How to Make It Through This

no matter what 'this' is

Last week I referenced an email that I sent three years ago. To my horror, not everyone on earth seems to have read it, and I realized it’s from a time before Substack, and not reference-able or shareable, so here it is again, dusted off and lightly edited either in service of my sanity or at the cost of it. Down in the paid portion, my modern addition fresh as of June 2024.

You decide…

OP: Spring 2021

One year ago...
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I had achieved many goals:
- I was on top of my email inbox
- There were no piles
- My storage unit was empty
- I had scheduled 20 Learn to Teach Yin trainings
- I could do six pull-ups
- I was six months coffee free
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At this* moment, my inbox tops out at 1,300 unread messages. I'm writing to you amid towering piles of mail that has come in, and an unkept and listing one that must go out. I have two trainings scheduled. I'm on day five of my pull-up training program. I'm into my third cup of coffee today.
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None of this is feels like a failure, exactly, but I also don't have the sense of confidence that I had a year ago. The momentum I had established has evaporated, and my daily wins are back at daily sadhana, three meals a day on plates, clean clothes, washing my face, and taking my vitamins. I'm working on the daily shower and the daily bed making, the daily meaningful conversation, and daily care for my own vehicle, but this all feels tenuous.
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Everything feels tenuous.

If I look back at the wreckege of the year and the personal evolution, I can feel both pride and shame. As I look forward, through the thicket of the deep woods that are behind and around us navigating a pandemic and a devastating diagnosis simultaneously, I have the adorable tendency to get sucked into the vortex of worry, anxiety, depression, disaster planning. Having done this for 40 years, I'm well practiced at following the dark path, absorbed by the darkness of negative thinking, self-pity, and preparing for the worst. Kwinns, it seems, are exemplary crisis-thinkers. Thankfully, I'm equally well-practiced at dusting myself off and forcing myself forwards.
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Elizabeth Gilbert wrote something about horizontal worry - the anxiety that keeps one from falling (or staying) asleep, the sense of dread and capacity to leverage creative thinking in the darkness that somehow is worse than getting up, and how she has picked her way through wreckage by getting up and not allowing herself to worry lying down. Like any good bit of self-helpery, I attempted her strategy:
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1. Notice worry
2. Get out of bed
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This may work for you, but I've found that I'm capable of worry in all orientations to gravity. I'm really good at it, in fact. I can worry upside down, or sideways, or while running or bathing, or pretending to meditate. My worry is nimble, persistent, and often hard to quantify. I'm not sure that my worry is sensitive to positioning in the way that Elizabeth's is (but try it - maybe yours is?).
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Worry is an emotion or a state or a condition that we all seem to be exploring in the wake of the pandemic, whether it is more strongly correlated to health or wealth or the unique suffering of spending loads of time with the same cohort of people. While I am no stranger to the experience myself, I'm finding that during the pandemic, those on my team and those in my circles are either more aware of or more willing to share their experiences of worry, which has invited a teaching to come out of me. I don't know where it came from, and it's as plain and simple as positional worry management, but it has been a powerful strategy for me.
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​Invest 10% of my time and effort on the absolute worst-case scenario. Really get into it.​
"What if they do ask me if it's time to disconnect life support?"
"What if this back pain and mild fever is a kidney infection?"
"What if the building does catch fire and our seven containers of oxygen explode and blow a giant hole in the side of the mountain and launch me directly into outer space without a suit and I spin out like Sandra Bullock in Gravity and have to shimmy around in a Russian space vessel in my undergarments AND WHY DID I NEVER LEARN THE CYRILLIC ALPHABET?!"
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(I said really get into it)
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​THEN​
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​Invest 90% of my time and effort in the absolute best-case scenario. Redirect my precious mind into the absolute best-case scenario.​
"What if someone who knows all the things about this thing could magically appear and help me with each simple step?"
"What if there is a tremendous crew of people who know exactly how to support me and my people so I can just do the things that only I can do?"
"What if..."
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It has been monumental in navigating the biggest and most intricate challenge of my life.
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Maybe it suits you, too?
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Let yourself worry and pity and despair (try standing up?), and then invest all of that talent and ferocity into imagining the best. The absolute magical miracle best.
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Report back?