I felt nothing but exhilaration and pride as I took a step onto the rocks at the summit. Looking down, I could imagine myself when I was partway up the mountain, panting, pushing, and clearing the frustration and anxiety out of my way.
Now that I was at the top and looking back down, the path still looked crazy hard, but the feelings of inadequacy at the mid-point were no longer with me.
It was the next day, as I was telling a friend about my inspiration on the mountain that I realized I had missed a big part of the lesson.
I told her the story with my optimistic nature showing in full force, using those words that popped into my head as I sweated and panted up the steepest part of the mountain: Persistence, resilience, grit.
“… shame, feelings of inadequacy, self-punishment…”
Damn. As she added those words, I realized she was right. I didn’t take that hard route simply because I was demonstrating resilience and grit. I was punishing myself for what I thought I had done wrong. I was pushing away the shame I felt as I remembered the words in the email. I was proving to myself that I WAS resilient, strong, and even if I failed at one thing, I would be DAMN SURE NOT TO FAIL at this.
Our conversation shifted from why we punish ourselves to why it mattered. After all, punishing myself by climbing up a mountain had to be one of the healthiest and constructive ways to do that, right?
Well, yes. Knowing WHY I was pushing myself so hard matters. If I’m working away these feelings, these frustrations, giving those feelings a name will help me address them, specifically, rather than blowing off arbitrary steam.
When we know the why behind our actions, we can be more intentional about not only processing our feelings behind those actions, we open our minds to learn the necessary lessons the experience can teach us.
I shared the story of my hike with my friend so I could talk through thoughts I knew could contribute to life lessons, to apply my thoughts to actual improvement in future similar situations. When we tell a story like this to a friend, we create arbitrary constraints around the experience, we create a box for the story to fit into based on prior experience. That means we look for what we want to see, set limits for understanding the context of our stories, and miss all kinds of potential for lessons and growth. But when we share the story with the right friend, they might just ask the questions we need to ask ourselves – the harder questions – and that conversation is likely to remove some of those constraints.