Love Me Some Brunch

Why Alysia Montano wears a flower in her hair during every race.

Even though she grew up playing football, shooting hoops and running races against all the boys in her neighborhood, U.S. 800-meter champion Alysia Montano never wanted to be thought of as one of them.

As a result, she started wearing a flower behind her right ear to remind the boys they were getting beat by a girl.

The flower remains Montano’s trademark even though her opponents are now world-class female middle-distance runners.

“The flower to me means strength with femininity,” Montano said in June after winning the 800 at the U.S. Olympic trials. “I think that a lot of people say things like you run like a girl. That doesn’t mean you have to run soft or you have to run dainty. It means that you’re strong.”

I’ve received a lot of hate messages today on here. It’s odd for me because I generally never get much hate, considering all the people I like to think I’ve helped. Instead of responding to anyone, I figured I would put a little spin on it and tell you guys a story.

I grew up with a kid named Justin. Although he was a couple years older than me, we played sports in the backyard extremely competitively, and we were always trashing each-other about going pro haha. Who was gonna do it first. Who was gonna ultimately win and get their face on a video game cover. It was always soccer, hockey, or baseball. Whatever it was, somebody just had to always win.

Fast forward to middle school, high-school… We never grew out of it. Justin got hated on because he was ‘cocky’ and ‘self absorbed’ because he told people one day he was going to be a pro basketball player haha. He believed in himself to a crazy degree. It didn’t really matter what he did. He would go pro.

At my school, I was always struggling to keep up through injury, but I was the same way. It didn’t matter what. I would have told you I would go pro in pogo-sticking if I wanted to. Neither of us were necessarily superstars, both were extremely grounded, and both worked a lot harder than anybody I’ve ever met. I went off to kick soccer balls and entered the downward spiral that you guys know of.

Justin got a little scholarship to a smaller school in Michigan to play football of all things. A small tight end who only had a few passes thrown his way. It wasn’t for him. He gave up there, and came home to deliver pizzas in our little town called Pewaukee. He was saving up money, because he wanted to pay for one semester, walk on at UW-Madison, and take a shot at maybe getting a scholarship on the football team. Attending community college after telling everyone in high school about his big ambitions, he was mocked, laughed at, ridiculed, made fun of, and received even more hate for still being 'cocky’ about himself. He was a pizza boy attending community college, telling people that he was gonna be a pro football player. His own manager even laughed at him and said, “good luck buddy!” as he laughed hysterically.

Two years later, JJ Watt, the pizza delivery boy, was drafted into the NFL, in the first round actually. He then went on to sign a $100,000,000 contract, and will probably be one of the most valuable assets in all of sports, within the next few years. In under 5 years, he went from $8 an hour, to signing a contract for one hundred million dollars. Defensive player of the year. Without a doubt he is the most valuable defensive player in the NFL.

I guess he won.

The moral of the story is that JJ never stopped believing in himself. Through constant hate, ridicule, and even in-person mockery, he knew in his SOUL, that he was going to make it. He said it when he was a kid, and he never stopped believing it when he grew up.

I however, did. I’m not saying I would have been a big time pro athlete, but I am saying that I’ll never know what could have been. I gave up, and I’ll never make that mistake again. I believe in myself, and I believe in what I’m doing. I may not be a huge NFL athlete, but I believe that I will change the entire world, and even change how it works. We change lives, we move mountains, and we have already done amazing things that are raising some major eyebrows in the world of fitness. We are just getting started.

Once your find your purpose, protect it. Hold it tight because it’s all you have. People will pick, poke, and take stabs at you, every second, of every day. They want a piece of yours, because they haven’t found theirs, and never will. Don’t lose your grip. Don’t even address the pain these cowards try to cause you.

Something to think about…

Maybe the hardships in dream chasing, aren’t really all that hard. Maybe the struggle comes from allowing the picking and the poking to get inside. Do what you want to do. Do it for you. If you’re crazy enough to actually convince yourself that you CAN do something, I’m telling you that you can. Maybe it just starts with a little self belief. So do the extra reps, work the extra hours, put in the extra time. More importantly, put some extra time into YOU.

This graphic is just amazing. Picturing what most most people are trying to say in words is a great way to reach out to more people. The Anorexia picture and the child abuse picture was the one that broke me the most even if all of these pictures tells us a very important story.

I don’t expect this to go viral or to get millions of likes because, I don’t want it, liking won’t help. Please, embrace it and take action. Re blog so others can see it and talk about these world spread issues.