I Think So 

By a “broken heart” I really mean a “broken spirit.”
Example:
Joe Paterno was the winningest major college football coach of all times. He served as head coach for the Penn State Nittany Lions football team for 46 seasons. He won 409 games and took his team to 37 bowl games and two national championships. More than 250 of the players he coached went on to the NFL.

Joe Paterno was loved and admired by his friends, players, neighbors and family. He was fired in November as a result of the child sex abuse charges against his former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. The coach always bears the responsibility for what happens. He was suddenly disgraced after all of those years of admiration.

Joe Paterno - RIP
Shortly after his firing, Joe was diagnosed with lung cancer, he then broke his pelvis, and died just two months after the scandal broke out. I think that without the disgrace he would still be coaching and winning today. Yes; a broken heart can kill you.

Recruit Some Help
The reasons to quit smoking are many; staying healthy is at the top of the list. Just about every smoker I know says, “I know that I should quit.” I know from experience that it is easier said than done. I quit 40 years ago and can still remember the battle. In Success Made Easy I quoted myself as saying, “It’s easy to quit smoking; I’ve done it hundreds of times.”
This article in CBS News makes the case that smokers who quit with company do better than those that go at it all alone. Check it out, pass it along, just maybe you will save a life.

OPTION ONE:
Nice and close to the stores. All you have to do is drive around awhile, or stalk someone leaving the mall, or sit and wait for a spot to open up.

OPTION TWO:
Park here and then walk about two minutes to get to the stores. There are usually more open spaces, so it’s actually a bit faster and you even get a little excercise as a bonus.

OPTION THREE:
Park where I do; see me? You will not only get the two minutes of walking, but as a bonus you will be able to go down and back up one flight of stairs; even more excercise. Oh yeah, one more thing; NO DOOR DINGS!

NOTE:
These three photos were all taken at 2:30 PM today.

The old saying, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” is more than folklore. One medium size, unpeeled apple provides over 3 grams of fiber, more than 10% of the daily fiber intake recommended by experts.

The apple’s two types of fiber lower cholesterol levels, and thus reduce your risk of heart attack, and stroke.

Adding just one large apple to your daily diet has been shown to decrease cholesterol 8-11%, and eating 2 large apples a day has lowered cholesterol levels by up to 16%!

A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine confirms that eating high fiber foods, such as apples, helps prevent heart disease. Almost 10,000 American adults participated in this study and were followed for 19 years.

Lowering cholesterol levels isn’t the only benefit of eating apples. The pectin they contain removes toxins like the heavy metals lead and mercury, from your body.

Another antioxidant, vitamin C, also found in apples, will boost your body’s immune defenses, providing yet another way that apples protect against cancer.

For me, eating apples sounds better than going to the doctor. You?

Ask Yourself, “What if…?”
What if you were blind and could suddenly see?
What if you were deaf and could suddenly hear?
What if you were numb and could suddenly feel?
What if your nose was blocked and could suddenly smell?
What if your taste buds were dead and could suddenly taste?

Unless you are unusually gifted or severely handicapped you have these five senses. Each one is a reason to be joyful.

How would you feel if you lost everything you have and then suddenly got it all back? Rejoyce over the things you have while striving for more. It will make the journey easier to endure.

Take Good Care of It!
You will most likely have more than one home in your life. You may have several jobs, multiple bosses and countless cars. You will have friends that come and go. You might even have more than one spouse. Change is inevitable and mistakes are forgivable. But, as far as anyone knows, you will only have ONE body.

New Habits
With that being the case it stands to reason that you should take good care of it. Good fitness habits will serve you as you get older. There’s no need to be obsessed with it; just get some form of regular exercise, eat the right stuff and avoid the bad stuff. When you go to the mall, park as far away from the entrance as you can. As an added bonus you will have fewer door dings. Take the stairs rather than the elevator. When you use an escalator climb up or down on the steps. Eat less and move more. Little habits add up to big differences.

Discipline
When it comes to exercise I have found that a gym with a trainer or coach is next to essential. Most people can use or need someone to get them to do what they know they should do. If you are one of those organized, disciplined, self motivated persons that knows how to use the latest gym equipment and can stay on top of yourself, well… you probably stopped reading this after the first paragraph.

So Exciting!
I had the pleasure of making six presentations to this wonderful group of Brighton Store Managers from all over the country while they were “conferencing” on Maui this week. I get to meet a lot of enthusiastic people, but none more excitable than these people are. Mahalo for the opportunity.

Too Excited!
I must have been too excited on Monday evening following dinner with several Brighton managers at Leilani’s in Whaler’s Village. I failed to see the uneven sidewalk when walking back to the Hyatt Regency, stumbled and took a dive. I made a “five point landing” with my knees hitting first, then my fingers followed by my right shoulder, rib cage and finally the side of my face. I posted a photo of my fingers at the time on Facebook and was told that it was “gross.” Yes it was, I’m sorry for that.

Should I or Shouldn’t I?
Doctors on Call at the hotel was closed, so security came to my room and patched me up enough that I could make my two presentations Tuesday morning. I’m not fond of going to the doctor, so I debated as if to go at all. Jerry suggested that I go to the clinic at Whalers Village and I am glad that I did. I saw a good example of empathy as they cleaned the sand out of the wounds, poured a stinging disinfectant all over them, and gave me a painful Tetanus shot in the arm. The doctor there told me that if I hadn’t treated these wounds there was a 97% chance they would get infected, which could possibly lead to “Lock-Jaw:” not very good for my profession. In the days that followed my left foot started swelling and reached the point where I could hardly walk on it.

