Health and Independence

We talk about freedom a lot in our country. We all have it because of some fed-up colonists and many brave soldiers that have fought for us over the years. We use it to pursue dreams and live the lives we want to live.

But, are we really using it to live the lives we want to live? I ask that question, not to point a finger and anyone’s lifestyle or say that they are not living the way they should. I have no agenda when it comes to what you do for a living, where you spend your time or what you believe in. I think this country is great because of our differences. I think we were built on this principle and as long as we can learn from each other, we will use these differences to continue our journey.
Journeys are something that fascinate our society. We like stories about them and we use them in analogies with sports teams, education and of course in business. Journeys are something that take a long time. They take perseverance. They take guts. We admire those that take journeys. We admire those that make them successfully.

But, what defines success on a journey? Is it arriving at our desired destination? Is it how quickly we get to that destination? Is it how well we navigate the trail? There are countless ways to measure success in any area and a journey is no different.
We are all on a journey today. We each have all been on at least one journey since we were born. Many months and even years of the journey are not even something we remember. We just started doing what we do and pretty soon we started to realize what we were good at, not so good at and what we liked and didn’t like. As we got more and more comfortable with all of these realizations, we started to choose other journeys.

The journey that I talk about the most is health. It is what I do and what my company does, so clearly I have been in a conversation or two with people talking about their health journey. This journey is different for everyone. We all have goals and we all have challenges, but no one is on the same journey. It’s just like taking a trip. You may be going to the same place, but you are taking different roads to get there. Even if you are on the same road, we are all in different cars and have our own experiences along the way.

These experiences remind me of the summer road trip. Many of us are getting in cars and heading to places unknown over the summer. In fact, the 4th of July ties all of these themes together. It’s the birthday of our country, which gives us an opportunity to celebrate our freedom. It is a time when many venture out to see family and friends or simply to get out for a quick break over a long weekend.

This summer, we are all free to do what we want. We can go anywhere and do anything. That is why I ask the question: Are we really using it to live the lives we want to live? Ask yourself: Am I really living the life I want to live? When it comes to your freedom, are you using it? How independent are you?

This may sound like a malicious and pointed question, but I ask because it is important to ask. If we don’t ask questions, we don’t really measure and assess ourselves. What was true about our journey years ago, may or may not be true today.

Let’s take food for example: How much independence do you have when it comes to your food? Do you know what is in it or where does it come from? Even if you can answer that or simply don’t care, can you answer the question that we all need to start asking: did I choose to eat this because I like it or because it was easy?

Many times per day, people through their independence out the window when they shuffle to the counter or roll through the drive-thru. Even at the grocery store, we buy what is on sale or what catches our attention with signage and packaging. Or we simply buy what is easy to prepare.

No matter what “decisions” we make from day to day, we are choosing not based on what we want, but on what we think is easy or what someone is telling us to choose. We are convinced on a daily basis to eat, drink and buy. We do not choose, we are told or coerced.

I’m not attacking food companies, restaurants or even the people that fall into this trap every day. I too enjoy convenience. I do things that make my life easier every day. I also enjoy business and being successful. I do things every day that help my business grow and progress. That isn’t the problem.

A large part of America’s glory is our economic prowess and the ability of people to start and grow successful businesses into national and even global powerhouses in all industries, some even creating their own industries and inspiring a whole new generation of businesses to follow.

Clearly I’m not suggesting that business or food is the problem. The problem is us. We are choosing not to choose. We are dependent on what is put in front of us. We are relying on the companies that make more money when we eat more.

This summer, do me a favor and think about that for a minute. Ask yourself some key questions and think about how you answer them. When you look at the contents of your grocery cart, ask yourself why those items are there. When you find yourself eating lunch, ask yourself why you are eating what you are eating. Did you choose these things because you like the, or did you choose them because they were easy? The most important question you can ask is: Are you making independent choices or simply letting others tell you what to eat?

Want to Live Healthy: Get Real

Health is a very important part of our lives. We think about it, talk about it and try to improve it every day. There is not a day that goes by that we don’t focus on our health at some point. Unfortunately, for many, this focus involves worry and doubt. For many people, health is something that they are seeing as a problem and an area they need to improve.

I don’t disagree with that. I talk to people every day that are in poor health. I see articles that illustrate our growing health epidemic. I talk to colleagues and clients daily and they are all hearing the same things from clients and employees. The fact remains: health is a problem for most people.

In this day and age, with all of the technology and education we have at our finger tips, it has never been easier to live healthy. Wait, did I say that correctly? It is never been easier? Well, that depends on how you look at health. In the old days, we didn’t focus on health, we just did what we thought was normal and it turns out that it worked pretty well. We lived good lives and stayed in good health right up until the end.

There wasn’t much education involved. Doctors were learning and sharing as they went patient by patient. People were starting to figure out what they liked and didn’t like in their own lives. Technology was starting to become a bigger part of medicine. Over the last few centuries, we have taken leap after leap forward in technology. Our life expectancy has jumped and the ways we can be treated and aided have continued to multiply rapidly.

This would make health easier, right? We have more technology to help us and we have more knowledge at our finger tips than ever before. We should all be living healthy and it should be pretty easy for us, right?

Wrong. Living healthy is not easy. It should be, but it is not. Why are we having such a hard time with it lately? There are many reasons that people are not as healthy as they should be. A better way of looking at it is: people aren’t as healthy as they WANT to be. That is the reality of the situation and that is what leads us to the biggest problem we have.

What is our biggest problem? We don’t want real solutions. We want the quick fix and instant gratification. We want results without effort. We want change to happen to us without actually making any changes in our lives. This is our big problem and it is not going away without some major changes.

There is only one way to solve this problem: Get Real.
We have to get real. We have to realize that change is something only we can do. No one can do it for you and if you don’t do it, no one can and no one else will. If we don’t realize this, we are going to keep going down the same path.

Based on conversation and our basic wants and needs, this path is not a path that anyone would choose, yet many of us are choosing it daily. When you ask someone the question: “Do you want to be healthy?” The answer is ALWAYS yes. There is not a person on this earth that would choose to be unhealthy if given the option. The strange part about this is that people are choosing to live unhealthy. They are choosing these health problems and choosing to go the wrong direction despite their desire to be healthy.

This sounds sick doesn’t it? It sounds like people are insane. It sounds like people are dumb and don’t understand. People are not dumb or insane. They are smart (for the most part) and know what they want. The problem is not their intelligence, sanity or education. Their problem is reality. They are living in one and trying to be healthy in another.

That is what we need to fix. Health needs to be a part of everyday life. If health is a part of real life, we can make real changes and see real results. That is the only way people are going to be able to do it. You have to find real solutions that work for you on a day to day basis in order to live healthy. You have to apply these solutions daily by breaking them down into simple steps. These simple steps will bring you real results.

Living healthy is not something that only some can do. It is something that we are all capable of. The results are real as long as the actions are too. In other words, in order to live healthy, you have to get real.

Health: Simple Steps for Simple Results

Health can be overwhelming. There are a million things to think about. How much do you eat, what do you eat, when do you exercise, what do you do when you exercise, where do you go, who do you ask, what do you look for…
The list can go on for hours if you are really trying to focus on health improvement. Or it can stop pretty quickly if you are overwhelmed and can’t think about it anymore and give up. Unfortunately, for most people, the second option is not only more likely, but has become the norm.

It feels more difficult to live healthy than it does to just “do whatever”. We all know what happens when you “do whatever”. You really do what is easy. That is ok if the results you are looking for are a continued decline in your health. It is not ok if you want to improve or even maintain your health at a certain level.

So, what do you do? You dive into a program that shows you “the right way” or read articles and watch programs designed to show you “the right way”. The way that they are showing you is very complex and specific to a certain philosophy. The program may work. It may actually be a good thing to do. The problem is that you have to think differently and act drastically differently than you are used to acting.

This makes changing quite difficult. When the only changes in front of you are sweeping and drastic, it will be difficult to make them. If changes are smaller and easier to manage, you can expect to complete them and be successful.

This is the mistake that most people make. When you go to the grocery store, there are a million choices and possibilities. Rather than defeat yourself before you even get there, make a small list of two or three items that you want to make sure you pick up. Going to the store is already a plus and will have positive impact on your routine. Getting a few choice items that you planned on will give you another step in the right direction and help you feel like you are getting the hang of the process.

Keeping it Simple

Food tip: Don’t worry about every detail on every label. Don’t worry about the difference in nutrient level between this vegetable and that one. Don’t try to change everything about your diet in one day. If you are eating fast food a lot, pick a level that would be a measureable improvement and stick to it. Don’t try to cut it all out immediately.

