No Excuses! - The Power of Self-Discipline Part 20

People who engage in aerobic exercise first thing in the morning have been shown to be brighter, more creative, and more intelligent throughout the day. They actually score higher on intelligence tests, and they seem to come up with more ideas to help them do their work better during the course of the day.

The reason for this is obvious. When you engage in aerobic exercise first thing in the morning, you drive hyper-oxygenated blood into your cerebral cortex, the part of your brain that you use for thinking, a.n.a.lyzing, and decision making. This makes you wide-awake and alert from first thing in the morning and then for several hours afterward.

When you exercise as soon as you get up, you kick your metabolic rate into a higher gear. As a result, your body continues to burn calories all day long. You continue to lose weight for several hours after exercising.

When you exercise first thing in the morning or anytime during the day, you become hungry. However, because you are working out your body in such a healthy way, you will have a natural appet.i.te for healthy foods. You will have little or no desire for sweet foods or desserts.

Make Exercise a Part of Your Lifestyle.

One of the best things you can do to achieve and maintain high levels of physical fitness is to join a gym or a health club and attend regular exercise cla.s.ses. You can even pay a little more and get yourself a personal trainer who puts you through an exercise regimen three or more times each week.

You are much more likely to discipline yourself to start and maintain a fitness routine if you have someone who is expecting you to be at a cla.s.s or monitoring you on a regular basis to make sure that you follow the exercise program to which you committed.

Many people today are hiring personal trainers. Either a personal trainer can come to your home or place of work or you can go to a gym that has personal trainers on staff who will work with you on the specific equipment you want to use.

People who use personal trainers are almost universally delighted with the results. They find that being accountable to a trainer exerts a positive influence on them, causing them to eat less so they have less weight to burn off and to work harder when they exercise so that they can earn the approval of the trainer.

Join an Organized Sport.

Organized sports are a wonderful way to achieve and maintain high levels of physical fitness. They are far more demanding in terms of time and schedule, but the payoff is often extraordinary.

If you are a member of a sports league-whether that be baseball, tennis, football, soccer, racquetball, or anything else-and you have a coach or trainer that you work with on a regular basis, you tend to be more focused and disciplined. You will exercise more often and more vigorously, and you will be fitter and trimmer than most other people.

Develop New and Better Habits.

Unfortunately, physical fitness and sports training require such high levels of discipline, and few people are capable of starting and continuing this kind of exercise regimen. For better or worse, whatever you do repeatedly becomes a habit, and many people get out of the habit of regular exercise and never go back.

Fortunately, it is never too late. At any time, you can decide that you are going to enjoy high levels of physical fitness. You can make a decision, right now, to start a physical fitness routine of some kind and then set it as a personal test or challenge to see if you have the willpower and discipline to follow through on your resolution.

YOU CAN START TODAY.

Some years ago, there was a sixty-eight-year-old woman living in a senior citizens' home who had never given much thought to physical exercise. She had worked hard, raised her family, become a grandmother, and was now living comfortably in a senior citizens' residence.

One day, she saw a television special on jogging. During this special, they interviewed a couple of people in their fifties and sixties who were running marathons. Some of them had started running later in life.

This sixty-eight-year-old woman decided that she wanted to run a marathon as well. She drove down to a nearby store and bought the proper shoes for walking and running. That day, she began her exercise regimen by walking around the neighborhood where she lived. Over the next few weeks, she walked ever-greater distances. She bought books and sought advice on how to exercise and train her legs for running.

BUILD UP GRADUALLY.

After two months, she began jogging a little as part of her walking routine. After six months, she began running as part of her walking and jogging routine. By the end of the first year, she had run in a mini-marathon in her local community.

By the time she was seventy-five, she had completed ten 26.4-mile marathons and two fifty-mile cross-country marathons. And the most remarkable thing was that she had never run before the age of sixty-eight.

So what's your excuse? If this sixty-eight-year-old woman could start exercising so late in life, why can't you?

One of the greatest guarantors that you will live a long, happy life, being bright, alert, and full of energy, is that you begin a regular physical training program, four or five days per week, and continue it for the rest of your life.

When you exert your self-discipline and willpower to achieve a high level of physical fitness and then maintain it year after year, you will feel terrific about yourself.

In the next chapter, you learn how self-discipline in marriage can have a wonderful effect in a.s.suring a long life of happiness and fulfillment with another person.

Action Exercises: 1. Today is the day! Make a decision that you are going to achieve the best physical condition of your life in the months ahead, and then take action immediately.

2. Get a complete medical examination so that you know your condition and limits before you begin.

3. Start walking thirty minutes each day, preferably first thing in the morning or, if not in the morning, right after work.

4. Join a gym or health club, pay for a year, and make an appointment with yourself to work out five times a week, sixty minutes each time.

5. Hire a personal trainer and have him/her guide you through an exercise program that includes aerobics, strength, and flexibility exercises each week.

6. Invest in a treadmill, a LifeCycle, or an elliptical machine and put it in front of your television so you can exercise as part of your home and family life.

7. Start gradually and work up slowly, resolving to exercise for several weeks before you notice a major difference. Be patient, persistent, and determined.

Chapter 18.

Self-Discipline and Marriage.

"It is better to control yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or demons, heaven or h.e.l.l."

-BUDDHA.

Your ability to enter into a long-term, loving relationship is an important measure of your character and personality.

Men and women are born to be two halves that make up one whole. They have different qualities and characteristics that, when properly combined, achieve completion and the balance and harmony that nature demands.

