Stumbling is a sign of momentum

I'm here to tell you that stumbling *is* the path, rather than a sign that you fucked up the path

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Today’s inspiration:

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

- Thomas Edison

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Now onto the essay:

“Stumbling is a Sign of Momentum” was originally published in the fall of 2021. I’m re-posting because a lot of the essay’s themes have been (re)emerging in recent coaching conversations:

• Accepting that the journey of change is non-linear and messy.

• That “failing” or “regressing” is a function of change, not an indication that you’re doing anything wrong.

• The quantum leaps that can occur when a person lands on a genuine reframe, or when something previously murky is suddenly illuminated.

I hope it kicks off your week in a helpful way.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

In February 2020, I’d just started dating a man I’d met on Hinge. He had a strong—if constantly furrowed—brow, sad eyes, and rode a motorcycle. He had a brown belt in Jujitsu, worked in the fine art world, and was fixing up a Vanagon to travel across the country in. Sure, he was just getting out of a sixteen-year relationship, but I was smitten, which meant fantasizing about #vanlife and magically thinking away every last red flag (including the one from our very first date where he told me he was still living in his ex’s basement).

I was dating a few people at the time, and under normal circumstances, I would have moved on pretty quickly from this sort-of-kind-of-only-barely-available person, just dipping his toe back in the dating pool after being out for almost two decades. But then, pandemic. I immediately knew I didn’t feel safe enough to keep dating the other two men I’d been hanging out with, but something about Sad Eyes felt familiar to my nervous system. In the chaos of the early days of COVID, when none of us knew what was happening—when we were fastidiously sanitizing grocery bags before bringing them up from the garage, and bleaching all the doorknobs and light switches twice a day—“dating” as I’d known it stopped being a thing, which meant pivoting (bleh) from ice cream and restaurant dates to long, masked walks in McLaren Park, over and over, for months.

Even as the COVID data rolled in and we learned how to safely start hanging out, Sad Eyes ran hot and cold. He’d be present, and attentive, and then fall off the map. Days would go by and I wouldn’t hear from him. Then we’d hang out, and it would be fun, full of meandering conversations, bad sci-fi, and picking up take-out and driving to some cool view to eat in my car and chat and watch the fog roll in or the moon rise or the sun set. There was something about having someone’s shoulder to rest my head on during such tumultuous times that had me justifying all the bummer disappointments. We’re in a pandemic! I told myself. Everyone is struggling! I was on a roller coaster, constantly bemoaning my upsets to my poor housemates while internally I adjusted my expectations, talking myself out of what I actually wanted. Everything is apocalyptic! Something is better than nothing!

And then…eighteen months passed.

Do you know what it means to be breadcrumbed? It’s when a person you’re hanging out with gives you just enough attention to keep you hooked, but then the second you return that attention, they pull back. If I had a dollar for every time I declared myself “done;” for every time I told him this wasn’t working; for every time my heart would race hoping that ping on my phone was him, and how very rarely it ever was; but also, for how many times I said and thought all these things, and then continued to hang out with him anyway, I would have precisely nine-hundred-thousand-billion dollars.

This, the thing my pobrecita nervous system recognized.

I finally called it quits with Sad Eyes in back in July, after he went on and on one night about all the PTO he’d racked up at his job, speculating out loud about all the places he might travel to, without once including me in the daydream. It was finally the thing that exhausted me enough to walk away.

Except: we’ve been texting again! We’ve even hung out a few times! It’s hard not to fall back into another familiar-to-the-nervous-system-story, the one that I’ve told myself since forever, the one that goes: there’s something very wrong with me. I’ve worked so hard to change the narrative I tell myself about myself, but when it comes to men and relationships it is still a lot of fumbling around in the dark. The next layer of the onion, as it were.

Anyway: Ashley and I went out the other night and I was bemoaning my Issues with Men and Dating and how frustrating it is to know something on an intellectual level (in this case, that no, I don’t want to be with a man who breadcrumbs me) but still behave in ways that are contrary to that knowing. It’s uncomfortable for all the aforementioned and obvious reasons, but also a bit scary, because it’s eerily similar to my pattern with drinking: knowing that the poison wasn’t serving me, wanting desperately to be done, making bold declarations of abstinence, and then inevitably fucking up and falling back into the pit of shame (give me a non-drinker and I’ll show you…an over-thinker).

As I paused to catch my breath, Ashley sat back from the squash soup we were sharing. “Well, you know what coach Steve says: ‘Stumbling is a sign of momentum.’” Then she gave me a delightful metaphor: That when humans are in a process of change, we’re like little screws, going around the same groove again and again. It may seem like we’re grinding away at the same familiar territory, and in many ways, we are. But what we forget is that every time we turn around the screw’s obnoxiously well-worn grooves, we’re slightly higher up each time.

Coach Steve! My new hero. The lightbulb’s been buzzing bright above my brain ever since.

Believe it or not: This post isn’t about relationships. I mean, it is. But only partly.

The other part is the part about the reality of change, and what is required if a person is to change in ways that are sustainable over the long-term.

When you seek to blow up a familiar pattern—particularly those that are so ingrained in your nervous-system that it’s challenging to even see, let alone believe, that a different way might be possible—an abstinence only approach is often, at first, unhelpful, because it keeps you in the cycle of failure and shame. If you take an “all or nothing” approach, all the focus on is the failure, rather than the lessons you might learn inside a more mindful turn of the screw.

Shame is not the way. Nor punishment. Berating yourself when you falter might seem like the way to motivate yourself to never fuck up again, and maybe it works for a time. But if I know anything, it’s that hating oneself into change is an unsustainable practice. If shame worked, you’d be the most healed, transformed person on the planet.

If stumbling is a given; if it means that nothing is wrong at all; if stumbling *is* the path, rather than a sign that you fucked up the path, well. How might you interact with the stumble in a way that fosters curiosity, an expanded self-awareness, and the resilience to not get stuck in shame or failure, but to simply get back on course and continue apace?

“Stumbling is a sign of momentum” is self-compassion, kindness, and forgiveness right at the moment you need it most. This is something you can offer to yourself, this is how you resource back into yourself; this is you not dependent on anyone or anything outside of yourself to make you OK. This is how you begin to trust and take care of yourself. This is you, reminding yourself of your precious humanity, this is the joy of not being a robot. This is harm reduction, and harm reduction is progress.

This is how you change.

Five years ago, I was adrift and scared and lost. I drew a line in the sand and made a choice that I never thought it would be possible for me to make, the effects of which still delight me in their mysteriousness. And this choice would have been unsustainable, or certainly nowhere near as joyful, had I not learned to love myself for my humanness.

I am still learning how to do this. But I trust that when it comes to whatever it is I might be examining in myself at any given moment, a day is coming where the familiar screw makes its final turn around the well-worn grooves—pop! just like that!—and I get to look back on all the prior revolutions with those delightful feelings that never get old. You know the ones: relief. Awe, and wonder. A smattering of pride, if I may say so. A boost in self-confidence: What else might I be capable of transforming, of healing?

And this is how it goes: out to dinner with a dear friend, when, like a flash, which wasn’t a flash at all, but a culmination of stumble after stumble after stumble after stumble and so on etc, the thing you’d been gripping on for so long releases. The warm, gentle glow of a lightbulb buzzes in what used to be a dark room. There’s no need to explore the room just yet, no need to fill it up with stuff, just yet. You can sit for a while. You can linger.

Look at all this SPACE.

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SELF MADE empowers you to liberate yourself from societal programming and step boldly into a life of your design. Posts are written by me, Dani Cirignano, writer, Integral Coach, and recovery guide based in San Francisco, CA. 

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