Two steps forward one step back

How many times have you heard this or said this to yourself about life?

Sometimes you would even say you went even further back than one step or on a good day your maybe just are treading water; Life is hard.

I always try to look on the positive side of life but I am in no way perfect, far from it, I am grumpy, stubborn, sometimes arrogant and go into a huff like a 5-year-old (just ask Kerry).

I am always my worst critic, if I feel I have not done a good job, for example D I Y, you read the instructions carefully then set everything out and go through each step trying to construct the item. If one thing is put in upside down or you end up with four screws extra you must start again or have the constant thought that it may fall apart at any time. This could be a metaphor for life, the feeling of starting again makes you feel like you have let yourself or others down in some way. This is you being hard on yourself, but I struggle with this in my life, just as I feel I am getting better at this I take a huge strop and feel like I am back to square one or like snakes and ladders, sliding down the big snake to the start again. There is no logic reason to feel like this but you do, or at least I do, I am getting better at coming out of my little huffy strop but I have not found a way of not going into it in the first place; I am not that advanced as a human yet.

In life, you are going to make mistakes, if you learn from them it is worth while moving forward, but sometimes you feel the harder you push forward the further you get pushed back, like trying to walk in quick sand the more you struggle the faster you sink into the sand. This makes you feel like not bothering to push yourself or do anything and you would rather just tread water, or the quote I use is hanging by a thread. Kerry and I love watching undercover boss, a programme where the CEO of the company goes in disguise back into the heart of the company to see how the company is truly run to learn if the company is working well. Sometimes hearing what the employees are going through in their personal lives is heart breaking but you still see them giving 100 % to the company with great positivity and commitment is amazing. Sometimes the CEO rewards them at the end of the show with what to the CEO may seem a small gesture (normally money) but to the employee it is lifechanging for them, they breakdown crying and are overwhelmed by the gesture but sometimes it is the CEO that gets the most out the experience, it just shows you that one seemly little gesture can change a person’s life, it restores my faith in people but also shows me how many people are just clinging on to life by their fingernails.

I try to see the good in people, but that does not mean I am a good person but I have many faults that just seem to repeat like a broken record, sometimes the harder I try to fix them the further I fall back, the frustrating thing is I know I have them but I keep just repeatedly doing them, like a recurring injury.

I know I am old (middle-aged) so injuries are easy to get but are harder to fix and are hard to admit. I train a lot and sometimes I get an injury from training that takes a while to fix, that frustrates me and pisses me off! The constant pain gets me down sometimes and I become ratty and take it out on Kerry, I don’t mean too then I go in a mood because I feel bad about the situation then say sorry and then still feel bad which makes things worse. When my injury fixes itself I always promise myself that I will not be so stupid again to make the injury re-occur, but I get excited training or get hurt letting people practice on me repeatedly until I get hurt again, sometimes it feels like a hamster wheel that I can’t get off. Thus, the feeling of two steps forward and one step back. I writing this blog currently with a damaged shoulder and neck injury lasting from January, that is getting me down and making sleep hard, teaching hard and life in general sore and tiring, I have even taken to pain killers to help ease the pain, but as my lovely wife Kerry says “you don’t get a day off life!” so here I am walking two steps forward and one step back but still moving forward.

Big love from the AFC xx