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In the modern era, there is this pressing need to consume things quickly. As technology continues to progress, our society promotes for things to go through our system faster than ever before. Along with this cultural shift, we have lost our connection with cooking, which is the fundamental thing that sustains our life. Instead of cooking for ourselves, we let someone else cook for us, and we end up buying into the system.

This culture of mass production, promotes instantaneous consumables that aren’t digestible. We don’t consider where this food comes from, so there is no relationship with what goes inside our bodies. We go as far as to think of cooking as a waste of time, but cooking is not some kind of deviation from what you are supposed to be doing. When you cook, you are doing something that is life giving. And that’s what we’ve lost. Without taking the time to ponder what makes us who we are, we lose our sense of what makes us significant. Our ability to make food for ourselves is vital to support our well-being.

I’ve explored this idea of bread. Prior to the birth of processed bread manufactured in factories, you had dough that would get left out, so wild yeast and bacteria from the air would get trapped for fermentation. That’s how bread would rise organically. This method allows the bacteria and yeast to break down gluten and release nutrients. The result of this is home-made bread (shown in the picture), from a sourdough starter.

Marketing campaigns for whole wheat, whole grain and gluten-free shaped people to think of it as “healthy,� when it turns out this type of bread is difficult to digest. The nutritional release never occurs in the modern bread making process, so nothing gets broken down for us to digest it. Rather than fermenting (which is a slow process taking 1�2 days), normal bread now takes 1�2 hours to rise. This is immediate compared to how it’s supposed to be done. And so, what you end up with, is something that looks like bread, tastes like bread, but is not really bread.

It’s time we turn our attention to making something from scratch and cook for ourselves. Starting with bread, putting my personal touch on food has given meaning to not only feeding myself, but to share it with others as well. Getting to know your food provides all the more value for your vitality. Let’s get back to eating real food again.

A culture of mass production promotes instantaneous consumables that we are not able to digest properly. We don’t think of where this food�

Whenever exercise is mentioned, part of it has to do with avoiding discomfort. This is the association people make during the beginning�

Striking first means making the first move, not to attack, but to be vulnerable.

How do you feel about the person next to you, when they doze off during the ride back home? As you look to the side and enjoy the familiar�

When you sit back and relax to watch a sporting event or any type of performance, you end up looking into the lives of other people. The underlying factor here, is a certain feeling you want to get from the experience. Whether it is a professional athlete or anyone devoted to a singular focus, their life in essence is a great sacrifice. David Foster Wallace described this human condition between the viewer and the performer as:

“They give themselves over to a pursuit to endure great privation and enjoy a relationship to perfection that we admire, even though we have no desire to walk that road ourselves.�

In sports, it is common to default into thinking athletes get paid to play games. On the outside looking in, all that the viewer can see is the performance of the players. So while it is true that people are paid based on the type of value they produce, inside the minds of individuals who are exceptional in their craft — they know a secret. Athletes do not get paid based on the games they play. Athletes get paid for their practice. In other words, they are not that different from most people. Such professionals are rewarded for their work, dedication and time.

Beyond performance, the life of a professional in any field revolves around decision-making. The key principle to a person’s execution comes from what they are best at. Knowing your strength and developing it, is the driving factor to produce results.

A person can perform only from strength.
One cannot build performance on weakness,
let alone on something one cannot do at all.
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There are four main elements to strengthen every day. Mark Verstegen championed this formula with the simplicity of the four pillars:

Prepare for IT.
Fuel for IT.
Train for IT.
Rest for IT.

Your IT is the mission statement that guides every step of action over the course of each day. This gives you the context for everything you do or choose not to do. Your performance for IT is revealed in your mindset, nutrition, movement and recovery. When you make the commitment to turn pro, you realize one thing: every day is game day.

Everything requires time and without it, nothing gets done. All of us have the same amount of hours to use in a single day, and in the long run, time is the great equalizer. So what can you do with what you have? Do all that you can with what is given to you. And, if you are asking what it is, understand that time is all we have.

A person’s life turns out to be the accumulation of all the choices made each day, so make time for what you value. Put your strength in practice now. Strength is found only in the present.

If there is something you want to do to create a certain type of change, make today the day.

It’s Time.

