Think about a baby starting to walk, it falls over, shuffles on its bottom, grabs hold of the sofa, staggers, cries, falls over. We don't say, my goodness stop that baby from walking it's no good at it?
So it is with anything new we are like that baby we are going to fall over, be imperfect, and so what?
Mainly it's with strangers we don't have to see them again.
If we say to others who seem to know- I have never done this before and I am willing to learn then all of those I would value say, you are doing well, can I help, shall I demonstrate how to....
Most people are more concerned about what you think of them than what they think of you
It's a little like jumping into a cold swimming pool, just jump in without thinking about it. No chance to change your mind so don't give yourself space and time to change your mind, if there is a risk you will. I did a parachute jump for charity and a bungee jump for a dare. I went climbing a wall with a friend, made a commitment and couldn't back out. Take a deep breath and jump in, the water is warm once you are in.
Go girl
I don't have to do it again if I don't want to
Is there a trial session before I commit to it?
Are you new to this too?
I remember when I learned to do something new like Tango, I booked a workshop and mixed with the newbies, isn't funny that in lessons people are there to learn and improve. That's why they are called lessons.
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Let's examine something we both know this board. I lurked for nearly 5 months before I plunged in. Then my posting was dire, after a while it improved quite a lot. So how do you post to someone new here? The answer I suspect is that you are interested in them, you care, because of that you aren't worried about what they think of you because you think of them. The real world is the same. I am minded of the guru on the road, a traveller meets the guru and says " I am on my way to the next village, what are the people like there?" The guru says "what were they like in the last village?" The traveller says "they were kind and welcoming" the guru says "you will find the people in the next village the same". The next traveller arrives with the same question about the people in the next village, the guru replies in the same way "what were like in the last village?" The traveller says "unwelcoming, and very rude". The guru replies "that is how they will be in the next village"
I am sure there are many who are similar with similar thoughts as you and many of them are there. You only need one sympathetic soul and you have a plan.
At the end of the day everything we do has a skill set along a bell shaped curve, on somethings i am awesome with others blah and that can change. I was so poor at jive when I started I love music and after a couple of dozen sessions really good.
On the other hand I sing in the shower very badly, something equivalent to a cat wailing, I get dragged to karaoke, I pick a song that requires little singing and everyone sings a song with me. I mime.
At the end of the day act as if and keep on smiling. You don't have to like it just do it.
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OK so you want to go spinning?
Turn up at the gym dressed ready to get on that bike, pay then immediately to the studio.
Start on a bike at the back left hand side. That means early arrival to claim your bike. Have a towel and a water bottle. When the trainer says anyone new, raise your hand (excusing yourself as a first timer). It's your first time go at your own pace. Ask someone smiley near to you to check your bike is set up ok. Wear plain black leggings and T-shirt (no attention) smile, smile, smile. Enjoy the music, then at the end of the session, say to yourself "way to go Jellyb." Second time is easier.
Here is how not to do it, bike at the front, wear purple and a red hat, frown, hate the music and ignore the instructor whilst having your seat too high wearing high heels, die of thirst and leave in the middle to go for a P.
No one cares at all how you look, your health is more important than any temporary embarrassment. You don't have to like the medicine, just take it.
When you go spinning (and you will) there is a generous rainbow strength coming your way, as you can do it. Remember the first time is the worst, it's all up hill after that.
Spinning is an amazing workout, you can go at your own pace, it's low stress on a bike, jiggle bits don't jiggle, you don't have to jump on the spot, it's easy on the knees. There is great lively music. And best of all everyone is working out and ignoring you. You can do it with minimal fitness and work up to high gears and high speed. Sometimes the studios are in the dark with a back track projected onto a screen.
You got this. I think you can now see yourself spinning, it's called rehearsal, visioning or imagination.
V
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose. V 64, WAW
My dear Jelly, as I read your post about your relationship with your father I was brought back to mine. It was a hard time. The yelling, the fear, the inability to understand why he was behaving this way. Revealing your childhood experiences in the manner you did dropped my defenses and allowed so many of my memories to flood my conscious. I absolutely love the way you write. I have pushed these feelings down for so long. I have forgotten how bad I felt. I feel sad now. This sadness has nothing to do with my wife. This is about a petulant man child who verbally abused his family to get his way.
