Trying new things, especially as a beginner and especially alone is tough, it can be embarrassing and awkward and make you never want to do it again. It’s inevitable to feel this way but it doesn’t mean you should give up or not try. Life is about embracing the mistakes and the embarrassments; how will you ever get better if you don’t try?
Life is about embracing the mistakes and the embarrassments; how will you ever get better if you don’t try?
Over the summer, I began my fitness journey. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I’ve been in gyms before but it’s like I was glued to the edges. I stuck to the cardio machines to avoid the embarrassment of getting something wrong. I quickly learnt that no one was watching and no one cared. Everyone was doing their own thing, and was probably thinking very similarly to me. Luckily for me, I was approached by a trainer and my confidence grew with each session. It was awkward, and I had to fill a lot of silences with empty gossip and meaningless chat but it was good for me. After a while, I had no problem striding into the weights section, where the men stare and grunt at themselves in the mirror, or moving the weights on and off the machines. Now I have began a new gym, after moving back to Uni, which is another challenge in itself but one I am working to overcome.
My advice is this: It’s important to know what you are good at, and what you enjoy but to fully embrace life and to become the person you’ve always wanted to be, you have to overcome the fear. Join the gym, go to that class alone, meet up with that society because you will honestly never know if it will make you happy or not until you do. Gradually expose yourself to new things, try and do something new everyday even if it is as small as finding a new place to eat lunch and what you feared, because it was new, will eventually become habit.
