The Voices, They Are Stupid

I've been working out again. As always, I've rediscovered that it's absolutely true that you end up with more energy, not less, when you work out on a regular basis.

And the voices in my head--man, they know just what to say. What's with that? Everything from a whining "I don't wanna!" to "I really don't have time to work out" to "It's my day off, I don't want to spend my day off at the gym," and everything in-between. A stupid one yesterday: "It's almost lunchtime, so I'll be hungry by the time I get there, and if I go work out now then I'll have a really late lunch if I have one at all, and if I eat before I'll be too full to work out."  Really? As if I'm afraid of being hungry for an hour or two. Anyone who's seen me knows that I'm in no danger of starvation any time soon.

The voices in my head have no logic. That's probably a good thing, otherwise I might cave in to them (more often).

The voices in my head are not who I am, nor are the voices in anyone's head who any of us really are. They are, generally speaking (at least in my case) a vocal minority expressing my fears that goad me into laziness, and are mainly concerned with maintaining my comfort level. That includes my success or lack thereof. To these voices, success is scary. It's not just fear of failure, which these voices also have. What if I succeed? Then (OMG) people might see me, might notice, and that puts me in danger. What kind of danger, the voices can't really specify other than a vague unease and the notion that people will mock me if they, for example, read my books. Regardless of what might or might not happen, it's change and we're safe right now without the change. We're safe and nothing bad is happening and if there's change then there's all this bad stuff that might happen.

What bad stuff, they can't always delineate. Even if they did, it probably wouldn't make much sense. (See previous mention of the lunch logic.)

The main leverage that the voices have is that I've been embarrassed and I've failed and I've struggled, and just thinking about some of those moments makes my gut knot up tight. So their vague threats do have teeth. Take, for example, my garden. I've spent a lot of money and time and effort on my veggie garden. Last year, I had almost nothing to show for it. The deer ate my tomato plants and most of the broccoli. They even ate the zucchini plants. The thought of all that loss makes me feel horrible. I wasted money, and I ended up looking stupid. The time spent I don't mind so much--I love gardening, and it keeps me in shape. Still ...  And I have this project where I'm going to fence the whole darned thing in to keep the deer out. In fact, I'm going to work on it today. So why am I here, typing (and playing Bejeweled) when I should dash out there right now and get to work?

Because of the voices. And when I press them past the "I don't wanna, it's my day off and it's cold and dreary outside" (although the sun is peeking out right now, yay!!) the best that they can come up with is "what if you don't have enough materials to finish and we can't afford to buy new and if you buy stuff we'll be short and lose the house or worse, what if you finish and the deer still get in and then we'll have lost the house and we'll be starving for nothing or worst of all, what if the deer stay out and the garden still fails? Then you'll be a gardening total failure because you can't even blame the deer and we'll have no food and no house and we'll all die and it's all your fault and your husband and kids won't blame you because they're so nice but you'll see their large, tear-filled eyes and know you are to blame for their total destruction."

This is, seriously, the best the voices can do.

Why do I listen to them? Why do any of us listen to the voices in our heads?

Right now I can't think of a damned reason why. I'm going to go out and work on my garden. Type atch'y'all next time!