Many of you are familiar with gratitude. Whether we have heard it in church, school, your parents, or a yoga class, gratitude conversations are found in all areas of life. It is hopeful to me that gratefulness is making it’s way into discussions. But I want to take this grateful conversation a different direction. I want to talk about the result of gratefulness.

When you have a rhythm of being grateful in your life, I believe it leads to action. Using my story from above, these members are grateful to be alive, move (even if in a limited capacity), and have the ability to exercise. In response, I see them nearly everyday, getting in the pool like clock work. This is what I believe gratefulness does. There is no letting life pass by. Out of this gratefulness comes an attitude of seizing the day. We are given another chance each day, each moment to become better, to chase all God has for me, so let’s go get it.

Gratitude vs Habit Formation

Some of you may say argue that it is not gratefulness that keeps you progressing as much as it is the creation of habits and routine. To that, I would say that you are partly correct. I do think habit formation plays a role in consistency, but I also believe gratefulness plays a role too. A habit can keep the mind and body going, but gratefulness can keep the soul going. Gratefulness gets us back to the basics of all that we are. Who we are. Whose we are. Why I am here. When we have that foundation in place, it can keep our soul healthy and going amongst the distractions, disqualifications, and delusions that we get faced with. More on this later.

How do we develop this rhythm of being grateful? Most of us are probably grateful at certain points in our life. Birthdays, holidays, large gatherings, pay day, and vacations would be easy examples. But how can we develop this rhythm on a consistent basis? Remember, if gratefulness can help us stay consistent, we want more of it right?

Awareness is the Key

To be more grateful, we have to become more aware. Not just aware of what is all around us (though that is helpful), but are of who we are and what we’ve been given. How often do we remember that we are a daughter or son of God? How often do we consider that every breath we take has been nothing short of a gift given to us by our Creator? I know that I struggle to really consider that often enough. It starts with slowing down and giving ourselves space to realize these truths. Start with five minutes each day. Or just start with one minute. When we start to slow down and consider these things more often, I believe we will start taking less for granted and become more grateful. Awareness leads us to gratefulness leads us to productive action.

One other beautiful quality of gratefulness to leave you with is just how contagious it can be. I watch these gym members having this gratefulness about them as they go about each day and I can’t help to start to become grateful too. When you start to live out of a place of gratitude, others notice. What if we started letting gratitude be the thing we passed on to each person we encounter? Maybe your gratefulness can give a little hope to someone who may not see much hope in that moment. Make sure to spread gratefulness by being grateful yourself. Then not only will you put yourself on a path towards action, but others will become active too.

Let gratitude move you today. Let’s see just how it far it can take us!

The post The Grateful Get Going appeared first on Faith & Fitness Magazine.

“My spiritual life is on point, but my physical life is off the rails.”

“I seem to have great habits in my nutrition, but I need more community in my life.”

“I’ve got so many areas of my life squared away, but just need to fix these other two.”

Have you heard any of these phrases before? Better yet, have any of these phrases come out of your own mouth? This kind of talk is super common in the world of health. We all hope to be a little better in one area or another. I think that is part of being human. To grow, evolve, and be slightly better than yesterday. The problem I find is we try so hard to make this a reality that we tend to over complicate the process towards growth.

The problem starts when we begin to compartmentalize the different areas of our lives. When we do this, we tend to keep everything about the result in those given areas as well, whether good or bad.

Here is why you should not follow that trend.

Every time you have a certain habit, goal, or rhythm succeed or fail, you have the opportunity to learn something. No matter how long the success took or how little the failure came about, with some intentional reflection, you can find out the culprit to the victory or defeat.

Maybe it was something out of your control

You needed more time.

There wasn’t enough structure.

Not enough accountability.

Whatever the solution may be, there always is an answer that can be found. When we find that answer, we shove it right back into our “physical” or “mental” or “spiritual” box and stop thinking about it altogether. We just leave it there and label it “pass” or “fail” in our minds.

