It make challenges you to question what you're doing and what you "think" you're doing. One of my favorite things about CrossFit is that it's difficult and challenging, I'm a firm believer that we constantly need something in our lives that really pushes us to the limits and challenges us in more ways than one!
Below is the article, I'm going to post some of my thoughts on it later after you have a chance to read it. Feel free to post comments!
I bumped into an old friend from the distant past. In my
early days as a hard-nosed knuckle-dragger he was one of my compatriots, and
one of the hardest working martial artists around. He had always prided himself
on his sinewy mentality when it came to all things physical, and he had a
prolific work rate. After a brief (and predictable) catch up (how’s the work,
the car, the kids, the wife and the mum – in that order) he said ‘hey, you
still doing animal day?’
Animal day, for those that do not know, is a form of
knock-out or submission fighting (any range, any technique) that I pioneered in
the mad, bad (and often sad) 90’s. A time I absolutely loved, but a time I am
also grateful to have left behind.
I shook my head in the negative. It had been a many years
since I engaged in my last animal day fight.
‘Why not?’ he asked, adding, ‘I’m
still mad for it.’
‘Because it is difficult easy,’ I said, ‘and in order for
me to continue growing my character, I don’t need difficult easy. In order for
me to grow my character I need difficult difficult.’
He gave me one of those
loud, squinty eyed confused looks that shouted from a hundred feet ‘Explain!’
So I explained.
Even as a veteran of thousands of fights, animal days were
still a scary experience for me, it was violent and dangerous and extremely
difficult. But because I had fought so many times and knew the terrain well it
no longer stretched me.
Whatever it was that I needed to reap from that hard
period of my life had been well and truly harvested; there was nothing left for
me to learn there. Animal day was still difficult, and from the outside looking
in it probably looked as though it was mad difficult, but for me it wasn’t, in
fact it had become difficult easy.
My friend was still in love with the ground-and-pound
style fighting and whilst his physical prowess was evident he had not grown
even a single inch in any other area of his life, probably not for the last ten
years. His was the mistake made by many; they presume that if something is
difficult then they are in the arena. But experience has taught me that the
only time you are truly in the arena is when you are (ever so slightly) out of
your depth.
Difficult easy is when you are on familiar terrain, not
matter how hard the going.
Difficult difficult is when you find your self at the
bottom of someone else’s class with three crazy training partners; fear at your
left, doubt on your right and (that big bastard) uncertainty squaring up in
front of you.
Difficult easy is treading water whilst kidding yourself
that you are swimming against the tide.
Difficult difficult doesn’t need to employ pretence
because it is drowning and swimming for its life.
I see many people suffering stalled development because
they are so busy occupying themselves with very worthy, respectably, difficult
easy tasks that they use to avoid the difficult difficult areas of their lives.
I am doing it right now as it happens. I should be doing a
re-write of a difficult (difficult) film script that is over due, but instead I
am busying myself with a piece of difficult (easy) work that is not really due
to be in print for another fortnight (damn, caught myself out again!)
Some (more) examples; you bury your relationship problems
(difficult difficult) under hundreds of miles of road running (difficult…but
easy).
You fill every spare moment with hard lists of worthy
causes (difficult easy) so that you don’t have the time to invest in the book
that you were always going to write, or the film you would love to make (if
only you were not so committed in other areas) or the (difficult…very
difficult) painting career that you had always intended to create.
You immerse yourself in course after course, book after
book (so difficult, and yet….so deliciously easy) on becoming a life
coach/property developer/master chef instead of just getting out there
(difficult, oh so difficult) and actually doing it.
Listen. Let me tell you, the moment a task becomes
difficult easy you stop growing. That is a fact. In order to re-establish your
vital development you need to take an honest inventory (difficult very
difficult – I have done it) of your life, ditch the pretence, and embrace the
black that is….difficult difficult.
And stop chasing ostentatious challenges (that are
difficult easy for you) and sort out your health; you are three stone over
weight and your blood pressure is off the scale.
Kill the worthy endeavours that you think other people
will think are impressive and do something truly and uniquely impressive; take
your (secret) addictions to task and kill the porn (in all its forms).
Stop collecting trophies and certificates and belts that
tell the word how successful you are and actually BE a success, by taking a
hammer to that creepily burgeoning fear that you are harbouring.
And don’t, please (like my old mate) fall into the trap of
mistaking hard work – even extremely hard (easy) work – for progress. Because,
let’s be frank, difficult easy is really just another way of saying ‘easy’, and
there is no growth in easy.
We aspirants are into the hard game, the long game, the
difficult difficult game. What we are not into, or what we should not be into
is the game of easy.
