Inertia

It always seems easier just to maintain the status quo, right?  If I keep my head down and nose to the grindstone, everything will be ok.

Short aside moment:  Those of you familiar with the song, “Stick to the Status Quo” from High School Musical may commence singing it now.  And yes, I do in fact make the perfect crème brulee.

I know this is hard for many of you to believe, but I used to be an introvert, so I understand not wanting to step out, make waves, or attract attention.  Really, it’s true.  And now that I have overcome introversion …

I prefer to call things like I see them.  And if something needs to change, stop whining and change it!  I look at this world from a faith-based vantage point.  I have prayed many times over the years for God to change my situation or change my perspective.  He always does.  According to his own timing, of course. 

So maybe I should amend that advice … if something needs to change, stop whining and pray about it.  And, although often easier said than done, follow God’s leading on the subject. 

Somehow magically I now find myself mentoring and coaching people on a regular basis.  And while I observe a certain amount of complaining and/or whining about the status quo, I’ve been drilling down into some more interesting themes.  Exhaustion, depression, lack of belief that anything can change, avoidance of failure by not even trying in the first place, and a downright fear of change.  Wow.  And I’m not judging, because I have my own share of down days, but this is all hardly fruit of the spirit material.  Perhaps I’ve found my calling?

So yeah, inertia.  I can’t make you move.  My doctor told me I’m not allowed to lift anything heavy, like ever again anyway … btw all you boys who have been wanting to carry my books for me, now’s your chance.  And for those of you needing to overcome the object-at-rest kind of inertia, I’m happy to use my loud mouth to tell you … just get it and move already!  Maybe start with a little love, joy, peace, patience …

Urgency

Lots of people have excuses for not taking control of their health now.  I think I have heard them all.  A smattering of lines I’ve been on the receiving end of:

It’s summer.

It’s winter.

It’s the holiday season.

I’ll do it when school is out.

I’m going on vacation.

I’m exhausted.

I don’t have any money.

I don’t have any time.

It’s hard to stick to a diet when I have to cook for my husband and kids.

I don’t really have any health problems.

I just need to exercise more.

I’m just going to count calories.

I’m just going to watch what I eat.

I’m really kind of fat and happy now.

My response to most of these is, “So what?”  Other selected responses:

Have the fam get healthy with you.

It’s 80% nutrition, 20% exercise.

How’s that working for you?

OK, well, good luck with that.

Really???

Better yet … well bless your heart!  Hey, I lived in the South.  J

A few weeks ago I stood next to friends & business partners of mine while they shared some news.  Now we’re in the business of getting people healthy with our company’s nutritional products.  We’ve been doing this for a while.  Sure, we’re in business to make money … that’s generally the point of a for-profit venture.  And the bills need to be paid somehow.  (Rah rah, capitalism!)  But what gets us out of bed every morning, what we’re passionate about, is so much more. 

Friend #1 shared that he received a text – just before he was to get on stage and speak in front of a couple thousand people, mind you – letting him know a close childhood friend had passed away from a massive heart attack.  He was barely into his 40s.  Friend #1 hadn’t talked to him about his health.  Regret sucks.  And grown men crying makes me cry.  Pass the Kleenex.

Friend #2 shared about a relative who has said no to getting healthy for a long time.  At least someone tried, I guess. But now he’s dying, and there’s not a whole lot that can be done.  And it’s just as sad.

What I really want to say to the excuse-makers …

Are you listening to yourself?

I love you, and I want you to be around.  And I’m afraid that you won’t be.

Don’t you want to be around for your family?

It’s a little hard to do God’s work when you’re tired, sick, or dead.

My Challenge

My journey over the last year has been about getting myself healthy.  Physically mostly, but mentally too I suppose. 

I was still detoxing from Corporate America about a year ago when I stumbled across a “network marketing opportunity” (sounds goofy, doesn’t it) in the health & wellness field.  I say stumbled across, but it was really more like God laid it in my lap.  Network marketing … you know, as in multi-level marketing, the party plan … come to a party, join my team, etc.  This one was a little different, though.  Actually a lot different.

