Ghosts of Resolutions Past

You say you love all of your selves equally, but we all know who the favorite is. The one who volunteers more frequently, reads more diverse news sources, is ten pounds thinner. . .she’s your Best Self. You could be like her, if only. . .

Buyer beware. Setting goals, making resolutions, envisioning an idealized version of yourself — for me it’s a dangerous thrill.

The ghosts of resolutions past mock me from the shadows. Losing fifteen pounds was rewarding the first time, warranted an approving pat on the back the second time, and the third time? Maybe only a satisfied shrug. These days my penitence, mostly holiday aftershock, is typically abandoned within weeks.

Judging by the confetti of resolutions that descended on Jan 1, for many of us our Real World and Ideal World are miles apart, and we make regular trips back and forth.

If only our mirrors had Instagram filters. . .

Wait. . . are the values that underlie my judgments truly my own? When I have successfully scaled Mt. Resolution will there be satisfaction on the other side, or am I searching for media idols in my mirror? Are mirrors even an objective measuring device? How much energy will I waste serving the wrong masters? Sometimes it feels like I’m using an Italian dictionary to translate Chinese.

Is there a state where the real and ideal are one?

It could be yoga. Yoga works for me. I have never once left the mat and regretted the time spent. But it’s not without struggle. I made the mistake of telling my instructor Candace that I wanted to start working on the splits to loosen up my hip-flexor, so now I have this annoying goal knocking into me every time I enter the studio. I didn’t want to have a yoga-goal.

I blurted it out while we were chatting at the counter, at which point the nurture-alarm went off in my head: “I can’t set goals here because goals lead to assessment and inherent in assessment is the possibility of failure. I can’t fail here. I seek failure at the gym. Yoga is my safe place. I come here for my spiritual hug.”

I said it, though. I couldn’t unsay it, and Candace didn’t unhear it. We’ve been doing runner’s lunge followed by half-splits for the past three weeks. I ponder the mixed messages of achievement vs. character as I count breaths during half-pigeon. It’s getting easier.

In Real World, I spring into action when there’s something to improve or destroy. We need goals in that world, right? Without a destination in our sights, we’re rooted in place. Goals make change happen. Targets, accountability, unwavering commitment to the process of getting there. Discipline gets the job done. It is the undone chore that derails the train.

That’s where things get complicated, having the discipline to be my own enforcer. In parenting, they call it tough-love, and it’s toughest on the parent. Applying this to myself requires eyes-on-the-prize blinders that distort my perspective and can seriously steer me off track. I get caught up in the achievement and forget to be kind to myself in the process. Self-discipline is a paradox if not an outright oxymoron.

If the pursuit of a better self is the pursuit of happiness, why does it feel like a punishing slog? It shouldn’t. In the battle of tough vs. love, love wins. It has to. No matter how noble the goal, the big picture requires compassion and the self-awareness to know that true happiness is a state of emotional equilibrium, not a perfect anything or money in the bank.

That’s it. I’m going to move my focus from self-improvements and concentrate on making the pursuit itself meaningful.

My goal this year is to take more risks. I listen to podcasts while running and there was one about a guy who was terrified of rejection, so he made a goal of getting rejected every day for a hundred days. He thought of outlandish asks that would guarantee a NO response, and made himself endure the devastating feeling of being rejected. Exposure therapy: you practice facing your fears and thus become desensitized to them.

Risk is initiating an action to which you do not know the outcome in advance. According to this definition Mr. Rejection from the podcast was not actually taking risks. He was initiating an action that forced an outcome he had avoided his whole life because it made him feel bad about himself. He wanted to de-condition himself, disrupt the auto-response of self-denigration that had no room for growth. It was a known outcome that he wanted to conquer.

I want to go for the unknown. My whole life I’ve been “the reliable one” and I’m proud of that, but it comes from an underlying fear of letting people down. So I over-prepare. . . control the outcome. This is what I want to disrupt. Going For It is my new project, not attaining specific targets.

Sounds simplistic but consider it. My good friend Melinda and I have a regular Tuesday lunch date at Brooklyn Boulders, an indoor climbing gym. Just before the holidays we ran into a friend Gary whose belay partner had to get last minute shopping done so he was on his own. He stuck around, and we were excited to climb with him. He’s a more experienced climber, indoors and out, so we set our sights on a difficult pitched route. It was one I had tried once before but couldn’t achieve without assistance from my belayer. I knew I didn’t have the skills to conquer that section, but I figured he wanted to be challenged, and Melinda and I would see how it’s done for future reference.

So I belayed him first and watched as he defied gravity like a spider. I lowered him to street level and he instructed us on footwork before we made our attempts.

Self-doubt began with my first touch of the wall. I remembered my previous attempt as ridiculously difficult. I shooed those thoughts away and committed to the first grip. One move at a time, and here we are, already at the crux. The route pitched away from the wall and every pound of my body weight transferred to my shoulders and elbows. Eight tiny finger pads panicking at what was being asked of them. One move at a time, I said again, keep going. Don’t pause or you’ll run out of gas. I moved my legs to the same holds Gary had used and I looked up to where my hands were supposed to go next.

This won’t work, I thought. Your hands will slip, this is too much. You’re not ready! You’re probably not going to make it.

I willed myself to ignore the inner chatter long enough to reach for the hand-hold, and to my surprise my hand didn’t slip! It felt — it felt — actually correct. Secure, not even tenuous.

Oh my god! Keep moving, I thought. You need to get your bottom half past the pitched section! I kept going, one, two, three moves later my entire body was above the pitch and my feet were resting solidly on the hand rests I had doubted only moments before.

From way below I heard Gary exhale in surprise.

“She did it.”

As my raging pulse visited each muscle in my body for a round of high fives, I navigated the top section on auto-pilot. It went so quickly I could hardly remember what happened. I tapped out at the top and every pleasure-center in my brain fired at once.

I was done.

Thanks for the belay Gary. What just happened?

I didn’t recognize the person up there, she who committed gravity-defying stunts and time and again made moves that were 99% likely to end the attempt. That kind of decision making is foreign to me. I thought I was a fully developed plant but it turns out I’m a seed that has just now cracked open and begun to grow.

Give risk a chance. Risk isn’t attempting a foolish stunt, or betting disproportionate resources on an extreme and unlikely occurrence. It’s an opportunity to encounter a bit of your best self, in a neutral zone somewhere between Real World and Ideal World.

I guess that’s what resolutions are for. Not as judgment against our current state, but a ticket to the world of possibility out there.

I’m going to keep working on the splits, why not? I don’t see it as a goal, another badge. I’m a bit too old to trot it out as my 2am party trick. It may be the trailhead of a new journey for me though; license to try that other thing that has always been just out of reach. It’s a waypoint, not a destination, just like 2018 Best Self.

Originally published at topsettrekkers.com on January 8, 2018.