Team Quadzilla

What are your values? Values are NOT ethics or morals. Values are what is important to us, what we ‘value’, and what gives us PURPOSE. Most people have approximately 5-7 core values that identify who they are at their core. Each person’s values are unique to that person. Values reflect who we are on a daily basis, in everything we do at home and at work. When we align with our values on a daily basis, we have more energy and feel more fulfilled because we are leading from what’s important to us. When we don’t align with our values, we feel less authentic and become demotivated about our daily lives. So who are you at your core?
Think about what is important to you and write it down. It might be helpful to recall a great experience, or day, or time in life when you were on top of the world. What were you doing? How did you feel? Take detailed notes of this time and look for key words that describe what is important to you. Remember: Don’t pick values you think you should have. There are no right or wrong answers. You are trying to discover the values you know to be yours.
Why is this important? I’m glad you asked. Making decisions is simplified when you are living out your core values. When you know what is important to you, you know longer have to wrestle with the choice in front of you. You already know what to do; you simply decide in alignment with your core values. If you don’t choose according to your values, you will be miserable. We have all done this and it hurts.
I think most of the stress in our life would be eliminated if we would simply choose in alignment with our values. The problem is that we don’t consciously think about what our values are on a daily basis.
So if you want to reduce stress in your life, live your best life, and be your best self then do this exercise.
1. Think about what is important to you, what you value, who you are at your core and WRITE IT DOWN. Choose words or phrases that help you identify your values so you can easily remember them.
2. Review your values often. Tattoo them in your mind. You may need to refer to your list for a while until it really sinks in. Post them in places you can see them often. Talk about them with those close to you.
3. When faced with a decision, choose in alignment with your values and experience the freedom and confidence of knowing you have chosen well!

If you want more help to figure out your values, or how to tie your values to your purpose, or to answer questions like, “What on earth am I here for?” I strongly recommend Rick Warren’s book “The Purpose Driven Life”.

Fortitude

Your Top Priority Revealed in 3 Questions

April 1, 2017June 4, 2020 teamquadzilla

What is your top priority? I understand that your top priority today is likely different than it will be next year or last year and that’s ok. There are ‘seasons’ in life that require our focus to change. For example, you may have gone back to school in order to change careers and that is your top priority for a ‘season’ of time. When you graduate, school will no longer be your top priority.

The point is that we all have a top priority today and my hope is that we take the time to identify today’s top priority and evaluate whether or not it is what we want it to be. To evaluate today’s top priority ask yourself a few more questions.

1. Where does your money go? A revealing way to assess where your priority lies is to look at your expenditures. Where you spend your money (or more specifically, your ‘extra’ money after the standard bills & such) indicates where your priority lies. You are your own judge as to whether or not the way you spend money aligns with your priority.

2. How do you spend your time? Think about how you spent your ‘free’ time this past week or month. Decide for yourself if where you spent your time aligns with your top priority. For me, I’ve spent virtually all my free time the past week or two working on our new house – demo, painting, cleaning, moving our stuff, etc. so it can be made ready for my family to move in. It has been my top priority, but hopefully VERY soon it will be done and my priority will change.

3. What do you think about? This might be the most revealing of all. In your quiet thoughts you reveal your true focus. If what you constantly think about differs from what you want your top priority to be, then you know you have some work to do to change that.

While changing your top priority (assuming it is not what you want it to be) is not easy, it is simple. Your priority ultimately comes down to your CHOICE. You choose what your top priority is whether you are conscious of it or not. That may sound a bit narrow minded, and I’m sure there are instances where circumstances are out of your control or ‘seasons’ where your top priority is not what you want, but for the most part you can choose where you spend your extra money, how you spend your free time, and what you think about. Hopefully, your top priority is aligned with your values, is related to a big goal you set for yourself, and includes the important people in your life.

Fortitude, Personal Development

BREAKING THE VICIOUS CYCLE OF FAILURE

April 1, 2017June 4, 2020 teamquadzilla

Forgive me for getting personal, but I’m compelled to share something I’m learning in my personal development study. Maybe this can help you as it helps me, or at least provide some encouragement. I’ll make it an equation just for fun.

Commitment – Character = Failure

This may not be obvious at first glance, so stay with me. I find myself often riding this cycle of Commit – Fail – Recommit – Fail despite what I believe are my best efforts to change. Further, the vicious cycle gets me down impacting my confidence, self-esteem, and ambition. Sometimes for few minutes; sometimes for days or even weeks. Can you relate?