A friend had been telling me about it.  I didn’t listen until my sister attended an event and got me to a party a couple days later.  Wait, I can basically get paid to lose weight?  That’s cool.

I’ve made lots of new friends through this business.  Positive, supportive people who go out of their way to help and encourage others.  We party together.  We travel together.  We attend events together.  We spend way too much time on Facebook together. 

Last November I was at a local training event with my fellow promoters.  We were mingling, networking, and meeting new people before the training got started.  I bumped into one of my new friends – we had met a couple months before … at a big group party where we both were speaking.  I asked about the race he had won the weekend before while-suffering-from-bronchitis (!!!) …as an asthma girl, this is particularly impressive to me.  “What was it, just a 5K?”

“Just a 10K.  And why do you find this so hard to believe?”

“Well, it’s you, so I don’t.  But …”

To make a long story short, he talked me into starting a couch to 5K program.

Me.

A little background here.  My running experience consists solely of seventh grade track.  I was slow.  I wasn’t very good.  A couple of dear friends, including a future Olympian even, attempted to teach me hurdles.  That was hilarious!  I ended up throwing shot-put.  And running for conditioning?  Yeah, so much fluid built up on my knees that the doctor gave me two choices – take twelve aspirin a day or quit track.  So I took twelve aspirin a day for the season, and then I quit track.

So the idea of me running three-point-whatever miles is kind of a foreign concept.

And my weight?  It has been all over the map during my adulthood.  For those who think I look great now … here are some pictures to show you where I’ve been.  My highest ever … 1996.  The cute baby (my niece) makes the picture only slightly less horrifying.

I lost 67 pounds.  Gained most of it back.  Here in 2001, apparently I still didn’t “get it”.  Again the cute kid makes the pic slightly less horrifying.  In my defense, I had sinus surgery a few weeks after this was taken, so I probably wasn’t feeling well.

Fast forward to 2011.  I had lost a few pounds doing my own low carb thing, but was struggling to get back into it post-holiday season. 

And to today.  I finally found something that works.  Praise God.

So I attack my health and fitness goals 90-days at a time.  My last 90-day challenge was to maintain and survive a transition through some health issues and into a new day job.  Which I did, thank you very much.  And the medical professionals have suggested that maybe possibly perhaps I shouldn’t do “vigorous cardio”, but I’ve learned that they really don’t actually know for sure.  I’ve had pretty much every vein in my body ultrasounded or MRI’d recently, and I’m happy to report that my veins are fabulous!  So blah-de-blah-blah-blah, I’m going to run.

My current challenge … which I’m about a month into … is to … drum roll … lose 25 pounds and get on the treadmill three times a week.  So far I’m down 4.3 pounds (math girl says better ramp it up …), 6-7/8 inches, and I’m wearing a size smaller jeans.  (Yes!)  I’ve been on the treadmill three times a week.  I’m even back to my couch to 5K program, ever so slowly. 

Me, running.  Who would have thought?

Time

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  I’ve been busy with a few things.

All the way back in November … it was halftime of the Ohio State – Michigan game.  We had flipped the channel to the JMU game to watch a friend play.  JMU is never on our television.  Never.  We really do need to get to a game live-and-in-person next fall.  So anyway, I am standing next to the tv and my phone rings.  The number is in Atlanta, and I’m thinking , “I was just in Atlanta a few weeks ago, who do I know in Atlanta?”  And I answered. 

Often I don’t answer when I don’t recognize the number.  Nine times out of ten it’s a headhunter.  They prefer to be called executive recruiters.  And they usually have some boring job opening that doesn’t pay enough money to make me not want to slit my wrists, located of course in Podunk, Middle-of-Nowhere.  The headhunters call every day.  Every day.

So this dude tells me who he is and asks if it’s a good time to talk.  “No,” I tell him and explain why.  He calls me the next day – Sunday morning during the sermon.  I don’t pick up.  He calls Sunday night, while I’m upstairs at church taking care of some angel tree stuff.  I miss the call, but in trying to click on the voice mail link to listen to his message, I end up just dialing him back.  OK, I’ve got ten minutes until I need to teach.  I’ll see what he has to say.

