The Physical Body of Confidence

I have been working through mind/body associations for the last few days.

I am hardly what one would call a massively built individual.  My interest in sports beyond what I had to do in high school really only starts since our relocation:  first running, then Iaido, and now the Highland Games with the associated weight training.

Certainly my health is better as a result of this, I am in better shape because of this, and (injecting a little bit of vanity) I look as good as I have in some years.  But what I have noticed over this time is I am still carrying myself as if none of these things were true.

I had not really given this a lot of thought before the Highland Games this weekend, where I am surrounded by men in my division who (almost inevitably) larger and heavier than I.  What I realized first of all is that I carry myself differently from them; the second thing I realized was I was the only one who was doing that to myself.

I (and probably most of human history) has associated large and powerful with confident and powerful.  It is not always true of course, but the association is there.  I have never thought of myself in that category at all.  But then I began to wonder:  is it really something random, or is can it be a manifestation from the outside in?  Not all that are confident and powerful carry themselves and strong and not all the strong are confident and powerful.

But for the purpose of this meditation, I am concerned about myself.

How I look on the outside does, at some level, reflect how I feel about myself on the inside:  "Clothes", says Bernhard Roetzel, "are the visiting card of the personality, and should therefore be chosen to match it."  We portray outside how we feel about ourselves on the outside. 

But it is not just clothes, I am coming to realize.  It is the very nature of our health and our bodies that give the same information.

Is our health 100% in our control?  Of course not.  I have had friends and family struck down by cancer, by heart attacks, by rare diseases that less than 50 people living have.  And age, like it or not, comes to us all. 

But even within those things there are elements that we can control.  If we have a genetic predisposition to diabetes (as I do) the continued consumption of food as if I did not is probably not the greatest idea.  If I know that any level of cardiovascular and weight training is better than none at all, best that I should do something.

Yet it is is more.  It is more than meeting the minimum.  Throwing in the Highland Games has been a wonderful experience in so many ways - not just for the experience and the camaraderie, but the very real sense that throwing puts me in a class of athletes known for their strength and power.  Admittedly I am on the lowest rung of that ladder, but I am still on the ladder.

I am trying - when I now look into the mirror - to carry myself not as I have before, sort of slumped down and small, but taller and more proud.  I lift my shoulders and suddenly I am amazed at the difference.  The man staring back at me in the mirror is not one I necessarily recognize.

And that is good - because what I see of that man, willing to go throw and compete with others and be confident in his ability and his right to be out of the field, is something I want more of in whole life.