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The Health and Fitness Express contains
the random and organised thoughts of John Miller |
I suppose your view of the meaning of Easter depends on the tradition in
which you're brought up.
If you're someone living somewhere in Europe before Christianity got
there you'd grow up believing one thing. You'd be celebrating a festival
of new life, where, by the first Sunday after the first full moon after
the spring equinox, the evidence is clear that cold and dark have been
replaced by warmth and light. Life is becoming more abundant again. Snow
has been replaced by verdant pasture. Eggs are being broken, chicks
hatched and flying schools reopened. Bunnies are hopping around all over
the place.
For those of us who live in the Southern Hemisphere the significance of
the pre-Christian Easter celebration is a bit cockeyed, (as of course is
the celebration of Christmas), which is probably one of the reasons why
we've downplayed this interpretation throughout our short history. It's
also a reason why we place great store on the October long weekend
holiday, the VFL grand final and the Spring racing carnival.
If you're a small Lutheran boy in a grey melange suit with short pants,
grandson of a Wimmera farmer of German descent growing up in Whyalla,
indoctrinated into the seriousness of the crucifixion on Good Friday and
the joy of the revival on Easter Sunday you'd grow up believing another
thing.
Anyway, what's this got to do with keeping yourself fit and healthy?
Well, maybe Easter (and the few days after it) is a good time to stop
and reflect on whether life is giving you life or sucking life out of
you; whether you're living the life you'd like to live or dragging
yourself from one tiring day to the next; whether you're in good health
or illhealth.
What ever condition you find yourself in, one of the messages of Easter
is that new life is achievable; things can change, things can get
better; sometimes with great and dramatic effect.
James Rohn said it best 'Things change when you change. Things get
better when you get better.'
Things certainly feel better when your body is in better shape. If
you've slackened up on your exercise program over the last month or two,
now's the time to get focused and put some new life into it.
(I've had a few people lately ring up and say they can't come to the gym
because they're too busy at work. That's dreadful isn't it, when you let
your work interfere with your health and wellbeing; when you can't find
3 hours out of 168 to look after your Self?)
INSPIRED AND MOTIVATED BY JOHN MILLER
One of my favourite talks is the 'Seven Habits of Fit and Healthy
People' - subtitled as 'Inspired and Motivated to Keep Yourself Fit and
Healthy'.
If you'd like me to come to your workplace and gee yourself and your
work colleagues up and present this talk for a couple of hours just send
me an email.
INSPIRED AND MOTIVATED BY JESUS OF NAZARETH
The small boy in the grey melange suit with the short pants has still
got plenty of life in him and over the last couple of years he's been
putting together a book of inspiring and motivating quotes from wise
people, starting with the great man himself. I think that Easter 2004 is
an appropriate time to release it.
If you'd like a copy of the ebook, 'Inspired and Motivated by Jesus of
Nazareth' just send an email to miller@millerhealth.com.au and I'll send
you the book.
This is the first of a series of books of quotes from famous people. I
went through the gospels and plucked out the quotes that I thought would
stack up well in a modern anthology of wisdom literature. I think you'll
be pleasantly surprised by the themes.
You'll be able to use some of the principles outlined in the quotes to
inspire and motivate yourself to invest in your future, in particular
your health and fitness. One of the most predominant themes is indeed,
'investment', the simple principle of sowing today what you'd like to
reap tomorrow. And remember, time, money and effort spent keeping
yourself fit and healthy is an investment; time, money and effort you
spend getting over an illness is a cost.
INSPIRED AND MOTIVATED BY ADOLF HITLER
My daughter Jo (coach from the city) says that a goal
is a dream with a deadline.
After you've read this newsletter, open up your diary and set a couple
of health and fitness goals that you would like to achieve between now
and the end of June.
Talking about goal setting, for a bit of light relief over Easter I
dragged out my battered edition of that most notorious volume of goal
setting literature, Mein Kampf, and found this interesting little quote
from Adolf.
'Take away from present-day mankind its religious-dogmatic principles
but without replacing it with an equivalent and the result will be a
grave shock to the very foundations of their existence.'
Well he's right. Take away the meaning of any sacred festival, religious
or otherwise and the best we can do is replace it with an orgy of
chocolate; just another excuse to fill up both the existential vacuum
and the stomach with fat and sugar, without nourishing either the soul
or the cells of the body!
So whether it's revival, resurrection, restoration, rebirth,
revitalization or reinvigoration, treat the few weeks after this Easter
just past as a time to get focussed back on your Self, as a time to get
yourself back into exceptionally good shape, physically and mentally.
In the meantime stay tuned; highly tuned and wait for the next
newsletter, the text for which, in keeping with the religious tradition
of the season, will be 'Exercise, your indulgence'.
Regards
John Miller
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