discipline.

I was handed a Bible study booklet in the last week of May to begin prepping for the study I would lead for four of the counselors. The nine steps of Bible study that were laid out in the beginning of the book startled me. I didn’t know how to begin – it had been so long since I studied scripture that way. So I broke the study down into chunks. I made it look manageable and I sat down to study every morning or afternoon while Erik napped. I learned so much about God, about scripture and about study this summer. A summer of discipline has gotten me excited to study God and his word more.

I have had to be disciplined with my parenting too. It’s incredibly self-sacrificing to hand little Erik a spoon when I’m giving him a bowl of oatmeal or Greek yogurt and let him try to shovel a few bites into his mouth. Things are a lot less messy when I just feed him. But will he ever learn that way? It’s important to me to teach him the things he needs to live life well, love God well. It’s taken a lot of discipline to consistently choose the messy education experience instead of the tidy spoon-feeding.

I don’t really like discipline. That’s not the point of this post. But when I’m not in the thick of parenting I usually have enough perspective to reframe it. “Step by step, one travels far,” J. R. R. Tolkien says. I think discipline is applicable to more than just the hard things that challenge you at the core of who you want to be. There’s other things – like looking for small beautiful moments in you day or remembering to write down what you’re grateful for. Little by little, one unpacks every box after moving to a new home, or learns to love healthier foods. Little  by little the autumn colors roll down the mountains each October. Maybe the longer we practice discipline the more we discover that it’s pure gold.

2018-09-23 02.03.18 1.jpg

I’m in the thick of everything right now – the parenting, the writing, the unpacking, the study. The fall colors. Don’t think I’m advising back over my shoulder from the other side. I’m stuck hating the act of discipline right alongside you (trust me.) I’ve just seen the outcome before and I’m willing to work for that.

There’s a song called Keep On Keeping On by Colony House that tends to fall flat to my ears in the middle of my best seasons. When life is easy, I can’t listen. There’s no real keeping on to do. It’s in the mirey middle sections of trying to do things that won’t be finished for weeks or years that I have to have that anthem running through my head and heart.

So, friend, keep on keeping on. You’ll get there. Remember, “Little by little, one travels far.”

hiking, pancake rocks, colorado, fall colors, mountains, friends