It’s not what you think. The context I’m talking about “cheating” in is not one we normally think of. I’m not referring to cheating on a relationship, in a game, or ay other type of contest. I’m talking about cheating on plans.
How’s that diet and exercise plan going right now? How’s that spend more time doing things you love plan going? How’s that financial plan going? Have you cheated on any of these lately? It’s ok – really! I’m not beating anyone up for cheating. I can cheat on diet and exercise with the best of them (not to mention other things). But the problem we all have to be careful of is cheating on plans without planning to compensate.
For example – ideally if I eat something that wasn’t part of my diet plan I’ll add something to the exercise plan to compensate for it. When I use my time for something other than I planned to use it for ideally I can make up that time somewhere else so that I still accomplish the things important to me. When we cheat on our budget and use funds intended for one category for another category, we should make up for that in another category.
It’s no secret that most people lack the discipline to stick to every plan perfectly. Our minds change. We lose focus. Our motivation wavers in moments of weakness. But we must accept that when we don’t follow the plan something is going to compensate whether we want it to or not. If I blow up the diet I’m going to have to exercise more or fall short of the fitness goal I want to accomplish (or let it take more time). If I skip quality time with my family I have to make time available to replace that or miss out on those moments forever. If I spend money on eating out that wasn’t in the plan I won’t have as much money as I wanted to have for vacation (or it will take longer to save it).
The common denominator in any of those scenarios is time – the great equalizer. All plans require time. We can either stick to the plan, compensate, or accept that the goal will take more time. The easiest option is to avoid the discipline of sticking to a plan and simply accept that reaching goals will take more time. Why rush goals when I can eat what I want now, make urgent what seems urgent now, and buy whatever I want now? Just accepting that goals will take more time enables us to cheat on plans without compensating. It enables us to lack discipline.
It is the lack of discipline to stick to plans or compensate and adjust to changed plans appropriately that makes so many people fall short of their hopes, plans and dreams. A little cheat here and a little cheat there never hurt anybody…until it adds up over time into a mountain of lost opportunities. So be careful when you cheat – it could cost you something you can’t get back, time.
In Ephesians 5 wives are commanded to respect their husbands and husbands are commanded to love their wives…. as their own bodies… as he loves himself. What does loving as yourself, as your own body, really look like in today’s culture?
There is a common corny joke about anytime two guys are in the woods and see a bear they don’t have to out-run the bear, they just have to outrun their friend. If it was a man and his wife the man should run WITH his wife, loving her survival as much as his own. That’s why it always happens that way in action movies too.
Another way husbands should look at the “as you love yourself” is to actually TAKE CARE of yourself – as in exercise, maintain some level of health. Loving our wives “as ourselves” isn’t saying much if we’re not taking care of ourself.
I feel like I’m in this boat right now. I ate A LOT over the holidays, didn’t exercise for the past couple of months, and put on probably 15 lbs. It’s time to get back in a healthy routine. Does this sound like a new years resolution? Whatever you want to call it. I’ve gotta get re-focused on my health.
Men, every time we feel like being lazy and not exercising to take care of ourself we should think of it as loving our wife less because we’re loving ourself less.
My goal for this year is to lose 25 lbs and keep it off through the holidays. What is your fitness goal for 2012?
Other than the most important thanks I give every year for God’s mercy, My Wife, Family, Friends, Health, and Wealth, here are some particular financial-related things I’m thankful for this this year at Thanksgiving:
Several weeks ago I had the privilege of torturing myself through a 3.5 mile and 35 obstacle US Marine style course called the Goodwill Mud Run. It was a blast considering the cuts and pains, the fact that I was not in shape for it, and the mud in places I didn’t know mud could go.
As I look back on that experience I’m reminded of a few financial relationship principles we need to keep in mind:
Sometimes It Ain’t Pretty
The crazy thing for me about the mud run is the obstacles weren’t the hard part. I was fine as long as we were on an obstacle. I can push right through that sort of exertion. It wasn’t the cuts and pains or even the mud that made it difficult for me (although I did get about a gallon of it in my mouth on the very first mud-hole). Where I struggled the most was during the running from one obstacle to the next.
I hate running for the sake of running, so I just don’t do it enough. There’s really only two things that effectively motivate me to run – Shawna (when she is running), and playing ball (usually basketball). When it comes to the constant and steady pounding of the leg muscles for running long distance, I suck.
