This I Believe...

Through strength my chains are broken

          Its six o’clock in the morning, darkness surrounds me; it’s the dead of winter, well below freezing. One by one, figures start to emerge from the darkness as we gather around the gymnasium doors, standing under a flickering flood light, waiting for our custodian to relieve us from our suffering. There is only one reason for us to be in a gym at six in the am; it was because we believed, and I still believe that keeping your mind and body strong is the ultimate and basic key to success in life. Discipline is the only way to control your body and mind, having control has helped me to enjoy life to the fullest. For me that form of discipline was lifting weights twice a day, five days a week. For me it was the smell of the iron as I pulled it in towards my face and then away with the same ferocity. It was the surreal feeling of my muscles contracting and expanding, the rap blaring in my ears, and the constant drum of my heart pounding. Lifting weights is the very definition of joy in my life, and to me discipline is lifting weights. The desire to see myself become better than anybody thought possible was what gave me the drive to push myself like that.
          Imagine for a moment, you are Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia. Every morning you wake up with the weight of a hundred million souls resting upon your shoulders. The only thing that will be the same for you every morning is the physical exercise. The most successful people in the world have strict workout regimens every day. Vladimir Putin practices Judo every morning as he gets up to lead Russia into the future, and Barack Obama had a basketball court installed in the backyard of the White House. If world leaders are exercising every day, then there must be a good reason for it all. There’s more to a little exercise every morning than meets the eye. It’s the basic building block to success in life. It’s the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night. Without doing it I would feel fake, like I was living a lie, and I believe that people do it to maintain some kind of control over their life.
          Athletes are who they are because they are in shape; they did not get to that position in sports by being out of shape. Adrian Gonzalez grew up in Tijuana, one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Underprivileged and impoverished he was still able to become one of the greatest baseball players their ever was, or will ever be. It is discipline that carries us through life. Discipline carried Gonzales through danger to fame, and I believe that discipline will carry me, and anyone else who practices it, to success.
          Life is about making something happen, not waiting for them to happen. I believe the easiest way to get your life started on the right track is to give yourself a disciplined pattern of exercise to repeat everyday; something that is easily accomplished. I started by just banging out push-ups and sit-ups in my room every morning and again before I went to bed. Every little thing you do counts. If I had not started doing the basics in my room when I was just barely a teenager at fourteen years old, then I never would have started. You have to work your way up the ladder before you can reach the top, and that’s what I did, and have been doing since I started high school. Every challenge I completed gives me the energy needed to complete any task in life head-on.
          When I accomplish the small easy tasks it gives me the boost I need to tackle life’s bigger challenges. I believe when you deprive yourself of completing these little challenges you weaken your body. I know that feeling, it is a painful a lasting emotion, its called failure. Failure kills you; it kills your chances of leading a successful life. You cannot let failure ruin your life; you have got to give yourself a method to overcome failure. I believe that for me that method is self-discipline. I contribute most of my success to the self-discipline that I maintain in my lifestyle, and I know that all of my success in the future will be controlled by pushing my body and mind to its limits.