I’m learning that breaking the failure cycle requires more than a stronger commitment, or a ‘never give up’ attitude. I’m proof they don’t work long term. I believe the answer is character development and renewing my mind.

First let me clarify that not all failure is bad. Failure is how we learn and grow. If we don’t ever fail, it simply means we aren’t pushing ourselves or trying anything new or trying to improve anything. I’m referring to the failure to stop the bad habit, attitude, behavior, etc. Whether it’s to quit smoking, drinking, overeating, cussing, or being angry, bitter, resentful, depressed, selfish, or some other negative thing in our life we want gone forever, we all have something we can’t seem to kick. It could be we struggle to start something too, like to start exercising, eating healthy, being more generous, kind, selfless, or some other positive thing that we can’t seem to gain momentum on in our daily life. Follow me? Simply recommitting to do better doesn’t work.

Character is the key to breaking this failure cycle, but character is a term that’s hard to define. Don’t you think so?

CHARACTER DEFINED

What is character? Google calls it “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.” Sounds nice, but it’s not very specific. What are mental and moral qualities? And how does one know if these qualities are good? There must be a better definition. Merriam-Webster’s simple definition is “the way someone thinks, feels, behaves; someone’s personality.” I’m sorry but most times I hear character used, it references an assessment of the persons good or bad character. Yet the definitions we have don’t seem to help us with what actually makes up ‘good character’.

Wouldn’t you agree it’s important to determine what mental & moral qualities or what thinking, feeling, and behavior make up good character? Yet how can that be done when everyone seems to have their own opinion about what is good and what isn’t? Without getting further into a debate about whose definition of good qualities fits good character let’s just agree that a universal standard must be used. You shouldn’t be surprised that the universal standard comes from God in the Bible.

I’m not going to do Bible study here to define what is good vs. bad mental & moral qualities, but I will assume God’s universal standard to clarify a solid working definition for character (specifically ‘good character’), or the type of character required to break the Vicious Cycle of Failure. (credit Andy Stanley’s book Louder Than Words): “Character is the will to do what is right, as defined by God, regardless of personal pain.”

There are a couple important things to catch in this definition. First is that what is right (or good) is defined by God. God tells us the standard for what is good and clarifies truth in the Bible. You are welcome to debate me on this, but just because you don’t believe what God says doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. Truth is truth. Second is that doing right costs something. So having good character requires modeling the character of God in our behavior whether it hurts or not.

Yikes! Suddenly, all this has gotten pretty heavy. However, it’s important to know what character is if we’re to break the failure cycle.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

If you are reading this far, you likely agree with me that character is required to hold the commitments we make to be our very best. You may even agree with the definition of character I shared. Before I move on to how to develop good character, let me back up a minute.

I now understand that who I really am comes from what I really believe about myself, my circumstances, and the world around me. When I fail at a commitment to slay the negative parts of my behavior or do something good it really just means that I’m doing what my mind is programmed to do. I’m just living according to what I believe. Does that make sense? Our behavior follows what we actually believe.

For example, a person doesn’t just one day end up in adultery. No one wakes up one day and says, “I’m going to commit adultery today.” It’s more like, “I don’t know what happened, but one thing led to another and here I am.” It happens over time based upon beliefs about self, circumstances, and the world that lead to a string of choices (seemingly innocent choices) that ended up in adultery. It started with a thought and progressed to outward behavior from there. The same is true for anything in our behavior. We act according to what we really believe. The reality is, we are often lying to ourselves. Do you believe that? Do you think it’s possible that what you think about yourself, your circumstances, and the world around you is actually wrong? Yeah, well I didn’t until quite recently. So what can we do?

Here’s an equation I recently wrote in my journal to illustrate how to develop good character.

Speaking truth + Replacing lies = Character Development

The first thing we need to do is to speak the truth to ourselves. I already mentioned that truth comes from the Bible, so if I’m to speak the truth I’ll need to know what the Bible says. Once I know what the Bible says (hint: read it daily), I need to speak this to myself. Did you know the Bible has a whole lot to say about who you are, who you can be, and what your purpose is? There is no greater book written for your personal development and encouragement than the Bible. There is great power in speaking the truth to yourself. Try it if you don’t believe me.

The second thing to do is to replace the lies we tell ourselves. This goes hand in hand with speaking the truth to ourselves. When our minds are filled with truth about ourselves, our circumstances, and our world, it’s much more difficult to think about the lies. This is a process that takes a while and it may hurt at times. The lies don’t go away easily. Some are deeply rooted in our minds and have been watered and nurtured over the years by our own (or others) reinforcement. However, I’m convinced that I can guide and guard my mind to focus on the truth so that eventually the lies don’t impact my behavior negatively.

