Lifestyle Archives • Page 4 of 10 • Elect Wellness

5 Reasons Your Knees Hurt, and How to Fix the Pain

Over 200,000 people a month search google for information on knee pain. Needless to to say, it’s a common problem. You may be surprised, however, to learn that the knees are seldom to blame for the discomfort experienced. I’ve outlined 5 of the most common sources of knee pain below, and some ideas to correct the root causes.

1) Far too much sitting

How does this affect your knees? You may wonder. I’ll explain. Your gluteus maximus is the antagonist to your hip flexors, the muscles that lift your knees upward toward your torso. As you sit on your glutes, they relax and lose tone, much like pressure point massage therapy. The hip flexors, on the other hand, get extremely short and tight with long periods of sitting, because of the 90* angle between your femurs (upper leg bones) and torso. This creates unnatural pulling and twisting forces when you do try to stand up, walk, jog, run, squat, or jump. Please note, I didn’t say they are too strong, just too short. They should be at least strong enough to do a full set of sit-ups or knee raises. But they need to be worked and/or stretched through a full range of motion, which includes hip extension. Walking is tremendous for accomplishing this, as one femur extends behind the torso as the other reaches forward for the next step. Strengthening the glute maximus muscles with exercises like lunges, hip bridges, and donkey kicks will help create tone in the glutes that will produce a constant gentle lengthening of the hip flexors.

2) No lateral hip strength

This is a big one, and it’s very common. When we were younger, we did jumping jacks, played foursquare and hopscotch, roller skated and swam, among other sports and activities. We actually moved our legs side to side! That strengthened a group of muscles called our abductors, which connect the outside of our hips to our upper legs. When we were younger, strong hip abductors kept our femurs (upper leg bones) from caving in toward each other. These days though, too many of us have lost that lateral hip strength, and therefore suffer knee pain due to misalignment of the bottom of our femurs with the top of our tibias (shin bones.) What was supposed to be a smooth-operating hinge joint has now become an uncomfortable mess of clicking, grinding, catching, and pinching. It’s not simply bad cartilage, old age, or too much weight. Those may be small contributing factors, but they don’t excuse a legitimate postural dysfunction. I promise you – the path that returns you to pain-free days with be filled with lateral strengthening movements like lying and standing side leg raises, hip hikes, single leg stands, side planks, and resistance band side steps. Keep in mind – if you let the foot rotate outward during these exercises, you will severely limit he effectiveness of the movements and fail to help yourself. So be sure to keep the angle of your feet parallel to each other throughout every exercise.

3) Shoes are too small

This is an all-too common mistake. People often decide whether or not a shoe fits based on the amount of room left in the toe while standing. That’s actually the least important aspect. It’s much more vital to make sure you match your arch length, and have enough room in the forefoot to move and splay your toes, including that neglected little toe. If you are going to use the foot-measuring device, make sure you measure both feet, and use the inside slide to measure your arch length as opposed to looking at total foot length. Many of us have lost some of the arch over time, resulting in a longer foot – but we are still trying to wear the size we wore 15 years ago! Give those toes room – lateral room. They help balance you and keep your knee aligned properly.

4) Externally rotated femurs

If we allow ourselves to become less coordinated and less athletic year after year, we will start to compensate for our lack of strength and balance with an altered gait. What do I mean? Visit a mall and just watch people walk for a while. You will see that we are starting look more like waddling penguins than gliding humans. Our legs and toes are turned out. Instead of simply moving forward, we end up fighting the other half of our body. The right side takes a step toward the right. The left side takes a step toward the left. Yet our goal is straight ahead! What a waste of time and energy. More concerning, however, is that this puts added stress on the knees. Both the toes and the knees should be pointed in the direction we are trying to move. Sometimes, just one femur is rotated. This can actually be caused by “toe-out” driving for long periods, where the heel stays under the brake but the toes are out over the gas pedal. This can add up if you spend a lot of time behind the wheel. If you are going to be on the gas for a while anyway, try moving your heel over underneath the toes. You’ll feel your femur internally rotate back towards normal, and your knee may be better for it. It’s a good idea to check yourself for symmetry e wry now and then, especially on road trips.

