What is this week’s episode all about? Well it couldn’t be about anything else but Kidshaper. Last Wednesday to Friday we all headed down to Melbourne for the world famous Kidshaper Conference run by Rob Bradbury and his team. Now I could cover play by play of how amazing the conference was and what was spoken by the speakers and how it impacted our lives; but instead over the next few weeks I thought I would bring you a collection of short stories that I got to witness. The episode is called

‘Kidshaper’s Shorts Part One’

Hello you awesome person that found me.

How is it totally my fault?

Last year Rob asked Dave to do the new segments on stage and to make them funny. Seeing the concept of making something funny can be potentially embarrassing, Dave chose his usual entourage of Nath and I to make fools of ourselves alongside him. Last year we continually topped each performance with something more crazy but this year was a challenge. How do you top doing the news with flanelgraph?

We only had three sessions. Dave and Nath started strongly on the Thursday night with a chili-eating contest whilst reading the news whilst keeping a straight face. We were on again the next morning but none of us checked what time or thought about what we were doing. I continued the train of non-thought the next morning until I realised that we had to get all of us dressed (including my nine month old little princess), and out the door ASAP to try and make it there before the rally started. I arrived 10 mins after the rally started and I would of made it, but instead of us being on 20 mins after the rally started like the night before, that morning we were on 4 mins after.

Both Dave and Nath reported to me that they had bombed and I was to blame. If I was there on time I could of had an idea of what to do and it would of been great but instead they didn’t have anything and bombed. It was totally my fault yet I still don’t know why.

I did make up for it later on by coming up with an idea for them to do the announcements whilst people ran at them to tackle them off stage.

Embarrassing = ……

I had the wonderful chance to meet an Internet friend turned real friend Michael Chanley. What a guy he is. He poured out his heart and invested into the conference through his fantastic teachings, and then he found time to simply hang out with us. One of those times we were playing Billionaire which is one of the all-time greatest card games as it involves fully grown adults yelling at each other ‘TWO TWO, I HAVE GOT TWO… OK ONE’.

I thought I would spice it up by adding a rule as you were dealing you would tell us an embarrassing story. I thought with upstanding citizens like Michael, Andy, Dave, Nick & Cadu the stories would be quite contained. Maybe they would be like ‘Once I was dining at a silver service function and I used my cheese knife as my butter knife, it was most embarrassing’. I forgot that I was dealing with children’s pastors. I don’t know who started the trend but the words ‘ I accidental relieved myself in my pants’ or something to that description were told, and then it was on for young and old. All of us (including me) were reliving stories about our childhood and certain accidents. It turns out embarrassing = ………… poo!

Sometime early starts are not early enough

I try to be scared of nothing. I have a unbreakable belief that I am living to 120 years old so when it comes to scary rides they lose some of their effect. Whilst the person next to me is screaming ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die’ I gently say ‘You will not on die on this ride. I am on it’. If they look at me disappointed I say ‘Don’t worry it will happen one day’.

There is one thing though that does scare me. Missing a flight. I have not missed a flight in over 7 years but I have had some close calls. We got to the airport nice and early and by the time we checked in, changed the baby and bought a drink, it was the final boarding call.

Why is it a final call when they do it 7 more times?

Even though we were early we could of been earlier. Unfortunately for our friends Kieran and Matt, their early morning start wasn’t early enough and they missed their flight. After hearing that, on the flight back we arrived 2 hours before our flight time.

More shorts next week. Until then make sure you…

Have Fun.

Dan

Steve is what we call a super friendly guy and at the end of the month when he sits down to send out the bill he knocks on the door of the board of directors and begs for them to absorb the operation cost for that month. Month after month they all say yes. We hired a new director who got wind of this and he went immediately to see Steve to fire him, though after conversations with Steve decided it was best to fire himself and let Steve be. Steve is a really nice guy… or may be a Jedi.

This week I am at the only place to be, the Kidshaper conference in Melbourne Australia. This is a very strange year for me as I have been asked to contribute to the conference by performing and teaching an elective. My performance was tonight and it went well. If you were there feel free to comment stating how good it was etc. Tomorrow I am speaking at my elective and I am very excited about it. This is a new realm for me and I am loking forward to seeing what I can do within 40 minutes.

