“What is worth doing even if you fail?”

Brené Brown, author, speaker and researcher on the subjects of vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame, decided that this was a better question to ask than the one with which we’re all more familiar: “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” 

This is Brené's photo. She gets the credit. I hope she doesn't mind that I am using it.

She says it was reframing the question which helped her prepare for her most recent TED talk and it also drove her to write her new book, Daring Greatly.

It got me thinking, not only about what is worth doing, but what it means to fail at it and I realized that it’s very much in line with my word of the year: PRACTICE.

What is worth doing/practicing even if I fail? On the surface, my answer is that anything I want to do is worth doing, and that just trying means I haven’t failed.

“Normal eating” is worth doing. I used to think that I was failing at normal eating when I either ate too much food, “bad” food, or too much bad food, but now I know that eating normally involves all three. Sometimes. I also used to think I had failed at normal eating if I didn’t lose weight. Failure, to me, in this case, would mean falling into a downward cycle of abusing my body with food and never catching myself. That said, “normal eating” is worth doing, even if I fail.

Working out with kettlebells (yes, I am so very happily back at it) is worth doing. In this case, failure doesn’t mean I couldn’t do a certain number of snatches or that I couldn’t press a certain weight. Failure isn’t that I stopped working out with kettlebells for a while in order to let some injuries heal. Here, failure is simply not doing. That said, working out with kettlebells is worth doing, even if I fail.

Practicing yoga/improving flexibility is worth doing. Failure isn’t when I can’t hold a pose, or even get into a certain pose, or when I feel like a big galoot instead of a lithe yogini…it’s never getting on the mat. I used to think that I was failing at yoga if I wasn’t in a studio with an instructor, chanting, wearing the right clothes, and feeling all blissed out. That said, doing yoga (even on my bedroom floor in my PJs for two minutes) is worth doing, even if I fail.

Writing is worth doing and I would feel that I had failed if I gave into The Voice and never wrote again because I was worried about what people would think. Failure isn’t when I go for many days without writing. It isn’t even when I think, “Meh! Maybe I’ll never write again.” Failure is not allowing myself to express who I am via the written word. That said, writing is worth doing, even if I fail.

Floundering, feeling confused, lost, and full of self-doubt is worth doing because miracles often reside in the midst of self-doubt and confusion. I would feel as if I failed at floundering if I resisted it and never learned the lessons that struggling offer me. That said, floundering, feeling confused, lost, and full of self-doubt is worth doing, even if I fail.

Talk about foreshadowing, eh?

What is worth doing even if you fail?

Have you noticed that we’re a country of extremes? That’s how it feels to sensitive old me. We’re bombarded via the media (traditional and social) with messages and images that are extreme. The moderate middle ground tends to be ignored. Every issue is a lightening rod to outrage…the more extreme, the better. No wonder it’s hard for me, who tends toward “either/or” thinking to bring myself back to “both/and” thinking.

Last week I was given a great both/and example and it reminded me of what it is I want in my life: understanding leading to acceptance leading to improvement leading to trust.

Stephanie Vincent of Radical Hateloss wrote a blog post entitled I Walk The Line. I encourage you to read it because it encapsulates what I believe, succinctly and effectively. Her bottom line is the overlap between what she calls the “Fat Acceptance Movement” (where she says it’s just about self-acceptance without self-improvement) and the fitness community where self-improvement is the only goal and there’s a lack of self-acceptance.

On a side note, I believe that the fat-acceptance movement is not, in and of itself, “self-acceptance.” I also think there’s a big difference between “fat-acceptance” and the Health At Every Size movement, which focuses on health rather than on defensiveness, and is not involved in the unfortunate “war on obesity” (more on that later).

On another side note, I am starting to move away from using the word “self” with the word “acceptance” because “acceptance” is enough and implies a universality that is appealing to me.

Anyway, getting back to Stephanie, she says: “From my perspective the line is not what divides but rather where the two overlap. The overlap is the magic for me. To me it is where the power of possibility and contentment thrive. Beyond the overlap in either direction seems off balance and stunted in terms of ultimate happiness and achievement of what we want most.”

Can I get an Amen?

I think we can all agree that health/wellness in body/mind/spirit is what we want. Where the disagreement comes in is what health looks like, how much it weighs, and how to achieve it. I’ve done enough reading to know that you can find statistics and studies to support any “extreme” you’d like to put forth and embrace.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. ~ Jung

Can I get another Amen?

And getting back to that war on obesity. We must look at and consider where the money goes (Big Food, Big Media, Big Pharma, Big Diets/Fitness) because in the end, that’s really what’s it all about. When war has been declared, who stands to win and who stands to lose…and what does winning and losing look like? Is it even possible to find a “both/and” instead?

*the healthy body/mind/spirit edition

I am grateful for my ability to see both sides of most issues, even when I don’t agree. When I am not grateful, I find myself on the defensive and wanting to argue with people.

I am grateful for both my liberal and conservative tendencies. When I am not grateful, I find myself at odds with myself and others.

I am grateful that I am not tied to any one religion because it allows me to admire and aspire to the tenants that resonate with me from many different religions. When I am not grateful, I feel disconnected from my spirit.

I am grateful that I have surrounded myself with compassionate, empathetic, loyal, supportive, and nurturing friends and family who are passionate about who they are and what they do. When I am not grateful, I can’t be any of those things in return.

I am grateful that I have learned to protect and shield myself from destructive influences. When I am not grateful, I fall back into old unappealing, destructive patterns that cause me stress and hide the real me.

I am grateful for awareness. When I am not grateful, I tend to get anxious and anxiety makes my body hurt (thank you Janet Oberholtzer for Don’t Be A Worry Wart.

I am grateful for raging hormones. It means I am embarking on a new, exciting part of my life. When I am not grateful, I feel like a victim of my body. Results of recent hormone testing show that I am in that second spot where the red line is going up and down erratically.

That explains A LOT! I’m riding the waves (mostly…). When I don’t ride the waves, I waste a lot of time and energy trying to swim against them. There’s not a whole lot that can be done, other than tweaking my intake of bioidentical progesterone (my hormone guy has me using both oral and topical now).

I am grateful for my mind, which works in its own unique way. When I am not grateful, I feel less than and compare myself to others, which shuts down my creativity.

I am grateful for my healthy body. When I am not grateful, I start obsessing over every little change and fluctuation. I start beating myself up and when I beat myself up, I tend to eat too much. Obsessing and beatings do not help. Results of recent blood work show that my risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes continues to be “low” based on VAP cholesterol testing, Cardio CRP,  and Hemoglobin A1C. As well, my blood pressure, resting heart rate, thyroid, and other numbers are excellent. I do not take any prescription medications to control these numbers.

What are you grateful for? Does being grateful have a positive effect on your body/mind/spirit? How do you measure health?

Woooooooooo-HOOOOOOOOOO!!

What the heck, right? Well here’s the thing: I am realizing that there’s been too much boo-hoo in my life and not enough woooo-hooo! I don’t care how corny that sounds, it’s true.

It’s funny (not) how easily it is for me to go down that negative spiraling path. And it’s usually only in hindsight that I can see how bad it had gotten.

Clues? Excuses, whining, being critical of myself (and others), and (this is a key one for me) allowing myself to get sucked into people, ideas, and situations that trigger defensiveness in me. It starts to pervade my life from all angles and I find myself reacting from a place of needing or wanting to prove something, which, in turn, takes all my time and energy away from creating and being me.

Boo-hoo = defensive, resistant, fearful, worried, frustrated, panicked, dread, self-destructive, unfocused struggle, focused on what I can’t do, critical, bitter, overwhelmed, victimized, dishonest, in denial, reactive.

Woooo-hooo = flowing, natural, easy, confident, challenging (in a good “Karen” way), focused on what I can do, cheerful, exciting, fun, accomplished, thriving, creative, speaking my truth from a place of passion not opposition, proactive, love.

Now, I get that life can’t be wooo-hooo every second of every single day or else we wouldn’t KNOW that it was wooo-hooo. We can only know whooo-hooo relative to booo-hooo.

And so let this serve as a reminder to me of what boo-hoo feels like, and what woooo-hooo feels like.

We are all living proof of the concept that our words and beliefs create our reality. I am seeing that I’d not been using woooo-hooo words and I’d not been having wooooo-hoooo beliefs and my reality was starting to reflect it.

So give me some woooooo-hooooooo people!! And tell me what words you use to create your reality.

…because I have none of my own.

Every once in a while, I don’t have much to say. I know, right?

So here are some other people’s words that have resonated with me lately:

“So, I stopped looking for the root cause – “The Reason” why my life isn’t working. I started looking for ways to nourish, strengthen and support myself.” Reconnection, by Hanlie

“The World Won’t Celebrate You If You Don’t Celebrate Yourself,” a glorious manifesto by Mara on the fact that we all deserve the best and yet when we say so and are proud of ourselves for being who we are, we feel that we’re caught in the act of thinking we’re “something.”

When you’re operating from your true strength, you’re…thrilled; get a total rush; feel proud; get totally turned on; mean it with every cell you’ve got; do what you do freely anytime of the day, with anyone who’s ready for it.” ~ Danielle LaPorte, in Mavens. Connectors. Visionaries. Promoters. Identifiers. Which are you?

“The fact of the matter is that responsibility has to swing both ways and, frankly, responsibility is lackin’ on both ends!” ~ Annabel in Nutella Pays For Its Healthwashing Ads, in regards to both personal and corporate responsibility

“Food labels have become akin to online dating profiles where we list how well-read we are, how good looking we are, etc. and conveniently leave out that we love fava beans (and a nice glass of Chianti), if ya know what I mean.” ~ Annabel, What Does Natural Mean? Not Much. Ask Kashi

Annabel is on a roll!

Speaking of rolls…I had a visit with my grandmother yesterday.

Grandma: “What’s this?” (she asked, holding up a dinner roll from her lunch plate)

Me: “It’s a roll.”

Grandma: “A what?”

Me: “You know, a piece of bread. A roll.”

Grandma (after thinking for a second): “Have you ever had a roll in bed with honey?”

Cracked me right up. Her too.

In college, my writing professor suggested that my prose were Proustian. I am embarrassed to admit that, at the time, I had no real idea who Proust was, other than “a writer.” To this day, I have not read Proust.

But who cares? Here are my answers to Vanity Fair’s version of the Proust Questionnaire.

What is your idea of perfect happiness? “Happiness is the emotional reaction to the performing of actions that bring you closer to what or where you want to be.” ~ Commander Johnson

What is your greatest fear? Irrelevance. Actually, I don’t know if that’s my greatest fear, but right now it is.

Which historical figure do you most identify with? I don’t.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? A tendency towards “all or nothing” thinking.

What is the trait you most deplore in others? Hypocrisy/martyrdom.

What is your greatest extravagance? The freedom to pursue my passion and a flexible schedule.

What is your favorite journey? The one I’m on. My life.

What do you dislike most about your appearance? Right this minute? My bloated abdomen. Although I am really trying to accept it so I can view it more objectively and not through a lens of desperation.

What words or phrases do you most overuse? I don’t know. (That’s not the phase I most overuse…I really don’t know. You tell me.)

What is your greatest regret? Having rushed certain things/processes that should not have been rushed.

Who or what is the greatest love(s) of your life? My husband.

When or where were you happiest? See the answer to the question above, “What is your idea of perfect happiness?” and add to that, I am happy at home (and home is not a specific place, it’s a feeling).

What talent would you most like to have? I would like to be able to sing so as to give others goose bumps. In a good way.

What do you consider your greatest achievement? My marriage.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what would it be? A beloved and spoiled house cat.

What is your most treasured possession? My confidence.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Bitterness/resentment.

Where would you like to live? Somewhere warmer, sunnier, and with longer daylight hours year-round. Preferably by an ocean.

What is your favorite occupation? Writing.

What is your most marked characteristic? Transparency and/or the ability to relate.

What is the quality you most like in a man? Timness. This is a quality my sister came up with to describe my husband.

What do you most value in your friends? Transparency and/or the ability to relate.

Who are your favorite writers? John Irving, Wally Lamb, Elizabeth Gilbert, Ayn Rand, James Michener…

Who is your favorite hero in fiction? Dolores Price from She’s Come Undone

Who are your heroes in real life? Pretty much everyone I know.

What are your favorite names? I don’t have any.

What is it that you most dislike? Conflict. Liver and lima beans.

How would you like to die? Fearlessly, but also quickly and with no warning. Is that a contradiction?

What is your motto? I have three: 1) Be for, not against. 2) It’s not mine to fix. 3) Practice, don’t preach.

“She doesn’t like to be rushed in the morning.”

“She likes a lot of individual attention and doesn’t do well in groups unless she’s the center of attention.“

“She’s hilarious and has a lot of spunk.”

“She likes to be acknowledged.”

“She likes to be alone. She appreciates visitors, but only for a few minutes.”

“She’s stubborn.”

“She says the funniest things.”

“She wants what she wants when she wants it.”

“She tends to resist certain activities, but once she gets going, she seems to enjoy herself.”

These are comments statements made to me by those who are caring for my Grandmother. Each time I hear such a statement I have one of three reactions:

1. Wow, that sounds just like me.

2. Wow, that sounds just like me, but I wish it didn’t.

3. Wow, I hope that sounds like me.

In my family, “being like Grandma” is not something to which to aspire. In fact, “You sound just like Grandma,” is not a compliment…it’s a barb. And yes, I’ve said it too.

