So there I was, way back in the hot, hot summer of 1980 in Forth Worth, Texas. I’d just changed out of my dark brown formal wedding tux into nice jeans and a polo shirt, heading for the getaway car with my new bride.

My ’71 Satellite Sebring Plus was shiny clean and parked just out back of Southcliff Baptist Church. Family and friends had wildly decorated my blue sports car with streaming toilet paper and white shoe polish messages that might have been a little suggestive.  And somebody had stuffed a potato in the tail pipe.

No matter. My young wife and I were headed out for our honeymoon! Woo-hoo! Church-sanctioned intimacy at last, waiting for us just a couple hours’ drive away!

The one thing not on our minds as we strode to my car with great anticipation was some out-of-the-blue financial management tip, if you know what I mean.

But sure enough, from our right quickly approached one of our acquaintances from Young Adult Sunday School class. Eager to intercept us before we could escape, she was clearly burdened with something she felt she had to pass on to me…immediately!

“Greg, I don’t know when I’ll see you again,” she said, “and I needed to tell you something. Marriage can get to be hard work after a while, and money matters can be a real stumbling block. But if you’ll set aside 10% of everything you make into a savings fund, and don’t touch it and let it grow, you’ll never have a problem in that way. Okay! God bless!”

She waved us off, and as she walked away I responded with nothing more than a puzzled raise of my hand in acknowledgment. What in the world possessed her to tell me that at this moment? I wondered.

To this day, I don’t remember that young woman’s name, but I never forgot her tip.

But neither did I heed it. And I wish I had.

Save 10%? Ha! I’d been a seminary student surviving off tuna fish, often with no bread or mayo, and depending on free meals at my church now and then. But suddenly I had a wife making over $700 a month working in a downtown bank. When you added my part-timish contribution to our fledgling budget during the school year — $100 a month from coaching Jr. Optimist League sports at a local elementary school and $50 a week from part-time Youth Ministry work out of town — just like that I was a rich man.

Comparatively, of course.

So our thinking became, Let’s live it up!  “Celebrate good times, come on!”  (Thanks, Kool & The Gang!) 

Even though I was still to be in seminary for another 3 years, Betty Crocker Double Fudge Brownies with Dr Pepper became our  go-to celebration indulgence. (Caveat: We always tried not to pay more than 1¢ per ounce for our much-loved soft drink. We’d wait until it was on sale in big returnable glass bottles at the local Piggly Wiggly.) And we even had steak now and then. We ate out at times. I never went hungry anymore.

But my new wife, in spite of having received from her doctor a starter version of the pill, had gotten pregnant on our honeymoon. Financial challenges were already in the making.

And in the years just ahead, even when I got a full-time Youth Ministry job at $22,600 (think 1982 dollars!), we still struggled over finances. We had one child, then two (later on a third and a fourth!) and the “prophecy” was coming true. Money matters…well, they matter. And we had no savings.

I’d completely disregarded the principle of setting aside a long-term savings fund built with 10% of my income. And at times there was hell to pay.

I even cut my finger wide open when I angrily swiped at a steak sauce bottle on the dining room table before me. The bottle shattered, inflicting a gaping wound directly on the part of my left hand’s finger that bore my wedding ring.

We’d been having a rather animated argument over money.

I ended up spending our last $85 to get my finger sewed up. Really smart, huh? I still have the scar to this day.

And when my wife and I finally split up — at first emotionally then for real — we were deep in debt. $18,000 deep, in 1997. That might be near an equivalent $40,000 today. And the stress back then had contributed to unimaginably dark thinking and living, even though we were believers, church-goers. It wasn’t the entire reason for our divorce, not by a long shot. But it was like a vise grip on the darkest regions of our psyches, and it squeezed the very worst out of us both.

They say today that in 70% of divorces, money stress is a big part of the breakdown.

So…

How hard is it to start saving 10% of your income? What mindset, what discipline, is required to do it?

Do spiritual resources and convictions from a steady walk with God help in this regard?

What if we have a good example in our parents to follow? What if we don’t?

My father is a retired Accounting Professor and CPA who at one point was also certified to sell retirement age financial investment products. He knows a thing or two about budgeting and financial planning. And he has a passion to help others do a good job of organizing their money matters. So he recently asked me to co-author/edit an e-book with him entitled Financial Planning Made Easier: An Illustrated Primer To The 5 Keys For A More Awesome Financial Future. Soon, it will be available on Amazon Kindle. A second and third book will follow, to include understanding investments and making good use of insurance.

