But the problem is that no matter how hot I was, I was even more worried about getting in the water. I had never learned how to swim! Once, when I was about four, I fell into something called a koi pond. If you don’t know what one of those is, it’s a little fake pond with goldfish in it. People put them in their yards. They aren’t that big, but when you’re four, they’re big enough. Anyway, I was standing there looking at the fish in the little koi pond, and I decided to take a step into the water. What I didn’t know was that koi ponds are kind of like giant plastic cereal bowls buried in the ground—slippery plastic. As soon as I stepped in, I slipped on the plastic and fell completely underwater.
My mom says that I got pulled out right away, but it sure didn’t feel like it. I felt like I was down there, underwater, and COMPLETELY HELPLESS, forever. I never wanted to feel like that again, so ever since that day, I have avoided the water. Because I’M SCARED of it. There, I said it. I’m scared of the water. Uncle Jake says it’s called hydrophobia—the fear of water. Well, whatever you call it, I got it.
That is what made today so cool. Uncle Jake took me down to a place called Bird Bridge. It is a bridge that goes over a slow-moving river. When it gets hot out, a lot of the older kids go down there and hang around and jump off and swim. It is out in the woods, and it has a little beach on one side of the river and a bank on the other side. I was excited when we headed down there. During the car ride, I didn’t feel scared of the water at all. Maybe it was because Uncle Jake was with me, or because he had told me I had to learn to swim, and I accepted that fact. But I wasn’t scared at all while I was in the car.
UNTIL WE GOT TO THE RIVER. As soon as the car stopped, my heart started POUNDING. I looked at the river. The water was dark. It looked black—LIKE THE KOI POND WHERE I ALMOST DIED, BUT BIGGER!
Uncle Jake could tell I was scared. After telling me to calm down, he said that I didn’t have to go in if I didn’t want to, which made me feel like a complete wimp. So now I was feeling terrified and wimpy!
Uncle Jake pulled off his shirt and jumped in the water. He swam across to the other side and back. Then he disappeared underwater. He was gone. I waited. And waited. Then I started to get nervous. Then I started to panic! I knew he must be drowning, caught by a vine or a fish or a monster or something, but I KNEW he was underwater, DROWNING!
Then he popped up laughing and got out of the water. He asked me to come on down to the water’s edge and wade in. I asked him if he was going to push me in, and he promised he wouldn’t. He told me that people are usually scared of things that they don’t understand. I needed to understand that water wasn’t going to hurt me as long as I respected it and learned to handle myself in it. So I walked down and put my feet in. Uncle Jake encouraged me to go a little bit deeper. Then a little deeper.
As I waded into the water, Uncle Jake pointed up to the bridge. “By the end of the summer, you’re going to jump off that bridge and swim back and forth across this river.”
“I don’t know, Uncle Jake,” I told him. “That bridge is tall, and in case you forgot, I don’t even know how to swim!”
Uncle Jake got out of the water, climbed to the top of the bridge, screamed, “HOO-YAH!” and jumped in.
“That looked like fun, right?” he said when he surfaced.
I had to admit that it did.
“By the end of the summer, that will be you.”
By this time, I was standing comfortably in the water up to my knees. This wasn’t too bad.
Then Uncle Jake said, “Okay, time for your head to go under.”
WHAT??!! My toes, my feet—that’s fine. MY HEAD? NO WAY!
Uncle Jake could see that I froze up and I did not want to do it. He calmed me down and convinced me to stay in the water. He stood there and dunked his head a bunch of times, laughing and howling every time he pulled his head out. I have to admit that it looked kind of fun. Then he started yelling. But not at me—he was yelling at the woods, at the river, at the world. And not in a bad way, but like he was having the time of his life.
“AAHHWOOOOOOOOO!” he was howling, every time his head came out of the water. “AAAHHWOOOOOOO!”
