Own It
Ownership – the act, state or right of possessing something.
When we think about ownership we typically think of tangible objects or things in our physical world. Now what about the stuff we can’t wrap our arms around like emotions, thoughts, biases or even fitness. For the sake of this piece let’s stick to fitness, which is still a nebulous, biased ever changing idea. One thing CrossFit has done pretty well is that it has created a standardized measure of fitness, not perfect but pretty freakin good. This is one of the reasons I fell in love with CrossFit in the first place – it provided a simple, clear representation of my fitness level. I would love to say that the CrossFit prescription of “constantly varied functional movement performed at high intensity†was the reason I continued to improve my fitness but if I’m being honest with myself the turning point came when I shifted my mindset and began to own my part of the process.
The turning point came when I realized that in order for CrossFit to work for me the way it had for so many others I had control over 1 thing: the ownership of how, or if, my actions aligned with my goals. Before beginning any training program, you should have a clear vision on what you want to achieve.  That’s not to say it won’t change over time but you need to know where you want to go. Once you have that it simplifies your actions (or at least in theory it does). I heard from a coach one time that there are no neutral decisions, only decisions that take you closer or farther from your goals. The beauty of that statement is its simplicity, so elegantly simple that most people don’t grasp how powerful it is. Once you own the fact that each of your daily decisions either take you closer or farther from your goals you can begin to own your fitness and stop blaming other people for results that you don’t like.
There are so many factors that contribute to your fitness that it would be impossible to address them all here. Understand this, your sleep, nutrition, stress levels, interpersonal relationships, workouts, and many other things contribute and can positively or negatively affect it and should be considered. So don’t immediately place blame or look for excuses as to why you’re not where you want to be because it most likely lies in the daily decisions in your life that you’re not owning. Own the fact that you are in control, that you dictate your place in this universe not your coach, your significant other, your boss, etc. It’s not your jobs fault, your gyms fault, or your family’s fault because I can show you plenty of people who are making it happen with worse circumstances. The difference is ownership and once you own that the sky is the limit.