Life. Life really is an incredible thing, and we humans really are miraculous things. Incredible creatures capable of the most amazing accomplishments and the most horrific crimes. Human history is dotted with individuals who's contributions have sounded like a trumpet through time. Humans like Einstein or Newton, who just by thinking profoundly, impacted the development of science and technology on a global scale, and not just during their lives, but for centuries thereafter even to today. People like Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Edison are well known names and they defined entire ages! We are still to this moment living in the wake of their decisions, experiencing the echoes of their lives. Each of us has this power, the power to affect the world around us in profound ever expanding ways that boggle even our own imaginations. All that is required is that we accept it. That we stop running and dodging the fact that we are wonderfully and powerfully made and we start living as though our actions have consequences that echo in eternity. Our families are counting on us to do this, our children, our spouses, our friends, our communities, truly the world!
This blog is a little more serious than most, but this is a very important topic to me and one I will dedicate a serious amount of energy to. I believe there are three major attacks against the world today. Three major area's that have fallen under prolonged assault. Our families and the role of families in our communities, our understanding of money and resources and how to manage them, and our health and fitness.
Let's start with health and fitness. Never before in history have we been so affected by this assault. Hyper-palatable foods crafted from any worthless thing that have no actual nutritional value and do nothing but add pounds and pounds are so abundant it is astounding! Not to mention the incredible pharmaceutical industry! They don't want people to be healthy, they want people to be dependent! Whether it's fast food, pharmaceuticals, or whatever, the lack of available knowledge and desire required to take care of ourselves is drastically lower than the way we would take care of a machine capable of as much! Just think of how science would wonder and stagger in amazement if suddenly they had a robot as functional as a man, capable of imagining and thinking. And yet we wake every day and take it totally for granted that we are such a thing.
Second of all, never before have there been so many people with so many resource issues than there are today! Our country and our citizens individual debt is bigger than ever before, and the education and information needed to turn it all around is totally absent! The average household owes over $10,000 in credit card debt alone, up 29% from 2000 per USA Today. On top of that, the average household owes 20% more than it makes each year according to Newsweek! A yahoo finance survey indicated that 61% of Americans said they don’t save enough, and what they do set aside isn’t in the right savings vehicle, and 68% said they would save more if they could, but lacked the extra funds. Plus, 44% of Americans said they simply guessed what they would need (to save) for a comfortable retirement! Guessed!! Clearly the information needed to make informed decisions is simply lacking. What's worse, almost half of all workers live paycheck to paycheck just to make ends meet (CNN).
The nation’s median salary is around $36,000, and has stayed flat for almost 2 decades, while the cost of living has soared. Americans must make $62,000 today to buy what $36,000 bought in 1989 (Bureau of Labor Statistics). I'm not trying to sound a death gong over here or make it seem like all is lost. Watch the news if you want to hear that. I'm simply saying we need people to talk and we need people to offer and educate on these topics! The only way we can turn this around is by education.
Last but certainly not least is families. With a divorce rate that is through the roof, and more checked-out parents and dead beat dads than ever before, families and society is cracking. Crime is rising, more public shootings every year, devastating story after devastating story on the news about all the most broken things humans can do to each other. Families need help.
The truth is that all it takes for evil to flourish and prevail is for good men and women to do nothing. This is why, in 2013 I will be focusing on helping families, individuals, and organizations attack these three issues. Family, Finance, and Fitness. I am forming a group and looking for partners to help me roll out the IronLife program. This will directly focus on these three great issues we face in the world today. It's time good men and women stepped up. It's time we started taking responsibility for where we are and what's been going on. It's not our brothers and sisters that are to blame, our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against authorities and powers of the dark! I'm not talking black magic here I'm talking about the darkness of not being aware that there is a better way!!! The darkness of giving up and just not knowing the simple truths that can set people free!
I believe there is a better way to live. A way to take control of our lives, of our fitness, of our finances. A way we can be examples of greatness to our families that will bring them together. A way to live that will not cause our children to hate and run from us but to adore us. A different family model where children look up to and seek advice from their parents, through teenage years and even into adulthood. Where children are not viewed as burdens but as blessings!! Where finances are not a source of shame or something to be avoided in conversation or sneered at or ignored, but to be proud of and openly discussed! The fact that this subject is so taboo and untouchable, often even between spouses, is the source of the issue in the first place! Victory with our resources is not an impossible to discover secret. It is available and we should expect victory and we can do it!! It's just a matter of information, not inability! Finally, fitness; I went from the couch, to a full blown IronMan in six months flat. There is alot of bogus information out there designed to keep us unhealthy, taking pills, eating badly, and buying every diet fad that comes down the pike, but it dosn't have to be that way! I'll be aggressively attacking all three of these issues this year, so stay tuned! We'll be starting weekly chalenges, books, workout groups, workshops and more! I am very excited!
Share this story with someone today, and stay tuned for the actual program, and ways we can all start taking back these three areas of our lives! Help me spread the word about this little blog and the coming IronLife program and together, we can make a difference!
I see two extremes one is that we throw our hands in the air, throw a little tantrum, whine to everybody around us hoping they will tear down the wall for us, and when they don't, we scream and pound our fists till we eventually get too tired and fall asleep. Just like a toddler. Once this show is all over, we go in another direction, deeming that the first was impossible and a failure. We stop running, stop biking, stop trying to swim, because it was too hard, because "I can't swim" because "it is too far" whatever. Then the reasons and excuses come out and we rationalize our way out of the truth, which is that we quit.
The other extreme is that we instantly evaluate the failure, realizing that it is simply a stepping stone to be overcome, talk with our advisers about what went wrong, talk about what went well and hatch a wiser smarter plan. Then we get back on the horse / bike / road and try again.
