Have You Ever Reinvented Yourself? [What if I don’t want to be The Great Fitness Experiment anymore?]

Levitating-Girl-Cute-Animated-Gif

*blink blink*

If I could change one thing about myself to be whatever I wanted it to be – laws of nature be darned – I’d make it so I could make that *blink blink* noise that cartoon characters do when they blink their eyes in surprise or disbelief or heartbreak (probably over the fact that their mouths only form one syllable: waaaoooohhhhh).

“Mom? Why can’t I have a BB gun? I promise not to shoot anyone… above the knees.” *blink blink*

“Oh, I’m sorry, you can’t use the kettlebells without a personal trainer. You might accidentally let it fly through the window.” *blink blink*

“Why are these screws left over? Ah well, the table stands fine without ’em.” *blink blink*

See? How awesome would that be?! I’d never have to say anything of import ever again!

I’ve been thinking of upgrades I’d like a lot lately. One of the best things about moving is the opportunity to reinvent yourself. Just like you get to toss out a bunch of junk you’ve been holding onto for years (because everyone needs 17 power cords for a cell phone you haven’t owned since “flips” were cool and you had to text by repeatedly pressing the number pad amirite?) because there’s no room for it on the moving truck nor in your new life, now you get to toss out the pieces of yourself that you don’t like. Back before the Wild West of the Internet, I think you could do a full about-face and pull a Jean Valjean-like transformation – although even he couldn’t escape who he really was in the end – but these days we’re a little more limited by our electronic trail. Especially, ahem, me. The girl who’s known for oversharing. Truth is I’m never quite sure how much to tell new acquaintances about myself because I’m not sure how much they already know. (Not that I think I’m A Thing or whatever, just that I include my website in my e-mail signature and post a lot of stuff on Facebook.)

At first, when I found out we were moving to Denver I was excited at this prospect of reinvention. Minnesota saw my worst years as an exercise addict and way more of my anxieties than I would have liked. But Colorado hadn’t seen me at my worst. And maybe it would never have to! Denver offered the prospect of not being “that girl” at the gym anymore. I would be able to walk into a new place and not have the manager immediately roll into a ball of porcupine quills because he/she knew I was going to ask for crazy things. Like kettlebells. Or chin-up bars. Or kettlebells on chinup bars. In the pool. Just that. Plus I wouldn’t have a slew of well-meaning people questioning my every activity. “Were you here twice today? Are you sure you’re not exercising too much?” And I could have conversations about BodyPump without making people feel immediately defensive. I could be normal! I could be… anything!

*blink blink*

Or, unchecked, I could go off the rails. You know, whatever.

As I thought more about this phoenix-like opportunity being offered me – and how often, really, are you afforded this type of chance in life? – I made a longer list of Old Charlotte things that would no longer be a part of New Charlotte. For instance, I used to be known for being a terrible secret keeper and ruining surprises. Usually it came from a place of happiness or over-excitement (“You’re having a BABY?!?! I’m so excited… to blurt your good news in front of 75 strangers waiting to go into TurboKick! Oops.) but every once in a while it came from a place of, well, subterfuge. Female friendships are tricky and one of the fastest ways to bond with someone is to tell them something they’re not supposed to know (but you do!). It shows you trust them more than most people. It shows you think they’re cool. It also shows you don’t think very far ahead because rare is the person who loves a spilled secret without spilling one herself.

All of which can be okay, or at least limited in scope, until the secret you share is not about yourself but about someone else.  This type of gossip – which I’m trying desperately not to rationalize even though I want to white-wash it under the guise of “I’m only saying this because I caaarrre!” – can really come back to bite you in the butt. Which it did me. More than once. I can honestly say I have NEVER felt so ashamed in all my life. The drama it caused, the people it hurt, the petty rivalries it perpetuated… all sadness. That is definitely a trait I hope stays with Old Charlotte. I want to be trustworthy. I want to not just be mostly kind but to be always kind. I want to love people unconditionally. I want to be worthy of their love and respect.

