Who are you?

Who are you?

Archaic or fresh

Dense or thin

Of whatcolorskin?

Loud and proud

Or do you follow the crowd?

What are your dreams?

Your general theme?

They say it’s effortless

To just be yourself

But it’s hard to resist

Being everyone else

Sometimes the strength

Just doesn’t seem there

To follow your heart

And let down your hair

Now all that’s left to do

Is take a fresh breath of air

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What have you done to change the world?

Everyone tells me not to drop out of school. “It’s your key to the future,” “Don't be stupid,” “I won’t talk to you anymore,” “ You won’t make anything out of your life.” Well this all may be true, here's my opinion about the school system.

I feel like the way that the school system is set up is just terrible. We sit on our butt for literally 7 hours a day 5 days per week! No wonder the obesity rates are going up. They teach us that there is no blue ribbon for failure or creativity. They give pills to the kids who can’t sit still and they fill us with the past when we should be creating our future. Everything we need to know is on our iPhones. The skills we need to be successful are already instilled within our minds, they just need to be opened. So how do you open up your mind? You go out and explore. You take risks, you fail, you get back up and try again. You watch movies and read books and talk to people. You meet new people and get new ideas. You EXPERIENCE the world.

The system is not set up so kids will get to experience the world. The system is set up to take all of the money we don’t have and then make us feel like we should have tried just a little harder. Cramming our heads with facts all day and making us memorise things just to pass the test is such a waste of time. Once you are out of highschool all you have is what they taught you in school. All you have is what someone else wanted you to know. It’s not what is going to help you be successful like knowing how to manage money, be creative, open your mind, find your passion, succeed, and take care of yourself! They teach us math, english, reading, and science. If you do well in science they tell you to go be a scientist, do well in math they tell you to go be a mathematician. They tell you what to do and who to be, in some kids’ minds that is their only option if they want to be successful. That is all that you leave high school with, and college you leave with tons of debt, wasted time, and still not a single clue what you really want to do with your life. You haven’t had time to create yourself because you’ve been going through the system.

After college you get a lousy 9-5 job just like everyone else to pay off your debt. You get a car that you probably can’t afford and you live off of ramen noodles and McDonalds for the next couple years. Have you done anything to create yourself? Have you done anything to change the world? Are you ever going to? By the time you realize how much time you wasted in school it is already too late. You can’t go back and save all that money for something else, like traveling the world. You can’t go back and choose a different path because what you were taught is all you know. You never had time to create and to explore. All you had time to do was study and work. Now you have kids, and you want them to have a better life than you ever did. But you don’t know how to make it better for them, so you send them to school just like everyone else. You put them through the system. You watch them do the same shit that you did, and they grow up to be just like you. That’s all they ever knew and nothing has changed. You didn’t change the world and neither will your children. You didn’t experience the world and neither will your children. You played it safe and stayed in your little bubble, your entire life has gone by with little to show. I don’t want to be like you. I want to go out and change the world. I want to do everything that anyone has ever told me I wasn't capable of. I want to have fun and do what I love, then share it with other people. I want to inspire people. When I’m dead I want to be remembered as the one who followed her dreams, not just another mediocre life with little to show. So stop telling me what to do. Get off your ass and go experience the world. The clock is ticking.

For the Love of the Sport

The bar stares me in the face. It is cold, rough, and stiff as I place my calloused hands around it. Today I will do the same thing I have done everyday for the past year: snatch and clean & jerk.

I do some box jumps and and a couple double unders to get the blood pumping to my legs. The room is cool, with some chill music playing softly in the background. It’s just another day at the gym.

After stretching and warming up I slide on my high knee socks that will protect my shins from the wrath of the bar, and next my bright red adidas shoes. I tape my thumbs, tighten my wrist wraps, and slather chalk all over my hands. My coach threatens to make me clean the gym, so I put down the chalk bucket and get ready to lift.

Starting with the tens I do a couple quick reps. This is my chance to fix any technical errors before the bar gets heavy. As the weight goes up, I have to get into more of a routine before each lift. I take a sip of water, chalk my hands, shrug my shoulders, and stomp my feet out as if catching an imaginary bar. My hands grip the bar and my back tightens. There is no doubt in my mind that I will make this lift. I raise my head and find a focal point to stare at.

Shoulders tight, back tight, and heels pushing hard against the floor I start to pull the bar. The bar doesn’t want to move, so I add more force. The bar scrapes my shins and out-turned knees on its way up. It gets to my hip crease, and I hesitate a second longer before I begin the second pull under the bar. The bar is motionless; it sits in the air right where I left it.

