“I’m not athletic”
“I could never dive
“I’m not good at math”
“I am very slow when it comes to languages”
“I’m very bad with directions”
“I can’t dance”
“I can’t”
“I don’t know how”
“I am this way”
“That’s the way my brain functions”
“I was born this way”
The labels we place on ourselves tend to stick with us.
Easy to put them on our minds
Not so easy to peel them off.
And they go under our skins in different ways
Either someone else injects them,
Or they’re born from trauma,
Or we just get lazy.
My lazy side used to say, “I am not good with directions”.
To back my laziness up, I saw something on TV, a game show and the MC was showing a brain and comparing the brains of males and females. He said that the female brain lacks the part responsible for direction. Watching that only reinforced my belief that “I am bad with directions.”
Until about 8 years ago when I was assisting a well-known builder to purchase a house in Rosedale area, and I was supposed to pick him up for our appointment. He told me on the phone to pick him up on the southeast corner of Yonge and Eglinton, and I shamelessly replied, “sorry but I am bad with directions, can you please tell me which building at the intersection? BMO or CIBC? and I will pick you up from there.”
When I picked him up, first thing he said was, “how come you said you are bad with directions? You are just lazy and don’t want to learn them”. He didn’t say it harshly, he was just being real.
With practice, I eventually understood directions, and now I can easily pick someone up on the southeast corner of any intersection!
These labels can actually come off with perseverance.
Take my best friend for example.
He always said he wasn’t flexible and couldn’t do yoga because he couldn’t sit on the floor (and to be fair, he really couldn’t at first) but with perseverance, which I hope he’ll teach me one day, he made it happen. He practiced sitting every day. The first 2 weeks it was painful and kind of funny to watch, but he got better.
Believe me, we can get the groove back.
I’m sharing some of the labels I’ve been carrying for decades and managed to overcome, though I still have way more to work on.
I remember overhearing some family members talking about me, saying ‘Tannaz is not athletic, she can’t even run fast’. Hearing that of course broke my heart, but stubborn me decided to join the running competition at school.
I remember the race vividly,
I was running like my life depended on it, I was 10 feet from the finish line, leaning forward as if my head could get me to cross it faster. I went down so hard that my nose scraped peeling the skin off my nose. I still remember the gut-wrenching sound of it. I fell scarring my face and knees, and not only did I lose the race, but the embarrassment of lying flat on the ground stayed with me.
I was traumatized, and of course, the label that I couldn’t run was marked on me in bold.
It took me years to heal, but I actually found out that I am quite athletic. I am just better suited for individual sports like tennis rather than team sports. I still have a fear of letting down my teammates, but in individual sports, I only have myself to blame:)
See, you will find your groove.
Somehow you will.
If we don’t remove those labels, they might stick with us forever.
But change is possible, as I’ve learned from my own experiences.
I always always wanted to play chess, but I used to think chess was a game of strategy, I am not really a strategic person, I lose focus quickly and I don’t have enough patience. Years went by and I kept seeing people playing chess and wished I was one of them.
Not long ago, while we were at a resort just relaxing, I noticed a chessboard on the table.
I asked my kind man, “do you think I could ever learn this?”
He answered, “why do you keep saying that? Let me show you.”
“You might not be the most strategic person, but you know the strategy of chaos:) you have won people in backgammon with that, maybe you could use new strategies that no one has thought of for chess!”
So I sat down, ordered a margarita, and listened to him.
We played twice a day for the entire 7 days we were at the resort. Not only did I learn the game, but I enjoyed it, and get this, I found out that I can focus, I can sit still and think of strategies! I lost every game, but some of them took an hour – not too bad for a rookie!
Let’s not label our beautiful selves,
And don’t forget
#loveistheanswer
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