Hope you’ll be able to use Dad’s books quite profitably and enjoy them. (You’ll enjoy the illustrations in the first book, for sure!)

And I hope you’ll be wiser than I was as a young man with a wife and kids to take better care of than I did.

I should have cut out the brownies and Dr Pepper — and several other indulgences — and put money into savings.

How might things have been different if I had followed that one wise practice?

Now I understand it. Grand Vitality.  Financial health affects marital relationships in a big way and the soul health that is inextricably tied into them — which in turn affects our physical health too.

My earnest advice, learned the hard way? Strive for financial health — with protected, growing savings — to bless the whole time of your journey on earth! And Dr. Walter Austin’s book, referenced above, just might be a key tool for you to use.

Early this morning, CNN posted a sobering article on my iPhone News about divorce. It was titled:

5 factors that may predict divorce,                                                         according to psychology

The article was not long, but it was effective. It highlighted how, given that about one out of two marriages initiated some time during the last few decades eventually break up — causing all sorts of financial/emotional loss — this issue needs to be addressed.

Kudos to CNN for running the article. Baby boomers like me have especially been at risk. I can testify. And a good friend of mine — a beautiful lady I would never have expected to suffer even the slightest separation — just let me know the other day that the big “D” was happening to her.

So sad.

But for the future, if we’re going to have the best zest in our bodies, souls, and wallets (the purpose of this blog site), divorce simply cannot be part of the picture, I think we’d all agree. The cost is too massive.

And that’s just in relation to the self-concerned element of the situation. What about the cost to the kids? Let’s not soft sell this. The inner devastation for them from seeing their parents split up is insidious and quietly long-lasting, especially if they’re very young.

So what did Drake Baer of Thrive Global highlight as key factors in divorce?

1. young marriages – the older you are before you marry, the better chance you’ll last; marry young and you have to work harder to stay together when the inevitable changes in life circumstances and changes in personality expression develop.
2. demographics – sharing common education levels and religious preferences is very favorable; if there’s too much difference…problems.
3. neuroticism – emotional instability in one or both partners can spell doom. Few people are equipped to handle constant or even intermittent “severe misbehavior” or outbursts of uncontrolled emotion from their close living mate.
4. infidelity – if you cheat, “forget about it!” Chances are, you won’t be forgiven.
5. The Number One Killer of Marriages? I’ll borrow a direct quote from Drake:
   “The number one killer, as indicated in the lab and in the therapist’s office: contempt. Things that signal you’re disgusted with your partner are all super toxic for a relationship, like hostile humor, name-calling, eye-rolling. But there’s also some hope here, too: if you want a relationship to last, be kind to the person you’re with. In a sense, it’s as simple as that.”

Thanks, Drake!

And there’s another important point to make here, I’m hoping….

What if we could explore some factors for marital success before we get married? What if we could do a bit of analysis ahead of time–analysis that would make a reasonably accurate prediction of the chances for a marriage’s success? And if that rating were below, say, a 70 or 75 out of of 100, “forget about it!”