When we continue to compartmentalize, we continue to open and shut these boxes without letting them help the other areas in our life. This is where your greatness can be revealed.

Realizing Greatness

Do you know you’re already really good at developing habits?

Oh, you didn’t know?

Well, you aren’t just really good, you’re great at them!

Whether you like the habit or not, we are constantly living within the limits of the habits we have created over time. Hopefully we all brush our teeth before we go to bed (I will pray for you if you don’t). This is an easy example of a habit we have all developed that we don’t even have to think about anymore. Other examples would include when you leave for work, how you tie your shoes, how late you stay up at night, and what you watch on TV.

Our whole lives are directed by the habits we have formed.

And whether you like it or not, you’re really good at them too. The big question is, are you happy with the habits that you have developed up until this point? After some contemplation, you may realize that you are not quite where you want to be with all your habits. To that I say welcome to the club. I too am on this journey, which is exactly why I am writing on this topic. Let’s break this down and turn the greatness we already have, those habits we already are living within, into the habits we want.

To start, find a habit that you have been doing for at least over a year (or a considerable amount of time). Then start breaking down what has made this habit stick for this long. Once you have reviewed the keys that have made this habit stick, take those and start implementing them into the habit you want to change. You will start to notice that in most cases the process for habit achievement is nearly the same across the board.

This is why compartmentalization can be harmful to our growth.

When we do this, we let a successful process just stay in that box, never getting a chance to enter into the other boxes. When we do this we need to literally start thinking outside the box. That process can effect the other habits in other boxes. Will every process be able to transition over smoothly? No. There will be tweaks made no doubt. If we can start to train our minds to think this way though, we are well on our way towards dominating habits that we choose.

Continue to learn from other areas in your life. Don’t let them stay separate. We are a whole person, not just separate entities within a body. Start living from this perspective. Let’s see what growth comes out of it!

The post You’re Already Great! (you just don’t realize it) appeared first on Faith & Fitness Magazine.

Pace is a hidden aspect in the pursuit of goals, betterment, and a more enjoyable life. Well, maybe it’s not hidden, but it seems to be something that is not consciously considered. In today’s society, the typical pace people go with is what society has set for us, and that is top speed. If a person can accomplish their goal in less time with less effort then we always go for that. Who can blame that person? We live in a world where instant gratification has become king. Now, that is not to say it is all necessarily wrong. I commend a person who seeks to be efficient and get things done in a timely matter, but I think there is a great asset we miss out on when we embrace this full tilt lifestyle. We end up missing out on long term, lifestyle change within ourselves.

How do we give ourselves the best chance to get this long term change? We must slow our pace down.

“Noah, are you crazy? Slow down! I can’t slow down! I’ve got books to read, weight to lose, and ladders to climb! I can’t just slow down if I want all these to happen!”

The above statements are what I would imagine would be some common responses I would get from people if I brought up this idea of slowing down. I don’t blame you either. Remember, society has been preaching over and over these ideas of speed and instant gratification for years now. Starting to think differently than that won’t be easy, but I believe it’s necessary and important. Let me explain. If you are like me, multiple times during the year (not just January 1) I come across a challenge or habit that I would find worthy to embark on. Let’s say this habit I want to start involves going through a stretching routine every night for 30 minutes. I start this journey, feeling motivated and excited to see what growth will come from it. A couple weeks in motivation starts wearing off and due to circumstances maybe a day or two gets skipped. One month in and I have totally lost the energy to work on this habit and have most likely given up on it altogether. This has been part of my story for many years. Maybe it has been some of your story too. What can we do to not keep reliving this type of experience over and over?

This is where slowing down works its magic.