To remind everyone what I’ve been up to … I’ve been a happy network marketer for the better part of a year.  Helping people clean up their eating, lose weight, get healthier in general.  All while getting myself healthier too.  Sometimes I even prospect the headhunters who call. J

Headhunter dude proceeds to tell me about this job opening.  It’s actually local.  And he mentions the name of someone I worked with in Corporate America.  Someone I’d call “one of the good guys”.   To make a long story short … I had a couple interviews, accepted an offer two days before Christmas, and officially joined the company in January. 

I’m employee number six of a new manufacturing startup.  I’m having such a blast … there are a lot of entrepreneurial aspects to this job.  I get to be part of building the culture and the workforce – one where people are more interested in doing the right thing than in politics and personal agendas.  And often what I show up thinking I’ll accomplish for the day is completely different from what actually happens.  In a good way.  An interviewee asked what a typical work day was like.  My response was, “Well, we haven’t had one yet, but here’s what I envision in the future …”

So yeah . The job is great, although it certainly requires me to redirect my time compared to my previous routine.  And there’s something to be said for cheap (relatively speaking) health insurance.  I had plenty of money to pay Cobra premiums, and I had another year of coverage, and there were multiple options after that.  But …

At the same time I was going through interviews for the new job … I was also going through more medical testing that finally started to reveal some answers to health issues I had been dealing with for months.  When God closes a door, he opens a window, right?  “So, Jenn, I’m gonna give you an incurable chronic condition, but at the same time I’m gonna give you a job that doesn’t suck, with benefits.” 

And no, I’m not going to go into detail about what’s wrong with me.  I’m fine.  I’m not terminal.  Those close to me know my deal, and that’s enough.  My cleaned-up nutrition helps things … another window.  J  To exercise or not to exercise – and exactly what that means – is an interesting issue that no one seems to have a good answer to, so my treadmill and I are figuring that one out on our own.

So if I just smile and say something to you like, “I didn’t do anything,” “It’s a long story,” or “I was arm wrestling Hulk Hogan,” it means you’re the 541^st person to ask today.  I appreciate the concern and prayers, I really do.  But the one word response will make you look at me like I have three heads because you’re not going to understand.  The two sentence explanation will make you look at me like I have five heads.  And the full ten minute saga will be, well, ten minutes of my life I will never get back.  Please don’t make me spend my time explaining.

Time.  God gives me the freedom to choose what I do with my time.  I didn’t choose the medical stuff, but I choose how I react to and deal with it.  (Pretty well, thank you very much.)  I choose to work my new day job and to appreciate what a cool opportunity it is.  I choose to continue helping people get healthy despite having fewer available hours in the day.

What a long strange trip it’s been so far.  A happy trip.

Embrace the Change

Apparently I’m a change agent.  Those of you in Corporate America playing Buzzword Bingo, go check off that square now.

You haven’t heard of Buzzword Bingo?  (Some know the game by its less clean name.)  It’s even on Wikipedia – I checked.  When in a meeting, you have a sheet of paper with a bingo grid.  Each square contains a corporate buzzword or phrase.  Good candidates are things like synergy, think outside the box, organizational process assets, etc.  Best buzzword I ever heard – Workforce Shaping.  Anyway …

Someone mentioned this morning that people don’t like change.  Ain’t that the truth.  We’ve been languishing along in this country with this overwhelming malaise over bad economic times for the last three years.  And it seems a lot of us find every excuse in the book to stay idle where we are.  It’s like we’re hunkering down and curling up into a ball, hoping everything will blow over.

It affects our work, our willingness to take risks, our health, our faith.  We pour ourselves into jobs we hate because we feel fortunate (rightfully so) to have jobs.  We don’t even make a Plan B because we’re so wrapped up in maintaining the status quo.  Keep your nose to the grindstone and make it to retirement age.  So many of us dream of being independently wealthy or just having a less stressful existence, but it’s only a dream. 

