And those are discipline, commitment, and consistency.
As many of you probably know, I just finished Ironman Arizona.
That was November 16th.
So at this point, I've been done with that prep and that race for three weeks now.
And whenever I finish a fitness challenge, a professional goal objective milestone, there is a period of time after it is complete where there is just this.
This ability to reflect on the previous chapter, the previous season, what worked, what did not, what I learned in that process.
And, as I've been sitting in reflection, a lot of my time sitting in reflection is spent in the sauna.
The sauna for me is...
It's my quiet place.
It's my secret place.
It is where I go to pray.
That is where I hear God very vividly.
And it's also just a time to be still, be present, be patient, and listen.
That for me is either in the sauna or times when I'm running.
And these three words have just been top of mind a lot recently.
And as I planned this episode out and I started putting all these things together, I think there's a much greater purpose and reason, and why behind these three words, which I'll get into.
These three words.
At face value, They're just words and they are redundant words or descriptions or characteristics.
They get thrown around a lot.
They get overused in my opinion, a lot.
Discipline, commitment, and consistency.
And they get thrown around and used so much that I believe they get watered down and just how valuable they are and can be.
As I've thought about how we apply, or how I've applied commitment, discipline and consistency over the years, it's actually a really simple concept.
It is simple to accept.
It is difficult to apply.
In my book Go On More that we launched earlier this summer.
There is a section of the book talking about the difference between what is simple and what is easy.
And I used to view them as synonyms.
I used to think that simple was easy and easy was simple, but they are so far from each other.
Just because something is simple does not mean that it's easy.
The way that Albert Einstein described the word simple is that it is at the highest level of intelligence.
To be able to make the most complicated and complex simple is hard.
It is challenging.
But if you can do that, you have a high level of intellect.
You might even be a genius.
To take these three things, these three characteristics discipline, commitment and consistency to accept it.
It's very simple.
But to apply it and to execute upon it.
I would argue that a lot of people don't do it, can't do it and have failed many, many times before.
These characteristics and values are foundational to life, to success, to winning, to achievement.
They are not competitive advantages.
They are not hacks.
Being disciplined doesn't make you any more competitive than somebody else.
Being committed doesn't make you any more competitive against something else.
Being consistent doesn't necessarily make you more competitive.
And where I'm going with this is those three things discipline, commitment and consistency.
They are table stakes.
It is the minimum requirement to compete.
It is the minimum requirement to succeed.
They are the minimum requirement to win.
And if you are sitting somewhere listening to this episode right now or watching it, and if you are failing to succeed, if you are failing to accomplish, if you are failing to win, I would put money on it that, more than likely, the reason or the chances that you are not winning, you are not succeeding, you are not achieving, is because you are not disciplined, you are not committed and you are not consistent.
So I have a call to action in this episode of what I'm about to dive into.
And that call to action is if you want to succeed, Truly, you must.
It's not a you should, you can, you may.
You must, one, be able to hold yourself accountable, discipline yourself.
Two, set goals and objectives and don't quit until you reach or achieve them.
Commitment.
And three show up every single day, over and over and over again, while in the face of adversity or obstacles or struggle.
Consistency.
I'm recording this episode at the end of 2025.
It is early December 2025 at the point in time that I'm sitting here speaking to a camera.
If you want to change your life in 2026, that call to action.
Those three things will change your life.
Guaranteed.
Like guaranteed.
And I say this very carefully with no ego.
I say this with no ego, but with full humility and self-awareness and confidence.
I truly believe in the deepest parts of my soul and my heart.
The only reason that I have been able to build something, achieve certain things, succeed in the way that I have measured success, because success is relative to the individual.
The only reason I've been able to get to a certain point in my life that I'm proud of is because I have been disciplined, I have been committed and I have been very, very consistent for over a decade now.
If I think back, if I reflect of my journey in the military and then transitioning out of the military and building BPN into what it is today, which started in my college apartment in 2012 with a 20000 loan.
If I think back and reflect on any of the physical accomplishments or, at the the bare minimum, the improvements I've made in my physical performance over the years, it is not because of raw talent and skill.
It is not because of the family I was born into.
It is not because of some sort of supernatural gift.
It is because of discipline, commitment, and consistency.
So I wanted to really set the stage before diving into the rest of what I'm about to speak into.
