#How to -B- : Belief

As a starter to this blog series it seemed a no-brainer to talk about Belief: how much we believe in ourselves and how that effects our fitness & our daily life.

In the immortal words of the one and only Cherrrrr, ‘Do you believe… ?’

You can have all of your ducks in a row, your training schedule is watertight, your meal prep is on fire, you’ve got all the kit, and you think you’re ready to rock, but if somewhere in the back of your mind there’s a voice telling you “you can’t”… know that this will be your biggest hurdle.  It’s not ‘that exercise’ or ‘that class’.  It isn’t the amount of reps.  It isn’t that you didn’t get your usual spot at the barre. The only thing that stops you from being able to do something is that you don’t believe you can.

If you think somewhere deep inside you are a non-believer, I think its worth working out why.

Maybe you don’t believe you can because you don’t know how.  Now, exercise is a journey, like everything else in life it takes time to learn what the eff you’re actually supposed to be doing. There is a very real difference between not yet knowing how to do something and not ever being able to. You gotta give yourself a chance in your stretchy barre pants.  We don’t expect you to walk through the door and by magic know exactly what to do. That’s what 1stBarre is for! Time learning about the class, about your body, about yourself is time well spent and it can be a pleasurable experience as long as there’s no extra pressure applied.

Here are some fun reasons people think they shouldn’t do Barre:

I haven’t done it before. I’m too old. I’m not in shape. I can’t do the splits. I’m not graceful/coordinated/I don’t know my left from my right sometimes.

Here is a fun reason why I think people should do Barre:

We don’t give a crap about ANY of the other reasons.

Why add all that negative non-believing pressure to yourself BEFORE you even walk in the door? You’re knocking yourself out of the game before you got IN the game, and you don’t even know what the game is! People, please!  So many of us make that sweeping statement;- “I’ll never be able to do that”. That just ain’t true peeps.  In fact, you don’t know and if you don’t try you’ll become trapped in the Schrödinger shizstorm of being both able and not able to do it, yet neither at the same time.  I believe emphatically that everyone can do everything, the journey by which we get there however is as unique as your own fingerprint.  The moment that you believe you actually CAN do it, come hell or high-water, that is the moment you are catapulted on to your journey and whether you realise or not, you’re already doing it.

Ever thought you don’t believe you can do it because in reality you don’t really want to do it?

Whaaaaat? Yeah, thats right. What if you don’t want to? “But I should, right?”. But why should you?

Have a think about it.  What if that isn’t your goal, your desire, your ambition? No matter what your mates say, or your parents, or your kids, or your Insta crush, or society as a whole, if you don’t really want to do something, its never going to be satisfying. Thats OK! Don’t do it. And own it! You know what cranks your chain and what doesn’t, there’s nothing wrong with that and everything right with that.

What if you don’t believe in yourself because you’re a bit scared?

Lets not be so bothered about admitting we’re bricking it for a minute. Fear is real. Being a bit scared, frightened, anxious, overwhelmed is fo’ real yo.  Loads of life is scary, and it’s all relative to us as individuals. What is easy to some is petrifying to others. Walking into any kind of fitness environment takes courage. It is an environment of exposure and scrutiny and it can feel very exclusive, which sucks. This is partly to do with us buying into that very idea, that we are not worth inclusion. I choose to reject the entire premise of exclusivity, primarily because its a crock. If you believe nothing else, make sure you believe that you have as much right to be here as every single other person. That is the truth.

Back to fun reasons people think they shouldn’t do Barre… are you just a bit worried about looking like an a$$? Yeah, well here’s the thing, most everybody at barre has done that at some point, nobody more than myself!  And really, how do you define looking like an ass? If you do it with confidence you can pull anything off. Trust me.

Lemme serve up some honest talk before we depart. Its stuff you all know but its worth repeating.

Not every class is going to be a winner. Not every day is going to be a pleasure, lets be real.  Some days it just goes a bit tits up, but if you can approach life with the same tenacity with which you walk into class and believe that you’re gonna KICK SOME ASS no matter what gets thrown back-atcha, then you know you’ve started to get shit done.

I’ll see you in class.

Big love, Nat