Pilates And Advice-Giving Monsters

The club where I play tennis and pickleball offers various exercise group classes which I’ve shunned for years. If I pause to analyze why, I might be tempted to say it’s because of lack of time, but the truth likely lies somewhere between ‘I’m too lazy’ and ‘I don’t want anyone barking moves at me’.

Recently though, I started taking a weekly Pilates (mat) class at the club. The last time I took group classes might have been in my twenties or thirties when I tried a few at the local community centre. But, taking a group class all these years later has been somewhat of an eye-opener, and I realize how aging softens you, in more ways than one.

My Pilates experience: I lower my knees to the mat for a modified plank, even though the instructor and the women on either side of me are slanted on toes and hands in full plank mode. “Eight more” the instructor says and I grit my teeth, sinking further into my modified pose. Ten, twenty years ago, I would have pushed myself – up, up further, plank better, choose the most difficult of the three options the instructor offers. Now I choose the easiest version and I no longer care what others around me are doing. I pause, grab my water bottle for a sip before continuing: 4-3-2-1.

“And that’s, it, you’ve all done very well,” the instructor says, wrapping up the class. I know I haven’t and yet, I’m completely satisfied with my performance, mentally patting myself on the back.

Aging softens you, gets rid of any competitive streak that no longer serves you, that indeed never did, but you were too immature to realize it. Now you do (except of course on the tennis court. There, I still want to win).

Be humble Stay Curious :  I signed up for another webinar and watched it so you don’t have to. This one was by Michael Bungay Stanier. He spoke about how we all have an advice-giving monster inside us (poised to run amok) and challenged us to stay curious a bit longer instead of immediately offering advice.

Your advice monsters may be one of 3:

1.     Tell it – where you think the only way you can add value is by knowing the answers

2.     Save it – where you think you need to protect everyone all the time (exhausting)

3.     Control it – where you want to have your hand on the steering wheel at all times.

Which advice monster lives inside you? I think I might have a combination of 1 and 3.

He also spoke about easy change versus hard change when you are looking at changing some habits or gaining new (better) ones.

Easy change? For me that would be an early morning routine of 15-20 minutes of movement and exercise. Easy because now I’m retired my schedule is open and flexible, I don’t have to leave the house, I can exercise in my PJ’s (and do).

But hard change? Hard change is where you can’t get traction and often revert to the beginning. A classic one: I want to write a book (and publish it!).

Hard change for me might be sticking to a daily, consistent, writing practice, putting myself out there, sending out queries over and over despite rejections, despite resounding silence, calling myself a writer and artist.

Something he said that struck me: We try to postpone hard change by gathering more information, doing more research, taking more classes. We try to manage hard change by rushing to action and advice-giving (those advice monsters). But hard change often does not require getting more information. Hard change sometimes is stopping a way of being, so a new way of being can emerge, but we are more committed to the status quo than we realize.

Guilty and guilty: Committed to the status quo of less effort, more ease (see Pilates above) and always looking for more/better info (see signing up for webinars above).