Being kind to yourself!

A few years ago I conducted an experiment – not a scientific one, or in a completely “controlled environment”. But, nevertheless, it was an experiment to see how being nice and nasty has an affect on you.

I wrote a blog post about it on a couple of websites, one of them no longer exists and the other one, well, the post is buried under years of other blog posts, so it’s got lost in the ether of the world wide web.

Having observed the Fuelled By Fun page and the posts people put on - the way people ‘self talk’ and the number of times I read posts that said “I’ve only done…5km/1mile…” Or “It’s just a 10k/5k/400m…” – it occurred to me that this experiment I did, needs to be brought back out of the ether.

The reason this experiment even came to fruition was when I read an article on the Danielle LaPorte website and noticed quite a lot of negative comments on Facebook about her experiment. So, being a bit of a ‘Doubting Thomas’, and wanting to see things for myself – I thought I’d try my own experiment – with some left over rice that we had. Yes, my husband thought I had lost the plot!

I weighed the rice and bagged it up in two separate cling film bags, using two food bag clips to ensure air didn’t get into the bag. The ONLY difference between these two bags of rice is that one of them I ‘spoke’ nicely to and the other one I used words that we tend to use to ourselves a lot (our ‘self-talk’), like “you’re so rubbish” “you just haven’t a clue” etc – you know, that self ‘banter’ that we give ourselves.

First, I had to get past the idea that I was talking to rice – I know, it’s only rice!!! But once I had, I could be quite mean to the rice (sometimes REALLY mean – poor rice!)

Because I wasn’t convinced it would work I didn’t ever take a photo of the rice in it’s younger more positive days – I did sort of think it was me just being a bit random and possibly having a mid-life melt down.

But this is a picture of the bags of rice after a week…

Rice: Week 1

Still not convinced, I figured if one was going mouldy then the other would follow suit quite quickly, but I persevered being nice to one bag and horrible to the other.

After 10 days this is what they looked like…

Rice: 10 Days

And finally 2 weeks later (just before they finally got binned)…

Rice: Week 2

I realise we’re some what more advanced than rice – but at the end of the day, we’re all susceptible to negativity and negative vibrations. We’re all made of atoms – even the rice!!

So please PLEASE be nice to yourself – and to others.

Yes, I realise there are plenty of negative people out there saying that this is a ridiculous experiment, it’s not a scientific experiment blah blah blah all that kind of nonsense. So if you don’t believe it, why don’t you try it for yourself, just as I did. It’s not that difficult to bag up some rice and be nice to one bag and mean to another… or maybe for some of you it is?!

Science is about challenging what we know, or what we think we know. While this isn’t a controlled scientific experiment, it’s an experiment non the less. Everything that we see, touch, hear and feel is related to ‘matter’ – it’s energy, it’s atoms. Just because you can’t see what’s happening to that ‘matter’ doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Just like using derogative comments and being mean to yourself and others may not seem like anything is being affected.

If you think this is all poppy-cock and hokey that’s fine – I don’t care – carry on being mean to yourself and to others, just try not to drag those others down to your mouldy bad rice level please!

The friends you haven’t met yet!

Rebecca’s recent blog about confidence made me smile because I recognised something of myself in it, but bear with me – this is not a repeat of that theme, just a tangent that starts from the same root.

A couple of years back I started Parkrunning -with the same sense of trepidation that Becs felt. I loved it and through Parkrun I met a lovely lady who ‘added me’ to a local running group on Facebook that her friend had started so that I could join likeminded people for social runs. I didn’t do anything for two months after joining this group because I didn’t know these people and I was a little scared that everyone would be faster than me and I would be instantly unpopular by slowing the group down.

How wrong I was!

On 1st May I met Nicola in a car park, in a forest, to go for a run. I didn’t know Nicola and she didn’t know me – it was all a bit “I’ll be wearing a pink carnation” or rather, driving a blue polo! But she was running, and I was running, and I was also running out of excuses not to give it a go! There were a couple of other ladies along as well and we had a super run, chatted about our days at work, the weather, things that annoyed us, all sorts of things. There was none of the opening small talk people employ at dinner parties or bars, just an unspoken assumption that we were all already friends by virtue of being there so we cut straight to the “natter”. It was a brilliant starting point from which many fabulous friendships have blossomed and many more amazing common interests have emerged and been indulged.