Exercise tip: Don’t try to run a marathon this week. If you are sedentary, don’t expect to be a on a world-class athlete’s training schedule next week. The only way to get started is to get started, but if you try to do too much too soon you can a) injure yourself and b) get extremely discouraged when you miss one workout when life happens in week two…or week one.

The moral of the story is: keep health simple and you can do it. If you make it too complicated, you will simply out-smart yourself and make it too hard. The longer you do it, the more intricate and advanced your process can be. I’m not saying that it isn’t good to be focused on the details and finding every way to live healthier. I’m just saying that if you don’t accomplish anything because your “perfect routine” is too hard to stick with, you might as well not do anything.

And that is the problem. Most people are saying that right now. “If I can’t do it, I may as well not even try.” That is the attitude that many of us have when it comes to health. The truth is, we can all do it. It doesn’t have to be difficult. As long as you are willing to put in a little time and make small changes, you can live healthy.

In fact, living healthy is pretty simple as long as you make it simple. The best way to make health simple is to focus on small, simple steps. When you can get a few simple steps going, you can start working on the next ones. As you work on these steps you will continue to see results. It’s all about simple steps for simple results.

Change Your Actions, Change Results

Change is part of our lives. It always has been and always will be. The only thing that is certain in this life is that things will change. Health is not only changing, but it requires us to change in order to keep it, improve it or simply understand how it is affecting our lives.

No matter how healthy or unhealthy your lifestyle is today, you have experienced change in your routine. It may be on the job, at school, at home, with friends or all of the above. At some point, you had to make changes in order to keep doing things you wanted to do. Change, while it can be painful, is not difficult to acknowledge or understand.

Although we have understood the presence of change, I’m not sure that everyone has truly accepted the fact that they need to change in order to keep moving in the desired direction. Change in health is simple: it is simple: you have a path that you want to go down. As you move down this path, challenges come your way that require you to adjust in order to keep going down that path. If you don’t adjust, you won’t be able to continue. It is like a personal road block. If something is in your way, you have to change course in order to get around that obstacle.

What if we don’t change?

What happens if we choose not to adjust our course? That’s simple. If you are on a road driving and there is a fallen tree blocking the way, you have to make a choice. You can change and go another way, or you can sit and wait for someone to move the fallen tree. You still have two choices, but one is far more reasonable than the other. I don’t know too many people that would sit and wait for someone to move the tree.

Let’s think about it from a personal perspective. If your family is running into a scheduling conflict and there seems to be no way to get one event or another, you have a simple choice to make. You can adjust your schedule and change how your time is allocated, or you can keep doing it the same way and hope the situation magically resolves itself. This sounds a lot like the fallen tree, doesn’t it? If you are waiting for something to magically happen that will change the results, you will be waiting around for a long time and may never see a solution.

How do we change?

Change is a scary word to many people. In fact, many people will continue do things that are clearly not working for them because the fear of change is greater than the problems they are dealing with now. For that reason, they are ok continuing to deal with more and more problems because that feels easier than changing. After a while, they get used to doing things this way, used to dealing with problems and results that are less-than desirable. It eventually feels like there is no alternative.

Let’s be clear: There is always an alternative. There is always something you can do to make your life better. No matter how long you have been doing something, you can always change. No matter how much time you have invested in a process, you can always make it better. When you do, you will see better results.

There is one thing required for solutions to work in your routine. Action needs to be taken. No matter how badly you want that schedule to work out for you and your family, if you don’t change something, you will keep into conflicts. No matter how badly you want to that tree to be out of your way, unless you are willing to act and change course, it will remain in front of you, blocking your way.

What do we need to change?

In order to change, you need to take action. In many cases, it is easy to see that a person is not doing anything to counteract a problem, but in just as many cases there is something being done, action being taken that is actually causing the problem. Either way, you have problems if this is taking place. Doing nothing and doing things that harm your health are equal and often difficult to distinguish.

That is why the key to change is action. Not only do you need to take action, but you need to focus your action on the results you want. There are certain results you are looking for in all areas. If these results are not seen, what happens? Do you simply keep trying to do the same things and expect different results? Do you do nothing and assume that the problem can’t be solved forgo those results?

I hope you don’t do any of the above. I hope you would look at current results, realize that they weren’t the desired results and change action to get different results. That is what successful people do. They change their actions to change their results.

What does this have to do with your health?

Personal health and wellness is change. When you look at your current routine, if you are not as healthy as you want to be, you have likely been out of the habit of doing healthy things or in the habit of doing unhealthy things. The change you need here is simply to start making your actions help your health rather than hurt them. That is what healthy people do. It’s all about changing action to change results.

That is what it takes to change in any area of life. It may take time and it may take some investment, but the alternative is already happening and it is hurting you. Increasing weight and health issues are pretty big tree in the road. Poor energy and lost days are large conflicts in your schedule. So, what should you do?

I hope you will look at your current results, realize that they aren’t the desired results and change action to get different results. That is what successful people do in any area of life. They change their actions to change their results. Are you ready to be successful in health?

Healthy Mistakes

When people talk about health, they often talk about improvement or learning how to be better at certain things. There are few major components that we all think about that impact our health. The better you are at the major components, the healthier you are going to be.

It’s not terribly complicated. If you are good at eating healthy, you will be healthy. If you are good at exercising, you will be healthy. How do you get good at these things? You have to practice. It’s just like any other skill that you have learned. To become good at anything, you have to practice.

Practice makes perfect, right? Well, that is the theory. That is what we all strive for, but the idea of being perfect is more appealing than the actual pursuit of perfection. And the reality is, none of us will ever be perfect. Perfection is not something we can actually achieve in any area of life and health is no exception.

That is the problem with trying to be perfect. It won’t happen. Why do we think it will? I’m not sure why, but many of us do it, some more than often, but we have all been there. Especially in health, perfection almost seems possible. At least on paper, we all think that we should be able to do it.

The biggest problem in this pursuit is that we judge ourselves so harshly. When we make a small mistake, we treat it as if it were a catastrophic situation and it derails us completely. We are so hard on ourselves that we can’t recover and we continue to make other mistakes. Why do we do this? Did we think that we weren’t ever going to make a mistake? I’m not sure, but we all do it in one aspect or another. Health is an area that we tend to do it more than others.

What are mistakes?

Mistakes are nothing more than speed bumps. Mistakes are things that slow us down on our journey to health. That is a simple way of looking at it and it is a positive way of looking at it. That may be enough to make you feel like we are trying to be a cheerleader and tell you that health is easy and all you have to do is get over that “little speed bump” and you will be on your way to sure success.

Well, sure success doesn’t exist and I’m not here to tell you that anything is going to be easy. Health, of all things is never easy for anyone. It is not automatic and it won’t be a sure thing for you, me or anyone on this planet.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about what a mistake is. It’s simple, a mistake simply a missed try. A mistake is an attempt at something that didn’t go the way you wanted it to go. While we are at it, let’s talk about what a mistake is NOT. A mistake is not the end of your routine. A mistake is not the proof that you can’t do something.

What do we gain from mistakes?

If you are willing to look at mistakes in a way that will help you make progress, you will gain a lot from mistakes. Mistakes teach us. Mistakes show us that we did something wrong. When we make a mistake, we know that we have to do something differently next time. If we don’t make mistakes, how do we know how to improve upon anything? We don’t. That is why mistakes are critical to progress. When you make a mistake, you gain a perspective that you didn’t have before. You may not know a better way just yet, but you know what doesn’t work. Sometimes knowing what doesn’t work is the best thing we can learn. That way we won’t keep trying to do it.

Mistakes are healthy. Provided we learn from them and don’t let them derail us, we can learn from mistakes. If you don’t make any mistakes, you aren’t trying hard enough. When we challenge ourselves, we make mistakes. When we challenge ourselves, we also grow and get better. This is no coincidence. The mistakes are what teach us and help us learn better ways, which lead to growth and improvement.

If you want to live healthy, you have to be willing to make mistakes. You have to be willing to try a new routine. You have to be willing to try to put certain things into your day despite the fact that they will be challenging. You have to be willing to try and you have to be willing to fail. Mistakes are little. Failure is final. Failure, true failure, only occurs when you quit something. When you quit something, you may stop making mistakes, but you also stop growing and getting better.

When it comes to health, if you are not growing and getting better, your health isn’t either. You need to focus on your routine, break it down into small steps and execute those steps day in and day out. Each month, week and even each day, you will make mistakes. As you do try more and more ways to do healthy things, your routine gets healthier and so do you. Mistakes are part of health. As you continue to make health part of your life, you will continue to make mistakes. You will also get better and better at what you are doing, so when you think about it, you will eventually be making healthy mistakes.

Every Win Counts

When it comes to sports, wins are the most important thing. There is nothing more important than winning. It’s great to think about sportsmanship and lessons learned as the season goes on, but let’s be honest, winning is the only thing that matters. At the highest levels of sports, winning is the only thing on the minds of players and coaches because their performance is judged solely on the total of wins each year.