Making Sure
I reluctantly went to the hospital for X-Rays. I saw an orthopedic surgeon and after reviewing the x-rays he assured me that there were no fractures. YEAH! He then prescribed lots of rest and “TLC” at home; Yeah, Right!

“Doctor Retail”
He then sent an assistant in to show me some “relief options.” It felt as though I was at Nordstrom as he had me try on various orthopedic boots and shoes. After being convinced that none of them was going to increase the healing, I said, “I’ll think about it” and hobbled away in my Converse shoes. I’m glad he hadn’t read Retail Selling Made Easy. One “Okay but…” and I might be wearing something very unfashionable.

It’s Resolution Time
This article in The Huffington Post points out that there’s a biological reason why bad habits are so hard to break – they get “wired into the brain.”
The key to unwiring them is understanding how unhealthy behaviors become ingrained in the first place. A pleasure-sensing chemical named dopamine conditions the brain to want the short range reward again and again, thus developing a hard to break habit. It’s a tug-of-war between willpower and temptation. 
The trick is to simply replace the bad habit with a good one through repetition. In Success Made Easy I call it “displacement.” You replace one thing with another. Once you replace the bad behavior with the good one, the bad one goes away. Carrots and chocolate pie just don’t go together.
The mental battle is accepting the long range positive results over the immediate reward offered by the bad habit. An example might be watching a mindless TV show vs. taking brisk walk around the block. Once you hit the street, the thought of the TV show goes away. Give it a go; there’s nothing to lose but a few pounds.

TWO YEARS LATER
As our President arrived in Hawaii for another vacation I was reminded of this blog post I did when he was here two years ago. The last I read was that he is STILL sneaking a puff here and there. I am okay with the President taking a vacation now and then, most have, and the last one far more than this one. I’m also glad that he chooses to come to Hawaii as the press helps, but I am still waiting for that total declaration of tobacco abstinence. Once he does that, he can get on the bandwagon and encourage America’s youth to follow the leader. Leaders must be very careful about the images they portray, as they will be followed by many; right or wrong. Here’s what I said two years ago: Oh, and don’t miss the comments at the end; and add your own if you want.    

Say It Isn’t So
When I read that President Elect Barack Obama declared that you won’t catch him lighting up a cigarette in the smoke-free White House, I was hoping that he would go on to say that you wouldn’t catch him smoking a cigarette anywhere. But NO; the word is that he still occasionally smokes a cigarette. During the campaign he said, “I figure, seeing as I’m running for president, I need to cut myself a little slack.” Well, now you are the President and you need to think about being the right role model younger people need to see.

Mo Betta Image
We would all be better off if Obama were to maintain a healthy image and set healthy standards for Americans to follow. A while back, when the campaign began I read that he was going to quit smoking because “his wife wants him to.” While it’s good to know that she is that smart, that isn’t a good enough reason to quit.

Times Have Changed
A number of years ago the country as whole wasn’t very smart about the effects of tocacco. I remember my father lying in a hospital bed dying of lung cancer and smoking cigaretts provided by the hospital. Such a thing would be thought of as absurd today.

Manly Image?
When John Kennedy lit up a cigar he was seen as a “man’s man.” Today doing so would be seen as foolish. I doubt if he would be a smoker today.

Big Thinker?
And a pipe smoker today, unlike in Gerald Ford’s day, would more likely be thought of as a stinker than a thinker.

“Hey Dude, whazzup?”
And what was this guy smoking anyway?

2010 NOTE: I was advised via a comment that this is a great photo shop job, and I can see that now, but it’s just too funny to delete.

Halloween 2010 Update
On June 1st of this month I announced on Twitter, “I am going public. I will be posting my weight and weight goals on my iPhone WeightBot application daily.”

June 1, 2010
Almost instantly and a bit miraculously my weight began to fall off.
When faced with the glory of public praise or with public humiliation, most of us will opt for the former and do what we know is needed. I did!
If there’s something you want to change, GO PUBLIC with it. I have posted my weight every day for all to see, not only on Twitter, but here on this blog and occassionally on Facebook. The results tell the story. My long range goal was to get to my high school weight of 165 by the end of November, making for a 36.4 pound weight loss in five months. I still have a month to go. Take a look at today and tell me if you think I will make it. I do! Just watch; I can use all the help I can get. 

October 31, 2010
I have had my ups and downs during this four month period, and every “up day” led to a behavior change the next day. It has been me against me. If there’s something you want to impact, measure it. If you want to increase the impact, measure it more often.

“What’s Your Secret?”
People are now asking me what my “secret” is or “how” I did it. I respond by saying, “There’s no secret to weight loss or weight control. We all know how to do it. Simply eat less, avoid the fat and sugar, and get some excercise.” A friend and mentor used to say, “If we all had to go to the dinner table naked there would be very few overwieght people.” I think there’s some truth to that. I keep telling myself (when tempted) that “Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.” I can attest to that. Go public with whatever you want to acheive. It works!