Author Archive
Regret vs. Remorse
It’s election time, the Regular Season, and Award Show Season, all at the same time. Everybody wants the air to be cleared, to have a clean slate as it were. It’s rather amazing how many apologies to which we’ve been subjected lately, eh? Famous athletes, movie and rock stars, politicians, all proffering “heartfelt” apologies for some indiscretion or another. But are they sorry? Sorry for what they have done? Or is it something more…I dunno…less? Regret, perhaps.
There’s quite a gulf between regret and true remorse. Remorse is a deep emotional response that touches on shame. Regret, not so much. Regret is a more superficial emotion, a sadness or maybe a disappointment, more closely attached to rational self-interest whereas remorse is more akin to altruism. Remorse is more outwardly projected: I’m sorry for the effect on the OTHER. Regret much more inward, more centered on self. Think about the last few very public “apologies” you’ve heard or seen recently. Any true remorse?
How does one apply this difference in every day life, other than as a determinant in how we feel about the news we read? Well, regret lends itself to strategy and tactics, a certain calculus or cost/benefit analysis applied to the road ahead, or applied to the fall-out of the road behind. Rational.
Remorse on the other hand seems to me to be purely reactive. Not amenable to planning because whatever we’ve done to prompt true remorse, to be truly sorry, to feel ashamed, is nothing one would ever make a rational choice to do. We FEEL sorry, we don’t think it. We feel the pain of the other and we feel truly sorry for our part in it.
And there, my friends, is where the line between regret and remorse lies. That outward extension of ourselves toward the other, so easy (I think) to see it when it’s real, and so obvious when it’s not. Just as regret could be seen as a form of rational self-interest (I’m sorry I got caught), we might think of remorse as emotional altruism (I’m sorry I’ve let you down).
To remember our remorse for actions in the past is to remind ourselves of the presence of others and our effect on them as we act now.
The Highlight Reel
Those of us who use CrossFit as our training program do so in order to be better at life in general. Real life in many ways is more like the CrossFit Games than it is like CrossFit training. In the Games we have winners and non-winners; in the Box we have you vs. you. We are trained it seems from early in life to not only compare ourselves with others, but to allow ourselves to be compared BY others. In this we somehow allow the creation of a zero-sum game of our own sense of self, and we allow the scores to be kept by others as well as ourselves.
Kinda like all those singing contests now on TV; the judges are supposed to be judging only the contestant singing at the moment, the contestant to be focused only on herself and the judges. Invariably though, both judges and judged compare the contestant with others, for this is an openly zero-sum game. Someone will only win because everyone else lost.
I’m more than OK with this for the Games, and I’m quite fine with this for all of those silly contests (which I admit are a guilty pleasure Chez bingo). There is a real problem, however, if we allow this kind of process, this kind of judging, to be a metric for how we view ourselves. We have an unavoidable frame of reference bias that threatens even the healthiest among us when we use these external controls to judge our internal outcomes.
Why? We tend to compare our “behind the scenes” moments, our rehearsals and our trial runs, with everyone else’s “highlight reels.” We are not usually privy to someone else’s dry runs, the failed efforts that eventually culminate in the masterpiece before us. We cannot forget our own struggles, the efforts we ourselves have made out of the limelight, and we all too often use these memories as the “compare to” when ourselves evaluate ourselves against others.
I’m reminded of a story that Grambingo tells often and well. I am one of 4. We were pretty successful youngsters, at least in the eyes of the community and at least by the standards then in place by which we (and by extension Gram and Grampbingo) were measured. My Mom would listen as fellow parents bemoaned this or that child-rearing difficulty, often followed by “oh Anne Lee, you wouldn’t know anything about this; your kids are all [whatever].” Grambingo would politely nod and smile, all the while thinking “oh boy…if you only knew!”
You see, Grambingo remembered all of the hard work, the heartaches when her kids disappointed and the battles fought so that they, the kids, might succeed. The other parents were comparing their “behind the scenes” with Grambingo’s “highlight reel”, but she knew better, she couldn’t help but remember her own “work in the gym” so to speak.
