The Stronger Revolution

Maybe it is a bold statement, but many of the decision you make that dictate your actions are probably assumptions.  And, if there is one thing we know about assumptions, they are usually wrong.  Humans, by their nature, cannot tell the future and cannot read minds.  Yet, we assume we know what will happen and we assume we know why someone acted the way he/she did.  Why do we do this?  Once you accept the fact that most of your decisions are based on assumptions, you can begin to stop.  Awareness is the key.

Some assumptions may have positive influences on your life.  Most will be negative.  When we are trying to improve our life through the aggregation of marginal gains (1% better every day), assumptions may really hold us back.  How many times have you made an assumption about taking an action that lead you to not act at all?  Have you ever said, “well, of course it was easy for them, they are so successful?”  Or, maybe you have said something like, “I could be successful too if I had that much money.”   These are limiting statements likely based on surface images with no facts out the background.

Sometimes, this is known as the Instagram Effect.  When you look at social media, all you see is everyone’s success.  You never see the hours of work, the failures, or the pain someone went through.  In business, this is known as telling someone’s story.  You reduce your produce price because you assume no one will pay for it.

To stop making assumptions try this:

We want to minimize these assumptions as much as possible.  Everyone has heard, “You know what happens when you assume . . . .?  Chances are, you are just wrong.

The post The Stronger Revolution: The Assumptions We Make appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

Managing your lifestyle is really important in the aggregation of marginal gains.  If we want to improve by 1% every day, we have to set up our lives to support that 1% gain.  In the past, we’ve posted articles about things we control in our day, like diet, sleep, and exercise.  Once we have our lifestyle under some structure and control, we have to reset our focus on outside influences.  Or, as we like to refer to it, your circle of influence.

The concept of your circle of influence is based on a Jim Rohn’s concept that you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with.  Jim Rohn was an entrepreneur, businessman, and motivational speaker.  He believed that while you are shaped by many life experiences, it is your five primary social interactions that frame you.  Moreover, this makes sense.  If your best friend has a good or bad habit, you are more likely to start that habit as well. It is simply exposure.  More recent studies has shown that your primary influences include more than these five people.  However, the concept stays generally the same.  You are shaped by the primary people in your life.

When we are trying to develop as a human being.  When we have a purpose, and we are striving to live for that purpose on a daily basis, the people who influence us become very important.  Thus, we need these people to exhibit certain qualities.  Not everyone in your life needs to exhibit every one of these qualities.  However, they should have at least one.

When talking about the primary people in your life, we are not talking about the people you work with, or maybe even family.  We are talking about the people you consciously choose to spend time with.  These may be friend, business partners, spouses, or coaches.

The best thing you can do is take some time to assess who is in your life.  Pull out a piece of paper and write a list of the five people you are around most of the time.  Now, sit back and look at that list.  Does everyone on the list exhibit one or more of the qualities above?   If not, it may be time to make the hard choices in life and take the hard actions.  It may be time to remove someone from your circle of influence.  Often times, it is easier to add a new influence than it is to simply remove a bad influence.

You are in control of who you choose to spend time with.  Don’t take that decision lightly.  If you want to set yourself up for the most success you can have in all that you do, those around you are very important.

The post The Stronger Revolution – Circle of Influence appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

A few episodes ago, we did an episode of the Stronger Revolution about Self-Awareness vs. Self-Reflection.  In that episode, we used an analogy of a house.  Everything in front of the house is what exists completely outside of ourselves.  When we are standing on the porch, we are self aware of everything going on around us.  When we are in the house, we are self reflecting on all of our motivations, memories, intentions, history, etc.  The small area between what is inside the house, and what is on the porch, is the threshold.

When we boil down life to its most basic form, the only things we really control are our thoughts and decisions.  This is the threshold.  We use everything inside of the house to cause the actions we engage in on the porch and in the outside world.  The idea that we only control our thoughts and decision can be a hard thing to accept.  Don’t I have control over my body?  Well, technically no.  Do you control when you get sick?  No, your body gets sick.  No matter how much you fight it, no matter how much you may try to use your mind to not get sick, your body still gets sick.  Here’s another example, how about doing something like throwing darts.  If you had complete control over your body, you would be able to hit the bull’s eye every time you throw the dart.  But, you can’t hit the target every time.  All you can do is influence your actions from your mind, but you don’t fully control the final outcome.  We decide to throw the dart, but our body takes over the action.  If you accept this, then you can expand this concept beyond your mind and your body.  You control you mind, you don’t control your body, and you certainly don’t control anything outside of yourself.

