1000 Days

Prologue

I have surpassed 1,000 consecutive workouts without a rest day. I have become bigger and stronger. Was it difficult? Some days, yes. But for the most part, it was enjoyable and deeply gratifying.

“You are so disciplined,” some said.

“It is because you’re a Marine,” said others.

“I wish I had your motivation and discipline,” said still more.

            I assure you, it was not motivation, and certainly not discipline that got me here.

It took no punishment. No strict code of behavior. No authoritarian control. It required more than discipline alone: commitment, passion, and direction.

Commitment. Doing what I set out to do. Passion. The barely controllable urge to do something I enjoy. Direction. A way to advance by harnessing my passion and commitment.

Training daily, while more demanding some days than others, was a pleasure. Was there sometimes pain? Yes. But it came not from discipline. It was from doing what I took pleasure in.

Passion and discipline, pleasure and pain, these things are not too different. One is not good while the other bad. One is not without the other. Yet only one has become today’s fad for motivational speakers.

Such people find pleasure in discipline and are passionate about pain. Disciplinarians act as if the spectrum between these things is flat and that they are the furthest from passion because it is seen as a weakness based in emotion, and pleasure being a sin against toughness. But the spectrum is a horseshoe with passion and discipline, and pleasure and pain, existing nearer each other than they are from the mindless, emotionless center.

Discipline has become en vogue and is now marketed as a product you can buy (if not monetarily, then with your clicks and attention) from a disciplinarian, who advertises obeyance to their code, as both the means and the ends to self-actualization.

 Discipline has become tough guy speak for “if you are not willing to suffer, then you are a [pejorative for a weakness].”

“Suffer how I describe and one day you too can be like me, an [icon of greatness].”

Their product is nothing but self-abnegation to achieve an image of pseudo-stoic piousness. The disciplinarians advertise and profit from selling this word as a whole identity to people who need more than punishment from and obedience to the disciplinarian. In this fashion, discipline is nothing more than a soft-core dominatrix service to customers desiring submissiveness.

Making the process of achievement needlessly difficult to express more “discipline” is a masquerade so obvious that only the participants, in their mindless commitment to Discipline™, cannot recognize the lie.

I’d love to talk about how tough I am for training daily. How hard it was. And how much discipline it took. But that would be a lie.

There's a reason this messaging only
resonates with teens.

The disciplinarians have been lying to you.

There is an entire industry built around the idea that discipline cures the ailments of modernity. Obesity, laziness, anxiety, low self-esteem, depression. The list goes on.

In that industry are professionals who personify discipline. They make a living selling their way to a disciplined life, selling themselves as disciplinarians.

And many are quick to buy.

The thing is the disciplinarians mask their fulfillment as self-sacrifice. Pretending that they do not take pleasure in pain, as if the former imparts cowardice and the latter glory. They say getting what you want is hard, that hard things take discipline, and therefore hard things are inherently good – and anything that comes easy, is bad – something you shouldn’t want.

“You want to be badass? First, you need discipline.” Buy my books, shirts, supplements, and subscribe to my podcast.

Does getting what you want require discipline? The disciplinarians have convinced the masses that it does, building an entire industry around the notion that restraint and punishment are the means to success. Maybe it is required for some, but maybe not for you. Maybe you need more pleasure in your life than pain. And maybe that pleasure cannot be had through the disciplinary tactics as advertised.

Heaping suffering on suffering produces what? For the modern man who constructs his own convenient obstacles to feign a struggle, it creates a braggadocious attitude about how tough they are and nostalgia for the inflated hardships endured.

“Quitting is for losers,” they say.

Is it?

Perhaps you really did not want what you thought you did, and maybe you should quit. Too bad you cannot get a refund for all the unwarranted and avoidable punishment that kept you from exceling at something you enjoy.

Maybe it would be better for you to find something you truly want. Something you’re so drawn to you are immediately obsessed with it. And honestly, everyone who is doing what you quit won't know, or care, and if they do, they’ll probably be happier for you… and happier doing the thing they enjoy since you would have been complaining about how awful the thing is for you while simultaneously humble bragging about how much discipline it takes for you to do what they find easy. 

If you’re not liking something, move on. If you require motivation to do whatever it is, but have trouble finding it, move on.

