No worries, it’s fine: you don’t have to take me up on my advice to Kristin Armstrong’s blog in Runners World, because I’ll just keep posting excerpts here.
(Apparently.)
From her latest:
I read something about how elephants are trained. When they are young they are tied up by one ankle with a heavy chain. No matter how hard they struggle or pull against it, they cannot escape. Over time they accept this condition as their destiny and full grown elephants are able to be restrained by a wimpy little ankle chain. Anyone with eyes could see that with one tug of their mighty leg the elephant could instantly break their tether, but the elephant has no idea. The strongest animal on land dreams of freedom.
How often are we like the elephant? We are restrained by the old voices that used to define us when we were young. The heavy chains are nothing more than twine, easily snapped, if only we knew we had the strength.
Somewhere in Middle School or High School I got this idea in my head that I was terrible at math. I didn’t even both taking it my senior year in high school, and when I started college, I signed up for the easiest looking math course that would get me out of the math requirement (it was “Intro to Statistical Computing’)
I ended up teaching statistics for the next five years. It paid for grad school. What the hell did I know?
Somewhere in Middle School or High School I got this idea in my head that I was terrible at sports. Then I spent my twenties running marathons and doing Ironmen triathlons. I didn’t want to start Crossfit because I was no good at lifting, and now it’s one of my favorite things in my life. What the hell did I know?
I loved that part of Kristin’s last entry — a nice reminder that who we think we are might need an update, every now and then.