Chapter 3 ….Man Up in Your health!
Hey guys. So, little bit different than kinda doing the daytime versus the nighttime greeting, or talking about manning up. Just because tonight I got something else I gotta man up and do instead. But, what I’m going to do today is I’m going to read a little bit from chapter three. And chapter three is titled, of the book, is titled Man Up in Your Health. And I think it’s important. I think it’s, all these different areas are areas that we as men, aw heck, we as people I mean, if I’m honest, are areas that we can strive to do better in.
So, this one has to do with health. And for men, it’s a little bit of a peeve of mine, pet peeve or pet project of mine. As men, we take the time to own things like our toys, our cars, our trucks, our snow mobiles, our houses, our lake homes, all those, boats, whatever it is. We take the time, we take ownership of those. But for whatever reason, many men give up ownership of their health. And they give it up to their wife or they give it up to somebody else. They don’t keep that ownership. They don’t man up in that piece for themselves. You know, if there’s a doctors appointment to be made, they wait for their wife to do it. Or how many guys out there wait for their wife to set out their supplements or their medications to take them?
I think it’s time that men take that, I mean, you have to take that back yourself. You have to take control. And there’s a sure fire way that I can tell your wives how to help you do that. But it wouldn’t be very nice and I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. But, anyway, so I’m going to read a little bit for you from chapter three, Man Up in Your Health. And this part of the chapter is called, hey Kevin nice 16 pollens taking care of your health. That’s awesome. Since April? Cool, I can’t wait to see where you are when April hits in 2018. But this section of the chapter is called Change Your Story.
Let’s look first at your beliefs. What are you telling yourself when it comes to changing your health habits? Remember the list of excuses in the intro to this chapter? Not enough time. Too busy. Lack of knowledge. No money. Injury. And so on. All of these are simply our beliefs or our triggers to rationalize our way out of doing something. Taking control. You believe money is your limiting factor. When in reality, my trainer that I use has proven to me with simple exercises using only my body weight, that he can have me crying uncle in a matter of minutes. It’s free to workout at home with your own body as resistance. You might believe you’re too busy to fit it into your schedule.
Yet, we all find a way to fit things into our schedule that we really want to do. Example, snow mobile trips, fishing trips, our favorite TV shows, eating out, social media, video games, need I go on? You might say, I’ve had too many injuries. Okay, stop. That’s merely an excuse and you know it. I’ve had four knee surgeries, dislocated both of my shoulders more times than I can count, beat the crap out of my wrists, elbows and shoulders while adjusting patients. Torn ligaments in my ankles, and the list goes on. Unless you’ve been in an accident and are paralyzed from the neck down, there is always something you can do.
Think of the word because. By simply using this word in a specific way, it can change your habits. Use because to attach value to why you are doing it. I go to bed earlier now, because I want to show my boys that their dad takes the time to take care of himself. I want to set the example for them to take care of themselves, so they can be their best too. I watch what I eat because I want to look down and be able to see my shoes. And I don’t want to be in the hospital with some sort of lifestyle related disease by the time I’m 50.
I push myself at the gym because I want to look good for my wife. And I want to be able to play and run with my kids for longer than 20 seconds without losing my breath. I also want to be around to see my boys become adults and start families of their own. The stories we tell ourselves, guide our decisions and behaviors. You are the only one who has power over these stories inside of you. As you change these stories, your mind becomes better at it. No different than challenging your body, challenging your mind gets easier with practice. Change your stories, change your habits.
So, that’s partially what this chapter, I mean, it’s all about owning your health and manning up in our health. And that takes so many different, there’re so many different pieces to that. For each one of us, our health is, in all of these areas, each one of us has our own individual stories. Our own individual challenges. Life isn’t fair, life isn’t the same for all of us. Some of us were given more, some of us were challenged more. I’ve started to enjoy embracing the suck, the challenging piece. Not that all challenges are awesome. You know? And all challenges are like, as you’re going through it are something that you’d want to be dealing with. But, many times when you’re done and you’ve gone through it and you look back on it, there’s some huge growth and some huge movement forward that happens from all of it.
