A Slice of Humble Pie with P2
🥧 A podcast where we curiously explore nutrition, fitness, mindset, sports, wellness, & beyond. ☕️Host @parastoobadie
A Slice of Humble Pie with P2
Crafting a New Vision of Strength Through Personal Stories and Shared Triumphs
Shedding the heavy shield of my mask 'P2 STRONG' wasn't just about setting aside a nickname; it was a transformative moment that unearthed the truths about strength I never knew I held. Join me as I reflect and unravel notion that real strength lies not just in the steel we lift but in the steel within us, forged through trials and tendered by support.
Your stories of unwavering fortitude are the lifeblood of this journey. I invite you, the listener, to bring your own narrative to the table—those times when strength caught you unawares, emerging from the shadows of doubt or fatigue, propelling you onward.
Reach out and share these personal testaments, as we collectively redefine what it means to be strong. Let's craft a new definition that embraces every struggle, celebrates every triumph, and empowers us to face the road ahead with an open heart and steady resolve.
Website: https://parastoobadie.com/podcast/
Email: asliceofhumblepiewithp2@gmail.com
Instagram: @asliceofhumblepiewithp2
Welcome back to A Slice of Humble Pie. Today we're going to have a solo episode and I'm going to share with you what strong means to me, and I encourage you to maybe sit with that question and reframe it and explore it on your own as well. What does strong mean? Strong is important to me because, before the definition I'm about to share with you and before I am speaking to you as myself, per Stuvati, I used to have my handle and my URL under the title P2Strong. She was my mask. Let's back up for a second.
Speaker 1:So obviously, if you've been listening for a little while, you'd know that fitness has always been a part of my life and before today, like back then, I thought of strong as just something that I could accomplish externally, like can I finish this program? Can I lift this weight? How strong can I get? How heavy can you lift and put back down? How can I persevere through and do something on my own? Because I saw independence as strong and anything but to be weak. So basically, I mean that's all true. It's true that you know you're strong if you can lift a weight. You're strong if you can push through and finish something.
Speaker 1:But my perception or now I perceive my former self wearing my P2 Strong mask was really just avoiding and kind of like. It was like displacement because I was afraid of being vulnerable, and especially even to my closest network. I'm the one that has it together. I am strong, I got this. I don't need nobody. And oh my gosh, how the opposite that is for me. Now I don't even think that at all. I strongly believe that, like we're stronger when we're together and maybe that's the consequence of being in like rugby or, you know, team sports for most of my life that I've started to see, yeah, you have your individual strength, but you don't get there on your own. You really need everybody and I've recognized that I am the sum of everyone that came before me and will come after me. And strong wasn't just my physical accomplishments and it wasn't just showing up. It also was being vulnerable, seeking help, getting through situations, getting picked back, picking myself back up. So even through the worst heartbreaks or the worst toxic situations that I usually put myself in or I contributed to 1,000 percent, I wouldn't be who I am, and I now see that as strength, that I can look back and be like whoa. You did some things. Some of them were questionable. You've grown up but that all contributed to true strength. That contributed to physical strength, mental strength, emotional strength, resiliency, capability, the ability to receive.
Speaker 1:I'm still a little weird about it. If you're giving me a compliment, I don't know how to take it. So I see that as part of strength. So when I'm talking to a client and I'm talking about strong, or if you're reading anything that I've ever written, I say strong. That's what I'm referring to. It's that it's one word, but it could mean so many different things depending on the context and the situation.
Speaker 1:And who is to say what's strong and isn't? I mean, you have some literal translation like strongman training, like that's a type of sport, you know when you're lifting Atlas stones. That's amazing. But who is to say what's strong and what isn't? Who's to say you're weak or you're not? Nobody.
Speaker 1:And if you, like me, used to wear a mask and you had a different perception, that you can't show parts of yourself, because that's like showing a weakness, like blah, blah, blah, blah, like just dismiss that narrative Absolutely, just let it go, burn it down. And it's the acceptance of the toxicity, it's the acceptance of the hard parts that have really just made me more me and I would say that it was more like now. I'm a lot more positive than I used to be, even though I appeared more positive, but I think it was within the toxic positivity circle where, instead of owning all parts of me, I would just want to you know. No, no, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. Well, no, it's not like you can't dismiss parts of the conversation and then just will it to be okay, like sometimes it's okay not to be okay, and we have to stop shoving that down our own throats and other people's. That's just not serving anybody. We're not getting better, we're just making it harder than it needs to be when it's already hard.
