YES I CAN! Learning to believe in myself.
Pushing for my first podium in an elite race. Because I told myself I could! Photo by: James Brosnan
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior.
In the beginning of last season I would often tell myself things like, "we'll just see what happens", or "those girls are monsters i'll never be able to keep up", or even "my equipment isn't that great, i'll need to upgrade all of the things to compete". All of that self diminishing talk did exactly that. It made me believe that I wasn't good enough.
I've struggled a lot with confidence as an adult, the whole idea of being feminine enough, smart enough, wise enough, and strong enough to keep up with my peers has lead to some pretty serious panic attacks in the past. Over time, I learned that the biggest mistake I was making was comparing myself to everyone else. It's stupid, degrading, and a huge waste of time. Let other people be themselves, and you be you. It works out so much better than you trying to be someone else. TRUST ME. No really, stop.
Now you might be thinking, "what if you're not good enough?" "What if that other girl is better?" You could be right, but people achieve a whole lot more when they think they can do something, than when they've already decided they can't. So now my new thing is repeatedly telling myself how great I am. "You can do this", "Stick to that wheel", "dig deeper", and you know what? It's landed me some pretty good results!
As soon as I changed my state of mind, my body followed through. It's really as simple as that a lot of the time. Granted, there will be times that I think I can, and it doesn't work out. That's fine because so long as I really tried, i'm not going to be as upset. I'm more annoyed with myself when I've given up before I even made an effort.
Stop making excuses for all the things you don't have yet, just work with what you've got. You might be pretty surprised with what can result from a little patience and a lot of elbow grease.
By the way!
The next two weeks are going to be so fun for William and myself! Tomorrow I get my new custom Mars Cycles track bike, Thursday I start my instagram takeover of @transportationalternatives. Saturday I get to race the Redhook Crit for team Hatchmap Equality with the ever so fabulous Carol-Lynn Mills, Sunday is going to be a blast racing at the Kissena Velodrome, and next Tuesday and Wednesday Will and I are going to give it our all at few races during Speedweek in South Carolina! Please, please, please follow along on instagram @ayesuppose / @transportationalternatives and as always send safe vast vibes!