Tip # 4: Take your Nuts with you, wherever you go!
Total estimated time taken out of your day = approx. 10 minutes (as detailed in my previous blogs) –
Represented by:
Time to perform Tip # 1= 5 min
Time to perform Tip # 2 = 3 min
Time to perform Tip # 3 = 2 min
So, hopefully you are trying to incorporate the first 3 tips I have shared with you in my previous blogs. Also, hopefully, you are slowly being convinced about my subject heading.
With this tip (#4), adding nuts to your day is a fantastic ‘snack’ option. Like I have mentioned in a previous blog, ‘snack’ does not need to be a euphemism for junk food. Snacking can be healthy too and should be encouraged for many good reasons.
What do you need to do?
Eat nuts but don’t go nuts on it!
All you need is a handful. Actually, we all have different size hands so I will be more specific – eat less than or equal to 30g of nuts. Some good nuts to choose from include: walnuts, almonds, cashews, peanuts and macadamias.
Quick snacks on the run should still ideally provide high-quality protein with a controlled amount of carbohydrate. This handful roughly provides between 4g and 7g of Protein and Carbohydrates and vary from nut to nut.
Time taken to perform this Tip # 4 in the mornings is approximately 1 minute. Yep, only 60 seconds. So, the running total for the 4 tips so far is approximately equal to 11 minutes. Eleven minutes out of your busy day!
Just to eat right.
A good snack. Berries are a wonderfully tasteful treat.
Good Fats.
My aim is to show you how my Top Ten Tips to eating right should take you less than 30 minutes of your day. Why is this eating tip worth your time and of great value to your body, you may ask?
Well, it provides ‘good fats’ to your body. Yep, not all fats are ‘bad’, but you know that. Your body needs fats to survive and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There are some vital minerals and vitamins that are fat soluble only.
For example, vitamins A, D, E and K are some such vitamins. So, these essential vitamins are only assimilated in to your body as nutrients in the presence of fat.
Even for those of you reading this blog that have started or are planning to commence your ‘get fit for summer’ training program, understand that losing fat is assisted when you provide the body with fat. Good fats, that is.
That’s correct – you need fat to burn fat!
Good fats provide many benefits such as omega – 3 fatty acids that elevates good cholesterol or High Density lipo-proteins (HDL). Why is this important? Well, this lowers your risk of heart disease as blood is more malleable, that is, blood is made thinner, hence flows better to keep you alive.
Good fats from nuts also provide joint protection. This is vital for those of you who work out in the gym with weights – like me. Having nuts in your diet allows better recuperation for inflamed joints, stiffness and swelling. You’ve got to be nuts not to include them in your diet after reading this.
It should also be noted that these good fats are found in cold water fish such as salmon, tuna and mackerel and plant-based foods such as flaxseeds and soyabeans. Reach out and grab them and add these sources to your diet.
To dig deep, you have to dig deep.
Nuts come in many sizes.
The average person does not eat adequate daily amounts of these good fats, probably less than 1g per day. Carrying around two or three servings of nuts with you in your busy day does not take much time to consider and provides great value to your body, mind and vitality.
Nuts come in many sizes but are essentially small and convenient enough to eat ‘on the run’. Here’s an old Uni riddle: What do you call nuts on a wall? Yep, walnuts. So go for walnuts. There’s no excuse!
We’re on track to prove that Eating right actually takes less time than you think. So far, a grand total of 11 minutes out of your day to apply my Top Four of my Top Ten Tips to get you in Tip-Top Shape this summer.
You’re now Aware. Apply Action. Adapt accordingly.
My Triple A philosophy to self-development.
Thank you for reading.
Until next time,
Do you strive to better yourself in every way? Are you a Leader?
Life is also complex. One of the skills is to make this complexity a little less complex. Simplify the complex. De-clutter. Simplify life. Most of us would agree on this too.
Life is also an exercise in Risk Management. Anyone that thinks otherwise needs to put their thinking hat on for a few minutes. Look back at your life. Look at your life so far to this point. Look at all the decisions you have made either consciously or subconsciously to minimise your life risks. How many?
Many.
I believe one category with high risk to a growing number of human beings today, partly because of the increasing levels of obesity is cardiovascular disease and other stress-related disorders.
As I see it, it is not enough to just eat the right foods and keep cholesterol levels low. It is also not enough to exercise regularly, not enough still, to take regular holidays to ‘get away from it all’.
Nope, not enough.
How can we lower that moderate to high risk of cardiovascular and stress-related diseases? As I see it, to protect ourselves and lower these real Life Risks, we must learn to ‘switch-off’. Like I tell most of my apprentices in the gym and in life, we need to learn to “quiet the mind”.
Easier said than done.
We need to learn how to ‘turn off our engines’ in order to lengthen the effective useful life of our time on this planet. What I mean by this is that we need to switch off our production of the “Fire within”. What Fire Within, you may be asking?
You see, we are many things. One thing I know is that we are not in control of ourselves as much as we think we are. We are hormonal creatures. Because of this, the Fire Within is a term I use for the production of the hormone – “adrenaline”. I also refer to this as the “Energy Hormone”. The hormone that gives you that sense of Vitality. The hormone that is triggered whenever we a faced with a ‘flight or fight’ response to a threat. That fire within needs to be turned off, when no longer needed.
This hormone, this Fire Within needs to be tamed. To be controlled. Better. Many people need to learn to become less dependent on this energy hormone for their everyday living. As a keen observer of human behaviour, I believe that like many other things people struggle with managing, in life – their diets, their money, their insatiable desire for ‘newness’, their constant dis-satisfaction with the old etc, many people do not know how to ‘switch off’ this vital hormone – the giver of vitality or life and also – THE TAKER!
Not turning the Fire Within OFF, allows emotions such as anger, frustration, irritation, challenge and excitement trigger this energy hormone: adrenaline. I see many people incapable of managing these psychological triggers of this deadly hormone. Incapable of bringing this hormone under control. They let these emotions get the better of them.
Effective stress management is what is needed. Some rules of the brain to consider –
Step 1: Quiet the Mind.
Step 2: Repeat to Remember.
