Today’s post is based on a talk I gave a few years ago. It’s about living a healthy and balanced life, and on laying the groundwork to success. I thought it might be of interest to my readers. Let’s get right into it.
1. Be organized, and schedule set times for important self-maintenance. Exercise, meditation and sleep should be designated and non-negotiable. Professional athletes need to train regularly to perform at their peak, scientists and mathematicians need to regularly and rigorously apply their minds to stay sharp.
2. A natural extension of number rule number one is to be protective of family time. Turn off your cell phone and stop checking emails. Know when to unplug. The advertising campaign of a popular handheld device extols the virtues of being “connected” with people always and instantly, and how much more efficient they are because of it. Fact is, mobile devices can be a constant source of distraction, stress, drama and a tool of relationship manipulation.
3. Og Mandino, in his inspirational masterpiece “The Greatest Salesman in the World” says that we are all slaves to habit, both good and bad. “Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure” he writes, therefore we should ”form good habits and become their slave.”
4. You need to be intellectually hungry, assertive and opinionated. But the yin to the yang is the importance of embracing the awkwardness of life. Accept that there is mystery beyond the realm of comprehension, and that not everything in this existence can be shoehorned to fit the parameters of your understanding.
5. In 1968, marathon runner John Stephen Akhwari of Tanzania finished a race in an international competition dead last. Akhwari had been plagued with a vicious leg cramp, dizziness and dehydration from near the starting line, and to the observer, the cause for Akhwari was hopeless. Yet he continued on in pain and finished the race over an hour after the winner of the race had broken the ribbon. When asked by a reporter why he didn’t just quit and save himself the anguish, Akhwari responded, “My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race; my country sent me to finish the race.”
Akhwari definetely had the mindset and the mustard to see it through to the end (although he probably didn’t get a shoe deal). The moral? Fight the good fight.
6. Despite your past or conditions of the present, you can choose to be great now and in the future. Referring of the Nature vs. Nurture debate, Stephen R. Covey author of The 8th Habit writes:
[Nature vs. Nurture] is based on a false paradigm or map of human nature, that of determinism. We are a product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger… Determinism is deeply imbedded into present-day culture and is reinforced by the terrifying sense that if I do have choice, then I am also responsible for my present situation. Until a person can honestly say “I am what I am” and “I am where I am because I so choose to be there,” that person cannot say with conviction, “I choose otherwise.”
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