Good Pain

Reading: 2 Corinthians 10:1-6

All athletes know pain. Very often, the crossover from simply working out to becoming an athlete runs right through the intersection of pain. People who make a bigger commitment to fitness may not realize they are also making a bigger commitment to pain. As a coach, let me be the first to say not all pain is necessary, or even beneficial for fitness. This kind of pain often leads to injury, reduced range of motion, and loss of strength. Definitely not where you want your journey to take you. Yet well before the threshold of injury lies the battlefield of suffering. It’s here where you’ll discover more about who you are, what you’re capable of, and what really holds you back. And would you believe your closest ally in winning the battle is pain? Let me introduce you to good pain.

I know, it sounds like an oxymoron. Can pain really be good? I’m not going to debate that biologically. Pain is our body’s way of trying to get us to stop what we’re doing. It’s a feedback loop extending our life expectancy. But your neurological system can’t differentiate the stimulus of your pain. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between a heavy back squat and a roof collapsing on you. Which is why sometimes I think they feel the same way! Your squat creates the same physical discomfort as the roof, elevating your heart rate, producing lactic acid, fatiguing muscle fibers, all in a coordinated effort by your brain to get you to set the weight down. This is good pain. To use a military term, you embrace the suck.

Good pain provides feedback something is happening to your body. If your workouts were never difficult, you’d never get fit. In other words, what challenges you changes you. Good pain is proof things are happening. It’s also a key component of the process of fitness. The more time you spend under healthy tension, with your ally good pain, doing battle against suffering, the fitter you will get. It’s also why everyone doesn’t get fit. If you don’t understand the process, you’ll end up resenting pain and suffering. When this happens, you’ll either create excuses not to push yourself, or you’ll create excuses not to come to the gym. These are really good guardrails for recognizing you’ve forgotten the process. Every athlete wrestles with these at some point, so don’t beat yourself up, just get in the gym!

When we look at Spiritual Fitness and good pain, there’s often confusion. People will challenge the concept of good pain from the view of major catastrophic life events. What’s good about cancer or divorce or the loss of loved ones? My answer is nothing. Nothing is inherently good about any of those events. But that’s like saying what’s good about getting hit by a car. Getting hit by a car is not good pain. However, all the hours you spent in the gym working through the process of tension, pain, and suffering may have produced a physical result which ultimately keeps you alive even though you’re hit by a car. You were strong enough to sustain the event, but the two are separate. In Spiritual Fitness, good pain is the emotional discomfort brought on by the process of surrendering your innate selfishness and insecurities in favor of God’s joy, peace, and love. It is not an easy process to let go of these desires. Like comfort blankets, you’ve used them for years to insulate yourself from the pain of your past. Or you’ve hidden them to avoid vulnerability for fear of humiliation or rejection. Good pain is part of God’s transformational process for your life. As you surrender your desires and God rebuilds your self-worth, self-esteem, and confidence, you will handle life differently. This is what it means to become spiritually fit, and it’s my prayer for all of you.

Questions for Reflection:

Have you ever tried to give God the desires of your heart? What did the process teach you about yourself?

Do you think suffering in your physical workouts produces benefits which apply to your spiritual life? If so, what are they?

The Greatness Process

Reading: Acts 8:4-25

“Good is the enemy of great.” – Jim Collins

In his book Outliers, Malcom Gladwell introduces a principle known as the 10,000-hour rule. In summary, the rule states that 10,000 hours of practice are required to become a master of a skill. Guess we all have a few thousand hours left on our double unders! The concept received great scrutiny by many who argued that in the mastery of a skill, factors other than practice must be accounted for. Gladwell’s point was well noted though – most people never achieve mastery, or greatness, because somewhere along the way they settle for good enough. Or perhaps they have the wrong perception of what greatness they actually pursue. When I’m coaching my athletes, I like to use the phrase, “Greatness is a process.” If you want to experience greatness both in the gym and in life, here’s the process you’ll need to follow.

1. Greatness is the process of defining a great end

This is where most people get into trouble right out of the gate - they begin with the wrong end in mind. I remember when I was in sixth grade and decided I wanted to learn to juggle. I saw a clown juggling at the circus and figured if the guy with the big nose and fat shoes could do it, so could I. Not so fast as Lee Corso would say. As I sat in my bedroom with three balled up socks, I set a goal for myself. Keep one in the air at all times. And guess what? By the end of the night, I achieved greatness. I juggled those three socks for quite some time. But did my juggling look like the clown? Well truth be told, I probably looked more like a clown than he did. Where are you missing the mark in life by setting the bar too low? If you want to live a great life, you must define a great end state. In Spiritual Fitness, the end state is Shalom. (If you want to know more about Shalom, check out this post)

2. Greatness is the process of mindful practice

You will never become great without practice. The repetition of skill training creates new neurological pathways and allows us to move with less thought. Why do you think it takes like 12 years to become a surgeon? Would you want someone to operate on you who just took an online course they can’t wait to try out? Ridiculous, I know. Yet we read a book on how to have a great marriage and don’t understand why we still have problems. You know why you still have problems? Because greatness takes practice. And that practice must be mindful. In Spiritual Fitness, we practice exercises such as prayer, Bible reading, meditation, stillness, and a host of others. But if you don’t stay in the moment when you practice these exercises, they will never achieve their full work in your heart. I know too many people who do all the things I just listed and still live average lives. Perhaps it’s because the third component of the greatness process is simply too much.