I wanted to post here to say hi and see how your doing. I ended up talking about myself. After reading that post I think we both had some difficult childhood father experiences. It is weird, you describing yours floods me with mine. I like having this connection to you.
On NPR maybe a year ago, there was this little clip about a man who was afraid of rejection and then intentionally went out and made himself get rejected everyday.. They said it became popular (almost like the Harlem Shake) and people were doing wacky stuff just to get rejected. I think a club was even started I am trying to find out who this guy was. Maybe someone else knows.
For me, the desire to do what I want to do supercedes any social fear. I never thought about this much until I read your post. I am told by close friend that I am oblivious to other people though. I also grew up in an area where anything goes. there are so many people you can basically do anything and you probably won't stand out that much. I agree with vanilla, most people are too concerned about themselves to even notice you.
Start putting yourself first. You have to be your own advocate and if you want to do something badly enough just take the plunge and make sure you do it.
what exactly are you afraid of?
Me: 42 H: 43 Twins age 5 Physically Separated 7/2015
Spinning is a ton of fun and hard work. I loved it. I would love to start going again. I agree with everything V said but would like to add prepare to be sore in places you did not know could be sore and have fun
You are such a sweet, soulful, gentle man and I am so very sorry that you have experienced similar pain to my own. Let the defences drop when you can and feel it and let it go. Hanging onto to it serves you no purposes, but the letting go will bring huge reward.
Mu it took me some time to understand the man my father was. Out of my sisters I actually have the best understanding and relationship with him (that must sound odd given he is dead, but nonetheless true). I did the work.
I have been reading Melodie Beatties book The New Co-dependency and she has a chapter in there called A New Legacy from Our Family of Origin. It makes for interesting reading. She says "each of ancestors plays an important part in shaping who we are ...if we can't honour our ancestors, we can't love ourselves".
I actually know very little about him. But I do know my father was physically and emotionally abused as a child. He was the second son in a family of five children. An older brother and then sisters. As the second son he had no status, but had status over his female siblings. He was by all accounts his father's whipping boy. And I mean literally. He was the chosen child to be scapegoated.
He grew up in wartorn country and somehow through some internal drive and resilence made is way out of Hungary. My mother tells a story of my father escaping across a policed boarder with friends a couple who had a child. There was some incident where as they were moving across the boarder, where the couple and child were separated and in the chaos my father saved the child and brought her across the boarder reuniting her with her family.
My father spoke no english when he arrived her in 1956. So I guess the fact that my father moved to a new country without family, without speaking english shows that there was something quite determined about him.
My mother says that he was an amazing father prior to the time we could speak english better than we could. It seemed to phase him that we could potentially out smart him by the fact that we had a better command of the english language.
My father had the most spectacular handwriting, it was curved and italic like. It reminds me of caligraphy and when I think about him writing in his second language. I find something strangly beautiful and romantic when I think about this.
My father had a complete love of food and wine. He was a wine waiter when he met my mother, who was a waitress. He could have been a sommelier, but his gambling got in the way.
My father eventually became a foreman for the biggest brewery in NZ. So this required him to manual labor, likely quite hard for my father as man who saw himself lifting himself and his family out of the poverty and peasent lifestyle of his childhood. But what I remember, every morning, my father would at 5.30am and he would shave and he would put on an ironed white shirt, trousers of business suit and a tie and would put his blue work overalls on top. My father would brylcreem his hair and would file his nails. He has the softest hands of male I have ever known.
Why am I telling you this? I guess because my father at the end of the day was a man of human fraility. He was a childhood abuse survivior, a refugee, a hard worker, and man with beautiful penmanship and a lover of good wine and food. He also happened to be a compulsive gambler and emotionally abusive and unavilable husband and father. Seeing the man in his totality is important.
I am now the age my father was when my father was in his most addicted period of his gambling. I look at my own life and my struggle with all of my demons and dragons, and I think, likely my father was trying to slay his own, the best way he knew how.
