by Dan | Aug 21, 2016 | Exercise, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
We have all come a long ways in our quest for what we want to achieve in our life. We all need to have goals. If we didn’t have goals, what would there be to look forward too! We all need to challenge ourselves, and our goals for each of us as individuals are as individual as we are. Here is my nurse Chris…who is now an avid runner. She accomplished one of her goals this Spring by participating and finishing her first Half Marathon. But what is her real goal? She just participated in the color run here a week ago. This next picture says it all!
Here she is behind her grandkids in this run. The look on their face is priceless also. Bottom line, Chris gets to participate in things with her grandkids. She is an awesome grandma! That is what life is about…spending time with the people in our lives who are important.
You need to make a plan when it comes to your goals. Write them down…then they become more real. Just remember, it is not written in stone though. Your goals should be something to aim for!
Just remember to make your goals reasonable, or they won’t be achievable, and you will just get frustrated, and quit. Remember, it is something to AIM for! We all need challenges in our lives, but good challenges, not something that is only to make or create more stress in our life.
We all need goals to reach for. Goals is what makes life interesting! Be creative, imaginative, but also real! Your goals should be challenging, but the quest for them should also be fun and enjoyable. After all, the goal you come up with is for you!
Susan, my former nurse, is also a running maniac. Her goal…to be better today than she was yesterday. To be able to continue to improve. She is in no contest with anybody else…only to improve herself. You are doing is Susan!
To me, this picture of Susan sums it up great! Joy, relief, pride! This is an awesome picture of her that was taken at the color run. Good job Chris and Susan! “Go”al for it! Keep moving everybody! Keep working on your goals!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive exercise day#: 3250
by Dan | Aug 14, 2016 | Exercise, Family, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
Our new clinic ad campaign: Jump Start your Wellness by encouraging you to go out and get active! We provided many jump ropes to patients, and other individuals to start getting active, and jump rope! We all did it as a kid, so we want you to continue to do it now. It is like riding a bike…you never forget how! Now for some of you, just like me encouraging to get out and be active for years, it may take a little more encouragement!
You might think this may be boring, or you are not too excited to give it a try, but like most things, you don’t realize how much fun it can be. When we were shooting our commercial, and having all of our employees out jump roping, everybody was laughing, and having a great time! Who says exercise can’t be fun. This is how it should be!
Just get out and move! Jump Start your Wellness!
Don’t worry if you think you won’t look graceful starting! Like everything, it takes a little practice.
Sorry Joan!
Just like I have been saying for years, it is always easier to exercise, and have more fun, when you are doing the exercise in a group!
So, what are you waiting for? Grab your jump rope, and make time to jump start your wellness!
Keep moving everybody! Exercise for the Health of It!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3243
by Dan | Aug 7, 2016 | Exercise, Family, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
We all have our own plans, thoughts, ideas about things we want to accomplish in our life. As we continue on this adventure, and start getting into thoughts of goal planning for next time, I think it would be important to begin with a little different perspective on how to go about coming up with your goals. We all need motivation to help convince ourselves to keep trying, and what that spark would be that will get us going to take on new things, new adventures, new plans for our life. Maybe we need to consider it a different way. Maybe we need to take ourselves out of the equation when deciding on our goals. Maybe, it’s not about us, as individuals. Maybe we need to think of others, and what we can do to help somebody else out. Or, if we take care of ourselves, how will that impact other people in our lives who care about us. As individuals, we all have unique traits and qualities that somebody can learn and benefit by. By focusing on things this way, maybe that in and of itself will be something that would actually motivate us as individuals.
The picture posted at the beginning is one of my training partners Steve, and I, as we are about to cross the finish line at the Disney marathon…Steve’s first. That was a goal he had…to run and finish a marathon. I have talked on Steve before and his health issues he underwent to be able to get to that point. My goal then was not to run a personal best in the marathon for me. My goal was to do whatever I could to help Steve get to the finish line and achieve his goal. It was not about me…this time, my goal was about him. I look back on this picture often. The emotion of Steve’s face as we are nearing the finish line says it all. Everything he had gone through to be able to get to that point, the health scare, the work, the dedication, the discipline…to cross that finish line! That was also my reward. It was all worth it to me as well. The journey we went through to get to that point. There is no better feeling of accomplishment for me than knowing I helped him achieve his goal. It was not about me…this journey was about him…and I got to play a part in it!
Find that purpose in your life where you can make a difference on somebody else’s life. What is that purpose? What is it for each of us as individuals? Each one of us has to answer that. But, it you can keep some of the major underlying reasons for achieving your goals not be about you, but about someone else in your life, you will be more happy and successful that you could imagine. For each of us, we focused on our health, but the main reason we even made that a priority was our own individual families.
