Excellence honors God.
All over the world, we see these taglines marketed to us as a sort of call to action, providing us the momentum to pursue a brand of lifestyle. Nike – Just Do It. Adidas – Impossible is Nothing. Amazon – Everything from A to Z. This got me thinking… What would my motto be for life? What do I want to live by?
Reading further into Chase the Lion, mentioned like (the book I referred to in whatever blog Vol. 20). I stumbled across this simple yet profound quote by Mark Batterson says, “Excellence honors God.” Simple right? Do things to the best of your ability and try your hardest. I think it’s easier said than done. See, this is a sort of a call to action to excel in our purpose and passion. By being great we are pursuing excellence. We hear this a lot, whether in sports or academics, we are taught to pursue excellence. So shouldn’t we do that in our personal lives too? Excellence doesn’t just happen. It takes action, it takes work, it takes intentionality to be better and better at whatever it is we are trying to excel at.
For example, Nike doesn’t just make a shoe and call it excellent. They didn’t build their brand on one-off ideas that they decided to run (no pun intended) with. There’s a series of steps, trials, failures, and successes that lead to excellence in the shoe world. Even more relatable to us, we don’t just wake up one day and decide we are going to graduate from school, skip classes and go to the finals and succeed. Ok maybe for some classes that worked. Back to the point – it takes years to develop the skills to excel and graduate college.
That work and the stress that comes with pursuing excellence is good for us. Batterson said from his perspective that, “positive stress, eustress, forced me to seek a fresh anointing each and every day. Without it, I’m coasting. With it, I’m gaining momentum.” I don’t know about you, but I feel that. Reading that energizes me and led me to the thought of what is my tagline? I want to be great, and I want to be excellent in my pursuit and passion for following the plan set before me. But how do I accomplish that?
It starts with intentional decisions. Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about such things.” The intentional decisions have to come from a place that allows us to choose the right decision to propel us into action on the path set before us. After all, actions speak louder than words. We can say all the right things, but until we strap on our boots, and get to work, our plan is only a good idea we think or talk about. After choosing to pursue that plan, we must be intentional when deciding between choices or actions. As we’ve discussed many times before, there will be unknowns, adversity, the choice between good or bad habits… but it’s the decision we make at that moment that will affect the trajectory we are on.
See, we’ve built the momentum up to this point. We’ve aimed our ship towards the target drawing us in, we’ve established a plan and good habits. Where our mind goes our body will also. The decisions have been made up to this point; so if you haven’t already, now is the time to define where it is you want to go. Choose the tagline that inspires you to work harder, be great, or go for the gold (see what I did there – a few taglines to get the juices flowing). Choose to excel in your actions. Be great at what you put your mind to. Become better and better each day you work towards achieving your goals. Be encouraged that you can do it!
WORKOUT
Much like the decision to pursue the goals we have in life, we must choose to pursue our fitness goals with that same intentionality to be great. God says, the body is a temple and so, we should honor it in workouts as well.
For this workout, we are going back to a set and rep structure for a light full-body workout!
Lower Body:
1. Air Squats – 3 sets of 30 reps
2. Alternating Lunges – 3 sets of 10 (ea. leg)
3. Single leg RDL – 3 sets of 10 (ea. leg)
Upper Body:
1. Pushups – 3 sets of 20 reps
2. Dips – 3 sets of 20 reps
3. Light Curls (can use water bottles, detergent, dumbbells, bands) – 3 sets of 10 (ea. arm)
Core:
1. Crunches – 2 sets of 20 reps
2. Leg Lifts – 2 sets of 20 reps
3. V-Ups – 2 sets of 20 reps
Hammer and Anvil 