Pressure is a Privilege

Reading: Nehemiah 4:1-23

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” – Marcus Aurelius 

Arguably one of the great leaders of all time, Marcus Aurelius discovered something that’s still true today in the pursuit of both physical and spiritual fitness. The very thing in front of you – your new skill, your heavy barbell, your fear, your insecurity, your pride – that’s the way forward. We will not achieve our greatest purpose in life by plotting a route around the obstacles that lie in front of us. Instead, we must develop an intrinsic desire to embrace pressure. Pressure is a privilege.

Difficulty is often the first indicator that change is either about to begin or has already begun. Here’s the problem – we hate change. Now, you can get on your soapbox and try to tell me how much you like change, and how the only constant is change, and how to not change is to not experience life, and I’ll gladly receive your leadership memes. But at the core level, change is scary. And we don’t like scary things. We like safe things. Why do you think they call them ‘Creature Comforts’?

What great adventure ever began with comfort? I mean, do you think that climbing Everest, hiking to Machu Pichu, or covering the Appalachian Trail is comforting? And that thing in front of you, it’s not comforting either. You don’t get a PR in the gym by staying comfortable, you earn them as a result of confrontation. Now don’t buy into the idea that confrontation is all bad. You can live an incredible life of peace and joy while embracing confrontation. In fact, the greatest peace and joy in your life lies on the other side of your willingness to confront. Confront your fears. Confront your doubts. Confront the belief that you can’t change. Confront the notion that just because the world says, somehow you’re obligated. You see, the thing in front of you in the gym isn’t really the thing. It’s the things going on in your head that only bubble up when you stand in front of the thing in the gym. That’s the pressure. And that pressure is a privilege.

I’m a student of leadership. I love leadership. I love working with leaders. I love building leaders. And I love coaching leaders through their own confrontations. Leadership is about learning to embrace pressure. Everyone is a leader until things get difficult. Everyone knows what’s wrong with our government but won’t run for office. It’s one thing to spectate, and quite another to step into the ring. The man you’ll read about today, Nehemiah, knew the difference. He had a vision to rebuild the wall of a great city, but the only way forward was to confront the very obstacles in front of him. Nehemiah had enemies, he had doubts, and he had downhearted people to lead. It would have been easier to turn away from the pressure. It would have been easier to live with the status quo, to accept a mediocre life. But Nehemiah, like Marcus Aurelius, knew that pressure is the path forward. 

The Seven P's

Reading: Ephesians 6:10-17

My Dad had a saying. Well, that’s not completely true, my Dad actually had many sayings. While I rolled my eyes at him in my younger years, I now find myself trumpeting them to my family, my friends, and my athletes. Here was one of my Father’s favorites, which he dubbed “The Seven P’s”

‘Prior Proper Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance’

I can still hear the way it sounded rolling off his lips. My dad loved to emphasize the word ‘preparation.’ My Father loved to prepare. He loved to prepare the guns and ammo the night before a big hunt. He loved to prepare the meat and let it marinate overnight before the next day’s barbeque. And he loved to prepare his children for the lives we would one day lead. When I want to check the heart of an athlete in the gym, my first step is to check their preparation.

You perform the way you prepare. That’s my modern-day spin on my old man’s saying. Once the clock starts, it’s too late. If your “pre-drink” is still jostling in your stomach because you walked in five minutes after class started because you stayed up too late watching your favorite show, what do you expect? I’m just going to hit you with the hard truth right here, because I know you can handle it. Your priorities are revealed in your preparation. There’s no better example of this than weight loss. If you want to lose weight, scientists have discovered that you need to eat right and exercise. I don’t care if it’s Keto, Atkins, Paleo, Zone, Block, Macro, or whatever’s coming next, if you put quality nutrients in your body and move it on a regular basis, you will see results. But in order to do it consistently, you have to prepare. You need to meal plan, you need to shop, you need to prep your foods, you need to package and organize it all. So, if by week four, you’ve found yourself at the drive-thru again because you just, “didn’t have time,” you don’t have a nutrition problem, you have a priority problem. 