What’s the ultimate lesson here? We all compare, and we are all compared. It would be simply lovely if life were a non-zero sum game but alas, ’tis not. The lesson is as simple as making sure that you are always comparing things that are alike. Your rehearsals with someone else’s. Their highlight reel with yours.
When you are comparing apples to apples you must be sure that you are either looking at the fruit itself, or recalling the labor required to fill the basket.
The Highlight Reel: Sunday musings 9/16/12
Sunday musings…
1) Floss. Floss and then brush, or brush and then floss?
It’s the new “over or under” for a new century.
2) Flossing. Traditional PT, rest, injections? All ineffective, ultimately. Several sessions with a Voodoo Floss band sandwiching a trip to Savannah? No pain.
Do the Voodoo.
3) Epic. “There are decades where nothing happens; there are weeks where decades happen.” –Lenin
Do you have that same, eerie sense that one of those weeks is nigh?
4) 35. It seems that most Nobel Laureates make their signature discoveries before the age of 35. They may not get the word out right away, and given the average age of Nobel Laureates they certainly don’t receive recognition for those discoveries until years or decades later. Some of our non-Laureated geniuses certainly came up with their stuff pre-35 for sure. See Gates, Bill et al.
Doing a little math with a calendar in front of me it looks like a certain guy we know, a trainer with a little math in his educational background, came up with an idea at age 35 that has turned out to be pretty important in the fitness world.
A little thing called CrossFit.
5) Reel. Real life in many ways is more like the CrossFit Games than it is like CrossFit training. In the Games we have winners and non-winners; in the Box we have you vs. you. We are trained it seems from early in life to not only compare ourselves with others, but to allow ourselves to be compared BY others. In this we somehow allow the creation of a zero-sum game of our own sense of self, and we allow the scores to be kept by others as well as ourselves.
Kinda like all those singing contests now on TV; the judges are supposed to be judging only the contestant singing at the moment, the contestant to be focused only on herself and the judges. Invariably though, both judges and judged compare the contestant with others, for this is an openly zero-sum game. Someone will only win because everyone else lost.
I’m more than OK with this for the Games, and I’m quite fine with this for all of those silly contests (which I admit are a guilty pleasure Chez bingo). There is a real problem, however, if we allow this kind of process, this kind of judging, to be a metric for how we view ourselves. We have an unavoidable frame of reference bias that threatens even the healthiest among us when we use these external controls to judge our internal outcomes.
Why? We tend to compare our “behind the scenes” moments, our rehearsals and our trial runs, with everyone else’s “highlight reels.” We are not usually privy to someone else’s dry runs, the failed efforts that eventually culminate in the masterpiece before us. We cannot forget our own struggles, the efforts we ourselves have made out of the limelight, and we all too often use these memories as the “compare to” when ourselves evaluate ourselves against others.
I’m reminded of a story that Grambingo tells often and well. I am one of 4. We were pretty successful youngsters, at least in the eyes of the community and at least by the standards then in place by which we (and by extension Gram and Grampbingo) were measured. My Mom would listen as fellow parents bemoaned this or that child-rearing difficulty, often followed by “oh Anne Lee, you wouldn’t know anything about this; your kids are all [whatever].” Grambingo would politely nod and smile, all the while thinking “oh boy…if you only knew!”
You see, Grambingo remembered all of the hard work, the heartaches when her kids disappointed and the battles fought so that they, the kids, might succeed. The other parents were comparing their “behind the scenes” with Grambingo’s “highlight reel”, but she knew better, she couldn’t help but remember her own “work in the gym” so to speak.
What’s the ultimate lesson here? We all compare, and we are all compared. It would be simply lovely if life were a non-zero sum game but alas, ’tis not. The lesson is as simple as making sure that you are always comparing things that are alike. Your rehearsals with someone else’s. Their highlight reel with yours.
When you are comparing apples to apples you must be sure that you are either looking at the fruit itself, or recalling the labor required to fill the basket.
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at September 16, 2012 6:20 AM
Sunday musings 9/9/12 (Anniversary Addition)
Sunday musings…
1) Jobs. Need more. ‘Nuff said.
