It’s a play I’d made hundreds of times in my career as a softball pitcher.

Field a ground ball, fire a strike to first base.

As with many sports, I’d taken hundreds of thousands of ground ball reps over the years so that during games, the play was made from muscle memory. Catch, turn, throw.

Routine.

No filter needed for this throwback pic…

Until one day during my junior year of high school when I fielded a ground ball, turned towards first base, and fired the ball 10 feet over the first basemen’s head.

I was not nervous, I was not anxious, I was not injured.

But from that point forward, something inexplicable happened to me every time I fielded a ground ball on the mound.

I had developed a case of the yips.

The yips, for those of you who don’t follow baseball or golf (though it happens in other sports) is defined as the sudden and unexplained loss of fine motor skills in athletes. Perhaps the most famous case in history is that of Steve Blass, a former pitcher for my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates. After a very successful 10 year career in the major leagues, he developed a case of the yips that was so severe, he was out of baseball within two years after his first wild pitch.

He was 32 years old. (Now when this happens to a pitcher, they call it Steve Blass disease).

In 2000, I was watching a playoff game between the Atlanta Braves and the Saint Louis Cardinals when Rick Ankiel, a phenom drafted by the Cardinals only one year before, threw a pitch in the dirt.

And he never recovered his pitching career.

Even though my experience with the yips wasn’t life altering, it was by far one of the strangest phenomenons I ever experienced. I could no longer trust my body, or trust my skills.

Field a ball and throw it home? Sure. Turn to throw it to first base, and my arm would suddenly feel almost disconnected from my body and I couldn’t predict the result. I no longer had control over something that I had always had control over.

As I recently listened to an interview with Ankiel, I was struck at the sheer terror he must have felt at his body and mind’s inexplicable betrayal of his gift. And I was thinking of how often that happens to so many of us - outside of the sports arena.

I think of the mental health struggles - the crippling anxiety that keeps a lonely person from meeting new people. The devastating depression that hijacks your belief system about your talents, your skills, and your worth.

I think of the physical deterioration of our bodies that leave us standing in a pile of “used to’s” instead of focusing on our “can do’s.”

Many of us have our own yips on this journey in life. We don’t get a say in our genetics that leave us in need of new knees and hips before we turn 60.

But we do get a say in how our story goes.

Rick Ankiel, the phenom that he was, set out to write the story of a successful major league pitcher, with all of the accolades that go with it. Instead, he wrote a different tale.

Ankiel spent the better part of six years trying to solve his pitching woes. But in 2006, when he threw only three strikes in 20 pitches during a spring training game, he re-invented himself. And in 2007 he returned to the major leagues as a right fielder, and is the only player besides Babe Ruth to have homered as both a pitcher and a position player.

He went on to play another seven years in the pros as an outfielder.

It wasn’t the story he set out to write. But I’m not sure he would have actually written the book that he did write (called The Phenomenon), if not for that one pitch that changed his life forever.

Sometimes we have to stop fighting what we want to do and start doing what we were meant to do.

Sometimes when people ask me hard questions,  I give a pat answer.

Co-worker: Have you seen the stapler?

Me: I have pants on. What more do you want from me?

I put these on today. 

Usually I’m making a joke. 

Sometimes though, I’m not joking at all. Sometimes I’m using humor to cover the truth that, on this particular day, I got out of bed, brushed my teeth, took a shower, put clothes on and drove to work. 

Hell, I even plucked my chin hair. 

There are days when those basic tasks feel far from basic. 

There are days when everything feels just a bit harder. I don’t know how else to explain it. The difference between snowshoeing on unbroken snow and on a well-worn path, maybe. In both cases, you’re following the same path - but in unbroken snow, those steps take a lot more out of you. You’ve got to work a lot harder to get where you want to go. 

On those days, the self-judgement and guilt that follow is relentless. At least for me. 

Many days, I battle a constant feeling of “why does it feel so hard to write one *&^&^^% email?” 

Why does everything feel so hard? 

Why can I not just buckle down and get things done? 

I just, as of last week, completed a fitness product (Stronger You: The Ultimate Fitness Guide) that I began in January. My goal for completion was March, then April then….well, August. The disappointment I feel in myself for taking so long to finish far outweighs the accomplishment of completing something.  

Sure I finished, but it took me forever. 

I don’t always know how much of those delays are laziness and how much are my weekly, sometimes daily struggle with this thing I’ve spent the past decade plus trying to understand. That thing is dysthymia, also known as persistent depressive disorder. I write about it often on this blog because….well….I believe we need to talk about it more. 

Last week, I wrote a post about fears, and I mentioned that my greatest fear is that I’ll never give to the world all it is that I feel I have in me to give. That I’ll spend so much time spinning my wheels worrying about what I should do, that I’ll never get around to the doing part.  

A friend of mine took a screen shot of that last line and told me to post that sh** somewhere I could see it everyday. 

