Self-love and the Poison of Comparison

Self-love and the poison of comparison

“What does self-love have to do with Pole dancing,” you ask? It has everything to do with Pole Dancing. First of all, to step out and start pole dancing classes takes so much courage. Most of us don’t come into this sport with an innate ability to move, or to climb a pole. There is risk involved in you even having the courage to step into the pole studio. You are risking failure, or looking foolish. Now no one looks foolish when they step into this pole fitness journey, but the voice inside our heads say we might. Some people don’t ever overcome that voice; they let it keep them from stepping inside the studio. If you overcame the voice, hooray!!! If you have not overcome the voice and are stilling looking longingly from outside of the studio, please come in and join us. We are all learning and growing. We all fall; we all stumble. We all have to try tricks over and over and over. Come in. You are welcome.

Back to the self-love. We live in a society that is constantly telling us that we aren’t enough. We are thin enough. We aren’t lean enough. We aren’t tall enough, or short enough. We aren’t pretty enough. We aren’t graceful enough. We aren’t smart enough. We aren’t outgoing enough. We aren’t quiet enough. Whatever the message is; we are constantly receiving it. We never feel good enough. My beautiful people, I am here to tell you that you are enough!!! You are beautiful!! You are unique, amazing, one of a kind. Stop listening to the lies that are all around you. Start speaking life and love to yourself. You are enough just as you are. We all have goals. We all have things we want to accomplish and that is fine, as long as you realize that accomplishing that goal is not going to make you good enough. I lived for years chasing the idea that whatever physical goal I was after would finally make me feel good enough. Here is the problem with that thinking. You reach that goal and just change it to something else. There is no goal that will make you feel good enough because that feeling comes from loving yourself as you are. When you love yourself and take care of yourself, then you accomplish goals just because you want to, not as a way to find good enough. Start speaking life and love over yourself. Start speaking love and life over others. Pay attention to what you say to yourself in your head. Reprogram your brain to speak kindness, acceptance, love and beauty over yourself. As you start to change the way you speak to yourself, you will notice that you feel differently and that people even treat your differently. It will take time and effort, but the treasure you will receive is worth making the effort.

Now let’s talk about the poison of comparison. Comparison is the thief of contentment and community. We are a community in this pole fitness world. We all have different weaknesses and strengths. We need to work on our weaknesses and appreciate the strengths in ourselves and others. We come from different backgrounds and that makes our pole journeys different. I was a cross-fitter and strongwoman before I started pole. This made me crazy strong compared to many other polers. I can invert, shoulder-mount, and hang like no bodies business….but you want me to hang by a knee pit, are elbow pit and I want to cry. I have worked so hard to get passed the thigh burn. I didn’t want to do anything that involved burning, but I would make a static pole look like a spin pole when I did circles. As I started coaching, I was able to help the girls build the kind of strength they needed to do the inverts and running circles and they, in turn helped me to work through that awful pole burn. We needed each other. We were able to learn from each other’s strength to build passed our weaknesses. So let’s stop comparing ourselves to others and walk our individual pole journey. And let’s start loving ourselves and realized that we are enough just as we are.

All my love,

Pole Beast