Intellectual Emotional Spiritual Financial Physical
In the autobiography Convictions, John Kroger worked thirteen hour days seven days a week. After three years he decided to take his first vacation. What can I say, his job was his life. So I thought about myself. How well rounded am I? Am I challenging myself in all the right areas? I did a cursory reflection of how I spend my time and energy and this is what I came up with.
What am I doing to take care of my…?
Intellectual Health- School, Books
Emotional Health- Relationships, Blogging, Piano
Spiritual Health- Church
Financial Health- Investing
Physical Health- Biking
Am I missing any area? Let’s break it down…
Intellectual Health- I think this is the most important muscle you posses. Your brain. Obviously the main dumbbell I use to work this muscle is school. The second is my books. Today I think I read over 100 pages.
But all work and no play can be taxing. Have you ever heard the story of the two lumberjacks?
One man took his axe and just hacked and hacked and hacked away at a tree, nonstop all day only to get 75% of the way through it. The man beside him would chop away for a few hours at a time, then left to take breaks, and would come back to resume his work. This second man felled his tree by nightfall. The exhausted first man was astonished. “How did you do that?? Our trees are the same size, and I was swinging nonstop! You took breaks and still accomplished more than me? How?” The second man simply replied, “During my breaks I sharpened my axe.”
Emotional Health- I think you can work and work, but if you don’t have some sort of release you’ll be stressed, depressed, and unproductive. I listed relationships. Catching up with old friends is always a way I like to recalibrate. Also when you are in a good relationship. That’s a great way to unwind (although that can be argued. But I said good relationship). Blogging definitely helps me unwind. If I have a stressful day (as I have on occasion with my particular job) all I have to do is sit in my chair, turn on CNN or better yet, a Law & Order marathon, and unravel by writing for you, my faithful readers, what I’ve been thinking about that day. Very cathartic. I also teach myself piano songs to unwind, but haven’t been doing much of that recently, I need to get better. I think my friends are getting sick of hearing the same few songs…
Spiritual Health- Being a member of the LDS Church allows your doctrine to permeate throughout all facets of your life. Not only are you told what to do with your Sunday mornings, but how to look at yourself, God, your family, your friends, your time on earth, and your time beyond. You get a real perspective, an eternal perspective . Reading books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and The Millionaire Next Door you’d think the ultimate goal is to have a lot of money. What’s the point of life? So I ask, do you work to live, or do you live to work?
Financial Health- IMHO, I don’t have too lofty of dreams, just nice ones. I hope to own a home someday, be able to travel with my family like I did as a kid, retire without worry, serve an old people mission, be able to help my kids in college… plus we live in this temporal world. It’s important to know. Plus let’s face it, it’s kind of exciting watching your money grow like a rabbit farm. I’m learning how to invest and hope to get pretty dang good at it starting young. All I need is some venture capital (Dad, are you reading this?). That’s why I’m going to rob J Dawgs tomorrow. (Ha, yeah right, like they have a lot of money on hand… uh oh, I sure hope they don’t get robbed tomorrow or I’ll have to edit this post! Haha, speaking of saying dumb things, my mom always got mad at me when I’d say BOMB or TERRORIST in an airport. She was less than amused, I was tickled every time).
Physical Health- My newest hobby Biking!!!
My roommate bought a bike a while back. A sleek roadster. You know, the kind with ram horn grips and tires as thick as your finger? He uses it for exercise and to save gas. I look over my shoulder every night when he gets home– he passes me with his bike in tow and in the background I see my bike with flat tires sitting there crying. So today I took it into Taylor’s Bike Shop and got slick new tires road tires. I’m going to ride it to school everyday to save gas, get great ‘parking’, and for exercise. I think I’ll take a bike ride each night down some trails when I don’t have to worry about traffic. What am I still missing? I’ll need lights (headlight and red blinking tail light), I have a lock already… oh, I’ll have to get an odometer. I’ll want to know how many miles I ride in each trip, and overall mileage. It will be great to be able to say “I ride 5 miles every night and have ridden 1,000 miles since I got the bike”. Because of my venous insufficiencies my cardiologist suggested I don’t run anymore for exercise. I’m not much of a weight lifter (if you’ve ever met me you’re giggling about now) and don’t play sports. I don’t like to be touched. I prefer a recreational activity where I can be alone with my thoughts and just feel the wind on my face. Biking sounds like a great choice. I’ll be researching biking and will probably talk about it more later. I can’t wait to pick up my bike tomorrow!
So remember to take time to sharpen your axe.
What are you doing to remain healthy in each of these domains?
Filed under: JOURNAL
