Don't pick your nose

Almost eleven years ago, Pierini Fitness composed one, among many, of his favorite middle-age man reflections - Find something else to worry about – after observing many of his clients worrying unnecessarily about the economy at the time and its impact on their personal finances.  His takeaway message to clients from these observations was that all was well, and they’d have to find something else to worry about.

Time would prove that I was correct, although true to the statement, history does repeat itself and at this moment, a nation and a world is worried to death about the Chinese Coronavirus.  It’s understandable because fear is a pastime for so many people who have become comfortable worrying about this and that.  We all have fears because we’re human and Pierini Fitness would never say that he doesn’t suffer from occasional fears, it’s just that, perhaps, he does a better job of co-existing with them and being able to continue marching forward in the life he’s living.

God willing, he’ll continue to be able to do this because, like everyone else, there’s a risk of some degree that this virus could afflict him.

But, to all my fellow middle-age men around the world, I have an important press release that hopefully will provide you with some welcoming comfort.

Pierini Fitness has recently conducted cutting-edge research on the impact fear has on the risk of catching or avoiding the Chinese Coronavirus.  His findings are that fear has no impact so go find something else to worry about.

But do exercise caution in going about living your life to the fullest.  Follow the best practices possible regarding personal hygiene, being careful in meetings and travel, handling food carefully and staying home if you’re feeling sick.  Don’t put your fingers in your mouth and don’t pick your nose.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Find something else to worry about

My recent meetings with clients and acquaintances are reminders of the worries many people have about the economy and its impact on their personal finances. There’s more worrying going on than anything I’ve witnessed in my 30 year career as an advisor to individuals and businesses about financial and tax matters.

Several years ago I attended a workshop with a psychologist guest speaker. He said something interesting that still resonates in my mind to this day, that worrying is a form of excess greed. I approached him after the seminar and asked him to clarify what he meant by his statement. He said it was based on his experience counseling affluent people and the worries they had about maintaining their economic wealth.

There’s another facet of worrying that’s often not obvious to the worrier. While personality may drive the worrier, so are its learned aspects. When I catch clients knee deep in worry mania, I’ll ask who taught them how to worry, their mother or father. I’m always amazed at the swiftness of their reply that it was one or the other but not typically both parents. Rarely will they respond that it was neither.

More often than not, I find that the worries my clients bring to a meeting are imaginary rather than real, like the image of the boogie-man a young child has in the darkness of the night after viewing a Frankenstein or Dracula movie.

So whether it’s a form of excess greed, personality or learned behavior, the truth of the matter is the worries are real in a person’s mind with all the emotion that tags along for the ride. As I sit across the desk in my face-to-face meeting with clients, with no personal emotion attached to their worries, it’s easy for me to be objective and poker face-like by assuring them that all is well and that all will be well.

Often, the departing counsel to clients who come to me with financial worries is simple – I tell them to trust in God, get to work, live a Spartan life, cultivate relationships with family and friends because that’s what’s most important, check back in a few years so I can tell them “I told you so”, and go find something else to worry about.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Goodness warming and footprints

Pierini Fitness is on a summer sabbatical until August 3, 2015.  Enjoy this blogflection until we return. Stand tall and be an awesome proud middle-aged man.

Well as a man with little science background, you’d think I’d be inclined to place all my trust in scientists for answers about something I know little about.  This is not what I’ve done in my middle-aged man wisdom-gaining journey.

Like scientist proclamations about global warming, running out of water due to drought and carbon footprint stuff.

Take global warming for example.  For every scientist and other interested-party “expert” warning us about this calamity is someone else equally scientific and an interested-party expert telling us it’s all a bunch of, pardon the pun, hot air.  I’ll let you do your own research, just like I have, and draw your own conclusions.  I’m not a scientist or interested-party “expert” but that doesn’t disqualify me from joining the “it’s a bunch of hot air” crowd.

How about running out of water due to drought?  That’s a hot topic in my California part of the world and our government water police will cite and fine you and me if we use more water than they decide we should.

One thing about aging is having the benefit of history to guide your present and this middle-aged man is blessed with some yesteryear drought-related history to guide his current water consumption, even if he has to do his watering in the wee hours of the night.

Twenty or more years ago I lived in a rural area that was in the path of residential development.  I would regularly read the local newspaper about the, then, drought and all the disasters it would eventually cause.  At the time, I lived on acreage and had my own water well so I read this constant dire news with emotional detachment even though, I suppose, my well could have run dry.  But it didn’t.

