I’ll Do It Myself… Is Not How We Thrive Together
“I’ll do it myself!” Both my young daughter and my elderly mother tell me that. They tell the world that. They say it in a very similar way. A part of me smiles that that kind of drive for independence got us as humans to walk and talk, to be able to feed ourselves… however messily at first, or however messily at the end of our days.
I’m grateful for that self-sufficiency impulse. It feels primal… really useful for survival.
And there’s a deeper wisdom when it comes to thriving. Someone who wants to be thriving yearns to be physically vital, resilient, and maintaining mobility until their last breath.
It’s so good to have that yearning, that drive: To be able to get up and down from a chair on our own. To be able to walk and climb stairs. To be able to stand and hug someone without putting all of our weight.
As I study mobility for myself as I enter my elder years, I think about what I want to be able to do at 90. At 90 I’d like to be strong enough to carry another human up a mountain. Wouldn’t that be cool?
What if I could carry a 5-year-old grandchild up the mountain… and nobody was looking at me like there was any doubt that I was a good, strong, and stable for the task? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Of course, I don’t know what my life will be like at that age. A lot of things can happen in the decades to come. The whole purpose of this story for thriving is a reminder to myself of what I’ve learned already about mobility.
The people that work with the transition from being a sedentary adult to being vibrant, vital, and alive—being able to do the things you want to do with calm confidence, strength, range, resilience—there’s a consistency about what they say. And it goes counter to that initial impulse:
Use support. Stabilize yourself using supports as you build strength and range.
Those supports can be human. They could be a crutch, even a cane. For me, who moves down rocky, muddy, tree-rooted, unpaved trails, for me right now, I use hiking poles (that I call Forest Dancing Sticks).
I used to think when I saw people with hiking poles on the trail was, “Why do they need those???”
But there’s a difference between needing a tool for survival—or even needing in order to keep from falling and hurting yourself, which is a survival protection—and benefiting from using them — enjoying them even.
My sticks help me glide down the trail almost like swimming at times. They help me climb hills like I’m a mountain goat.
I now have four points of contact I can use on a steep slope. That changes me. It changes the sense of confidence. More than that, it engages all of me in the climb. It does so in a way that isn’t harming or straining even the smallest ligaments in my knees, my back, my arms, my shoulders. Because now I’m much more fully aware of my whole body moving toward this intention—climbing or descending a mountain.
One person I learned from said most people start mobility work “too big.” They want to do that squat they’ve never been able to do… so they go down too far and they’re shaky and they fall forward or back. They don’t get hurt, but they’re not… stable.
These savvy teachers of mobility showed me the difference between starting too big (“challenge yourself!”) and doing micro-squats — doing a half sit, not quite touching the chair, and even having another chair for support as needed (even if just a finger of extra steadiness).
They assert: If you spent 21 days doing half sits into a chair, when you extend that a little deeper, a little longer, with a little more power on the up-set, your body will respond differently than if you push it to do squats deeper without support when your body isn’t ready for it.
When we’re shaking, when we’re at the edge of failure. The edge of failure blasts an internal survival alert: you have to do this OR ELSE! But that message to our nervous system and to the sinews of our body says, even if this causes us damage, it’s required. We have to or else.
That actually does not build long-term mobility.
There are plenty of books that talk about building strength and pushing the body to failure. I’m not saying that that does not work. But as an energy specialist, what I can tell you is if I push my body to that point, I am now repairing an injury.
Instead, what if I mindfully and repetitively send a different message to my body:
I want to be able to lift my daughter. I want to be able to lift myself. I want to be able to lift a backpack. I want to be able to lift the groceries. And I want to be able to do that with stability and strength… and live life with physical confidence.
If I engage my muscles in this way, and I give them exposure to those types of things with support and deep listening, guess what? My body retains and builds a different kind of strength. It’s a strength of resilient mobility.
And that’s honestly what I see with those people that are in their 90s that are moving down the path and up the hills.
I talked to a man much older than me on the trail. I asked, “How far are you walking today?” He said, “Eh, I don’t know, five miles, 15. We’ll see what I feel like.” And I could feel in the wisdom of this person—there with two hiking poles, both much older than I am and yet much more robust—that there’s a respect for what he’s asking his body to do WITH him, not driving it to do things FOR him.
What he said about using walking sticks has stuck with me. “They help me use more of me.”
They help me use more of me.
And I think about the contact improv dancing that I’ve done. Dancing with co-creators, I could use more of me. Their strength and stability allowed my body to balance with grace and beauty that I couldn’t if there wasn’t their support.
All of this is my meandering John Muir way of saying this:
That streak of independence that we have is useful, but it is not enough for thriving.
Consider the possibilities that (1) sharing loads and stabilizing each other is actually how we thrive, and (2) those who actually have great mobility, resilience, and strength, often use “extra support” the hyper-independent people reject as “unwanted.”
And that’s a reminder for me here at this point in my life.
Useful Concepts for Thriving in This Story
-
Resilience
The capacity to return to calm confidence after stress so mobility and stability can grow over time. -
Vitality
The living energy that fuels strength, range, and an active life you can feel in your whole body. -
Co-Regulation
Letting another presence or tool steady you so your own system can move with more ease. -
Power WITH
Directing energy together—people and supports—so everyone moves more capably. -
Practical
Choosing supports and small steps that actually work in the body you have right now.
