kick this "all or nothing" thinking to the curb

It seems I’m only compelled to post here when the going gets tough on this goal.

Today I added up the summer reading participation numbers (the number of kids who actually followed through and reported on the books they’d read), and the numbers seem to be way down from last year. I don’t know what it is. Our circulation has been way up and attendance at programs has been fairly good. It’s possible I’m tallying things up incorrectly, but I don’t see how that could be.

This is kind of discouraging because I feel like I’ve worked my butt off this summer. And I HAVE. I think I’ve done some pretty good things, along with learning all the ropes. And clearly kids are reading, or at least they are checking out books anyway. I’ve been feeling satisfied about how it’s gone up until now, and it’s annoying how much these hard numbers (which I can’t explain) have diminished that good feeling.

I know intellectually that it’s ridiculous to expect that I’d put together a flawless summer reading program given that this is my FIRST SUMMER EVER as a children’s librarian. I really don’t want this to diminish the hard work I’ve done so far. So…I’m giving myself one evening only to have a bit of a pity party. And then it’s on to thinking about how I can improve things for next year.

Not big ones by any means, not uncorrectable, but they are bugging me. They really colored my day yesterday, and they keep coming up today. I think the reason that they bother me is that they illustrate a couple of life-long bad habits/weaknesses: 1) a tendency to avoid doing things that scare me and 2) a tendency to gloss over details.

The truth is, I did not do my best at work this week. I did OK, but a bit of the newness has now worn off and I let myself slip back into procrastination somewhat. Nothing too major, but…I could do better. I let avoidance get the better of me, and this resulted in some minor consequences. Namely, work that was ‘good enough’ but that I’m not particularly proud of.

This slip-up does not mean I’m a bad person OR a bad worker! It does mean that I have some work habits that I’d like to correct.

In the coming week, I am going to do my honest best. I am going to tackle my work with energy and good cheer. I may feel fear, but I am not going to let it prevent me from making the decisions I need to make. I am going to be brave.

In my mind, anyway. No wonder I am frequently miserable and fed up with myself.

Fact 1: I can’t do it all.
I just realized that I have a lot of resentment about the fact that the list of things I want to do and experience constantly outstrips my ability and time/opportunity to do them. Probably this is just a function of the fact that 1) I’m growing up and 2) my ability to dream has not grown up.

Rather than being proud/happy/excited about what I can do and have done, I’m focused on what I’ve left undone. And rather than looking at these undone goals and tasks as something to look forward to…I despair of ever completing them and instead collapse, defeated, in stasis.

So, that’s something else to work on. Figuring out how to dream about things without getting upset if they don’t come to fruition.

Fact 2: Mistakes do not mean what I think they mean.
Meantime – I’m starting, slowly, to work on my thinking about mistakes and what they mean. I’ve noticed that some times mistakes are harder to take than others. Basically, if I’m feeling good, it’s easy to look at mistakes as aberrations and instructive blips. When I’m already feeling bad about myself, mistakes are another confirmation of my laziness, spaciness, and overall lack of worth.

I’m trying to catch these latter occurrences when they happen. This is going to take a lot of practice because the last thing I want to do when I’m feeling bad is to examine how I’m feeling. And to be honest, the stuff that one has to say to cheer one’s self on always feels cheesy to me. That makes me resistant to it. But it works. Hard to accept that, but it works.

The other approach I’m trying is rationality and/or focusing on the facts of the mistake. This sometimes works too, if I’m unable to be my own cheerleader. It works because if there’s one thing that drives me crazy about other people’s flawed thinking, it’s when they pick and choose evidence to support their presuppositions rather than taking all the evidence into account. Judging myself to be a not-so-good person by way of my mistakes is ignoring the evidence to the contrary.

I ate some chocolate tonight. I could:

1. Say, “well, this no sugar for a month thing was a waste of time – screw it!” and finish off the bar and maybe make some blueberry muffins and eat most of them…

or

2. Say, “wow, that was good, but I don’t need any more chocolate for awhile now” and continue with my goal.

I am choosing to do the latter. I can feel the all-or-nothing bits of me crying out in protest (really, they are crying out to me to finish that chocolate bar). But I won’t! A little mistake does not mean that my whole goal is defunct.

...since I’ve realized lately that I really need to get to know it well…if only because it runs in my family, so it’s something I’ll probably need to always work actively to prevent – like high blood pressure.

Anyhow. Turns out this all-or-nothing thing is a common thought pattern of depressive and anxious people. Ummm…duh, right? I mean, it makes complete logical sense. And yet, to SEE those internal assumptions that I’m always making written down on the page…

I was reading one of the self-help books on depression – it wasn’t even all that good a self-help book! – and seeing my internal monologue written down almost word-for-word was both totally disturbing and a relief. I burst into tears. I mean, I knew intellectually that I tend to be hard on myself, but until I saw the actual words I tell myself written down, I just. didn’t. recognize. it.

It’s clear to me now that most of my all-or-nothing thinking is…not completely subconscious, but not quite conscious either. I’ve been doing it for so long that my brain does shorthand – skips over the conscious fallacious assumptions and goes right to the feeling bad as a result. This is obviously a pattern that’s been engraved over a long period of time, and yet I rarely consciously feel bad about myself. Where the hell did these thoughts come from, and how did they get so dang distorted?!!

...all around last week, which is part of the reason I didn’t post here much. I tend not to post here when I’m not too proud of how I’m doing. I procrastinated; I ate poorly; I did the bare minimum on my classwork; I withdrew socially; I even missed the first 2 sessions of my yoga class (to be fair, the first time was out of my hands, and the second sort of was, too). Yikes.

I think this has a LOT to do with the ALL OR NOTHING monster. I can’t remember where I slipped up first, but my sense is that slip-up #1 started a cascade effect in my brain, one I was only partially conscious of. When I do something I’m ashamed of, I tend to just throw up my hands and think “well, I messed THAT up, so why bother with THIS?”. Double-yikes.

Anyhoo…it’s a new week, a fresh start. I can’t just give in to that kind of thinking. It’s fine if I fail, but failing because I didn’t even try is just silly. So I’m picking myself up and trying again, darn it.

...and in my struggles with many of these goals. I want a fully-formed good habit immediately. And when I fail, I feel like giving up. If I can’t do it 100% right away, what’s the point?

It’s so ingrained that I don’t even realize that I’m doing it most of the time.

It’s a totally unrealistic and destructive thought-habit. And I’m tired of it.