How to Stay Young

HOW TO STAY YOUNG
1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay 'them'

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. 'An idle mind is the devil's workshop.'

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person, who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love , whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, even to the next county; to a foreign country but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.

AND REMEMBER,
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Share this with someone. We all need to live life to its fullest each day!
Worry about nothing, pray about everything, especially for our country!

* If you plant honesty, you will reap trust
* If you plant goodness, you will reap friends
* If you plant humility, you will reap greatness
* If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment
* If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective
* If you plant hard work, you will reap success
* If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation
* If you plant faith in God, you will reap a harvest
--So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.
God BlessDan Ritchie

"This is a good thought that was
sent to me by a friend." Dennis Ginoza December 26, 2010

Motivated to Walk

MOTIVATED TO WALK

It takes just a simple thing to get motivated to walk. In late June, 2009, our medical insurance made available to us a pedometer. It records every step that is taken. It is part of a walking program that records your daily steps, downloaded into a computer program.

The steps recorded then are converted into health miles. There is a reward. At the end of the year, we will be awarded a monetary bonus. I told my wife, we both should engage in the program. We did.

The pedometer now attached to my shoe or tied around my ankle is the seed of motivation. It caught the competitive spirit within me. I thought I had laid to rest that competitive spirit after I hung up my baseball glove in serious competition years ago. It’s still there.

Self-motivation has turned into collective motivation. In October last year, eight regions of our United Methodist Church competed in walking, church conferences in California, Delaware, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania. We got a little more serious about walking.

When my wife and I were in Las Vegas, we decided to see the new hotels along the strip. We are not gamblers. We decided to walk from the Belagio to the Venetian. We also wanted to see the new City Center. When my wife took the esclator, I took the steps. That day my wife walked some 22,000 steps (almost 7 miles); I walked over 30,000 steps (about 10 miles).

Every day we download our steps until the challenge was over. Our California-Hawaii group ended up dead last out of eight conferences; I personally did well in the challenge, but more importantly, both my wife and I make it a point to walk every day.

This program with Virgin Health Miles provides a motivating factor, to set goals, to record bio- measurements, blood pressure, weight loss, and to create personal programs for physical activity. In my program which I was already doing, I use several equipments—rowing machine, trampoline, chin up bar in our garage, stationary bike, a basketball hoop, and two 25 pound dumb bells.

My wife Sylvia goes to the fitness center for her exercise. I also walk along Main Street. In our trips we have walked in interesting places, but that’s another story. I have become a kind of a marathon walker.

It doesn’t take much to be motivated. It can take just one thing like a pedometer. Motivation means, setting a goal, putting your mind to it, doing an inch at a time, a minute at a time, and staying with it.

It was the Apostle Paul who said that our body is a temple of God. It is a gift. It is like a machine, it is meant to work, it reaches higher efficiency when it is used, and the more you use your body, the better you feel and the more energized you become. You should try it!

Dennis Ginoza
December 26, 2010