My greatest self: Where I am going and what I continue to strive for

  These last few weeks have been crazy for me personally, emotionally and mentally. Working through the motions and processes of my life at times can be extremely challenging. But if I do not stay on, focused and determined and aware of the good , the challenging and the progress that I can pursue I know things will continue to flow and continue to move toward progress in my life.

This week I really sat down and thought about some questions that were brought to me. Here are some things I know, some things I am learning and things that I am continuing to grow with.

Where do you feel most empowered?

For me I feel most empowered in the gym. I feel like I am strong, confident and can take on the world from the barbell, floor, or pull up bar. I know I may be where I want to be yet but I am continuing to strive to move forward. 

When do you feel courageous?

When I feel the most courageous when I am in front of a pad of paper, a notebook, and with a paint brush/pen with my creative flow moving through me. I feel that I am aware of my emotions, I am able to speak out without fear and be courageous in my words and my emotions without getting inside my head. 

What areas of your life feel fulfilled?

I feel my life is fulfilled and overflowing in the following areas:

1. My marriage and relationship with my husband. We are continuing to understand, motivate, love and be courageous together. It at times can be rocky and we at times can both be stubborn in our ways and ideas. The most important thing I have learned through our relationship is the idea of support and willingly letting go of the small things, learning to communicate and love creatively together. 

2. My gym. I feel completely fulfilled, alive and embraced by my community, my gym family and my motivation when I step foot into Sweat360 on a daily basis. 

3. I feel fulfilled in knowing that I still have a ways to go in figuring out my body, my emotions and just my daily lifestyle. I am not perfect and I am going to continue to challenge myself to find out how my walk of life and the way my life can and will work. It is a continuous journey of learning and understanding of myself!

What are your weaknesses?  

1. I know one of my biggest weaknesses is caring WAY TOO MUCH about what other people think (or what I think they may be thinking) I know this is something that has gotten in the way of my progress and my journey through life. My great friend and coach Lara the other evening drew a really great visual sketch/quick learning for me as we we were talking the other day. This is an example that I know I will continue to look back to when the type of thoughts, situations or feelings come up.

  Here in this photo we have me going along the journey/road of life. Along the way as you can see on the right there are the doubters, the "haters" or just people in general who will try to bring you down, and try to distract you from your journey ahead. If you stop to listen, to be convinced of those whispers, doubters and others along the road you will become distracted and ultimately not get to the destination point of finding my true self. I have been there though along this journey and unfortunately stopped and listened to the people/thoughts and ideas that I didn't need to hear and didn't need to believe. But now I have turned around and continued on life and will continue to move forward. This is such a great sketch/clear picture of where I am , where I have been and where I want to be going. 

2. I have unfortunately been shaming my body, putting myself down and not believe in myself. Going along with being distracted by others and certain situations my mind is sometimes my worst enemy. I can take myself down the path of destruction continuously while convincing myself I am not good enough and not worthy. It is a viscous cycle and one that I have to continue to turn around in my life. I know there are so many great things I am doing, I know my body is working on becoming what is wants and needs to be. I must remember that these processes and thoughts and changing of ones ways are not just an overnight success. I am continuing to push on, push through and continue to get better at this. 

What are your strengths?

  1. One of my biggest strengths that I personally believe and see in myself is my willingness to change, to grow and to continue to move forward. Along the way I have stumbled, fallen over even injuring myself in mental, emotional ways but I continue to try and spread my wings of change and move on. I have been to the lowest of low but continue to move forward and really put passion into my daily life, thoughts and processes.

2.  I am creative, I feel inspired and I want to continue to live my life and my strengths with passion.

What can you change?

 What I really can change is my thoughts. I need to turn around the thoughts and the things I am getting hung up on and let them GO. I will get to where I need to be in time but I need to continue to never give up and always press forward. If I change these ideas, these movements and these ways and behaviors success will come for myself full force. 

What can you surrender?

 1. The what I can change and what I can surrender I believe go hand in hand. Change the thoughts, the things that bring me down and surrender those things, write them down, burn the piece of paper and move on. 

2. I can also surrender that I am not perfect. I can work towards success and I can achieve success but sometimes I just need to surrender, need to cry, grieve and be frustrated to figure out a solution to how I am feeling and find a pathway through it all. The moments in time are the way that I at times work through things 

Striving for my most authentic self. Striving to be truly 110% ME. 

