Is it just "who you are" or is it more complicated?
On being graceful and our ghosts of self-doubt
My girlfriend and I work out together a few times a week in our home gym. During a recent workout, after I finished doing an exercise, she complimented me and said, "You look so graceful." It was jarring to hear because whenever someone says anything about me being graceful, I'm immediately taken back to my childhood when my mother repeatedly told me I was not graceful.
It was a running joke in my family that I was the clumsy one. I accidentally knocked things over a lot and was capable of tripping on anything and nothing. If there was a banging sound in the house, it was assumed that I had run into something. I still trip up the stairs to this day.
Now that I have more life experience and a deeper understanding of myself, I could tell you that my penchant for clumsiness is likely due to a combination of factors:
I have long limbs for my height.
I have a neurodivergent mind that often moves at a faster pace than my body.
I'm prone to gesturing with my arms and hands (I've accidentally knocked over drinks at restaurants at least three times in the past six months).
But as a child and well into adulthood, I believed as fact that I was inherently "not graceful." I had accepted my fundamental lack of grace as a truth for so long that I didn't think to question it. This is one of the ways our ghosts of self-doubt get formed.
If you're explicitly told or implicitly shown something about yourself enough times, especially as a child, you're bound to believe and internalize it.
There are likely things that teachers, coaches, caregivers, and authority figures said about you when you were growing up that you still believe are true today and that you haven't stopped to interrogate any further. If you got called "lazy" enough times or were told that you didn't apply yourself, you may still believe that's simply who you are. A "lazy" person at your core. Genetically unmotivated.
Even statements that were intended to be complimentary can become restrictive. Think about the many kids who were told they were "gifted" and grew up to be perfectionists who constantly talk shit to themselves and can never meet their own impossible standards because expectations for them were always so high.
All of those critical voices weave together to become the chorus in our heads that helps guide our thoughts and decisions. And if we don't examine and deconstruct them, the result is usually that we artificially limit ourselves throughout our lives.
For a long time, I wrote off doing certain things because I thought I wasn't graceful. Or if I did them, I would tell myself I couldn't expect to be good at them due to my clumsy nature. Eventually I was able to see that being clumsy and being graceful aren't mutually exclusive. I realized that while some people do have a natural grace about them, grace can be learned in different contexts through practice and intention.
I am graceful in the gym (thank you to my girlfriend for noticing). Because I've been lifting weights for almost 15 years! When I started, I had far less body awareness and familiarity with the equipment and basic movements. Since then, I've not only gained a ton of experience, I also worked as a personal trainer for several years and had to be able to demonstrate and correct movements for my clients.
I'm also graceful on the trapeze. Because I've been doing trapeze as a hobby for almost six years! When I started, my body was far more rigid and erratic. But over time, I developed an ease of movement and became much more comfortable with navigating my apparatus.
What I want you to take away from this is that often, who you think you are is an incomplete picture. Your perception of yourself has been built up over the course of your life from the culture you live in and the people you've interacted with (whose beliefs and ideas about you are often misguided, only one piece of the puzzle, or completely wrong). That perception has also been compounded by your brain's tendency to only catalog the instances that confirm the story you've been telling yourself while completely ignoring any evidence to the contrary. A vicious cycle that warps your self-image further.
To get out of that loop, you have to develop the awareness that you're in it in the first place. Then, you need to figure out where these negative ideas about who you are and what you're capable of came from and determine if they're really the full truth about you. Chances are, there's way more to you than you've given yourself credit for.
Queerly yours,
Shohreh
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