The year was 2003. I was finally ready to take my driving test. The gentleman instructed me to drive around the building to the four tall cones set up for the parallel parking portion of my test. I pulled up until the front two cones were perpendicular with my back tires and turned the steering wheel as far to the right as I could. I put the car into reverse and backed up. Then I turned the wheel to the left and drove forward. Then backward. Then forward. Then backward. Then…well you get the idea.
The result of my twenty-point turn into the gap between the cones resulted in me sitting perfectly between the left two cones and about two feet away from the makeshift curb to the right of the car. I had failed.
When we returned to the DMV after a drive through the nearby neighborhood, I was presented with my results. “If you go downtown, take someone who knows how to parallel park. Otherwise, congratulations, you passed,” the white-haired man spoke to me. We both laughed at his joke. Then we headed in to deliver the good news to my mom and finish the paperwork we needed to complete to make it official.
The year is 2015 and I have accepted a new job. A job that is in the city. At a location where I will have to parallel park on a regular basis. (This is where I would insert the ‘see no evil’ monkey emoji if this was a text message.) Through the twelve years that had passed between earning my drivers license and taking this new job, I had avoided parallel parking like the plague.
The year is 2018 and I am successfully parallel parking on the right side of the curb and the left side of the curb. In three years, I have learned when and how to turn the wheel and can usually do it in three turns of the steering wheel. (Yes, I have a reversal camera in my car now, but I am the one steering the car. It’s crazy how much technology has changed.)
The question you may be asking yourself, is “what is the point in you telling us that you’ve improved your parallel parking abilities?” And the reason is because of this: who has ever failed at something and in response you just gave up on it entirely?
I’m embarrassingly raising my hand.
For better or for worse, I’m a perfectionist. Sometimes this is a super motivating thing and I accomplish exactly what I set out to do. But most times, the anxiety in failing to reach that level of perfectionism I desire, leaves me unmotivated and unaccomplished.
So in an effort to live my most comfortable life, I’ve decided to begin celebrating my wins. I’m doing this to help show myself that I am capable of so much. So even if I can’t do it today, I know that I am capable of doing it someday. And I do my celebrations daily.
My fiancé and I take a moment every day to discuss our biggest win of the day. Some days my win is that I got out of bed. Some days it’s that I helped someone out who needed it. And some days it’s that I did an awesome job at parallel parking.
As much as I struggle with it, I know it’s important to not give up. It’s important to understand that improvement will come in whatever we do, as long as we keep doing it.
There will be things in our life that we will be naturally gifted at and things that we will struggle with. Ironically, I feel that I’m a natural at writing. At expressing myself through the use of the written word (even if I don’t always use proper sentence structure and love to break the rules.) But I struggle with reading. I can go into my troubles with my dyslexia another day, but it’s not the norm for someone who loves to write to have a difficult time reading their own words. But I haven’t given up. I understand that continuing to read all kinds of things will continue to help me learn how to cope with this challenge.
That is just one example of something I refuse to give up on. And I hope you think about this. I hope you tell yourself, “it is okay that I’m not proficient today, but someday I will be.”
Fifteen years ago I failed parallel parking. And today, I aced it!
