Today I want to talk about pace. No, I’m not talking about Pace Picante Sauce, or the actor Lee Pace.
Not that these aren’t both great blog topics. At 412 posts, I might soon be sufficiently thin on ideas to take up one of those.
No, today I’m here to talk about the kind of pace that is more related to a rate of speed. In the past few months, I have been all about trying to up my pace. There are things I want to do and my focus has been on doing more and more every day.
There have been some upsides to this. In a very literal sense, a daily commitment to running and exercise has helped me lose some weight and feel healthier. I’ve also noticed my running pace steadily tick up recently. Just on Sunday, I did a couple miles at under 8 minutes per mile, which is the best pace I’ve had in 15 years, or maybe ever. So that felt pretty good. Good pacing.
But I’ve also come to realize that faster is not always better, and working harder is not always the most productive thing. It’s a pretty common trap in our society. In trying to do too much too fast, we can become slaves to a pace that just keeps increasing until we can’t keep up.
A couple months ago, I had a burst of energy and was thrilled to be upping that pace. I was writing more and faster than ever before. I’d get up early, journal, get the kids ready for school, then have a productive day’s work, make dinner, write the blog, help get the kids to bed and then write for my book late at night.
I was so proud of how much I was doing and how quickly it coming that I didn’t pay attention to what it was probably doing to me. To go back to running for a moment, it is very much like running a 10K race and starting out in a mad sprint. Sure, you’ll really fly through that first mile or two, but you’ll wear yourself out and gasp your way to the end, if you make it all.
And I think that may be what started happening to me in the past few weeks. I was having a much harder time finding the energy to keep up with all my self-imposed deadlines and ever growing goals. At some point I finally realized that the best pace isn’t necessarily the fastest one.
It doesn’t mean that my desire to accomplish things has decreased. It does mean that my expectations of how I get there are shifting. For me, it begins with self-forgiveness. I need to be more flexible with myself and allow that I may not be running at 110 percent every day, and even if I could, that probably wouldn’t be so good.
All of us feel pressure be and do all things at impossible levels of perfection at all times. Certainly, I know this is a common issue with parents, who want to be a great mom or dad to their kids, but also want to succeed at their careers, be a good spouse, be a good friend, and maybe even be good at a few other things outside. That is a lot to juggle, particuarly all at once.
If anything, COVID probably kicked that into overdrive. Remembering back to the beginning of quarantine, everyone was talking about what new language they were going to learn, all the books they were going to read, and all the cool projects they were going to undertake with all this time their hands. There was this unrealistic pressure to somehow make the best use of this strange time. Well, I for one had a hard time just keeping it together day to day for the most part, and I think sometime earlier this year I got a little goal crazy and probably started pushing things a little too far.
Goals and aspirations are good, but not at the expense of our wellbeing or at the expense of the moment. I started writing this blog 412 days ago to try to teach myself to be present and to value the moment, and here I am, still learning that lesson.
Today I was listening to a podcast that was talking about the concepts of the opposing forces of body and soul that come from Kabbalah philosophy. Basically, the idea is that our body, which includes both our physical bodies and also things like emotions and ego, is focused on things like food, rest and the quest for stability and comfort, while the soul is the higher part of us aspiring to greater things. We need both, and the trick is to have them in balance.
And quite a trick that is. I, for one, tend to almost always lean way too far in one direction or another. And this is probably pretty common for most of us. But it is important to listen to what our physical selves need, even if that means shifting focus a little. For me, that meant that my body screaming “SLOW DOWN!” to me was a very unsubtle signal that I needed to rethink the pace I was running. I wasn’t being present, I was missing too many moments, and I was wearing myself out. Sprinting may have done me well for a little while, but before long my work and my self were suffering.
My first reactions were guilt and feeling like I was losing a step, but then I worked on some of that self forgiveness I mentioned earlier. Believe me, it’s somthing everyone should try. Cutting yourself a little slack can go a long way toward that healthy balance, and truly, slow and steady wins the race. I can still get a lot done in a day without sprinting.
It’s been a stresful year, and I think a lot of us have been pushing ourselves a little too hard. Let’s all try to go a little easy on ourselves. Slow it down a little. I will if you will.
