Look for what’s possible
“We spend January 1 walking through our lives,
room by room,
drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.
Maybe this year, to balance the list,
we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives,
not looking for flaws, but for potential.”
~ Ellen Goodman
Learning is your own journey
“You cannot teach a man anything;
you can only help him find it within himself.”
~ Galileo
Allow nature’s healing
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,
places to play in and pray in,
where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.”
~ John Muir
Keep going
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.
The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.”
~ Thomas Edison
Who would’ve guessed this would be killing us?
A seemingly harmless activity we all engage in — daily — is perhaps one of the top dangers to our health. Care to guess what it is?
Some clues:
- You probably spend more time doing this every day than sleeping.
- Doing this 6 or more hours per day makes it more likely you will die within the next 15 years than someone who only does this 3 hours a day.
- Even exercise doesn’t mitigate the risk of doing this activity too much per day.
- People who have jobs that require this activity the most have twice the rate of cardiovascular disease.
- After two hours of this, your good cholesterol drops 20 percent.
Have you guessed what this danger is? It’s sitting. Yes, sitting. Who would’ve figured the simple act of sitting – well, sitting too many hours per day that is – would start showing up as creating such a negative impact on our health?
I’m sure you’ve heard the argument that all our modern conveniences — remote controls, dishwashers, etc. — have impacted our overall health. But it doesn’t seem to make that much sense, does it? It’s not like anyone became a fitness star by standing up and walking to the TV to change the channel!
In reality, though, all these bits are adding up to where we are much too sedentary for our good. Our bodies were designed for — and require — movement. If you sleep 8 hours a day and sit another 6-10 or maybe even more, that’s nearly the bulk of your day. All those little ways we worked in movement in the past have added up.
So, what to do? Try to move more, sit less. Keep in your current level of exercise, but move more during other times. Consider setting a timer to work 50 minutes of every hour, then getting up and moving around the other 10. Stand up to talk on the phone, perhaps. If you watch TV, get up during commercials and stroll around. Take a short walk on your lunch break and after dinner. Skip the elevator; take the stairs.
In other words, interrupt all that sitting as much as you can. But don’t go overboard because it won’t stick. What’s one idea you can try on next week and work into your normal life? Do that, then keep going. Start small; build big!
