Do The Thing You Have To Do

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, Collected Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley

The need for willpower

Has this ever happened to you? You set a goal to lose weight and decide you need to eat a healthier diet. So you pass up the doughnuts at work, eat a salad for lunch, snack on almonds or raw veggies in the afternoon . . . then at home, after work, you find yourself sitting on the 2nd shelf of the refrigerator, eating everything in sight. Or you decide to start an exercise program and to go to the gym directly after work every day. You load your gym bag in the car with every intention of going to the gym after work. But at the end of the day, you are so tired you drive straight home – past the gym – and collapse in a heap in front of the TV. What happened? Where did your willpower go? Continue reading “Do The Thing You Have To Do”

Enough

 

“Clutter isn’t just the stuff in your closet. It’s anything that gets between you and the life that you want to be living.” ~ Peter Walsh

“Waste lies not in the number of possessions but in the failure to enjoy them.” ~ Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

Do you have “enough”? This is a two-sided question. If you don’t have a reserve of resources in all areas of your life, you spend your time scrambling to get your basic needs met. On the other hand, if you keep amassing resources beyond your reserves, you end up giving most of your time and life source to accumulating. Continue reading “Enough”

Breaking Negative Habits

“Wisdom is letting go of some bad habits everyday.” ~ Farshad Asl

This is how I used to wake up. Clock goes off at 6:00 AM. Hit the snooze button. Clock goes off at 6:05 AM. Hit the snooze button. Clock goes off at 6:10 AM. Hit the snooze button. This continues till 6:30 or sometimes 6:45. Finally climb slowly out of bed, groggy and headachy from having too many beers the night before. Head to the bathroom, coughing and hacking because of my smoker’s cough. Pop a couple of Tylenol to help the headache. Continue reading “Breaking Negative Habits”

Start Small

“Be the person with embarrassing goals and impressive results instead of one of the many people with impressive goals and embarrassing results.”
~ Stephen Guise

After stepping on the scales one morning and realizing I had gained 60 pounds, I decided it was time to lose the excess weight “once and for all”. So I set a goal for myself: “I weigh 190 lbs. by December 31, xxxx.” This was definitely a stretch goal for me but I gave myself some time – 9 months – and I calculated I only needed to lose a little over 1 pound per week to reach my goal. So I started strong! Continue reading “Start Small”

Eat Food

Food is fuel. Excellent food, excellent fuel. Good food, good fuel. Poor food, poor fuel. What are you fueling your wonderful body with?

Michael Pollan is one of the leading thinkers and writers in the field of food and nutrition. Pollan has stated that his findings after extensive study can be summed up in these 7 words: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Continue reading “Eat Food”

When Is Enough Enough?

“Struggling is an expression of one’s unmet needs.” ~ Thomas Leonard.
What are you struggling with or against? There is a place you need to build a reserve.

Do you have enough?

In the Excelerated Life model, there are 3 principles that may seem to conflict: 1) Excelerated simplicity — freeing yourself from unnecessary complexity; 2) Being clutter-free and well-enough organized — able to find what you need when you need it, and 3) Excelerated reserves — building your reserves in all areas. Excelerated simplicity and being clutter-free go hand in hand, but how do we reconcile these principles with building Excelerated reserves – with accumulating more stuff? Continue reading “When Is Enough Enough?”

Have A Good Day

Your life is made up of a string of days. String together a succession of mediocre or average days and you build a mediocre, average life. String together a succession of good days and you build a good life. String together a succession of great days and you build a great life! Very seldom do great days happen on their own, without your involvement. You can get a great start on a great day by using the “Golden Hour” – the first hour of the day – to set the tone for your day.

TheExceleratedLife.com
have a good day

Hyrum Smith called them the “magic hours”, a block of uninterrupted time, usually in the early morning, when you can concentrate on things beyond the normal urgency and routine of the day. This may be a time when you read or meditate or plan the day ahead. Brian Tracy refers to this time as the Golden Hour — the first hour of the day which can set the tone for the rest of the day.

Continue reading “Have A Good Day”

Keep A Reserve

Got enough . . . really enough? Enough that you are no longer engaging in survival thinking? Surviving isn’t thriving.

Many years ago, I was in the bathroom at work when I heard someone enter the stall next to mine. After a few minutes, I heard my boss’s voice. “Got any extra paper?”

“No, I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s barely enough for me.”

There was a pause for a few seconds, then . . . “Got change for a $10?”

Clearly, we were in need of a reserve.

Continue reading “Keep A Reserve”