The following is a transcript from one of my podcast episodes on the discomfort that comes with change and the importance of moving through it. Ep. 65 Welcome to The Churn of Change, and I posted it here because something on resistance was requested on a Facebook post, and this one came to mind first. Enjoy!
Hey there, honey bunnies. Welcome to episode 65 of your Sovereign Storytellers podcast with your host, Michelle Wolff. And today is CrossFit <laugh>. I actually don't know what the title is gonna be. Let's say play the Mind Game for to yeah, I don't know. I'll come up with a title later. By the time you see it. I promise it's gonna have a title. Here's what started this thought process. So last night, I was doing a Human Design reading for someone who does CrossFit. We were talking about how it's a mind game. You know, CrossFit is, if you don't know, it's a, it's a method of exercise that is very, very, very, very hard.
It's challenging; it's continually challenging your body to do more than you ever imagined. And it's very hard because a lot of the activities are not things we normally do, like lifting enormous amounts of weight or jump up on boxes and things that we used to do, but we don't do much as a sedentary species these days. Relatively sedentary, you know what I mean? But I was telling this person that my daughter does CrossFit, and she's moving into, sorry about that. Squeak. I'm closing the door. She's moving into competing. And for her, the box jump was incredibly difficult. The box jump is literally just jumping from the ground up onto a wooden box, and it's fairly high. I mean, you start with a low one, but you keep going higher and higher. And it reached a certain point where she just couldn't get herself to do it.
And she would freeze up every time she would do all the suggested practices, you know, just jumping up on smaller stuff or jumping up or, or jumping over things on the floor. But it was her mind getting in the way. Her mind just could not conceive that it was possible for her to jump that high and land on that box even when people were doing it in front of her. Sometimes that will help, you know, when you're trying to, like, when I was trying to, when I was learning to mountain bike, if somebody was in front of me and I could see how they maneuvered a technical patch, then I could do it. It was no problem. Well, you know, it was still a problem 'cause I was learning, but I wasn't afraid of it. And I could see how it was done. But even for her, seeing other people jump up on that box wasn't cutting it. It was her mind messing her up.
Now, eventually, you know, she visualized <laugh>, she tapped, she did EFT tapping on it. I mean, this kid really worked to get to where she could jump up on that box. And I'm, I actually haven't talked to her about it in a while, so I'm assuming she eventually made it. But that's how personal development is, too. Plenty of people start CrossFit and quit. It's hard. It's challenging, and you have to work on your mind. A huge part of martial arts is mental taming the mind. People go, and they're like, Ooh, I wanna be, you know, Bruce Lee or whatever, or whoever's popular in that world now. And then they get in there, and you can learn the physical stuff, like you can do that. But learning the mental pieces, learning how to master your mind, is really the core of that. It's the, it's the master level. You know, when you master your mind, when you understand how your mind works, and you get it out of the driver's seat where it never wanted to be and was never intended to be, life starts to shift. Happiness starts to show up, money starts to show up, and relationships get easier. But the process of getting enough distance between yourself, buried in the mind to the place where you can observe your mind, and you can catch yourself in the act, you can catch yourself with your hand in the cookie jar both literally and figuratively. <Laugh>.
That takes some effort; it takes some discipline. It takes you grabbing yourself by the scruff of the neck and actually doing it every day. So, this is what stops people from losing weight permanently. It's what stops people from sticking with an exercise plan is what stops people from entering into yet another codependent or, you know, storm of a relationship because they'll feel the mind taking over, and they allow it; it allows patterns of victim thinking to continue. It allows patterns of everything is horrible, and we're all going to hell in a handbasket thought processes to continue. Our world is in a great state of upheaval worldwide. We know that. But we can go through it in anticipating chaos and the disaster and the destruction. And for some people secretly craving the destruction. The destruction does need to happen, but it doesn't have to be chaotic and horrible. Or we can focus on, okay, how do we disassemble this broken system and put it back together in a functional way without having to have so much pain involved?