Here are the 5 great truths

I wish I’d understood

before I got married the first time…

1. Guys, money matters. If you’re not prepared to, on your own, support a wife well already, don’t take a potential fiancee into your arms and promise her anything definitive. I know, I know…these days it seems both partners must work to avoid unacceptably low standards of living. But guys, it’s my personal conviction that — except for in unusual circumstances — you need to be the strongest one in this regard. And if your wife gets pregnant and/or finds she wants to stay at home and be a full-time mother or simply can’t work for any other reason, you both may have to make it on what you earn.  Testimony: I was still in grad school when I first got married. Should have waited two more years by just showing a little self-control.  Caveat: Life throws us all kinds of twists and turns. Sometimes a lady has to support her man for a time, as illustrated well in Jon Bon Jovi’s great song Livin’ On A Prayer. On the other hand, guys, do what it takes when you can. Testimony: At one time in my late 20’s, with a wife and three young kids, I had four jobs: lectured 6 or 7 hours a day in a full-time private high school teaching gig, drove the school bus for another 2 hours a day M-F and for Friday night football team travel, worked as the part-time Youth Minister at my church, and mowed lawns every early evening/Saturdays during the school year and summer breaks.
2. Personality combinations matter. I highly recommend that a couple who are getting serious about marriage study their personality types in the book named The Enneagram Made Easy: Discover the 9 Types of People by Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele. This book changed my life only a decade ago, for real. It helped me really understand myself, first and foremost, then others. And if you find yourself looking at the dark side of your potential mate’s personality type and say: “Hold up! That’s not for me! I won’t tolerate that for a minute!”….then you need to get out of that relationship, as painful as it may feel for a while.
3. Birth order combinations matter. There are lots of good books on the psychology of firstborns, second-borns (like me), third-borns, etc. I won’t recommend any particular author or book here. But just know that you should read up on this.  Testimony: As a second-born, my first marriage was to a firstborn daughter. I never predicted from her behavior before marriage how a sensitivity to authority expression and father-image leadership issues in her personality would be such a strong challenge to me.
4. Love languages matter, big time. Gary Chapman’s bestselling books on the 5 languages of love expression are a must read for all potential marriage partners. Start out with the first one: The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate. If you don’t already understand your potential mate’s love language and feel really good about caring for him or her in the way that communicates love the most powerfully to them, wait until you do. Period. Paragraph. End of story.
5. The biggest predictor of how you’ll act in your marriage has already been determined by how you related with your opposite-gender parent when you were young and growing up. Did you have a warm, close relationship with your mother, your dad? If you didn’t, deal with this issue. Get some counseling help, if at all possible. After all your initial early-marriage romance has worn off, you’ll eventually relate with your mate just like you did your opposite gender parent — apart from transformative changes in your self-understanding and behavior. Testimony: My growing-up relationship with my mother was hurtful and lonely at times. Other times, it was very good. She lived with huge psychological/emotional issues, including sexual abuse, that gave her dramatic suicidal down times and prolonged seasons of depression. I eventually was drawn to, and helped re-create, a somewhat similar scenario in my marriage as I had experienced in my growing-up relationship with my mother…unwittingly, I suppose.

Agree with me on some of this stuff? No? Yes? Let me know!

One thing’s for sure…marriage is worth saving, if at all possible. If it’s not salvageable at all — one partner has become abusive or completely abandoned the other physically and emotionally — starting over under God’s grace is often to be preferred to the misery of lonely isolation and facing life alone.

Loneliness can kill — especially in modern society where togetherness among close friends and family warmth can be hard to come by. If you don’t have the gift and strength to remain unmarried, don’t even try…especially if a good opportunity presents itself and you can use the insights of this blog article!

Today, I write a “soul” blog! It’s for that unseen living essence in all of us that defines who we really are even more than do our bodies. I’m working with the understanding that if we can heal and strengthen our very souls, we can also do better, more financially profitable work on a daily basis and help our physical bodies be healthier!

Note: In the Greek, “soul” is sometimes interchangeable with “spirit” and is most often that which is comprised of our mind, will, and emotions. It can be unseen, or it can be what was represented as departing to heaven or hell in the famously romantic movie Ghost, with Patrick Suazy and Demi Moore.

Fair warning: What I discuss today is considered fantasy-hooey by secularists! If you’re one of them, approach warily.

Okay, here we go…

Even having a college degree and a masters, there’s still a whole heck of a lot of things in life that I still don’t comprehend — especially in areas I haven’t formally studied. For instance, how can all the small muscles in my face, in a certain configuration, convey my exact emotion to someone who knows me well? Think about it…it’s a psychological/physiological mystery.

And there are a ton of scientific creations by the hands of genius men, especially, that I just don’t understand at all. For instance, cell phone towers and satellite signals and stuff like that. How can they make it possible for me to see an electronic portrayal of my friend’s face on my iPhone screen and hear all the nuances of his or her voice in my head (using my earbuds) when they’re 1000 miles away?

It’s beyond me. I’m just not smart enough, or informed enough, to know.

But, thank goodness, there’s one supremely important thing in life I do know that makes all the scientific or psychological knowledge in the world pale by comparison in its value to me.

