Tag: jesus

Practicing What I Preach

by Christian Boyles, posted in Lifelong Fitness, Motivation

Almost every day I write a post about fitness, Crohn’s Disease, and life.  Almost every day, I try to share advice that was given to me, research, and my personal opinions on the above topics.  That does not mean that I am a testament to this perfect, idealistic version of me that I am trying to assimilate in this blog.

However, every day I keep in mind of where I’m at and I remember my end goals.  I remember that eating a nearly perfect diet that I believe in will further my goals, that pushing out the extra rep will also help, and that blogging is my form of expression and a means to an end for going the extra mile until I choose to go even further.

Not having these things all figured out oftentimes makes me feel like a hypocrite.  I’m reminded of a quote from Jesus in the Christian’s New Testament:

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

That’s Matthew 7:3-5 in the New International Version of the Bible(crazy how many different versions there are!!).  I was raised in a fairly religious home, thus I remember random scriptures often that I sometimes relate to things I’m going through in my life.

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I chose this image from freeimages.com because the bar looked like a barbell

However, if those words were taken literally I wonder if there would be a single person willing to preach.  That’s where Christians believe in grace and moving forward, even when they make mistakes.  That’s where I believe in getting up, even when I fall down, and continuing to blog while simultaneously fighting to improve my life into that idealistic version I spoke of in the first paragraph.

So what is the idealistic version of myself?

Idealistically, I’m going to continue blogging and working out, running, and dieting, studying nutrition and also furthering my career.  I will turn into someone I would proudly call a role model.

I will practice what I preach.

It’s going to happen!  I believe in myself and I know I can do it!  Since I wrote the series on diet last week, I have made a lot of healthier choices.  I’ve been running a lot more and eating cleaner just like I said my character Jimmy would as compared to Carl who only likes greasy, nasty food.

So as long as I talk bad about Carl, I’m going to be a Jimmy!  While practicing what I preach, I’ll continue to keep you posted and share content.

 

 

To Be The Best You Have To Sacrifice

by Christian Boyles, posted in Lifelong Fitness, Motivation

Is there anything in this world that you want more than everything else? Then you must be willing to place it above everything else. 

That just seems like common sense, right? Let’s say you want to be the best boxer in the world, and you want to be as good as boxing legends such as Mike Tyson and Muhammed Ali, but you aren’t willing to give up drinking three out of 7 days a week. I promise you, you will see results but they will remain subpar compared to giving it your all and giving up drinking Thursday through Friday.

I was driving home and I thought about my own journey with lifting weights and nutrition. I personally want to be the best I can be with these things, and I have pretty much given up hanging out with friends and trying to get girls. This probably sounds crazy, but that’s how badly I want to be the best. I work out for almost 2 hours every day except Saturdays, I eat well, I spend at least an hour a day reading books on nutrition, and in the remainder I write new posts for my blog so you have new motivation and content to read.

During my drive home, I remembered someone else who said something similar although on a much higher level and this is strictly metaphorical to my own journey and yours. I thought about Jesus in a passage I read from the Bible. There was a rich man begging him to enter the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus more or less told him that if he wants to be the best follower of Christ he can be and enter Heaven he has to sell all of his belongings and follow Jesus. In a way, you probably think Jesus sounded nuts. However, when you look at it in a context that is metaphorical to whatever you are passionate about, you realize that if your heart really wants something badly enough, Jesus is saying you’ll give up anything for it.

Most of us would never take that step and we would have looked at Jesus like he was crazy, but again it’s all about how badly you want something and the rich man told Jesus he would do anything to enter heaven. Jesus quickly proved that the rich man definitely would not do anything for it, considering he wouldn’t part with his wealth. His wealth was where his heart was.

My heart is with my fitness, and I challenge you to go all in for something you are passionate about. If you want something bad enough, you’ll truly do whatever it takes. Thanks for reading.

By the way, as a disclaimer, you don’t have to quit your job and go out of your way to do these things. I’m simply making the point that your results will be far beyond what they could be if you do go to the extremes and do what it takes. Also, about the point in dropping a job, you may need a job to have the revenue to pursue your dreams so don’t quit absolutely everything people. Again, thanks for reading, and have a great day.