Sometimes We Need to Go Back to Move Forwards
I had an incredible trip down memory lane last weekend, thanks to a beautiful care package I received from Dad and his partner Celia. As well as my favourite chocolates (yumm), Dad filled a box with some of my old school photos, High School report cards and awards.
And, who knew that a whole host of emotions and memories could come flooding back by reading your old report cards?
As I was looking through the report cards, it wasn’t the grades which I was so interested in, as the teachers’ comments. There was a reoccurring theme woven through all of the comments — the words “perseverance” and “diligence” were written everywhere. This was really interesting for me because, in recent years, the word “perseverant” is something I have been stuck on.
Moving to a foreign country brings an entire bag of challenges to work through. I often explain it to people as feeling like losing your identity. When you strip away everything from your old life that defined you — family, friends, school, community, job and even language… what are you left with? I even lost traits and characteristics — in my old life I would have described myself as confident, outgoing, driven, kind, social, ambitious… yet, moving to Croatia had me starting from scratch and at the very beginning of my journey, I felt: useless, lazy, lethargic… the traits I was so proud of, felt like something from a dream, and I couldn’t even will myself to be and feel motivated, no matter how hard I tried.
My first two years here saw me in a deep depression. Little did I know that I was like a caterpillar in a cocoon going through an extreme metamorphosis (battling demons in the dark and moving through a hell of a lot of growing pains). Since then, I have slowly been rebuilding (rediscovering?) myself, taking the lessons I needed, leaving behind what no longer served me, peeling back the layers and evolving as I go. Today, I can happily say that I am very proud of who I am and feel much more like myself.
So, why did the word perseverant stand out? Well, in recent years, I came to the conclusion that I do not have a very diligent or perseverant character; maybe because of new challenges I am facing here — like learning Croatian. The Croatian language is a constant battle, and I definitely have not been as diligent as I should have been. I am also a bit of a butterfly, flitting here and there, interested in a lot of things but I don’t follow through on everything. So, I determined that I just mustn’t have a perseverant character.
This self-diagnosis also came off the back of reading books like Duckworth’s Grit, and works by Carol Dweck — who was the first to coin the term: fixed versus a growth mindset. In short, a fixed mindset believes “I am naturally good at something, or not”, while a growth mindset says: “with enough hard work, I can be good at it”. Someone with a growth mindset is also more likely to find the value and lesson in failure, maybe even turning it to an advantage. It should come as no surprise as to which mindset is the most beneficial in life and for our long-term success.
Anyway, I came to the conclusion that I am just not very diligent or don’t have a perseverant character, that I am guilty of falling into the ‘fixed mindset’, and it’s something I need to work on. My mind, having come to this conclusion, even pulled up evidence from my past to support this claim (note: no matter what we believe, we will always find evidence to support the fact — selective filtering — this is what our mind does). And, I believe it, without question.
Yet, here were these report cards, saying over and over again — “Tash has a diligent and perseverant nature and achieves every goal she sets herself.” All of a sudden, memories came flooding back to support this claim. How I wasn’t naturally good at maths or science but worked hard and was so proud of myself when I passed. I rarely questioned my ability, but rather believed that with enough hard work, anything was possible (growth mindset). I worked so hard, at many things throughout High School — academically, and extra-curricular — and I achieved them all. Even running, I was never naturally a sports person, but I remember wanting to be better at Cross Country, and pushing myself to start running after school, I ended up becoming the Senior Girls Open Cross Country champion and ‘Best All-Round Sports Women’ in my Senior year. This really made me laugh because I had completely forgotten this — it was a generous award though, I was more of an all-rounder than a shooting star.
So, there it was. Perseverance. My mind drifted forwards through everything I had done in my life, and something that others may have seen — was hidden from my eyes. Of course, I have had perseverance; I wouldn’t be where I am if I didn’t. I wouldn’t have got my law degree, moved to Australia, London and Italy. And I definitely wouldn’t still be in Croatia — something that has challenged me in every single way.
