YOUR LIFE A-Z:EXERCISE

NEVER SKIP IT

EXERCISE

EXERCISE is also a great de-stressing tool.  Some of you love to EXERCISE and can’t wait to get to the gym or on your mountain bike.  Others of you hate EXERCISE and have to be forced into doing it.  I would wager that those of you who hate to EXERCISE are EXERCISING for the wrong reasons and doing particular EXERCISES that you just hate.  Before I talk about different types of EXERCISE, let me get clear EXERCISE, whether you like it or not is important to your health.  Thus establish an EXERCISE rule.   The only rule needed is to EXERCISE at least thirty minutes a day whether you like it or not.  The simplest way to EXERCISE is to walk for thirty minutes.  Other than a good pair of walking shoes, walking EXERCISE does not require anything else and almost everyone can do it.  If you can’t walk then you need to discover other ways to EXERCISE.  Stretching is a good choice of EXERCISE and it does not require any fancy equipment.  Learning to make EXERCISE as part of your daily routine is a very important part of self-care.  The goal is to EXERCISE more days a week than not.  EXERCISE will help you stay flexible and healthy as you age.  And unless you die early, you will age.  If you want to get around in a healthy body as you age EXERCISE is important.  Make it your goal to discover an EXERCISE that you don’t hate and then do it on a daily basis.  It is simple.  The only goal is to do it.  Don’t do it to lose weight, do it because you love yourself.

YOUR LIFE A-Z:KEEP

KEEP SAFE AND UNLOCK ALL THAT YOU NEED

KEEP

KEEP is a little word that often does not get much consideration or attention, but it is a word we use repeatedly throughout our day.  If we listen to ourselves we will hear ourselves say, “KEEP it clean; KEEP it cold; KEEP it away from the dog; or I am going to KEEP it.”  KEEP implies an action of protection and necessity.  To KEEP something means to retain it because it is either useful or it has a positive meaning and function for which you want to use it.  KEEP doing the TWENTY MINUTE COACH on a daily basis and you will discover that you are naturally living more positively and consciously throughout your day.  What are you KEEPING and what do you need to discard from your daily life?  Become conscious about the stuff you KEEP.  Do you need it?  Does it serve you?  Are you serving those things that you KEEP?  If something needs to be KEPT cold and you leave it out in the heat then you did not act responsibly toward that which needed you to tend to it.  The word KEEP is important.  Here are some things that you need to practice KEEPING.  KEEP safe.  KEEP calm.  KEEP up the good attitude.  KEEP peace.  KEEP practicing.  KEEP cool.  KEEP letting go.  KEEP alert. KEEP learning.  KEEP good friends.  KEEP moving.  What are ten other things that you can list that will help you if you KEEP them in your daily life?  Do not ignore this four-letter word ever again.  KEEP!

YOUR LIFE A-Z: HUMOR

LAUGHTER AND HUMOR IS HEALING MEDICINE

HUMOR

We need HUMOR in our life.  We need activities that we look forward to because they make us laugh or amuse us into feeling better.  Life is serious but life is absolutely lethal without HUMOR.  HUMOR is not just laughing or experiencing something as funny.  HUMOR is a much deeper and personal response to life that allows entertainment and amusement into the daily moments of life.  Look for HUMOR today. If you have a pet or a small child, those moments will not be hard to find but for those caught up in debt, family discord, depression, and loneliness, HUMOR is much more evasive.  In those cases HUMOR becomes a treasure hunt, a deliberate search for amusing, entertaining and light hearted smiles throughout the dullness of the day.  How to find it?  Do you have a special cartoon character that makes you smile?  If so, Google that character.  Search out comedy clubs in your area to enjoy an evening of someone else’s hard working ability to make you laugh.  Think about it, comedians abound in our society for a reason.  We need them in order to survive the hardships of daily living.  Discover what TV shows, music, or people that make you laugh.  Keep a HUMOR chest in your den of movies, ideas, situations, and other things that make you amused, allowing that genuine smile to cross your face from cheek to cheek.  HUMOR is a moment suspended from daily reality that brightens your mood for a moment and is necessary for your survival. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z:SEEK

ALWAYS SEEK AND EXPLORE

SEEK

Don’t settle for the ordinary.  SEEK after the answer to your heart’s burning questions.  SEEK meaning, purpose, quality, and compassion in your day-to- day routine.  SEEK to love those around you; don’t just SEEK to be loved. SEEK within to bring light to your own dark shadows that keep you trapped in negative behavior and feelings.  Jesus reportedly says in two separate accounts, SEEK the Kingdom of God within you and SEEK the truth, and it will set you free.  As the hero/shero of your own destiny you will have arduous tasks and obstacles to overcome and bring the best out of yourself.  The question remains, how do you sabotage yourself in ways that keep you repeating old exhausting patterns of remaining the victim of your own passivity?  Get in the game of life and SEEK to experience the joy of your existence, the joy of breathing (yoga and meditation will help with that), the joy of being able to be alive one more day.  Make the most of it.  It is hard to confront our darkness.  It is hard to see the shattered mirror of our pretend self and SEEK the truth of our indiscretions, personal pain, and our own shortcomings.  We all have them.  We all pretend that we don’t.  In AA it is important to do a personal inventory of how we have hurt others.  List your own inventory and SEEK forgiveness and light to heal your darkness.  SEEK until your Quest is finished and then there will be a new quest.  We are born to SEEK. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z: LIMiT

