Today I Might Be Crazy

Today I might be crazy. I signed up for the 2017 CrossFit Games. I have only been participating in CrossFit since last July, I am not a top athlete, I am not highly competitive, I have no hope of making it to the regional games for my age group, I will have to scale almost every movement and I will not even rank highly in my gym. So, why sign up and participate?  Because, without hurdles to overcome or goals to achieve life becomes complacent. It’s lose track of where you are heading based on where you wanted to go in the first place.

This morning’s MET-CON at “the box” was a cardio killer, our trainer said it was the hardest of the week because the first Games workout is on Friday. Yikes, that’s coming up fast.  I’ll be the first to say, I’m probably not ready, but will I ever be? Each week for the next 5 everyone participating in the games will compete at their box with the same workout and then log our results. The top scores will move on to additional events until the elite from across the country (maybe the world?) will gather this summer to compete in the finals.

If there isn’t hope of any substantial outcome, why compete? I decided to compete because I made a commitment last July to give CrossFit a one year opportunity to see what it could do for me. I made the commitment, so I will give it 100% until the end of my evaluation period. If that means pushing myself to do more than I thought I could than that is what I will do. I’m already stronger than I’ve ever been. But, I can do more.

I could workout at the local gym or in my home. Would I push myself as hard? No, absolutely not. Unless you have crazy determination and focus, it’s important to seek outside guidance to move beyond where you are today. The best will always tell you they have had a coach or a mentor and they wouldn’t have gotten where they are without their guidance.

In my practice, I push clients to set goals, break them into small bites and develop timelines toward completion. Unfortunately, I don’t receive much feedback that the clients are taking advantage of power of goal setting. Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in California, did a study on goal-setting with 267 participants. She found that you are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down.

So why not write them down? My uneducated guess is a fear of failure. But, if you wrote down a goal, be it financial, lifestyle, personal growth, career, health, etc. and did anything toward achieving the goal, wouldn’t you be further toward the end than if you didn’t take any action? How is that failure? It’s not, you should praise yourself for the progress you’ve made. Then, reassess the goal, redefine the interim steps and recalculate the goal date.

Forbes reports a remarkable study about goal-setting carried out in the Harvard MBA Program. Harvard’s graduate students were asked if they have set clear, written goals for their futures, as well as if they have made specific plans to transform their fantasies into realities. The result of the study was only 3 percent of the students had written goals and plans to accomplish them, 13 percent had goals in their minds but haven’t written them anywhere and 84 percent had no goals at all. Think for a moment which group you belong to. After 10 years, the same group of students were interviewed again and the conclusion of the study was totally astonishing. The 13 percent of the class who had goals, but did not write them down, earned twice the amount of the 84 percent who had no goals. The 3 percent who had written goals were earning, on average, 10 times as much as the other 97 percent of the class combined. People who don’t write down their goals tend to fail easier than the ones who have plans.

So, what does competing in the CrossFit Games have to do with financial planning? Absolutely nothing, for someone at my level. But it has everything to do with living my best life. What commitments will you make to live your best life? Will you write them down? Will you share them with your financial planner, life-coach, mentor, trainer so you have your own personal cheerleader in your corner?