The mantra at my CrossFit gym is “constantly pursue progress.” It’s a great sentiment. Another is “trust the process.” Those both seem simple enough, but if change were easy, everyone would do it.
I know change isn’t easy, in any part of your life. The most obvious example to start with is my own personal fitness (thanks in large part to my CrossFit gym! Love you 8 mile!). I am currently sitting in a chair, and everything is sore. My abs are sore. My shoulders are sore. My wrists are sore. My ass is sore. Walking up and down the three flights of stairs to my office at work is a torturous reminder of the workout I did yesterday (or maybe even the day before). But I DID that workout. And the one before. And the one before that. And I haven’t lost a single pound, which is something that would be nice. But I have had so many people come up to me and tell me that I look skinny in the last few months. I have had bar customers ask me what I do to get such nice-looking arms, or so much booty. And I feel like a total badass. When I started CrossFit in March, I was so winded during workouts I could barely function. I finished dead last often. I was sore for days. And you know what? I’m still winded as HELL during workouts. I’m still sore for at LEAST one day after, but usually more. But I don’t finish last as often, and I can throw around a lot more weight, and do a lot more movements than I could when I started. I may not have lost any weight, but the number on the scale doesn’t feel so important when the compliments start rolling in and I just feel so DAMN GOOD. Is it hard to walk into the gym three days a week knowing I’m going to get my ass handed to me by some insane workout the owner Nick concocted to torture us all in his garage? Hell yes. Nobody likes to feel winded or beat down by what their body isn’t yet ready to accomplish. But I also love walking in and knowing I have a challenge in front of me, and that it’s going to push the boundary between what I “can’t” do (yet) and what I can do just a little further in the “can do” direction. And I have a great community to lean on while I’m sweating, which helps a lot. But if it was easy, everyone would run a six minute mile and have six pack abs.
Financial change isn’t easy either. Seth and I have about a five year financial plan worked out. I won’t go into the details, but a huge chunk of it is paying off all of our debt, especially our student loans. Everyone wants to rid themselves of debt. No one walks around thinking, “Yay, I owe a bunch of different banks a ton of money!” Debt is stressful and it limits what you can do with your life in a lot of ways. So we’re committed to getting rid of it. Is it easy? Of course not. I’d much rather not have the annoyance of a budget that limits what I can spend. I would love to online shop with vigor and eat out most nights because it’s easy and it’s fun. I’d love to be headed to Paris in May or St. Thomas for Christmas, but if budgeting to pay down debt was fun, everyone would be debt free. Do we have moments of weakness? Of course. Just the other day, Seth texted me during his lunch break and said he wasn’t sure he could keep going the way we are. That he married me to be WITH me and we never get to see each other because all we do is work and that we’re going to be killing ourselves for another 3 years, and is it really WORTH all of this? Luckily, in marriage you are supposed to be there for your partner to lean on, and I had just been thinking “Only 2-3 more years of this and we’ll have so many more options!” Does it suck that I work three jobs, 80 hours a week, and I only see my husband on weekends and when we’re asleep? You fucking bet it does. I love him to pieces and miss the days we were in college and took regular mid-afternoon naps together. Is it frustrating to be working jobs we don’t necessarily like all that much to get ahead? More than I can describe. But is a finite amount of misery worth the rest of our lives together with less financial worry and infinitely more freedom? Of course. Our dream jobs don’t necessarily come with fatass paychecks. So we’re stacking cash now to make sure we get to do what we love in a few years’ time, and most importantly, we’re making sure we’ll have much more free time to spend together in the future.
So whatever it is you’re working on, whatever goals you have in mind for yourself, remember: change comes with growing pains. It’s never easy. But as Nick likes to say, if you have “an unrelenting commitment to be consistent over the long term,” you will succeed. And you can trust him because he’s the guy who actually runs a six minute mile and has six pack abs.
What goals are you working on? Share with us!