But eating disorders and gossip – those are big things. What about all the smaller personality traits? As I looked over my list of “things Charlotte needs fixed” it occurred to me that many of the things I couldn’t actually tell if they were a flaw or a feature. My love of knowledge and learning can come across as being a bossy know-it-all or it can mean I’m an interesting conversationalist. My love of other people’s lives and stories can either appear as being prying and nosy or it can come across as genuine interest in what makes other people who they are. My tendency toward self reflection can either be seen as narcissistic navel-gazing or as being self aware. But how was I to know which one I was? How would I know which Charlotte others were seeing??

I felt lost. *blink blink* I feel lost. What if New Charlotte doesn’t feel like being the Great Fitness Experiment anymore? What if I can’t do it without the Gym Buddies? (And would it even be any fun if I could?) What if I don’t want to work out anymore? Like, ever? I’ve been good about self-motivating through park- and hotel- workouts over the past month but even I could feel the inertia pulling me. The real question: Would I still want to exercise if I wasn’t driven to it by an unhealthy compulsion or pulled to it by my need for my friends? Do I really love exercise for the sake of exercise or did I just love it for all the extra stuff it gave me?

My list anxiety came to a head today as I went out again to look at gyms. Every time I walked into a new one, my chest tightened a little more and the tears got a little more aggressive with my contacts. *blink blink* At first I thought it was simply because the thought of walking onto a weight floor or into a cardio studio without all my wonderful Gym Buddies was making me depressed. (And that’s true). But as I sat in the parking lot of yet another failed option I realized that I was looking for the wrong things. What I was looking for – and not finding – was a gym that would make me into the person I wish I was. I was looking for people who would accept me for who I am but see me as something better. I wanted a gym where I could be the successful and respected fitness writer with insight and flair – oh, and a slammin’ body. I wanted a gym where I could have magically skinny thighs and still squat 300 pounds. I wanted a gym where I could be funny and sassy but never offend anyone. I wanted a gym where I could wear tutus and snort water out my nose from laughing too hard and fart during happy baby pose in yoga and eat endless chocolate without gaining weight and… *blink blink* Apparently I wanted a gym where I could be in a Cameron Diaz movie. But none of that is really me. And so of course I wasn’t satisfied.

Each time I went over my ever lengthening Not Charlotte list, I felt more desperate. I wanted to run into the street and beg people to just give me the benefit of the doubt! Please don’t assume the worst about me! And then I realized that maybe need to give myself the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there is no Old Charlotte and New Charlotte. Maybe there is now (and always has been) just fallible Charlotte. Normal, flawed, loving, annoying and quirky Charlotte. Maybe I need to stop trying to fix her. Maybe I’m not broken.

So I signed up with a gym today. It’s a good gym. It has everything I need. They’ll even let me use the kettlebells without supervision. (And the TRX and the wall balls and the VIPRs and all the other goodies!) It has fun classes and child care and all the free weights a girl could desire.  It’s not fancy but it’s clean. It’s reasonably priced. As I walked around I realized that I’d missed all this. And I was glad to be back in it, even if I didn’t have any friends there. Yet.

But none of that was what sold me on the gym. In the end it was the friendliness. It’s a small-ish family owned gym and by golly the whole family came out to meet me! Three generations! Everyone shook my hand and admired my kids and asked me questions. Sure, I was about to sign a contract that would fork over a lot of money to them over the next 12 months so I’m sure that helped too but it still felt genuine. Everyone there was chatting with each other. And they all seemed to like me. Not the the me I wish I was – all they know was what they got on the intake form – but just the mom of four kids who likes to workout sometimes and laugh all the time. I can be that me. *blink blink*

Have you ever reinvented yourself? What superpower would you give yourself? If you could change just one thing about yourself what would it be?? (And no, I will not accept abs, boobs or thighs as an answer.)

stanley_blinking

 

31 Comments

  1. I tried the total reinvention thing once, for 2 weeks, and it was completely exhausting and phony. I wasn’t me, I was tense and I think it brought out all my worst traits in one huge vomitous rush.