It’s simply this: The Bible tells me — in the full revelation of all its varied writings – of a God who not only created the whole cosmos by the unfathomable power of His spoken Word but who also came to Earth, personally, in the flesh. He was here for about 33 years as a man named Jesus of Nazareth and suffered for us, crucified on a Roman cross. He did this as the Lamb of God, prophesied in the Old Testament by chosen prophets hundreds of years before it happened, so that you and I could be forgiven and cleansed and accepted and loved…and know God face to face, forever, having been given as a gift a glorious place in His coming eternal kingdom.

You see, according to Scripture, God’s already done all the bloody sacrificing needed. And He’s already raised Jesus from the dead and sent the message out around the world, calling all men to Himself. All He asks is that we acknowledge our sinfulness and believe His great message of love and turn to him with all our hearts, inviting His Spirit to live within us from now on and transform us, slowly, into the mature sons and daughters of God.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will never truly perish but have everlasting (eternal) life.” John 3:16    Lots of folks share a special love of this one verse. You even see it on TV written in big letters on placards in the end zone, being held by someone who obviously loves both God and football!

The two brief paragraphs above are my own summary of the message of all sixty-six books of the Holy Scriptures. I’m sure of their bold claim because my 9 years of formal studies were in Christian theology. And after those days of college and seminary, I’ve studied the Bible through several times on my own. Carefully. With an open heart.

So now…

Not only my whole eternity but my daily life depends on the Bible’s supremely important truth. And if you notice, there’s passion in the revelation. God’s passion, for us, that is. He didn’t just passively let us know he loves us. He did what He did with personal passion! Mel Gibson even made a movie about it called The Passion of The Christ.

Some years ago, thanks to author-speaker John Eldredge and his magnificent book trilogy, Wild At Heart, I better comprehended God’s passion for us. I had decided to become a follower of Christ when I was young, but I am still growing over 50 years later in the wonder of what John’s trilogy discusses so well. I highly recommend all believing or seeking men and women read it. I think I can honestly say that if I had known well what John Eldredge presents so well, I would never have suffered a mid-life psychological crisis so damaging as it was, to me and others.

This leads me to my second firm conviction: that God gives to every one of us for our own earthly journeys what I like to call a leading passion, which is so important to our well-being that if we don’t find and express this particular passion within, we simply can’t be right with ourselves or the world.

In fact, without it, we may give in to despair. Without it, we can feel we have no real meaning or purpose. We’re adrift. We don’t know for sure why we’re even here. The world-weary expressions on the faces of Hollywood characters in movies show clearly enough what it’s like to just be trudging through life without an animating passion. Those reality-based characters take drags on their cigarettes, exchange deadpan dialogue, and express all sorts of cynicism and/or despair. It’s the way of the world.

But as I’ve said, God the Father demonstrated His all-consuming passion for us in His Son Jesus’ well-documented birth, life, death, and resurrection from the dead, which are recorded in the four biographies called the Gospels and were written by ordinary men named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Their eyewitness accounts tell the story of how God literally poured out His heart to us through His Son. Even secular historians like Josephus, and many others, have had to acknowledge the extraordinary mission and passion of Jesus that has changed the world.

As for those of us who are willing to take a good look at God’s passion and see it for what it is, we are forever changed by it. It starts us on the road toward a passionate life well lived. We suddenly are breathing and moving about with an awareness that transforms…well, everything.

But we need to know, also, the leading passion God has given us individually. And we need to humbly seek out how to express that passion in a way that helps, but never harms, others. Caveat: Good character is essential here. Spiritual maturity makes the expression of our passion something very palatable to those around us. In the end, we are called to serve, not overwhelm or manipulate or harm.

What is your leading passion?

More on this soon…

There we were yesterday evening, my 85-year-old father and I dressed quite casually in sweat pants and worn out polo shirts as we investigated the numerous egg options in the chilled clear-glass cases on the back aisle of the beautiful and ultra-spacious new King Soopers near our home.

“I don’t know what kind you want,” Dad said, surveying the hundreds upon hundreds of white egg containers variously labeled. I knew he was just trying to be helpful. This was his way of affirming, I’ve got this, however expensive they are. I know you won’t buy the cheap ones.

That’s right, Dad. Even though after a Total Loss Divorce years ago and still being pretty much broke, I wasn’t even thinking of buying the cheap eggs that come from chickens stacked in cages living in mass population, pooping on each other and feeding on GMO grain. No, I prefer the chickens that can cruise the open fields and eat naturally occurring bugs and worms. I know it’s actually good for us humans that they like tasty stuff like that.

