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The Power of a Decision

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Four years ago I found myself at the bottom of a very deep and dark hole.  I had experienced two heart attacks within a year of each other, I had retired from my job as a nurse after many years, I faced few prospects for work, and I was depressed.  Deeply depressed.

At first I spent the majority of my time fooling myself into thinking it was going to be ok.  Surely the universe would have my back here.  I can do this.  I had no plan at all.  Just a vague notion that maybe it would just magically all work out.  Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months, and guess what happened?  Nothing changed.

Then I slipped into the dark hole and stayed there.  I became very good at berating and hating myself.  I didn’t understand why this was happening to me.  I blamed everyone and everything around me.  But most of all I blamed myself.  I hated the man that stared back at me in the mirror, but somehow I also felt like I deserved this.  Many people in my life tried to help, but I wouldn’t listen to them.  What did they know?  They couldn’t possibly understand how I was feeling!

Last year I made a decision.  Not a half-ass kind of decision.  A real no going back, I will die on this hill decision.  This had to change, and I had to change it.

I was so angry, hurt, scared, depressed, hopeless, and sad, and that created a rage inside of me to say, “ENOUGH!!  I’VE HAD ENOUGH!!”  So I decided.  No more would I sit in that dark hole.  No more would I not show up for Katie.  No more would I feel sorry for myself.  NO MORE!!

Things started to change very quickly.  I started to work on me.  I discovered that the world wasn’t out to get me, it was just waiting for me to decide and take action.  I realized how painful it had been for Katie to watch me go through this, and exactly how wonderful she is for realizing I had to walk this path alone no matter how much it tore her up inside.  I discovered how much faith everyone had in me, even when I had none in myself.  Once I had found my hill, I was shocked at how many people climbed the hill and fought beside me.  I discovered how much love I have in my heart, and in my life.  I found out how grateful I am for everyone, every day, and every breath I get to share.  I stopped taking everything for granted and started telling people how much I appreciate them.  I learned to appreciate myself.  I learned to love myself again.

Don’t get me wrong.  There were struggles along the way.  There were days when the old me would try to wake up.  But I had already made my decision.  And I would never climb down from this hill.  Never.  Somehow a magic thing happened.  It made the struggle bearable.  It made the dark days lighter.  The decision gave me the strength to punch back.  The decision reminded me that life wasn’t happening to me.  Life was happening because of my choices.  There are still struggles.  But my decision is a bright beacon, a north star that leads me out of anything thrown my way.

In the last year, Katie and I have moved into a bigger space, we both work from home, our relationship has never been better, we take positive steps every day, I have learned to laugh again, and I have found a peace and serenity I didn’t know existed.  I wake up every day motivated, excited, happy, and thankful.

Are you tired of life the way it is?  Do you feel called to something bigger, better, exciting, and powerful?  Then make a decision today.  The kind of decision that there’s no going back on.  You are going to stand on the hill of this decision and die if necessary.  Because this hill?  This is your hill, and no one can take your hill.  Reach into yourself, grab that feeling, and climb your hill.  I know you’ll be surprised by the results.  And I’ll fight beside you.  That’s a promise.

The Year of Positive Change

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The Year of Positive Change

So 2018 is almost in the books, and I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on the last year.  My accomplishments.  My failures.  Lessons learned along the way,  Reflection is a powerful tool allowing us to objectively evaluate where we are in our journey, what has helped us forward, and what has held us back.  Brutal unflinching honesty is necessary here and that can be a little painful.  But the pain is worth it if it gets us back on track and closer to our goals.

My theme for 2019 is positive change.  Change can be such a dirty word sometimes.  It’s often used as a weapon like, “Why don’t you change?”  Or, “To do that is going to require change.”  These statements and others like them seem to have a negative connotation.  Even writing them here gives me a pit in my stomach.  But change is a positive thing.  Without change, mankind would have never crawled out of the caves and become a farming society.  Without that event, I wouldn’t have the life I have.  Thanks cave people.  I’m glad you left the dark hole you were living in.

Change can be scary and overwhelming.  Even one small change can make it feel like everything is changing and changing too fast.  I have been there.  Getting out of my comfort zone is an exhausting, trying experience, and yet I feel so much better and gain more and more confidence when I do.  Setting a goal for change and achieving that goal makes me feel like a million dollars and ready to take on the next mountain.

So as we approach 2019, I thought I would share one strategy every day for making 2019 the year of positive change for you as well.

