Process

(Be forewarned, this one rambles a bit.)

There is a lot of introspection happening in my world lately. Much of the time, over this past fall, it has been taken up by could haves. This month…this month is different.

Now could be is pounding a refrain in my head.

I have always been interested in motivation, in what drives a person to do what they do? What internal or external trigger is making this person jump off the cliff or this other buckle down and tackle the climb again and again and again. Is this something you are born with or is it something that can be taught? Is success contingent on talent? work ethic? aggression? What is the motivation? What makes the difference?

I have no clue if I will ever find the answers to these questions. The more I ask, the more new questions seem to spawn from the answers.

The one thing I have found is that motivation in largely dependent on emotional investment. Dreams, desire, want and perceived need play huge roles in whether or not a person will go after their dream and just how hard they will try.

Lately I have found myself filling page after page of my journal with my personal wants and desires. It certainly didn’t feel that way when I was in the middle of the worst of my depression. In the beginning it was more like why why why is this happening when I wanted this to happen!

Slowly, as the move and the sale of house and gym came to pass, I used my writing to imagine what that very day would look like in a perfect world: we would have x number of boxes packed, the kids would be little angels and the dogs wouldn’t throw up on the freshly steam-cleaned carpets. Then the writing graduated to how that week would go or that trip (Disney World does not allow for depression!) or it would go off on a tangent about dreams remembered.

I guess that is when the trigger hit for me. Dreams remembered. Why did I forget them? Why did I leave them and put my effort into the one I had just seen crumble around me? I still don’t have the answer to those questions, but that process of writing, writing, writing without internal censorship or editing has done far more to anchor me than anything else I have done.

I am also realizing that I am a far different person now than before I had the gym. Opening  a CrossFit gym was a gigantic leap of faith…in myself. It was by far the most exciting/terrifying thing I have ever done and I cannot regret a moment of it. Now, I look back at past, unaccomplished goals and I wonder what the hell I was so scared of? I also wonder, what’s stopping me now.