Motivation
I ran across this article last month and I just can not stop thinking about this absolutely amazing man. Paul Alexander was completely paralyzed and confined to an iron lung due to complications from polio when he was six years old. The very fact that he lived at all is a miracle in and of itself but, with the love and support of his family and through his own determination, Mr. Alexander received a law degree and established a private practice.
Even better? Mr. Alexander has taught himself how to breathe on his own for short periods of time (usually when he’s in the courtroom).
Check out this beautiful story (it’s long but worth the read).
Motivation
Change can be scary.
Change requires that we look at ourselves, our patterns, our decisions and honestly assess which are healthy and which are unhealthy. Which patterns we need to scrap, and which need to be developed more.
That might mean that we have to humble ourselves, admit ‘the way I’ve been doing it all along is not , in fact the BEST way to do it – maybe its even the worse way to do it’.
Boy, that really drags up some ugly stuff doesn’t it?
What if the way you’ve been doing something your whole life were completely sabotaging your goals and dreams? Would you be able to give up being right to do the right thing?
In order to avoid being wrong, many of us simply refuse to look very deeply at our behaviors. Maybe we have the ideal person in our heads (the person who hits the gym three- no FIVE times each and every week, who always chooses the salad over the burger, the person who makes good interrelational choices, who’s always there for their friends, who never skips church …), every now and then we might catch ourselves comparing the reality with the ideal but then we feel too confronted, too disappointed in ourselves, so we duck our heads back in the box and go back to pretending that everything is going great in our lives.
But pretending doesn’t make it so.
If you aren’t absolutely satisfied with your life today, if you find yourself feeling sad or discontented or frustrated it might be time to sit quietly with yourself and examine the choices and actions that you are really making.
My family and I recently watched ‘The Truman Show’, a movie about a man who had lived his entire life in a television studio, in which all of his interactions were actually contrived by the producer without his knowledge. Truman knew something was off about his life, he just couldn’t put his finger on it – and despite strong efforts on the part of the producer and actors who made up his life to the contrary Truman was motivated to figure it out (also to track down the girl who got away…). There came a point when he finally stumbled upon the truth – he came to the end of studio – what appeared to be an endless horizon was really a wall. The wall of the box that he’d spent his entire life confined to. The producer tried to convince Truman to stay, that life was safe there in the studio, that people were counting on him not to mess with the status quo. Truman had a choice. He had no idea what was in his future, he had never had a real relationship (except for that girl). He took a chance.
Maybe you’re living in a box too. It could be any number or things but let’s say it’s your health. Whether you used to be able to eat whatever you wanted and never had to exercise and this middle-aged weight is a surprise to you and has left you feeling confused or you weren’t ever even able to run a mile in gym class no matter how hard you tried. Maybe you think ‘this is just the way it is’ because you’ve never known anything different. Are you where you really want to be? Are you willing to consider the possibility that things don’t have to be this way, that you actually can lift the curtain, step out of the box and be – really BE the person that you want to be.
A little step is all it takes.
Make your minutes matter.
Photo credit ‘The Truman Show’ 1998
Recipes
Oh. My. Gosh.
Coach Wright wears many hats around here and one of his newer titles is Chef –which I have to admit, he’s getting pretty good at. Last night Aaron made chicken breast, rice, salad and steamed broccoli – a very healthy meal that blew our past efforts out of the water. That’s because he researched the best way to bake chicken breast – and apparently 350* for 30 minutes is not it.
The secret to perfectly cooked chicken breast is to bake for a short time at a high temperature. The chicken was crispy on the outside, fabulously moist on the inside, and perfectly seasoned. Check out the recipe here.
You’re welcome 🙂
Quality of Life
How much time did you spend planning your last vacation? Did you research where you would stay, which local restaurants to check out, and which activities and sights were not to be missed? Or did you just say, ‘Hey let’s go to Greece next Thursday’ and buy a plane ticket? Many people spend hours planning their vacations, down to the most obscure detail and one week of vacation represents only about two percent of your year.
What if you spent as much time planning for how you will reach your goals as you spend planning a week away?
The things we resolve or set goals about at the beginning of the year are the things that we claim to want the most out of lives:
Health
Financial Security
Success
Strong Relationships
Don’t the things that determine your happiness and satisfaction with life deserve as much attention as your free time? Our goals need to be planned for, mapped out.
We’ve talked a little about setting goals (or resolutions) the past week or so but we haven’t really looked at how are we going to accomplish them. Setting a goal (especially if it’s a SMART goal) is a great first step, unfortunately it’s where many people stop and that’s why they don’t reach their goals. You have to take the next step, breaking the goals into smaller tasks and achievements. What will you do and when will you do it each month, week, hour, and minute – what actions and behaviors will you take to help you reach your goals? What mindset will help you reach your goals?
Now put those actions in your calendar as appointments – and KEEP THEM, or assign blocks of time to different behaviors, make a list – – – whatever you need to do (and WILL do) to keep yourself on track.
Why Minute Movement?
I have a Google alert set up to send articles about fitness every day and have noticed an interesting (but maybe not surprising) pattern. The majority of the articles I’ve received in the past few days were about how few people keep the fitness resolutions they make at the beginning of the year and ways to combat that problem.
Several gyms are offering intense 21-day programs to help their clients develop the habit of using their gym membership, others offer a fitness challenge, and still others offer free classes for a few weeks. All of these can certainly help a person who wants to get in shape, the question is, ‘How sustainable are they?’. Unfortunately, far too often the answer is, ‘Not very’.
Those intense programs can have you seeing results, if you’re following an equally intense nutrition regime. And challenges can be fun. But with anything extremely intense, time consuming, and restrictive you’ll eventually encounter burn-out. If you find that hour-long exercise sessions at your local gym are leaving you too sore and pressed for time, it’s likely that you’ll just stop going. A lot of people do.
Now I’m not suggesting that a gym membership is a bad thing, in fact it’s wonderful to get a good, hard workout that leaves you feeling spent and exhilarated at the same time. But if you’re finding it difficult to get to the gym every day or if you’re finding that you sit in a chair all day (which can actually negate that gym time) you should really give Minute Movement a try.
Minute Movement is not a short term ‘quick fix’ that will leave you burned out and lacking confidence in yourself because you gave up. Minute Movement is a simple, systematic, and sustainable (long term) solution that will help you meet your fitness goals so that this time next year you can find something else to make a New Years Resolution about.
