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Saying it outloud!
Saying it outloud!
Car Chronicles Ep 1: Are you falling victim to self-immobilization
Freedom begins when we recognize how we limit ourselves. During a recent drive to work, I had a profound realization about a pattern many of us fall into but rarely identify: self-immobilization. This is the unconscious way we freeze ourselves out of enjoyment, learning, and growth by mentally checking out of experiences that make us uncomfortable or uncertain.
My journey with this concept began in a dance studio with my wife. As someone with zero dance experience, I felt awkward and stiff while everyone else seemed to flow effortlessly. Rather than embracing the learning process, I mentally shut down – classic self-immobilization. Only after attending a second class with a different instructor did I realize that nobody expected me to be perfect. Once I let go of self-criticism, I actually started enjoying myself and learning the moves.
This pattern shows up everywhere in our lives. It's the reason many fitness journeys never begin – overwhelmed by information, people freeze rather than start. It explains why we reject trying our partner's favorite activities, like when my wife initially dismissed anime before it became our cherished cheat-day tradition. Self-immobilization even limits travelers who stick to American restaurants abroad rather than embracing local cuisine due to language barriers or uncertainty.
The magic happens when we recognize these self-imposed limitations and consciously break free from them. Every chain broken gives us greater freedom to move through life with curiosity and openness. What experiences might be waiting for you if you stopped immobilizing yourself? What chains are ready to be broken in your life? Release yourself from expectations of immediate perfection and watch how much more enjoyable life becomes.
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You know what that means. That means your boy is on the road. Yes, sir, I had a job last night and I'm like, hey, man, are you able to work tomorrow? And I was like, hey, you ain't got to pull my leg to make that money. So there we are. I got off at 10 last night and they went me in to see if I could work today at 10 am.
Speaker 1:So all the way there and as I was driving, I had a very interesting self-realization and I want to see if you guys have noticed this about yourselves and if you do the same thing. And once you become aware of this, it allows you to free up and actually enjoy events in life. Okay, so I call this self-immobilization, if you know what immobilized means. It means you're not able to move, usually caused by an outside force, or something caused it to you, and self implies that you caused it to yourself. Now, what is this? I want to give you guys an example of a time where I did this. So last year, stephanie got us tickets, tickets I guess they were tickets from what's that place called Groupon. No, I guess a coupon, not a ticket. Ticket Tickets Original count tickets to to Two Day Studios and original count tickets to to two dance studios and we went to one of the studios. It was a very nice dance studio and it had all the awards that you could possibly think of and all the instructors were like professional dancers. And when I was younger to this day still I enjoy watching people dance. I think it's absolutely insane how some of these people have such control over their bodies and how they just move literally like water, just so fluid, and how they're able to choreograph certain dances to make it just look so in sync. It's insane, and I've always been in awe of dancers. But if you were to ask me, hey, let's go dance, I'd be like hell, no, I don't dance. I don't know how to dance okay, which I don't, I don't know. I know a little bit of what we learned from the dance studio when I get into that. But if you were to ask me to go dance, hell no, and that's part of being self-immobilized, that's just part of it, because you don't know how to do something. You don't want to do it. So we're at the dance studio the fancy one and we're meeting our instructor and she's talking to us telling how you know the day's gonna go, and so we get into dancing. And by you this is.
Speaker 1:I took a salsa class when I was deployed in 2014, 2015, to saudi arabia. I took one salsa class that lasted an hour and all we did is go over the steps. But did I remember anything from that class? Absolutely not. So I'm basically in this joint like a baby deer with freaking loose legs and stiff hips, looking like a cardboard box trying to move. And then stephanie, on the other hand, she's danced since she was younger and she danced all throughout her life, so she knew how to do the dances the salsa bachata that we, that we were learning and I in there, like I felt out of place.
Speaker 1:I was embarrassed because I'm like making little simple mistakes. I know what the hell I'm doing, and this is where the self-immobilization kicks in. Because of the uncomfortableness of not knowing anything, exam, because of the uncomfortableness of not knowing anything, you mentally start to stop yourself from enjoying what you're doing because your body is telling you hey, let's go, this is not us. And it becomes awkward and not fun because you'll get frustrated at little things or you don't want to do it anymore because you're not able to get it down or whatnot, and so you just become unable to enjoy what it is that you're doing. And so at the end of it all, when people ask you, hey, let's go dance, you'll be like, well, dance is not for me. You know, dance has never been for me All. Because the one time or the couple times you experience it, you immobilize yourself from actually enjoying the event. And I was doing that at that dance studio.
Speaker 1:And I realized afterwards you know part of the reason why I was able. I was I mean, I'm dancing with my wife. That shouldn't be an awkward experience. It should be a fun time for both of us. But I realized at that moment I wasn't allowing myself to enjoy it because I just I was, I just didn't, I just didn't know how to dance, I was uncomfortable and yeah, that's basically what was really messing me up. And everybody was so far ahead of me. Everybody else in there was dancing, everybody else in there knew what they were doing. I'm like, damn, I just feel so out of place. And I felt out of place because I was immobilizing myself and not allowing myself to actually just loosen up Like bro, nobody in here is making fun of you, this is a place of murder. So I was talking.
Speaker 1:So afterwards I was telling myself that because we had another, uh, we had another ticket for another studio and so we went to this other studio. Now, the studio wasn't high class like the other one, but the instructor she was, I want to say she was less uptight and more of an instructor than the other one was. The other one. It was something about the way she was instructed that I really I didn't like and I just couldn't. I don't know, I couldn't put my finger on the way she was teaching how to dance this instructor. She was literally, you know, calling out cadence, calling out the steps, cadence, calling out the steps, and then she would literally take me as her partner and dance me through the steps. The other instructor wasn't doing that, I don't know, it was just awkward.