Step 3: Remember to Repeat.
Effective stress management requires that we be healthy in mind and spirit, not just in our physical bodies. What I am talking about here when I refer to effective stress management, it is to “quiet the mind …. And spirit”. This is what will truly allow you to manage one of your life’s greatest risks: adrenalin mis-management.
Eating well and exercising is not enough.
Many individuals seek adrenalin ‘highs’ and seek increasing levels of excitement and joy to enjoy the thrill of challenge. They never seem to get enough. Constantly seeking more and more different ways to experience the adrenalin rush. I believe these people may find it much more difficult to manage adrenalin which could likely increase their life risks.
Ask yourself: are you one of these types of people?
Like any surfer would know, you cannot keep riding the peak of the wave forever as there will always be a trough. A low point. Adrenaline “junkies” need to train and re-train themselves to experience life without the constant novel stimulation. They need to come down from the “mountain-tops” and enjoy the peace and calmness of the valley. This is where true rest and recuperation/re-charging and healing can occur.
Please do.
Your life depends on it more than you think. Turn off the Fire Within.
The hustle and bustle and frantic pace of modern living does not allow us the luxury of natural recovery. We are robbed of it. This comes at a cost: an ever-increasing state of mental diseases or stress-related diseases. A costly price to pay for not managing the energy hormone, better.
Because of this theft brought on us by modern-day living, we find ourselves planning these ‘vacations or holidays’ in to our lives, through deliberate design. But, you cannot escape YOU – you cannot run away from your mind.
Even Jesus Christ, the greatest psychologist that ever lived, thought it was very important, too. Rest, that is. There is a passage in the bible where he did request of his disciples to follow him to a quiet place and get some rest (somewhere in Mark gospel, I think).
Think about it: Jesus Christ thought it was necessary all those years ago.
Now, from a Christian – religious point-of-view, if Jesus Christ thought it was necessary for him and his disciples to periodically get some rest, then, who are we to think we can exist without it?
Practice switching off the Fire Within before the flames burn out your life before your time.
Pour some water to put out those flames. From time to time.
Don’t just treat the symptom (vacations/holidays). Focus on treating the cause: Quietening your mind. And spirit.
The title does not refer to what some of us did in our youth with beer and the various other types of alcohol. No, I am talking about: water, and consuming more of it.
When you wake up, go to the toilet and relieve yourself first thing, drag yourself from the bathroom to the kitchen sink and pour 12 glasses of water (approximately 250ml per glass) in to a larger flask or water bottle. The water bottle should be able to hold 3.0L of liquid, in this case – water or H2O (for the chemistry inclined).
Approximate time needed to do this:3 minutes or 180 seconds.
Can you take 180 seconds out of your ‘busy’ day to do this very important task? You bet you can! This is the 2nd Tip to “Tip-Top” shape and all it takes is 3 minutes.
So, back to my previous blog, when we add the 3 minutes to the time it took to do the first habitual tip (which was less than five minutes), you have an accumulated total of 8 minutes. Yep, eight minutes to invest to a more healthier – YOU.
What to do after you’ve filled the water bottle? Put it in the fridge to cool. Why? Because, you are going to take it with you to work and be ready to drink from it throughout the day until you finish it.
Why is this tip valuable to your body and worth your time investment?
Water makes up more than sixty percent of your body’s mass. It is vital to your health and vitality and without sufficient water intake, you could put your life at risk. If you didn’t know this, sometimes when your body tells you that it is hungry, a lot of times, it is actually asking you for more water. It is telling you, you are thirsty.
Why? Well, if you are not aware of this, the body does draw a lot of its water from the food you eat.
So, when you constantly sip water throughout your work day, in addition to its health benefits, you will feel fuller. And when you drink before, during and after every meal, it reduces your appetite, especially during the rest of your day.
There are many studies done on what the recommended daily amount of water an average person requires and generally, there is a consensus that a person should drink anywhere between 8 and 10 glasses (250ml) per day. Great!
The question I would like you to ask yourself is this: are you currently drinking that many? Be honest. I am certain that many (maybe you included) are not drinking anywhere near the recommended daily allowance.
If you’re staying physically active (and I am presuming most of you reading this are active), having a little bit more (12 glasses) is wiser, giving you a little buffer for the additional energy output you expand during exercising.
Most of you know that the moment you realize that you’re thirsty, it’s a little too late. The body, by that stage has already lost approximately 4-5% of its total water. Now, you should note that your energy output is heavily dictated by the amount of water or hydration level you have at any point in time. Losing just 1 percent of your body weight in water (approximately 1kg to 2kg) can decrease your overall energy output by as much as 20 to 30 percent.
Now, that is a significant reduction in potential energy output. It will affect your vitality. You will notice this lack of energy in your training sessions. You can see that dehydration puts unnecessary stress on your body, on your organs. Your body goes hunting for water in other places – within the body itself. Where do you think it will find water? Yep, you guessed it – your kidneys, your stomach, colon and also, where you least want to lose it – your hard earned muscles.
All that muscle you have been working hard in the gym for months. Years, perhaps. Being catabolised. Not good. Not what you desire. You want to work hard to build muscle and then hang on to whatever muscle you have. Muscle is precious. Preserve it as best you can from it been cannibalized by its own body.
From a health point-of-view, your organs are put under unnecessary stress than it already has and does not work at its most effective and efficient selves. Your brain requires adequate water to allow you to focus and think at its optimum. A lack of water can also relate to recurring headaches and migraines. I have seen a reduction in these ailments over the years with my clients, the frequency and intensity of such drops.
From a muscle point-of-view, muscles that don’t have sufficient water will mean that your lifts in the gym due to a reduction in your strength levels. This would mean a less than your best effort which would translate in to less potential for muscle growth. No growth means no progress. No progress ultimately leads to an empty, unhappy feeling in your gut. This remains true not only for muscle but for almost all areas in our lives – not experiencing a step-by-step progression towards whatever goal you are working towards.
No progress – you get de-motivated. Progress – you feel motivated. The latter feeling is preferable, I believe.