5) An unlevel pelvis

Perhaps you sleep on the same side every single night. Maybe when driving, you always lean into the center console. Or it could be you always carry a heavy briefcase or purse on the same shoulder. Any and all of these could add up over time to shorten the distance between your lower ribs and your hip bone on one side versus the other. We have 2 quadratus lumborum muscles that complete this connection – one on each side. If the right muscle is much shorter and tighter than the left muscle, the hips will be unlevel, often resulting in a short leg. (fyi, sometimes the shoulders and neck take the hit instead) This will add stress to the knees – sometimes the one on the “short” leg, sometimes the one on the “long” leg. Remember though, the problem is really in the core. The knees are just displaying the symptoms. Try sleeping on the other side, carrying your bag on the other shoulder, and/or leaning the other direction in your car for a while. Be sure to incorporate core exercises in your workouts, and challenge both sides with equal force. Stretching both sides with equal distance is another good idea. With equal force and distance, the weak side will eventually catch up to the strong side. Furthermore, total strength, balance, and flexibility will increase, making you less likely to develop the postural dysfunction again when doing necessary daily activities like sleeping in bed, carrying items, or driving your car.

So don’t be disheartened if you’ve been led to believe that irreversible damage in your knee joint is the cause of your problems and pain. The often thrown around “bone on bone” idea is VERY seldom true. If you can bend or extend your knee at all, you are likely not “bone on bone,” no matter what you’ve been told. And even if you’ve experienced some cartilage damage, your body can regenerate it given healthy alignment, exercise, and nutrition. You have cells called chondrocytes, and the pumping action that MOVEMENT and pressure creates actually stimulates the production of cartilage. As you can see, sitting around because you have knee pain only makes things worse. Take action, but take safe and smart action to begin your healing and strengthening journey. Contact us if you need or want help making it happen!

10 Secrets to Soaring Self Control

Research shows that self control, or willpower, is an essential tool for success in any long-term endeavor that involves the accumulation and execution of particular habits. Improving one’s health and fitness is no exception. So how can we harness more of it? How can we leverage and grow the willpower necessary to overcome the urges and impulses that threaten to derail us off the track to our goals?

1) Wait: I can’t stress how powerful this trick is. The next time a derailing urge hits you, instead of gritting your teeth and immediately fighting back, try simply giving yourself 15 minutes before acting on the urge. Commit to nothing more than waiting that long. You’d be amazed how many urges completely subside with a little time.

2) Snack: Eating frequently actually helps you eat better. When we go too long between meals, our blood sugar drops, our brains fatigue, and the signal to eat a little something grows into a craving to consume everything. So snack early and often on healthy, natural foods and watch your ability to turn down large unhealthy meals improve considerably.

3) Forgive: It may sound strange, but this is a big one. You must realize that nobody has perfect self control. No one is even close. So don’t expect it of yourself. You are going to mess up and give into some temptation along the way. Failing to forgive yourself will only develop anger that will ruin your relationship with food and start a vicious cycle of self destruction. Just like failing to forgive someone else only hurts you, failing to forgive yourself can hurt you even more.

4) Sleep: Ever notice how efficient and productive a day is after a great night’s sleep? It’s in part due to a higher level of self control. Our ability to overcome distractions and temptations is escalated with sleep. Going to bed is step number one in eating clean

5) Practice: Self control is a muscle that must be trained. Leverage any small situation where you find an urge is present, and use it to intentionally restrict yourself to some degree. Conversely, when you would rather not do something, even if skipping it would be rather inconsequential, try forcing yourself to go through with the action anyway. You’ll be glad you trained your self control when the moment of real need arises.

6) Exercise: Research shows that exercise’ improvement in blood flow, oxygenation of the brain, elevation of electrical activity, and secretion of hormones all contribute to heightened self control. The sense of achievement provides a winning mentality that can flow into our diets. Yes, exercise can increase hunger, but it’s easier to reach for the right stuff because we’ve done it.

