One of the things I’ve done most in my life is running – not physically, no, that would have been great. No, what I do is run from things that frighten me, both good and bad. I have always completely ignored the fight mechanism in fight or flight, and just gone straight to the flight part.
I’ve become quite good at running away from things. In fact, I’ve become so good at running that I never even had to try anything else. I don’t like confrontation of any kind, but perhaps that’s just because I never had to deal with it. When you get so good at running away from all the bad things in life, it is only natural that some of us might start running away from good things before they can turn into bad things. We run early, we run fast. As you might remember from my earlier post (Can Not Doing Something Become a Habit?), it became a habit for me to not do things that made me happy. I ran away from it without hesitation, not really by choice, but because I just always did.
I have wanted to change this for a while now, and I thought that meant I had to stop running. I thought, and quite logically so I should say, that the opposite of running is to not run. Of course, just because we run away from good things it doesn’t mean we should do the opposite, that is stop running, if we want to change the running away from good things part. I don’t think the running is a bad thing in itself, it’s the direction we chose that can mess things up.
Whenever there was something I wanted in life, I’d ignore it. I still often do. Not the little things, like ‘Oh, if only I had a biscuit with this tea my life would be better’ kind of thing, but things that effect our lives far more than a single biscuit might do in most cases. Of course, if that one biscuit means you are in the right shop at the right time and meet your perfect partner, then of course, the biscuit might leave quite an impact on your life. In most cases, however, a biscuit is just a biscuit, I suppose.
You probably know that there is a lot about blogging and building a website that I know nothing about, and before I started this blog and even while working on it, I tend to use this horrible excuse: ‘Oh, but I can’t do that.’
It’s a silly excuse, because of course we can’t do what we haven’t learned to do yet. The problem is, I used to just end it there. I can’t do that, so I’ll just run away in the opposite direction and maybe find a place to hide somewhere. Of course, I was always too afraid to hide and just kept running.
Whenever something was difficult, I would use that as an excuse and stop doing it – even though it was something I loved doing. In fact, odds are, if I loved it, I would work even harder to find excuses not to do it. I was just too afraid at first, and then in time, it simply became habit. Then it wasn’t about fear, but just because it was what I always did. When I chose my major at university, it wasn’t something I really wanted, it was just something I didn’t not want to do. I pretended I didn’t have hopes and dreams, and then I just moved on with my life.
I love the experiences I have from studying to get my degree, don’t get me wrong. It was just never something I could do as a career. It doesn’t fit who I am. I am dyslexic, so translation is out of the question as a career. I can’t handle too much noise, too many people and many other things, so my place of work has to be quite unique for me to be able to survive it. Considering myself and my skills, my strengths and weaknesses, ought to have been key in figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. It wasn’t. What was important was simply to choose something that wasn’t what I really wanted, but not something that was too bad either.
There are a number of reasons why this pattern, this bad habit, came into existence, but today that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to tell you how I believe I can break my own pattern.
I don’t have to stop running, all I have to do is run in a different direction than before. Don’t run from what makes you happy, don’t run from love – run towards it with every fibre of your being. Only that way can we truly break free and attain the things we dream about.
Why do I say this? Because if we stop running, we don’t really go where we want to, do we? We might start moving in the direction we want and slowly get to where we want to be, but to achieve our dreams we need persistence and strength. We have both of those things when we run away. It takes both persistence and strength to always run away from the things you love and from your dreams, so why not take those gifts and use them differently? Use your persistence, use your strength and fight to get where you want to go. You have a dream? Well, do like me. Change direction and use the skills you have because you always ran away, to run towards your goals.
If you are afraid like me, then run without hesitation so that you don’t have to consider your fear. Fear doesn’t stay with us forever; at some point it disappears. Just accept it is there and wait for it to go away. In fact, you can even use it as a guide. If you are really afraid use it as your marker. Fear is the sign that you are running in the right direction again, as long as you run towards it and not away from it. When you are afraid, you care. It matters to you and that, my dear friend, is a great sign.
Now, when I become afraid, I also get a little excited. I know I’m on the right path, because I’m afraid and yet it feels so very right and true. Somehow, it feels easier to me to just adjust the direction I’m running in, rather than stopping entirely. I never would have thought it would be like that.
Feeling confident in my work doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvements. I know I need to get better, but because I feel more confident, I know that I will. How can I know that I’ll get better? Because I won’t stop until I am… and then I’ll continue and become even better. No matter how good I get to be, or how great my life might one day become, I’ll never stop trying to improve myself.
I used to find it quite daunting. I felt like I could never improve enough and even though life is all about the journey, I wanted to at least become a little good at something early on and then continue to improve. That’s not what life is like, though. Life isn’t structured in neat little stages; it is a mess.
Some things you do and you are naturally talented, some you have to struggle a bit more to learn. Some things you’ll learn quickly, some you’ll learn slowly. Sometimes if you take a break from something you realise that something happened when you were focussed on that other thing and you’ve somehow improved more than you ever thought possible. Then again, some things you forget if you don’t work on it all the time.
People tell us all this science about how learning works and it can be so tempting just to believe what those people say. They are right, of course. There are some techniques that work better than other techniques. Everyone who is interested in learning knows what ways they learn best and that’s good. But I think, in the middle of all the science and all these theories on learning, I forgot the most important thing.
We can all learn.
I think I got stuck on finding the right way to learn because I was struggling so very much. In case you don’t know, I am a huge fan of the television show Red Dwarf. In it, Rimmer spends weeks on creating the perfect schedule for all his studying and revision before his astro-navigation exams. The schedule is well structured, colour coded and pretty. The only problem is that he spent so long planning his studying that he didn’t get any studying done at all before the exam. I feel exactly like that. I have always been so focused on running away from all that matters because I didn’t believe I could learn, because I though I was ugly and stupid and because, more than anything, when I finally did try to improve, I got stuck on what to do and how to do it instead of the actual improving myself or my skills. When you focus too much on what to do, what you should do and how to get it done, well… then nothing gets done while you’re doing that. Just like Rimmer and his studying. Oh, and if you can’t guess, he failed his exams again.
I am trying to focus less on all those things now and just run towards what I want in life – full speed ahead. I have less time to think and worry, and honestly, it feels great. I want to improve, but now I am actually trying to improve every day. I want to be a better writer, a better person, and I want to create the life I need to be happy. I’ve thought a lot about that. What I think I need, that is. I spent most of my life trying to avoid it, so yes, I’ve thought a hell of a lot about it.
You know what my answer is?
It doesn’t matter.
No, I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter what I need, it doesn’t matter what I think I need. What really matters is what I have and that I appreciate it. Then all I can do is focus on what I love in my life and work on that. Run towards that.
Money, connections, skills or education. It doesn’t matter right now. I love writing, so I’ll write. Even if no one ever reads any of what I write, I will continue to read and write and work on improving my skills. Instead of running away, I’m changing direction. I’m still running, but not away from anything or towards a desire or dream in the future. I am focusing on being grateful for what is in my life and improving what I can right now. I’m running towards what I want, not based on the past or the future, based on what I love in my life.
