Beat Somebody

When you’re in the gym, doing the workouts that we do, you will hear someone yell at some point “BEAT SOMEBODY” and I am sure that it motivates everyone in a different way… to me, it makes me push harder, when every fiber in me is yelling, screaming, aching to stop what I am doing, I am able to look at the person next to me and try to move faster.

Now, we have some real animals at CrossFit Costa Mesa and I am working towards being one of them. When I’m working out next to one of these people and someone yells out “beat somebody” and all I have in my peripheral vision is Sarah, Erica, Joe, Chad, Bobbie, Frank the list goes on and on and I KNOW that they are going to beat me, that’s when its hard to shut down those inner voices that start whispering that there is no way that I am going to beat one of those people, hell, I can barley even pace them… it takes all of my strength to focus on what I am doing and finish the wod… and lately I’ve been finishing in the back of the pack.

This is when the excuses start to subsidize in my brain… “That’s a shitty time Chaz, wow, you could have done better.” “Did you really push yourself, really?” “Yeah, I should have slept more” “ I didn’t really eat enough today” And I can go on and on, again… but I am sure that everyone has a little bit of this going on for them self.

I started to think after Saturdays wod in which I finished at way later than I should have, how in the world am I going to beat somebody if I keep beating myself before I even set foot into the gym or if I am letting my negative thoughts get the best of me? I’m not… I know that I have it in me to be just as amazing as all of the athletes that I have chosen to surround myself with, if I would only give myself the chance to be and stop coming up with bullshit excuses on why I didn’t do as well as I probably should have.

Here are my excuses as of late, and I am going to post them in an effort to let them go out of my brain and recognize that they are big enough problems for me in this moment, but not big enough to hold me back from reaching my potential. I am going through a lot in my life right now as I am loosing my job in a month with no new job lined up, I have absolutely no savings to get me through and no idea what I am going to do if I can’t find a job asap, my best friend has graciously let me move into her living room with my cats, I do not eat enough, and I know that, and I blame it on stress… that last one is the biggest bullshit excuse that I let get to me every day… When I started CrossFit I had endless excuses but I didn’t really realize it because in all honesty I didn’t know what it took to head down the road that I wanted to. I cannot say that now, I know that I need to eat good nutritious whole food, sleep at least 8 hours and get good recovery time in. I cannot say that I am honestly doing any of those things 100% right now.

Now, with that said, there really is no wonder why I am finishing last and why I have such a negative attitude in my head. I am defeating myself before I even have the opportunity to compete with the people that I want to.

Wow.

Now, what am I going to do about it? I have been thinking about that since Saturday, and it’s a hard thing to own up to the fact that I am complaining about my results, but am the only reason that they are the way that they are. As I have said before, it’s my life, if I don’t like something then I better change it.

I plan on setting the alarm in my phone to go off every 3 hours so that I am eating when I am suppose to. I am NOT going to drink beer with my boyfriend 3 or 4 nights a week. I am going to sleep for at least 8 hours, even if it means not doing something that I would really like to. I am going to actively and aggressively peruse a new job and hold onto positive thoughts that the right job will surface in enough time for me to sustain my livelihood. I will move out of my friends living room. I will take care of myself in a way that I know I deserve and need to in order to achieve the things that I know that I want.
I am sharing these things with everyone because now its not just an internal battle of me lying and convincing myself of bullshit, its out there for the world, for everyone to ask me about if they’d like and to hold me accountable if they so choose. I think that having this out there will help me hold myself accountable because there is absolutely no reason to come up with excuses on why I’m not following through on any of this.

My friend Tommy, who got me into CrossFit is always telling me “the easy way is rarely the right way and the right way is rarely easy” I think that perfectly sums up my every day battle as of late. I know what the right way is, I know what the right thing is, I just want so badly for it to be easy, but it isn’t.

I will start doing what I know is right, I will STOP making excuses, I will beat somebody.