A few years ago I was talking to a young woman – one of my newer clients about lifting weights and she said, “I’ll never be able to do that”. And that very moment I had a flashback to myself when I first started CrossFit … I was in a gym in Reno, NV and I saw a young, strong, beautiful girl back squatting what I would now guess was about 125 lbs and I said, “I could never do that”. I remember thinking it looked amazingly heavy and I couldn’t even imagine what it took to be able to do that. I thought I was too old and I thought I was not the “kind” of person who could do something like that.
As I sat in what was now MY gym with my client remembering that moment, I realized that the weight I saw on that strong girl’s back on that day in Reno was now the weight I used to warm up … before getting heavy. I can’t explain how it happened because it happened so slowly. Day by day I became a tiny bit stronger. Day by day as I practiced and worked I gained tiny bits of confidence – strength of muscle and strength of mind. Over time those baby steps added up. I remember the first time I squatted 125 because that was my body weight and I thought that was pretty cool. I celebrated by doing a squat with my oldest daughter on my back. I celebrated regularly the tiny improvements, and boy was I excited for each tiny step!
But what’s funny is that you forget the LONG haul. You forget who you were in the beginning when you thought you couldn’t. It becomes a distant memory because THIS is the new normal. THIS is the GIRL who CAN.
The truth is, this has happened to you many many times throughout your life. You never thought you would understand math or have children or own your own business or get a divorce or recover from injury. It seemed monumental and impossible, yet here you are, living your new normal as if the previous normal never existed.
Now that we are here in the midst of this Covid-19 Quarantine we are in that beginning phase and we hear people saying, “I can’t Zoom, because I don’t know how to work Zoom. I can’t get myself to go workout because I don’t have the motivation. I keep going to the kitchen and eating crap because it’s right there to eat. I’m sleeping late and I haven’t showered and I haven’t worn pants in days because I just can’t make myself do it.” But the truth is we’ve already started taking the steps. Work is getting done from home and we are learning how to use Zoom. We have learned how to sanitize and disinfect and sometimes we even put our pants on. Baby steps.
Our lives may, in fact, be altered forever. Businesses are discovering that perhaps they don’t have to pay exorbitant rent prices if they can have their employees work from home. Zoom is much cheaper than rent! People are learning how to manage their schedules better, motivate themselves better and enjoy their families and loved ones more.
We are each becoming Someone Who CAN.
And someday when you look back upon this time, you might just be amazed at the life you lived before Quarantine.
