Beyond the Box: Have To vs. Get To

You don't have to. Say it out loud and hear how false it is. Nobody is standing behind you with a clipboard. You have a body that moves, a schedule that allows for it, and enough money to pay for it and somehow you've decided to call that a burden. Somewhere in a hospital right now is someone who would give up nearly anything to trade places with you and complain about a hard set of thrusters instead. Sit with that before you say "have to" again.

The Sentence That's Lying to You

"Have to" is the language people use right before they quit on something. It's the story you tell so that when you bail, it's not really your fault but instead the workout made you do it, the day made you do it, the schedule made you do it (or not do it). Nobody ever quit on a "get to."

This isn't a gratitude journal exercise. Some days the WOD is genuinely miserable, work really did suck, and no amount of positive self-talk moves the wall balls out of your way. "Get to" was never about liking every rep. It's about refusing to hand off responsibility for your own hour to a sentence that isn't even true.

The Jen McKee Standard

If you want to see what this actually looks like instead of how it sounds, watch Jen McKee the next time at the whiteboard. She doesn't flinch, and she doesn't wait until she's already gasping to decide how she's going to handle it. She's built her plan before the workout starts because she knows the middle of all the “stuff” is the worst possible time and place to make a decision. By the time the rest of the room is deciding whether to panic or just what the hell is happening, Jen's already executing.

And she's not afraid to fail at it. She'll take the harder option, miss a lift, and go again without the theatrics. It’s not luck and it's not talent, but is the real life action of the "get to" mindset with the work already done on it: she treats the hard thing in front of her as something to solve, not something being inflicted on her. That's the whole gap between the people who say "have to" and the people who are actually good at this.

The Muscle You're Actually Training

Here's the gut check: if you're waiting until you're mid-workout, mid-crisis, or mid-hard-conversation to decide you're capable of handling it, you've already lost ground you didn't need to lose and you are letting yourself do it over and over again. Jen's plan gets made on the drive in, not when the clock starts. Your relationship with hard things gets decided the same way…. before you're in it, not during it.

That's the muscle. Not toughness for its own sake, but the discipline to decide, in advance, that you're the kind of person who gets to attempt the hard thing instead of the kind who waits to see if it happens to them. That decision doesn't stay in the gym. It shows up in every aspect of your life. 

Running the Gym Is Its Own Get To

I don't get to hide behind "have to" either, even though it would be easy to. The schedule that never turns off, the equipment that breaks at the worst time, the conversations I'd rather not have are all chapters in the novel I could write as something being done to me. It would even be true, some weeks. It would also be a lie by omission, because I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to find out if something I built can hold up under pressure.. And most importantly get to witness it every day. Most people never get the chance to fail at something that's actually theirs.

What the Shift Actually Builds

Nobody remembers the workout you complained your way through. People remember the ones where you showed up already decided; like you had a plan, like the hard thing was yours to take on instead of something happening to you. That's not a mood, but a decision made ahead of time, the way Jen makes hers before the clock ever starts.

You don't have to come to the 5:30 class. You get to. Stop pretending otherwise.

Always remember: the plan gets made before the panic. Make yours now.