From the Blog

• Be Careful What You Wish For

Health News Highlights

• BTC Video – Making Things Happen
• No Arms. No Legs. No Worries.
• The Power of Perception
• Love It!!
• Just When You Think You’ve Heard it All
• Norman Vincent Peale, The Father of Positive Thinking
• This Health Care News Might Make You Ill!
• Profit Killing Pills
• 8 Hours a Myth?
• High on Life

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Billy the Coach’s Body Manager’s Bulletin is packed with tips, insights and motivation that will dramatically improve your exercise, nutrition and lifestyle management skills. Sign up today to receive the BODY MANAGER’S BULLETIN in your inbox monthly.

Although we have little control over much of what happens around us, it is we who choose from that list of options as to how we react to what happens around us. We can choose to change and adapt or we can choose to cling to the past as the world changes around us.

We can choose to be elevated by the people and experiences around us or we can choose to be degraded by them. The value of choosing to be elevated can not be overstated.

To make that choice, we must understand that we are a product of our life experiences, and those past experiences shape the way we view ourselves and the world around us. This is not some fuzzy theory or new-age mysticism. It is a mechanical blueprint of the way our brains work, and how the influence of past experience shapes the decisions we will make today.

Don’t think so? This simple exercise just might change your mind.

Ca y u rea t his?

W at i y o a e not r adi g th s?

I y o a e n t re din t is, t en w at ar y u d ing ?

What you are doing is blending what you see (the present) with what you remember (the past). Your eyes read what’s there, and your memory fills in the blanks. This fill-in-the-blanks ability of our minds is present in the way we think about many things, including how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.

Our memories are the stored experiences of our past. If our past experiences are dominated by failure (can you say yo-yo dieting?) then our fill-in-the-blanks thought process may suggest that future failure is likely as well. In addition, negative or painful past memories are more easily recalled by the brain as a way of protecting us from repeated risk. This enables failure or negativity to be more impressionable on our day-to-day decision making and behavior choices.

Fortunately, we have the power of choice, and we can learn to use these same fill-in-the-blanks skills to our advantage.

Here’s a couple of helpful suggestions on how to intelligently fill-in-the-blanks:

1) Question your initial assumptions about how to react to circumstances around you. Everybody gets hungry, but not everybody speeds into the nearest McDonalds drive through because of it. Fill-in-the-blanks by remembering this is why you always keep a banana or granola bar in the car with you.

2) Never decide whether you will exercise this morning from under the blankets of your warm and cozy bed. Fill-in-the-blanks by deciding the night before WHEN you will go to the gym the next day, not IF you will go. Decide the day before your workout and execute on the day of your workout.

3) Exert your power. When you need to attend a meeting with that annoying co-worker who causes colossal spikes in your blood pressure, fill-in-the-blanks by remembering I can only control how I act. How I react. Exert your power over your reactions, let the annoyance run right off your back, and focus not on your co-workers actions, but on the freedom of remaining unaffected.

4) Build upon your behavioral success. Fill-in-the-blanks with a commitment to repeating having healthy food available, going to the gym and keeping your cool. Repeated behaviors become new habits which replace past cycles of failure. Don’t surrender when you make a mistake. The only mistake is surrender.

From the Blog

• Be Careful What You Wish For

Health News Highlights

• Fitness and Sobriety…Getting Better by Getting Active
• The Price of Obesity
• Where Does Your City/State Rank in Obesity and Diabetes?
• Almost 1 in 20 Americans with Artificial Knees
• Overeating Doubles Chance of Memory Loss
• Technology May Soon Ease Management of Diabetes

Not signed up for the Body Manager’s Bulletin?

Billy the Coach’s Body Manager’s Bulletin is packed with tips, insights and motivation that will dramatically improve your exercise, nutrition and lifestyle management skills. Sign up today to receive the BODY MANAGER’S BULLETIN in your inbox monthly.

So at what point did it become so difficult to achieve these relatively modest goals? Well, it happened at precisely the tipping point of where too many Americans forgot one of those critical realities of life.

Be careful what you wish for….because you just might get it.

Some wished that high school students could be paid to attend class in Cincinnati Ohio. They got it. But be careful, such is not the case in countries where students excel in math and science because the parents are still in charge.

Some wished that employers would be forced to pay for their employees’ contraceptives under the guise of “health insurance.” They got it. But be careful, such requests are unlikely to amuse an executive weighing a resume against the less-demanding alternative of technology. Been to an ATM or airline check-in kiosk lately?

Some wished that we could call obesity a disease rather than a consequence of poor eating habits and lack of exercise. They got it. But be careful, the faster we discount the importance of personal responsibility, the sooner our children will learn to do the same.

Remember there is nothing wrong with change. Quite the opposite, change is a powerful force that makes the promise of tomorrow’s technologies so exciting. Change in the hands of people who are confident, self-reliant, durable and motivated is a beautiful thing, capable of creating new careers that can’t even be imagined yet.

But nothing stifles a vision of the future like a blind obsession with the past. To demand of anyone or anything, without first demanding of ourselves, does a disservice to the pursuit of what we as individuals, we as employees, and we as Americans can become. Those who pursue the future with aggressive appreciation will be rewarded. Those who expect the future to be handed to them will not be.

So be careful what you wish for. Getting things the easy way, or giving things to people without holding them accountable in return, helps neither the giver or the getter.

Appeasing the entitlement mentality is a lot like drinking seawater. It seems to work initially, but the more you do it the worse the situation becomes.

The answer? There is nothing wrong with people. But there is a serious problem with the choices people make every day. Compounding the bad decisions problem is the fact that the bad decisions get all the publicity, while the thoughtful, considerate and responsible decisions in comparison, go largely unpublicized.