During this same time, not that long later, was news of an approved major residential development that would result in I can’t remember how many hundreds or maybe thousands of new homes to be constructed.  Where are they going to get water is what I thought to myself before eventually realizing that I had had enough of this drought nonsense like a well gone dry.  Those homes were eventually built and none of us every ran out of water.

So what about this carbon footprint stuff?  I’ve heard this sound bite term many times, can repeat it in environmentally-friendly conversations but, until now, couldn’t define it if my life depended on it.

So thanks to a morning Google internet search about carbon footprint, I learned that it has been historically defined as the total sets of greenhouse gas emissions caused by an organization, event, product or person.  To make a long story short, it’s something that can’t be calculated because of the large amount of data required and the fact that carbon dioxide can be produced by natural occurrences.

So this means the carbon footprint generated at a Sunday NFL football stadium packed with tens of thousands of hot dog eating and beer drinking middle-aged men belching and farting can’t be quantified but merely expressed as a figure of speech.

Your carbon footprint and $3.25 will buy you a large cup of Café Americano at your local Starbuck’s.

So where is all this Pierini Fitness rambling leading you?

Rather than focus on this global warming, running out of water due to drought and carbon footprint stuff designed to create fear and unnecessary worry about how your children and grandchildren may not have a planet earth to call their own like you and I have, why not direct your middle-aged man energies to something within your control?

Like gracefully aging and trying to live a good and honest life.  And from that effort, contribute something wonderful to the world we middle-aged men live in with our own contributions of goodness warming and footprints.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Diet and fitness affirmations from A to Z

Introducing the Pierini DIET here

With a new year around the corner, many middle-aged men and women will make New Year resolutions to get eat healthier, get fitter and lose unwanted bodyweight. It happens at the start of every new year as evidenced by crowded gyms bulging at the seams with new members who join, begin an honest effort to exercise and eat healthy, only to lose their enthusiasm a couple weeks later or a month at most.

To guide these poor souls, the chief executive blogger of Pierini Fitness has come up with this alphabet-based compendium of diet and fitness training affirmations. If you'd like a PDF version of this, send me an e-mail request at pierinifitness@gmail.com - Enjoy!

A – Always train a little on scheduled fitness training days. Don’t let your efforts be sabotaged by an “all or nothing” mentality because something is better than nothing.

B – Be on guard for family and friends who do not share your diet and fitness zeal as their misguided charitable offers laden with possibly envy can sabotage your efforts.

C – Chance is not how diet and fitness improvements are made so make sure you have a written plan to guide your daily efforts.

D – Don’t eat unless you are hungry. Break old habits of eating because the clock says it is a certain time or food is offered to you when you aren’t hungry. Don’t be afraid to say “no thank you”.

E – Eat your food slowly and make sure you “milkshakefy” it. What’s that mean? Read The Pierini DIET, an easy-read PDF book I’ve written.

F – Fuel your body with real food that will support the demands of your fitness training and aid in post-training recovery.

G – Go for a brisk walk as an alternative to watching television or spending time on the computer. You can always do that after you’ve taken that brisk walk.

H – Have fun chasing your diet and fitness goals and you’ll increase the likelihood of success.

I – Intensity is your time-efficient friend so make sure that your cardio sessions are short and intense rather than long, slow and steady. You should be breathless at the end of your cardio training.

J – Jump if you can now and then in your training. It’s a great way to make sure your cardio sessions are short and intense.

K – Kill all negative thoughts that periodically enter your mind that you can’t achieve your diet and fitness goals. Find something else to be a failure about.

L – Lift heavy weights at least once, and preferably, twice a week following a progressive resistance training program. Use good form and seek out instruction to make sure you perform the lifts correctly.

M – Monitor your bodyweight, diet and fitness training efforts by maintaining a journal. Weigh yourself daily and record details of your workout in your journal. Depending on your dietary discipline, consider using a daily food journal to help create awareness of what you are eating and to foster rigorous honesty.

N – Never tell yourself that you can’t do it because you can – if you want it bad enough.

O – Opportunities to eat healthy and exercise are always present, even when you are away on a business trip or vacation. Be creative and so something. Don’t worry about people looking at you – let them.

P – Pushups, pullups and other bodyweight-only exercises should be part of your fitness training program because fitness training variety is the results-producing spice of life.

Q – Question all that you read and are told about diet and fitness from the “experts". Follow the money and make sure that their advice passes the “smell test”.

R – Rest and recovery are your friends after a hard fitness training session. Train hard and then make sure that you have a quality rest and recovery program on non-training days.

S – Sitting is something you do when eating, visiting with friends and working if you “sit for a living”. Insofar as your fitness training goes, don’t lay when you can sit but don’t sit when you can stand when exercising.

