Little Thoughts For A Thursday
Sunday musings (thinking about Crossfit)…
1) “Every aspiring clown has big shoes to fill.” -Steve Rushin. Whoa. Think about that. Not only is that one of the best sentences–almost poetry–ever written, but it evokes literally volumes of imagery and text.
I’ll be pondering that all day.
2) For whom do you play your music? Whatever it is you do, whatever it is you have to offer, it’s really no different from the street corner musician, is it? You may be part of a little band of musicians, but let’s just say it’s your music for the moment. For whom do you play and why?
Do you play for an audience of passersby, each there but for a moment, only to hear the smallest dose of what it is you have to sing? If you’re to get a coin in your case you’d best be at the top of your game for that moment, and you’d best be playing your very tip top stuff. Indeed, you are likely to play a very limited repertoire in that scenario, eh? Kind of like the salesperson in a big commercial gym, armed with a stress-tested script with little opportunity to ad lib, but capable of successfully performing that script better than others and thereby achieving a measure of success. Some coinage.
Or do you rather play for a much smaller audience, one that lingers to hear the greater range of your catalog? The person who represents that tiny percentage of aficionados who not only UNDERSTAND your music, but have actually been trying find it, whether they knew that or not. This kind of music can be kinda messy, an experiment in expression, and it may not prompt all that many people to pause at your corner as they stroll through the iTunes of their lives. Indeed, even those who DO pause may find your music too difficult, too much of a challenge, too long in the ‘sinking in’ to appreciate. You get excited to have an audience only to be brought down when they walk on.
This sounds a bit more like Crossfit. The music of Crossfit.
(N.B. I read something that mentioned the metaphor here; sadly, I cannot remember where in order to give attribution.)
3) Have you had those days when you trudge into the gym, the Box, with little to no desire to be there? Beaten down and on the verge of defeat, you simply show up, punch in, go through the motions, punch out. Had some of those? Yah…me, too. It happens elsewhere in your life, too, in other places and at other times when you don’t really ‘have to’ be there, doesn’t it?
Well then, why did you show up?
There’s a continuum, I think, along a line that includes discipline, motivation, and habit. It might be a circle or a feedback loop–I’m not sure yet. The end result is something like consistency. Was it some sort of discipline that prompted you to go to the gym and do that workout when you didn’t really have any too much desire to be there? Some sort of force of will, a conscious imposition of rational to overpower emotion? Or were you simply motivated by some end-goal long before chosen, a milepost toward which you travel no matter what because the destination is so compelling? Subtle, I know, and I confess that the subtle difference between discipline and motivation escapes my vocabulary at this stage.
What I DO understand, though, is the concept of habit, and habit formation, and the consistency that arises from positive habits. You know, just like the Crossfit prescription of Form before Consistency before Intensity. Whether it’s the PULL of motivation to arrive at some wonderful destination, or the PUSH of discipline driving you there, it is the creation of habit, of consistency, that ultimately gets the job done.
Success is about building those habits, the ones that produce good outcomes. You went to the gym that day because going to the Box at that time is the habit you’ve developed; punching that clock on that day provides the consistency that will bring a giant forward leap on the next day when you show up with a spring in your step and fire in your belly. Any kind of habit that consistently moves you forward along a road to success is a habit worth creating. For example, I’m in the habit of assuming that every day in the office is gonna be a good day, unless it’s a great day, and I’ve noticed that this kind of habit is contagious.
Whether pushed by discipline or pulled by motivation, give yourself permission to create habits that move you.
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2011 at 8:37 am and is filed under Crossfit, Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.