A Toast To Your Health

A Toast To Our Health

As a young man I never toasted to my or any of my friends health. Good health was a given. Yes there were people we knew that had bad health at a young age, but that was considered the vast minority.

We did things nobody should ever do because we never considered our health. I played football even though I was only five foot eight, one hundred and fifty pounds. They broke my shoulder, broke my ankle, two toes and two fingers. I considered those broken bones as something I would recover quickly from and get back at it.

I never got sick enough to miss work or any other activity. Doing anything to maintain good health was never in my mind. Those of you who are in your twenties and thirties probably are living the way I did. However, this is a false sense of immortality. What you do for your health today (good or bad) will eventually catch up to you.

All the pounding I received from sports created my bad back and major surgery on my neck. Eating a lot of bad shit raised my sugar level, my cholesterol level and my high blood pressure. Oh sure, my Doctor Feel Good has me on medication to control all those things, but wouldn't it be great to not have to take all those pills every day?

At sixty I decided to take better care of myself. I go to the gym four days a week, I eat healthy and I have cut down my sweets significantly. I still need all the pills because I'm older and I started too late.

However, the most important thing I changed regarding my health is my attitude.

Good health IS happiness. It's a lot harder to get all the happiness you deserve when you're in bad health. However, you can focus on the happiness that's available to you even if your health is not the best.

My bad back and neck are things I've lived with for a long time. They will be with me the rest of my life. I've decided to make they part of my life, not a burden on my life and happiness. So what if I have to take a few pills. I'm focused to having my health under control, not feeling angry or frustrated because of all the bad shit I did when I thought good health was not important.

As you know from my previous blogs and books, we should never live life with shouldas or couldas. Whatever cards we were dealt or whatever we did when we were stupid is the past. Today is the day we need to focus on. Doing everything we can to either make our health better or just not letting it get worse should be our mantra.

No matter what age you are now, when you raise your glass with your friends or loved ones make sure you say these words:

A Toast To Our Health.

The Only Thing That's Certain Is That Everything Will Change

The Only Thing That's Certain Is That Everything Will Change

We've all heard that saying in one way or another. I first heard it in a song by Bob Seger. Throughout my life I've calculate that 20% of people would prefer nothing would change in their life, 20% not only expect change, but will make decisions and take actions to make changes and 60% expect changes, but don't look forward to it happening.

I'm more in the class that accepts changes and have many times in my life made changes because the current situation was not making me happy or a change would make me even happier. Where are you on this subject? BTW, there is no right answer. However, there are a few wrong answers.

The wrong answer is: "I don't want anything to change because I'm concerned it will make my unhappy life worse." The wrong answer is: "I don't want to make a change because I have no confidence that I'll get it right." The wrong answer is: "I accept my life as it is even if I know it could be better." The wrong answer is: "I'm going to keep my life very, very simple so any change will not affect me."

The problem with these wrong answers is that we don't have control of change. As the saying goes, "the only thing that's certain is that everything will change." The only way I know of that will guarantee nothing will change your life is to put a gun to your head and pull the trigger.

Shit happens. Mother Nature can force a change in your life. Terrorists can force a change in your life - just ask the people in New York or Boston. A spouse or girlfriend/boyfriend can change your life for the negative or the positive. The lottery can change your life. Illness or accident can change your life. An old parent can change your life for the negative or for the positive.

We don't have control over these events so we should just accept that it's certain something at some time in your life will change your life. The right answer is do you have enough love of life to turn a negative into a positive. Do you want happiness so much that the negative change, that's certain to happen, will not steal the happiness from you?

Do you want happiness so much that the positive change, that's certain to happen, will be embraced and shared with everyone else.