Accountability WIth a Twist

No one could ever accuse me of seeing the world in a cookie cutter way. If the first step is acknowledgement, then I accept that I am not right, or as they say back home, "I ain't right.". Even though I am a bubble and a half off plumb, I need goals and I certainly need accountability.

I possess an advanced degree in procrastination. It took me a while to get that degree as I kept putting off the work. In a sense, that caused me to receive the degree with honors. Obviously, it comes into play in meeting any business dream I might have. I could go on and bore you with hours of details showing how I have put off doing things. Why do I put things off like I do? I am not totally sure. Maybe part of me enjoys misery, stress and worry. I am certain that fear puts me down all the time. Yesterday, the Biblical parable of the servants and talents hit me like a ton of bricks. FEAR kept the one servant from investing or taking care of the 'talent' (asset) that the master gave to him. FEAR led him to be called "lazy" and, as the CEV states, "good for nothing". If any of you are like me and fight esteem issues, the last thing I need is my prowess of procrastination prompting someone to call me 'lazy'.

I am a great dreamer and goal setter. I find following through difficult because of fear and some other things. I have brainstormed a few unique ways to encourage accountability.

1. Tell others your goal. I do not mean just write it down in a journal (a great idea, by the way). I mean yell it from the mountaintops, or better yet, post it on the modern day mountain tops-Facebook and/or Twitter. Lay it out there. See who the supporters are in your life and weed out the haters. If your dream or goal means that much to you and you add in your post a simple "why" statement, then your true friends and supporters will be unable to at least click "like". Silence speaks volumes and those who do not respond are merely nosey and not what you need.

2. Use your common SENSE(S) This is where it gets unique to the inner workings of my mind. Senses guide our life and much of this guidance is done without any conscious thought. You smell and see the "HOT NOW" sign on the Krispy Kreme store and your mouth and stomach get the message immediately. Why not use that sense recognition for good?

Let's look at a "body" goal. People have used motivational pictures of how they want to look for years and visualization has long been encouraged. The sense of sight helps out here in the quest for the beach worthy body. How about smell? One could easily keep a bottle of coconut scented tanning oil nearby so a quick snort could keep them on track. Sense of sound is included with simple affirmations repeated that one finds encouraging. The sense of taste proves a little trickier. Sure, a mouth full of sand would prompt visions of the beach, but instead, savoring and enjoying the tastes of healthy food. If you do not find healthy food attractive, I know a way to change that..And finally, the sense of touch. I see this one with huge potential. How about a simple band around your wrist? You feel it and that could hold you accountable when after that dang brownie jumped right into your hand. I have heard of people shaving their heads as a reminder that they need to be focused.

There you have it. A couple simple ways to help with accountability. There are other, more traditional ways, like finding an accountability partner and the aforementioned journaling. In a couple of days, I am putting this to the test in a very public way.

Ready, set ACTION

Roll up your sleeves, tighten your belt and take a big snort of ammonia, it is time to get things started. You and I want change, but not change for change sake. We want a defined change and we want that change to redefine our life. Since we want the change, then all we have to do is say "poof" and it will happen. OK, that was far fetched a bit so all we have to do is pray about it and God will make it happen. Again, God is not a Genie in a bottle nor is He Santa Claus. Well, dang, the easy, no sweat ways won't work so how do we take action.

By now, you know I like things that run in threes--Stooges, strikes, Musketeers, etc. As for taking action, yep, I have got a 3 step plan.

DREAM
All good action plans begin with a dream. I find that people (including me) tend to dream way to small. The best part of a dream is that it can be huge. There should be no limits to a dream. Take for instance a bench press. Let's say that you have 100 workouts in a year and you start at a reasonable weight. In most gyms or the weights sold in stores, the smallest weights available are 2.5 pounds. The weight you select is easy enough to do 10 times without much effort. Every other workout, you put the weight equivalent to a sack of sugar on the bar. In other words, you will add 5 pounds every other workout (or 50 workouts) in a year. In theory, that would yield a 250 pound increase. Now some of you are screaming, "John that is not possible." I ask you to tell me why it is impossible. What if you only reached half that amount a year (125 pound increase) and you did this for 2 years (the same impossible weight in 2 years). Again, even if you only met that by 50% you will still have a 190 pound increase in 2 years. I have heard people say "shoot for the stars and you may still hit the moon". Do not suppress your dreams. And write them down. We will learn how to use that against you later.

GOALS
From dreams come goals. I see goals as the stepping stones to reach your dreams. Setting goals deserves a full blog to do it justice. Goals must be small, measurable and obtainable and once they are reached, can serve as a springboard for the next goal. The old adage "Inch by inch is a cinch and yard by yard is hard" fits here. Maybe the goal is to read your Bible 10 minutes a day. This may seem like an insurmountable goal but build on what you can do. For instance, maybe it is read a chapter a day and increase a chapter every week. It will be no time that you are reading those 10 minutes or more. I had a patient once that said she could not get out of bed in the morning. She started by setting the alarm and forcing herself to walk out of the bedroom. Sure, for a week or so she immediately crashed on the couch but she applied the same approach and eventually found herself walking to the mailbox. Her "dream" is to walk with her husband in the mornings and she is a lot closer than she was in the beginning.

