For those of you who know me, you know I like to play!  My favorite hob­bies have always included some kind of a board under my feet.  Surf­ing is my great­est pas­sion, but I also enjoy snow­board­ing and carve and long board­ing through the streets of Lake Oswego.  I get all kinds of funny looks and terse com­ments from neigh­bors, who must think I am some kind of teenage trou­ble­maker as I skate by with my kids and their friends.

I’m not alone in this, either.  Many times at the beach, on the moun­tain, or in the streets you will find my col­leagues and their kids right there with me.  Coach Barry Engel­man has recently taken up snow­board­ing with his boys, and he also surfs with me from time to time.  Coach Steve Scan­lon can often be found skat­ing in local park­ing garages at 11pm, or at Mount Hood board­ing with his kids.

Any­how, our imma­ture hob­bies are not the point of this post.

So what is my point?  That I hang out with boys in men’s bod­ies?  Maybe so, but I believe that there is some life-giving magic to be found in play­ing out­doors at any age.

One men­tor in my life is my great uncle, Chuck Heller.  Chuck was a very suc­cess­ful busi­ness owner in his day.  When I first started in busi­ness some 25 years ago, I asked him for his take on what had made him suc­cess­ful.  He shared a great deal with me, but the thing that really stuck with me was how he took care of him­self phys­i­cally, and how he played.  Chuck came home for lunch every day to swim laps, eat a healthy meal, and take a short nap.  He said this helped him men­tally as well as phys­i­cally.  He is 94 years old now, and still plays ten­nis at least 5 days a week!

I’d like to encour­age you to take care of your­self this year.  Pick one health dis­ci­pline to improve upon.  Do you need to work on eat­ing bet­ter qual­ity foods, or smaller por­tions?  Will you com­mit to exer­cis­ing at lunchtime for 30 min­utes a day, 4 days a week?  Have you been think­ing about try­ing a new hobby, or finally dust­ing off the clubs, racket, glove, or board and get­ting out there to play once a week?

To keep play­ing like kids, we must be very inten­tional with how we care for our­selves.  This year, pick one aspect of your health account to improve upon.  Then, incor­po­rate some play into your Life Plan and your cal­en­dar this year.  Not only will this allow you to make the most out of every day right now, but you’ll reap the ben­e­fits for years to come.

Do this, and you may receive one more won­der­ful gift:  when you play like a kid, you get to do this stuff along­side your kids!

I hope to see you on the moun­tain this weekend,

Related posts:

1. Are You Spend­ing Enough Time?
2. The World’s Great­est Dieter
3. I Love a Good Vaca­tion in the Morning
4. The Mon­day Morn­ing Huddle
5. How to Fight the Gloom

Tags: Disciplines, Life Planning, Non-Negotiable, Playing, Snowboarding, Surfing, Teenagers

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Self-Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.