Inspiration Grows Everywhere

What inspires you?

The nurse who just won the Boston Marathon after she decided to do it, just for fun (1)?

The world class athlete who, despite suffering a broken neck just days before the Ironman World Championships last year, rallied and toed the line at the very same race and executed a screaming fast time of 2:49 (2)?

The entrepreneur who decided to create an online bookstore and ended up as the world’s wealthiest person (3)?

All of the above?

Undoubtedly, inspiration is all around us, in the papers, in social media and certainly in the ether that surrounds us in these times of hyper focus on technology.

And while all can serve as motivation, there’s something lost if we skip over the human connection within our own communities and find a catalyst to do anything, right in our own neighborhoods.

For me, one person stands out with his innate ability to inspire… and he’s not even trying to do so; he’s just living his life.

John, the service advisor who helps me every time I take my car in for its check-ups, is pleasant, professional and the perfect example of approaching life with a healthy mindset in the simplest manner possible.

So simple, in fact, that it’s not remotely a big deal for him to prioritize eating a balanced diet, sourcing his food locally (as in, from the garden in his own backyard), preparing it each and every day (by taking a mere 10 minutes to walk outside and pick whatever looks good) for himself and his family to eat and subsequently, maintaining a lean body, a high level of mental focus and performance across the board in the workplace.

Are you thinking he must have loads of free time on his hands to grow a garden and cook for his family every night?

Nope.

He works 70 – 80 hours each week at the dealership.

And he is happily married with two kids.

And he takes care of everything else any homeowner and provider to the family needs to do on a regular basis.

So what’s the secret?

There is none.

It just comes down to first making what you eat a top priority and then mindfully planning your schedule to accommodate a very small amount of each day to follow the simple steps to nourish your body as well as your family’s.

We can all come up with excuses.

“There’s not enough time to cook.”

“I don’t know how to sift through all the confusing labels when I go grocery shopping.”

“It’s too expensive to eat healthfully.”

One, we can make time for whatever we feel is worthy.

If your health, and your family’s is important, whether or not we make time to source our food and prepare it isn’t even a conversation, any more than whether or not to take the time to drink water or sleep.

By the way, in the time it might take to add water to a boxed mix of mac and cheese and microwave it, to use an example John shared, he walks out to his garden, picks whichever leaves he feels like eating that night, sautéed them while he grills some pasture fed chicken. And his little kids eat it.

Two, yes, it is quite confusing to sift through confusing grocery labeling, but guess what? If we rely primarily on eating real food, we don’t have to worry about reading labels because there are none! Real food is just what it is. Organic broccoli and olive oil, grass fed steak and avocado with lime. Five ingredients, all of which are food. Boom. Doesn’t get simpler than that.

Three, sure, it can be pricy. But what costs more? Buying real, clean food that nourishes your body while supporting the community and the planet, or buying cheap food which makes us fat and sick, poisons the planet and leaves animal welfare at the bottom of the list of priorities?

Perhaps the best approach is what John summed up in one sentence: “I just do what my mom taught us growing up.”

He had the gift of a mom who made eating well so easy and inherently simple that it just never needed to be addressed.

We’ve made it tricky, complicated and expensive when it doesn’t need to be any of those.

Just eat food.

And move.

And don’t fuss about it. It doesn’t need to be a thing.

Need a little extra incentive?

See who you can find in your neighborhood that is your version of John.

They’re all around us; we just need to open our eyes and look around.

 

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/sports/boston-marathon.html

(2) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/sports/tim-don-boston-marathon-ironman.html

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos