How to (not) give up
Here I am thinking I’m qualified to give life advice. Hello. My name is Sara and clearly I’m crushing this whole influencer, life coach, comedic dance floor that is my blog. I mean, just look at me go.
What I just wrote is the typical tone of my internal monologue. I keep it rather sarcastic, try to not take myself too seriously while reminding myself that if I fail I’m going to look like a right dickwad. I still do all the things that make me feel insecure however I never do them from a place of confidence and self motivation. What usually happens is I think about what I want, I figure out a way of doing it, I second guess myself continuously, I do it, I feel a little gratified and anxious directly afterward, I find something else I want to do and the cycle continues.
I do what I want to do. I get out of my comfort zone. I lead my “best life”. But I’m not doing it looking like this:
I look more like this:
In my life if I had a goal I always found a way of reaching it. I put in the hours, the sweat, the discipline and courage necessary. Doing the actions comes quite natural. What doesn’t come natural is positive self talk.
I was listening to Lewis Howe’s podcast where he interviewed three time gold winning Olympic medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings. She talks about her struggles with how negatively she talks to herself and how this inevitably impacts all areas of her life. Her athleticism, marriage, relationship with herself and others. I’m fully aware that I’m not an Olympic gold medalist and that the amount of work she put in to become who she is in sport is not even comparable to my life but in my own small way I related. Even though I talk shit to myself and always have I still completed everything I wanted to accomplish. Negative self talk doesn’t necessarily stop you from achieving but it disables you from enjoying the fruits of your labour.
Sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning and tell myself how ready I am and how great this day is going to be and how I’m worthy of good things and then the day happens. Normal day things that happen to everyone, everywhere. It’s all my fault I’ll tell myself. Then I’ll reply that that is indeed impossible someone else must at least share the responsibility. Another voice will chime in saying that looking for someone to point fingers at isn’t going to solve anything. My inner child starts to throw a tantrum and reminds me how I was never loved and no one will ever love me. The adult inside tells me we’re probably having a panic attack and we should pull over before we run over a squirrel or something. This is everyday. And shit still gets done. I don’t think I’m alone here.
Giving up is an option. Not to be overlooked if what you’re doing is abominably stupid. Those things aren’t too hard to set aside, maybe with the intention of picking them up later and eventually just letting them wither in the corner to die. Other things, the real important things, the ones that make you want to cry and scream and shout and punch the wall, those are the ones that you want to give up so badly but you know that if you do you’ll hate yourself forever. You know that if you give up you’ll demonstrate to the world, and most importantly to yourself, how weak you are. And that’s “how to not give up” by Sarita.
I don’t enjoy it though. The process is fucking miserable. I don’t even give myself enough time to enjoy what I’ve attained because all I can do is remember the fucking emotional turmoil that I put myself through just to get through each day to reach that goal that I’m just done. Then I’ll just do it all over again with some other project.
I’m currently finishing an assignment and I realized that this time I tried to be more forgiving towards myself. I realized how not being the protagonist but more one of many characters of my inner monologue certainly helped in the process. And I want to tell you about it.
I’m currently working at a summer school for kids from 7 to 12 years of age. They’re intense little fuckers. I love ’em. I have a lot of kids with clear cases of fucked up home environments. See I’m not exactly working for a prestigious school. A lot of these kids don’t come from wealthy let alone healthy families. I found a couple of rackets and some balls in the “games room” which is more of a storage room full of materials and some toys? Anyways. I was told I could use anything in this room and as my group of kids asked to play tennis I gave them the rackets and the balls. The balls. Okay. They were having a good time. One kid to theatrically display his anger for losing a point threw the racket on the floor and this broke. He didn’t mean to break it. It was a child being a child. He was fucking around with a toy. Which is what kids do. Alas. I found out that these particular items were a teacher’s, she had left them from a previous activity she had done with her group some weeks prior. Now. Of course when she found the broken bat and half the balls in her tray she clearly got rather upset. These were her sons none the less. Of course for a mother this is a rather hurtful moment. I cannot relate, personally, I can only imagine. So she decided to confront me in not the most professional way. We were setting up the greetings area for the kids as we do every morning and she in a patronizing tone that contained sprouts of general “I’m done with this chick” melody continued to lay out all the ways I had fucked up. Not only regarding the rackets but also in the way I managed the kids. I said I was sorry about the rackets, that had I known that they were hers I wouldn’t have used them, naturally. However the way I managed the kids was not in any way of her regard. She is not in the position to tell me something like that. Not only because she is a colleague, not my boss, but we hadn’t worked together. At all. She never saw me with them. She never saw me work. How the fuck can you tell me that I’m not doing a good job? You’ve never seen me do it.
That day my inner dialogue was all over the place. I noticed this. Arriving home I told myself that I had shit to do. Which I had. I didn’t want to continue my day with constant self doubt in my head. So what did I do? I just accepted that she could be right. That maybe I am fucking up. Maybe I should ask someone else if I’m doing a shitty job as feedback culture in this environment isn’t exactly flourishing. Also a contributing factor was the fact that these toys in particular were her sons. She probably felt rather silly for leaving them in the “games room” and this was a reason she was so frustrated. She’s a public school teacher in Italy which means she’s under-paid and over worked. She’s neglected by the system. This will have some sort of influence on her general state of mind which will probably trickle down to the newbie who was in charge of the kids when they broke her rackets. This made me feel a lot better. Knowing that hey, yeah, I probably did fuck up. I only just started working with kids and I’m hoping to make a career out of this so there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement. A lot of learning to do. A lot of mistakes that will inevitably happen. This is just one of the many to add to the list. Do I want to learn from this and grow? Or do I just want to finish here, blame everyone else, and move on to the next thing? Also it was important to see people as whole humans with whole lives and whole universes they deal with on a daily basis. People aren’t just 2D. You can’t just categorize them as such.
It still sucks though. I’m not looking forward to seeing her again tomorrow morning. We clearly don’t click. However I’m going to find a lot of people like this. There’s not a single place, working environment, group of friends, families that don’t have issues. In addition there’s no point in seeking perfection from others when I myself am not even in the same dimension as “perfect”.
Giving up isn’t just a question of seeming weak but it just, like, doesn’t make any sense? Why?
Unless you genuinely hate what you’re doing and don’t see a future with it, him, her, them either at work, in a relationship, with a diet (veganism for me) then why would you just stop doing it? Because it’s hard? Everything’s hard. Life is hard. There’s no tropical island life. Instagram lies to you. I know. I’ve been there. Even under a palm tree. Life is fucking hard. But it’s the hard times that make the good times worth it. The hard, toxic ass, relationships that make finding someone good so much nicer. The boss that tried to micro-manage everything makes the one that believes in you and gives you freedom to explore and fuck up way more admirable and great. There’s no joy without misery. So when you do fuck up, just remember that you will fuck up again and again and that’s just how life goes. Soothe yourself. Put on a good song. Enjoy your favorite meal. Learn. Grow. Be awesome. And do it all again.
Until next week,
Sarita.
