Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Day 100: "You Matter"



Below is a blog post in 2010 written by Alec Hanson, Founder/Owner of CrossFit Costa Mesa. Today, due to the greater popularity of CrossFit, anyone with a Level 1 certification can open up a CrossFit affiliate and use the name of CrossFit to build a business even though that person does not have the right skill set or experience. This was not the case with CrossFit over 5 years ago. Over 5 years ago CrossFit was not known by hardly anyone in the general public. To be able to start a CrossFit gym in ones garage and build it up to a gym like CrossFit Costa Mesa takes a good business person, good trainer, and a good person. I seriously doubt that most of these popup CrossFit gyms in the past 1 year would be able to survive if they tried to do so 5 years ago because they cannot hide behind a good name such as CrossFit as they can today. Anyway, I always like to read the blogs of people that were in the game when no one else knew what the game was because those people are a different breed than the others that just want to tap into a new business. Those other people don't live CrossFit...Alec is a person that does in fact Live and Love CrossFit. With that said here is the post from Alec's Blog a few years ago:
You matter.  Period.  Somewhere along the lines of our lives we believe we don’t, at least not “that” much anyway.
Some of us have parents who tell us we matter, some are not so lucky.  But shortly, we learn we are only as valuable as what we can accomplish.  School tells us we matter if we get the best grades.  Sports tell us we matter if we can beat the other guy.  Our friends and peers tell us we matter if we can somehow be cooler than everyone else.
And we always fall short, don’t we?  There is always someone smarter, someone more athletic, and someone just cooler than all of us.  And in this wild ride of becoming who we are today, we forget that we matter.  We try our best to recreate our own importance; through our efforts and tribulations we strive to hear from others the validation that we have worth, that we are valuable and important, that we matter.
We stack rank ourselves against everyone on a hierarchical ladder we make up based on a value system of intrinsic worth that we piecemeal together from various life experiences, of which we define through other paradigms and life experiences, many of which we simply witness and somehow believe to be God’s given truth.
Basically, it’s all made up shit we’ve come to believe, accept, and allow to run our lives.  It’s a worldview we live our lives by, controlled absolutely by paradigms we don’t even know are controlling us.
Well, in all that bleakness and confusion surrounding our “real” selves, there is a ray of hope.  There is a way to begin to unearth and behold your intrinsic value.  It will take work, but it will be worth it.
During your next CrossFit workout, I want you to go deep.  I want you to pour out yourself and take your mind and body to the point where  the only sound is the thumping of your rapid heartbeat and the roar of your burning lungs.  That place where the voices of doubt, self-loathing and fear, begin to get stripped back and drowned out and that small whisper of your true self can be heard.  I want you to go there and find your self again.
And in that moment, in that space of pain and exhaustion, you will find that you are worth the pain.  You will see that you are worth going through that pain and that on the other side, you are worthy and capable of achieving amazing things.  You may even PR the workout, or not.  It doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that through that blackness you get to rediscover that you are worth it.  You are worth the pain to become the person you are destined to be.  You get to remember that you have a burning sun inside your body and mind, an unlimited power built inside you screaming for release.
You are worth more than a mediocre life with mediocre results.  You are worth more than a paycheck, a balance sheet, or someone else’s opinion.  You are worth the pain.
It’s my hope for you that you will have the chance to meet that person the next time you CrossFit.  The “real” you.  The “you” that is filled with an indomitable will and ability, the “you” that can take on anything, and the “you” that is worth all the success, all the passion, and all the love this life has to offer.
It’s all yours and it’s all possible with just one little dive into the heart of pain.

Go here to visit Alec's Personal Blog