Fun Size Bytes (from @Tj)![Ah yes, that first time that your therapist/counsellor/psychiatrist/parole officer tells you something with a little more brutal honesty than you expected to get.
Or maybe wanted to get.
All I can tell you is that I’ve been there, and my guess is that a lot of other folks around here have been too. I’ve been trying to think of something really quotable.
So far I can only remember two. The first was a (tiny) bit of a “zing!” and the second was one of the more important insights for me, personally (it may seem “duh” obvious to you).
1) When I was 18 or 19 and first went to therapy, the doc (who looked like he was a close cousin of Norm from Cheers told me: “If I was ever going to drive across the country, I’d want you to plan the trip, because you would worry about and plan for every potential pothole from one side of the country to another.”
This was over the summer. Near the end of the summer he told me he was going on vacation and wouldn’t be able to see me for the last two weeks I was home from college. I responded by saying something about how it was no big deal because I was pretty busy getting ready to go back to school anyway. He said, “I really don’t need you to validate the fact that I’m going on vacation, and you don’t have to pretend that you aren’t disappointed that what little time we have is being cut short.” It sounds a little curt, but he was showing me something that I did (do?) a lot: trying not to be disappointed by coming up with reasons why something “isn’t a big deal” even when it is.
2) When I was ~28 or so and went back again (10 years longer than I should have waited), I was working with a guy who taught at the University of Florida. He didn’t do counseling full time, and consequently forgot my appointments on more than one occasion. Yes, really. He forgot my appointments.
He also had a swing in his office. We talked about a lot of good stuff and he helped me tremendously, but he said one thing that I have continued to remember and passed on to others:
“There’s a fine line between excitement and anxiety. A lot of it has to do with how you think about it.”
This is NOT to say that people with some sort of anxiety disorder can just “think their way out of it”. That wasn’t what he was saying. But how we talk to ourselves is important.
But if you’re excited about something, it may feel an awful lot like being nervous about something. The physiological responses are very similar. Don’t be nervous just because you’re excited. (If you’re like me, being excited about something intertwines with being nervous about being disappointed or [in the case of meeting new people] being disappointing.)
He was also a baseball fan. We talked about the Red Sox. He asked me if I knew about Ted Williams. I said “Of course I know about Ted Williams.”
For those of you who aren’t baseball fans, Ted Williams is still important. Don’t tune out.
Ted Williams is considered one of the greatest batters in the history of baseball. He is the last professional baseball player to bat over .400 in a single season (1941).
Dr: “Do you know what it means to bat over .400?”
Me: “It means he was really good.”
Dr: “It means that 4 out of 10 times he got up to bat, he hit the ball.”
Me: “Right”
Dr: “That means 6 out of 10 times he got up to bat, he did NOT. He failed 60% of the time, but he’s still considered the best hitter of all time. And in [68] years, no one has done better. If you tell yourself you have to succeed 100% of the time, there is nothing for you to do EXCEPT fail, because no one succeeds 100% of the time. So maybe you shouldn’t set the bar for yourself so high. Cut yourself some slack. If you can fail less than 50% of the time, you’d be doing better than Ted Williams.”
I had never in my life thought about an acceptable “ratio” of “success to failure.” Growing up in an academic family (my older brother got a 4.0 his first semester of college and was on honor roll/dean’s list every semester, my older sister was high school valedictorian and got a 4-year full-tuition scholarship to college), I had learned to measure myself against “100%” from an early age. Well, it’s one thing to get 100 on a math quiz with clear cut answers which can be calculated.
The thing is, life isn’t a math quiz. Life isn’t like school. And the only people who never fail in life are people who never try.
I’ve been meaning to buy a print of by Mike Monteiro’s Let’s Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow for awhile now. Turns out I waited too long to get the 8x10” version. Hey look, another mistake. So I bought the $50 version. I’m going to hang it in my office where it will remind me not to measure myself against perfection.
Anyway, this is probably well beyond “TL;DR” length, but all of this is to say: “Hey Mary, it might have felt like a punch in the gut to hear some stranger say something which sounds kind of mean, but (coming from someone who wishes he had gone at your age instead of waiting) it sounds like you found someone who isn’t going to downplay issues or beat around the bush. It’s a good thing, really.”
ps - don’t you love Mary’s new Twitter background?](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks57vomwUI1qz8t7bo1_500.png)
http://twitter.com/alsoyourmom/status/5182571096
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Ah yes, that first time that your therapist/counsellor/psychiatrist/parole officer tells you something with a little more brutal honesty than you expected to get.
