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This blog is about my battle with weight and the journey that ensued.

Along the way are some not so subtle side tales but, for the most part, it is in chronological order. If you want the story from the beginning, start on March 24, 2009 at "The Tipping Point", and read your way to today. Thanks and best of luck on your journey.


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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

P90X: "P90X is Your Opportunity" Day 39 of 90


P90X requires a choice.  I can go to my basement every night and pop in a DVD and do the workouts, or I can watch reruns of Big Bang Theory.  I can follow my diet, or I can eat donuts.  The level of instruction that came with the program is incredibly detailed and thorough.  There is online help in the form of personal Beachbody coaches and there are tons of websites to go for advice.  All I have to do is decide to do it.

I could decide to not do it.  I could rationalize that by many things.  Ninety days is too long.  I can’t be expected to discipline my diet that way.  It requires me to buy weights (it doesn’t).  I need yoga blocks (you don’t, you can use something else).  It’s mainly for men.  It’s mainly for women.  I don’t have time.  It’s endless.

I can blame almost anything at all for my failure to just “do it.”

What P90X gives you is an opportunity.  That’s all.  An opportunity is not ‘instant fitness.’  You don’t get the program and then suddenly wake up looking like the people in the DVD.  What it gives you is everything you need to have/know to complete the mission except motivation and determination to affect a change on yourself.  That has to come from inside you.

 I was a party to a very interesting online debate last night. 

One side was claiming that societal discrimination, oppression, sexism and a plethora of other things were the reason that women and minorities are not in the pantheons of leadership.  That side was citing the lack of those folk as CEO’s, millionaires, politicians as evidence that there was a lack of opportunity for those groups.

The other side to the debate was arguing that opportunity was more abundant than ever and what is missing is the drive to actually take that opportunity and convert it into success.

Guess which side I was on?

When I look around this country, there has never been more opportunity for people.  Education is as available as it is ever going to be.  A young man even founded a school online called Khan University, offering a world class education, online, for free.  It was featured on 60 Minutes the other night.  The online space has offered numerous opportunities for people of ingenuity to achieve their goals.  College educations, while becoming astronomically high priced, are still geared towards making it cheaper for the disadvantaged.  Jobs are becoming less and less about the ‘who’ is applying and more about the ‘what’ is applying.  ‘What’ skills, what attitudes, what behaviors and what motivation.

Opportunity is NOT the instance of being given a CEO’s job because you can locate the corner office as well as the person with 25 years of business experience and an MBA.  It is NOT the starting position on the basketball team because you know how to spell ‘shoot’ as well as the person who can hit a jumpshot from forty feet out.  It is NOT being handed the prize without the work.  Opportunity is an intern position at Microsoft, not Bill Gates’ office.

Opportunity is a chance.  It’s when you are given the means to accomplish something and then YOU have to do the work.

There was a day when all that was available to us in this society was a book on fishing.  We were responsible for finding the pole, the bait, the tackle box and the right lake.  There was a day when the most ingenious would go after getting the materials and then would also have to learn how to do it.  There were also, in that time, certain barriers to obtaining those things.  It created inequities.  But that did not stop the driven.

Today, more than ever, there is information on how to fish, on where to get a free rod, on where to find the best bait, on where the best waters are, on the top methods of fishing.  Fifty years ago, if that same driven person referenced above had been given access to that information, that person would have drained the whole lake of fish.

I wanted to write and publish a book.  There was a day when that would have been impossible.  I found all kinds of information, relatively cheaply, on how to do it.  I simply had to apply the knowledge diligently.  I also had to sit down and write the book…which took three years on and off.  It was work…but I wanted to do it.

I wanted to build an Online Bank at my old company.  Company decisions that were not mine to make were real obstacles.  But I found a company that wanted to do it, and I did it for them.  We opened it last week.  You may find it at http://www.smarterbank.com.

I wanted to lose weight and keep it off.  Done.  Four years and still cranking.  I could eat whatever I wanted.  I don’t have to be diligent about it.  But I would pay the price and lose what I have achieved.

I wanted optimum fitness and to see how fit I can get…and here I am with P90X.

Self-help abounds in today’s society.  There has never been more information about how to succeed from work skills, to people skills, to leadership skills.  You can find tons of information on how to make yourself more marketable by making sure you look your best, instill confidence and demonstrate poise.

The only thing that is not readily available is motivation and drive.  That, you have to find inside you.  If you don’t find it, don’t worry, you will always be able to grab an excuse from the rest of the folk who simply refuse to try.  Blame society, blame discrimination, blame…blame anything.

The real barrier to achievement today is the attitude of entitlement.  We give out trophies to everyone, just for trying.  Grades in school have become dumbed down.  Everyone has to do well.  We have thrown out every metric that grades achievement.  Everything is so readily available and given so freely that if something seems hard, no one tries any more.  That drive is most strong is those that have NOT had things.  They want them and will do what it takes to get them.  We are given so much without real effort that we have destroyed the desire that fuels motivation.  THAT is the real barrier to achievement…the lack of a work ethic...the lack of hunger.  Just give me my victory.

Sorry if you have that attitude…you will find out someday that you have to take the victory.

If you really want something, there is no greater time than today.  Just go find out the information on ‘how’ and then just go do it.  Don’t sit and talk about it.  Just do it.

People who are running their fastest, and not looking behind them, are never caught by a slower runner.

My thanks to Dr. Michele Noonan, star of the Big Brother TV show and my partner in crime in last night’s debate.  She inspired today’s blog.

http://www.doctormichele.com/about/
http://www.michelenoonan.com/

[later that night]


Yoga X and the Treadmill.  Did everything...nothing notable...except the weight keeps coming off!

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