Putting it in Stone: 3 months to a new me!

[ColdEggNog]

Long time lurker here! Don't mind me, I'm just thinking outloud

 

Background:

A little about me... I've always been slightly impaired by some social anxiety. This causes me to go through spurts where cognitively, I absolutely crash and burn- if things go wrong, I begin to get discouraged and I look for validation from others to pull me up. If I don't get that validation, then well, it continues to spiral until I get validation. Yeah- that's not healthy.

 

Nonetheless, whenever I'm on a "hot streak" so to speak (everything's going great), I'm extremely confident and it absolutely shows in my persona (I'm easygoing, witty and able to crack jokes on the fly, etc). However, when things fall apart or when I feel like people are ganging up on me rather than validating me, I fall apart. I begin to dissect everybody's actions, very small things begin to drag me apart, I become standoffish, etc.

 

Needless to say, I've never had a girlfriend (albeit I've had several dates and have had a couple FWB's, so I'm not unconfident in that field). My big problem is that I get hung up on girls that I'm really into; I get hung up on them to the point where I don't look into other potential love interests that are right in front of me. I let the "crush" control my happiness- when I'm around her or talking to her, I'm really happy, but if I perceive something is amiss, there goes my sanity. If she rejects me when I make a move, I still pine over her months later. This is unhealthy.

 

tl;dr? I have issues with being consistently confident. I look for validation from others and if I feel attacked, I look for ways to either mold myself to protect myself or I go into a slump. If I feel like things are out of my control, I play the victim mentality card. I do consider myself a nice guy, so of course, if things go wrong I instinctively think that life is unfair. However, whenever I feel like everybody approves of me, encourages me, and compliments me, I get on a confident streak and I can do anything. And it feels great, and through introspection, that confidence is when I thrive the most. So, how can I completely rid of self-defeating thoughts and overanalysis, and simply draw this confidence from inside me rather than expect validation from others?

 

Motivation:

I graduated with an engineering degree earlier this month, and for the first time in a while, I have absolutely no responsibilities. In 2.5 months, I'll be moving to a new place hundreds of miles away and starting a PhD program. It feels amazing, and for the last couple weeks, I've pretty much just sat back, slept, and hit the beach for a week (I feel like I deserve it damnit, and I got a nice tan to show for it now !)

 

I've naturally been sedentary. I do have some active interests, but I spent a lot of time sitting on the Internet, watching the tube, or being lazy. I partially attribute this to the rather sedentary style of my family through my upbringing, as well as an extremely busy college experience (I was consumed in coursework, but also did numerous amounts of volunteering, extracurriculars, and labwork), so my lifestyle has been rather sedentary. Beer doesn't really help me much in that respect either. Oh well. Especially over the last year where I was doing tons of travelling and had a bloated courseload, I devoted most of my time to doing work. And whenever I had a small break, I preferred to be alone (not healthy, since usually my thoughts consumed me as well).

 

My motivation? I'm going to be moving to a new place and starting a fresh slate at the end of the summer. That's not to say that I'm going to be someone that I'm not. However, this is the first time in ages that I've been absolutely free, and the first time in ages that I've been motivated enough to make positive changes to my life. When I'm finished here, I want to be "fresh." You can read fresh as "swag" as exemplified from Lil Wayne, or you can read fresh as a greatly self-improved individual. And frankly, I'm actually pretty excited about this; I always say I'm going to make these changes, but this summer, I really have no excuses not to! It's almost intimidating though, as over the last year, I might have forgotten how to have a life but, it's time to relearn! Hopefully at the end of this, I'll have seen enough improvement in myself, and then, things will fall into place naturally (namely, great friends, steady relationship, better lifestyle choices, more energy and natural motivation, etc.) Starting in graduate school, I want to be naturally full of energy and confidence and really maximize my time.

 

Goals:

1. Annihilate the self-deprecating thoughts: I wanted to see if the Ghostbusters did any work on eliminating negative thought patterns, but not much success there. I've got some ideas on how to work on this (and hopefully by working on the subsequent goals this will come naturally), but this is the part I'm shakiest on- if your confidence tends to be external, how do you transform your mindset so that we can get confidence from within?

