Fall Down 100 Times, Get Up 101

Thank you so much for your response to my newsletter article last week – I was so pleased to have encouraged and inspired you to Give Blood (or to hassle your friends and family to do so! I’m not fussy, as long as someone gives.) I actually got a lovely letter from the Blood Donation Service thanking me for my efforts, with a certificate to prove my 17 donations. It will take pride of place. It was a really nice touch for them to say thank you, and I had to laugh because they said ‘being an ambassador is just as helpful to us’ – by the time I received that I’d already heckled my friends on Facebook, twitter, my blog and in this newsletter – I was way ahead of them!

The end of the week saw me slapped down by life, really falling hard on my backside, and the Japanese proverb “Fall down 100 times, get up 101″ came very strongly to mind! So for this week I have pulled out this article from 2007 – just as relevant now. Enjoy!

- Fall Down 100 Times Get Up 101 -

When will I ‘get it’? When will I learn? When will I feel like I know what I’m doing in this game of life? Ever asked yourself these questions, or something similar? Welcome to the club! Would it surprise you to hear that the most self-possessed, successful, confident people ask themselves these questions? Would it surprise you to hear that you are not alone in feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing?

Of course, if you do know what you’re doing, in every area of your life, and you are the perfect person who never feels wrong-footed, or out of your depth, or confused. Congratulations…I don’t believe in you, but congratulations anyway! See, I don’t believe that ‘the perfect person’ exists. The only people I’ve ever met who are ‘totally together’ are not very together when you scratch the surface just a little!

Remember when you were little? How did you learn to walk? By falling on your bum 100 times and getting back up again 101 times. (or 1000 and 1001!) How did you learn to talk? By getting it wrong a lot! Spend some time with a toddler if you don’t remember – only mom’s understand toddler-speak…but somehow they learn to get the right words, then sentences, then before you know it they can speak perfectly.

There is a funny (to me!) belief that when we leave school we stop learning. Once we reach 21, we should know everything there is to know about the world. By 30, we should definitely have a handle on this ‘living’ stuff and get everything right, all the time. And past 30? The Perfect Person. Master (or Mistress) of the Universe.

Sadly it’s not so! We keep learning. Every day. We’re doing our best to live our lives every day, and we learn to do things a bit better every day. The problem comes when your expectations of yourself don’t allow you learning time. Imagine if as a toddler you gave up after you first fell on your arse? You’d still be crawling. Being willing to learn means being willing to get it wrong…that’s the way you learn. Fall down 100 times, get up 101.

- Something to Play With -

Where in life are you still learning? Are you enjoying that learning process or giving yourself a hard time for not being perfect instantly? What would change if you allowed yourself to just enjoy being a beginner? Want to share your thoughts on this article? Leave a comment below.

Love

Donna.x

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How Quick Are You Gonna Get Up?

I was just listening to ‘Ali in the Jungle’ by The Hours – here’s a snippet of the lyrics:

Everybody gets knocked down,
How quick are you gonna’ get up?

At the end of last week I had quite a significant knock down – one that left me feeling totally squooshed (like Thomas out of Tom and Jerry when he’s just been whacked with the broom!) Fortunately my friends helped me pick myself up off the floor and get (tentatively) back up again. Today when I was listening to this song, it seemed a very appropriate subject to share with you. Everybody gets knocked down. Everybody. It’s just one of them things. The important thing is how quick are you going to get back up?

This is not to say that you should get back up instantly. Oh no, take the time to hurt if you need to hurt, to hide if you need to hide, to cry if you need to cry. Be gentle with yourself when you’ve been knocked down. But once you’ve had some recovery time, get up. And keep going. You won’t be alone in being knocked down, and when you get up you’ll be stronger, wiser…and maybe it will even turn out that there’s a big silver lining in that there cloud. This knock-down might just have knocked me into the path of something very inspiring…we’ll see.

Love

Donna.x

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