Are you Riding the Lackawanna Railroad?

Life on the Lackawanna Railroad

Are your plans and goals constantly being derailed? Is that carload of great ideas stuck on a siding somewhere? If so, I’d be willing to bet you’re on the Lackawanna Railroad.

My apologies to anyone that once served with the old DL&W, the Delaware, Lackawanna, & Western Rail Line, usually called the, “Lackawanna,” or the Erie-Lackawanna Railway for this play on words. What I’m trying to do here with this pitiful pun is impress on those making little progress with improving their lives that “Lack of want to” is the ball and chain they’re dragging with them and that is holding them back.

That lack of ‘wanna’ can come from many different sources, and most times for most people it is so carefully hidden in the back of our minds that we deny it even exists. “Of course I want to!” we’ll exclaim when challenged about our motivation; or in keeping with the theme here, our lack of it. Yet even as we mouth those words of denial, how many self-defeating things do we do each day instead of the things we know we need to do to achieve our stated goals. More important, why do we do them?

The fundamental reason for most people, based on everything I’ve heard and read, is fear; just plain old everyday fear. It could be fear of failure. It could be fear of success. And it could even be both. The human being that likes to live outside their comfort zone is a very rare individual. You’ll also find that individual is very successful at their chosen profession. How often do we tell ourselves that we want to live comfortably when in reality, there is no such thing. I hope that didn’t shock you but the truth is . . . Living comfortably is a fantasy we create in our minds based on our assumption that those we perceive as having achieved that level of comfortable living haven’t a care or concern in the world. They seem to float through each day without a sign of worry and we’re certain it’s because of their level of success. Let me tell you a secret – the REAL secret. It ain’t so!

The reason those people seem so comfortable and are successful is because they know how to live and be comfortable outside their comfort zone when those multitudes of everyday problems appear. It’s not that they don’t have problems, they just know how to adapt to them so much better. I’m reminded of the WW II General who said, “If we can’t go through, we’ll go around!” Ask a successful man how many detours he’s had to take getting to where he’s at and he’ll probably laugh before beginning a long list. A roadblock to most men is merely a detour to the man with enough ‘wanna’ to find a way.

So the next time you get sidetracked, look inside for the answers as to how you got there. Meditation, soul searching, call it what you want, I feel it’s an important part of staying off the, “Lackawanna.”

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Oct 25, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

Leg exercises for boomers and above.

This is a quick link to one of our sister sites, “Older & Active” and an article about leg exercises for boomer and seniors. Please pass this link along to any of your friends, relatives, neighbors, etc, that might be helped by keeping the ‘wheels’ moving. http://olderandactive.com/leg-exercises-for-boomers-and-above/

Aug 28, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

Obama Attacks Nutrition

The following is reprinted from “Tea Party Nation” and is written by Alan Caruba.

Obama Attacks Nutrition

By Alan Caruba

While watching a television commercial for some prescription medication, have you ever wondered why something it states may kill you or cause serious side effects ever was permitted to be marketed to the public?

For decades I have taken a full range of vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements every morning. I don’t get head colds or any unwanted side affects. In my seventh decade, I enjoy exceptional good health. An annual physical check up is always the same. I am fine.

Millions of Americans benefit from a daily regimen of vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements. Athletes use whey protein powders. Body builders take amino acids. Others augment food products that lack sufficient nutritional value. Their health and wellness is now threatened by the Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Banning Health!

On the Friday before the Fourth of July weekend, the FDA published a 47-page document, the Codex Alimentarius, that would ban all nutritional and supplemental ingredients by requiring them to file documentation involving multi-million-dollar testing and the regulations would be retroactive to 1994!

This will destroy the manufacturers of these products because most are small companies that could not afford such costs. It’s not like there is a vast body of information that demonstrates any threat to health from vitamins and minerals. Quite the contrary. There is ample information on their benefits. There are libraries filled with books devoted to this.

Who would benefit from such regulation of the natural supplement industry? Big Pharma. The same pharmaceutical companies that have a long record of putting forth FDA-approved medications that later prove to be lethal are looking to use the regulatory powers of FDA to literally increase levels of illness.

In the same way Obamacare has been demonstrated to not only be unconstitutional, but also a threat to the health of millions—especially senior citizens—this callous administration now threatens to remove from the shelves of stores that sell nutritional supplements, from pharmacies, and from supermarkets and other outlets, the vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements on which millions depend for wellness.