As if work stress isn’t detrimental enough to our health, there’s the phenomenon I call the Dollar Menu Daze.  “I don’t have a lot of money or time to spare, but if I stick to the dollar menu, I can get a burger & fries for $2!”  All things in moderation – the occasional fast food meal is not going to kill you.  But for too many of us the drive-through has become too much a way of life.  Obesity rates in this country and around the world are staggering.  Staggering.  And anecdotally, the depression I observe in people with poor nutrition habits is, well, depressing.  It’s a vicious circle in a lot of cases … eat bad, so you feel bad, and you feel bad, so you think there’s nothing you can do to fix your bad eating habits.

And then there’s faith.  Certainly there are still lots of people on fire for Jesus.  (Yay!)  But have you noticed the church is not immune to the financial / health / etc. malaise, depression, bad mood, whatever you want to call it?  Call me a heretic (hat tip to my Sunday school teacher), but we’ve changed or stalled or something. 

Disclaimer: By “the church” I mean The Church in general, not any particular denomination, location, or congregation.

Years ago in my corporate life I established a mantra that still comes in handy. 

Embrace the change.  There will always be change.

As a project leader I needed to keep a team of people focused and productive in the midst of changing information, changing business conditions, and the changing minds of clients. 

Little did I know at the time that just shifting my mindset would be so beneficial.  Once you accept that there will always be change in your life, and that change may indeed be healthy, a whole world of possibilities opens up.  Think about that.

Free Your Mind

My apologies for being unplugged from the grid for a while.  My priorities go something like God, country, family, Buckeyes … and I haven’t quite figured out yet where internet audience works into that equation.

I just got back from another national conference for my business.  Awesome and inspiring as always … and I think the networking was most important for me personally this time.  Let’s just say, “What happens in Atlanta stays in Atlanta.”  Catch up with me in person, and I’d be happy to share.  I have pictures.

Of the formal sessions, my favorite was a version of The Matrix, complete with excerpts from the movie.  A couple quotes stuck with me:

“There’s a difference between having eyes that see and having vision.”

I have the vision.  I see what Corporate America is doing to people’s spirits, their health, their quality of life.  That vision is even clearer now that I’m on the other side. 

I have a vision of health and wealth and quality of life for me, my family, and my community. 

I’ve talked to numerous people in the last week who don’t have the vision, and I’m not sure they’re even seeing.  People are so depressed.  They so lack the confidence they can succeed … that I’m pretty sure they’re confident they will fail at whatever new thing they try.  (I tried … I failed … lesson – never try?  No!)

I physically hurt from feeling so bad for these people sometimes.  At some point I just have to say “Next!” and move on.  Say a prayer for those too far down for me to lift up.  God’s really the only one with the power to do that anyway.  And I hope they’ll come around eventually.

“I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.”

Isn’t that the truth.  And applicable to so many things in life.  Free will is a real kicker. 

Part of me wants to channel Joel Osteen, with a huge Texas-size grin, and say, “God loves you and wants you to be happy and succeed!”  And all of that is true, although I’m not a big proponent of prosperity gospel.  There are always going to be sucky parts of life on this earth.  But it’s true … and you just have to choose it.

Several people have commented lately that I seem happy.  Some of them don’t even know about all the changes in my life over the past year.  And I am happy.  By the grace of God I escaped the matrix of Corporate America.    

So here I am, science and math nerd turned cheerleader (who would have thought).  I found the door.  I walked through it.  Are you gonna come with?

My Why

Why do you do what you do? 

We have a zillion choices every day of our lives.  Many of them we don’t even recognize.  You can choose to get out of bed, or you can choose to hit snooze.  You can choose to go work at your job, or you can choose to go into the office and quit.  Now clearly each choice has a consequence, and often the consequences or fear of a consequence drives our choice.

My business involves a lot of psychology.  Nudging or persuading people to see things differently – their life, what’s possible, their daily choices.  We encourage people to find their “why”.  Why are you doing this?  Not just “what are your goals”, although that is part of the equation, but a deeper at-the-core why.  Your why may change over time … I know I have a bunch of why’s but only a couple prominent ones at the moment.  And here it is …

To get myself healthy and to avoid Corporate America.