This year I was also asked to write a piece for the Kidshaper book on Making Kids Laugh along with a bio. Seeing as it is incredibly late and I have been running non-stop for 2 weeks with work; I have decided for this episode to share with you my bio that I wrote -

Funny Man Dan’s Bio

Funny Man Dan (or FMD to the older kids) is no stranger to hearing laughter.
Not because of his haircut (though it could do with some work) but because he
has made thousand of children laugh all around the world. He is a volunteer
on the Hillsong Kids team and is one of the writers and performers for the
BIG curriculum and other projects. He is known as the luckiest guy in
the world and if you met his Princess wife and his Little Princess daughter
you would agree. He is also a writer for www.thethursdayblog.com but that is
just a shameless plug.

I am sure that was a treat. Until next time there is nothing more for me to do besides signing off by saying…

Have Fun

Dan

This week’s episode has been quite difficult to write for a few reasons. One, a lot is going on and my topic has changed 6 times whilst trying to write this; and two, I am on a business trip with no access to the internet. I have quickly paid to get on it in my hotel so I don’t have much time. You must know how much I value you as a reader, this cost me $10 to post.

There are many different people out in this world that do many different things. Every now and then though by the medium of chance, I become a temporary part of other people’s worlds. In my short time in this world I have seen many things, experienced a new life, witnessed the way things work and come out with one conclusion….

“You are amazing – Construction Workers”

You honestly are cool because you found the secret message.

As you should all be aware I have a new role in the bank I work in. Yes I am a part-time international children’s comedian, but I also find time to work in a bank. The easiest way to sum up my new role is this phrase – “I open banks”. That does not mean I rock up to one of the many banks we have around the country to make sure it opens at 9am, nor does it mean I have some sort of locksmith-type job. I open new banks, banks that previously were not there but after I am done with them, they are there. Obviously this whole paragraph is not on my official title.

We faced a unique situation with this latest bank we are trying to open. Usually we go to a shopping centre that has a vacant shop and we do a lot of work and we open up. This time we have gone to a shopping centre that is in the middle of a huge expansion and we are one of the many new stores going in. This means for this week and the next I need to hang up the business shirt and trade it in for a high visibility vest, hard hat, safely goggles and steel capped boots (that only desire to try and give you blisters). I was going on a construction site and I needed to get ready.

The first thing I needed to obtain to get anywhere near a construction site, was to complete a nationally recognised safety course called a white card. It used to be called a green card but they changed it recently for unknown reasons. My guess was because of the influx of foreign citizens who jumped at the chance to do a one day course to be able to stay in America only to be brutally disappointed that this green card could do no such thing.

The course was long but still very interesting. I loved hearing our teacher tell a story about every topic. This man had been in the industry for 40 years and both his sons now work with him. After completing the course with a 100% on my test I received my white card and I was one step closer to a construction site.

Before I could get onto the site I needed to be inducted onto it. This is the safety and rules briefing that the site managers must give before access is granted. Even if you have been in the game for 49 years you still need an induction for every site. The person giving the talk spoke loud, spoke with colourful language and spoke passionately. Unfortunately the construction industry has recently reported the most number of deaths than any other industry in this country. This man up the front was passionately yelling for people to follow the rules and keep themselves and others safe. He had personally been with a number of people as they had died on the job and he desperately wanted history to stop repeating itself.

Now I have my white card and I am inducted, I needed to get a really important job done. I needed to receive delivery of 5 large pallets to my new bank. This involved one easy stage of unloading at the loading dock and one difficult stage of getting them an extra 800 metres to my shop; up ramps, around corners and dodging all the obstacles of tools, equipment, machines and parts of shops that were everywhere. To do that was a man with his forklift and I got to witness an amazing feet as he tackled the entire course whilst in reverse.

In a week I will hang up my hard hat, put away these goggles and burn these stupid blister-loving shoes, but I can’t help but be affected by the experience. To spend some time with someone so experienced that has passed on his knowledge to his sons and to all that do the course; to some one whose passion for safety in the industry to prevent history repeating; to someone so skilled that he can literally move mountains no matter what the obstacle – I learnt one thing. If you are a construction work, a builder or a tradesperson you need to know that you my friend are amazing.

