This Side of Fear:Inner & Outer Blocks

For the first time in my life I have been treating myself to a personal trainer once a week. I would imagine that working with me as a client has the potential to be intimidating - not because I am strong and fit physically (I’m working on that), but because I am strong and fit mentally.?

I am aware that sometimes my confidence has the capacity to make people adjust accordingly or make assumptions about me -particularly when it comes to knowing my body. After all, I’ve been a dancer my whole life, it’s my job to have control over and understand my physical self.?

From the start, it was important for me to let my trainer know that even though I might seem like I know what I’m doing, I have little to no experience in the weight lifting realm and I really wanted to be sure that my “smart body” wasn’t making stupid choices about how to do things.?

She understood what I was saying and went on to share with me that, for her, the assumptions went the other way; and that she often had to prove to her clients that she knew what she was doing despite her slight physique and young age. She isn’t much bigger than a flea and is barely 22 years old. She also happens to be an award winning weightlifter.?

I appreciated her candor and assured her that I could tell already that she knew her stuff and that she had nothing she needed to prove to me. And so our work together began with a foundation of honesty, mutual understanding and respect, despite how easy it might have been to assume or make judgements based on each of our appearances.?From that moment on I knew we were a good fit.

She always keeps our workouts varied and interesting from battle ropes (never have I felt less elegant) to “the sled” which entailed channeling my inner quarterback.?

On this particular day, she pulled out a small black block about 16 inches high and started to demonstrate the next exercise. I watched as she easily jumped up and off of the block as an unfamiliar feeling came over me. It was fear. It was my turn and I stepped in front of the block preparing to do the exercise. I stood there staring at it - I couldn’t move. “C’mon you got this Lisa - it’s easy!”, I heard my trainer saying. She seemed somewhat surprised by my hesitancy.?

I bent my knees preparing to jump but something in my brain stopped me.?

As a life coach I work a lot with fear so it was super interesting for me to understand what was going on. I truly believed in my mind that I couldn't do it and was already creating vivid storylines about what might happen when I miss the box. She lowered the height and had me jump off the box which I did (albeit reluctantly) and I could even easily leap up and land on one leg. Still, I was completely convinced that there was no way I could do it with two feet. “Just try it once” she kept saying, “I’ll catch you if you fall.”?

No amount of encouragement was working, so we downgraded to a step and although I did it fairly easily a few times, that too came to a standstill and I couldn’t do that either!?

I noticed that I wasn’t angry at myself or ashamed, in fact that day I found it super curious, almost funny. I knew instinctively that this moment was teaching me something about myself, although I didn’t know what - and despite what you may be thinking, it wasn’t about overcoming my fear. My focus transformed from “conquering my fear” to understanding it.

So I thought it might be interesting to look at my story through my lens as a coach to see if there were any inner blocks that were holding me back that day.

There are four inner blocks that can hold us back or affect our ability to move forward with things we want to do.?

We use the acronym GAIL

The G stands for Gremlin it’s your inner critic that tells you, in one way or another, that you’re not good enough.?

In my story, if the Gremlin was responsible for holding me back it might have sent me the message that said something like “don’t do it you’ll just embarrass yourself”, “you aren’t strong enough to do it” etc… but I wasn’t hearing that message.

A stands for Assumption - an expectation that because something has happened in the past, it will happen again. Now that’s interesting because somewhere deep down there may have been a time when I hurt myself trying something similar and I believed that this was the same.

The I stands for Interpretation– An opinion or judgment that you create around an event, situation, person, or experience and believe to be true. I might have interpreted what happened as a weakness or waste of time but for me that wasn’t the case at all. (Who knows how my trainer interpreted it but we are looking for my inner blocks not hers!)

The L is for Limiting Belief– which is something that you accept about life, about yourself, about your world, or about the people in it, that limits you in some way. So many things could fall under this heading in my story including limiting beliefs about age, health, strength etc., courage etc but again I didn’t really feel any of those.

So what was going on that day??

There’s a quote that goes something like:?

“Everything you've ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear… To get what you want, you just need to get past your fear.”

And in some instances that may be true and fear can sometimes actually be a motivator, especially if you ascribe to the idea that overcoming it will bring you everything that you want.?

But you know what I’m realizing as I write this? I did have a limiting belief that day. The limiting belief was that I’m supposed to overcome my fear! The limiting belief that when I am faced with something that scares me that I am supposed to do it anyways.?

We spent at least 15 minutes more with my trainer trying her best to convince me - to no avail. The funny thing is that I thought I wanted to do it but now in retrospect I realize that I could care less! I am grateful that it happened though - and for today’s lesson. The block wasn’t a mental block. It was just a block.