Some days life is as simple as making a list and checking off the boxes of tasks that you want to get done. 

But some days, life isn’t that simple. 

I’ve said before that sometimes I don’t know where the depression ends and I begin. And that’s the daily frustration. 

Sometimes I lose interest in things like music, books, my guitar, exercise. Many days I lack productivity and on many more days, I’m overwhelmed with an overall feeling of inadequacy. I spend so much time thinking and feeling that I should be more. Dysthymia is sometimes referred to as mild depression, because you still function - until you hit a major depressive episode, as I’ve done in the past. 

The trap is that you feel like you should just snap out of it. Recently, I read in a post on dysthymia which mentioned the prevailing myth that a person can just look on the bright side. 

Stay positive! 

Stop being such a Debbie Downer!

If you’d just look for the good things, you wouldn’t feel this way!

Recently, I heard the expression that there are only good days and great days - no bad days. And that expression really wounded me deeply. Because it made me feel like I just don’t try hard enough to see what’s good. It played into those feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem that hit me so hard some days. 

I was relieved to see that concept written as myth, because so often, I feel like a failure for not snapping out of my funks. For not being able to counter a tough situation with straight out gratitude and positive thinking. Mind over matter they say.

And I say, what is wrong with my mind, that I can’t make anything matter?  

It was myths like those above that prevented me from seeking treatment for most of my life. It’s myths like those above that often still give me the greatest heartache at the end of a long day. I don’t always know and understand what I can and cannot control. I don’t always know how much blame is mine. And that is so, so, so, very hard. 

I treat my depression the best I can. I have an amazing therapist, an amazing spouse, I take my medication and I work hard to make the lifestyle changes I know can help. I exercise often, try to meditate, work to let people in to my life and my struggles and try to be open and honest about the struggle. 

That last one is harder than it sounds. 

Sometimes people think that depression is only obvious sadness; that it’s crying in the middle of your living room floor or bursting into tears when your boss looks at you sideways.

Those are often side affects of major depressive disorder, which is it’s own unique monster. I’ve crossed paths with that one before, but it’s the “mild depression” and I beg, beg, beg to differ with the idea that any depression is mild, that clips me at the knees. 

I wrote this post today because I got up and put pants on - but for some reason - perhaps the reason that I can seldom see but always feel - putting pants on felt like an accomplishment. 

So today, and many days, both behind me and probably ahead of me, the best I could do in a day is put pants on. 

But I’m going to do my best to celebrate those pants. And maybe even, if I can find it in myself, bedazzle the shit out of those pants.

Ever had someone completely call you on your bullshit?

I have.

Just the other day in fact. 

My number one skill, aside from dominating the sports category in Trivial Pursuit, is kicking the ever-loving crap out of myself.

I do it in multiple ways - physically at the gym, mentally at the end of the day, sometimes the beginning, and at least a handful of times in between.

If I really wanted to be like Wonder Woman (this one came from Ireland - thanks Susan), I'd learn to be nicer to myself. 

I do it for a multitude of reasons - because I didn’t do something as well as I thought I should have. Because I did do something I thought I shouldn’t have. I set high expectations and often come up short. 

Recently, I’ve been feeling badly about a lot of things - I’m not sure that it matters much what those things are.

And so a friend of mine called me out.

I mean called. Me. Out.

My private email signature has the following quote:

“One must be compassionate to oneself before external compassion.”  - The Dahli Llama 

She wanted to know, and I'm quoting her directly "what kind of b.s. is that quote when you don't feel that you deserve kindness for yourself?"

Um...well....

I told her that I have the quote on the bottom of my emails because I want to remind every single person I send an email to how important it is to embrace kindness for themselves. And I want to remind them that they are worthy of kindness and compassion.

And that unless they can do that for themselves, they’ll have a very difficult time doing it for someone else.

She just stared at me, unblinking, as I said this. 

"Yet you rake yourself over the coals over every mistake you make and every perceived flaw you can find?" she was somewhat incredulous. 

I didn't know what to say. 

The best I could come up with, after a lot of reflecting, is that I often look for ways to validate that I’m not a good person. Someone offers positive feedback and I brush it off - someone offers constructive or negative feedback and I use it as confirmation for that strongly held belief; which is ultimately, that I’m not deserving of kindness.

We’ve all constructed belief-systems about ourselves. That we’re unlovable, undeserving of happiness or kindness, that we don’t deserve success or love - I mean the list goes on and on. But just because we believe it doesn’t mean that it’s true. 

I don’t know what negative beliefs you might have about yourself. 

But today I’d challenge you to take a look at some of those belief systems - take a long, hard look at those old beliefs - and pretend, just for a half a second, that they aren’t true. 

I know, it’s tough right? 

It’s ok, try it anyway.

And I’ll keep trying to challenge my long-standing beliefs as well. 

Be kind.