The right approach to the future

Forget the past and build the present towards reaching your future

I bet that all of you have heard about Steve Jobs. He is one of the people that I really admire. Often times when I feel trapped or challenged to take an important decision I think about him and some of the things he says in his presentations. Actually right now I am reading a book about him called The Steve Jobs Way: iLeadership for a new generation. Eventhough the book is about his life, the obstacles he was challenged to overcome and the way he coped with the hand that life dealed at him, it is also a book that will make you think a lot about the way your life turns out to be. About the decisions you make, the dreams you chase and the risks you take.

In the book Steve says that great inventors create products that are the result or the fruit of their imagination, that let them build a world, in which they'd love to live. And that is a totally different approach to life, from the one where we just try to make the past better. I know it sounds kind of fancy and probably you feel confused but I am gonna try and make it clear.

Think about something in your past. A situation that you feel like you took the wrong decision...the time when somebody cheated on you, when somebody did something wrong and hurt you! How do you feel about it? DO you wish you could change it? Have you promised yourself that you won't ever let it happen again? And when challenged to face a similar situation in the present, you rewind the time back to the past, feeling scared that you will be hurt again or make the wrong decision, and thus considering your actions towards avoiding the repetition of this past situation. 

Use your imagination

Well that is the wrong approach! What you should do instead is when a situation is challenging you, the better thing to do is stop for a while. Look at everything that is happening and ask yourself: Where do I wanna be? What do I want to happen in the future? Where do I wanna go?...Then when you find the answers to those questions you will have the destination that your hearts wants to take you to! From there on, you should use that drive, all your abilities and your imagination to build your presents towards reaching the desired future. Someone once said that when you look at the past, you may trip in the present and fall in the future! Is this what you wnat your life to look like?

Many of us belittle the voice of our hearts. Many of us think that some dreams are way too impossible, so they are not worth fighting for. And thus the defeat is  forced out of the mouth of victory! As Steve Jobs says "Every opportunity starts with an unmet need." So find the answer to the question of what is your desired future...and strive for it!

The strength of the effort is the measure of the result

"The strength of the effort is the measure of the result!"

Is it one of those days when you feel tired? Even exhausted? All you can think of is your bed and your comfy pillow? You know you have a bunch of things that are waiting on you to be done...but the desire to take a break...walk away from everything and just rest is irresistable? What do you choose? Show some attitude and get the work done or just let it wait for tomorrow?

Truth is you always have a choice, and sometimes it is only a choice of attitude! And it is your attitude which determines where you go in life...wether you enjoy your triumphs or suffer your failures!

I will tell you a story. Back in 2005, when I was living in the USA and playing basketball, I had a goal. To become the best basketball player I could truly be! Pretty tough,right? Well I did not spend my time daydreaming about it. I worked hard for it. Every morning in 4:30a.m. my alarm went off. Did I want to get out of my bed, walk 3miles to the gym and practice? Hm...didn't feel like it...but in my heart I knew what I wanted to be, and I knew exactly how I was going to achieve it-WITH HARD WORK! So I used all the will I had and got out of the bed, went to the gym and gave it my all!

Did it pay off? Well at first it felt like evrything was a waste of time...the more I did, the less I seemed to get...but in life you have to keep pushing...keep walking! You never know what is hiding behind the turn on the corner....Just when I felt like quitting, I kept pushing my hardest and it all payed off. The next season I blew everybody! I played the best I have ever played. I became MVP at the Balkan Games; I won every single award there was to be won in my country, I played pretty good at the European championship and so on...