2) Job. “The best job is the one you don’t need. That way you have permission to do what needs to be done. You can always do the right thing.” Sheri Lansing (?)
3) Life. “We’ve added years to life, not life to years.” George Carlin.
My bid is that those of us who are doing CrossFit add quality years to our lives. We can expect our senescence to be much freer of decrepitude than that of our predecessors, which will allow us to spend less time simply checking the required boxes of our days.
We are also adding a communal life to our years, at least those of us who are members of an Affiliate gym or who engage the online CrossFit community. I’ve had more substantive conversations about more varied topics with the people I’ve met in the CrossFit community than I have in my medical community. We engage one another. We join together in our WOD’s, join together in living.
We cram just as much life into every time domain as we do work in our WOD.
4) Anniversary I. We did “Haddie”, the memorial WOD for our beloved pet that left us this time last year. The WOD included Burpee PU and runs; Haddie had a stroke in her spine and for the last two years of her life would continually fall while running, only to pick herself up and keep going. Tough chick.
Pets, dogs in particular, teach us some valuable lessons. We learn responsibility because they depend on us for the essentials of life. Every day we see what unconditional love looks like when we are smothered in puppy love upon awakening. Heck, we get it when we return from a 90 second errand.
And we learn how to say goodbye. Our pets teach us that life is finite. Our love cannot change that, nor can theirs. Before we say goodbye to our people we typically have to say goodbye to one of our dogs. It’s a lousy, ouchy lesson; it’s a measure of their love for us that they typically handle it so much better than us. We are left with memories, and even here our dog teaches us about remembering our loved and lost.
Who, after all, really remembers anything truly bad about their dog?
5) Anniversary II. Mrs. bingo and I just celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary. My “Better 95%” and I have been together 30 years in all. Pretty cool. Actually, VERY cool. One of my CrossFit buddies noted that my ROI on that 5% I contribute is pretty huge!
Marriage is hard work, and given the atmosphere around here right now it’s probably not very cool for me to offer any advice, so I’ll just channel the grace offered to me on this occasion by another CrossFitter. Robin hoped that “[our] wedding day was the day that we loved each other least.” If CrossFit is seeking to become a better you tomorrow than the you of yesterday through the work you’ve done today, perhaps we can say this about marriage:
Seek to have more love tomorrow than you did yesterday by loving more than you ever thought possible today.
I’ll see you next week…
Secular Tailwind
“Well Hannah, we really think ABC, Inc. is poised for a big uptick. We see them riding a strong secular tailwind in the 3rd quarter with earnings to follow”
Excuse me? “Secular tailwind?” Seriously, WTF is a secular tailwind? Does the presence of a secular tailwind mean that there must be a secular headwind hiding out there somewhere? And how about the “secular” part of this weather front? Secular always seems to be accompanied by sectarian. You know, like Sunni’s and Shiites. The yin to someone’s yang. Heathens and infidels on one side, true believers on the other. If a “secular tailwind” is good, how bad is a “sectarian headwind”?!
For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, I not only play a doctor on TV, I also play one in real life. We doctors have been vilified for using impenetrable language to make ourselves look oh so very smart, all the while confusing the heck out of our patients and making them feel unintelligent. Small and embarrassed. Kinda like when you ask the wine steward for a suggestion and you just know… you KNOW… everything he said about the wine was pure nonsense, and your wallet’s about to get violated. Heck, at least we doctors had the decency to use opaque phrases in a different language. We really sounded pretty cool and very smart when we said everything in Latin or Ancient Greek.
Not the good folks in finance, though. The don’t even really SAY anything. They’re just making S__T up. “Secular Tailwind.” Seriously, how do they say stuff like that and keep a straight face? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that everyone who watches or listens to those financial shows is doing so by choice; unlike a patient in his doctor’s office who has some kind of illness to be sorted out, the people watching CNBC or MSNBC are voluntarily tuning into Cramer and his buddies. Not a soul in that audience needs to be listening. Their reward is to be insulted.