Because, like I've said those three words, they get thrown around, they get added to cute Instagram captions and they get put on people's walls.
You go into a gym, they end up just being, uh, Filler at some point.
Fluff.
And the true value and power.
In my opinion at least, behind these words, these descriptors, these characteristics, they lose some of the oomph in the power.
Discipline, commitment, consistency.
Those are values.
Those are values that we, as individuals or organizations and teams, we embody, we live out, we apply.
They are by no means easy to execute upon, especially when we water down the meaning and the message of them.
But man, they will take you places.
They've taken me to places that I never would have dreamed or imagined happening.
10 plus years ago.
But if you apply them, or you at least take them going into this next year, you're going to see a massive return.
Huge results.
Now I've recently been reading a few books.
One of them is called Living Life Backward by David Gibson.
The subtitle of this book is how Ecclesiastes teaches us to live in light of the end.
It's an incredible read and I've really been enjoying it.
And there is a section of that book that is titled Embrace Life's Repetitiveness.
Repetitiveness.
Repetition.
Repetition.
Repetitiveness and repetition requires consistency.
Consistency is a muscle that needs to be trained and it atrophies without a stimulus.
What does atrophy mean?
I first learned about the word atrophy in terms of muscle.
When you strength train, you go in the gym, you build muscle, you get stronger.
When you're in the gym, you're breaking down those muscle fibers.
And then post-workout, you recover, you consume food nutrition calories, you sleep, you rest and then the muscles grow.
Your muscles are not growing while you're in the gym.
You're breaking them down.
You're literally creating micro tears in the muscle when you're putting them under a stimulus.
But when you rest and you recover, that's when the muscle actually grows and develops.
When you stop training, you stop going to the gym, you stop putting that muscle and that body under a stimulus and you stop breaking it down, it doesn't grow.
It doesn't improve.
It doesn't get better.
The muscle becomes smaller.
It becomes weaker over time in the absence of the stimulus.
The muscle atrophies, so much of our life atrophies as well when we don't keep applying a stimulus on a regular basis.
And just like my good friend and running coach Jeff Cunningham says, it's better to be consistently good as opposed to occasionally great.
If you train a muscle one time every six months, that muscle does not have the ability to grow and develop.
Even if you go in every six months and you train that muscle for hours to a point where you can't even move that part of your body anymore, it isn't a consistent enough stimulus on a frequent and regular basis that there isn't going to be growth, there isn't going to be adaptation, there isn't going to be development.
Consistency itself is a muscle that we have to train.
We have to keep applying this stimulus to experience growth and development and adaptation.
Going back to this book that I've been reading, Living Life Backward.
I mean, one of my favorite books in the Bible is Ecclesiastes.
It is a rude awakening of a book in the Bible.
It is humbling. extremely humbling.
And every time I reread that book, I learned something new.
There's new perspective gained.
There are more humbling moments experienced.
Life is repetitive.
But we as individuals, we as people want to break that cycle of repetition.
It's just natural.
So within the book, I'm going to read some of the things that David Gibson has written down.
And my goal with citing some of this and talking about repetition and how we should the call to action, embrace life's repetitiveness.
Because a life of repetitiveness facilitates a life of consistency.
And the more consistent we can be at what we are doing, what we are practicing, what we are reading, who we are praising, who we are giving the glory to, the more consistent we can be in the absence of chasing and pursuing change.
The reward is on the other side of that repetition.
So the section of embrace life's repetitiveness, we're playing pretend.
Let's pretend that if we get the promotion or see our church grow or bring up good children, we'll feel significant and leave a lasting legacy behind us.
Let's pretend that, That if we change jobs or emigrate to the sun, we won't experience the humdrum, tedium and ordinariness of life.
Let's pretend that if we move to a new house, we'll be happier.
We'll never want to move again.
Let's pretend that if we end one relationship and start a new one, we won't ever feel trapped.
Let's pretend that if we were married or weren't married, we would be content.
Let's pretend that if we make more money, we would be satisfied.
Let's pretend that if we get through this week's pile of washing dirty diapers and in shopping lists in school runs in busy evenings, next week will be quieter.
Let's pretend that time is always on our side to do the things we want to do and become the people we want to be.
Let's pretend we can break the cycle of repetition and finally arrive in a world free of weariness.
