Photo Credit – Roy Son Photo
by Molly Hanten
This week I celebrated my golden birthday and the launch of our “Pursue your Legend” campaign at Alchemy. I found myself thinking about my own personal journey, my Legend, and how obstacles and relationships have shaped this last year.
The inspiration for the campaign came from a quote that really stuck with our team: “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too” (The Alchemist). That was it! That’s what we are trying to do here. We are pursuing our own Legend while doing all we can to help others pursue their own. My immediate thought, “I don’t know what mine is! I am only a kid.” Wrong. I am now 27 and hell, I am damn well pursuing my Personal Legend.
I went through college thinking I was going to head into Broadcast Journalism then switched to PR. Funny story, my spelling and grammar suck and I hate sitting at a desk, so that didn’t last. For some reason it was SO hard for me to admit to the rest of the world I wanted to pursue fitness. Is that even a real job? What will everyone from school think of me? My parents aren’t going to dig it! To say the least, once I said f*$k it, my life improved significantly. No, my schedule was not normal. Yes, I missed lots of happy hours with my friends and yes, I worked lots of weekends. BUT, I was so damn happy that WORK was no longer work, it was just a ton of fun.
I spent years working in the yoga world and met some incredible people. I ran marathons, did yoga, and my body suffered. I was bored with my fitness routine (and injured) so when I stumbled into a CrossFit gym and met my now business partners I was so happy! I loved the workouts and LOVED watching myself actually get STRONG. In 2013, I moved out to the east coast to launch a yoga studio in D.C. and in my mind, I was going to stay there for a long time. I had dreams of moving home someday and opening a hybrid yoga studio but figured it would happen when I was “old”. Well lucky me, my business partners had the same thing in mind and I broke my hip.
It took me a while to realize my broken hip was actually the biggest blessing in disguise. I was so used to my lifestyle, my body and my routine. I was on bed rest for three months and had to move back to Minneapolis with my parents. I thought my life was OVER. I will never forget when I reached out to the Alchemy team to share the bad news and Mike Jones replied “Damn, that sucks! BUT I am pumped because now we can seriously start working on this thing!!!!!” And so we did.
Now we sit here five months into this incredible journey and it almost feels like a blink. Not only have I had the honor of watching this phenomenon grow but incredible friends, mentors and relationships have emerged from this journey. Those I’ve known for years have also supported me, encouraged me and loved me through this whole thing. Life over at Alchemy is pretty darn good.
It is not just the gym, or the coaching- it is the athletes who walk in here everyday working on their own Legend. It is my Alchemy team members working morning and night while making their own Legend. It is the community we’ve built and will continue to grow in these walls. Well, I guess now is a good time to tell you too… there will be more walls. We are opening location #2 this year. WHAT!?!?! The Legend continues… 🙂
Until I see you next- what is your Legend? Are you pursuing it? If not, get inspired at Alchemy. We’d love to have ya.