7) Reflect: This strategy can take a variety of forms. Meditation and/or daily devotion has been proven to increase self control. So has church. Spending a moment at least each week, or better yet – each day – on your spiritual side, can give you the power you need act in congruence with your long-term goals, rather than short-term impulses. Even reading a book that provides a new perspective can cause you to step back long enough to re-evaluate your current habits, and act intentionally to change them for the better.

8) Drink: Your body is about 70% water, but your brain nears 90% water. Just like a lack of food and sleep can cloud decision-making abilities and self control, so too does a lack of water. If you know your lean body mass, aim for 70% of that number in ounces of water per day. If you don’t know your lean body mass, aim for 1/2 your body weight in ounces per day. A well-watered brain is a well-tempered brain.

9) Replace: This is a cornerstone of self control. The ability to avoid doing something you really don’t want to do often hinges on your ability to find something else to do in its place. For example, if you always find yourself overeating from 9-10pm, try scheduling game time with a friend or spouse during that period instead. Try to pre-determine alternate courses of action for particular urges. Ones that give you a similar feeling of reward are best.

10) Talk: It may sound weak or corny, but reaching out to an appointed accountability partner at the “time of temptation,” whether it be a friend or coach, is a great way to keep yourself on track. Sometimes we just need someone to either talk us away from a particular anti-goal action, or talk us into taking a particular pro-goal action. Ironically, making yourself this vulnerable is often the key to making yourself that strong.

This Heart Attack Hit Close to Home

I was sitting in my living room working on getting hundreds of CD’s imported onto my computer, so I could leave that now old school space-robbing technology behind. (yes, even CD’s are now old fashioned, lol)

A few years ago, we were preparing the house for our first baby and we needed to clear room! My mother-in-law had come over to help my wife make a bunch of little banana nut muffins for Jamie to munch on through the labor process

The phone rings. My mother-in-law answers. “Oh no! I am SO sorry …” You can only hear one side of the conversation, but you immediately knew that something terrible happened. After a few minutes, she hung up the phone and from the living room, I heard Jamie and her mother praying in the kitchen for their friend. When they finished, I found out that the brother of my mother-in-law’s friend had just had a big heart attack and was going in for open-heart surgery. I don’t know about you, but it’s moments like these where my health and fitness become very serious. There is debate over who exactly the following quote came from, but it is said that “you never appreciate your health until the day that you lose it.”

Memories came flooding back regarding one of my best friend’s from high school. He lost his dad at the age of 56. His mom will tell you that 10 minutes before he dropped dead of a heart attack, he was telling his wife how excited he was to enter the next phase of their life together. The last of their kids had recently achieved his independence, and they were getting to have fun together, much like when they first started dating … only better … because now they had grandkids! A moment later she would be calling 911 as he lay motionless on the floor. For him, there was no open-heart surgery. There was no tomorrow. The result was apparent, and he wasn’t coming back. A wife would lose her husband, 2 sons would lose their father, a daughter would lose her daddy, and grandkids would never again crawl up on grandpa’s lap. Back to the brother of my mother-in-law’s friend. They found complete blockage of his right coronary artery. Now that’s a lot of heavy-hearted material for an email from me. I realize that. We need to face the brutal facts of reality though. (Indeed, things would get worse for my mother-in-law as her son would die from a heart attack too, shortly after I originally wrote this article.) But here’s the good news:

This stuff doesn’t have to happen! Stories like this seemed to flow through the church where I grew up, almost every other week. It’s one of the big reasons that drove me into preventive health and fitness. Don’t become another tragic story. Don’t let your loved ones become another tragic story. Make your health a priority. Make fitness part of your everyday routine.

We all think that we can save ourselves tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year. Life is precious, and your quality of life is precious … and not just to you, but to your loved ones as well. I’ll leave you with one more powerful quote, and hopefully it will motivate you to take action and start taking care of yourself. If you need help, we are here for you. All you have to do is reach out and ask!

Here’s that quote I mentioned. Take it to heart. (and take care of yours) “The trouble is … we think we have time.”