Health is all about wins too. In sports, you can clearly define wins and losses. At the end of the game, one team has more points than the other, so it is not difficult to know who wins and who loses. Health is a little different. At the end of the day, you don’t really have a scoreboard to tell you if you won or lost the day. You don’t have a scoreboard to look at during the day to see if you are winning or losing at any point either.

The lack of a score can make health more challenging. It is hard enough to live healthy. We all know it is a challenge to eat well and make time for exercise. The lack of awareness of results can make it even more challenging. There are a number of questions that come to mind for most people as they try to make health part of their lives. Some of those questions include:

How do I know if I am winning?
What should I do to win more?
What will I do if and when I win?

Let’s address these questions and make sure that winning is not only understood, but part of your routine going forward. The first question is easier to answer than you think it is. Winning is not as complicated as we make it out to be. Winning is simple when it comes to health. The best way to answer the question is to look at it a little closer.

How do I know if I am winning?

You know if you are winning or not. When you look in the mirror and when you get on the scale, you know if you are winning. When you think about your energy level during a typical day, you know if you are winning or not. When you look at your schedule and compare how much time you want to be spending on yourself and your health, you know quite clearly if you are winning and you know quite clearly if you are not winning.

What should I do to win more?

This question is even simpler. When you look at your routine, it is easy to see what you are doing and what you are not doing. Sure, there are challenges to doing what we want to do each day. There are challenges to eating what we should, moving like we should and making time for ourselves. Winning itself is not easy. What is easy? It is easy to read the scoreboard. I know we talked about not having a daily scoreboard to judge winning or losing, but we can easily tell in long-term results or lack there-of.

What will I do if and when I win?

This is an important question that most people aren’t asking themselves. Celebrating wins is one of the most important things we can do to insure more of them. Not only is it good motivation to get your moving toward your goals, but it is also a good reminder of the joy that you feel when you get that win. When you express that joy and truly live in the moment of success, you can keep yourself focused on the win and set yourself up to get the next one.

The problem with health and winning is that the games we play are so small and often we don’t even realize where one ends and another begins. That is where the lack of scoreboard comes in. It’s not that we can’t tell if we are winning or losing, it is more about the fact that each game may be a minute step that we overlook during a busy day. During the course of a busy day, we may have hundreds of possible wins…and loses that we may or may not even think about. At the end of the day, we do not have a scoreboard or scorecard to tell us what wins we got or even what games we played.

Again, this makes things more challenging because of the lack of clarity. One thing is clear when it comes to your health: every win counts. During your day, you have hundreds of opportunities to win. You may not have the perfect diet or the perfect exercise routine or even the perfect schedule. Guess what, you don’t need any of these things. All you need to do is focus on the little wins. Big wins are nothing more than little wins added together.

When you see a team win an important game, they don’t win it with one play. They win it with a series of plays in a game-plan that is executed throughout the game. When you see a team that has a successful season, they don’t win the championship in one game. They win over the course of the entire season. Every win they get throughout the year adds up to determine their positioning at the end of the year. They don’t simply arrive in the championship game to get one win and take home all the glory.

In sports and in health, wins don’t come easy, but they all count. Every game you play during a season is important. In health, every game you play is important as well. You may think of that mid-morning snack as an afterthought, but it could mean the difference between a healthy snack and another junk-food binge that leaves you feeling like you lost the day.

It is important to focus on the big things, but the small things are equally if not more important to living healthy. The more you can do on a day to day basis for your health, the more wins you will get. Everything you do counts toward a win or a loss. Everything you do is important. Every win is important. If you want to live healthy, you have to realize one thing: Every win counts.

Spring Clean Your Routine

Spring is finally here! Depending on where you live, you may be excited for a change or you may already be used to warm weather by now. Either way, spring is a great time of year that brings back fond memories for all of us and keeps us looking forward optimistically. Why do we love spring so much? Well, we love it for the same reasons that we can use the season for positive change:

Renewal: Spring gives us a sense of new. Everywhere you look, you see reminders of a new season and a new chapter in the year. Use it to reach your goals!

Outdoor Access: Now that the weather is getting warmer, it is only natural that we can get out more often and stay out longer when we do. The fresh air can rejuvenate us from day to day and even help rejuvenate our entire routine.

Spring is a great time to take inventory of your routine and decide if there is any “spring cleaning” needed. Even if it’s just a minor adjustment, this is the perfect time to make it. It’s just like cleaning out the garage. It is a good time to do it and here are some steps that will make it easier.
What can you do to spring clean your routine? (How does it compare to cleaning out the garage?)

Revisit your current routine (Taking inventory)

Before you start making changes, you have to know what you are doing now. Ask yourself a few simple questions:
What are you doing for your health now? (What is in the garage now?)
What challenges have I run into lately? (What items do we really need to move or get rid of?)

Plan your future routine (Clearing out the junk and moving things out)

Now that you see what your current routine looks like and what challenges you want to fix, you can start making plans to adjust. There are a few more simple questions to ask yourself at this point:
What do I want to be doing? (What do I want to keep and what do I want to throw away?)
When/Where do you want to do these activities? (Where are you going to put the items you are keeping?)

Execute (Reorganize and put things away so you can actually use them!)

Go out and do it! This is the best part about your routine and cleaning the garage. It is the time when your needs, plan and action all come together. It’s not the easiest part of the job, but when you do it, you see rewards.

No matter what you are doing, there is something very satisfying about setting and reaching goals. Whether you are revamping your exercise routine, your diet or actually cleaning out a room in your house, when you put a plan together, take the time to make it happen and see the result you were looking for, there is nothing better. You wanted to do something, you did it and now you can see the results.

Health may not always be as immediate. You don’t always see results quickly, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t happening. Just make sure that your plan is realistic, give yourself a realistic timeline to execute (you wouldn’t try to clean out the garage in 5 minutes) and you will be on your way to a healthy and happy spring.

Have a Healthy Spring!

Goals: Set and Let Your Habits Do the Rest

Setting goals is an important part of any part of our lives. If you want to accomplish something, you have to set goals and take steps toward them in order to be successful. That is the essence of goal-setting: taking measureable steps toward success. Taking steps toward success is more than just wanting to do something. When you set a goal it is turning an idea into action.

Goals are easy, staying aligned with the goals we set is where the challenge comes in. If the accomplishment of goals was as easy as setting them, we would all be wildly successful. Every New Year’s Resolution would come to be and we wouldn’t ever have to question it. The facts and our experience strongly show us that setting goals and accomplishing them are two very different steps in an important process.

So, what do we need to do to make accomplishing goals part of setting them? Well, once you are in the habit of setting realistic goals that work for you, it becomes that automatic. At least it feels automatic. Think about it this way:

When you get in the car and put on your seatbelt, you are doing so for a number of reasons:
1. Safety- you know that a seatbelt can mean the difference between safety and serious injury or even death if you don’t wear it.
2. Legal- you know that if you are pulled over and not wearing a seatbelt, you will be given a ticket for not obeying a basic traffic law.

These are the reasons you are using a seatbelt in your car. You do this every time you get in and drive anywhere. You do this each time, no matter where you are going and no matter how rushed you are. If you are taking a leisurely drive, you put your seatbelt on. If you are hustling to get to a meeting, you put your seatbelt on. You put your seatbelt on no matter what.

How did this become automatic? Wearing your seatbelt in the car became automatic because we know how important it is. We have two very clear motivators to keep us from neglecting this habit. Bodily harm is a good motivator and so are tickets and fines. These motivators are important and will keep us on track with our goals of not dying. They are helping us keep as much of our money as possible and keeping our driving record clean all at the same time.

The motivators behind goals are important to get you going and to help you start making changes to see the results you want. When you think about health, there are many motivators that become a factor to get us moving. Improved daily feeling, avoidance of long-term health issues, weight loss and other factors are enough to get and keep most of us setting and reaching goals to live healthier.

Motivators are important, but the biggest factor in our health is our habits. The habits of diet and exercise are what bring us the results we are looking for, or keep us from seeing them. If your habits are in line with your goals, you will see the results you want. If they are not, you will struggle and not see the results you want to see.

In other words, our habits are the most important factor in success. Remembering that success is nothing more than setting and reaching goals: our habits are what allow us to reach goals by making the actions part of our daily routine.

Often, the most influential things we do are things we no longer think about. When you put your seatbelt on, you don’t have to think about it. You do it every time, yet it doesn’t even enter your conscious thought most times because it has become so automatic. The motivators are there. You could recall in an instant WHY you are wearing your seatbelt, but you don’t have to think about it in order to do it.