Stacy Teague says kale. You know, I draw the line somewhere and kale is one of the areas I draw the line on. Yeah, no kale for me. But that’s okay. For other people, they love it and that’s awesome. So here’s the other thing I want to stress a little bit of. I am not perfect you know, the inside joke on the kale piece is, I will never, I don’t want it. I’ve tasted it, nasty. But, that being said, I kinda follow the 80/20 rule. The Pareto principle for those of you who are aware what the Pareto principle is. That 80/20 rule is 80% of the time I’m going to do what I can that’s best for my health, best for my body. Whether that’s eating right, making sure I’m at the gym and doing the things I need to be doing at the gym to strengthen myself. To strengthen you know, my muscles. To strengthen my cardiovascular system, all that types of thing.
20% of the time, I’m going to actually enjoy life. ’cause here’s the deal, working out, getting to the gym, it’s not enjoyable for me. Not in the least. I got lots of other things that I can do that are much more enjoyable than killing myself in the gym. Plain and simple. I do it because it’s a means to an end for me. And I talk about this in the chapter two in this, that being in good health and being in good shape, allows me to do things that come up, that pop up, or that maybe a surprise. It may be a hunting trip, for me, I love to hunt. It may be a hunting trip into the mountains that comes up and the possibility or the option or the opportunity arises, I want to be in good enough shape that I can take advantage of it without worrying, again, that I’m going to be, like I talk about with my kids, that I’m going to be sucking wind in the first 20 seconds.
The better shape I’m in, the better physical health, mental health, I mean mental health is just as important as physical health. The better shape you’re in of that, the more things you can handle. The more things that come at you during the day, don’t seem quite as overwhelming, if you will. That’s what I’ve found. So, hopefully if you haven’t yet, and as we’re going through this, hopefully this is sparking interest. Giving you a little idea what the book is about, why I’m so passionate about it. And how it could benefit either yourself as a man, or if you have sons, or how you think it might benefit your husband or another man you know. Hopefully see that, hopefully it’s becoming evident where it’s going and why it’s going there.
So, if you haven’t reserved your copy yet, Barnes & Noble, great place to reserve it online. We, I just found out that since the book is doing as well as it is, they dropped the price. So anybody that’s already reserved their copy and done the pre order, I think it was down to like 11 something right now, you will get those prices. If you pre order, you’re going to get the lowest price before the book ships. And so, they’ve dropped the price because it is doing so well. So, Barnes & Noble, go there, pre order your copy if you haven’t yet. You don’t get charged until it ships which is right around I think, November 14th, that weekend. But yeah, so everybody that’s already pre ordered, guess what, it just went on sale. So, you get a little cheaper on the book.
Hope y’all are having a great week. I’m going to try and get my, the trainer who I interviewed for the book, my trainer in there, try and get him in at some point this week. But I get to go down to Santa Fe Harley Davidson tomorrow, actually, early tomorrow morning. I get to go down there and get to experience their bike night. That dealership in Santa Fe is very, very big into philanthropy and doing some cool stuff. So me and Justin are going to fly down, we’re going to talk to them about what the Man Up Project is and why it’s important. Get to do a little slow race with them, have some fun doing that.
We’ll see how good I do. I’m looking forward to it. Looking forward to getting down and hoping on a bike somewhere different. And then doing a men’s breakfast with their Hog Chapter tomorrow, or Friday morning, and then coming back home right away. So, quick turn around trip, but getting to spread the message of what that Man Up piece looks like to everybody. There isn’t a group or a demographic or a certain person that this, in my mind, doesn’t, isn’t for. This is for everybody. We were talking, as Brenda today was recording the forward for the book, since she wrote it, I said, you know, we need to put a WO in front of the man for woman up. Because this, honestly it is, this could, these principles in here, I’ve said it before, one of my good friends who got to read, got to give me some feedback on the book said this should be called human up.
And I think it could be. But I think for men, it’s got a little more, it’s got a little more, a different slant than that. So, anyway. Y’all have a great rest of the week. And we’ll talk soon. Maybe a little bit this weekend. Take care everybody.