Leadership Wise

CHAPTER 2Let’s Warm Up! Ten Business Choices Where One Option and Its Opposite Both Have Merit

Years ago I joined CrossFit like every other 30-year-old geriatric millennial out there who wanted to get in shape. And for a while, I thought I was doing well! I would do a workout at the gym and not die. I'd be miserable, but eventually I got to where I could breathe after the workout was done. Sometimes, I'd even muster the fitness level required to best my wife in a workout, although that was rare if I'm being honest.

We all know how this short CrossFit story ends, right? It ended where all CrossFit stories end: with a back injury.

One day, I pulled a 400-pound deadlift, and I felt something in my back give a little. As humans, we generally just think of our body as, well, a singular thing, which is to say an integrated thing that just all fits together. So when a piece of that body moves somewhere it's not supposed to, it's always a tad disconcerting, like when a tire flies off your car as you barrel down the freeway—that kind of disconcerting.

I dropped the barbell when it happened and just walked away. I'd pulled a muscle really badly in my lower-left side. The pain was so bad that for a couple of weeks it hurt to even sit. I remember being in excruciating pain during my kids’ Christmas pageant where I kept wondering whether frankincense or myrrh had analgesic properties. I would've robbed baby Jesus of his gifts if it'd have helped with the pain. I was in a bad way.

As it ...