The Art of Giving Back

I will be the first to admit.  I do NOT enjoy the CrossFit open. 

Five weeks of brutal workouts, that make your body more sore than you even knew possible,  and push you to a point of absolute complete exhaustion both mentally and physically no matter what level you're at… sounds like fun, right? 

It’s five weeks that, going to bed Friday, I know my body won’t feel good again until maybe… Monday night(?!) It eats me upside, rattles my brain, and shakes my nerves. 

I also am well aware that at this point in CrossFit, I am in no shape to even come close to competing at Regionals. 

So, after people hear me say this I often get asked… “Then why are you doing it?”

Good question - it’s because of the art of giving back. 

Over the past 4 and a half years CrossFit has truly changed my life.  It has introduced me to new people, challenged me in ways I didn’t know possible, given me the skills to help others achieve goals, provided me a mental outlet, created an aspect of my life that constantly holds me accountable, and provided me a summer I thought I could only dream of, learning from some of the best people I have ever met.  If you really think about it, that’s a tremendous amount…

Take. Take. Take. 

The CrossFit open is the one time in the year that CrossFit HQ truly asks something of you.  Each day, I walk into the box because I WANT to.  Because I know the benefits and rewards that come with it.  Because I am TAKING the opportunities that CrossFit is providing.  However, the Open is the only time that CrossFit asks you to show up some day between Thursday evening and Monday evening and push yourself to the ultimate limit. 

For all that I take, this is the least I could give. 

So I started to consider this in other aspects of my life and came to this simple realization.  For the things we love and find fulfillment in,  perhaps they will be even more fulfilling if we gave back to them.  Even if it is once a year, or the smallest act,  it is still appreciating our love in a different light. 

Yes, for the next five weeks I will take part in 5 brutal workouts, I will probably lose sleep the night before or shed a tear,  maybe I’ll even set some new PR’s… but this is just my simple way of saying thank you to something I love and that has impacted my life so much.

What will you give back to what you love? 

An Equal Trade

“I can’t decide what color to color this circle.”

I recently was sitting at Starbucks, on the verge of pulling my hair out looking for jobs, thinking about my last semester of college, and being overwhelmed by various “adult life” things.  As I looked to my left, I saw a little girl, maybe 5 years old, with a Finding Nemo backpack.  She looked at me “I like your backpack”, I said.  She then sighed and faced me saying “I don’t know what color to color my circle” as she pointed to a coloring sheet in front of her and handed me a box of Crayola colored pencils.  I immediately had a huge smile on my face, while hers was still full of stress.

She is five with the stresses of coloring her coloring sheet. I am twenty-one with the stresses of the last semester of college. Different stresses, but all the same.  

Consider this…  We have two glasses of water, both being completely full.  One glass is 12 ounces, the other is 24 ounces.  Just because one glass is smaller, does that mean it isn’t full? No. One may be larger, however we would say both are full.  

PERSPECTIVE – it’s an amazing thing.

Life is made up of these highs, lows, anxieties, stresses, and turns. However, in the grand scheme of things we are all human and each of us have our own. Each being just as important – similar to the glasses both being full.    

Now, I am not entirely sure if this little girl noticed I was anxious and thought she would turn my day around or if she needed someone to confide in her problems with however she was the inspiration for this blog and she was the smile on my face that day.

How come when we are stressed or anxious, about anything, we tend to turn off from the world.  We are short with the waitress or barista, we don’t hold the door for the person behind us, we rush the cashier or even find every little thing we can knit pick about something we don’t like at the moment.

There is a quote out there that states “Be kind, for everyone is fighting a battle”. 

I’m not sure it gets truer than that. We’re all battling something but perhaps sometimes we forget. We get so wrapped up in our situation that we become blind to the rest of the world.  Our stresses, burdens, and situations create this “the world revolves around me” or “I’m going to shut off from the world, because I can’t deal with this right now” attitude.  However, maybe this perspective and attitude deserves to be shifted to looking at the world around us and seeing it as “How can the environment around me and I work together to create something better”. 

That little girl and I could have completely ignored each other, shut off from the world around us, and all would have been fine.  Instead, we confided in each other and in the end it created something even greater.  I gave her a color for her circle, and she gave me a smile with a new prospective. An equal trade. 

Allow your prospective to shift – it may lead to something better than you could have ever imagined.