This past week, the CrossFit Gods were in my favor. Just as I’m about to reach my 5 year anniversary of beginning this crazy sport and fitness regimen, I checked off two more “new-to-me” skills. Wednesday night I finally trusted myself enough to bring my feet off the wall, down to my chest, and into kipping handstand pushups! The next day, I surprised myself even more by mastering jumping bar muscle ups. If you’re an avid CrossFitter as well, or at least familiar with these terms—you know it’s no easy feat. And for me, I’ve held myself back the most mentally. The worst part is, I KNOW this—which has made it that much more torturing. When you know you can physically do something, but mentally you’re stopping yourself—it’s a tricky place to be. I would know, because I tend to live in that space frequently. This past year of CrossFit especially, has been all about trying to bring my mental fitness up to speed with where my physical fitness is. Because if I don’t trust or believe in myself, simply it isn’t happening.
As with every year that goes by in CrossFit, I’m super stoked and proud of myself. Year one felt so monumental, and now five feels just as great. As time goes on, I’ve realized how much harder you must work, and deeper into yourself you must dig, to continue on the path of developing more strength and more skills. But it’s so much more than that isn’t it? Talk to any CrossFitter, and yes they’ll tell you. For me, I can’t imagine going through any of the challenges I’ve personally faced in the last five years—without CrossFit. For many, CrossFit guides us through the darkness. We’re all fighting battles, and a lot of times battles others may not know anything about. I’ve been in the bottom of a front squat before, not knowing if I would make it back up—and not because I didn’t have the physical ability, but because I was so maxed out mentally during a long season of unemployment. I’ve struggled with worrying about the health of family members, and the only thing that has kept me sane was recognizing and executing on the fact that I controlled the efforts I gave to my own wellness routine, and not much else. Or even just the ability to check into a CrossFit class, and check out of your life for one hour has felt therapeutic.
CrossFit exposes our weaknesses (especially mentally in my opinion), and I think that is something I love most about it. I have so many hilarious stories of myself through these first five years of CrossFit, and experiences to share. I remember the first heavy deadlift day where I believe we were supposed to be working up to a one rep max. When everyone started getting all of the weights out, I froze and stared at my empty barbell. I’ve been so uncomfortable with myself more times than I could ever possibly count, and no coach or athlete could fix it or permanently help me out of it. That’s because I was facing something internally, often wrestling with my own mental dysfunction and limiting beliefs. And now all of these things I’ve worked so hard to overcome for the most part, and quite literally “don’t sweat it” much anymore. Maybe I take for granted now (as we all do), walking into CrossFit and not feeling like the warmup is a foreign language (as I frequently did in the very beginning). Maybe I also take for granted anything that I can do now, that took me months or years. Maybe you do as well.
I no longer worry if I’m liked, accepted, or how others feel about me at all. I’m doing the best I can (on any given day) and fighting my own battles. What I accomplish for myself, may seem small to others—but I know how big it is in my own mind. Every milestone I reach feels so meaningful to me. Because with every new strength or skill, I only see the enormous mountain that I mentally (finally) decided to summit. And if all of us could remember our “beginning” we would be patting ourselves on the back. We would realize that everything we do and learn in CrossFit is really awesome. As we get more and more seasoned and further into this journey we chose in life, we may forget those first feelings. Your first pull-up or toes-to-bar. What about the first “RX” workout you did? I remember one of my first “big” goals in CrossFit was to do something with 100 pounds for a barbell movement that wasn’t a deadlift. I was so excited to achieve this in way shorter time than I expected, with a 100 pound squat clean.
If you don’t know or care about me at all, or don’t know or care about CrossFit at all—what is the purpose of this blog post? I’ll tell you that the purpose of this blog post is absolutely not for me to describe every single thing I’ve done, accomplished, and learned throughout my CrossFit journey. And it’s not about all of the ways I feel that I’ve transformed myself physically, mentally, and spiritually throughout these last five years either. It’s about recognizing, being mindful, and celebrating our many milestones in life. It’s far easier to sink into taking everything for granted, and I’m here to say—let’s not do that. Be grateful for what you CAN do, and excited about what you can’t do—YET. We can always grow, change, and evolve. We can decide to get better. If we commit ourselves to always being willing to learn and try, we’ll eventually get “there”. Wherever “there” is for us, and oftentimes maybe somewhere even “better” than we originally dreamed or thought of. Don’t be afraid to try, because reaching greatness, usually comes with a lot of failures along the way.
The reality is, most of the time we are what is holding ourselves back. We are the problem for ourselves, and the sooner we realize this the better off we will be. We’re standing in our own way. A really hard lesson I’ve had to learn, is that no one can believe in you—for you. Sure, it feels nice when someone else believes in us. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to believe in ourselves. This choice, again rests with us. And it isn’t easy. Whether this be in CrossFit, or anything in your life—choose to believe in yourself. Choose to “start going further” in all things. It’s not the easiest choice, but it’s the best choice if you’re on the path to living your best and purpose-filled life. Remember that we all have greatness within us, but it’s up to us to find this for ourselves.