…The Feeling of Dreams Coming Alive.

During this time of year I always get an itch, a feeling of excitement for the upcoming Crossfit Games.  On Tuesday July 19, the Games opened with Individual Masters and Teens competition and will continue throughout the rest of the week ending with 2016’s Individual and Team Champions crowned on Sunday July 24.

I am not your every day Games spectator.  I do not have aspirations to be in the Games, to kill local competitions or even to blast past my compadres at my home gym (Ok, this last one may only be half true).  However, I sure wouldn’t mind sporting some ‘Biceps like Briggs’ or those abs of steel that every Games athlete seems to own.

Beyond the surface of what it looks like is happening at the Games I do have a deep seeded belief in what the Games represent, and for me that is the Feeling of Dreams Coming Alive.

For one week, every summer, we get to watch people’s dreams come Alive.  All their hard work, day to day dedication, discipline and sacrifices express themselves through every movement, action, intention and thought.  Some people lose, some people win, some people get injured and others prevail with PR’s even when they’re still coming in ‘last place’.  It’s quite miraculous to watch.

My introduction to Crossfit came in 2011 when I was feeling the stale inhalation of breathing the same air, in the same place, in the same way and I just needed to see something new, feel the excitement of possibility again, and look up to the renewal of a refreshing outlook of how we (collectively) can live life and move through life in a sustainable productive way.

I have not been so sustainable or productive in my past which is why I pine after education, information, avenues and broadening consciousness of how to make things better.  I’ve stood in a place where striving after better also meant that I was not good enough and so everything I did felt like I was filling a draining bucket that had gaping holes at the bottom.  It was an exhausting bucket to fill, and eventually turned into a sinking shipwrecked boat ride as I drifted out to sea, floating, alone.

Laying back in exhaustion submitting my efforts, I acknowledged they were never good enough, and it was the first time I actually realized that the depleting gaping holes were even there.  I kind of always had a feeling about those holes, because I was working so damn hard without any returning gains, but I just didn’t know how to fix them.  You know those deep internal fixes that are frighteningly hard to navigate and even harder to figure out solutions for…  Forgiveness, Grace, Surrender, Peace…

The moments come in life where you have no other choice but to fix the holes.  Moments of grief, moments of death, moments of joy, and moments of life, which can all be downright frightening in their own distinct ways.  But in order to be able to face these moments fully and wholly, I literally had to fix the boat I was riding in, otherwise I knew that everything I did would be working towards filling buckets that would eventually empty themselves again and again.  Mindless, numbing actions…  Even if what I was doing ‘looked smart’ or logical.

I had no idea how to fix the holes, but the one thing I realized that I could do is that I could completely change the boat I chose to ride in, by changing my mind, changing my thoughts, broadening my ideas, and deepening connections beyond everything I thought I knew or could understand which in turn ultimately changed the buckets I was utilizing to feel fulfilled.  We could utilize the analogy here that the buckets or boat represent your deep seeded beliefs.  Not just the things you ‘say’ you believe in, but the stuff underneath that’s deep in your gut.  And figuring out whether those beliefs have been handed to you, ingrained without question, or embraced from a place of true resonance and experience in your very own life.

Crossfit represents a complete shift in attitude towards life, living and being for me.  I used to live in a static and fixed mindset.  You go up the hill, you come back down the hill, and then you do it all over again.  That’s a lot of hills and a lot of climbing with quick resets and down slides once you get to the ‘top’.  When your vision and perception starts getting locked in like this everything can feel like a challenge, even breathing.

But what if you stop at the beginning of the hill that you think you’re seeing and start asking different questions?  What if you start walking around the base of the hill to feel what’s really going on?  What if the hill is not actually a hill but a vision of a dream you’ve had all along, or an opportunity leading you towards an expression of a new dream?

Finally in my life, for once, I stopped to ask those questions.  My tendencies in the past have been more about running, jumping, and throwing myself into situations.  Doing the work and charging up hills with my head down.  I looked disciplined and focused.  But I never asked questions.  I just took things as they were, or as I thought they were.

Now, I’ll be honest, stopping to ask questions is not easy and sometimes hearing the answers is not easy either.  But really underneath it all, it’s not about the questions OR the answers.  What it’s really about is your ability to face the hill every day and actually see it for what it is, because as we all know the only inevitable in this life is change, which means that ‘the hill’ is also changing each and every single day, every single moment too.

“The only thing that is constant is change.”  -Heraclitus

The feeling of dreaming with Crossfit has helped me to face the changes of the hill, the changes of life every single day.  The dreams I had 10 years ago are not the same dreams I have today and it has been the process of releasing the expectations I had surrounding those dreams that has helped me to adapt and welcome the new dreams and possibilities that are alive in these moments right now.  Adaptability, functionality, creativity and change, it’s a Lifestyle and it moves beyond Fitness.

A Healthy Functional Creative Vibrant Adaptive Life = Wealth, Abundance, and Living IN the Dream.  You are alive in a dream that is alive.  Think about that for a second.

To me it looks like balanced flowing capacities of physical fitness, emotional fitness, mental fitness and spiritual fitness.

One of the easiest ways to shift your mindset about these things is to ask yourself what your personal definitions are about these basic words and symbols in your life.

What does Healthy really mean to you?

When I said Wealth did you instantly think of money?

What does Functional really feel like for you?

How does Abundance move and operate in Your Life and With You?

Once you get your answers, you own up to exactly where you are.  Once you own up to exactly where you are, then you can take a step towards what you want to become.  The dream is not about what you want to become.  The dream is the feeling of this space and the action of moving into the space from where you are into what you want to become.  I call this space and movement Operation Abundance.  It is an action, a verb, a feeling, and an intention all wrapped up into one.

Owning where you are and Dreaming about where, who, or what you want to be is this fully embracing, loving act of being able to fully hold and represent BOTH worlds at the same time.  You are fully whole when you own up to exactly where you are and who you are.  You are also fully whole when you acknowledge what you dream about, who you want to become, and move towards it.

In the act of this step each point (or hole in your bucket/boat) becomes a completely different thing.  The action transforms who you thought you were, even though you’ve fully acknowledged it and loved yourself through it, AND it also transforms everything you thought you could be or were dreaming to be.

You are bigger than you are.

You are bigger than you think you can be.

But you have to own where you are.

And you have to own where you want to be…

To allow the dreams themselves to really Become.

Because Dreams are just as much ALIVE as you are…  So the more you come ALIVE in your life, the more that Dreams will meet you exactly as you are, where you are, and who you are in the becoming of dreaming, believing and being.

Every year the Crossfit Games re-ignites this feeling of living ALIVE in this life, vibrantly, healthfully, functionally and productively for myself and for the greater whole.  Becoming an Active Participant in your life through fitness, through education, through sustainability, through relationships, through connections, through community, through whichever avenue that resonates the most will ultimately bring us all to the understanding of the reality of dreams in our lives and that really truly dreams are the reality of our lives.

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