Let’s discuss PDF.

No, not the buggy, overpriced shite from Adobe, the other PDF:

Personal Development Fatigue.

Yes, it is a thing (because I said so!) and yes, coaches get it too. And by coaches, I mean this coach. Me. I get PDF.

The constant learning, and growing, and improving, and doing, and dissecting, and thinking, and over thinking… So. Much. Over. Thinking.

Running

It’s like being on a treadmill. At first, you’re fine with it, the pace is manageable, you can feel yourself getting stronger and you have more stamina. You reach the level of fitness you were aiming for and are ready to jump off, but the treadmill has other plans.

A little message pops up on the screen letting you know that you have 20 minutes more to do. You’re knackered and really don’t want to, but you do it anyway and you’re proud of yourself for getting through it (no matter how crazy you looked to others in the process). You prepare to hop off but then another message pops up: ’40 more minutes’ then the treadmill speeds up. You’re like, ‘screw this!’ and frantically start pressing buttons to turn it off, but the treadmill just speeds up and increases its incline. You attempt to get off but before you can, the ground around the treadmill disappears revealing a dark chasm that you’ll fall into if you try to step off the treadmill, so your stuck. You must keep running. After 40 minutes, the floor comes back, and the treadmill eventually stops. You’re absolutely wrecked, confused, dehydrated and pissed off, but you did it, you rose to the occasion.

You crawl (because walking is out of the question) to the changing room, clamour to your feet and attempt to open the door. It’s locked. You turn to make your way to reception for help, but you crash into a treadmill that just appeared from nowhere. The message on the screen says you must do another 30 minutes to unlock the door. Your keys, purse and clothes are in there, you need your stuff so, tears rolling down your cheeks, you jump on.  It’s worse this time around. Random objects are being hurled at you as you run, people you can’t see are screaming hurtful insults at you, you’re hallucinating, and you need to pee.  

You’re forced to do this several more times: To get out of the changing room, to leave the floor this gym is on, and then again to get out of the building.

After what seems like an eternity, you finally make it out of the building. You jump in your car/Uber/ bus and finally you’re home. You take out your keys and attempt to unlock the door, but the key doesn’t work. You look to your left and there’s the treadmill again…

This is your life now. The evil treadmill just turning up randomly to force you to work out, except in reality, the treadmill is life, and the running is a succession of goals and lessons that need to be completed and learned in order for you to move on to the next phase of your life.

This or that?

There are 2 choices. The first is to obey the treadmill. We do this because we can see the bigger picture. If we put the work in now, the results will be great eventually. If we reach the goal and learn the lessons, we’ll be stronger, smarter and more resilient meaning that navigating life might be a little easier and more rewarding.

The second choice is to ignore the treadmill and find another way to get into the house. This will probably work but might be risky because while it may be less taxing than the treadmill, it might create more issues. For example, an alternative way to get in might be to break a window then climb through. In theory that’s a good idea, but let’s say that after paying to get the window fixed, then paying for a succession of locksmiths to fix the lock, they all tell you that the only way to get in via the front door is to use the treadmill. You don’t want to do this, so you just decide to keep a window open all the time. The problem is, people keep breaking into your house and stealing your stuff, birds and other creatures get inside and create a mess, your home is cold and damp, and, on days you can’t physically get through the window, you’re forced to sleep in your car or in the front garden. Or to put it another way, instead of facing your problems and dealing with the lessons, you decide to use things like alcohol, drugs, sex, food, scrolling, gaming, etc to avoid the lessons, creating more problems in the long term.

The other way

There is a third option though.

I sometimes (rarely) wear contact lenses. I pay for them every month, receive 3 months’ worth of lenses every quarter, but only wear the lenses continuously for about one or two months a year. I recently found out that I can pause payments and resume them again when I’m ready to receive the contact lenses. So technically I can pause payments until, say, April, make monthly payments in April, May and June, receive lenses in June, wear them over the summer, then pause payments again until next summer or whenever it is I might need them again. I thought this was a great new scheme for the company to introduce, except, it’s not new. I’ve always had the option to pause payments, I just didn’t know. So, for almost ten years I’ve been paying nearly £30 a month for lenses that I only wear for one or two months of the year when I didn’t have to.

*Sigh*

So, just in case you didn’t know, let me tell you this:

You can pause your personal development.

You can opt out of the goals and lessons for a while if you’re not in the mood, feeling overwhelmed, or just fucking tired.

You don’t always need to be in the process of fixing, improving or pushing yourself.

In fact, we shouldn’t  always be in the process of fixing, improving or pushing ourselves because if we are, then when do we spend time appreciating who we are in the present, and how far we’ve come from the past? And when do we put in to practice all the things we’ve learned from all these lessons if we’re constantly moving on to the next without a break? Also, there are many times in life when we’re fine as we are.

Control

I was lucky in that as a child, my mother was my advocate, and she did a great job. She also taught me how to advocate for myself when she wasn’t around, so since childhood I’ve had to advocate for myself to ensure that other people’s prejudices didn’t mess up my plans. Necessary but exhausting. I explain how this has played out in my professional life in Surviving not thriving.

In 2017 or whenever it was, I was bored in my job and was convinced my brain was atrophying, so I went back to uni part time. Whenever I’ve been unhappy in a job I’d make a plan to leave, then I’d leave. When volunteer management stopped being enjoyable, I moved into a different field. I’ve always actively looked for and engaged with learning opportunities ever since I realised many years ago that as a black woman with an impairment, working in predominantly white spaces with predominantly white leadership, in most cases (with a few exceptions) I was more likely to marry into British royalty than receive the support and opportunities that were offered to my non-minoritised / non-disabled colleagues.

I’ve had to advocate for myself, be in control of my own development, be strong and resilient (or at least appear to be) and get kicked in the face (metaphorically of course) several times  just to get, maybe a third of the opportunities, respect and basic decency that others get, so I fully understand how terrifying the prospect of allowing development opportunities to pass you by can be. Not grabbing those opportunities when you’re constantly at a disadvantage feels like a luxury you cannot afford.

But it’s not.

Not when you’ve been depositing into that account regularly for years.

Pause for perspective

When you pause and take the time to appreciate who and where you are, what you’ve achieved and how well you dealt with challenges you’ll be proud of yourself of course, but you’ll also rest in your newly acquired confidence – the confidence in your ability to figure things out and make things better for yourself.

The confidence that would have helped you to see that the floor disappearing around the treadmill was an illusion created by your mind in a state of fear.

The confidence that would have reminded you to remain calm and feel for the ‘pause’ button at the side of the machine instead of pressing all the buttons in a panic.

We can’t always control how others perceive and treat us, or the situations we may find ourselves in, we only really have control of ourselves, so while striving to be the best version of ourselves is a good thing, part of that process involves pausing for reflection and rest so personal development feels like more of a positive endeavour and less of an energy depleting chore.