The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

by Joe De Sena

Spartan Core Virtues: Self-Awareness: Know who you are and who you are not. If you don’t, you’ll be confused daily. Commitment: Stick to it because the world is filled with people who don’t. You’re better than that. Passion: If you’re not passionate about what you do, you’re not going to be great at it. Take things seriously and learn to be passionate. Discipline: Set your rules and stick to them. Be disciplined about it. Prioritization: Deal with the important things—important being what you define as important—first. Grit: Get gritty. Break out of your comfort zone. Do the hard, scary shit. Find your passion and persevere. Courage: This is the ability to stay focused and work relentlessly with both intensity and passion through virtually anything, especially through failure. Optimism: See the world as you want it to be, not as it is. Be ever hopeful. Integrity: If you’re not honest with yourself and others, then what are you? Wholeness: Live the life of a complete and whole Spartan.

“If you can compromise once, you can compromise again.” Giving in once makes it easier to give in a second and third time and a fourth.

Commitment requires complete honesty. It means that you will do what you said you were going to do, even when you don’t feel like doing it. Anything less is pointless. There’s no “maybe” in commitment.

Don’t allow your dedication to weaken either. Get rid of distractions. Focus on what’s important, and learn to say “no” to anything that pulls you from the path of your commitments.

How to Commit to Your Goal Step 1. WRITE DOWN YOUR PROMISE to yourself on an 8½ by 11 sheet of paper, sign it, date it, and tack it up somewhere like your bathroom mirror, where you will see it every day.

Step 2. CREATE A SOLID PLAN

Step 3. MAKE IT PUBLIC. Ensure accountability by declaring your intentions to the world.

Step 4. FOLLOW A LEADER. Emulate someone whom you respect who has mastered commitment.

How to Stoke Your Enthusiasm Step 1. MAKE YOUR GOAL WORTHY OF YOUR ENTHUSIASM.

Step 2. EVALUATE YOUR MOTIVATION.

Step 3. BOOST ENTHUSIASM WITH A GSD PLANNER THAT HELPS YOU RECOGNIZE “LITTLE WINS.” GSD stands for Get Shit Done! Planner. Its purpose is to: * Map out the goals to your True North. * Identify small steps and keep them firmly in mind. * Track and celebrate little wins. * Keep you motivated, ambitious, and honest.

DELAY GRATIFICATION (SPARTAN VIRTUE: DISCIPLINE) In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves … self-discipline with all of them came first. —HARRY S. TRUMAN Self-control is like a muscle; the more you exercise it the stronger it gets. Every time you avoid something that tempts you, you strengthen your resolve to resist future temptations. This is an important principle to understand because it’s such a powerful tool for success. In almost any area in which you want to achieve something worthwhile—in your career, relationships, finances, or health—one of the most effective personality traits is being able to delay gratification.

Benjamin Franklin correctly pointed out, “He that can have patience can have what he will.”

people who practiced self-discipline along with getting regular physical exercise actually became more disciplined in ALL areas of their lives.

“We must all suffer from one of two pains: The pain of discipline and the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

WHAT SPARTANS EAT Whole foods. Fill up on with fresh fruits, vegetables, beans and legumes, lean grass-fed meats, seafood, and eggs. Limited processed foods. Avoid stuff in boxes and cans, foods that can last in your pantry for weeks. They are filled with preservatives, sodium, and trans fats. They will kill you. Nothing. Sometimes Spartans fast to keep ourselves honest and gritty and feeling alive. Try skipping dinner occasionally. Only when we’re hungry. Spartans don’t snack. The best of what’s available and needed. In other words, Spartans adapt their diets to the seasons, eating what’s fresh and locally grown, if possible. The closer to home you find whole foods, the more nutritious they tend to be.

Kelly McGonigal, a psychologist who teaches a class on the science of willpower at Stanford, says self-control is about holding two opposite options in your mind.

“Perseverance is genius in disguise.”

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

You know what my priorities are, right? Health, Family, Work, Fun, in that order.

“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent.”