That is what healthy living habits become for healthy people. You know WHY you are eating healthy foods and getting your exercise in each day. You know why you are doing this day in and day out, but you don’t have to think about it because you have set goals and made the action part of your daily routine.

It gets easy. It may be a challenge to get started, but trust me, the more you do something, the more you will be able to do it without it feeling difficult. The longer you do something, anything, the more natural it becomes. As it becomes more natural, you won’t be thinking so hard about the reasons you are doing it or the alternatives to doing it. You will just do it.

The best part about success is that you are reaching goals you wanted to reach. What is success? Success is when:
You set goals.
You are motivated to achieve your goals.
You develop habits that help you achieve your goals.
You achieve your goals.

The first step is to set your goals. If you set them, write them down and understand why you want to reach them, the habits that are necessary to reach them become clear and you can easily make them part of your routine.

As you do that and they become more and more natural for you, you will see success. Setting goals and keeping focus on the action is the best way to develop the habits you need to succeed. It is your habits that are going to help you reach your goals. So, if you want to be successful, set goals and let your habits do the rest.

Want to Live Healthy: You Can

Living healthy is not easy. The more we see in the media, the more problems seem to be plaguing our country. If you are human, which I think you are if you are reading this, you likely see the problems and may even be experiencing some of them yourself.

Health is not something that comes easy to anyone. There are many people that have made it easy for them, but only after many years of hard work and practice. It may look easy for them now, but they had to build those habits. They had to work their way to where they are now. When you see them in action, it looks easy. It may even be easy for them now, but trust me, it was not easy to start and there are still difficult times for them when it comes to sticking with the routine.

The difference between healthy people and unhealthy people is nothing more than the habits and routines that they have worked on for a long time. Even with new habits, the process is the same for healthy people. They know what it will take to make something stick, so they do it and do it until it is part of their routine.

Unhealthy people look at these people and think that the process is easy for them. They think that it is hard for themselves, but easy for the healthy people and they think that the difference between them and the healthy people is the ease. That is not true. No matter how much you struggle with health, there is a way to do it. You can be successful.
You can also fail. This is not what you want to hear, but failure is always a possibility. If you are trying something new, you can fail. If you are working to include new habits into your routine, you can fail.

Now that we have that out of the way, we can discuss some real solutions. Here are some solutions to help you realize that you can:

Stop Fearing Failure

If you acknowledge that failure is an option, you can get over the fear of failure. The fear of failure is worse than failure itself. The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people are able to fail and keep going, try again or simply find a better way to do something. There is always another way to do something, so if you fail, simply try again, try something different and you will eventually succeed.

Determine Plan B

If you have another option, failure will be pretty short. The problem with falling short of a goal is that it leaves you feeling like you missed the mark. Well, it’s true. You did miss the mark, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t try again. If you have a plan for getting back on track or a secondary goal that will allow you another option, you can succeed or simply limit the impact of a small failure.

Don’t Expect it to Be Easy

Health is not easy. If you expect it to be easy, you will be disappointed. The most common reason for failure is poorly managed expectations. We’ve all been there. You set out to try something new and expect it to be easy. When we run into one little issue, it is enough to derail us. We didn’t see it coming because we expected it to be easy. Success is not easy and often takes a lot of practice. If you go into it knowing this, you can reach it. If you go into it with the fantasy that it will be easy, reality will quickly catch up to you and failure will not be far behind.

So, what are you goals? What is the new habit you want to make part of your routine? No matter what it is, you can do it. How do I know that without knowing what your habit is or what your routine looks like? I know that you can because it isn’t as hard as you think it is. If you can move forward without fear of failing, have a plan B in place because you know that failure is possible and expect a few challenges along the way, you can do it.

It’s not rocket science. It’s not brain surgery. Health is hard, but it’s not that hard. We can all do it. You don’t have to run marathons or lose a hundred pounds in a week. All you have to do is come up with a simple plan that works for you. Determine what habit you want to improve and go improve it. Notice I said improve and not change, eliminate or create. We already have many habits. If you can improve just one habit gradually, you can make a significant impact on your health.

Can you improve your health? Of course you can. Is it going to be easy, of course it won’t be easy. But no matter what it is you are trying to do, if you are focused on your health and willing to create a realistic plan, you can do it. Trust me, you can.

Health: Simple But Not Easy

Health is simple. There are two things you need to know. 1. If you exercise, you will be healthy. 2. If you eat healthy food, you will be healthy. Is that all you need to know? Of course not. Health may be simple, but it certainly isn’t easy.
We all know what to do in order to be healthy. We all know what not to do to avoid being unhealthy. Unfortunately, there is a big difference between knowing what to do and knowing how to do it. That is where health throws us for a loop. It isn’t the knowledge we have a problem with, it is the application.

Why is health so hard?

Well, the hardest part about health is not knowing what to do or even how to do it. The hardest part about health is finding a way to make it part of your life. We all have busy lives with many things to do, places to go and people to see. We have long to-do lists and short attention spans. We need more time just to get what we already have on our lists done, let alone adding anything to them. Healthy habits seem to get left off the list a little easier than most things. It is hard to get them on the list as it is, and it is just as hard to keep them there.
What can you do?
It is actually simpler than you think it is. Living healthy is simple by nature. We have made it more complicated than it needs to be. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as we are making it. If you want to live healthy, there are a few simple steps you can take to make it work for you:
1. Select One Habit
It can be walking, running or going to a class at the gym. It can be packing your lunch at home or substituting with a healthy item at dinner. It doesn’t matter what you do. If you are able to something healthy, you will improve your health. The bottom line is that if you don’t do anything, you will not be healthy. You don’t have to change your whole routine overnight. Something is better than nothing, so just pick one thing that you can do and start doing it.

2. Track Your Progress
How do you know if you are successful or not? You have to look at your progress to determine success or failure. You can write down your goal in a journal, on a napkin or track it an online app. With exercise you can get as detailed as you want to get by tracking time, intensity and frequency, or you can keep it simple and just track the days you are doing it. With diet you can just pick one meal to focus on and write down what you are eating. You can get as elaborate as you want and it doesn’t have to be difficult if you use an app that does the work for you. It doesn’t matter how you track as long as you track.

3. Give Yourself a Chance
We all know that health is not easy. Why do we expect it to be easy when we start something new? We expect to be able to change overnight without any challenges. With this expectation often comes failure and discouragement. Give yourself a chance by putting some realistic expectations on your new goal. Focus on the long-term habit rather than the results, that way you are able to build yourself up rather than being frustrated that the results aren’t coming fast enough for you.

4. Don’t Quit
It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? In fact, this is the simplest part about health. If you quit, you get nothing. If you don’t continue, you don’t get results. It doesn’t get any simpler than that. Keep going on your goal. If it is a realistic goal, you know you can do it. It may take planning, patience and motivation, but you know you can do it. That is why it is your goal: because you want to do it. If you didn’t want to do it, you wouldn’t set the goal in the first place. So, keep going and remember that any progress is positive. You can’t get where you want to go in one step, so don’t quit when step one or two are a little challenging. You certainly can’t get where you want to go without taking some steps. So keep taking them even if they are difficult. It is the only way to get there.
Health is that simple. If you set a goal, track your progress, give yourself a change to reach it by setting realistic expectations and commit to keep going even if it is difficult, you will be healthy. It’s all about habits. If you can get into the habit of doing one thing, it will become easier and easier as you go. When that goal becomes habit and you don’t have to strain to get it done, you can start on another habit and start making that part of your routine too. The more healthy habits you have in place, the more healthy you will be. That is all you have to do. Start with one and work on it until it becomes part of your routine.

So, when you are you going to start?

There is no perfect time to get started on anything. If you are waiting for the right day or for things to slow down for you, you are going to be waiting a long time. Let’s be honest, when you are “waiting for the right time”, aren’t you really just putting it off? It is just an excuse to go one more day without taking action on your goal. The best time to start is right now. The best way to get started is to simply look at your calendar and put something down at a time that works for you and do it.

Health is simple. It may not be easy. If it were easy, we would all do it without any challenges. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be talking about it like this. We would all be up and running with no issues and in perfect health. If you can remember that it is simple, it will feel a lot easier. Pick a goal and start working on it now. It won’t get any easier to get started.

New Year, New Start

Each year, we push through the holiday season and all of its craziness. When January rolls around, we have a chance to wipe the slate clean and set new goals. A detailed plan makes it possible to stay on track and reach your 2013 goals. If you are going to be successful, your routine has to be in line with your plans and goals. Hopefully you have a plan to meet your goals. Hopefully your plan is more than just a “resolution” made as the year ended.

Your health and wellness impact your life in many ways. The cost of your future medical care and the current cost of insurance and other medical needs are impacted. This all leads to overall financial impact. Your day to day energy, mood and ability to get through the day are impacted as well. You can choose to impact these areas positively or negatively.