My feet move out with a bang and I dive under the bar to catch. My chest is parallel with the wall and my shoulders are flexed. The bar is solid in my grip and I will not let it go. As I stand up I let out a breath relief. The bar stays above me a second longer, before I slam it to the ground with a satisfied grin on my face. My coach walks over and gives me a high five before telling me what I need to fix for next time.

The battle continues everyday with that barbell. It never gets lighter, I just get stronger. Some days the bar defeats me and I leave with my head hanging low. Some days I reign victorious, beating my own personal records and doing what I never imagined I could. Either way, every time I walk out of the gym I leave motivated to be better the next day.

Weightlifting is a metaphor for life. The whole point is to overcome obstacles and better yourself in the process. The goal isn’t to know everything, or to be able to lift all the weights in the world; the goal is find your physical and mental limits then to push past them!

It is a lifelong pursuit to become the greatest you can be.

You Are Good Enough

What is that feeling that leads so many people to depression, cutting, eating disorders, bullying, suicide, drinking, abusing sex, and drugs? We all know it, we’ve all felt it before. It’s made us feel tiny, unwanted, and unloved.

It’s the feeling of not being good enough.

It comes from the pain of our past, the fear of our future. We were abused, misused, misled, misunderstood. No one cared. We were rejected. We were forgotten and we were yelled at for our mistakes and our differences. There is so much pain and hurt inside all of us.

Pain is inevitable.

In this life you will feel pain. Loved ones will die, parents will divorce. Things do go wrong at some point. The thing with pain though, is that you can carry it around with you, weighing you down or you can let it go and recalculate your path in life.

The first step to letting go, as Natasha Bedingfield would put it, is to open up your dirty window. Realize that the past is the past, there’s nothing you can do to erase it. Most people run from their past, letting it define who they are and how they act. There is another path, that is much more difficult, it will lead you to happiness.

Let go of your past and learn from your mistakes.

Stop running. Just stop. Take a second and think; what can I do in this moment to become a better person and lead a better life? Take all the lessons that you have learned, all the experiences that you have gone through and let them help you make better decisions in your future. Embrace who you are, your imperfections and all. Somebody loves you.

I just want you to know that you are good enough.

Search for Happiness

Not too long ago I read a book about Buddhism. I’m not a religious person, but I was raised going to church on Sundays. In school I’d learned about the eightfold path and the search for enlightenment, so I decided to look more into Buddhism. I was hoping that after I read the book I would have all the answers, and my life would be perfect within a few days of practicing this new religion. That’s not the case, but this is what I choose to take from the book:

- Always have friendly thoughts about people and all other forms of life.

This and the next few are from the Eightfold Path. According to the Buddha these are the morals one must live by to overcome the craving for earthly pleasures.

- Speak kindly and truthfully while avoiding bitter words against anyone or anything.

We’ve all done it before; spoke ill of someone behind their back or maybe even to their face. We know it’s wrong, but we do it anyway. However, avoiding saying negative things to or about people will help you be more positive and think positive thoughts.

- One’s time should be used for self-improvement.

Don’t waste your time with negative self-talk or other self-harming activities such as drinking, doing drugs, cutting, etc. Instead try to find small ways to better yourself each day. I know I have a ton of things to work on like being more positive, letting things go, and not taking things personally.

- Earn a living in a way that will not harm others and doing what you love (I added that part).

Don’t let the world tell you who you have to be. Take what you love to do, practice it a little bit everyday, and don’t stop when it gets frustrating. At first you might suck, even if it is something you love to do, but if you keep going your work will become better quality and you will eventually find a way to make a living by doing what you love.

- Keep the right state of mind; self-awareness and compassion.

Practicing compassion towards others is a huge step in bettering yourself. People will want to talk to you and be around you if you act compassionately. Saying hello, remembering people’s names, and giving your full attention are just a few ways to practice compassion.

- Practice meditation.

Zen Stones

Meditation is a great way to heal the mind. I don’t know about you, but my mind is constantly busy with a million different things: my homework, to-do list, blog ideas, books to read, movies to see, who I want to be, what I want to be like, how to get better at this and that… Meditation is an easy way to give it a rest and let it have time to heal. Just like our bodies need rest, so do our minds. It won’t be easy at first, but it is recommended to meditate for at least 20 minutes a day. Clear your mind and focus on nothing, or try repeating your mantra over and over in your head. It is harder than it sounds!

I wrote this as a way to organize my thoughts. Take what you want from it, and I hope it will help you on your search for happiness.

-Liz

Eat Right

A couple days ago someone told me that they liked weightlifting because they could eat whatever they wanted, compared to crossfit where they actually had to watch their diet to perform well. I just shook my head and smiled.