Meeting people through common interest or activity is an enriching experience. It may be that we are less anxious about having nothing to talk about, or sufficiently focussed on the common activity that we do not overly concern ourselves with social inhibitions. Whatever the reason, through shared activity, I have met people from entirely different backgrounds and professions that I may never have come across in my day to day life. Not everyone you meet will end up being your best friend but I truly can’t say I have met anyone through this path that I found genuinely disagreeable.
 
Of course, there are safeguarding issues to be considered around the subject of meeting complete strangers and the group I joined is comprised of friends and friends-of-friends so there is a certain amount of vetting involved. Caution and common sense are advisable but (and excuse the cliché) there is a strong chance that the strangers you are wary of meeting are the friends you just hadn’t met.  If you have a local sports or community group that interests you, take the plunge – it could be the best thing you ever do!

The Perception of Confidence

Confidence is an amazing thing don’t you think? How people have it in abundance and it just oozes out of them. Take a local Park Run or race for example; you rock up, hover at the back wondering why you’re there, completely out of your comfort zone, think everyone is staring at you and then everywhere you look you see them – the confident army. With their smiles and laughter and ‘good lucks’ – who are these people? Are they really real?

Those uber confident ‘athletes’ strutting their stuff on your streets, in your pools, on your cycle lanes etc. weren’t always confident. Like an oak tree growing from an acorn, they weren’t always super confident, they became or learnt to be confident…

Me, I’m one of these people. I’m super confident, loud, mouthy northern girl. I’ve never felt more comfortable and confident in my own skin than I do right now. No one likes a show off and that is in no way how I want to be perceived. If I told some of my best friends that rewind ten years and I was the shy girl stuck in the corner too afraid to socialise or even go out in the first place they’d laugh in my face.

I vividly remember my first ‘grown up’ run – ran too fast, felt like death, never again. After my first run I quit for a good six months.  Desperate to get fit I then started stalking a local running group for about three more months until I built up the ‘guts’ to join them on a run. They were the most friendly, lovely bunch of people that I’d ever met AND super-duper confident. So this confused me, how can lovely people be so confident – in my world I had yet to marry the two. So I continued on this journey, returning to the club regularly and I continued to become me – the true me.

Through sport and exercise I have been encouraged and supported to have a go. As my ability has grown so has by self-confidence. But it’s not a direct link, there is a key step in the middle – “exercise buddies”. Sub consciously my exercise buddies over the last ten years have turned me from a shy Susan to a confident Clara. This isn’t a free relationship, what you take out you give back. Not at the same time, just when it’s needed. So this is me giving a little back to you – yes you reading this right now. You’re not alone and what you see as confidence is also friendliness.

Perception intrigues me. What I think may be completely different to what you think and vice versa. So who is right? Both! You see perception is such a personal thing, it’s your voices in your head – how you see the world. I just wanted to point out that whatever we think there is always another side.

At work I’ve often been caught swimming down corridors (stroke practice) and doing exercises in the office – people in this environment aren’t as encouraging. I don’t get a smile suggesting I should continue, more a grimace to suggest I should be in a ‘looney bin’ and that’s not professional behaviour.  It’s not as easy to gain confidence here so my advice to you is fake it until you make it, if you pretend you will become. (Look up Amy Cuddy Ted Talk).

So fake it until you become it – be more oak tree than acorn. Be proactive in the world of exercise buddies – spot the shy one and make them feel at ease, we were all shy and scared once because our perception was different.

I know it’s not as simple as this, but it kinda is. I too shrink back to my unconfident self. After starting back at the pool I had a practice session where I quickly switched form the fast lane to a lane that was too slow for me because the other guy in the lane was a little quicker than me but more importantly not smiley! Although the lady in the next lane was a little slower than me, that’s OK as I paced myself so not to clash and also had a lovely encouraging chat with her (both ways!).

Thanks for taking the time to read and as my late father-in-law always said Keep Smiling, it goes a long way.