On a beautiful Wednesday morning, my freshman year I woke up to the sound of birds chirping. I hear my mom talking to me “Jack it is time for school, get up.” I rolled my eyes because it was only Wednesday and not Friday. Then I roll out of my bed and slowly put on my clothes one by one. I drag my feet through my room and through the hallway, My brother (a senior at the time) chases me down the stairs and I am too tired to run so I let him tackle me to the ground. Then My Dad sees this and says” Knock It off you two!” My Brother says” yea yea ok.” Then my brother and I walk down the stairs calmly.  Our breakfast had yet to be made, so we scrambled to make our breakfasts, next thing you know it is time to go to school. We arrive five minutes late. I rushed to my class and I missed a test because I did not arrive on time. I wait on my phone playing candy crush, then the teacher finally lets me in, as I am walking in everyone in the class is staring at me for some reason. The life lesson I learned is to not be tardy because it will have consequences. A couple days later I roll out of bed and I walk downstairs to my breakfast already made. Which was odd because I would make my breakfast at the time. As I am walking through the school the teacher gives me an opportunity to take the test at lunch. I went to the test. It is a weird room, but I do not think anything of it, I sit down to take it and the teacher is late, so I play more candy crush as I wait. About a half hour later he arrives. I did not think I needed to prepare for the test, and I bombed it. The lesson I learn is to always study for tests. One day after school I was getting ready for track, we warmed up as a team compared to our individual warmups. The track team lines up in lines of five, one line at a time we crank out the warmup. It was the fastest warm up I think we have done in my track experience. Then we split off into our event groups, I went to go practice with the throws team. As I am walking over to the ring with Brad (my brother) Coach walks over to Brad and I and says, “oh man I cannot wait to train another Westlake.”  Later during practice, the throws team heads into the weight room, We do our workout. I got paired up with some other freshmen at the time. Coach calls us over and tells us the ropes and how it will work. Coach shows us the lift called Hang Cleans, he shows us the form, then he sends us off to do the lift. As we were cranking out the lift something was wrong, as I was pulling and catching, I rushed the lift and I jacked up my back. The lesson I learned was do not rush things, it will come naturally with practice. 

Motivation

I get my motivation prepping myself the day before, then I am pumped throughout my work out and anything physical. If I do not prepare myself beforehand, I will lift but I will and can struggle to complete the lift. Another reason for my motivation is for my lifting is to compete in track. I compete by throwing farther and I throw farther by lifting weights and exercising daily. I went sprinting today to mix things up other than lifting weights. Another reason for motivation is the person I am dating because she pushes me throughout my workout and throughout the day and through my schoolwork. Let me tell you a story about the time I lost motivation to study for an exam. One day I had to prepare for an exam three weeks in advance, but I did not prepare for it. I procrastinated so hard I almost forgot about the exam until the teacher reminded the class about the exam. I was freaking out because I procrastinated for two and a half weeks, because of this I panicked. After school I went immediately to my bedroom and cracked down and did not leave my room until ten pm to eat dinner. As soon as I was done eating dinner I ran upstairs to get cracking down on studying, I did not go to bed until three am. The next day was an absolute nightmare. As the teacher was telling the class something important. I started dozing off and the teacher saw me and took an opportunity to mess with me. The teacher decided to slam his hand on the desk next to me. Which at the time was annoying because I was asleep but looking back at it, I think that was pretty funny, if I were a teacher, I would do the exact same thing. Because of this I learned to never lose your motivation for anything. One other thing about motivation when I lift is working out reduces stress. Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system work more efficiently. When your heart and lung health improve, you will have more energy to tackle daily chores. Therefore, you should do some form of exercise because you will have oxygen, nutrients and exercise will help your cardiovascular system. When he found motivation to work out, he unlocked a whole new chapter for his life. When I started to work out, I would only lift when I was required to do so but now, I cannot do anything if I do not lift. Let me explain that I cannot do anything if I do not lift because I have so much stress from personal life and school life, so a good workout for me is an escape from both. I feel like I can accomplish so much more if I work out. Overall if you have motivation you can do great things and accomplish so many things in life. 

Self-discipline

         Self-discipline is “the ability to control one's feelings and overcome one's weaknesses; the ability to pursue what one thinks is right despite temptations to abandon it.”-Oxford languages. I have learned self-discipline through many things during my seventeen years of life. Here is one fragment of self-discipline of what I learned. When I was twelve my mom and Brad made some cookies and the twelve year old me decided to devour all of the cookies which I came to regret instantly because my mom and my brother came home from errands to find the cookies gone. Of course, they came to me and interrogated me asking if you ate all those cookies. I thought I could lie and get away with it or come clean. But let us just pretend I came clean about the cookies. So as a mischievous twelve-year-old I lied, and I said I went to open the front door to get a package and a wild rabbit came in and stole the cookies. I had to think quickly so I grabbed an empty box and put something inside of it. But my mom and my brother believed the ridiculous lie. But my stomach started to grumble and rumble, I rushed to the bathroom and spent two hours in the bathroom. (do not tell my mom and my brother this) I have learned self-discipline since then not to devour a bunch of cookies but still am doing this but with convincing stories and not the whole plate of cookies. I tell you another story of my seventeen years of life. Whenever my brother comes to visit from Colorado university boulder, he always flexes every time he comes to visit. I could not tell you why but he flexes like there is no tomorrow, and he makes fun of me for not being as jacked as Arnold Schwarzenegger which does not make sense to me because he is not as jacked as he is. To start off this story of self-discipline I will quote Theodore Roosevelt “With self-discipline most anything is possible.” I think this quote is true because I have accomplished so many great things in life with self-discipline such as being fit, healthy, crushing my Personal records for throwing in track and field. Also thinking I could never throw as far as I am now, but I am not stopping there. I have one more year at fossil and plan to throw my heart out. Also, I will be joining the sprints crew and I cannot wait for my personal records to set and crush during the remainder of my high school career. Overall, I think it is very important to have self-discipline in your life along with a healthy diet and schedule.