Are you having trouble getting yourself to do hard things like exercise?

That’s normal, but you need to do it, and I hope this story will help.

He was 90 years old when his family hired me to help him.

He was having pain in his legs and some trouble walking.

They could see him getting weak and understood he needed help to move.

But he wasn’t too keen on getting up and moving because it was causing him pain when he did.

I was always patient with him, but on one particular day he was giving me a harder time than usual and I shared this.

“Hey, do you know what’s going to happen if you don’t get up?”

“What he asked?”

“Well, you’re going to get so weak and tight and will need a cane to assist you.”

“From there you will have to use a walker,”

“Then a wheelchair”

“And then you will become so weak that you will just be confined to a bed.”

“All of this will happen so subtly that you won’t notice.”

“And there will come a day when you’re lying in bed that all you will want to do is to get up and walk.”

As you can imagine, he got up and walked that day and let me help him start moving.

(You wouldn’t believe how many people told me to leave him alone because he was old.  I loved him too much for that and I hope someone loves me enough to do the same.)

You see the older generation didn’t grow up exercising.  Their diet and lifestyle were in such a way that they didn’t need it as much as we do today.

But being alive today is very sedentary.

It’s a super easy life physically, and everyone should get movement because you’re being robbed of it by the gift of life being so sedentary.

So, you have a choice to sit there or to move.

And I can share a million reasons why it’s important.

A little different than my 90-year-old friend; you won’t go through his journey so quickly because you’re probably younger.

And yet it will catch up with you and all of us.

That’s what happens when we don’t do the right things.

The right things according to The Bible are what is “good and right and true and lovely.” (Yes exercise is lovely;).

These aren’t religious things.  They’re common sense.

This writing isn’t about moving as much as it’s about getting yourself to do the hard things.

Because the greatest thing I see with people’s health isn’t that they don’t eat well or exercise; it’s that they have stopped trying and caring about themselves.

They’re tired and they have conditioned themselves to do the things that are easy and convenient.   Of course this is usually unconscious.

The trouble is that you can avoid things short-term, but that habit will kill you in the end.

You might think when you get older you simply won’t care.  That’s fine to think that but it isn’t wise and it’s certainly not fair to our loved ones who will have to care for us.

There really is no way out of caring for ourselves.

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”  John Dryden

I know this isn’t an easy thing to hear but I only share it because it is so many people’s reality today.

And we’re not made this way.

You and I are much greater than this.

So, bring on the hard things.  Get up and move, eat healthy, learn, take in positive things and live the life you were born to live.

You can do these things and a whole lot more…I promise.