2. Improve my physical endurance: I'd say it's my sedentary lifestyle, but whenever I do workout or play a sport for fun, my stamina is low. My mile run time is pitifully low, mainly because I have no endurance. This summer, I'm going to work cardio into my daily routine (running, exercise bike, etc). I'm gonna start small and track my daily cardio, and hopefully in 2.5 months, I'll be in better shape. Which also ties in to the following...

3. Drop at least 10 pounds: I'm 5'10" and about 195 pounds. Clinically, I'm not obese, but I definitely am overweight. I'm going to add cardio into my daily schedule, and a few times a week I'll do some muscular workouts too. I've replaced sugared sodas with diet sodas and have begun to pace my eating (chewing slower to help eat less, and focusing on small meals throughout the day rather than a couple huge meals). I want to drop down to at least 185, and if more comes, then great! Really, I'm hoping that a better appearance like this will help me be more consistently confident too.

4. Learn how to swim and ride a bike: Okay, this one I'm not proud to admit- plenty of people know I don't know how to swim (the responses I get from others doesn't matter), but aside from my immediate family, nobody knows that I never learned how to ride a bike (I know, I know...) I never really told anyone the bike thing because I was worried about being judged (which, I know is unhealthy and it shouldn't matter regardless- this I'm starting to see and embrace). But hey, I'm starting off by admitting it here! This week, I'm going to start practicing swimming on my own (I know the very, very, basics, but I don't know how to tread water and my form is terrible, and I had an experience a couple years back where I almost drowned and have been a bit afraid of the water since...)... the bike will come later this summer, but I'm ready to conquer it damnit!

5. Practice social confidence: I've always been the type that waits for people to contact me to hang out (I had the mindset of, if they like me, they'll take the initiative to invite me out or talk to me). Again, poor thinking. I need to put myself out there and perhaps be a bit persistent. Especially since a lot of my old buddies don't know I'm in town right now since I was always either at college or working internships elsewhere- might as well take the initiative to reconnect and practice being sharpening up my confidence in hanging out!

6. Embrace hobbies, new and old: While I've developed hobbies over the years, I wouldn't say I've been super passionate about them (except when I started golfing a year and a half back, but even that hobby I've put on the backburner for a while). I'm going to get back on the golf course this summer as well as get back into tennis and frisbee. I'm also going to pick up some new hobbies that I've always wanted to try (I'm taking an online bartending course right now, playing racquetball on occasion, and plus I also kind of want to get into improv comedy/stand up comedy- I feel like that would do a lot of good for my confidence). Oh, and maybe add an outlet for helping others and find a place to volunteer every week, so that I don't get tooo bored. With all these activities I'm working on, hopefully this will give me more to talk about too.

 

And there you have it! Really, this is mainly for myself so that I have something to look at and gauge my progress, but if anybody has any encouragement or personal experiences to share, feel free! Tips are greatly appreciated to, especially if it's something I may not have considered! If not, no matter, I'll come back later anyway!

[Nohbody]

Go for it! I need to start running again, myself.

[Exit]

Sounds like quite the detailed plan. I think the fitness thing is actually a bigger part of the puzzle than you might expect. You asked how to make your confidence an internal thing instead of feeding off of the approval of others; well, losing some weight, setting physical goals and surpassing them, learning how to swim and do other things that you want to know how to do.... you start doing all that and suddenly you will be in control of your own confidence. 195 @ 5'10" doesn't sound heavy at all to me, but I guess that depends on your current build and whether any of it is muscle or not. I've got a good 50lbs on you and I'm 5'11" but I would be way too thin at anything like 185. Do a lot of reading about cardio and exercise, I think you might find that you'll actually want to shift more of your focus towards strength training and stuff like that. Of course there are conflicting opinions about it, but it seems now more than ever I keep coming across "experts" who argue that cardio is really not all it's cracked up to be. We all know people who run for their entire lives or do other endurance activities and still can't lose the weight they want or have a great physique. Start throwing the weights around and I think you'll like the results.

