Learning about yourself by doing hard work

You learn a lot about yourself when you're pushed to the brink, that's why we should keep pushing ourselves to the boundary, then stepping back to rest. That combination helps you grow, then heal.

My wife and I removed the carpet from the living room and replaced it with engineered hardwood. This requires banging the boards into the previous row so the tongue gets into the groove, then nailing it down with a flooring nailer. The room is angled, so many of the edges needed to be cut at an angle.

Here’s a few lessons I learned about myself.

Don’t make assumptions, state your intentions

Anytime you’re working together with another person, especially if you’re married to that person, be really clear in your communications, verbally and non-verbally.

As a man, when I say something related to construction work, my wife assumes I know what I’m doing. Society has raised me to know everything, to mansplain things.

In this case, I don’t know much about flooring besides the carpentry skills I learned over the past few decades. Instead, I’m slowing down so I can state my intentions.

“I don’t know the answer, but here’s what I think we should do. What do you think?”

“I really have no idea what I’m doing, your guess is good as mine.”

“Let me step back, and you take the lead here.”

It’s really important to check in often. There was a morning when I was feeling tired, and still recovering from my cold, that I came across as a little irritable.

She didn’t know if I was mad at her.

We checked in around lunchtime, and I said I’m just feeling under the weather. We’re okay, but let’s keep validating those feelings.

Gender roles are deep in our society

My wife and I grew up with fairly traditional gender roles. As progressive as we are, we are in the system.

The building trades are mostly men. The whole system is mostly men.

So if you’re going to a supply house, getting equipment, getting bids, you’re interacting with mostly men.

I grew up in this.

My wife grew up outside of this.

I learned that the world groomed me to be good at this, and it kept my wife from doing this.

So when we’re doing the flooring project, especially when it’s something that neither of us has done before, we’re supposed to be on an equal playing field.

Instead, what I noticed is that she tends to second-guess herself. If I question something, you’ll instantly defer to my opinion.

So we disrupted this by using words, slowing down, and checking in often. In the end, she’s better than me at the angles. Her maths is better than mine. When she got the chance to learn, make mistakes, and keep going, she’s a better carpenter.

I found a new persona/part, meet Rocky

Finally, this past weekend, after nailing down 500 sq ft of flooring while slightly under the weather, I became aware of another part.

Meet Rocky.

He’s the underdog.

He wins by grinding out harder than anyone else.

I came to be when growing up, I was a weakling. As a refugee kid, we were in a system that was hostile toward us, and we needed to survive.

Rocky pushes beyond my limits. He grinds, he grinds, and he grinds harder than anyone else. He wins simply because he just won’t give up.

When put in these horrible situations, humans can push through incredible things. For me, Rocky pushed me through the hardest situations.

There were moments when the day was coming to an end, and we needed to nail down the final few boards, I had to dig deep. Rocky comes in and grits out the final few boards.

Keep growing, keep going

Thank you for being here with me. It’s been a journey getting this newsletter up and running. I’m happy with my cadence and learning to build it into my weekly creations.

In the coming months, I’m digging back into deeper therapy and look forward to sharing. I’m also working on a blueprint of how I would do therapy differently if I could start over. People want to know how to get started, and I think I got a few ideas.