Another follow up with the Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge:

Reminder ==> Being Healthy Is A Lot of Fun

So often – as a culture – we make drudgery out of exercise and working out. My friend Trever McGhee said something in a video today that made a lot of sense.

Trever came up with his new word of the day: “Livit”, a contraction of the two words “Live it”.

He asked the question, “Who ever came up with the word “diet” anyway? Ever time you say the word, your body contracts because the word “die” is in it – so your body thinks it’s going to die and it associates it with the food around die-ting. No wonder the body doesn’t want to loose wait, it’s afraid to release anything or it might die. So instead of talking about a diet, he chooses to focus on a LIVIT.

I like that Trever. Quite brilliant actually.

Back to ‘drudgery’ and a work-out. I’m choosing to use the word play-in.

Various aspects of this:

You may have noticed that the word ends with “in”. I chose this because it implies within us instead outside of us – whereas outside implies separation.

Play-in makes a game or fun out of the experience – one of internal playfulness and joy.  Just say the word “PLAY” to yourself, out loud a few times, and see if your energy doesn’t shift. “The idea of play” makes me feel more relaxed and like I should smile and anticipate having a good time. It makes me think of kids and enjoying myself. I think about laughing and making noise and all the things we used to do when we were kids.

Adults for the most-part are lousy at playing. Life is serious, after all. We must take life seriously or we aren’t being responsible, right?

If we’re having fun, we can’t be taking it seriously.

WHO SAYS SO?

If you’re like me, you agree we can have fun and still take our duties and obligations to heart, responsibly.

Work is not a word that makes people feel all warm and fuzzy (unless of course you’re a Core Health Facilitator or a successful internet marketer – where work is pure pleasure). In general terms when most of us HEAR AND SAY THE WORD: WORK, it makes us feel tired.

And just to prove a point, I had Alexandra energy measure me personally for the word:

I said the word: WORK and it made me go weak.

I said the word: PLAY and I tested strong.

This is interesting and it follows what Dr Ed Carlson teaches us in Core Health about the power of language and choosing words carefully. Thats why, for example, he calls work-shops ==> play-shops. And that’s why Dr. Ed uses the word:

Re~Treat instead of retreat. Think about it for a second: We get to RE -”TREAT” ourselves (we get another treat) or we can retreat (run away)…

Kind of interesting , yes?

Anyway, this is the idea behind looking forward to PLAY-in instead of doing a WORK-out.

Your health and your body are a joy and a miracle. Start digging it and expressing that internal self-love. It’s healthy and thinking it and saying it are good for your health.

Make the Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge fun for you. Take a yoga or pilates class, start learning ballroom dancing, ride a bike everyday, take long fast walks, swim or all of the above.  Take up martial arts or qigong. Start having fun and concentrate on doing things you love – that make you feel good.  Become a healthy wealthy boomer too. You have the brains and you have the experience, you’re a Baby Boomer. Go for it.

BTW, anyone can participate, not just baby boomers.

That’s the way to get a six pack.

I AM Michael Barrett. I AM a Healthy Boomer and I AM a Core Health Facilitator.

The Healthy Wealthy Boomer: Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge begins just as we officially enter into summer…

It’s kind of weird being in Florida – experiencing the complete seasonal transition for the very first time in its entirety. Know why? It’s because our bodies are used to a different winter cycle - I think - and on some level our bodies are still waiting for winter to come – even though it’s already officially summer. We moved here in the summer in 2009 and as far as our bodies are concerned we haven’t had winter yet.

Funny how the body works – not really funny actually, more like interesting – how we can be such biologically driven creatures and not even be aware of it on a conscious level. We certainly do have biological clocks – cellular clocks – that are synchronized with our attitudes, the weather and our environment – even when we don’t realize it. And this becomes more and more obvious as we get older.

In many ways, that is what this challenge is about.

The Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge is both about the outcome – a baby boomer six pack – and also becoming really conscious about our internal clocks, how we approach our health as healthy boomers, having fun being conscious of our physical condition and how we express ourselves physically in the world around us.

Five years ago, my life was a mess. I made the choice to change it and I have. It ’s been turbulent at times and I’ve made a ton of mistakes along the way since that time.

Just the same I did it…

In spite of huge issues that came along in life, we stuck it out.

As they say at Harv Eker’s Enlightened Warrior Training Camp:  “Never give up.”

And although we almost threw in the towel a couple of times, every time we got knocked down we got back up and got back into the arena. And we made it through – both tempered and strong – in one piece operating, at full capacity for the first time in a long time.

And after all the years of confusion, I KNOW WHO I AM 100% again and I AM 100% Healthy. 

It was impossible to be healthy carrying around all the emotional baggage, the self anger, anger at others and all the layers of confusion accumulated over a life time – childhood, a family, divorce and all the other life events that offer challenges and open the door for miss-takes and confusion to set in without being aware of it.