This is how people should approach fitness. Not liking lifting? Do something else, and if that doesn’t work out, do something else. Do until you find what your heart compels, then you won’t be troubled by the negative feedback loop that is discipline. Instead, you will do because it is what you enjoy.

Motivation might get you to the edge of the pool, and discipline might get you to jump in and tread water for a bit, but each will fade, and soon you will tire and drown.

This is how many are when it comes to lifting weights.

“I want to get big and strong but have a hard time getting to the gym.”

“Because you lack physical discipline,” says the disciplinarians. Buy my strength program.

“I’ve been going to the gym, but I haven’t made any progress.”

“Because you lack the dietary discipline.” Buy my nutrition guide.

“I’m not enjoying training.”

“Because you lack the mental discipline.” Buy my inspirational memoir.

“I’m thinking about quitting.”

“Do it,” I say. “Forget the disciplinarians.”

Disregard their snake oil. Turns out that what you thought you wanted wasn’t for you. So what? Move on. Find what you do want and do that with your whole heart. Such a thing is a pleasure, a blessing, even if pain or difficulty is required. The two, pleasure and pain, are closely related and individuals derive value from each based on their proclivities. Maybe the pain of discipline is not for you and is not your path to success. Your goal should be to determine where on that spectrum, from pain to pleasure, works best for you – not to mindlessly adopt the practices of disciplinarians because they have marketed masochism as the solution to life’s difficulties. Discipline is not the cure-all as advertised.

Discipline has become the pursuit of punishment conflated with virtue. The guise of disciplinarians who proclaim that their achievements were somehow earned by being a victim of themselves.

“Pain is temporary, pride is forever.”

A nice sounding quote, one I used to believe myself. But I have come to realize that it is a platitude, and that the reverse is also true. Pain can be forever. And pride can be temporary.

Such platitudes define the disciplinarians, for they have become one. It is machismo 2.0, a reborn version of the attitude that you are weak if you cannot or will not do what they say. That you are weak if you don’t wake up at 4 a.m. and suffer through some needless ritual for a portion of your day. The disciplinarians espouse that to be disciplined means the abnegation of comfort and pleasure.

Abstaining from pleasure and replacing it with punishment is the disciplinarian’s version of religion. A characterization of purity that makes them beyond reproach. And if you too can forgo pleasure, then you can earn salvation from the ills that plague you – like they did.

“You too can be redeemed through Discipline.”

“Believe me,” they say. “I an apostle of Discipline, and I can show you the way.”

Capital D because it has become their God, the disciplinarians the prophets, and their books and podcasts the gospel. These people construct crosses of balsa wood and bear them in the same manner, for the same purpose, that people spin signs at the corners of intersections.

And if you don’t buy what they’re selling, then you’re a [pejorative here].

Or worse yet, a heretic.

A person who can achieve without proselytizing discipline, pain, and suffering. Without riding that high horse named Self-sacrifice. A person whose passions drove them to the goal, not without discipline at all, but without it being the totalitarian mindset that pits pain against pleasure, as if enjoying the process to achieve the goal was sinning to earn salvation.

I could have written about how disciplined I was these last 1,000 days. About how hard the days were. About how difficult it was to work full-time, while going to school full-time, while being a husband and father, and some days needing to snow shovel and chop wood for hours… and then have the discipline to get in the gym, where I had the toughness to endure excruciating workouts.

But then I would have been lying to you.

The truth is, I’ve enjoyed this process. Even when the workouts were hard, or painful, lifting is a pleasure – for me. It was more passion than discipline, and though they are related, I found discipline alone lacking the resources to sustain commitment. When things got monotonous, or I had a moment of discouragement, it was not discipline, but passion that drove me. For I found what I love to do, so I do it, and so should you. Not for the sake of discipline, but because whatever it is – lifting or not – you would live dissatisfied without it.

So, if discipline has not yielded the rewards the Disciplinarians promised, then quit them and move on to something you are passionate about, where consistency will be easier, and from that discipline will flourish effortlessly. It will still take commitment, direction, hard work, and sometimes pain – but when those things come, bathe in the pleasures they are – for those are the rewards of a joyful pursuit.

As these last 1,000 days have been.

Pleasure pythons.