a keen life

It’s hard to do anything in life when you think that you have only two options:

1. Fail spectacularly in a terrified stupor, or:
2. Hide under the covers.

But that is really how low self-esteem works! The rare middle ground lasts mere moments, and for me was usually like this: Holy cow I am flying so high and I feel really good oh shit this can’t be real wow the ground is approaching real fast. [Splat.]

I read a great article today in the NY Times, “Can you become a creature of new habits?” (May 4, 2008) that made me think about this stuff. Dawna Markova and M.J. Ryan posit that there are three states of existence that we move through when seeking change: a zone of comfort, stretch or stress.

Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle — activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar — where true change occurs.

Fearful thinking (fat thinking) makes me think there is only Safe and on the other side, Scary. There’s no such thing as Stretch in between! Because sticking around in that “awkward and unfamiliar” state takes guts. Elsewhere in the article, Markova says, “You cannot have innovation unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.”

And that curiosity, for me, requires a bit of self-love. Otherwise, my curiosity turns harsh and all I can see is a myriad of awful, damning faults. I have to be curious and gentle, and I have to be willing to let that curiosity morph into wonder and excitement. That’s the feeling I had when I rode a bicycle last week for the first time in over a decade. That’s the feeling I have when I go walking somewhere new and I find beautiful places and can feel my legs moving strongly beneath me. That’s the feeling I want to feel more and more. It’s nice to know, from the researchers profiled in this article, that this feeling will help me become more aware of the world and change ingrained habits.