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04-18-22 01:08 PM - Post#919000
This is how I reremembered walking...from the new book:
The Quarterly Review
The Two Numbers Goal Sheet is one of my favorite tools for helping people (including myself) achieve goals. After doing a few other simple assignments, I like to come up with two hard numbers for goal achievement, if possible.
Numbers are measurable. That might be the most obvious thing I ever wrote, but it is also a profound point. Measuring “I want to be happy” is going to be a tough one. Famous Amos taught us that “Happiness is an inside job” and Abraham Lincoln basically reminded us that we are as happy as we choose to be. I agree with both points.
It still makes happiness a tough thing to measure. However, when I set one of my two numbers to a bodyweight goal, to lift as a 96-kilogram lifter (211 pounds), every morning I can step on the scale and see whether or not I am closing in on my goal. True, bodyweight might be a horrible tool to measure, but I must weigh in at Olympic lifting meets and that’s the rules.
The daily weigh in is fraught with issues. Traveling in planes, getting a cold, and certain kinds of food combinations tend to make my bodyweight go up. Other things, remarkably simple and repeatable things, tend to make my bodyweight go down.
Earl Nightingale reminds us in his wonderful work, Secret Advantage, that every so often on our goal achievement journey that we stop and check in with ourselves. Every day, I write down my goals (the numbers). Every day, I follow my Pirate Map and do my To Do List, meditate, eat veggies, lift, and walk (and all the rest).
Every day. At the end of each day, in my journal, I write, list, or note what I did on the path towards this goal.
And “every day” has a LOT of value. But every so often it’s nice to stop and check in. Earl recommends to us that we should occasionally review our weeks and months and see what we are doing to keep the momentum on our goal setting.
There is nothing new here. Few of you might know that on January 8, 1932, my father, Albert John, turned in a book report on The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I hope I don’t have to tell anyone who wrote this autobiography.
My dad had a few spelling errors and earned a C+. He would do much better in school as he moved along! By the way, my sister found our father’s collection of Book Notes and I have been enjoying reading my dad’s insights on Don Quixote, Longfellow, and, among others, Franklin at the wizened age of fourteen.
My dad noted: “I would advise everybody to read this autobiography.” Franklin spent the largest part of this book, I read it after following dad’s advice, on thirteen habits that he wanted to be better at in life. Each week, he would focus on one, so that each virtue, like humility or temperance, would have four weeks a year for his focus.
I like Franklin’s idea. Somehow, reviewing an attempt to change one’s life gives clarity. I think four times a year is a good idea. Simply, I stop for a moment, look over my journal, note the ebbs and flows and then look deeply at the OTHER things I did to assess my steps.
For my physical goals, I did an interesting thing. I read and reread a number of people on appropriate body composition changes. I have a large collection of the works of Rusty Moore and Greg O’Gallagher. Rusty’s body composition materials are focused on looking good for weddings, photo shoots and yachting. His materials on the “Yacht Bod” made me snicker at first and then I dug deeply into his work. I discovered that what we do in elite performance is great for competing and throwing things. That’s not the same as looking good in a wedding or reunion picture.
To sum: if you want to look good in the pictures, read Rusty.
Greg focuses much more on the “look.” He combines intermittent fasting, walking, and heavy targeted lifting to look good at the pool and beach. I complimented Greg in a video once and trolls told me that they “had lost respect for me.” Somehow, losing the respect of an anonymous poster on the internet doesn’t impact me as much as these typists can imagine.
To sum: if you want to look good at the pool, read Greg.
After reading and rereading all of this, I went to Clarence Bass’s site and bought (for the second or third time) his collections called Ripped and The Lean Advantage. These are a total of six books. I think I have his whole collection, but I knew there was something in these books that was speaking to me.
I found it.
Walking
I leafed quickly back through my journal and noticed something: when I added in an additional walk daily my bodyweight trended downward. I always (since I started taking this seriously) walk after I lift. Rusty, Greg, and Clarence all discuss the importance of getting some extra walking in.
This is fairly simple, I think. I need to get back to what I WAS doing: adding an extra little stroll into my evening or afternoon.
I just sat down after a half hour, two-mile walk. I fully expect, if I continue to do this one little thing, to see my bodyweight nudge downward again.
This is the value of the quarterly check in. Yes. Yes, the daily Pirate Map is crucial. But there is also a good chance that you or I might miss something simple and obvious like the additional daily stroll. Or the gut biome stuff. Or the sleep quality. Or whatever.
By the way, it was also fun to read all this material with the vision of looking for MY issues, my answers. I was taught this was called “active reading” as a child, but I might hazard to say that this is truly selfish reading. Don’t take “selfish,” as a negative word here: I was looking for an answer and I found it.
Certainly, adding some additional walking might help you, too. It might be fun for you to reread some other materials and see what leaps out to you as you look to evaluate your progress to your goals.
On the financial goal, I stacked up a few things on my desk. I see:
Earl Nightingale’s book, Your Success Starts here
All of Derek Sivers’s books, my favorite is Your Music and People
Nic Peterson’s book, Bumpers
Another of Earl’s books, Transformational Living
Earl’s DVDs and CDs, Secret Advantage
Online, I took the course How to Speak So That People Want to Listen by Julian Treasure
These are the works recommended to me by friends to strengthen and understand my work online and the speaking circuit. People are amazed, and this might sound odd, when I tell them how nervous I am before every public speaking engagement. I suffer, like many, from the fear of public embarrassment and handing me the microphone does little to calm me down.
So, I take courses on public speaking, stand-up comedy, and acting to help prepare me for the various gyms, clubs, and auditoriums I find myself speaking in. My business books from this past quarter seem to be focused on, well, being focused. I’m clarifying my work and simplifying my business model.
My goal for my business is just ONE number. I measure things, like Earl Nightingale taught me, by having a goal that is reasonable and measurable. The number certainly stretches me, the opposite of my bodyweight goal, but it is doable.
Every quarter, I must send in my quarterly payments to the Internal Revenue Service. As I write this check, I am also grabbing my journals and notes to review my Two Numbers Goal Sheet.
None of this takes very long. My walk today, literally in a pause while writing this, took longer than the entire process. I finished my daily Two Numbers Goal Sheet as well as my quarterly review AND wrote about it in a very short amount of time.
Including the half hour walk, I think the process took an hour. If you skip the walk, you are looking at a two-hour investment a year. Two hours. Per year.
That’s a reasonable price to achieve your goals.
Daniel John
Just handing down what I was handed down...
Make a Difference.
Live. Love. Laugh.
Balance work, rest, play and pray (enjoy beauty and solitude)
Sleep soundly. Drink Water. Eat veggies and protein. Walk.
Wear your seat belt. Don’t smoke. Floss your teeth.
Put weights overhead. Pick weights off the floor. Carry weights.
Reread great books. Say thank you |
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