If you can accept that you can’t control anything outside your mind, this can bring an immediate sense of relief.  A lot of your frustration is coming from your attempt or desire to control things outside your mind.  You don’t control traffic, you don’t control what the Government does, you can’t control what your friends or co-workers do.  So, stop trying and that frustration goes away.

This acceptance will also remove a sense of responsibility for everything outside of your control.  This is not to say that you can use an excuse of no responsibility in your life.  However, you can give up the feeling that you are responsible for anything outside your thoughts and decisions.  If you make a decision to buy a house that is outside your monetary means, and you default on your loan, then you are responsible for that decision and outcome.  However, if you do what your boss tells you to do, and your business doesn’t win the new sales account (or whatever), you aren’t responsible for that.  You made the decision to do what your boss told you to do.  You made the decision to do your best.  You don’t have any control over the final outcome.

Finally, accepting that we have no control over anything outside of our mind will bring clarity to your life.  You are no longer worried about anything outside your thoughts and decisions.  If you are someone who likes to try to control everything, finally accepting that you cannot control everything should bring you some relief.  You can stop worrying about it all.  You only have to worry about your thoughts and your decisions.  You can influence everything outside your mind with your decisions that lead to your actions, but you cannot control the final outcome.  So, let it go.  Only focus on what’s between your ears.

If you still aren’t with us, take out a piece of paper and a pen.  Write down everything you think you control.  This might be a long list, this might be a short list.  But, write it all out.  Now, go back and cross off everything on the list that is outside your thoughts and decisions, even your actions.  Remember, you can decide to lift your arm over your head, but there is no guarantee that will happen. You could develop an auto-immune disease that prevents you from lifting your arm.  Also, make sure you are crossing off things you influence.  Influence comes close to control, but isn’t actually control.

Once everything is crossed off, review your list.  Your list should be boiled down to your decisions.  You decide things like when you eat, when you wake up, when you go to bed, what you do at work, when you exercise, etc.  These are all things in your life that you can control by making a decision.

For more information on this concept of what you do and do not control, check out our Podcast Episode

The post What We Really Control appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

Let’s start with this illustration:  The summer rolls around and you have a beach vacation coming up next week.  You are getting ready for the beach, you leave, you spend your week there, and you come home.  Simple picture right?  However, depending on what you actually do, and how you feel leading up to, during, and after this vacation, you may be relaxing or escaping from your real life.

In the long run, we want to make sure we are “relaxing.”  We don’t want to be “escaping.”  In their most basic form, the difference between the two comes down to your intention.  If you intend to take a vacation in order to recharge your mind and body so that you can come back to your regular life bigger, faster, and stronger, than you are relaxing.  If your intent is to get away from your regular life because you can’t handle it any longer, so you can deal with it better, then you are escaping.  Relaxing helps us live more toward our purpose and provides us the energy to work toward our goals.  Escaping helps us mindlessly turn off our brain, so that we when we have to return to our regular life, it seems more bearable.

Stress is a natural part of life.  Unless you are some guru living in the mountains with no financial or family obligations, there is almost a guarantee that something is going to cause you stress.  The ultimate goal is to remove ourselves from the stress so that we can recharge.  Too much stress will start to make you feel tired, unfocused, irritable, maybe constantly hungry.  Overtime, too much stress has been shown to lead to chronic illness like heart disease.  Learning to relax will help to fight that stress.  Escaping it doesn’t really fight stress, it just pushes it away for a period of time.

Regardless of how reflective you are, regardless of how in tune you are with your life, you are partaking in escapism somewhere.  We all do it.  When we limit it to 30 minutes of social media in the middle of the day, it’s not a big deal.  When we allow it to dictate our life, like spending all weekend neglecting responsibilities in order to play video games, it is time to look at the bigger picture.

