LIFE IS SHORT…LIVE A LITTLE…
Here’s the truth…. life isn’t short.
If we are talking about 1893, yup, life was quite short. The average life expectancy was under 48-years-old.
But it’s 2015. Odds are that you are going to live to your late 70s, and if you are relatively educated and affluent, add another decade to that.
Having spent a significant part of my life working with older adults, I can tell you that exactly 0 times has an older adult told me that they did not regret taking better care of themselves when they were younger.
Rates of morbidity, defined as the inability to do normal age appropriate functions, have actually increased in the US in the last couple of decades. What does this mean?
While we are living longer, we are not living better. In the presence of poor exercise and diet, we will see muscle wasting and joint deterioration causing pain, lack of independence, and increase risk or trauma and disease.
Ask people suffering from these issues, many of which are completely preventable, how short life is.
I think what most people are trying to say is that life is precious. Enjoy it. Soak it in. Don’t obsess over the small things. Live and love to the fullest. Give what you can.
Don’t squander your health before it’s too late.
Eating healthy and exercise does not mean depriving yourself of joy, fun, food, drink, and celebration with friends and family. People who distort the process of improving health and fitness as the absence of living life to the fullest are sadly mistaken.
Sure, fitness elitists and food snobs have some role in promoting this distorted notion.
But no successful fitness and health professional would ever advise or encourage this.
In fact, often those who seek our advice are often surprised how doable our system for optimizing their health is. In cases of dramatic transformations resulting in pounds shed, pain eliminated, medications discontinued, and performance records broken, never do they recount significant pain, suffering, and deprivation.
Instead, they remark of the liberation, satisfaction, and fun they are now afforded by their stronger, healthier bodies.
If you believe life is short, think again. You’re probably going to be around longer than you think. Don’t spend one minute more than necessary at risk of suffering when that can be prevented.
Life truly is precious. There is room to both have fun, enjoy it to the max, and be healthy and fit.
Enjoying life to the fullest and being healthy doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. One begets the other.
The trick is figuring out how to do both, and sustain it.
Go here to learn how we do it.
Dr. Mike
PS: My seminar, What the Heck is Wrong with Me?, 6-7:15pm Tuesday, November 10th is less than a week away and will likely sell out.
You have to go here and fill out the form to reserve your spot.
