Sometimes I’m less interested in the answer than I am in getting a good score.
I had a doctor’s appointment recently, and after I was shown to the exam room, I found myself doing something I’ve gotten into the habit of doing. I started taking slow, deep breaths. I wasn’t nervous, and I wasn’t trying to calm myself before seeing the doctor. I was getting ready for my blood pressure test.
If you’d rather watch than read, you can watch this week’s reflection on YouTube.
I knew that in a few minutes someone would come in, put the cuff around my arm, and take my vitals. So there I sat, breathing slowly, trying to relax and get my heart rate down. Apparently, I wanted to make sure I gave them the best possible version of my blood pressure, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.
The whole point of checking my blood pressure is to find out what it actually is. If it’s high, that’s probably something my doctor and I should know. Instead, I’m sitting alone in an exam room trying to improve the number before anyone gets there.
The nurse came in, wrapped the cuff around my arm, and took the reading. 122 over 80. Inside, I did a little happy dance. I had passed.
Except there was nothing to pass. Nobody was grading me. I hadn’t accomplished anything. But I had gotten a good number, and I was strangely pleased with myself.
That’s the part that stayed with me. I don’t think I was only happy that my blood pressure was good. I liked what the number seemed to say about me. Healthy. Responsible. Taking care of myself. I looked like somebody who was doing what he was supposed to be doing.
I’ve actually gotten much better over the years at letting people see when I’m struggling. That hasn’t always come easily to me, and learning to be more open about where I really am has been a big part of my growth. But apparently that doesn’t mean I’ve completely lost the desire to make a good impression.
And I doubt I’m particularly unusual in that. Most of us probably do some version of it. We straighten up the house before someone comes over, even though it doesn’t normally look that way. We choose the picture of ourselves we like before we post it. When someone asks how things are going, sometimes we give them the short version because the real answer is a little more complicated.
I don’t think that means we’re trying to fool anybody. We just like putting our best foot forward. We like looking capable. We like looking healthy. We like looking like we have things reasonably together.
What made me laugh about that exam room was how automatic the whole thing was. Nobody had asked me to impress them. The nurse wasn’t going to think less of me if my blood pressure was a little high. There wasn’t even a test, but somehow I had created one.
And once I started thinking about that, I realized how easy it is to turn all kinds of things into scores. How much I got done today can become a score. How someone responded to something I said can become a score. Even what time I got out of bed this morning can somehow become a score. None of those things are necessarily telling me whether I’m doing well or poorly, but it’s pretty easy for me to treat them that way.
Maybe that’s what I was doing with my blood pressure. Instead of just letting the number tell me what my blood pressure was, I had turned it into something that told me how I was doing.
There wasn’t anything wrong with taking a few deep breaths. They were probably good for me. And I’m certainly not going to pretend that I’ve reached some point where I no longer care what people think of me. I care. I like making a good impression.
I just find it interesting how quickly making a good impression can turn into trying to get a good score.
I’d like to tell you that at my next doctor’s appointment I’ll sit there completely unconcerned about what the blood pressure cuff says. I know better. There’s a pretty good chance I’ll be sitting in that same chair, taking nice slow breaths before the nurse walks in.
But at least now I might catch myself doing it and laugh.
There I go again, trying to pass a test nobody is giving me.