RESOLVE
Good ol' Stonewall Jackson comes in again to save the day. As mentioned in previous entries, I do like me some Stonewall. "Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve". This sort of explains New Years Resolutions. We START with the dream and the goal, and then resolve to make the change. For me, they usually last until about 9pm New Year's Day. Resolve takes, well, resolve. Resolving to change takes hard work and dare I say, accountability. Accountability requires creativity and the next blog will show some creative ways that I plan on injecting accountability into my life.

What are your dreams? Can you manufacture goals to reach them? Then what are you willing to do to reach your dreams (that is where we get stuck)

I want to wrestle Shute

You hard core movie buffs from the 1980s may recognize the quote from Vision Quest. I can relate to Louden Swain. Well, except for the obvious differences: he was young, lean and, as the movie plot summary says, Louden "comes of age" in the film. I have certainly already come of age and I am a long way from lean.  In the opening scene, Louden is jumping rope and his hair bounces with each jump. When I recreate the scene, everything but my hair(s) bounces with each jump.

Louden wanted to make a dramatic impact and ended up facing Shute in an epic wrestling match. Shute represented a challenge that would take a superhuman effort to overcome. Hollywood assured that Louden defeated Shute.

In life, I am ready to do something worthy of a real legacy. It is time to face the Shute. I can relate the nuts and bolts of this blog to making a template to beat the Shute.

If you have seen the movie, everyone thought that Louden was nuts. If a person embarks on a life changing adventure, their sanity should be questioned. Chris Columbus--remember he was nuts to sail off into the sunset. Charles Lindbergh was crazy too. Throw Henry Ford and Bill Gates into the deep end of the Looney Pool.

I am ready to take the body, soul, heart and mind mantra to a new level of crazy. And, I since I have little sense, I am going to chronicle the whole journey. It will apply to everything--job, exercise, diet, family...every thing that gets in the way of my maximal experience with my family, my God, my job and my life will be viewed as Shute.

And, if you have never seen the movie, the full version can be found on YouTube. If you have seen the movie, do you remember Louden's best friend's name? And you get bonus points for knowing Shute's first name.

Wake up calls

I love to dream. I am a vivid dreamer and if I could eat popcorn while I was asleep, my dreams are usually better than any movie. They are detailed, realistic and sometimes funny, sometimes exciting and more than often, really odd. This morning I was dreaming that I was at work somewhere. I can't say that I recognized where I was working or the 2 supervisor type women I was speaking to, but I knew it was work.

We were talking about my dad and when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which was in 1986. In this dream, I calculated correctly that if dad were living he would be 90 at his next birthday. But, because of the uncertain world of the subconscious, not all of my math skills were accurate as I said he was 53 when he was diagnosed.

This miscalculation woke me up out of a dead sleep.

Turning 53 is just around the corner for me. As I laid there waiting for my heart beat to come down from hummingbird range, I remembered this scripture in James 4:

¹⁴ What do you know about tomorrow? How can you be so sure about your life? It is nothing more than mist that appears for only a little while before it disappears. 

Where do dreams come from? I have no idea and I don't think anyone else really knows. But, yesterday, I had a similar wake up call and I was wide awake. As I sat in an employment office of a hospital waiting for yet another job interview, I noticed other applicants as they walked in the office. The first was a woman in her mid 30s. She was carrying a copy of her CV and she was dressed nicely (better than me) and was quite conservative in her appearance. I have been there and done that. The dressed for success look geared for early to mid career when enthusiasm remainns high but has been tempered by experience. Then the second was a much younger woman, She was obviously early in her career (possibly the first post-college job) and she was dressed  little more formally and even decided to wear a lot of her bling. Ah, the enthusiastic, almost Polly Ann-ish, excitement of entering the post graduate work force.

 Then there I sat. I did not spend a lot of time on my hair (or should I say 'hairs' as I could number them if the notion struck me). No tie, but I did wear nice shoes. I am, at this point of my career a dedicated believer in WYSIWYG, or "what you see is what you get".


It dawned on me. "What do they REALLY get?". By this point in my career, I should have roots so deep that dynamite could not get me out of the job. And I am not all that removed from the age in which serious health issues changed my dad forever. What am I doing?



As my heart rate finally slowed and as the tears began to well in my eyes, I realized dad was 63 when he was diagnosed. Then a whole series of number coincidences began flooding my mind. I was born in 1963. Madi's birthday is 9 weeks away, which is 63 days. I have held 9 different jobs as a nurse practitioner. I am not a believer in coincidence so I wonder about the significance of all of this.


Then i remember the foundation of this blog in which I defined wanting to love God with all my heart, soul, mind and body. Part of being a Christian involves TRANSFORMING. That means, changing. So if I really wanted to have zealous intentions, I have to change and change to a point that I cannot be confused with my former self.


Talk about wake up calls!!

