Josh Benner

Tag: motivation

  • Life lessons from baseball

    Life lessons from baseball

    Today is the opening day for the 2023 Major League Baseball season. Between opening day and the end of the season in early November, more than 2,430 games will be played.

    Baseball’s regular season is the longest in American professional sports, nearly doubling the 82 games NBA and NHL seasons.

    I think about the baseball games that are blowouts. The 10, 12, 14 run wins. When a team gets behind by a huge margin in baseball, it’s very rare for them to comeback and win. And the later in the game a team is down by a big run-differential, the less likely they are to comeback. If you get to the bottom of the 9th down by double-digit runs, the incidence of a comeback is virtually unheard of.

    In a baseball game, you can go out on Thursday, and your team can get crushed. Starting pitcher might not have good stuff bats aren’t connecting, errors. It can be a horrible day, a 12 run loss.

    But the beauty of baseball is that, no matter what happened on Thursday, Friday is a new opportunity to go out and to succeed. No matter how badly you lost yesterday, it doesn’t matter with how you can do today.

    Life is the same way. We can have a really bad day. We can feel totally defeated. But tomorrow is always a new day.

    That metaphor works both ways. If you were the team who dominated on Thursday, you still have to go out and play well on Friday.

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  • From nothing to a Navy SEAL: David Goggins and mental toughness

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    I’ve been going through the new book “Can’t hurt me: master your mind and defy the odds” by David Goggins.

    I’m about halfway through the book, and I’ve really enjoyed it. Earlier this fall, I saw some interviews Goggins had done, and I was intrigued by his story, but the book gives so much more elaboration.

    (Spoiler Alert)

    In previous interviews I’ve seen, Goggins talks about having been overweight (just under 300 pounds). He had no goals, no accomplishments, and was unhappy with where he had come, while working an unfulfilling job. He had previously tried to join an elite unit within the Air Force but a genetic condition gave him an easy out to quit.

    After one particularly bad day at work, Goggins had a change of heart and decided he was going to become a Navy SEAL. In three months, he trained for the SEALS, lost 106 pounds, and improved ASVAB scores to be able to go to Navy SEAL training (BUDS).

    If you read the book, you see that he didn’t have great advantages. He grew up with a physically and emotionally abusive father. As a young kid, he basically had to work a full time job and he fell far behind in school. He had to resort to cheating to keep passing grades. His mother left his father, and spent years struggling to make ends meat. Later, his mother met a man whom they loved but who was murdered. Spending most of his childhood in a small town in rural Indiana, as a minority, he faced racism.

    He struggled academically and often cheated to get by. This would eventually hurt him as he got far behind academically.

    In the book, Goggins doesn’t believe in using those disadvantages as an excuse.  Instead, Goggins talks about in this book is the importance of taking ownership of our disadvantages, flaws and failures.

    We love to look at people like a David Goggins and think they’re special, and have things the rest of us don’t have. There’s also a lot he didn’t have.

    Goggins doesn’t believe in using those things as excuses. It’s a pretty vulnerable book. He talks of the struggles and fears he battled.

    He talks a lot about mental toughness and how our mental ability to overcome challenges and setbacks is something we are all capable of. He talks about how we all need to find ways to push ourselves. For Goggins, it was joining the Navy SEALs and becoming an ultra marathoner. We don’t all need to go that route. But if we don’t challenge ourselves, we also won’t grow.

    There is a lot of language in the book. Reader discretion is advised.

    Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe! 

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

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  • The little moments that change our lives

    I came across a TED talk from 2010 today entitled “Everyday Leadership” by Drew Dudley.

    His talk is based on an interesting premise.

    I worry sometimes that we spend so much time celebrating amazing things that hardly anybody can do, that we’ve convinced ourselves those are the only things worth celebrating. We start to devalue the things we can do every day.

    Dudley goes on to tell a story from his college years. He was talking to incoming students and happened to spark a conversation between a young man and woman. The young woman had felt very unsure about if she was ready for college, and was looking to quit.

    Her interaction with Dudley helped to break the tension.

    And in another twist of fate, the young woman would go on to date (and later marry) the young man Dudley had introduced her to.

    And he had no idea!

    It wasn’t until graduation when the young woman approached Dudley and told him about that moment (which he didn’t even recall). None of them could have ever imagined at the time, but that would be one of the most significant days in that young woman’s life.

    We never know the impact that we have on people. We never know how a seemingly small event can be a boulder in a pond that sends the water ripping throughout the rest of our lives.

    We do tend to idolize the people who are at the top who are really “making a difference” and overlook the life changing impact we can have on those with whom we interact on a daily basis. And if influencing one person isn’t something we can appreciate as being special and transformational, then why would we deserve to influence many?

    To influence one is to influence many because the one person impacts lives who impact lives. The ripples continues to form.

    Some moments are big moments and we know they’re big moments at the time. Getting married. Other moments are big moments that we didn’t necessarily realize were big moments when they happened (initially meeting that person who would become your spouse). May we appreciate the beauty of the “little” things.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.