Expectations

I want to talk for a minute about expectations and how rarely they match up with reality.
I want to talk about self-confidence and the power of a self-defeating attitude.
I want to talk about how many of my eye-rolls I do as a result of people whose expectations are lowered by their self-defeating attitude.

So the other day I was at work and I had a newbie, this happens about once a week. This newbie was, as are the majority of my adult students, female. Society has been telling this woman from birth that she is weak and pathetic and can't do anything physically as well as a man (which I am, for all intents and purposes) and so when she sees me doing something that looks physically difficult, her assumption is that she is not going to be able to. I tell her "don't you see - it has nothing to do with strength, it is all about technique, you can be the strongest man in the world, and without technique, you can't do a fraction of the stuff I can" and I try and I try to impress upon her that it has to do with the way you are doing it, not the size of your biceps.

She tried to climb and couldn't do it. She said "I can't do this, I'm not strong enough" and for anyone who has EVER taken my class you know that "I can't" is an unacceptable phrase unless it is followed by "yet."

Her particular problem was that she was rushing through a technique because when she was in the air doing it, she had to support her weight by her arms alone, and because she spent her whole life hearing "you are weak" she believed it. So, naturally, I decided to prove her wrong. I told her to do a dead hang - and to hold on to the rope and pick up her feet. She held on for about 10 seconds before her arms gave out. For those of you who have never done dead hang, for a beginner, 10 seconds is a very very long time. She got this huge look of surprise in her eyes like she never expected to do what she just did, and almost didn't believe it.

Then she climbed the rope to the top. Twice.

She expected to be weak, and so she was, and when I proved to her that she was not, she nailed it on the first try.

In my years of martial arts, dance, aerial arts, fire arts and sports, I have realized exactly one thing: people are way stronger, way smarter, and WAY more powerful than we give ourselves credit for.

I cannot count the times I hear a student say "I can't do it" and then I say "tough, do it anyway" and then they do it. I also cannot count the times I have heard a student say "I can't do it" and I say "tough, do it anyway" and then they get halfway through and give up, not because their arms gave out (I know what arms giving out looks like - you don't land gracefully or talk while it is happening, arms giving out is the point of falling) but because they didn't think they could do it.

You need to have faith in yourself. You need to stand up to everyone who ever said you can't, and you need to get right up in there and say "Watch me"

You need to believe that things are within your physical abilities. Sometimes they may not be. There are many things that I cannot do. Yet. But that list gets smaller and smaller every day, and that is because I push myself to realize my potential.

We are so complacent and so willing to give up, and sometimes, even with a teacher saying "I know you can, you just have to try" that we are so afraid of... actually, I have no idea what people are afraid of.

And then there are the people who come to my class and complain about it hurting or it being hard. To which I have to spend a great deal of energy not to reply "FUCKING DUH!"
When you do something amazing, you should expect it to be difficult, and you should expect that you will struggle, but if you do not expect that you will succeed, you will not.
If you do not go into an activity or a test or any aspect of life saying "I can do this" I almost guarantee you that you will not.

So please. If you want to come to my class to bitch and moan and whine about how much it hurts and about how hard it is and about how I make it look so easy -
1) how do you think I got to this point?
2) shut the fuck up and let me teach someone who actually wants to learn this stuff

The woman I was talking about earlier - I hope she comes back, because I can see the walls starting to come down and that is awesome, that is how it has to happen. But I have another student who is taking my aerial class and
1) is afraid I am going to drop her in acro
2) has a low threshold for pain
3) cannot do a pull up
4) doesn't want to strength train in class
5) wants to learn more than just climbing, which she has yet to do successfully

for those of you who don't know much about what I do - 2, 3, 4, 5 pretty much is what aerial is. It is pain, it is doing pull-ups, it is strength training, and it is climbing. What did you think this class would be like?

So (finals words, I promise) the next time you decide to do an activity, I want you to ask yourselves some questions
1) what do I expect this class to be like, and on what basis am I basing that expectation
2) what are my fears/desires and how far am I willing to push those
3) what are my physical limits and how far am I willing to go to increase them
4) what do I expect from myself
If your answer to number four is vastly higher than your answers to 1-3 would allow, I would suggest revisiting your priorities and what you actually want. Are you willing to go through the learning process in order to know what you want to know? Because if you are not, don't waste your teachers' time - we have better things to do than listen to you talk about how hard this is and then refuse to do any exercises that would make it easier.