This is crazy…..you can be a lead guitarist here >

I just blew 30-45m here – wow! If you’ve ever want to be a great rock guitar soloist you have got to check this site out. A very cool piece of work – great site! Very, very addictive – you have been warned….

Rock on,

Tarry G

Only a fool would live on the North Shore

The North Shore is one of the greatest places to live in the World! – Shhhhhh – we don’t want everybody knowing it! Let’s keep it to ourselves. So here are some great lines when people ask you where you live:

– “The Lions Gate Bridge is always a nightmare….”
– “How would you like to live in a community the highway runs through…”
– “It’s so much more convenient to live in Vancouver than here…..”
– “Have you seen our tax rates!…..”
– “Having to connect to the mainland via bridges makes you feel like an outsider…..”
– “The best restaurants are across the bridge…..”
– “Yes we have the mountains but there’s really nothing cultural to do here…..”

Don’t forget to look sad and apologetic when using these lines. You get the idea and I’m sure you can think of your own lines, but feel free to start with these.

Peace,
Tarry G

Rule #3

No food consumption three hours prior to bed time – in a perfect world I’m eating well combined meals that should be digested in 3-4 hours, so that when I’m sleeping  – all of me is actually getting rest.  If you go to bed with undigested food your body "works" digesting food when it actually should be getting a good nights sleep.  Depending on what you ate that is still undigested, you may find yourself affected mentally too. 

Ever gone to sleep just after eating a bunch of pepperoni pizza – nightmares, indigestion and you wake up feeling like you never slept.  That’s you’re body working all night instead of resting.  Don’t do it.  It’s my new rule.

BTW in case you’re wondering how I know this – I read it in a book, I’ve experienced it, and it makes sense.  Yeah I know my "fact credibility" ratings just dropped – its okay, it was too high anyway.

Tarry G
(calculating what time 3 hours after this little snack will be……)

Encouraged……

So…. a friend of mine was asking me earlier today about my next rule – my response was along the line of "I’m not sure how to articulate my failure and yet keep adding more rules".  I guess that had a "I’m failing at this and ready to quit already" tone to it (which was not too far off the mark). 

His response was as follows:

• (warning explicit language) "You can never expect any success if you allow your failures to be compound versus simple.  So, it hasn’t been exactly as you had anticipated, big f**king deal. Get back on the horse, get up at 6, drink your water, and make up your next rule.  You stuck your head up on this one as I presume you wanted some accountability – so here it is – DO IT!."

I’m an encourager, this is the primary work that I do every day.  I do it all the time and yet I forget how powerful words can be – even in a email.  Thank you, (you know who you are).  I’m back and with vigor. 

Rule 3 coming up…..

Rule #2

Drink a minimum of 8 glasses of water per day – given the time of year, the newness of this program,and my general health I decided to go with the (seemingly) easiest of the current rule options. 
I will have more to say about this later today/tomorrow – but as its already Dec 2, I thought I would quickly post this now.

Peace,
Tarry G
a Camel

State of the Union

Its been a while since I’ve updated this blog – which probably means almost no one is reading this – that’s okay, perhaps its even better, it kind of makes this more of a public/private journal of my experience.  I’m cool with that.

So – you ask, hows it going waking up at 6am everyday.  Well let me tell you, its been an eventful month.  Up until I got quite sick four days ago I was probably averaging 80-90% success at getting up by 6am.  It was tough, because I wouldn’t go to sleep at the "right" time in order for this to happen.  Many nights I would only get 4-5 hours sleep.  Sometimes for good reason, but mostly for bad.

In the end I’m laying here at home as I have been for the since last Tuesday sick with acute bronchitis, maybe even pneumonia, and one of the reasons I’m here is that I believe my body was very tired in general and so was not working as best as it could and become susceptible to sickness. 

My doctor prescribed some heavy antibiotics and I’m prayerfully on my way to healing.  So no 6am for me.  I wake up when I wake up – oddly enough its often very earlier than 6am, but even if it wasn’t my plan is to let my body rest at home until I’m well enough to go back to work.

The other new thing that has happened in the last two weeks is that I have gone to see a Naturopath.  This was a very interesting experience.  I’m not convinced that this is the way to go from a health perspective, nor am I convinced from a spiritual perspective, but I thought I would give it a shot.

So – the next step for me is to determine what the next rule should be.  We are almost at the end of the month.

I’m thinking:

• 30 minute brisk walk everyday, rain or shine.
• 8 Glasses of fresh clean water everyday
• Wash the Car and clear the Desk once a week

I’m open to hearing other ideas…..

Peace Love Dove,
Tarry G

Confession

…….is good for the soul – actually it is essential for the soul.

I slept in today (Sunday Nov 6).  Not by a little, by a lot!, I woke up at 8:20 am!

I was disappointed, but I’ve confessed, dusted myself off, God still loves me, and tomorrow is another day!

I’ve thought about whether getting up at 6 am every day is a good idea, and I’ve come to the conclusion that "daily" is the way to go for me, I don’t feel constrained by it.

I believe that in addition to building discipline into my life, that I’m also building capacity for the future.  For example, sometime in the next few months I will incorporate a rule that requires me to walk for a certain quantity of time each day.  The "get up at 6 am everyday" rule will be one of the rules that will help to make the daily walk more likely to occur.