The more you make health part of your routine, the better you will feel and the better you will function. It’s no secret that health works and it’s no exaggeration to say that everyone wants to be healthy. This year, you can make it the year that you meet your goals. Since it is January we have a fresh start and we already have New Year’s resolutions on our minds, so we have a few questions for you on an individual level as we kick off 2013:

What are your goals?
What do you want to change about your health?

If you want to see any changes, you have to have a plan and you have to take action. The most important question is:
What is your plan to reach your goals?

We challenge you to put together a plan that works for you and will keep you achieving your goals all year long:

• Write your goals down
• Tell someone about your goals
• Think about what challenges or barriers you may encounter
• Create specific steps to overcome these challenges and barriers
• Determine how you will measure your progress
• Decide what rewards you will give yourself to celebrate success along the way

No one wants to look back and wish they had started sooner, so get going now! No matter what your goals are, you can get started now and set yourself up for a healthy year. Even small steps now will pay dividends later in the year.

We continue to hear about the healthcare crisis, obesity and diabetes epidemics and many other health problems around our country. Clearly, living healthy is not easy. Deciding to focus on improving health might be easier than actually doing it, but getting started can be overwhelming. It all starts when you do. And you can start anywhere at any time.

Getting started is important, but sustaining the momentum is even more important. January is a great time to get things moving, but it is only the beginning. This is the first step in a long-term plan that will provide long-term results. We want you and your family to be successful in life and in health. That is why we are here to support you. Hopefully your year is off to a great start and you are on track with your goals. If you haven’t set goals, now is a great time to do it. Let’s make 2013 a successful, happy and healthy year!

Happy New Year from The Wellness Division!

Your Health: Are You Playing to Win?

Winning and losing is clear and there is seldom confusion as to which side you are on. When you talk about a sporting event, the winning team is clear and the losing team is clear. In an individual competition, you know who wins and who loses. It is not difficult to understand who is on which side.

Health is something different. You are constantly playing, so there is winning every day and there is even losing every day. You can lose daily and still be healthy. As long as you are able to win more often then you lose, you are still able to live healthy. That is where the trick comes into play. You have to understand that in order to truly live healthy. Many people try to win all day, every day, but it doesn’t work. When it doesn’t work, they quit because they think they lost. That is where the real strategy begins.

Winning vs. Losing

Winning is easy. Winning is getting what you want and doing what you set out to do. Winning makes a day go smoothly. Winning brings you results you want. More accurately, winning is the result you want. You have to play to win in order to win. It sounds simple and even sarcastic, but it’s true. Winning is something we all want, but until we start playing to win and expecting to win, we don’t win and we will never win.

Losing on the other hand, is difficult. Losing is not getting what you want and not being able to do what you set out to do. Losing makes things rough and challenging. Losing doesn’t bring you the results you want and it means that you are getting results that you don’t want. Losing is what we dread and what we hope never happens, but it does happen. Once we realize that losing happens, we can get on with it and keep pushing forward.

Offense

In health, there is offense and defense. Just like a game, there are multiple parts in each game and you have to be able to focus on if you want to win. Just like sports, it is easy to focus on offense. The offensive part of the game is easy and fun. Some people think that exercise is like offense because they like it and it is easy. Others think diet is like offense because they are better at picking and choosing healthy foods. Whatever you think is easier in your healthy routine that is your offense.

Not only is it important to know that it is the side that is easier for you, but you also need to know how to use it to your advantage. When a team is better than another team, they are able to score more points and put themselves into a better position as the game goes on. The team is able to take advantage of each situation and build a lead to ensure that the other team can’t come back. Even if they score more as the game goes on, with a big enough lead, they won’t come back to win. The team that used their offense to build a big lead is able to hold on and win the game.

Defense

Defense is a very important part of any sport and it is certainly an important part of a healthy routine. Defense is not fun. Defense is not glamorous or pretty. Defense is gritty and takes hard work. Defense brings results because it helps you take care of important things. During a game, defense helps you keep the other team from winning. Defense allows you to establish a baseline and keep things close when the other team is on the move. If you can put a solid defensive strategy into place, you can ensure that it never gets too bad. You never get too far behind and are always able to come back when your offense is play again.

Health is really just a balance of offense and defense. If you can take advantage of opportunities to score more points and advance your offense, you can build a lead. If you can keep your defense strong and keep things under control, you can keep the game close until you are ready to go back on offense.

Putting it all together

In order to win in sports, you have to do both. You have to be able to play offense and defense at a high level. The better you are at each, the more likely you are to win each game you play. The same is true in health. You have to be able to manage both sides. The key to remember with health is that you are playing games all day every day. You are playing offense at breakfast, defense after and each time you are making an eating choice or exercising, you have the opportunity to build a lead or defend to prevent falling behind or to protect your lead.

Each day, you have the chance to win or to lose. You are making choices all day that determine whether you are going to win or lose. The choices are not always easy, but the results are clear. When you put in the effort to build you routine in all areas, you are playing to win. Wanting to win is great, but the action of putting your routine together is the key to actually getting there. Are you playing to win?

Hard to beat someone that never gives up (Personal Wellness)

Health is something that we all talk about. It is something that we all think about. Is it something that we all are doing something about? That is where things get a little less clear. We all want to be healthy. The difference between wanting to be healthy and being healthy is a finer line that most people think.

Let’s think about a healthy routine for a minute: you have to exercise, eat mindfully and take time for yourself to do these things on a daily basis. While everyone is busy wanting to live healthy, those that are living healthy are busy…living healthy.

What is the difference? Well, it’s not a matter of will or determination. It is not a matter of being stronger or being a healthy person or not. Living healthy comes down to the ability to keep going. The ability to get up when you’ve fallen down is the only way to live healthy.

The great baseball player, Babe Ruth once said: “It’s hard to beat someone that never gives up.”

This is true in all areas of life. Since we are talking health, let’s keep it focused on that area. How often does living healthy get difficult? That is a trick question, because living healthy is always difficult. The day to day can be a challenge and keeping it going week in and week out, month in and month out gets even more challenging.

The key is to keep going. When things get difficult, you have to find ways to overcome the challenge. When you get knocked down, and you will get knocked down, you have to do three things:

1. You have to decide that you are going to get up.
2. You have to figure out the best way to get up.
3. You have to decide where you are going to go when you get up.

Try it

When you set a goal, you are trying to do something. When you are simply thinking or talking about it, you haven’t tried anything yet. It may be take energy to focus on the goal even before you get started, but you haven’t gotten started yet. When you start trying, you will be putting in real energy and real time.
Get up and try again

This is a good start, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be set-backs. When you get started and start getting some progress made, there are going to be days that get difficult. There will be challenges that make you wonder if you can keep going or not. There are even going to be moments that make you feel like you can’t go on.

That’s right, there are going to be times that you have fallen and don’t know if you can get back up again. Guess what: you can get back up again.
Where will you be if you quit?

You have to keep going. You have to get up and you have to move on. Where will you be if you don’t get up and keep going? What will you have accomplished? Have you reached your goal? Are you going to be satisfied if you stop now? Probably not. That is why you have to keep going.

What progress DID you make?

It is one thing to say that you want to keep going. It is another thing all together to actually do it. That is where thinking and talking turn into doing. You have to look at where you were when you fell down. Did you get as far as you wanted to get? Probably not. Now it is time to think about what you need to do to keep going. You have to pick yourself up and get moving again. One way to do that is to look at the progress that you DID make. When you can look at your routine and realize that you made some progress, it is easier to start getting back on track because you are not starting from square one again. You don’t have to go back to the beginning.

What’s next?

Now that you have decided to get back up again, what are you going to do? What is the plan? The sooner you set a plan and get going on it. When you get your plan in motion, you are free to make choices and do what will make it work for you. If you run into challenges, you have to remember the reasons you started doing this in the first place. If you still want to reach your goals, why would you stop pursuing them? Why would you give up?

After all, if you don’t give up, you can’t lose. That is the beauty of health. The more you do, the more you get. As long as you get up and keep going, you get results.
When Babe Ruth was talking about not giving up, he was right. Baseball takes perseverance and determination. So does health, but in health, you are even more likely to succeed if you are willing to keep going. As long as you don’t give up, you can’t lose when it comes to health. In other words, it is hard to beat someone who never gives up.

Find Your Way

When you look at your health routine, what do you see? Are you making time for yourself and living healthy? Or are you wishing you were making time for yourself and living healthy? Of course, there are many points in between these two extremes, but for many it feels like you are on one end or the other.

The reality is, most of us are somewhere in the middle. We make some time for ourselves and get some results. We may not be making as much time as we want and therefore not living quite as healthy as we want to be living, but if you are making SOME time, you are doing something right.

