Life is Tough...And That is AWESOME!

The following is in response to a conversation I had with my son about how life is hard, and sometimes it seems like when you are working really hard at accomplishing something and it doesn’t go your way, you feel like giving up.

Enjoy.

Dear Son,

I can understand and feel your pain.  I’ve been there many, many, many times myself.  You struggle and work to achieve something of worth and value and for some reason, you fail.  It’s even worse when it seems that everything in your life is failing at the same time and it becomes very easy to say “why try anymore?”.  You want to throw in the towel and give up.

Believe me when I say that I’ve experienced this a lot throughout my life.

But let me tell you this…and if you don’t remember anything else I’ve told you…remember this quote: “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

It’s important to remember that because life is tough, life is going to knock you down, life is going to hurt, I can guarantee that life will hurt you a LOT…and that is awesome!

Stretching Before Exercise is A Waste of Time

http://saveyourself.ca/articles/stretching.php

I read this interesting article on stretching before exercise and if you want to read the whole thing go to the above link…It's pretty long so for those who don't want to read here are some of the highlights that I thought that can be helpful.

His whole article can be summed up with the following sentence: “Stretching as we know it — the kind of typical stretching that the average person does at the gym, or even the kind of stretching that most athletes do — is mostly a waste of time.”

The article examines stretching from the stand point of “Why do people stretch?” and does stretching actually achieve those goals?  So why do people stretch? The top 5 reasons are:

1)    Warming Up
2)    Prevention of injury
3)    Prevention of Muscle Soreness
4)    Flexibility
5)    Performance Enhancement

Teach Me To Be A Man

I have a few blogs that I like to follow.  One of my favorites is from Chad Howse.  He recently posted this article on raising men that I highly recommend:

http://www.chadhowsefitness.com/blog/2014/03/3-lessons-in-manhood/

Rise of the Un-MEN

By now I’m sure that nearly everyone has heard the statistics.  The ones that put numbers to the increasing failures of the male gender.  We are being outperformed by women on all fronts; education, profession, religion and being responsible adults.  What gives? 

I even read recently that the oft touted statistic that women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn may not be all that true and that reality is that women soon will be earning as much as 8% more than men!

Boys are failing on an epic scale!

Up front let me state that I’m all in favor of equality and I hope I do not come across as slighting women in any way with what I’m going to say here.  The success that women are having is well earned and deserved, they have worked hard and sacrificed a lot to achieve it (men take note…this is the formula for success).

I also firmly believe that we play very specific gender roles for a reason and that it all part of a divine plan.

More and more it seems that men are opting to forgo the role of the breadwinner to stay home and let mom fulfill the divinely appointed role of protector, provider & presiding for their family.  Is it any wonder that men are reporting increases in reporting depression, anxiety and suicide?  When a man isn’t living up to his divine potential he cannot be satisfied and he cannot feel good about himself. 

On average men now spend more time in the bathroom grooming themselves than women do, spending nearly as much as women on cosmetic and beauty products.

Men today even produce less testosterone (the chemical that makes us men) and each generation declines even further.  Literally making us less and less manly with each passing generation. We are very LITERALLY becoming more feminine.

What really scares me:

SPRINTING

Lately I’ve been trying to add some new things to my workout to get a little extra “Umph” in my day and I discovered something that I think deserves sharing…it’s a little exercise known as Sprinting.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a big advocate of Running. I’ve been a steady runner now for about 15 years and I love it.  I’ve always enjoyed running 3-6 miles on a regular basis and the health benefits I’ve enjoyed are amazing.  Running has even saved my life (a story that I’ll have to share here someday).

I’m also a big fan of really simple exercises that work multiple sets of muscles simultaneously (which is why I’m a big advocate of free weights over machines, or simply doing body-weight work, and only doing three or four exercises for an entire workout).

As I looked around for some good, simple, efficient exercises I started reading about the benefits of Sprinting, and I decided to add it to my workout routine as a finisher (meaning that I finish my workout with this activity) 

What IS Your Excuse?

I see so many people who are unwilling to do what it takes to improve their lives for the better.  Everyone can come up with an excuse as to why they "can't" do any better...the validity of those excuses on the other hand are questionable.

The truth is that the only limitations are in our minds.

NO FEAR - NO WHINING - NO REGRETS

Determined Discipline

We all do it.


Every single one of us is guilty.

We all know what is good for us…spiritually, physically, etc…we know the right things to do, but we just can’t bring ourselves to do them most of the time.

For instance.  I know that if I get out of bed when my alarm goes off and go exercise I’m going to have more energy, feel healthier, be stronger and just have a way better day.  I know that if I do get up on time that I’m 100% more likely to make it to the bus on time to get to work.  I just know that will happen.  Yet EVERY SINGLE DAY when that alarm goes off, I have to make myself get up.  I don’t want to get up.  I grumble and groan about it and often I’ll talk myself out of it and lay back down and sleep some more.  What’s wrong with a little more sleep?  Nothing really, but I know that my day will not go as well if I don’t discipline myself and exercise.

The same can be said for lots of things in our lives.  We know what is good for us and what is not…yet somehow it is always way easier to choose that which is not good for us and doing the thing that IS good for us is always more difficult.

Why is that?

It’s because the Natural Man lacks what I’ll call “Determined Discipline” and in fact he really hates it.  The Natural Man seeks the easy, lazy path of least resistance. The path that appears to have low levels of difficulty and the one that will bring pleasure NOW…not defer it for later.  This short sightedness leads to problems later, but the Natural Man doesn’t care, he wants pleasure NOW.