    I think instead of thinking of the things you “need to change” you should think of it as a fresh start. With families and friends we can get into a role, eg the Good One, The Black Sheep, The Smart One etc. A fresh start gives you the opportunity to ask which role(s) you’ve been playing, and do you wish to play that any more. It gives a choice. Look more at your strong points, what do you like most about yourself, and instead of trying to outrun something you don’t like, run towards building up what you do like.

    I was listening to a Hay House seminar the other day and one of the things suggested (and I can’t for the life remember who said it) is to keep a compliments journal. Write down 5 things you like about yourself every day, and they have to be different each day. I love this idea and I’m going to start doing it (now that this has reminded me). People who know you, family, friends, internet people can tell you how great we think you are but I think that until you tell yourself it kind of gets caught on the Rock of Yeahbut (“Charlotte, you’re so great”…. “Yeah, but {insert put down here}”).

    My super power would be the ability to clone myself 😉 I’d send the clone to work and sleep in.

  2. I’ve often thought I would love to pick things up and move somewhere where nobody knows me or my past or any of my “issues.” But then I realized that wherever I go, there I am. That’s not a bad thing in most respects, but it’s also not a solution to feeling lost or looking for meaning. With that said, you are Charlotte. You are a mom, a wife, a friend, a writer, a fitness fan and anything else you choose to be–wherever you go, that’s who you are. Those things do not define you, but rather describe you, and we all love you no matter where you go or what you do (unless you club baby seals or something.)

    For me, I did kind of reinvent my blog a couple years ago when I shifted the focus off me and my “serious” issues to that of more humor. I started using it as a platform to entertain instead of vent and it was one of the best things that I did. Whether or not is was successful doesn’t matter to me, as it was what I felt I needed/wanted to do. Maybe I couldn’t craft the life I desired offline, but at least online I could spend my time doing what made me most happy.

    With that said, I would LOVE to reinvent myself offline somehow. Of course I would fix all my physical/mental issues and leap up to a healthy weight with no traces of exercise addiction or OCD, but I would also have the freedom to be more of a “creative.” I’m a hippie-dippy yoga type at heart, but stuck in an office all day. I would love to be able to write from home and actually get paid for it. Perhaps my superpower would be to predict winning lotto numbers so I could stay at home and write while eating organic vegan food without worrying about paying the bills? Oh. And to be able to stop the cat from shedding.

  3. 1. Sure
    2. To be able to violate the First Law of Thermodynamics
    3. My mechanical properties. I’m rather averse to being broken and/or squished (don’t ask me how I know)

  4. I want to reinvent myself right now! I often want to be a different person or present differently. If I could change one thing about myself- apart from physical appearance stuff- id be naturally more assertive.

  5. Yay for finding a gym! It sounds like it’s going to be great. It’s so tempting to try to “fix” ourselves – but in the end, I think, liberating to accept who we are. I’ll let you know – I’m still working on it! 😉

  6. Really glad to hear you found a gym, Charlotte! I hope it works out and that you find a new set of Gym Buddies soon. 🙂

    As for me, lately I’d wish just for the superpower of knowledge. As we enter into the wonderful extra space of summer, I find myself wanting things I don’t have. Even though I feel so blessed and love so much about my life, I want more community, less work, more space, less debt, etc., etc. And I ask myself…Are these important things I should be striving for? Or is this just life and I need to come to accept it and be content in it? Hard to say. Wish I had a magical gift of knowledge to provide answers to life’s hard questions.

  7. When I transitioned from my small elementary school to my much larger, far more anonymous junior high, I changed my name. I was so tired of having people mispronounce or misspell my name that I decided I’d use my middle name forever more. To this day, my husband does not use my first name, only a few select childhood friends and my mother get to do that.

    If I could have any superpower it would be the ability to create fully immersive illusions based on books I’m reading. Imagine how much people would flip out if I could throw them into the midst of the Happy Potter world, or Westeros, or conversely the unimaginable sub-atomic level of the universe when I happen to be reading something more cerebral.