It turns out that the relative “literacy” rate for medical information is roughly akin to the vocabulary of an eighth grader. In other words, if I choose to use words or phrases that would not register with the average eighth grader a substantial percentage of my patients will not understand what I am trying to get across. Real research has been done on this stuff and reasonably so; it’s important to understand what your doctor is trying to tell you. Many of us in medicine really do get this, and really do try to neither speak above or speak “down to” our patients. Gone are the days of multisyllabic jargon sandwiched between words from a dead language.
Imagine if that wasn’t the case. Even worse, imagine what it would be like if physicians and other caregivers acted like all those financial talking heads and not only tried to confuse you but just blatantly made crap up while doing so. “Well Mrs. Jones, I’m afraid there’s a involitional reservoir of hard fluid residing in the retrosplenic attic which appears to have suspended all glomerular transport underneath. There are a number of ways it could have gotten there, and of course there’s no guarantee that we are right, but we are pretty sure it was blown there by a Secular Tailwind.”
Don’t worry, though. We’ll just start a little IV Novena…
Panera Bread Cares (A Random Thoughtlet)
While driving to work this morning I had NPR on the radio as usual. The Business News segment was featuring the Panera Bread company and its “Panera Bread Cares” program. Briefly, Panera has converted about a dozen of its formerly for-profit stores into non-profits owned by the Panera Foundation. There are no prices in these stores, only “suggested donations.” Approximately 20% of patrons donate more than the suggested amount, 60% pay as if it is regular price, and the rest pay little or nothing.
Needless to say, the folks from Panera were more than a little self-congratulatory about this enterprise, and I think they have some reason to be so. Their stated goal is to raise awareness of “middle-class food anxiety”, not so much to provide food to the poor or the homeless. I imagine that the paying customers might be a little less prone to continue patronizing a store which all of a sudden started to be populated by the various and sundry homeless, especially those who look the part. Still, I do think this is an interesting experiment along the lines of Radiohead and music but for charity rather than as a business model.
Here’s the rub: a Professor Somebody from someplace opined that it is “exceedingly rare” that a business has a charitable venture that is indistinguishable from its for-profit core business. I wish I remembered the guys name. He intimated that it might actually be unique, not seen in any other business. Right. About that. This is the self-congratulatory part that rankles. Unique, as in only one, like never before seen?
Hardly.
How about the countless private doctors’ offices and clinics that have been seeing and treating patients for little or no payment, a phenomenon that began decades ago and continues today? Have we become so jaded about doctors and healthcare that an economics or business professor can state, presumably with a straight face, that a company offering to give away its core product in its usual setting is unique and almost unprecedented?
Come on now.
I’m reminded of a story one of my older partners used to tell. Dr. Scheie, namesake of the Scheie Eye Institute at Penn in Philadelphia, was a pioneer in cataract surgery. Every one of his patients had the same experience in the operating room itself, and Dr. Scheie personally did every single surgery; no one was denied surgery by the great Scheie, regardless of their ability to pay. Where they spent the next several nights (this was in the days of sand bags and immobilization) was determined by what, if anything, they did pay. Regular patients, those who paid the “recommended donation”, were the majority of the patients and they stayed in semi-private or double rooms. Those less well off who paid little or nothing were tended to in a dormitory like ward. There were two private rooms reserved for those who were of more substantial means. When asked what surgery would cost if one were to spend the night in a private room Dr. Scheie would reply: “you should pay what you feel you should.” The eye clinic never lost money.
I think the idea and philosophy behind the “Panera Bread Cares” is pretty cool, but let’s be real about both the phenomenon and the real rationale underlying these “pay what you can/want” stores. Panera is getting enormous publicity and goodwill from a trivial number of store conversions. It is getting great feedback and outsized credit for something that is so common in medicine that business professors seemingly forget that and get on NPR and say stuff like Panera Bread Cares is so rare that it might be a one-off. They are giving away bread bowls, for Heaven’s sake.
Doctors have been giving away something much more valuable to those who can’t pay every day for decades.