Speaker 1:I now know and I'm so appreciative of everyone around me, of my small network that holds me accountable, that helps me through, of my various communities, that I have the absolute privilege to be a part of. The lessons learned from the pandemic as well is that you know we really are social creatures, even the most introverted of us. We need each other. You know we have to rely on each other and most of us thrive in community, and I found mine in sport. And now, when I have to kind of backtrack. What strong means to me? I see it as a root that I am strong but I'm also resilient. I am strong but I'm also malleable. I am strong but I'm also free. I am strong but I'm also vulnerable. I am way more than the P2 strong version of me thought I was, and I know that to be true.
Speaker 1:For you, maybe your goal is that, hey, I'm going to go deadlift 300 pounds. You'll physically get stronger if you're working through a powerlifting program and you know, with progressive overload, you'll eventually hopefully be able to achieve that goal. But what else do you get out of it? You could just say, yeah, yeah, I lifted the weight, put it back down. But the tenacity that you need to achieve that goal you build your strength in so many other ways, and so if you ever found yourself in a situation, like I was in, where you kind of dismiss your own strength, I invite you to sit there and maybe explore right now what did strength mean to you? What does it mean now? What parts of you would you say are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Is that a bad thing?
Speaker 1:No, the whole purpose of this podcast, humble Pie, is to look through and find those layers of where I wasn't right, you weren't right, you weren't right, we weren't right, because we're not always right. And sometimes, when I say strengths and weaknesses too, it's like before I was trying to be like. Without weakness, it's just impossible. Human beings are just, you know, complex humans or creatures. Duh, human beings are humans. Good one. Human beings are complex and we have layers to us. We can't be good at everything, we can't know everything, and so, even the weakness, I don't see that as a negative. It's true, there is like strengths and weaknesses, but I'm not like I'm doomed because of my weaknesses, it's just.
Speaker 1:It's good to know what to work on. It's good to know what to work on. It's good to know where to outsource. It's good to know where I may have some limitations, and that's not to say that I or you are not capable of improving those weaknesses and making them our strengths. But it's also good to recognize that. That's the whole point of having community. Does it serve you to try and improve every single weakness? Maybe, maybe not. What are you trying to do?
Speaker 1:I now know that for me it's evolved and I hope it's evolved for you too, and I want to see the attitude growth in all of us, and for me, the catalyst is sport, because you can see that you have something tangible, which then helps us see the stuff that isn't tangible. Sometimes it's hard to articulate the feeling, but you can physically see, like cool, last week I lifted 50 pounds, this week I'm lifting 60. Hey, yay me right. You can see that progression. And then you start to go into out of the quantitative stuff and look at the qualitative stuff, like, well, how do I feel? What else is happening? What else is happening in my personality? What's happening around me? What about the people in my life? Am I leaving a positive impact?
Speaker 1:That's what strength means to me, and to me it's synonymous with fears, which is my little tagline of turn up the fears, because I fully believe that we are capable and we have strengths within us and we can choose to, like level them up. And if we don't, that's okay too, that's absolutely okay. But it really comes with that awareness Like, instead of pretending that we're good, hey, I'm not okay, that's more than okay. And I just had to pause for a second because as soon as I said that I was thinking about right now I'm sitting in a space where I'm by myself with a microphone. But if old me was sitting across from me and we had a little you know, matrix moment or time machine, why would I tell old me, like, why do you feel you're strong, which I was? Old me Like, why do you feel you're strong, which I was? I wouldn't be who I am without those skill sets and that personality and tenaciousness and discipline and determination that brought me here. But I used to just think so less of myself. Hence even starting this.
Speaker 1:You know this podcast is a big deal. It's not new. I didn't just want to do it because it's the flavor of whatever new medium that everyone wants to do. Honestly, I wanted to do this when I was like a teenager, but I'm like I can't do it. No one wants to listen to this. I'm like, well, maybe you don't, maybe I have like one listener. Well, that's strength, because I overcame something that I absolutely thought is just never going to happen. And here we are.
Speaker 1:So what did you used to think? Strong meant Do you feel you're strong? How do you develop it? What are your weaknesses? What does that mean? Do you want to improve them? How would you improve them and how does that serve you? And, most importantly, how does that make you feel, and how do you take that and pass it on to someone else? So maybe someone that used to be in your shoes back then? So if I had, you know, some new, a new person, a new girl, someone sitting in front of me that resembled who I was when I was younger, am I going to inspire them and empower them, to push them through so they can grow, or am I putting them in a little box and making it seem like they can't do it? I don't know. Those are the thoughts that are in my head and right now I hope you follow along with that.
Speaker 1:This one was a little bit off the top of my head and I wanted to explore it a little bit more, without putting as much parameters around where my brain went. So I would love to hear from you what strong means to you. What does it mean? So please contact me. You can email me or you can contact the podcast all the information's in the show notes at Podcast with Pi. Let me know what does strong mean to you. At what point in your life did your strength surprise you and where do you want to take your strength next? Thank you so much for joining me, and I hope you learned something from this, or at least thought of something that you didn't think about before. Until next time.