3. Greatness is the process of embracing discomfort

Just as Jim Collins describes good as the enemy of great, comfort is the enemy of fitness. Let’s be honest, suffering is hard. Sitting on the couch, that’s pretty easy. Here’s the thing though – you can train your body to embrace discomfort. I call it being comfortably uncomfortable. In physical fitness, this is akin to working out just under the threshold of your breaking point. As you spend more time in physical discomfort, your body adapts becoming more durable to such discomforts. The same is true in Spiritual Fitness. When we step outside our comfort zone and do things like put others first or forgive people who hurt us or give our worries and anxieties to God, it creates discomfort. These responses aren’t comfortable for most people. However, the more you live your life this way, the more comfortable they become. You realize your comfort zone is actually bigger than you thought, and you constrained yourself because of limited thinking or poor self-awareness. Fitness and discomfort go hand in hand. Greatness comes from learning to embrace discomfort, not running from it.

When you wake up, do you want to have a good day or a great day? Do you want the people you lead to call you a good leader or a great leader? Is it enough to live a good life, or are you willing to give yourself over to the greatness process? If so, you must define a great end, be mindful in your practice, and learn to embrace discomfort. God’s purpose for our lives is to bring greatness to His name. Renew in your spirit a commitment to the greatness process and get ready to live your best life ever.

Questions for Reflection:

Of the three components of the greatness process (define a great end, mindful practice, embrace discomfort), which do you excel at? Where could your process be improved?

Can you think of an example where comfort disrupted your greatness process? What did you learn from the experience?

For Quality

Reading: Philippians 4:4-13

In CrossFit there are many ways to measure the success of a workout. Two of the most common are task and time. In a task priority workout, also known as an AMRAP, the goal is volume. Athletes are trying to get as much work, or task, completed in the amount of time allowed. The marker of success is the amount of work you achieve. Then there’s time. When a workout is “for time,” speed is the priority. Success is measured by your ability to complete the work faster than either the other athletes in the gym or yourself the last time you did the same workout. But every so often in our gym, the measurement of success will change. I remember the first time I attempted one such workout. Well, I don’t remember the workout as much as how I felt when I read what I was supposed to do. Two words that made me rethink my approach to every workout – For Quality.

Quality. It seems like such a simple concept. Most people would agree quality matters. Think about the produce you buy. How many times have you passed over a banana or avocado or tomato in favor of one you deemed more superior? This is a small expression of our pursuit of quality. We want quality vacations, quality dinners out, we even want quality time with friends and family. But does that same pursuit of quality show up in our gym life? If we’re honest, the answer is most likely no, and that includes me. When time or task becomes the priority, quality often takes a back seat. I mean when was the last time you bought someone a quality birthday gift from the drug store when you suddenly remembered their birthday and had five minutes to pick something out. Quality is in tension with task and time, not just in the gym but in life.

So, here’s your first reflection question – what does a quality life look like? Perhaps that’s too deep right out of the gate. Let me flip it and ask it this way – what does a life without quality look like? Ah, there we go, that’s a little easier. I wonder if just now you pictured a past experience in your own life. Maybe you saw yourself going through the motions. Maybe you let your pride drive your motives. Maybe you gave into worry and never took the chance to try. In short, you missed it. The biproduct of a life without quality is regret. Regret is often a pretty good indicator you’ve stopped prioritizing quality.

In the Bible reading for today, the author is writing about how to live a quality life. He’s giving his audience a quality checklist if you will. As you read through these verses, let me encourage you to grab a pen or highlighter and make some observations. I think you’ll notice there’s an overarching theme to living a quality life, and that’s to live it “in Christ.” Jesus isn’t just a kind Jewish teacher who lived a morally upright life. He’s the Son of God who defeated death and invites us all into a new life. If you really want quality to be the measure of success in your life, follow Jesus. Otherwise, you’ll read these teachings and keep trying to change your character formation. When you live a life in Christ, you give yourself over to spiritual transformation. There’s a huge difference believe me!

The next time you’re in the gym, pursue quality. The next time you’re at work, pursue quality. The next time you’re in a rush, pursue quality. The next time you want to get the last word in, pursue quality. The next time you’re trying to get everything done on your to-do list, pursue quality. A quality life isn’t just the best tomato or dinner or vacation. A quality life is one given over to Jesus and lived in pursuit of who He would call you to be. In the midst of a crazy, self-obsessed, self-absorbed culture, change the metric of your success. Live your life for quality.

Questions for Reflection:

What does a quality life look like?

Do you recognize the tension between quality, work, and time? What does it feel like in your life when all three are in harmony?