One of our clients at my studio recently came in and said that a close friend of his had just been rushed to the hospital for a near fatal heart attack at the age of 44…

He has a wife and 2 children.

I was told that the friend who suffered the attack had “let himself go” in recent years, put on a lot of weight, and his eating and sedentary habits were pretty bad.

Not exactly a happy thought, but it got me to thinking that this man didn’t have to come so close with death… he didn’t have to risk leaving behind a family who I’m sure was devastated by the thought of losing him.

Now, I agree some people may be more prone to certain genetic issues, but that doesn’t mean they have to succumb to them. Your health, your weight, and your over all vitality is largely within your control.

You call the shots.

You’re in control of your life.

You either dictate how your life will go or you allow someone else to do it for you.

Of course, you’ll encounter hardships, detours, and setbacks, but that’s inevitable when you’ve taken a path that doesn’t allow for the easy way out…

It’s all about setting standards for yourself.

Again, you choose to set high, low, or middle of the road standards.

I call the middle of the road standards, the status quo, or “me too” standard. Basically, you accept whatever the customs of your family, friends, and co-workers do in their lives.

It’s the reason why the famous saying “you are the sum of the 5 people you associate with the most” holds true.

This isn’t an easy fact to accept… and it may not make me that popular for telling you that you are in control of your life and of your decisions, but my goal isn’t to win any popularity contests - It’s to get you to make a change.

I want you to set higher standards for yourself!

For example, if you aren’t happy with the way you look and your energy levels are at a “2” out of “10” I want you to tell yourself that being overweight and feeling like a “2” just isn’t good enough.

You don’t have to accept your current position.

There’s no reason you don’t deserve better and can’t achieve more than you are currently doing.

Ask yourself, “Am I really doing my best to look and feel confident, energetic, and happy?”

If the answer is “no,” then you have to ask yourself what more you can do to attain a healthy weight that you can be proud of.

You don’t need to shoot for 6 pack abs by next week (or ever!), but I want you to picture exactly what your end goal will look like.

How do you look?

How do you feel?

What changed to get you there?

Again, these aren’t easy things to do, but once you get “clear” and focused on what you want, you’ll find the “how” to get you there… every time.

This may mean taking a break from hanging out with people who like to eat, drink, and party excessively… not permanently if choose to, but just until you take control of your new lifestyle and higher standards. 

Remember, you’re not judging anyone or condemning their lifestyle, but rather looking inwards and creating new standards of what you really want for yourself.

It’s time to stop compromising on what you want.

You’re no longer allowing anyone else to dictate your life and at this point you’ve found your own voice and realize that you’re in control…

You call the shots.

Committed to your success,

Stephen Cabral, CSCS, CPT, NS
Author of Fatlossity, Lose5in7 Weight Loss System
Health Consultant for MTV, NutritionData, Diet.com, Gather, EDGE
http://StephenCabral.com

< P.S.> Click here for a free weight loss video on how I am able to help clients lose 5 pounds in less than 7 days (naturally and safely) check out:
http://www.Lose5in7.com

In today's troubled economy 5 MILLION American Citizens have sent Congress their pink slips and they have spent nearly 150 million dollars to send that message to congress!

Send Congress a PINK SLIP Today

The radical right wing neo-con bobble heads singing in lock step their dreary refrain of hate and doom which dominates the talk radio airwaves are doing their very best to bring about the utter destruction of America as we who lived through the depression and WW II knew it to be.

Though I was a child during the tail end of the depression and WW II, I certainly remember well many differences between the America of those days and today’s version of the same land.

Make no mistake about it these warped minds are not Democrats nor Republicans but they are trying to influence these political parties and drive them into radical and un-American positions to further attenuate the freedoms and privileges with which I was raised.  

The concept that America was a blessed and privileged land of free men who valued their freedom above all else is well on its way to being successfully obliterated.  Most of these apostles of hate would do away with all dissent of the government (as long as the current administration is in power) and condemn those who would point out any errors as “traitors.”

They want the heavy hand of government to dominate our use of email, telephone or any other means of communication.  Every financial transaction we make is to be monitored and any unexplained transaction the government might choose will be viewed as potential “laundering” of money for terrorist purposes (or drug purposes, your choice).  Of course, what can you expect from a group who fail to recognize that the overpopulation of the world is the root source for many of the problems we face in the future.  I might add, what can you expect from some of these people who are convinced that condoms prevent breast cancer!

