Why am I listening to this disabilist crap?

[baratron]

10:50: Must not get annoyed with trainer who used the extremely disabilist phrase "as easy as riding a bike".

Yeah, riding a bike *might* be easy to learn for those of you with four fully-functioning limbs, eyes, & a good balance centre. It's not so easy for all of us. Some of us can get by with trikes or hand-cycles. Some of us can ride tandems with a sighted guide. Even then, not everyone can ride a cycle under their own power.

It's just hard to feel motivated that a task is "easy" when the example used is something that I, and a lot of other people, have never and will never be able to do :/

Edit: I know it's a common phrase. I don't know why it grated so hard, except that we were being told that something really difficult for me to do is "as easy as" something else that's IMPOSSIBLE for me to do :( Just felt like a kick in the teeth.

13:13: WTF? Trainer reckons that "you only see obstacles when you lose sight of your focus". Bullcrap!

The biggest obstacles I have in achieving my PhD are my health and my spoon level. I have to monitor these things CONSTANTLY so as to not collapse. Constant vigilance of my obstacles is what will ENABLE me to reach the goal.

Bullcrap, bullcrap, bullcrap.

This course appears to be designed for highly optimistic morning people who are motivated by blue-sky thinking. I prefer to keep my aspirations realistic.

Currently eating lunch & planning ways to avoid stabbing the trainer to death. The worst thing is, I think that she & her NLP bollocks are running the Time Management course I've booked in February.

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Does anyone else find that LJ app inserts two blank lines everywhere you meant for there to be one? I always have to come back and edit my posts on the computer later so they don't take up an entire screen!

Comments

[baratron.livejournal.com]

The bike analogy was such a small part of it that it's only worth pointing out to people as a thing to watch out for - make sure that if you use that phrase, you also have several other examples that are inclusive for people of differing physical and learning abilities. I don't believe that Every Single Thing a person says needs to be inclusive, but the overall picture should be.

"As easy as falling off a log" is inclusive - ANYONE can fall off a log, even if you have no voluntary movement of your own - but I guess it wasn't positive enough for the corporate neuro-linguistic programming bullshit merchant. Ugh.

(See most recent post for much more).