What are you doing right? Let’s start there. This is often the key to success. Obviously doing things right is important. However, the real value in this is not just doing something right, it is knowing what to do so that you can do it and most importantly, being able to understand why it works so you can keep doing it.

That is the difference between someone that can continue with a successful routine. It works in any area of life. When you look at a successful business person, they have a deliberate plan, a process in place that continues to give them the results they are looking for and they make time to keep that process going according to plan.
The same goes for a top-level athlete. They are talented, yes. They are able to do things that most others cannot. The reason that they are able to excel among others with similar abilities is their ability to focus on their strengths, keep practicing and perfect certain techniques. These techniques can include certain strategies that give them advantages over someone that simply “plays the game”. There is a difference between preparing to play and simply playing.

Health is nothing more than a skill-set. In fact, health is a skill-set that we all have. We can all eat healthy foods and move our bodies. We all learned how to do these things without even thinking about it. Our childhoods were filled with movement, play and other activities that kept us in great shape whether we knew it or not. The foods we ate were the foods that were in front of us. Sure, we all recall having to stomach something that wasn’t as fun, but for the most part, fruits and veggies are not magically introduced upon adulthood.

We have the skills do to the things that get us and keep us healthy. We are born with those or we learn them as part of everyday life. What we don’t have automatically is the routine to keep these things going or the plan to make them work when things get more challenging. That is why many of us are not getting the experience we want out of health.

What can you do to get the experience you want out of health? You have to find a way. There are ways to do it in every routine. I don’t care how much time you have or don’t have. I don’t care how busy you are. I don’t even care how much you dislike certain foods or exercise. You can find a way as long as you see the value for yourself.

If you want to do something, you will find a way to do it. If you want to do something, you will find YOUR way to do it. That is the key to success. It has to be your way, or it won’t work for you. Here are some steps you can take to find your way to good health:

Step 1- Think about the little things you can do to improve your health
Take a step, any step toward good health. You know what it means to be healthy and you know what you are doing or not doing in your routine. There is no excuse. Even a small step will lead to changes as long as you keep doing it.

Step 2- When you find a small step that works for you, cling to it and commit to keeping it going
No matter how small and insignificant you think something is, it will lead you in the right direction if it becomes part of your routine.

Step 3- Keep an eye on what is working…and what isn’t
The key to setting your routine in stone is making sure that it is working. Keep track of your schedule. You can do this with as much detail or effort as you see fit. Don’t over-complicate things, but if you know which days and times are requiring certain things, you can be sure to properly allocate your tasks.

This is just three steps and if you can do these you are not only off and running, but you are focusing on ways to keep going and you are positioned to make improvements along the way. It really is that simple: take a step by starting something…anything, keep it going if it works, change what you are doing if it doesn’t and keep a close eye on what is and isn’t working, so you can continue to adjust but keep the good parts moving in your routine.

Health is not about being perfect. No one is perfect and no one ever will be. Health is not about staying with some magic formula that you saw on TV or that your friend told you about. Health is about doing what works for you. Health is about finding your own way. If you want to live healthy, you have to find your routine. You have to find your way.

Immediate Action, Long-term Results

Everyone knows that health is a good thing. We all want to be healthy. No one woke up this morning and said: “I want to feel terrible.” Or “I want to be sick and have all sorts of health problems.” No one wants that. No matter how poorly someone takes care of themselves, they don’t want to be sick and out of health. They want to be healthy. Everyone wants to be healthy.

If everyone wants to be healthy, why are there so many people in poor health? Why are so many people overweight? Why is diabetes on the rise? All of these issues are due to lack of action. Or, a better way to look at it: The action that people are taking is the action that is leading to these results.

No matter what action you take, it will bring you results. If you practice healthy habits, you get healthy results. If you fall into unhealthy habits, you will see poor results. In other words, if you focus on actions that will bring you positive results, you get positive results. If you focus on actions that bring you negative results, you get just that, negative results.

That is easy to understand. That is why most people are at least trying to live healthy. Most people know that if they do something, they will get some results that they want out of their action. It’s true. They will get results based on what they are doing. This is no secret and is simple to understand.

What is not so simple to understand is the relation of today and tomorrow. The things that you do today are the results you get tomorrow. When I say today and tomorrow, I am speaking figuratively. That is part of the challenge. We all see it that way. When we are taking action today, we actually expect it to lead to results tomorrow. We expect things we do to yield instant results. When we do something positive that is. When we do something negative, that is a different story.

When we do something that leads to negative results, we not only expect it to lead to results in the distant future, we even talk ourselves into believing that they may not occur at all or that the results won’t be “as bad”. This is clearly a recipe for disaster when you consider that the results you get are directly related to the actions that you are taking. Good or bad, you get what you put in.

What does that mean? It means that what we do today, does lead to results tomorrow. The challenge lies in your definition of tomorrow. If tomorrow is literally the next day, you may not notice a drastic change from one day to another. This can be a difficult thing when you are taking positive actions for your health. This can be an easy, yet devastating thing if you are taking negative actions against your health.

The solution to this problem is simple. If you can think about your actions for what they are, you can justify taking them. They are what brings you your results.

Positive actions bring positive results. If you can stick with them, you know what you are going to get. Just don’t forget that. Keep in mind that tomorrow will be today when it comes around. If you did what you needed to do yesterday, you got what you wanted today. The more you do that, the easier it is to see the small results that add up to big results and allow you to keep each today focused on actions that lead to the tomorrow you want.

Negative actions bring negative results. If you can remember that the actions you are taking will lead to results, you can take a moment to make sure they are in line with what you want. Keep your eyes on the long-term results, because your immediate actions are bringing them to you. Like it or not, you are getting results based on your actions.

Your Results are Hiding Behind Your Excuses

When it comes to health, the results we want may be different from one person to another. The results we want differ based on our goals. Some people want to be skinny, others want to be big and muscular. Many want certain numbers that will tell them that their overall health is good. And many others just want to feel good from day to day. No matter what your results are, you have something that you want to achieve.

Whether you are achieving the results you want depends not only on your goals, but on how well you stick to them. If you stick to your goals, you will reach them and get the results you want. If you don’t stick with your goals you will not reach them and therefore, you will not get the results you want. There is no way around it. You can try to find a way around it, but you won’t. If you keep trying to find ways to get results without actually reaching your goals, you will always end up in the same place…failure.

The dreaded “f-word”. Failure is one of the worst words in the English language. No one wants to hear it. No one wants to be there at any point and time. When you set out to do something, the last thing you want to do is fail. In most cases, that is the worst case scenario. In health, it should feel even worse, but it doesn’t for most people. In fact, many have gotten used to failure in health. Many even expect it because they are so used to it.

Why do people fail so much in health? They fail because they are letting one thing get in their way. The various things that derail routines are not one thing, they are many different things that come up and various times. That is not the issue. The issue is that we allow these things to become one thing. This one thing is the dagger in the heart of any routine. This one thing is the killer of more routines, more goals and more successes than anything else.

What do the little hurdles turn into that allows them to get us off track? What is the one thing that can end any good routine? It is called an excuse. This is the one thing that can knock you off track. No matter what you are doing, no matter how long you have been doing it, if you allow yourself to make an excuse for something, it will end your successful run.

Why do we make excuses? I’m not sure what makes excuses so easy, but I know that we make them because it is the easiest thing to do. When something looks difficult, the easiest thing to do is allow it to truly be as difficult as it seems. You don’t have to do anything to make something difficult. In fact, when you do nothing, it becomes so difficult that it is impossible to achieve anything.

That is what is so dangerous about excuses. As soon as you make one, you are telling yourself that you can’t do something. Not only are you telling yourself that you can’t, you are actually reasoning and providing support for your argument that it can’t be done. Whatever it is, no matter how easy it may be, if you are able to come up with a good excuse, you not only won’t do it, you will actually believe that you can’t do it. Even if you want to do something, you can’t do it if you have an excuse not to.

That is where so many people are with their health. They have struggled to get into a good routine that brings the results they are looking for. This is the result they are getting now. That is not the problem, but just the product of the real problem.

The real problem is that people not reaching their health goals have found excuses for not doing it. They have found reasons that they can’t and they have decided that it is not possible. Even when they tell themselves they are going to do it or try again, they have gotten into the routine of finding that perfect excuse to fail.

Failure is a word that no one wants to hear when they are getting into a routine. Excuses are something that no goal wants to hear when it is being set. There is a reason that goals are difficult to achieve. It is not because they are too tough. It is because it is so easy to find an excuse. We make big excuses, we make small excuses and they are all just as impactful. Any excuse can shut us down at any time.

The key to beating excuses is not letting them exist. When you set a goal, sit down and think of the possible challenges. When you know the challenges that may come up, you can be prepared for them. You can find a way to overcome the challenge ahead of time, you will be able to put it into action when the time comes. If you can find an excuse to let it stop you, you will and it will stop you.

