One Hard Thing

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

You have the number, you know your schedule- you’ve even picked out the perfect day and time to make this appointment. Shoot, you’ve even picked out alternative days and times just in case their schedules can’t accommodate you!

You know you have to make this call - you know this is the last step to get this position - the last thing on your check-list - possibly the easiest task left for you to do this week.

You need to make this call!

But then your heart starts racing.

Your thoughts spiral: what do I say? Do I have all the information? What if something goes wrong?

You ponder and ponder and ponder somemore…

Before finally deciding:

“Ah! I’ll do it tomorrow!”

***

There’s been a lot of talk of anxiety-based-procrastination lately, but while I’d prefer to see the hard data from the experts for myself (and not some 90 second commercial on YouTube), I can’t help but agree that there is a connection.

The only thing I really know/remember from high school about the subject, is that it’s a maladaptive behavior that stems from a perceived fear or even threat. And the reason I remember/know this is because this has been the bulk of my adult-life for the past couple of years.

Let me explain:

Even though I was a relatively anxious teenager, I actually never had a problem with procrastination in getting my homework done, completing projects, or making appointments and completing training once I got into my 20’s. In fact, ironically enough, the thought of putting off my work actually made me stress-out more! Even if it was something unpleasant, I’d rather just do it quickly and get it over with. “It’ll only hurt the first time,” is how I rationalized it.

So that’s pretty much how it went down during my 20’s: even though I wasn’t doing anything particularly posh or sophisticated with my life, it felt like I still had everything altogether. Minor setbacks didn’t really throw me off, and even big life-changes weren’t anything I couldn’t handle.

That is, until one specific life-change…

A Familiar Aside:

If you’ve read my stuff so far, you probably know where I’m going with this.

If you haven’t yet, then I’ll keep it super-brief.

Right after I turned 30 years old, my dad died.

It was very sudden, and, in my opinion, a very unnatural-natural death (just because of how simple it could’ve been to fix).

He was in the hospital for four days - specifically over the Thanksgiving holiday, of all times.

There were moments when he looked like he was making progress, and we had hope that he was going to be okay.

But then he bottomed out, and there was just nothing the doctors could do.

***

It’s taken me a long time to get here, but I am finally at the point where I can talk about my father without completely falling apart (though there is a tear or two to shed). I think part of that comes from recognizing that it’s always going to make me sad, no matter what. Another part of it comes from the fact that I can laugh about all the little things my dad left us.

There is joy left to find at the end of one’s grieving journey, yes - but there is also joy to be felt even in the throws of the first year or the second. Grief has no time-line; that is and will always be true. And neither does joy, even though it doesn’t always seem like it.

Connection Is Healing:

Now the reason I brought up my loss here isn’t to make anyone sad, or even to talk about grieving (I needed to take a break from that for a while, for the sake of my own psyche).

It was more of a way of demonstrating how, even after you’ve moved through the worst of the storm, it can still be difficult to get yourself back on track.

Going back to my procrastination from earlier - the thing is, I’ve noticed there’s a direct correlation between the uptick of my procrastination following a difficult season in my life. After a lot of soul-searching, I was able to figure out why:

When your world no longer feels safe, the thought of rejoining it feels terrifying.

Dollars to donuts, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about right now.

But, here’s the thing I’ve learned from my experience: you can’t hide from the world forever. Yes, under the rock is safe, and cozy, and you have all of your favorite shows to binge-watch, but you’re also missing out on the joy that still exists.

Living without it for so long, just made my days too sad and too lonely… and made me even more anxious than I ever was before!

Connection is healing, whether it’s with someone you know and love, or a total stranger you just happen to chat-up in the craft-store. And when you start making those connections again, the world seems a lot less scary because you know you’re not dealing with it alone.

Anxiety goes down -

procrastination goes down -

and those little speed bumps don’t feel like mountains anymore…

One Hard Thing At A Time:

For me, that “one call” I need to make: it was for a volunteer opportunity.

Because it’s offered out of a hospital, they need to go through the same vetting processes that they put employees through. It is a legitimate health and safety-concern, because hospitals are cesspools of disease as well as jack-pots of controlled substances.

I struggled to make that call ever since the process began, even though completing everything else was easy.

But after my big life-change, old anxieties came flooding back to me. Only this time, I felt especially embarrassed by it - my fear of the phone-call made me feel like a child, something I haven’t been in a very long time.

The hard truth I guess I want to make known is this:

There’s no timeline or schedule for any of your emotions…

Not grief, not joy, not even fear.

The only thing you can do is, just one hard thing at a time.

***

Whenever I now feel overwhelmed by a job, or start to feel myself spiral into self-doubt and intrusive thoughts, I now try this exercise where I tell myself:

“Just one hard thing. If you can do only one hard thing today, let this be it.”

Sometimes it doesn’t work - sometimes I have to go calm down and decompress before I’m ready to face it. Other times, I have to amp myself up by blasting a compilation of Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen OPs.

But most of the time, “one hard thing” really does work.

Whether it’s the only thing I do that day, or just a single task in a busier schedule, it’s enough to remind me that it is okay to be scared, to be anxious, to feel small… but that I am also strong enough to take charge, to get back up, and even to take my licks once in a while (for I suffer from a terrible, lifelong affliction of “open-mouth, insert-foot”).

Conclusion:

Coping with terrible life events doesn’t mean you ignore them and don’t get involved- in fact, I would argue that when the whole world’s on fire you don’t really have a choice: you gotta pick up a bucket or let yourself burn.

Coping also doesn’t always mean you can fix the problem overnight or according to your schedule- if you can even fix it at all!

Coping with the hard times is less about trying to control them, and more about taking charge of yourself - even if it means just doing one hard thing at a time.

No matter how small it is it can make all the difference.

So, the next time you feel like the world is crumbling and the walls are closing in, remember to breathe and go do one hard thing for the day.

It certainly makes phone calls a lot easier.