Eat for how you want to feel in two hours

If you eat for what tastes good and is satisfying right now, you won’t perform well in two hours.

If it’s all about feeling good right now, then you eat sugar, other junk, and don’t move much at all.

Healthy living becomes practical when we connect today’s choice with how we want to feel a few hours later.

Choose food, movement, and rest that produce energy – not merely momentary pleasure.

As the years go by, your habits will accumulate in your body and manifest long-term results too.

Raise Your Floor

Ambitious goals raise our ceiling, but dependable minimum standards raise our floor.

Your life is shaped less by what you do on your best days than by what you do on your worst days.

Decide what you will do even when you are tired and are “not feeling it today”.

Like how Floor 18 holds up the celebrated top floor of a 100-story building, your worst days hold up your best ones.

Build a life filled with habits that don’t collapse when things aren’t perfect.

The best rewards

The best rewards are reserved for those who don’t fear.

It will take courage to be the exception.

It will take courage to stick your head up.

It will take courage to take the lead.

What are you fighting?

What if you just let it go?

Socialism and Think Daily

There seem to be some (who have not studied history) who are thinking socialism might be better.

That has been tried and proven over and over, and it does not work. Ask Argentinians.

I do not make political statements on Think Daily.

But I will say this: Think Daily conversation is for a free society where your life is your own.

If socialism ever took over my country, many past Think Daily posts are either null and void, or would have to be altered.

I would not write them anymore, because my framework of freedom is gone, and so are our incentives to do better.

We’d be in trouble.

How many years do you have left?

I stumbled across this guy giving seniors advice about how to make the most of their Social Security income. Now that I think of it, it probably came up on YouTube since I just turned 62, and at 62 you can start getting Social Security.  

(OMG!  I’m not ‘old’.  But maybe I’ll ride my dirt bike down there and pick up my check.)

Well, this guy was asking the viewer to guess how long they will live. I thought how sad it would be if I, or anyone else, gave an answer like 70 or 75. Maybe some don’t think about it, and others may think they will live about as long as their parents…I don’t know.

But this is an important topic for everyone, even if you are 20.  Having a great life, and what could be more important to a person than that, requires some planning.  It can’t happen by accident. What we really want is a great healthspan. For the last chapter, we want to feel good and be able to do stuff, not simply be conscious in a chair or bed.  Right?  (If I die suddenly, thank goodness!)

So we have to plan.  For me, as most of you know, I have this giant jar of marbles on my vanity.  I have one marble for each week I will live to be 100.  Each weekend, I take a marble out.  I think my brain and body get it.  They know the road ahead and are planning accordingly.

62 years down, 38 left to go.  62% – the math is easy.

I have to do my part.  I have to eat well, move well, sleep well, and use medical technology to the fullest to avoid or fix early what might get me before 100.

They say that because of AI breakthroughs, for every year you live, you will live even longer because of these discoveries.  (Let’s hope regulation does not get in the way.)

So, if I asked you, how long do you think you will live?  What would you say?

And what are you doing to ensure that happens with a closely matching healthspan?

(OMG) What have I become?

“You can’t see the label when you are inside the jar” – Clay Hebert

I think it is a good question to ask every once in a while to get a perspective.

The only tough part about this question is answering it honestly.

You have your reasons, and you have your excuses, so it’s hard to see who you are, or are becoming, from any other perspective than inside your own head.

But if you could try to see yourself from 10 feet away, and who you are to others, it can be encouraging, or sobering, and at least instructive about what course adjustments you may want to make. Because maybe who you have become is not exactly what you intended or want. You may want to make some thinking adjustments to be who you want before it’s all over – because after all, from the inner, comes the outer.

Who have you become?

Who are you becoming? 

Peaked in a webinar?

Did you peak in 8th-grade science class?  Did you do you best thinking in the first half of a webinar?

If you want to get somewhere really great you’ll have to focus and work down one road for a long time.

You can make an amazing career or accomplish extraordinary things with discipline and perseverance to a simple but worthy goal.

You have to carry enthusiasm for long-term goals long after the sugar high of creating the goal leaves you.

Day after day, making progress, adjusting, getting closer without getting distracted or turning to go in a totally different direction.

Is that you?

Leave some unplanned time

A life scheduled down to the minute may be efficient, but it leaves no room for discovery and spontaneity.

I do not like days with a “Full Schedule”, meeting after task after meeting…  I never know how long things will really take.  I hate being late and rushed, and I hate not being able to finish something if I am into it.  

Sometimes you have to plan, sure.  But for me, days with my hours claimed before they come are no fun.

Adventure requires uncertainty.  When you get “invited” to do something different, having whitespace in your schedule allows you to take the invitation without knowing how it will turn out.  

The most memorable part of a trip is rarely the airport, the hotel, or scheduled dinner.  It’s the wrong turn, the unexpected person, the hidden trail, or unplanned challenge.

Unplanned time doesn’t mean I will be doing nothing.  It means I can do anything without looking at my watch.

Karma compounds

“Good and evil both increase at compound interest.  That is why the little decisions you and I make everyday are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.” – C. S. Lewis