I have averaged two to three hours of exercise daily in the past two years. My exercise routine includes Basketball shooting, swimming, weight lifting, running, cycling, pickleball, lawn tennis, and badminton. It is one of the most consistent things I have done in the past couple of months, and I consider it very gratifying and joy-inducing. The benefits of exercising can not be over-emphasized from producing dopamine, aiding the aging process, and helping sustain a positive mood, sleep, energy and cognition. Exercise has been very therapeutic for me, and it has helped me deal with the dark days.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has constantly re-invented himself from being the world’s greatest bodybuilder, and highest-paid movie star and later becoming the thirty-eighth governor of California (the world’s sixth-largest economy.). Growing up in Austria, his father constantly encouraged him to be useful. In Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, Arnold shares seven life principles that have helped him become one of the most recognizable faces in the world and the secret to his extraordinary achievement.
Life is full of twists and turns, ups and downs, bittersweet experiences and suffering. Whatever would go wrong would eventually go wrong (Murphy’s law); the key to living a meaningful life is to learn to suffer mindfully. As German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” “If it’s to be, it’s up to me” means taking responsibility for your life, accepting the things you can control and living your life on your terms. If you want to get anything done in life, it is up to you to find the resources, associations, connections and beliefs to get it done. No one is coming to the rescue; you are all you need, your potential is enough, and you are worthy and capable of achieving anything you set your mind to attain.
“The opportunity of a lifetime is to pick yourself. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified… and pick yourself” – Seth Godin
If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree. – Jim Rohn
It is never too late to go in a new direction; you are not a tree; you are here to make epic shit. As French author and Paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once quipped, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” If you don’t like your present situation, move! Change can be extremely tough, but nothing moves until you move. If you do what you have always done, you will continuously get the same result. If you want a different result in your life, you have to do something different. As Newton’s First Law of Motion states, “A body at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.”
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In The Seven Figure Agency Roadmap: How to Build a Million Dollar Digital Marketing Agency, author Joshua D. Nelson provides a step-by-step, on how to implement agency marketing, how to get results for your clients, and how to implement systems so they stick around long-term. He also writes about building teams and systems, so you become the owner of a reliable and scalable business that can work without you.
“You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.” ZIG ZIGLAR
Do not forget who you are; most of us forget our true essence and purpose in life due to the challenges, vicissitudes, trials and tribulations that we all have to deal with as a result of being human. It all started in childhood when we were indoctrinated with self-limiting beliefs, domesticated like wild animals, and programmed with our caregivers’ and parents’ projections and fears. You were told you could not do that; money is the root of all evil; people like us cannot attain that level of success. You need to know your place in this world and take care, among other well-meaning but self-limiting beliefs.
Achieving any worthwhile dream requires setting Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound goals. Goals are essential, but even more important are the systems and habits that make them easier to achieve. As Greek philosopher Aristotle once quipped, “We are what we repeatedly do; excellence is then not an act but a habit.” Your system makes staying consistent and showing up daily easier. As we all know, setting New Year resolutions doesn’t usually work, as most of us don’t follow through. Discipline is staying consistent with your goals even when the motivation has waned out; it is doing things that you necessarily don’t feel like doing. By focusing on the right systems, achieving your goals would be far more manageable. The beginning of any journey is usually smooth; the middle is messy, and attaining the goal is gratifying.
Systems for achieving your goal could come in different forms, such as time scheduling, batching, habit stacking, community goal setting, and using an accountability partner, among other strategies. Here are some ways I have been using these systems to achieve some of my goals.
Our relationships determine the direction and how far we go in life. At the root of all our issues is how we manage our relationships with other humans, situations and things. We stay in toxic/abusive relationships that are not helping us fulfil our purpose because it is all we have ever known, the familiar, which is the root of family. Family should always be there for you. Right? But the reality of life is that your so-called family might switch up on you at some point. They accuse you of changing, feeling superior, and becoming condescending and arrogant. Your family is not necessarily a bloodline; it is how people treat you during the hard times that shows who your true family and friends are. As the saying goes, we know our friends during adversity, and our friends know us during prosperity.
Most of us stay in toxic relationships due to our trauma/misplaced sympathetic bond with our abusers because they are familiar, and as humans, we move towards the path of least resistance. We are scared of being alone; hence, we people-please, live our lives on autopilot, not rocking the boat. It is better to be alone and healthy than among dysfunctional, unhealthy humans abusing us emotionally, psychologically and otherwise. It is tough leaving toxic relationships as the chemical imbalance and trauma bond make us stuck with our abuser. Still, by educating yourself about these unhealthy relationship dynamics, you can free yourself from these bonds.
The 2023 Royal Victoria Marathon was held on October 8th, 2023, in British Columbia, Canada. I ran the Beneva Quebec City Marathon in Quebec City, Quebec, last week, and it was my seventh full marathon in 2023. The Royal Victoria Marathon is a Boston qualifier. It is also part of the BC Marathon Championships and an Abbott World Majors ranking event. The Royal Victoria Marathon was my eighth marathon for 2023 as part of my Canadian Province Running Challenge.
