You Can’t Hate Yourself Into Doing Anything Positive
I whined a LOT when I first started working out.
Sure it was hard, but it wasn’t unmanageable (clearly). I think I thought that people connected more with me through complaining. I “hated” running (even just cardio in general), wallballs, thrusters, burpees, box jumps…and the list went on. Essentially I hated anything that pushed me out of my comfort zone and just plain made me feel uncomfortable. I wore my love for heavy lifting like a badge of honor but in reality I was just doing myself a disservice.
The complaining and saying how much I disliked certain movements had become a protective shield for me. It was also holding me back from reaching any real progress! I’ve said it before, if you’re always negative about something, your mind will overcome any potential you had to do anything positive – tell yourself you can’t and you won’t.
So I made the decision to stop being such a whiner and start trying to be better at things that made me uncomfortable. I didn’t tackle the entire list at once, nne year I just tried to move faster and do bigger sets of wallballs and thrusters. The next year it was running and burpees and so on. And while I’m not the best that there is at those movements, I’m at least not embarrassed with my effort in doing them now.
When the Assault Bike made it’s introduction into CrossFit a few years back, past-Ashlyn definitely would have jumped aboard the complain train on that one. But while so many others were out there hating on it,
I told myself how strong my legs are and how I could really rip on it. I EMBRACED the suck! I like to think it’s the piece of cardio I’m the best at now 🤷♀️
The point is, no matter what it is in life that you throw shade at, you will never reach your full potential with it. Negativity breeds negativity and until we change our mindset, we’ll never reap any benefits from it whether it’s fitness, weight loss, work.. literally anything.
– Ash