But I hadn’t bought my healthy free-range eggs at King Soopers before, only at Whole Foods or Sprouts.

“Do you see anything that you like?” he added, his question only sounding idle while I surveyed for my favored kind. This was a subtle but intriguing fact-finding mission he was on. He wanted to see just how much the term healthy implied when it came to my breakfast food.

I didn’t respond, just kept searching.

Don’t misunderstand. I love, live with, and work in Marketing for, my elderly father. We get along pretty darn good. And believe it or not, he has an exciting startup company about to get into launch mode, but it’s not big enough yet for me to be on full salary and I have to hustle some freelance copywriting/editing work on the side.

Dad most often compensates for that fact by purchasing most of my groceries for me out of his Social Security check and writing royalties. (He’s a semi-famous retired Accounting Professor and CPA who pioneered the online Business Ethics courses required every two years for all CPA’s in their ongoing education program.)

Anyway. I’d let myself run out of — and been sorely missing — my scrambled eggs at breakfast, always and only the love offerings from free pasture chickens sent to Sprouts, where I normally shop now. The last few mornings, I’d quickly become dissatisfied with only having, along with my  K-Cup Donut Shop Coffee, just two slices of toasted Dave’s Killer Seed Bread topped with Sprouts Organic Virgin Coconut Oil and Earth Balance Coconut & Peanut Spread.

True. That’s pretty tasty fare. But I missed my eggs.

$2.00? I thought, as I looked at the first 12-count option. That’s too cheap to be good. Then I saw some for $3.00. Nope. $4.00? Still too cheap, I knew. I would only be getting cage-free but GMO grain-fed eggs for that price.

(BTW, if you don’t know yet about what GMO means — genetically modified organisms — as pioneered by Monsanto and proliferated by other companies like them — you need to check it out. Makes me shudder to think what they’ve done to our formerly healthy grains and how the perverted versions harm us now, all for the sake of the mighty buck.)

Anyway…Ah! There they were! Regularly $6.00, on sale for $5.00 with my King Sooper card! They were from the happy egg co. , free range on pasture, raised with care on small family farms. It even said so right there on the carton. Yeah, it said all that in big bold print so guys like me could see it right away.

But I could just imagine Dad calculating in his head. $5.00 for 12 eggs? That’s over 40¢ each! The cheapies are only about 16¢! (After the initial writing of this blog, I’ve found the very same eggs at Walmart for less than $5.00. Super-healthy eggs are catching on in a big way, I guess.)

Meanwhile, I thought to myself, Okay. Two eggs at a little over 40¢ each, that’s right at 85¢. Add two slices of toasted Dave’s Killer Bread, another 60¢ or so. Add in some home grown organic sausage or grilled ground hamburger with Taco Seasoning to mix in with the eggs, about another 75¢. And yes, miscellaneous stuff like butter or coconut oil and jelly or honey, another 35¢.

Grand total, counting 50¢ for my coffee? (Or $1.00 if I need 2 cups some mornings.) About $3.50, or less. Try going to any restaurant, or even a fast food place, hoping for a super-satisfying, protein-fortifying healthy breakfast for that small amount of money.

For instance, I love The Village Inn. However. To get anything close to what I’ve described, plus tip? Almost $10. And it still wouldn’t be nearly as healthy for me.

But I suppose the question is: Am I worth even the $3.50 every morning? Is my body worth that much investment versus, say, a cheap bowl of cereal or a highly processed $1.00 frozen breakfast burrito that I can just microwave in the oven? (Or some frozen pancakes, etc. etc.)

Think about this. What if my healthy breakfast gives me 15 extra minutes of prime concentration power between 8:30 A.M. and Noon. Well, since I make about $50-$75/hour with my professional freelance work, 15 extra minutes is worth $12.50 at minimum. And that doesn’t even address the quality of work I do when my body and brain are fed with wholesome nutrition! My work could literally go from mediocre or merely good to brilliant simply because I’m smart enough to invest in myself at breakfast.

To repeat from my initial blog: I want body, soul, and wallet zest. And I want them working together, feeding each other. That’s what this blog site is all about.

$3.50 for breakfast, plus a little cook work to make it all happen?

You bet.