No Time to Workout? 13 Facts of the Average American Life’s Clock

As health, fitness, and nutrition coaches, we hear “the time excuse” all the time :) And some people have gotten so good at selling it to themselves, that we almost start buying it.

But if we all take a step back and give this idea of “time” some thought, some powerful facts emerge that can give us a fresh … and better … perspective.

Author Michael Fortino recently gathered some data of the time spent in the average American’s lifespan. Brace yourself. It’s amusing, but also disturbing and disappointing.

The average American, in their lifetime, will spend:

7 years in the bathroom
6 years eating
5 years waiting in line
3 years in meetings
2 years playing phone tag
6 months sitting at red lights
8 months opening junk mail

Now, why is the founder of a health and fitness company giving you these facts?

Well, frankly, at a BARE minimum, we are asking that you give at LEAST 8 months of your LIFETIME to working out (two 45-minute workouts a week).

That’s the same amount of time you spend opening junk email !!!

There are 168 hours in a week, and two 45-minute workouts amount to a whopping .9% of your total time

That’s 0.9 … less than 1% of your time … that we propose you invest in the house of your soul, the only framework you have with which to live this life.

Indeed, science says 1.8% is even better. The American College of Sports Medicine has confirmed that you should exercise MOST days of the week, which = 4 in a 7 day week … so we aren’t even aiming “high” … at HALF the final goal!

Look, if you are an average American, here’s what’s going to happen TODAY, according to the research:

you will get interrupted 73 times
you will take an hour of work home
you will read less than 5 minutes
you will talk to your spouse for 4 minutes
you will exercise less than 3 minutes
and play with your kids for 2 minutes

I don’t know about you, but I HATE AVERAGE. I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid it like the plague.

Not that I’ve always been successful at escaping it’s ugly grasp, but I will always continue to try to run away from it. If I trip and fall, I’ll get back up and keep running.

It’s often 2 steps forward, 1 step backward … but anything is better than sitting in the middle of the bell curve.

Speaking of the bell curve, you really only have 3 options:

1) Be below average
2) Be average
3) Be above average

I don’t write to try to change convince you that you SHOULD want to be above average. You wouldn’t even be a recipient of this email if you didn’t already desire an above-average life.

I write to ask you … if you resonate with the 3rd option, the desire to be above average … are you treating your body in a way that is congruent with that philosophy?

If you aren’t investing at least a LITTLE time into it every week (.9 – 1.8%), the short answer is “no.”

Maybe you feel like you are above average due your academic accomplishments, your business success, or your relationships with family and friends.

While being above average in the mental, spiritual, financial, and emotional categories is notable, you will still lose your mind, lose your independence, and become an unnecessary burden to your family and friends if you don’t TAKE CARE of YOUR BODY.

That’s just “average” played out.

So I challenge you to rethink this idea of “time.” We all have 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week, and a full 8,736 hours in year.

What will you do for yourself, for your body, for your health, and for your life THIS year, THIS week, and THIS day?

Take your time, and make the most of it. Take care of yourself so you can make the most of it!

Rank Your Life Balance: It’s Likely Affecting Your Health

Over the past 15 years, I’ve worked with numerous clients trying to achieve a better quality of life. One thing I’ve noticed is that when an individual’s life becomes significantly unbalanced, their stress levels quickly rise, and their health is negatively impacted.

Giving this idea of “life balance” a lot of thought, I decided on 8 specific areas of life that we need to work on mastering. Although I could find reasons to create a certain hierarchy among these categories, life balance is achieved not so much by putting these in an order of importance, but rather by giving them all equal attention and effort. When one or a few of these areas grow so large they crowd out another area of equal importance, problems arise.

After reading the descriptions below, click the photo here in this blog post, and it will enlarge so you can print it and fill in the categories. Then rank yourself upon the circular graph: 1-10, with a 1 being the first notch, a 5 being the large notch in the middle, and a 10 being the outside edge of the circle. After placing a dot to rank each category as transparently and accurately as possible, connect your dots to see the “shape of your life.” Are you well-rounded and rolling along smoothly? Or have you accidentally built some kind of crooked, deformed shape that would struggle to go anywhere without causing havoc?

