Stay Active to Stay Healthy

by vernsanders on August 28, 2012

This month would have been my dad’s 105th birthday, and, over the course of this month, I’m talking about some things that he taught me. I don’t remember my dad ever sitting me down and saying “”Listen up…you need to learn this…” He taught by his life example, and a lot of the things on my list are things that were just clear in how he went about living. I “learned something new every day” I spent with my dad, particularly as I got older and started paying more attention. But at the same time, I am very aware of things that I learned early, because that’s just how things were. To start from the beginning of this series of posts, click here.

Last time, I wrote about how my dad viewed family as including people you didn’t sign up for. This time I want to talk about something entirely different.

My dad finally stopped chopping his own wood by hand about the time he turned 92. That is not a typo. And he chopped a lot of wood, because he had two wood stoves in the house, and he used them for 99% of his heat.

The lesson here? Stay active…if you don’t use it, you lose it…exercise does a body good…(fill in your favorite here…).

But I never saw him “exercise.” He didn’t ride a bike, run, swim, or power walk. He just did stuff that involved physical labor. He was doing what needed to be done, and the side benefit was that he stayed healthy.

And isn’t that a great leadership principle? Some people are so obsessed with “exercise” that they don’t get done what needs to be done. Yes, they are healthy, but they are not “active” because “exercise” is a substitute for staying healthy. The same thing can be said of work. Some people spend all day at work, but get nothing done because they are busy doing busy work. To be a leader you need to recognize what needs to be done, and do it, rather than just put in the hours. It is the difference between being an employee and an entrepreneur…

How about you? Do you just put in your hours? Would you get things done if somebody “let you”? What are they doing that is stopping you? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Ipod shuffle status (What is this?): 4318 (Peace Train – Cat Stevens)  of 7875

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History is Important
August 31, 2012 at 7:08 am

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