January is apparently international month of fitness marketing. This month we are treated to a constant barrage of ads featuring impossibly fit people sweating in the most attractive of ways. These ads want you to feel inadequate, so that you buy their products or join their gyms to overcome your flaws. I’m sure this works for some people who can imagine that they, too, can look like that if they get the product. For me, though, instead of being inspired by an ad like this, I take away the message that the product is not for someone like me.

Skipping the product is not where this story ends though. I want to go out and try new things, but I can’t help but use the impossible ad as the benchmark to measure myself against. Every fitness ad seems to have images of people doing amazing things that 99% of us will never accomplish. After a while, I internalize the message that whatever I might do is pathetic.

If you think your accomplishments are pathetic, encouragement feels patronizing.

I just took up rock climbing. This is something I’ve thought looked fun for years, but was afraid that I lacked the strength to do it. A couple of weeks ago, Cliff nudged me to try open belay at my local rock gym – that’s where an instructor belays you for up to 3 climbs. They keep you safe and give you some basic tips, but it’s not a class.  The following weekend I booked us a basic skills class, where they teach you how to belay for a partner. And the next weekend, we signed up for a membership so we can keep at it.

I’m not good at it. I am heavy and not that strong and getting a grip on those little holds is a lot harder than it looks. I’m quickly learning that scaling a 5.7, which many first-time climbers can tackle with little effort, is just a bit beyond my abilities for now. This is painful for me. Not in the sense that my arms get sore (though they do), but in the sense that I’m letting others see me do something that I’m not great at. More than a year after adopting this “do the things” philosophy, it’s still hard for me to stop measuring myself against strangers.

It’s still hard for me to stop measuring myself against strangers.

To this point, a lot of the things I’ve been doing like kayaking, hiking, and biking can be done far away from other people. But climbing is different – you are necessarily close to other people. This adds an extra dimension of fear of being judged.

Fortunately, when I actually do overcome that fear and show up at the gym, I realize that those strangers are cheering me on. Climbers are pretty awesome – they’ve all struggled to get up a wall, and that’s exactly what keeps them coming back. So they don’t see me as struggling at some trivial route they could scale easily, they see me as going through the same struggles they go through, period. That encouragement they give me is as sincere as it gets.

I need to stop worrying about what I can’t do, and focus on what I can do.