So I had a rough learning experience this week.
A little background to set the scene. I have been experiencing some inconsistent knee pain this last week during certain movements in workouts, like when squatting, or even just everyday activities, like going down stairs, getting in and out of my car, etc. I say inconsistent, because sometimes the pain is there and sometimes it's not - weird, I know. In any event, I met with my trainer for our weekly workout and I let him know about what's been going on. So we began the workout and he had me do some new exercises/movements to help investigate what might be causing that pain.
Pretty close to the end of our workout, and after seeing that there wasn't any one particular movement or position that made a difference - again, pretty inconsistent - he had me do some body weight squats. He showed me the form he wanted me to use and could see after just one try that I was having a hard time. So on the second attempt he stands behind me and brings his leg forward to brace my back as I squat and he instructs me to push my hips back even further. I could only go down so far before losing all strength and feeling that twinge in my knee. In order to compensate for that I leaned forward to maintain my balance, not just in the squat position, but in order to stand back up, which I did.
I realized that being overweight and carrying most of that weight in my belly has pushed my center of gravity forward, such that when I went down to a certain height, I needed to lean forward in order to maintain balance. With him telling me to move my hips backward, it completely threw off my center of gravity and I didn't have the strength to hold myself in that position without feeling like I was falling backwards.
On my third attempt, this time with him insisting that I push my hips back, and even though I felt his leg bracing me, I couldn't do it. I fell. It was only about 4-5 inches, and the physical fall didn't hurt, but what hurt was the emotional toll that short action had on me. Craig (my trainer) walked around and held out his hand to help me stand up and said, "come on, one more time." I took his hand and let him help me up. I was feeling very weak, embarrassed and ashamed of myself. He walked around behind me one more time and told me to try again. I didn't want to do it, but I did. He tells me, "Bring your hips back. I'm here, I've got you." I tried again and really focused on bringing my hips backward into the sitting position. Same result. I could only go so far before my legs completely gave out. I fell again.
"It's okay," I hear Craig's voice behind me as we walks around to face me. He holds out his hand again to help me stand up, but this time I hesitate. I didn't want to take his hand at first; I was too angry - mad at myself. I didn't even want to look at him. I was so ashamed of myself. I was mad at being so fat that I couldn't even hold myself up. I was mad at being so weak that I couldn't even complete the simplest exercise. Then I got mad at myself for everything that had happened to me in my past that led me to this humiliating moment - most especially my own bone-headed decisions. You know, the little ones that you don't think will have any consequences? "Just one little bite won't hurt (which then turns into an entire pie/cake/pizza/etc.); I had a rough week, I can have some ice cream; I'm too tired to exercise, I just really need to rest/relax;" etc.
"Come on," he beckons again. I take his hand and stand up, then bend over forward - out of breath and defeated. As he walks away, while I "recover," he says, "we can stop there for today, but lets do some foam rolling." In that moment, I'm just trying to keep my shit together. I'm flooded with emotions and feeling like a massive failure. As I get my breath back I walk to where he is with the foam roller and he goes through what he wants me to do. I've done some foam rolling before and even though I don't tell him that, I'm glad to be doing something I kind of know how to do. But my mind isn't really on it and when I finish he tells me to just relax and breathe.
But he can see on my face that I'm not okay. "Are you still thinking about what happened back there?" he asks me. "Yes," I said with my head hanging down, "I'm pretty upset about it actually." I proceed to tell him how I'm feeling about myself and that prompted a pretty frank discussion about what I can learn from this experience. I wish I had a tape recorder with me to remember all of the details, but some of the major points he made were these:
I didn't fail today.
He pointed out all of things I WAS able to do - like learn a brand new exercise while keeping great form; being better conditioned in that I could actually talk to him between sets of prowler pushes; even one of the other trainers in the gym let him know that he sees me there working out on my own; etc. He pointed out that struggling with one exercise, while showing improvement in others is still a win.
