You Don’t Need Motivation. You Need to Remove Your Bias

This is one of the statements that I learned this year. As human beings, we are always biased. We have a mindset regarding anything. For example, whenever I hear the term “couch”, I have a thought on it — — whether I like it or not. There is something that instantly comes to mind.

I can associate the term “couch” with coziness, sleep, softness, or even scrolling through social media. If you ask me why, I have a lot of reasons. Hahahaha. It all depends on how I see things.

One thing that I am biased about is boxing. My brother, we’ll call him B, had been bugging me last year to train boxing on our own. I was all for it. We were excited. We discussed how we’d train and what we’d do. We had been playing the idea in our heads and we wanted to set up boxing equipment.

This year, he finally did set up, but I was still sticking to my own exercise routine. I didn’t start instantly like he expected me to, even though I was sincerely all for it.

Here we go.

Why was I hesitant even when I was excited about it?

Bias. I had this thought that boxing might be too hard for me. At one point, I also thought he wouldn’t go through with it. But he did. And I kept quiet. He was so excited and happy. He already started watching tutorials for beginners and he was bugging me to train. He didn’t stop.

While me? I mean meh? I was thinking that “mehhhhh, boxing ain’t for me.”, “I’m weak.”, “I’m fragile.”

Cringe-y, right? Yes, I’m cringing, too, while writing but that’s what happened.

Growing up, I was exposed to Manny Pacquiao’s battles and I had this thought that boxing is just for tough people, and I’m not. I can’t be strong like them. I can’t start to train like them. Boxing ain’t for me. It’s too good for me. Yup, a toxic mindset of my own.

I thought that I wouldn’t like boxing better than my then-current routine. Let’s say I was seeing and treating the routine too precious to change it. Did you furrow your head? Hahahaha. Weird, right?

In my mind, I was “Nope, I already like the current state I’m in. It couldn’t get better than this.”

Until it did.

So many reasons. So many side comments too. Shall we?

The Breakthrough

We’d been running together for some time before actually boxing so we set up one morning to train together with separate routines. It was mid-May, this year. Then, after one hour, he asked me to actually do it. I reluctantly went, still feeling meh but also low-key excited and dumb because I don’t know any basic move.

I decided to give myself a chance that day.

He taught me arm and posture positions at first. Then, holding that position, you’d do shadow jabbing. We started with 5 shadow jabs for each arm then built up to 30 each.

He then asked me to wear gloves while doing it. The feeling? “I am Ronda freaking Rousey!!!” Hahahahahahahaha. And a little bit of Connor!

I was ecstatic. I was giggling whenever he said I’m getting better at it. Still giggling when he said I’m losing the position. I was so happy the whole time. I felt like a badass. Instantly.

We repeated shadow jabbing for another good hour or more. I was so tired and happy after. I even jabbed during my sleep, Haha. The next morning, everything in my body hurt.

After that day, I didn’t stop. It was one of the best decisions I made. I have achieved my target weight because of it. I felt more courageous and more badass, too.

I’m having too much fun writing this but here are evergreen lessons from this experience:

1. Your reasons either push you to enjoy or stop you.
2. Give yourself a loooot of chances.
3. It’s okay to find out you don’t like something. Keep doing you.
4. Give yourself a chance, again, for people at the back.
5. You are worth it.

Was this blog too long? too fun? or?

Bye! Till next time!

Sandra, who shuffle dances, too. Hahaha.