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Challenges are a funny thing. They push us to rise to our best selves. Help us to realize things about ourselves we never knew. Like, for example, that restarting Zumba after a five year hiatus makes you feel like a drunken sailor on a Saturday night. Somewhere between a hip swivel and a pelvic thrust, I thought about never coming back to class and finding some other form of cardio that didn’t make me look a completely uncoordinated fool.
Only then did I realize that I only like challenges when I am successful with the result. I remembered many years ago, my husband James encouraged me to take tennis lessons. He’d been playing and thought it would be a fun activity for us to share. It wasn’t. Hand eye coordinated sports—softball, volleyball, basketball—have never been my thing. In fact the only sports I’ve ever had excelled in were track. And bowling. Running in a straight line. Throwing a ball in a straight line. I took the tennis lessons and then told James, “I don’t love it.”
“Why,” he asked. “We had fun playing.”
“But I’m not good at it.” I replied.
“You can only have fun if you’re good at something?” he asked somewhat disgustedly.
Generally speaking, yes. But as I continued a clumsy grapevine across the dance studio to a Latin beat, I couldn’t deny an energizing, sweat drenching, dizzying euphoria. Not exactly a good time, but the work needed to be done.
Recently I began a new project of a much larger scope than which I was accustomed. I relished the opportunity to finally push past my writing boundaries. I felt encouraged by my editor, supported, up for the challenge. And when all that died down and the research and writing began, I just felt scared. Scared of failing. In public. Reviewers would skewer my writing. Other authors would snicker behind my back. But the contract said I needed to finish. By a specific date. And the contract didn’t factor in my level of enjoyment. So I spend my days pushing to rise to my best self. And realizing things about myself I never knew.
Challenges are opportunities for growth, but sometimes they just mean you have to sit at your desk, work hard, and swivel your hips. Maybe the best part of a challenge is not the fun in winning, or a head thrown back in laughter or creating lasting memories for a scrapbook, or scaling the tallest mountain, but the real beauty in taking on a challenge is simply completing what needs to be done.
Lesa Cline-Ransome
Reblogged this on WORDS…With a Dash of SABOR and commented:
I often think I hold the gold medal in self-doubt. I am so filled with “I can’t” that when I do, I usually pick apart what I’ve succeeded in doing. Lesa reminds me I’m not alone in the self-doubt arena. Perhaps all writers are stymied by this. But she also reminds me that there is beauty in taking on a challenge–and perhaps that’s reward enough–to meet the challenge, whether it be Zumba or writing.