The hard part about dealing with escapism is that it is going to require some major self-reflection.  It may also show us a need for some major life changes.  Let’s go back to the illustration we started with:

Let’s assume you are in the week leading up to your vacation.  Every day just seems to drag on and on. You are becoming more and more irritable. You just want to leave Saturday morning so you can avoid thinking about work for a week.  While on vacation, you become aggravated because someone from the office tries to get a hold of you.  Then, you feel down and depressed the following weekend because you have to leave vacation and go back to work tomorrow.

If this describes you, then you are using your vacation as escapism.  You need to look at your life to determine what you are escaping from.  Maybe it is your job.  Have you defined your purpose?  Do you have set goals?  Does your job align with your purpose?  If not, that’s probably the cause your stress and some big decisions need to be made.  Maybe you need to take some time to look at your purpose.  That might lead to a change of career.  Those are big steps in life.

During the week leading up to your vacation, you are excited to leave, but also busy making sure everything is in place.   You don’t want to worry about anything while you are gone.  When you leave on Saturday, you are building in anticipation, but also know that you are kind of going to miss your regular life.  While at the beach, you spend time learning new things, reading books, and letting your mind wonder a bit.  When someone calls from the office, you are excited to hear from them.  You briefly deal with any issues, then go back to your vacation without being annoyed.  By the end of vacation, you are bummed that it is over, but also super excited to get back to your regular life.

If this describes you, then you are using your vacation as relaxation.  You are getting away to recharge.  You use your time away to create separation from daily distractions so that you mind can wonder.  You give it space to come up with new ideas.  You have a clear purpose and that purpose drives what you do.  When you return from vacation, you are excited to get back to living for your purpose and pushing to accomplish your goals.

Look at your daily habits.  First, are you putting time in your day to separate from work or other daily duties (like raising kids)?  If you are, great!  Now, look hard at why you are setting aside that time.  You want the intent to relax.  You want to feel like you are taking time to recharge.  If you have taken the time to self-reflect, and you think you are utilizing escapism, and not relaxation, the good news is that it is never too late to make changes.  As we’ve said before, relaxation doesn’t need to be some big grandiose gesture.  It is as simple as taking a walk at noon every day while listening to classical music.  It is the intent behind the gesture that matters.  Are you trying to recharge?  Or, are you trying to avoid?

The post Relaxing vs Escaping appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

Change in our life is inevitable.  We cannot resist it, but if we accept it, change will help us grow for the better.  Sometimes, that change is a major change that completely upends our schedule, our structure, our daily life.  We aren’t talking about a sudden work assignment or a late meeting that throws off the rest of your daily schedule.  We are talking about the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or lockdown stemming from a pandemic.

When our lives are flipped upside down, we need to get back on a schedule.  We need to do this as fast as possible.  Structure is freedom.  Taking control of our day through a schedule is the first step to bring structure to our life.  This is not the time to throw in the towel.  Throwing in the towel is giving up and won’t serve us well in the long run.

A major change in our life will result one of two ways:  1.  It will pass and life will return to normal.  2.  Our disrupted life will become the new normal.  In either scenario, you need to continue to grown.  You need to continue to live for your purpose and live the best life possible. So, here’s some practice and tactile ways to maintain your structure when life really gets in the way:

When you get down, remember, this is just adversity.  You choose how much this adversity will impact your life in the long run.  You can embrace it and use it as a chance to become better.  Or, you can let it knock you down.  Adversity is unavoidable.  Try not to judge this adversity as bigger or smaller than other adversity.

For more information on this topic and further discussion on the above six steps, check out the podcast episode.

The post Dealing with Major Change appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

On this episode of the Stronger Revolution, we talk about Have to vs Get to.  So often in life, we proceed throughout our day doing things we think we “have” to do.  As a continuation from the last episode of the show on relaxation/stress, when we think we have to do something, stress can often enter the equation.  We all have things we want to do in life.  However, what we want to do, and what we think we have to do, can often conflict.  It’s that conflict that shows up as stress.

The first way we can start to avoid this stress in our life is to accept that fact that we don’t HAVE to do anything.  Except for a fear of negative consequences, no one can force you to do anything.  Your motivation to do something when someone tells you what to do is fear of the negative consequence.  For example, you don’t have to do that work assignment from your boss.  However, you choose to do it because the negative consequence of losing your job keeps you obedient to the request.  If there is no negative consequences that you are afraid of, then you truly have the choice to do whatever you want to do.

