Working Hard at Taking it Easy: My Mantra for 2011

I smiled as I received the text because it was the culmination of one heck of a Christmas vacation.

“I love you too, sweetie. This your first time being 22. It gets a lot easier as you get older, I promise.” –Mom

We had gotten off of the phone not too long prior to her text, as she had spent the last 20 minutes coaching me out of a quarter-life crisis that seemed to have crept up on me. Just when I’m sure my mother has no idea what she’s talking about, she always shocks me with her simple yet profound spurts of wisdom in my time of need.

This particular calamity started during our family holiday getaway. In the hopes of escaping the glum Michigan weather (and economy) for Christmas, my family decided the holiday would be better spent in Arizona, since my parents own a condo there. Excited to spend my Christmas basking in “The Valley of the Sun”, I had determined that I would treat this trip as a resort—an escape from the bustling condition of my life here in DC.

For the first few days I succeeded in this effort. I went shopping with my Mom and enjoyed my lack of need for a heavy winter coat. My quest for relaxation quickly started to wane, however, when I began thinking about my goals for the New Year. Given the goals I had at the start of 2010, I had only accomplished about 50% of what I set out to do:

(As declared on December 10, 2009 in my post,  “The Easiest Way to Predict the Future…” )

I will attempt to bring in a solid income of $2,350 per month

I will completely pay off my lowest credit card amount, $873.53

I will have at least $1000 in personal savings in 6 month’s time* (accomplished this but spent it by year’s end)

I will be enrolling back in school part-time for the 2010 summer session, and full-time for the 2010 fall session

My hair will reach armpit length (APL) or longer in six months or less

In 6 month’s time I really want to tone up my physique* (accomplished this but fell off the fitness wagon by year’s end)

I want to improve my wardrobe

In 6 month’s time I really want to develop this blog

On top of that, my goals for 2011 were equally aggressive:

1. Read the entire Bible in a year via daily, morning reading and journal writing
2. Make enough in freelance/side hustle/self-employed income to cover rent and all necessary expenses (anywhere from $1,200-$1,500 a month)
3. Get really physically fit — increase my cardio endurance, muscle mass, and frequency of workout sessions
4. Grow hair from APL to MBL
5. Increase blog readership to 1,000 daily readers and 1,000 subscribers
6. Pay off second credit card ($855.90)
7. Re-save $1,000

The more I thought about 2010 and what I wanted to do for 2011, the more I felt like a failure.

My real life to-do list that I took with me on the trip

I even named it “The infinite to-do list”. Crazy.

“You spent way to much time procrastinating last year…”

“You’ll never get anything done if you continue at the rate your on now…”

“You know you graduate in 18 months, what happens if none of this stuff is accomplished by then?”

“How on earth are you going to go about overhauling everything this year?”

Despite the fact that I have the annoying habit of berating myself grammatically in the second-person, my inner critic was starting to really take hold of my vacation. Instead of just…well, hanging out with my family, I slowly started forcing myself into activities that I believed would propel me into success when I returned home.

“There’s a really nice gym in this complex. You really should try to start working out so that you’ll be used to doing it when you get home.”

And so I threw myself into this crazy, aggressive workout plan that I decided I would do every other morning. I was so set on proving my commitment to my own inner critic that I even declined the invitation to go mountain biking on real mountains with my brother one morning so that I could stay home and go to the neighborhood gym. Ridiculous.

“It’s going to be really hard to change your old behavior. You should probably go to the bookstore to do some research on how to accomplish your goals.”

And so I made my brother walk a mile to the nearest bookstore with me (our parents had taken the rental car for the evening) so I could leaf through a half dozen books on “success”.

I feel ridiculous even typing all of this, but the list goes on. My parents’ condo didn’t even have internet access, but I still managed to stay glued to the miniature browser on my iPhone, constantly devouring blog posts or articles that I felt could help me “do better” for 2011. In short, I had reduced what was supposed to be a vacation into a constant obsession with what I felt was do-or-die success for 2011. The saddest part was that I didn’t even realize what I was doing until it was too late.