We are all ‘goal-seeking’ animals, so make this 2nd Tip of my Top Ten Tips to a healthier you a part of your daily life. Take action and start making this habit a part of your life. Today. In a week, see how you feel.
It takes approximately 8 minutes of your day to carry out these two habits. Give your body, your life what it needs. Simply, because you’re worth it. The compound effect of making these two tips habit is contribution to a better quality of life in your future.
You’re now Aware. Apply Action. Adapt accordingly.
In my experience, eating right can actually save you time. Save you, life.
It is winter in this part of the world (I’m live in the beautiful city of Sydney, Australia). Stop, project less than 12 weeks from now, when the next season arrives – ahhh, Spring. Picture this: people are getting out their spring/summer clothes from the cupboards and are feeling a little down because they can’t squeeze in to them like they remembered they did last year. It can be quite de-motivating for some.
Maybe , you’re in that spot of bother right now?
In this first blog of an 8.5 Reasons why Eating RIGHT should not take too much of your time.
My Tip # 1: Never Skip Breakfast!
In one of my earlier blogs, I state that imagination is key to the achievement of any worthwhile goal or goal you place value on . So, if achieving a more sculptured (tonned body) is what you desire you need to learn to use your imagination.
Yes, use your imagination to visualize (now) how you would like to look by summer. This is a very important step – ‘seeing’ yourself as you imagine yourself to be. Having a clear understanding of your destination (refer to earlier blog: “Don’t be a rudderless ship”).
The more vivid the picture of your destination is in your mind and the more it connects with your heart, the more drive and focus you will muster.
Champions practise a lot of visualisation and simulation. To create magic, you need to fuse the worlds of sanity (where you are) with insanity (where you dream/imagine you are, before you are). That is difficult. That is one of the key keys. Don’t stop. Trying. Believing. Keep on … keeping on. You’ll get there. Everyone always does. Especially, if you do it with your heart. and …. with LOVE.
And, with the help of “Coach Mo” (incidentally, that little voice on your shoulder, we can call Coach “Mo”) to start your steam train again …. Hoot … hoot … slowly towards your goal). Just like a steam-train, getting started in your body transformation goals, getting those wheels cranking at the beginning of the journey is the difficult part.
But when you pick up [Mo]mentum (Coach Mo), you, just like that steam train can smash through whatever obstacles that lay in your path. To smithereens! Because you have Big Mo (momentum) on your side.
Here we go again.
Its easy to put off things, to procrastinate. Don’t. Don’t leave it for September, it will be too late. That’s when the majority of people start panicking and joining gyms. Start now. Find your plan (or get help from the relevant professional) and work your plan. You don’t want Spring and then Summer time and Christmas to roll around and you not feel happy about the way you look in you clothes, now, do you? Or you can just buy bigger clothes to hide it all.
Up to you.
You’re the Captain of your ship through the seas of Life. Set you goal towards being your BEST and put a quality plan in place (includes your health & overall well-being) and set sail … Towards your destination.
Making better use of the 86,400 seconds given to us every day
I have said this before: no matter what your exercise goals are, eating healthy (well-compositioned meals), can help you achieve them faster.
And right now, time is ticking and time is your friend as we have just started Winter and have a little under 10 weeks to Spring. But, the question you’re probably thinking is how are you supposed to spend time preparing healthier meals. You barely have enough time to hit the weights, how are you realistically supposed to find time to watch what hits your plate? Right, I hear you …. that is why I wrote this blog to convince you to help you, help yourself more effectively.
Eating right is actually easier than you think.
How so?
Well, in my more than two decades in the health and fitness industry and helping hundreds of people around the world. It is one truth I have discovered. They have learned that, too. You can save more of your life. Here’s how …
I believe that spending a few minutes a day making the right decisions about your nutrition could save you from spending twice the time in the gym or four times as much time on the treadmill or aerobics. How so, Paul, you may be asking? I don’t have the time, you may say!
I argue that it typically takes less time to prepare a healthier meal than it does to work off the extra calories you would eat if you didn’t spend time watching your diet.Makes sense? Yes, it does!
Think about it.
You have 86,400 seconds of your life everyday to live, the way you choose to. But, my question is why would you spend more of those seconds sweating and exercising (and for many enthusiasts doing group classes – smelling intense body odour in small bacteria-infested rooms).
I pity these folks and their poor, poor nostrils. If you do like it, God bless you. Applying my tips could mean you spend less time doing those classes. Smelling those arm-pits. That would be good for you and your nostrils, wouldn’t it? Also, I see so many people lining up outside cafes and stressing about what they are going to have for lunch. How about I say, we take that wastage of time and thought pattern with my tip here?
Achieving a well-balanced physique should be understood for what it is: a masterful fusion of art and science. One should improve once’s “BODY Smart”knowledge. this takes time and deliberate practise.
Your daily eating habits
Ok, it isn’t always easy predicting how much time you’re going to have each day to pay attention to your nutritional habits. It isn’t easy. I realise that. Still, there is a smarter way you can make sure you’re getting the most from what ever number of seconds you can use each day.
What if I told you that there are ways to change your daily eating habits without making major sacrifices in your diet. What are you thinking now? For many people, they have tried everything, and ‘nothing works’ is a common frustration. What if I told you that these changes are very real and can be implemented in to your “all-day” eating routine. And the great thing is that you could implement these changes anytime you wanted to?
In the next series of blogs, I will be sharing with you my top 8.5 tips to successfully making changes to your daily eating habits with sustainability in mind. Changes that you can sustain forever. These Valentine Top 8.5 Tipsonly takes a few hundred seconds (a few minutes) to master, but I believe, when implemented, they can take months of unnecessary hard work off your schedule, provided you follow them each day.
This is the real challenge for you:Unlearning old habits that are not aligned with your new, ‘imagined self’ and learning these new habits, my Top 10 tips. Successful change is and can only be brought about through improvement in your self-regulatory behaviour . This is heavily dependent on the power of your imagination.
Changing habits – releasing bad eating habits and adopting some good ones is like facing an internal Predator. You need to ‘face the Lion’ within you. Having a conversation with a lion.
Spring/Summer/Christmas?New Year, here you come – You, only better!
