Personal Development

Funny thing about ruts: You don’t always recognize you’ve fallen into one until you’ve come out the other side. We’re creatures of habit, after all. And that’s not entirely a bad thing.

Among the many industries due for an evolution, I’d say the fitness industry ranks high. It seems like so much of it has remained trapped in the ’80s - the hype, the noise, the focus on the surface of things.

My nephew, Toliver, turns 12 this month, and like many kids his age, he names pizza, burgers, macaroni and cheese, chips, fries, and similar fare among his best-liked foods.

Some of the most powerful messages we see and hear about fitness today (the ones that reach us through mass media) would seem to suggest that fitness is the domain of the young, the super-buff and, above all, the single.

The call to start working on my letter for this “Feel Great at Any Age” issue came at the perfect moment: It just happened to be my 45th birthday. Fact is, if you had asked me when I was 20 what 45 was going to look and feel like, I’m not sure I’d have been able to tell you.

Late spring is my favorite time of year. There’s something inspiring about seeing so many living things crank into the high gears of their growth cycles.

One summer, when I was about 8 years old, a lovely young woman named Jennifer came to spend a month or so on the farm where I grew up. Jennifer, who must have been the friend of a family friend, was a mysterious creature.

In business, there’s a concept known as the “Peter Principle” that describes how individuals within an organization tend to be promoted through the ranks until they rise to their level of incompetence.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when I was less healthy than I am today. And I hope, looking back five years from now, that I can say the same thing.

We tend to think of cause and effect as a simple, two-part thing: A particular action results in a particular reaction, period. And perhaps in some controlled experiments, that’s true. But in life, most reactions are complex and cyclical chain reactions, because in life, most everything is connected.

Call me radical, but given the ragged state of health and fitness in our country, I think it’s about time we started seeking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what really makes for a healthy way of life. It’s also high time we all started saying “no thanks” to the hype.

We’ve known for a long time that spending too much time and energy at work can cost us. We’ve all seen hardworking friends disappear off the social radar while in hot pursuit of career success, and many of us have risked becoming strangers to our own families as the result of work demands that made no space for weekends and evenings at home.

Health is all the rage in business these days. Which is to say that many companies are actively promoting healthier employee lifestyles. Or at least they’re trying.

Accepting critical feedback from others can be tough. But smart people know how to respond to criticism with grace -- and how to use it to their professional advantage.

There’s a biology term - “circular mill” - that describes how a group of army ants, if separated from their colony, can wind up marching in an enormous circle, each ant perpetually following the ant in front of it.

The success of your fitness goals depends, in large part, on the soundness of your fitness strategy. You do have a fitness plan, don't you? Here's how to get one, fast — or how to make your current plan even better.

Gearing up to write another mega-list of ways to make yourself better? Don't! Instead, chart your course toward real goal mastery.

Imagine if everything went the way you wanted: your workouts, your relationships, your grandest career ambitions. Visioning can bring your life goals into clearer focus – and help you make them a reality.