The word diet means “the kinds of foods that a personally habitually eats” (wiki). It doesn’t matter what sport you are in, or even if you aren’t in a sport, your diet should be as close to clean as possible. Our bodies are not meant to consume all this processed junk that is part of the SAD (Standard American Diet). Our minds are more productive when we intake proper nutrition and our bodies provenly perform better when nourished.

If you aren’t watching what you put in your body then you obviously don’t want the full benefits that weightlifting (or life) has to offer. Sure the temptation is great, but deep down we all know what good food is. We all know that broccoli is better for us than a big mac. If you don’t know what real food is then you should really look into it. I’m sure that you reading this have an iPhone, iPod, or some other internet source. Go ahead and google what real food is, and then go ahead and incorporate it into your diet. I promise you will feel more energized and productive within a few days.

Moral of the story: if you want the full benefits of anything then you need to eat right.

Watch out for a more in-depth blog on good food and nutrition soon!

-Liz

Kicking Out the Numbers

Lately I’ve been feeling burnt out. I told my coach that I wanted to take a couple weeks off to recover and focus on my diet, but what I really wanted to do was walk out of the gym and never come back. I felt defeated, broken down, and disappointed in myself. I had set goals that I thought were completely attainable, but when I fell short I decided that I just wasn’t working hard enough. My back ached, my shoulder throbbed, my knees were sore, and my hands were wrecked; I wanted to work harder, but physically it felt impossible. I was missing lifts that I had been chasing for months. No snatch or clean & jerk PRs for a long time can be slightly depressing for an Olympic Weightlifter. Thats when my coach reminded me how fun weightlifting had been when I first walked through the door.

Remember when you first started Olympic weightlifting? That day when you first walked into a weightlifting class and learned what a snatch was. That time when your biggest worry was making sure your hands were in the right place on the barbell. The days when you never wasted a second thought on how much weight was on the bar, or the person’s next to you. These days were what my coach was referring to.

This made me think back to all the fun that I had putting more weight on the bar simply for the joy of beating myself. One day I could only lift 50 lbs, but the next I could lift 55 lbs. I liked the feeling of being strong. Not the feeling of being stronger than so-and-so or lifting more than so-and-so, but just the feeling of self-satisfaction. This is where the true love of the sport comes in. The day that you start comparing yourself to everyone of a similar age, height, weight, etc., is when you lose the love of the sport. This started after my second weightlifting competition.

I was the youngest female at the very first the meet I ever attended, and this man named Charlie told me I should quit gymnastics and cross country to do weightlifting. I also found out that I qualified for Youth Nationals. I got a big head and convinced myself that I was pretty good at this weightlifting thing. From then on I wanted to do whatever would make me the best weightlifter. I committed 100% to weightlifting. When I registered for Youth Nationals my coach told me not to worry about my competition, as he didn’t know the skill-level of my competitors. We were just going to have fun and hit a PR total. His exact words were

Snatching 54kg at 2013
Youth Nationals

“It’s just you against the bar.”

At Youth Nationals I did pretty well. I hit a PR and missed qualifying for Junior Nationals by two kilos. This gave me an even bigger head. I started watching the results of the girls I competed against. I friended them on facebook, followed them on instagram, and added them on twitter. If someone made a PR, I made it my goal to beat them. By this point I was cluelessly lost in the numbers. I stopped working as hard; because my goal wasn’t to beat myself, it was to beat my competitors. By the third meet I was already knew where I would rank as far as placement. I knew my competitors best numbers before they ever stepped on the platform. This ruins the game. It’s just as bad as having someone give you a bunch of spoilers right before you go see a movie that you’ve been looking forward to.

My coach and I after
Youth Nationals

Even with all the congratulations and impressed expressions I was not satisfied with my performance. I knew that a few of the girls I had lifted against at Youth Nationals were lifting more than me. My training showed little motivation and my numbers stalled. By the time I competed in my fourth meet, which was a high school meet, I wanted to back out the night before. I told myself that weightlifting sucked and I wasn’t very good at it anyway. A couple people commented on how disappointed I looked after my last lift. My parents even jumped to the conclusion that I was tired of weightlifting, and wanted to quit. Well they were right; I was feeling a little bit hopeless.

The day after that meet I continued my usual routine of going to the gym. My coach could tell something was up, and somehow he got me to admit that I wasn’t having fun anymore. Thankfully he is an understanding coach who has been through all this before. He reassured me that it is his job to worry about the numbers, not mine. He told me to stop worrying and just enjoy weightlifting. So I’ve decided to do just that.

I’m officially kicking out the numbers because the only person I want to beat is myself.

Moral of the story: don’t compare yourself to anyone else or it will suck the fun out of life. We all have a unique story of how we got to where we are and how we will get to where we want to be.