He said that in the SEAL Teams they yelled “HOO-YAH” when they had to do something they didn’t want to do or something they were scared to do. He said yelling loud relieved the tension of being scared. He told me to give a yell and see how it felt.
“AAAHHHHWOOOOO!” I yelled. Then again. “AAAAAAAHHHHWOOOOOOOO!”
“Louder!” he told me.
“AAAAAAHHHHWOOOOOOO!!” I yelled again and again. It felt good to let out all the fear. I did it over and over again, with Uncle Jake matching my yells, louder and louder. Then, suddenly, Uncle Jake yelled out, “Now dunk your head! AAAHHHWOOOOOO!”
Without thinking, I dunked my head completely under the water and whipped it out yelling, “AAAAAHWOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” I did it. It was fun, so I did it again! Then again!
Then, for a few more minutes, Uncle Jake and I sat out there dunking our heads and yelling at the top of our lungs and laughing. Finally, the rush settled down, and we walked out of the water.
“That’s good for today,” Uncle Jake told me.
“Yes, yes it is,” I said back.
We walked back to the car, dried off, and got in.
As we drove away, I realized something: I wasn’t ready to swim yet. But I was not scared anymore.
CHAPTER 12: DISCIPLINE EQUALS FREEDOM
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
My morning alarm clock blasted in my ears. I listened to it for a few seconds. Then I reached over and hit the snooze button. That felt soooooo good. I just didn’t feel like getting up. I wanted to sleeeeeeep.… I closed my eyes and comfortably faded back into a deep sleep.…
In the distance, I heard the door open. Just as it registered in my groggy brain that it had to be Uncle Jake, I heard him say, “Marc?” Before I could answer him, the noise hit me like a freight train: CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! It was the garbage can and the broomstick again.
“Okay. Okay. I’ll get up,” I told Uncle Jake. I must not have sounded very enthusiastic, because Uncle Jake called me out.
“What’s wrong with you, Marc? Why weren’t you down in the garage this morning for your workout?”
“Well…” I didn’t know what to say.
“‘Well’ what?” Uncle Jake asked me.
“Well, I don’t know,” I told him. “I just … I’m just … I’m tired.”
“Tired? What does tired have to do with anything?”
“Well. You know. I’m tired. I worked out all last week. I did jiu-jitsu classes. Plus, we went to the river. With so much stuff going on, I’m just tired. I think I need some rest.”
“If you need rest, you go to sleep earlier. You don’t sleep in, and you don’t miss workouts. Even if you can’t perform at a high level, showing up and doing something is still a thousand times better than not showing up at all.”
“Well, it’s not just that,” I admitted. “This program is taking up all my time. I’m getting tired of doing so much. Maybe I could just get the chance to relax and watch some TV sometime. I could use a little freedom to do what I want.”
My argument seemed to make sense in my head. Shouldn’t I relax a little bit? A little TV can’t be that bad, right? I just wanted a little freedom.
Uncle Jake sat and looked at me. He wasn’t mad. But his face looked like he almost felt sorry for me. Like I didn’t know anything about anything.
“We all want freedom, Marc. All of us. That is what I want in my life. That is what my friends and I fought for overseas. Freedom is the best thing in the world. But freedom isn’t free. If you want true freedom in life, you have to have discipline. Do you know what discipline is, Marc?”
I wasn’t 100 percent sure, but I thought I had an idea. “Doesn’t discipline mean you follow the rules?” I said.
“That’s one kind of discipline,” Uncle Jake said, “but it isn’t as
simple as just following the rules people give you. The most important part of discipline is following rules that you set for yourself. It is doing things you might not always feel like doing—things that make you better.” Then Uncle Jake started getting really intense. “Listen, if you want freedom from being bullied at school by Kenny, you have to have the discipline to go to jiu-jitsu class and learn the skills to defeat him. If you want freedom from ridicule when you do pull-ups at school, you have to have the discipline to train so that you can do pull-ups.
