Tuesday - July 20, 2010

“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.” - Abraham Maslow

I have always considered myself to very self-aware and when you spend as much time alone as I do, you can become very VERY aware of yourself (yeah, I said it).  From the pinch in my shoulder to the way I feel when I have forgotten to take my blood pressure medication, I have always been on top of the signals my body has been giving me.  But for all of those aches, pains or pleasures, I have also come to the conclusion, that I don't know myself as well as I think I do. 

Yes, it's true, I had an epiphany last night.  My brain, whom till now I had considered an ally in my quest for change, is actually a saboteur (GASP!).  That even though my mouth says, "Yes I can" or "Yes I will!", my brain doesn't actually mean what my mouth is delivering.

Case in point, last night Jo had me do - Box Squat Jumps - (To be honest I'm waiting for Jo to catch this part of the blog and tell me what the exercise actually was).  The exercise was asking me to haul my ass and that piano tied to it, onto a box by "jumping".  At first I was like "how bad can this be?", until my brain decided to start doing the math to determine that it would be physically impossible for me to jump up onto a 2 foot high box. (again, I'll probably wait for Jo to tell me that the box was only a foot off the ground and to stop being such a baby.)  My point is, my brain actually had me convinced that I couldn't do this and I actually got scared.  "Scared of jumping, Shelley?  Really?"  and it wasn't the fear of actually jumping, it was the face plant that I was going to do when I only jumped up half the distance and cracked my face open on the other side.

However, with a little internal coaxing,(and a lot of external coaching from Jo) I picked a spot on the box that I was going to land on, and nearly every time, I was able to hit that spot.  I was ecstatic when I hit 25 jumps.  Then Jo told me that I had 50 of these same jumps but with a 180 twist (was it supposed to be a 180?  I'm sure I only did a 90...(omg).  Fortunately for me, Jo recognized that severe bodily injury was likely to occur and found me a lower step to complete these exercises on - for now - but I know that I'll do the higher step soon. 

What I realized last night, is that I had managed to change my way of thinking by giving myself a goal to focus on rather than focusing on the effort.  I wonder how many times I missed a great acheivement by being too scared to try?