The Shorts Are in the Drawer Again
Summer arrives and something quietly shifts.
The weather gets warmer. The days get longer. And somewhere in the back of the wardrobe, behind the jeans and the jumpers, there’s a pair of shorts that haven’t seen daylight in years.
And they’re going to stay there. Because of what people might think.
Not what anyone has said. Not a comment that was made or a look that was given. Just a story. A fully formed, completely convincing story about what’s going on inside the heads of people who are, in all likelihood, far too busy worrying about their own insecurities to notice anyone else’s.
The shorts stay in the drawer and you spend another summer slightly less comfortable, slightly less free. You already know how that feels.
The story is already costing you
Here’s what I want you to really sit with for a moment.
The anxiety you feel about wearing the shorts, or the swimsuit, or the sleeveless top, or whatever it is for you, isn’t coming from what people are actually thinking. It’s coming from the story you’ve created about what they might think.
And here’s the part that gets me every time.
You are already living the pain of the worst version. Right now, in your head, you are experiencing the judgment, the imagined comments, the eyes you’re convinced are on you, before any of it has happened.
You are suffering the consequences of a verdict that exists only in your own mind.
So what exactly do you have to lose by just putting the shorts on?
What I hear women say most often
One of the things that comes up again and again when women join EH Fitness, and I mean constantly, from women of all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds, is some version of this:
“I never realised other people felt like this too.”
Not once. Not occasionally. Constantly.
The woman who was convinced everyone in the gym was watching her. The woman who wouldn’t come to a group session because she was afraid of what the other women would think. The woman who spent three summers with the shorts in the drawer because she was certain her legs weren’t good enough.
Every single one of them was living inside a story. A story they’d written alone, in their own head, with no input from anyone else.
And when they finally stepped out of it, when they put the shorts on, walked into the room, showed up anyway, you know what they found?
Women who felt exactly the same way they did.
The one question worth asking
I’m not going to tell you the story disappears. It doesn’t, not immediately, not completely. I still catch myself in one sometimes.
But there is one question that interrupts it before it takes hold.
Am I responding to what is actually happening, or to the story I’ve created about what might happen?
Just asking it is enough to create a pause. And in that pause is usually the truth, which is almost always more manageable, more ordinary, and far less frightening than the story your brain has been running.
Nobody is judging you. They’re too busy worrying about their own shorts sitting in the drawer unworn. Put the shorts on.
What’s the thing you’ve been talking yourself out of this summer? Leave a comment. I genuinely want to know.
And if this resonated, drop your email below and I’ll send every new post straight to your inbox. One email a week. Something worth reading.
Emma x