This constitutes a criminal conspiracy and Congress, which has ceded its law-making authority to the FDA, must hear from everyone in order to stop this assault on everyone’s health.

Frank Murray, the former editor of Better Nutrition, Great Life, and Let’s Live, is the author and co-author of fifty books on health and nutrition. They include Natural Supplements for Diabetes, Health Benefits Derived from Sweet Orange, and 100 Super Supplements for a Longer Life. He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.

One of Murray’s books, Sunshine and Vitamin D, notes that “With the hundreds of clinical trials published on Vitamin D in recent years—I read one study with 132 references—it is obvious that the ‘sunshine vitamin’ no longer has to play second fiddle to the other vitamins.” The same can be said for vitamins A, B, C, and E. All have amply demonstrated their value. Add to them, zinc, potassium, selenium, and other mineral supplements. All those prostate advertisements are about herbal supplements!

The Obama administration that has made obesity its pet project is also famous for photos of the President eating every kind of fast food. It is rank hypocrisy, but the proposed FDA ban is literally life threatening.

Write, email, and fax your Representative and Senator to ensure that Congress intervenes with the FDA in the same fashion it is struggling to protect us against an out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency. In particular, contact the members of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee.

Your life and the lives of your loved ones literally depend on stopping this attack on real nutrition.

Americans are losing the freedom they take for granted as Big Government intrudes on every personal choice they make. The Obama administration has demonstrated its total indifference to America’s senior citizens’ access to affordable medical care and now all Americans’ ability to access nutritional supplements.

You are being “protected” into an early grave!

Aug 22, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

Don’t Lose Weight – PLEASE!

This is more than just a play on words. On a daily basis, I see individuals putting their health at risk by making a decision to, “lose weight,” the mantra of the diet industry. If you’re one, PLEASE read this short piece on why “losing” weight can put your health at jeopardy.

First, no matter what system or diet you choose, losing weight for most people is not much different than losing your car keys, or a matching sock. If you don’t know where that weight went, and why,  just like those keys or missing sock, the pounds will show up again at some time in the near future. Don’t believe me? How many diets have you been on?

Or if this really is your first, ask other dieters (or those that have dieted before and are thinking about starting another one) how many times they’ve been looking for that magical nutritional mix that’s going to knock off those extra pounds. Yo-yo diets are for yo-yo’s – DON’T be one!

Folks, it’s time to be honest. You got yourself in the shape you’re in over a long period of time. Think not of how long it took to gain it back after the last “successful” diet – I’ll talk more about that later. Instead think of the time it took between the day you were born and the day you decided there was a whole lot more of you than you ever hoped to see.

Most of the people I’ve talked to, when I get to asking significant personal questions about their childhood and upbringing reveal that they developed an emotional attachment to food in their youth. It had no noticeable effect on their health at the time unless they were the type to prefer indoor sedentary activities like playing video games or watching TV. If they were active, the extra calories they burned balanced the poor calories and they reached working age without packing on too many pounds. But once in the work force, confined to an office all day, and not making the proper adjustments in their diets and non-working time, those pounds added up quickly.

So knowing how and why you got into an unhealthy condition, whether it’s a  few pounds or triple digits, is just as important as knowing where and why it went as you shed it.

Now before I use any more references to weight, let me add that I think weight itself, is an indicator at best. It became the accepted standard by the mid- twentieth century when the life insurance industry, with no better system to use, published their list of healthy weight parameters. They’d come to realize that people that were over fed or under fed didn’t live as long as those with what became typical healthy weights for people their age. Then with the government becoming more involved with health issues, and incapable of an original thought of their own, we had bureaucratic agencies urging people to lose weight at the same time that other government agencies are giving out misinformation on nutrition and helping produce the most obese population in history.

My problem with a strictly weight based mindset is that it doesn’t come close to indicate what is now recognized as REAL optimum health. Getting your health to an optimum level should be your only goal. Learn to listen to your body, learn about nutrition, learn ways to stay physically active doing things you enjoy, and learn what misconceptions led you to an unhealthy state. Do that and your weight will slide right on down ( or up in some cases ) to where it should be for optimal health.

E3 Team members are dedicated to helping you achieve those goals for a long, healthy, happy life. While none of us has all the answers, we do have areas of expertise and a large array of people and resources available to us. We’ll be happy to help you enjoy the Health and Wellness you deserve!

