You Are A Homeowner
First of all, I would like to congratulate Darra and YaQutullah for winning my most recent challenge! Each will receive four LÄRABAR samples (given to me for free as part of the 2015 LÄRABAR Ambassador Program). I encourage all of my readers to be on the lookout for future challenges, because there will be more! I enjoy showing appreciation to my readers whenever I am able.
Where are my homeowners out there?
If you own a home, you probably know about everything that goes into maintaining it, whether you maintain it well or not.
Another thing that you probably realize is that, not only are houses significant investments, but also, they tend to require a continual investment of money over time for maintenance. Makes me think about how I had to repair my refrigerator and water heater in my house before I’d lived in it for a year. Yeouch!
Finally, you are likely fully aware that if you stay up on maintenance and do your best at taking care of your house, your house will appreciate in value. Sure, there are other factors to consider, such as the prices of other homes in the neighborhood, the general condition of the market, and so on, but for general intents and purposes, the better you maintain your house, the more the value of your house increases.
I’m sure you know where I’m going. 😉
Taking Care of Your Personal Residence
Ok, so whether you own a brick and mortar house or not, you are nonetheless the owner of a residence. That residence is your physical body. You’ve been a homeowner since you were first born!
Similar to a house, you likely know much of what it takes to maintain your body. Regular practices that you must engage in to keep your body up include:
- Sleeping
- Eating healthy food
- Exercising/Moving regularly
- Drinking water
- Receiving sunlight and fresh air
You also know that your body over time requires huge investments. The investments are not only of money, but of time as well. It costs money to eat healthy food (read this for cheaper ideas for healthy eating), to go to the gym (even though you don’t need one), to get water from your tap or from the bottle, and to visit the doctor when necessary. It costs time to make yourself exercise, to get to bed at a good time, to go to the grocery store or farmers market, and so on. However, if you want a healthy body, there are no shortcuts. These are things that you must do.
Finally, whether you realize this or not, the greater the investment you make in your physical body, the greater the dividends back to you. When you invest in good quality food, in exercise and sleep time, and in all the other things necessary for good health, what is the return?
A significantly reduced risk of disease, greater quality of life, and often greater quantity of life.
“Everybody wants [it]…”
Ronnie Coleman, one of my favorite bodybuilders and an 8-time winner of the Mr. Olympia Bodybuilding Competition, is known for many quotes, one of them being the following:
“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody want to lift heavy weight!” (PG Version)
What he’s saying is that there are a lot of folks out there who want big, well developed muscles, but most are not willing to lift heavy weights, which are necessary to build strong muscle.
Don’t we all want the benefits that come from maintaining our bodies well and making those healthy investments and sacrifices? I think that all of us do, but here’s the thing: Not all of us are receiving those benefits. Why? Two reasons…
- We’re not willing to make the necessary hard choices
- We try to take shortcuts
In the same manner that a homeowner might know he/she needs to replace the front door but hesitates to shell out the big bucks for it, we often know exactly what to do to take our health to the next level, but we don’t want to do the required work. Oh, how we hold ourselves back!
On top of that, we often try to get healthy results from half-healthy living. Instead of controlling portions, we use appetite suppressants. Instead of eating fruits and vegetables for nutrients, we eat burgers and fries, and then take a multivitamin. #FAIL.
Instead of losing weight the old fashioned way, we take fat burners and even go under the knife to remove extra fat (liposuction). Instead of doing a variety of chest exercises to build strong and well-formed pectorals, we again go under the knife to get artificial implants installed that look like strong pectorals (no joke; I actually saw this on TV before).
One big thing I’ve noticed with shortcuts though is that they never work, and they almost always have a catch. They’re never, ever worth the convenience they appear to offer. I dare you to really think about the shortcuts we try to take in life. I bet that you’ll see that they always end up bad in the end.
Moral of the story is, be a responsible homeowner and take care of your personal residence. Yeah, it’s gonna cost you time, and it’s gonna cost you money as well. It’s not worth it to skip the hard work of eating right, exercising and sleeping. It also isn’t worth it to take shortcuts to a healthier body; more than likely, they won’t give you the fullness of the better health that you desire. I promise you though that whatever you invest into maintaining and caring for your body, you will reap multiple times over in quality and quantity of life.
I will leave you with the following post from one of my favorite blogs to read. It talks about how we can simplify our approach to maintaining our bodies.