How much time do you have a day to apply these tips?
How much time can you spare? Can you spare 30 minutes in your day or 1800 seconds of your 86,400 seconds? We will do a little maths exercise and count the amount of time each of these tips will take out of your day, starting with Tip # 1 in this blog. Doing all 8.5 of my tips would take less than 30 minutes tops each day. Yet they can give you everything you need to maintain a balanced diet. That’s not much time, is it?
Can you allocate that time to YOU? Simply because your life is important and you would like to do everything you can to not only add years to your life but more importantly, add Life in to your years.
It’s going to save you spending your valuable life, your valuable seconds, thinking and exercising unnecessarily to undo what you unknowingly – did in the first place!
How good is that?!
These tips are not meant to create more stress in your life, it is meant to help make your life a bit more manageable, a little less stressful, when it comes to eating a balanced diet with sustainability in mind. It is about making the best of whatever time you have. Allow me to show you how.
My Top 8.5 Tips will cover all main meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner and snacks in-between. We will begin with the first meal of the day – breakfast. So, I will go through your day, from sunrise to sun-set and piece together a sustainable, efficient and effective schedule for melting off fat, building muscle and having increased daily energy towards reshaping your body, not tomorrow or next week.
Right now.
Spring/Summer/Christmas/New Year’s here you come. You – only better!
Sunrise – you rise.
Education through a perception of the truth. Increasing your awareness, taking sufficient and appropriate actions and adapting accordingly is key towards self-improvement. Funny thing is that the process also applies to relationships and response. In the photo, Former Australian Wallaby Captain listening intently to learn key principles of my philosophy in to being your BEST, ALL the time, not some of the time. Great student. Great Champion. Great friend. Vv
Tip #1: DO NOT Skip Breakfast.
It should consist of a mix of the 3 basic macro-nutrients: carbohydrates (oats), protein (eggs – 3 eggs/1 yolk) and a little fat (avocado, peanut butter, almonds).
Estimated time spent: < 5 minutes.
Why not skip Breakfast, you may be thinking?
It is one of the best advice our parents and grandparents have given us when we were children. Missing this very important meal creates more hunger later on and increases your risk of ‘bingeing’ and taking in more calories than you truly need in later meals. With no food in your stomach, your body’s response is to take in whatever calories you ate the night before – and whatever you eat later on and … bingeing at lunch and like many reading this – at dinner. Just before bed.
Result? Guess what? All these ‘extras’ TURNS INTO UNWANTED BODY FAT!
Yes, around the gut ( as some call a ‘spare tyre’) for most men out there after they turn 30 and deposits around the butt and legs for the ladies. Very de-motivating indeed. Not exactly what you want, is it?
So, I insist, make this first tip if you’re skipping breakfast a part of you life. Make it your first habit to master: take 4 minutes when you wake up and eat a meal for breakfast but make sure that it combines all macro-nutrients. You will get sustainable energy all day long and lower your desire for extra calories from other food to provide energy later.
This is a very good rule of thumb you should apply for every meal during your day. Ask yourself – do I have a good mix of carbs, protein and a little fat.
Use what I’ve told all my past customers – my “eyeball method” or ‘I see with my two eyes’ method. Look at your plate, ensure the macro-nutrients take up space on the plate in this ratio:
P:C:F = 0.4:0.5: 0.10. ( where P = Protein; C = Carbohydrates; F = Fats)
Steve Reeves was a Master Poser. He imagined and built the Best Built & Aesthetically beautiful body in the world through synergistic awareness. He understood that optimum health of body & mind required the fusion of art and science. Become a scientific artist of YOU … of your life.
Homework: Lets keep adding the time needed to apply each tip I share in successive blogs and see if it requires you to spend less than half an hour of your day.
Let me prove to you using numbers (minutes spent) that Eating right actually takes less time than you think over the next month or so. Let you in on a secret: I love Physics and Mathematics. They were my first majors in my first University Degree almost 30 years ago now.
Let me show you how these little but significant 8.5 Tips can and will encourage an optimum environment that is a fusion of art and science, allowing for Synergy. This synergism is KEY: it is in the combining of the elements that creates a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Repeat. Make it habit. Make this one change. Repeatedly, with enhanced self-regulatory behavioural change. Repeat.
Believe.
My triple A approach to the development of Self.
Ahoy & all the very BEST… allow me to guide you through my Top 8.5 Tips over the next few weeks.
Cheers & ahoy!
The old Captain Viking Pirate …. & Life Tips
SYNERGISM: The Critical Mind-set to success. Understanding that it is in the combination of key elements to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Create the BEST you firstly, through 1) Education and then 2) motivation.
I love spending as much time as I can with each of them – Olivia and Zachary. I am very fortunate that in this phase of my life I am able to do just that.
Give them my time – my life. Just like other dads do, too.
Olivia, Zachary and I love doing many activities together. Building things using leggos is one such activity. My son teams up with me and we construct, bust down, re-build and re-construct the best castles we can dream up with the limited pieces of leggo pieces we have. Olivia is a champion builder now. Better than me already. They both are. She’s so good, that her constructions are very elaborate and above all – ‘stable’. That’s her thing – it has to be stable.
“Dad, she says, a castle is better to be stable than just pretty, aye dad?”
“Uhumm … yep, to some extent, that is true. You don’t want strong winds to blow it away now, do we? Like most important things in life, we need strong foundations. We all need to have our rocks in life.”
I try my best to encourage them to use their imagination and play ‘pretend’ games. Even though there is a limit to how many leggos they have, each time we build, they create something new. No creation is ever the same.
And when run out of leggo pieces, my daughter asks what else. I say lets pretend even more. Olivia gets so excited and so does Zachary. I start it off by saying ..
“Just pretend … that your castle has wings …. Large wings and it can fly …. Fly up in the sky and the wings are so large that the castle can take us all in it .. and …
My daughter interrupts me and then asks “But dad, castles can’t have wings, can they?”
I thought about what she said and I wanted to tell her the truth but I thought that a little un-truth, a little lie would be the best thing for her and her brother right now. I wanted them to continue their ‘make-belief’ world. Heck, if I had one wish I would want their ‘pretend world’ to not come to an end.
