One of my best (and worst) qualities is that I’m a perfectionist. Sometimes, this can be great! It gives me that extra attention to detail and creates a driving force within me to constantly work on bettering myself and the world around me. Other times, however, this can be one of my worst characteristics because it causes me to freeze. I’m unable to move forward on certain tasks or sometimes even start them at all in the first place, because I’m waiting until it’s “just right” or perfect.
I saw a quote the other day by Deborah Stewart that went like this, “We’re not supposed to know how to do it before we’ve done it. We’re just supposed to begin.”
That quote really stuck with me because I struggle a lot with that whole “begin” part and I know that I can’t be the only one. Maybe this was even the case for a lot of you when making the initial decision to take that first (& maybe scary) step and try out CrossFit. Either way, I think a lot of us can relate to feeling like we don’t really know what that next move or step should be, or what it could look like.
We can become so hyper-focused on trying to figure out the perceived “right” thing, that we become paralyzed and end up doing nothing at all.
It’s easy to get trapped in what I refer to as the “what if” hole. Our minds start to over-analyze every single potential outcome. We let the fear of possibly making a mistake in our decision-making or having things end up not exactly how we had pictured them, stop us from moving forward at all.
The thing is, we have absolutely zero way of knowing what the right next step on our path will be. Sometimes we can look back and know that answer in hindsight, but in the moment we truly have no way of knowing. And that’s OKAY!
What’s important to realize here is that we aren’t responsible for that piece of it. What we are responsible for though, is making a choice and an attempt to continue to put one foot in front of the other and to do so as our authentic selves.
We aren’t always going to always have everything lined up perfectly in front of us and tied up with a beautiful ribbon on it. We can’t wait for “perfect” because it may never come, or at least not in the way we originally pictured it to be in our minds. Sometimes not making a decision IS in fact making a decision. So the work we must do comes in taking that step forward, no matter what it looks like.
Reflect on what small decisions you can start to make in your life in order to work on practicing this. If it helps, try to view it as if we are training our muscles like we do here in the gym at District H. It takes practice, just like any other skill. Through these small baby steps, we can continue walking towards the versions of ourselves we are working so hard to become.