What’s Your Excuse?

What’s Your Excuse?

I wasn’t wanting to go to the gym.  I was feeling sluggish and it was super cold outside.  Plus, the roads were snowy and icy.  Good excuses right?  I’m sure a lot of people, even those that made New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight or get back in shape, stayed home for just that reason.

But staying home and skipping a workout because it’s cold out, or because of the ice and snow is not the warrior’s way.  Sure, I could have worked out at home too.  That is always an option, and the key is working out, not necessarily where. But let’s face it, the excuse of the cold, ice and snow was just that, an excuse.  When you live with the Warrior’s Edge, you don’t make excuses.  You don’t take the easy way.  You do what you know you should.  You do what is right.  You are disciplined and don’t make excuses, especially one so weak as it being cold outside.

So I went to the gym and got a good workout in.  Like always, after the workout, I was glad I went to the gym and felt better for having been there and for having gotten my exercise in.  When you stick to your exercise routine, you not only feel better physically, but you feel good that you had the discipline to do what you were committed to.  And you can’t live with the Warrior’s Edge without being committed to physical training and living healthy and alive.

The gym was closing and I went back out into the cold.  It was ten o’clock at night, but after my workout, it didn’t seem as cold as before.  In reality, it was colder, but I was in a more positive frame of mind after my workout.  Then I saw something that made me ashamed of my earlier feelings of not wanting to go because of snow, ice and cold.  I was getting into my vehicle to drive home when I saw another gentleman who had been working out. I don’t know his name, but he is at the gym daily.  He was leaving the gym after his workout and heading home too.

He wasn’t getting into a car though. He doesn’t drive.  Well, he doesn’t drive a car.  He is in a motorized wheelchair.  So he was driving it home.  Yes, I felt like crap when I thought of how I was using the cold as an excuse to maybe skip a workout, and here he was out in the cold with his wheelchair, and I’m sure the ice and snow gave him additional challenges with his chair.  That’s living with the Warrior’s Edge.  He has the discipline and commitment to take his motorized wheelchair out in the cold, ice and snow to workout at the gym.

So I don’t ever want to hear “It’s cold out” come out of my mouth again when it is time to go do what I know is good for me and the right thing to do.  I want to remember him and his dedication.  I want you to remember him and his discipline and dedication too.

Are you keeping your commitments?  Are you living as a warrior with the Warrior’s Edge?  Are you doing what’s right?  Are you training your body, mind and spirit?  Are you living your life with everything you have and being the best you can be?  If not, what’s your excuse?