Let them run wild and far with their imagination. Keep dreaming. See what they come up with. Encourage them to ‘see’ what others cannot, what I can’t.
With no restraints. No rules. Their world where anything is possible. Where castles have wings … large wings. Enough to carry mum and dad and them away in to the skies. Forever.
I told her that her castle can have wings. Anything she wanted would be given to her. Any power she wanted. Anything she imagined, no matter how ridiculous it may be, would be granted. There were no rules. No one to tell her what could and could not be done. She was the boss. The creator.
Olivia stopped me again and said: “but dad, castles can’t have wings?”
I told her “why not, Olivia. Why can’t Castle’s have wings? I told her not to just ask “Why?” but also consider “Why not?” and then her story-telling of her make-belief world started flying. She imagined all sorts of things. All sorts of possibilities. I was in heaven just listening. Listening to their debates. Their possibilities.
Wow, I enjoy the storytelling my kids share with me!
She didn’t argue with my lie. Only I knew, that I lied. A lie that castles had wings.
But that lie was enough for her to continue her dreaming, her storytelling. Her ‘pretend-world’. I thought telling her a little lie was better than telling her the truth. She will eventually find out the truth but in her time. In her time.
They can find out other little small lies society tells them as they journey through their lives. But, in their time. Things like Santa Clause. Like the Tooth Fairy. Like the Easter Bunny.
These little lies (and there are many in life) are important to every child. Every person who was once a child. It encourages their imagination to run wild. It gets them to question possibilities. It gets them to not just ask “why?” but instead to also ask “why not?”.
Why not? Why not create a castle with wings? Why not travel to the moon? Why not be a better you? Why not make a more fuel-efficient car? Why not choose to eat a healthier meal option just because you respect and love yourself a little bit more today than you did yesterday? Why not go to sleep early tonight and say no to a ‘big night out”? Why not strive to be a better person from this hour forth? Why not make time to go to the gym at least twice a week? Why not take care of your beautiful self better?
Why not, not why?
Look back at your life. The way I see it, it seems that up until six years old, we get lots of encouragement. But by the time we reach our teens, we get discouragement from everyone and everything we experience in life. By the time most of us kids get to working life, young adults appear to have been drained of courage and have lost most of their enthusiasm – that sparkle that allows a person to choose to adopt positive thinking everyday.
Why?
I believe one of the reasons is that not enough of us humans are asking ourselves “why not?”. A lot of people have lost belief in striving for a better life. A better self. They have lost belief in themselves. Enthusiasm and courage has been sucked out of them.
Also, partly because they’ve stopped asking themselves “why not?”
Its not too late people. Its not too late to do something about it. Its not too late to try to lose ten or so kilos. Why not? Its never too late to start dreaming again. Its never too late to start believing in yourself again. Why not try harder? Why not keep going? I’ve seen it with the very old and the young alike. That is the only thing that gives you hope:
Believing in a dream … make it your dream … to believe in the question of telling you and asking yourself the question of “why not” …. Be your BEST you can be – for yourself and … while you’re on a roll, why not be the BEST YOU CAN BE for others too!”.
Don’t wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured. It may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed. Walking on the moon may never have happened. Don’t allow fear to make you quit. Never quit on life. You’ve got to win over yourself. Never settle for defeat. Never stop striving to being the best you can be, in every sense of the word.
Have you hitched your wagon to a star? Why not?
It seems that there is a philosophical movement that exists that associates drive and initiative solely with materialistic power and gain. There appears to be an ever-growing obsession focused on the accumulation of non-essential personal possessions.
This should not be confused, I think, with personal achievement and the pursuit of individual excellence. Disregarding all material gain, I believe there is a pure personal pleasure which comes from achieving the difficult or the unusual. Whatever it is that it is.
The magic rests in everyone of us. Yes, it rests in you too. The enduring power that has moved you and will move you, again, comes from inside. Yes, inside you.
Success is not just reserved for the talented. It is not in the high I.Q. Not in the gifted birth. Not in the best equipment and technology. Not even in ability.
Success in anything, I believe is hugely dependent upon drive, focus and persistence. The extra energy required to make an extra effort – to go the ‘extra mile’ – to try another approach – to ask ‘why not” do something a little bit different, a little bit smarter – to concentrate on the desired outcome – is, I believe, the secret to achievement. To win, in your unique journey through life.
The magic is this: ATTITUDE.
A wise man once said: “Its your attitude, not your aptitude that determines your altitude in life”.
Apply. Adapt accordingly.
See how the next four decades pan out for you. Choose well.
And when you start dreaming again, you might as well dream BIG. It takes the same amount of focus!
As another wise person once said: “Make no little plans: they have no magic to stir your blood to action – instead make big plans, aim high in work and hope.”
In my last blog “To matter or not to matter”, I posed two questions –
Who am I?
Why do I exist?
How we answer these questions determines whether we live for about eighty years or eternity.
I mentioned that it would have to be one of man’s innate needs: to have mattered. It is the same for all men, whether you trying to achieve your full potential in life or only doing just enough to survive from paycheck to paycheck.
Maybe, some men can imagine it engraved on their tombstone:
“He made a difference.”
Man’s most innate need, I believe, is his/her need to besignificant – to find purpose, to find meaning.
The important thing here or the difference between success and failure in achieving this need to be significant is HOW we go about satisfying this. You could go about it by fulfilling your own ambitions by sucking in all the spoils of this life and think this could get you closer to being significant.
Or,
You could succeed by becoming a part of a higher purpose – a club, a movement, a political party, a religion. You could find it in your relationship with a higher force, whatever it may be – God, Mohammed, Hare Krishna, Buddha.
So, how we answer those two questions determines how we seek out significance. It divides us in to two distinct groups:
Those who seek significance in appropriate ways
Those who seek significance in inappropriate ways
Which one are you? Which group will you fall in to when you’ve left this physical earth? Our hunger to satisfy this need of significance can get you closer to God (or whatever deity you pray to) or move you further away from him.
