by Tim Swanson
Where have you been longing to grow more disciplined? Is it with your fitness level, or your weight? Is it your level of preparedness at your job? Is it how well you communicate with your team?
When I was in high school I weighed 180lbs. I was a pretty big guy. The school's football coach asked me to join the team more than once. I always declined because I was a theater kid. His response was always, "what a waste." After I graduated, I gained a considerable amount of weight (an additional 120lbs to be exact). For most of college I was rolling around at 300lbs. My weight had become a significant issue. My back hurt any time I stood for longer than 10 minutes. I couldn't really bend down far enough to tie my shoes. I avoided physical activity, which was extremely taxing for me. And I had developed sleep apnea, which is a horrible horrible thing. My quality of life was low. At the same time I was watching my father battle with his own weight. And my family was worried about how much longer we would have him around. As I listened to the concerns of my family members, I began to think about how I was affecting my own lifespan. So I did what had to be done. I committed to losing the weight. I planned for a strict regimen of daily exercising at the gym in the apartment complex.Then I pursued a strict diet that cut out junk food, and begin counting every calorie I ate. Then I pursued that plan for exactly 1 1/2 days before giving up and going on a Little Caesar's Hot-N Ready pizza binge.
But it was ok, because I'm not one who is easily defeated. So I tried again. I cleaned up all the pizza boxes and bought a bunch of healthy food at the grocery store. I even got myself a new workout outfit. For three days I did great. I worked out every day. I ate healthy. So I decided to celebrate with a Little Caesar's $5 pizza. Then I went back through the whole unhealthy cycle all over again.
I really wanted to get healthy. I hated living the way I was. I was taking all the right steps. My problem was that I was trying to take all the steps all at once. I tried to start the hardcore workout, and the diet together . My expectation of myself was to go from 0 - 60 in 0 seconds flat. But that's not the way it works.
I've met countless other people who approach life change with same strategy I did. They want to go a new direction, so they jerk the wheel as hard as they can. Then, like me, they feel like failures when they crash. When it comes to making changes and developing self discipline, life is a lot more like driving a car. This is a metaphor that we take for granted a lot, so let me break it down with an illustration.
The other day I sat my teen aged daughter behind the steering wheel of my car so I could teach her how to drive. We were in our church parking lot on a Monday, so it was nearly empty. I had her check all the mirrors, and put her seat-belt on before she shifted into ‘drive’. She cruised along the parking lot aisle at about 15 mph, and before long she had to turn. Without thinking about it, I told her to make the turn. It’s a good thing she was only going 15 because I had neglected to instruct her to slow down before turning. She made a wide turn and nearly ran into the concrete parking barriers. We spent the rest of the session learning how to slow down to make turns.
When it comes to making a life turns and developing new disciplines, we have to learn to slow down. Unlike my daughter driving in the church parking lot, none of us are taking life at 15 mph. If you try to change directions without using the brakes, you'll crash. And the older you get the higher the stakes are. Soon crashing will mean losing money, time, or even relationships. We have to learn to mind the turns. Here are some tips that’ve helped me pump the breaks and successfully change course with my habits and disciplines.
1. Don't be afraid to dream big. Most people are tempted to step back and reevaluate their dreams when they experience failure. But failure doesn’t mean you have the wrong dream, it means you have the wrong approach. When dreaming, dream big.
2. Break your dreams down into baby steps. Like I said before, I had all the right steps to losing weight. My problem was trying to do all those steps at once. When I broke the diet down into baby steps I had way more success. After a few months of slowly working in new dietary disciplines, I began a simple workout routine that I was able to consistently maintain. That was how I started losing weight. Today, I've lost nearly 70lbs.
3. Look for opportunities to challenge yourself along the way. Once I started experiencing some success with diet and exercise, I felt motivated. So I signed up to do a 5k run where people dressed like zombies chased me and a couple of my friends. When I was kicking it at 300lbs, I would never have even considered doing something like that. But it was such a rush, and it helped me accomplish my goals.
4. Reward little successes. Once I started dropping pant sizes, it was easy to go out and get a new pair of pants that were a size smaller. That felt great. Celebrate victory at every turn, and the road will be a lot smoother.
5. Find a way to make it fulfilling. At some point I began reading the book ‘Wild At Heart’. Chapter one has a section called ‘A Battle To Fight’. Eldridge talks about every man’s need to battle. That resonated with me, and it was the catalyst that I needed to take up boxing. That was five years ago. Since then, I have gained enough experience that I now train other fighters at my gym. Boxing made it about more than just losing weight. Suddenly it was about learning to protect my family, and seeing if I had what it took to stay on my feet and even win a fight (I discovered that I do have what it takes) .
6. Invest your heart, mind & body in your dream. Spend time committing your dream and all of your small steps to God, through prayer. Ask Him to guide you. Spend time reading about other people who are further down your same road. Do some writing about your dream, and your successes and failures. As you focus on your dream in your spare time, it’ll grow your new discipline in different ways. That will make it easier to see your big dream become a reality.
7. Work with others. My exercise effort spiked when I started working out with my buddy, Josh. Him and I drove to a boxing gym every weekday to train together. Both of our attendance became way more regular when we teamed up. Find someone who has a similar dream to yours. Get together with that person and let his/her presence challenge you to work harder.
8. Once you’ve taken a couple of slow turns, speed up! As you develop discipline, it will become easier to make changes to your habits. You can plan on growing at a faster pace as you experience success. Use that to your advantage.
9. Learn from failure. When you fail, be grateful. There is an old samurai saying that goes like this, “You learn one lesson from victory, but a thousand from defeat”. When you lose, you are in the position to learn valuable lessons. Take advantage of that. Remember, successful people are not the ones who never failed, they are the ones who learned from their failures.
10. Help somebody else develop a new discipline. The ultimate win in life is being a part of someone else’s success. Eventually, you will have enough success that your self discipline will be a valuable tool to helping other people grow. When I started boxing, I looked up to a few different professional fighters like Freeman ‘The Machine’ Taft, and Rich ‘Rare Breed’ Hale (I sparred with both of them, and they both rocked my world). Today, I have fighters that look up to me, and talk about me the way I used to talk about those guys when I first started fighting. I have invested enough time in the discipline of fighting that my experience has become valuable to other people. It is the best feeling in the world to be a part of someone else’s growth.
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