Dad Bud

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts. - Marcus Aurelius Everyone has a story to tell, whether good or bad or challenging or epic, everyone has a story to tell that’s worth listening to. Let’s stop for a blog post.  Let’s stop to talk about something near and dear to my heart. One of the many reasons I write this blog, likely the most important reason and the ‘why’ around sharing these lessons on living a life of harmony. Health, particularly men’s health but not limited to men only. It’s for the career-oriented, adult-responsibility, busy-living individuals out there and a greater issue among this group, a lack of fitness and health well-being balanced off with driving careers and raising families.  It’s not only about physical health though. It’s about mental health as well, in my opinion this is the most important piece.  November is coming this week, which also means Movember. The re-named month of the moustache. But...

“If nothing changes then nothing changes.” This saying has popped up a couple times over the past week for me, so I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Changes, challenges, pushing comfort zones, and growth. I’ve written a lot about this stuff and will continue to talk a lot about it. If nothing changes then nothing changes, it’s as simple as that. So I did something drastic this week, as one does to prove a point to himself and to initiate a needed change for some needed change. Excuses have been mounting for me lately, so I needed something different. Here is what I learned doing 50 burpees per day for an entire week. Let me preface this a bit first, I dislike burpees....no that’s not true, I absolutely despise burpees and the individual that came up with it. I don’t do burpees, ever. They’re awful; pain, loss of breath, struggle, more pain....the worst in workouts in my opinion. Every other time I’ve done them I’ve not touched them again for a long time. I did someth...

“We should not, like sheep, follow the herd of creatures in front of us, making our way where others go, not where we ought to go.”—Seneca Life is not linear, well it shouldn’t be at least.  We often get caught in the straight line and projection that we’ve been told life should go. Go to school, get a job, find a companion, get married, have kids, buy a house, spend your life saving for retirement and paying off that house, then settle down to watch the world pass by. This is the extreme life-long linear track with ups and downs along the way, it is generally fairly linear along the whole of life. Many people successfully veer from that linear track, some of the world’s most successful and accomplished individuals. This track still exists but is becoming less of the norm, less prevalent in newer generations. What about the day in and day out linear track that gets us caught in a rut. Sleep, wake, breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner, relax, bed, and throw in grocer...

“When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.” -  Marcus Aurelius Off weeks or off days or even off months, they happen to us all.  This past couple weeks I’ve been lacking harmony (or balance) in certain aspects that are important to me, fitness. It happens to us all, at one point or another, and you need to be ok with it in order to overcome it. I’ve started a new job with an uphill learning curve, my parents have been visiting, my daughter started a new school which is still an adjustment on our schedules, and winter has begun to bring coldness, snow-covered sideways, and early evening darkness. Excuses.  We can all find excuses, I’ve been clinging tightly to mine these past few weeks. I’m allowing them to control me rather than heed my own advice and control them. Or perha...

“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.” - Brene Brown Let’s get vulnerable.  No really....let’s talk vulnerability here, what it means to me, and why I believe it is so important for achieving great things. For me, vulnerability is putting yourself out there with no safety net to save you. It’s breaking down every piece of yourself to completely expose your weaknesses. It’s being willing to not only expose those weaknesses but to confront them head on, attack them, and really try to overcome them.  We, as humans, don’t typically deal well in this space. We don’t naturally welcome weaknesses to the forefront, put a spotlight on them, or expose them for all to see. The basis of our humanity is to be strong, to win, and to not show weakness, and this is exposed more now with social media and it’s misrepre...

“What man (or woman) actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him” – Victor Frankl Why talk about goals now?  Likely you prefer, like most, setting goals based on calendar year accomplishments. This is one of the most natural ways of goal setting. Here we are 3 months from year end and I am already in full on planning mode for the goals I wish to strive for next year. I’ll share some of them but will not on one specific one, as I like a balance on sharing out loud along with keeping something at bay until I can scream it from the hills in excitement. I spoke about a list I made at 20 years old, as an early adolescent, of things to accomplish in life. “100 things to do before I die” was what I titled it. I kept it to 100 as it was a manageable number rather than a lifelong, never-en...

“Just 'cause you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there” Chester Bennington, Linkin Park Let’s talk injuries here, because you really want to avoid those at all costs -obviously.  They get you out of routine (if you have one already), they put you into an inactive routine, and help to drag you down both mentally and physically. From the site of the injury across your entire body, you feel the struggle. I classify injuries as both physical and mental, as they both take the same toll on you. They drain you. Physically you can hurt an ankle or a foot, awaken some longstanding knee issues, back problems, neck problems, toes, chest, shoulders. Whatever it is, it happens to us all in one way or another. We all have something that aggravates, especially when we head out for a longer run, try a new exercise, or lift a child a wrong way. Some are worse than others. Some have cures like different shoes or socks, some need extra special care, and some hold ...