The fact is, when we fail it is not because we aren’t good enough strong enough or dedicated enough. We fail because we are too good at making excuses. If you look at the most successful people you know in any area, what do they have in common? They don’t make excuses. When they are choose to do something, they do it. They find ways to do it, they refuse to let anything stop them and they succeed. Look at someone in your life that is not successful in any area. What do they do? They make excuses. They find excuses to fail and they accomplish that.

Accomplishments are all subjective, so success is completely up to each of us in our own routines. Success to me means getting the results you set out to get. When you make excuses, you can’t get those results. When you are in the routine of making excuses, your results are never visible. They are hiding. Your results are hiding behind your excuses.

What Are You Fighting?

When I ask someone about their health, there is a sense from them that I want to hear something positive. This is true to a point. Do I like hearing success stories? Of course I do. I like to hear about people doing things well and making positive changes to their health.

What I don’t like is to hear people tell me what they think I want to hear. There are so many ways to live healthy and so many reasons to do it, that I wonder why we aren’t all doing it. That doesn’t mean that I expect it to be easy. I know that living healthy is a challenge. Actually, it is a series of challenges.

The first challenge seems to be getting over the fight with yourself. When I talk to people about health for the first time, there is often a struggle for them to find a reason that things aren’t as good as they want them to be or as good as they would like to tell me they are. There is a strange need to please that people have causing them to want to give the best reports and share that they are “doing what they are supposed to do”.

Doing what you are supposed to do is challenging. It is hard to do and not many are very good at it. Doing what works for you is easier to do and will always be more fulfilling. The problem is that we have to figure out a few things:

1. What do you want to do?
2. Why do you want to do it?
3. How are you going to do it?
4. What is stopping me from doing it?

When it comes to health, you need to be able to focus. You need to know what you want to do, why you want to do it and how you are going to do it. If you don’t know any or all of these things, you are going to struggle. One of the reasons for people struggling is not being able to identify these options.

That seems to be the biggest reason people are off track. It’s not that they can’t do it. It’s not that they don’t want to do it. It’s more about not taking the time to set up a plan. We could talk about the importance of planning all day. We could talk about it until we knew our plan inside and out, but that wouldn’t help us get started.

What helps us get started? First you have to get over your hang-ups. What are your hang-ups? What are my hang-ups? They are likely different and that is the point. Everyone has their own reasons for not getting started. They want to get going. They know they should get going. They even know why they should get going, but they don’t know how they are going to do it and can’t get past their inner hang-ups that are keeping them from getting started.

Let’s walk through the steps:

1. What do you want to do?

Let’s talk about exercise. When you want to get more active, what do you have to do? You have to get more active. It sounds simple and even too good to be true. Well, it is too good to be true. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. You have to start by deciding exactly what you want to do. Do you want to run? Do you want to bike? Do you want to walk or hit the gym? There are countless options, but until you choose one of them, you can’t do any of them.

2. Why do you want to do it?

When it comes to exercise, there are many reasons to get started. There are health benefits, weight loss, looking good and many other reasons to do it. Until you identify those reasons, you can’t motivate yourself to do anything. You have to keep the reasons in mind when you get started so you can keep going when it gets tough.

3. How are you going to do it?

This sounds simple and even sarcastic, but I assure you that you need to mind this step. The way you are going to get active is important. The plan is even more important. For example: If you are going to go to the gym, you need to have a bag and a time set aside to go. If you are going to ride a bike, you need a bike. It doesn’t get any simpler than that, yet many struggle to establish the how before they try to get going.

4. What is stopping you from doing it?

This is where we fail. If you are not doing something, you are being stopped. Something is stopping you from doing it. The people that I talk to with excuses and stories about what has happened or not happened are being stopped. Who or what is stopping them? They are stopping themselves. There is a fight that we all have before starting something new. If have you haven’t gotten started, you are fighting yourself and losing.

Setting up your plan can mean the difference between success and failure. If you don’t do it, failure becomes far more likely. Failure is certain if you are fighting yourself. Health takes support and dedication. When met with a fight, health often loses. We can all put up a good fight and fend off a healthy routine. The world around us makes that easy.

But, what are we fighting? We are fighting a good healthy routine. We are fighting energy. We are fighting better sleep. We are fighting long-term health. We are fighting the look in the mirror that we can be proud of. In other words, we are fighting the things we want.

It doesn’t make sense, does it? Of course it doesn’t make sense. When we are asked, we tell ourselves and others that we want to be healthy. When it comes to the action, we often start that fight. If health brings such good things, why do we fight it?

It doesn’t make sense, but if you follow the steps and ask yourself 4 questions, you can win the fight. Ask yourself what you want to do, why you want to do it, how you are going to do it and you will be able to get started. You may want to ask yourself one more important question before you get too far: What are you fighting?

Fitting Exercise In

Exercise is one of those things that we love. Exercise is also one of those things that we hate. Actually, I don’t know too many people that had exercise. I know a few, but most just hate trying to get exercise in. They hate the idea of changing the routine or the thoughts that come to mind when they think about the possibility
of squeezing exercise into their schedule.

Most people are talking about trying to fit in exercise, but very few are actually trying to fitting it in. What’s worse is that most people that are trying to fit it in are not even getting it. They are “trying” and not doing, so it doesn’t make a difference what they want to do until they do it, there is no exercise being fit in.

That is a problem for their health, their mood, their confidence, their sleep, their work, you name it and exercise (or lack of) is impacting the ability to perform. Let’s take a look at some of the positive impact that exercise has on your day to day life. Exercise gives us:

1. Weight Control

In case you’ve been living under a rock, I have a breaking story for you: Exercise helps you maintain a healthy weight. When you burn calories, you lose weight. When you don’t burn them, you gain weight. It’s simple and we all know it.

2. Long-term Health

Exercise prevents many chronic conditions and helps you live a longer life. When you exercise, there are certain risk factors (like heart disease, diabetes to name a few) that you can dramatically reduce. This means longer life and more healthy and enjoyable years throughout your life.

3. Mood Boosting

Have you ever tried working out to start your day? If you have, you likely swear by it and even feel off if you haven’t had your workout. What about the afternoon or evening? Have you ever felt tired and cranky? We have all been there. Exercise is proven to boost mood and is even being used by therapists to treat depression.

4. Energy

Those that workout in the morning know this to be true: Exercise gives you more energy. Not only will you have more stamina throughout each day, but after a workout you will actually have more immediate energy. It wakes the body up and helps you get going. It works at any time of the day, so get moving for more energy.

5. Sleep Improvement

Can’t sleep at night? Try exercising the next day and you will sleep like a baby the next night. Exercise helps us regulate sleep patterns. By moving more during the day, we are better able to shut down at night. It sounds too simple to be true, but it is. Burn more energy during the day and you will sleep better at night.

This is just 5 items on a list as long as your arm. Actually, it is longer than your arm and longer and continues to get longer every day. Scientists are still discovering new ways that exercise impacts our lives. We could talk about the benefits of exercise all day, but that wouldn’t help you see those benefits.

In order for exercise to impact your life, you have to do it. That is the only catch. It’s great to know how good it is and to learn about the benefits, but if you don’t do it, you don’t get any of those benefits. I don’t think people are forgetting the benefits. I don’t think that anyone would choose to deal with chronic conditions knowing that all they have to do is exercise to prevent them.

I think it’s more than that. It goes back to fitting it in. More importantly, it goes back to making it part of your day so that it gets fit in rather than becoming a thought that you simply gave up. We are constantly fitting other things in. We” make time”, “shuffle things around” and “try to get it done” when it comes to every other are of life. We don’t want to let anyone down when they ask a favor or want us to be somewhere. What we don’t do is fit exercise in.

I think the reason we don’t fit exercise in is that we are looking at it in the wrong way. We are looking at exercise as something that we are supposed to do or we should be doing. We also look at it as an extreme version of itself. When I ask someone if they exercised today, they immediately start with the excuses for not exercising and the disclaimers about how they are “not an athlete”, “a fitness nut” or “Superman”, so today, it “just didn’t happen”.

In many cases, they are being true to their routine. But in many other cases, they are short-changing themselves and being quite self-defeating. When you walk, you are exercising. When you take the stairs, you are exercising. When you move instead of standing still, you are exercising. When you stand instead of sitting, you are exercising. Any time you are doing something that requires more movement than an alternative; you are giving your body what it needs. That is the good news. So, what’s the bad news? You need to do more of it!

That doesn’t mean that you have to join a gym or go buy running shoes. It doesn’t mean that your intensity or dedication is lacking. It just means that life as we know it promotes inactivity. It is easier to sit all day. In many cases, it is actually required. It is easier to move less and sit more at home, at work, in public places and anywhere else you may go.

