Reviews

Quitting for Self Preservation

Posted on by Rachael

I’ve been listening to The Mountain is You, by Brianna West. It is rare these days I learn from these self helpy books new things about myself. Not to sound arrogant, and also, I’ve done a lot of self work. Even though I’ve come a long way, trust me, even though I haven’t been writing, I’ve come far… I always know there is more work to do.

I’m about halfway through this book, and I’ve written so many ideas to ponder and think about further. The one that sticks out the most is, quitting something to self preserve your future loss. How this gets brought into perspective for me, and to expand on this more, is through exercise. Exercise has often been met with resistance. I have said “I have oppositional defiance disorder with it” I’ve gotten good at starting and maintaining for a while, but something always disrupts this process, which creates excuses for me not to continue to do something. I have a lack of follow through with myself and blame people, ideas, and other things for not continuing the process. Hi, I’m Rachael, and I’m a serial gym membership owner and rarely a goer. I’ve given my money to these places.

Examples of this: I was really good at going to the gym for 3 months, and then I got Covid and I couldn’t get back to the gym after this, OR back in the day I was really good at going to the gym and was really into running for a short period of time, and one of the people who worked there was bothering me every time I went in, setting unspoken expectations about why I was there. Both of these examples were about 10 years apart, and I had a billion excuses for not going back.

The concept of “quitting for self preservation” brought up more questions. Forgive me, as I’m not quoting her correctly, and some of this is mixed together from other things in her book. But the questions that come up for me were “Do I find the excuses to not continue to exercise because I want it so much, and I don’t want to keep failing at it.” and or, “Am I so scared of what I truly want, (I mean I don’t even know what that is), that I quit for self preservation of the fall (because I know it’s coming anyway).

Now that I’m writing this out and giving focus to this idea, is the question truly, What do I want out of exercising? Do I want to be fit? Do I not want to look good? Is this me self sabotaging to keep myself in a place of not being seen?

Here is what I know. I want to be healthy, and I want my body to be healthy. I want to feel better. More to come on this, as I have found out that due to my trauma I have fibromyalgia which impacts me almost daily (a whole other blog post).

What I don’t know: Are my road blocks because of these other things? Being seen? And, am I allowing myself to quit, for self preservation? That is something that I haven’t considered. The failure of working out, is too great, that I just give up quickly to avoid whatever feelings come? I don’t know.

More on this and also being curious about things, has been super helpful in sorting out things.

Being seen has consequences.

Posted on by Rachael

It has been a bit since I’ve written, rather several several years. The healing hasn’t stopped.

I’ve been apart of Toast Masters for a year and a half. We have pathways, projects and bench barks to meet with different objectives. One of the suggested assignments was to write 6 blog posts and post them within a month. I chose this project, as I already had a blogging platform and I’ve been interested in writing again, following giving a 2-3 minute speech about my process. I thought this project would help with the writing practice. 

Toast Masters has helped give me a voice, and a safe environment to practice using my voice in. I have gained confidence, flexibility, leadership skills and more. I’ve worked on various speeches, and have used my voice to share personal stories and fears of public speaking. Through time, my shaky body reading my paper word for word, gripping the lectern, has shifted, to a solid human being in her voice, still with my paper in hands, but rarely looking at it. 

There are plenty of things I am still working on. One of them is voice fluctuation, body language and not using the lectern. I’ve learned that public speaking is like acting. You are a performer and being a performer is not something I’ve been very good at due to my confidence issues and never wanting to be seen.

I’ve done so many things to not be seen, because being seen always has consequences. 

One of the ways I’ve worked on building confidence was being vulnerable with myself and others about what is actually happening in my brain. Writing has helped me tell my story. Toast Masters has been a way to speak it out loud and build confidence in myself, my truth and how I tell others about it. 

More to come. 

June 2017

Posted on by Rachael

In June I watched a movie on Netflix called “What the Health”.

I was in shock. To say the least.

I mean, I knew how badly animals were treated, and how many preservatives and chemicals that get pumped into any animal product… I did not really really know or understand to the extent, enough to become full vegan before.

If you have not seen it yet, or are interested in watching it, there were about 5 minutes of the whole film I could not actually watch, and covered or closed my eyes. I was disturbed. Sickened actually.

There were a few human subjects on the film who had become vegan, to show how a vegan diet can change your body, so that they would not longer have to take the medications that had been prescribed because of their previous diets. My only Beef of the film had to do with these human subjects. The study they did lasted two weeks and the people were off of their meds and functioning. I would have loved to have seen a longer version of this study to capture a stronger message.

I have always said… I wanted to be a vegan, but I loved cheese too much. I wanted to become a vegetarian, but I would be terrible at it because I don’t eat beans or soy very well.

Because of this movie, in June of 2017, I became a vegan. NO more excuses.

Of course with every Diet there are people’s limits and what they feel comfortable doing. At this time I am not eating any animal product, and have not started living a full vegan life style.

Like I’ve said many times before, I am just trying to eat in a more intentional and intuitive way.