One of my favorite country music artists is Chase Rice. He has a unique story of how he found himself in music. From being a star linebacker at University North Carolina, to a career-ending injury halting his path as an NFL player and his father sadly passing away while he was in college, he had trials and adversity. When he became a star in the music industry he started an apparel brand – HDEU. On the site, (https://headdowneyesup.com/pages/about-us) he shares the story behind the saying. In a nutshell, no matter the good or the bad, if you keep your head down, focus on what’s in front of you, you’ll be able to accomplish the things in front of you.
This got me thinking about how real that statement is. Oftentimes in life and society, we see people act one of two ways – at least most commonly displayed. When things are good, people want everyone to acknowledge it. They boast about the good, so much so that when things are bad they fake it as good. And the other way around, when things are bad, people want others to feel sorry for themselves or they loathe in their own self-pity. It’s not all the time, but I think I can speak for everyone that we’ve all done it before – one way or the other. What happens when we do that though? When we hang our head so low or we hold our head so high?
I was reading this story about Ben Franklin being warned to stoop when walking into a room and it seems Ben Franklin was being warned to have the head down/eyes up mentality too. In Chase the Lion, Mark Batterson references a story where young Ben Franklin was entering the library of Cotton Mathers when visiting him for dinner. The library had low beams running through it and though being warned to duck, Franklin didn’t understand the warning and hit his head on a low beam. Mathers told him “Let this be a caution to you not always to hold your head so big. Stoop, young man, stoop — as you go through this world — and you’ll miss many a hard thump.”
This is so interesting to me because if we hang our head too low and we keep our eyes down we will begin to miss what’s in front of us and miss the goal we are striving towards and we get caught up in every grain of dirt we are walking past that we won’t see the goal still exists. But if we don’t stoop and we hold ourselves high above others, yes we can see the goal ahead, but we will miss any roadblock, adversity or fork in the road, causing us to stumble and fall.
Mark Batterson writes in Chase the Lion, “If you stay humble and stay hungry, there is nothing God cannot do in you or through you.” See just like the phrase Chase Rice coined, or the warning Ben Franklin got, if we keep our head down but our eyes up, we will still be able to accomplish and reach our goal and we will be able to avoid any adversity or twist that is thrown our way.
So I challenge you as you pursue the goals you have set in place. Charge ahead towards the goal. Make the decision in your mind to navigate the path ahead with that “head down, eyes up” mentality. Listen to the guidance of others, heed any warning thrown your way, but don’t let yourself get into a position where your head is too high or too low.
WORKOUT
The “head down, eyes up” mentality cannot be more true when it comes to sports, fitness, etc. When we are working out we can get caught up with the “gains” we are or aren’t seeing. We start seeing results and flexing in the mirror becomes more important than the workout itself. Or, we don’t see the results but see others around us or feel like we aren’t getting anywhere and begin to get down on ourselves for the lack of progress. So when we are in our fitness journey we have to attack it with the mentality that nothing else matters other than growing one step at a time, one workout at a time.
For this workout use the WOD app or a stopwatch. We are going to perform 40sec work and 20 sec of rest. Go through each block three times. Take a minute break after each block is
Block 1:
- Air Squats
- Squat Jumps
- Squat Holds
Block 2:
- Push-ups
- Dips (feet on ground, bench etc.)
- Shoulder Taps
Block 3:
- Speed Skaters
- Split Squat Jumps (right leg forward)
- Split Squat Jumps (left leg forward)
Block 4:
- Crunches
- Alternating Leg Raises
- Russian Twists
Hammer and Anvil 