I have a love/hate relationship with CrossFit. I hate doing it, but I love what it’s doing for me. I’ve had a few people lately mention that I’m looking fit, both slimmer and stronger, but that’s not it. I mean, that’s great and hopefully I’ll continue to pull it together, but what I’ve found that’s really valuable is how it stretches me mentally every day. I started working out get my body in shape, but I’m loving that it’s strengthening my mind.
Each morning I have to go do things that I don’t think I can do. Every day my brain says, “There is no way you can do this” and I have to fight that feeling and do it anyway. Some days I succeed and do the impossible, other days I fall short. Either way, it’s excellent practice for my brain.
As a rule for life I don’t do things if I’m not 100% sure I’ll be able to do them. I avoid failure and any sort of risk. But this exercise is a revolving door of impossible tasks and I don’t have a choice but to try. Practicing uncertainty over and over again takes away the power it has over me. And it makes everything else relative: “I did 50 back squats this morning (lifting 110 lbs each time) — finding my way to a new place to meet a group of people is a cakewalk in comparison!”
My brain is learning the lesson that I can do hard things and is having to find a new set point for impossible. It’s also learning that trying and failing is OK too, but that I fail a lot less often than it predicts I will. Every time my brain tells me that something in life is too hard, it is faced with an arsenal of proof that I’m a lot tougher than it gives me credit for. It probably seems funny to talk about my brain as if it’s not me, but some days it really does feel like my brain is the devil on my shoulder, whispering (or shouting) at me to give up. Thankfully these days its voice is a lot quieter, but just because I’m not currently mentally ill, it’s still a constant practice to keep it in check and to muffle those words of discouragement that it would be eager to feed me if I gave it a chance.
I just got the kids off to school and I’m waiting for the alarm to tell me it’s time to put on my shoes and go do more hard things. I’m dreading it because today is the hard coach, the one who not only makes me do all the things, but tells me to put more weight on the bar and then babysits me to make sure I finish every last bit of it. It’s terrible. And wonderful. I’m totally dreading it. My legs are already dead from those 50 back squats yesterday, but he’ll laugh and say that it’s nothing. I have no idea what we’ll be doing today, just that it will feel impossible and that somehow I will get through it and be glad that I did it, but not in the way athletes are happy they worked out. I’ll be happy in the way that people with a phobia of flying feel when they’ve touched down at the end of a flight and are tempted to kiss the ground: “We made it! I’m alive. Hallelujah. It’s a miracle.”