Emily  

Sitting in progress: Acknowledging how far I have come

  I may not be the only one that feels at times pressured with life. There is so much going on in our culture today. There is so much pressure to be the best, to be strong and to be perfect. Some people excel in these type of situations, some people deflect away from these situations and then there is the category where I fall under most of the time. I feel that I am a little bit of a clump or a mass that makes up the pie of life and it's situations. I thrive at times on the pressure I can put on myself, I excel to exude the excellence that I want to to portray to myself and especially others. But most of all what I have yet to really dive into is feeling the sense of being happy with myself. I am sure other can say they can relate to this.

In the past I have had the little voices come up in my head. This voice at times can be my voice of encouragement and at times it can also be the voice that could destroy me. For many years of my life the voice of destruction occurred. I had a ton of great things happening to my present self at the time. I was losing weight, running half marathons, growing in my own self and accomplishing so much. But that voice of doubt and destruction started to come up more than once for me. It could happen at the moments that were the least expected; after a hard workout, after I had tried something great, or even after I had achieved another goal, or set the bar high for myself and to my surprise surpassed my expectations.  That voice would whisper quietly in the back of my mind and confuse me. It would enter thoughts into my present self of "not being good enough", "being too slow", "not eating right", or "not pushing yourself hard enough". Those whispers then started to become louder and instead of ignoring those whispers and brushing them off I started to believe those thoughts, those lies and untrue stories.


  Until January of 2015. In January of 2015 I decided to stop letting those whispers continue to be the loud shouting in my life. Once I decided to become a better version of myself those whispers became softer, quieter and almost non existent. Those whispers of negativity and false statements started to become loud shouting and rejoicing of positive affirmations and change in my life. As of October 2015 I am really becoming this changed, enlightened and growing human being. I HAVE accomplished a ton in the last year and I will continue to learn, grow and do what is best for me and my present and aware self. I know I have the support, love and passion within myself and with others to become, learn and do my life in the best way possible.


 I sit here now after releasing long held lies and negative elements in my life. The road has not always been a smooth and clear one in the past year. But I will say I have come out of these past few months being able to sit in my progress and sit in my success. Sitting in these great accomplishments is the best thing I could have ever done for myself. I may not be done, I may not have really figured out my life and where I am going but I am continue to walk the journey through life, ignoring the negativity and staying on and trekking through the path to success.

Stepping away from social media and revealing my true self: Thoughts on my 1 month social media detox!

 As many of you know I have decided that for a month I will step away from social media. This gives me time to dive into what makes me so drawn to social media, how I am using it in my life and what is important vs. non important information for me to be digesting/take in via social media. I have been going strong for about two weeks now and I just wanted to share a few things that I have personally noticed within myself with the changes and differences I have already seen in being "out of the social media loop".

 The biggest thing I have noticed is that my present awareness has shifted. I am not constantly looking at my phone or just disconnecting from myself anymore. There have been times at home, on breaks at work, etc. that I will look at my phone and start looking at things on social media and somehow an hour will go by in what seems like an instant. Now with time it almost seems to be moving slower but for the better.

 I have really noticed that my awareness when I am around Ben, with friends, etc. is so much more grounded, rooted. I am not zoning out when Ben is talking to me anymore. Now it is almost like I am the one who has to pull him away from his phone and being distracted. I think it also makes me realize how much I was not paying attention to him. And that isn't fair to my wonderful husband who has so much to say and so much I can learn from! Now with social media and those items out of the way we are having some really wonderful conversations together and just enjoying be around each other more. It's not that we weren't doing this before but I wasn't focused on sometimes what Ben was saying or other people around me were saying. I am much more aware , focused and engaged without looking at Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, etc.

 I have also realized that I sometimes use social media as a way of disconnecting or not feeling emotions in a present moment. When I have felt anxious, mad or upset I at times would tend to just walk away and ignore those thoughts and feelings by distracting myself with social media. I have had a few instances come up with needing to deal with my emotions and being fully aware of those thoughts and feelings rather than just pushing them down and distracting myself with my phone and the apps I so frequently use. It was quite honestly hard, strange and a foreign feeling  at first. But the amazing thing was I was actually able to sit in those feelings and thoughts for once and really fully deal with the present issues at the time. I also dealt with the feelings/issues at hand and then was able to solve why I was feeling that way and move on from it and felt relief and fullness.


Some of these things that I have noticed seem to simple to me. But honestly I was not aware of them before because of the distraction/disconnect in my life with social media. It is not to say that I will never use Facebook or any other the other social media outlets again but for me personally I am now aware of some things that I definitely need to continue to work on for me to be a successful, aware and fulfilled person!

