Growing Into You

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” -Bertrand Russell

In May, I plan on graduating from Indiana University with my degree. After five years of playing baseball, attending school, and working, I will finally be able to leave my academic career behind. But wait, May is only a month away and I have so much to do!

Two things I MUST get done before then, as required by my degree, include completing an internship and finishing an Independent Study Macroeconomics class. The internship is something that causes absolutely no worry in my life because it is simply showing up and helping with baseball; something that I love to do. Macroeconomics, on the other hand, is something quite different!

Because of the procrastination tactics that I have taken on in completing the task (something I will discuss in future articles), I am left to complete a 16 week class in a matter of 4 weeks! If you do the math, that is about a chapter a day. This is on top of my regular class, internship hours, work, and writing for this blog. All of this studying could leave a lot of people to be very stressed out, but to me, it’s just another thing to do on my task list because I have learned to excel under pressure.

I have a simple approach to stress that I believe can be used in ANY situation. Is your financial situation stressing you out? How about your health? Just follow the five simple steps in order to feel secure and confident you are heading in the right direction and going to fix the stressor.

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A week ago, I wrote an article (Get Me In Shape!) telling you my goal of losing 30 pounds, how much time I have to do it, and how I was going to do it. I just wanted to give you a quick update on my progress.

Starting Weight: 210 pounds

Current Weight: 197 pounds

Time Left: 51 days

How: I have began the run/walk program in the Runner’s World. It is nothing too strenuous, but the fact that I have to get up off my couch and do physical activity really helps. I have also added in my own resistance program that has helped as well.

What I ate: I have not changed my eating habits drastically. I just watch my quantities.

I have decided that I will give daily updates in my Building Habits tab. This goal coorrelates with my focusing on writing EVERYTHING I eat down on paper. Please feel free to look at that tab to see where I stand. Feel free to let us know where you stand on your habit forming goals as well.

“Good habits, once established, are just as hard to break as are bad habits.” –Robert Puller

In my post, “My 21 Day Habit,” I told you I was going to focus on no more than two habits I either want to form or want to break for 21 days. 21 days represents the amount of time I believe it takes in order to form or break a habit. After the 21st day, if I have succeeded in forming those habits, then I will proceed to go after two more habits. This page will be continuously updated to inform you of my progress.

I encourage each one of you to try this on your own. Putting your goals out there for others to view allows others to hold you accountable (which I have discussed briefly in my article Why Blog? .) Being held accountable will put more emphasis on completing your tasks in order to not let the other readers down. Any encouragement I receive from you, whether via e-mail or posts, will give me more motivation to continue. (more…)

“First, we make our habits. Then, our habits make us.” -Charles C. Noble

When I was a kid, one thing sticks out in my mind. My father was a great motivator. Starting at a very young age, my dad always gave me motivational talks about what I needed to do in order to achieve great things in life. Being young, I would always shoot out of the box right after one of these speeches. Then, my mind would wander, and the fire would dwindle down.

There are two different points from my father’s speeches that I will never forget. The first, which came when I was slumping in baseball, was an acronym. He told me that that when I am getting ready to do a task, repeat the word “K.I.S.S.” in my head. I’m sure many of you have heard this acronym before. “K.I.S.S” stands for “Keep it simple stupid.” What he meant by that was don’t over think the situation, and most importantly, don’t over complicate it.

After my dad got tired of having his great motivational speeches work for about one week, he began to stress another point that has stuck with me. He told me that it takes 21 days to make a habit stick. So, after his speech, we would sit down and make a plan. No longer would I sprint out of the gate on a 400 meter dash only to run out of gas 300 meters in. Each day, for the first 21 days, I would focus solely on doing one or two habits differently. Any more than that and I would have been breaking the “K.I.S.S” code.

So here is the challenge I will set for you and myself. I will have my 21 day cycle running on a tab on the top of my home page. Each 21 day cycle, I will post no more than TWO habits that I am trying to form (or break.) Each day, I will report back to that page and let everybody know where I stand.

I encourage each one of you to do this with me. You can e-mail me what your habit is or you can post it through the comments section. The more times you e-mail me throughout the 21 days, the more likely you will make it through. You will be able to get encouragement and be held accountable from other readers and myself.

I am counting on each one of you to hold me accountable. Together, we can change our habits.

First, I would like to thank EVERYBODY who has subscribed to my blog over the past week. Seeing my subscriber numbers go up as quickly as they have has really come as a shock to me and it tells me I must be writing about something that is clicking with you.

I have been having some problems with my RSS Feeds. So to fix these problems, I just went ahead and started a new feed. So in order to fix the problem and get everybody on the same page, I am asking any person with a subscription to re-subscribe to the new address. Here is my new feed. The one that I had previously was http://feeds.feedburner.com/growingintoyoucom.

I am unsure what caused these problems. Being so new to blogging, I still have quite a few wrinkles to work out. I am learning quickly though.

So in a nutshell, could you please unsubscribe from the old feed and re-subscribe to the new one located above. I am TERRIBLY sorry for this inconvenience, but I want to make sure everybody is able to receive the articles. If you have any questions just e-mail me at tad@growingintoyou.com. I really enjoy hearing from each and every one of you. I hope you all have a great weekend.

“Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” -Buddha

Have you ever accidentally cut somebody off on the highway, and then about three minutes later they come flying by you like a bat out of hell giving you the bird? What about the person that just looks for fights over the smallest things? As bad as those hot heads are, there is a type of person that is much worse. This type of person will stay mad for hours, days, or even weeks at their good friends for the smallest fight. We all know these people. They are known as grudge-holders.

Believe it or not, at a point in my life, not long ago, I used to be a HUGE grudge-holder. Looking back on it now, I am embarrassed how I used to act. At one point in high school, my best friend and I got in a fight about what to do on New Year’s. We had made a plan to go over to one of our friend’s house. Then, when we got in the car, she mentioned to me that we were changing plans.

I did not get visibly mad at her then, I just said O.K. and went our way. We had a decent time with our friends, but that was the last time I spoke with my friend for three weeks. That’s right; I did not say ONE word to my best friend because of one stupid night. I did not confront her about it, I did not even bring up why I was mad. I completely ignored her. Finally, after three weeks she came up to me to see what was wrong. I finally had gotten over it by then, and so we talked about it. After we talked, we were fine and have been good friends ever since. (more…)

Hello. I would like to personally welcome everybody to Growing Into You.

“Where ever you go, go with all your heart.” -Confucius

My name is Tad, and I am a graduating senior at Indiana University. I will be receiving my degree in Sport Management with a minor in Business. When I do get my degree, there are two things that I am debating between doing. I either want to become a collegiate baseball coach or open my own baseball academy. I love to coach because I truly enjoy being able to teach others about the game that I love. I want to see each player reach their full potential, and if I am a small part of the reason for their success, then I have accomplished my goal. Opening my own business, on the other hand, would be a very exciting venture for me. It would allow me to have control over everything that I do, along with giving people of all ages a place to improve. The decision is a tough one.

Transitioning

The last five years have been a transition period for me. After graduating from high school, I was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in the MLB draft. I chose to attend Wichita State and play baseball there. I do not believe professional baseball was in the cards for me though because every year I played at Wichita State, I suffered a season-ending injury which resulted in surgery. These injuries really threw my life into a whirlwind. Baseball was all I knew how to do, and I did it well. So, needless to say, this was a down period in my life. (more…)