Month: May 2013

Fear Itself

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I’ve been thinking a whole lot about fear lately.

It seems that everywhere I turn I see another awesome article or quote or blog post about overcoming fear, standing up for yourself, and basically owning your total bad-ass self.

I don’t doubt that I have some serious bad-ass potential but throughout a lotta my life it’s been hidden behind some unnecessary and not-always-helpful fear.

A few days ago a friend of mine was a little too quick to agree with me that he thinks that my sisters are tougher than me.  He’s met them twice.  I wasn’t offended, not too much, my sisters are tougher than me!  Yarrow used to ‘tightrope walk’ across the top of the jungle gym when she was just two feet tall.  Cedar backpacked around New Zealand at 18 by herself.  Sure, I was a whitewater raft guide at 17 but that never would have happened had Yarrow not already paved the way for me.

I’ve been scared, fearful, timid for a lot of my life.  This might not be your first, or even second or twentieth, impression of me but I feel it from the inside.   My teens and twenties were spent with a lot of fear over being embarrassed, standing out, looking awkward, not being good at something, offending someone, being taken the wrong way, you get the idea.

I was, and am, a confident human.  I know I’m a good dancer, a capable cook, a nice person.  I can argue my point if I feel very strongly and am knowledgeable on the subject manner.   But sometimes my agree-ability is a mask.  Sometimes I am afraid to truly speak my mind for fear of straight up looking stupid.  The thing is, who gives a shit?  If all these other people are feeling compelled to write about overcoming fears and embracing/facing our insecurities than I am definitely not alone in this experience.

In the past I always imagined that faking confidence and avoiding anything that challenged my (many) insecurities was the road to never looking stupid and keeping up an image of…I don’t exactly know…fearlessness?  As I become a full-fledged adult (scary and beautiful and totally happening) I’m realizing more and more how much I respect and appreciate others for being open and honest about their own fears and insecurities.

In short, I find real, raw humanness so heartwarming and beautiful and even kind of sweet.   Screw bravado, I wanna help you up after you fall on your face!  And I want you to do the same for me.

Some of the articles that I’ve been reading lately…

10 Life Changing Tips Inspired by Rumi from MindBodyGreen

How Will You Ever Know If You Don’t Fucking Try? from A Life Less Bullshit

Do Whatever The Fuck You Want also from A Life Less Bullshit

Avoiding Fear by Indulging in Our Fear of Fear from Seth’s Blog

Sing it Brett!! Darling Do Not Fear

“We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face… we must do that which we think we cannot.”

and of course…

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Both quotes by Eleanor Roosevelt

Head Space

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I recently had a conversation with a friend in which I explained that the more time that passes before I respond to an email or text the harder it is for me to know what to say.  I start to feel like I should open with an apology.  You’d think that this might shame me into procrastinating less but it hasn’t worked yet.  I mean, who wants to say, “sorry I’m an asshole and haven’t written you back in waaay tooo long”.   This blog is kinda like that too.  It seems a little odd to jump right into regular scheduled programming after a long absence.

I’m not going to apologize but I will say, I miss writing!  And taking pictures!  And connecting with all of you!  It’s been a strange year and the blog has definitely reflected some of these personal shifts, mostly through scarce postings and vague reference to my life being a little shaken up.  I’d love to get back to regular 3-5 times a week postings but I haven’t been able to kick my ass into that gear as of yet.

At last posting I was gearing up for my 32nd birthday.  Well friends, May 12th has come and gone and with it my Challenge deadline.   The challenge was to basically do a whole lot of yoga, Pilates, running, and meditating in the 6 week period before my day.  I fell a little short on a few of my specific goals but I did get stronger and leaner and had many really great workouts along the way.

Although I really enjoy setting goals and challenges for myself I also feel that it can become a little restrictive and actually undermine my greater goal of living a super active lifestyle and enjoying whatever activity feels right to me in the moment.

I don’t know about you but I only have a finite amount of energy and time.  Sometimes I would rather use that time and energy to mow the lawn or clean the house or go dancing or take a walk or a hike but if I am trying to meet a running goal than I choose to lace up and check it off my list.  My take-home lesson is that at this point in my life it’s more functional and satisfying to truly listen to my body and my day-to-day life and let my activity be a response to these needs.  This isn’t going to make me PR in a half-marathon any time soon but I’m totally cool with that.

Meditating!  Love-loathe.  Loathe-love.

Rarely in my life have I been so incredibly challenged to release judgement about my ‘skills’ and abilities.  I suck at mediating.  I am so not successful.  And yet, I have sat in stillness and relative silence dozens of times over the last two months.  I rock at meditating.  I can totally do this. 😉

I’ve been loving the Headspace app.  It is a free 10-day, ten minutes a day, meditating program.   The premise is super simple and the exercise can be done sitting or lying.  Once I got caught in a crazy downpour in my car and I pulled over and did my meditation from the drivers seat.

In light of my new goal too not set goals I am commuting to embracing meditation as a really useful tool to have in my box of live-your-best-life tricks.  Most of my meditations last around 10 minutes but I’ve had good experiences with sits as short as a minute or two.    This recent Huffington Post article, Meditation Health Benefits: What The Practice Does To Your Body,  only reiterated my affection for meditation.

That’s all for now. Hope to be back soon!