Nobody Will Change Anything They Are Doing Until They Are Forced Too

We all love comfort don’t we? As a matter of fact, I believe I work hard enough and it’s my right as a man and an American citizen to demand a comfortable life, one that I can sit back in ease and pleasure. Ahhhhh, where’s my easy chair?

This is the Life

But unfortunately that usually is not how life goes, as all of us can attest too. Life is anything but easy and comfortable.

The attitude that a life of ease was owed me made me lazy. I found myself indulging in watching to much TV and not enough physical activity, and eating way to much of all the wrong things. Pizza naturally goes best with watching football on Sunday afternoon. I don’t drink alcohol, but Coke or Pepsi weren’t good either with all the sugar, and I always had to have my ice cream as a desert.

Needless to say my weight and blood pressure both started to go up and my waist started to go out. Instead of playing basketball, I started to look like I swallowed one.

My doctor kept warning me that as I got older, this type of lifestyle that I was living, would eventually catch up to me and the ending would not be good. He said he’s seen more than one of his patients go through this same scenario.

Most of us live in that comfort zone and we aren’t moving unless we are forced to or something happens to us and pushes us out. I didn’t want this to happen to me, so I started to think of a plan of action.

Well a friend of mine, Larry Beacham, sent me an email about a 90 Day Health Challenge. If Larry is in something, it’s worth me taking a look at also.

The company is the fastest growing company in the network marketing industry, according to the “Wallstreet Journal”. Yes, I said the “Wallstreet Journal”. When was the last time you read about a network marketing company in the “Wallstreet Journal”?

Visalus on the cover of "Success From Home" magazine

This company is also on the cover of “Success From Home” magazine for the month of August. This is the second time they have dawned the cover of this very prestigious magazine, in the past twelve months.

In the month of July, 2011, over 48,500 people signed up to take the 90 Day Health Challenge. 48,500 people is a lot of people. These are people who want to lose some pounds and get back in shape, and most of all, the product that is going to take them there…works.

The company is Visalus Sciences, and it has been around for six years and the Challenge works. Story after story shows changed lives and healthier people. People who are getting in shape and staying in shape.

80% of all Americans are obese, and our young people are over weight and do not get any type of exercise or physical activity in any way shape or form. Ladies and gentlemen, America needs to take the Challenge. You need to take the Challenge and I need to take the Challenge.

Well I joined the Challenge on July 21, 2011. I weighed in at a plump 206 pounds. As of today, August 18, 2011, I weigh 196 pounds. I’ve lost ten pounds and I feel great, and I’m getting to the point where people are starting to notice. That feels real good when someone comes up to you and asks you, “Are you losing weight”? You become a walking billboard for the Challenge.

Not only can you lose weight and get healthy again, but you can make money by promoting the Challenge, but if doing the business is not for you, you can still join the Challenge and get your product for free.

Yes get on the road to a new you without it costing you any money, and maybe even get paid for losing weight and getting in shape, because the company gives away over $10,000,000 a year in free product, prizes and vacations and maybe you could be one.

Did I also mention that there is a BMW bonus for those that do the business, and over 5000 people have been awarded a brand new black BMW already. Larry got his and it only took him 30 days to get it.

How would you like to lose weight, get in shape, make some money, and maybe get a black BMW, all for just promoting the 90 Day Challenge. Just click on “Join The Challenge” below and get your Challenge started today.

Ever Feel Like Putting Up a “DO NOT DISTURB” Sign on Your Life?

The distractions are a part of life, but distractions in the your business can be devastating. They can come from very important people in your life, but one thing is certain, you cannot let them go unaddressed. They have got to be dealt with and should be dealt with right from the start of you entering into owing your own business.

Ever feel like putting up a “DO NOT DISTURB” sign on your life? I have and maybe you have as well.

I know this is going to be a rehash of something that I posted awhile back, but I think it ‘s that important. I know that it has been something that I have been continually fighting since I entered the network marketing industry with my own business. Every time I think I have it settled, it shows its ugly head again.

Why does everyone constantly tread on your valuable time? Is it because they don’t take you seriously and they don’t hold the same respect or value to your time as you do?

That’s the heart of it. Now I know that there may be some variations to that truth, but that is basically the bottom line. People are not going to take you seriously until you take you seriously.

An example is company events. I never thought that they were as important as they are, so therefore my wife and my family would place other events into my schedule, sometimes without my knowledge, and they just assumed that I would drop everything and rearrange my time to accommodate them, and that’s exactly what I did.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my family and my family means a great deal to me, and most of the time I would deem the things they wanted me to attend as important, and I would put myself out for them, but I realized that there has to be a definite dividing line between my business and other things, and it’s up to me to keep and hold that line steady.

You should have a business plan and some type of guidelines set up for yourself to follow, and they should be for both short and long-term goals.

I do daily and monthly plans and I have set for myself yearly plans as well. You have to have this set in place and then comes the hard part. Learn to follow them. This learning process can be hard to do, but it’s a process you have to complete.