“If you want the freedom to swim in the water and enjoy your school trip, you need the discipline to overcome your fear of the water and learn how to swim. What about school? Do you want to be free of being stumped on tests and not knowing the answer to questions in class? Then you need the discipline to study and learn the material they teach you. When you get older, you are going to want financial freedom—that means having enough money to do what you want without worrying about it. The only way you are going to get financial freedom is by having financial discipline—by saving money and not wasting it on things you don’t need. And all that discipline starts with getting up early in the morning.”
“Well, I’m up now,” I told Uncle Jake.
“I know you are,” he replied. “But you are only up because I woke you up. I made you get up. That’s called ‘imposed discipline’—when someone else makes you do what they want you to do. What you need is called SELF-DISCIPLINE. That is when you take control of yourself. When you push yourself. When you make yourself do the hard things. That is what gives you freedom. Does that make sense to you?”
“I think it does,” I told Uncle Jake.
“You need to do better than think it does. You need to understand. Explain to me what you think self-discipline means.”
I was nervous because I wasn’t 100 percent sure I understood. But it did make sense to me, so I figured I would give it a try. And it’s not like I had much of a choice anyway, with Uncle Jake staring at me, waiting for an answer.
“I think it means this, Uncle Jake,” I told him. “We all want freedom in life. We want to be able to do what we want. We want to live free. But in order to get freedom, we have to work for it. Work hard. We have to earn that freedom. Freedom requires discipline. So even though sometimes discipline seems like it is trapping you and making you do things that you don’t want to do, discipline is the thing that will set you free. Discipline equals freedom.”
“That’s right, Marc. Perfect. Discipline equals freedom. So let’s get up and get to work!”
“Is that what keeps you motivated, Uncle Jake?” I asked, wondering how he stays so fired up all the time.
“Motivated?” Uncle Jake replied. “I don’t worry about motivation, because motivation comes and goes. It’s just a feeling. You might feel motivated to do something, and you might not. The thing that keeps you on course and keeps you on the warrior path isn’t motivation. It is discipline. Discipline gets you out of bed. Discipline gets you onto the pull-up bar. Discipline gets you to grind it out in jiu-jitsu class. If you do those things only when you are motivated to do them, you might do them only fifty percent of the time. Sure, it’s nice when motivation is there, but you can’t count on motivation. You have to rely on the personal discipline you develop. Like you said: Discipline equals freedom. Got it?”
“Yes, Uncle Jake, I do.”
“Good. Then let’s go down to the garage and get busy.”
And we did just that!
CHAPTER 13: PULL-UP NUMBER ONE
YES!!!!!!!!!
I DID IT! Finally, after eighteen days of training, TODAY I DID MY FIRST PULL-UP. BY MYSELF!!!
It was pretty easy, too. I did some push-ups at the beginning of the workout, and I actually got my record there, too, with twenty-two. Then I did some sit-ups and a few squats.
Then it was time to do pull-ups.
So I went and got the big box that Uncle Jake built for me to jump off of when I do pull-ups. But when I slid it underneath the pull-up bar, Uncle Jake said, “No.”
I was puzzled. “Why? You don’t want me to do pull-ups today?”
“Quite the opposite, Marc,” he answered. “You are ready to do an actual pull-up today.”
Oh no! I thought to myself. For the previous three weeks, all of my “pull-up” workouts haven’t included any actual pull-ups. I have only been doing something called “negatives,” where I jump up off the big box so I can get my chin over the bar. Once I got up there, I would try to hold it as long as I could. Then I would slowly come down, lowering myself as slowly as possible, fighting it the whole way down. Once I was at the bottom, I would jump up and get my chin over the bar again. So although this was a “pull-up workout,” I wasn’t actually doing any pull-ups.
“I don’t think I’m quite ready yet,” I told Uncle Jake.
“Oh, you’re ready. And even if you aren’t, you need to try. We have to assess your progress.”