David Gibson goes on to say This is exactly what the preacher wants us to spot in the book of Ecclesiastes, where we are unsatisfied with the rhythmical repetition of our lives.
It is because we are pretending that things should not be like this for us as human beings.
To want infinite change, in other words, to gain something, is to want to escape the confines of ordinary existence and somehow arrive in a world where, on the one hand, repetition does not occur and, on the other, permanence for our lives does.
But neither is possible.
As we search for something new under the sun.
So we are searching for absolute novelty, and it does not exist.
The pleasure of novelty is, by its very nature, more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns.
One, the book of Ecclesiastes is so important and valuable.
Two, the way that David Gibson breaks this down, in my opinion, is absolute gold.
We live in a life where we want to turn away from repetition and repetitiveness.
And we want change.
We want different.
We want novelty.
We want newness because we start getting bored.
We start becoming unmotivated.
I have been here in the past and I'm not perfect where I experienced this myself from time to time.
You get tired when you're running the same day over and over and over again.
You want newness.
This is one of the reasons we take vacations and we go see new parts of the world.
This is one reason we start new businesses or pursue new passions and projects.
We want newness.
We want novelty.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong on pursuing change in something different and wanting to shake up your day-to-day.
But if we can't embrace the repetitive nature of our lives, we can never be consistent.
And, in my opinion, when we are running away from the repetitive nature of our lives, it's because we are scared to sit in the quietness, the presence, what requires patience and stillness and listening.
The truth is we're not bored.
We're not burned out from the same repetitive schedule and rhythms from one day to the next.
But we are human and we are in need of these dopamine hits.
This is why we pick up our phone every three seconds.
This is why we're looking for these moments and experiences that release endorphins and dopamine, and it feels good.
There is a reward to the dopamine circuit, truly.
But the reality is we're not bored.
We're not burned out.
We are just avoiding the repetitive nature of our lives that promotes and facilitates consistency.
As I was thinking about how to apply this to everyday life.
And there's many examples I can think of, but in this case, based off of who, I believe I'm speaking to and can relate health fitness nutrition,
There's people that I... come across and talk to, and they struggle with weight loss.
They struggle with consistency of eating healthy or training or going to the gym.
And these are the same people who get bored of the same meal from one day to the next.
They get bored from the same workout from one day to the next.
They constantly need newness and change and variation.
And then you meet people who continue to make progress in their health, in their fitness, in their personal life, in their professional life.
And they don't need novelty.
They don't need change.
They don't need variation from day to day.
They have consistent schedules.
They have consistent routines.
I think about lunch, for example.
Let's go down to the most basic, fundamental example that I can use.
I have been eating the same lunch every day, with small changes very small for years now, literally years.
It is beef and it is rice.
Sometimes I throw some pickled onions in there.
Sometimes there's some barbecue salt thrown in there, some buffalo sauce, hot sauce, sea salt.
Small things added too, but 300 grams of jasmine rice that I weigh out, eight ounces of ground beef or bison or venison or elk, eight ounces half a pound of meat and a cup and a half of rice.
I've been eating that every day for lunch for years.
And you know what?
I never get tired of it.
Never.
Because I know I'm going to feel good from it.
I know it's going to fuel my day.
It's going to fuel my workouts.
It's going to digest easily, quickly so I can get back to work.
It's easy to prep every night before coming into work the next day.
It doesn't take any additional time or mental energy to prepare, heat up, consume.
I throw it in the microwave for three minutes, 20 seconds right before I eat it.
It allows me to be consistent.
But there are some people who can't eat the same lunch from one day to the next.
They get bored.
They got to switch it up.
And because they are required to switch it up because they're bored, they want variation.
They didn't prep it the night before, which forces them to go out during their lunch break and go find something that isn't going to be as healthy, as nourishing, as convenient.
It's going to take more time away.
That is lack of consistency because they can't embrace the repetitions of life.
Now you might be listening to this thing, dude.
You're making a much bigger deal than it has to be around what you eat for lunch.
But the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.
And I can almost guarantee that same individual who can't eat the same lunch from one day to the next gets bored of the same workouts from one day to the next.
And they require more variation, which reduces their ability to maintain consistency.
And then they get so bored and tired and mentally exhausted of trying to think well, what workout can I do next?
Because I'm bored of the ones I've currently been doing.
They just stopped going all together.