The Evil Villain Worry

Kids. Bills. Job. Health. Insurance. Taxes. The check engine light on the truck. The leaky toilet. The economy. I could go on and on with the never ending list of worries that pop in our minds. Big worries, small worries, worries that climb on rocks-our lives are full of self inflicted stressors. I can speak of worry as an expert because I come from a long line of “worriers”.  I have been trained from birth to attempt to handle and brainstorm every single “what if” scenario.

Do you want to know the silliest of my worries? I worry about oversleeping. I am not sure what would happen if I overslept, but I am sure it may be the predictor of the Rapture. I bet some of you imagine that this started after I entered the working world and you would be so wrong. Here is where it really gets odd. I do not and have NEVER used an alarm clock. I mean I have been like this since I was 9 years old. I wake up no less than 4 times a night just so I can see what time it is. The sickness that lives in my head will have me guess the time before I open my eyes, like I am going to win a cruise or something if I am correct. I can honestly only recall 2 times or so in my life that I slept past 10AM on a Saturday! The very first time I recall doing that was about a week after my high school graduation and I remember vividly my grandmother was visiting.

Why do I worry about oversleeping?  All I know is that admitting my worry sets up a nice platform to open the discussion.

1.     Most of the things we worry about never come true, and if they do, the results are rarely catastrophic. Have I overslept in the past? Nope. If I did, I would likely survive without losing my job and may have to endure some teasing at work. I am fairly certain I would not be executed.

2.     Worry is a fear without a face. In this case, my worry about oversleeping literally keeps me awake at night and robs me of the sleep I need. What frightens me about oversleeping? I have no clue.

3.     Worry smothers itself in negativity. Negative thoughts then lead to negative actions which lead to negative energy and feelings.

4.     Worry becomes a habit. I will worry if there is nothing worrying me. Talk about toxic, self inflicted wounds.

5.     Worry stimulates the body to react to stress. This distress has many physical ramifications that, unlike milk, “does NOT do a body good”.

6.     Worry can be pathological.

So, what is an accomplished worrier with more than 40 years of experience supposed to do when he knows money is tight, the job is shaky because of a contract issue, and the IRS bill is, well, scarier than Freddy Krueger ever could be? Besides, worrying about stuff gives me “control”, right? Surely, if I toss and turn enough nights and make myself a sleep deprived lunatic, I can solve this problem. Yeah, right, that has worked SO well. 

What if I lean on God and look to Him for answers? God makes it SIMPLE if we will just have faith. Look at Philippians 4:6-7, “⁶ Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. ⁷ Then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel.” Then Jesus says in Matthew 6:25 “ I tell you not to worry about your life. Don’t worry about having something to eat, drink, or wear. Isn’t life more than food or clothing?”.

I am a work in progress. I pray daily that God will help me overcome my issues and I know others suffer right along with me. So, with God, I can overcome this nemesis. So , stay tuned until the next time. Same blog site. Same blog channel.

Arrggg

Where is my Charlie Brown shirt? He said it best. "Arrgg" carries deep meaning with me. Fat. Broke. Discouraged. Overwhelmed. Did I mention discouraged? Oh, yes I did. See I attribute that to the millions of thoughts running through my head that have kept me up since 3 AM. Life has been slapping me around enough I almost feel like saying, "Cut me Mick".

But ENOUGH. I am a firm believer in conviction, or God talking to me and putting things on my heart. No, I am not looney, scooters, or insane. I am a guy who has not been leaning on his Heavenly Father like I should. As a result, this portly nurse practitioner who daily counsels people regarding mental health finds himself discouraged and picking myself off the canvas of life.

Sure, I could stay down and take the 10 count. That is what would be easiest thing to do, but easy got me in this mess! It is mid afternoon and a Saturday. I am spending the day listening to a webinar on how I should be doing my business. Sadly, if I DID anything with my business, the poor host of the webinar would not literally be wasting his time. Fear and procrastination have been my business partners this far, but I am firing them.

There are a handful of authors/individuals who I read and admire. A couple I have met and admire them even more. The other two I hope to meet one day and thank them. The two I have met are Lee Arnold and Annie Armen. Lee is a real estate investor like no other. Annie goes by the name "Hurricane"and she is the most intensely positive person alive. She is a hidden treasure that more people should investigate. The two I have not met are Tim Ferriss and Jen Hatmaker. Ferriss is known for the "4 Hour Work Week" and along with Annie, someone I quote daily in my work as an ARNP. And Ms. Hatmaker wrote a book about the excesses in our lives today and it touched me deeply.

Now, what have I to lose if I just got radical and crazy with my life? I mean, what if I really prioritize prayer, seek God and LISTEN to Him? What if I became a ZEALOT and focused all my attention and intent of serving Him in EVERYTHING I do and clean my temple of the junk that clutters my body, mind, soul and heart? What if I approached PEOPLE, SITUATIONS and LIFE in a completely different manner? Not sure it could get worse.

In the spirit of Ferriss and Hatmaker, I, too, am starting an experiment and this blog will chronicle the journey. Maybe it will help someone who feels like me today. I am calling it Zealous Intentions. it is for life, health and business.