Scorecard

Earlier this week, while driving, I asked Zoe to remind me to close the sunroof when we got home.

I have a bad habit of leaving it open – sometimes overnight – while parked outside. I have been lucky, it has never rained but I know that if I do not change my ways, my luck will run out.

“For some reason, Zoe, I cannot seem to learn this lesson.”

As I heard these words, I suddenly saw a pattern emerge in front of me. This is not the only lesson I have struggled to learn.

Recently, I’ve started to think about why some changes are harder to make. Why some life lessons seem to take much longer for me to learn.

Over the years, I have found myself falling into similar traps over and over again:

• I am extremely trusting – despite having been fooled many times by others.
• I notoriously make things worse by not knowing when to stop trying to fix them. This is particularly dangerous for others when I am cooking.
• I am easily distracted while driving (accident-free for 18 months now).
• I seek external validation in order to feel good; and
• I restrict my food intake to deal with feelings of inadequacy, shame and disappointment as well as to cope with stress.

I wish I could say that I have finally freed myself of at least one of these traps, but alas, the journey is still in progress.

Some days, I have a hard time accepting the fact that I am where I am in my learning and growth. I chastise myself often, asking “what is the matter with you? You know better!”

You know better…

This is a sentence I use often when I am frustrated and exasperated with myself.
I do know better. I know what I should/shouldn’t do, what I need to let go of and hold on to. “What are you waiting for, I ask?”

Here too, I wish I could say that tough love worked and helped get me closer to change.

Self-reproach comes to me as easily as breathing, so it would be really helpful if my instinctual response to my perceived “failures” actually helped. It doesn’t. At best, it has no impact. At worst, which is most cases, it creates a vicious cycle of self-blame that causes me to turn to the same maladaptive coping mechanisms I am beating myself up about.

Oh dear…another lesson I am working on learning! Is it just me or does this sound exhausting?

So, what keeps me in this cycle? The answer is as simple and as daunting as this: my core beliefs about myself.

In my eyes, if you are good, smart, strong, all it takes is knowing. The rest is up to true grit, effort and motivation. And so, when I engage in activities which are not in my best interests, I feel broken, lazy and stupid. I categorize myself as a defective machine in need of the best Help Desk possible – you know the one; the lemon that every users wants to replace.

This brings us to the most important lesson I am trying to learn: I do not need to be fixed.

I do not need to be fixed. (I may need to say it a few more times before it sinks in).

I am me. I am good. I am more than enough.

There are reasons why I do certain things – the root causes of which I am working on healing in order to pave the way for new truths for myself. There is a place for marks and judgement in this world (academics, competitive sports, etc) but human beings should not be graded as individuals.

This is a hard one for me. 

And, while I have made great inroads in accepting that I will not always earn an A+ in life, I have determined that acceptance is not what is required anymore. My entire grading system for myself (and only myself) needs to be scrapped altogether. There is no letter grade for a person; no established scorecard of life. If, like me, you operate under the firm belief that we carry around our own self metrics, this is going to be hard to accept.

Ouf…I am going to just sit with that for a moment and breathe.

There is a lot to learn, even at 42. And while I have relapsed recently, it is never too late to start your education afresh.

So after a few months of losing my way, today I ate breakfast and started learning again – hopefully this time, with no report card.