Unless I missed it, you’ve never seen a 10-year, $100 million contract offer to a loving Mom who without fail has read to her child every night since the day she was born. The same can be said for that anonymous student who quietly hits the books while his partying friends are hitting the bong. And today like every day, there will be no headlines for the countless, middle-age adults who willingly give time and love to elderly parents who have always given time and love to them.

Human nature gets a bad rap in the media, it’s true. But out where life is lived rather than sensationalized, I think human nature is doing just fine.

From the Blog

• Super Bowl Winner… The NFL

Health News Highlights

• Is Your Personality Making You Put on Pounds?
• Define Your Wellness Mission
• Bicycle Magician
• Less Jobs, More Twinkies
• Why Eating Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat
• Healthy Sleep Tips

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Billy the Coach’s Body Manager’s Bulletin is packed with tips, insights and motivation that will dramatically improve your exercise, nutrition and lifestyle management skills. Sign up today to receive the BODY MANAGER’S BULLETIN in your inbox monthly.

But the real winner in all of this is really the NFL. Whether or not you are a football fan, you have to tip your hat to an organization that knows how to deliver a product that people love.  Unlike the NBA, MLB or the NHL, the National Football League operates on an entirely higher level of passion, professionalism and profitability.

In a year when a labor dispute between players and owners threatened to cancel the entire 2011-2012 season, both sides came together, resolved their issues and proceeded towards a Super Bowl that was watched by an estimated 100 million people. Not a bad ending to a rocky start.

Along the way, NFL annual revenues climbed to $9 billion, aided in part by the average 30 second TV spot for this year’s big game going for around $3.5 million. That’s a lot of Doritos and Bud Light.

So as the lights go down on the 2011-2012 football season, what lessons can a dedicated Body Manager, or business owner, learn from the NFL’s success?

Here are a few suggestions:

• Play with passion. Life is too short for a C minus effort with a C minus outcome.
• Play with integrity. Establish high standards of performance and always strive to exceed them.
• Be creative. Always watch for new opportunities. You’ll find them just outside your comfort zone.
• Keep the drive alive. Long bombs are exciting to watch, but first downs make small accomplishments add up to big wins.
• Give more than is expected and you’ll receive more than expected. Think big. Go big. Give big. Get big. Then do it again. Bigger.
• Be like Tom Brady. Marry a supermodel and live with her in a brand new $17 million mansion.

OK, that last one was just to make sure we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Taking yourself too seriously is never any fun. Especially if you’re a Patriots fan.

From the Blog

• HAPPY 2013!!! (A pre-hindsight look at 2012)

Health News Highlights

• This Will Amaze (and should frighten) You
• The Single Best Thing You Can Do for Your Health
• CEO Outlook 2012…
• Is Employer-Based Health Insurance Worth Saving?
• America’s Obesity Problem Weighs Down Business
• How About Better Parents?

Video of the Month

• Human Factor: A goal is a direction, not an end.

Not signed up for the Body Manager’s Bulletin?

Billy the Coach’s Body Manager’s Bulletin is packed with tips, insights and motivation that will dramatically improve your exercise, nutrition and lifestyle management skills. Sign up today to receive the BODY MANAGER’S BULLETIN in your inbox monthly.

People rightfully talk about the value of hindsight. True, nothing like the rearview mirror of hindsight unearths the woulda, coulda, shouldas of life’s missed opportunities. So let’s jump ahead to the end of 2012 for a moment and use a little “pre-hindsight” to look backwards into the coming year.

The first thing I see is that the rewards of 2012 went to those who worked, not wished for what they wanted. Hard work perennially favors those who relish most deeply the opportunity of America, and 2012 was no exception. Once again history repeated itself, revealing that America’s enviable strength continues to be nurtured by those who maintain the sobriety of self-reliance amidst the stagnation of entitlement.

Technology accelerated her tenacious penetration into every crevice of modern life. From medicinal nano-robotics to deep space exploration, 2012 provided the largest window ever into how much we know about how little we know. Just as Edison and Einstein hewed a path for Jobs, Branson, Kamen and Gates, so did 2012 Sherpa the way for our next generation of technology’s trailblazers.

Of course our evolutionary journey can not be disgorged from its past, and 2012 was no exception in our painfully slow march to the brighter edges of humanity. For those hoping differently, I regret to inform you that our many accomplishments over the next 12 moons were not divorced from the crime, war, neglect, intolerance and disregard which accounts for such bulk in our behavioral forensics. But undaunted, we forged ahead nonetheless.

It is not by accident, but through perseverance, that we made it to the end of 2012. And it is not through indifference that we will make it much farther. The best news of all in our pre-hindsight review of 2012 is that in the ongoing battle between indifference and perseverance, perseverance won once again. For every instance of self-destruction both around us and within us, so too did arise the opportunity to remain fearless, unrelenting and undeterred in our appreciation of the gift life. I did not give up. And you did not give up. And that is ALL that will matter, in hindsight, some 362 days from now.

So as it must be, the year 2012 will be like none before it, a bittersweet experiment from the almanac of time. And as it can be, if we choose, the greatest days of our lives.

From the Blog

• A Date That Will Live in Infamy

Health News Highlights

• Did I Read That Right?
• First the Good News
• Now the Bad News
• The High Cost of Alcohol Abuse
• You’re Never Too Old to Run a Marathon
• Holiday Gift Idea for Fitness Fanatics

Video of the Month

• The Business of Well-Being

Not signed up for the Body Manager’s Bulletin?

Billy the Coach’s Body Manager’s Bulletin is packed with tips, insights and motivation that will dramatically improve your exercise, nutrition and lifestyle management skills. Sign up today to receive the BODY MANAGER’S BULLETIN in your inbox monthly.