The furthest I had ever dreamed of running was a half marathon. I did that 5 years ago. I trained for 6 months and I had to have a friend run with me for motivation. I completed the 13.1 miles the day after my wedding, which was extremely distracting from the actual race (for some reason). Since then, I thought I was done with running. Apparently, it's not done with me. I'm 28 now. I'm training for a full IRONMAN in Chattanooga at the end of September. I woke up one day and decided I needed a challenge. What changed? You aren't going to buy this. I still don't quite get it. The only difference I made was my mentality. I promise. That's it. I haven't been training for the last 5 years. Actually, I'm only training about 6 months leading up to the race. Sure I ran 6 miles here and 4 miles there, but nothing significant. I lift weights every day: that's the only regular exercise I've been participating in. The furthest I've ever ridden a bike before was 21 miles (5 years ago). The IRONMAN is 116 miles. The furthest I've ever swam was 1 mile (7 years ago). The IRONMAN is 2.4 miles. I once hiked 22 miles in a day to Center Mountain in Kodiak Alaska. I once rode my bike 14 miles and hiked 13 miles on the same day. Big days, no doubt, but my biggest physical performance days fail to compare to the 144.6 miles I'm doing next month. I've barely touched the halfway mark INDIVIDUALLY. Seriously, what gives? I'm telling you, I changed my mind about what I was capable of. I read the book "Can't Hurt Me" by David Goggins and I realized that this is what he did. He went from an obese nobody to an ultramarathon runner in a very short amount of time. Again, you don't believe me, because I went through the same denial. I thought Goggins was just a freak of nature. Maybe there's a small part of that mixed in, but I'm telling you, you have unmet potential. There are 40 full IRONMAN races each year with between 1500-2000 participants IN EACH! You do the math. Are there that many freaks of nature around the world?

There's so much noise about weight loss out there. These are the essentials - yes it's this simple. How long did it take you to gain the weight? You're not going to lose it over night! There's no magic metabolism booster or superfood you're missing. You need to eat less and move more. That's it. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Burn more calories than you consume. If you can permanently change your diet to contain healthier foods, great! Ultimately it's just a math problem though. You can't possibly create mass if you don't feed it. You don't have to exercise to lose weight. It definitely helps to burn more calories instead of simply eating fewer, but it's not necessary. I hear this excuse all the time: "I don't have time to go to the gym". I get it. It's still not easy to get in shape and stay in shape. But if you don't take care of your health, no one else is going to! Pay your grocery bills today so you don't have to pay hospital bills tomorrow. Let me know if this is a topic you want to hear more about!

It’s not letting me take the quiz brother

Think of your life as a series of modes of transportation. Sometimes you’re walking, sometimes running, biking, or swimming. This can be both literal and figurative. Where is your plane headed? Who’s driving your boat? How many different trains are you riding on right now? Every person you meet can push you a little further down your path. Each day is an opportunity to move the needle a bit more than yesterday. Where did you start? At zero. That’s where we all begin, in every area of life. We start different categories at different times, competing in multiple races simultaneously. But how many races do you want to compete in? Can you compete in many and win? Yes, but not without sacrifice. If you only focus on one, it will likely progress further, but will you enjoy limiting yourself to just one? Imagine each area of your life as a car on a road. You can’t easily drive more than one car at a time, right? You drive one car for a while, then switch to another, and so on. This is what our lives look like, moving multiple vehicles down the timeline of life. Consider your favorite athlete—let’s take Cameron Hanes, for example. How many hours does he spend training for hunts or practicing with his bow? Many more than most of us ever will. He pushes himself a little further every day with consistent and intentional practice. But he doesn’t do much outside of that. In his book Endure, he discusses the significant sacrifices he’s made to pursue his dreams. Imagine how long it would take you to catch up with his experience! Let me share a few of the races I’m competing in, and how I rate myself on a scale from 1-10. A 1 means I’ve just started, and a 10 means I’ve perfected it. I’m training for an IRONMAN (3), starting my own business (5), buying land and building a house (6), getting ready to have my first child (2), lifting weights every day (9), and reading and praying daily (8). Every aspect of my life is something I can improve. But which ones am I prioritizing? Are they the ones I want to be prioritizing? I’d love to add playing guitar to the mix, but the other items take precedence right now.

I’m nearly 30, but I’ve learned several things about myself this year. I freaking hate that. Learning something about yourself should be a positive thing - right? Yes, it’s good to experience a realization, learn, and grow. But it’s often rather embarrassing or painful to go through these experiences, especially when you’ve been practicing certain behaviors for months thinking it was beneficial. I was working for an insurance firm last year. I looked at the excellent pay structure, understood the product, and believed that I liked everything about the idea of selling this to individuals. They taught that anyone could do this with minimal training from any background. Is that true? Well, kind of. I could do it, but not to the level I wanted to (because being a door-to-door salesman is not something everyone can be proficient at) and I definitely was not doing work I enjoyed. I tried to convince myself that the money outweighed my feelings, but I was lying. My wife has been telling me that personality types matter, and you can’t just force yourself to do things you don’t mesh well with for long periods of time. This isn’t an excuse not to do the dishes, or to skip the only work you have lined up, but it is a crucial turning point for the scope of your life. I don’t have the salesman attitude! Here’s a head-scratcher: Would you rather look back on your life with 1) enough money, having done what you were passionate about, or 2) tons of money, having done what you despised? I’ve decided I’d rather have the former! How did I come to this realization? Hours and hours of reflection. I wasn’t sleeping well, I had pent-up energy that led me to lift weights more aggressively and run more often, and I was mentally exhausted after each day, despite not investing more than 8 hours of work. What was going on? I’ve worked plenty of 12-hour days and had no problem repeating those days for weeks on end. This, however, was brand new to me. I started looking for help. Where? On the web of course. I’m too masculine to ask a professional. (Maybe I still have more to learn, but I doubt it.) After watching tons of “finding your passion” videos and reading “how to never work a day in your life” blogs, I realized the simplest fact: I have a dozen or so passions, and I’m pursuing exactly 0 of those right now. Man can only hate himself for so long before he implodes. My thoughts were becoming quite self-destructive, and I needed a way out.