And they stopped trying to eat healthy.
And they go from prepping their meals and working out daily to running to McDonald's and skipping their workout and sleeping in and staying up late and binge watching Netflix.
Again, you might be thinking, Nick, you're taking this a little too far.
But no, this is how it starts.
I've seen it time and time again with hundreds of people.
This is how it starts if you can embrace life's repetitive nature, which is natural you can maintain consistency.
But if you require variation and you're always looking for change and you always want newness, that leads to an inability to maintain consistency where eventually, you just fall off completely.
And before you know it, you're thinking back to man.
You remember the days where I felt really good.
I was performing good.
I was eating well.
I was training hard.
I was showing up for my job, my work, my passions, my family, my faith.
Yeah.
That's when consistency was at its strongest because you embraced life's repetitiveness.
When we were at our old HQ, Yeah, now we're in our new headquarters for BPN.
Our old HQ, we were there from 2019 until early 2025.
And we had a gym there.
And when you walked into the gym, there was this door, this wooden door.
And on that door had, go all in.
And these big, bold, black letters, go all in.
That has been my life motto for a long time.
And it's worked.
I'm never someone who dabbles or tinkers.
I never related to that way of living in life.
Now to each their own.
I know a lot of people who are dabblers, who like to tinker.
And for many of them, they are very successful people.
They live a very good life where they have their one thing they're working on, and then there might be 10 other things or hobbies, or passions.
They just dabble in, they just tinker in.
And I've never been attracted to this way of living.
I'm not saying the way I approach this is right or necessarily wrong, but I just want to share the way that I think about it and I approach it.
I like to be able to go all in on things.
Because I find that when I tinker or dabble, I'm just dipping my toe in the water.
And it might be fun, but that fun isn't going to turn into something that, in my opinion, is worth spending a little bit of time in.
Because it also takes away from the time that I can spend elsewhere, with my family, with my business, my passions, my projects.
And of the people that I've met who have made the decision to go all in on something.
It's paid off in massive returns.
Going all in requires sacrifice.
It requires commitment, huge levels of commitment.
The question you got to ask yourself is, what are you going to go all in on and why?
Why do you want to go all in on this one thing?
In 2026, you want to see your life change.
First off, go all in on following Christ.
Second, set a goal, set an objective, like write it down and put it out there, put it into the existence of the world to hold yourself accountable and go all in on it.
Now you have to choose carefully, because when you go all in on something, other parts of your life will have to give.
In order to go all in on one thing, You can't tinker.
You can't dabble in these other things.
Because when you tinker and dabble in other things, that takes away from what you could actually be doing on the thing, the mission, the project, the goal that you want to go all in on.
Here's a good example.
As I've been sharing over this past year, these past couple of months, how my life has transformed by committing my life to following Jesus Christ.
That is a part of my life.
The number one thing in my life, that I have made the decision to go all in on, surrender everything to God.
When I made that decision to go all in, I knew that I was going to have to give up other parts of what I was spending time on, Because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to go all in on Christ.
If I truly wanted to spend time in the word, reading scripture, studying theology in prayer, literally changing and transforming my life.
There were parts of my life that I previously had lived that I was going to have to let die or stop or give up.
One, because it didn't fit in this new way of life in the way that I was reborn.
But two, because I needed to make time for what I was about to and did prioritize in my life.
So this doesn't just apply to a race that you want to accomplish.
I think sometimes when I talk about setting these goals or objectives, going all in.
It's easy to apply this to, here's this Ironman I'm going to do.
Here's this ultra I want to run.
Here's this weight that I want to lose.
It's much larger than that.
This doesn't just apply to a 12-week training program.
Going all in This applies to your family.
This applies to your faith.
This applies to your work.
This applies to your identity.
Everything.
Absolutely everything.
What does it look like to go all in?
To go all in, you have to be willing and able to strip yourself of all things that are holding you back.
And I say this with a grain of salt.
And I say this with a grain of salt, because there are certain things you can't strip away from your life
When I say strip things away from your life, strip things that have no value towards the end goal.
I've watched people go all in on something and they stripped their lives from everything else that was holding them back from that goal, that accomplishment.
And that ended up being things in their life that they probably shouldn't have stripped away.
Like their family, their marriage, their responsibilities as a parent, their responsibilities as an employee, as a team member, as a friend, as a peer.