I believe authentic, lasting significance lies in your connection and belief in your higher force – your God. You need to be part of something bigger than you, something all-encompassing, something omni-present. Something God-like, or God himself if you are a Christian.
It does not matter what religion you belong to. Maybe, even construct your own bible or religious text.
Through communication with your God, through prayer and meditation, you can achieve significance that endures, that is lasting.
This communication link, like branches to a vine, will allow you to grow and seek your significance in appropriate ways. You will find your life purpose and remembered forever.
Dream: you will be remembered when you are gone. That YourLifemattered.
A little entertainment posing for family and friends at a party.
No tan. No contest colour.
Few days before Australian Titles. Tanned. Coloured. Getting ready for battle. Result: 2nd in Australia.
How busy are you? Busier than your brother, sister, best friend, work colleagues, neighbours. Everyone else? I don’t know, only you would.
Everyone rushes around from one task to another, one meeting after another, one seminar after another and so on. Never having enough time to do all the things you want to do in any given day. You know what I mean. It’s the life we live in the 21st century.
We have many varieties of transportation too. You name it: fast cars, fast ferries, fast trains, fast planes. Fast everything. To get you from point A to point B, C, D …. all the way to Z. Doesn’t it make your head spin a little, just thinking about the ‘rush’ everyone is going through in their daily lives.
Such hectic “rush about” activities. All this constant energy-sapping activities takes a heavy stress toll on one’s body. Your body. Ever wonder why people come down with severe illnesses so suddenly? Respiratory illnesses like influenza, asthma attacks, anxiety attacks and so on, on perfectly healthy people?
Why?
Well, I believe it could well be connected to the over-extension of one’s self. Just like going above and beyond what you’re capable of lifting in the gym, every day. It is only a matter of time when it will lead to a serious injury.
The never-ending over-extension of one’s self leads to over-stress which leads to the lowering of your immune system. Basically, your immune system gives up!
Maybe, just maybe, our bodies were not designed for all these technologically faster modes of transportation (including advancement of communication mediums). Don’t get me wrong, these modern modes of transportation are essential to living in today’s modern cities. However, I just get the feeling that our bodies were not designed for constant “rush about” activities, adding increasing physical, mental, emotional and spiritual stresses.
Maybe our bodies was always designed for camel or donkey travelling and we keep putting it in faster and faster machines and using faster and faster devices.
You see, out in the deserts, camel or donkey travelling allows plenty of time for rest. Faster and faster modern day vehicles keeps or adds to people’s tension and stress.
We need to all slow down. A little. Try walking a little slower sometime.
Now, I am not saying we should give up driving modern cars, catching faster trains or getting on even faster planes or not using your i-phones and the internet. No, they are essential. What I am saying is that we need to recognize and accept that we are not super-humans and that the human-frame has its limits, just like everything else in life.
Unfortunately, a lot of people do not know how to recognize their limits until it is too late. Until there is a health disaster.
Recognizing your limits is one thing but then you need to build in adequate rest and recovery time so as to allow healing and re-charging/restoration to take place. You need to take ‘time-out’ in your daily life to re-charge. You need a ‘re-charge point’.
This is the problem: Busy people, people in a constant hurry, performing never-ending “rush-about” activities, never have time or choose to not make the time for recovery and re-charge. Their lives are so busy. Their minds are always in over-drive and so they have little time to meditate or ‘quiet’ their minds so that they can put all their problems in perspective.
Just because technology is changing at super-sonic speed, does not mean that everything else in life is. Relationships take time. Cultural learning takes time. Crops take time to mature and ready for eating. Knowledge acquisition takes time. The human body also takes time in its evolution. Not everything changes as fast as technology. Don’t translate the speed of technological change to everything else in life.
Quicker. Faster. More, more, more isn’t always better. Life is not meant to work that way. Protect your mind, protect your body.
Slow down. Know your limits. Before it is too late. Embrace your camel or donkey travel regularly, the way our bodies are meant to be travelling through life: with frequent, periodic rest and restoration breaks. This is akin to muscle-building and growth. Time away from the gym allows well-earned rest and recovery which leads to muscle development.
There are many ways to camel or donkey travel. Some ideas include – yoga, weight training, pilates, praying, meditation etc. Find your re-charge activity. Find your quiet time. Keep this time regular. Make it routine. Regain control of your restless mind. Regain control of your life.
In short, the people of today’s modern world – modern living have been increasingly showing signs of physiological and psychological disintegration on many levels. Why? Because we are living at a pace that is too fast for our bodies.
This is the essence of today’s mounting stress problem.
Great sets make great workouts. The more shapely, smooth and safe one’s sets are, the more structurally sound they will be, like good engineering foundation to a building – the better one’s workout will be. Simple right?
Not so fast. Lets break it down.
A great workout needs to transcend ego training. It needs to rise above fear but stay within the safety umbrella. It needs to progressively take you beyond your tolerance levels. Your self-imposed limitations. It must, within the limits of personal experience in the gym and domain knowledge, allow the person to feel what I call the ‘essence’ of each exercise. The aim of a good workout is to gain as much as possible as economically as possible, within a specified time-frame.
A set could be short, right and nice. Some people prefer that.
A set is a little miracle and a critical link to a successful workout. A miracle because of the way it makes you feel, when you do it right and nice. A number of repetitions make up a set. A set in weight training refers to the way we move a weight from somewhere to somewhere else. It metaphorically tells a short story – of what is, of what happens, of who did what and of what is done, when it is done.
All sets have a definite finishing point. It carries a trainee from calmness to acstacy, from being dry to sweaty and pulsating. From nothing to something.
A set in bodybuilding is as critical to a workout as a river is to a whole catchment. Namely, everything. The part serves the whole, it is what the whole comes down to. You see, sets alone or sets of exercises laid out in no particular order may get you sweating and burn calories but does not fit in to an organized pre-designed plan: 2 sets of 10 reps of squats. 45 reps of dead-lifts. Huh? Why? For what purpose? What goal?
Oh, I get it. Sets are part of a story.
I like to think of a workout that a person carries out is a short-story. His/her story through physical expression. Meaning needs to arise. How does meaning arise? It may happen because a suitably experienced personal trainer puts the sets and exercises into an order that allows meaning and purpose. Why do we need meaning/purpose (refer to my previous blog: don’t be a rudderless ship for some insight).