Priorities are revealed in the way we prepare our spiritual lives as well. It’s one thing to say you want a peaceful life. It’s another to be the first to apologize or forgive. You may have the best intentions in the world of developing patience, but if you can’t drive more than five minutes in the slow lane without being frustrated, you don’t have a patience problem, you have a priority problem. Spiritually speaking, God must be the priority. Which means you’re not. I know that may be tough to read, but it’s true. The greatest experiences you’ll have in life will come when you focus on someone, or something, other than yourself. Not because you don’t matter. But because your priority will dictate the way you prepare. And prior proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance. 

Great Coaching

Reading: 1 Timothy 4:7-16

Have you ever had a great coach? Hopefully, many of you do right now. When athletes come to me interested in checking out our program, I always tell them the same thing. “It’s not about the equipment or the facility, ultimately it’s about the coaching. Great coaching matters.” I can attest to this personally having started my athletic pursuit in middle school. I’ve had some great coaches. But I’ll be honest. Until 2013, when I thought of coaching, I associated it solely with physical fitness. I studied great coaches, constantly refined my style, and when I made the decision to join my current gym, CrossFit 737, I made that decision solely on the basis of the coaches. They even offered to let me workout on my first day, but I declined. Instead, I sat there on the side of the mat and watched how they coached their athletes. It was the coaching that drew me into the program. It was the coaching that kept me in the program. And I’m blessed to now be part of their coaching team where we all share a commitment to the pursuit of greater purpose in life. 

Which is why 2013 was such a pivotal year for me. That’s when I began to see that spiritual fitness was just as important as physical fitness. The problem was I didn’t have a coach. Well actually I did, but drinking buddies, self-help books, and hobbies really don’t provide the infrastructure you need when life gets hard. And let’s face it, life gets hard. In 2013, I realized that if I was going to experience the fullness and richness of life, I needed a new spiritual fitness coach. In the same way that I sat on the side of the mat to watch the coaching at 737, I opened the Bible to watch the coaching God provided. The more I studied God’s approach to spiritual fitness, the more it made sense for me. And as I began to implement His training methods into my own life, the richer and fuller it became. For me, God is the greatest Coach I will ever have. Let me share three things His coaching will do in your life.

First, God will challenge you. All great coaches challenge you. Why? Because they see things inside you that you can’t see yourself. They bring perspective to the table. And they know the best is yet to come. That’s not a promise of greatness. It’s the realization that hard work produces better outcomes. When was the last time you expected a workout to be easy? So why do you expect life to be that way? God allows challenges in your life to shape you, grow you, and refine you. When you start to view life as a daily set of workouts, it gives you the freedom to embrace the difficulty knowing it is for a greater purpose.

Second, God will support you. In the gym, we call this “spotting.” Spotting is when one athlete stands ready to help another if the load gets too heavy. God is spotting your spiritual life. He’s not only here right now, the truth is He’s been here from the beginning. I always thought when things got difficult, I needed to buckle down, toughen up, and figure out a way to do it on my own. Now I’m willing to take on greater challenges and welcome more adversity because I know I’m not doing it on my own. God is here to support me the whole time.

Finally, God will encourage you. Our gym is a gym of encouragement. And I need it. I spent too many years driving home from my nice corporate job to my nice home in my nice car beating myself up for all the things I did wrong or missed. When I would miss a lift at the gym or not make the podium in a race, I would spend days or even weeks obsessing over what went wrong. We have the capacity to fill our minds with plenty of discouragement, but God is the great Encourager. Despite what you may have heard, or even thought, God is not interested in your mistakes or failures. He’s the most positive Coach I’ve ever had in my life. Given enough time, encouraging coaches develop encouraging athletes. I have become the encouraging person I am because I surround myself with spiritual encouragement only God can provide.

Have you ever had a great coach? My prayer for you is that you would realize spiritual fitness is just as important as physical fitness. I would argue it’s even more important. As athletes, we spend so much time in the gym committed to the pursuit of physical fitness, and our coaches play a huge role in that journey. What would it look like in your own life to sit down on the side of the mat and watch God coach? I think you’d see what I’ve discovered. The challenges, the support, the encouragement, all lead to something far greater than you could ever imagine. It is the result of great coaching.