THURS: Even Yellowstone Gets Yelped

(Thursday’s workout is posted below.)

I am terribly uncomfortable with negative feedback and I do not anticipate I will ever be great at receiving it. It eats at me for hours, sometimes days, occasionally weeks. My first instinctual reaction is to angrily respond and tell the person just how wrong they are. “Oh yea, well how come we have seven years and two gyms to prove otherwise!” Problem is, that doesn’t do any good, and it’s taken me six and a half years to make baby steps towards progress in this arena.

Often, we perceive someone suggesting that we might be able to improve X as a collective attack on A through Z, and that’s never the case. If we are unable to compartmentalize our skill sets and personality complexities, then we are unable to make improves in certain facets of our lives.

Negative feedback can come in many shapes and sizes. It can be a scathing customer email listing all the ways you’ve failed them, or it can be a coach suggesting that you reduce load on your back squat because you are not presently strong enough to overcome gravity with it on your back. Both create reactions of insecurities and the natural inclination to say nah uh. Rather than see negative feedback as something that reinforces a negative outcome, see it as an opportunity to fix that crack in X, not overhauling A through Z but making it stronger.

Remember, even Yellowstone, one of the great natural wonders of the world gets Yelped. No one on this earth is free from negative feedback, however unsolicited we may perceive it. Create something useful from it and grow.

-Dave

Thursday, 12.14.07

30 Minutes. Heavy. For Quality.
1 Rope Pull + 1 Return Drag.
Max Sandbag Squats in 1 Minute.
40m Reverse Sled Drag or Farmer Walk
100m Sprint → 100m Return Jog