So how do you get off the Vicious Cycle of Failure? Through character development. By replacing lies we tell ourselves with truth from God’s word (Bible) and by preaching this truth to ourselves, our minds will be renewed and our behavior will change for the good. Ultimately, it takes behavior change (aka: character) to keep our commitments and be our very best. It’s simple but not easy. And just so you know, you will never “arrive” for this is a lifelong process. I am thankful for this valuable life lesson and I look forward to the journey ahead of me.

I’d be honored to hear your thoughts on this.

Fitness, Nutrition

How much water should you drink?

April 1, 2017June 4, 2020 teamquadzilla

There is lots of noise out there about proper hydration for optimum health. There are diet plans that call for extraordinary amounts of water consumption (1 gallon or more daily!), and it seems like the common advice is to simply “drink more water.” There’s the rule of thumb which says to drink half your body weight in oz of water daily. So a 175 lb person like me should have 87.5 oz of water a day – or an 8 oz glass of water 11 times.

But what if I exercise? What if I eat lots of fruits & veggies? What if I sit outside in the hot sun and read all day? To me, these are all variables that make the rule of thumb unreliable. Additionally, while it is rare to drink too much water, it’s not good for your kidneys to over hydrate. So what should you do?

In my opinion, you should mind your pee. That’s right. The color of your urine tells you if you are properly hydrated regardless of how much water you drank. The lighter the color, the better your hydration – generally. If your pee is clear to ‘diluted lemonade’ then you are good. Brighter yellow to apple juice means trouble.

Personal Tips & Observations:

-Sleeping dehydrates you. I have a big drink first thing in the morning (20 oz at least) to relieve dehydration, start my digestive system before breakfast, help me feel more full before I eat, and wake me up. I think this is a good habit.

-Drinking a big glass of water before every meal will help you to eat less because you will feel more full.

-Have a water bottle with you at your desk or work place all day. Drink from it often.

-Certain medications or vitamins will discolor your pee for a few hours, so don’t freak out about that.

-Have a headache or feeling ‘hangry’ (aka: hungry/ irritable/ angry)? Drink a big glass of water first. Give it 10 minutes to see if it makes you feel better. Many times it will. This is your body telling you that you are dehydrated.

-Please do not replace water with soda, sports drinks, coffee, alcohol, juice, milk, etc. Your body needs water. While some juice, milk, wine and plain coffee may have some health benefits, MOST are filled with artificial and chemical ingredients that do more harm than good.

This has been a public service announcement from Team Quadzilla. Adequate hydration leads to increased awesomeness. Have a beautiful day!

Fortitude

Are you REALLY too busy?

April 1, 2017June 4, 2020 teamquadzilla

In my experience, the #1 excuse I hear for why people can’t get their health in order is that they are too busy. Are you REALLY too busy?

Here’s the thing. Our culture has made it this twisted “badge of honor” when we can tell everyone with a big sigh, “I just can’t. I’m sooo busy right now.” Ugh!

It’s time to push back. Go against the flow. Stop drinking the culture’s kool-aid. Being too busy is NOT a badge of honor, it’s a serious problem. It’s a problem you can fix.

At church on Sunday I heard this acronym: BUSY = Being Under Satan’s Yoke. Don’t run cuz you think I’m gonna get all spiritual on you. Stay with me.

Whether you believe in Almighty God and Satan or not, the truth is that TIME is our most precious resource. Whether you believe it or not, God has made each of us for a special purpose, one that no one else on earth can do. Satan doesn’t want us to fill our God given purpose. Satan is determined to destroy us any way he can, and he has found a clever trick. He wants us to WASTE our time on non-essential tasks and meaningless distraction. He wants us to be so over stimulated with media and electronics that we can’t hear ourselves think about what matters most. He wants us to be exhausted from our vacations and recreation instead of refreshed and refocused. All so we can’t fill our purpose and be our very best version of ourselves – the person God has made us to be. It’s a subtle form of slavery we find ourselves in; having taken the yoke of the evil one without even knowing it.

So what can we do? The specific answer might be different for you than for me. All I know is that we MUST recognize that this battle for our time is real, and that we have the power to CHOOSE how to spend it much more than we realize. In order to live intentionally and be at our best – to fulfill the purpose we were uniquely made for, we need to take care of ourselves – body, mind, and soul. MAKE time for your health. It’s important. The end.