Is Your Former Self Sabotaging Your Future?

Originally Posted Sept 11, 2014,

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been experimenting with how I move my body. I desire to get into better shape and fit back into more of my pre Little E clothes.

I've started attending a weekly free-form dance class, spending more time on my reformer, and even getting on the treadmill for some interval training.

Let’s just say that a lot of the time I feel completely awkward, to the point where I don’t want to do it.

Exercise, working out, moving my body is a place where I get confused, OFTEN…..pretty much every day.

The source of that confusion stems from me living the past, getting stuck in comparison and placing really unfair expectations on myself. So much that I shut it down before I even get started.

For those of you that are unaware, I was a National Competitive Ice Dancer. I grew up in ice rinks and spent much of life before the age of 20 living and breathing skating.

It’s a sport that strives for perfection and with that comes a particular aesthetic and look that all of my team-mates and I aspired to. But even then I didn't quite make the cut; I was a little too tall, I had boobs, and I was a little softer after puberty. I look at old pictures now and I would do anything for that body again. I would appreciate her so much more than I did back then.

To be completely honest, I can’t actually think of a time where I ever confidently stood proud and accepted how I looked in the present without picking myself apart and not longed for a silhouette of my past.

I'm constantly comparing myself to this image, striving to get it back. Anything less isn't worth it.

“Perfect Practice Makes Perfect” is ingrained into my head; it’s a motto that I repeated to myself every day before I stepped on to the ice. I hear myself say it every now and then and it immediately stops me in my tracks.

I can’t do perfection any more. I will never get back to there, it’s ridiculous to even thing that I could attain the body of my 19 year old self and when I'm really honest with myself I don’t really want to anyway.

I'm 33, not 16 or 18, I have birthed a baby, I have hips and boobs, I'm a woman, AND… I don’t ever desire to train 40 hours a week, I have way more exciting and fun things to do with my time, like chase Little E around.

Authentically getting back into regularly moving my body is far from elegant, movements that I could do effortlessly in the past are awkward, clunky and most of the time don’t feel great or even look good.

But…Its still worth it.

The requirements of my body in how it functions and what I want from it are different, therefore the way in which I need to move have to be different. They don’t require elegance or perfection, I just need to show up.

It’s time to bring my perceptions of what being in shape and feeling fit into my present reality, and leave my past where it belongs. In the Past..

I'm way more likely to reach my goals if I do.

My new requirements for movement come from my desire to:- Turn Sheldon’s head when I walk in the room- To feel alive- To feel confident- To be able to keep up with my kid, a MUST, he’s fast.- To feel beautiful, even sexy- To experience health and well-beingAnd..- To be able to express myself and my body how I wish too at any moment.

XOAshley