Crossfit Changed My Life (But Not How You Think)

It’s been a while since I wrote something fitness related. In fact, since switching to my personal brand in January 2016, I haven’t really spoken about health and fitness much at all, besides the importance of sleep.

And truth be told, this article isn’t really about exercise, either.

Rather, I wanted to share one of the most pivotal moments in my journey which kickstarted almost everything I get to wake up and call life today.

And I owe it all to Crossfit.

Let me explain…

Back in 2014, I was stuck in a job I didn’t enjoy, without any real sense of purpose or meaning in my life. However, I didn’t have the awareness to realize this at the time. I was just going along on the hamster wheel or conveyor belt of life that we get so easily sucked into if we’re not careful, thinking that things were “fine” and that this is just what life looked like.

Back then, the Crossfit boom had just started, and a friend of mine had recently opened his own Crossfit box in my hometown. He was one of the first people to do so, and certainly the first person I knew who was into it.

I’d always been into health and fitness (one of the reasons I became a personal trainer after quitting my job), so I decided to take him up on his offer of a free trial week of classes.

What I found was something completely new, totally different to what I (and the rest of the world) had been told is the correct way to exercise. And it started to open my eyes.

This eye-opening then expanded further after coming across the Paleo diet, a style of eating often paired with Crossfit. And while I didn’t continue my Crossfit journey beyond those free classes, I did adopt the Paleo diet until going Vegan in 2017 after researching the devastating health, animal cruelty, and environmental impacts of consuming animal products.

Now it’s important to point out that at that point in my life, I’d never really spent much time online, browsing websites, blogs, listening to podcasts or learning anything new.

But now that I’d started researching fitness and nutrition, I started coming across other resources, too. I found sites like Live Your Legend which documented people who were making a living doing what they loved, all while making an impact in the world at the same time. And I was hooked.

It was at this point that I started to realize how bored and unfulfilled I was in my job and my life.

The common theme running through it all, whether it was Crossfit, nutrition, or making a living, was that there were people doing things completely differently to how I’d always been told was the right way. And they were thriving as a result.

With this newfound inspiration, expanded paradigms of what was possible, and eyes wide open, I began making more intentional decisions about what I wanted my life to look like and what I wanted to create.

I was no longer going to be another participant on the hamster wheel. The cage was full enough already.

With my patience running out and feeling more and more stuck each day, I decided to leave that job with no plan B, armed only with two things:

1. A vision of the life I wanted to create.
2. An unwavering decision that no matter what happened, I was not going to quit.

It’s a strategy that has served me well. I now get to wake up next to someone who makes me incredibly happy, work on projects that excite me from wherever I want to, design the hours of my day however I like, and call myself friends with people who were once just role models of mine online.

But none of this would have happened if I’d never opened my eyes to the reality that the way the world tells you to do things is not always the best or only way to do them.

Rosa Luxemburg once said:

“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

Had I not discovered Crossfit, I would never have begun my personal research project of discovering new ways of seeing the world. I would not have begun thinking for myself and discarding previous beliefs of what’s possible or realistic. And I would certainly not have noticed my chains holding me back in the average zone.

So Crossfit, although I’ve never stepped foot back inside another box, thank you for helping me get out of my own.