Tag: fear

Fat people try harder

Exercising will teach you a lot about life and even more about yourself as a person.

When a close friend first dragged my lazy ass to the gym, I was incredibly unfit and doughy and unconfident. And to top it all, I was embarrassed about all those things.

I was scared that people would point at me and laugh as I chafed myself into a puddle, plodding along on the treadmill at a snail’s pace. Or worse — they would pity me lifting these tiny little weights.

The way that I did them.

I would watch that obese guy walking on the treadmill and think, “Give up fatso — you’re not even trying.”

But he was trying a lot harder than me. And deep down, I knew it. 

The problem was me — it was how I looked at people. They were making an effort to improve themselves and I was standing there being a snide little prick because of my insecurities.

I wasn’t mocking them. I was mocking me.

Exercise taught me that the people doing the most criticism are almost always the people who are doing the least to change.

Maybe it’s because they haven’t found their light, their way to improve the world and themselves, and they deeply wish they had. Or maybe because it hurts to watch someone winning when you’re losing or lost and don’t know how to turn it around.

Exercise taught me that it’s a lot easier to mock someone else for trying than making an effort yourself.

Exercise taught me that change is hard, but it’s almost impossible when you hate yourself and believe the world is against you. 

And exercise taught me that I’d rather be the fat fucker plodding away with everyone laughing than the skinny fucker sitting around doing nothing but criticizing.

Now whenever I catch the eye of an obese person trying to turn their life around, trudging along on a treadmill, scared and self-consciously sweating buckets, I give them a nod and a smile so they know I’m rooting for them.

Because now I know how hard it is to climb that mountain.

And how brave they are for trying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Third eye blind

In a couple of hours a nice young doctor is going blind me.

She’ll be very polite about it but there will be a good few minutes — as she scrapes the skin off my eyeball — when my future is entirely in her hands.

Then she’ll zap my eyes with a laser and I’ll be blind for a bit.

Hopefully until Monday. Maybe forever.

That extreme uncertainty, the polarity of futures I’ll face in those short minutes has been straining my ‘third-eye.’ Like a vice locked over my temples, squishing the blood out of my prefrontal cortex. 

There’s no way out but to surrender to the unknown and get ready to spend some serious ‘me’ time.

No screens. Nothing to read.

No way to write.

Just me, my thoughts, and a goodie bag of CBD-laced chocolate and Percocet.

Terrifying stuff.

I’ve queued up some of the blogs I’ve written over the last three months that I was too shy to publish earlier.

Thank you for reading my little infinity project.

And if my lucky string continues, I’ll see you on the other side.

How to see the stars

Humans are great and all but we’re total cowards when it comes to nature.

It’s a miracle that we survived long enough to escape it at all.

We trap the sun in a glass to ward away wolves, wrap ourselves in comforting cloth to forget the cold of the wild, and bang our drums all night to scare off the ghosts.

And that’s all great.

But one thing we never see anymore is the stars.

Oh sure, we’ve all seen a couple of them. You probably even know the names of a few. But most people never get to truly see the stars.

That thick, soft, glimmering night that presses itself into the back of your eyes from beyond time.

The startling realization that you’ve lived 30 years in the light and haven’t really seen anything at all. 

The unsettling thrill of knowing there is really no end to the places we can go and the wonders we’ll see…

But nobody gets to see the stars anymore because we’re too afraid to walk into the dark. 

And that’s the only way to see them.

Beware comforting stories

When people talk about identity what they’re saying is: “This is my story.”

Whether that’s where we came from, what we believe, the food we like or who we have sex with, it’s all part of our story.

For many years I told myself stories like, “I’m not a morning person,” or “I’m an introvert,” or “I can’t write every day,” or “rich people are bad,” or “stopping smoking is hard.”

Worst of all, I told myself I didn’t have anything to add to the world.

But no matter how many times I told myself those silly tales, deep inside I knew they weren’t true. And I was slowly killing myself trying to drown that little voice every time it spoke up to remind me so.

Because the stories we tell ourselves are the fluffy cushions that make our comfort zone so comforting. But they’re also the locks that keep us there.

Luckily, we hold the keys. And it’s never too late to change the story.

Life is a tightrope

In 2011, a mother and her son walked 300ft along a wire no wider than your thumb, 121ft above the ground — with no safety net.

It was an emotional moment for them both.

The woman’s father, The Great Karl Wallenda, had plunged to his death from that same spot 33 years earlier. He was 73.

If you haven’t heard of him, Karl Wallenda was the acrobat.

He and his family formed The Flying Wallendas, who created many of the acrobatic feats performed today. They were renowned for pulling off the most daring stunts while dangling hundreds of feet in the air — without a safety net.

Earlier that day, he was asked his terminal question: “Why?”

Karl is quoted as replying, “Life is on the tightrope, and the tightrope is the only place to be. The only place I feel alive is on the wire. Everything else is just waiting.”

Life is a balancing act. Our job as humans is to shuffle out along that wire every day and perform our best, knowing that one day we will fall. And walking out there anyway. 

Because that thrilling fear that comes from doing something uncommon — that’s being alive.

That’s what it’s all about.

The rest is just waiting.

Only fear standing still

There’s an old Chinese proverb that says:

“Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.”

Often, we’re in such a hurry to get to the results that we’re disappointed when they don’t arrive immediately. We get frustrated when our social media posts go unnoticed, or we get overlooked for a raise.

We want the instant success that we see on social media.

But real success doesn’t come overnight. It can’t.

Because true success is overcoming challenges, solving problems, failing, and starting again.

Being successful means taking that little step forward towards your dream — whatever happens.

As you take on your challenges today, remember that the only failures in life are those that don’t keep taking those little steps forward every day. The ones that stay still.

Keep on stepping!