In my youth there was no email but the mail was considered inviolable and if you were not on a party line no one could listen into you phone conversation without a court order (other than a gossipy operator, of course).  Your money was your own business and social security numbers were used for social security purposes only.  In fact, my social security card still carries the message “not for identification purposes!”  Boy have we lost track of that one!  Back then a discussion of the value of privacy would have been impossible as no one save the most impressionable readers of “1984" could even conceive of a world without privacy!  Sure, they lacked some of that in the Soviet Union but that was a Communistic Dictatorship so what could you expect.  This was America and it simply couldn’t happen here!

With the caveat that I recognize the overpopulation of our land makes some of the freedom we knew, impractical and not in the best interests of a densely populated society.  We really don’t want each subdivision to be loaded with septic tanks and drain fields, for instance.  But when I was young if you owned a piece of land, you owned it.  To use it in most ordinary manners did not require you going to the governing bodies and playing “mommy may I” in order to build a house, erect a fence, dig a well, etc.

And it would have been ludicrous to imagine that one had to get a “permit” to repair a worn out roof or install a window!  Today one does not “own” a house and a piece of land.  That’s right, you don’t own your own home, even if it is paid for in full and you have no mortgage or encumberment of any kind.  You may wonder, “who does then?”

Apparently, society or government does.  You have to go to government to get permission to use your property for most uses including simply building a house in which to lay your weary head!  This isn’t a matter of “if you have done something wrong” but you must get permission before you even try!  And, lest we forget, pay for the privilege of getting permission.  And if there is some form of “ceramic sculled  black bellied walrus beetle” on your land you may have only the opportunity to pay taxes and protect the threatened creatures.  In most places you will not be allowed to move a camper trailer onto your land and live in it!

Property rights for the average citizen consist of the right to pay taxes, the right to keep one’s property maintained and not an eyesore to the surrounding property, the right to keep pathways free of snow in the winter so no one will fall, and the right to be sued, but not the right to do as you wish to utilize and use the property!  Oh yes, did I mention the right to pay taxes?  Well, it bears repeating.

Incidentally, you do not have the right to intercept and decrypt television signals flying through your air space without your permission unless you pay a fee to some satellite or radio company for that privilege.  

And then, there are of course, the “little Hitler contracts” with which you must abide, that is to say the “CC&Rs” for the subdivision.  You must pay, not taxes but must pay nonetheless, the homeowners association dues or fees and subject yourself to the ever watchful eye of the neighborhood association architectural committee and so on ad-nauseam.  

I must admit, when I think of my youth and reminisce about the many freedoms with which I was raised it brings a wistful dream and longing for those wonderful times.  I know that some persons didn’t have what I did even though my life was that from a poor family with most of the pleasures of life requiring money denied us.  Persons were raised without the security I had of two parents who loved me, a rural community that would never have let us kids starve, the time to be a kid and run free to do what we would as long as we stayed out of trouble and our parents knew where to find us.

Where the Harry Trumans of yesterday have been replaced by the Bushes of today and even more so tomorrow, when the freedom to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, create our own societies and rules as children without adult interference. must be replaced by leaders who have been denied this kind of natural learning experience and taught instead the manifestos of power, of agenda driven dynamic controlled preparation which completely misses the realities and frailties of the human essence and the compelling and provocative nature of each person’s journey through this life.

Such a leader might well make a “successful” society in that there is generally a restraint from violence and general domestic “order” but it is sure to subjugate the experiences of the lower economic strata of the populace to the needs, whims and desires of the movers of mountains and executors of the domain who need a slave class corollary that they themselves might avoid the rigors of reality.   For example, China has such a society today.  Do you want to live there?

We face an especially difficult challenge today in that many believe we must sacrifice the freedoms and standards with which we were raised in order to remain a so called  “free” nation.  I categorically reject this argument or concept.  When you give up your freedoms you are as surely without them as had those freedoms have been taken at gunpoint!