Have Fun.

Dan

Help – noun – to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need.

The Thursday Blog – noun – to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a transformation from everyday life to the epitome of awesomeness.

Combine these two together and you have an near-perfect guide that can provide help in all situations, unless you are in need of physical help (i.e.) stranded at sea and trying to use your laptop as a floatation device.

Today we are going to discuss a certain breed of people. These people are usually not that close to you, in fact sometimes they don’t even know your name. These people seem to be pop out of nowhere when you least expect it and after encountering them we are all filled with the same question:

“How Could That Possibly Help?”

You have found the secret writing. This means 7 years good luck

Some time ago that could of been yesterday but I won’t go on record saying that in the effort to cover up the evidence if the person I am about to talk about says “I read what you said about me in your blog” and I can say “what, I was talking about someone some time ago”…Anyway yesterday I was somewhere that may or may not be work. Once again covering my tracks. After finishing checking my work emails, I went to get a cup of tea. A colleague asked me how my Little Princess was going. Now when someone asks me how my baby is, or how married life is my face starts to glow. Once again I was lost for words thinking about my family and I simply said “She is perfect”. This answer was good enough for my colleague but not good enough for someone else that just walked into the room.

“That won’t last!!!!”

Slightly taken back I smiled nervously with the expression of ‘what?’

“How old is she?”
I answered his question to which he quickly replied ““You’ve got 18 months left. Enjoy it, then she will be at the terrible two’s”.

Now this guy was obviously joking around and I could tell he loved his kids because he finished with “I wouldn’t trade them for the world, but still, watch out”; but the whole thing left me thinking “How could that possibly help”?

What is it about humans that we think that if we have a tough time with something, that somebody else should have an equally tough time. It is usually something that the person has been though, dealt with, gotten past therefore doesn’t effect them anymore; yet they still tell their story and claim it will happen to others. If you haven’t encountered these people before now, then one way to meet them is to get married.

I remember being asked how long I was married for. At the time I proudly said 3 months to which I set off three different ladies with their horror stories:

They all start with an outlandish statement that they think fits all couples -
“Oh the first two years are the worst. You will fight like cats and dogs”.

Then they move onto an outrageous story -
“One time we were yelling and my husband had had enough so he ran into the bedroom and barricaded himself in. He pushed the wardrobe, the desk, and the chest of drawers in front of the door”.

Then they throw you a little bone -
“But it gets better after that”.

Really, does your husband only use the desk to lock himself in with now??!!

But there is one target that is bigger than them all. This target is so tempting for those people that even if they are complete strangers walking in the street they can’t help but say something. The target is a Pregnant Lady.

How many people feel it necessary to share their horror stories about their labour to expecting mothers. Seriously! This women is about to experience the miracle of bringing life into the world and she has some unknown person on a bus say how her waters never broke and she was in labour for 4 and a half weeks. HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLY HELP!!!!

If you are facing something unknown, your first day at work, you’re expecting a child, recently engaged, just put a deposit on a house, started a diet, or whatever it is, let me tell you this. You are going to do great. There are thousands of people out there that have done all these things and it worked out fine. Listen to them, not the random few that could sell their story to Stephen King.

Have Fun.

Dan

In fact it I have ever only done one of these episodes before. You can find it here.

This special type of episode is because something very special happened yesterday – it was my Princess and my 3 year wedding anniversary.

This can only mean one thing for this episode, it is the return of:

The Poet is in Love – 2

(Hello there. You found me. I hope you are well.)

To my Darling

I have set myself a challenge that I feel is too hard to bear. The challenge is not to run a mile, make a million dollars or save the world with my cape flapping in the wind. Oh how part of me wishes this was the task as I would stand a chance, for my challenge is far greater than all of these and no man has succeeded before.

I have to try, I have to give it a shot, and if I fall short I fall knowing that I did not hold back one bit. My task, my challenge, my goal is to entirely describe your beauty and communicate my full love for you.

What can I compare you to? Compare you to a rose, the flower is forgotten, compare you to a river, the water is dry, compare you to the sun, and that dot can’t be seen. You are more beautiful than all of these.