Contact us today!

 

Aug 13, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

Why Not?

So many times I’ve heard people, myself included, talk about things they’d like to do. The movie, “Bucket List,” was all about unfulfilled dreams and fantasies. Of course if you want to make them come true in a hurry, it’s a huge help if you happen to befriend a guy with mega-bucks like happened in the movie, and I’m sure that lack of finances is the biggest excuse most use to explain why they haven’t achieved their dream. But therein lies our story.

It seems to me that there are two distinct groups in the world. There are those, when struck with an idea, or given a challenge, smile and say, “Why not!” as in, why not do it, it sounds like a good idea to me. And then there’s the second group, the ones that when presented with a challenge of any sort immediately go into “Why not” mode and begin listing all the reasons they can think of as to why it’s not going to happen, why they can’t accomplish the task, or achieve the dream.

In my opinion, no matter how lengthy the list of reasons (a tactful way of saying excuses), the real reason is fear.

Fear is the big crippler that affects us all. When you see or hear about people that are rich and famous and then find out they’ve become alcoholics and/or drug addicts, and you wonder why someone in their position, who to you it seems like they’ve got it made, you can bet the reason is fear. Quite possibly they lack the self confidence to believe they’ve made it on real, God-given talent and as a result, they’re in fear of being found out to be a phony that doesn’t really belong in their lofty position. There are other reasons of course, but that one is the one I’ve most often heard bandied about by the psych types.

There are a number of good books on the subject of fear and what to do about it, all written by people much better qualified to explain it. Some that I’ve read and like are:

“Fearless” by Max Lucado

“Conquer Fear!” by Lisa Jimenez

“Eat that Frog!” by Brian Tracy

What they all have in common is explaining what has caused us to have this fear in us that keeps us from achieving our full potential, or as sometimes happens, screwing up our lives after reaching our goal because we think we don’t deserve it.  Somewhere in our early years, back when they were numbered with a single digit, either we were told something that wasn’t true, or we misconstrued something and accepted as fact. Either way, we’ve got some misinformation firmly lodged in our subconscious and it’s keeping us from achieving what we say we want. I think philosopher and psychologist William James may have been one of the earliest to state: “Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds,
can change the outer aspects of their lives.”

From the very moment that a person believes they can and will reach or complete their dream, it will begin to happen. If you’re not getting what you want out of life, perhaps it’s time to read one of these books to see if fear is holding you back. It could be fear of failure, fear of success, or as silly as it seems, both. There’s one way to find out and that’s accepting the possibility and identifying the problem. Then you too can Conquer that Fear, live Fearless, and Eat that Frog!

Jul 29, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

ROI and You

Most of the people I’ve spoken to about ROI can be divided into three groups.

Group One are the individuals with a business background that have had ROI batted around in front of them for the last few years and know it as, “Return on Investment.”

Group Two are those that think of ROI as one of the parades at Mardi Gras.

And then there’s always Group Three, the eternally clueless. These are the folks that are up to the minute on the latest gossip, or trial in the media, or the lives of celebrities, but have no idea what’s going on in their own lives.

However, no matter which of the above groups you’re in, there’s another ROI that affects us all, and in all areas of our lives, that I’d like to make you aware of today. It’s the ROI that I call, “Return on Involvement.”

Return on Investment is simply dollars and cents; how much return do I get for the money I put in. Return on Involvement goes much beyond the balance sheet and the return might not be visible until years in the future.

One good example would be the in the area of your personal life and the time you invest with friends and family. Quality time spent today will pay huge, exponential dividends in years to come. Think too of your spiritual life. The few hours of time you invest now getting to know God may be measured in eternity when your time comes. I happen to believe in spending some quiet time in meditation, and meditating about things like Return on Involvement helps me keep my life in perspective.

Return on Involvement most often affects your free time, the time spent on hobbies and volunteer activities. For a gardener that reaps what they sow, it’s obvious. Spending the time to properly prepare the seed bed and till the soil, and water the growing plants adequately and consistently provides a return evident in a better crop of vegetables or abundance of flowers. I get great pleasure from playing baseball and riding my bikes. Baseball provides me physical activity,  camaraderie with my teammates, and an incentive to stay in shape to play better. Riding a bike also provides me with physical activity and pride in doing my small part to make the planet greener.