Needless to say running 3.5 miles with zero training before the event was not pretty for me. It didn’t matter that I had mud in my bleeding cuts and every time I spit there was as much mud as saliva. I felt like my lungs were refusing to absorb oxygen in protest of what I was putting my body through. My chest had that awful cold feeling you get after running hard in cool weather for about four days after the event. It was terrible.
Sometimes working through life’s challenges is going to be ugly and we’re going to have to do things we don’t like to do because it is necessary to reach the goal.
Finishing The Race Eventually is Better Than Not Finishing At All
The Mud Run is very much like a Marine training course. They even have real Marines in uniform out there yelling at you all through the course. I don’t know the background on the Mud Run, but I guess in the spirit of the Marine way you don’t run this race as individuals – you do it in teams.
My team was awesome. I was not. My friend organized the team and must have either thought I was in better shape or he wanted to get me in better shape – all at once.
I was the slowest runner on the team. What little ground I was able to make up by going through the obstacles faster than my teammates was quickly lost by running so much slower than them from one obstacle to the next. I tried my best to keep up but about halfway through I realized if I didn’t slow down to a pace I could sustain my legs might give out, I might hurl, or worse (my family has history of heart issues and I already have the cholesterol).
It didn’t feel good knowing that I couldn’t get there faster. I could have pushed it and might have been fine, but I had reached a level of pain that was as far as I wanted to go. It felt like as much as I could bear at the time.
Sometimes we need to push ourselves harder, but sometimes we need to accept that reaching a goal is going to take longer than we want it to. It’s better to get there eventually than to not get there at all.
Finish The Race Together
My three teammates knew we had to finish the race together, and they were very good sportsman to me – the team anchor (not in the good sense – like I was an anchor they were having to drag ). They challenged me to push myself and they encouraged me to keep going. That helped me more than they know. If it wasn’t for them I might still be out there meandering my way through the course and asking myself “Why am I doing this?”.
Surprisingly enough my friend who invited me to be on the team asked me to do it again in the Spring. That is either true muv (man-love) or he doesn’t know anyone else dumb enough to say yes. I accepted the challenge and promised I will be in better shape for it next time (maybe a lighter anchor).
It matters that we have accountability in our lives. It matters that we have support around us. It matters for whatever goal is in front of you now and whatever the next goal is after that.
Work through the ugly stuff, make steady progress toward the eventual goal, and finish together.
Question: Have you ever participated in a mud run or other race and had a similar experience as me? Will you hold me accountable to getting in better shape for next time?
I love basketball. It’s what gets me out of bed and to the gym in the morning, which is the only time of day I can consistently get exercise without stressing about work or family time. When it comes to getting up early in the morning I’ve tried everything I know to try. Shawna isn’t a morning person. Friends schedules conflict so they can’t be there consistently. But there is one thing I can count on – 99% of the time at least one other dude who loves basketball as much as me will be in the gym at 6:00 shooting hoops, and sometimes we even have 6-10 of us so we can play a couple of games.
Basketball is the ONLY thing that has ever consistently gotten me out of bed in the morning to go to the gym, and it works out great. I can show up at 6:00, play ball for 30 minutes, and then do some other cardio or resistance exercise for 30-45 more minutes. It gets me up and going, it’s something I enjoy, and it helps me be fit and healthy. I’m basically tricking myself into having a healthy discipline of regular exercise because something I enjoy motivates me.
Don’t we all need something like that in our life? Maybe you’re like me and you need something you love to encourage physical fitness in your life. What is one thing you enjoy so much that it gets you up and going in the morning?
The same principle is true with regards to financial discipline. It isn’t fun having to budget and being disciplined to follow it. That is why we say there must be fun in the budget. There must be things in the budget that are enjoyable for you so that you have something to look forward to that motivates you to have the discipline to do the rest. What is the fun thing in your budget that motivates you to stick to the plan?
Shawna and I like to watch the Biggest Loser. It has something to do with life change and we all somewhere inside want to be healthier people no matter what our weight. I heard an interesting comment on the show the other week that caught my attention.
One of the contestants said something like “Saying no to junk food is saying yes to myself” and they were referring to the positive health benefit. It struck me as a very strong statement. Think about that for a minute and consider all the things we could put in that sentence in the place of junk food.
Saying no to the brand new car, or house, or boat, or whatever THING is saying yes to my future financial position.
Saying no to watching 4 hours of TV per night is saying yes to more quality family time.
Saying no to porn or facebook is saying yes to relationship with spouse.
Saying no to “me time” is saying yes to having time for God.
Anything you put in the place of the no and yes position is ultimately a benefit to you. It is a discipline issue.
