Today, as I sweat to the point where nothing moist was forthcoming, I looked over at PJ and laughed. He had arrived late this morning due to our early season ice storm. He drove over at 5-10mph. He drove, anyway. He showed up. He didn’t just show up, however, he showed up ready to do some real, hard, work. PJ worked his core for 90 miserable minutes this mañana and he wore a smile, it seemed, through it all. Stud, blondie, and jmo seemed happy as well.
My mind wandered back to practice with one of my clients earlier this week where we discussed his newfound disciplines around his work. My client was concerned that his disciplines, this go around, would be fleeting as in the past. He wanted some magic pill to make ’em stick. He so badly wants to make himself better. Good. However, for his disciplines to endure he’s got to do more than just force himself to keep “lacing ’em up,” so to speak. Here’s why.
The root for lasting disciplines in work and life are similar and not so much a mystery around the way you and I are wired or even so much a reflection of our character to endure or our capacity for pain or persistence. The root, I’ve come to discover, is found in joy. Your discipline, if it’s too last, has got to somehow become a source of joy.
Joy.
Wanna stick to your playbook of productive action toward the worthy aim of your opus? Find the joy in so doing. Find the joy. The best among us have learned to find the joy is some barren, badass kinda place. Find your joy, my friend. Lasting, lifelong kinda disciplines are laced with LOVE and aimed at a worthy and well defined labor of love – your OPUS. Good. The roots of endurance, like so much of life, are not found in e z p z kinda searches near the surface. The roots, it turns out, you gotta dig for.
Have you found yours?
BUILT TO LEAD 
Thanks for noticing the smile. There is a certain joy in pain. Your post reminded me of one of my favorite verses. I think you’ll dig it too…(especially verse 2)
Hebrews 12:1-3
1 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, WHO FOR THE JOY set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.