Yet as much as I enjoy those things, I have to go back to each and look at my involvement and weigh that against the return. Could I get the same results from driving a hybrid vehicle to the gym for an hour or so every day and then going to lunch with a civic group? Isn’t it great that in this country, at least for the moment, we have the ability to make those choices?

I know a woman that often tells me how people today have no time for each other and how no one visits her anymore. Yet when I point out to her that she spends twelve hours a day keeping her house and yard spotless to impress visitors, and then makes those visitors feel uncomfortable when they do stop in by hovering over them, lest they sit a glass down without a coaster, or use a ‘good’ towel that is out for display only, she doesn’t hear a word of it. So while her house certainly looks ten times nicer than mine, is she getting the return she wants from her twelve hours a day? By her own admission, she isn’t, but if the hour at this moment is between 7 am and 7 pm Central time, it’s almost certain she’s at work somewhere in her house or yard.

Up until last month, for over two years I did a daily radio show on Blog Talk Radio called, “On the Bright Side,” providing listeners with odd bits of information and trivia about events that had occurred on that date, birthdays of famous people, and specially recognized days, like “Hug your Kids Day,” or, “Workaholics Day,” or, “Bikini Day.” It was a lot of fun, but . . . each fifteen minute show took an hour or two of research and preparation, to say nothing of the commitment to hosting the show at the same time every day, no matter what other events were going on in my life. So as much as I enjoyed doing the research and doing the show, my involvement with it got to the point where the return wasn’t worth it. I found I had to give up too many other things because of it. While I enjoyed the return of knowing I’d touched people’s lives in a positive way, it got to where the involvement of time wasn’t worth it.

Therein lies today’s lesson. How many things are you involved with that aren’t giving you the return you’d like, and what can you do about it? A beautiful lady gave me a tool to use that has made a difference in my life. She urged me to read a chapter of Psalms and Proverbs each day. I do that before I pause to meditate and I’m often amazed at the perspective I get from combining the two. Try it for a month and I think you too will be happy with the ‘return’ on your involvement.

Make it a great day!

 

 

Jul 07, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post

Make it a Motivated Monday!

Have you ever dragged your tail into the office on Monday morning, going immediately to the company coffee pot (previously made by a more motivated individual) to commensurate about, “Blue Monday,” with your fellow employees? I have and it’s not something I’m proud to admit. The first time I noticed myself doing that, I was sure it was entirely because I’d gone to work for the wrong company. Since I don’t believe in coincidences, I couldn’t blame it on the company when I noticed it again with another firm.

The common denominator of course was me and my attitude. While it’s true I’m not by nature a cubicle dweller, and can get antsy if kept indoors for long periods of time, there are ways to work around that problem if you have your head on straight.

A good friend from years past, Tim Shawd, was the first I heard telling folks, “Make it a great day.” When I first heard that, I thought it funny. But the more I thought about it, I realized how very true it was. Today, and any day, is only going to be as good as you make it. If you’re not actively working on improving your life, don’t expect to see improvement. If you’re not actively working to improve your relationships, don’t expect to see improvement. And by “actively” I don’t mean reading another book, listening to another CD, or posting another affirmation on a sticky note and calling that progress.

Actively in this case means taking action; making the changes, though possibly painful, that will effect the outcome you desire.

As a case in point, there’s lady that is part of one of the groups I’m in that meets for coffee. Every time she sees me she tells me about a diet she’s read about and about a nearby gym she’s thinking of joining, and how this is the year she’s really going to do something about that extra 100 pounds she’s packing. She tells me all this as I sip my green tea and she puts away a latte or two, plus a sweet roll or two, and then takes a couple of cookies home with her.

I guess she thinks driving by a gym is all it takes to work off a little weight and in her case, maybe that’s so. She’s so afraid of going inside that maybe just seeing the building makes her sweat off a few pounds. The bottom line here is that she is neither active nor serious about pursuing what she claims is her goal. I often wonder how much weight she’s gained in the year I’ve known her and listened to her tell me her stories.

The key to a good life is simple. To have a good life requires having a succession of good years. To have a good year, requires a succession of good months. Good months require good weeks, and to have a good week,  the very best thing you can do is start off with a, “Motivated Monday.”

As my buddy Tim would say, “Make it a great day!”

 

Jun 27, 2011 | 0 comments | View Post