Not letting the scale define you: Moving past the number and showing myself true success

Sometimes it is so easy to let the scale define myself and my progress. I have really been diving in head, nose, mind and body first to try and understand my thought process and the way I think about myself lately when I get on the scale. As I have slowly began to lose weight again I am noticing so much more because I have not put myself on the scale everyday. Rather than relying on that number to tell me how successful I am I have approached the scale and my relationship with it much differently this time around. Rather than relying on that number to base the value of my success and my achievements I have chosen to look at how I am feeling vs. whatever number that scale shows me on a daily basis. I have based my life around my own personal accountability and not letting that number get to me. Sure, when I weighed myself for my monthly check-in on Friday this may not have been the number I wanted to see. For once I am starting to be honest with myself and continue to push forward without just giving up. Sure there will be times in my life where I stumble and I fall a little. But the key to this is to get back up and start off from where you are. 

 Another thing I have found extremely useful with my weight loss is listing, having dialogue and writing my thoughts down about how I am feeling about that number. Whether or not I would like to admit it I know that I am not at the ideal number weight wise that I want to be continuing on in life and the future. But what has this number really taught me? What can I learn from what the scale has shown me on any given day? I feel like many times the scale is my worst nightmare, evilest friend and enemy. I do not enjoy getting on the scale and to be completely real with myself and whoever is reading this I sometimes get a little anxiety about it. It at times stresses me out to no end.

 What I have decided to do is rather than dictate my daily life, moments and future because of this number is to just BE. 

• Be the person who isn't quite at the weight they want to be but still gets out there everyday and moves. 

• Be the person who lifts some heavy shit, shows up and leaves the floor sweaty with  no excuses.

• Be the girl who gets there and stays there and is aware that life happens and to learn and grow from her own experiences.

• Be whatever I want to be. Don't apologize and be true to myself and my own passions. 

• Be loving and be passionate. Show kindness to whoever really needs it and to those who have shown you and continue to teach you great lessons in life.  

 So the scale isn't showing me what I ideally want to see for the rest of my life. Should I fret over my weight or just go ahead and get out there and kick ass in whatever way I want to?! I feel like this is something that I of course still struggle with constantly. But I am making a promise to myself to not rely on my weight as a barrier but to grow and learn and expand on so much more without worrying about that silly number!

 

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.” 
― Jim Morrison

Moving and being awesome: What this has taught me and is continuing to teach me

 Sometimes there are days that I wake up and I really literally don't want to move. It may be because I am tired, have too much on my mind, or just want to sleep in. All of these things that sometimes run across my mind I have come to find are my "blockers" or excuses that are possibly moving me away from continuing my success. You could even say that food, alcohol and certain social relationships were also blocking me from great success also.

 Since January 2015 I have committed myself to becoming better, to move more and in different ways than I ever thought of before. At first I wasn't sure if I could do it; starting over was going to be hard. But I have continued down a path of wanting and needing more, demanding more and feeling successful along the way. This weekend I participated in a fun and friendly competition called the Sweatcreate Games with my local gym Sweat360 and our gym affiliate for jujitsu Recreate Fitness in Portland. Talk about the most fun experience ever! Good friendly competition, lifting some heavy ish, playing some corn hole, a little tug o' war and followed by a sweet barbecue?! It was so fun and I don't think I've laughed more and played any harder in my life! All of these type of group events I would have shied away from 5 years ago before I came to Sweat360.

 An awesome person and fellow Sweat athlete Jenn broke down her day of how much she lifted during these various events. I went ahead and went back through to see what I could remember. Some of my highlights were the following:

Deadlifts: 135lbs x 60 reps = 8,100 lbs. total in a 5 minute time cap

Push Press: two 20 lb. kettle bells (40lbs) x 100 reps= 4,000 lbs. pressed in a 5 minute time cap

- 1 45 lb. kettle bell  and 1 60 lb. sand bag carried down and back of the front area of the gym during a times weight carrying challenge with our team of 6. We were all able to carry a ton of med balls, sand bags and bells in 56 seconds! :)


- Was able to complete two laps around the building, 21 -35 # kettle bell swings and 12 pull ups with some resistance band assistance in 3 minutes!


- Was able to help the fantastic team of 6 I was in be the overall winner of the games by team. (We didn't win against recreate overall as our gym but still I WILL TAKE IT!

