Last night I realized that I’m always underestimating myself.
It was my first soccer game. I was pretty excited about it. It’s something I wanted to do cause it was outside of my comfort zone. It was a little scary, but at the same time something I thought I could do if I pushed myself.
I was also terrified. I imagined everyone else on my team being amazing soccer players. They’d run circles around me with the ball and I wouldn’t have any idea what was happening. They’d be at one end of the field and I’d be at the other, trying to catch up. I didn’t think I would be able to keep up with everyone else.
It happens sometimes when I go do my workouts for the boot camp. I look at what I have to do and think that there’s no way that I can do 15 reps, let alone 4 sets of a particular exercise – never mind the fact that I’ve been working out pretty consistently for the last couple months. Somehow all the rational thoughts get pushed aside by my doubt.
It’s not just with soccer or working out. It’s been like this for a long time. It’s been everything from realizing that my friends like me cause I’m a genuinely nice person (I should have figured that out a long time ago – most of them have been my friends ever since I moved here 15 years ago), to figuring out that yeah, someone would like me enough to want to date me and call me their girlfriend.
The soccer game turned out to be pretty awesome. The ladies I play with are easy going and supportive. Even though I was definitely exhausted and sweaty by the end of the game, it didn’t really feel like a workout cause I was having so much fun. I was able to keep up with everyone too. One teammate even asked me how long I had been playing soccer – apparently I didn’t look as completely lost and confused as I felt – so that made me feel pretty good.
Even the fact that I’ve stuck with this boot camp up til now (even though I’ve had mornings when I didn’t want to have to get up early to work out, or workouts that seemed too hard, or that they’d never end) shows that I have more strength and perseverance than I like to admit to myself.
I need to remember to not underestimate myself. I CAN do things – scary, hard things, even. I just have to do them and stop letting my head get in the way.