What happens, and I've talked about this a number of times, and I think you can listen to being addicted to your mind. I think it's episode number seven. It's what? It's back at the beginning of my podcast. There's one about being addicted to your mindset. And this is why you're not where you wanna be. You're addicted to your mindset, your thinking that you can't jump up on the box, and the fear it produces is more comfortable than being successful. Jumping up on the box, I don't know that that's what was going on with my daughter. Just, let's just use it as a hypothetical example. When people quit CrossFit, it's because they can't get through the mind. That's like, you can't, it's not possible. It hurts too much. It's hard. You're gonna throw up; everything's terrible. This is too painful. Oh my God, get outta here. But what, when you're weightlifting, what you learn is your body is capable of so much more. It will do pretty much what you ask of it. If you don't ask anything of it, it doesn't do anything. And it gets more and more lethargic and feels heavier and heavier, which means you stay disconnected from it even more.
The rewards on the other side of the discomfort are profound.Â
The reward of hiking at, at that point, I was 275 pounds, and I was hiking large mountains in Colorado, sorry, Georgia. Your mountains are not actually mountains. They're kind of bumps <laugh>. And I know the mountains in Colorado compared to the Alps or, you know, a joke, but whatever. It was hard. It was very, very, very hard. But I wanted it so much that I was willing to go through the pain of hiking for miles with my very much overweight outta shape body, which didn't stay overweight and outta shape because I was doing so much with it. But it hurt, like it hurt a lot. But getting to the top of a mountain and seeing the view to get to witness that kind of majesty with your eyeballs makes all that pain worth it, so, so worth it.
Same with CrossFit. When my daughter would make it to the next level, or be able to master something she'd been struggling with for weeks, her confidence went through the roof and she's lost a ton of weight and kept it off for two years by not letting her mind make her stop when things get uncomfortable yesterday or depending on the order, you're listening to the podcast in the one front. In number 63, I talked about the character Amos on The Expanse. I like the Amos character because he's an, it is what it is person. He has a terrible backstory and stuff, but he, he talks about, you know, you know, you're in the churn. You're being churned like in the spin cycle of a washing machine. Things are getting tossed around. And if you die, it doesn't matter. And if you live, it doesn't matter.
He's truly like, well, it is what it is. This is life, and this is what we do. And, you know, he has his code of ethics, and that's just the way it is. And it's really a black-and-white kind of view on things. But sometimes we need that.Â
Sometimes, it's good to wander the cosmos and look at all the different angles of a diamond. And sometimes it's good to just come down on, we're doing the thing. We're gonna learn to jump on this box. No matter if it takes a year or ten years, we're gonna do it. We're gonna learn to lift this heavy weight. We're gonna learn to climb this mountain. So we get to see the view at the top.
Your mind will do everything in its power to keep you from taking that next step. Because when you take that next step, you, you step into the churn, you start to be tossed around. You start to feel like you're in the spin cycle. And if you welcome it and embrace it, knowing that on the other side of that is a world you don't know because you haven't lived it yet, it will keep you going. It will help you with your discipline. With discipline comes freedom, and with discipline comes being able to see that view at the top of the mountain. Now, I'm not talking about harsh discipline, where you shame yourself into doing something. You talk smack to yourself and force yourself to do stuff. There's a forcing that's growth producing, and there's a forcing that's destructive, destructive to your self-esteem, destructive to your confidence, and is actually bordering on abusive, if not actually abusive. And maybe repeating, you know, a critical parent or a punishing system that you grew up with. There's fear-based motivation, and there's, I want to see the top of that mountain motivation. There's shame-based motivation, and there's, I wanna live as long as I can and be able to do things in the world. Motivation for getting healthy.
When you try to motivate people through fear, through, ooh, look at this scary thing, and now look at this scary thing and, and don't do it because it's so, so scary. You can get some compliance, but it doesn't last because we, we don't, we won't stay in that state often or for very long, unless you're, you know, just totally crazy. And if so, why are you listening to a podcast? Shouldn't you be in group counseling right now? <Laugh>, like, we don't stay in those states. We'll seek, we'll numb out, we'll check out before we stay in that kind of state for too long.
What I'm talking about is the normal discomfort that challenges who you think you are when you go to change. Your mind is gonna say, yeah, we're gonna do this thing, and we're gonna do our Forest Reiki® treatment every day, and we're gonna function out of our Human Design, and we're gonna get this last 10 pounds off by cracky, and that's gonna work for about 24 to 48 hours. And then your mind's gonna go, this is stupid. This is so dumb. Like, this isn't even gonna work. Why are we even doing this? And why did we spend that money on this?