Life is going to happen to all of us at some point, it is not a matter of if; it is a matter of when. You are either going through a storm, coming from a storm, or heading to a storm. As British writer Vivian Greene once quipped “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to end, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” We all have a choice when these storms of life come whether to be better or stay bitter, learn the lessons or let the situation lessen us, get the message, or stay stuck in the mess. Post Traumatic Growth is the change that occurs in us after we go through these storms of life. It is the transformation that happens in us after going through a painful period.
It is the lesson and the resiliency we exhibit when the vicissitudes and challenges come visiting. We become transformed when we see every trial and tribulation in life as a learning opportunity, an opportunity for a rebirth, restart, or reinvent ourselves. It is the story that we tell ourselves when we are going through this pain that shapes the course of our lives. It is growth that comes after a painful divorce, getting laid off, having a miscarriage, losing a parent, or having a health scare. It is the growth you experience after pushing yourself to the extreme or finishing a marathon. As the saying goes “No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.” By recycling our pain, we get transformed and it is that transformation that leads us to our purpose in life.
I fell in love with Kerry Washington’s character, Olivia Pope, in the American political thriller television series Scandals. Her performance won her the Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series and other multiple award nominations, including Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nomination. In Thicker than Water: A Memoir, Kerry Washington attempts to make sense of herself, her upbringing and her family dynamics.
I’ve written this account to more fully understand this truth, to affirm it, and to embrace it. This truth has given birth to a deeper compassion and love for my parents, and for myself. And I share it with you because I do not want to hide.
Kerry reveals how her parents did not reveal to her that she was conceived through artificial insemination until recently. She writes about her parent’s tumultuous marriage, being an only child, navigating the family secret and finding her place in the world.
In October 2021, I decided to learn to swim, which was one of the best decisions I had ever made. It was hard at first; it took me six months to go to the pool’s deep end, but I was committed to becoming a good swimmer. I practiced for at least 2 hours daily, 1 hour early morning and another hour in the evening. I was a regular feature in my local YMCA, and the live guards gave me many tips and strategies for achieving my goal. I initially started swimming because I wanted to participate in my first triathlon in 2024. Swimming is a form of meditation as I use my time in the pool to contemplate issues I am trying to solve. I usually swim with an underwater MP3 player to listen to French audio materials and music. My swimming time allows me to think and improve my French listening skills. There are many days I don’t want to go swimming, but once I remember that I have a habit of stacking my swimming time, I get ready to go swimming.
c. 1300, “something seen in the imagination or the supernatural,” from Anglo-French visioun, Old French vision “presence, sight; view, look, appearance; dream, supernatural sight” (12c.), from Latin visionem (nominative visio) “act of seeing, sight, thing seen,” noun of action from past participle stem of videre “to see,” from PIE root *weid- “to see.” 1
American author and disability rights advocate Hellen Keller was once asked what was worse than being blind, and she replied: “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision”. Keller lost her sight and hearing after a series of illnesses when she was 19 months old. She did not let those physical challenges hinder her purpose in life, and by the end of her life, she was named among Time magazine’s 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century due to her accomplishments.
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision”.
Crafting a vision for your life is one of the most important things you can do for yourself. As the boxing analogy goes, “You cannot hit a target you cannot see.” You cannot take people farther than you have gone; success is an inside job. If you cannot see it, it will be hard to conceive it or even achieve it. As author Napoleon Hill noted in his classic book, As a Man Thinketh, “Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive and Believe, It Can Achieve.” You need a clear vision of where you are going, as it will be your guiding light during the inevitable dark days ahead. On your path to achieving your goals and aspirations, whatever would go wrong would eventually go wrong but with a strong why and a definite purpose, you would overcome all obstacles.
It is better to be safe than sorry means it is better to make good choices in order to get great results than to make bad choices which leads to bad results. As author Jim Rohn often said, “Success is a few good habits repeated every day, Failure is a few bad decisions repeated every day.” According to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, safety is one of the needs we long for the most as it is very important in living a stable life. Our safety needs include personal, health, emotional, psychological, and financial safety. Once these needs have been met we can then move to higher needs. When one feels safe in an environment there is harmony but if safety is not guaranteed, humans naturally seek that safety in another clime.
It is better to stand alone than be surrounded by frenemies, draining friends, a nagging spouse, or sticking around with toxic family members because they are all we have always known. People pleasing and living your life based on optics/what would people say could get you in danger and in unsafe territories. At the core of most of our relationship issues and emotional heartache is the inability to set healthy boundaries. American poet Robert Frost once quipped “Good fences make good neighbors”. Your safety should always be your priority in any circumstance, whether it is dealing with a friend, frenemy, boss, or spouse.
As it is often said in sports: “A good defense is a great offense” and “Defence wins Championships”.
In 2001, Chairman of Berkshire and CEO Hathaway Warren Buffet delivered a lecture + Q&A at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. He advised the students on making the right career choices and the qualities they would need to become successful in life.
Warren Buffet’s lecture + Q&A Full Transcript at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.