Another way to look at this is to note the things in your life that you think you have to do.  Then, ask yourself if these items are truly necessary.  This is the moment where you have the power to make a choice.  Either you decide to continue to do those things.  Or, you decide not to do them.  If you decide to continue to do those things you think you have to do, then you must accept that choice and align what you want to do with these things you think you have to do.  When you do that, the stress will go away.

Once you align what you think you have to do with what you want to do, then you need to change your language.  You no longer have to do anything.  Now, you “GET” to do everything.  This paradigm shift will not only remove stress from your life, but will also fill your life with gratefulness.  You now get to do everything you want.

There are people in this world who would give anything to do what you are doing.  So, remember, you have every reason to be grateful for what you get to do.  If you are not grateful, and don’t want to do it, this is a big indication that you need to make a change in your life in the interest of making yourself happier.

For more information on this topic, including real life examples and applications, check out the Podcast:

The post Have To vs Get To appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

“Just Relax.”

Those words used to be like a nail on a chalkboard.  People telling me to relax would make me even more angry and stressed out than I was possibly feeling before they said those two words.  How did they know I needed to relax?  Maybe I was just excited about something.  Maybe I was deep and thought about a decision I had to make.  Regardless, it irritated me.

Nowadays, I don’t take it so personally when someone tells me that I need to relax.  Instead, I respond by using it as a way to self reflect on what they may be seeing in me that I am not.  It is a great reminder to consider whether I am feeling more irritable than normal, more tired, more unfocused.  Relaxing has been a hard thing for me for most of my life.  However, I think I am getting a better grasp on it these days than ever before.  So, someone telling me to relax is a good reminder that I may or may not be as “chill” as I think I am.

Perhaps the best place to start is to consider why someone even needs to relax.  What do we think people will gain if they could just relax more?  Well, we know that stress is really unhealthy for humans.  Our fight or flight hormone system was programmed a million years ago so our bodies would be primed to run when the saber-toothed tiger was creeping toward us in the woods.  Our adrenaline system is designed to help us react quickly and dramatically to situations, and then shut down.  However, with our fast-paced, alert filled lives in modern times, doctors have concerns that we are constantly in this fight or flight state.  Long periods of time in this state can cause negative health issues like weight gain, loss of focus, irritability, exhaustion, heart issues, and more.  Thus, relaxation allows us to get ourselves out of the fight or flight state and reset.

There is a difference, however, between relaxing and escaping.  Relaxing is removing ourselves from something that causes us stress so that our minds and rest and we can return better than before.  Escapism is removing ourselves from something that causes us stress so that we can turn off our mind and better DEAL with something upon return.  We don’t want to escape from our lives.  We want to relax and always be moving forward through the aggregation of marginal gains.  Those aspects of our lives that we are escaping from will prevent us from moving forward.

Everyone is different when it comes to what causes us stress, how we know when stress is too much, and what we need to do to recharge.  However, there are a lot of common themes we can point to.  When you are feeling constantly tired, irritable, or sick, you probably need to relax a little.  If you are eating more than normal, or never have an appetite, these can be signs of too much stress.

A great way to relax and recharge is to sleep.  Sleep is a great form of separation that allows us to recharge.  Similarly, taking walks or find another mindless activity will work wonders.  Relaxing isn’t about turning off our brains, that’s how you escape.  Relaxing is about refocusing the brain onto a task that allows your brain to rest and refresh.  Some people use hobbies, like shooting, chopping wood, fishing, painting, etc. to relax the mind.  Others use exercise.  When your workout is really intense, you can’t do much more than focus only on what you are doing right now.

Anyone who says they never need to relax is lying to you.  They relax, they just relax differently than you do.  Some people need big periods of relaxing, like going away for a long weekend or a week long beach trip.  Some people can get away with what I call “micro relaxing.”  Micro relaxing is short periods of time throughout your day where you relax your brain and let it focus on something easy and repetitive.  Micro Relaxing might include working out for an hour, listening to some classical music on your drive home, or reading a good book for thirty minutes during the middle fo the day.

If you want more information on relaxing, and how it is different than escaping, check out our podcast episode.

