Rebecca just edited and sent me this video from last May.
It was just after the gubernatorial primary and my son and I were invited by the wonderful Rachel Ford Jones to speak at the Jefferson-Bullitt Co Conservative Club, with my son giving the conservative viewpoint on the election and me giving the liberal viewpoint
It was an honor to be asked to speak and we had a lot of fun.. Hearing my son, who just turned 21, speak to an adult audience and be as poised and thoughtful as he was, made me awfully proud.
I love that Johnny has his own political views. We discuss and debate politics often. At times we disagree passionately but we always are respectful of one another. I have learned a lot from debating with Johnny (and believe –or hope anyway–that Johnny has learned a lot from me). Our political discussions have made us both more thoughtful about our individual viewpoints and more respectful of opinions that differ from our own.
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Over the last 30 years, as Americans, we have been obsessed with medicine. From antibiotics to steroids and everything in between, we medicate our selves and quite honestly and quite simply we OVER medicate ourselves. We don’t move as much as our ancestors did, we get sicker more often, we carry more body fat and our stress levels seem like nuclear time bombs just waiting to go off. True, we live longer but in my opinion we don’t live as quality of lives as generations before us. We live on prescription and over the counter medications. And they are killing us. I am not a doctor, I am not what you would call a “health professional.” I am person who specializes in fitness and movement and have watched first hand how movement can better people in the following areas; physically, emotionally, psychologically, and even sexually (get your mind out of the gutter, I have not witnessed that first hand but people have told me and I take their word for it, dammit.) Lets define movement for a second. Movement defined as “the act of moving your body or a part of your body.” Now I will had a phrase to the end, “in a fashion that increases blood flow to the body’s tissues, decreases harmful inflammation and increases feel good hormones the body.” That is how we will define movement, anything where you move. Like weight training, walking, going up stairs, running (oh god), sport activities, playing with your kids etc. You get the point…MOVE! So, can I ask you a question? Has anyone ever been to a doctor for something and instead of prescribing medication that doctor told you to “start moving?” That is not a shot at the medical professionals but I would dare to say that movement (as defined above) could treat and prevent many of the diseases that kill us. From diabetes to heart disease to certain cancers, movement has scientifically shown to decrease the death rate and improve a person’s well being. You people who are reading this are smart. You are educated. You know what is important overall but what about during bouts of constant stress and anxiety or when you have a cold or infection. How does movement work then? Activities to Consider When Sick Walking Activities to Avoid Heavy weight training How Exercise Affects Your Immune System Brief Vigorous Exercise- no immune suppressing effect Long term moderate intensity resistance Training– stimulates innate immunity (natural immunity; white blood cells, mucous, stomach acid) Textbook Guidelines to Exercises While Sick
To close this out here are a few tips To Keep From Getting Sick Eat organic food
Money. Although important, money only buys things. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less. Time. The most unpredictable measurement of human existence. Why? Because you never know when it is going to end. Time is the most important currency in existence. Time allows you to create something that could, last forever. Money doesn’t do that. Time may no last long but time could have unlimited value. A dollar will always be a dollar. The biggest excuse one can give is to say they don’t have time. When in fact, they are saying, “I don’t want to make time.” The point being, if it were important to you, you would make time. If that relationship was important, you would make time If working out were important, you would make time If your health was important, you would make time If it were important to you, you would make the time. We all don’t have 24 hours in day. The concept of hours, minutes, seconds is man made. Something to organize your sleep and work schedules. It gives us a guide to lead our lives by but its not factual. YOU decide the measure of your time. Your decided how much you are willing to spend on a given item or task. You and you alone decide where to put your energy. Time is up to you. Are you using it wisely? None of us are making it out of here alive. No you. Not me. The reality is, one day our time will be up. We will fade off into the distance and only be memorialized by the people we leave behind and the value we added to the universe. How would you like to be remembered? Are creating something that will last forever? Here are a few ways to use your time better: Stop Wasting Time Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste other’s time. Many of us that say we don’t have time, waste more time than we are given. Is that