Sunday musings 9/2/12 (From Savannah)
Sunday musings…
1) Savannah. Cool town ya got here.
2) Volume. Heard on the street last night:”Ya, but how many is that in ‘dog beers’?”
3) Bogart. “The problem with the world is that everyone is always a couple drinks behind.” Humphrey Bogart.
Bogart, an accomplished drinker, is also making a statement about a general atmosphere of tension and angst in his world. While I don’t necessarily condone his solution, now or then, his observation is spot on, now AND then.
Things are generally better than we are admitting out loud to others, generally better than we are admitting to ourselves. Really. To see this shouldn’t necessarily require beer goggles.
4) Ghosts. Savannah is populated by hundreds, maybe thousands, of ghosts. In truth if we met any last night I either didn’t notice or don’t remember. They, the ghosts that is, are all said to be sad or angry. If Savannah does indeed have ghosts it stands to reason that they ALL aren’t angry or sad, and that got me to thinking about ancestors.
Have you ever examined your heritage? You know, looked at what’s swimming in your gene pool, and where it’s been through history? There’s probably a ton in there, probably a ton of information that is worth knowing. History is awfully cool, a rich and vibrant panorama that can be viewed from any spot and examined in either direction. Your OWN history is like this. You should know your own story.
Some of your heritage may still be around, their panorama moving ever slower as they spool toward the end of their part of the story. Are they happy? Are they fulfilled? Have they imparted all they, and you, need? If they were to leave this life, if there be ghosts, would they be those quiet, happy types, or the sad angry ones that provide fodder for tour guides “crawling” the haunts of Bogart and his ilk? Time grows short for your living heritage, for them and for you.
If there be ghosts, might you be wise to learn their stories before they cross over?
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at September 2, 2012 6:50 AM
Sunday musings 8/26/12
Sunday musings…
1) Substantiate. Among the definitions or meanings is “to make more substantial.” Could use more of this.
2) Wedding. Mrs. bingo and I are once again in San Diego (nice town ya got here, by the way), this time for a wedding. Not just any wedding, mind you, but a wedding that took place on the deck of the Midway. Whoa. I can’t begin to describe the chills, the raised hair on the back of the neck thrill when we realized that we were actually on the elevator that brought countless aircraft up from below, and that we were descending to meet the bride.
Seriously, thrill of a lifetime.
3) Promotion Class. Did you know that each year a defined number of Admirals (and presumably Generals in other services) is promoted as a class? Me either. These classes will gather on occasion, but they usually go their own ways throughout and after their careers. Kinda busy, you know, keeping the free world safe.
The groom is one of these Admirals, one of 12 in the Class of ’99. Including him, 8 of these men and women were in attendance (as well as an Admiral from ’00 and the General husband of an Admiral). Awestruck doesn’t begin to cover the collective reaction of the other guests.
What was striking, to me and to most, was the camaraderie on display in this particular group. They’d done this before, been assembled by choice many times before, and this time came from all over the globe to share in a comrade’s joy. In their Dress Blues they moved among us with a grace and a certain dignity that was palpable, while simultaneously cavorting like college classmates who snuck away to the beach. I searched for words to describe what I saw last night, and found one this morning.
I spent the evening in the company of 8 (+2) substantial men and women who provided lessons in honor, loyalty, and gravitas simply by being together in the room.
4) Home. Where do you live? Morgan Freeman: “Everyone lives somewhere.” Do they? Do you?
Where you live is more than where you are domiciled at the present moment. The distinction between “house” and “home” is real, is substantial. Home requires effort; house requires a checkbook. A house demands upkeep of the walls, the various and sundry systems and furnishings, but a home demands an on-going commitment to what is contained within those walls.
Home also seems to contain a notion of place. A “where are you from” kind of statement or sense. You’ve committed to a certain zip code, learned the rules of the road so well that you move through that larger space in a continual comfort zone. It might be described as simply as knowing where to find eggs for emergency muffins on a rainy Sunday morning, this notion of “home in place”.