Peace,
Tarry G

Rules for rules…

So what are my "rules for rules"?  The list continues to evolve (and I would love some help with it) but here it is for now:

1. Simple – not necessarily easy.  It needs to be something that is easy to articulate, that needs little or no explanation.  For example:  "Eat one fruit every day" – that would be a very good rule (particularly for a what I’m trying to accomplish!)  Easy to articulate, easy to understand.
2. Measurable – A rule needs to be measurable, so that I can easily determine whether I’m actually doing it or not.  We are accountable for performing an activity not for the results of the activity. (now before you start commenting on the fact that we "are" in fact accountable for our "results", please think through what I’m saying here). For example, we don’t actually perform the "act" of losing weight what we do is do a bunch of activities that historically when done consistently result in weight loss.  Of course it is essential that any of the rules that we create is carefully thought through….(see next point)

 

3. Strategic – What are you trying to accomplish in this particular run of "twelverules"?(ha!, I’m already writing/talking as if "twelverules" is a thing people do – like it has its own personality..:)  Are you moving towards physical fitness, changing the way you do business, building your spiritual life?  Whatever the goal is will naturally determine what rules you think you will need to happen in order for you to accomplish the goal.  For the most part you may already know what the rules should be – but it will no doubt involve some research, discussion with friends and some deep thinking.  I’m hoping that at some point we can have a forum right here and come up with big lists of good potential "rules" people can use.

 

4. Customized (for you) – You know yourself better than anyone else so BE REALISTIC!   This is where I have my biggest issues.  A mentor of mine (Don Lawrie) used to say Think Big, Start small, Go Deep.  If you are like me – thinking big is easy – starting small is very difficult if not almost impossible.  So be realistic when you are making your rules.  When I first thought about rule #1  (for me) Waking up at 6am everyday – I had actually thought it would be even better to get up at 5am or even 4:30am (yes, I am a little OCD….lol), but after processing it for a few minutes with a friend and thinking about it – 6am was the "right" hour.  Of course life situations will change and so will your capacity so be free – but above all BE REALISTIC!

I would love some input on this – I’m learning and making this up as I go.  If you have a suggestion for a good "rule for rules", or have some ideas for rules – please feel free to comment.

Peace,
Tarry G

PS Oh yes – state of the union for me – Yes – I woke up at 6am for each of the last two mornings!  Actually 6:09am the first day because I wasn’t used to hearing the sound of the alarm, and 6am this morning although it was very easy this morning to sit and stare-sleep in a stupor.  (ha!, try repeating that 7 times in a row quickly – stare-sleep in a stupor….stare-sleep in a stupor….stare-sle……….

Rule No. 1 – here we go!

Rule number 1.

Starting November 1, 2005 I will wake up at 6am on a daily basis.

So what’s that all about – what does getting up each morning at 6am have to do with losing weight and being fit?

Well first of all getting up early in the morning is good for me.  It gets my day started early.  It gives me quiet uninterrupted time to read the bible, pray and journal.  It gives me a head start on everything that needs to get done during the day.  It eliminates all the bad things that occur when I stay up late, such as: eating a second late dinner, snacking on junk food (often in order to stay awake to read or watch TV).

Something really good happens when I start my day early – I "feel" better, I make better decisions, I think more clearly and with less pressure.  This in turn (somehow by default, and I can’t really explain this) causes me to make better decisions about what I’m eating throughout the day – and ultimately will lead to the path of fitness.

BTW, originally I had planned to make the first rule about going to bed by a certain time instead of waking up at a specific time, until I came across this blog entry by Steve Pavlina (he has written many personal development articles that I have found to be very inspiring, and although I do not always agree with Steve, this particular post was fantastic in the area of sleep).  This caused me to re-think the idea of going to bed at a specific time and instead made me make the rule to wake up at a certain time.  Take a moment and read the post on Steve’s blog, its well worth your time.

So what I am committing to is waking up at 6am everyday.  If I eat a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts every night, have onion rings for lunch, and french fries for breakfast – it doesn’t matter as long as I’m up and functional by 6am every day.  Of course as I do this I believe that my eating habits will change (Not that I’m eating anything like I just described!)

Well I better start looking at what I need to do before I go to bed……6am is not that long away.

Peace,
Tarry G

How does twelverules work?

Great question.  It simple, slow, discipline building.  There is no rocket science here – in fact nothing really new either, except as with all great ideas (oh no – I’ve just started and I’m already calling it a "great idea"…..LOL – did I tell you I was an optimist too) simple continual follow-through is the key.  Anyway what will hopefully make this great is that the rules are user defined (with some guidance/ideas) gentle and progressive.

The idea is that discipline begets discipline and if you start building the discipline muscle it will gradually get stronger and stronger.

I believe that if you make 12 simple rules (loosely oriented around fitness), one a month, cumulatively for a year that you will actually so transform your body that people will have difficulty recognizing you.  How can I claim that, do I have any proof or evidence? – no, but I’m (and whoever wants to join me) going to be the guinea pig/poster boy by doing it myself – publicly, right here on this blog.  I will post pictures – you will have to click to see them, because hey, I’m shy.  I will also post my experience and other things about this journey in real time.

Peace,
Tarry G