Ever had a bad day? I don’t mean a bad luck day, like sickness or accident – I mean a bad day in which you got almost nothing done? Or something you had done turned out lousy?
In other words, a slump.
Do you have a strategy for dealing with slump days? Or maybe a couple of slump days in a row? Or even just a short slump, in which you are doing something and it starts turning out crummy?
When I was a kid, I used to bowl. My grandfather took me bowling once or twice a week, and he’d watch me bowl a few games. I got good at it, too. When I got older, I’d bowl a couple of times a week with my friends. By the time I was about fifteen, I had an average of about 180. Back in the day, that was pretty great for a kid.
I really loved to bowl, and looked forward to it every day. Couldn’t wait to get out of school that day, or for the weekends, when I’d spend hours in the bowling alley. It gave me so much pleasure.
After awhile, I got used to being really good at it, and have people remark about it. Then came the slump. For about a week I averaged around 113. That destroyed my fun and demolished my game.
So what did I do?
I gave it up!
What an ass! Years of pleasure and progress destroyed by a week of backsliding.
Nobody gave me any good advice just platitudes like, “Don’t give up!” God, I hate platitudes.
I wish someone had explained about backslides, and that if you work through them, not only can you recover, but you can slingshot back into better progress than ever. If only someone had the wisdom to take a kid aside and talk about how he was feeling and what he might do about it, without telling him what he should do.
“Should” is such a debilitating word. It’s wrapped up with that, “Why don’t you just…” mentality.
- “Why don’t you just eat less”
- “Why don’t you just stop drinking”
- “Why don’t you just work harder”
- “Why don’t you just stop being depressed,” ad nauseum.
Why don’t you just STFU?!
The “shoulds” and the “justs” are why people resent advice. Maybe advice isn’t what’s needed. Maybe gentle guidance is in order.
When we talk to ourselves in “shoulds” or “just” terms, we may be sabotaging ourselves.
Instead, if we look at things in the long term, we might see that everyone who’s excelled at anything has had slumps. I’m happy to be in the camp with people who managed to screw up a lot. It means they tried a lot.
This may sound like a platitude, but if you think about it, it might help you through tough phase if you should have one:
“Giving up because of a slump is like having a flat tire, and instead of fixing it, slashing the other three.“
Yeah, fixing it might be a pain. I’m not saying that it isn’t. But if the flat gets fixed, you can continue on your way. If you don’t, well…
So what might one do when one’s in a slump? You can find lots of “x number of things to do when you are in a slump’ if you google “What can I do when I’m in a slump.” You’ll find lots of things like:
- go and get some fresh air.
- count to ten
- accept it
- acknowledge it
- drink some water
and all of those Ideas are good.
My problem with most of the “x number of ways to…” are that they are generally in formula form and presented as “should.”
There are a lot of techniques that might be tried, that don’t fit into the “How to Immediately get Over a Slump” platitudes.
One is something you may never have thought of. That is to imagine a future slump, and figure out how to deal with it, and then practice what works. Here’s what I mean:
Imagine doing something you enjoy, or want to improve at. Don’t take something real important yet, make it something mundane, like say, you want to brush and floss your teeth more regularly. Imaging the good feeling of having done that twice a day for a week or two. You can compliment yourself for the good streak, and your teeth and gums would feel nice about it.
Now imagine that you forget to floss for a few days. Your teeth and gums notice it. What would you normally do? Curse yourself out for screwing up? Get annoyed and fed up? How does that advance your cause? How does it effect the long run? Does it make you feel like getting out the ol’ dental floss, or does it make you want to throw it out?
Next, imagine that you reflect on the situation for a second, and realize that the only way to get back on track is to do it. There is no down side to getting out the brush and the floss and going for it. Imagine how you would feel after making progress once again. Would you feel more competent? More mature? More in charge? Maybe, maybe not. You don’t know how you’d feel until you try this mental exercise.
If it makes you feel good to get “back on the horse,” try the mental exercise with something more important to you. Try tweaking the way you go about it unitl you feel good about the results. Then try it with more things. What this does is practice a more productive response than most people have when they are in a slump.
I wouldn’t have recommended this if I hadn’t tried it. Recently, I’ve been putting in about an hour and a half of practice a day on a particular magic technique. I try sixty attempts at this technique during this hour, and I time them. It takes about a minute per try. I record if they were successful or not, and how long they took. Ive been keeping track of it in a spreadsheet for about the last six months.
I’ve noticed a few things. There have been ups and downs. If I look at things from day to day, sometimes I see great leaps and bounds, and some days I see pretty bad slumps. But if I look at the scores from six months ago, and I look at this month’s, I see pretty good progress. In another six months it may be “ready for prime time.” Had I given up after any slump, I would not be in the much better position that I’m in now compared to the beginning.
I also noticed that some days I “skipped,” and after those days I often made more progress than normal on the next day. Also, there were days that I had pretty bad “slumps” (like yesterday) and the next day sort of ricocheted back with the “slingshot effect.” That is another clear benefit of keeping records and using macro-measurements .
I may never be a 180 average bowler again (my crusty old shoulders and the fact that bowling alleys have gotten scarce have made sure of that) but I’m not giving in to slumps anymore. I’d rather deal with the slump than deal with years of regret that I gave something up that had given me so much pleasure.
I hope you will try the above exercise before you get into your next slump, and I hope it helps you.
Now I’m off to the practice table to work on my magic some more.