Here’s the major life categories I observed:

Faith

Life is but a vapor. It is gone in the twinkling of an eye – here today and gone tomorrow. If the purpose of your being is to wake up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, lay on the couch, watch tv, go to bed, and repeat the next day … you don’t have a healthy existence, and probably don’t have a healthy body either. We are 4-dimensional people. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Don’t ignore the latter. What lasts is more important than what fades away. Live for something beyond yourself. It’s the key to fulfillment. Being happy has everything to do with fulfillment, and fulfillment has everything to do with the spiritual part of you.

Fitness

There is no need to live in chronic pain or fatigue. You don’t have to struggle through life with a lack of strength, energy, or confidence in either your appearance or your health. Science has shown us quite clearly how to build a body. Your physical self is also also what the mental, emotional, and spiritual you resides within and utilizes. When you place artificially low limits on your body by not taking care of it, you also begin to limit the impact of your mental, emotional, and spiritual self. Furthermore, you unnecessarily burden your spouse, your siblings, your parents and your children when you invite preventable diseases and conditions upon yourself with poor lifestyle choices. Make sure your are constantly improving, or at a minimum, maintaining, your health and fitness.

Family

My dad used to jokingly say, “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.” The fact is that we do need to remember where we came from, and who sacrificed so that we might not only survive, but thrive. There’s an ancient scripture that says “one who doesn’t care for their family is worse than an infidel.” If we can’t learn to appreciate and support our own family, we are likely going to struggle building meaningful relationships with anyone else. Everyone has faults, and the closer you get to people, the more those faults will become evident. You want someone who will stick by you in spite of your shortcomings. Be that someone for your family.

Feng Shui

Feng Shui is a Chinese philosophy focused on harmony with your environment. Regardless of the origin of the term and any other implications, I believe in the power of the premise. The first step of success often involves simply putting yourself in a position where you can be successful. The places you go and the people you surround yourself with both make a difference in how your life will unfold. Indeed, even the look and feel of your home, your office, and your car – anywhere you spend a lot of time – can affect your mood and motivation. If your mind tends to be cluttered and unfocused, do an audit of your environment. Do you find the same all around you? Make sure your surroundings are clean, organized, and “formed to function.” You’ll be surprised what happens to your own level of clarity and productivity.

Function

We all need a job – work that we bring to a market or community in exchange for some type of compensation or appreciation. It might be that you have a full-time career caring for a company, or a full-time career caring for a family, for example. Your level of compensation or appreciation is usually relative to not only your ability to perform your function at a high level, but also your ability to cleverly market and share the story of your function within your company or community without offending or annoying your necessary audience. Both require skills, both benefit from mentorship, and both produce a healthy sense of pride with mastery.

Finances

It’s one thing to produce money by performing well your function. It’s quite another to efficiently and effectively manage that money. Smart money management looks at the return on investment from your dollars. For example, the acquisition of assets that enrich your life – like an education, a home, a retirement fund, a healthier body, a motivated mindset, a rental property, a small business, etc … are all good investments. Throwing money away on needlessly expensive clothing, restaurants, wine, and other doodads … or paying for debt interest on quickly depreciating liabilities like extra cars, boats, and televisions … might bring needless stress into your life that will negatively impact your health, unless the aforementioned assets were already solidified.

Friends

“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” That scriptural truth is thousands of years old, and it holds just as true today as it did then. Much like iron is formed in the flames by the iron hammer that contacts it, we become formed by the friends with whom we endure the fires of life. The “take-home” message is two-fold. First, we must befriend those that represent what we want to become, allowing ourselves to be molded into the kind of person we desire to be. Secondly, we must focus on being a positive influence upon those whom we have already befriended, so they can come out of the fire better than they entered it.