Your beauty can only be described in feeling. When I see you every part of my body reacts as they all scramble to get a better look. My legs stand up to attention to welcome royalty, my hands move nervously at the thought of getting to touch you, and my stomach………. my stomach may love you the most. Not just because of your amazing meals you expertly prepare but when it sees you it is satisfied. A meal not shared with you does not fill, and I remain hungry throughout my day until I can feast on your beauty once more.

Oh how I love you. I love the sound of your voice when I walk in the door that can make any stress float away. I love the way you stand when you look at our house and decide it is messy and we are going to fix it. I love the way you pause when you say a joke and try to trick me, constantly giving it away with the look on your face. I love the way you allow me to hold you and how you can instantly snuggle into me giving me no way to move, though I would never want to.

But now we have had a child, my Little Princess, I have discovered another level to love you.

I love the way you comfort her as there is no comfort like your arms. I love the way you tell her that she can’t put something in her mouth, and patiently repeat only seconds later. I love the way you talk to her, letting her know what adventures are in store for her today. I love the way you ask her questions and will take any noise as an answer. I love the way you hold her with confidence, love and respect.

Our life together is everything I have ever wanted and regrets don’t stand a chance. I may not have a million dollars, fancy car, or an 8-story house; but I do have you and you are worth the world to me.

Happy Anniversary My Princess, here is to the next 94 anniversaries as we continue to live, love and

Have Fun

Love your Faithful Husband

Daniel Joseph Lee-Archer

So if there is a light, cameras and action figures around this can only mean one thing. It means this episode is called

“It’s filming season!!!”

Today is my first shoot for our Big Curriculum number 3. Now this statement would excite a lot of people. There are thousands of people around the world waiting for the next instalment of the Big Curriculum. For those who are aware of such curriculum and want a sales pitch, I am afraid you need to go somewhere else. From my years working in sales I have one rule: I don’t sell to friends… unless they really want it. So no sales pitch here, but if it is something you really want then check out the website.

Filming season is here!!!! Filming season is unlike any other season. It is like hanging out with your friends except that your time is booked and co-ordinated with several different parties and the time spent together runs on a really tight schedule. Filming season does not know the difference between night and day, weekday or weekend, location a or location b through to x. It could happen anytime, anywhere and while it is on anything could happen. That is why I love it, every shoot in unique.

So tonight we were filming the film clip to Dave’s and my latest song. The filming took place in a lovely cosy house. Being fairly tired from work when I found out I was filming most things sitting on the couch I was fairly happy. Then I was told I needed to learn forward in an uncomfortable spot to get the lighting right. Of course I told our director that my character had a deep secret in his past and if I leant back it would symbolise a life living in the shadows. I was told to lean forward.

Now I can’t say we were the most prepared for the shoot. We laid down the track in a recording studio a few weeks back but at that time we had our lyrics in front of us. You would think it is easier to remember lyrics if you wrote them. Unfortunately *4 that is not the case. Now we both could of easily downloaded the track and listened to it over and over but instead we left it until it was time for the first take. It would of looked like a badly dubbed Japanese movie as the song would play, we would remember the line after hearing a bit and have our mouth moving a million miles an hour to catch up.

But to our credit after 4 or 5 full takes we had it down and started to get good. So much so that our Director Jarrod said ‘I like what you are doing, but it is different to before. I can’t use any of that footage’. Now Jarrod has worked with us before and he should know that it takes a while to warm up. Next time I suggest we get a stand-in director to start us off with a toy camera and for Jarrod to start from Take 6.

As always we went late into the night as we came up with a few fun ideas to throw in. We make sure that with everything we do we have a carefully thought out script that has been written, re-written and then some; but there is always room for the on the spot ideas that just blow everything out of the water. There is something about getting a bunch of creative people in one room. Sparks do fly.

So it is finally here. Over the next few months we will be having dozens and dozens of film shoots right around the City of Sydney. A lot of late nights, early mornings plus all doing our normal jobs as well. It is funny because there is a lot going on outside of this filming for me with work and family, and adding this could be overwhelming, but it is not. Why? To steal a line from Santa – ‘Tis the season.

