May/June 2012
Aspen Crossfit Reveals Weaknesses, Develops them as Strengths
By Angel Naivalu
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Eleanor Roosevelt
What's on Your Mind?
Did you ever feel afraid to join Crossfit? Or perhaps you weren’t necessarily afraid when you began, it wasn’t until you arrived for your Elements class and saw the class that was finishing their WOD, all lying flat on the floor in a series of “Sweat Angels,” looking as though they were in need of IV’s or oxygen masks and you wondered, “Have I totally lost my mind? Why would anyone do this to themselves?”
Have you ever walked into the box, looked at the WOD, and felt an inkling of fear?
Do you ever have days when you feel like nothing is changing, despite how hard you are working out, and despite the fact that you have little evidences all around you that confirm that you ARE making progress?
Do you ever wonder if anyone else is seeing the amazing changes on your outside, equal to what you're experiencing on the inside as a result of your Aspen Crossfit experience?
If so, guess what? That’s FEAR and…
YOU'RE HUMAN!
Don't get too excited yet.
Human means fallible.
One of our greatest barriers to happiness in life is PERCEPTION.
Our perception of ourselves is MOST OFTEN based on fragmented, misinterpreted, twisted, assumed, partial, subjective evidence, rather than truth.
Poignant experiences, most often from our formative years, make impressions on us – DEEP IMPRESSIONS.
Being a cattle rancher's daughter, the concept of BRANDING comes to my mind (as in branding cattle – searing a mark into the cow's hide with a scalding hot iron).
These impressions and perceptions we attain from poignant experiences in childhood BRAND US and can leave a painful mark (or scar) that we carry with us into adulthood.
There are many psychological terms for this type of "branding," that occurs, such as "core belief," or "inner sentence," or "inner script," whatever it is, IT LEAVES A MARK!
It is quite common that these core beliefs SURFACE and stare us right in the face as we encounter the workouts as Crossfit.
I believe it's in part due to the fact that, at Crossfit, there is no room in the box for excuses. There is nothing easy about a workout. And there is no opportunity for mediocrity, nor stagnation as you continue to attend and workout there.
The set up and structure of Crossfit has eliminated a lot of the distractions (or escape routes) found in our normal life, those things that make it easy for us to be lazy, take the easy street, shy away from anything hard, etc. As a result of those enabling circumstances being eliminated, we can actually SEE and HEAR the whisperings of the imposter voice within our head, shouting, "You're not good enough!" Or "You're a failure!" For example.
Have you ever felt that just before a WOD begins? Or perhaps during one? For some reason, thrusters really take me there. I hear it. I feel it. It adds to the weight on the bar….and yet, I don’t quit!
Those voices exist to some degree in all of us, and yet with a simple, “3-2-1, GO!” We confront that imposter voice, and we demolish it! Day after day, WOD after WOD.
Do you have any idea how this is affecting your psyche?
Crossfit changes our perception of ourselves, because it guides us in doing things that we hadn’t ever conceived of doing before. Hard things. Things we thought only “hardcore athletes” did. Before we know it, there we are, doing hard things, and it stumps that imposter voice. It challenges and changes the limiting beliefs we may have carried for DECADES! And now there we are saying, “I AM GOOD ENOUGH!” And, “I AM SUCCESSFUL!” It’s a nice side-benefit that, anywhere else, would be billed as cognitive therapy.
Thank “Yoda,” (Erik) the next time you see him, for the free therapy.
It's time to get your game on,
Isa GAME On!