Using Eisenhower’s matrix makes organizing tasks easier by placing them into one of four possible boxes: 1. Urgent and important (tasks you will do immediately). 2. Important, but not urgent (tasks you will schedule to do later). 3. Urgent, but not important (tasks you will delegate to someone else). 4. Neither urgent nor important (tasks that you will eliminate).

With every decision, big or small, ask yourself, “Does this choice take me closer to my True North or further away from it?”

GET GRITTY (SPARTAN VIRTUE: GRIT) The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strived valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again … who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. —TEDDY ROOSEVELT It is better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life. —SISTER ELIZABETH KENNY

Duckworth defines grit as “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.” “People who are gritty,” she told me, “are incredibly, doggedly tenacious about a singular goal. They don’t just put in consistent effort but maintain focused interest over time.”

Duckworth has a recipe. She says the four ingredients for grit are passion, practice, purpose, and hope.

integrity: doing the right thing all the time, even when no one is looking.

Whenever I face a decision about time, money, commitment, I rattle off my True North priorities and they guide me, too: • Health first. • Family second. • Business third. • Fun fourth.

success as “doing what you said you would do consistently with clarity, focus, ease, and grace.”

SPARTAN HONOR PLEDGE With a determined sense of responsibility, I pledge these statements: I will follow my True North, I will commit to what is important, I will be ambitious and motivated in all that I do, I will value my time, I will make all my decisions by examining the upside and downside, I will delay gratification, I will grit it out, I will shift my frame of reference, I will live each day honoring my journey to live the Spartan Way. Signature: ____________________ Date:____________________

28 Practices for Living the Spartan Life

1. Take a cue to stand. If you have a desk job, do your back a favor and get in the habit of standing as much as possible at work. Get yourself a stand-up desk or, at least, use cues to remind you to stand every half hour. Set a timer on your computer or stand up every time you receive a phone call.

2. Make push-ups harder with a sandbag. Place a sandbag on the ground to your right. Assume a push-up position next to it. Do a push-up, then grab the sandbag with your left hand and drag it underneath you forcefully until it’s now on your left side. Do another push-up and drag it back with your right hand. Keep it up for twenty reps.

3. Drink water, not j...

4. Practice deep breathing. A

Outsmart a rival at work. Never whine. Ever. But do communicate with the boss, proactively. When your boss dreams up a new project or seems under the gun, volunteer. You’re not kissing ass if you do the work. You’re working. And whether or not it ices out your rival, the important thing is that it advances the company’s goals. And you’ll feel good about that. Not only that, but your boss will notice that you’re proactive.

6. Take a cold shower. I love ’em. Okay, no I don’t. But I take them.

7. Run barefoot on the beach. Running

Seek out silence. Our world is too noisy. We need to experience quiet as much as possible.

9. Work out the first thing in the morning. I’ve been doing this for years. I get my exercise done before most people wake up. That way I never miss a workout. Apparently, working out in the morning gives you a better workout. Get this: A British study found that people who exercised at 6:45 a.m. pushed themselves harder and longer than people who worked out at 6:45 p.m.

10. Bored of burpees? Do 20 kettlebell swings.

11. Rearrange your fridge. Move all your produce to eye level. According to Cornell University researchers, you’re 2.7 times more likely to eat healthy food if it’s in your line of sight.

12. Team up. It’s easier to stay committed to your promise when you share that commitment with a partner or team. Think about it: It’s 5:30 a.m. on a cold, drizzly morning and you’re contemplating either going for a three-mile run or staying under the covers for another hour. You are more likely to jump out of bed if a friend or friends are waiting for you at the park in the rain. Friends keep friends accountable.

13. Nourish your neurons. Just fifteen to twenty minutes of cardio a day can lower Alzheimer’s risk, according to Gary Small, MD, coauthor of The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program. Increased blood...

14. Do this when you screw up. Look him or her in the eye and say, “I ...

15. Check the label. The best foods for your body don’t come in boxes or cans. For those foods you

16. Grab an apple, take a walk.

17. Have a smoothie with pea protein.