What other ways can you think of to make a no a yes for our own good?
Yesterday I think I nearly broke my friends ribs. We were playing basketball at the end of our workout (something we do all the time). As we both went for a loose ball I somehow went under his arm from behind and drilled him in the rib cage with my shoulder.
He went down immediately – moaning and groaning about his ribs and he think they cracked. He was feeling it the rest of the day but kept acting like he was fine. I feel horrible about it. He is planning on running a 10k next week and that accident will probably cause him more pain during the race than he would have had otherwise.
I didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident. But I can’t take it back. The damage is done. In this case it physical damage. But isn’t it true that sometimes we hurt our friends emotionally or they hurt us emotionally? I’ve hurt friends feelings before just by having other friends. That was totally unintentional. I’ve also hurt friends’ feelings by backing out on commitments I made to do something with them. That is the emotional equivalent of walking up to my friend and physically punching him in the face while we were playing basketball.
We all make mistakes though – right? The important thing is to learn from them and change the behavior moving forward. The strongest friendships survive the mistakes along the way.
For about 29 years of my life I was for the most part allergy free. Now that I’m 30 it seems like I have a regular stream of snot coming out of my head.
There was a short span of my life when my dad and I got poison ivy every time we went to cut fire wood and we would have to bathe in calamine lotion for a week to get rid of it. If I recall correctly (I was very young – dad taught me to work at an early age) it only took about two years and probably three major poison ivy episodes for my parents to decide dad and I should seek medical assistance in this area (because the last thing we were going to do was avoid cutting firewood). So the doctor gave us a series of shots (I was a very tough kid) that basically gave us immunity to poison ivy. I’ve never had to worry about poison ivy from that time on, and for the most part I don’t recall ever having any other major allergy problems…until now – age 30.
It seems like for the last year or so I’ve been officially allergic to waking up. That’s what I’m declaring it until someone smart informs me or I take the time to educate myself on what the heck my morning problem is. I’m not talking about being allergic to GETTING up. I’m seriously saying I have a problem when I WAKE up. The normal half coherent rolling over in sleep type of ‘waking up’ doesn’t bother me. It’s only when I’m truly awakened in a way that my brain begins functioning on a conscious level – snot begins to flow out of my head. It’s like snot is the oil of my brain and my nose is the oil leak – brain cranks up and nose begins to leak.
For a while I thought maybe I’ve developed an allergy to dust or something, so we cleaned our room very thoroughly. Maybe it’s our dog sleeping in our room (on the floor on his own special bed – NOT in our bed – that’s another story). But it couldn’t be a dog allergy because I don’t have this sneezy snotty problem in the middle of the day when I’m around dogs – or dust either for that matter. I’ve ridden this thing out for at least a year, making it through every season, just to confirm it isn’t pollen or whatever other seasonal allergies. Nope – none of that explains this snotty phenomenon I only experience when I truly wake up from sleep.
I’m wide open to professional explanations from anyone who will be so kind to explain. Until then or until I do some research I’m officially diagnosing myself as allergic to waking up.
One of the blogs I read is this guy, mymoneyblog.com - I read it because my financial counsellor recommended it. Mymoneyblog has some pretty good stuff to read sometimes. Like recently he linked to this article (Young Adults Fastest-Growing Group of Uninsured) which I thought was very interesting. My young, healthy family was in the “uninsured” group for three years. We recently got some high deductible coverage though. Even though I still don’t like the seemingly high premium I do feel a bit more peace knowing that if something bad happens I won’t have to live in a van down by the river.
Anyway, if you happen to be in the boat I was in and you realize you need to find some form of health insurance I know the best place to look – www.zanderins.com. They get the best quotes from several providers. I couldn’t find a better deal.
Check out that article linked above. If you’re like me it will remind you of how ridiculous healthcare is becoming…
This is an interesting article about genetic advances. I’ve read a little about this in other places to know it is true. Check it out and then see my notes at the bottom.
Your Genetic Code Is Not Carved in Stone By Al Sears, MD
New research is revealing how your environment actually changes your genetics – and it’s putting you in the driver’s seat. In November, the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute released the results of their groundbreaking study. They found that a mother’s diet during pregnancy not only affects her child, but also her child’s offspring. This means that the lifestyle choices a woman makes can affect several generations of children – a revolutionary idea that flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
For more than 150 years – since the time of Darwin – scientists have believed that any changes to an organism cannot be passed on to the next generation. According to strict Darwinism, if you were to change your diet, lose weight, and become super-fit, your children would not benefit from your efforts. But we now know there is something more at play: the “epigenome.” The epigenome plays a powerful role in your health… and could make the difference between whether or not you “inherit” heart disease or diabetes or something else.
