Self Sabotage and How To Quit

The day this post was started was a rough day. It was started after a series of rough days. It was in the middle of my writing process where I prepare an idea to become a future Work in Process. I was working on compiling materials on a story idea that was started and stopped many times. I was so emotionally vulnerable from reading some comments and critiques about it that I wanted to quit. After talking with my spouse, he presented me with a great idea. Don’t read the critiques from nearly ten years ago. The story wasn’t much more than an idea then and it was barely a rough draft. I originally shared it with excitement and abandoned caution in a workshop class. Hard lesson learned, not sure how or where other writers learn that an initial inspirational concept should be cautiously shown with people who know what kind of feedback you are seeking. That initial misstep was self sabotage.

Since that brutal experience, I am now in favor of knowing what stage a piece of writing Is in and what type of response or critique is expected from anyone I let read it. I ask myself what stage of writing is this piece in? What kind of response am I looking for? Am I seeking reassurance that the idea is worth pursuing to see where it goes? Am I merely looking for holes in the story, or am I stuck and need someone to be a sounding board as I work through the different options it could go from here? Am I ready for a content, mechanical, or copy edit critique? What do I want to share with someone else and why?

This applies to any creative endeavor, when seeking a co-conspirator of encouragement to continue or confirm that this should be put aside and pick it back up later when you know more what you want to do. We just want someone in our corner. Maybe it even applies to more things than just writing, or creative pursuits.

I am not only insecure about writing; there are plenty of other things that I am interested in that aren’t in my wheel house, but I do them anyway because I simply enjoy the experience of doing them. For instance, I abhor working out, but I love how my body and mind feel afterward. There are so many things including writing that are easier to spend time on, like reading, watching movies, eating bbq potato chips. Even those things are good for us in moments of rest and recovery. You can’t go full throttle all the time.

Since I love to read, I want to bring in Atomic Habits by James Clear. I was trying to rebuild a favorable exercise habit that over the years got lost because that initial action of starting was such a bummer. Queen of Avoidance could easily be my title and domain when it comes to exercise. But exercise helps me write, and I love writing. My brain is kept busy working my body so I don’t become injured, and my subconscious and imagination are free to go down rabbit holes in story development. You know what I am talking about, the improvisational practice of “yes, and then  . . . .” experimentation. So there was a real need to reboot that routine habit even if it was going for a short walk.

Clear, in his book, advises to make it easier to start when you can’t get going. He gives several methods to try. Which I tried, and the one that worked best for me was asking myself how do I make this easier? It worked; I am not as consistent as I think I should be. So many days, weeks and months, I was highly critical and even shamed myself over my terrible consistency. I read training books like Peak Performance:  Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success by Brad Stulberg, and Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance by Alex Hutchinson.  These books, just like Clear’s had information that I found was applicable not only in trying to get back to running, but there were some key points that hit me that could be applied to my perspective about everything else as well.

Even Brené Brown’s various books dealing on her shame study came into play. Realizing the critiquing, the analysis and assessments that come at us from others and especially from within ourselves were working against me. (You can pick any of Brown’s books, they are all helpful, love her!)

The mass of reading on writing, like - the writing process, routines, habits, stages of development and mastery. Really anything of interest to you; all hold information, knowledge and perspective that can be both encouraging and enlightening about yourself. Along with trying to improve my daily routine and health habits, Even reading about people who wrote about writers and their habits and routines. Anything with any relationship to writing, health and routine got on my reading list.

I read about people top in the various fields related to these subjects.  For instance, the training of marathon champions like Eliude Kipchoge’s method of the 50/80% effort ( you can google Kipchoge’s training methods). During one of my social media scrolling I ran across KC Davis who writes about struggle care. That gave me a whole different perspective on looking at why some things are easier than others. Examining my own self expectations. And using these two approaches of effort and self-care have helped me figure out ways to make the efforts easier to make, and not judge how small those efforts are, or get too tangled up in shame over the frequency.

This has been a  self education process on perspective which culminated in a level of enlightenment about all the things I am doing that hamper my efforts. Things like sharing a story I am working on far too soon, or  belittling my own efforts. The most recent “AH-HA!” moment was when I started keeping track of the percentage of my to do list done daily. I counted the number items on the list, usually between 11 and 20 things a day. And rarely did any day drop below fifty percent. Listen, even on my worst days I did more than fifty percent of those things! BOOM! My records went back for two or three months before that reality hit me. I even had some 100% days! And a 100% effort is for a race! So days of tasks and plans fully completed were race worthy. What? Wait a minute, I’m not lazy. I  am not lazy. I was doing this with my writing work as well.

I have a list of writing tasks. This list developed out of both my collegiate and independent creative writing studies and includes actions or tasks that I need to complete to become a better storyteller, develop my writing skills and complete projects.  This meshing together the elements of all these materials and people who I see doing things, doing them well, and continuing to become the people that they want to be, and applying the elements that work for me to my own efforts is my own routine and habit.

Wait a minutes, have I been sabotaged myself by taking story ideas not fully worked out or on, and share them with no boundaries of what I was seeking giving those I asked to read free reign to tear apart a story idea, or instruct me on how I should finish the story and what I should do with it because I was a novice? I wasn’t aware of what I was doing, to the story or myself. But reading about people and processes and striving for something, I realized my own personal development was growing as well.

And to bring this full circle back to those early moments, someone after reading one of those early novice ideas asked me about failure and when I would know to quit. It was worded more covertly than that, they asked me what my definition of success was.

I think my answer surprised us both. It wasn’t money or fame. My answer was and still is, if I inspire one person, that is success. If one person reads something I wrote and is entertained for a brief moment are able to return to their life with a better attitude or perspective, that is a success. If I inspire someone to keep doing the things they love and even to try new things that might become one of the things they love, that is a success. There are so many one to one small successes that can occur and have, that keep me writing. My enjoyment of doing and knowing that every year, I see my writing develop and change. Oh, that is a sweet success all my own that no one can possibly pay me enough to stop.