Fun

George Bernard Shaw noted “We don’t quit playing because we grow old. We grow old because we quit playing.” Isn’t that the truth? Somewhere along the way, many of us have forgotten to have fun. Spending time participating in what you enjoy is not laziness. In fact, research shows that it’s a good idea for your health. Counterintuitively, many people actually become too lazy to schedule and plan for fun activity. What do I mean by that? Well, instead of doing what they might really want to do, they settle for the couch and television – taking the easier, but ultimately less fun option of sedentariness over truly enjoyable activity. So make sure you have fun on purpose. Don’t risk your health by leaving it to chance. If you still need more justification to enjoy yourself, know that you’ll feel and perform better when you return to work.

Fitness Psychology: Change Your Mind, Change Your Body, and Change Your Life

We all know that extrinsic motivation doesn’t last long. In takes less than 90 days for the excitement of New Year’s resolutions to wear off. In fact, if you look at fitness gym falloff, statistics imply that the external motivation provided by one’s calendar only lasts about 50 days. A big part of the problem is that New Year’s resolutions are rarely true resolutions. They are wish lists. And we typically don’t get what we wish for. We get what we must have. Until your wishes become must haves, they will continue to be fleeting. Long-term fitness progress cannot rely on temporary positive emotions stirred up by outside sources. Our feelings are much too volatile. We need more solid ground to stand on if our healthy habits are going to endure the storms of life.

Here’s a secret that I’ve found after years and years of coaching people toward their full physical potential. And this principal applies beyond your body. The fact is, if you want to make large and lasting improvements in ANY area of your life, then ..

That is, your Education + Esteem must be stronger than the Impulses + Illusions you encounter.

Allow me to explain and expound on each the things represented in this equation:

Education

Without education, there isn’t the slightest reason to change, or knowledge of how to change. If you think everything is ok, you will continue in your ignorance down the same path of self destruction as everyone else. Confronted with multiple confusing paths, a person usually stays where they are, even if they know it’s wrong. It’s the old “the devil you know is better than the one you don’t” mentality. “I know I’m on the way to premature death, but at least I’m familiar with the path.”

It’s sad that people won’t try something else if they know what they are doing isn’t working, but that’s the way we tend to be – lack of clarity results in lack of action. So we must get educated – and the responsibility is ours. The information is available. Books, internet, webinars, seminars, professionals … you name it. Though you might absorb different perspectives, the accumulation of knowledge combined with the accumulation of experience allows you to build wisdom – which always steers you straight. But just like you can’t turn a car that isn’t moving, you are never going to get on the right road if you don’t at least start pressing the pedal and moving.

Esteem

All the education in the world won’t conquer a lack of self esteem. How is your self esteem? If you don’t care about yourself, you aren’t going to act upon the education you receive. There’s just no reason to. You don’t see your life as worthy of being better. Or perhaps you want a better body, but you really don’t believe that it is worthy of being improved.

Where do you derive your self esteem? Is it dependent on your environment? That’s a dangerous source – our environments change, and we could lose it. Does it come from your money? Another dangerous source – money comes and goes. Will your self esteem follow it? Do you source it from the people you know? People both change AND come and go. That’s again very dangerous.

Look, I’m not trying to preach to you and get you to adopt my source of self esteem, but I can tell you that I’m blessed to know where I come from, why I’m here, what I’m going to do about it, and where I’m going. There is a peace I derive from my assurance, there is a passion instilled within me, there’s a purpose for living, and there’s a pursuit to chase after, and paradise in which to relax when my time here is done. I know who’s image I’m created within. I know the family into which I’ve been adopted. I know my eternal Father, and I know that nothing can separate me from His love or pull me out His hand. Who I am is not determined by what the people or the economy thinks of me, but by what God knows of me.

Many people talk about self esteem and how it shouldn’t be tied to our bodies. You might be surprised that even though I make my money as health and fitness professional, I agree. However, this message is getting across in the wrong way, bringing an additional unhealthy and just as devastating message with it. You’ve no doubt seen over various social media channels – we are now supposed to “love ourselves the way we are.” You see obviously overweight and unhealthy individuals parading their lack of self discipline and modeling barren bodies in what more accurately could be described as a celebration of premature death.