This isn’t an article to ‘big myself up’. The profound insight I gained through this was –
The incredible power of the mind and our beliefs to lift or limit.
In the last few years, I have believed that I am not naturally perseverant, and made-up a completely false story of self. Even though there was plenty of evidence to the contrary, my mind chose to ignore that, and create a new, limited image of myself. Believing this to be true, I then accepted it of myself and stopped pushing so hard, or wasted stupid amounts of energy beating myself up over it.
Our thoughts and beliefs shape our reality. But here’s the thing, we can CHOOSE our thoughts and essentially recreate our own reality — for better or worse.
The next day I had a great conversation with my brother, sister and brother-in-law about this topic, saying they wouldn’t want to look back through their report cards — which made us all laugh. My amazing brother-in-law Deano, talked about the negative comments in his report cards. Now, Deano, is one of the best guys I know — hard-working, funny as hell, loyal, kind, generous… what if he had believed those opinions? Looking back on his report cards might not be the same experience as mine (discovering something I’ve lost), but instead, he can look back and kinda give the big finger to the doubters. He can look back to see how far he’s come. Same can be said for my brother and sister, who didn’t have the best reports in school, but are both so incredibly hard-working, kind, great parents… so many wonderful attributes that can’t be determined in High School, summed up in a comments section or seen by teachers who are operating within the confines of a narrow, fixed institution.
We are all limitless. We can each be lazy & motivated at different times. Kind and awful. Compassionate and harsh. Perseverant or coasting. This is balance. This is the purpose of life, to experience it all. Each has its time and place, and each has a lesson to teach.
But, what is the most important thing is that we don’t get stuck on labels, and especially — hold ourselves back with limiting self-talk and beliefs. Everything we believe about ourselves will manifest into our reality. It’s not just hippy talk either — our thoughts literally re-wire our brains (create new neural pathways); if those thoughts are positive, then they create positive feelings and we are more likely to take positive action. It is a domino effect. If our thoughts and beliefs are negative, it fosters negative feelings, which is less likely to encourage us to take positive action (to change our situation) and can often lead to a downward spiral (depression, anxiety, helplessness) — i.e. “I am useless” — feel like shit — unmotivated to take positive action — feel useless because not taking said action…
Even small ‘silly’ thoughts as simple as “I am not a morning person” (something I say because I am not that peppy 5 am person catching every sunrise); can become self-fulfilling — if we believe we are not a morning person, then we are less likely to try and be anything other. Now, I am not saying that we all need to be motivated morning people, BUT, if it’s something we want to be, a trait we want to foster, then we need to first check whether our thoughts and beliefs are in line with what we want — otherwise it’ll be an uphill, almost impossible battle.
And these are just a few examples which sit much closer to the surface. Then there are thoughts and beliefs that are programmed from childhood which fall to our subconscious mind; things like feeling worthy of love… these are harder to tackle and requires digging deep, so I will go into this further another day — but just wanted to show that it is all related.
EVERYTHING, starts with our thoughts.
Some of us, start out on the ‘right’ path, then lose ourselves along the way and need to find our way back. Others, have a rougher start to life, and fight to reclaim who they know themselves to be — not letting the negative opinions of others bring them down, and many of us will teeter-totter between the two. I am so glad Dean and my family brought up the other side of the story — it shows that we can be everything, but moving forward in life is about choosing who we want to be. Choices that bring us closer to our truth.
In summary:
· The power of our minds to lift or limit is incredible
· We are limitless; we can and probably will show every aspect of our nature BUT, it is up to us to CHOOSE which aspects we want to foster (perseverant, kind, compassionate, forgiving…) and what we want to let go of
· We can choose our thoughts, reshape our minds and create our own reality
· Sometimes we need to look back to remember who we are, or how far we’ve come
What limiting thoughts are you holding onto, or what would you like to foster?
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