BRIGHT SPOTS FRIDAY!

My Bright Spot this week is you guys. Bear with me, I’m not going cliche on you. We say it and hear it a lot…on these posts, in our surveys, when talking to new members. The best part about our gym is the community. I brush it off on occasion because doesn’t every CrossFit gym say the same thing? Well they might, but they’re wrong. Sometimes I say it out of habit, “You guys are my family.” But other times it’s there, inside me, where it matters the most. And I feel myself leaning into you guys almost by accident. I’ve been sharing some things recently that I’ve read or listened to. Here’s the one that has hit me this week. It’s longer than what I normally post, but it’s powerful if you absorb the words…

“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open…It means adopting the burden of self-conscious vulnerability, and accepting the end of the unconscious paradise of childhood, where finitude and mortality are only dimly comprehended. It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality.

So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them – at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. Encourage the seratonin to flow plentifully through the neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.

People, including yourself, will start to assume that you are competent and able…Emboldened by the positive responses you are now receiving, you will begin to be less anxious. You will then find it easier to pay attention to the subtle social cues that people exchange when they are communicating. Your conversations will flow better, with fewer awkward pauses. This will make you more likely to meet people, interact with them, and impress them. Doing so will not only genuinely increase the probability that good things will happen to you – it will also make those good things feel better when they do happen.

Thus strengthened and emboldened, you may choose to embrace Being, and work for its furtherance and improvement. Thus strengthened, you may be able to stand, even during the illness of a loved one, even during the death of a parent, and allow others to find strength alongside you when they would otherwise be overwhelmed with despair. Thus emboldened, you will embark on the voyage of your life, let your light shine, so to speak, on the heavenly hill, and pursue your rightful destiny. Then the meaning of your life may be sufficient to keep the corrupting influence of mortal despair at bay.

“Stand up straight, with your shoulders back.”

You may not be aware of our Mission Statement at Nevermore…”To build human connections through fitness.” The people we have met, and continue to meet, have helped us more than you know. You are all surrounded by amazing folks every time you come to the gym. If you are not embracing and fostering those relationships you are missing out on the best of Nevermore.

Today I am grateful that those connections for me are real, and impactful.

What is your Bright Spot this week?!