Q 1.2: King

King: The daily discipline of physically training the body.

Let that sink in and we’ll break it down in sections.

Daily – One should be making repeated efforts to train. This doesn’t have to mean running 10 miles every day. It does mean putting in some sort of physical effort to invest in your body. On a given day, your body could benefit from lower impact activity like stretching, walking and yoga.

Discipline – You cannot slack. You must establish guardrails or involve others who will hold you accountable because after all, you cannot hold yourself accountable; don’t lie to yourself. Identify your tendencies that keep you from physically training your body on a daily basis and put the measures in place to keep you from ditch-diving. Establishing that is an example of discipline.

Physically – As part of the Get Right, you must put the physical work in so that you can be better equipped to handle what life throws at you. Additionally, I have found that if I get a solid workout or run in, my mind is cleared of the fog and I am open to correction, new ideas and ways in which I do just about everything, better.

Training – You’ll never arrive. You are constantly putting in work to get just 1% better. Identify a goal and make incremental improvements. When you’ve reached that goal, make another goal. Improvement is not made in the completion. Improvement is a process of continual training. As you’ve heard countless times, life is lived in the process, in the journey.

Body – There is a lot of reading and study to be done in order to better understand what both Christian and secular writers mean when stating that our bodies are temples. Regardless of your view, you know the basics of that inference. You should treat your body well, and in this case, that means physically training on a regular basis to keep your temple sharp and ready.

This relationship we have with our bodies begins with Fitness, hence why that is the first F. It is not negotiable; I must be physically able to perform the physical necessities of life in order to be effective. If I am unable to carry my kid after she breaks her leg or I am unable to put a suitcase in the overhead bin of an airplane, how effective am I? I would be more of a liability instead of an asset. I never know when “the time” will come so I must train on a daily basis, utilizing a variety of methods, to be ready.

Why do I push for 1% better through different training methods? If all I do is run, I can’t carry my kid. If all I do is rucking or weightlifting, what will I do when my kid wants to run a 5K with me; ask her to walk? Integrate a variety of training methods to challenge your body and build stamina. Stamina fights fatigue. Fatigue happens when you’re not trained for that next 1%. Fatigue keeps you from stepping up when only you can step up. When no one else can, you can…you must. In the words of the late Travis Manion and now memorialized by the Travis Manion Foundation, “If Not Me, Then Who?” In the end, fatigue makes cowards of us all. Fight the fatigue. Fight for that next 1%.

It is important to understand too, that no matter how far or fast you run, no matter how much you can carry, the inevitable time will come when you can’t out-King your Queen. The Queen is the next section in Q-Source and that too, requires discipline and guardrails. For this however, I’ll remain focused on the need for the daily discipline of the King.

A few years ago, F3 PAX around the country spread the initiative of the F3-250. The spirit behind this was to encourage PAX to participate in 250 workouts in a calendar year. This could be a great measure of accountability for men. If you have another man tracking with you on your way to 250, you’re more likely to put your feet on the floor when the alarm rings in your ear. Another tactic is to let someone know the night before where you’re posting. Set your clothes out and get everything else ready. That’s discipline. Find yours. Locally, there are men among us who are engaged in daily check-ins with other men as part of their daily discipline.

It takes a want-to in order to make this a reality, no one will do the work for you. Our world is full of excuses that will entice you to take a more comfortable or faster path. I challenge you to not succumb to that excuse. Why? Inevitably, the “stuff” is going to hit the fan and YOU will have to respond in a way that requires physical effort. You will not have the time to look for the easiest route or the route with the least resistance. You will have to act because only you can. Check that, you won’t have to. You GET TO.

How will you ensure readiness? By engaging your KING and having the daily discipline to physically train your body, your temple. If you need help or accountability, I will gladly walk with you. Just know, you won’t walk forever because I’m going to push you to run or carry weight while we walk.

I love you too much to let you stay static.

Maximus

First Quadrant (Q1): Get Right – To properly align himself, a Leader takes the Daily Red Pill (DRP). This is his daily commitment to accelerate his fitness, fellowship and faith.

