Don't Awfulize It

I was on a walk with a friend the other day discussing cycling training programs, when he mentioned a piece of advice another rider had been given by their coach.  When looking at a training plan or program "don't awfulize it" just follow it.  

Just in case you were wondering, awfulize IS a word (I just googled it) and here is the definition:

verb INFORMAL

  1. imagine (a situation) to be as bad as it can possibly be.
    "I awfulized the upcoming confrontation I was planning to have with my boss"

What struck me about that advice was how applicable it was to just about everything in life.  How many times have we looked at our calendar to upcoming work meetings, or projects and imagined our worst case scenario around how they were going to go?  Needed to have a tough conversation, and our internal dialogue and storytelling just makes the forecast even worse?  Or are starting on our path towards a goal or we have set and while feeling energized and excited we are also starting to feel a sense of overwhelm and uncertainty about the why and how of this undertaking.

A strategy that I have often shared with people I have coached centres around the act of "chunking things down" into small steps, or bite-sized pieces.  Instead of looking at the whole journey at once, starting at the completion and back-tracking to see what important steps should happen along the way in order to cross the finish line.  This may sound like it only has an application in a business sense, but I feel that it also crosses into our personal lives as well.  Case in point for me - learning piano.  

I decided to start my lessons back up as a birthday gift/COVID activity last year.  I had started about three or so years ago and took lessons but never felt like I really retained a lot or took in enough to really start to feel like I was getting it.  So I now am on a Zoom call every Monday night for 30 minutes where I have a very patient and supportive teacher who has helped me to feel like I am actually learning through my struggles to hit the right keys.  I have been starting to work on a new song and although it is one that I chose, I find myself hesitant to spend a lot of time on it.  I am working on the homework pieces that my lesson book contains, but the song that is supposed to be fun is the very thing I tend to avoid.  My teacher said something that brought my hesitation into focus for me.  She described how music is referred to as phrases and those are usually four bars long.  She said that I am likely feeling overwhelmed by how long the song is (I have to say it does go on a bit!) and that by focusing on a phrase at a time and limiting myself to just working that way, I will likely feel less frustrated or stalled.  Light bulb moment, and also where the coach gets coached.  The very advice I have been giving others I was receiving myself and fortunately it was sinking in.

So instead of looking at this piece of music in its entirety and awfulizing the situation - why the heck I thought I could ever play it - I should focus on it a phrase at a time, get comfortable in small pieces and enjoy the journey as one day I WILL play the whole damn thing and it will feel pretty awesome.

Moving from the piano bench to other areas of my life, I am going to watch for moments of awfulization in process and work to flip the switch on it.  Focus on the smaller tasks in front of me, in the present moment and enjoy the work there, knowing that it will all add up to the bigger goals that lie ahead.

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