Scientists in an emerging field of research – epigenetics – have discovered that your genes are only 15 percent of the total genetic material you get from your parents. For example, your genes give you many individualizing traits like blue eyes or brown hair. The remaining 85 percent – the epigenome – is a scaffolding of proteins that surround your DNA’s double-helix pattern.
As it turns out, this “scaffolding” functions as an interface that interacts with your environment. Based on the lifestyle choices you make, the epigenome has the power to turn genes on or off, changing the way your body translates your genetic coding into the proteins that make up YOU.
The Children’s Hospital Oakland study, lead by Dr. David Martin, split genetically identical pregnant mice into two groups. The mice had been bred in a way that gave the scientists the ability to monitor a gene that determined both the color of their coats and their tendency to develop chronic disease. So, by tracking coat color, they were able to follow the effects of vitamin supplementation across two generations of offspring.
The first group of mice received a standard diet. The second group received the same diet, with the added benefit of supplemental vitamin B12, folate, choline, and zinc. When the babies were born, the females from both groups were mated and fed identical diets with no supplements. When the offspring gave birth, Dr. Martin’s team discovered that the original mice that had the diet with extra vitamins passed the benefits on to both their children and grandchildren.
Findings like these have powerful implications in both directions. It means that, by making healthy choices, your efforts can have a positive effect not only on your children but on your grandchildren as well. On the other hand, a diet of fast food and sodas will not only wreck your own health, it could predispose future generations to chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
That helps to explain why so many schoolchildren suffer from high blood pressure and low HDL (good cholesterol). The poor dietary choices their parents made are coming home to roost. This discovery gives us new insight into a long-standing debate between Charles Darwin and a guy you may never have heard of – French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
Darwin‘s theory, which has been shaping the direction of modern science, can be summed up in a few words: Genes cannot be affected by the outside world. In other words, your lifestyle choices have no effect on your genetic code or how those genes are expressed.
But Lamarck believed that if an organism changes during its life in order to adapt to its environment, those changes would be passed on to its offspring – and Dr. Martin’s study is one of several that are proving he was correct.
So, guess what? It looks like you’re no longer a “victim” of your genetic programming. If, for example, if you decide to exercise vigorously to develop new muscle, it now appears that it’s possible for you to pass on a predisposition to build muscle with exercise to your children… and perhaps even further down your line of descendants.
Conscious decisions to improve your health will interact with your epigenome. In turn, the proteins in your epigenome can turn off genes that would have otherwise expressed themselves as disease in your descendents. Instead of the old model, think of your genetic code as a library. You have thousands of choices, but you never check out all of the books. The epigenome interacts with your environment and your choices to determine which books to “read.”
You can actually “talk” to your genes to improve your health and prevent disease.
I hope you appreciate the power of that last statement. It means you no longer have to live in fear of disease – even if you have a family history of it.
Vitamins like E, C, and A send messages to your genes that normalize cell division. This alone can aid in preventing many forms of cancer.
For vitamins E and C, I recommend taking more than the U.S. government suggests. Start with 100 IUs of vitamin E and 2,000 mg of vitamin C daily.
Here are four other nutrients that powerfully support detoxification and proper genetic expression:
Vitamin B12: 500 to 1,000 mcg daily
Folic acid: 500 to 1,000 mcg daily
Vitamin B6: 10 to 20 mg daily
Betaine: 200 to 1,000 mg daily
Don’t sit back and allow “bad genes” to ruin your health. Take action and make yourself and future generations healthier.
I know you can get those vitamins in a lot of places, but the ones I take are here. These health articles I post are usually totally unrelated to our online business or the products we offer (I read them from a newsletter with no ties), but the articles are so consistent with the benefits our products offer that I have to share how to get what I consider the best health products on the market.
There is also a couple of genetic tests we offer. One helps you identify whether or not you have problems with specific genes that give you a predisposition for heart disease. Another helps you identify how your body absorbs B-vitamins which greatly affect your health. You can find those tests, Gensona tests, here. These tests aren’t cheap, but they’re worth it if you really want to take action to make your future offspring healthier.
). They challenged me to push myself and they encouraged me to keep going. That helped me more than they know. If it wasn’t for them I might still be out there meandering my way through the course and asking myself “Why am I doing this?”.