It appears the designer of the course knew what they were doing. With 'Roadblocks' as the theme for the first week of this challenge, it really does promptly think through all the confidence issues one may be facing, having taken on the mammoth task of sticking to a course this long. 52 weeks is a long time to dedicate to anything, especially where there is creativity involved, in addition to effort, with no external motivation. This is a commitment to a course with no exams and no one to hold me accountable except myself? It’s the stuff of my nightmares! And with that, I realized I had the answer to the first prompt. What is standing in my way right now? Me.
We often find ourselves wanting to do many things - start a fitness journey, go on that solo trip, pick up that book that's been on the shelf waiting to be read or dive into our hobby; but often find ourselves saying, "I am so busy, I wish I had the time". This feeling is especially intensified when people around us are actually doing the same things and miraculously being able to juggle it seamlessly with their day job. We start to then "rationalise" - "I have more responsibilities at work/home/school"; "I need xyz items to start what I want to do, and that is expensive"; or "My commute to my workplace takes up too much of my time, whereas they live closer to the office", although for a majority of us, this last one is no longer a valid excuse with remote working becoming the norm in most places. If these sound familiar to you, read on.
All of the above, without fail, are all reasons I have used at some point to stop myself from starting something that has been on my "to restart list" for a long time - dance. I would watch people on YouTube put up choreography covers and marvel at how amazingly and with ease they reproduced some of the most complicated dance moves and then promptly feel sorry for myself because of course I could do it too, but I just don’t have the right training or enough time to do it. Even as I heard these excuses from myself, a part of me knew it was utter horse-poop. I convinced myself that being naturally skill and *some* talent in being able to danced meant that every dance move I ever did had to be perfect from the get go. My absurd ideas on perfectionism hindered any actual action. It went to the extent that when I attended dance fitness classes at the gym, my body refused to move the way I wanted it to and with the ease I remembered during my school and college days. The fact that a combination of aerobics and the simplest of choreographies in a gym class was making my body stutter was both shocking and depressing.
It then dawned on me that my body is a machine that needed to be active to run smoothly and that if I wanted to dance as gracefully as I thought I could, I actually had to do the dancing. It was, however, months before I actually took a step towards restarting my dance journey. Self doubt plagued me every step of the way - will I find something that I enjoy, and is the right fit for me, will there be time to do it, will the instructor be good enough (yes, I had the audacity to question the teacher's skill), will it be too expensive? After a few halfhearted enquiries around some dance studios, fate, or rather, Instagram ads drew my attention to a workshop that promised training in different dance styles, had weekend classes in the afternoons, was affordable and was close to home. There was no excuse any more so I decided to just take the leap and sign up. It was arguably best decision I made in 2022. The excitement was immediately visible in my demeanor and in less than 4 classes, my body toned up - and I did not mind the muscle soreness because it came from something that gave me pure joy.
Of course, this is not the end of my roadblocks story - far from it. This is just one I overcame. My roadblocks are far and plenty. I know I have a good singing voice, and my family keeps egging me on to sing but somehow I just cant bring myself to do it, all thanks to some faceless person in the audience back in 2012. I was auditioning for the singing group in college and said faceless person in the audience told me to hold the mic away from my mouth because it was too loud. I wasn’t told that I did badly (I didn’t get selected either, but that's because there were others who sang better), but that incident simply stole my confidence. Following that incident, music took a back seat in my life for 10 years - time long enough for anything to go rusty, let alone a singing voice.
How many times have we done this to ourselves? How often have we given up on a dream because someone who didn’t know any better said something or did something that attacked our confidence and shattered our self esteem to the point that we did not want to pick that mic back up again, or those dancing shoes, or that pen or the paint brush? When something disrupts our faith in our own abilities, nothing anybody else says, will help us gain it back - not until we somehow realize that we are, in reality, extremely resilient creatures and can literally do anything we put our minds to. It is like in running - your body can run the distance; you just have to convince your mind.
I can still hold a tune well enough, but simply lack practice and am too cowardly to actually rehearse, since the perfectionist brain doesn’t let me make mistakes and doesn't forgive the mistakes made. This is my ultimate roadblock - having the confidence enough to start something new.
I read somewhere that you regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you did. I don’t want to regret not doing things. This is when a quote from the movie Florence Foster Jenkins comes to mind, "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing". I want to be able to say that.
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