Reasons to Abandon Television - I know it’s not for everyone, but Travis Wright at CultivateGreatness.com makes a good argument for why you should dump the television for more fulfilling activities.

Stop Worrying: 7 Effective Strategies for Dealing with Anxiety - At PickTheBrain.com, Tejvan Pettinger offers excellent advise for avoiding unnecessary and unhealthy worrying.

35 Sneaky Ways to Improve Your Finances - You’re probably doing some of these already. And several of the tips you know about, but just haven’t taking action. But I bet you’ll find a few that you’ve not really considered. This is a guest post by Alex Shalman on RirianProject.com.

Reconnect with Your Teenagers - Shelley Stile uses personal life examples to help you renew your relationship with your teenage children.

Can You Say ‘No’ When You Need To? - Jeff Cohen knows that one of the most important skills anyone can learn is how to say ‘no’. Take a few minutes to learn the skills you need to avoid taking on more than you should.

“He’s turned his life around. He used to be miserable and depressed, now he’s depressed and miserable.” - David Frost

“Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out alive.” - Anonymous

“Life is wasted on the living.” - Douglas Adams

“Life is like playing the violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes along.” - Samuel Butler

“I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.” - Winston Churchill

“In spite of the cost of living, it’s still popular.” - Kathy Norris”Live every day as if it were your last, and then someday you’ll be right.” - Anonymous

“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” - Groucho Marx

“Life is a sexually transmitted disease.” - Anonymous”Life is one long process of getting tired.” - Samuel Butler

“It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another - it’s one damn thing over and over.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay”Not only is life a bitch, but she’s always having puppies.” - Anonymous

“The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.” - Woody Allen

“If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” - Mickey Mantle

“Life is like a dog-sled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” - Lewis Grizzard

“The first half of our life is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.” - Clarence Darrow

“He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.” - Joseph Heller

“Death is nature’s way of saying, ‘Your table’s ready.’” - Robin Williams

“Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? Because we are not the person involved.” - Mark Twain

“My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can’t decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.” - Rita Rudner

“People find life entirely too time-consuming.” - Stanislaw J. Lec

“I think it’s better to not have been born at all. But how many people do you meet in a lifetime who were that lucky?” - Yiddish Saying

“Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” - Yogi Berra

So, I’ve given this some thought and I’ve got to make two important changes.

1. No food allowed in my home office. This should help address the snacking problem and help cut back on the messy office.
2. I will walk or jog for at least 30 minutes, 3-4 times a week. Actually, I like to run with a heart monitor, so I will exercise in my heart rate target zone for at least 30 minutes each time.

That’s it. Making these changes, effective tomorrow, should make the different. In a week or two I will let you know how I’m doing. In the meantime, what other simple suggestions might you offer?

Then I considered the action of living. Living involves so much more than just the actions we take to keep our body strong. Living, to me, encompasses our physical and mental health. The action of living means to take on life fully prepared, both in body and mind.

Our mental health is a matter of how we view ourselves and the world. Being content with where we are in life and feeling powerful about our ability to affect our future are key to a healthy mind. And our mental health directly affects our physical wellbeing.

Maintaining good physical health means respecting that our body’s are finely tuned organisms that need proper care. Here is where we must recognize how our diet (what we eat) and exercise (what we do) play a critical role in keeping our body healthy. We can choose to ignore these matters and do as we please, but our body’s will suffer the consequences. This is one fact that I know all too well (see my Living goal).

For many of us, health only becomes important after we survive a serious illness, see a loved one pass, or find that we are not able to do things we once were. What has happened in your life to help you realize the importance of health?

[Photo Credit: Abdullah AL-Naser]

Goal: I will lose 13 pounds by April 1st, that is one pound a week.

Now, the truth is, I need to lose much more than this to be at a healthy weight. But as I talked about in the last post, “Setting Personal Goals the Smart Way“, it is best to make goals obtainable in the not so distant future. So, I will be working on this life goal all year, but my first target goal is to lose the 13 pounds. Then I can celebrate, and not with food. Actually, it is important for me not to use food as a reward for achieving any of my goals.

My action steps for losing the weight focus on two things: increasing physical activity and decreasing calorie intake. For activity I will be doing a few things. First, I will take more walks with my wife and the dogs and begin running again. I have done a lot of running in the past and even completed a half-marathon. However, I tend to stick with it for only 4-6 months and then lose interest. So this time I am not going to think of it as training, but instead, running will be more for recreation. I will also spend more time at a couple activities I really enjoy, backpacking and disc golf. I prefer to be active doing these things rather than doing more formal exercising.

Cutting calories will be fairly easy for me during the first few months. I have been eating a very unhealthy diet as of late, and I simply need to cut out the junk food. That means cutting back on the high carb snacks and soft drinks. I will also focus eating smaller meals at least three or four times a day.

So, that is the brief description of the action steps I have laid out for this life goal. What suggestions do you have for how I can stay focused and lose the weight?

But life is not over and the journey is still underway. I am at a point in my life where I need to revisit the goals that I have set, consider some new paths and set new targets for myself.

Over the years I have come to believe that our lives can be summed up in Seven Actions: love, play, live, seek, learn, invest, and work. Everything we do falls into one of these Seven Actions. By seeking to understand these actions, what they mean, and how we can use them to improve ourselves, we begin to take control of our lives. And when we are in control, we can choose our own path, create our own happiness and determine our own future.

So, I’ve set some new goals for my life. I’ve organized them by the Seven Actions. During the next year I will be talking about these goals, and the progress I am making. I will share with you what works and what doesn’t.

But this blog is not just about me. This blog is about change; and it’s about you. It is about using each of the Seven Actions to better our lives and become what we most want for ourselves. I hope you will visit often.

What you can expect:

• Regular posts and articles about using the Seven Actions to change your life.
• News and information about real ways to reach your goals.
• Tips, tools and resources that will improve your life at work, home and in the community.
• Encouragement from others who are changing their lives.

What you won’t get:

• A lot of fluffy words about change with no help with no real answers.
• Paid posts that promote a product or service without real experience that it works.
• Answers from a guru who knows everything and has life all figured out. (This is just one way of looking at life, and by no means the answer to everything.)