Steve and I are each missing one member of our families in this picture…Molly, my daughter, and Jeff, his son. Otherwise this is the rest of our families. This is the reason we want to take care of our health. This is the reason we want to be around…to spend time with them, and for them to spend time with us. It is about them! The journey along the way is just the benefit we get in the process.
What is that journey for you? And when you do decide to go for it, where will it take you? I am going to post next on actual goal setting, and how to “go”al for it! Keep this concept in mind that “it is not about us”. Make it about somebody else, whether friend, family…God…whatever it may be. When you do things for somebody or something else, it can be even more rewarding! The thing that helped motivate me in this way was reading the book by Rick Warren…”The Purpose Driven”. This is what he talks about as well. If you have never read, do it!
That journey can truly be a success, not just a destination. A success that keeps on going, and keeps on benefiting you. That is how it can be for you! Enjoy the journey! Keep moving everybody!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3236
by Dan | Jul 31, 2016 | Exercise, Family, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
Everybody has a story to tell. A story that explains how certain things in their life took place…whether by choice, or by chance. This particular story occurred by choice. When I take care of my patients, I see many times how our health choices, or lack there of, influence our overall health. I hear regrets from patients, and how they wish they could have changed things, had then known back then what they know now. But, unfortunately, we know this, and they know this, already. They knew it long ago. They just did not want to think about it back then, as life was going good, and how could their health possibly be a factor in things. How could their choices then make such a difference now. Well my story focuses on my family…my wife and my kids. Too many times I would hear from patients that they want to be around to see their kids graduate…to walk them down the aisle of their wedding…to be able to spend time with their grandkids. This is where we all have to take a step back, and refocus.
We have to literally STOP! What is it we want? What is it we want to accomplish? Once again, what is our goal/goals? One story in particular helped me come to realize what I wanted to accomplish.
My story is about this individual pictured above. When this picture was taken, this individual had just turned 52 years old. He was approximately 5’8″, and weighed over 300 lbs. Over the course of the next 11 months of his life, he suffered 2 heart attacks, and 3 strokes, the 3rd stroke which he ended up dying from. He passed away before he was 53 years old. He left behind 10 kids, and those 10 kids went on to create 35 grandkids. His first grandchild was born 1 month after he passed away. He never got to see any of his grandkids. He still had his own kids that had not even finished high school yet. He missed out on a lot of things in his family’s life. I was born 16 years after he passed away. This was my grandfather. I never got to know my grandfather. I never got to spend any time with him. I am told he was quite a comedian, and a practical joker. Maybe that is where I get some of my talents from. Over the years I have always felt cheated by the fact I never got to meet him…spend time with him…get to know him…to love him. And he never got to know me! I decided that if I had anything to say about it, or be in control of it, that I would never let this happen to me. So, on 9/26/07, I made a challenge to myself. I wanted to see how many days in a row that I could exercise. How many days could I go without missing any? I wanted to be as healthy as I could so this would not happen to me. I wanted to see my kids grow up, and see all of their accomplishments, and to be able to see their kids. I want to someday be a grandpa! I want to be able to know what that feels like. I want my grandkids to know me! I may have never met my grandfather, but I learned a lot from him. I learned that if I don’t want this to happen to me, I am going to have to take care of my health… and that you do have some control over your duration of your life. Now, there are always circumstances that come up that as humans we have no control over. But we need to learn to control those factors in our life that are controllable. In the end, we will all benefit from this. But there is no question. This takes discipline!
There are always things that come up. Things that need to be done during the course of the day. Some important, some not so important. The key is trying to figure out which ones are really the important ones. Then we need to make exercise and our health a priority. If anybody ever said that exercise was easy, then I don’t think that they did it for very long. It takes work. It takes dedication. It takes discipline. Over time, exercise will get EASIER to do, but I have never said it was easy! But, it can also be fun, and it can create fun. Make it enjoyable, and overall your life will be more enjoyable. That is what true success is! As the famous Dr. George Sheehan, who help start the running revolution, stated:
I can’t say it any better than this! My success is going to be that hopefully I will be around longer to see my family grow, and to spend time with them. That is true success. My kids cheered me on in races when they were little, just like to first picture shows. I got to return the favor. They were great experiences that I get to remember forever. Hopefully, I will get to see my grandkids, and cheer them on as well! My consecutive exercise streak has not ended yet since that day in 2007. I am still just as excited to be active now as I was then. I keep those same motivating factors in my mind at all times…Sarah, Megan, Molly, and Nick…my family!
