Commitment, Goals and Progress

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Spiritual/Emotional, Sports, Youth/fit | (0) Comments

One of the primary rules in life is simply that the results and outcome of your life will be a reflection of the things you are committed to. This is true for family, job, friends and spiritual matters. This is especially true for your health. If you are committed to eating right and exercise, you will be healthier than people who are not. Now I know that there are those freaks of nature that do everything wrong and still live until they are 90. And I know that there are those who do everything right and die of cancer or a heart attack when they are 30. But, for the 99% of the rest of us, what we commit to makes all the difference to our health, quality of life and longevity. So, making commitments in areas of diet and exercise is not a minor thing. It is critical to every area of life. I have found that the self-discipline I developed through weight training and bodybuilding has carried over into most other parts of my life as well. Since most advances in life are the result of commitment and not “luck”, we really should stop and examine the things we are committed to and ask if those things are worth the time and effort we put into them. I suspect, that there are a lot of people who could use a realigning of their commitments and a lot more self discipline.

From MPF-

I’m leaving a lot out, of course, but one primary theme worth highlighting here is that cycling gives Dave’s life structure.  Maybe he’ll ride the Tour de France someday, but the movie isn’t so shallow as to make us think that’s what’s important. Dave has learned a degree of commitment and discipline from riding, a certain willingness to set goals and follow through, and at the end of the movie, we’re pretty sure he’s going to make it.

I became interested in fitness outside of a sports context:  I felt small and weak and wanted to be big and strong.  But, similar to Dave, lifting weights came to have a bigger meaning for me.  Schlepping down to the basement at 5:30 in the morning every day, I took away some lessons about commitment, about making small, incremental progress towards a clear goal, and I would say that those lessons have stuck with me at least as much as the ones I was getting in class.