Set a realistic goal and make a plan.  You’ve heard this a thousand times.  I know when I hear someone say this, my eye roll starts before the first part is even past their lips.  I’ve learned this year though that they’ve been right all along.  You have to have a goal.  Less than three percent of Americans have written their goals down on paper.  Less than one percent write their goals down every day according to the best research out there on this topic.  The trick to goal setting is to make realistic goals and a plan to achieve them.  One of my goals for 2019 is to get in shape.  Sound familiar?  This tends to be the number one goal people have at the beginning of every year.  But then the gyms are empty by February.  One of the reasons is because getting in shape is a vague and unrealistic goal.  A better goal, that’s realistic, specific, and has a plan built in is I will go to the gym for one hour three times a week.  Boom.  That doesn’t sound nearly as bad as getting in shape.  Once you figure out your goal that is specific and realistic, write it down.  Write it down every single day.  Put it in front of your eyes as often as possible.  You’ll be excited with the results.

Side note, this is Matt writing this, but I made Katie publish it and now it has both of our signatures on it. I give up, WordPress you win this one!

Geeking Out

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The other day Katie and I were walking through Target and I stumbled across something that made me giddy like a young school boy.  I full on geeked out.  Like embarrassed Katie geeking out.  It turns out Nintendo has been releasing versions of the Nintendo and Super Nintendo from the late ’80s and ’90s.  I practically tackled people in the store to get to the salesman.  I had to have one.  If you can picture an older man, gray beard and all, sprinting for the clerk you’ll get the picture.  Real good look.

My first experience with a Nintendo was nothing short of magical and hilarious.  My best friend and I had somehow found a copy of Jaws and took it home to try it out.  Jaws is not a great video game.  In fact, it’s not even a good video game.  Ok fine.  It sucks, but that night we didn’t care, and to us it was the greatest game ever made.  We stayed up all night playing that stupid game.  I’m not even sure we beat it.  Many hours later, the sun was coming up, we hadn’t slept a wink, and we were still laughing and carrying on.  We had so much fun.
Maybe Nintendo is not your thing, but think back to a time when you were young and play felt good.  The innocence, laughter, and love.  Not a care in the world but what you were doing in that moment.  Now we all know adulting sucks, and it intrudes on every aspect of life.  The messenger of misery comes and goes, and sometimes it feels like he just won’t stop showing up.  Sometimes the younger boy excited about a crappy video game based on a movie about a man eating fish seems so far away.  A whole lifetime away.  I promise you he’s not.  He’s just been forgotten, put in the corner of the attic.  Sure, he’s dusty and neglected, but he’s still there, waiting for adult me to brush him off and let him play again.
My encouragement for you today is to do some soul searching.  Find the fun things deep inside that you used to love to do.  Then go out and find a way to do that again, even if it’s only as long as a game of Donkey Kong.  You might just find yourself in a great place.  You might also just happen to find something you didn’t even know you lost.

Snickerdoodle Smoothie

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Ever try an Arbonne Snickerdoodle Smoothie?

Are you looking for ways to have a healthy but delicious breakfast but tired of the same old stuff? Here is a recipe just for you! Arbonne Snickerdoodle Smoothie, just typing it makes me want one.

I will admit that for the longest time, I avoided protein shakes. Every one I tried tasted like chalk, and let’s be honest who wants to drink chalk? Not me. So I finally gave in and decided to try the Arbonne Vanilla Protein Shake (Click Here), and it tastes like cake batter. I am not even kidding, it is amazing. But you can only drink a plain vanilla shake for so long, so that is why I found this recipe to mix it up.

It is power packed with vitamins but tastes like a cookie! Score! Double bonus score actually!

2 Scoops Arbonne Vanilla Protein Powder

1 Scoop Arbonne fiber

1 TBSP Almond Butter

1 TSP vanilla extract

1 TSP cinnamon

Add power greens such as spinach, kale + swiss chard

Almond milk and ice

Blend and enjoy!

This shake is delicious but also nutritious! It contains vitamins K, A, C, B and so much more!

[recipe]

 

My Journey Here

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I’m going to come clean here about my journey.  My diet in the past was really bad.  Like worse than you’re imagining.  So as we begin this journey of clean eating and getting healthy, let me take a few minutes to tell you a little bit of my journey.  I hope this will help you to see that no matter where you’re starting on the healthy spectrum, you’re not alone, and I am here to help you along.

My previous diet consisted of fast food at least once a day, enough Coke to drown a small group of water buffalo, hot dogs, Cheetos, Pringles, Fudge cookies, and anything else with a saturated fat content above 100 % of my daily intake.  To say my diet was bad is a complete understatement.

The problem for me was that I have a good metabolism and really never gained a pound from any of these escapades.  Now I can hear you grumbling through the computer.  What do I know about the struggle if I never gained weight?  I know I felt lethargic and sick a lot, never thinking it had to do with my diet.

Now the real kicker here is I’m also a Registered Nurse.  You would think I would know better, and in so many ways I did.  I just didn’t care.  That is until I had a heart attack while sitting at work one night that almost killed me.

