Unbreakable Mind & Body

Never Quite Ready: Taking Action Despite Self-Doubt

Tiana Gonzalez Episode 30

In this vulnerable episode, I share a recent brand photoshoot experience that had me battling waves of insecurity despite years of camera experience. Despite taking over 1,000 photos, my inner perfectionist—formed through years as a dancer and bodybuilder—kept finding flaws. The mantra that pulled me through? "I am enough and what I'm doing is important."

This triggered memories of perhaps my greatest personal challenge: after earning my IFBB Pro card in 2010, I gained over 50 pounds within months. Gym sessions became exercises in humiliation. There were days the physical pain kept me bedridden, and I questioned if I'd ever feel comfortable in my own skin again.

Looking at my recent photos against the backdrop of that difficult chapter reveals an important truth: readiness is largely a myth. Had I waited to feel completely confident before this photoshoot, an important project would remain just an idea. 

Growth happens when we step into discomfort despite our insecurities. We're never going to feel 100% ready for the things—but that's precisely why we must begin anyway. What dream are you postponing until you feel ready? 

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Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only. This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.


Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body podcast. I am your host, tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate, creative storyteller and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to the show. I am your host, tiana, and this is episode 30. I cannot be more excited. We launched this show on March 11th. I am recording this on Friday, july 11th, and this is the 30th episode. So exciting, so grateful to have you here.

Speaker 2:

And I had a bit of a humbling experience a few days ago. I was out to dinner with my brother for his birthday, with his girlfriend and a few of his friends, and something was mentioned while we were passing appetizers around the table and someone said oh, you told this story on a podcast episode, to which I turned and looked at her and said oh, you listen to the podcast? And she said yeah, of course, I put it on when I'm at work. I love it, it keeps me going and I'm just typing away on the computer and it's cool to get to know you in that way. And then another person at the table said yeah, I listened to the show too. And then, of course, my brother said yeah, I listened to the show too, and it's great, listen to the show too. And then, of course, my brother said yeah, I listened to the show too, and it's great, so cool. Three people that I was having dinner with. There were a few other people at the table as well, but three people at the table all gave me positive feedback about the show and said they liked certain episodes, and I cannot express my gratitude anymore, express my gratitude anymore.

Speaker 2:

Before we dive into this episode, I want to remind you that if you are someone who is looking for some support and getting your head in the right place so that you can work out efficiently and command the space around you when you walk into the gym, when you get on the fitness floor, check the show notes, there is a link where you can download a quick mini guide that I have created, called Lift. Like you Mean it, it's basically a five minute pre-workout ritual. It may take a little practice to get the swing of it the first few times you use it, but there are some prompts for you to think about. There is space for you to download this mini guide that I've created and then you can handwrite it. So if you're someone like me who loves pen and paper, you can go that route, or you could just think about the questions that I give you in this little guide, just to help you get clear on what it is you're looking to accomplish and create a small, bite-sized goal that's attainable each time you set foot into the gym.

Speaker 2:

Now, without further ado, this episode is going to touch upon this idea of getting ready. I've talked about the anticipation phase in previous episodes. I've talked about just getting started and then making mistakes, because you're bound to make mistakes regardless. So we might as well start making them as soon as possible so that you can get clarity and then continue moving in the right direction. But here's the thing you may not feel ready, and that might be what's holding you back.

Speaker 2:

Last weekend, I did a brand photo shoot with a friend of mine, and the day of the shoot, he reached out to me, and I'm going to read to you the exchange that we had, because I think it's powerful and it's vulnerable. So he reached out to me and said hey, ready for today? And I responded as ready as I can be I'm rusty with a laughing emoji, and he said no worries, we'll do today, and we can do this as many times until you and I are both well-oiled machines. I replied okay, probably we'll need to. My insecurities start bubbling up every time I'm about to shoot. Ugh, I'll get through it. And then I followed up with another text and said I am enough and what I'm doing is important and a part of my work. This is what I keep thinking I am enough and what I'm doing is important. That helped me get through the shoot. That helped me get through feeling insecure in front of the camera. Now I wore a cute matching set of fitness outfit. We did the shoot outdoors.

Speaker 2:

My midsection is showing in most of the photos, because it's basically a sports bra and matching pants, and I have to be completely transparent with you I do not love how I look in many of the photos. We took over a thousand photos, so of course, a lot of them were in between. A lot of them were me transitioning between pose to pose. A lot of them, I'm breathing. I am a belly breather. That comes from my martial arts background, and so there are some photos where I'm looking at myself and I'm thinking, damn, this could have been a little bit better if I did this or that could have looked a little bit better had I turned my hip a little bit more this way or put my hand in this place better had I turned my hip a little bit more this way or put my hand in this place or maybe pulled in a little bit tighter. And, as my friend said, we can do this as many times as we need to until we become a well-oiled machine. And the truth is that the more I work with a photographer, of course, the better the session is and the better work we create, because it's a collaboratory effort.

