Back on March 12th, an article from nerdfitness.com appeared in my inbox (because I had subscribed to it) and it kinda rocked my brain. Which meant, of course, I immediately had to tell the Jedi Council about it. The article was called “Are your beliefs sabotaging you?” and is essentially about the conscious and unconscious limits we put on ourselves, often due to a bad experience or an off-hand comment. Steve Kamb, founder of nerdfitness.com, put it like this:
1. We hear we’re bad at something, or have a bad experience with something.
2. We avoid trying again, because we are shying away from the potential for more pain of that experience.
3. If we do try again, we try half-assed, so we can point to that and say, “See? It didn’t work.”
4. We never get better at said activity, because we never practice it.
5. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
For me the perfect example was when I played soccer when I was around 12 or 13. I’d played other sports, but being kind a human cyclone of klutziness and thereforenot overly coordinated put the kibosh (<- first self-fulfilling prophecy!) on things like tee ball and baseball, dance, and skating. But I had legs, so I could play soccer. Let’s be fair here, I wasn’t a natural athlete, but I was (and still am) full of enthusiasm and sportsmanship. We were told by our coach that on game days, the first people to the field would get to start the match. Do you know who was always one of the first six people to arrive for a match? And also who never started? Yup. This girl. I stood on the sidelines and cheered my little (semi-broken) heart out for my teammates, and occasionally got to sub in, but that was about it. What my poor pre-teen brain took from this was that I was terrible at soccer and therefore sports. It will not surprise you to learn that was the last year I played sports.
That story wasn’t to make you sad for young Andrea! It’s totally working out for her still. But it shows how much we let the outside world tell us what we are and aren’t good at, be it sports, public speaking, singing, what have you. It’s an indication that many of us are more fragile that we realize, and little things may be stopping you from accomplishing amazing things.
SO, I challenged the Jedi Council to look back and see if we could find some of the self-sabotage that might have put in our own way, and how we’re trying (or going to try) to overcome it and decide our own fate! Self-fulfilling prophecies be damned!
Andrea
It’s funny, I came up with my ‘perfect example’ for the lead in of this post in seconds. However, when it came to writing something a little more substantial, I was at a loss. I don’t know if it’s because I feel like I’ve created so many self-fulfilling prophecies about myself, or if it’s because most of them are much more personal than ‘not being good at sports.’
I think it might have something to do with the fact that I kind of have come to terms with being the ‘big girl’. I’ve been her for a long time. I’ve been the sidekick to a lot of pretty girls, before they shed me for prettier friends. I’ve also been the funny girl, because when you’re the big girl, you better be ready to be the first to laugh at yourself, or you’re going to spend a lot of time with hurt feelings or crying in the corner, or both. I let that ‘big-boned’ (<- not really a thing) person be who I was. But now, coupled with my deep desire to healthier and more able to wear and do the things I want, I find that I also have a deep fear of who that person is. I've been able to hide a lot of personal failings behind being a big girl; not being very popular, not really having any meaningful romantic relationships, that kind of thing. And now that I'm on a journey to shed that image, I don't know what the future holds for the 'new me' and that's kind of terrifying.
I have a much better idea of who I am as person now, the girl behind the image, and I think that’s something that starts to come as we get older. It also helps that as I take steps towards that ‘new me’, the me that isn’t quite as big as before, I have the Jedi Council by my side. ‘Cause quests are always easier when you have a team of awesome people with you.
Kate
Well, it's the end of March. I'm a bit surprised by how quickly it's gone by, because it feels like only last week that I was planning out what I was going to do this month. I felt so optimistic about March, and how I was going to tackle it and beat it into submission, and while the reality hasn't quite been as successful as that, I'm still feeling pretty good about it.
I've been trying not to get overly personal on these blogs, but Andrea challenged us this week to write about ways that we've allowed ourselves to be held back by setting ourselves up for failure so we don't have to take ownership of our own insecurities. Most of us have some of these sneaky little negative demons tucked away in our brains, quietly influencing our decisions and I've been making a concerted effort over the past few years to tackle mine. This past month has involved a pretty persistent one.
I've known for a long time that I very likely have Obstructive Sleep Apnea, or OSA. When we enter REM sleep, our deepest sleep cycle, our muscles relax (so we don't act out our dreams!). For some of us, our muscles relax too much and the muscles in our throat actually collapse upon themselves, blocking the trachea and preventing us from breathing. This causes poor sleep (duh) because your body is constantly cycling into lighter sleep patterns in order to breath, and it also causes all sorts of other health problems like heart arrhythmia, increased risk of stroke and diabetes, and a whole host of other issues. Also, strangely enough, it causes chronic tiredness. Go figure, right?
Anyway, like I said, I've suspected I had this for about a year. And I did nothing. Why? Because it's scary. The idea that I might have it is scary and the treatment (having to wear a positive air pressure mask hooked up to a machine while sleeping for the rest of my life) is scary. You know what's even scarier, though?
I've spent most of my adult life thinking that everyone is as tired as I am, they just cope with it better. I've always assumed that there's just something inherently lazy about me because I'm always more exhausted than everyone else, and clearly they manage to make it work. So when I came upon the idea that maybe, just maybe, there's something wrong with me that can be fixed? Well...wow. That would be incredible!
But the other side of that coin is that if I get treatment, and it doesn't help....what does that mean? As long as I can safely say "oh, I'm just tired all the time because I probably have sleep apnea", then I have a crutch and an excuse. I can use it to justify how I feel. Is it rational? Of course not. Have I avoided being tested for sleep apnea for almost a year? You betcha.
So, this month, I got tested. They assign everyone numbers, based on their night time breathing. 0-5 is normal, 6-10 is possible OSA with further testing needed, and 10+ is confirmed OSA, treatment necessary.
I scored a 14.5
So, as of today, I'm on night 6 of wearing that scary breathing mask while sleeping. In 3-4 weeks I should know if it's going to make me feel less tired. And yeah, that's scary. But this whole project is about becoming better, healthier versions of ourselves, and that means tackling the scary.
Sam
This week Andrea challenged the Jedi Council to talk about a time when we let limits that we’ve put on ourselves or others have put on us in the past and how we are working to overcome them.
I’ve personally been struggling with writing this particular blog for about two weeks now. I’m sure that this is something that I have done to myself in the past or that even other people have done to me, but I just haven’t been able to think of any examples to write about. I guess that’s a good thing?
The closest thing that I can think of is that I used to have a friend, a number of years ago now, that wasn’t very encouraging about me trying to make changes things in my life. I am no longer friends with this particular person and since then my life and myself has changed dramatically (and for the better). While she never told me I couldn’t do this or that, she would encourage the bad habits that I did have and never encouraged the good habits I was trying to make. Want to go out to dinner? Don’t get the salad, get the burger instead, it will taste better. You don’t need to go to the gym, come to the movies instead. That sort of thing.
Thinking back on this friendship that lasted 17 years, it wasn’t always like that, but as we got older, I started to grow as a person and started doing things that made me feel more like myself, started to become more confident of the person I was becoming and standing up for myself, and because I was growing (and she wasn’t) our friendship changed.
This change was too hard to overcome and four years ago, we stopped being friends. That person that I was starting to become, well I am her now (for the most part, you can’t ever stop trying to achieve to be the best person you can be for you). I’m happy, I have an amazing new group of supportive friends, and the couple of other people I was friends with before I met my amazing new group, well I truly feel that once I figured out who I was, I became a better friend to them.
While maybe it’s not quite what Andrea asked us to write about, it did make me contemplate my life and articulate something that I learned four years ago. Surround yourself with people, who are supportive and encouraging, it makes all the difference in the world.
