A Little Activity History

Since I was a little girl, I have been active. Growing up on a farm with horses and gardens and lawns, a lake near by and a mysterious, murky pond within wondering distance, lent itself to never ending physical activity, exploration and play.

Then, in college, I found my way into Oregon State University’s entertaining weight room (hello…young men, tank tops, muscles?) and the pool and discovered my first passion…fitness and nutrition. I was enthralled with learning about foods, what exercise did to the body and how, what vitamins we needed to stay healthy, and began to form what I now recognize as my ‘purpose’ in life…empowering others to be responsible for themselves.

So even though you think that my focus is financial education and teaching people about money, my focus is always, first and foremost, inviting you to think differently about money AND life. I love providing you with tools that help you continue to take ownership of your entire life and how it shows up for you.

Though Pay Yourself First usually has to do with money, today’s article involves ALL of the ways we need to pay ourselves first. Not just in the realm of money, but health, exercise, time to think, and more. I hope you enjoy this invitation to think a little differently today.

Pay Yourself First with Time to Think

If there’s one thing I know it’s that we all think too much. The problem is that we often think too much about the wrong stuff. The reason for this is two fold:

1. We haven’t learned how to control our thinking, and,

2. We create lives that are so busy that we don’t take time to practice controlling our thinking.

And yes, I do mean we create busy lives. We all have the same 24 hours in our days. It’s a matter of making priorities about how we SPEND that time. I haven’t met a human being alive that can’t find 15 minutes in his or her day to stop and just think.

The thing is…unless you have learned that you can, and must, control your thoughts, that 15 minutes won’t be productive or enjoyable for you. One of the best and easiest books to read on the power of controlling your thoughts is “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen. I read it years ago and it was great. It’s short and easy to digest.

Do yourself a favor and grab this book. Then go find make some time to read it so YOU can start taking time to think the right thoughts for you and YOUR life.

Pay Yourself First with Time to Eat Well

Let’s face it…if there is one believe, it’s that ‘we are what we eat.’ We’re also what we put on our skin, and what we breath, and what we drink. We can’t NOT be.

One of the situations that has always confused me is when parents are eating a great healthy salad but the kids are eating French fries. After all, they’re ‘just’ kids. What part of the fact that those kids grow into adults do some parents not understand. If you want to make a healthy adult, you have to feed the little adult healthy food. I mean, if you were growing tomatoes and feeding the plant poison, I promise you’d never get a single healthy tomato on that plant!

If you find yourself saying, “I don’t have time to eat well,” my suggestion to you is to ask yourself what part of you isn’t important enough to feed well? Do you not love yourself enough to feed that beautiful container you get to move about the planet in what it needs to be healthy?

Eating healthy isn’t rocket science and doesn’t take any more time that eating unhealthy food. And not knowing how to cook isn’t an excuse either. If I’m traveling and hungry, I can just as easily choose a piece of fruit, a container of yogurt, a roll and some carrots. And this is always less expensive than eating out.

So find a way to say thank you to your body by providing it with healthy nutritious food.

Pay Yourself First with Time to Move Your Body

As you already know, my first love is fitness. Anyone who knows me knows that before I do anything else, I take time in the morning to move my body. Sometimes that may only be 15 minutes of yoga, but I put my body through a routine of stretches that invites my brain to wake up and my joints to move. This frees up my creative juices as well and allows me to go into my day ready to receive whatever I’m attracting into it that day.

Our bodies aren’t meant to be stationary. This machine I’m typing on is one of humanities biggest double-edged swords. It has allowed us opportunities and information that was difficult at best before we invented the computer. On the other hand, it is changing the way we think and function with not only the world but each other.

Again, exercise isn’t rocket science. Stretch a little (buy a beginning yoga DVD), walk every day for half an hour, get an exercise ball to work those abs and back, do some pushups, etc. And you don’t have to go to the gym. Simply pay yourself some time every day to move your body and I promise it will pay you back in the long run.

Bottom line…move it or use it. The more active you are now, the more active you’ll be later.

Pay Yourself First with Time to Do Something Nice for Someone Else

After 52 years on this beautiful planet, another thing that I know is that when I do something nice for someone else just because I want to, it affects me as much as it affects the person I’m helping. And everyone who has ever attended my Train-the-Trainer workshop has always agreed.

You know that warm, yummy feeling you get when you do something nice for someone or make them feel great in some way? That’s your body telling you that you were just doing your purpose. And that warm, yummy feeling pays your body wonderful rewards in the form of stress reduction and happiness hormones.

So take a couple of minutes every morning and think about what you can do for someone else. Once you’re in the habit of doing for others, you’ll be amazed at how your world turns into a world where other people do things for you as well. Try it!

Pay Yourself First with Time to Love Someone

This might seem pretty obvious but it’s one of the hardest things for people to take time for. Again, our busy, busy, busy lives interfere most often with our most basic emotion, and need…love.

Loving someone doesn’t have to mean going out to dinner, taking them to a movie, making dinner for them, etc. Loving someone could be visiting someone in the hospital, reaching out a hand and rubbing a back for a few minutes, saying I love you, tucking a child in at night without your cell phone.

If love really is all there is, then if you’re not taking time for love in your life, you’re missing what is.

Pay yourself the opportunity to experience love today.

Pay Yourself First with Money for Your Older Self

This is the most obvious place to pay yourself first and the first place in your life where the practice can slip between your finger tips. We let all myriad of events and situations get in the way of providing for our older selves.

In our adult programs, we often do a visualization where we take people forward to talk to their older selves. It’s a profound experience for most people because they simply haven’t thought about it in the way we present it.

Pay Yourself First is the first lesson our campers learn when they play The Money Game and it’s reinforced with every round of the game. Over and over again, they get paid and pay themselves first. By the end of the game, they’ve got the idea!

There IS an older version of yourself waiting inside of YOU for you to do the right thing financially. If you don’t, that older person could be living a life of poverty, ill-health and unhappiness…all because you didn’t pay yourself first while you were young enough to do so.

If you’d like to listen to an audio of one of this visualization, click here.

OK, you’re on your own now to pay yourself in all sorts of yummy ways. I hope you enjoy it thoroughly.

Just something to think about…

COFFEE TIP I PROMISED YOU: How to get a .99 cent iced coffee!

Stop by one of those little convenience stores at a local gas station.  Do the following:

1) Grab a plastic container they offer for the soda machine.

2) Fill it with whatever you want in your iced coffee: milk, specialty creamers (I LOVE the Irish Cream flavored ones:-), syrup if they have them.

3) Fill the container to the brim with ice from the soda machine (yes, to the brim…remember, you’re going to pour hot coffee over the ice).

4) Choose the type of coffee you want and just fill it with coffee instead of soda.

I did this last week at a gas station by the LAX and it was .99 and it was huge!

Enjoy!