Speaker 2:

But the IFBB pro in me, the perfectionist in me, the dancer in me, is never going to fully love and embrace the finished product. Because I am my own worst critic. I can find a flaw in myself in every single photo of me. I can pick myself apart like the worst bully in the world. I wish I wasn't like that. I do see that trait as a bit of a flaw and I can simultaneously say, wow, look how far I've come, look at how amazing I look in this picture. I can look at the same photo and in one breath of air I think I look amazing, and then in the next I think I look amazing, and then in the next, see something that I don't love or that I'd want to change. So really, the moral of this story is that I'm never going to feel ready, it's never going to be perfect and the work is never done. But what if I could push that aside and look at the big picture? I told my friend this is part of something bigger than me.

Speaker 2:

This photo shoot is part of a project that I have set my sights on for a very long time and only just recently found the courage and made the investment to find a mentor to give me an organized process to follow that makes sense to me, that speaks to me and that will be executed in a way that feels good from start to finish. I was moving along 100 miles an hour on this project and then I hit a section where I realized, oh shit, I need new fitness pictures, because the last set of photos that I have that I would want to include in this project are from three years ago and they are moody and dark and in a gym that's very masculine looking. So I'm sort of this little beacon of light wearing these bright colors bright blue, bright orange. In another set I wore hot pink and black, very girly, with my big hoop earrings and gold jewelry and my nails and makeup done. However, the photos are gritty and they're gorgeous, but they're not the right mood and vibe for this new project.

Speaker 2:

I've shot with so many different photographers over the years. I've shot with so many different photographers over the years. I've done tons of photo shoots. It's definitely not my first rodeo and still there's always something where I feel like not at my best. I think this goes back to perhaps being a dancer and feeling insecure performing on stage, knowing I'm not the prettiest girl, I'm not the thinnest girl and I'm not the best dancer in the group, but people do watch me. I've had people tell me that came to see me perform in different dance performances, whether it was the company I was in in high school or the company I was a part of in college.

Speaker 2:

Shout out to Black Dance Repertoire. That is the name of the group at Binghamton University. We were a student organization, student run, and I think my senior year of college I was actually the vice president of the organization. So I loved that group and even when we would travel and perform at different schools and at different events, people would say, oh, my eyes caught you, my eyes went right to you. People look at me. I know that and yet still there are parts of me that want to hide. There are things about me that I question if they're good enough and again, the work that I'm doing is so fucking important. It doesn't matter if I think I'm pretty enough for this or if I'm lean enough for this. I didn't feel ready. I didn't feel ready that day. I was super nervous.

Speaker 2:

I think the first maybe 200 photos I'm wearing a big t-shirt and I was just trying to like warm up and get comfortable with my friends who I'd never worked with before. I was nervous about how people would perceive me People in the area where we were shooting. It's a local river walk area, so there's people on their bikes, there's kids in a local playground not too far from where we parked the car. I was worried and I had to shut those voices off. I had to quiet down the noise. I had to stop it and remind myself that this work that I'm doing is important for me and for the people that I serve.

Speaker 2:

There was a time in my life, after getting my pro card, where I gained an excessive amount of weight in a very short period of time. I got my pro card in 2010 and within the same calendar year, I gained over 50 pounds. I had done a lot of damage to my body in the process and I take responsibility for that. I didn't think it was going to happen to me. I was warned be careful. What you're doing is dangerous. It's not sustainable. You might hit a rebound. I didn't think it would happen to me. I truly thought I was invincible. No, it's not going to happen to me. I'll be fine Until I wasn't, and so towards the end of 2010, almost all of 2011, most of 2012 and well into 2013,.

Speaker 2:

For two and a half years almost three years I wanted to just curl up into a ball and disappear. I was extremely overweight, I was very uncomfortable, I had irregular periods, my hormones were a mess, thyroid was a mess, I had some issues with my liver and my kidneys the list goes on and on and on. And I lived in yoga pants, a hooded sweatshirt that zipped up and a baseball hat, and I would pull my baseball hat so far down over my eyes when I went to the gym because I didn't want to make eye contact with people, because I felt shame, I was ashamed of myself and I was embarrassed because I had once been at the peak, at the pinnacle of conditioning. And then I lost it. And I will tell you that the gym is very similar to a bar or the local hangout spot. People say things because they see you every day. They see you at the same time. Their inhibitions are down a little bit.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people go to the gym to blow off steam, so they feel relaxed, they're comfortable, and people say things that are just so wildly inappropriate. At one point. A former gym partner came up to me and squeezed my belly while I was doing crunches on a Swiss ball. He came over and pinched my belly and he was like you got to work on this. How embarrassing. I was so mortified I let him have it right then and there I said I'm going through a lot with my health and it has nothing to do with bodybuilding or with me eating crazy. This is something out of my control and I'm working on it. So fuck off.