What if instead of shooting to stretch every night, I shot for 2-3 nights a week? Or what if instead of 30 minutes of stretching, I made it only 5? This process of slowing down may push the end result I am seeking farther down the calendar, but I believe my chance to actually make it there is much higher and more realistic too. It also builds the habit into you daily life. If I went down that first path of stretching every night for 30 minutes and did that for one month and accomplished the goal I set for myself, there’s a good chance I just quit after that and eventually I would end up back where I was or maybe even worse. On the other side, if I take my time, and really work to build this habit into my life, I am giving myself the opportunity to make this habit long lasting. That is where real change occurs!

When you start to slow the pace down, you actually start learning more about yourself too. When these habits start to build over months and years you are getting opportunities to learn things about yourself that you would never get the chance to if you only have a lot of short, quickly lived habits. I would also argue that slowing down gives you a better grasp on learning about the habit itself. A good example would be reading. I think reading 100 books sounds like a cool goal to shoot for, but what if instead I read 30 books and really spent time taking notes and diligently tried to apply the principles I learned from them? Or better yet, maybe I made it more process oriented and just shot for 10 pages of reading per day? Which one am I going to learn the most from? Which one will I actually stick with over the long term? I know what my answer would be.

As you get started re-evaluating your pace of growth, a change of mindset will be necessary. You will be headed in a direction different from what current culture is telling us. You will have to change your ideas on achievement and timelines. I challenge you to find achievement in the growth you make, no matter how slow. Look at achievement as a continued building block being added and not just a finish line that needs to be crossed. Each block you add, you are growing into that person you desired to become when you set that goal in the first place. Isn’t that what you wanted to begin with?

A last dose of encouragement. I think this pursuit in working on pace of growth can be seen through a spiritual lens. Teaching ourselves to live this out can help our walk with Christ, because that relationship never has an endgame. It is on going much like building lifelong habits. Focus on being slow and steady and you will naturally experience growth. You can even look to the life of Jesus and his pace. Did you ever see him in a rush to accomplish anything? What you did see was habits and rhythms in his life that he purposely chose and pursued for years, preparing him for his ultimate mission and task. Living with a slower, more deliberate pace is modeling a life after Jesus.

Life in the fast lane has it’s advantages for a season, but slowing down can last a lifetime. Find the right pace for yourself and experience growth for the long term.

The post The Pace of Growth appeared first on Faith & Fitness Magazine.

This seems to be a question that a lot of people ask themselves, especially when the calendar year renews every 365 days. When one usually asks themselves this question, it’s followed by the creation of different goals in pursuit to better fitness. Things like “losing __ pounds of weight” or “going to the gym 5 days a week” or “getting my weight back to where it was in high school”. Don’t get me wrong, these are commendable goals to achieve. The issue I have is a step bigger than that. It seems every time the word “fit” comes about, we all seem to run towards an answer that primarily involves our physical self. Though that is partially correct, I think we are missing other pieces to this puzzle. 

When we look at ourselves and our own fitness levels, we should not exclusively be looking just at our physical self. We are composed of so much more than just physical features. We have a soul, mind, emotions, responsibilities, and more that needs just as much tending to as our physical bodies do. So you may ask then, “Noah, what is the best definition of fitness?”

My opinion is that fitness should be defined as: 

One’s ability to survive and thrive in their given environment and roles.

Going off of this definition of fitness, your application to this is going to look different for each person. Let’s look at an example. 

Let’s take someone who is a professional writer. Their specialty is going to be on how well they are able to write, tell stories, engage readers, and so on. That is one piece of what would define their fitness level. Now, let’s say this person is also married and has two kids. Another aspect that would define their fitness is their ability to be a good husband and father. This doesn’t mean that there is no focus on the physical self whatsoever, but you can see that if they only defined fitness by their physical attributes, they are missing out on so many other aspects in life they could be growing in. 

As you continue on your path of growth in this journey of life, don’t forget that fitness is the culmination of all parts of your life. Don’t neglect one area of your life while growing other parts. You wouldn’t drive a car that has a tire that’s blown out would you? Look at your whole self. Find what areas you can work on and let’s get fit. 

The post Defining Fitness appeared first on Faith & Fitness Magazine.