Maintaining Confidence: Use It Or Lose It.

I’m practicing the skills that I already have, especially the skills that don’t come naturally to me – the ones I have to work at. It’s my way of guarding against losing them. It’s so easy to avoid doing things that you find challenging. Why go to all the bother?  Life is ok without the stress of it, right?  But without practice, our brains stop getting the reinforcement that we can do this hard thing successfully, and our confidence plummets.*

Navigation And Highway Challenges

I’m not a fan of highway driving and trying to find a distant location that I’m unfamiliar with is a bit of a nightmare for me. You’d think that GPS would make my life easier, but it doesn’t. Instead of seeing the whole route on a paper map, I’m forced to observe bite-sized bits of the puzzle without any idea of how they relate to the larger picture. Driving with a GPS is giving up control and having faith in the process.  That’s more than a little unnerving! 

Expanding My Horizons

You’d think I would avoid travelling by myself to new destinations, but I don’t. I know that for every place I avoid travelling to, I’m telling my brain that I can’t do it. I’m reinforcing the thought that I can’t visit new places. In turn, this will diminish my choices in life. I’m not prepared to increasingly shrink my existence, until I’m stuck sitting in a chair in my living room.  

As part of the push to “use it or lose it,” I recently drove 2 hours out of town to a yarn retreat. I prepped myself for the journey with a bottle of water, some Fuzzy Peach candy and a full tank of gas.  Then, I set my GPS to avoid the highways because I thought that would make a challenging situation more pleasant. I was wrong. 

Best Laid Plans

The GPS created a route that looked like it had been drawn by an Etch A Sketch. Every couple of kilometres I was turning left and then right as I zigzagged north and east. The turns were so frequent that I missed one and was sent down a country road full of pot holes, as the GPS recalibrated my route. That dirt road was deserted. As I drove in the middle to avoid the worst of the craters, I wondered what I would do if I damaged a tire out here in the middle of nowhere!  This was a situation that even a package full of sour candy couldn’t improve.

Highway and Navigation Success

I made it to my retreat unscathed but exhausted. When it was time to go home, I didn’t repeat my error. This time I set my GPS to include highways and the route was more direct. The highways were not fun to drive on, but I took comfort in knowing that I wasn’t on a deserted road if I ran into car troubles. Despite my initial hesitancy to include highways on my trip, I returned home with renewed confidence in my ability to drive them. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts or stories about maintaining your confidence to use skills that you find challenging. Comment below.

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