Or maybe wanted to get.
All I can tell you is that I’ve been there, and my guess is that a lot of other folks around here have been too. I’ve been trying to think of something really quotable.
So far I can only remember two. The first was a (tiny) bit of a “zing!” and the second was one of the more important insights for me, personally (it may seem “duh” obvious to you).
1) When I was 18 or 19 and first went to therapy, the doc (who looked like he was a close cousin of Norm from Cheers told me: “If I was ever going to drive across the country, I’d want you to plan the trip, because you would worry about and plan for every potential pothole from one side of the country to another.”
This was over the summer. Near the end of the summer he told me he was going on vacation and wouldn’t be able to see me for the last two weeks I was home from college. I responded by saying something about how it was no big deal because I was pretty busy getting ready to go back to school anyway. He said, “I really don’t need you to validate the fact that I’m going on vacation, and you don’t have to pretend that you aren’t disappointed that what little time we have is being cut short.” It sounds a little curt, but he was showing me something that I did (do?) a lot: trying not to be disappointed by coming up with reasons why something “isn’t a big deal” even when it is.
2) When I was ~28 or so and went back again (10 years longer than I should have waited), I was working with a guy who taught at the University of Florida. He didn’t do counseling full time, and consequently forgot my appointments on more than one occasion. Yes, really. He forgot my appointments.
He also had a swing in his office. We talked about a lot of good stuff and he helped me tremendously, but he said one thing that I have continued to remember and passed on to others:
“There’s a fine line between excitement and anxiety. A lot of it has to do with how you think about it.”
This is NOT to say that people with some sort of anxiety disorder can just “think their way out of it”. That wasn’t what he was saying. But how we talk to ourselves is important.
But if you’re excited about something, it may feel an awful lot like being nervous about something. The physiological responses are very similar. Don’t be nervous just because you’re excited. (If you’re like me, being excited about something intertwines with being nervous about being disappointed or [in the case of meeting new people] being disappointing.)
He was also a baseball fan. We talked about the Red Sox. He asked me if I knew about Ted Williams. I said “Of course I know about Ted Williams.”
For those of you who aren’t baseball fans, Ted Williams is still important. Don’t tune out.
Ted Williams is considered one of the greatest batters in the history of baseball. He is the last professional baseball player to bat over .400 in a single season (1941).
Dr: “Do you know what it means to bat over .400?”
Me: “It means he was really good.”
Dr: “It means that 4 out of 10 times he got up to bat, he hit the ball.”
Me: “Right”
Dr: “That means 6 out of 10 times he got up to bat, he did NOT. He failed 60% of the time, but he’s still considered the best hitter of all time. And in [68] years, no one has done better. If you tell yourself you have to succeed 100% of the time, there is nothing for you to do EXCEPT fail, because no one succeeds 100% of the time. So maybe you shouldn’t set the bar for yourself so high. Cut yourself some slack. If you can fail less than 50% of the time, you’d be doing better than Ted Williams.”
I had never in my life thought about an acceptable “ratio” of “success to failure.” Growing up in an academic family (my older brother got a 4.0 his first semester of college and was on honor roll/dean’s list every semester, my older sister was high school valedictorian and got a 4-year full-tuition scholarship to college), I had learned to measure myself against “100%” from an early age. Well, it’s one thing to get 100 on a math quiz with clear cut answers which can be calculated.
The thing is, life isn’t a math quiz. Life isn’t like school. And the only people who never fail in life are people who never try.
I’ve been meaning to buy a print of by Mike Monteiro’s Let’s Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow for awhile now. Turns out I waited too long to get the 8x10” version. Hey look, another mistake. So I bought the $50 version. I’m going to hang it in my office where it will remind me not to measure myself against perfection.
Anyway, this is probably well beyond “TL;DR” length, but all of this is to say: “Hey Mary, it might have felt like a punch in the gut to hear some stranger say something which sounds kind of mean, but (coming from someone who wishes he had gone at your age instead of waiting) it sounds like you found someone who isn’t going to downplay issues or beat around the bush. It’s a good thing, really.”
ps - don’t you love Mary’s new Twitter background?
