During the back to back trials of recent years, my capacity has been at an all-time low. This meant cutting back on anything and everything that was not essential to keeping a roof over my head. Avoidable stressors were removed from the menu. These included dealing with technology in many of its guises. And apps were top of that list following numerous stress-inducing attempts to use them. They were designated to the ‘I can’t, right now, pile.
Consequently, I now associate the word ‘app’ with an immediate raise in stress levels! I hate having to register, create a password and fill in boxes that require attention to small details that bore the arse off me. All the things that irritate me on a good day and could take me under on a bad day!
Now, upon hearing the word ‘app’, my resistance rises with a roar, “I can’t do app’s”. And this response has become automated and embedded.
However, since coming out of the shit shows of recent years, my capacity is increasing. And I have found myself in new communities with new opportunities. These require me to address the areas that became ‘no-go, I-can’t’ zones, out of necessity. Like dealing with app’s.
It is now a necessity to stop avoiding these, start working through my resistance and explore what I can move from the ‘I can’t’ pile, to the ‘I can’ pile. And how.
I am working to establish and address where and how to put the can back in my can’t. We all have limitations as an expression of our humanity, not of failure. In fact, I have learned that I fail myself if I repeatedly force myself to do things I can’t, whether at that point or any point. This only re-enforces a sense of failure about my can’t. It is kinder to be honest with myself about my limitations and whether:
- This is something I have been unable to do but now that I have the capacity, I can seek help to push through on learning how to do this: any form of tech
- This is something I can’t do as it is beyond the realms of my capabilities. I will employ someone who does have this skill set. For example, DIY!
- This is something I can do as it flows from my natural skill set and training; counselling
- This is something I can do (mostly) but I really dislike doing; any form of admin!
It has not been enjoyable spending years watching my ‘I can’t’, pile grow so big I worried I would become obsolete as a human. Ditto watching my ‘I can’ pile shrink to a disturbing minimum. Instead of surrendering to this process gracefully, I fought it tooth and nail all the way. Which made the whole experience much longer and more painful. Until I had nothing left in the tank to even feign an ‘I can’ to myself, in an area of ‘I can’t.’
Now I am much more realistic with myself about what I can and can’t do. Life is much easier this way!
And I am now rebuilding my ‘I can’ pile. There will always be some things in the ‘I can’t’ pile, whether temporarily or permanently, and that is ok. But there are some things that now need to be faced, worked on and moved from the I can’t pile to the I can pile.
One of the key factors that help me to rebuild my bank of ‘I can’, lived experience, is those special people that believe in me and remind me that I can, when I am afraid that I can’t.
Sometimes I need to lean on those who believe in me, until I push through to find my can. Before doing something new, or for the first time in a while, it is easy to fear that ‘I can’t’. It takes courage, faith, trust and support to attempt such a task. But once done, I create the lived experience of ‘I can’. Or I identify what I still struggle with and seek the appropriate help to move towards my ‘I can.’
But until I seek support for the ‘I can’t’, the desire to experience an ‘I can’, remains a theoretical concept. Once done, irrespective of time or support needed, it becomes an embodied knowing that I can.
It is only when I witness my ‘I cant’s’ becoming ‘I cans’, that I gain the confidence and trust to keep going and growing in what I can do. While accepting and releasing what I can’t.
This, like everything in life, is a process – one I am calling, ‘practising my can-can dance’!