T – Timed workouts are great particularly during short and intense cardio sessions. Use a stopwatch occasionally and time your efforts to measure your fitness improvement.

U – Umbrellas can be used to take a brisk walk on a rainy day that you might talk yourself out of doing because it’s raining. Make sure you have one in your fitness training toolbox.

V – Victims of crimes sometimes put themselves in harm’s way. Don’t be a victim of diet and fitness failure crime by putting yourself in harm’s way with environments and people that are not safe for you.

W – Warm-up your body with flexibility drills and gradually elevate your heart rate before beginning the tough part of your fitness training.

X – X-treme and unrealistic diet and fitness goals should not be what you are chasing. Reasonably demanding and achievable goals will serve you better.

Y – Yearn for the day when you are one day closer to achieving your diet and fitness goals for that is today.

Z – Zeal will serve you well in your lifelong diet and fitness journey. Make sure you are always carrying some with you.

There you have it folks – your diet and fitness affirmations from A to Z

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Memories are made of this

The Pierini DIET - click here to learn more

This is the time of year I meet with clients that I normally see only once a year. I look forward to these meetings to advise them about this and that and the social chit chat that oftentimes follows - the small talk about life in general, family in particular, fitness, God, economics, politics, places traveled and maybe even the weather. It’s a great reciprocal exchange of humor, knowledge and wisdom and one of the fringe benefits of my profession.

Last year meetings with clients were the inspiration for these five Pierini Fitness blogflections:

Find something else to worry about

Rebels in remission

One day it will be our turn

Busy about nothing

They can’t eat you

I look forward to seeing all my clients again this year. Memories are made of this.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

They can't eat you

A quick meeting with a client on Monday afternoon revealed that he periodically reads Pierini Fitness blogflections. We spent some time talking about all the worrying some of my clients are doing that I wrote about here:

Find something else to worry about

While exchanging chuckles about what little good worrying does most of us, something he said struck me as worth repeating. Even in the most difficult situations, with the odds not in our favor, against the most formidable adversaries, one thing to remember is that , unlike those giant and scary monsters in horror movies, they can’t eat you.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Just an average Joe Blow

A popular term the media, politicians and political commentators like to use is "average ordinary citizen". They frequently use this term in a context that borders on being condescending, as if an average ordinary citizen is someone other and less than them.

So are average ordinary citizens what other people are but never us? Who is an average ordinary citizen? Is he related to the Nowhere Man made famous in the 1965 song by the Beatles, the lyrics of which are below?

"He's a real nowhere Man, sitting in his Nowhere Land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody.

Doesn't have a point of view,knows not where he's going to,isn't he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere Man, please listen,you don't know what you're missing,Nowhere Man, the world is at your command.

He's as blind as he can be,just sees what he wants to see,Nowhere Man can you see me at all?

Doesn't have a point of view, knows not where he's going to, isn't he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere Man, don't worry,take your time, don't hurry,leave it all till somebody else lend you a hand.

He's a real Nowhere Man,sitting in his Nowhere Land,making all his nowhere plans for nobody."

Are average ordinary citizens better known to us as Joe 6-Pack or Joe the Plumber, characters we learned of during the recent Presidential debates?

Is Joe 6-Pack an average ordinary citizen who likes to drink beer and watch NFL football on television? Or maybe he is an average ordinary citizen who likes to exercise and has a 6-pack from doing alot of situps, you know a gym rat.

Joe the Plumber may be more recognizable to us; the average ordinary citizen who makes a living as a plumber, the one who wears a heavy leather tool belt around his waist that makes his pants hang low so that when he bends over he exposes his "plumber's butt".

Makes you want to think twice before naming your son Joe.

Is Joe married to a hockey mom who is like a pit bull with lipstick, or the soccer mom who drives a large SUV? They both are average ordinary citizens too.

There's no doubt in my mind that I am an average ordinary citizen of the middle-age man vintage; I discovered this long time ago. But I do remember wanting to be somebody when I was younger, and I really worked hard at it, believing it would be my ticket to eternal self-esteem and the fountain of success in the eyes of my family and friends who looked at me and my accomplishments.

Then I became a little wiser and discovered that I wanted to be nobody, an average Joe Blow, or an average ordinary citizen as the higher powers like to say. I discovered that trying to be nobody was much more difficult and, unbeknownst to be, has been a greater source of happiness, making me feel more comfortable in the company of other average ordinary citizens like my good friends Joe 6-Pack and Joe the Plumber.

There's nothing inferior about being an average ordinary citizen so I'll continue going about my life being just an average Joe Blow.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum