In a recent post about weight loss and emotions , I referenced a piece of information about the Rider and the Elephant that I gleaned from this book. The ironic part is that when I got to think about it, I realized I never finished the book! I'm a slow reader, so the library needed the book back before I could finish it. (And, side thought, with the Nintendo Switch releasing this coming Friday, is there not a more appropriate time to review this book??) The Rider and Elephant metaphor is introduced early on in the book, so I wanted to take a dive back into Switch. Why? The full title of the book is Switch: How to Change When Change Is Hard , and I was interested in seeing other principles of change the Heath brothers had to offer as potential fodder for future posts. So, now that I've made my way through the full book, did I garner a lot of new information, or was the Rider / Elephant metaphor the only good thing in here? Let's get into it.

A little while back, I wrote a post on weight loss on emotions where I shared that the most important thing when beginning a weight loss journey is managing your emotions. If you haven't read that post, please do as this post will largely build upon that and make much more sense. Diet is a huge deal when losing weight. People might think it's all about exercising, and while exercise is certainly a factor, I would say it has more like a 25% importance. That means that diet holds like a 75% importance. You can workout all day, but if you don't change your diet, I highly, highly doubt you will see much progress at all. Oh, and get rid of the idea of temporary diets. There's a reason I choose the words "dieting lifestyle change." If you truly want to shed the weight and keep it off, there's no going back. You're going to have to make conscious effort to constantly keep a healthy diet. Is it hard? Yes, but I think you'll find it's not too bad o...

Hey there folks. You know that I manage another blog, Engedi Artistry, and when I conceived this post, I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted it here or on that blog. I ended up putting it over there, but I still think it's a great post for the Adulting 101 series. Instead of duplicating the post over here, I'm doing something kind of lazy and just linking this post to that one. I know, I know, this is uncharacteristic of me, but I need a break! Hope you all have a great weekend. LINK: What's in My Work Backpack

"I can't wait to retire someday." That phrase has never sat well with me. Now, I'm not a numbers guy, but I think in this case, numbers make a big impact. The life expectancy of the average person is 80 years old. If we assume that the average person enters the full time workforce at age 22 (when people typically exit undergrad) and retires at age 62 (according to an online source), then that's precisely 40 years of full time work. Roughly half a person's life.

Last week, I challenged you all to meet with at least one new person a week to build your personal network. As somebody who attempts to practice what they preach, I have been undergoing this challenge myself, and I have setup several meetings within my place of work to learn more about the company as well as glean information for the team I'm working with. So far, it's gone pretty well. People have been very gracious and generous with their time and have been more than willing to meet with me. Everything was chugging along great until I got an undesired response... I was being deflected onto somebody else.

On the February 20, 2017 episode of The Adam Carolla Show , host Adam Carolla sat down with Scott Keneally to discuss his new documentary,  Rise of the Sufferfests , and one of the primary focuses of the documentary is the analysis of tough mudder competitions. I only recently heard about these things from a friend, so for those of you not aware, a tough mudder competition is a sort of obstacle course where people subject themselves to a long, arduous sort of trek through mud. Definitely doesn't sound like they're for the light of heart.

Think about all the things you pray for and all the ways in which you've been told to pray. Of course, there's the Lord's Prayer. There's also the ACTS acronym of Adoration-Confession-Thanksgiving-Supplication. And for you early 2000s church folk, how could we ever forget the prayer of Jabez?? Oh yeah, those nostalgia juices are flowing now! There's nothing inherently wrong with any of these prayers. In fact, I use the free Echo app to remind me every two hours to pray using the ACTS acronym. But as good as those prayer models are, there is something rarely called out. Something mentioned in the Bible over and over, yet we hardly ever make an explicit note of it.