I’ve had a lot of bad days. As a special educator, runner, and graduate student, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and like I’m not living up to the lofty expectations I set for myself.
As a marathon runner especially, I’ve always been incredibly hard-headed. I push more. I struggle more. I think I’m not working hard enough. I think I have more in the tank, and I just need to be more inspired. I just need to be more motivated.
Especially on bad workouts, like trying to run seven repeats of a mile on the track, some days I just wouldn’t have it. I would get through two or three, maybe, at my goal pace.
When I felt pain, it was a sign: I would have to push harder and work harder. I would have to exert more of myself.
And then I would collapse. I would stop doing well.
It took me a long time to realize I was shooting myself in the foot, that I was doing the opposite of what I was supposed to be doing.
When something wasn’t going well, when my body was not ready for a given workout or I just didn’t have it on a given day, the solution wasn’t to push harder and work harder.
The solution was to take my foot off the gas. It was to go easier on myself, be more compassionate, and slow down. The solution was sometimes to just drop the workout and stop altogether, and save my energy for another day.
If only I learned that lesson sooner, I would have run faster in high school and college.
. . .
This is a rule that increasingly applies to other sectors of my life. I have a lot of rough days as a special educator where I don’t do the best job of handling behaviors, and I take a nasty comment or bad behavior from students as a personal attack.
I’m not saying I’m perfect now. But bad days in the classroom still happen, and they still happen maybe once or twice a week. They still bother me because I want to become a better teacher for my students.
But when I leave my job at the door, I shut off all the self-criticism. I attend to everything else in my life. I acknowledge the parts of the day that sucked, the parts of the day that were good, and I move on to the next one.
I’ve started to give myself permission to not have to do more to validate myself. Instead, I take my foot off the gas and do less — a bad day is just an isolated event. It doesn’t need to be overanalyzed and consume a bigger portion of my headspace than it already does.
When I was studying for the LSAT, I would have days where I scored terribly on practice tests. I eventually scored at the 94th percentile on the exam and get into the evening law program I wanted to get into. But on some days, I would score 75th percentile scores and absolutely tank my practice exams.
What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I get better? Why were my scores plateauing? Was I suddenly not smart anymore? Did I suddenly lose my mojo and lose all the progress I made from studying?
The answer was no, obviously. But at the moment it was really easy to take a bad day and terrible score personally. Some days, I just didn’t have it. The LSAT was a test that relied much more on mental sharpness on a day and how well-rested you were — on some days I obviously wasn’t as sharp and well-rested. Maybe I just stepped up when it mattered — I don’t know.
But whenever I had a bad day of LSAT studying, I applied the same rule from running as I did to the test.
I took a break. I went easier on myself. I took the day, and maybe the next one to stop studying and focus on other things that didn’t stress me out as much. I might watch my favorite TV show or play video games. On that day, I would do anything else besides study.
The bad day was just a bad day. It didn’t need to be overanalyzed. I didn’t need to work harder and punish myself. I needed to take my foot off the gas pedal — and I’m glad I learned that lesson, because the practice test before my actual LSAT exam, I did terribly, and then chose to take the rest of the week off studying. It was the best decision I could have made.
. . .
I’m not saying there should be no reflection. I’m not saying there should be no adaptation or revision of my approach or my practices.
There usually should be a reflection and analysis of what went wrong and how to prevent the problem in the future.
But this is a reflection overthinkers naturally do. There’s productive reflection, and then there’s rumination. Over-reflection often traverses into the rumination phase where all you do is beat yourself up, treat yourself like shit, and feel sorry for yourself.
I couldn’t let things go. I couldn’t let a horrible lesson or poor management of behaviors go as a reflection of my self-worth and identity. I couldn’t let a bad workout not define me for the day.
Now, when it’s a bad day, I’m much better at leaving it at the door or leaving it at the track. A bad day does not define you. It is not an indication that you’ve “lost it.” It’s just a bad day.
99% of the time, if you’re anything like me, a bad day is actually a sign not to work harder and panic. It’s a sign to rest, recover, and take your foot off the gas.
There’s a lot of temptation to push harder when things aren’t going well. For me, I’m glad I gained the maturity to know the answer is actually the opposite.
. . .
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This post was previously published on Mind Cafe.
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