I wonder, and I readily confess that I worry about my friends who have multiple “homes”. Does home travel with them from place to place, simply injected into the particular space they occupy at any given moment? Maybe. I know that I am always “home enough” whenever I happen to be accompanied by Mrs. bingo, but still, I’ve needed a map every day here in SoCal.
“Everyone lives somewhere.” Indeed.
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at August 26, 2012 8:52 AM
Sunday musings 7/29/12
Sunday musings…
I think this is a good day for me to give you my “book report” on Allison Belger’s book “The Power of Community” in which she looks to the field of psychology to explain why it is that this thing we call the “CrossFit Community” was born and has grown.
It turns out that we humans are “pre-wired” for community. There is a stimulus, or a set of possible stimuli, that have a greater effect on this “pre-wiring”, that make for a more powerful urge to form and join together as a community. In our case as CrossFitters it is the combination of shared suffering, actually shared suffering that we have willingly subjected ourselves to, and the near universal support that we offer one another during our travails. We are vulnerable when we suffer; we seek the company of others who not only understand our suffering, but who see us in that vulnerable state and offer support. Rather than take advantage of us at our most vulnerable they seek to support us.
Allison points out that this occurs in the small space of the CrossFit Affiliate, in the slightly expanded space occupied by groups of Affiliates in a particular area, and by CrossFitters spread out around the world and connected by that same shared suffering and freely given support. “The Power of Community” shares many, many stories to illustrate both aspects of this stimulus. We come together, become a community, and by and large remain so. I think Allison nails the what and the why from a psychologists point of view. I enjoyed the read immensely.
Ah, but there’s more to this community thing, though, isn’t there? Why is it that the community aspect of CrossFit has continued to grow even as the community has grown to include so many people encompassing so many differences? Why is Affiliate number 4000 just as “bought in” to the whole community feel as Affiliate number 40? Why does that continue to happen?
That’s the $20MM question, isn’t it? You see, every aspect of the CrossFit community is voluntary. CrossFit the fitness program is free. Heck, I did it for 5 or 6 years by coming right here, 3 on/1 off. Didn’t pay a dime, and yet because I was a CrossFitter I was a part of the community. You can do CrossFit any way you’d like, you just have to raise your hand. The water’s cold and the current’s rough so you’ll have to work hard, but if you jump in we’re all here to help you swim.
Even the whole Affiliate system is really voluntary if you think about it. How many of us haven’t gone to a gym where trainers are teaching classes that look just like “Fran”? When you decide to Affiliate you are simply deciding to join a different part of the community, and frankly there’s really not a whole lot you are required to do in oder to do that. A little money. A few rules about the trademark. That’s it. Heck, this is about as free of rules and regs as any business I’ve ever come across. Pick a color…any color! Territorial restrictions? Nah…may the best gym win.
Joining a CrossFit Affiliate is simply choosing who you wish to have lead your tiny little micro-community. Open a CrossFit gym and what you have done is nothing more or less than chosen who you want to lead your larger community. It’s all there, all laid out in front of you. Want the freedom to create YOUR version of a community built around shared suffering and supporting one another during times of vulnerability? Your business with your rules and your version of entrepreneurial spirit? It’s harder to do it this way, I think, than to have strict rules on programming, branding, product placement and sales, but that’s CrossFit, eh? It’s harder.
But just like CrossFit when you succeed in this setting it’s you who reaps the benefit. Once you’ve anted up, placed your table-stake, it’s you who will reap the rewards of hard work, innovation, inspiration. It’s really a whole lot like every other part of the CrossFit community–you’ve chosen to call your gym a CrossFit gym, chosen to become part of that particular part of the CrossFit community.
That’s the “Secret Sauce” of CrossFit. We have all chosen to do this. We’ve chosen this very hard fitness and health prescription and from that we’ve become a community. Some of us have chosen to open places where people can do CrossFit, and more than that they have chosen to pay the very small price to call those gyms “CrossFit”. The “Secret Sauce” is that we are all volunteers, here of our own accord, and everything about the way CrossFit, Inc is run makes it easy for us to volunteer. If you don’t understand this, if you don’t realize that the “Secret Sauce that binds the community is there because each one of us puts it there, you don’t really get us at all.