Your mind is gonna be like I don't wanna, because that's your mind's job is to keep you safe. So here's what I'm gonna tell you. Anytime you shoot for a goal, you know that the between you and it is gonna rise up. Now we say that, and we're like, ha ha ha. Yeah, things are gonna get hard, but no, things are gonna get hard. They're gonna hurt, they're gonna be uncomfortable. You're gonna wanna quit. You're going to want to quit. And you're gonna find every excuse in the book to do so. You're gonna forget. You're gonna put it on your calendar but then not open your calendar. You're gonna decide that watching the next season of The Expanse is more important, which, okay, it is, right? But get back to your stuff right after that. If you've always used the struggle with your weight as a way to not deal with pain, then things are gonna get painful. When you start to tackle the state of your body. And I am not at all talking about weight loss for I'm talking about I want to feel better kind of weight loss, not if I'm not a size eight by Christmas Eve, then I'm a loser, you know, not that kind of weight loss. I've hesitated even to put weight loss stuff up. Because what happens is then people come, and they're like, I gotta lose 20 pounds. Or I'm always gonna be this stupid loser. And, you know, there's all this stuff, and I haven't wanted to deal with it. But what I've come to realize is that's where we have to start sometimes. Sometimes, we do have to start there, but what's really going on is you've developed an identity around weight and everything that it means.
That's not true. And your soul is saying, Hey, it's time to, it's time to get in the body. And when you get in the body, and it's really uncomfortable because you're overweight right now, then things have to change. Or you have to go back to sleep. Me, you know, figuratively, you have to go back unconscious. You have to keep numbing yourself. So you, you can't have it both ways. You can't get to the top of the mountain without waddling your little chunky butt up there. It, you can't get there like no one can. I mean, you could take a helicopter up there, but that's sort of missing the point.
It really is about the journey. It really is about your mind saying, I can't take one step. Why did we even do this? And your mind's like, just turn around. It's okay. But then the other part of me was like, I am not turning around. I drove all the way out here, <laugh>. I packed it. I'm hauling this heavy backpack. I'm getting to the top of that mountain, and I'm spending the night. I'm not turning around. But I had to repeat that process multiple times, multiple times. I, so if you're trying to start a meditation practice, you're gonna have to repeat that process multiple times. I don't wanna meditate. It's so boring. I'm not one who, I just can't, I can't sit still. You can sit still. You do it all the time. You can't sit still in silent meditation because of what it means when you make yourself with kindness.
Sit there long enough; there is a top of the mountain on the other side. You'll go through the itchy, wiggly, eh, eh, wind wine. I don't wanna your mind doing everything it can to get you to stop sitting in silence. But then you'll pop out on the other side into this silence. That silence with a capital s that has a quality to it that feels like coming home. But you have to sit through the itchy wiggles first. You have to coach yourself. You have to remind yourself that you're trying on this different way of living. You're trying it on for size. Our mind is like, we're gonna be forever changed, and we won't know who we are. If we're healthy and we meditate, then we'll be some tree-hugging freak zone, and no one's gonna talk to us. You know, like all the stuff <laugh> your mind's like, oh my God, what is your grandma gonna say?
She's gonna think you're worshiping the devil <laugh> to get to the top of the mountain is gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt. There's no painless way to do it. Obviously, if it was painless, we would just do it, but we don't.Â
We take the action, things start to hurt, we find ourselves in the churn, and we quit.Â
We go running back to what is safe, comfortable, and numb. I always think of Pink Floyd's song that comfortably numb. We're comfortable in our numbness, and that's fine. But be honest with yourself about it. Be honest with the fact that you're choosing to be comfortably numb rather than go through the pain that will get you to where you say you wanna be. So, the pain of lying to yourself is pretty extreme. It's very hard for you to maintain a facade and say that you're trying to solve a problem that you're not actually trying to solve.
And you know, you're not actually trying to solve it. Because when you take the actions that will solve the problem, and shit gets real, you stop. Okay, we've all done it. We've all done it, and we're still doing it. And that's fine. But what I'm saying is get honest with yourself. Notice how many times you've started to take care of yourself. How many times you've started that book? How many times you've started or tried to stop something, like stop smoking, and it gets uncomfortable, and you quit? And then you say, well, I just, I haven't found the way that's gonna work for me. That is not true.
There are a hundred different ways that will work for you, but you're gonna have to stick with one of them.
There was a study done, I don't know how long ago, but 85% of people who went to therapy got better sometimes, even before they went to their first appointment. And it had nothing to do with the modality of the therapy. They could go to a Jungian therapist, they could go to a Rogerian therapist, they could go to a cognitive behavioral therapist. Didn't matter. 85% of the people who went to therapy got better, and those who went to therapy and stayed in therapy got better. It had nothing to do with the type of therapy.