In the past couple of months I’ve had the opportunity to see my Grandmother through the eyes of people who don’t know her very well, but who are getting to know her better. And I am getting to know her better, too. I’ve spent more time with her (and her stuff) recently, than I have in the past five years combined (she doesn’t like visitors, remember?).

It’s been an uncomfortable experience because I’ve been so invested in seeing her only one way, to the point that even when someone says something nice about her, my first reaction is to want to refute it. And boy does that feel ugly.

As I get to know her better, on a different level (and as the person responsible for her), without family filters, and having extended some grace both to her and to myself , I am seeing that yes, she has some positive traits and there are ways I am like her, both positive and negative. I am figuring out how to be okay with that.

For example, as I’ve been going through her things I have found diaries and journals, going back years and years. I haven’t read them in detail and probably won’t, but from the little I saw, she liked to make notes and observations. She loved inspirational quotes. She spent time wondering about the meaning of life. I am sure that if Facebook and blogs has existed in her day, she’d be right there, sharing her thoughts with anyone who’d care to read.

Her way of sharing was to clip articles and send them to people with a note. I know that I and other family members found it annoying…as if she were trying to fix us. Hmmmmm…

And then there’s her anxiety, which takes the form of resistance, anger, manipulation, and other annoying behaviors. As such, my Grandmother wasn’t very Grandmotherly I used to think it was because she didn’t like kids, and the noise and chaos that comes with them. But now I see that she was overwhelmed and didn’t know how to handle it.

I have anxiety too. Until now, I thought I had gotten it from my father, who tended to be passive and to avoid any an all situations that might make it worse. But he was also eminently likeable. And great with kids.

And so here I am: sometimes resistant, angry, manipulative, and annoying. And sometimes passive and avoiding. And sometimes likeable. Good with kids, but also overwhelmed by them sometimes. Among other things that have gotten passed down through the gene pool.

But most of all, I am grateful to be seeing my grandmother through different eyes. Eyes that can relate.

Can you relate?

“When the heart weeps for what is lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.” ~ Sufi Proverb

It’s no secret that I’ve been in a relatively cranky mood lately. I’ve been acutely aware that the more negative I feel, the more negative I feel, and I’ve been calling myself out, left and right, in an effort to get back to the self that I know and love.

And then I realized something.

As much as I believe in wholehearted acceptance – in embracing the positive and the negative as equally valid and worthy – I’ve been resisting accepting myself when I am a hormonal, bloated tick with a Linda Blair rotating Exorcist head. I’ve been saying things like, “that’s not who I am” and “I don’t feel like myself.”

In those moments, I feel as if a part of me (a more child-like, care-free and optimistic part) has been lost and I fear that it’s a forever thing. These feelings go beyond what I used to experience as PMS, which I learned a long time ago feels real in the moment but always passes.

I am starting to understand, on a deeper level, what Dr. Christiane Northrup meant when she said that going through perimenopause is like giving birth to yourself. Although I don’t know what it’s like to physically give birth to someone else, I know it’s both one of the hardest and most joyous processes ever.

So now I accept that the there is no alien inhabiting my body. The hormonal stranger is not a stranger, she is me. And she’s been there my whole life, just waiting for me to embrace her. There’s something about her that scares me because she’s a little more assertive than I am used to being. She doesn’t care as much about what others think of her, or if they like her.

And yes, she amuses me.

“What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I really am?” ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer

“Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it.” ~ Thaddeus Golas

Although I sat on my ass in the land of “nothing” for the vast majority of six whole months, one thing I knew for sure was that if adopted the “all” mentality (which I’ve been known to do a time or 10), I’d be sorry.

Being in between feels good and right.

It hasn’t taken me long to get my kettlebell mojo back. The first time I tried to do 20 snatches in a row, I was seriously winded afterwards. But by the following week? Twenty snatches, no problem. And last week? I did five sets of five cleans to push-press (right and left) and five snatches (right and left), for a total of 100 cleans to push-press and 100 snatches. With a 26-pound kettlebell.

At first, I was pressing a 15-pound kettlebell. Now I can press the 26. At first, I was doing goblet squats with the 26. Now I am squatting with the 35.

In between each set or complex of kettlebell moves, I do a series of yoga poses. This thrills my body/mind/spirit.

My kettlebell/yoga sessions usually last 30 minutes and I do them twice a week. Other days I go on fitness walks at the beach (upon reading this post from last year, it’s obvious that I need to revisit this from time to time). Or I go for a hike with Tim. Or something.

I love the yoga “intervals” so much that last week, I started doing them first thing in the morning on my bedroom floor.

