Did you ever see something that you know you’ve seen before,
but have that one moment strike you intimately?
I have an office in Boston, Massachusetts. It’s on a very busy street with a window that
looks right onto the sidewalk. As I was
sitting in a meeting yesterday, in thought about some business thing, I watched
a man walk down the sidewalk. He was
walking quickly with a long stick in front of him, moving it left and right in
a tapping motion on the sidewalk. He was
looking skyward and had a big smile on his face. Maybe you have picked this up already from my
description…he was blind.
As I sat there, I thought, “Where can this guy have to go
that badly that he would take his disability into the crowded and traffic heavy
streets of Boston?” It struck me how
precarious an act I was seeing on the part of this blind man. As I rolled my thoughts around in my head, I
thought about how this person must approach every day. I thought about the courage it must take to
blindly stroll into the unknown and the risks involved. What an incredibly courageous person it takes
to not let those risks deter their journey.
It triggered many thoughts about people in my life that have
demonstrated that same courage.
My friend and Beachbody coach, Lisa Barker, who has survived
cancer and battles every day to create a condition in her life that will keep
something like that from ever happening again.
I thought about all the cancer survivors that I know, Shea GIbney, Teri
Findlay, Rosie Anderson. I thought about
the ones that fought long and hard, only to lose…like Bob Grenon.
My new Facebook friend Jaime Grossman who, after getting to a point
in her life where her physical condition became precarious and dangerous,
grabbed the reins and made permanent changes.
Although she has made dramatic positive changes, she is still left with
the residual physical damage. She is,
however, resigned to winning the slow journey to fix the remaining issues as
well and does so with an incredible optimism.
My new Facebook friend Nancy Reinhardt who, when told her body was
failing her and that she may never be able to have the freedom of
movement that others had, made permanent and lasting changes to her physical
condition over the last few years. She
jogged one mile the other day for the first time in years.
My friend Dave Potter who, after doing two tours in
Afghanistan with the military, went back for a third tour voluntarily “because
there are many who can’t do this, but I know I can.” His convoy was hit with an RPG in his second
tour and he suffered hearing damage that will never return. That not only didn’t stop him, it hardened
his resolve to return.
My dad who, after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease
at the age of forty, spent the next thirty years fighting with the terminal
illness. He never stopped pushing
himself to the limit of his endurance every single day. He took a cocktail of about 50 to 60 pills a
day. Every three hours he had to take
six or seven pills. Some of them helped
him move, some of them offset the toxic effects of the rest of the pills. But he never gave in. Ever.
He said once that he “didn’t want Parkinson’s to win.” It didn’t.
He actually died of an infection caused from an implant that had been
put in to stop a clot.
When I write about my own journeys with my weight loss, I do
it with passion. But I will be the first
to tell you that it pales in comparison to the things that many have had to
overcome in their lives.
On the other hand, there are many who look at something like
a P90X program and think, “Oh my God, I could never do that. It’s way too hard.”
I guess that’s the point of my blog today. I know I spend a lot of time encouraging
everyone who reads this to work harder at improving their physical condition
for the journey ahead of them. Your
physical condition is a big deal. When
it fails you, you may feel like everything else is coming down around you. It is also difficult. But it is not THAT difficult. When I think about some of the courageous
people I know in my life, I have to…and YOU have to…put things like this in
perspective.
I don’t think I have done something miraculous by
conditioning myself this way. Not in the
least. In fact, I KNOW it is something
everyone can do. Next to the people
mentioned in this blog, my story is bland.
So, when you think about your physical condition and think
improvements are hard, I get it. But to
be candid, it is not that hard for you.
If this is the hardest thing you ever do in your life, God
Bless You.
Try P90X or any other fitness routine that positively
changes your life. You will feel great
and put yourself in a position to be healthy and happy for the rest of your
life.
If you look at the stories of courage above, there is one
thread common to all of them. The thing
that I am asking you to go out and claim, a healthy physical condition, is what
they all bravely have had to work to reclaim.
Don’t wait until it’s too late. Have a great weekend and thanks to all of
those who have shared their stories and inspired me.
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