Your sense of who you are will determine your actions and what you end up getting in life. If you see your reach as limited, that you are mostly helpless in the face of so many difficulties, that it is best to keep your ambitions low, then you will receive the little that you expect. knowing this dynamic, you must train yourself for the opposite – ask for more, aim high, and believe that you are destined for something great. Your sense of self-worth comes from you alone – never the opinion of others. With a rising confidence in your abilities, you will take risks that will increase your chances of success. People follow those who know where they are going, so cultivate an air of certainty and boldness.
It was the perfect excerpt from Robert Greene’s last book, The 50th Law. So much going on this week for me personally and at CrossFit. But I loved that I stumbled across this following some talks with Key and my friend, Lex from Razor’s Edge Fitness CrossFit in Pensacola. We’ve all actually been talking about self-focus and relying on yourself to achieve greatness. Yes, one of the best things about CrossFit is the community and it’s ability to lift you up and help you power through the end of a WOD (see Julie Foucher’s blogpost “Improvement through Human Connection”). I sincerely believe in Coach Glassman’s philosophy behind CrossFit - “the belief in the improvability of ourselves and others”. But this belief in yourself, as is recognizing that you are your own limitation, is key to achieving success in anything we set forth to accomplish.
Last night, I very much wanted to skip my training, go home, and crawl into bed. But I had Lex in my head reminding me that “we CrossFit because we love it.” Sure I had had a rough day. Yes, the commute was brutal (yay wreck making it a 2 hr commute home instead of 1). Of course I was exhausted. But do I love CrossFit? Do I want this? Am I truly fatigued physically, or do I have the physical capacity to train? Answer: Sure I love CrossFit. Yes I want this. And of course I have the physical capacity to train! (see previous post – this last one may not have been entirely true)
I struggle with this concept of self-belief on a regular basis. I think many of us do, particularly in the CrossFit box. It’s hard not to gauge your performance against the other numbers on the white board. We all say that you must compete against yourself and focus on THE important question – “Have you increased your work capacity over broad time and modal domains?” But how often do you catch yourself beating down on yourself for not beating someone in the box you thought you would? How often do you, even before the WOD, shift your focus from asking more from yourself and aiming high for yourself, to focusing on staying ahead of someone else? This will continue to happen if you don’t shift your focus to self-belief, to relying only on your performance as the basis for your self-confidence. Annie Thorisdottir didn’t go to the Games thinking, “I’m going to beat Clever this year.” Neither did Rich focus on Graham. In every interview their eye was on the prize, they were aiming high for what they wanted to achieve – to be the fittest on earth. They had the confidence in their abilities and they went after success.
One of the CrossFitters at my box that I’ve been coaching since late June is a former football player. Since Day One, Jessy has told me how he’s going to catch me. He was an athlete long before CrossFit. He’s one of those guys that is HUGE, and you can tell he’s spent hours in the weight room lifting heavy. He had no problem going RX weight-wise on his first 315 deadlift WOD. The man is STRONG. But his first WOD, he got his butt handed to him by a bunch of girls. Huge and strong without mobility and speed does not equal fitness. But he’s worked on it. Every single day, he’s focused on improving. And he’s definitely caught me more than a few times now. At the end of August, he announced that in 30 days he was going to beat me in a WOD heavy in either running or double-unders. That was his goal. I couldn’t help but laugh, not because it was going to be impossible, but because it was the epitome of someone setting his standards for himself based on what someone else was achieving. I explained to him, that I was sure the day was not far before he was going to kick my butt in Annie or Griff. But I followed that with asking him what did he want from CrossFit. And I LOVED that his answer was not to be at the top of our whiteboard. Jessy wants to compete someday. He watched the Games on ESPN2, and he looked at his level of fitness, and he decided “I want to be on that road.” So because I’m commuting and training on my own anymore (and sadly don’t get to coach) I haven’t seen Jessy in a few weeks. I called him last night and asked how he was doing and was he still on his road to the Games. His response “I’m getting better at double-unders. I beat my Annie time by 3 minutes...watch out!” Yes, Jessy’s still going to be after me, but as long as he sees his own increase in work capacity and believes in his own improvability, I have no doubt in his ability to go much further than catching me….he’ll do awesome at competition.
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