“Too late” came when I woke up on my last morning with something I had never experienced in my life—an anxiety attack. I wasn’t sure what was happening to me as I otherwise calmly went about my day packing for my flight home, but the more the day progressed, the more I felt this unmistakable tightening in my chest and pounding of my heart.

I returned home only to find that I had brought my mysterious symptoms with me. At that point, I still was not understanding that my internal New Years Resolution obsession/criticism was causing me unnecessary stress because I had spent all of 2010 practically behaving in the same way. When I wanted to do or achieve something badly, I researched my target ad nauseum until I felt I was almost an expert at it, then I’d spend the next few weeks implementing what I’d learned. I never once thought twice about my methods because I have always considered myself an ambitious person. So when these seemingly random (albeit mild) anxiety attacks came upon me, I really felt freaked out and lacking control. I was but a mere three days into the New Year at this point and instead of feeling like a conqueror, I felt completely defeated.

For the next three days, I did nothing but spend time in prayer. At that point, I could do nothing else and as I look back on it, I truly believe that was exactly the position God wanted me to be in. The proverbial “they” always say that sometimes God has to bring you to your knees so that you’ll have a chance to look up and see what’s truly going on. No sooner than I literally got off my knees on that third, anxiety filled day did I call my Mom. I simply could not take it anymore; I needed someone to either console me or confirm that I was, in fact, crazy so I could figure out my next steps.

I think my Mom and I talked for only 20 minutes since she was at work, but what she told me both horrified and liberated me at the same time. In no uncertain terms, my mother simply told me that I had ceased to be myself. I was so determined—so focused—on becoming this “better” Courtney that never procrastinated, wrote daily blog posts, earned more money, and had Michelle Obama biceps that I quit enjoying my life as it was and all of the things I had to be grateful for. All the things that make me me—my love for vintage clothing, fashion magazines, and solo afternoons at the museum—I had quit doing because I didn’t want to be “distracted” from my goals. Instead of finding balance between my goals and my other hobbies, I swung to the extreme in the name of ambition and left core pieces of myself behind. No wonder my mind and body were revolting.

As soon as my Mom described her perspective of my issue, I immediately knew she was right. I was tempted to be defensive, but I couldn’t because I could literal feel the pressure physically draining from my body. In an instant, the “mysterious” anxiety that I feared would rule the rest of my life simply didn’t exist anymore after that phone call. I could do nothing but hang up the phone and thank God. I had my health, my happiness, and my peace of mind back…I then knew that there was no ambition in the world that mattered more.

Since my quarter-life crisis, I have done a number of things to get “me” back. The next day, I literally got off the bus while running errands downtown and ran into a good friend I had been neglecting for months. We both dropped everything and spent the whole day together—it felt amazing. The day after that, I picked up a copy of Elle Magazine and soaked in a bubble bath. That was pretty cool too.

Although my new attitude has already shown tremendous positive change in my life, I hope I don’t sound like I’m declaring a life free of goals in lieu of leisurely living, because I’m not. All of the goals that I set out for 2011 were and still are important to me because they reflect values that are important to me, I had just been going about achieving them completely the wrong way. Instead of focusing on arbitrary deadlines (January 1, 2012 or else!) and outcomes (mid-back length hair or death!), I’m focusing on calmly developing habits that I believe will lead me to my desired results. I’m also committing not to focus on goals for more than 12 weeks, or 3 months at a time.

Most days I doubt whether anyone in the world can possibly relate to all of my antics that I talk about on this blog, but if any bit of my story resonates with you, know that there is a true calmness in letting stuff go. There is no reason to kill your psyche over a future that you ultimately get to determine. If something comes up and you find that you are not where you want to be, simply correct your course and try again tomorrow. In the words of Harry Emerson Fosdick, “No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.” I should know because I pounced and almost crushed mine.

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