Our bodies do not define us. Agreed. Who we are is a mixture of our perspectives, our passions, our personalities, and our pursuits. But … and it’s a big “but” (pun slightly intended) … our bodies DO either empower us to lead fuller and better lives, or put limits on our potential – not the least of which would be our time here on this earth. You see, the house that your family lives in does not define your family – but a stronger, cleaner, more organized living space adds vastly to the quality of life for your family – with more security, health, and productivity. It’s the same with our souls, who we are, and our bodies – where we live.

When your children behave self destructively, you don’t tell them to just love themselves the way they are. Quite the contrary, you DO LOVE them the way they are, and that’s precisely WHY to do everything you can to eliminate that self-destructive behavior – before it hurts them. So who loves themselves more, the person who’s willing to do what it takes to have a healthy body that serves their soul well, or the person who lazily accepts their unhealthy and unnecessary limits? We’ve been approached to be a partner of different magazines and websites that promote the celebration of overweight women. I was told it was my target market. Maybe it’s one of the markets, we help, yes. But I told them I disagreed with their entire perspective, and if any of the subscribers became my clients, my first goal would be change the destructive mindset that made them subscribers in the first place – and that wasn’t fair to them. So I declined.

Your self esteem goes hand in hand with your personal standards. We all have standards, whether we know it or not. We might have standards regarding our hair, makeup, our clothing, our jewelry, our technology, jobs, our cars, and our homes. For many of our clients and prospects, settling for a job at McDonald’s is simply not an option, yet for some reason settling for a meal there … is. Why? There is a minimal level of quality that we accept in different areas of our lives. Why does our body and health not hold as high a place as other things? You must think enough of your physical self to treat it as well as you do your financial self.

Impulses

One of the reasons humans have dominion over this world is the amazing ability to overcome our impulses, and instead reach for higher purposes. It’s a spiritual component that makes us 4-way creatures, a step ahead of other 3-way species with only the physical, mental, and emotional parts. But when we just simply continue to give in to impulses, we act like animals … and lose much of the power that sets us apart and allows us to get ahead.

Illusions

Illusions are common: it tastes like a lot of this will make me happy, but after going to town on it, we rarely are more joyous for having eaten it, right? It’s usually a feeling of sickness and regret. It seems that this will make me accepted – maybe everyone is partaking of alcohol, and it seems that if you drink, it will make them like and respect you more. The reality is that it’s easy to be one of the crowd. The bell curve is packed with mediocre people. What’s lacking, and what draws true respect, is people that are willing to be themselves, and to do the things necessary to achieve their goals. Those are the people that draw crowds to watch them, create fans that adore them, become the subject of movies, get books written about their lives, and cement their place in history.

In summary, we don’t make many in-the-moment decisions; our actions are largely predetermined.

A while ago, I read the title of a scientific article on the brain that proposed this idea, and quickly read the whole thing, motivated by my desire to form an argument against their hypothesis. But although I disagreed with certain angles and assumptions, the more I thought about the basic premise, I reached a similar conclusion. We act largely according to our beliefs, perspectives, and convictions – NOT by weighing costs / benefits at the moment of decision. Sure, we can hit the “override” button intentionally while mustering a surge of temporary self discipline, possibly motivated by someone else’s beliefs, perspectives, and convictions, but most of time we are pretty predictable – if someone knows our deepest views of both ourself and the world in which we live.

Consider the “flowchart of a friend.” If we could create our own “matrix” of world, and place your friend within it, giving him or her choices in a variety of situations, you could pretty accurately draw the line through the flowchart – why? because you know their deepest beliefs, convictions, and perspectives. They are “pre-programmed,” if you will, to behave in a certain way. The good news, and powerful fact to understand, is that we are reprogrammable. But it takes work. Certainly, rewriting software is harder and takes longer than pushing an override button. But it’s oh so worth it.

So the next time you feel that you are not making progress, ask yourself: are the “E’s” lacking or fading? Are the “I’s” too abundant or growing? Once you determine the problem, resolve to correct the balance of your progress equation. That’s how you keep moving forward. The heavier the left side of the equation compared to the right, the faster you’ll go. Remember: