Get Your Hopes Up (& Bootcamp #30 Revealed!)
"Don't get your hopes up."
I've been told this all my life. It's become an automatic internal response to whenever I start to feel like things are looking up.
Maybe I'm really losing the weight this time...
Don't get your hopes up.
I think I'm really getting a handle on these coping mechanisms...
Oh yeah? Don't get your hopes up.
This tour might actually happen...
Oh, honey, don't get your hopes up.
Though initially given as advice by loving grown ups convinced that they were "just looking out for us," this mantra of sorts has become the basis on which we diffuse big dreams and bold action.
If you get your hopes up, everything hurts 1,000 times more if it falls apart.
I say, "My point exactly."
As you may have gathered, I'm all about hope. It's my thing. And you know why?
For most of my life, I thought hope was a tease. Without recognizing the power of hope, my life was heavy. There was this emptiness that weighed and dragged me down every shuffling step I tried to take forward. I was taunted by it in my bleak reality that life as it was, was all there would ever be.
Sure I hoped it would get better. I hoped someone would swoop in, tell me I was amazing and take the reigns of my life to make something of me, instead of me having to do anything myself.
After years of self work and strengthening from the inside out, I started recognizing the power of hope as a tool to create change...
Unbridled hope can allow you to see what you truly want.
Hope peeks through the darkness in every situation if you allow it to. Every time you're "stuck," and you find yourself hoping that you'll get out somehow, hope becomes that doorway to finding your way in to the life you want.
Caring about your hopes with every part of you can drive you to create them.
Instead of negating big dreams, I embraced them, and allowed hope to show me the way to action. Hope became that driving force to make my world what I wanted it to be. I've cried buckets when it hasn't worked out, but I've rejoiced more often when my dreams have been realized.
Repetitive hope episodes create a positive life perspective.
A large part of my positivity since my dark days has come from embracing hope. Simply allowing yourself to look at the possibilities that arise from every fall you take makes you an optimist in that moment. With repetition, this habit will take just like any other.
Had I not allowed myself to get my hopes up, 30x30 never would've happened.
We never would have reached out to strangers in over 30 cities across North America, hoping they would say yes. A lot of them didn't. Thankfully, we found 30 who did... and then some.
I never would have left for 2 1/2 months with just a travel backpack and my laptop, hoping it would be the adventure I thought it would be. It wasn't. It was better.
We never would have started this movement together, that brings hope to people who are struggling every single day!
I won't lie to you: every rejection hurts like a roundhouse to the face when you care so deeply about it.
I still catch myself sometimes when something I was hoping for falls through. I'll mutter to myself: "shouldn't have gotten my hopes up..."
...to which I slap myself in the face a little and remind myself of all the other mind-blowing experiences I've created by getting my hopes up.
A lot of people feel stupid when they hope. They feel like it's not worth the pain it causes when it doesn't work out. It's not worth the ridicule they'll get from people who'll say, "I told ya so."
Here's my rebuttal:
The pain of losing is short-lived in people who understand the power of hope. If you really give it your all, a loss isn't permanent. A loss is a detour that will show you where the dead ends are. [click to tweet]
The people who'll say, "I told ya so," are the people who spend their entire lives smothering their hopes until they refuse to feel. Their highs are capped, their lows never hurt that much because they didn't care about what they lost in the first place. Don't let them project their misery onto you.
The action step for the day is actually a call to action for life. I bet you can guess what it is. Ready?
Speaking of getting our hopes up, I was fretting for the last month or so about locking down a final bootcamp location to live out my hope of having it exactly where and when I wanted it.
And guess what?
I got a LOT of no's.
But I held out until I got the deal I was hoping for with exactly the right space...
It is my pleasure to announce that the 30th 30x30 Project Bootcamp will be held in...
(drum roll, please)...
PORTLAND!!!
Come join us at CrossFit Portland on Friday, July 5th at 8 AM to make this final, CrossFit-ized bootcamp of The 30x30 Project Tour one for the books!
You know what that means? All you WDS attendees, I want to see you up and at 'em early that day to open yourself up for all the energy that's about to come your way! That's right, this is the same day that WDS kicks off for 2013, and it's just a 6 minute bus ride away from the heart of downtown (I Google Mapped it).
There will be prizes. There will be CrossFit-izing. There will be blooooooood!
...no, not really that last one, but it will make you gush sweat.
This is EXACTLY the situation I was hoping for. In fact, I had waited to reach out to CrossFit Portland until I talked with someone who knew the owners. Thanks to Joel Runyon, Jenna Forstrom, J.D. Roth and Jen Limbaugh for hooking me up with co-owner, Xi Xia! Yes, that's how many people it took to make this ideal final bootcamp happen.
Even after all the no's. Even after the nights lying awake wondering if it was all gonna fall apart on me in the end...
I refused to let my hopes down.
Here's to some major hope-upping this Memorial Day weekend!
Have a great one.
With hope and fire,
Amy
P.S. OC peeps, I'll see you out at CrossFit Vibe in Costa Mesa tomorrow morning at 9 am! Let me show you just how tough a bodyweight bootcamp can be. Click here to see the Facebook event!