I’m a painfully optimistic person. In a year that many are saying is one of the most trying on record, I spent a huge amount of my energy and time trying to soothe people and remind them that the best is yet to come. Needless to say, this year it took a lot of energy. The world has experienced a number of traumatic events, a seemingly endless parade of iconoclasts left our presence and a fierce election cycle has left our country feeling raw, our holiday dinner tables rife with sometimes confronting conversation.
Through it all I feel like I’ve had this kind of life hack. I feel like I know this simple way to remind myself that the world is good and that people have goodness in their hearts long before the dark side ever touches them. It’s something that reminds me that at our core, we all have many gifts: our many bodies, our voices, our embraces and our sense of competition. It reminds me that it’s ok to shout like a fool when I want to or maybe even howl from time to time. It reminds me that in the hardest of times, just putting out your hand can be enough to have another one reach back out and give it a good smack that says “You got this.” This thing that gives me all this is crack-cocane KIDDING. It’s obviously NP.
I have been trying hard the last few weeks to deal with the magnitude of the crater that this year has left us in and that optimism has kicked in again. Things may get weird and there may be great challenges in all manner of places and from many sides of our lives but these challenges serve to make us stronger. When we are faced with something we are not sure we can deal with we can reach inside ourselves and use the power that’s in each of us to get through, and our tribe will always be there. Even when our struggles feel personal, insurmountable and all encompassing, when we bring them to our team, we are all stronger and we can get through with our family. Guess where I learned all that: yup, crack.
The late-amazing Princess Leia Organa has an amazing quote. She says “Stay afraid but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” On this our last workout of the year, I felt that for sure. ‘How am I going to be ok in this rain?’ ‘I really don’t want to get up and go run around in the wind and rain.’ ‘My trendy sneakers are getting mucky.’ ‘Rain. FML’. But you know what, we all did it and I felt really friggin’ good after that workout today, I’m betting many of you did too. When we’ve been battling injury and we’re not sure if we’re ready to go, we do it anyway and we let ourselves find the answer for real instead of speculating what it is in our heads. When a “lawyer” calls the “cops” on you because you’re being “loud” and then they come and you have to talk to them, it sucks but then you might find that the cop is way on your side and hates that he had to come out here at all too. When we look at the future, we only have our deepest darkest fears to go off of but those voices are the fake-news of your own mind. Purely speculative with all of the real time response.
That’s what I learned in 2016. Life can be fucked and sometimes you feel like even some lemons would be better than what it’s giving you but you move on, you go forward and you get ready to be flexible for what’s next. As a tribe, we dealt with a lot this year and we’ve seen some amazing resilience in all of you in the face of some truly frustrating things. You dove in and kept the tribe at your forefront and didn’t look back. And we won’t look back on Sunday either when we’re officially in 2017 or on Wednesday when we try-out our first new Wednesday location. Or for many months after that when we enter more and more of the unknown.
The tribe is strong. The tribe is fast. The tribe is ferocious. The tribe is ours. Let’s make this year a banner year for our tribe and start fresh with some new energy and some badassery on many levels. Let’s push each other and push ourselves to be the best we can and lets not back away from that even when the going gets tough. I believe in you and I’ve seen that you believe in me, and that’s the greatest gift we can give each other.
Do great LA.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
- Wednesdays in January will be at the Griffith Observatory. We will have workouts at 5:30am and 6:30am and we will continue to provide muscle shredding workouts. Bring your friends, co-workers, neighbors and enemies.
- Recruit like your lives depended on it. Our numbers have dropped because we’ve gotten complacent and because we were working out it a boring, unwelcoming parking lot. We’re no longer in that lot so lets no longer be complacent. You never know who’s life you could change by telling them about this. Take a dive into that discomfort and ask people to join us. (If anybody want’s any pointers about recruiting, Steve or I are more than happy to talk strategy.)
- Happy New Year. I’m proud to call you my tribe.
