Confessions of a ONE, TWO, & THREE: Screws and Nails
This may seem a little silly since my last blog was so monumental, but it is worth sharing! I had always had this trichotomy (not sure if I’m using this word correctly) of actions when it comes to making decisions and reacting to situations. When I encounter something negative, this is exactly what goes through my head in a split second. “I am going to let someone down and they are not going to like me because of this (TWO),” then, “This doesn’t look perfect (ONE),” and then “It looks like I failed and I can’t look like I failed (THREE).” If we were all honest and thought through our decision making, I am sure for all us “reactors” that there are similar patterns of thoughts that happen within a second. We may explode in anger or withdraw in ourselves in shame or react to our fear and anxiety that riddles our thoughts and actions. However, there is a pattern of thinking that occurs that leads up to those reactions.
As you can tell I don’t respond well to mistakes, failure, imperfections and people being disappointed in me. I have actually discovered that I live and make most decisions based on whether or not I am going to disappoint someone or whether someone will think negatively about me. It’s an awful admission and one that I would rather hide away and keep to myself, but there it is out in the open. Side note: as difficult as it is, I believe that exposing things takes away their power. It’s kind of like putting hydrogen peroxide on a cut. It may sting for a second and get all bubbly, but it goes deep to the bacteria to clean it out and aids in the healing process.
You would not believe how many times that I respond negatively to situations that can just be used as a lessons. However, sometimes it just takes someone calling you out to show you a different way. We are in the process of renovating a lake house that we bought in October. My cousin, Alicia, came out to help us last weekend. Renovating requires a ton of skills that I don’t have so I am constantly failing or asking for a lot of help. Alicia and I had tried to hang this towel rack up for like an hour and kept running into problems. And we were both a little too stubborn and prideful to ask Sam for help. At the end of the project, it didn’t really look the way either of us envisioned it but we decided to just leave it and move on (i.e. no more holes in the wall!) I was putting all the tools away and I picked up Sam’s huge organizer that had hundreds of screws, nails, anchors, etc. It wasn’t actually shut when I picked it up and those hundreds and hundreds of pieces went all over the floor of the room. I sat down on the floor exasperated that nothing seemed to be working. I’m very new to not reacting so the only thought that came to mind was how stupid I was for picking it up while it was not shut instead of how to actually handle the issue. Then Alicia, my positive TWO cousin, sat down next to me with a huge smile on her face and said with gusto, “Now we get to organize everything since it was such a mess before!”
It only took me another second to realize that she was absolutely correct. I could have wallowed in self-pity and doom and gloom. Or I can make something good come out of this. The organizer was not doing it’s job of organizing anything because over time we had just thrown anything and everything in it. It didn’t bother Sam or me as long as it shut. How dysfunctional is that?!? So we sat there for another 30 minutes organizing all the nails and screws. We sang songs and chatted the whole time and it looked amazing at the end. Sam even sent me a picture and thanked me when he saw it the next day. Because I chose to clean up the mess and not stay stuck, Sam didn’t get upset with me but actually said it looked good. That’s making lemonade out of lemons, right there!
Here is another aspect that I am trying to change about my TWOness. My thinking is that in order to not let anyone down that I need to say “yes” to everything. But I realized that I actually make things 100 times worse because I never give an honest answer. When someone asks, “Hey can you do this for me?” and I automatically saying “sure, I can do that, “ without checking my schedule or even asking myself if I WANT to do it, then I am going to run into conflicts down the road. When I realize that I don’t want to do it or don’t know how then I will push it off and try to avoid it. If I have a scheduling conflict then I know that I will have to disappoint someone with my “no” or disappoint them if I have to move it. What’s the end result? I end up disappointing people in the end and now that person cannot trust me to do what I say I am going to do. I have killed my integrity which is really a million times worse than saying “no” in the beginning.
I figured this out the other day when I was supposed to go show a friend how to use her Cricut machine and was so overwhelmed with another hiccup in my day that I cancelled on her. I then looked down at my phone and saw 5 texts from 5 different people that needed something from me and that I was going to disappoint and let down because I was overwhelmed and overcommitted. FIVE TEXTS IN A ROW!! So I threw my phone at the end of the bed and had to process through the huge amount of shame and guilt that I was feeling at that moment. And what happens when I get that way? Walls go straight up! I want to hide in my bed and never say “yes” to anyone ever again! But it is not their fault or responsibility to control my reaction. My friend responded the way I was afraid she’d respond-she was disappointed and now my “yes” lacked integrity.
In the same spirit as my last blog, today is day one! Today I will think before I give the auto response of “yes.” Today when someone ask me if I can do something, I will ask myself,
Do I want to do it?
Do I have time to do it?
Do I know how to do it?
The answer to all three of these questions needs to be a resounding “YES” for me to agree. For those that would like to implement these boundaries, let me tell you what’s going to happen. The people who usually get a “yes” from you are going to revolt. Stay strong! They will be okay. And all of this amazing insight was processed with my amazing counselor yesterday on my virtual appointment at 2pm. I connect and at 2:01, Hailey texts me “Call me now please!” I don’t usually get urgent sounding texts like that from her and she wasn’t at home so I tell my counselor that I need to call her real quick (which I NEVER DO!) Hailey answers, “What are you doing?”
“I’m in a counseling meeting,” I say, a bit annoyed.
“Mom, I need to talk to you!”
“About what? I will have to call you back at 3.”
“AT 3???? That’s an hour away!”
This went on for a couple of minutes. My real quick call that I thought was an emergency and that I tried to get off and call Hailey back ended with me over-explaining and both Hailey and me were frustrated with each other. In that scenario, who was at fault? I could blame Hailey for the resentment, anxiety, and frustration I was feeling, but all of the blame lies on me! I didn’t have to call her. Or I could have called her, figured out it wasn’t an emergency and hung up. Yeah she would be disappointed but better than us both being disappointed in me. I quickly apologized to my counselor and was so embarrassed. And here is where my thinking started to change. Instead of being so hard and down on myself, (my counselor would not allow it) I used it as a learning experience and we were able to talk through what happened and why it happened. Turning lemons into lemonade!
I think this way of thinking is a great habit to get into! I will strive to think and then respond, and use failures, mistakes and missteps as learning experiences. Who’s with me?