WHEN WEAKNESS COLLAPSES INTO POWER

Yesterday I had a moment where I literally was unable to breath. While training, I reached a point, where I was unable to get any air into my lungs. I was still doing breathing movements, but my lungs simply didn’t fill with air, no matter what. I got into panic mode, which made the situation even worse.

Then my practice kicked in. I knew I was having a panic attack on top of everything. It was only for maybe 15 or 20 seconds of not being able to breath, but it felt like minutes, being on the ground gasping for air like a fish on land. It was absolutely terrifying, a moment of complete lack of control, vulnerability and weakness.

But since panic attacks are not entirely new to me, after a couple of seconds I realised what was happening and what I needed to do: centring, slowly breathing in through the nose followed by along breath out through the mouth - repeat. Then I was also able to verbalise (at least to some extend) to my trainers what was happening and what they needed to do in order to support me.

And because of that, this moment was also a moment of absolute strength. It showed overwhelmingly the power of practice and how far it can go being aware of what was happening, and having the tools to change that in such an extreme situation. It is not rocket science, it is only knowing my body and her reactions very well and having practiced centring a thousand times.

It also showed the necessity of these moments of weakness. There is no strength at all without the humbling moments of being on the ground. Strength simply can’t exist without the polarity of weakness - while there is no valence in either of them. This is where the practice applies and where true power comes in - the power to chose and change, because you learned how to do that.

Do you want to work with me to get a grip on your own sense of power? Book a free discovery call with me here and we will look together, what is possible for your unique situation. https://danielawelzel.youcanbook.me

(photo credit: Henry Be via unsplash)

THE COURAGE OF BEING WEAK

Lastly I was reading a quote from a well known speaker “Vulnerability is not weakness, it is our greatest measure of courage”.

It is one of these memes, that sound so incredibly encouraging when you read it mindlessly while scrolling through social media. You think to yourself, “oh, that sounds nice’, scroll further, just to forget what the quote actually was. But what sticks again is the implication of weakness being a bad thing.

I’d like to suggest a different way of framing: “Allowing oneself to be weak is the most courageous thing one can do.”

Being weak is not bad. It is simply the opposite of being strong. And being strong is not good. Neither strong nor weak has a value by itself. The value follows out of the context. There are moments, that require us to be strong. Every parent knows that, when they need to sooth their child, while themselves being exhausted, or when we need to hold our shit together for the greater good (whatever that means in that moment). There are also moments that require from us to be weak, not as a way of manipulation (that is in fact not weakness but rather a non-kinky way of topping from the bottom), but rather as a way to admit our shortcomings and flaws and from that being able to ask for support. Non of us is perfect after all. And vulnerability is just a consequence of allowing oneself to be weak.

Last but not least, we are social animals, that exist within polarities. It doesn’t work that we are strong all the time, as little as anyone of us is weak all the time. We adapt to the context, may it be relationships, environment, culture, and exist on a spectrum between weak and strong. We are always strong or weak, depending on what we relate ourselves towards.

So why do we struggle so much with admitting, even more, celebrating weakness? I believe, being weak is the most courageous thing you can do in a world that requires people being strong all the time.

(Photo credit CDD via unsplash)

REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE NOT A TUMBLER

The last few days I dealt with set backs, obstacles and some very humbling experiences.

Something that often comes to mind in these moments is this little, supposed-to-be-encouraging quote “Keep up your head, princess, or your crown is falling”

Frankly I hate this quote. It summarises so much what is wrong with our perception of strength today.

Perhaps the obstacles we are stumbling over are there for a reason They might be asking if we are still on the right path. Perhaps the set backs are there simply to slow us down, reminding us that life is not a race to get as quickly as possible from A to B.

Perhaps sometimes we simply need to fall, so we can allow ourselves to rest and fully enjoy a soothing bath in our self pity, aware and with choice, fully feeling.

Nothing wrong with staying on the ground for a while when stumbling, taking a rest when we pushed too hard or in the wrong direction for too long. It is a possibility to really feel into what we need to experience and learn.

Otherwise we could ignore that important moment too easily, while rushing to get ourselves up immediately, putting our crown straight and pushing further. That is not strength, it is numbness.