The post The Stronger Revolution: Just Relax appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

The Stronger Revolution Podcast is primarily about setting and achieving goals.  Throughout the episodes, we have laid out a process by which you identify your motivation to achieve goals (you purpose) and then organize and structure your life to guarantee progress.  Part of that process involves the ability to say, “No.”  “No, I don’t have time to help with that.”  “No, thank you, I need to save time to do something else.”  “No, I can’t help, I will be spending time with my family.”

The challenging part of saying No isn’t actually saying it.  The words are simple.  The challenge in saying No is feeling justified in doing so.  This is often motivated or hindered by fear.  Fear that you might make someone mad.  Fear that you might disappoint someone.  Fear that if you say No this time, they won’t ever ask again.  Fear that an empty calendar means nobody wants you around.  However, if you have a reason to say No, actually saying it becomes much easier.

If you constantly say Yes to everything request in your day, you will never have time to dedicate to what you want to do.  Therefore, you need to create space.  You need to separate yourself from distractions so that you have time, attention, and energy to dedicate to one thing.  You cannot be a slave to your calendar and you cannot be a slave to the whims of everyone else.

This is a balancing act.  At one extreme, is someone who says Yes all the time.  This person has no time to themselves.  This can often lead to a feeling of needing constant interaction with others.  It can also lead to burnout and resentment.  At the other extreme is someone who says No all the time.  This person spends too much time alone and often develops anxiety when others are around.  A life alone is not a happy life.  Therefore, we need to find a balance in the middle.  We need to spend some time saying yes, and reserve some time for ourselves.  This balance act is going to be a constant challenge.  Sometimes, we will feel too available to everyone else.  Then, we have to start saying No.  Later, we might start feeling too alone and isolated.  That’s when we have to go back to saying Yes.

For more information on the Art of Saying No, check out the Podcast Episode:

The post How to Say No appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

Anything that steps in the way of our goal progress is known as adversity.  Whether it is big or small, adversity provides us a chance to grow, learn, and develop as human beings.  It is why the process of goal achievement is so much more important than actually achieving the goal.  Anyone can pick achievable goals.  It’s called staying in your comfort zone.  I won’t ever write a book, but I am comfortable writing blog posts, even though my dream is to write a book. I won’t go to medial school because I might fail, but I will spend my time and money earning a different degree because it is easy and I can float along.  However, setting challenging goals means we may have hiccups along the way, and its how we respond to those hiccups that cause us to become better.

When you think of how you want to respond to adversity.  Think of driving through it.  You never want to turn around.  Even going around adversity still removes the learning experience.  But, push through it, taking it head on, that’s where the development happens.

For more information on overcoming adversity, and how to flip your mindset to actually welcome adversity into your life, check out the podcast associated with this post:

The post The Stronger Revolution: Overcoming Adversity appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.

All too often, we find ourselves reflecting too much on past events, or trying to plan far into the future.  The result is that we are missing what is happening in the present.  We are not staying present here, right now, today.  This is a potential misinterpretation of the Stronger Revolution Philosophy.  When we are trying to grown through the aggregation of marginal gains, we need to focus, plan, and track our goals.  This does require future plans.  However, we cannot become so focused on the accomplishment of that goal that we miss all that we can learn from the day-to-day struggle of achieving that goal.  Accomplishing the goal is not where we grow and develop.  In the next episode, we will talk about how we grow through overcoming adversity.  But, for now, we need to stay focused on the process that is happening today.

There are different strategies we can employ to help us stay present.  One is to realize that we have no control over the future.  The ancient Stoics believed that we only really have control over what is in our mind.  Our thoughts and decisions are all we can control and it is wasteful to try to control anything else.  We can also take note that even when we try to predict or plan for the future, we are almost always wrong about how we think something will play out and we often fall off a strict path to our goals.  Thus, there is no reason to predict the future too much.  Finally, we can use things like journals and calendars to record future events.  This allows us to forget about what’s to come now knowing that when it is time to concern ourselves with a future event, we will be reminded at that time.

For more information on staying present and strategies to help you do so, check out this episode:

The post The Stronger Revolution – Staying Present appeared first on Pittsburgh Crossfit | Industrial Athletics.