    If I could change anything about myself, I would give myself the ability to finish a task. I tend to start many projects, work hard on them, then around 90% done I just fizzle out and move on to the next thing. There are many rooms of my house just missing one corner being finished, or a lick of paint on the trim, or a light switch plate that hasn’t been screwed back in…

    • I so hear you on the not quiiiite finishing a project thing! My whole house looks like that too. In fact, I painted today and left about a 3 inch spot in the corner unpainted. WHY? Finishing would be an amazing super power. Maybe then I could wear the things I knit instead of putting them in a bin ‘to finish later’…like years later.

  8. I grew up in a small town, surrounded by family & church congregation. I was (still am) extremely shy, my parents were protective, so I had a bit of a sheltered upbringing. I went to college at age 25, and it was the first time in my life that I’d ever been in a place where no one knew me or anything about me. No one knew so-and-so from my family or anything like that. I’d never thought about it before, being defined by all those connections, and I’m not saying those connections are a bad thing, but it was a really good experience for me. I wouldn’t say that it gave me a chance to change, but it gave me a chance to see myself differently, and see what I was capable of on my own. Sometimes we need that.

  9. What Terri said. 🙂
    I guess my own Great Transformation happened by accident. I’d been dealing with debilitating anxiety and undiagnosed post-partum depression, and I went into therapy. My therapist (gently) forced me to take a good, long look at myself and my habitual behavior. Sh guided me through the process of changing my POV and how I reacted to stress.
    It’s an ongoing process. We will never be “perfect.”

    Have you ever read the “Supermom” books? There are 2 of them (I believe). It’s about a suburban mom who has a Swiffer Incident, and wakes up to find she has superpowers, including the ability to make others do the right thing with her All-Powerful Mom Look.
    That’d be my superpower.

    • BTW, if you don’t want to do The Great Fitness Experiment anymore, that’s OK!!!!!!!

  10. Reinvention: Yes, I once tried to go by “Mandy” after switching schools but everyone ended up thinking I was aloof bc I forgot to respond to the new name.

    Trait to change: I would love to have more patience (with myself and with others)

    Superpower: flying for sure (flying dreams are my favorite!)

    I’m so happy you found a gym home 🙂 it sounds perfect for you!

  11. I’ve been lucky enough or unlucky enough (depending on your viewpoint) to reinvent myself twice now, once with a move to the UK and then a further move to Japan and I agree with JavaChick in that it allows you to look at yourself in a way that isn’t defined or shaped by others and I found that very empowering.

    My superpower if I could choose one would be to selectively hear what other people were thinking – i’m sure that would satisfy my inquisitive nature!!!

  12. I find I’m hardest on myself. I woudl look for people finding the flaws I see in myself and eventually came to see that mostly I was the only one who cared 🙂
    I’ve just tried to try new things and enjoy the moment and not try to be someone other than healthy happy me and see where it leads me…

  13. However you embark on your next adventure, just take us with you!
    🙂

  14. If I could reinvent myself (or just part of me) it would be to stop being someone who talks about doing things (or sometimes just thinks about doing them) into someone who takes action!!!

  15. It is such an interesting question & I think many of us would say yes! For me, I am not sure if I ever was who I was since I was so busy being or trying to be what others wanted me to be. Finally I am trying to be me & working on that!

  16. Reinventing yourself is fun perhaps but it can be really tricky. This is not easy and lots of consideration should be accounted. If you feel it’s necessary, then go ahead. But if you love yourself and you think people loves you for who you are then why reinvented?

  17. I reinvented myself back when I erased my entire on-line presence back in the Fit Rebel days. I erased everything, the web side, the posts, all of the Youtube vids, everything. 4 years of effort and hard work FFFT! Gone.

    Then I created the Red Delta Project which was a much different take on fitness and I have to say it was certainly a good call. Although, sometimes I do regret hitting the delete key on those 400+ videos.

    Sometimes we can re-create ourselves into something better kind of like a hermit crab moving from one shell to one that allows them to grow.

  18. I don’t care if you don’t want to do any more “fitness experiements”, and just work work out for your own health. Please keep writing a blog….I LOVE your writing, wit, charm, and stories! Moving is hard, not only physically, but more so emotionally. You will find a new “set point” so to say.

