What's Your Difference?

 
You spend most of your time conforming. We all do.
Our alarm is set to someone else’s clock. Our wardrobe meets their standard; so does our beard and our haircut. Our work is premeditated, plug-and-play-and-plug-again. Even that tattoo sleeve is getting awfully common…
It’s easy to follow trends. It’s hard to change habits. And THAT is what makes the Catalyst family different: we’re willing to do hard things.
You might already know this about success, or maybe you’ve just heard motivational cliches, but it’s true: no measure of success comes easy. You’re not going to find the winning lottery ticket; not going to improve your fitness on a video bowling game; not going to age gracefully because you eat the low-fat candy. But those are easy to believe, because you wish they were true. And when someone tells you that brisk walking will help you drop 30lbs by Christmas, you want to believe it.
We don’t. We’re different.
By and large, Catalyst family members have turned that corner. They’ve been hustled, conned, sold. They’ve done everything else–all the easier things–and none have delivered. They’ve followed that rainbow and found only leering men in green boots.
Catalyst family members stand out: they have T-shirts, sure. Sometimes they have little rope marks on their ankles from learning to skip, or other 24-hour battle scars. They are identifiable in their knee socks…and also as the first to confront difficult stuff. The first to speak up, or to sit down and read. They’re not here for the fluffy stuff; they’re here to change.
I get to see it from the front of the class: that ten seconds of transition from Secretary to Athlete. From businessman to badass. From calm old dentist to chalked-up, head-on-straight warrior. Fifty times every day, I get to see what makes them DIFFERENT: the willingness to change, to do hard stuff, to suffer and triumph.
True difference is obvious. I’m proud to stand before these folks, who care willing to do the hard stuff: to show up and expose themselves to coaching and correction. To do CrossFit under the eye of a professional and shoulder-to-shoulder with a mixed bag of rebels. To change.
Get off the treadmill. Do something hard. Grow.