Jenny and Erin

It seems there are two common ways to live life - as a serious and dreadful march to your death or as an adventure with many unexpected twists and turns. Your choice ultimately determines the trajectory of your everyday life, including your dreams. It is worth asking yourself how you have chosen to live your life, as a death march or a grand adventure?

In my experience it seems the easiest default for most people in facing goals, much less daily life, is the death march mentality. This “get it done at any cost” way of viewing the world and the insistence that “perfect“ is possible is seductive. Heck, even knowing this, if I’m not careful my most sought after adventures have morphed into a death march. Perhaps this is tied to unrealistic beliefs about life and assumptions we fail to question. Such as:

• Believing that if you just do the “right” things or make the “right” choices you will have a happy, pain free life;
• Believing if you were only smart enough it would be possible to live a mistake-free life, with none of the embarrassing mishaps you seem to suffer on an all-to-regular basis;
• Believing the answers to your life should come easily, since they seem to for everyone else; or
• Believing it is possible to live a life in which the things you want and/or the decisions you make aren’t quite so difficult and don’t hurt nearly as much.

If any of these beliefs are familar I’d kindly suggest it is time to re-evaluate. Death march and adventure mentalities change one’s internal experience. They change how you view yourself and consequencely how others view you. I have found this in relation to pain. There are times in our lives that all of us hurt. Whether this pain is physical or emotional isn’t pertinent, as the end result is the same. Pain makes it is easy to trip, stumble and even fall. But how deep the pain cuts, how hard you fall and whether or not you try to get up depends to a great degree on how you view your life.

Pain when walking a death march drags you down, grows as you complain and causes pretty horrible decision making. It leads to fear, failure and continually mounting losses. It causes you to draw away from others, and oftentimes an unacknowledged desire to inflict pain on those closest to you so they can get some understanding of just how bad you feel. Even though it is never said, when you’re living life as a death march, you often welcome the pain (and maybe even “accidently” inflict more) because it means you can quit and no one can blame you.

On the other hand, the mind is a funny thing. By choosing to live life as an adventure, the same pain can be viewed quite differently. Pain is now an indicator of a steep learning curve, a clue to a weakness you must address before continuing on your journey or a test of your desire. This pain can still bring you to tears and tempt you to quit, but ultimately it challenges and draws you closer to those nearest to you. In an adventure it becomes clear there may not always be a lesson to pain. Rather, despite the best planning and all the best intentions bad things just happen. Pain is an inherent part of life.

You can choose to live and experience your life however you want. You can (and already do) determine how you want to view your mistakes and failures both to yourself and others. And even if you decide to have your life be a grand adventure it won’t necessarily be easier - you still will make mistakes, answers will still be hard to find and you still will experience pain - but you will have the knowledge that you are making a life not just floating along.

Have you ever noticed that some goals feel more attainable as you move towards them, while others do just the opposite? The small triumphs you experience while working towards some goals make you want to work harder, while small triumphs with other goals feel like painful reminders of just how far you still need to go? It’s not a mirage, some goals seem to have the momentum within them, while others you have to keep feeding them to keep the momentum rolling.

I call goals with internal momentum self-fueled goals. These are the goals that as I work towards they take on a momentum of their own and seemingly carrying themselves forward. I am aware of the barriers with my self-fueled goals, yet I am still able to envision even greater possibilities and feel my goal’s reality. The goal and the very journey, is motivating in itself. Jenny and my dare turned goal for this summer (click here if you don’t know about this goal) is definitely a self-fueled goal. Yes, it’s work - and very hard work at times - but the joy of working towards it keeps me motivated. Self-fueled goals seem to resonate so deeply in my soul that they inspire me to do better and to do more. In fact, on our walk this morning we discussed adding a more difficult trail that we had previously taken off our list. But, before I get ahead of myself…

Not all goals are self-fueled. Some require constant motivation every single step. I call these monster goals. They are hard and typically painful. Every day I have to convince myself that the goal is worth the work and the end will come. Take my fear of public speaking. I rehearse, go to Toastmasters and have even had a few successes. However, it just isn’t getting easier. I hope, and on the good days believe, that someday public speaking won’t be so difficult for me, but for now, each time it feels like torture. Sometimes I just really want to quit and forget about it.

So what’s the difference between the two goals? Why is one self-fueled and the other isn’t? I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not a matter of choosing the right or wrong goals. Nor does it have to do with the perceived difficulty of the goal (I don’t think I’ve had a more difficult goal than the walking and training for 588 trail miles). Some goals are self-fueled because of their very nature.

Self-fueled goals typically have a distinct endpoint. And more importantly, it is abundantly clear what needs to be done to get to that endpoint. Walking 15 trails is clearer than practicing and improving speaking publicly. There isn’t a lot of guesswork associated with the self-fueled goal. Yes, maybe a bit of trial and error, but the end is still clear. Self-fueled goals also typically have some enjoyment incorporated into them. With walking I get to be outside, goof around with a good friend and see new places. This does encourage me on the harder days.

Is it possible to then to turn a monster goal into a self-fueled one? Unfortunately I don’t think so. But, I believe lessons can be taken from self-fueled goals to help the monster goals not feel so daunting. This may include incorporating an end-date, making a detailed list of what you should do to get to the endpoint and add some enjoyment to it. So maybe Toastmasters isn’t the best way for me to improve my public speaking skills. An acting class, or play, would offer me an endpoint (the performance), a detailed list (memorize lines, rehearsal and blocking and it would be more fun for me. However, I think the most important step to overcoming monster goals is to accept that they are not self-fueled goals, and to stop waiting for the to become one. Keeping this in mind keeps my expectations of the goal, and it’s ease, in check.