  19. I’m about to make a move to Hong Kong where a total of one person in the whole city (an ex who I will be avoiding) know me from Adam . . . uh Eve. I’m kinda excited for the fresh start. A lot of things have changed in the last couple of years (major weight loss, overcoming an eating disorder, personality changes, lost bad relationships), and it’s been hard to adjust to all the changes while still surrounded by the familiar. It’s not a reinvention. It’s just a chance to run with all the new awesome changes.

    If I had a super power it would be mind reading . . . I’d be a super villian!!! ::cue evil laughter::

    If I could change one thing about myself, it would be my seeming inability to think before I speak. I can’t count how many times this has gotten me into trouble. All kinds of trouble . . . luckily the police officer thought it was funny in a pathetic sort of way and let me go with a warning. Yeah that would be change #1!!!

  20. your new gym sounds wonderful and worth the money! Family owned. My gym is owned by a middle aged business man.

  21. I’m taking it as a good sign that I really can’t think of anything at the moment that I want to change about myself. Maybe it’s because I’m so darned busy with moving. (Oh; did I mention that we got the keys to our house the day before yesterday?!)

  22. Ooh what an interesting question!

    I’ve been trying to reinvent myself these last couple of years, I suppose, with the whole notion of rewiring my brain to be more positive, optimistic, content, grateful, and forgiving.

    But it is damn slow and inconsistent and takes a lot of work. Sometimes I make progress and sometimes I backslide. The notion of moving to a whole different environment and just deciding to make a wholesale change and take an entirely different approach to life has a certain appeal! So many of our thoughts are reinforced by our habits, and seems like it could be powerful to totally shake everything up.

    Love the eloquent way you hash this stuff over and just know we love you HOWEVER you are!

  23. Short answer…hmmmm, YEAH! I actually think reinvention could be listed as one of my hobbies, although, like Crabby, it doesn’t always take. My efforts ebb and flow. But that’s life, right? And like you said, some of the things that you sometimes think about needing to change can benefit you under different circumstances. Gosh, growing up is hard. 🙂
    Good luck at the new gym.
    Gaye

  24. You have my permission and my blessing to reinvent yourself. (I know you were waiting for that, right?) But I do hope you continue to blog about it all!

    • I second Naomi/Dragonmamma’s comment. It doesn’t matter what you write about, but I would miss your voice if you stopped blogging.

  25. I’ve been thinking about this post since I read it two days ago. I think “reinvent” is a scary word that makes it seem more daunting than it really is. People are constantly changing and evolving and adapting to whatever new challenges and experiences that life throws at them. Sometimes they are drastic, quick changes and other times, they are slow almost imperceptible changes that only after five years do you begin to notice.

    I think this is actually a really good thing. Being too rigid and resistant to change is bound to bring unhappiness. Do what makes you happy at the time and if it still makes you happy years later, keep doing it. If not, don’t do it anymore.

    Overly simplistic? Maybe.

    PS. As far as the GFE is concerned, I love those experiments, but I love your thought-provoking posts just as much, if not more. So I’ll still read, no matter what.

    PPS HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

  26. First of all, those GIFs are fah-reaking me out!

    Secondly, THIS: “And then I realized that maybe I need to give myself the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there is no Old Charlotte and New Charlotte. Maybe there is now (and always has been) just fallible Charlotte. Normal, flawed, loving, annoying and quirky Charlotte. Maybe I need to stop trying to fix her. Maybe I’m not broken.” YES!!! A thousand times, yes!

    Also, hooray for getting to use the KBs without supervision! PARTY!!! xoxo

  27. Thinking about doing that right now. Want to remain a part of my grandkids lives. Now I’m a fun Grandma, taking Mackenzie snow tubing, or swimming or cooking up some treat, but what happens when this 6 year old turns 10 or 13 or 16? Will her mom get the “oh do I have to go” when it’s time to go see Grandma? Decided I cannot stop the natural distancing that will no doubt occur when that time comes, but maybe, if I stay engaged in my own thing, I will be a more interesting person so that at least I can say I’m growing up too.