Coupled with the years of qigong practice and all the positive things I have done over the last 40 years to enhance my health,  the last 12 months we’ve done the work to clean out the energy, dump all the layers of confusion and remove all the energy glitches that made us go weak.

And now they don’t…

They’re gone now. Now comes the work of naturalizing the results and healthy behavior patterns as the new defaults. So I’m going for it and by the end of summer I am going to have a baby boomer six pack and that’s a personal promise.

Healthy Boomer Six Pack Abs Challenge

I CHALLENGE YOU to take up the Healthy Wealthy Boomer: Healthy Boomer Six Pack Challenge and join in. Play with us and re-discover that natural core of health you were born with.

Imagine how great you will feel in 3 months, 6 months and a year from now - if you get started right away. 

How about 10 years from now?

Remember what it felt like to be a kid?

NANNY NANNY NANNY, I’m healthier than you are…

Tag, you’re it.

You know you’ve been thinking about it for a long time.  Another 20 years will go by – fast – before you know it.

Get up, put your walking shoes and start…

What’s holding you back?

I’m going to make it happen, how about you?

I AM Michael Barrett, I AM a Healthy Boomer and I AM a Core Health Facilitator.

Strength is an important topic, particularly for Baby Boomers.

The good news is that age and genetics do not determine nor limit strength.

Look at the old gentleman in the following video. If he can do that, we can most certainly walk 3 miles a day – or whatever it takes – to get the metabolism going again and to get the job done. Watch this guy, it’s quite impressive.

Size and gender are not limiting factors either.

Have you ever seen a mother protect a young child?  Have you ever tried to take something out of a little baby’s hand when they get a grip on something – like an expensive earring?  It’s hard to take it out of their hand.

The baby can do this because they use all of the energy in their body and their consciousness at the same time. It is life force (chi in Chinese). As western adults, most of us have forgotten how to use our life force as the core of our strength. The old gentleman in the video hasn’t forgotten. And the infant knows nothing else but full expression of self.

Anyone can choose strength.

Strength is a Key Ingredient to Long Lasting Health

Strength is essential for physical alignment and daily life, yet is often overlooked as a key ingredient to long lasting health. As a rule, we tend to take strength for granted – until we don’t. In most cases, we miss strength most when we no longer have full command of it. Two common examples of the loss of strength are:

• trauma from injury or
• an illness that forces us to be sedentary or bed ridden during the recuperative time

More commonly, we become aware of the need for strength when we bend to lift something and twist and find ourselves struggling with both the load and the execution of the range of motion. Or when we notice how sore our lower back muscles are after we rake and bag the leaves in the back yard.

Muscle tone and adequately strong muscles make life easier as we age.

If we have been inactive for some time, we can reactivate our physical tone fairly easily by becoming active physically again. It does not take much to get the body awake and alert. It does take persistence.

The body actually likes it.

More than that, “waking the body back up” takes a new decision to do so. Once you focus your attention on the result and create a mandate for yourself – clearly and definitively – it will begin to manifest itself in physical form.

Bill Bartmann, a Healthy Wealthy Boomer from Tulsa, made that choice a long time ago. He is a martial artist and takes care of himself although he wasn’t always in good shape.

Earlier in his life, he lay in a hospital bed after breaking his neck falling down stairs and was told by doctors he would never walk again. He made up his mind there and then that was not acceptable. Months later, he walked out of the hospital on his own. He used his determination to walk again and he used it to turn his life around from alcoholic, gang member, homeless high school drop out to billionaire and one of the wealthiest men in America.

Bill does not set goals:

“I don’t set goals. Instead I make promises because in my experience, we are far less likely to re-neg on a promise than a goal. The results are consistently better.”

This is a good approach. When it comes to setting up a personal set of protocols to get back in shape, Bartmann’s idea makes sense because not achieving a goal is one thing, breaking a promise is another.

When you make a promise to yourself – or someone else that you care about – you are more thoughtful about what you are committing to. When you treat your self as your best friend, you are less likely to promise something you do not intend to keep.

Treat your body as Your Best Friend.

This is the basis of health and strength – to love your body and groom it, care for it, feed it really good food and attend to it with loving attention – in the same way you would care for a championship show dog or a horse.

In many ways, strength is a measure of vitality and physical consciousness – a sort of gauge for aliveness. You can use it as a self-measurement tool for alignment and clarity.

Strength is what provides the support for the skeletal system in our body. It is an integral component of physical and postural integrity, and provides for efficient mobility. As such, it is our best natural defense against many common injuries.

Strength, coupled with flexibility, is the most effective counter measure against general aches and pain. These aspects of strength are valid at all ages but are particularly important as we get older.