Have Fun

Dan

Birthday’s are fun times in our household. Dan & I are known for celebrating every possible occasion – whether it was our 7month dating anniversary back in the day; the day we purchased our first place; or Grace’s second tooth coming through – everything’s a “big deal”. It’s always party-time. We even have our party food menu: Fronti non-alcoholic champagne; chocolate fondu; and camembert cheese with sundried tomatoes and smoked salmon…yum!!

Anyway I digress. Back to Dan’s birthday. Because this one particular thing I wanted to take him to finished on Wednesday night (!) [his birthday is on Thursday], I thought we could have a birthday “week”…nearly every night of the week spent celebrating my hubby’s 27 years. So we are

On Tuesday (I’m just going to cover the main days here) we had a lovely birthday cake at our Connect Group. The Wakerley’s organised it as a surprise for him and he lovingly repaid the gift by using one big spit-ball to put out the candles. Needless to say, the cake came home with us!

On Wednesday I met him after work (my original plan was for us to scoot on his bike but Sydney’s weather decided not to cooperate), and we grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading to…Toy Story 3 in 3D at the IMAX. He totally hadn’t picked where we were going and was very pumped when we arrived there. The movie was incredible – Dan said it was “near-perfect”.

And today (Thursday) I have planned something which has been slightly stressful, only because I am trying to make sure Dan doesn’t find out about it. I have booked dinner for us at Hurricane’s Bar & Grill at Bondi Beach…but it’s not going to be just the two of us eating there. I have invited 16 of his close friends to join us as a surprise. I am planning on blindfolding Dan when I pick him up from work and just driving around until all the friends have arrived at the venue. Then we will arrive and if all goes to plan – SURPRISE!! I hope it works that way at least. He loves being around people and I know he will appreciate celebrating his birthday with a bunch of close friends. If you know Dan though, you will know that it is VERY hard to keep a secret from him; he somehow manages to guess things quite easily by putting random pieces of information together. Lord please help me not to give anything away!

Then on Saturday night we are having a celebration at my parent’s house, where Dan has requested satay prawns. There is another surprise on the table that will make an appearance that night too, but because by now Dan will have read this blog, I’m not going to say what it is! For those who were at Colour Conference this year, you will have seen this piece of food dancing on stage…

As my husband says and lives out – Have Fun.

Jaz

For those who think I am drawing a parallel between a red pen and a type of person you would find in the workplace, I am not. I am talking about the writing utensil that is filled with red ink, thus no parallels being drawn. In fact nothing is being drawn seeing I can’t find a freaking blue or black pen!

Let’s get into the episode shall we. It is called:

“Crawling….. again”

Hello there. You found me. I hope you are well.

This week was my first real week in my new role. I did work one day last week then went on a 4 days annual leave. Most people on annual leave spend it by relaxing and doing very minimal. I on the other hand with 4000 other volunteers spent it at a million miles an hour putting on the best Hillsong Conference in history. It is funny, my colleagues asked “did you enjoy some relaxing time off last week?” Enjoy- Yes!!!! Relax- Ha!!! I wouldn’t change it for the world, that is why I wont.

So this week has been really tiring so far but very satisfying. There is so much to learn and I don’t know a single thing. This is a direct contrast from where I was. I have come from a role that I had mastered, I knew everything about everything and if I didn’t I knew how to find it. Now the only thing I know is my computer log-in and even that took me a day to set up.

There is a lot to learn but the one of the hardest things to learn is the acronyms. I am not sure what it is about work places all around the world that love acronyms. I have left a role where I knew all about LMI, CPS, TCR, PMI, LVR, SLM and now I have to learn PCG, SLA, ETA, MFD, and OSH. It feels like too many TLA – Three Letter Acronyms.

Everything I have learnt over the last 2.5 years gives me vital experience to enhance my new job, but the day to day tasks are completely new and foreign to me. It is like I am having to learn how to crawl….. again.

Monday I was not happy with crawling. Seeing I started a week before for one day to set up things, I had 78 emails waiting for me when I logged onto my computer. This was overwhelming as not only was this a large number of emails, they were all about things I had never heard of. So I started to try and sort them out. So I opened the shared computer folders.

