How I am Changing My Mindset - The First Step

How in the world did I go from loathing physical violence to suddenly wanting to whack people myself?

Well, first off, this isn't the only time in my life I've had to change my mindset. I have a few stories to share with you - my friends will know some of them, but there are a few I haven't shared yet. I think now is a good time to do so.

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First of all, I was a child who did not understand or like effort.

I am naturally talented in a lot of ways - this is not a brag, but a personal observation. I have some athleticism (despite not being strong), I am artistically inclined, and I have a sound mind capable of intelligent work and conversation. People around me saw a child athletically gifted and artistic, and I was complimented on it. As a child, I had some intelligence, but I struggled to be understood and even though I knew a lot of facts, I struggled with math.

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but when things required no effort for me, it felt good. My sisters and I were all very competitive in being smarter than each other, so there was pressure to be good at things. If I felt I had passed a life requirement of being able to do "X" thing at the basic level, it felt good; There was no need to put effort into my life, and I was grateful. Because when I sucked at something, effort was tedious, boring, and sometimes painful.

I remember having to count from 1 to 100 in first grade to pass a requirement for class. Each student went out of the classroom to do this assignment in front of an attendant, and it just so happened that my mother was the person acting in this role.

I was not confident in my ability to count to 100 and it didn't help to have my mom be there to judge me in this task. After hitting 20, I was panicking and started crying. Thankfully we were in public (of sorts) so my mother had all the patience and love in the world to pick me up and hold me, and tell me she knew I could do it. She continued to hold me and waited for me to count the rest of the way.

I managed to do it, and she expressed how proud she was of me. After a few moments passed where I could calm down, I walked back into the classroom to continue my day.

Now you tell me: if you were in my shoes, would YOU have felt proud of yourself in that moment?

Not only was I scared of my mom, and scared of failing, I had cried in front of her. I had exposed myself as a weak person in front of a person of power. It did not feel good. It did not encourage me to seek more opportunities to grow and struggle through difficult things.

My next opportunity to do a difficult thing was when I struggled to learn my times tables in third grade. My father was the one who took on the responsibility of helping me through this, and his approach was different from my mother: to do the thing, regardless of emotion, by focusing on the task at hand.

This experience was better, but still tough. I wasn't great at memorizing numbers (as seen in the first story) but my father was patient, yet firm in that we would overcome this. He first taught me by going over all the patterns of certain times tables, and then by snapping his fingers, producing a rhythm that helped me overcome any panic, by focusing instead on timing my answers to the rhythm. In a way, he gamified math in a very simple rhythm game. Patterns and Rhythms were already familiar to me as an artistically-minded child, so this method of learning was very good for me. No emotion, just rhythm.

I was able to pass my tests for multiplication, and division (though new) was easier to overcome, since I already knew the components for the opposite of division: multiplication.

I did actually feel proud of this accomplishment. But it was a LOT of work.

And I didn't like work. From first grade on, if I felt I wasn't good at something, and it wasn't REQUIRED that I be good at it, I would just move on with my life.

Did I have envy at other kids who could do things I couldn't? Yes.

Did I want to put in the effort to get to their level? No.

Why would I? I was plenty good at doing OTHER things - some of those things did not come easily to those kids I was comparing myself to. So I was just fine: they could have their things to be good at, and I would have mine. And that would be how I lived my life, and I was ok with that.

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My first real taste of rewarding effort came when I was 13 and living in England:

I moved around growing up, going from Michigan to California, California to England, and England back to California. My dad worked for Ford Motor Company, and Jaguar/Land Rover when Ford still owned them, and he was reassigned to England for a two year assignment. I look back on those two years with fondness and sadness.

The most prolific moment of those two years was when my church group decided to participate in a charity trek that I swear was called "The Seven Summits Challenge".

(*runs to my bedroom to consult ancient teenage diary* ...)

"Saturday, June 24th, 2006 ... 6 Summit Walk"- huh. My dad was right 😅

My dad and I had both gone on that trip, and we remembered the challenge name differently. We, along with a few other teenagers in our church group and some adults to supervise, decided to raise charity (don't remember what charity for the life of me...) before we went on this 6 Summit Challenge near Shropshire, UK: https://sixsummitschallenge.org.uk/event-info/

They must have updated the requirements for the challenge, because this website says you must complete some physicals and demonstrate your aptitude for a walk lasting over three days.

That was not the walk we had.

Let me type for you the journal entry experience recording that "hike" all those years ago:

"Saturday, June 26th, 2006: Woke at 1 AM, started 6 Summit Hike [Began at 2 AM if I remember right]. 1st hill, good: Steep, but there was a fence I could hold onto all the way up [I remember it was mostly a steep hill, and most of the teenagers raced up that hill to see who could get to the top first - I was one of those idiots.]. We got a bit lost on the way down though; After going over a second hill, I thought we already did 2 Summits: nope. We only did one + a couple miles.

"2nd Summit: lots of rocks: beautiful scenery. Max [name changed for privacy] helped me up, but I was the first one down. We all thought there was breakfast [after this summit], but no.... after we walked a couple more miles, we finally got to eat. It was about 8 o'clock then, maybe 9. Still good food ... Oh yeah: we tracked through sheep fields. Bleh! It was still fun watching [other teenagers] fling the sheep wool around though, hehe...