Personal growth is lonely and miserable. The road to self-improvement is often described in flowery terms like “embarking on the journey of self-discovery” or “learning to see the beauty which lies within” when it is actually more akin to a trip to the dentist; worthwhile, necessary, but utterly unpleasant.

Jenny’s diatribe, “Becoming a Better Person Sucks”, portrays this beautifully. Click here to read her post. However there is at least one step, personally the most painful, not addressed in Jenny’s post. Asking the question - How do I know what I need to change?

Back to the tennis analogy, so you’re a horrible player and you just got beat. You want to improve because currently you can’t show your face at your health club. Initially, defining the steps to becoming better seems obvious. To win next time you just need to get into better shape. Slow down buck-o, things are more complicated. To truly get better you must take an honest inventory of your performance. What made you fail? Not understanding the rules of the game? Fatigue? Did you psyche yourself out? These questions can sting, who wants to make a list of all of their failings, especially after just going through the pain of losing? With your self-esteem in the toilet, you have the joy of defining how you plan to get better. Should I run sprints? Lift weights? Play more until I improve? What will have the highest yield?

Three weeks and many workouts later you lose again. You are frustrated that you lost, especially after all your effort. Losing hurts so you blame others - if my parents had insisted I play tennis in high school, maybe my friend cheated, I was distracted by the people on the adjacent court. When you repeat the story to your friends no ones jumps to your defense; they actually avoid your gaze!

If you are lucky, maybe, just maybe, a friend remarks that you are taking on the wrong problem. They suggest the answer may not even be related to tennis, maybe it is tied to your unrealistic need to be perfect or to always win. To expect that you, who haven’t played tennis since junior high, are going to win against someone, who played competitively in college and once a week since, is unrealistic. This is when it hits you; maybe you have been trying to change the wrong things. Your need to win has served you well at work, but has also cost you several friendships over the years.

It is time to examine your habits, beliefs and thoughts. However, it’s not just the bad habits, beliefs and thoughts that need to go under the microscope; surprisingly (and more often painfully) you must also dissect those you have always assumed were positive, or worse yet helpful. This is typically where the true problems mask themselves. The trouble lies in the fact that if you knew what you were doing wrong and it was easy to fix, you would have changed it a long time ago. Get over your embarrassment; call the experts, your friends, or (gulp) even your family. Again, they know you and can help identify what needs the change, and sometimes even how you can go about doing it.

Congrats, you are making progress - it may not feel like it - but keep at it and one day you will look back and see how far you’ve come. Who said it would be fun???

I want to be better, do better, maybe even be the best, but everything between this realization and becoming this mythical “better person” just sucks! Becoming better sounds great in theory, and I’m sure if I ever reach the end point of being a better person it will be great, but right now, not so much.

Let’s examine the process one undergoes to become better - better at anything – tennis, love, writing, etc. Life is humming along when a friend suggests playing a game of tennis. You’re a competitive person and so you say yes, even though you haven’t played since junior high. You assume that even if you don’t win, you’ll at the least hold your own. Unfortunately your friend whoops you. Due to your competitive nature, you feel pain, possibly in the form of embarrassment or screaming muscles, but no matter – the point is you feel it. It’s the feeling of pain from the chasm between who you are and what you want to be. This spurs you to want to be better.

A fuzzy kind of self-doubt and confusion moves in (often with a touch of that icky anger). When did I get so out of shape that I can’t play a single stupid game of tennis? How messed up am I that getting beat makes me feel like a loser all day? Your mind starts racing – Just how bad is this? Do other people feel this way? When did I lose “it”? Why aren’t I good enough for this to come naturally? How many other people know I’m a loser? And so on downwards in a deep spiral until you reach the worst questions of all – Why aren’t I good enough to have always been better? Why aren’t I good enough just as I am? It sounds kind of melodramatic when the subject is tennis, but imagine your feelings when it is an impending bankruptcy, an inability to have meaningful relationships or losing a promotion at work.

If you can find a way through the pain, confusion, self-doubt and overwhelming paralysis you eventually emerge. Guess where? The lovely land of pure drudgery! What a complete let-down – how is it possible to have dealt with all of these painful feelings and end up tired and uninspired with the work it takes to change? That’s because the next step on the path to becoming a better person is the slow repetition of the thoughts, actions and even words that make you better until they become first habits and then morph into part of your character. It’s easy to give up – the list of things you need to change becomes magnified in your mind and completely overwhelming. Unfortunately some people stop here and believe they are hopeless or that other people have what it takes to change but not you. Hell, you are who you are and if people like you they should take you as you are – warts and all. However, what you don’t realize is that becoming better sucks for EVERYONE.

Surprisingly, the worst part of becoming a better person is that it’s not so easy to quit! Even when you’ve tried to be better and failed, that vision of what is possible just doesn’t fade – it keeps you awake at night, biting at your heels. The possibility of who you could be haunts you when you see others achieving what you want and you know you could have if you didn’t quit.

And the circle starts again, the only way out is to just accept and deal with the plain, hard truth – becoming a better person sucks!