Olympian achievements

#022 The superhuman or the ordinary

The most important thing, they say, if you want to be a writer, is just to write. To sit down, put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, voice to dictaphone, and get those words out of your mind and onto the page. Not just once, after the creative writing class, or when the feeling strikes, but routinely and consistently, making a commitment to yourself and your craft. It is through effort that a book or article is written, not superhuman talent.

I have not posted anything for a while, having lacked the headspace to write creatively for Substack. I have created and run a writing workshop, so there has been some writing, but nothing requiring sustained attention, intentional reflection, and editing to a standard fit for the scrutiny of an audience. There have been major changes happening, and I have had to listen to and respect what my mind could manage from day to day, and it has not been creative writing. I’ve missed being here and hope I have something worthwhile to say!

Source- 9071293694_4d6ac94d85.jpg (406×500) (staticflickr.com)

I wondered yesterday about writing, but the news has been so utterly horrific I did not want to consider any of it. I feel sickened and afraid of the violence and hatred that people are mindlessly acting out, justifying their actions to themselves with stories that have little truth. I wish I had the words to write with the clarity that others have, but instead I can only stand witness, open mouthed in horror, and say I wholeheartedly abhor it, and pray that this violence stops soon. Those of you not living in the UK may not know what I’m writing about, but sadly there are so many violent acts happening around the world that you likely are aware of plenty of events that would fit. Whilst it can seem insignificant in so many ways, Substack writers seed potential connections, comfort, and deep thinking that bring things out into the light. Paraphrasing Kelli Finglass, the Director of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, in Netflix’s Amercia’s Sweethearts (delightful distraction TV viewing this week!),

Shine your light, and take it into the world to bring joy and happiness to others.

The personal struggle

Having had a month away, I wondered how to get back into the writing groove. When our daily practice changes, the loss of momentum can make it easier for resistance to creep in. Do ‘they’ say it takes 30 days to create a habit? Or 21? According to Philippa Lally at the Habit Application and Theory Group at Surrey University, the science doesn’t support this pop-psychology, and everyone’s timescale is different (no original source given, but reported in Jocelyn Solis-Moreira’s online article, 2024). I wonder what the research says about how many days it takes to break a habit we have formed, and to have to start all over again? Does it become easier each time we restart, or are we more likely to give up? My guess is that it depends on the story we tell ourselves. Do you notice your own stories and how they help and hinder your writing practice?

I don’t know about you, but a critical voice will sometimes accompany my non-writing spells, narrating a story with the potential to keep me further from my writing practice. It might say something along the lines of;

‘If you were a real writer, or really committed to this it shouldn’t be difficult, you’d just get on and do it.’

And what it might really mean in those moments is something like;

‘I’m scared of what you’re doing. I’m scared that you’ll fail, or be laughed at, or ignored, or be seen, so I’m going to do everything I can to protect you from these possible horrors. I’m going to kill your motivation to put your words out into the world in whatever way that I can’.

In its way the inner voice is trying to protect us, but the more it whispers ‘don’t bother’, the harder is can be to maintain the routine and keep writing. It is such a waste of our energy.

I don’t think I’m alone in sometimes having these kinds of thoughts and they can make us feel vulnerable, and as if we are the only one experiencing them. We typically do not like feeling vulnerable, and we may have been told that it is a sign of weakness, and shamed. Brene Brown has written a lot about shame and its tendency to grow and thrive in the shadows, when we feel cut off and different. We need to find the alternative stories that give us the strength and courage to be vulnerable so we can keep following our passions, not our fears.

We are all the same(ish)!

Just before sitting down to read and take notes from Cathy Renztenbrink’s book, Write it All Down, this morning, I listened to Reverend Kate Bottley’s interview with Iwan Thomas on BBC Radio 2. Iwan is a retired athlete who competed at Olympic level for many years. He won silver in the 1996 Olympics in the 4 x 400m relay, with Jamie Baulch, Mark Richardson, and one of my 90’s crushes, Roger Black. Iwan was on the radio promoting his autobiography, Brutal, and commenting on the Olympic games. I have not read the book, but understand that he writes about the darker sides of competition as a way of life. It’s a story we’ve heard told before by professional athletes, who all share a strong drive to succeed and train to be the best. They reach the top of their sports, performing at seemingly super-human levels, until they don’t. Iwan and other sports stars have shared the darkness of depression that consumes them when injury, or retirement ends a way of life. Brutal is Iwan’s personal story of what happened when he could no longer respond to set backs by training harder. I didn’t hear all of the interview, but a line that caught my attention was along the lines of;

‘I didn’t want to go for a run’.

