I’ve had 3 really special opportunities this past month.
I was honored to speak with the Shanley freshman for their freshman retreat about how God made us all to be great, how we all matter, and should strive for excellence.
Coach Feeney invited me to speak with the Moorhead High Spuds Football team during their pre-game chapel before the first game of the year about Hebrews 12:1-13, which is all about discipline.
An old high school classmate invited me to go speak two nights ago with his boys’ FM Athletics 4th grade football team about how champions do the small things better, and how you have to be willing to sacrifice something in order to achieve something better.
Having the honor of doing these speeches always fires me up because I love talking about faith, and I love talking to young men and women who are striving for excellence.
After giving these 3 talks, I realized that all 3 of them relied heavily on the concept of discipline. And that got me thinking about how I wanted to share that with you, since discipline so closely ties into your health and fitness journey.
During the Moorhead High speech, I talked about one of my all time favorite verses in the Bible - Hebrews 12:11:
‘No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.’
And then I talked about how:
Discipline starts with focus
Discipline requires endurance
Discipline produces strength and peace
All of this sounds great, but what does it really mean?
Discipline starts with focus:
In life, what stops you from achieving what you set out for?
The answer is distractions - whether it’s social media, bad habits, bad days, problems at work, stress at home, and so forth.
How do we combat that? With focus! Break it down to workable moments. One day at a time, one week at a time. We have to stay focused on the task at hand. My old Bison Head Coach, Chris Klieman, brought the phrase “win the dang day” to us and I still have that ringing in my head daily. We are only guaranteed the present moment. We can’t change the past, and we don’t know what’s coming in the future. All we can do is stay focused in the present moment.
Discipline requires endurance:
Adversity will hit at some point. When you know that and expect that, it doesn’t make adversity easier, but you can handle it better.
If you haven’t already seen this, this video came out a few years ago from the Duke women’s head basketball coach, Coach Kara Lawson.
Kara Lawson: Handle Hard Better
She talks about how we all wait for life to get easier, but it won’t. She talks about how champions learn how to handle hard better.
The more often you intentionally put yourself in tough situations, the better prepared you are when you get unexpectedly thrown into tough situations. The more you discipline yourself in the day to day, the better prepared you are to handle hard better.
Discipline produces strength and peace:
Former US Navy Seal Jocko Willink has this saying - “Discipline equals freedom” and he couldn’t be more spot on.
Go back to Hebrews 12:11 and see the parallels - ‘No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.’
Righteousness and peace comes to those who train themselves in discipline. That sounds like freedom to me.
The word “discipline” is from the Latin word disciplina meaning “instruction and training.” It's derived from the root word discere which means “to learn”. Think of Jesus’ disciples - they were learning from him. The word discipline and disciple have the same root: to learn. Discipline can sometimes come off as a “harsh” word for some reason, when in reality it is simply an opportunity to learn and be trained. And from that, we gain order in our lives, and from order flows strength and peace.
I was listening to a podcast by Father Mike Schmitz a few weeks ago and he said, “discipline is not the point, but it is the path. Joy is the point.”
We discipline ourselves to find joy.
And obviously from this message you can tell that I am a Christian and my joy comes from Jesus Christ, and I absolutely love being able to share that joy in those speeches with our youth.
But what I also love is helping adults 40+ learn how to apply discipline to their lives when it comes to their fitness. Because “a little discipline goes a long way,” as my old Running Back Coach, Tyler Roehl, used to tell me.
A little discipline helps people:
Lose the weight they want off
Commit to daily walks
Cut back on alcohol
Eat nutritious foods that fuel your body
Regularly perform resistance training to set yourself up for success and strength in later years
And after they start applying discipline, after a little time, this starts happening:
They get up and down from the floor with ease playing with kids or grandkids
They go on fun trips and do hikes and activities with no fears or disappointments because their health held them back
They bring more joy to their families because they are healthy and happy
They start to crave exercise and couldn’t imagine not doing it, and I dare say they even find it fun
And I could go on and on. But my challenge to you this week is this - find one thing that you can add in or take out of your daily routine that will make you healthier and begin practicing discipline. Remember the Rise saying for the year: Standard over Feeling. Even when you don’t “feel like it” - just do it. That’s discipline.
And I’ll end with this. This is all much easier to do when you surround yourself with people striving for the same thing. Whether it’s at Rise or somewhere else, get around people striving to be disciplined, healthy, and joyful. If you hang out in a gym, you’ll probably become healthy. If you hang out in a bar, you’ll probably end up drinking alcohol and eating fried foods.