More Committed Than Comfortable

My life has a word for this season, and the word is more.

More students. More plans. More things I said yes to because I love them. Loving something has a way of making you forget to check your calendar first.

So I'm learning how to manage "more." I'd love to tell you I've figured it out, but I haven't. What I have figured out is that "more" doesn't come with a bigger day. It comes with the same twenty-four hours and a whole new set of questions about what deserves them.

Right now, one of those questions is sitting on my desk in the form of my teaching plan.

When the plan meets real people

I built that plan with so much hope. I could see exactly how it would unfold. Then I watched it meet real students, with real lives and real questions, and some of it worked beautifully—

—and some of it didn't.

This is the humbling part, because the old me had two favorite ways of handling a moment like this. The first was to get a little defensive: explain why the plan was actually fine, if everyone would just look at it the right way. The second was to quietly ignore the problem and hope it went away, which, as you know, is how a small problem grows up into a REAL problem.

Both of those options are comfortable in their own way. Defensiveness protects my pride. Ignoring protects my schedule. Both call up my personal Protector, the part of me that stepped in and helped me feel safe when I was a child.

But neither one protects my students. And neither one makes me better. And I'm not a child anymore.

So I'm practicing a harder sentence. I show up to my students and say:

"I can see this isn't as awesome as I'd hoped it would be. What can I do to improve it?"

I have to take a deep breath every time I say it. And every single time, something good happens afterward. People lean in. They tell me what they need. The thing gets better. I get better.

No pain, no gain (I know, I know)

It reminds me of working out. When your muscles ache the day after, it doesn't mean something went wrong. It means something is changing. The soreness is the evidence.

I used to think growth would feel like a breakthrough, like a door flying open and a guy shouting, "By George, I think she's got it!" But mostly it feels like sore muscles. It feels like revising something I was proud of. It feels like saying "I was wrong about this part" out loud, in front of people I want to impress.

I've been carrying around a quote from Billy Cox that names this better than I can:

Life will only change when you become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.

I've realized my comfort zone isn't just the couch and the cozy blanket (though I do love both). My comfort zone is also the way I've always done it. It's I'll get to it when things calm down. It's I'd rather not admit this isn't working.

Making room when life is already full

For a long time, I thought making room for something I loved meant waiting for empty space. Someday the calendar would clear, and then I'd finally have time.

The calendar never clears, ya know? I know you know.

Making room turns out to be less like finding an empty shelf and more like reorganizing a full closet. You take everything out. You look at each thing clearly. You decide what goes back in, and in what order.

NaNoWriMo built "November is about writing" into my brain. Even with my teaching plan in pieces and a life full of "more," I'm making room for a story this month. Not hours and hours. Sometimes just a page before the day starts. But a page I chose, on purpose, over something easier.

Your thing might not be writing at all. Maybe it's the piano you used to play. The garden. The sketchbook. The trail you keep meaning to hike, or the friend you keep meaning to call. Whatever it is, it doesn't need a perfectly cleared calendar.

It needs you to be a little more committed to it than you are to comfortable.

Your invitation this month

I'll leave you with two questions. Sit with whichever one tugs at you.

What's one thing you love that's been waiting for room? What's the smallest space you could clear for it this month? (Small counts. Small is how it starts.)

Where could you trade a little comfort for growth? Maybe it's asking the hard question. Maybe it's admitting the plan needs revising. Maybe it's saying, "This isn't as awesome as I hoped. How can I make it better?"

Growth is humbling. But it's also how we become.

Tell me what you're making room for. I'd love to cheer you on.