How Self Expectations Work
The young mother woke up. She put her jogging clothes on. She looked in the mirror. She told herself that it was going to be a great day. Today, she was going to achieve her potential.
She started jogging down the street. She looked at all the streets in the town. Dread filled her heart. She would never be able to jog all of the streets in town by the end of the day. She wanted to crawl back into bed. She didn’t want to face another day of inevitable failure. Nevertheless, she tightened her courage and started jogging. Today, she thought, might be different.
The mother jogged past Elm street. She had many more streets to go. She passed Juniper street. She passed Maple street. On and on she jogged.
By lunch time, the mother had jogged through more than a quarter of the streets in the town. Sweat pored down her face. She had moved with speed and precision. She had pushed herself hard, rarely taking breaks. Now, the day was halfway done and she knew she would never jog all of the streets in town. Heartache and tears began to well up inside of her. The feeling of inevitable failure began to creep in. She would never be able to finish it all. She stood up, and started to jog once again.
The day began to draw near to an end as she passed Spruce street. The sun had set and she had been jogging late into the night. Her body ached. Her stamina was spent. She had jogged eighty percent of the streets in her town. She felt like an absolute failure. She had a burning desire to be a good jogger, but she would never be able to finish jogging all of the streets in her town. She would always fail.
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The mother woke up. She was not as young as she used to be. She was wiser though. She knew she couldn’t run all of the streets in her town. She wasn’t going to attempt it. Instead, she was going to do what she believed was possible. She put on her jogging clothes. She stepped outside. She took in a deep breath of air. The smells of the town where very familiar to her now. She no longer got lost. She knew the streets by heart. She started on her daily jog.
As she jogged, she set the course in her mind. Today, she would stop at maple street. Maple street was a reasonable street to stop at. As she neared Maple street, she decided that Maple street was not really reasonable. A good jogger could run as far as Acacia street. She passed Maple street and kept jogging.
After some time, she neared Acacia street. The street was still in the distance, but the gap was closing at a reasonable pace. She considered other joggers in her mind. She had never actually run with them, but she remembered that she saw pictures of them standing on different streets in the town. Some of them had been standing on Aspen street. As she thought about those pictures, she was unsatisfied with her jog for the day. She decided that she needed to jog to Aspen street. Good joggers, she thought, can run to Aspen street.
Aspen street was still far away. She needed to push herself to run faster. She started to motivate herself by berating and belittling herself. She had started this method of self-motivation years ago. She didn’t think that it worked very well, but she didn’t have time to consider a different method. On and on she jogged.
The mother never reached Aspen street. She was two blocks away from Aspen street and two hundred and twenty blocks away from Maple street, when she became too tired to jog anymore. As she boarded the city bus to head back home, she thought about her failure as a jogger. She thought about her failure, all night.
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The old but wise mother woke up. She put her jogging clothes on. She wanted to jog today. She loved jogging. She liked the smell of the air. She loved the sites in the town. She loved the feeling of the pavement on the street. She loved that God had given her the gift of jogging. As she set out on her run, she felt the breeze through her hair. She felt the wind on her face. She allowed the exhilaration of movement to flow through her. She didn’t have any particular distance to achieve today. Today, she simply enjoyed jogging.