No matter what I am doing, I know the moves. They’re simple, effective, they feel good, and they’re effortless from a motivation standpoint (meaning there’s nothing that feels forced…I just “do it”).

I am focused on feeling good right now, not on what I used to be able to do or what my body used to look like.

I am focused on proper form so I don’t hurt myself, not on hurrying the process.

I am focused on enjoying what my body is capable of, not on what it isn’t.

I am focused on progress, not on making my body hurt in ways that it shouldn’t.

I am focused on being in between, not on all or nothing.

Tell me about your experiences with being in between.

Have you ever gotten so sick and tired of your damn self that you could barely stand it? In case you haven’t guessed (insert sarcasm here) that’s how I’ve been feeling lately. I don’t mean that in a deep self-loathing sort of way, I mean it in a I-really-love-who-I-am-at-my-core-but-an-alien-seems-to-have-taken-over kind of way. An angsty, prickly, eye-rolling alien. I think I remember feeling this way when I was 14. I’m not even going to say the H word.

I know my naturally optimistic, enthusiastic, positive, and sometimes mischievous core self is around here somewhere, but until the alien decides to vacate, I’m going to extend to myself some grace, thanks to Joy Tanksley. Her Monday Morning Sparks for the month of April have to do with grace. I suggest you watch her brief videos, but if you don’t want to, here is my take on what she says.

Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/krystiannawrocki

Four Ways To Extend Grace To Yourself 

1. When you are frustrated and/or disgusted with yourself, view yourself as the child you once were.

Sometimes it’s easier to have patience with children. In fact, thinking of answers to the prompts in my previous post was a great exercise in not only connecting to my childhood self, but in remembering that I am, indeed, naturally optimistic, enthusiastic, positive, and sometimes mischievous.

2. Meet yourself where you are without comparison or interest in where you’ve been, or where you’re going.

I have been everywhere but right here lately, thinking about how I spent most of the winter not hungry and losing weight, and at the same time worrying about what people will think if I’ve gained weight by the time Fitbloggin‘ rolls around. I KNOW!!!

I am right here, right now.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

3. Embrace the concept of ebb and flow. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing stays the same. It’s always a back and forth.

You can’t have up without down, right? In fact, now that I think about it, this whole process has been about ebb and flow. Ebbing back to revisit old behaviors and fears, flowing forward as I learn something new and apply it. Ebbing kind of sucks, but embracing it is so much easier than resisting it.

4. As a last resort, when you’re spiraling into negativity and self-loathing, give yourself permission to distract yourself, in a kind (not destructive) way.

Ways I’ve been distracting myself lately: going to bed early so I can lose myself in a book; playing Words With Friends, Scrabble, and Scramble; writing; and yes, food. But I am aware…and awareness is the key to all healing!

And to even things out (because once you extend grace to youself, it’s much easier to extend it to others and vice versa)…

Five Ways To Extend Grace To Others

1. Assume basic goodness in others.

This is kind of like seeing the child in others…realizing that within each and every one of us is a child who may have been dealt a pretty rotten hand.

2. If you’re going to tell stories about other people, try your best to tell charitable stories. Catch yourself when you’re not.

This is a hard one as it concerns specific people, but I am learning to catch myself. And I have found that when I am charitable, I feel better about myself. Winning.

3. Be honest with yourself as to what you are seeing as the worst in someone else, then turn it around and find that same element in yourself. It’s ther

Ah yes…this is a great equalizer.

4. Be fully present with others without trying to fix them.

Usually one of the first signs that I need to be paying attention to my own business is when I start getting into someone else’s business.

5. As a last resort, if there is someone so challenging that you just can’t do any of the first four things, and you’re filled with judgment, bitterness, and resentment, then the most graceful thing you can do is take a step back from the relationship.

I have done this once. I am still stepped back. I don’t know how long it will last, but I get the impression that this serves the other person as much as it serves me.

__________

And just because it hit me right between the eyes and relates to my current state of being, please check out “To Thine Own Self Be True”, a must-read from the fabulous Hanlie at Ordinary Abundance.

Two stand-out quotes:

“All my life I believed that I was a product of my experiences, but now I’ve come to appreciate that I’m a product of my thoughts.”

And…

“It was eye-opening to realize that a lot of what I habitually thought were not even my own thoughts – they were the opinions, brain-farts and prejudices of others.”

Thank you ever so much for reminding me Hanlie. I have been SO bogged down in reacting to experiences (both old and new) instead of changing my thoughts.

What do you do to extend grace to yourself or to others? Any and all suggestions are welcome!