Today was the first day I woke up where I was not in pain! For over a week now every morning as I try to get out of bed I can hardly move my arms and legs. Just trying to get dressed was a challenge! What used to be easy tasks were now difficult and painful. It started a couple of weeks ago when I decided it was time to get back into shape and start working out!
Why would anyone purposely endure pain that was not necessary and not comfortable? It is the only way to grow!
I have been able to spend the last couple of weeks with leadership expert Orrin Woodward. Orrin’s approach to life in all categories is the same, no pain no gain. He has taught me so many principles over the last couple of weeks about stretching yourself, enduring pain, and discomfort to grow. The only time you will grow is if you push yourself past the normal, past your comfort into the unknown, uncomfortable and sometimes painful. Just like a muscle, if it is only used in the capacity that it can handle it never has to grow, but push past its normal usage all the way to failure the body responds by building more muscle to handle the future demand.
In leadership if you are not uncomfortable you are not growing and if you are not growing, you are no longer leading. So many people avoid pain for happiness and comfort, when only by enduring pain (failure) can you get true happiness, comfort and purpose. A leader is always out front pushing themselves to failure so they can rebuild and become better.
We worked out multiple muscle groups and took them all to failure one at a time. There was a point where I was screaming trying to lift just 10 lbs but could not do it, failure! Next my legs, doing squats got to the point where I pushed with all my strength and yet the weights pushed me backwards, failure! Then my back, working to the point I could hardly set the weights down let alone lift another set, FAILURE!
After a day of failure in every area of my body, I left the weight room a CHAMPION, for I now know, only through failure will I grow!
God bless, Dan Hawkins
The Leadership Search by Orrin Woodward
I used to get to the end of each day and think, what did I get done today? What was different today than the day before? Is this what hard work gets a person in life? I wasn’t living my life intentionally. I didn’t take the time to look at getting better everyday. What did I want my financial picture to look like? I wanted to be debt free, give to charities, and not get into fights with my spouse about late payments on bills. I needed to stop taking financial advice from people in my life with credit card debt and furniture payments. I found myself listening to audio recordings like, “- LLR 396 – The Ten Laws of Financial Management by Orrin Woodward” and “- LIFE 17 – Money as a Slave by Chris and Terri Brady”