Leave room for adjustments, as they will come. I don’t mean that you should be so hard and staunch in your attitude, that you are just a drill Sargent and no one can approach you. Be flexible, as this should also be a part of your business plan too.

This past week is a great example of this.

In one week, my grand-daughter asked if I would go with her into court and support her in facing one of the worst nightmares anyone can face.

She is ten years old and has been approached in a sexual manner by someone who she knows. She finally confided in my wife and it has resulted in a court case. I love my grand-daughter and I would drop anything that I was doing to be with her, and her family, during this very difficult time.

In the same week, my daughter-in-law’s father took his own life and the funeral was in the same week. We spent a couple of days with her and her family during another extremely difficult time.

These are situations that you would move events around, and create time in your schedule for. Anyone of you would do the same thing, and these are the things I’m talking about, but the crazy friend of the family who is always calling you, or the daughter who is calling you because she is upset over breaking another nail, those are things that you just don’t have time for at all.

Remember to follow these simple steps.

You have to take your business seriously and you have to set yourself up for success, because no one else will.
Make a business plan and learn to follow it, and I do mean this is a learning process.
Make room for adjustments and only fill them with the important things in life.
Learn to say, “NO”, to the time and energy draining items and people that drain you of your time and energy.
Make sure you get the right amount of sleep and challenge yourself to get healthy.
Remember, It’s OK to put up the “DO NOT DISTURB” sign on your life.

This is what true leaders and successful businesses must do to survive and prosper. Your business will thank you and your family will thank you.

How Many Diets Have You Started and Stopped?

Ever been on a diet? Does a bear live in the woods? Right…who hasn’t? A better question is how many diets have you started and stopped?

How many diets have you started and stopped?

Our society today is in love with the way we look in a mirror, and to tell you the truth…not many of us have taken a long hard look in the mirror because if we did we would not be happy with what we see. I know that I am not happy with what I see.

Dieting, like marketing, has a common thread running through the middle of it. In a network marketing business, if you don’t get people off and running and putting money in their pockets they are going to jump out. Dieting is much the same way. If you are not seeing results, on the system of losing weight that you are on, you are going to quit.

Our society has an attention span of about 5 seconds. We are impatient and we want results fast, so getting people in the flow quickly is important to the success of your system.

I have never had a very big problem with my weight. It was never a big issue when I was younger and active, but as I have gotten older and less active, it now has become a problem.

The biggest problem is seeing that you may need to start paying attention to your weight, and then taking that first step to getting started on a system of weight loss and a healthy lifestyle.

I do emphasize the phrase, a healthy lifestyle, because most of us will get on a diet and even if we get the results that we want, we than jump off the diet and put the pounds right back on, and most of the time we put more on than we had taken off.

When I was younger and I had an active lifestyle I was training all the time and a healthy lifestyle was exactly that, a lifestyle, and not just a diet. I was always watching what I put in my mouth and exercise was a part of my everyday regiment.

If you are just dieting you will never succeed. You must come to the conclusion that a life change is what is needed to reach the goal that you wish to attain. This is a continuing process and not a one time set of acts to perform.

I have found the solution. I have found a process that will get you, and me, not only losing the weight that you wish to lose, but also set you on a course to a healthy lifestyle. Having more energy, feeling good about how you look, and you will start to become the new person that you really are.

The 90 Day Challenge is what I am on and it is what I am offering to you. Join me on this challenge to lose some of those pounds and get on the road to the healthy lifestyle that you’ve always wanted. Click on the box below to get more information on the 90 Day Challenge that is sweeping the country.

Next is the offer that I have to all you network marketers and those looking to make some extra money. The idea of losing weight through the 90 Day Challenge and the ability to market and create another source of income, is for you.

The next trillion-dollar a year industry, is what the experts are calling the health and wellness industry, and as usual, weight loss is at the very top. Who do you know wouldn’t want to lose some weight? It’s the topic that comes up in most conversations…weight loss.

What if you lost twenty or thirty pounds, do you think your friends and family would want to know how you did it? You become a walking billboard for your own business, and it’s the best marketing on the planet.

Get on the 90 Day Challenge for yourself, and I will show you how you can get yours for free while you create a residual income for yourself.

Here’s to your health.

Do You Believe?

According to the dictionary, the meaning to the word, “believe” is; to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so.

When you were a kid, did you believe in Santa Claus? I remember those days of wonder and excitement, writing your letters to Santa and waiting to see if you were good enough to get what was on your list, but as I got older and I listened to what my friends were saying, and some little things that I noticed on my own, It started to make my belief in Santa a little bit shaky. I wanted to believe, but the truth in the evidence of the existence of Santa just wasn’t there anymore. So I have come to the terrible conclusion, at the age of fifty seven, that there really is no Santa Claus. I hate to be the one to tell you that.