Like the Baby, True Strength is Rooted in Life Energy

And strength is – in large part – the primary physical coordination function for the body. In general, a real misconception is that size is the key determinant of strength. True strength is a measure of the individual’s ability to use the entire body as a single unit – as opposed to muscle mass.

Strength in this context is integrated use of the skeletal system, connecting tissue and powered by “life energy” running through the whole system – simultaneously.

Once we achieve flexible strength, we rarely get sore when we use our muscles and our body.

What Prompted The Post…

Last month a baby boomer named Arnie started a new thread in our Facebook group Baby Boomer Health and Wealth: Healthy Wealthy Boomer, by asking this question:

“Hey what do you think is the best approach to maximize physical strength as we age?”
Here is what I wrote about to Arnie…

• Physical activity is essential we are too sedentary in today’s lifestyle.
• Walk everyday, stretch every morning, learn and practice the Tibetan Rites at least 3 times a week.
• Be physical again. Walk up the stairs at work. Park the car further away from the entrance at Costco and walk both ways.
• Take dance lessons and PRACTICE – it’s so much fun.
• Ride bicycles again.
• Learn Qigong or Tai Chi or one of the soft Kung fu systems from a qualified master. Take up yoga.
• Swim again.

When you choose an activity that’s fun for you, you will do it more often. Exercise should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore. Add the “fun back into it”. For example, take long walks with people whose company you enjoy and who you find interesting.

The key is activity:

• use your body,
• use your muscles.
• achieve a healthy tone over time.
• treat your body like your best friend.
• balance your exercise to match your lifestyle and vice versa.

Strength is a component of longevity and is a great anti-aging tool. It is a metaphor for the quality of life. Baby Boomer Health is all about choices.

Be healthy. Choose strength.

It is a better choice than choosing the alternative. Quit listening to the media and think about the old man and the bottle. You are never too old.

If you have been thinking about it, now is a good time to get started. You can do it.

I AM Michael Barrett. I Am a Healthy Boomer. I AM a Core Health Facilitator.

Talk about a Healthy Wealthy Boomer – Jay Leno’s Garage – 1931 Henderson KJ

You know when I was a kid, my stepfather used to talk about how his dad used to race Indian motorcycles against World War I fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker. His name was Jim Lawrence from Longbarn (near Twain Harte, CA). He was apparently quite a machinist and loved to build stuff in his machine shop right there next to his house.

My stepfather told stories about the 32 Model B Ford his dad had sooped up for him with a “shaved head”, a custom designed – and machined from scratch  - electric fuel pump (in the trunk) and custom headers. He said it was the fastest thing around Twain Harte and Modesto and policemen would stop him just to look under the hood to see what made it so fast. He never got tickets because they thought the car was so cool and apparently they loved his dad.

Bear in mind my step dad was a teenager in the late 30’s and I was a teenager in the mid 60’s so the closet thing I ever got to a Henderson 4 cylinder was looking at pictures in a magazine. But my step dad always talked about the old Henderson “Square Fours” and what cool bikes they were.

Doing What You Love Is a Real Secret to Being Successful, Wealthy and Healthy

Work is a joy and it creates tireless energy when you immerse yourself in what you love. The other day I came across something really cool online at nbc.com. It was a video that Jay Leno did about an old 1931 motorcycle. What really stood out to me watching Jay Leno talking – with real admiration for the old scooter – about the super bike of the early 30’s was his obvious love for collecting and all things vehicular. I had heard from a collector friend of mine years earlier, that Jay was a serious collector, but I kind of blew it off and threw that bit of info into the “some rich guy with a lot of toys archive”.

After watching that video, I really got it that Jay Leno is not a car and motorcycle collector, he is a passionate guy and this is his real love and joy in life. It’s appropriate to me that he would be blessed with such success empowering him to get so involved and create such a magnificent collection. He really knows a lot about cars and motorcycles – a whole lot. What could be more fitting as a “caretaker of such quality” than somebody who is so passionate.

Watch the video and see what I mean. First off, you’ll learn more about the Henderson than you ever knew before, but see if you can identify what I saw in Jay’s voice, his tenor and the shear joy of being able to have such a magnificent motorcycle.

Watch Jay’s video, it’s not only fun, it’s quite interesting (please excuse the 15 – or so – second commercial):

Here is a link to the website with a lot more info about the KJ, if you are interested.

Jay Leno’s Garage – 1931 Henderson KJ

His passion makes this aspect of his life and his fulfillment have real meaning. To me that is the real secret to being a Healthy Wealthy Boomer. Jay is healthy in a way that may keep him passionate about life for a long time to come.

After all…

“Attention animates,” to quote Guy Finley – no wonder Jay has such a great collection and attracts such amazing vehicles into his life. He continues to focus on what he loves.

Now we just have to get him to lay off the pasta a little.

What a cool video and a great motorcycle.