you? Do you waste your time on pointless activities? Do you waste time on toxic relationships? Do you waste time by eating poorly and drinking substances that ultimately reduce the amount of time you have? Start with your why. Why do you exist? Why are you on this earth and what are you here to do? What is your passion? You must answer these questions and go back to them daily in order to use the time you have better. Do Less Reality check. Some of the things we do are pointless. These activities keep us from being able to do the things we really would like to. Simplify your life by getting rid of the things, activities and even people who are distracting and not contributing to our mission. Stop Thinking You think WAY too much and don’t do enough. On a daily basis I repeat the following to my clients, “don’t think, just do.” We spend wasteful time thinking about what we are going to do next, instead of taking action on what we want. You don’t have forever, so stop thinking so damn much. Know How Little Time You Have On average, each day, you will spend time doing the following: 7.6 hours sleeping Leaving you with 5.5 hours to do with as you choose. Add in an hour to work out and you don’t have very much time. Compound this over a life time and it gets really bad. You must make the time you have count. Make the time to do the things that set your soul on fire and help you follow your passion. At the end, you will be glad you did. Time is our most precious commodity. It is also our most unpredictable. It can be over in a split second. Let your why lead you. Oh and PS… stop wasting time!
She worked out with weights, got plenty of sleep and ate a balanced nutritional plan. With our custom nutritional plans we can specifically work with you on portion control, focus on macronutrients and get results.
Personal story time. At several points in my life, I was on this self destructive path. While not as detrimental as other’s stories, it was abnormal for me to focus on being something I wasn’t to be liked by someone, who at the time, mattered. About five years ago, in the midst of running up and down the road traveling from city to city, I miraculously found a girlfriend. It was a very strange relationship with a lot of ins and outs that don’t matter for this topic but I found myself constantly having to live up to a standard that was foreign to me. Essentially, I was living up to a physique that I never worried about before. Just like when women try to get in shape to be more attractive to men, I found myself killing myself to be leaner and more athletic than I ever had before. Without her knowing, I was trying to compete with boyfriends of the past who were ripped out of their minds. I was trying to be something I wasn’t and honestly never wanted to be, just so I guess she liked me more. This obviously was a waste of time. But the result was awful. I completely altered my diet and my workouts, going completely off what I normally did. I would drink protein shakes, eat tuna and rice cakes and do a bunch of CrossFit style workouts and then cardio (I have never done cardio since). As you can imagine, I bottomed out physique wise. I did a lot of cardio, ate very little, and lost my damn muscles and myself. All to try to impress a girl. What a waste huh? Here is the result of all my hard work:
I weighed 175lbs on the day that was taken. I had not weighed that amount since I was 19 years old. I had lost myself trying to prove something to someone, who at the end of the day didn’t care much about me anyway. So what was the point? There wasn’t one. After, I got out of that mess I put the weight back on and now I am at a comfortable 200 lbs. This happens all the time. People will chose the job their parents want versus the job that they want. Women will starve themselves to look more attractive to their significant others. Men will do whatever it takes to impress a girl that they like no matter how much it deviates from who they are. Stop this process! it is unhealthy and will not get you anywhere. Here is why.. The people worth impressing just want you to be you If it matters to you, it should matter to them. If it doesn’t they aren’t worth your time. I believe you only have a few close friends, everyone else will go in and out of your life serving some purpose and then leaving. You being you should matter to the people who love you the most. If the guy you are dating can’t accept you for who you are, dump his ass. Same goes for the guys too. Only you know whats best for you Everyone will give you advice. However, they don’t have to live in your skin. You know whats best for you. Act like it. Let others take you as you are, or not at all. F*** society Society’s message to us leaves a lot to be desired. To be honest, its evil. Magazine photos are photoshopped to create an unrealistic perception of what a woman should look like and even what a man should look like. Its unfair to our psyche to expect us to look and be like something that isn’t real to begin with. Let go of this, be yourself and be who you are. You can’t please everyone Its impossible to please everyone. So why try? You end up not pleasing the person you should be pleasing in the first place…YOU. When we embrace our authentic selves, we open ourselves up to real relationships, real happiness and real success. Your time is NOW!
