Photo by Calvin Ma on Unsplash
We were awakened by terrible sounds of barking, hissing, and rattling. After we beelined down the stairs, my husband turned on the outdoor flood light and peered out the side door where the heinous sounds were coming from. It was a posse of neighborhood dogs, bullying a wild animal that was caught in one of those cage traps that belonged to the people next door. It was too dark to really tell what kind of animal, a skunk or a raccoon, perhaps. Nevertheless, I went outside and wildly clapped and yelled at the dogs to leave it alone but to no avail. If my husband wasn’t there as the figure of reason, I’ll be honest, I probably would have taken a broom or found a way to try and break up the pack to give that poor animal some relief, at least until our (apparently catatonic) neighbors would release it. Instead, we went back to bed. I felt alert and helpless, but then eventually fell asleep to sounds of evanescent exasperation and exhausted ruffians.
It sucks feeling helpless. As a matter of fact, it can be quite infuriating. For the brief time I worked in the school system, I remember feeling a similar feeling when two rivaled teenagers who were posturing-up to each other wouldn’t respond to any of my vocal pleadings for them to back down.
My recent supposition is that most of my anxiety issues lies rooted in perfectionism. In many areas of my life, I have strived to maintain unrealistic standards. I don’t want just an organized, clean house, I want it to look like the ones in the HGTV magazines. I don’t want just to be fit and healthy, I want my body to look like a fitness models’. I don’t just want to write this blog post, I want to be nominated for a Pulitzer for it – now I’m just exaggerating, but just barely so. It’s no wonder I sometimes feel frustrated and helpless!
This dysfunctional trait of mine is also one of the things I’m most proud of – what I mean is that I’m the kind of person who always strives to do my best in everything and I believe in excellency. What I’m working on now is recalibrating by keeping standards high on the things that matter the most to me but balancing it with self-compassion by trying to keep my stress-levels down.
What I am learning about is acceptance. I am learning to:
- Take responsibility for the things I can control – I want to be a faster runner. When running at an annual 5K this year, I wasn’t as fast as I wanted to be. This, however, was in my control because I knew I could have been practicing throughout the year. Instead of complaining and dwelling on the fact I wasn’t as fast as I wanted to be, I took responsibility for my outcome. Since then, I’ve been running 5 days a week.
- Accept the things I cannot control – If I can’t change the outcome, why spend any negative energy wishing it were different? There is peace in letting go.
- Prioritize which difficult things are worth influencing – As someone who has many interests (and as I hinted above – wants to be good at everything), focusing on one thing to excel at is difficult for me. Throughout my life I’ve wanted to take on such roles as a screenwriter, an actor, and a fitness trainer – just to name the main ones. All of these things have been very difficult to excel at and the odds of being successful do not seem to be in my favor. Instead of fearing failure, I’m learning to find joy and meaning in the pursuit of excellence. I may not have full control over my success in any of these areas, but I sure can influence my chances of success by prioritizing what is worth the journey.
Sometimes I feel like that caged, wild, animal, hissing and spatting at things that aren’t in my control. I can over-analyze my past all I want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m in a cage. Instead, I can get still. I can just breath. I don’t have to like my situation, but I can accept it and take heart that after every season of darkness, the sun will inevitably rise and I will be set free.