It’s the “What if…” that’ll stop you in your tracks

I’m not one to spend lots of time planning. 

I am often the one saying: “oh yeah, I didn’t think of that”. 

Sure, that has its drawbacks, but this behavioural tendency has got me doing marathons, open water swimming (for the first time on race day at Blenheim Triathlon – you too? It’s a common one), the 100 mile Ride London cycle, the first Tower Run up Tower 42 at 7am with a client, and going to night school to re-train as a solicitor whilst a musician (I know, that last one is a crazy one). 

And that’s pretty much how this Serpie Mental Health blog came about. I thought the mental health champions could write something useful at the beginning of lockdown (thank you Jon Lewis), some people wrote in to say they liked it, and so I decided to publish something every week, instead of us all being together on the Wednesday club run….and that was 17 weeks ago – wow. 

It is incredible we mostly all willingly mostly locked ourselves away for a good portion of the last 17 weeks. Running and Serpie WhatsApp groups and stupid videos have kept me going, and seeing and experiencing how wonderful, generous and creative humans really are.

I confess, the serpie MHC blog has, many a time, had me on tenterhooks. Despite humans’ collective creative capacity, I don’t have creative capacity to write something every week, and here’s where the “I didn’t think of that” came in. 

If my colleagues knew the way I’d set this up they’d be alarmed (but not surprised). They’d never embark upon of programme of promised work without knowing where all the material and content was going to come from, without a contingency and disaster recovery plan.  That’s good practice for running a business, but sometimes, it’s maybe the “but what if….” that will scare you off from daring, and then you’ll never know what you could’ve achieved. 

As it turns out, I’ve not had to write once, because I’ve always had volunteers. Sometimes I had three ready and waiting in the virtual wings, stacked up in an artistic pipeline – what a luxury. And sometimes I’d edge through the weekend seeing the next Wednesday on the horizon and, with growing trepidation near the beginning after the initial surge of enthusiasm, slightly stressfully wonder “hmm, what can I write about, just in case…” and up a volunteer would pop! 

This experience has reminded me to have faith. Not necessarily in a religious sense or in any kind of god, but in myself, and in the universe. It has demonstrated to me that, whilst a little planning probably doesn’t go amiss sometimes, there’s also scope for taking a risk, seeing what’ll happen, and having faith in myself and the universe that whatever happens, good or bad, I’ll be ok and will be able to cope. 

Last Easter I was training for the London Marathon. I tapered in Ireland with a couple of Serpie friends and on a walk I came across this stone (photo on the blog https://serpies.blogspot.com) saying: “…faith believes it, hope anticipates it, and patience quietly awaits it…” - I’m taking the “it” as my ability to come good when needed. 

It was my phone screen saver for a while, to remind me to be brave and courageous and to stretch that comfort zone outwards every now and then.  

Spend too much time considering the risks and analysing whether you’re prepared to accept the downside, the imagining of the “what if…” scenarios, and you’ll never do anything, instead you’ll find yourself paralysed on the track and in your tracks, the world having moved on passed, as it inevitably does. 

So have faith Serpies, in whatever gives you strength and undoubtedly in the network of supportive friends you’ve built, fostered and contributed to around you. You never know what amazing things will come out of stepping off, what may seem like, a precipice; it could just turn out to be the best decision of your life. 

As we seem to be easing out of lockdown and as we can begin to meet back at the club run, I’ll be signing off from the Mental Health blog. 

A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed, I am very grateful, you have renewed my faith in humans, myself and the universe, and thank you to those that have emailed in with your comments and compliments – they were all passed on to the writers. 

Dare greatly, behave brave.