There is in each and every one of us humans, an innate need for story, for storytelling, for relationships between disparate things. For causality. We all like to make sense of and recognise patterns in everything in life, including the performance of sets of exercises in the gym. A set in a workout needs to be structured with the correct number of repetitions, weight, tempo to allow the gym trainee to see and allows us to discover meaning to patterns – and for storing and repeating them in body, mind and spirit for the future.
When you see the interrelationship, when you observe and feel the connection between the set and the workout – it is like pure art. It is like beautiful music. Like sex. What you get is sets performed – simple, compound, complex and compound-complex. Interspersed with rest periods and water/liquid breaks/chat breaks/toilet breaks.
Like sex. Orgasmic, really.
Even when you think you understand the interrelationship between the set and the workout. You don’t. You realize you don’t understand the chemistry and mystery behind it that give meaning because every time you perform each set, keeping all variables constant, the feeling and result is different.
How is that so? One can learn patterns by which this simple-complex system, the set, works. But how you get different results, different effects from the same cause is as mysterious as the soul of a man or woman or the origins of the universe. It comes down to the different mental states people are in at any point in time. A mystery at the best of times.
A set as I like to define it is a “15 to 45 second focused moments”.
People can understand a whole workout program without ever knowing the ‘essence of the exercise’ when performing a set. I have seen this in people who have trained with weights for many, many years. When you perform sets of exercises in the proper manner, you have rhythm and when you do it well enough you not only get meaning but you make music. It is music in motion! Great sets make great workouts.
Great workouts include long and short sets. Long and short ‘focused moments’. Complex and simple and complex-simple.
Workouts of the rich and famous have gotten ridiculously short and everyone seems to be after the shortest workout in our every-increasingly busy, instant gratifying western societies. Workouts that include only short sets for an even shorter workout is to say the least, hypocrisy personified. People want to get all the health benefits of working out but don’t want to put in the work. Everyone wants to know how much less and less they can get away with fewer exercises when the are in the gym.
“Here it is”, an newspaper article or tv broadcaster would say “get the body you want by only spending 5 minutes in the gym once a week”. How ridiculous is this? Do you think Michael Phelps got the results he desired by spending only 5 minutes in the pool? Do you think Tiger Woods got the results he got by spending only 10 minutes out on the golf course? There are many more examples in every field in life. They got that way because they spent countless hours deliberately practicing certain habits within a structured and planned program over many years. Not 5 or 10 minutes!
Well I have news for you. There are many ways to perform a set, and a serious gym enthusiast should employ most of them, if relevant. Just as a golfer would use different golf clubs for different strokes, a gym trainer would use different sets. Some of your sets should be short – yes; some should be long; some may even be what I call a ‘midget-set’ – a sub-set of a set. Each set has a unique tempo to it depending on where they fall in the workout and purpose.
The point is to mix them up.
Mix them up within an overall workout goal and plan. You need meaning and purpose in your workouts to get the most out of them. Mix them up, like an ecosystem or local community, a workout thrives on diversity and mastery of execution. Just like a democratic society.
You see, I have had many, many workouts and have done many, many sets and spent many, many hours in the gym with deliberate practise over the last 23 years or so. One thing struck me as odd and interesting – some workouts took less than twenty minutes and were very short, some took almost all morning. Usually, these long workouts happened because I did not have any particular time set in mind to do them. Instead, I made a conscious choice to take the time. In the shorter workouts, I didn’t take the time. I got lost in the workout, enjoying the highs and lows of each set, sculpturing away.
Each workout still done with pleasure.
Each set and workout had no fixed intrinsic amount of interest. Instead each set and workout were interesting and pleasurable as long as I chose to focus and give my attention to them. Its similar to a surfer being out in the surf or a golfer out on the golf course for hours trying to hit a small ball in little holes. Or a swimmer doing laps in the pool or a person knitting a patterned jumper or a man spending hours servicing his car. Or a tennis player playing tennis. Why do they do it? How long?
Same answer as each of these activities would give – as much time as you care to give it. Not an infinite amount of time, but more time than you first imagined.
So, put away the clock and time-piece and lose yourself in your sets – your workout. “Feel” each repetition of each set of each workout. Make the last rep as good as the first. Give more meaning and purpose to your workouts.
Make music. Allow yourself to make music with motion. Find your rhythm.
Give each type of set a chance – a voice, sometimes without the constraint of time. Give your least favourite exercises a try – an avenue to be heard.
You may just like what you see and feel (and hear).
This is what I call a democratic workout. Try it sometime.
The one thing I know about going anywhere, is firstly, you have got to decide on where it is you’re headed. Usually before you depart. This increases your chances of heading in the general direction of your destination and – getting there!
Knowing where you want to or desire to go is very important in all areas of life – physically, financially, spiritually, relationships etc. The one thing that my successful clients have all got in common is a ‘sense of purpose’ in why they are going through a body re-engineering program and getting help from me.
I work with my clients to put together a picture of how they would realistically see themselves looking like. Once done, I design daily habits to help them achieve their goals, using my framework to body transformation – a Game Plan.
They get critical goal-achieving acts to be performed daily. These were habits that were not fun but necessary to achieving their goals. I differentiated them from acts which were merely tension-relieving and got them to FOCUS on the former. Once I devised the plan to make it happen, they developed the attitude of “I’ll do what’s necessary to get what I want”.
They had purpose.
You see, what I have learned in over 20 years of helping people in the gym is that purpose is the engine that powers our lives. What we’ve all got to do is work at increasing that ‘engine size’, maybe from a 1.8L to a 4L or 6L?
Everyone has purpose, yes. For some it is surf, and others the internet, still others it is to eat, for others it may be just to get through the day and for others still, it is revenge or getting even. In very challenging stages of your life, the response you need – purpose – is the healing portion that enables each of us to face up to adversity and strife. A winning positive mental attitude.