You are not a tumbler. You are not supposed to get up immediately after falling. You can allow yourself to stay on the ground, watch the world from a different perspective for a while, rest, and come back up, when you are ready and resourced again to face whatever live throws at you

You are not a tumbler, you are a human being.

(Picture of the art installation De Berenkuil, Maastricht)

NO MORE POWER WOMEN PLEASE!

I recently saw a wonderful sharing from the German Comedian Carolin Kebekus, which spoke to my heart and soul in many ways (video link in the comments).

Often we hear people describing some of us who are visibly successful in a way that fits into the society, “this is a real power woman!”

It is meant to be admiring. If someone says that about us, we might even be proud.

Carolin however shared about the impossibility and pitfalls of being framed as a power woman. On the one hand the expectations being connected to that, but also the separation it creates. If some of us are power women, what is with the rest, the "standard women"? Are they not powerful after all?

Similar to strength, the word power as in power women is misleading as a false virtue. Being powerful more often than not comes simply from the need to survive, sometimes even from Trauma. It is not a choice, it is a necessity, masked as a virtue, which on the other hand creates the need for safe places to allow ourselves to be weak, to allow ourselves to lean on someone, simply because no one can be strong all the time.

We go hiding in order to cry, curl underneath the blanket, because we can’t face the world with out "Shop Window Self" (credit to Jamie Catto for this term) as a power woman.

But the world doesn’t need more power women. The world needs more urgently women who are authentic in every aspect of their being.

I want to live in a world, where we can cry in public without being framed as hysteric or too emotional, where we can use mistakes as a matter of learning, without. Being scared, hat we will be judged as inadequate or not enough, a world where we can lean on someone’s shoulder not as a mean to regain strength to be able to face the world with a mask of strength, but because this is who we are as human beings.

Let's drop the notion of power women, and instead lets start to be human.

(photo credit Hakim Oki)

BEING A HERO HAS ITS PRICE

Do you know Amelia Earhart? She was an aviation pioneer, the first female pilot crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 1932.

Or do you know Marie Curie, a physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity?

Both were heroes of their time, pioneers, doing groundbreaking work in their field, sticking out their head for something they believed in.

As a kid I was inspired by these kind of hero’s and heroines, the ones in my immediate life, like my mother, but also those I mentioned above. When I grew older, I wanted to be like them, courageous, fearless, true and dedicated to a purpose. I wanted to do nothing less with my life. To that time I didn’t understand yet, that being a hero comes with a price.

The first time I got confronted with reality was when my mother I believed to be invincible got diagnosed with cancer. I was 16, and the doctors gave her a maximum of 6 months to live. She died a bit more than 2,5 years later, when I was 19, just one month before graduating school. Its was the toughest time of my life. But I took my heroes as an example, how to deal with challenges in life, with loss. I admired how they not only would be able to move on, but making something positive, something good out of the crappy cards life dealt them.

So I pushed through, didn’t allow myself to grief and to really process the loss strongly believing thats what I need to do. I thought being strong means to move forward no matter what. And I did. But a part of me was lost along the way and internally I started to doubt that narrative.

When I joined the police forces not long after, I consequentially ran into all kind of troubles. Being a person with very high standards around justice and helping others, working in the police was often a huge disappointment. I was stepping on toes of superiors, getting some bloody noses because I did what I believed in to be the right thing. I fought, and cried and fought again. People told me I shouldn’t take things too much to my heart, should grow a thicker skin, over and over again. I heard I was too sensitive, and ultimately I believed I was not good enough, I was not made out of the material heroes are made of.

I quite police, started to look for a new purpose, new goals, something that would fit me better. For years I was constantly oscillating between my somewhat naive and childish believes of making in impact in the world and becoming the hero I dreamed of when I was young and the deep need for security, hiding and rest.

Not being able to live up to my standards drove me into depression, several burn outs because I ignored boundaries when I should have rested or said no to things, and times of intense anxiety, even panic attacks. Being on the ground, it was when I started to realise that this hiding, resting, the need for security and feel, my sensitivity, which I thought was a flaw on my path to make an impact, was, what made me actually human.

