Wish I would have known

Are there things you wish you could go back and tell yourself as a child. Over the last year and a half I have learned a few things that I wish I could go back and tell myself. As a child I was very shy and everything embarrassed me so I spent a lot of time avoiding embarrassment. Needless to say that let to trying a lot of things once or twice then feeling like it was not worth the embarrassment to keep trying and failing.

I spent a lot of time blaming my parents who didn't let me do a whole lot of anything. They were very strict but loving parents. Let me clarify what I mean by strict, they tried to shield me as much as possible from what they considered the bad stuff. Basically I was very limited in the types for movies and music I was exposed to and I was not allowed to do a lot of things other kids were. I was not abused although as a teen who couldn't go see the concerts she wanted to I felt abused.

Over the last year and a half I have found that I love dancing and I take Latin dance classes and pole dance and aerial fitness classes. I love them but I was really bad when I started. I kept thinking that had I done gymnastics when I was a child I would have loved it and my parents didn't encourage it. The more I think about it the more I realize even if they did encourage it I would have quit because it was hard. So had my parents decided to let me take dance lessons and I couldn't get it in a few lessons I would have quit.

I realize now that it had nothing to do with my parents while my options were limited as to what I could do they would have helped me find something had I just stuck with it. I even remember one year I joined the track team and they made me fill my commitment. I am was not a runner then and I am not a runner now but I stuck it out and regardless of winning anything it helped me slim down and develop new social contacts.

So what do I wish I could have told myself as a child and teen? I wish I could have told myself when I was really young and took a few tumbling classes that even though it is hard right now it will get easier. That just because I don't learn as fast as the other girls that does not mean I won't learn it. As a teen I wish I would have learned to dance even if the only classes I was able to attend were ballroom style dancing but again I would have quit because it was hard. I wish I could have told my teenage self that anything I wanted to do could be done with hard work and dedication.

It is a lesson I have learned over and over since I signed up for a pole dance fitness class and expanded my types of fitness. I try it all now and when I don't get it the first time or even the first 50 times I just keep saying to myself that if I keep practicing I will get it. It has taken me a long time but I am trying to eliminate I can't from my vocabulary. Well for the most part there are probably thing I literally can't do but when it comes to learning a new dance step or a complicated upside down move on the pole or in the fabrics I have changed my vocabulary. I am also trying to help other ladies do the same when I catch my self saying " I can't" I almost always remember to at YET to the end of that. It is such a habit I don't seem to be able to change the vocabulary completely yet but it will come.

I have been down on myself for most of my 3 and a half decades of life so it is going to take some time to develop a better more positive vocabulary. I always felt like I was doomed for failure in everything I did. I am still not an ace at the dancing part of anything but I am learning and I keep improving and that is good enough for me. I am not good at a lot of things but each time I pick something I really like and really want to get better at then work hard to learn it guess what I get better at it.