When you sit back and relax to watch a sporting event or any type of performance, what happens is you take a look into the lives of other�

What is it that makes a human body healthy? There are many ways to answer this. We need sunlight, water, oxygen, food, exercise, sleep, but where does all of this go? Everything we take in, goes into our flesh. Health is a word that has no real definition. When you ask a person in athletics, being healthy means being injury-free. It is an elusive term that varies depending on who defines it. I cannot tell you what health is. I can only say that health is vital to living an optimal life. Health is what you need to live.

Originally, Moses wrote something profound during his time on Earth, the life of the flesh is in the blood. If our life can be traced in our blood, we can define health by examining the state of one’s blood. The answer to what makes a person healthy can be found in their blood.

EXERCISE & REST

Any exercise is a skill that requires practice. True exercise is blood flow — the flow that allows your life to move through your body. Circulation is what connects your head to your feet, it is the real movement in your body and the course of your life.

What is a practice? To follow a regimen with the intention of elevating the mind and the spirit to a higher level. A practice is engagement in a ritual. It can be defined as the dedicated, daily exercise of commitment, will and focused intention. A practice has a space and that space is sacred.
 — Steven Pressfield

You have to be healthy in order for anything in your body to function. When we look at other people, the first thing we see is their bodies. From the outside, what we see is a layer, the outward manifestation of how they take care of themselves.

Sleep is not an in-between phase of life. In terms of energy, the more you rest, the more energy you gain to use during exercise. About one-third of the 24 hours you have in a day, is time in sleep mode. Resting is an essential aspect of living and it is something that you must be good at! The balancing act, involves understanding the extremes. If you rest too much, nothing gets done and if you do too much, nothing gets rest. Exercise can be a remedy — but too much of it without rest is asking for pain.

WORKING IN vs. WORKING OUT

The most overused words tend to be something so vague, no one really knows what they mean. One of those words used today is “workout.� This term, working out, does not exist in any other language. And when you think of it, a workout involves sweating, grunting, draining yourself and the point is not to get any stronger or healthier, but to burn out. As the term functional increased in popularity, so did the people doing the most dysfunctional movements. Working out can a be destructive means that is mistaken for hard work.

In today’s era of fitness, the misconception is that going to the gym is the way to become stronger, faster, and dare I say, healthier. Exerting strenuous action to achieve soreness the next day is not the point. Lifting weights does not automatically result in gaining practical strength. Strength is in the central nervous system, the area of your body where you can access a reservoir of power. It’s an inner strength you can unlock at any given moment. This is working in, rather than working out.

Exercise is meant to be enjoyed. That is the advantage healthy people have in any activity—to be happy doing it. Becoming healthier requires a shift in both what you do and the way you do anything. What you think may change what you do, but what is also true is, what you do will change what you think. For optimal health, the focus is to work in. Working in has a direct effect on the mind-body connection. It can be a spiritual practice, a holistic connected body through the circulation of your blood.

GOALS

What is a worthy goal?

This question involves more than asking what is important. It is about having a plan, following through and doing something you can control. A worthy goal for me is in the pursuit of living a healthy life. This is what it means to take care of myself.

There is a tremendous demand for this thing called fitness, and yet only a few end up making it a part of their lives. The great myth about goals is that they require us to trade quality of life now for quality of life later. — David Cain

The goals that turn out to be a reality in the future, only work because they make life better today.

LIFESTYLE

As people age, they tend to re-define what it means to be healthy to fit their lifestyle. I find we are more inclined to do things that costs us money, rather than doing things for free. Simple steps such as taking a walk, breathing in fresh air, appreciating moments that may never happen again. It’s having a heart of gratitude that opens up a world of abundance for you to see how much of a miracle life is. Instead, most people decide to take on diets, buy a gym membership, go to clinics or workshops for other people to tell them how to live.

Your life is in your blood. It is a peace of mind, body, soul and spirit. The blood is life flowing throughout your body and is the river that cleanses everything in you. This is your optimal state.

We must realize we live in this body for a greater cause. There is a path to align our life with and it is staying true to who you are. At the end of the day, how long does a feeling last? Compare that moment to one week, one month, one year. It’s not much. People may think living to 90 years, or even 100 years, is a long life. What is that compared to infinity? Not much.

Whether it’s 1 year or 100 years, it’s your time, it’s your life.

Live it well.

Where do you live? Being asked this question whenever I travel locally or internationally, I thought about it in a deeper sense. In the�

Originality � Taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain, but ultimately make things better.