Uncommon Brokeness

My worst nightmare came true today.

After being gone from Crossfit Uncommon for 6 weeks straight, I felt I had conquered my fear when I returned on Tuesday. It was a great workout, the people were amazing and I left with an endorphin rush unparalleled to anything I had experienced lately. I felt confident and the great type of soreness when I walked up and down stairs. I earned this ache! I was excited to go back this morning and thought "Yes, the fear is gone and I can focus on making progress again."

This morning, while we drove across town,  I mentally noted the lack of butterflies in my stomach and thought I was really making progress mentally and emotionally - not just rebuilding strength physically. I hopped on a rower and felt strong with each pull. It was everything I wanted Crossfit to be. Even the group warm-up had me in a good mood because my aches from Tuesday slowly melted as my muscles were stretched and warm.

The first part of the workout was challenging. Lunges are hard and sometimes cause some aches in my knees, but I concentrated on each movement, really trying to set aside my preconceived notions of what was "hard" or "uncomfortable". There were only a few other people there and I had plenty of space to mentally zero in on what I needed to do. I felt good.

And then came the second part of the workout...

Partnered with my husband, we were alternating rounds of kettlebell swings and wallballs for 5 rounds each. It didn't sound that bad. I already felt tired, but I knew I had just five rounds of activity before I could put my time on the board and record today's workout as another small victory in my journey towards a better version of myself. Round 1 - the tiredness is catching up with me and I'm feeling tired. Round 2 - each movement is hard and I'm counting down reps in my head, silently urging myself to keep going a little longer.

Round 3 - I break.

All I needed was 15 wallballs, but by the 6th or 7th there are tears streaming down my face. I keep throwing the ball in the air, crying harder and harder until eventually I sit down sobbing. My body doesn't want to move, but it really wasn't a physical problem. The tiredness of my body revealed the true fear of my mind - that I can't cut it. That I'm not uncommon after all. That everyone is going to see the phony I am know that I simply don't have the strength to keep up with these titans surrounding me.

I collapse in tears and the nightmare is true - I've broken, surrounded by the people I respect most. I'm laid bare before the people I want to impress. I might as well be naked. Actually, I might have preferred being physically naked to being so emotionally exposed.

While my life is diverse and there are many things that shape me, I write about my cross fit experience because the whole re-evaluation of my life is based on the simple question - what does it mean to be uncommon? It isn't about physical fitness or Olympic weightlifting or being extreme for the sake of being extreme. Greg Glassman once described the cross fit athlete as a "better beautiful". Being the best version of yourself that you can be. It's a different way of thinking. A different approach to life. Pretty much any area in life can be examined by asking how you can optimize each area to be the ultimate version of yourself - without comparison to anyone else. Our pop culture provides measuring sticks for success, popularity, appearance, family/life balance, monetary gain and every other area of life. Want to feel unfulfilled and under-accomplished? Hop on Facebook and compare yourself to the air-brushed lives of your friends and acquaintances.

Social media is all about controlling the version other people see of you through pictures of happy kids, "pinning" fun crafts, posting funny cartoons and "liking" other people's success. We build cyberwalls of perfected images that meet what society has deemed acceptable. Brokenness is the enemy of image building and our society has a cornucopia of applications to build the best image of ourselves.

Being uncommon is different. Being uncommon says "forget image, actually become the best version of yourself." To do this, you have to be willing to break. Only once you have the honesty of reaching your limits can you truly extend beyond them.

Richard Rohr writes "self made people will try to manufacture an even stronger self by willpower and determination to put them back in charge and seeming control.....Eventually this game is unstable." Uncommon brokenness is being exposed in a community that accepts your brokenness as a current state without any bearing on your character or your future. You don't manufacturer a stronger self by individual willpower. To truly become the best version of yourself, you must be in community. A community of people willing to enter into your brokenness and encourage you into a place beyond the limits you have previously known. On our own, we hit our limit and stop. That's why we call them limits. We can use goal theory to push ourselves towards higher levels of achievement but we all have the place where we will just sit down and cry. Metaphorically or (even worse) physically.

It's only when someone is willing to walk up to you and tell you to keep going that you can truly go beyond what you thought was possible. Today, that some one was Crystal. And Tim. And Paul. And Jeremiah. And David. Those who cheered me on through the last rounds of wallballs even when the tears were still streaming down my cheeks.

Today was a PR for me. Not in any one activity - but in finding a place within myself that can keep going when I never would on my own. And I'm not afraid to be broken anymore.