Let me tell you what I am used to when it comes to computer folders. You open the drive, click your store and there would be all our folders we would need, including my own named “GODFATHER”. Seeing I am now a part of a different department that spans across all parts of the company there are a lot more folders needed which creates a labrinyth of mazes that an unsuspecting soul could get lost in. Unfortunately my soul was unsuspecting that day.

I was told where to access certain things and to find an email that would require me to look that up, but it would take me so long as I stumbled through the drives, checked, rechecked, and triple checked that I had got the right things, then file the email in a folder that I hadn’t even created yet. Things that I know that would take someone else 1 min were taking me 20. This was frustrating until something magical happened.

I said to my boss ‘I think I am starting to get a hang of it slowly’ to which she replied ‘I don’t expect you to find your feet for at least a month’.

This changed everything. I realised that I had put an unrealistic expectation on myself. I wanted to be able to do everything like a pro from day one. I was not giving myself the opportunity and time to learn, but rather demanding instant competence.

The fact of the matter is I have to start crawling to learn how to walk. But instead of getting frustrated like someone who has had the ability to walk taken away from them and are having to go through the pain of rehabilitation, I am going to choose to be a child and enjoy discovering a new way of walking.

Have Fun.

Dan

“Collectors Edition – Think, Act, Feel”

Have you ever heard the saying “Think before you act”.

Well the other day I had an opportunity to use my ingrained wisdom but unfortunately didn’t use it. The day was Saturday and I was due to leave at 9.30am to get to a performance. I was performing two, half-hour sets and I was getting paid quite a substantial sum. I was worried that I wouldn’t get up in time, but I did. In fact I woke up at 5.40am with a gut wrenching pain in …… well my gut. Fortunately, I had series 5 of the tv show “Friends” to keep me company while I waited for my girlfriend to pick me up. When she arrived at my house I instantly felt better because she is so beautiful.

Ok that was a lie, she is beautiful, but I still felt awful. So I start to go through the tricks I perform; I packed my juggling knives, I packed my fire wallet, I packed my bowling ball and then I saw my tennis racket. Ahh the famous “Dan Lee-Archer tennis racket trick” where I dislocate my body parts to fit through a racket with no strings. Before I packed that I thought to myself “I haven’t tried that trick for awhile, I should test it out”. So I did my part, I thought before I acted. However, if I thought real hard about it I would have realized that I have been using the same racket since I was 17 and that I had put on a bit of weight since then. Well I got it over my shoulders by dislocating it but the problem occurred when I found out I can’t dislocate my bottom. Yes my bottom has grown so much that Sir Mix-a-lot wrote a song about it. I like big butts… well , you know the rest.

So here I am, with a tennis racket stuck around my waist, sick as a dog, running late for my performance and the whole time wishing that I would of listened to my mother. “Dan, think before you act.”

So is this a blog about thinking before you act? Well if you thought that obliviously you have never read my blogs before because you would know I don’t go down normal lines of thought. Everybody knows about thinking before acting but there is another component that people either tend to skip or put it in the wrong place. It is in the realm of feeling.

So where does feeling go? Of course it is at the start of the process. Here’s how it usually works: You feel like doing something, then you think about it and judge it to be good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, fun or boring, and then you act on it. Example: I walk past the apple store and I see the new i-pod red and guess what, I feel like I want it. So then I start thinking about it and judge it. Would I get real good use out of it? Do I have the money? How much memory would I need? How would I download music, I don’t even have a computer? Would I look good with the white, black or red one? Then you decide to buy or not to buy.

The other way is you feel like doing something, you do it then you think about it and reflect on it. So I want an i-pod, I buy the i-pod then I reflect on the fact that I have no money for rent.

Most people live their life this way, they do what they feel instead of thinking things through completely. I am here to tell you of a different way, a higher level of living that only the wise find.

Change the order.

What you need to do is take “feeling” from the number one spot and put it at number 3. Take away the gold and give it the bronze.

Most people live their lives doing one of the two ways I described earlier. That means the direction of their choices are guided by how they feel. Yes they might make wise choices but they are putting themselves in situations where both options aren’t the best they could have in life.