Searching for a correlation between cholesterol levels and atherosclerosis is as simple as looking at the arteries of dead people. This search began in the early 1960s. In 1961, researchers Mathur and colleagues studied the levels of cholesterol and the degree of atherosclerosis seen at autopsy within the arteries of 20 deceased patients as well as 200 more cases selected from medical libraries. All cholesterol levels were taken within 16 hours of death. No correlation could be observed between these patients’ blood cholesterol levels and the amount or severity of “atherosclerotic plaque” within the arteries. Cholesterol levels, whether high or low, had no impact on the growth of atherosclerotic plaque – the major cause of heart disease. In 1962, The American Heart Journal published the research of Dr. Marek and colleagues who also searched for a correlation between cholesterol levels and atherosclerosis. Among 106 cases studied, the level of cholesterol did not affect atherosclerotic changes in plaque. His results matched others that were conducted by the same methods, in the same laboratory, and in the same populations. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition shows that at autopsy, postmortem patients who died suddenly showed no correlation between total cholesterol levels and atherosclerosis. Researchers Jose Mendez, Ph.D., and co-workers point out that their findings agree with previous studies. Notably, they cited researchers Lande and Sperry, who as early as 1936 also failed to find a correlation between cholesterol levels and atherosclerotic plaque. These studies shake the foundation of the current medical model for treating or preventing heart disease.
If you buy into psychology, which I do, you will remember something called “Self Fulfilling Prophecy.” This simply means that if you think it, it happens. For example; if I constantly tell myself that I am fat, every time I look in the mirror that is what I am going to see. Your mind is stronger than anything else. You literally can think yourself into believing anything. Often times this works against us more than it helps us. We get in our own head, believing that we aren’t good enough for something and of course the result is exactly what we thought. If we could flip it and get rid of the shit between our ears, imagine what could be possible? There literally would be no limits. Everyone on this earth goes through this. Self doubt, negative thoughts, past mishaps, broken relationships, death, disease and all points in between cause our head trash. It sits there in our mind, camping out on your brain just laughing at you because it knows it has you beat. It toys with you. It baits you into believing it’s bullshit. And whether you believe it or not sometimes you like it. It keeps you from responsibility. It is the easy way out to not face your fears or you past heartache. Its easy to wallow in your own self-pity. Its easy to be mediocre. But this isn’t what life is about and its sure as hell not what you want. This head trash has you in hand cuffs but you can break free. You can shut the door on negative thoughts and open yourself up to positive ones. You can, if you want too. Take the damn trash out! Here is how.. Make a List
On several occasions, I have had clients write a list of what they like about themselves. It is easy to pinpoint the flaws but what do you like about yourself. What makes you happy? What components of your day get you excited or are aspects you love? Let’s start here first. Then make a list of what makes you happy and a separate list of what you do everyday. Compare the lists. Do everything on that list that makes you happy and throw the rest in the trash. Positive thoughts make for positive realities.
Say Goodbye to Toxic Relationships Lets be real here, if you are around positive people you will be more positive, if you are around negative people, you will be negative. Period. It is that simple. In times of life crisis you need positive energy. If the people you surround yourself with are negative, they have to go. They are making you worse. They are feeding into that little monster in your head who is camped out telling you that you are not worthy. I would be willing to bet that this reason carries nearly all the head trash in our minds. Kick that shit to the curb.
What People Think of You is None of Your Business Sorry for the language but I come from a good place when I say, “F**K what people think.” This has just as much to do with your thoughts that anything. “What will we they think about?” “How will people react?” Who cares. Don’t fall into the mental tug-o-war over who thinks what about you. They aren’t you. They don’t walk in your shoes. What they think does not matter. What you think does. The less you care what people think about you the better you life will be and the less head trash you will have. Thought + Decision = Behavior. Change the thought, change the behavior. Say goodbye to negative thoughts. Say goodbye the heartache that sits on your mind. Say goodbye to the self doubt that consumes you. Say hello to being your absolute best.
