How comparison can compromise your health (Part 2) Day 486

In this blog post I am sharing how through comparing myself at a young age to other girls in my sport class, I compromise my physical body and my quality of living simply because of a decision that if I am not as good in something like the others, I might as well not do it.

 

As I mention in the previous blog, most of my life I could manage the lower back pain and the weakness/tiredness to a certain degree. The lower back pain resolved once I started practicing yoga and strengthen my core muscles though with the Anaemia  - this was something that I just had to accept and cope with. or so I believed.

 

About 6 months ago, I decided to seek homeopathic support as I saw that my body is consistently under pressure - I felt physically tired all the time. It was the first time I saw a professional homeopathic doctor and he asked me questions for about an hour, to source the starting points of my physical weakness. One of the things he focused on was the reasons for the physical tiredness and as he went through my blood tests results, he prescribed specific medication for Anaemia.

He was very clear that one of the components that are missing in my life and that had contributed to my physical tiredness is my day to day life style where I would normally sit and work in front of the computer most of the day without having any kind of sport to support the blood circulation. The specific sport that he was referring to was aerobic sport, which if you had read my previous blog, I had a lot of resistance toward.

 

Before the meeting with the homeopath doctor, I had in a way, accepted my condition of being physically tired - it was what I always experienced so I didn't actually know anything else. Just towards the end of the appointment, the homeopathic doctor looked at me and say: "I need to be honest with you, to me you look like a sleep walker, as if there is no life force in you". When he spoke these words, I went into shock because to me, even though I was always tired, I experienced myself with a strong life force, always moving, pushing myself, living.. but what he meant was that I got used to being so tired on a regular basis that I couldn't see the affect it has on the physical body and according to the doctor, once I accept that this is not the balanced way of living, I will be able to support myself and my physical body to recover and become healthy again and within that also, to overcome my resistance to sport so that I could utilize sport in a supportive and structured way.

 

I decided to apply the suggestions that the doctor gave me and the next day, I started practicing sport. Though, with my lack of experience in starting to practice sport, and with my nature to pushing myself to the absolute point, I went on the trampoline, believing that it is 'easy' sport - I pushed myself to the extreme and in 5 min, I was out of breath. It felt like I had asthma attack. Here, I utilized the Desteni tools: I set down, I made sure I am in my physical body, I removed any point of fear of death inside myself and patiently restored my breathing cycle. This experience wasn't easy for me because it clearly showed how limited my physical body had become and what it would take to build and develop the body to a point of being able to do aerobic sport on a regular basis.

 

A few days after, I had to leave my home environment for 8 weeks - this placed my body under a lot pressure - after 7 weeks away from home, my physical body started to collapse and despite of having homeopathic support, the Anaemia kicked in so hard that every time I came back to the place I was staying in, I had to rest to restore my 'life force'. When I came back home, I allowed myself to rest and relax for a few days, hoping it would balanced out the weakness that I experienced but unfortunately it didn't.

 

A friend of mine asked me to join her to Squash and I went along to see what Squash was all about. Inside myself, I had this resistance of trying it out for myself because I saw squash as a powerful game that my body wouldn't be able to handle but at the same time, I had to take responsibility for my physical body and support the body to slowly build the strength according to the homeopathic doctor suggestion. I started learning and playing squash and to my surprise, it wasn't as hard as I imagined it to be and on top of it - it is absolute fun.

 

3 days after the second time I played squash, I looked inside myself and I couldn't believe what I was experiencing - for the first time in my life, I was not tired at all. In fact, I slept less during the nights and I was not tired during the day. I tested this point again and I found out that, as long as I am playing squash 2-3 times a week, my body is great - I am not tired at all. But if I only play one day a week, after 3-4 days, the body is tired again which means that the balance that I am working with is by doing aerobic sport once every 3 days and I am ok for the next couple of days. It's been now more than 2 months that I am playing squash and I never felt as physically good as I feel now.

 

Unfortunately, I had to walk through the consequences to be able to support my physical body instead of integrating physical support from the get go. Many of us in childhood are busy comparing our skills and/or body image to our peers and accordingly make destructive decisions for ourselves. Imagine that I wouldn't compare myself during my childhood days to my class peers - I would have been able to prevent the accumulation affect on the body - I could have prevented the tiredness experience that I carried throughout my life - I could have supported my physical body throughout all these years. However, as long as the education system is unaware of how the mind works, the structural support is non existing which is why many if not all children are busy comparing themselves to others and thus creating ideas in their mind that are unhealthy to live by.

 

The point that we need to support the youngster (and ourselves) with is to understand and realize the consequences of comparing one's skills and/or body image to another where one would give up on oneself because one is feeling inadequate in comparison to another. What is not yet understood is the Natural Learning Ability of the body and within that, that each one of us has a different pace of learning and/or developing a physical skill but at the same time, everyone of us have  the potential to develop the necessary skills/abilities with enough time, practice and patience.

For example, when I went on the trampoline, I was utilizing the destructive method that I learned at school - 'push the body to its limit so that you can be the best in comparison to your peers'. But when I realized this one point about Natural Learning Ability wherein, I must consider the body's pace of learning without defining the results as either good or bad in comparison to others, I could walk with the body, equal and one, and slowly develop the necessary skills, the strength, the muscles that would in return, support the body to my best of my current ability.

 

I will in the future, expand more about the Natural Learning Ability but for now, I would like to make a point that - we tend to compromise ourselves based on comparison to something or someone without understanding the consequences of such decisions.  It is thus important that us as parents, educators, adults, understand how comparison works in the mind and how we can stop comparison ourselves and instead work with what is here to the best of our current abilities.