"The 3rd Summit was short + the least steep out of all of the summits, so that was good. But the 4th summit: Dear Goodness! The steepest one, but the best one. I got to the 'top', + then the next 'top', + then I got to the 'top'. The view was awesome! You could almost see all around the summit from its highest point. truly beautiful. Well, the way down [was] fun: sliding down our butts: Woohoo!

"Well, Jake [name changed for privacy] made a bet I wouldn't want to walk after the 4th summit, but he lost. Haha. I needed help though, so Max stayed with me. He was my life boat, + my 'brother'. I thank him so much."

* I remember this young man carrying me at some point - He was a capable young man, and I was a stupidly overconfident teenager who had no idea that these summits were closer to mountains than hills. He ultimately sacrificed his own strength to help me finish this trek. I hope I was able to properly thank him for his assistance before I left the UK in July of 2006.

To continue:

"Well, we struggled to the top of Summit 5 + then learned there was an extra summit! So much for the 6 Summit walk, huh? [I feel vindicated in my memory - take THAT dad!] Well, I was in bad shape even before Summit 4, but I kept going. Poor Max. He struggled behind me, so my dad walked with me. He helped me through to and over the 6th Summit + told me this:

"When he warmed up for swimming, it was in 3 parts: the first part consisted of warming up: stretching + loosening up muscles + stuff. The 2nd part was [where] he started to swims laps. But the last part consisted when he had 10 laps left from the original [number of laps he had decided to complete]. He told me he said to himself: My mind is in control of my body, not the other way around. Then he gave all he could, ignoring the fact his muscles hurt.

"He then found out Max + Neil (?) [another change of name for privacy, but I was not focused on the geography or the people involved] were behind so he went to go look for them. I had a new determination in me, though, + I sang in my head "Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming; What do we do? We swim, swim."

"I tell you now it gave me strength +the Lord helped me. I caught up with Nancy + passed her [another name change; I was jealous that she was doing better than I was in this ordeal for most of the day] without help + I entered the resting place with pride. I think everyone was surprised I went + did the last summit + Nancy cried to her dad about being too tired.

"I did great + got ahead of everyone else, just singing my song over and over again. Then Dad came back + it goes downhill from there, I'm afraid. He was walking with me, alone + started to praise me. My strength was giving out as he praised [me] + reflected on the past; on Libby [our dog we left in California, and who had died a few days prior to this trek. I was emotionally distraught over knowing I would never see my dog when I got back from the UK, and we were literally WEEKS from going home.]

"I finally stopped + told dad I needed a hug + a prayer, I was crying so much, but suppressing it well. Still, I learned a lot about all of the experience."

This is where my teenage self stopped reporting - and I did that, because I was rushing to write another section of successes that resulted from remembering lessons learned from this hike.

But I remember a lot of the feelings from that time, so I will fill you in on what I didn't write.

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My knees were so weak from climbing over rocks, steadying myself around steep inclines and declines, and climbing over pasture fences - like mentioned above, I was giving out around Summit 4. Yet I managed to clear 7, not the original 6, summits.

After my father told me about his mind over body exercises, I did gain a lot of strength, believing if he could do that, I could do it. And to remember this, I started singing the "Just Keep Swimming" ditty from Pixar's "Finding Nemo".

Praying for help, and filling my mind with this song (and what it represented) took my mind away from the pain I was feeling, and I marched myself up and down the 5th and 6th summits with blind, stubborn, determination. I would probably have been fine with Summit 7, had my dad not been distracting me. As my concentration deteriorated while my father talked to me, I again felt the pain in my limbs, and became very frightened that I would not make it back to the cars to go home. Literally every summit felt like a unique and separate day, and by the time I was nearing the finish line for this 7th peak, it had felt like I was on my seventh day of a week-long journey. I didn't want to disappoint my dad, who was proud of the progress I made, and I didn't want to show weakness to him either - but I did stop him in his musings, and we had a hug and prayer before finishing the last summit together, me leaning heavily on him for support.

We have a picture together at the top of that last summit - It was pitch black, being 10 PM. The Flash showed that he was beaming with pride, and it showed me on my last 'leg' of sanity and bodily autonomy. We arrived home at about 11 PM that Saturday night.

I don't remember who else did that 7th summit - I think maybe one or two other people did it, but I only remember me and my dad at the summit top, with the volunteers who had driven ahead to meet us. And we all had to get up for 9 AM church the next day - definitely a challenge to remember.

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This was both the worst and best experience in my life: worst, because none of the people on that walk were adequately prepared to do this challenge. I was in the middle of transitioning from girl to woman, so my bones were longer, but my muscles had not yet caught up, because muscles are naturally slower than bone to grow. As a result, this was not a fun physical experience. I do not go on hikes, not even 'little' ones as a result of this experience.

But it was the best experience, because I managed to do a hard thing. I had a LOT of help - without Max and without my Father, I would not have seen such beautiful scenery. I would not have found a way to challenge myself in any other way. And I would not have realized that yes: your mind can be stronger than your body.

Now, I wasn't stupid enough to then go out and perform extreme stunts because "my mind is mightier than any physical pain I might risk". It did, however, give me a powerful memory I could then use to address other issues: low self esteem, trauma, marital issues, perfectionism - and now fighting recreationally.

I won't go into those topics anytime soon - I'm just illustrating a point, that this singular lesson has given me a lifelong hope: That God helps those who ask, AND that my mind, or will, is stronger than my body.

This was the first step in changing my mind. See you in the next post for the rest of this mind-changing process! :)

XOXOX