#reverb15 // Day 14 // Limiting beliefs

Kimberly Schoenauer
Dec 14, 2015
3 min read

I'm joining pals Sarah and Elizabeth to write every day in the month of December, feel free to join in any time! Today's prompt: Limiting beliefs. We all harbor limiting beliefs about something. “I’m not good at X.” “I can’t do Y.” “I’m not enough Z.” What limiting beliefs did you harbor this year? How can you push past them in 2016?

I don't actively put myself down, in my head or when speaking about myself to others. I actually think I'd be good at a lot of things. I annoyingly say this to G a lot. Like, when we are nosily poking through open houses in our neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon. "You know, I would have been a good architect." Because, I have rainman-like spatial reasoning skills. But, I chose Business Information Technology at Virginia Tech, not Architecture. Or, when we are sitting at a traffic light for 130 seconds and not one car has gone through the intersection. "You know, I would have been a good logistics engineer who figures out stuff like optimal traffic light timing, especially here in Northern VA. I could cure road rage!" Because, I'm good at mathy stuff. But, I don't even know WHO does that and if that is even a career.

Logistics, engineering and mathy stuff are safe though, because those are disciplines that are based in unchanging principles that are, for the most part, either right or wrong. One plus one always equals two. The stuff I get cagey about are disciplines that are based on opinion and assumptions. And, once you come away from computers and calculations, as all geeks know, you have to actually interact with people. Sigh.

People stuff is what I'm bad at. I've never had the urge to become a personal trainer, as close to fitness as I am, strictly because I understand myself well enough to know that the intimacy of one-on-one training and engaging in small talk would annoy and exhaust the hell out of me. Group fitness is perfect because I can engage a whole gaggle of people at once, help them achieve their fitness goals - without being directly responsible for the result (that's the intimacy part), and connect with them before and after class. Praise!!!

But I am now getting to the point where I want to reach groups of people about more than just a sweaty hour of gym time. I am bursting with information I want to share with them about other ways they can make their hour with me in the gym count more. Proper nutrition and hydration, sleep, flexibility, cross-training, hormones, probiotics and other supplements, mindset, and allowing change to be an invited and progressive step to finding your best self.

Ahhhhhhh! The limiting belief is that I don't have a degree in exercise science or nutrition. The limiting belief is that I am not qualified to tell other people how to make shifts in their life. The limiting belief is that even if I did have all of those things that anyone would even be willing to listen to me. The limiting belief is that I am not the type of person who engages individuals one-on-one to achieve goals that I will share responsibility in.

2016. I want to help people more than I want to continue to believe these things about myself. That's just something I'm working on.