BE CLEAR

LIMIT

This is a fun word.  Know your limits.  Do you?  Or do you only discover your limit when your kid, partner, friend or boss pushes you one more time and you explode?   All of us have limits but most of us have no clue as to what they are; and as a result, end up tired, frayed, uptight, and angry because we are over stressed, over worked and over committed.  It is your responsibility to post your limits so that others know what to expect from you.  Perhaps you have noticed when you are driving in a new town and you have driven for a bit and do not see a speed limit sign and you get a bit anxious.  “Oh no, I wonder if it’s 25 or 40 miles per hour here?”  If you are going 40 MPH in a 25 MPH zone you are going to get a ticket.  So it is best to go a little slower until you know for sure what your limits are.  Everything and everyone has limits.  A LIMIT is a good thing.  It is not a bad, weak, or mean thing. A LIMIT lets others know what is expected and it is easy to co-exist in your environment when everyone knows what to expect.  It is important to spend sometime defining your limits in the various arenas of your life.  What are your limits at work, with friends, kids, or yourself?  Define them and begin to live within them.  You will be less stressed when you do this.  Just in the last A-Z I asked your to make a time-limit when trying to choose something different.  Great tool to try. 

YOUR LIFE A-Z:QUESTION

QUESTION

Yes, question everything. Rilke the poet wrote,  "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the question themselves.  Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."  Thus to question is to be alive.

Do not fret about the answers but enjoy the journey of discovery.  Questions about life, love, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are meaningful questions. By asking the questions we become more alert, aware, and alive.  The answers are constantly changing.  Once upon a time we thought the earth was flat.  That in and of itself is so hard to imagine in today's rapid world of knowledge andtechnology but it is true. Even though the ancient Egyptians had diagrams of the earth being round, the undereducated folks still thought the Earth to be flat when Christopher Columbus set sail for India.  His believed measurements of the earth were so small, that if he had not discovered the Americas in between his journey,he and his crew would have starved.  Question, explore, discover and enjoy living into whatever answers may come your way.  If no answers come, the risk of taking the journey is well worth the effort because the experiences along the way make the possibilities meaningful.

YOUR LIFE A-Z DISCOVER

Never Know What You Will Discover Inside

DISCOVER

By allowing yourself to accept your brilliance and gaining confidence with your new clear focus you will naturally discover properties about yourself and others that you have not allowed your self to see before.  Perhaps you have always been a creative person, but never allowed yourself to accept that your creativity is a talent that you own.  If you own it then you can get it out of your closet, dust it off and do something productive with it.

What parts of yourself have you locked away in the closet?  What were your dreams, desires, and hopes that you banished as being ridiculous, immature, or impossible?  Pull those out of the closet and dust them off.   Discover again the joy of being you and go for what it is that you want in your life today.  Or get out of your way and DISCOVER something brand new.  

Explore and create new ideas discovering things about yourself that you never dreamed existed inside of your soul.  Open the window and look inside.  You will probably be pleasantly surprised with the undiscovered gifts that have been beautifully wrapped inside of you all of your life.  They are just sitting there waiting for you to be curious enough to look inside and discover brand new opportunities to build the future you are wanting. 

You can never obtain excellence if your inner judge stops you before you even start something.  Anyone that has created something of excellence has failed more times than not and each time they try again, correcting what did not work before.  However, the joy of trying and discovering new things is a journey of inner excellence.  Enjoy yours.

Photo: RBDilley

Your Life A-Z INTEREST

Don't Let the Sun Set on Your Dreams

INTEREST

What really flips your switch?  What is it that you love to do?  If you had one day to spend doing anything you wanted, what would it be?  Don’t be flip about this.  Think about it. How do you spend your time and do you enjoy spending it that way?  If we do not develop interest in what we spend most of our time doing, then we get bored and boredom leads to depression, anxiety, and a multitude of other negative activities in our life. 

What draws your attention is one way to think about interest.  If you are in a room with different people, how do you choose which one to strike up a conversation with?  Or a very practical level, check your closets and garage, how many unfinished projects have you stuffed away somewhere?  The real reasons they are stuffed away is not because you ran out of time, but you did run out of interest and as a result choose other activities over completing whatever that is stuffed in your closet.  Without interest there is no motivation.  No one dates anyone that they are not interested in for very long unless perhaps the non-interested person becomes interested in changing the person they are dating.  That is not interest in the date; it is a clear invested interest in changing someone else into your own image.  So, be careful, interest is tricky.  But certainly by the end of today, be able to list three different things that interest you.  For instance, hiking, cooking, or your favorite football team.