There's a gazillion billion ways to feel better in your body if you go to yoga. What they don't often tell you is that yoga will break loose, stuck emotional energy. So you might be doing pigeon pose and find yourself off, or you might be <laugh> doing a big deep stretch and find yourself in tears. And if you quit, oh my God, I can't go to yoga class 'cause I might cry, then you're not gonna get to the top of the mountain. Okay? So if you quit and go, well, yoga's not for me, so I'm gonna take up swimming. And then you start swimming, and all the lymph in your body starts moving, which moves your energy, which brings up emotions. And then you quit. You're like, okay, well, like swimming doesn't work for me, so I'm gonna try CrossFit. If you really wanna dig in, go do CrossFit. 'cause My God, it will challenge, it will bring up everything.
People who do CrossFit and stick with it are warriors. Man, <laugh>, I'm so impressed with my daughter's progress because she recognizes it's not just physical pro progress, that she is mastered her or mastering her mind. Okay? So take a look at that. How honest are you willing to be? How willing are you to challenge the thoughts that are 100% gonna make you quit? You know, they're gonna do it. So prepare ahead of time. Okay, I'm gonna start this. It's, I'm gonna be motivated for about one or two days, then I'm gonna find excuses. Okay, what if, what excuses do I typically use? Do I get over busy? Do I slide into forgetfulness? And how am I gonna counter that? Not fight it, not smash it, but counter it. Your mind has a strategy to stay stuck. You know what it is. How are you gonna adapt for that? What words are you gonna say to yourself when you're like, I can't sit on this meditation one more minute. What will you say to yourself?
What words make sense to you? Like, yeah, we're gonna still stay here because I know that we can sit for long periods of time because we've watched five straight episodes of Schitt’s Creek and not moved. So I know that we can actually sit still <laugh>, so come on, little honey bunny, we're just gonna sit till our 15 minutes is up. Or, you know, whatever you've started with. I always recommend people start with five minutes, set your timer, and put your phone across the room. Otherwise, you're just gonna keep checking the timer. You know how you trip yourself. You know, when you start eating healthy, and you start to get energy, and you start to feel happy, and you stop doing it because being happy is bad; better to be overweight than to be happy.Â
Happy's dangerous for a lot of people, that's true. It's the emotion that's been held back that is more dangerous to their understanding of themselves than carrying 50 extra pounds or a hundred extra pounds. It's not about the weight.
We know we can lose weight. It's not about the mechanics or the diet or the food choice. It's about what your mind does when you cross into the unknown. When you get on that part of the map that says, beyond here, there'll be dragons. And your mind's like, no, not dragons. It goes scurry. And back to the popcorn bowl, <laugh>, it's much safer to carry all this extra weight than to deal with dragons. Okay? So your mind will keep you where you are. And if you want to be somewhere else, you're gonna have to get comfortable with the discomfort. Know that it's gonna be painful. Know that shame and arguing and fighting yourself does not work.
But being present and breathing and acknowledging, I'm scared. I don't know how to be a non-smoker in the world. I'm scared I don't know how to be a healthy, physically healthy person in the world. What are people gonna want me to do? Then? How will I say no to stuff if I'm not sick all the time? How will I set boundaries if I, you know, like what's really underneath? What are you really afraid of? You're not afraid of losing weight, you're not afraid of quitting smoking. You're afraid of what that's gonna mean. You're not afraid of public speaking. You're afraid of what it means, and that part you have some control over. You're not afraid of turning on the video camera and making some videos or doing some live streams. That's not what you're afraid of. You're afraid of how it's gonna feel. You're afraid of those feelings in your body. And so it's just better to never take that first step.
Can you hear the naughtiest cat in the world crying in the background? <Laugh>? Okay, anyway, I'm gonna stop there. So just know when you come into one of my programs, it's gonna hurt, and the reward is gonna be indescribably wonderful. And that's true for whoever you work with. Or if you just do it on your own, it's gonna suck.Â
You're gonna be in the churn, it's gonna be miserable, and your mind is gonna do everything it can to make you stop if you keep going.Â
The view from the top of the mountain is amazing, and it's worth it. And I want that for you because I know how it feels and what it can do for you. All right? In the meantime, think less feel more. I'll talk to you later.