When you hit a wall, lean on it.

Once again, as has happened on countless (probably hundreds) of days over the last year, I’ve reached the end of the day and the end of myself. There is nothing left. I did the best I could, and still I feel I came up short.

Recently, while scrolling through social media, I saw a quote that said, “When you hit a wall, lean on it.”

This is brand new thinking for me. The messaging I received as a child was the exact opposite. 

When you hit a will, ignore it. When you hit a wall, turn your focus to something else and over-produce in that area to compensate for the shortcomings that led to the wall. When you hit a wall, barrel through it at any cost as long as you get to the other side.

This thinking was expressed verbally and nonverbally to me all my life, and is now embedded in my way of thinking and being in the world. When I read the quote about leaning on the wall, it gave me such pause. I pondered it, rolling it around in the swirling current of my brain like a river rock. I tucked this idea into my mental filing cabinet labeled, “Strategies to Employ When Overwhelmed.”

Luckily, thanks to our current times, I got my opportunity to try out this new strategy real quick. The next time I felt myself hitting that wall, I stopped. I named that I was hitting the wall. I reminded myself of what I have done in the past upon hitting the wall that has not served me well. I thought, “Let’s try something different today instead.”

Typically, if I hit a wall of, say, exhaustion, I would not allow myself to rest. I would push myself as hard as I could to produce results to therefore earn and justify resting. But, this time, I decided not to do that.

The wall of exhaustion was upon me, and instead of trying to knock it down, I leaned on it. Hard. I stopped. I rested my body. I gave her water and food. I rested my mind by consciously changing the stories I was telling myself and listening to a different, kinder and gentler narrative instead. And you know what? It helped.

I am still very much in the infancy stage of learning how to lean on the walls I encounter instead of muscling them down at my own peril. Tonight, I have another opportunity to practice this new skill I want to develop because I find that wall staring me in the face, at the end of myself once again.

Instead of...

• Doing the laundry

• Finishing that thing for work

• Cleaning out my purse

• Making the grocery list

• Vacuuming 

• Making elaborate plans and lists and schedules for how I’m going to make this a fun and magical Spring Break for my kids

I am going to rest my body. I’m going to nest in bed under my weighted blanket with a full glass of icy water and a hot cup of my favorite tea in my favorite mug nearby.

I’m going to rest my mind and turn my attentions away from what led me to the wall and turn towards things that give me joy. My nest includes my current reads and the remote so I can watch Netflix if that feels better.

I’m going to lean hard on the wall that’s in my way. Maybe that’s the key to my walls; leaning is the way to dissolve them so I can take a step forward tomorrow.