The foundational qualities for marriage and loving relationships are trust and respect. Men and women can have many disagreements over the course of their married life together, but as long as the trust and respect between them endure, the marriage can go on indefinitely. If ever one or the other party can no longer trust the other or no longer respects the other, the relationship is finished.

Many marriages end in divorce and many divorced people have multiple marriages, each of which ends in failure. Yet some people get married once and stay married contentedly for the rest of their lives. Why is this?

The Key to a Happy Marriage.

Perhaps the most important reason for a happy marriage is compatibility. The two people are ideally balanced with each other, with each one possessing complementary qualities and characteristics that combine comfortably to form a perfect balance.

People often say that "opposites attract." This is a misunderstanding. Opposites attract in only one area, and that is temperament. You will always be most compatible with a person who has an opposite or counterbalancing temperament to your own.

For example, if you are outgoing and extroverted, you will be most compatible with a person who is more reserved and self-contained. If you are voluble and expressive, you will be most compatible with a person who is relaxed and a good listener. Nature demands a balance in temperament for two people to be compatible and happy together.

Birds of a Feather.

In all other areas, especially in the area of values, it is similarities that attract. Birds of a feather do flock together. You will always be attracted to people and most compatible with those who have the greatest number of fundamental values in common with yourself.

All of love, of any kind, is a response to value. We love what we most value, both in ourselves and others. When a couple is truly happy together, they seem to have very much the same values regarding family, money, ethics, work, children, politics, religion, and people.

People will often point out that there are happy couples who vote for different parties or come from different religious backgrounds. But the critical issue in balance and harmony revolves around the intensity with which a person values something. This intensity determines if a person is absolute and unbending or relaxed and flexible in his or her adherence to a particular belief about a particular part of life.

People can love and live together happily for many years even though they support different political parties, as long as political belief is not so important to either of them that it takes precedence over more important elements of their relationship such as children, family, and values.

Love Is Our Greatest Need in Life.

It is said that "everything we do in life is either to get love, or to compensate for a lack of love." Psychologists generally agree that the root cause of personality problems in adult life can be traced back to "love withheld" in infancy and childhood.

People need love like roses need rain. Without sufficient love and acceptance, individuals exhibit all kinds of personality and physical problems. It is only possible to be happy when your needs for love are completely fulfilled.

A happy marriage requires tremendous self-discipline and self-control. Love requires self-denial and sacrifice. When you are truly in love with another person, that person's happiness and well-being become more important than your own. You are willing to pay whatever price and make whatever sacrifice in order to ensure the well-being of the person you love.

In the Christian Bible, in a letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul says, "Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love avengeth not itself, is not puffed up.

"Love doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not his own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; "Love rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; "Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never fails."

Different Strokes Require Tolerance and Understanding.

Each person is an individual, with unique and special characteristics that make him or her different from all other people. Each person has different ideas, tastes, desires, hopes, dreams, and expectations. Each person has had different experiences and developed different ways of seeing and dealing with the world around him or her.

When you come together with another person in a loving relationship, no matter how close you feel to each other and no matter how compatible you may be in many ways, you will still have areas of disagreement, dissatisfaction, and discontent. This is normal and natural and something to be worked through by practicing self-discipline and self-control whenever these differences occur.

Self-discipline in a relationship requires that you be completely honest and open, that you be yourself and never try to be someone or something else. Self-discipline and honesty require that you state clearly what you are thinking and feeling, without anger or irritation, and that you listen calmly and patiently to the feelings, thoughts, and opinions of the other person.

Male-Female Communication Styles.

Men and women are different in many ways. According to MRI scans, when men communicate, they use only two centers of their brains. When women communicate, they use seven centers of their brains. It is as though men have two headlights with which to communicate, whereas a woman's brain is like a fully lit Christmas tree.

Men can process only one sensory input at a time, whereas women can process multiple sensory inputs. When a man is watching television, he does not see or hear anything else, including words spoken to him from the side or behind. He becomes totally fixated on the visual images and words on the screen.

When a man is driving a car, he has to turn down the radio to read the map. He has to turn down the television or radio to answer the telephone. He cannot read and listen or watch at the same time. Men can do many things extremely well, but they can do only one thing at a time. Men tend to be very focused.

Women, on the other hand, can talk, make dinner, watch television, read the day's mail, and talk to her children or husband all at once. They are multidimensional and can process several inputs simultaneously. They can talk and listen at the same time and be aware of what other people around them are doing and saying.

Women are relationship experts. They are very sensitive to other people. When a man and a woman attend a social gathering, within ten minutes, the woman will have done an a.n.a.lysis and a.s.sessment of the situation of each of the other people in the room. In contrast, the man accompanying the woman will have noticed little or nothing. This is because men are simple and straightforward in their thinking, whereas women are complex, aware of small details, and extremely sensitive to the dynamics and nuances of the relationships of the people around them.

A man can call his wife on the phone and say, "h.e.l.lo." Although she has only heard one word, she will immediately ask, "What's wrong?" She can pick up a wealth of meaning and emotion from a single word on the phone or a single glance or look when he walks in the door.

Relationship-Building Takes Effort.

Because of the many differences between men and women, it takes tremendous discipline to build and maintain a long-term, loving, and happy relationship.

Perhaps the most important area of mutual compatibility has to do with the discipline of listening. It is only when two people take the time to listen closely and carefully to each other when they speak that the lines of communications stay open, and this is when love and harmony continue in the relationship.