I don’t really have any hobbies as such, I enjoy walking and reading and eating and discovered yoga about 18 months ago which I usually enjoy doing.
In lockdown1 I really made the most of the daily exercise and spent the baby’s nap time walking with the pushchair every day. My partner would always ask me how far I’d gone, how many steps I’d done, how long it had taken me. One week I accidentally walked a marathon over the week and he said I could aim for that every week, could maybe try to do it faster, could start to try running some of it...He was suggesting this with the best intentions-for him it’s all about the goal and he enjoys trying to beat his time, to get better, to challenge himself. He thrives on competition. But for me this meant I was always feeling inadequate, I stopped enjoying the walks because I was thinking too much about how far I had to go or how fast I needed to walk, feeling like I should be jogging and then feeling like a failure when I wasn’t. Similarly with yoga I went through a phase of trying to improve, of trying to master poses, or trying to get more out of it by doing more difficult classes. And I stopped enjoying it. Recently I did a yoga class which I found frustratingly slow to begin with, but the teacher said about how yoga is all about the process and not the end goal,how it’s about working with your own body and not about getting into a certain shape. And that really resonated with me. I’ve started enjoying yoga just for the practice itself again rather than focusing on getting better at it. This morning I looked out of the window and saw it was a beautiful day, strapped my toddler into the pushchair, left everyone else at home and just went for a walk. I didn’t think about how far I was going or how fast, I just walked. And I loved it and I felt great afterwards.
We all know the saying that comparison is the thief of joy but it hadn’t really occurred to me before that this could include comparison to yourself. I’m going to really make the effort to just enjoy things again, it doesn’t have to be about self improvement all the time!