So I mean that, "Reaching New Heights," both symbolically and literally. Symbolically, in that hopefully these workouts helped you reach new heights (whether mentally or physically), but also literally in that literally I came up with the idea for this blog post while cruising at 30,000 feet altitude on my flight home from Washington D.C.
Let me first backtrack a little bit. I know- I'm the worst! I promised reflections each week but in my defense I did 18.2/18.2a on Friday and then left for vacation the next day, and then did 18.3 the day after I got home... sooooooo don't think of it that you are getting jipped on a post, but more like a 2 for 1 deal.
So... you're welcome.
Anyways, back to my flight. I'm what some might call a nervous flyer... ok I'm a terrible flyer. I'm one of those annoying people that at the slightest notion of turbulence start gripping the armrests like they are the only mechanism keeping the aircraft in flight. I brace my head back against the seat and clench my eyes tightly shut. I feel my heart rate climb and my breathing gets shallow as perspiration forms on my forehead. I keep shooting my husband nervous glances, but he is so impassive and stoic to the commotion that I almost feel embarrassed. Then, once I have illogically determined that the plane is not going to plummet out of the sky, I relax a little and divert my attention back to the movie I was watching (in this case Bad Moms 2).
Just a suggestion: what people who are bad flyers should never do, is take 7 hour cross-country flights because the possibility for turbulence, especially when flying around two snowstorms, is pretty high. Like in this case, basically it was turbulent for about half the flight. HALF.
HALF.
I think you understand my displeasure.
We had just finished getting through a particularly rough bit of air (as the captain put it) and I checked the time remaining on the flight. THREE HOURS. TWENTY-SEVEN MINUTES.
Ummm. What.
I still have three and a half hours to go? How is that possible?!?!? Like hygienically speaking I don't think I could last another three hours based on how much I was sweating. So I started thinking about what exactly fear is and what exactly I'm afraid of in that moment. Ok, so the second part is pretty obvious: I'm scared of crashing. I started thinking about what fear really is, and how it is a feeling that I can have control over.
Then, as much as I hated it, I had to acknowledge that me being fearful of the turbulence is not going to change the course of this plane. If it is going to crash, it is going to crash whether I fear it or not. I have no control over that. Which, kind of sounds silly typed out, because I'm a logical person (MOST of the time) and so I clearly know that to be a fact. But it did help me focus on the thing that I can control. My fear.
The next time the turbulence kicked up, while I cannot say that I had zero response, I felt way more in control, and continued to tell myself, being fearful will not change the course of this aircraft so I might as well enjoy this moment as much as I can. And you know what? I did enjoy the rest of the flight WAY more and managed to not entirely sweat through all my clothing.
Interesting right? Not the sweat part - the fear part! How often when faced with something outside of our comfort zones do we start to question ourselves and cast doubt on the situation? How often do we start to find reasons to bail out and avoid the possible embarrassment?
These Open workouts (See? You thought I wasn't going to connect all this, did you?) often expose our weaknesses and, in fact, are designed to do so. That can feel vulnerable sometimes because as most CrossFit boxes do, you perform these workouts as a gym or with many people watching and cheering you on. And so it starts - the workout is released and you begin to cast doubt on your abilities and where you are at in your fitness. You begin to feel nervous about certain movements and being able to complete them without feeling or looking silly (according to you).
But going back to my previous epiphany... how are any of these thoughts benefitting you? Are they going to prep you and help you perform better in the workouts? Nope. Are they going to make you sleep better and recover faster? Nope. Are they going to boost your mood and confidence the day of the workout so you do the best you can? I bet you guessed it, but also NOPE.
The truth is we are best equipped with facing these challenges not with fear, but by being objective. For instance in 18.2(a) we had the opportunity to max out our clean in the remaining time of the workout. I know I'm not the strongest girl and that my clean is not awesome, so I started to feel nervous about how I would perform and how that might look to my gym members. An hour before I went and did the workout, I started looking objectively at the facts:
I have work to do on my clean.
All I can do is try my hardest.
Stressing about my clean is not going to increase the amount I can clean.
If I give everything I have, then there is nothing to be ashamed of.
It's amazing how those simple, but true, statements whipped my head into shape and I was able to just have fun during the workout and simply enjoy it for what it was (and I ended up PRing my clean).
This experience then helped me prepare for 18.3. When they announced the workout and I saw that there were ring muscle ups in the workout, I feel like my old mindset would have been like, "Oh crap! I don't have ring muscle ups yet and I'm going to look like such an idiot in front of my friends when I don't get one."
Instead I decided to embrace it as an opportunity to practice my muscle ups and if I got one, then awesome, but if not, then it's a skill that I need to continue to work on. And guess what, I didn't get one. And of course, I was a little disappointed, but it wasn't my day to get it and that's fine. What is important to acknowledge is that being fearful wouldn't change the outcome either, and actually just makes the situation something negative and probably not something you can learn from. Focusing on fear is like getting stuck in quicksand, whereas embracing the moment and identifying objective facts about challenges will propel you forward.
There are always going to be things in life that scare us. And it's ok to acknowledge them, as long as we don't let them rule our head. Ask yourself, is what I'm thinking productive? How are these thoughts going to help or hinder me? What do I have control over?
This life that we have, was meant to be LIVED. Not in fear, but for love, for joy, for meaning, for fulfillment. Taking control over fear in your life is no easy feat, but once you have mastered it, you will find that the world is anew with endless opportunities that are yours for the taking.
So bring on 18.4 - it is ours to take.