Well my friend, I am here to tell you there is a better way. Fire your feelings and give the leadership to your thinking. Your new order should be: think, act, feel.

Think about what you can achieve when your thoughts are in control. There will be no more; “I don’’t feel like going to work, waking up early, exercising, eating healthy, helping people, etc.” Your feelings don’t dictate what you do! Your thoughts do because you can choose your thoughts. Do you get it?

Now you will be able to live life at a place where you can think about any direction you want to take your life and go for it. Your feelings are important but they can be changed. Look at the athelete that gets up at 6am to run and he loves it. He is a freak! Those feelings aren’t normal but they are developed. He thought, he acted and his feelings eventually submitted.

So choose your path then let your thoughts decide the direction and trust me, your feelings will follow.

I hope you enjoyed the wise sayings of that 22 year old. Till next week all there is left to say is

Have Fun

Dan.

Now we have gotten to the part of the blog that I struggle with every week. I keep forgetting what the best way to do a gentle segue from the intro to the title of the episode. Sometime I fill you in about everyday life, other times I bring up a topic to get you thinking; and sometimes I even just skip straight into the episode title and hope you don’t notice. There was also this one time I simply wrote about how hard it is to write the bit before the title so that I could use that as the bit before the title and wouldn’t have to write the bit before the title but just have to write the title…….

“Glory Days”

Hello there. You found me. I hope you are well.

I have been trying to get fit and healthy this year. Now I never paid much attention to my body when I was younger. We just happily co-exisisted and it simply did what I said. I could go for a run for 5km (3.1 miles) without any training, warm up or even sugar-filled sports drinks, and I would survive. In fact when I was 19, and had recently moved to Sydney, I registered to compete in the 10km (6.2 mile) bridge run. The problem was I was late and the race had already started so I had to run an extra 1km to get to the start line then run.

After getting to the finish line a runner looked at me and said “you did not just run in those shoes did you?” I looked down and I was wearing a pair of old skate shoes that were falling apart. How was I to know you shouldn’t run in skate shoes?

So that was my attitude to fitness. I didn’t work at it and I could pretty much do what I wanted except when it came to acts of strength. I had absolutely no strength in my arms. I couldn’t lift things, I couldn’t arm wrestle, and when my dad took my brothers and I to the gym all I could manage to bench press was the bar. But that is another story.

Seeing I am trying to work at my fitness, health and strength to one day put on the weights on the bar, I talk to a lot of people about it in my day to day life. I have discovered one thing when you talk about fitness, people feel compelled to give you an update on how they’re are going with their fitness.

“Hey Dan, wow you look great. Have you lost weight?”

“Yeah, I have been focusing on my health this year, getting fit and eating right”.

“I am going back to the gym this Monday”

“Um…… that’s great”.

“I am also cutting all carbs out of my diet”.

“Okay…… cool”.

“I am also going to start taking fibre supplements and train my body to empty my bowels once a day at the same time everyday, to maximise body waste efficiency to assist in weight loss”.

“This conversation is over”.

Now I am always very encouraging when I am told about peoples’ plans because I had plans for years to lose weight until one day it finally was actioned. But there is one thing that gets me in a conversation that I hear from so many people and it starts like this:

“When I was younger I could ……..”

I get told the most amazing stories about what used to happen in days gone by. I listen fixated as I watch this person come alive telling me about their amazing adventures. I love hearing those stories but it is what sometimes follows it that I dread.

The pause

That pause is when the reality of their current life reminds them that those days are gone. They had their time in the sun and now those days, those amazing days, are on the mantel piece as the trophy ‘Glory Days’.

If this is you you are not alone but I do have one thing to say. This is not a motivational speech or a self-help blog, nor am I going to teach you five easy steps or lessons to learn; but I do have one observation. There are people out there with the same stories, same adventures and same tales of the days once lived but when they are finished talking they don’t pause. Why? It is not because they can do everything they used to, have the same job, same inflow of money, same energy or sense of adventure. It is simply this. They are now living the life that they want to because they chose to.

Like the couple that have been married for 60 years who say they wouldn’t change a thing; it may be time to learn how to make life now the life you want and watch the glory days follow you throughout your entire life.

Have Fun.

Dan