Ghosts

I work in a school for a living.  I spend a lot of my day helping adolescents navigate the awkward phases of their lives, and I talk to a lot of frustrated, busy, tired, and sometimes angry parents.  I love what I do (most day).  A mentor-friend of mine recommended I pick up the book The Teen's Guide to World Domination:  Advice on Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Awesomeness by Josh Shipp, a motivational speaker.

Shipp talks about the "villains" in our lives that get in our way.  You know, like Darth Vader, Voldemort, or even our parents when we were young.  Ship describes one of the villains as

GHOSTS:  "Ghosts are possibly the most dangerous villains you'll face, and they're often the hardest to identify, because they're in your head."

He goes on to state that ghosts can be painful memories, bad mistakes, lies, etc.  They cause fear and doubt, and they can hold you back and paralyze you.

This got me thinking about my fitness of late.  It's been awhile since I updated this blog regularly.  Writer's block?  Not sure, but what I do know is that I've realized I've allowed ghosts to "dominate" me.  Here's a couple of examples:

1.  Food:  I still eat Paleo most of the week, but I've let too many unproductive foods to creep into my diet.  Then, I wonder why I have performance issues when working out.  I have food ghosts, telling me it's o.k. to eat that donut, drink those hoppy beers, and have that pizza.  The food ghosts are distracting and trick me into the immediate satisfaction that got me so out of shape months ago.

2.  Pull up's, Box Jumps, Thrusters, and such:  I've been a Crossfitter since June and have made some large gains.  But I started of reeeeeeeaaaally out of shape.  Regardless, I've become frustrated of late as I want my WOD times to be nearer to the thoroughbreds working out with me.  I've left Crossfit Carmel several times stating, "I hate (fill in the exercise)."  These negative statements only make me feel worse about performing such movements the next time, thus sabotaging my next WOD.  This Crossfit ghost has caused me fear and a ton of doubt.

I've started trying to "dominate" (Shipp's words) these two ghosts with focus and positivity.  Here's a bit of what I've chosen to do.

1.  Only allow one cheat meal or evening per week at the most.  Then, back on track.
2.  When I see tempting food (especially this time of year), I must physically walk away.
3.  Establish Crossfit goals:  i.e. become more efficient at box jumps; practice my pull up's and work up
     to 10 of them in a row; do one muscle up.
4.  Tell myself, "I'm going to get better at that" rather than, "Dammit. I hated that.  That was hard!"

As I type this, none of what I've written seems difficult or like rocket science, but it feels like such when "in the moment" and when those ghosts appear.  What kind of ghosts do you see?