Don’t give up on life when the going gets tough and you’re in a little rutt. Always think that its only temporary. Don’t think that you no longer expect anything from life. Instead, think in the reverse: think that life was expecting something from you. That life is asking of every individual, including you, a contribution and it is up to YOU to discover what it is. What it should be.
Someone really wise once said:
“Where there is life, there is hope.” “Where there are hopes, there are dreams.” “Where there are vivid dreams, repeated, they become goals.”
So true.
These goals then turn in to action plans and game plans – life plans. When these goals are connected to the heart, when it becomes an inner commitment, the achievement of the goals is almost automatic.
I see that with everyone I have successfully helped – it means something to them, your goals has got to mean something to you, too, in whichever area of life it may be.
This is one of the critical reasons for over 80% of my clients who have achieved their body transformation goals. They had their heart in it and realised their desires through the game plan I set for them and worked the plan. This is critical – working the plan!
As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, by default, you plan to fail.
What kind of goals are you committed to?
Have you asked yourself “what do I stand for?”. What would I defend to the end? What would I want people to say about me when I am gone? What do you want your children to tell their children about you?
It seems that for many people, millions of people – getting through the day is their -goal and getting to the ‘end of the week’. You hear radio announcers re-iterating this pathetic line, tv hosts reminding you of the ‘slug’ of the ‘daily grind’. What a load of you know what!
Setting such goals results in people generating just enough energy and initiative to get through the day. Their goal is to watch television – soap operas by day, game of chance shows in the evening, cops and robbers, home renovation shows and situation comedies by night – seemingly having no goals of their own. They sit in a semi-stupor night after night with tunnel vision and watch TV actors and actresses enjoying themselves earning money, pursuing their careers and their goals.
Do you go to work everyday waiting to see what happens? And do you spend all your time making someone else’s goals come true?
Purpose, my friend – purpose.
Do you know where you are going in your life? Do you really know? If you do, then, I would say that you would be in the less than 5% of human beings who do. Congratulations!
The vast majority however, I would say, sadly, do not. Like a ship with no rudder, left to the changing tides of the sea of life, with increased risks of getting no where or possibly getting ship-wrecked.
Aim to be one of the 5% if you’re not there already.
Start by setting lifetime goals and then breaking them into bite-size chunks for 1 year or 5 years, a 6 month or just a season project. Once set, spend more time on high-priority goal-achieving activities, daily. Just like my clients who successfully got the body they desired, they stuck to the game-plan through deliberate practise of daily habits.
Most people spend more time planning a party, studying the newspaper or news and/or making a Christmas list, than they do planning their lives.
Don’t be one of the 95%.
Find your purpose – your life direction.
Take the time and exercise the discipline to decide on your destination and to chart a course. Captain your ship through life with proper sails and rudders and accomplish more in a few years than most would accomplish in a lifetime. Just like my clients accomplish in a few months what many gym enthusiasts fail to achieve in years.
How?
The 5% of human beings that have done it have developed their game plan for LIFE.
The world is winning some battles and losing others.
We do not seem to be winning a lot of battles – the eradication of terrorism, the conflict in the middle-east or the tensions within certain European Nations.
We seem to be winning the battle against infectious diseases and certain cancers which is good. All external battles. However, we seem to be losing ground to those battles that result from our own “inner conflicts”.
Inner conflicts, some of which are brought about by life’s stresses. How stressed are you? What are your inner daemons? Are you a tortoise or a cheeter? What I mean by this is how fast or slow do you move when you are faced with stress? Knowing how much stress you can handle is vital to your sanity in the fast pace of life that is your life today. The first stage to self development is self-awareness and trying to find your normal stress level in life is vital for you in managing it.
So once again, are you a tortoise or a cheeter?
Stress is part of life, part of everyday living. There are good stresses and there are bad stresses. A good stress is the force your muscles are put under when you lift weights. A bad stress could be thoughts about how certain work situations would turn out before it actually happens. The first step to managing stress is being adaptable.
Adapting to stresses in life should be viewed as a normal part of life. When stress is treated and accepted as ‘normal’ in the mind, that it is just another variable of life, adapting to changes in circumstances is easier.
Through increased self-awareness, you understand your tolerance level to stresses (are you a tortoise or cheeter?). What your challenge is to work towards maintaining coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances … being in control-always ….. calmness amid a storm … clearness of judgment in moments of great danger. How do you do this?
Adaptation is the answer.
A big part of being adaptable is having a positive mental attitude to whatever curve-ball life throws at you. And there probably have been hurdles you have faced to date and there will likely be many more. Its not how many hurdles you face that matters but it is how you respond to them that is of much importance. How you adapt.
Your response is dependent on your attitude as ‘you are what you think’. In the medical industry more and more evidence is showing that our attitude is a stronger indicator of our pending recovery than our physical status or prognosis. A positive mental attitude determines so many variables, in health and in the quality of your life.
Your attitude is either the key or the hand-cuffs to your ability to adapt to changing circumstances. The path you take in life.
Your attitude is never static, never constant. It is an ongoing dynamic, sensitive, perceptual process. The attitude you choose to display is entirely up to you – a choice you consciously make.
It is said to be the most powerful and priceless personality characteristic one can possess.
Everyone has the capacity to be positive under almost any circumstances. A positive attitude is the key to success in any problem solving procedure or major lifestyle change. With a consistently positive attitude it is possible to win the game of life in all directions: personal satisfaction, strong relationships and success in a meaningful career.
I repeat, your first step is to find what your ‘normal’ stress level is – are you a tortoise or a cheeter. Determine your tolerance level. Just like muscle, you need to know what your physical stress limitations are before you increase weights. Lifting excessive weights and putting your muscles under undue stress can likely lead to injuries and you can physically feel and see it.
Not determining your ‘normal’ stress level could likely lead to injuries too – only unlike physical injuries sustained through ego-training rather than proper, educated weight training in the gym, you cannot see it because you sustain ‘injury to the mind’.
Be courageous and harness your most priceless possession: a positive mental attitude.
This is the key to successful adaptation.
Until next time,
Below: Doing a “Side Chest Pose” on stage at the Australian Natural Bodybuilding Championships – 2011.
Changing lives. Empowering people. One life at a time. 
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