I forgave my father a long time ago for being who he was and what he did.
Now I just have to forgive myself. Mu neither of are our father's. We know better and have done better.
On NPR maybe a year ago, there was this little clip about a man who was afraid of rejection and then intentionally went out and made himself get rejected everyday.. They said it became popular (almost like the Harlem Shake) and people were doing wacky stuff just to get rejected. I think a club was even started I am trying to find out who this guy was. Maybe someone else knows.
For me, the desire to do what I want to do supercedes any social fear. I never thought about this much until I read your post. I am told by close friend that I am oblivious to other people though. I also grew up in an area where anything goes. there are so many people you can basically do anything and you probably won't stand out that much. I agree with vanilla, most people are too concerned about themselves to even notice you.
Start putting yourself first. You have to be your own advocate and if you want to do something badly enough just take the plunge and make sure you do it.
what exactly are you afraid of?
When I first starting dating when I was 29/30 years old, I went into telling myself that every date was likely going to be a rejection and I was going to use every date as practice for the next one. It became a social experiment of sorts. Now I have absolutely no fear of spending 45-60 mins on a coffee date with someone I have chatted to online.
See I really struggle with the cold engagement. The not having any background on someone or them on me, makes me feel completely under prepared and anxious.
I guess if I am completely honest, and this is going to sound so high school. I think they are going to judge me on how I look and then not want to talk to me, because they don't think I'm worthy of being there. Completely stupid and irrational I know but also the complete truth.
Spinning is a ton of fun and hard work. I loved it. I would love to start going again. I agree with everything V said but would like to add prepare to be sore in places you did not know could be sore and have fun
V and tfish,
I know I can go to spin, I used to go to spin class 3 times per week about 4 years ago. The anxiety doesn't change, I just push through it. I am just especially anxious about it at the moment because I have no fitness at all and being in a room of thin fit people, freaks me out.
I guess what I am figuring out, is that the anxiety is alot of negative self talk that I just have to push through. I guess I was hoping that after all these years I wouldnt have the anxiety and I could just rely on self confidance and not give it a second thought.
It seems to me it is relying on the old strategy of faking it till you make it. To learn not to care what other people think. Get my head out of everyone else's business and get into my own.
The guys name was Jason comely. You can google him. Its actually an endearing story. His wife had left him and he rose above it. The "dares" look fun. I would do them with you One of them is to challenge a stranger to "rock, scissors, paper"... I think I would have to be in my 20s to do that one though!
a lot of people worry about being judged for something they know is superficial...the car they drive, their job, their house etc. it's part of being human. I am so embarassed about living with my parents and about their chaotic home (actually perfect for 5 year olds) , I don't want the kids to have play dates come over. So while it was easy for me to say just do it, I get that it's not so simple.
Although, admittedly I am not in a big rush to have to host 5 year old play dates
My favorite spin class was with male instructor who played and sang to meat loaf the entire time. His physique was similar to meat loafs as well. It was the best exercise class i ever took.
Let's learn to embrace what's not cookie cutter!
Me: 42 H: 43 Twins age 5 Physically Separated 7/2015
Spinning is a ton of fun and hard work. I loved it. I would love to start going again. I agree with everything V said but would like to add prepare to be sore in places you did not know could be sore and have fun
V and tfish,
I know I can go to spin, I used to go to spin class 3 times per week about 4 years ago. The anxiety doesn't change, I just push through it. I am just especially anxious about it at the moment because I have no fitness at all and being in a room of thin fit people, freaks me out.
I guess what I am figuring out, is that the anxiety is alot of negative self talk that I just have to push through. I guess I was hoping that after all these years I wouldnt have the anxiety and I could just rely on self confidance and not give it a second thought.
It seems to me it is relying on the old strategy of faking it till you make it. To learn not to care what other people think. Get my head out of everyone else's business and get into my own.
Lol OMG deep breaths
Yes, plus at this time of year there are many unfit people in spin classes.
If an old Broad like V can do this, a whipper snapper like Jellyb can
Who cares how you get there?
V
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose. V 64, WAW
