This Is Exactly Where I’m Supposed to Be
I used to see life as something to just power through, but not anymore
Contrary to popular belief, I’m not productive all the time. I can’t be productive all the time. Not every moment of my being is spent trying to better myself. I just spent about 30 minutes with a graduate school assignment due in two hours, laying in bed, trying to get out of bed, feeling so overwhelmed I kept trying to take a short nap, not actually sleeping, then getting up to actually work on my graduate school assignment.
It was a frustrating moment, but I have many that seem circuitous and unproductive. Not every waking moment of my day is structured or goes like I planned. And that’s something I used to try to fix and try to hack. Because I wasn’t who I wanted to be and where I wanted to be, there must have been something wrong. I started trying to force myself to be my ideal, mechanized self who always gets shit done as well and fast as possible. As a special education teacher, writer and editor, graduate student, and someone studying for law school — I needed a fix and a hack, or else I couldn’t get by with all the high expectations for myself.
Yeah, that was quite a recipe for failure. The 30 minutes just laying and agonizing in bed — that was exactly where I was supposed to be. Each place I am and each feeling I’m feeling — that’s exactly where I’m supposed to be. I get anxious before moments of great calm and peace. I get depressed before moments of great joy and fun. I don’t control my emotions, and I never have.
Sometimes in my moments of great darkness, often pretty late at night where I had the worst possible thoughts of being a waste of space, I would obviously feel terrible about myself. But then I would feel terrible for feeling like shit, amplifying how much I felt like absolute shit. My resistance and feeling that “this is completely wrong” and “this is not normal” were counterintuitive to actually feeling better, actually moving past a present moment of darkness.
However, these days I’m much better at managing and responding to my emotions. And much of that comes from what I learned as a runner that I have applied to the rest of my life. When I run, I use a mantra called “no surge,” which means what I sound like — I avoid sudden, drastic surges and efforts to seize the race by force. I listen to my body. I give the appropriate amount of effort at the given point. Eventually, a faster effort feels normal and easier. I maximize my performance by not giving into huge saps of energy in surges.
I’ve started to see life as one big run. With the mindset behind “no surge,” I have kinder inner talk with myself. I tell myself “Ryan, this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.” However emotion I feel, I don’t suppress it anymore. However my body feels, I don’t ignore to just keep pushing forward over and over.
I used to see life as something to just power through, but not anymore
I powered through the latest shift at work. I powered through high school, college, and a whole other bunch of personal challenges. I powered through that. I can power through this.
Sheer force and determination were the name of the game. All I needed to do was to keep powering, powering, and powering. Eventually, when my mind and body were telling me I needed to take a break and I had to stop for a moment to just rest, I’d keep on trying to power. I neglected sleep, a proper diet, and other forms of self-care just to keep powering.
Sure, I knew I wasn’t a machine of production. But that didn’t stop me from working myself like a horse all the time. It wasn’t actually about maximizing my productivity either — to some degree, I saw being a servant to constantly working as a status symbol of sorts.
It’s different now. I’m not perfect, but I’m much more accepting of myself and my place in the world right now. I start practicing what I preach in terms of growth mindset and make sustainable improvements and change instead of suddenly trying to make drastic changes in my life.
Takeaways
My assignment is now due in one hour. But it will get done, much like all the rest of them have gotten done. Life will go on and I can’t even remember writhing around in my bed, beating myself up an hour ago.
A lot of the time, I feel like I’m supposed to be somewhere else, when in reality, this present moment is where God intended me to be. This is where I’m supposed to be. I don’t need to surge to the rest of the destination, but rather I can move where my mind, body, and soul dictate I move.
I won’t say where you are is exactly where you need to be either. I think it’s dangerous to extrapolate a mindset and mantra that works for me to other people. “This is where I’m supposed to be” has become an auxiliary mantra, and according to Dr. Jennice Vilhauer at Psychology Today, what I do is mantra meditation, a means of quieting and focusing my mind using a phrase I recite silently. Having a mantra is very beneficial to mental health, helping to stop our normal train of thought and clearing our minds.
I love the words of Marisa Donnelly, the author of Somewhere on a Highway, who said:
“So stop. Stop worrying. Stop wondering. Stop letting yourself feel defeated and broken. You are none of those things. You are a person who is growing, changing, learning, becoming, succeeding. And where you are right now? That’s exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
So this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. Instead of fighting and trying to be more of who I want to be, I can accept myself for where I am.