 All of these things are awesome. What is really came down to for me personally was it wasn't about being the best person in the group, and it really wasn't about winning for me. The best thing I took out of being a part of this group and my team was SHOWING UP and DOING MY BEST.

 

Because of doing these things it had AMAZING OUTCOMES!

 SOOO much fun. I hope to be doing more fun events like this soon! Here are some of the awesome highlight photos from yesterday. Moving is such a fun and awesome thing. I am so happy I have decided to make this a part of my daily life, routine and moving forward. Things like these type of fun events continue to show me how far I have come and how far I truly can go and excel with my fitness.

Photos to prove how much fun we had on Saturday!

 

 

Rob da "cheerleader" for the day! This was during the challenge of carrying all those items collectively as a group down and back for time! Awesome coach and wonderfully fun times!

 

 

During my deadlifts! Love being in front of the barbell!

 

 

During tug of war! Yup that's right! We won our first round and lost the second but it was so much fun! An awesome way to test even more strength after tiring ourselves out with other various events!

 

 

Push Press: In 5 minutes I was able to get 100 reps with two 20 # kettle bells.

 

 

These people. Gym Family= The best people ever.

Fear and Doubt: How I am learning to move past it

I remember when I was in elementary school and we would all play on the playground, run around and play tag with my childhood friends and other classmates. One day in particular that I remember was when we were playing "Red Rover" and I had broken away from the game to go talk to one of my friends. A boy who was known as one of the classic "bullies" in our grade came over to me and my friend and started teasing us and calling us names. He was calling my friend "skinny", a "twig", etc. Then this boy who I really never liked all throughout grade school came up to me and started to call me "fat". Before he could even finish the word I punched him right in the throat. He stumbled back in shock that I had actually gotten to the point of being physical with him. I could tell that this was not going to end well.  After he realized that yes a girl had gotten him right in the throat and hard he hit me right in the stomach. I remember having that complete feeling of seeing stars and having the wind knocked out of you and not being able to breathe. I don't remember falling to the ground but as I came to I had other kids, teachers and other adults around me.

 After they found the little boy that had been bullying me they took both of us to the Principal and we had to sit down and talk to him about our choices. I remember being mad at myself for resorting to becoming physical with someone else but the minute the boy started sputtering the word "fat" I saw red. It was something that came up not only early on in my childhood but later on in my teen years. Dating was hard, and I always seemed to be the girl that boys just saw as a "friend". I didn't want to be looked at as lazy, fat or anything that was associated with being a bigger person. Sometimes I look back at how much time I spent on wanting boys, groups of people and others to like me and just wish I could have shaken my 12-17 year old self. I learned a lot of the things from my childhood and young adult years though. I have now learned that because I was pretty independent and strong willed  growing up that I have become this independent and tenacious adult later in life.

 I guess the point of telling this story is how I have always had a lot of fear and doubt come up in my life. I feared growing up that I would never find someone that would love me for me. I feared I would always be that "bigger" friend that no one would really want to hang out with. Hell, I even feared being alone for the rest of my life. Obviously this is not what happened at all! I found my wonderful friend and husband Ben when I was 18 years old. He has always accepted me for me at any shape or size. He has also always been the one that has understood me through my fear and doubt. He at times can talk me off a ledge that seems like its 5,000 feet high. I am thankful not only for the husband he is to me but also the sturdy, strong and determined man he is that makes me want to continue to become better and grow more and grow more together in our friendship and our marriage.

 Fear and doubt even with the most support, love and people in your life can at times not feel like enough. Over the past year I have written out, talked about, yelled about, cried and vented my fear and doubt to myself, my coaches, friends and family. Some will understand and others will not. Honestly this has been the best medicine and therapy I could ever have. To speak out and speak up about these things has helped me grow in my fitness journey, it has helped me finally stand up for myself in situations and be 110 % who I truly am. I will admit I let fear and doubt put me back into a place I didn't want to be almost a year ago. I helped my fear and doubt get masked by food and excuses. In January of 2015 I didn't know if there was a way of reversing what I had started. But I wanted to change before I got too deep into my fears and my denial. I am so thankful I made that choice almost a year ago.

