Most important person in your life

Sometimes when I have driving around Charlotte I tune my radio to one of several talk radio stations. Many times I then will just tune out whatever is being said. Mainly, I like the radio for the white noise.

This time, however, they were interviewing a life coach and he was talking about his latest work. 

He was telling the story about speaking to a group of people and one of the exercises that he had them do was to answer the following question – “Who is the most important person in your life?” Most people answered the question by saying – “their wife, their husband, their children, their parents, their siblings, etc”. 

Then, he asked them the awe inspiring question – “Where were they on the list?”

He went on to talk about why we should put ourselves on the list and at the top of the list. He reasoning made a lot of sense to me.

Before we can help others or do for others, we have to be happy and healthy our self. We can only do that if we consider ourselves in the equation. To a larger extent, being healthy can mean a lot of things to different people, but to me it means exercising regularly.

On more than one occasion throughout my life, I have been told that running is a waste of my time. At the time I never had the right response to why my running was important in my life.

Even thou, I could not articulate the reason why. I knew because I ran that I was happy and healthy and could go that extra mile. I had the energy and made the time to listen when important things needed to be said. I was a better person for doing it. 

This started me thinking. I wonder is the hardest part – putting ourselves on this list or is it that others don’t want us to be on our list and thereby discouraging us from even trying. Are they jealous of the fact that we understand what happiness is and how to achieve it? I don't know the answer, but I do know that I am happy and healthy. Sometimes, this just has to be enough.  

Sharing one thought at time,

The Cool Down Runner