I just got back from a great week of camp with my family. As I updated you last week, we spend a week every year at camp as a family. We are going on 6 years. I always come back refreshed and encouraged! The week is focused on family and faith. Joel Thomas, from North Point Community Church, brought great messages and really challenged us parents.
Just so you get a better idea of camp, Kanakuk’s family camp is a week long camp where families come to focus on their relationships with one another and God. There are 80 or so college aged counselors on staff that pour into the kids and families. My kids can never get enough of their counselors! All age groups, including us parents, have tons of activities and experiences planned. Tons of time in the pools and waterslides, tubing, bluff jumping, basketball, mini golf, paintball, jumbo slip-n-slides, and it goes on and on and on! We all get time apart and tons of time together. It’s an absolutely amazing week!
Deciding What to Lose
Now all of these topics and ideas that were discussed were around faith. I don’t want to down play that at all. Truth can be applied in many contexts, so these truths can be applied to how I follow Jesus and how I look at and evaluate work/family/health/Beachbody.
The second day of the parents’ breakout time, Joel brought the challenge of “sometimes following Jesus feels like choosing to lose.” If you’ve read about Jesus, you know he was always upfront about what it was going to cost to follow him. Countless times he made people aware you weren’t guaranteed a place to lay your head, a family, safety, or even your life when you choose to follow him. All of this choosing to lose was not in vain. There is the greatest reward in choosing to follow Jesus – being forgiven and made right with God! But the point that Joel drove home, that really jumped out to me was that in all of this, “winning anything of significance involves choosing to loose something else.”
How TRUE is that?! Think about almost every area of life… in order to win something of great significance, you will have to choose to lose something else. If you wanted to grow up and play professional sports, you are going to choose to lose what we typically think of as a normal childhood. You will will lose sleeping in late, free time with friends, lazy weekends, etc. Those times are needed for practices, training, games, and weekend tournaments. But what you’re hoping to WIN is something you’ve decided to be greater than what you are “losing.”
Or what about a new business. If you know any small business owners, you know that they really “choose to lose.” They spend countless hours and dollars getting their businesses off the ground. They CHOOSE to give up that time for something they see as valuable and worth that sacrifice. A new business owner may even choose to lose the security of another job for the dream of what could be their own. In the end though, the VALUE they see in their business is worth making those tough choices.
Now think about your journey with P90X, Body Beast, or any other program. If you were to ask any of the jaw-dropping success stories if they had to “choose to lose” they would all tell you YES! I chose to lose my comfortable lifestyle (my routine), I lost hours of sleep (still do), I lost eating whatever I felt like, I lost the ability to simply show up at a family holiday, I lost going with the flow… but what I was searching to win was worth everything I lost! The value of being healthy was too great to pass up. The dividends my health and fitness continues to pay is unbelievable! I gained so much more energy for my kids, health for a long life with my wife and family, and even just gaining control and feeling good about myself was completely worth it! I chose to lose a lot of my old life and it was because I could see the great value of what I would gain.
So what are you going to choose to lose?
As we focus on fitness and health here on teamRIPPED… what are you going to choose to lose? What habits, excuses, personal preference, comforts are you going to put off for something greater?
Can you see the value of there is to gain? Not just getting ripped… but can you see how deciding to make a real change will impact your whole life?
I’m here to tell you, it’s worth it. You will gain so much more than you give up. Are you going to look back a year from now and think, “man I wish I would have watched more TV…” Or, “If only I could have ate more ice cream.” Those things won’t matter to you. I just don’t want you to look back and think, “I wish I could have done more with my daughter’s soccer team…”
Choose to lose and go for great teamRIPPED!
Need a coach?
My email: coachwayne@teamripped.com
IG: @wayne_wyatt