Having a heart attack is scary, sobering, frightening, overwhelming, and depressing.  As the weeks go on, I will dive more into this topic.  I feel it deserves a blog post of its own.  But I want to pull the curtain back just a little and give you something to think about.

Having the heart attack made me realize my diet and lifestyle was a complete reflection of how I felt about myself on the inside.  It’s not that I didn’t care about my diet. I didn’t care about me.  It’s not that I didn’t know any better. It’s just the knowledge of what to do wasn’t enough to overcome the loud voices in my head telling me I didn’t deserve to be healthy.  And it took almost dying to open my eyes.

I will be writing a lot more over the coming weeks about my journey, but I want to be upfront about this now.  We will be posting diet tips and tricks, recipes, workouts, encouragements, videos, and fun and silly things often right here.  But we’re also going to dig into the why.  Why is health not the most important thing in your life?  It’s one thing to help with the body, but we’re also going to be working on our minds.

If you’re reading this, know that I genuinely care where you’re at right now, and excited for where you’re going to be.  I wouldn’t want to be on this journey with anyone else.  Cheers and we will talk again very soon.

Book Nook Review: The Miracle Morning

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Book Nook Reviews presents a review of The Miracle Morning

Once or twice a month, one or both of us will do a review of a book. This time I am going to review the book The Miracle Morning. So I have come to realize that I either I plan my day and run it or my day runs me. I am so guilty of checking my email or Facebook first thing in the morning, not realizing that it sets the tone for my entire, yes I said entire day. Then I heard about this book, called the Miracle Morning and decided to check it out.
Hal Elrod has taken this book and provided a framework for how to have your morning set the entire tone for your day. It is brilliant. I am not sure about you, but I like to sleep in, my alarm is not exactly my friend. When I heard that successful people are up at 5 am for the 5 am club, I wanted to crawl back under the covers and hide.
Elrod encourages you to get up early and spend if possible and hour of your day to set it up for success. He has 5 areas to focus on to get your mind and body right! The acronym for these is the SAVERS and y’all, that acronym doesn’t lie. My days are so much smoother and I am more grounded when I start with the miracle morning, it truly is a miracle. Pun intended!

SAVERS

S is for silence, A is for affirmations, V is for visualization, E is for exercise, R is for reading and S is for scribing (journaling).
The goal is to spend 5-10 minutes a morning in each of these areas to get a balanced mind, body and spirit. It also starts your day off positive. I love it, there is so much bad news, negativity and highlight reels from social media that we are exposed to every minute of every day. By taking this hour in the morning, helps me to focus on me, feeding my mind with positive (affirmations), filling my cup through reading, journaling and meditation and then getting some movement in.
I am not sure about you but there are days that I get so consumed in a project that I do not get up from my desk. My fitbit laughs at me while I look at the 600 steps number in pure disbelief at the 8 pm hour. When I start my day with exercise it makes me want to move around more throughout the day!
Let’s talk a little bit about why these are each important. But please do yourself a favor and get this book, it is life changing if you want it to be!

1.  Silence

For me this is the hardest one of the 6 pieces. My mind is always chattering, I mean like that annoying person in the grocery store who will not quit talking to you in line (yup, I live with that one). And so this is the area that I really focus on, I am working up to sitting in silence with my own thoughts. To get started I downloaded a meditation app and listen to a 10 minute meditation each day.

2. Affirmations

Y’all, that little chatterbox in my head she is not very nice. This is why affirmations are huge! Basically an affirmation is a statement of a positive thing we are working towards happening. It can be a completion of a goal, it can be positive self talk, it can be shifting to an abundance mindset. Anything positive is key, but more importantly consistency and repetition will do the trick here!

3. Visualization

You gotta know where you are going if you want to get there. There is a fact that many of the Olympic gold medal winners picture their perfect race over and over again and picture being on the podium winning gold way before it happens. This is how powerful visualization is.  This is my favorite piece, what do you want to achieve, take 5 minutes and visualize it happening.

4. Exercise

Just do it, enough said! Starting your day with even 10 minutes of movement can have a drastic impact on your health, and even your wealth.

5.  Reading

Be a lifelong learner, always be learning and growing. Successful people are never done learning, this is something I learned early on and have adopted this motto in life. I am always looking for ways to up my game and reading is the biggest part of that.

6. Scribing

Scribing/journaling these are so important, it helps you get the thoughts out of your head onto paper. You not only get stuff out of there, but you gain valuable insights too!
My synopsis does not do the book justice at all, but I am giving it a 5 star out of 5 star review. If you only were to adopt these 6 small principles in your life for the next year, I wonder what would change! I’ll be back in 365  days to let you know my personal results!