The Story I'm Telling Myself

I am a fan of Brene Brown. If you have read any of her books on vulnerability, maybe you are familiar with the concept of “The Story I am telling myself”. If you haven’t I’ll do my best to explain the concept.

Brene states that we put our own emotions, feelings, and insecurities in to each situation. We assume we have all the information but often times we don’t. For example, you ask you co-worker to help you out with something and they sigh and finally say ok. Obviously they don’t want to help you, right? Maybe they don’t even like you? The spiral begins. The reality maybe they slept poorly last night and already feel behind. They are worried about not being good enough to help on that level of project. They think they’ll disappoint you. Regardless - you can see both parties are bringing their insecurities into this situation and making a lot of assumptions that may not be that accurate.

I believe the same thing happens when we consider trying something new like Pilates. The story we tell ourselves may be - I’m not good enough. I’m not in shape enough. I’m going to hold up the class. Everyone is going to judge me. I need to be more flexible to do Pilates and so on. I hear lots of reasons why it has taken a student so long to try Pilates. There is often some fear associated with it. Fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of exacerbating a chronic issue and more! The reality is these fears are all part of the story we are telling ourselves! I can’t tell you how many times a new student will say, “Wow - this wasn’t what I was expecting and I wish I started earlier!”

I was even reticent to try Pilates in the beginning! I was an active person running regularly and I taught spinning classes, too. For some reason I just resisted Pilates. When I finally tried it - I feel in love with it! I don’t know how we change the ‘story’ or fear associated with Pilates … but it’s my life’s work to keep trying! There is so much good that comes from having a balanced body! Whether you are super active in other pursuits or dealing with chronic pain - Pilates does a body good! Let’s create a new story … the story of good possibilities that come from Pilates!