On the golden map that I was abandoned with he left instructions on how to continue to care for myself.
The 80-20 split really seems to be the critical component to my mood stability.
On the days that I can leave 20% reserves, meaning I only expend 80% of my physical and mental energy, and take breaks or call it a day before I have spent the last 20%, I do so much better.
I don't cry
I don't get confused
I can keep my focus where it needs to be
My patience is solid
...The problem I am having is that it is too easy to spend too much.
I just don't seem to have the same mental stamina.
I thought my past 2 nights good sleep would get me closer to back on track... but I was spent after a half day snowboard training clinic and lunch with the friends there. Then I had to come home and try to help my daughter figure out her school stuff and by the time I got home I was in tears and my mind wandered to it's confused and hurt place, trying once again to fix what I cannot fix. To solve what I don't understand. It just wants to sleep when this happens, so I let if I can. It is the best way I have been able to figure out to reset. It usually works on some level. But sometimes I still feel sad and confused as to why I am spent so easily. Especially when I am eating better, exercising regularly, and taking care of myself.
Mourn the loss of that?
...and really you want me to mourn the loss of that at the same time?
sometimes life is more than we can handle.
Even if we look fine
and act fine
Sometimes the seemingly little losses can nickel and dime us to death.
And sometimes little losses are not so little when you were already working with less.
...writing has also been a helpful reset and it somehow relaxes my brain.
I have been writing a lot lately. A LOT, much more than you see here.
I'll share a snippet that helped me relax as I wrote:
The other day I was working with a girl who just kept dropping the opposite edge after turn initiation. This is a very unsafe thing to do in snowboarding and I was trying everything I could think of to help her hold the correct edge through her turn. She was getting frustrated, not to mention those types of falls do not feel good. She was taking a break and thinking she was just not laid back enough for snowboarding, starting to believe that she could not do it.
I explained that for a lot of us snowboarding is what helps us to get to that laid back place. It helps us let go and feel relaxed and carefree. “It is my therapy,” I told her. She said she could see that in my riding and she wished for that. I told her about how the physics of snowboarding can transfer philosophically to many aspects of life; like how often in snowboarding “your intellect has to override your instinct.” This led me to consider the reverse as I tried to think of someway we could connect the snowboarding concept she was struggling with to what she does or has experience with in everyday life.
She talked about how she loved cheer. That is not one area I have any experience in and I will admit I have had my bias not in her favor. But I don’t like to hold onto bias so I asked questions and listened as she explained how she was a flyer, which meant she is the one that would be launched into the air. She said, as a flyer, it is always about being up, floating and light and when I was asking her to turn I kept telling her to pressure and be heavy into her feet to hold the edge which she just couldn’t seem to get. She felt like maybe her muscles memory was causing problems.
It was an epiphany for both of us.
I was totally excited when I exclaimed “that is exactly what you are doing.” Every time she turned she would push to turn then up-unweight almost immediately after. It was a launch, not a snowboarding turn. We talked about what happens before she up-unweights when she is being a flyer; how she would have to press down with that perfect balance between her and the person launching her just before she launched. I told her to hold that launch pressure to complete her turn on the snowboard. She wasn’t sure she could do it because of her muscle memory that was fully conditioned to be light and float. Fortunately she also likes yoga, so we turned it into a yoga pose to hold. It was awesome to see her go down and tackle those turns with that new self awareness. It was a night and day difference.
She was now cognizant of her muscle memory and by being aware of it she was able to adapt more easily to perform a new task. Therapy.
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