Exercise to have fun! Exercise to be happy! Exercise for the Health of it! Our run club is excited to meet and go out and run…to interact and be social…to take care of ourselves. Remember, in life, for the majority of issues that come up, we do have choices.
Make good choices. Choose to be healthy. Choose to be around as long as we can, and are able to be in control. Choose wisely! My story of my grandfather comes to light even more now. I will turn 52 in October. I have a lot of things I want to do yet. I have a lot of time I want to spend with my family! Enjoy the ride along the way! My consecutive exercise streak goes on. When it will end I don’t know. But when it does, I will just another one! Exercise for the Health of it! Keep moving everybody!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3229
by Dan | Jul 24, 2016 | Exercise, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
Exercise. A challenge to the majority of us. It is time to go through our choices in life, and figure out what needs to change. Then we need to decide through those choices, what goals we want to achieve, and what we want our eventual destination to be. What is it we are waiting for? Something clearly has to change for us. As with many of us, we all face a lot of changes in our lives. But, it is often hard to decide how to change.
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So how do we decide what changes needs to be made? This is where each of us as an individual is going to have to dig deep within ourselves to help come up with an answer on this. It comes down to choices in our lives. Choices that we have the ability to make. Choices that we get to decide on. We get to figure out what is important to us, and how we are going to deal with it.
Choices are what life is about. Choices that we as individuals get to make on a daily basis. Are they always the right choices? No! But many are good, and for those that are not, we can learn from them. Nobody knows everything. That is why we have to keep trying. Keep trying, and learning from the mistakes. Eventually, that one particular choice, in a cluster of choices, will start to separate itself from all of the others, making it much clearer to each of us.
We have to decide when we as individuals are ready to change…ready for change! That is where exercise can help each of us, for all of those reasons listed above. Now, you just have to make it personal to each of you. Why is important for you? What is it you want? It comes down to what is your goal/goals? What is it you want? Each of us is different, and what may be an important reason or goal to someone else, may not be the same for you. So what is it? What do you want your goal/destination to be?
Which path are you going to take? Which road do you want to travel on? Which avenue has what it is you are looking for in life? Only you can answer that. But, guarantee, you have to make it personal to you. It has to mean something more to you to drive you to want it, to live it, to achieve it! If you don’t have a goal written down, do it! It will be much easier to try and achieve when you commit it to writing. I will talk more about goal setting in the next few weeks. I will also talk about my goal/goals, and what was it that drove me to trying to set my personal consecutive exercise streak. Remember, strive to exercise for the health of it! Keep moving everybody!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3222
by Dan | Jul 17, 2016 | Exercise, Goals, Motivation, Wellness/Health
Last weekend was the 32nd annual Kampeska mini triathlon. Sarah and I once again participated. It is quite the adventure, to say the least. You do not have to be great at swimming, biking, and running, but you have to be good enough in all 3 to finish. It is a challenge. There is nothing like coming off the bike and going running. Your legs don’t know what they are supposed to do yet…unless you experience it, words really don’t describe it well enough. You have to use different muscles for all three sports. You have to learn to transition from one to the other without a break. You have to keep moving! That is the challenge…”tri-ing” to do well in all 3 sports!
It should really be: “Tri not to drown! Tri not to crash! Tri to run!” Sarah and I are definitely not strong swimmers. We just need to get out of the water, and then we start having fun…the bike is next, and last is the run. Here we are out of the water, on the bike, and running.
So many people say they could never do a triathlon. For many of those people, they have never even tried. You will never know what you can do, until you “Tri”! You may need to “Tri” a little harder. You may need to “Tri” to be a little more disciplined. It takes endurance, speed, perserverance, tenacity, dedication, self-confidence, commitment, and above all, courage. You will never know how far you can go until you “Tri”. That goes with everything in life. We face all kinds of challenges, and have to face them head on. We have to keep “tri-ing” in order to succeed. This is a great way to work on all of those life skills. If we can do this, we can “tri” anything!
Then you can say, “I Tri…therefore I am” whether with exercise, or life in general. You may not always finish something, or be good at it, but if you don’t at least “tri”, you will never know what you are capable of. It may just surprise you what you could do. Dig down deep for all of those characteristics that you would need to accomplish things in your life, and fall back on them often. They are within you, sometimes you may just have to dig a little deeper. You have to at least “tri”! This next slide summarize everything about what you can learn, or accomplish, with a triathlon, and life in general. We may not all be able to do a triathlon on our own, but they also had team events with this…3 people, and each person did one portion. Sometimes we need help to get things done, or to be successful. This is a good way to start, and before you know it, we may be ready to tackle on more things on our own! Surprise yourself!
Keep moving everybody! Keep “Tri-ing”!
Dr. Dan
Consecutive Exercise Day #: 3215