Exercise is not going to just happen for you. And yet, we discourage ourselves as if it is supposed to. We will spend the day working, taking care of kids, friends, going to meetings, feeding pets and all sort of other things. These are all good and important things to do. Don’t get me wrong. But at the end of a day full of these things, we still discourage ourselves because we didn’t go to the gym or go for a long run.

We need to stop thinking about exercise as the gym or a run. We need to start realizing that exercise is easier than that. You can exercise at your desk. You can exercise at home. You can exercise in the airport or the mall. It doesn’t matter where you are. As long as you are willing to fit it in, you can exercise. The problem is not lack of time or space. The problem is lack of creativity. Move your body in any way in any place that you can. That is fitting exercise in.

Stop Trying to Be Perfect

Have you ever heard the phrase: “Nobody’s perfect”? I’m sure you have heard this at one point or another. If you are anything like me, you believed it too. Most people do believe it because it makes sense. I know for a fact that I have made mistakes. I also know that everyone else I know has made mistakes.

Mistakes are part of being human. If you are human, you make mistakes. There are mistakes to be made in all areas of life. Anything you do that involves thinking, decisions or execution of a skill presents the opportunity for a mistake. That doesn’t sound like a very optimistic view, but it is true.

The optimistic view would say that any thought, decision or execution of a skill presents an opportunity for success. This is where I often see the importance of mistakes in our lives. That’s right, mistakes are important. Mistakes are what we learn from. Mistakes are what make us better. Without mistakes, we don’t improve.

More importantly, without the opportunity for mistakes, we have no opportunity for success. When it comes to sports, this is a no-brainer: if you don’t play the game, you can’t win. If you relate it to business: if you don’t call a prospect, you can’t make the sale. If you don’t show up to the meeting, you can’t contribute ideas. The list goes on and on and it’s the same in all areas of life. Without the opportunity for mistakes, there is no opportunity for success.
The bottom line is: if you are afraid to make mistakes, you will never succeed.

This is a lesson I learned a kid. Sports taught me this lesson. It took a few more lessons in the real world before I fully understood it and how it would work in the business world. Now that I get it, life and business are much easier. Do I see mistakes and failure? Of course I do. I experience them regularly. But I also see success daily. Some success comes from just trying again. Most of my success comes from the things I learned from the past mistakes.

When it comes to health, mistakes are also important. Yet, health is an area that people are afraid to make them. When discussing exercise routines with people, I hear far too often: “I can’t do it every day, so I’m not going to do it at all.” Or “I don’t have time to do it for an hour, so I won’t do it at all.”

These are excuses that I hear frequently. I hear them, not because these people are not good enough to get exercise, not because exercise is too hard for them. I hear these excuses because these people are afraid to make mistakes. It is easy to start a new routine. It is not easy to keep a new routine going. Each time you run into a challenge, it is difficult to overcome it.

Challenges will arise. Your plan to overcome these challenges is what will get you through. When you set out to do something new, you are bound to make a mistake or two. When you make those mistakes, you can do one of two things:
1. You can give up
2. You can learn from the mistake and try again

When you try again, you can either give a similar strategy another try or you can start over and try something new. Either way, you are deciding that you are not done and you are able keep going. When you keep going, you can succeed. When you quit, you can’t succeed.

In health, mistakes are not the end of your routine unless you quit. They are simply a roadblock that causes you to stop and think about what you are doing. You have a choice at every roadblock. You can choose to give up or you can choose to keep trying.

The choice is yours. When we were kids, we learned that nobody’s perfect. We learned that quitters never win and winners never quit. We learned all of these things and applied them to other areas of life. Socially, professionally and financially, we have chosen to keep going. In order to live healthy we need to make that same choice. You can try to be perfect, but it won’t happen.

Being perfect is an illusion. For some reason, we think that our health routines need to be perfect. The fact is, nobody is perfect in any area of life, including health. Healthy people are not healthy because they are perfect. They are healthy because they have learned from mistakes and keep trying to live healthy. Health is not about being perfect. Stop trying to be perfect and start doing something that you can do today. If you make a mistake, learn from it and do something differently until it works for you.

The Best Time to Exercise

Exercise is something that we all want to do. Even if you are not doing it regularly, it is something that we all agree that we “should” be doing it. Well, you are right. You should be exercising, working out, or just finding a way to move.

No matter what you call it, you need it to live. You need it to be healthy. You needed it to feel good. You need it to have the energy you want. You needed it to ward off diseases. You needed to lose weight or you need it to maintain your weight. We get more benefits from exercise, but I think you get the picture.

The only way to get the benefits from exercise is to exercise. That’s right, if you don’t do it, you don’t get any of the results from it. You can think about it all you want, but until you do it, the body gets nothing out of exercise. This sounds sarcastic or even condescending, but it is reality. Many people that I talk to on a regular basis are saying that they are thinking about, trying, planning to, you name it and they are doing it. The only thing that they are not doing is exercise itself.

One of the questions that I keep hearing: “When is the best time to exercise?” The answer is not as complicated as you might think. In fact, the answer is as simple as it gets. The best time to exercise is the time that works for you. The best time to exercise is during the time that you have to do it, the time you like to do it the most or simply when you can do it.

This isn’t the answer a lot of people are expecting. You’ve heard from one source or another that claims that there are times that are better than others to exercise, but there really isn’t a difference between morning, afternoon or evening. The difference lies in your routine, your head and your preferences. If you like working out at a certain time, you will stick with it. Many don’t see “liking” exercise as a realistic option. Well, even if it just the time that you can fit it in and fight through it, you will stick with it.

I don’t recommend one time of day over another. When getting started, it is important to try multiple options to see which will work. Actually, before you even try to get started, I recommend sitting down to think about your schedule. It is easy to pick a time and say you are going to go. It is more difficult to actually make that work for a long period of time.

So, how do you know which time to try? Well, that can be simple too. Let’s take a look at some of the key points of morning, afternoon and evening exercise:

Morning Exercise

Getting up in the morning is easier for some than it is for others. It depends on your age, schedule and personal preference, but more importantly, it depends on how your body works. I love morning exercise. When I wake up in the morning, I generally feel pretty good. Am I tired? I am tired on many days, but others I am not. On the days that I feel tired, there is a bit of a struggle to get going. But once I get going, I have another level of energy that I cannot get anywhere else.

My morning exercise is what gets me where I need to be in order to start the day.
The other benefit of morning exercise is that the mornings are consistent. Depending on your schedule, you probably start work at a certain time each day. You probably leave your house around the same time and get to your destination at a certain time as well. We all have a routine that takes us through the process. If exercise fits into that, you can make the most of your morning by waking up and getting your workout out of the way. This not only gives you the benefits of exercise, but it also allows you a mental victory to start the day. When you’ve already taken care of exercise for the day, you don’t have to worry about when (or if) you are going to do it later. It’s done and you can get on with your day.

Afternoon Exercise

Exercising in the afternoon works well for many people. It allows you to have your morning routine. For some that morning routine is hectic enough. This way, you are not worried about that and you can sleep in a bit compared to the morning exercise schedule. One thing that you can’t do is control the afternoon schedule. Many people have meetings, calls and other obligations that move fluidly throughout the workday. As meetings start to move in and out of your schedule, it becomes difficult to set time aside for exercise.

One solution is to go after work is over. Many like to bring gym bags or other equipment to work in order to go right from work to their exercise destination. This works great if you have the energy after a long day of work. You also have to have the resolve to go despite the other options in front of you. There is TV, food, couch, family, more work and countless other things that creep into the afternoon. They all make it harder, but they can be overcome.

Evening Exercise

Many of the same challenges exist in the afternoon and evening. Evenings are treated like mornings in many situations. I talk to people that say that their evening is the only consistent time of the day. Their mornings are crazy, afternoons are the same, but evenings are the part of the day that they can control. Control is a good word to think about when it comes to exercise. We all have a certain degree of control. When you choose to make time for yourself, you are taking control of your schedule and putting what you want into it. If you are letting your schedule run you, you are likely not getting the exercise you need.

Evenings also have their drawbacks. For starters, many are ready to fall asleep shortly after work, making the evening a tough time to exercise. If you are awake and ready for action, the evening can be a great time to get your exercise. The only other caution with this time of day is the after-effects. Much like the morning exercisers feel a burst of energy after exercise, so do the evening exercisers. If this burst is enough to keep you awake at night, you make have problems with evening exercise.

As you can see, there are pros and cons to all times of the day. I’m not going to pretend that exercise is supposed to be this perfect activity that you love every single time and you can set aside a magical time of day that makes it easy. It is all about finding the most pros and the fewest cons. The best time to exercise is the time that has the most pros for you and the fewest cons. The best time to exercise is the time that works for you.