But then again…to moderate my average daily breakfast cost…I could alternate toast & nut butter days with egg & sausage days…

…and perhaps just limit myself to one cup of delicious Donut House coffee per morning from my wonderful Keurig…

… and maybe drink only lemon or strawberry kombucha or awesome bone broth for the whole morning one day a week…doing something of a half-day liquid fast…

Hmmm! I can get that average daily breakfast cost down to $2.00!

Let’s face it, friends, in spite of TV and movies and football and soccer and baseball and golf and fishing and hunting and all our other recreations and diversions…in spite of parties and dances and poker games and family reunions and even church socials…

…it is indeed a lonely and often frightening world we live in.

There’s air pollution and water pollution and cancer and bad car wrecks, broken marriages and life-wrecking divorce and heartbroken children with aching souls…

…there are teenage gangsters and drugs on the streets, corrupt politicians and greedy corporations, nagging sicknesses and cheap grocery store food on the shelves that doesn’t nourish us properly and may just make us ill…

…there are wildfires and floods and earthquakes and tornadoes and hurricanes and lightning strikes and…

And mostly – deep in our hearts – there’s just too much fear, the bad kind, and loneliness. Even if we have some good family and friends, sooner or later we come to grief and isolation in some form or another. Or we experience it insidiously every single day as we go about our business and look “normal” to everyone around us.

So we all secretly long for escape — to a safe paradise where beauty and love and deep soul-comforting intimacy fills us. We long for joy and bliss in a different sort of world that will never end. We want the elation of continual celebration and hugs and kisses and…no tears…

But that escape to a painless love paradise of beauty and togetherness and endless pleasure just doesn’t exist. Not yet, anyway. We’re stuck here in our “cold, cruel world” and we gotta just gut it out. Doesn’t matter whether we live in the big city or a college town or a small town or the country. We just gotta battle through the long slog of our lonely, quietly desperate lives.

Or…do we?

To soothe our anxious, lonely souls we take another drag on our cigarette, pour ourselves another drink, drown our minds in loud music and toke at midnight. We drive too fast and guiltily watch porn and even cheat on our spouses. We eat sugary junk food that might one day kill us. Or we throw in the towel and just suicidally inject.

Or we work like maniacs to get rich but never have enough money to truly satisfy.

It has been well researched and scientifically/psychologically documented. Just under the surface of all our activity and busyness and polite smiles, we are…lonely. And afraid. Even a Tom Hanks movie character said so, in a very serious sort of way.

For a season, especially when we’re young, we might convince ourselves otherwise. Sometimes, temporary fun or favorable circumstances deceive us.

But sooner or later, stark reality overtakes us.

Many years ago, a handsome, middle-aged and well-known minister in Abilene, Texas, preached a last sermon then went outside the auditorium and blew his brains out. His misery quotient had hit overload. No one knew exactly why or what could have helped.

Before that, my own mother had attempted suicide first by sleeping pills then by hanging then by car exhaust. I’ve spent decades since then trying to understand why.

Today, in 2017, in spite of iPhones and iPads and Facebook and Messenger, teen suicides are still numerous and tragic and devastating. And old folks wither away in nursing homes or at home alone, facing sure death by loneliness.

What’s missing with us? Why is so much so wrong — not just in our world but inside us? Why all the pain and self-destructive behavior? Were we really made to live this way?

And for the love of God, is there an answer?

Where, in point of fact, can the love of God be found? Or is that, after all, just a mindless expression with no correlation to our mutual sad reality?

I’m thinking that if the love of the Creator cannot indeed comfort us, way deep inside, ultimately we’re screwed. We are — hats off to you, Henry David Thoreau — doomed to live those lives of quiet desperation he referred to then go feed worms six feet under.

Radical question: Was the Biblical author called the Apostle Paul wonderfully brilliant and highly trained yet tragically misguided? When he wrote to the first century Christians in Rome and Ephesus about the love of God, was he just wistfully imagining things? Was he not inspired with real, lasting truth anymore than is a salamander or a drunk fool?

After all, if you actually can fill a dark and lonely human soul with the light of warm divine love, and that love can endure…then…that changes everything.

For all of us.

This is worth investigating.

This last year, I’ve been pretty faithful each morning during breakfast to scour my health guru emails that arrive in my inbox everyday. A big thank you shout-out to Dr. Axe and The Food Babe and even WebMD! Another big shout-out to Men’s Fitness magazine and Pinterest for their info on exercise and healthy foods.