Corporate America was unhealthy for me.  But it was also downright rude to me.  One of the defining moments of my glamorous career occurred a couple years ago out in Arizona.  A little background first …

When I moved back to Ohio, I bought a house big enough for my sister and her kids to join me.  Which they did a few months later.  It has worked out well for us.  Everyone has space.  My house has been looked after whenever I’ve needed to be a road warrior.  There’s always been a teenager around to mow the grass so that allergy girl here doesn’t have to be sick for three days afterward.

So I’m “other mom” to Doug and Emily (and I guarantee they are rolling their eyes while reading this … they have been raised properly on sarcasm and Weird Al …). 

One Sunday night in December of Doug’s junior year of high school, we all ended up back at church, just like usual.  I was sitting in with the youth group to catch a movie I hadn’t seen yet.  Doug had been at practice for the Christmas musical and wandered in a few minutes after the movie started.  He was talking to a couple adults near the door, but I was out of earshot.  Someone leaned over and asked me, “What is Doug talking about, I thought he said something about someone dying.”

I made a beeline to the door, where Doug told me one of his classmates and football team members had died in a car wreck.  It’s one of those statements that doesn’t really sink in right away.  What? 

“He was in a car wreck with Bombo.”

“What about Bombo, how is he?”

“I don’t know.  Nick is texting me, and he’s not answering me back very quick.”

And then it hit me … the reason for all the cars gathering on my street when Em and I left for church.  “I think I know where your teammates are. I had assumed the neighbors were having a party.  Do you want to go there now?”  He didn’t, but it took less than five minutes of watching the movie for him to change his mind.

For many years the saddest place I have ever walked into was the James Cancer Hospital.  I visited my grandmother there at a time when we did not expect her ever to leave that place alive.  And there was room after room of patients with dismal outlooks.  I don’t have an issue with hospitals like some people do, but it was depressing.  With a capital D.

My neighbor’s house that night trumped the James.  There were kids everywhere.  Sitting on couches.  Sitting on the floor.  Some crying.  Most of them just staring into space, not moving, not speaking.  Bombo was there … he was fine, well physically anyway he was just a little banged up.  Coaches, a few parents, and a couple youth pastors were mostly in the kitchen.  Words still barely do justice to how horrible it felt.

Fast forward to the next August.  I was on a startup in a plant in Arizona, and I was expecting to be stuck there for the weekend and miss the first football game of the season.  Politics is the only way I can explain why two heavy hitters needed to be there in the first place.  The woman in charge of the whole project … well let’s just say we didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things … and she made an art out of being non-communicative.

I was talking to the production manager about how the plant was running that week, and whether we’d have a window in the production schedule to get in and do our project work.  It became clear we wouldn’t have free reign on the equipment until Monday.  There were maybe a couple small things we might maybe possibly maybe be able to do over the weekend, but that was about it.  This guy is also one of my favorite people at the plant, a dad, and he played college football so he “gets it”.  He encouraged me to hop on a plane Friday so I could make it to the game. 

At some point Thursday morning I approached Ms. Project Manager with my plan to fly out Friday and be back in the plant Monday morning.  I’d catch a plane back to Arizona Saturday if needed.  She told me not to make any travel plans until she could make a decision later in the day.  She kept me waiting all day, searching in vain for things we “could do” over the weekend.  It was much later in the day, after all the office staff had left, almost too late to ensure a seat on the morning flight when she finally told me I was allowed to go.  And she actually said these words to me … “He’s just your nephew.”

Wow.  Who is she and what gives her the right?

So I made it to the game and to every other game that season.  The entire season was about mourning the loss of Clayton.  His jersey was there at every coin toss.  His picture was there with all the seniors at the banquet.  The whole mourning process was rough but so necessary for the team, the football family that surrounded them, and the community as a whole. 

And that “he’s just your nephew” comment?  Hmmmm.  It’s people like that, with their priorities askew, that drive me to work at something that really matters, to avoid going back to situations that really don’t.