To go all in on something, you have to be able to strip your life from all the things that are holding you back, but be mature enough and self-aware enough to know what you're able and willing to strip away and what you are not is extremely important.
But too many people are afraid to prune their life so that their objectives can flourish.
There's a lot of things that we can prune away from our lives that provide little to no value or benefit.
And it'll open up a whole lot more space so that those goals, those objectives, the things that we want to go all in on, can actually flourish and grow.
One of my favorite quotes from a speech is from Theodore Roosevelt, and it's titled The Man in the Arena.
I've quoted this many times before, but I don't think it ever gets old.
I could reread this over and over and over again, and it just jacks me up.
It sets me on fire.
It motivates me.
Theodore Roosevelt said it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there's no effort without error and shortcoming.
But who does actually strive to do the deeds?
Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
You can't go all in if you aren't willing to put yourself in a position of failure criticism vulnerability, humility or sacrifice.
To go all in is to surrender everything.
In my journey and walk with God, The decision to go all in was to surrender everything to him.
Even if it led to criticism, failure in other parts of my life sacrifice vulnerability, promoting and exposing humility as opposed to ego.
That is required and that's what comes with the decision and commitment to go all in.
One of the best books I've read in this past year was by Pastor Joby Martin.
And it's called Stand Firm and Act Like Men.
I highly recommend it.
It was a great read.
And some of the things I'm going to speak about in this next session I would say are and were inspired by Pastor Joby Martin's book.
To stand firm and also to eliminate pride.
Two things that he speaks highly of in his book.
To stand firm is to be disciplined.
And much of being disciplined is knowing when, how, and why to say no.
Saying no to certain things in our life allows us to say yes to the enablers that facilitate progress, momentum and transformation.
If we can be disciplined in what we say no to and yes to, we can then be more consistent in our ability to show up to the objectives, the missions that we committed to.
Luke 21, 15 to 19.
For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.
You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, ancestors, relatives, and friends.
And they will put some of you to death.
Everyone will hate you because of me.
But not a hair on your head will perish.
Stand firm and you will win life.
Stand firm.
Be disciplined in your values.
Be disciplined in your beliefs.
Be confident in your values, in your beliefs.
And if you are confident and you stand firm in your values, in your beliefs, you then can more consistently show up and say yes to the right things and no to the wrong things.
That level of discipline is absolutely critical to get you to where you want to be.
Be proud of where you got to and how you got there.
Discipline is so much more than setting your alarm clock at 4 am and getting out of bed when your alarm clock goes off at 4 am.
Discipline is so much more than saying you're going to train once a day and training once a day.
Discipline is so much more than putting a marathon on the calendar in this next year and training for 12 to 16 weeks and going and running that marathon.
Those goals, those commitments have elements of discipline, but discipline is so much more than that.
Again, like I talked about in the beginning of this episode, these words, these terms, these characteristics, they get watered down, in my opinion, because they're not provided enough value for the greatness that they embody.
The greatness of potential that exists within them.
If we think about discipline in general In this case coming from Luke 21, being disciplined is truly knowing who you are, what you stand for, who you follow and why, what your identity is rooted in or, more importantly, who your identity is rooted within.
And then using those beliefs and those values and that purpose to guide what you do, why you do it, what you say yes to, what you say no to.
Being disciplined is an enabler for progress, momentum, transformation, and renewing of your mind.
Truly.
And the second thing I wanted to bring up, that's in reference to some of Pastor Joey Martin's book, is pride.
I've been hearing pride a lot in this last year as I've explored my faith and have gone all in to follow Jesus Christ.
And I used to view pride as the word proud.
And I've come to learn and realize that pride and proud are two complete different things.
And that pride is actually an enemy.
Pride is a negative.
Having confidence in being proud of oneself is That can be a positive.
But when proud and confidence evolves into pride, there are consequences and negative behaviors associated.
And I share this.
I think it's important coming off of discipline, as we talk about consistency and commitment and discipline as a whole, because what I have found myself in the past and I've watched other people experience this too is that when you go all in and you experience this life transformation of really being able to apply discipline in your life and consistency and commitment and you start achieving, you start winning, you start succeeding.
What started as a growth of Confidence and being proud of what you're doing, that can quickly evolve into being prideful.
Pride is an inflated self-importance.
