As I sit here, on my third cup of coffee for the morning, I ponder the constant thought of how I got to this point in my life.
Have you ever just sat there and thought about your life in rewind? Replaying events that took place in your life to bring you to the point you are at now. Some of which you may have forgotten about until they appear again years later.
I sit and think long and hard every time I am reminded of my past.
I think about how I handled things then, as opposed to now.
I think about the lessons that I subconsciously learned along the way that have molded me into the man I am today and the man I continue to strive to become.
For me, it all started when I was a young boy playing ice hockey. I grew up playing ice hockey for 13 years from the time I reached the age of 6, until the ripe age of 19.
I will state for the record that I have always been extremely competitive, but I never was a kid that particularly liked going to practice. Practice to me felt like a chore when all I really wanted to do was show up to play in the games because the games were the fun part!
This brought me to my first valuable life lesson of embracing the suck. I didn't like going to practice, I didn't want to go to practice, but I HAD to go to practice. Playing team sports is something much larger than myself because I made a commitment to being a part of a team and to be at practice, show up on time, and show up ready to play. It wasn't motivation that got me to practice, it was discipline...
As I grew into my later years of playing competitive hockey, I began to learn the concept of "playing through pain". The older you get, the faster the game gets and the more physical it becomes. My body began to sustain injuries on a more frequent basis but the injuries didn't matter at the time. "My team needs me and it doesn't matter how much pain I am in, if I can skate, I can play!"
Playing through pain was the second most valuable life lesson I learned because it truly doesn't matter how you feel - you know what you have to do.
After I hung up my hockey skates, I began to take up bodybuilding.
I began bodybuilding because I needed some sort of mental and physical stimulation to keep me going after having 13 years of being a competitive athlete. Being competitive is all I knew then and it is all that I know now...
Bodybuilding is where I developed my work ethic.
As a hockey player, I was a player that had the skill to be great, but didn't have the work ethic to be great.
Bodybuilding is where I learned valuable life lesson number three and that it is you vs. you. The only way you progress in something like bodybuilding or competitive weight lifting is by setting goals for yourself and only depending on yourself to reach those goals.
When I first got into bodybuilding, like many others, I idolized Arnold Schwarzenegger. I had posters of Arnold on my wall and I told myself everyday when I looked at his posters that I was going to look like him - that was my goal! I made my first commitment to myself and I worked every single day in pursuit of that commitment.
Then one day, after 9 years of consistent diet and structured weight training, I was taking a posing video for fun and I hit one of Arnold's famous poses - a pose that I had of him on my wall. I played back the video because that is just what bodybuilder's naturally do and I realized that I had done it... I had reached my goal of wanting to look EXACTLY how I looked at Arnold on my wall. The best part - I had been removed from wanting to be a competitive bodybuilder for about 4 years at the time I took this video!
Granted, I know that it is impossible to look EXACTLY like someone else due to genetics, but when I put the side-by-side of me and my idol hitting the same pose and seeing the similarities, I realized that visualization was real and that anything truly can be done if you can picture it clearly in your mind.
I didn't ever once second guess the possibility of achieving my goal. Absolutely
I have had many days where the thought of going to the gym pained me but I still went anyway. This was a lesson I had already learned from years of going to hockey practice even when I didn't want to go.
It was a commitment and this commitment is something that I made to myself and continue to make to myself everyday. It truly doesn't matter how I feel - as a man, when I commit to something, it HAS to be done.
I have since made new goals in life, which I have achieved and continue to achieve and work towards every single day because it is my duty to myself.
I am motivated by myself for the years of discipline I have bestowed upon myself over the course of my life.
Motivation exists, but it only exists through the lens of discipline. It is discipline that wakes me up at 6am everyday, regardless of how I feel, to get work done. It is discipline that carries me through grueling workouts that I continue to put myself through. It is discipline that constantly makes me feel like I HAVE to be good at things and being capable of doing anything I set my mind to.
I believe that motivation is found through a source of pain. Motivation is that feeling to keep going regardless of how bad it hurts, whether it be mental or physical pain. It is motivation knowing that failure is not an option, regardless of life's obstacles.
Discipline and motivation are deeply linked and you simply cannot have one without the other. The ONLY way you get motivated is through discipline. Doing the things you HAVE to do regardless of how you feel. There is an unusual sense pleasure doing things that are hard and pushing yourself to new levels of achievement - only here can you find true motivation.
It does not matter how sore my body is, I am still going to the gym. It doesn't matter if I am sick on leg day, you will still find me getting under the squat bar.
I have problems just like anyone else. Things in my life that I need to figure out and feel like I have no direction of where to begin. But at this point in my life, I have given myself no choice towards things that MUST be done.
I have goals in my life, places to be, and endless things to achieve. There will always be more work to be done and it is my duty to myself, my future family, and those that I love and care about the most to become the best possible version of myself.