Don't tell me what I can do

[pktechgirlbackup]

A conversation I had at a dojo party, with a senior student who was on break and had never trained with me:

him: I can kick above my head.
me: That's cool. I can't anywhere near high.
him: yes, you can.
me: no, I really can't.
him: not if you think like that you can't.

now, what I meant was "if you tried to move my leg that high right now, you would tear several muscles in half and I would be crippled for life." And what he meant was "you might be capable of kicking that high, but you'll never achieve it if you convince yourself your current state is your limit. stretch frequently and with the expectation you will do better every time, and who knows how far you'll go." They're both true statements, but the form of them that came out was not productive.* This is only the most obvious example of a conversation I had a lot at the dojo, in which someone told me to be more flexible while never ever considering that something besides me should change.** It went beyond fighting fire with fire and all the way to attempting to teach an object it was not immovable by being an irresistible force.

I would believe that there's a personality type this works for. But it's not mine.

*Just to be clear: this was his fault. Not mine. His.

**This was not unique to me. I was profoundly uncomfortable with their habit of telling tween girls that if they relaxed and stopped fighting push ups, they would enjoy them.

Comments

[pktechgirl.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And that was pretty typical: lots of things they said weren't wrong, but did require a ton of energy to make into something productive.