Do you use “guarding” to protect yourself?  Is it working for you?

Wherever there is danger, there lurks opportunity; whenever there is opportunity, there lurks danger. The two are inseparable. They go together.

— Earl Nightingale

You know how, after you’ve hurt yourself, pulled a shoulder or neck muscle or something, you start moving differently?  You begin carrying the injured limb close to the vest in order to protect it… And then you start using the other arm for everything… You start avoiding certain situations until eventually you go on the alert to “dangers” lurking around every corner?  That’s called “guarding” and it sucks up energy, effort and attention.  Still there is truth to the Latin Proverb:

Injuries put us on our guard.

Often injured parts need some guarding, some protection from re-injury… But we also need to stay ever-vigilant because, once we raise our guard, it’s easy to over-guard, to incorporate more and more precautions.  Eventually, guarding becomes automatic and then transparent to us; we forget we’re guarding, we begin to accept all that guarding as “normal”.

The Great Frozen Wall of Ellie

You fear that if you lower your guard for even one second your whole world will disintegrate into chaos.

— Douglas Coupland

Sometimes, as we accommodate an injury, at an unconscious level we build a defensive wall that protects but ultimately constrains us.  Our shoulder hurts so we don’t reach… and shortly, if we don’t catch ourselves and break the pattern, our range of motion is reduced to zero, and the next thing we know, the shoulder is completely frozen.

For me, letting my auto-pilot get stuck in “guarding mode” is easy to do; but when that happens I eventually realize that instead of going for the gusto, I’ve been holding back from opportunities.

For instance, I tend to get a little dizzy if I lean over and then stand up fast… so I hesitate when I’m at my exercise class, I rein-in my movements… and if I’m not vigilant, my practice of guarding insinuates itself well beyond my exercise class and begins to influence almost everything I do…  without even knowing it, I begin to approach my endeavors with caution and reticence; I lapse into taking the path of least resistance, choosing the less challenging movements, the easier art project, the more familiar topic of conversation, the simpler but less fulfilling tasks.

And when that happens, “guarding” becomes exhausting.  As I get caught up in a pattern of guarding, I unwittingly become the Great Frozen Wall of Ellie – I start limiting my efforts and curbing my spontaneous enthusiasms… life becomes a trudgingly narrow, dead end passageway instead of a sparkling pathway to new joys.  I find myself dealing with more problems and fewer solutions.

Holding Too Tight

In his ezine article, Why We Don’t Achieve Excellent? Jawed Ahmad describes how they catch monkeys in India:

Monkey-hunters use a box with an opening at the top, big enough for the monkey to slide its hand into. Inside the box are nuts. The monkey grabs the nuts and now its hand becomes a fist. The monkey tries to get its hand out but the opening is big enough for the hand to slide into, but too small for the fist to come out of.  Now the monkey has a choice, either to let go of the nuts and be free forever or hang on to the nuts and get caught. He hangs on to the nuts and gets caught.

We are no different from monkeys. We all hang on to the nuts that keep us from going forward in life. We keep rationalizing by saying. “I cannot do this because…” and whatever comes after “because” are the nuts that we are hanging onto that are holding us back.

So, here I am, guarding… holding back by holding on too tight to old injuries and thus avoiding or at the very least, delaying going forward.

Going Forward

When we are afraid we ought not to occupy ourselves with endeavoring to prove that there is no danger, but in strengthening ourselves to go on in spite of the danger.

— Mark Rutherford

I guess I need to focus on strengthening myself…  I need to let myself rest an injury but at the same time, work at strengthening my resolve – my surrounding muscles – so that I build a solid core of strength and vitality.  I want to find new ways to do that; I want to engage in all the possibilities life throws my way, even while guarding old injuries from re-injury.

And, with that in mind, I am remembering when I broke my ankle a few years back.  Hobbling around on crutches wasn’t easy for this out-of-shape body of mine; but guess what – after the fact I realized that using crutches forced me to improve my arm and shoulder strength.  By shielding my ankle from bearing weight I actually strengthened my overall fitness.  Lesson learned: That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Hush Little Baby

One thing I now know: I need to go forward by putting a muzzle on my foolish inner-critic child; she’s pulling me to pieces.  Like the Robot in Lost in Space, she shouts out:  Danger Will Robinson! She’s vociferously fighting to hold on to this guarding and protecting modus operandi.

Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character are required to set up in the fault-finding business … Guard your fragile life carefully. Only God can shape a flower, but any foolish child can pull it to pieces.

— Og Mandino

It’s time for me to soothe this inner child of mine, to offer her comfort and reassurance; after all, she’s just trying to protect me. I’m going to do that by taking charge of my self-talk (sigh, again…) And to make it stick, from now on, every time I hear my inner-critic child kvetching over dangers, I’m going to sing her this song:

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,
Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird don’t sing,
Momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.
And if that diamond ring turn brass,
Momma’s gonna buy you a looking glass.
And if that looking glass gets broke,
Momma’s gonna buy you a billy goat.
And if that billy goat don’t pull,
Momma’s gonna buy you a cart and bull.
And if that cart and bull turn over,
Momma’s gonna buy you a dog named Rover.
And if that dog named Rover won’t bark.
Momma’s gonna to buy you and horse and cart.
And if that horse and cart fall down,
Well you’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

Yeah, I changed it to Momma, not Poppa… I see this as a mothering thing.

So from now on, if you come upon me humming away, you’ll know I’m not going nuts, I’m just going forward!

Do you use “guarding” to protect yourself?  Is it working for you?