Psychologist and author, Robert Firestone says that self sabotaging thoughts and behaviors are perpetrated by an inner critic we all posses,naming it the “critical inner voice.” This inner voice is not positive and often reflects self doubt, procrastination and the “anti-self.” This undermines our goals, stunts our growth as people and flat out tells us we don’t deserve what we are trying to achieve. Firestone also says this come from early life experiences that have molded us to who we are today. The negative we heard early in life, transforms us to who we are today. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can chose what thoughts to listen to, just as we chose what clothes to wear everyday. No matter the circumstance of our early lives and how they shaped our minds, we can chose to fight against that. Life is all based on choices, we can chose to listen to the naysayers or we can make a conscious choice to believe in ourselves. We can chose to be our own worst enemy or we can chose to be our best ally. The choice is ultimately yours. Here are a few self sabotaging behaviors I see exhibited: Procrastination Procrastination is the assassination of motivation. It is the king of all self sabotage. It is the gap between intention and action and it is in this gap where the self operates. We make an intention to act but when the time comes, we make a choice to do nothing or leave it incomplete. We set a goal with zero intention on ever achieving it. Why? Because we perceive it as hard or too much or we are too busy. All of which is bullshit. If you wanted bad enough, you would of done it. If you want to drop bodyfat, you would of ate better. If you wanted to get a better job, you would of done everything in your power to get it. If you wanted a better life, you wouldn’t sit around complaining about the one you have. We procrastinate because we think tomorrow will always be here, one day it won’t and you will be sorry. If you want to do it, go do it. You are not too busy, you have 24 hours in a day just like everyone else. With procrastination, we delay taking action longer than we know we should. In the case of chronic procrastination, we waste time that we can’t afford to waste. We can actually wind up wasting our whole lives. Make it happen. Emotion Dodger When attempting to attend to negative emotions we often put road blocks in our chosen path. We “shoot ourselves in the foot” to quote a phrase, by ignoring negative feelings with food, alcohol or other substances. Food addiction is real and is different than alcohol and drug addiction because in order to live, we need food. Therefore, food addiction can be very difficult to attend to because we cannot shun food because that creates a whole new problem. I often find people behave irrationally nutritionally because of their state of mind, at the time. They have negative feelings and then use food as a medicine of sorts, taking to processed sugar and starch to make them feel better, which in turn makes them feel worse. We essentially try to deal with our issue but create more issues instead of tackling the issue at hand. This is the root of self sabotage. Many a client I have seen mask their pain via food. Some to more of a degree than others but it is real, very real. Again, I am no psychologist but this problem exists, I have witnessed it. Being the problem solver I am, dealing with the root or the source of the issue is more beneficial than the site of the ordeal. At some point we all have to face ourselves and our problems to become stronger and better people. Masking our pain with food, alcohol, drugs, sex etc. does nothing but hurt us. Rise above. Not Good Enough The psyche is a strange thing. It can make you feel like you can put the world on your back and walk with it or it can beat you to your knees and make you afraid of anything an everything. The phrase, “I don’t feel good enough” incites a vigorous response in my gut. I detest when someone tells me that they do not feel good enough, no matter what it is. We have become such a society where it is shunned upon to be confident, that you can’t say “HELL YES I’m good enough.” It almost seems more appropriate to say, I’m not deserving of it” or “I don’t belong.” This is negative thinking and complete bullshit. YOU are good enough….for anything and anyone. There is always self doubt, we all have it. I have it. But there is also a difference between going after what you want and not achieving it and wanting something and never going after it because you don’t feel like you are worth. You are always worth it. In high school they said Michael Jordan wasn’t good enough either. In case you didn’t know….he is the greatest to ever touch a basketball. Case closed. Believe in YO SELF. I have learned a very valuable lesson, if you want it go get it. As cliche as it sounds, tomorrow doesn’t exist and what you do today will ultimately take you into the rest of your life. Challenge the status quo and be yourself. |
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