There are days where you just don’t like going to the gym and you don’t want to go.  Yes, even I have those days.  And honestly, here is no problem in skipping a day.  Sometimes doing that is healthy for your body.  When you don’t want to go to the gym, sometimes that is just your body telling you that you need an extra day to recover.

Now what happens if you continue taking rest days, get out of the groove, or go on a trip or vacation that keeps you away from the gym for a week or so is what makes things tricky.  See, getting out of your routine can already make the first day back difficult.  You know that you should go back to the gym, but you also know how sore you are going to feel when you go back.

We all know this so our natural, and unfortunately more common, outcome is to just take another day off.  Yes, you are avoiding the soreness, but you also are exacerbating the problem BECAUSE the longer you take off the more sore you will be.  Soreness is inevitable if you have to take more than a few days off from your schedule, whether it is due to sickness, travel or whatever.  The trick is to get back ASAP because, even though it will be painful in the soreness sense, the sooner you force yourself back the less sore you will be and the faster you will recover because you have kept your time away at a minimum.

It’s an unfortunate catch-22, but the sooner you get back the sooner you will forget about the soreness and move on like normal.

With the advent of smart phones and the further continuation of the trend by Verizon selling iPhones as well, it’s amazing how much essentiality is being placed on luxury type items.  Certain people think it odd that I don’t have a qwerty phone whatsoever, but I simply shrug it off by telling them that my purple Sony Ericsson flip phone is the perfect conversation starter.  That, and the fact that I type faster using T9 than I would be able to with a keyboard best utilized by two thumbs, not to mention that I don’t see the need to have a computer on my person 24/7.  Sometimes it is just nice to get away.

I bought an iPod due to the amount o storage it holds, but my 2nd generation ipod works just fine still.  It turns off occasionally, but I don’t see a reason to go out and buy an iPod Touch.  Video game systems, car accessories and entertainment equipment fall under the same bucket.  Yes, functionality and more accurate information is provided in the latest GPS system, but I will buy new maps for my Tom Tom before I go and buy a new GPS altogether.

We have always been a culture that embraces the latest trends, but now we find ourselves evolved into a culture that doesn’t appreciate what we have.  It’s not that we get jealous over what others have, we just instantly decide we have to have it too, even if what we currently have more than suffices.  Sure, the latest model may do more, but is it really worth the exorbitant new-model price?  I mean, I thought we are in a recession after all…  We are supposedly strapped for money, yet novelty in any other situation has become necessity.

I need more time to think about it, but I will wait until the weekend when I have time to type it out on my desktop computer to finish the thought.

Difficulty can come in many forms.  Complaints come in even more forms.  Too many of us like to jump the gun and exclaim that they can’t do something or that it is impossible to accomplish.

I guess I’m sensitive to hearing people complaining about the things they can’t do without even putting forth an attempt to even reach the desired or requested end.  Sure, there are a lot of things being achieved that we cannot do today, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start working towards that end today and then get a step closer tomorrow…and continue on that trend.  Or we see accomplishments like Lance Armstrong winning consecutive Tour d’ France titles.  Yes it’s impressive, but if you didn’t have your 9-5 job and could spend all those hours training for something, you’d be able to get significantly closer to your own level of that than you would otherwise.

Too many of us view what we can do in the world through an impaired viewpoint instead of what it actually is: impacted.  To be impacted means that you have to find an alternate way to get something done.  Your arm is in a sling for a short period of time so you have to figure out a new way to fix your breakfast and subsequently get your food to the table.  You can still make your breakfast.  Now, if you are in a full body cast, then you are impaired from being able to make breakfast since, well, it is kinda hard to move…

We are so used to routine and observing routine that sometimes we forget that there are alternative ways to reach the same end.  I was never impaired from driving a car.  It just took a while to get everything in place to correct what was impaired so that I could drive a car like anybody else.  But it all boils down to how we view things holistically.  Do you try and figure out ways to get things done or get bogged down over the fact that the convenient way is closed off from you?

The more we think about that, the less we realize actually impairs us in life.  Everything will impact us in one way or another, but to overcome it is so much more of an amazing feeling than feeling defeated because the way we know and want to do something is inaccessible.  There’s a lot more to type about this and extract/analyze, but this is a major theme in my book.  One’s outlook on life always fascinates me, and seeing how that outlook relates to their life and accomplishments/journeys in life is a fascinating window into their life and how they choose to live.

A question posed by one of my friends in the Phi Beta Kappa group.

My response: When I approach employers, my life story is typically my sell.  I studied communication, business and writing, focusing on rhetorical and persuasive writing.  The meeting point of the three was marketing and I was successful in that arena.  Being my first job out of college, I wasn’t sure what to expect in the real world and that job taught me what I was realizing in college—what I want to do.  That’s the ultimate thing I learned from my combined college education, what I want to do.

I focused on video editing and behavioral communication mostly, which I pitched as a trained skillset aimed at targeting specified and unique audiences and, combined with my writing skills, I can customize any communication to that unique target audience.  I have further developed this skill to promote a book that I wrote, which will hopefully lead to a speaking and life coaching career.  Now it's just a determined effort to find the avenues to make these dreams happen and network with the right people who can put me in those positions...all skills I gained during my 4 years at McDaniel.

I’m a 23 year brain aneurysm and stroke survivor.  I have gotten myself to a point where you can’t see my disability.  My pride is that everyone sees me and doesn’t even notice my permanent disability.  I’ ve overcome my own limitations and through earning my education, meeting and developing relationships with college mentors and extracting what I can do from my education and the various combinations of skills, this is where I have landed.  Everyone deserves to know that they can overcome their own limitations, whatever they may be.  Nothing is impossible.  Things are impossible because we doubt ourselves.  Without doubt, impossible becomes an undefined word.

Honestly, it’s all about being confident, knowing what you want to do and telling an employer how your education and experience prepares you for that job.  You may get rejected, but everything happens for a reason.  Stay honest to who you are and what you want to do from your educational endeavors and the right opportunity will come your way.  Just embrace every opportunity you have.  The worst outcome from it is the same as not trying at all.  See what skills you have developed and what they have helped you do and pitch that to any and every employer.  Confidence, creative thinking and ability…that is what the liberal arts gave each of us.  Embrace it and the right people will not let you go.