We are confronted with the choice or stairs or the lift? Which one will it be…
Either, nothing happens (in your head) and you head for the lift. Or, that voice kicks in…”you’ve walked a long way today, your bag is heavy and will be difficult if you take the stairs, you’re in a hurry…” There’s always a reason not to push our bodies. We are programmed that to push our bodies is “hard”, is “challenging”, is a “chore”, something to be done so we can avoid worse things from happening. We aren’t typically programmed that it is fun to run up those stairs, to feel LIFE running through our bodies because we CAN run up those stairs.
This is what we must change. The choice of the lift or the stairs is one of many defining moments. These opportunities present to us a different way of approaching our lives and how we will age. We can age with fitness and health on our side, or we can go into a steady decline (of fitness and health) and not even realise we’d made that particular choice somewhere along the line. Now it becomes habitual and this habit, with many similar others sets us up for bad health and an older age without great function.
How many other defining moments will you have?
How can you become more conscious of these? I challenge you to find sneaky ways to get past that voice in your head and start exercising:
- Substitute driving for walking, stairs for mechanical assistance, park further away from your destination.
- If you have a lunch break, then use half for exercise – do yoga or something else where you won’t get too sweaty.
- If you have an office, close the door and do 5 push ups every hour. If you don’t have an office, then consider taking a leadership position and do them next to your desk!
- Get a Thera-Band and play with that to build strength during your lunch break
- Get a kettlebell and start to use it – you’ll have fun, you’ll get a great workout very fast and you’ll engage many muscles at the one time so it is super-efficient.
Last Reviewed 27/Feb/2014
