I Labelled Myself So Others Wouldn’t Know the Truth

You walk into a gym for the first time in years and everyone is looking at you.

They can see through your form that you’ve never done this before. The sweat five minutes into your workout screams, the heaviest weights I’ve lifted is a carton of milk.

Going to the gym makes you self-conscious, vulnerable, and filled with anxiety so you avoid it altogether.

This feeling is why I never played a sport in my life. Actually I did a relay race once.

I suck at pretty much all sports. I always told myself I’m not the sporty type and it’s not for me.

Thankfully, I didn’t need sports to function in my everyday life, so I got away with avoiding it for years. I even managed to convince my school to take Physical Education online just to get the minimum required credits.

But this year, something changed.

My husband’s obsession with golf rubbed off on our five year old, and suddenly, I didn’t want to be the mom who missed out on family experiences.

I envisioned all of us on the golf course one day, and that was enough to kick me out of my ‘I’m not a sports girl’ era.

When I was journaling about it, I realized that I’d avoided sports not just because I wasn’t good at them, but because I didn’t want to feel incompetent.

And that feeling became a missed opportunity for learning, for growth, for new experiences.

What was I really afraid of?

The truth is I was afraid of looking stupid.

We all start off not knowing how to do anything except cry, sleep, and eat (I’m in the thick of the newborn phase).

Everyone will always be new at something they’ve never done before and learning involves a discomfort that you need to accept so you can focus on being better instead of marinating in the feeling of incompetence.

The process of learning can trigger a lot of negative talk and self doubt.

My first week of taking golf lessons seriously, I must have said “I suck at this” a million times. I said it enough to make me realize that I was affirming it instead of acknowledging it.

Affirming it means accepting it as my identity. Acknowledging it means understanding it’s just my current situation, not who I am.

We all start at mediocrity but we don’t have to stay there

If I gave in to my self doubt, I would be mediocre at everything.

Comfort breeds mediocrity. Comfort means you don’t give yourself an opportunity to fail. Not giving yourself an opportunity to fail means not learning from your mistakes.

When someone makes it rich from a business venture, we hype up and focus on their success and minimize the weight of the process that led them there and forget about the failures and sacrifices they made to get there.

That’s why we try new things thinking it’ll be easy because if ‘John’ did it, then I can too. Until you attempt to do it and realize it’s hard and give up and decide it’s not for you.

Keep taking a step forward and by the time you look up, you’re farther than you think

I don’t know if I’m going to be the next Nelly Korda of golf, but I know that if I keep trying, learning, and failing, I’ll be a lot farther than when I first swung a club.

And if I do end up being mediocre, it will be because I stopped trying to learn, stopped practicing, stopped engaging in the sport.

Learning is a journey of self-discovery. Education doesn’t end with graduation, in fact, it doesn’t end at all.

I graduated with a Marketing degree in 2014. I believe that marketing degree has become obsolete with the creation of social media. If I only relied on what I learned between 2010–2014, I wouldn’t be able to keep up in an industry that thrives on constant innovation. I would be subpar at best.

Swimming is another sport I’ve taken up recently. I was sharing a lane with another swimmer and as he was leaving he said “I’m all done, you can have the lane. I don’t really know how to swim anyway.”

There was a hint of embarrassment and humility in his expression. He walked away too quickly for me to say ‘me too!’

That it’s ok and there’s no judgement, that I commend him for trying even though he’s not at the level he wants to be.

Instead I could only offer up a gentle smile hoping he doesn’t get discouraged because deep inside I’m rooting for him.

I don’t say I’m not a sporty girl anymore. I wouldn’t even know that to be true because I’ve never tried it.

My truth is, I’ve never tried sports because I was afraid.

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What new adventures are you avoiding out of fear?

Truly, this realization wouldn’t be possible without the life-changing habit of journaling.

Join a community of journaling enthusiasts and receive prompts and ideas to inspire self-awareness and creativity.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

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