In that moment I was choosing to feel bad about myself.
(That's always a tough one to hear, but he was right.) I was choosing to focus on the one thing I "failed" at, while not acknowledging all the other things I had done well. I was the one bringing up all my past mistakes and failures and causing myself to drown in regret. Additionally, he pointed out a danger in that, when I do that, I am also projecting my fears into the future, ensuring that I won't change when my focus is only on what I've done (and by extension, will continue to do) wrong. He instructed me to do some meditations to project into my future what my vision for myself is, but then to "come back" to the present and look at what choices I can make today to help lead to that future vision. In essence - have a vision of who I want to be, but focus on today (what I can control), not on the future (what I can't control).
Life is not black and white.
Coming from a highly religious background, I tend to paint most things as black and white - either you're good or you're bad and there is no in-between. But the truth is, there is gray. Humans aren't perfect, there is some good and bad in all of us - all of us make mistakes. Sometimes we make "bad" choices; sometimes we exhibit "bad" behavior. If life were only black and white, there would be no hope for us; but life has shades of gray - that is the training ground that allows us to learn how to make better choices. You can fail at something and not BE a failure - which is a totally foreign concept to a shame-based way of thinking. There is no gray for shame-based people, but that is not how life was designed.
If you have beliefs that are hurting you, then they are garbage and need to be thrown away. YOU CAN CHOOSE NEW BELIEFS. It may sound surprising, but this one is very difficult for me to accept. Again, due to shame-based thinking, wherein labels ARE the thing itself. What I mean is, I come from a past and a way of thinking that says: "if you do something bad you ARE bad. If you make a mistake, you ARE a mistake. If you fail at something you ARE a failure. If you ARE fat then you don't fit in and you ARE unacceptable. You can't be yourself because who you ARE, at your core, is unacceptable." When these beliefs are adopted at a young age they feel permanent - as if set in stone and unalterable. In my case, I know that these beliefs were instilled by the time I was six. And when I say instilled, I mean that by this age these beliefs were so ingrained that they were automatic. I had fully accepted their reality - this is who I am. There has never, ever been a time in my life when I didn't know that I was a failure, or a mistake, from the beginning. This is my foundation. Even though it's wrong, it's the only foundation I've known, so the prospect of removing my foundation is terrifying.
But what is the result? I have built a house on my crooked foundation that has resulted in unnecessary pain, an "ugly" house that is fat and un-athletic and lives in misery and sadness. The windows only see and reflect pain, sadness, and loneliness. A house of misery. What I am going through in attempting to improve my fitness is the equivalent of trying to tear down and rebuild my house, but in the process realizing that my house was poorly constructed because the foundation was misshapen and uneven to begin with. Which means, basically, that I need to gut the foundation and start over. I need to throw away the beliefs that are hurting me and choose new ones. Insightful imagery aside, this is much harder to do than it sounds. Hmm... harder to do, but not impossible...
This is why learning hurts. It reaches to the core of who I am. It forces me to examine the beliefs, experiences and circumstances that have been a part of me, seemingly from the beginning - and many of them, as I begin to shine a light on them, are dark, disgusting and terrifying (okay, not ALL of them, there are some good things in there too!). When I see the "bad" things I regret them or feel ashamed of them and the cycle continues. But the cycle CAN be broken. Actually thy cycle MUST be broken in order to progress.
The irony is not lost on me - the only way to progress is to fail. I need failures - I need to experience failing AND STILL BEING OKAY. I need to learn that I can fall on my ass a few times and "fail" at something, i.e., discover a limitation, AND STILL BE OKAY. In order to change my beliefs it will take deciding to believe different and then experiencing believing different and that isn't going to happen overnight, because experience takes time. And that's how it's supposed to be.
So how would you finish the phrase: "When learning hurts..."?
Here's how I think I would finish it: When learning hurts, be grateful. It means that what you're learning is significant and it's helping you become what you were meant to be.
