Talk about a blast from the past and perfect timing! I was just trying to explain to a friend the other day about how easy it is to quit things I'm not naturally good at. I wrote this blog article before I new I was a Highly Sensitive Person and am so in love with how much I've grown to love this trait and be able to view past experiences and struggles with a whole new perspective. Knowing I'm an HSP has allowed me the ability to give myself grace and be more comfortable with being vulnerable in from of others. So without further ado, I give to you my flashback from 2017!
I'd forgotten how hard it can be to learn something new. I've pretty mcuh had the same hobbies since I was young and I've worked for the same company for over 7 years now. At the age of 25 I've had to relearn how frustrating it can be to learn something new again because now I'm learning how to rock climb.
My hobbies when I was young which mostly consisted of reading. It's a pretty solo sport. Nobody really was ever there to watch and critique how fast or slow I went through the pages. The length of the book or who it was written by. I'm pretty sure my parents were just happy I even liked reading, more my mom (Jerye) then my Dad (Rdell) perhaps. He was at least still happy I was doing something besides watching TV for hours on end. Even if it was still inside and on the couch for hours on end.
I tried out a couple sports until high school. I did only a season of soccer, a season of swim, a season of trial biking (look it up). In fact, I think the only sport I did for more than a season was softball, but I was self conscious during games and performed poorly. I stopped as soon as I got to high school. Then I was able to discover a new world.
The world of speech & debate (Curtis Benjamin) and Drama (Elaine Breinholt Street). My teachers were great and I was able to finally find a niche I felt I belonged. I got so much better at being able to perform in front of people and find something I could do that others didn't. It was liberating and empowering and has helped me in more ways than I imagined possible. I am forever grateful.
Fast forward to now, at twenty five, seven years after my last high school play performance or oratory presentation to me trying out my first new potential hobby. Rock climbing. With people, in plain sight of other people, and being tied up to a rope with complete faith that the person holding the rope on the bottom would catch me if I slip.
I've been out a few times with small groups of friends, but mostly just considered myself a happy joiner. Just there to spend time in the great outdoors. Now with winter in full-fledge, I found myself going to the rock climbing wall at the Southern Utah University P.E. building instead. Which is inside. Where strangers are doing the same thing as myself. Who look like experts compared to how I feel. You know what happened? I got self conscious all over again. I asked my climbing partner, are you sure you feel safe for me to belay (when you stand at the bottom and hold the rope to catch the person if they fall), are you sure I'm pulling the rope in the right when while you climb, are you sure I'm big enough to catch you if you fall. Everything was good, everything was fine, he felt completely safe. But then it still wasn't good.
It didn't help when a stranger pointed out I needed to fix one of my leg harnesses. It didn't help when my climbing partner slipped and I shot up in the air and we both hung in the air for a few seconds until I fumbled with the gree-gree (that thing that helps release rope so you can come back down) so that we could both reach the floor again. It didn't help that I had had a bad day at work and was feeling less than adequate already and was using climbing as a distraction. The last thing that didn't help was when the group of experienced climbers around the other side scoffed because I was not, in fact, belaying correctly. That was the last straw for me.
I started to lose it, right there in public so I excused myself to the restroom thinking this is so stupid why would you be so upset over this? I was trying something new, I was still learning, I was asking for help, what more did people want? I cried in the bathroom stall for a few minutes, wiped away the mascara from my face, and walked back out with my new mantra: "You will not cry in public, you will not cry in public". I gathered my things and excused myself from my friends saying I had a paper to write that was due (which was true) and walked outside to my car. "You will not cry in public, you will not cry in public."
I got into the comfort of my car and immediately started crying. I drove home crying. I called one of my new best friends crying, sobbing on the phone about how stupid it was that I was crying. We laughed about how it didn't help that I was on my period. I gave a sigh of relief when she said what I needed to hear, "It's ok to have a bad day, do you want to try it over and go bouldering tomorrow afternoon?" I thought to myself, well, you don't need ropes to boulder, you don't need a harness to boulder, and you don't need a belayer to boulder and in the middle of the day, there's usually no one else around.
"Ok," I said.
Because to learn something new, you have to get back up. You have to try again and again and again and again. You're bound to feel foolish while learning. The important part to remember is that- that's the way it's supposed to be. You have to go through the uncomfortable part to get comfortable. That's how we learn and consequently, that's what I had forgotten.
It's easy to forget how hard something is, since I'd stopped trying a long time ago. This time, I'm not stopping. I'm going to ask more questions and practice more and expect more from myself. I'm going to expect myself to not give up, otherwise I'm denying myself my own right to learn. To conquer. To empower myself.
So to everyone out there trying new things: Don't give up. Keep going, keep failing, keep asking, keep doing, keep conquering.
Flash forward to 2019 and I still really enjoy rock climbing! I'm still not great at it, but I definitely didn't stop learning and challenging myself in regards to this hobby!
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