But guess what? It did not happen, while I was sitting and waiting! It happened because I took action, I worked hard, I refused to quit! Every morning you wake up, you have a choice! To strive for what you want or to put up with being mediocre!" To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”

Interview with Lauren Plumey-not just a woman...an inspiration

Lauren Plumey in action

In everything you do in life  you need to find something or somebody to light the fire in your heart. Sometimes that are people closest to us...and sometimes those are people that have never met us...they do not even know we exist. An year ago I started doing crossfit and there was a woman(a real crossfitter) that was my motivation, my role model. For the past year on my phone screen and on my computer wallpaper there is a picture of her.  Every ime I do not feel like practicing or I feel like eating junk I look at that picture and it gives me motivation to do the right thing in order to achieve the things that women has done. And you know what is the funny part? That I have never met her, neither has she. She did not even know about my existance till I asked her to give an interview for me. As I expected she turned out to be beautiful not only on the outside but also on the inside....probably you are wondering who she is?...Her name is Lauren Plumey and I will let her interview do the talking....


Introduce yourself.
My name is Lauren Plumey.  I am a 30-year-old affiliate owner and CrossFitter in Branford, CT, USA.  

How long have you being doing crossfit? 
I began doing CrossFit in April of 2008.

Have you been involved in some other sports before that? 
No...I was never considered an athlete in any regard.  I dreaded gym while I was in school.  However, I had been working out since the age of 14 religiously.  

 How did people around you accept the fact that you are doing crossfit?
Did they take a jaundiced view of it? I know that my friends that do not CrossFit and my family secretly think that I am a fitness fanatic.  In the beginning, my husband used to mock my constant banter of "the WOD."  Slowly, I began to persuade most of my friends to do CrossFit, including my husband.  He now owns the affiliate with me.  For those that I haven't been able to bring over to CrossFit, they wouldn't dare to say anything negative because they see that CrossFit works.  Its physical effects on my husband and I speak multitudes regarding the efficiency of CrossFit.

 Do you have a nutrition plan that you follow?
If yes, do you meet disapproval from you friends?Or do they understand why you eat the way you do?  I am a strict follower of the Paleo diet.  Most of my friends follow this diet as well (as most of them are also CrossFitters).  My Italian family thinks it is ridiculous that I NEVER plan to eat pasta again, but once again, my health (And their lack thereof) speaks for itself.  However, I never try to impose the diet on those that are not interested.

What does crossfit mean to you and did it change your life in some way? 
Oh my God..what a loaded question!  Well, first off, CrossFit made me an athlete.  I regret not finding it earlier in life.  It has taught me tenacity, and turned me into a problem solver, which I never was.  Prior to CrossFit, if things didn't come easy to me, I didn't attempt them.  Now, I ENJOY working for things.  CrossFit has also given me a healthy habit.  Through college, I made a habit of going out and partying.  Now, if I party too hard on Friday night, I can't perform the way I'd like to in the WOD on Saturday morning.  It has increased my confidence in all avenues of life and allowed me to forge friendships with like-minded people.

What is your favorite WOD and which one do you hate the most?
My favorite WOD is "The Filthy Fifty" (I love chippers), my least favorite is "JT" and the thruster/burpee WOD from the '09 Northeast Regionals (5 135/95 lb Thrusters, 10 burpees, 12 minute AMRAP)

Is it hard for you to combine your daily tasks with workouts?
And have you ever used the excuse that you are too busy to workout?  WORKOUT first WORK later!  I've called out of work to workout! I have found that, like anything in life, if it is important enough to you, you will find a way to squeeze it into your schedule.  So, yes, working two full-time jobs and training myself can get crazy, but I love it too much to make an excuse not to do it.

What is your biggest accomplishment in crossfit so far? 
 Qualifying for the CrossFit World Games two years in a row. Successfully running an affiliate.  

Do you remember some funny story with you and crossfit? 
  There are certainly a lot, but none that I am sure would transfer as humorously into text.

Lauren Plumey and her husband David

What advice would you give to the beginner crossfiters in Bulgaria?
  Don't be discouraged if it seems like you are the only one of your friends involved in this "insane fitness cult" Just as it did in the USA and Canada, it will spread like wildfire throughout the country in time.  Be patient~you will not be a CrossFit rockstar immediately.  But, like anything in life, the things that are worthwhile must be worked for.  "What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem to lightly."  True fitness is earned.