There are 20 Million reasons for each one of us to realize that, too. 20 Million reasons to think about how easy it has been for us to choose to be a part of this community whether we are Affiliate owners, Affiliate members, or members of the cyber-gym here on CrossFit.com. 20 Million reasons for us to share our thoughts on how well the folks we’ve chosen to follow have done in leading us, to think about how this particular way of doing business has led us to our personal successes.
We are a community. We have 20 Million reasons to proclaim what that means to us.
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at July 29, 2012 11:50 AM
Sunday Musings 7/22/12
Sunday musings…
1) Date. Happy Birthday to the founder of CrossFit. Many more to come.
2) Secular tailwind. Heard on MSNBC. What does that even mean? How can people rag on medical people for using medical terms when BS like this is spoken? At least my stuff means something.
3) Gym sign. “Tired of being Fat and Ugly? Just be Ugly; Come to the Gym.”
That there’s pretty good.
4) Failure. “There are no failures, only feedback.” (Unknown). I like that, pretty much exactly as stated. I’ve written before that in order to learn, to progress, to succeed, it’s probably NECESSARY to fail as long as the failure is examined and parsed for the lessons to be learned. The quote is inaccurate and loses its essential truth if one encounters failure and simply walks away from it, leaves it behind.
Examining a failure in oder to obtain feedback that will prepare you for the next attempt allows you to experience the ultimate way to fail: Fail UP.
5) Practice. I read about a couple of athletes who do the same thing in their training: they practice winning. That’s right, each training session they do something they are good at and make sure they succeed in order to get accustomed to winning, to make winning feel normal. A decathlete, a golfer, and a basketball player I think it was.
Makes sense, I think. Visualize all of the first-time winners you’ve ever watched in any type of event. The biggest opponent they faced as the match wound down was sitting right between their own ears. Doubt, fear, a palpable sense of “what am I doing here” born of being in the foreign territory out front, bourn like a yoke attached to a freight car filled with anxiety.
I’m quite sure there are dozens of ways we can do this in our CrossFit world as we do our WOD, whether we do them simply for the fitness benefit of do them on the fields of competition. I also know that we learn how to win, to defeat our fear, our weakness, our natural tendency to turn away from the difficult and the uncomfortable simply by doing CrossFit.
That, in and of itself, is a little exercise in the practicing of winning that carries over into the game of life.
6) Random. You know where this one’s going. Another random act of heinous, senseless violence just occurred, only not the one you are thinking of. I just got home from several hours at a local hospital ER caring for the victim (1 of 3) of a random beating outside a bar last night in Cleveland. While they will live, this vicious, ugly act will cost this person the use of an eye.
How should we, as individuals and as a society, respond to last night in Cleveland and Friday night in Colorado? The larger societal question is almost certainly bigger than we can handle here, and I’m pretty sure it’s bigger than something a tiny voice like mine might answer. But I think we can tackle the question of how we can or should respond on a personal level, as an individual.
We should live today and tomorrow and the next day just as we lived last week and last month and last year.
For these acts are the doings of madmen, of people who have somehow lost that part of themselves that makes them fully human. We are empathetic creatures on both a micro level (I gaze down upon my patient on the ER gurney) and macro (we shrink in horror at the story on the front page). Those who have committed these acts do not look upon their victims and see the same thing that you and I see; they do not look upon another being with whom they share vastly more then the total of any paltry differences and see a version of themselves, another person. How could they? How could they see another person and still do what they’ve done? By disregarding the humanity of their victims they relinquish their own. We gaze upon them, or we should, with little more than that which we would summon as we looked at any animal that savaged a person.
We react to these random tragedies by going about our daily business, going to work, to a ballgame, to a movie just as we would have done last week. We maintain, and should always maintain, a situational awareness of our surroundings, but we defeat these madmen by not letting them make us afraid. If they change us at all we win by becoming more open, more friendly, more generous. We who remain become serial perpetrators of an entirely different type of random behavior: Random acts of kindness.
And we win.
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at July 22, 2012 7:49 AM