The old argument of “if your not doing anything wrong why should you care who’s watching, listening, etc.” is a fools way and the way of a coward!  Let my freedoms be taken from me but never let it be said that I gave them away.  The method being used is gradual, that is we sacrifice a few freedoms today and more in ten years and in fifty years young people won’t remember what freedoms were!

Our founding fathers knew the characteristics of both freedom and slavery with the bonds of servitude being an unacceptable choice for the ones who would initially lead this country.  Granted, it was ok for persons of black pigmentation in our southern states and to a lesser extent to women but I believe most of the founding fathers knew the union could not be founded if the slave holders were excluded and this dirty little matter could be addressed at some later date.  And as for women, well what the heck, they had nowhere else to go where it was any different and many places where it was markedly worse!

It would be nice to think that the ensuing 230 years would have brought to the world in general and our country in particular, some measure of maturity, of a sanity in the face of reality, that we might conduct our affairs in a manner that would certainly benefit society as a whole but with the recognition that society is the people, and if those people are not respected the society is unworthy of respect.

The example of the many banana republic dictators and other ruthless leaders over the years is replete with examples of the conquering dictator who hold a helpless realm hostage by the mighty power of fear alone.  But I submit that the day will come when the people will want and demand a voice in their lives and a role, generated by themselves, in the overall processing of the statutes by which they will be bound and that only by this determination and process will a democracy arise.

This cannot happen the world over as some would have it, at the approximate same time.  Many civilizations are closer to the wandering nomads than the framers of complex governmental mores and conventions.

It cannot happen from the efforts and intentions of others unless they are prepared to spend generations controlling and guiding the masses to teach them the process and to instill in them the need for such a process.  Besides that, one must teach them that the waste and inefficiencies in democracy or representative democracy is not to be decried necessarily but to be recognized as the price to be paid that some rudimentary element of freedom might ultimately prevail!

There is today an apparent clash between various ideologies frequently defined as between “conservatives” and “liberals” in the words of the bobble heads.  If one actually looks up the meaning of those words he finds that “conservative” reflects preservation of the status quo and a resistance to any change while “liberal” is referenced to “open handedness” and “open mindedness” or a willingness to look at new ideas.

Based on these definitions I take great pride in being a “liberal” and believe others should share this pride. The concept of being called a liberal tantamount to being insulted is not there!   

But there is another factor to “conservatism” as it is being practiced today in that the neo cons do not wish to hold on to the status quo but they would actually like, in many instances, to revert to what things might have been in some idealistic, unattainable and imagined past.

It is time we dropped these epithets as descriptive and polarizing and started following a path of pragmatism in our efforts to improve this world and the lives of those in it.  I would like to leave to my children and grandchildren a better world than was given to me and that is not the way we are headed!

Yesterday I heard the bobble heads talking about arming teachers in schools saying that doing so  would make safer schools!  I couldn’t believe my ears!  I am definitely a pro gun citizen and believe in the right of every citizen to own and keep firearms and I do not mean just for hunting purposes!  This is an inherent American right guaranteed in our constitution just like freedom of speech.

But the very concept of having armed teachers is as repugnant to me as any other part of a police state.  They were saying that the children would adjust to it in a matter of days if not hours and consider it normal.  In that they are correct.  If we want to bring up our children to believe in a police state that would certainly be the way to do it!  We are definitely headed that direction and each generation sacrifices a little more freedom to accomplish this.

Many Americans including my father and brother have given of their time, efforts, bodies and lives in an effort to retain the freedoms we enjoyed down through the years.  For us to freely give up these freedoms in an effort to obtain more “security” at this point is a sacrilege and a travesty of our service men and heros of the past 200+ years who fought for these freedoms we are now willing to sacrifice.  Those heros certainly did not have security when they were defending these freedoms!  How dare we, the recipients and beneficiaries of their efforts, release these freedoms so casually?   The willing sacrifice of any single freedom, no matter how small, constitutes a defilement of the sacrifices made through the years to retain those freedoms.  Those heros didn’t think the freedoms were inconsequential when they were risking their lives!

I speak here specifically of the constant surveillance to which we are more and more subjected.  If the founding fathers knew that somewhere in the twentieth century the government would know if you drew ten thousand dollars out of your bank account or put it in, they would have been appalled and horrified!  Now I am appalled and horrified.  In a statement often credited to Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”