Believing that one self is superior or better than others and refusing humility or correction.
Being prideful is thinking you don't need help or that no one else can hold you accountable because you are so much better and greater than everyone else.
Pride is dependent on oneself.
Someone who carries pride.
When confidence in being proud evolves into pride, it is this self-inflated sense of importance.
You know someone who stands on top of the mountain and puffs out their chest and looks down on everyone else?
That's pride.
Proud is confidence.
It's an accurate assessment of one's self-awareness.
A confidence of knowing this is where I've come from.
This is where I am.
This is what I know I can do.
But I also know that I can get better.
I can improve.
I can't do this on my own.
I need help.
I need to be held accountable by others.
It's a lack of ego and full of humility.
I strive to be confident.
I strive to be proud.
But I'm fearful. of that evolving into pride.
And I'm very careful to make sure that level of confidence and being proud does not turn into pride.
It's something to be mindful of.
As you set these big goals and you chase them down and you start to succeed and you start to win, you start to achieve.
Be humble.
Maintain humility.
Don't let that success turn into ego.
And to maintain that posture requires discipline.
So the brand team and I have been talking a lot lately as we prepare to go into 2026.
And every year we start a new year off with a brand campaign.
And at the end of 2024, we sat down, we planned what 2025 was going to look like in terms of brand content messaging.
Look, feel what we wanted to convey to our audience, what we wanted to represent as a brand and organization.
And we did that same thing the last couple of weeks, end of 2025, as we plan and prepare for 2026.
And in 2025, we introduced For The Committed.
Might have been 2024 that we introduced this, but we are a brand for the committed.
Go One More is our tagline. but who do we serve?
We're for the committed the committed individual, the committed athlete, the committed spouse, the committed parent, the committed team member.
We are for the committed.
And what we've been talking about a lot recently is it's easy to think about commitment in terms of races, in terms of preps, in terms of short-term goals, milestones or accomplishments.
I'm going to be committed for this Ironman prep.
I'm going to commit to this marathon.
I'm going to commit to losing this much weight in 2026.
That's great.
That is a great goal and objective to be committed to.
But what happens when that race is done?
That prep is completed.
That weight loss goal was accomplished.
What's after that?
So our brand campaign going into 2026, we've decided as we guide this brand to truly create impact.
At the fundamental core, it is for the committed.
But going to Q1 of 2026, our brand campaign, broken off of for the committed is that commitment has no finish lines.
Commitment has no finish lines.
Of all the brand campaigns that have real meaning and purpose behind them that we've launched, this is probably my favorite we've ever done, because it hits near and dear to my heart.
It rings true.
When I think about where I first learned the hard lesson of commitment, it was definitely in the military.
And I started BPN before I joined the military.
I started BPN in 2012.
It was my junior and senior year of college.
And I graduated from college in 2013 from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Degree in nutrition.
I commissioned directly into the U.S.
Army as a second lieutenant infantry officer.
I was a contracted Army ROTC cadet at the university.
So when I first started BPN in 2012, I committed to starting this company, but it was so early on.
Now, being almost 14 years now after starting that business, I can say I was committed.
I've been committed to building the brand, to scale, to succeed.
But when I joined the army in 2013 a year later, I commissioned as a second lieutenant.
Right after graduating college.
I got sent down to Fort Benning Georgia, for a year of training.
I was in the infantry officer basic leader course went to ranger school, airborne school, Bradley leader course.
I was in Fort Benning for a year before my first duty assignment, which was Fort Hood, Texas.
I got stationed there in October of 2014.
And that's where I did my platoon leader time.
But Ranger School was my first test of true commitment.
I went into Ranger School, I believe it was February of 2014.
And the date that I started was the best Ranger competition date.
Meaning that if I didn't go straight through, if I didn't, there's three phases of Ranger School.
There's the Fort Benning phase.
Then there's the mountain phase in Dahlonega, Georgia.
And then there's the swamp phase in Florida, right outside of Eglin Air Force Base, close to Pensacola, Santa Rosa Beach.
And in order to move on to the next phase, you have to pass... current phase.
So in order to get to the mountains, you have to pass the Fort Benning phase.
In order to get to the swamps phase, you have to pass the mountains phase.
Ranger school has about a 50% pass rate and very few people go straight through.
For most people, you recycle at least one phase.