Get Right is usually part of my spoken message to the pax on the days I’m fortunate enough to Q. This is because the Get Right quadrant resonates with me. It rings so true because staying upright is my bane. This Q Point gives me adequate motivation to drive past my normal desires of sleeping instead of exercising, eating too much food that tastes way too good and boozing until my words slur. Maybe I was blessed with an inordinate amount of Jesters, but I think most can relate. 

Getting Right incorporates the tenants of F3: Fitness, Fellowship and Faith. Understand, that this is a very specific order. Why does the first F in F3 begin with Fitness, not Faith? “Because men who have no self-control over what they eat or drink and the daily use to which they put their bodies become captive to their lack of physical fitness. Ultimately, that defines them, primarily in their own minds but also in the eyes of those around them.” Getting up to work out at a stupidly-early time each morning helps reshape how we define ourselves. It gives us belief that we can hold our Jesters and bay and continue to Accelerate toward a better version of ourselves—a better man for our family, friends, community and workplace. 

Then, Fellowship “requires the High Impact Man (HIM) to put the needs of others before himself.” We are not prepositioned to put others first; we are engineered to survive by thinking of ourselves first. As we age though, we find that others become dependent on us. Our wives and children, our colleagues, our community all begin to need us more and more. This is a weight that can feel extra burdensome if we are not in the upright position. “Only in maturity does a man develop the discipline and desire to consistently promote the cause of his loved ones over his own and seek Preparedness.” This is not possible if we are overcome by our base desires of doing whatever we want in our pursuits of pleasure. 

Finally, we come to Faith. How do we define Faith in F3? It is the realization that we are not the center of gravity, and this great gift of life is not given so we may serve ourselves but to serve something greater. God, Yahwey, Vajrapāṇi, Zeus, SkyQ—F3 does not define this Greater Divinity, but we do recognize it is absolutely not us. “For the un-Fit man, this is simply not possible. His lack of control over what he eats, drinks and does renders him captive to other forces.”  

It is important to understand that we are not the center of the universe. It is also important to know that we cannot Serve anyone or anything without first being able to control our gluttony and sloth because “they are all-consuming.” As we continue to learn Leadership from the QSource, do not be fooled into thinking you have graduated from Get Right and can move on to the next quadrant. You, my friends, will always have a foot in the Get Right quadrant. Life moves fast. It can be difficult. Staying upright is hard. The following Q Points are a roadmap to helping up stand strong again when life drops us to our knees. 

If you see me down, know that I’m in need of your Leadership. You’ll have the same from me.  

SYITG,
Esso

If you remember no other Foundational Principles from the QSource thus far, this is the one to remember. To me, this is the basic point of all QSource and of all of leadership. It’s near and dear to my heart, and everything else contained in the QSource is simply leading us to Preparedness (that’s why G3L is called the 4 quadrants of Preparedness…). I will ask your grace as I share some personal experiences, but they are the only kind I have.

So why is Preparedness hoisted up as such an important virtue? Though this has been true for all of time, the last couple of years have pointed out in some clear ways how if we as a people were more prepared, the overall level of suffering and struggle could have been diminished. As the pandemic started to spread and so much was still unknown, we saw all kinds of behavior that was strange and often disturbing. We all saw videos of people beating each other up in grocery aisles for toilet paper. Toilet paper… let that sink in. Accosting another human being because you are so afraid you might not be able to wipe your ass in the most comfortable way you want to. But it wasn’t really about that. Because the masses live their lives so unprepared, they were reacting to a complete lack of knowing what to do next in an uncertain situation. As we learn in GrowRuck and other F3 Leadership training, in periods of high stress and limited visibility, you are likely to default to your level training/preparedness. Under pressure, we often see the results of being reactive vs. proactive.

The good news? This is all fixable with a tiny amount of discipline applied over a period of time. Like drops of water that eventually wear a hole in a rock, with the right guardrails in place, and a small but compounding effort, we can become largely immune to the tough situations that life will throw at us.

But only if we are prepared.