Let’s get physical
When it comes to exercise, I find that many people come up with the craziest reasons and cook up creative excuses for not exercising:
• One businessman friend of mine says, “I am in shape. Round is the shape.”
• Another one says, “I’ve started an exercise program. I do 20 sit-ups each morning. That may not sound like a lot, but you can only hit that snooze button so many times.”
• An honest one among them said this: “I don’t exercise at all. If God had meant for us to touch our toes, he would have put them further up our body.”
• And then the philosopher says, “The advantage of exercising every day is that you die healthier.”
But this one is my favorite: “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 now, and we don’t know where she is!”
If you’re in your late 20s and you don’t exercise, chances are you won’t notice anything. If you’re in your late 30s and you don’t exercise, you’ll notice that you’re beginning to develop muscles in all the wrong places – mostly in the stomach area. But they’re really just fats. When you reach your 40s, all sorts of sickness will begin to surface. You’ll begin to experience funny pains and aches in the different places of your body. When you reach your late 50s, you begin to pay. All those years of neglect and harmful lifestyle will begin to take their toll on you. And when you reach your 60s, you probably will run out of resources to pay… for the medical bills.
I’ve seen good people lose their entire lifetime’s savings because of poor health.
Meanwhile, their cardiologist buys a brand-new Mercedes Benz.
I have a weighing scale in my bathroom. I make sure I weigh myself same time every morning to monitor my weight. There was a time when I had to squat down just to see the numbers on my weigh.
I take my vitamins daily. I take a lot of them under a doctor’s supervision. I watch carefully what I eat, I stay away from sweets, and I exercise regularly. How else would I be able to do more than 300 talks, trainings and seminars in a year, and travel the world in doing so?
This reminds me of a story about a bathroom scale
manufacturer. He was very proud of the new model being introduced at the trade fair. The manufacturer said in his well-prepared sales pitch, “Listen to these features: it’s calibrated to one one-hundredth of a pound; it can measure your height as well, in feet or meters; it gives you a readout via LED; and it can even tell your weight by means of a humanvoice simulator.”
“Very impressive,” said an overweight prospect. “But before I place an order, would you mind if I try it out first?” “Be my guest,” said the manufacturer graciously. But no sooner had the overweight spectator taken his place on the scale than a loud, synthesized and computerized human voice loudly announced, “One at a time please, one at a time!” As a result, there was no sale that day.
One woman noticed her husband standing on the bathroom scale, sucking in his stomach. Thinking he was trying to weigh less with this maneuver, she commented, “I don’t think that is going to help.”
“Sure it does,” he said. “It’s the only way I can see the numbers.”
It’s easy to add pounds, and but it’s so difficult to lose them. That’s why exercise takes a lot of determination and discipline. But it’s good for us. It teaches us to prioritize the important things in our lives.
Health is wealth, yet only a few are serious enough to take care of this investment. Make sure you do.
(Develop your leadership skills and spend two whole days with Francis Kong this Jan. 30-31 at the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel, as he facilitates the well-acclaimed Dr. John C. Maxwell program “Developing The Leader Within You.” For further inquiries, contact Hannah at 09228980196, or call 632-6310912 for details.)