I won’t go into full details, just hit the highlights…my Top Ten Tips in David Lettermen style, in reverse!

10. Walking a mile or two with my E7 wireless headphones on (or not) — especially taking advantage of a good uphill climb /downhill descent along the way — is a more rigorous mind-and-body-stimulating workout than I sometimes expect it will be. Safe, super-healthy, and invigorating…gotta get my walk in almost every day!

9. Weightlifting remains a true fountain of youth for me:

a. my well-developed muscles burn my unwanted (and perhaps lethal) visceral body fat while I sleep;

b. my increased muscle mass helps stabilize my erratic blood sugar (I’m hyper-insulinistic);

c. developing shapely muscles makes me feel better about my appearance and pumps up my good-feelings endorphins.

Note: the atmosphere/people/equipment at LifeTime Fitness in my hometown are just dad-gum motivational! It’s worth the $75/month for a single, $125/couple.

8. Learning to swim when I was 6 is paying off  better these days, now that I’m wearing eye goggles for my indoor swim laps and letting my hips alternate (“rotate”) in their rise and fall in the water with each stroke I make.  I’m therefore moving through the water much better and staying aligned in my lane, which leads to enjoying my swimming more and gaining more aerobic fitness. (I need all the help I can get; right now, though I’m only 6’2″ tall, I weigh 285 pounds!)

7. Making homemade kombucha with a continuous brewer has proven an easier way for me to get a great probiotics drink I love than when I used individual gallon jars and always had to handle my SCOBY’s. My favorite flavor so far is created with small frozen strawberries and I love to drink my kombucha ice cold!

6. Making homemade goat milk kefir was a helpful way to get a powerful probiotic punch. But the dairy eventually clogged me up and gave me sinus drainage. Revert to drinking only kombucha for probiotics.

5. Drinking 2-3 glasses of cool or cold filtered water slowly, well before starting to consume a cup or two of hot black coffee in the morning with my breakfast, is just a smart thing to do. Drinking another 3-4 glasses of cool or cold filtered water during the rest of the day keeps me better hydrated. It also helps me eat less solid food loaded with unneeded calories. I’ve joined the FPC, the Frequent Pee-er Club. It’s all good.

4. Meditation on scriptural truth — reciting key phrases in slow repetition several times each — is a great way to start the day (usually after breakfast) and ease stress for the rest of my day, even when I’m going to be my busiest. Especially when I prayerfully bring to mind the love of God for me personally as I meditate (a love received completely apart from what I do for financial productivity or service to others later on), I find peace in whatever hassles or setbacks I need to deal with during the day.

3. Eating kimchi or cold fermented sauerkraut provides powerful probiotics and it doesn’t take but a few forkfuls to meet my daily need. Yeah, it makes me pucker my face…but I just remind myself of “the power of sour.” Does good stuff for your innards.

2. A Bi-PAP (Bi-Level Positive Airway Pressure) machine has done for me what a CPAP  (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) couldn’t. A Bi-Pap lets me exhale at a lower pressure level (level 13) than when I breathe in (level 17), while a CPAP keeps forcing air up my nose at the same high pressure level, making it hard to exhale. I sleep like a baby with a Bi-Pap. And better sleep means much better mental and physical health for me, period. They even say it’s hard to lose weight, maybe impossible, if you’re not sleeping well.

1. Golf is a much more physically demanding sport than I realized when I was young. It’s not just a good, but a very good, workout to walk those 2-3 miles for 9 holes or 4-5 miles for 18 holes. Even if I ride a cart (weak right ankle) I still get lots of walking done, uphill and downhill, because my cart can’t take me everywhere I need to go. And the game undoubtedly refreshes my heart and mind…the beautiful greens and fairways, the awesome physics/aesthetics of the game, the quiet out in nature….they all heal me and leave me feeling peaceful. Just so long as I don’t fret or freak over my score!

Final note: It only makes sense that if I follow these tips and enjoy better health, I’ll work better. If I work better, I’ll produce more dollar-worthy stuff. If I produce more dollar-worthy stuff, I’ll steadily feel better about my financial position in life and I’ll be better able to share with others in need from time to time.

Voila! A physical-financial-spiritual win for me AND others.