What Is Your Holy Cause?

Your “Why” is your Holy Cause. No matter what your “Why” is.

Holy Cause is a concept and term that I first heard from a great friend and mentor of mine, Setema Gali Jr. It’s the reason and purpose in our life that drives us to do the work that is required to stay ruthlessly committed to significant results. We all aim for big outcomes and targets in each area of our lives to grow and expand, but without a Holy Cause we will not back those goals and results up with the necessary action.

Your Holy Cause can be many different things. A lot of people say that it’s their family. Their wife and kids are their Holy Cause. Others may be driven by money, lifestyle, or a huge motivation to not feel or look a certain way any longer. Depending on where you are in life and what your experiences have been up until this point, there are countless causes to choose from. Included in my book, Live Your Legacy: The 90 Day Lifestyle Roadmap, is a process that will take you step-by-step through discovering what is your Holy Cause.

The one thing your Holy Cause must be is yours.

It has to be individualized and supremely important to you. You can’t use someone else’s vision or version of a Holy Cause. It may ultimately be very similar to others, but only you can determine that. Without it, you will not do the work. You will create this vision of who you have to become that sounds great and looks impressive on paper, but you will not achieve it without a strong and true Holy Cause. That’s because the reasons behind your actions are truly not important to you. They don’t matter to you. They are not backed by your Holy Cause. There is no purpose or real desire to achieve them, so you don’t.

In order for me to drop 45 pounds in six months, run a half marathon coming off the couch, and build up the strength needed to exceed the standards set by SEALFIT Kokoro, I had to be clear and strengthen my Holy Cause. I had to protect it, guard it, and back it up with ruthless commitment and action.

In order to become the person you want to become, you need to be committed. Commitment is a term that is thrown around very loosely in today’s society. We are quick to get excited about something or the idea of having something in our lives and say that we are committed to making it happen, only to forget about the commitment that we made after a few days or weeks once the freshness and excitement of that thought wears off. Without commitment, backed by that Holy Cause, you will not become who you want and you will not create the Legacy in your life that you desire.

Consider this story on commitment:

A man in the Navy had a lifelong dream of becoming a Navy SEAL. Everything he had done and trained for was to accomplish his goal of becoming a Navy SEAL. During the process of selection and qualification for the Navy SEAL’s, there is an underwater swimming test. Participants need to swim from one end of the pool and back to the other end without breathing.

What the candidate didn’t know was that it was an impossible task. So, he swims to one end and turns around, but halfway back he desperately needs to breathe and comes up for air.

Once out of the water, the Navy instructor tells him he is done, but sadly, he has failed the test and will not become a Navy SEAL.

The candidate is devastated. This is his lifelong dream. He has to wait a year before he can come back to try again. He continues to train, as he will not be denied his dream of becoming a Navy SEAL.

When he gets back in the pool to pass this impossible task of swimming underwater, as he turns to come back to the other end, again he has to breathe. Only this time, he doesn’t come up for air. He passes out. The other instructors are in the pool waiting for him to pass out. They swim down and bring him out of the pool. When he comes to, he sees the instructor on the pool deck, and then he is told he has passed the test.

He goes on to become a Navy SEAL.

The difference between the first time he failed the test and the second time that he passed the test comes down to commitment.

The candidate was willing to do whatever it took, including dying in the pool that day, to realize his dream of being a Navy SEAL. There is no gray area in commitment. Either you are, or you are not committed.

Where in your life do you lack commitment?

Hint: It will be in the same areas of your life that you are continually wanting and desiring more. It’s where you feel unfulfilled.

How many times have you started and stopped a new diet or exercise routine? Have you gone to a church for a few weekends before falling back into your old patterns? Have you launched a marketing plan that worked so well, you stopped doing it?

Stop Stopping!

For years, I would say that I wanted to be fit and have an athletic physique, but all of the actions I took were in direct opposition to that.

Because I knew nothing of commitment, I treated it as a thing that I should only be doing when I felt like it. I would work out when I wanted to or when it was convenient, make excuses about how it was okay not to do the necessary work required, eat what I wanted, and take actions based on how I felt.

Sound familiar? Do what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it. Not when you feel like it, but in spite of whether you feel like it or not. Every day. Consistently and ruthlessly. That is how you get committed. This is how you become the person that you determined you had to become to get what you said that you wanted.

It is not easy, but it is absolutely, 100%, worth it.

In my preparation and training in the six months leading into Kokoro 45, I was committed. I had to be. My Holy Cause backed it. There were many days when I didn’t feel like doing the work. There were many opportunities when it would have been easy to stray from my nutrition plan. There were many times when it was too hot or too cold, too early or too late to get my workouts in.

There are always going to be opportunities, excuses, and people that are going to try to take you off course from your path of living out your Legacy. That is why it is an absolute must that you must be committed to doing the things that you said you would do, to become the person that you want to become.

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Join Setema Gali, Nate Bailey and the Prosperity Revolution at this year’s PROREV LIVE! Rediscover yourself! Click here to attend.

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Photo: skeeze/Pixabay