 Fear and the doubt of losing people because they wouldn't like how I felt or agreed with my own thoughts or ideas has been another rough thing I have gone through. I have lost some friendships and people in my life because I finally spoke out about how I felt and unfortunately some friendships that had felt incredibly strong crumbled. My fear and doubt crept up during these times for me. I was broken, and felt defeated. But then I realized that sometimes these are just the things we need to go through to become better. Then realizing how many amazing people I have in my life and are still here for a reason and support me even with all my imperfections has been an awakening experience and has turned my thoughts and outlook around.


 I cannot allow fear and doubt to be my best friend. I have chosen to not let my fears or my doubts define me any longer. I will not let food, my relationships with others or any other non beneficial items in life bring me down. This past year I have really realized what motivates me, what moves me and who I really am. I am a fearless, motivated and positive person. I want to continue to strive to be the best form of myself. Life lessons are sometimes a rocky road up but I can't say I have any regrets about the choices I have made.

 Everything in my life finally has the feeling and acknowledgement of success and wholeness once more. Even though I may have been the "bigger" girl growing up that girl who I once was in now a strong, independent, weight-lifting, jujitsu, running and ass kicking type of chick! Living life with purpose and moving forward is what I strive for daily. So you want to know how I have moved past fear and doubt? I decided to move through it, grow with it and take it head on over the past year. Sure, this hasn't been a perfect, squeaky clean or easy thing to do. But I am SO thankful I made that shift, made that change and found that fear and doubt could no longer be a part of my life and daily routine any longer.

Here's to continuing to courageously face fear and doubt head on and to becoming my true authentic self!

 

Booties in Action 2015! First competition checked off my bucket list!

 

 

This last Saturday I competed in my first Crossfit competition. Booties in Action 2015 was not only a personal goal of mine but also a personal growing point to show myself how far I have come.

 

 

Here are some thoughts that crossed my mind yesterday after I completed my first Crossfit competition:

• Eight months ago I wouldn't have put myself out there and competed among forty other very strong women.

• Eight months ago I don't know if I would have even showed up to an event like this.

• Eight months ago I wouldn't have gone up to a 245 lb. bar and even thought, "Hell yea I can lift this!"

(PR on my deadlift! 245#!!)

• Eight months ago I wouldn't have even thought I would be able to learn some awesome Olympic lifting movements AND be solid in them like a clean and jerk, power cleans, snatches and many more movements that come SO naturally to me now.

 

(During WOD #3 doing some dumbbell snatches, one of my favorite movements!)

 

• Eight months ago I wouldn't have ever thought if I did something like this that I would even place much less place 17th overall out of 40 women.

 

(17th place overall in the Scaled division. WHAT?!)

 Saying over and over again the statement of "I would have never", "I would have never thought" just shows how much my thought process has changed. I am finally and fully becoming who I want to be. Who I want to be is still becoming defined. I am not only thinking about things but I am actually DOING and ACCOMPLISHING these thoughts. I feel that I want to be physically empowered. I am becoming physically empowered by driving and pushing and becoming stronger. I am becoming physically empowered by continuing to surround myself with motivating, powerful and successful people!

I felt such an overwhelming amount of love, support and strength yesterday while I was competing. It was like a great High Def class at Sweat360 but maximized with tons more people cheering, yelling and rooting you and others in the competition on. I couldn't help but smile when I could hear people yelling "You got this Em!", "Awesome job!" and "Keep pushing!". Being used to this type of motivation and yelling kept me more focused, more determined and more powerful than ever. I may have felt like my legs were going to fall off, or that my heart was right in my throat but continuing to push and finish made all of this time, commitment and showing up worth it.

  The great thing is that my gym has helped mold me, form me, and make me become so aware of the exercises that we did yesterday that at times I feel as if I can do these movements in my sleep. I absolutely loved that a ton of these movements were even too light for me! Can't believe I am saying this but a 65 lb. barbell from ground to overheard and a 20 lb. dumbbell snatch really made me slow down a bit so I didn't throw any of the weight above me or behind me! Of course after doing fifty lunges, or running lines these movements were definitely challenging but it pushed me to keep going, to slow down , to breathe and stay focused.

 My biggest learning from this experience for myself is to always OWN my life, my body, and who I AM 110%. Seeing so many women my size , different sizes and from all different backgrounds just killing this competition gave me so much strength within myself to know that trying new things, expanding my knowledge on my fitness abilities, and becoming happy and successful in whatever I want to be doing is all worth the hard work! Such a cool experience, eye opening and is totally making me want to do more competitions!

 

 

This is the true me. Happy, content and feeling the overwhelming success of completing my first Crossfit competition. What a great feeling and experience this last weekend has been!