Being strong has a price, being a hero has a price. We will pay that, if we keep ignoring the parts of ourselves that are flawed, full of gaps and sensitivities. We will carry the consequences of denying the weaknesses that make us human.

Heroes will need to admit defeat at some point. Amelia Earhart disappeared in 1937 at the try to round the globe. Marie Curie died of radiation. Even they paid a price, but not without leaving a huge impact in the world.

In the end we decide who we wanna be. And perhaps being human entirely with the courage to face our weaknesses is already heroic enough.

(Photo credit Hakim Oki)

PRECIOUS MOMENTS OF WEAKNESS

This week was a tough one. It was a tough one for no specific reason, because it doesn’t always need a drama for that. It was simply that things which usually are fairly easy for me felt much more difficult.

It was not a week to celebrate achievements. In a perfect world I would have finished my website, pushed forwards in my studies and created some more content for my exploration on strength. I didn’t do any of that because it was a week to stick to the most important commitments only and for the rest to exercise self compassion and acceptance.

It was a week where old wounds opened up, that haven’t healed yet, where anger re-emerged for being treated unjust, where grief took over for missed opportunities.

It was a week not to perform or show strength, but a week to show up, no matter what.

However, it is these kind of weeks I am mostly grateful for, even when its painful as f*ck. But these are the moments to learn, to grow, to admit and to feel, these precious moments of weakness that lead to strength.

IS BEING STRONG A GOOD THING?

Like a pregnancy it took me about 9 months to come from barely being able to hang with my full body weight on a bar for more than 3 seconds to managing my first unassisted pull-ups this week as you can see in the video. And I am f**ing proud of that.

Inquiring further into the topic of strength and weakness, I am astonished that I get a lot of praise when I portray myself as being strong, while being weak is something to be accepted, but nothing to be praised. There seems a weird connotation that being strong is a positive thing and being weak is rather negative or something to ignore or get over.

I’d like to reframe that. Practicing pull-ups for the past 9 months several times a week, each practice moment was in a fact a moment of weakness, being confronted with my inability to do that one simple exercise and all the thoughts and feelings that like to accompany these moments of failing.

And this is not only something that occurs in a rather non-consequential practice like that, but it appears to be part of pretty much every learning of a skill: trying, failing, getting up and trying again - over and over again until mastery or giving up entirely to be never spoken of again.

What, if we look at strength simply as the result, and these precious moments of weakness and dealing with them as the process to get there? What if we would start to honour weakness itself instead of reframing it as a different kind of strength?

Or as James Smith said “ Fall in love with the process, not with the result"

HEART IN A CAGE

This drawing is a piece I made more than 10 years ago as an assignment for a coaching session with Miles Kessler. It marks the starting point of my journey in Martial Arts as a path of self development, embodiment and insight, after quitting working at the German Police Forces.

I started with a lot of concepts, mainly thinking, if I would be good, no, the best, in realms of physical strength and in the capacity of fighting and defending myself and others, it would make up for what I perceived as my shortcomings in mental strength, being emotional, easily triggered and constantly feeling threatened from and being in competition with others. How wrong I was and how much my understanding in many of these things fundamentally changed over the years.

I want to continue the exploration on what we understand under strength and being strong. It seems to be such a broad concept with different people understanding different things. Some beautiful approaches had been shared from my FB post from last week as well in plenty of private conversations I had since then.

In order to understand what strong really means, it might be helpful to look into what we consider to be our weak points, a bit as if stripping away all the shelling of being strong to see what that part is protecting.

One of my largest weak points is to create huge expectations in myself and then failing to live up to them, feeding the sense of not being good enough as self fulfilling prophecy to make sure I never need to show my vulnerable sides. And here I am - anyway!

What is left when you strip away everything you are considering being a strong person? Who are you then?

STRONG WOMEN

I always wanted to be the strong one. Growing up with the role model of my mother being this incredible independent person raising three children by herself while having a full time job. I wanted to be like her, invulnerable and knowing what I do and where I’m going.

However this can come with its very own perks and pitfalls as perfectionism, anxiety and burnout which I will address a different time.

But first I am curious what it is that makes you strong. Or what you admire in a strong person as a trait.