 

Moving away and starting over definitely is a big opportunity. I am considering doing the same thing, for many of the same reasons, my anxiety and other issues has led to a lot of failures in this city where I've been for most of my life. Think I might head further south and see if I can start over.

 

Best of luck. I'd suggest keeping a journal or a blog or something like that to keep yourself on track. Write a little bit about it every day and don't lie when you take a day off or do absolutely nothing, that way you'll start to notice when you are falling behind or losing your motivation.

[Mr Scorpio]

A PhD in engineering? My friend, you are going to be pulling down some serious coin. Take solace that the money will not only take care of itself, but it will enable you to fulfill your other goals (i.e. -- affording exercise equipment, affording healthier food, being more attractive to the ladies, etc)

[ColdEggNog]

Thanks for the encouragement! It's been a little over a month since I set out that detailed plan, and I decided to come back here so that I have a standard to compare my progress to.

 

1. Annihilate the self-deprecating thoughts: Upon further research, I've determined that the "victim mentality" has largely been a source of my self-deprecating thoughts. When things are going great, then everything else is great too. If something goes wrong, well, you know how it goes. Instead of lingering and being a victim, I've found that it's a much better use of my time to harness that energy into a hobby or a workout. Instead of trying to seek reasons to validate myself/place the blame on "something I can't control," why not take action? These awareness steps have helped hone in where I need to target, and of course I'll continue to take action. As an aside, does anyone have a take on using omega-3 fish oil supplement not only for health improvement, but also as a supplement for fighting negative thoughts? I've heard that it is linked to improving negative thinking, but first hand thoughts would help tremendously too.

2. Improve my physical endurance: I've built up my home gym so on a typical day, I do 30-45 minutes of strength training with dumbbells (20 - 25 pounds, moving on up soon), and another 45 minutes of cardio (exercise bike, treadmill, or a run outside). I do this 5 times a week (I take off a couple days a week for either recovery or laziness- hoping I can fight through the lazines day and start doing 6 days a week). I haven't seen much tangible improvement in terms of weight loss (more on that in the next bullet), I definitely feel better and more accomplished after workouts. I'm now less fatigued at the end of my workouts and I feel like I've done a lot at the end Soon I'm going to increase the length of my runs and start adding swimming to the mix (more on that later too). In a couple months, I'm hoping I'll be ready for some P90X.

3. Drop at least 10 pounds: Well, my Achille's Heel here is that I love food too much to completely cut certain foods out of my diet, and I may have had a couple weekends where I didn't do much aside from slam beers like a college freshman and eat Doritos Locos Tacos from Taco Bell after midnight, so I can't say I've made tremendous progress here nonetheless, when I'm actually trying, I've definitely found that drinking a lot of water throughout the day has helped control cravings. Now that my endurance and confidence are a bit better, and since I still have a ton of extra time, I'm gonna start doubling the length of my workouts and adding more variation to really start seeing those results.

4. Learn how to swim and ride a bike: I've chosen to postpone the bike part of this goal (for now); perhaps add it as a goal for next summer? As for swimming, I haven't done this yet, but it will be objective numero uno for the next couple months. I found a good local pool that I'll start hitting up in the mornings several times a week when it isn't too crowded. Now that I'm in a little better shape than before, I think this will be a great cardiovascular workout for me too

5. Practice social confidence: I'll admit, having a lot of time to myself to help me figure out the direction I want my life to go in has went a long way in my confidence. Also, because I'm doing a lot more with my free time and keeping up with current events a lot better, I'm able to make conversation flow more naturally now. I've met a few new people over the last month, mainly friends-of-friends-type people, and it's been a lot easier for me to make conversation flow naturally in meeting someone for the first time. It's a wonder how subtle changes can go such a long way!

6. Other notes: I must say, I'm glad that I made this post in the first place as it gave me something to remind me what I set out to do this summer. While I'd say I still have a long way to go before completely transforming, I think I've made great steps for progress and I will keep building on this momentum. Of course, more to come again!