I was recently breaking one of my own social media rules and having an online debate (spoiler alert, nothing was solved) about training pregnant athletes.  

This person was going on and on about how “different” it is to train pregnant women and the overwhelming amount of complexity involved.

This started because part of a comment I posted which said “just ditch the intensity and scale appropriately”.   This statement was deemed a “gross oversimplification and reckless” and proceeded to tell me that I needed special training and should leave pregnant women to the “specialists”  (insert my exaggerated eye roll and look of confusion)

Was it really an oversimplification though????  My experience and the 14,000+ CrossFit gyms seem to be doing a fantastic job at building strong women, prego or not.  And it’s not complicated, delicate yes, but complicated no.

This email isn’t about being right or wrong.  It is about how we all regularly convince ourselves that things are so “complicated” that we can’t do them or we need something “special” to actually achieve them.

This is something that I deal with on a very regular basis with new clients and with other professionals in a variety of fields.  We tend to make simple things “complicated” in order to make us look smart or convince ourselves of reasons we can’t do something.  

When we encounter a change in our lives that will require hard work or discomfort, we instantly come up with the dooms day scenario about all the reasons that we can’t make it happen.

Don’t believe me??  Have you ever heard these stories:

“I’m going to start making more time for myself and going to the gym”…….two week later……”I’m just sooo busy, I have so much stuff to do”

“I’m gonna spend more time with my spouse”…….12 hours later…….”Work just got really hectic”

“I’m gonna get my diet together”……..3 mins later……”I mean how does anyone not eat sugar?!?!”

“I’m gonna save money for vacation”……15 seconds later…..”Rogue is having a sale!!!

Those are all my stories by the way!

We are masters at convincing ourselves that the world is an overcomplicated place where we have no real power to make the changes in our lives that we need and want.

Guess what?  We are all fooling ourselves!!!!!   We don’t want to admit that life is pretty simple. 

The problem lies in this single admission:   By admitting this we have to accept that we were wrong or just lazy and unwilling to change.  I don’t care who you are, that’s tough.

The reality is there are very few scenarios that actually exist where simply deciding to change isn’t enough of a catalyst to change our lives.  

It’s just hard. 

 But remember, simple doesn’t mean easy.  It just means it’s not as complicated as we will start to convince ourselves of.

What if I told you that you could make every change you wanted in your life simply by looking at seven cirlces?

Seems ridiculous and embarrassingly simple.

I was teaching a seminar recently and one of my mentors that I respect was walking a participant through a question matrix and they were discussing training and nutrition.

Take a look at the picture attached.

You will have the same reaction that I did…….

“Well, I mean there is a lot more involved here and it’s just not that….”

I never said it was easy, just simple.  

Fern