I ended up recycling two phases.
And when I started the school, it was called the best ranger competition date of the year.
Meaning that if you failed any phase, there was a six week holdover because ranger school essentially shut down because of the best ranger competition at Fort Benning, Georgia that happens every year.
Well, I failed the first phase, which means I went through the three-week phase.
I failed.
I was a six-week holdover.
For six weeks I had to stay at Fort Benning and do various tasks and details in preparation for the Best Ranger competition.
When the Best Ranger competition was over, I could restart the school.
So after being at Ranger school for nine weeks, I was then restarting it all over again.
Went through that phase, passed.
Moved on to the mountain phase.
Three weeks in mountains, recycled.
Had to do mountains all over again.
At that point, I felt like I was never going to escape or graduate this course.
Passed the second time through, went to the swamps phase in Florida.
Passed first time through, graduated.
Ranger school was a 61-day course. leadership and tactical evaluation course in school.
I was there for about 145 days, like four and a half months.
It felt like my entire life.
I never thought I was going to get out of there, but I'll tell you one thing.
From the moment I walked into that school and started, I was committed.
I'm not leaving here until I get my ranger tab.
I will stay here years if I have to and if they let me, before I quit, stop or give up, because I'm not leaving here without this ranger tap.
I was all in.
I learned a whole lot about myself there and I learned the power of going all in, to showing up with commitment, to showing up consistently, into holding myself accountable and being disciplined.
And I eventually graduated that course and got the Ranger tab pinned on my shoulder, which was one of the best feelings of my life.
Knowing that you were so committed and you worked so hard and you didn't give up and it paid off.
For a lot of people, they weren't as fortunate.
That shaped my ability to commit to a goal, to commit to a mission and see it through.
That changed my life.
That school truly set my life on a new trajectory.
It was the first time in my life that I was truly tested, pushed and challenged to succeed, to win, to achieve at this level.
But this much on the line, it was humbling.
You can walk into that school with pride.
You can walk into that school with ego, but they will strip you down from that right away and you will have so much humility.
You'll be so humbled so quickly.
There's no pride in that school.
There's no ego in that school.
Everyone gets stripped down to remove it.
That's the best part.
It's one of the best parts.
But commitment has no finish lines.
After accomplishing that, it wasn't jobs done, box checked, move on.
It was how do I use this moving forward?
What have I learned?
How have I grown?
How have I adapted?
How have I developed?
What's next?
It was going all in as an infantry platoon leader.
It was transitioning out of the military, going all in on building BPN.
Going all in learning how to be the best leader possible to take this organization to where it is today.
Commitment has no finish lines.
It's not a 12-week prep.
It's not an 18-week journey.
It's not a four-year contract.
It is a lifetime of learning.
You know, there's this term called sanctification.
I learned after being saved by Christ.
And after someone gives their life to Christ, which is salvation, the rest of a Christian's life is a journey of transformation.
This ongoing change, this ongoing transformation becoming more holy, more Christ-like and more aligned with God's will that is sanctification.
Once you experience salvation, the rest of your life is sanctification.
It has no finish line.
It is not a You give your life to Christ.
You experience salvation.
And then you have a four-year study for where you graduate and get a degree.
And it's, here we are, we've arrived.
No, it's forever.
A lifetime journey.
Commitment is just that.
It is The becoming.
Salvation is the beginning.
Sanctification is the becoming.
Who are you becoming in the process?
That's what commitment is.
Once you make the decision to commit, it is who you are becoming in the process.
The process is the reward.
Not the finish line because there is no finish line.
And I was explaining this episode to one of my mentors yesterday.
His name's Justin.
But how I've really just been sitting and reflecting on these three terms, these three characteristics of discipline, commitment and consistency.
And applying it to my work, applying it to my life, applying it to my faith and my walk with God.
And he said, you know what?
Those three things are, Nick.
I said, what?
He said, what God calls us to, obedience.
Obedience is commitment, consistency and discipline in our walk with God to become more aligned with God's will sanctification.
And when he shared that with me, It was like the bow on why these three words have just been top of mind for me the last couple of months and this last year.
Obedience.
The goal of life, the purpose of life, the mission that I'm on, after surrendering everything, has been and is to be more obedient through commitment, consistency and discipline.
That's the episode.
Hope you guys enjoyed it.
And as always, go one more.
