The 3 Week Stall

It’s been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. The summer has come and gone in a flash and I can barely remember what happened. The year is coming to an end as it is now December and I feel as though I’m not sure where it even went or what I even did. As a child, years would slowly sloth by with a snail’s pace and every day I would count down to the next birthday or the next Christmas. Now, years seem to disappear in a blink of an eye without me even realizing.

I’ve been sick with the cold/flu for over a week now and it has really thrown me off. Previous to that, I started an exercise class that I was going to write about in this blog but I’ve only managed to go 3 weeks of classes before I got sick and then had to take a break. It seems like 3 weeks is always my cut off with new ventures. I tend to go really well for 3 weeks and then something happens that throws me off. I then feel like I am back to square one and not able to jump back onto the moving bandwagon. What is it about 3 weeks? Looking back there has always been a 3 week stall in all my little projects. Is it that my brain only works on a 3 week cycle? Am I only interested in something for 3 weeks? Why does my body always get sick after 3 weeks doing a new form of exercise or new routine? It is a pattern I want to change. I will resume the exercise classes again on Tuesday and see if I can get back to where I was.

It is funny how your mind and fears can hold you back from everything. I think this is a situation I face right now even with the simplest of tasks. It seems kind of ridiculous to think that my ‘fears’ are holding me back from an exercise class, but the truth is I think deep down inside it kind of is. You see, there has been a pattern my entire life with the 3 week stall. As a kid the 3 weeks into some task and I would generally bail out usually because of some kind of fear (not always specifically 3 weeks, but somewhere along that line). I would start a new desirable project and it would go great for 3 weeks, then once it started to get too complicated then I would stop. Something would arise that scared me or threw me off and I would just stop and move onto something else.

As I kid I learned how to be extremely risk averse. Growing up, the country wasn’t the same as it was when my much older siblings were kids. By the time I was born, my parents were much older parents and the country had changed face from being safe and carefree to more concern about petty crime and robberies. The luxuries allowed to my siblings as kids such as being allowed to ride bikes alone down the street were not allowed to me. My parents were worried about my safety all the time. It was very rare that I would be let out of sight and, when I was, it was only confined to a certain area. Thinking back at it now, I realize that I programmed myself to feel like everything is kind of scary outside the safe zone.

We had a pretty big yard in my childhood home, which did allow me opportunity to explore and be free to do many things. However, when I was little, I was only able to be free in the back of the house, never was I ever allowed to be in the front of the house nor anywhere visible from the street without supervision. Even with the vast back yard, just having those limits applied to certain areas, I created a sense of fear around these boundaries. I created limits on my own choices and actions. I was afraid of all kinds of silly things. I was afraid my parents would be upset if I disobeyed the rules and I was especially afraid that maybe something bad might actually happen to me if I did go into the front yard. My bike did actually get stolen from the front yard one day, which didn’t help my cause. It actually solidified that bad things can happen if I crossed those limits. So even though I wanted to play in the front so many times, I never did and slowly with time, I taught myself to stop when scared. Do not go beyond the safe zone.

Obviously, this is not the only explanation of my risk aversion and I am not saying my parents did me an injustice by placing limits on my play areas. But the older I get, the deeper I go inside myself to figure out why my patterns are my patterns. Fear is usually the biggest contender. So many layers of different fears and so many cycles of fails because of fears.

As I learn more about myself, I am hopeful to be able to change some of my undesired patterns. Change those patterns that were formed through unconsciously giving into fear. Or at the very least bring awareness to what my fears truly are.

So now we go back to the 3 week stall. Maybe I’m not afraid of something specific. Maybe, I’m just so programmed to be only free to a limit that beyond the 3 weeks everything is scary. Perhaps in my mind, the third week is like the boundary to my front yard and beyond it my bike is going to get stolen or something worse.

I guess the challenge is to stumble passed the stalling and step into the unknown. I’m all grown up now, so the worst that can happen is not actually as bad as what my childhood self can conjure up. The scary stuff is really all in my head. The biggest obstacles are really only the ones that my mind makes up.