‘NOTHING will sabotage our happiness more thoroughly than the fear that we are not enough’. The words of renowned psychologist Bill Crawford echoed through my mind recently when a conversation with friends extracted a withdrawal from the memory-bank.
Sometimes those chats reimagine the happiest of days, sometimes they recall the worst of nights, but my recent journey into yesteryear created nothing but frustration and thoughts of undelivered dreams.
There was a period during my teenage years when I was a fairly good runner. The 800m was my thing. I was exceptionally fit because of countless daily training sessions for football, boxing and anything else that came my way. The fact that I was blessed with speed and endurance was a crucial ingredient when competition came around, and I was fairly successful in that period.
It was the mid ’80s and all was good in my life. I was enjoying sport, enjoying being a teenager and looking to find my own way in the world. However, I was fearful of ever fully trying my best at anything, and that had a huge impact then – and ever since.
Of course, this wasn’t a conscious campaign on my part. I didn’t really know why I was ducking out of everything when the going got tough, I just knew I was minding myself the best way I knew how. In the recent conversation I got to relive a few of these frustrating times but they still made no sense.
As I said, I was a fairly good runner and got through to the Connacht Championship. The finals took place in Carrick-on-Shannon. Two days earlier, Dad and I were in the bog, making good use of the fine weather.
Of course, being a young fella I paid no heed to sun-safety and spent most of the day with the T-shirt off, stripped to the waist and delighted with myself. That night the terrible itch began. My back was like a furnace, the skin had been burned to a crisp and was accompanied by a terrible headache and vomiting. That continued all through Saturday, and when Sunday morning came around, the pain had eased somewhat, but I had as much energy as a snowball in the desert.
I couldn’t sit comfortably on the journey to Carrick that day and felt every bump along the way. However, I still had enough left in the legs to handily qualify for the All-Irelands. Initially, there was great excitement about that prospect, but as the days passed the anxiety of having to try one’s best on the national stage grew and grew. The need to self-sabotage was strong, and it grew stronger and more acute every time my brain gave it space.
I knew I had reached a pivotal moment in life. Would I go to the championships and give my best or would I find an excuse to give less of myself? In my mind there was great jeopardy in the first option. If I went to the finals, tried my best and was beaten there was no escape from the fact that I wasn’t good enough. However, if I somehow managed to dodge the championships then I could forever paint a picture of what might have been. In my teenage mind it was a no-brainer.
A week before the finals I was running in the Open Sports in Glenisland, still searching for an esacpe route. I found it. I was running in the mile race, a few circles of a farmer’s field marked out by little posts stuck in the ground.
As we came round one of the bends I spotted the remnants of a pile of cowdung. In truth the cowdung had been cleaned away, leaving it perfectly safe for us to run, but I saw my chance and somehow slipped right at that spot.
Of course, I was ‘injured’ and – long story short – missed the championshops the following week with a bad knee.
At the time it was somewhat of a relief, but as the days, weeks, months, years and decades passed, sadness about that action has grown inside me. Instead of bringing peace, my self-sabotage brought nothing but angst and frustration.
I learned many things in life, ‘try one’s best no matter what’ is one of the most precious. It may be tough, it may be frightening, but do it – you won’t regret it. Take it from me – a veteran of the self-sabotage brigade.
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