Recently I’ve been doing some things that challenge me. As I was in the middle of these things I noticed something about myself that I didn’t like.
When I perceive something as too hard, I have a tendency to give up quickly. Then I tell myself I can manage without doing it, or I outsource it to someone else.
A good thing about financial constraints is that it forces you to do hard things because you can’t afford to outsource them. Once paying someone else is an option, sometimes it can lead you to outsource rather than dig in your heels and figure it out. (Obviously there’s a place for outsourcing, as I mentioned in my last post about time management.)
I’ve had a few situations I recently pushed through rather than outsource – even though I would have rathered pay the money than push my comfort zone. I really, really wanted to pay someone else so I wouldn’t have to do it. But I did it, not to save money, but because I realized I was negatively defining myself by telling myself I couldn’t figure something out and couldn’t do it right.
One example is dog training. A week ago, I completed a six week dog training course with our new dog, Nala, and experienced various degrees of inadequacy at every single session. At our fifth session, I saw the contrast between how the trainer handled her and what I do, and was so discouraged that I seriously considered sending her to him for six weeks of boarding and daily training sessions (very expensive) so it would be done right.
After getting all the details and checking my planner for when I should begin the boarding, I paused and wondered, why am I ignoring all of the gains we’ve had in the short time she’s been with us, the things I taught her? Why am I so ready to give up and give this over to someone else, when overall she’s a calm and eager to please dog who has made major progress?
Because she pulled on the leash when we took her for a walk.
The trainer said a dog should never pull, and when I compared myself to him, I was frustrated with my rate of progress. I told myself it was going to take more time and consistency to get this right than I had. In other words, it was too hard for me.
I stopped myself and reasoned, maybe it will take me longer and maybe she won’t learn it perfectly, but that’s okay. I refuse to disempower myself by reacting as if I’m incapable.
It’s just two weeks later, and she’s hardly pulling at all. It’s so much more enjoyable to take her for a walk; it didn’t take that much time and it didn’t take that much expertise. (It definitely didn’t take six thousand shekels!) But I almost gave up on seeing myself as an effective teacher for her, because I was impatient with my learning process.
She would have learned to walk without pulling on the leash with the trainer, and it would obviously have taken that task off of my plate. I would have gotten what I wanted – but I would have missed out on the empowerment that I got from figuring it out myself.
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Last week, it was raining and we began having water leaking into our kitchen. A lot of water. I had six 9×13 pans set up to catch the water: on top of the kitchen cabinets, on the counter, and on the floor.
My husband called the insurance company but since they couldn’t find our address on their system, they said they couldn’t open a ticket for us. With no other option, my husband had to figure out what was causing the leak. He spent time going up and down on the roof (physically tiring by itself), trying different things, until he isolated the problem – it wasn’t connected to the rain, but was caused by a leak from an outgoing pipe of a hot water tank. He figured out a solution, and a day later (after all the built up water drained out), the kitchen was completely dry.
He figured it out, and solved the problem, but was nonetheless frustrated at how much time and energy he spent on this. We talked about it, and realized there’s a tendency to think that things should be easy, and if they aren’t, then you shouldn’t do them. It feels wrong to do hard things.
But that’s completely backwards. It’s by doing things that are outside of your comfort zone things that you grow your sense of competence and confidence. When you take a moment to redefine what you did by taking on something difficult, you can feel proud instead of frustrated. Recognize that every single thing that is worthwhile takes hard work, and you have grown your capacity by being willing to do that hard thing.
Definitely being a parent requires going beyond what you want to do, what you know how to do, again and again and again.
That’s how you get better. That’s where the confidence comes from. You do hard things, and at some point they stop being hard. Then harder things come along, and you push yourself, and you increase your capacity – and then that stops being hard.
You don’t have to go out of your way to look for hard things to do, because your life will be filled with opportunities.
What would change in your life, instead of resisting hard things, you accepted them as a growth opportunity? I’m not suggesting you embrace the difficulties – that’s quite a stretch – but what if you simply accepted, sometimes things are hard. Sometimes you’re going to have to do things you don’t want to do. And it’s okay for it to be hard. It’s okay to be mediocre. It’s okay to be learning and not have all the answers. You’re just in process.
As you do those challenging things, you’re going to develop more physical and emotional capacity, which makes you a stronger and better person. It’s the person you can become that you miss out on when you tell yourself you can’t and you won’t – so you don’t.
Avivah
2 Responses
I’ve found that professionally I do this also.
As soon as something get’s difficult I feel like I should know this already and feel inadequate in the work I do (even though I’m quite experienced!).
I’m learning to feel excited that I have a new opportunity to expand what I know and can offer my clients.
But, now you got me thinking how to apply this in my personal life as well!
This is a bit of a tangent, but when you wrote about the dog training, it brought me back to when, as a teenager, I took our two half-lab half German Shepherd dogs to a training course (one at a time). They were sisters, and one looked exactly like a full German Shepherd and was incredibly intelligent and trainable and the other was completely black and also smart but exceedingly stubborn. Since I trained them, both of them would obey me BUT the stubborn one would never obey any of the other family members. So, trained by someone does not necessarily mean obedient to everyone! The same applies to horses, by the way. They can feel out whom they can push around, and if they sense a lack of confidence, certain animal personalities will definitely take advantage of that! For that reason as well, it’s much better that you gained the skills so that you can train and discipline Nala with confidence.