A successful, committed, world class runner did not want to go for a run. Surely he must love going running? I don’t know why I was surprised, so I took some time to ponder my immediate reaction.

Just saying and writing down that statement shows how utterly ridiculous and absolutist it is. Who loves anything, or anyone, so much that they never experience mixed feelings, and at least an ounce of resistance? I am unwittingly creating a caricature out of Iwan as an ‘Olympian deity’, forgetting he is a human being, achieving extraordinary things with grit and determination! I’m setting a standard for Iwan that is superhuman.

There is undoubtedly a lot of marketing and archetypal heroism influencing my blindness, so I’m not taking full responsibility for it! But it is there, underneath the cognitive knowing. The magic of life’s synchronicity is that it often repeats messages to help us attend to, and process them. As I made my way through Write it All Down, I came across a line that essentially repeated Iwan’s confession, but in relation to professional writers…

Renztenbrink acknowledged that ‘proper writers’ struggle to do the writing. They experience resistance, and don’t always want to do it, or love it. Indeed, they often don’t love it, though they might love the writing once it is done, and love having something written.

It’s so obvious written down. I know it cognitively, but the remembering of its truth revealed the possibility that I had bought into a story that writers and Olympians were different to me. That they achieved what they achieved because they were superhuman. This is often the story told to us. The implications being that they are different, and special, and perhaps don’t struggle in the way ‘ordinary’ people do. Yet, here is Cathy, a professional writer, telling me that she, and other professional successful writers are not special people, protected from these challenges. They are not the equivalent of idealised Olympians, but ordinary human beings who push through the inertia, and write anyway, even on they days they do not want to. It is only by writing the crap first draft that they can find and polish the diamonds. And they are good at this partly not solely due to innate talent, but because they practice, and practice, and practice some more.

This is a both a terrible and a wonderful realisation. I cannot give myself a ‘Get out of writing jail free’ card by telling myself the lie that paid writers are a special breed, and have super powers that I do not. They are people who put the work in. And are fortunate enough to get the break they need. Then they put more work in.

You and I do not have to try (and of course fail) to be superhuman. We just have to keep writing and polishing our work, even when the stories that we tell ourselves fan our resistance to it, or we are thrown off our routine and practice for other reasons.

What to do with this realisation?!

This of course does not mean that I will be a successful writer if I just keep writing. The world does not owe me an audience, nor ‘success’. The world offers time, and I am fortunate enough to have the ability to choose how I use it. Today, I chose to use it to write. And just as it is when you’ve not been for a run in a while, it feels a bit shaky, but good to be back out there.

As with my adjusted running goals (in Celebrating the Glimmers), we can each define our own writing success. I will keep turning up, without pressure, for as long as I enjoy it, and desire it enough. But in the coming weeks my articles may be less frequent, and / or shorter. After weeks of waiting, I have been approved for a licence to practice as a psychologist overseas. There is another stage to be processed and a bit more waiting, but in the meantime there is much to be done. I need to use my time to tidy the house. I need to use it to fill in forms, and start packing up my life. Amongst the excited and organised parts of me, there is also a fearful part that I need to take care of.

Fortunately the wisdom in Cathy Renztenbrink’s book applies to many of life’s challenges beyond the page. She shares Julia Samuel’s term for the scaremongering parts of ourselves that can create suffering as we walk our path - ‘The Shitty Committee’. I personify this, and imagine a cantankerous board chaired and vice-chaired by the grumpy old men in The Muppets show; Statler and Waldorf. They heckle from the balcony, trying to squash all glimmers of light, and yet they’re part of the show, whether we like it or not. We might do well to understand their ire, and consider how we can help them evolve, and open up to more light, and in the meantime, how to turn the volume of their heckling down.

Rentzenbrink reminds us that the closer we get to something brave, and bold, and new, the louder this ‘Shitty Committee’ heckle. I also keep reading that a creative life is entwined with doubt, like a double helix in every cell of our being. If we want the pleasure of a creative life, and potential growth from stepping into our vulnerability, we have no choice but to engage with the discomfort that it can bring, and follow Susan Jeffers’ advice…

Feel the fear and do it anyway

Susan Jeffers

We are all the superhuman and the ordinary. Keep putting your light into the world, knowing it is everything and enough.