Anyone in Your Situation Would Feel the Same Way

Sometimes it’s easy to think you’re crazy or terribly incompetent. It’s easy to feel like there’s something wrong with you.

I know I’ve been in that mindset more than once in the past, but now I realize it’s just not true.

As a runner, if there’s one reassuring thing when you’re running a road race and running a marathon, it’s looking around you. The people around you are not superheroes. They’re human beings, too. And they often look and feel just as bad as you do. That means you don’t need to push yourself or go out of character to exert more than you normally would, but you also have to be wary of under exerting, too.

The most prominent example while running is hills. Hills are challenging for any runner, especially when you’re running a race. And it’s easy to feel worse than you normally do when going up a hill.

Recently, I’ve had an epiphany when I’ve run up hills and during races.

Anyone in my situation would feel the same way.

They don’t know how fast I was running before or how I’d paced myself previously in the race. I’m not crazy — I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. I’m not going to surge. I’m not going to be thrown off my rhythm. I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing and let the race come to me and my body and instincts tell me what to do instead of trying to artificially override those instincts.

You’re not crazy and there’s nothing wrong with you

The fact is no one understands your life circumstances. No one understands what you’ve gone through, and what you had to persevere through to get where you are now. Some of my students feel grateful to be in high school given the educational experiences of others in their families.

Similarly, people can judge you from the outside. But not everyone knows the context behind your life. And in the real world, the majority of people are not going to care about that context either — I’m no fool to think everyone is going to be compassionate and understanding of your circumstances.

All I can say is we’re often our biggest critics, and knowing that constantly berating and criticizing ourselves isn’t just not nice, but it’s rarely the best way to solicit the best performance or effectiveness out of ourselves. If there’s a part of us that pushes back against a herculean effort we’re trying to give, maybe it’s a sign to slow down. If there’s a part of us that is tired and feels not right, pushing through isn’t always the best thing to do.

As a runner, it’s important to look around and realize everyone around you feels the same way — they might not feel exactly the same but they’re encountering the exact same hurdles and challenges. They’re not robots, and as human beings, you’re not alone in your pain and suffering.

Self-berating doesn’t work — self-compassion does

I realize self-compassion might be a bit of an overused trope in self-help circles these days, but that’s because it works. Serena Chan at the Harvard Business Review notes self-compassion is critical in improving effectiveness. It makes us kinder rather than judgmental, recognizing our failures as shared experiences, and take a balanced approach to negative emotions. People with self-compassion accept themselves to feel negative emotions.

Self-compassion is also crucial to maintaining a growth mindset because growth requires accepting where we are in our present moment.

As a teacher, it’s also really difficult to feel incompetent when something does not go well in the classroom, or when you might not connect well with a student.

However, I remind myself that other teachers probably struggle with the same instructional strategies and concepts. And when we get together and talk, teachers often feel a huge sigh of relief because we realize we’re not alone and we realize we’re not crazy after all.

Again, anyone in your situation would feel the same way. That knowledge has gotten me through many difficult times where I expected and held myself to superhuman expectations, and realized I, like any human being only have a certain level of tolerance.

. . .

Feeling like you’re not normal, or feeling like you’re all alone in your struggle is isolating. Realizing I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be has propelled me further than I ever would have imagined, and it came not from insane amounts of pressure or from being superhuman, but from internalizing my humanity.

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This post was previously published on Mind Cafe.

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