Speaker 2:

Imagine I actually wound up changing gyms at one point as well, because I was so embarrassed. I didn't want to see people, I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to explain what was going on, even if people were genuinely concerned and wanted to know. I just didn't want to talk about it.

Speaker 2:

It was so deeply painful and to be contacted by various supplement companies or from photographers to do shoots, because they had seen either me compete on stage or they saw my stage photos, or they saw some of the photos I did with the photographer just before getting on stage and they wanted to work with me and I had to tell them the ugly truth that I did not look like that any longer. You know how, on some social media platforms it reminds you like on this day 10 years ago, on this day 15 years ago. And when I look back, sometimes I'll see things that I wrote where someone had reached out to me and I'll say things that I wrote where someone had reached out to me and I'll say I'm working on it. I should be in better shape in a few months. I was just saying that to keep people on the hook and interested, but I really had no idea.

Speaker 2:

I was wishful. I was hoping I would pray, but there were days that I didn't even want to get out of bed. I was in so much pain. But there were days that I didn't even want to get out of bed. I was in so much pain my joints were killing me.

Speaker 2:

Now I don't know if you know this, but when you gain weight due to whatever circumstances or reasons, particularly on your knees, for every pound of weight up, it feels like four pounds of pressure on your knees, especially going up and down a flight of stairs or if you're hiking. And little by little by little, I eventually found answers. I eventually started to feel better. I eventually got myself to a place where I wasn't as insecure being out in public. I would say it was probably around the spring of 2012. I was still struggling, but it was a little bit better.

Speaker 2:

So to look at photos from last week and I mean, I know what I weigh and I know what I weighed on the day of the shoot and to look at the photos and see what I look like and look at my energy, I'm super proud of that.

Speaker 2:

But if I only lived by what the scale said or if I only went by what I used to be like, then I probably wouldn't have felt ready.

Speaker 2:

I probably wouldn't have felt ready to take this next part of this action plan that I have in place, to take these photos that are so important because they're a part of something that I'm working on that's going to make an imprint on people's lives, and it doesn't matter if it's one or two people or if it's a couple hundred, or maybe it might even be more, who knows?

Speaker 2:

I believe the sky's the limit. I believe the universe is abundant and I believe that there is more than enough out there for all of us to accomplish our dreams and be successful and to gain whatever it is our heart is set on. What I do know is when I was uncomfortable in my own skin, when I did only live in these yoga pants that had a rolled down waist so that I could breathe and feel more comfortable in my own skin, I never thought I would be in a place where I could take photos again. I questioned if I would ever feel confident at the gym again. I didn't know if I'd ever get to at least even somewhere that resembled what I once looked like, let alone be a better version, and I do believe that I am a better version because of all of the things I've experienced, because of the knowledge and the background that.

Speaker 2:

I have now. Sometimes I think all of those things were supposed to happen so that I could grow and become this version of me right now, and in a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, I'm going to be another version of myself. It's kind of why I laugh when old people come around or someone reaches out to me, particularly Facebook. Facebook is a swamp, that's the word. It's full of all these people that I barely spoke to back in the day and now they just watch my life and think that they know me, and every once in a while, somebody from there will reach out and they allude to the fact of some story or something about me from the past, for example, this one friend I remember. She reached out to me at one point and was like hey, we're going to go hear that DJ. Remember you used to love him. Do you want to come? And my music tastes have really changed a lot. And I just said to her yeah, I'm good, I don't listen to that anymore, but thanks for thinking of me. But that's not who I am anymore, that's who I was.

Speaker 2:

You're probably never going to feel fully ready, but if you don't at least start to move in the direction that you want, you're not going to accomplish much. You're going to be stuck. I know it's scary, but you got to take action. You got to do the thing, and maybe I'll look at these photos again and say, oh my gosh, I was crazy. These photos are amazing. I love them. I look beautiful and they're fulfilling the purpose. Or I might just look back and say you know what? This was a good stepping stone, and now the next time I work with this photographer, I'll have a better idea of what he's looking for for his portfolio and we know how to communicate with each other. So it's a win win.

Speaker 2:

Regardless. You're never going to feel ready not a a hundred percent but you have to take action. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you and you giving this show your time and attention. Remember, if you want to download that free mini guide that I've created to help you get your mindset in the right place before you set foot into the gym, go to the show notes and download. Lift Like you Mean it. As always, I will catch you on the next one.