I really never understood ‘test-taking anxiety’ very well. For me tests often feel very validating; I show up, sit down, answer some questions, and walk away feeling good. Fortunately, life never seems to run short on opportunities for me to gain understanding through experience… and I will admit I don’t find 3am ideal for a pop quiz, but isn’t that the nature of the unexpected, and how better to set me up for a learning opportunity?
I slept ok last night, until I awoke shortly before 3am feeling incredibly anxious and unsure why. Deep breathing didn’t slow it down, so I got up…found myself surprised to be in the company of my partners; we were awake, one and all. There reached a point, some time later, where I sat quietly with one of my partners, a man of experience, wisdom, and a great deal of love, and whose insights I value beyond description. It is no small thing to me when he offers feedback relevant to my enjoyment in life, expresses frustration with tasks I am less skilled at than expected, or offers best practices for skillful relationship building – and similarly, when he praises me, I feel like it is a holiday. I am honored when he actually comments on my writing, or my art.
Back to that Pop Quiz… as my partner and I sat quietly, each wrapped in our own experience in that moment, he asked me “So… now that you’ve had this big epiphany you talked about in your blog, what are you going to do with it?” Wow. One question. One moment. I felt completely and utterly unprepared, as though I’d gone to school on a test day without reading the chapters, or doing the homework! I tried rather hopelessly not to babble, not to cover my feeling of utter lack of preparation – and I really felt that cool appraising gaze become just a bit more disappointed than supportive, clearly unimpressed with my unimpressive reply. Ouch. Failing grade. But something we’ve talked rather a lot about recently has been one of the principles of The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking…succeeding through failure. And one of the very important things I took away from reading Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals is that not all measures of success are appropriate to a given goal… and here I was facing something eyes open at 3am where I wanted very much to ‘show off’ that I was ‘ready’ or had already mastered this new thing… but I’m not there yet. Hell, I just grasped one simple concept I had previously failed to understand… I wasn’t ready for the Pop Quiz, unless the goal there was to demonstrate that I wasn’t finished learning. lol.
But success can be small things done well, improvements over time, and progress – and I’m still smiling this morning, because I am learning to see and accept those smaller successes and take pleasure and delight in each new thing I learn to do better than I used to – and today, instead of hiding from my anxiety and fear of facing my partner’s high expectations, and my own sense that I ‘failed an important test’, I took a moment to accept that I have more to learn, and that some of what I don’t know adversely affects my partners’ quality of life with me. Instead of ‘running away’ – I really took care of me, by admitting I wasn’t ready then, at 3am, and then I did what I hope takes better care of my partner, today, and reached out and asked to make time to talk together, so I can understand his needs, mine, and how best to meet the needs of his I am equipped to meet, and also take care of me in a way that is emotionally safe for my partners, and effective and sustainable for me. Simple right?? (lol)
This still feels like a good day…and I’m eager to learn more, and get a ‘re-test’ another day. 😀
Evening Light 
That feeling when I’m asked a question that I’m still working on the answer to! (TBH, there was a bit of that in my reaction to ‘why do I donate blood?’) I’ve always preferred tests to homework, except when the test is essay questions. I’ve developed what little skill I have in talking about feelings and relationships in the last dozen or so years. I can reflect on my earlier years through my current lens, but my youth was largely (or entirely) an unexamined life. Give me a math problem, even a story problem (or whatever they call them now), and I was and am a happy camper churning out numbers all day. Ask me to have an opinion, and I choke.
Even still, my response to so many growth or reflection questions is “I’m still working on that.”
It is good to love someone whose admiration is worth seeking.
Why do I donate blood? There is an element of “saving lives that are inherently valuable because they are fellow humans,” I don’t deny. But to be more accurate in my answer, it’s not all that much about them. It’s about me. I want to be the person who does things that benefit others. I’m healthy enough to donate, and though I’ll never know who I impacted, I walk away with the conviction that I have made a difference in lives. I know many people who can’t donate for whatever reason, and they are no lesser for it, but it’s a thing that satisfies me. For the same reason I am registered with DMV as an anatomical donor. And maybe some of it is aversion – I don’t want to be the person who is (in my perspective) so selfish that I would refuse someone else the use of my body parts when I am no longer in them. But most of it is because the ideal me is willing to extend herself for the sake of others, and some of that is because I see an inherent value in people as people.