Speaker 1:So she was doing that and it allowed me to loosen up because I realized that you know, I don't know what I'm doing and everybody in here realizes and knows that I'm new and I don't know what I'm doing. And everybody in here realizes and knows that I'm new and I don't know what I'm doing. So the fear of judgment that I should be a professional dancer day one is obviously absurd. And once you come to that realization, that's when you start to loosen up and that way, you know, when we were doing that dance class, I was able to laugh, have fun, and then I started to actually learn Like we were. We were bro, we were moving and grooving and I was like, wow, we're actually doing this thing. You know, we're hitting spins and she was flipping them hips spins, and she was flipping them hips, shaking them hips, and it was a good time and it turned out to be a good time, and that's because I allowed myself to be free and move instead of immobilizing myself in my own fear of uncertainty or shame or guilt, whichever one of those or all of those that you want to add into the conversation and I think a lot of people face the same things, for example, when it comes to fitness, ok, when you want to do, when you want to start your fitness journey, think about that for a second.
Speaker 1:Ok, I want to, I want to lose 10 pounds, because that's what everybody wants to do. And do you understand how vast the fitness realm is? When you stare into the fitness realm, it is literally an abyss. If this is your first time, there's so much information, there's so much you have to do in order to actually lose those 10 pounds effectively that it becomes overwhelming. And then that's when the self-immobilization kicks in. You're like, listen, hey, this is not for us. We never done this before. We don't know what to do. We don't know where to start. People are just going to laugh at us and think we're new because or because we don't know what to do. People are going to judge us because we don't know how to work out correctly. And that's when the self-immobilization just kicks in and it literally prevents you from moving forward because you're frozen, you're mobilized, and we do it to ourselves, and I think a lot of people do it for other activities.
Speaker 1:So say example you have boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, whatever, whatever you have right and say one of you guys is in the anime and the other one isn't. So they're like yeah, you know, anime is for kids, whereas anime is cartoons. You shouldn't be watching anime if you're an adult. You know, you probably heard these before and when I, when I hear people say that, I'm like okay, well, have you sat down and actually watched a good anime, watch an episode? And a lot of them haven't. Same reason they don't want to be seen as someone who watches anime, so that fear of ridicule or whatever, whatever else may be prevents them from watching anime, when in reality I have had people who say that about anime. And you sit down and you watch anime. And you sit down and you watch anime. Next thing you know you enjoy anime. Ie stephanie, she didn't watch anime, but then I watched anime and we sat down and we watched anime together for the first time. And now our tradition is our cheat day. Every cheat day we watch like literally hours of anime. But that just goes to show that if you immobilize yourself, then you're missing out on so many potential opportunities for you just to expand and to actually take up other things that you might find enjoyable, but you just prevented yourself from enjoying them.
Speaker 1:There's so many things that I have said over the past years that I didn't like, like. I would say, for example, like EDM concerts. I used to always say how the freak can you just go out to a freaking EDM concert? You're just literally listening to music. You just listen to it at home. But then I came to the realization as I grew older that I would probably enjoy an EDM concert because it's the vibe, it's the aesthetic, it's the sensation you get. That you can't get when you're at home, because it's thousands of people all in unison enjoying something together that they love, and you can't really get a sensation like that if you're at home, and I understand that now. That's why people go to concerts. So I went from saying you know, concerts aren't for me, so yeah, I would go to a concert, like if I, if I would go to a concert I go to a drake concert or an edm concert I would be open to going now, but back before I'd be like hell, no, I'm not going, as stupid as hell. Why the freak would you even do that?
Speaker 1:I, I immobilize myself and potentially have missed opportunities to maybe meet new people or just experience something different. And I think that's a big factor in a lot of people's lives is self-immobilization. So don't you free up your mind and you just allow yourself to experience. What it is you're going through, like when people travel to a different country and they're always seeking out the American restaurants, the fast food chains. It's because they're self-immobilizing, they are afraid of the language barrier or trying to order food in a foreign country, or afraid to try food in a foreign country or they don't know what restaurants to go to. There's so many reasons that could be preventing them from doing it that they never do it and you never experience the magic of another country If you're always just searching for things the American counterpart in that country.
Speaker 1:I've had one of the best burgers in my entire life in Turkey and that's because a group of friends said, hey, let's go out to eat at this restaurant. I don't know if you know who Salt Bae is, but it was Salt Bae is, but it was Salt Bae's restaurant in Turkey. So we went to his restaurant and I ordered the burger and there's this dessert that you can have. Wow, I just forgot what it's called. Holy crap, yep, I'm about to get back to you on that one.
Speaker 1:But they would bring it out and they would cut it up and then, like the servers, would literally play some music and then they would airplane it into your mouth. You know how embarrassing that is. They didn't do it to me because I didn't get that dessert, but they did to other people. And then you get to watch on people's faces as they go from holy crap what did I just get myself into to them doing the airplane motion. And then the person opened their mouth and taking the dessert and then everybody laughs about it because you realize it wasn't that big of a deal, it was just you. It's not, it's not even embarrassing. Everybody's having a good time, having a fun time, and you're just over thinking the situation and now it's an announcement event that you got to experience that you would have never experienced if you had went to an african american restaurant that this is what I'm getting at, where there's so many opportunities that people are passing up on because of some self-immobilization.
Speaker 1:So I thought that was an interesting thought I had that I don't know why. I honestly don't know why I woke up this morning and was thinking this, but that's just the way my brain works, man, and so I figured I'd share it with you guys. And you know, hopefully it can help you in your life to break those chains, man. Every chain that you can break gives you a little bit longer length in that chain for you to actually enjoy life. So if you enjoyed this episode of Car Chronicles, don't forget to like, comment, share and leave that five-star review. Until next time, see ya. Thank you.