“Well, I am definitely holding myself up there for a longer time now,” I told him. “When I started, I was only able to hold myself up for a couple of seconds. Now I can hold myself up for over thirty seconds.”
“Well, that’s good progress,” Uncle Jake said, “but your goal isn’t holding yourself up. Your goal is to do an actual pull-up. So let’s see what you’ve got.”
Uncle Jake pulled away the tall box that allowed me to jump my chin up over the bar and replaced it with the short box that made it so I could barely even reach the bar.
“There you go,” he said. “Giddyup.”
I was filled with fear. Every time I had tried in the past, no matter how hard I pulled, I could never get my chin over the bar. Now, with Uncle Jake standing right here, after all the work he has done with me, I just didn’t think I would be able to do it. I stood there looking at the bar.
“Well? What are you waiting for?”
I slowly stepped up on the box and reached up for the bar. The bar was cool in my hands, and I noticed something that I hadn’t thought about: my grip. In the past, my grip always felt like it was going to slip off the bar. My grip felt different now. It felt strong.
I concentrated, and then, after taking a big breath, I pulled. And I went up. And up!
And up! And soon my chin cleared the top of the bar! YES! I HAD DONE IT!
I let myself down slowly and dropped off the bar. I looked at my uncle. He had a big smile on his face. A BIG smile! He was happy! And I was even happier. It felt so good.
I looked at Uncle Jake and yelled, “YEAH!!!!” as I curled both of my fists toward my shoulders like I had seen weight lifters do in magazines. And I could actually tell that, for the first time in my life, I was starting to get some muscles. Nothing huge, but they were certainly there. “MUSCLEMAN MARC!” I shouted, as proud as I could be.
Then I saw Uncle Jake’s smile disappear.
“Hold on there, Muscleman,” said Uncle Jake. I didn’t know what was wrong, but something was.
“I think it’s a bit early for a celebration.”
“Early? I just did the first pull-up of my life! I think it is the perfect time for a celebration!” I told Uncle Jake.
“That’s a problem.”
“A problem? Why is a pull-up a problem?”
“Not the pull-up, Marc. The celebration. It is way too early for you to be celebrating.”
“But I just did my first pull-up. EVER!”
“But your goal isn’t one pull-up. It is ten pull-ups. You did one. Sure, you have a reason to be happy—one pull-up is better than zero. But it is a long way from ten. No matter what you are doing in life, you can’t take your eyes off the long-term goal—especially to celebrate. You can assess. You can try to figure out some lessons learned from what you did right and what you did wrong. You can even do a little celebrating for the small victories. But don’t go overboard. You need to keep your head in the game. So come over here, give me a high five, and then get back over there and start doing more work on the pull-up bar. This is
only the beginning.”
I walked over to Uncle Jake, who brought his hand up in the air.
I slapped it hard, and he said, “Solid work. Now get back over there and get after it.”
“Yes, sir,” I told him.
I walked back over to the bar and actually did three more individual pull-ups before I needed to get the bigger box to jump up with. Then I did a bunch of the negative work, coming down as slow as I could. Knowing that I had already made some real progress made me focus even more. Ten pull-ups is a long way away. But I started to think I might just get there.
CHAPTER 14: FLASH CARD FURY
I am starting to learn some things about Uncle Jake that are very important to understand. While yesterday I learned not to celebrate too early, today I realized something else: Good is never good enough! Today was a perfect example.
I was sitting down in the afternoon while Uncle Jake was at the store. I decided to watch some TV, which is something I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to do lately! When Uncle Jake got home and saw me sitting there watching TV, he didn’t look very happy with me. At all.
“What are you doing, Marc?” he asked with a disappointed tone.
“Just sitting here watching some TV.”
“I can see that. Why? Don’t you have anything better to do?”
Way of the Warrior Kid--From Wimpy to Warrior the Navy SEAL Way Page 4