 And here is  a link to the website of her crossfit gym. http://shoreline.crossfit.com/

Help others grow

"Try hard to get what you like...or you will be forced to like what you get!"

Have you ever found yourself in a situation when a friend or somebody close to you wanted to achieve something. They put a decent amount of work, but sometimes when it got hard they tried to find an excuse why it won't happen? They let the physical pain or physical incapability of doing something, take over their mind. They let the pain the body felt, crush their mind and force them to quit. What did you do? Did you encourage them to keep on pushing or did you just let them quit...telling it is ok, and that if they do not feel like doing it, they could just walk away?

I've noticed that most people that surround you will let you quit. They won't be brave enough to tell you that you are being a baby that always whines when things are not going the desired way. Most people won't have the courage to be tough on you and make you push harder, just because they think that this will make you hate them! But is this the right thing to do? Just let the once we love go the easy way and thus never find out how great they could be?

I think that if you really care about somebody you should treat him according to what he could be...what he could accomplish! People could rarely achieve something if they do not push beyond what they think is their limit. In life you should always be able to see the beauty, ehind the ugly. You should always be able to recognize the strength, behind the weakness!  You should expect things out of people and thus you will plant in them the seed of confidence...so they could truely believe they can achieve.

NEVER GIVE UP!

As a personal trainer you should be able to see the potential in the scrawny newcommer in the gym, that looks worse than my great grandmother in shorts...the one that lacks all physical skills you could think of. The newcommer that looks unmotivated and insecure. Make sure you light the fire inside....don't let him go easy when the WOD gets hard.  treat him as he is already the athlete you wish he could. At first he will be mad at you, he will hate you...but in the future he will be grateful for the way you treated him.As Johann Goethe once said "If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be."  What do you wish for the people you care of?

A different perspective

At the end of the day you either focus on what is tearing you apart or what is holding you together!

I watched a short scene from a movie, where there was a servent who was talking in fron of a group of teenagers. She showed them some pictures. They looked kind of blurry and they were taken from really really close. She asked them to guess what was the real object in the picture. One of them actually looked pretty disgusting. It was similar to a really close view of brain, but it did not look nice at all! They tried to hit off the object, but none of them guessed it right! At the end it turned out to be....A WALNUT! Then she said that sometimes in order to see the object you should look at it in a different perspective.

That got me thinking about how life goes on. Sometimes when you find yourself stuck in a difficult situation, things look hopeless. You feel like you are carrying world's burden on your back. You catch yourself thinking that it can't get any worse and probably often wonder why this is happening to you? How did you deserve it?-you'd ask. Well the story above made me think about life and the problems we face. Sometimes when you are in the mids of the problem, it looks like it can't be solved. Looks hard...and the more you try to find the solution the deeper you get stuck in it. But hold on...don't give in to desperation...remember the servent and her pictures? Remember how the disgusting thing in the picture turned out to be a simple walnut? Well, take that example and adjust it to your life. When you face an obstacle, don't dig deeper in it, just to find yourself drained and unable to cope with it. JUST LOOK AT IT FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE!

Do you remember when we were little, how we loved to take the magnigier and look through it? Using it, you could se ethe smallest bug like an enormous tarantula! Even the smallest things, grew bigger if you looked at them through the lenses. But then...you just move the lenses away and it is still that small tiny bug it actually is. So, why are you scared now? What makes you feel that fear and insecurity? What if you are exagerating the situation just because you are looking from so close at it? Move further...let it rest! Don't stress over it and "the big tarantula will turn to a little bug", that won't scare you anymore.

When having a problem, don't give in to the negative emotions that try to overatke you! Be stronger than them....why? BECAUSE YOU ARE! Just remember that we are just a small part of the big Universe....and thus our problems are small on the background of world's disastours!