On a more serious note, do you believe in yourself? Remember that believe means to have confidence in the truth, the existence or reliability of who you really are. Do you know who you really are? I think that sometimes we hide who we really are because of the people, or the things that those people around us, have told us about ourselves. You will become a product of your environment, even if your environment is lying.

I grew up in a very unloving home. It was a home where we were never encouraged or given pats on the back for our successes. We never really had to many, and when we did they were either not acknowledged or we were ridiculed for even trying to do them. I was always told that I would never be able to achieve anything worthwhile.

But there was always an uncontrollable drive to compete, be competitive, and win. This stir was noticed by a coach and teacher in one of my schools, that took me under his arm. He worked with me, encouraged me, and told me that I was good at sports and I should go out and tryout for some of the teams. This man gave me the hope and stirred the belief in myself, that I am good at things and if I work hard I can achieve success.

Well it took a long time but that seed of belief he planted in me started to sprout. I started to play sports and I realized that I could run fast, and I could hit the ball pretty good too. My confidence in the truth of who I really was, and not the lies that everybody else told me about myself, started to make me stronger, more confident, and more persistent in my drive to succeed.

Where are you? Your potential is a picture of what you can become. Your believing in that potential helps you see it more clearly, and gives you the strength to reach out, grab it and make that truth a reality.

97% of the worlds population live in a box that was molded by what everyone else said about them, and only 3% ever get out of that box, and reach for that truth that they know and have living in themselves. If your reading this article, you are apart of that three percent.

Don’t believe or listen to what someone else said or is saying about you and your dreams. Take a long look in your own heart. What do you see? What do you want to achieve? What is there? Take that inventory of yourself, then take the necessary steps to training and moves you need to do to get on that road to the success you deserve.

Do you believe? I believe. I believe in you and I know that you can do it.

Please leave your comments and let me know what you are doing and the road that you’re on.

I want to leave you with a short video from the movie, “Miracle on Ice”. It’s about the men’s hockey team who won the gold medal in the 1980 Winter Olympics. This was a team made up of young college players and they were going up against one of the best hockey teams in the world, from the Soviet Union. This Red Army team was made up of men who did nothing else but play hockey. It was one of the greatest moments in sports history, and the video clip is from the speech, coach Herb Brooks, gives to his team before they go out to face, what everybody else told them would be an easy Red Army win. Listen to what he tells these boys and take it as if he is talking to you.

God bless

“The Miracle on Ice”

Your Attitude is Everything

I am going to ask you to do something very weird right now. First of all, I want you to listen to your thoughts. Now tell me, what thoughts fill your head? Would you label them as positive, or negative?

Now let’s say you are walking down the street with these thoughts. Do you think anyone who would meet you would be able to tell you what’s on your mind?

The answer to number one is up to you. But, the answer to number two can be pretty generic. Although people will not be able to tell you exactly what you think, they will more or less have an idea of how you are feeling.

Here’s another question. When you enter a party filled with friends, do they all fall silent as if something terrible had happened? Or does everybody there perk up as if waiting for something exciting to happen?

You know what? The answer to all these depends on your frame of mind.

Thoughts are very powerful. They affect your general attitude. The attitude you carry reflects on your appearance, too – unless, of course, you are a great actor.

And it doesn’t end there. Your attitude can also affect people around you.

The type of attitude you carry depends on you. It can be either positive or negative.

Positive thoughts have a filling effect. They are admittedly invigorating. Plus, the people around the person carrying positive thoughts are usually energized by this type of attitude. A positive attitude is very catchy.

Negative thoughts on the other hand have a sapping effect on other people. Aside from making you look gloomy and sad, negative thoughts can turn a festive gathering into a funeral wake. Think about this. Of all the characters in the “Winnie the Pooh” movies, who would you rather want to be around. Eeyore, the negative donkey or Tigger, the positive Tiger?

“Tigger”

A positive attitude attracts people, while a negative attitude repels them. People tend to shy away from those who carry a negative attitude.

We can also define attitude as the way of looking at the world. If you choose to focus on the negative things in the world, more or less you have a negative attitude brewing up. However, if you choose to focus on the positive things, you are more likely to carry a positive attitude.

You have much to gain from a very positive attitude. For one, studies have shown that a positive attitude promotes better health. Those with this kind of attitude also have more friends. projecting a positive attitude also helps one to handle stress and problems better than those who have a negative attitude.

A positive attitude begins with a healthy self-image. If you will love the way you are and are satisfied, confident, and self-assured, you also make others around you feel the same way. This is good as gold.

A negative attitude, on the other hand, has, of course, an opposite effect. So, carrying a negative attitude has a twofold drawback. You feel bad about yourself, and you make others feel the same way.

If you want to have a positive attitude, you have to feature healthy thoughts. This is probably very hard to do nowadays since, all around us, the media feeds us nothing but negative thoughts. A study shows that for every 14 things a parent says to his or her child, only one is positive. This is truly a saddening thought.

If you want a healthier outlook in life, you need to think happy thoughts, and you have to have positive thinking as well. So, what can you do? Well, for starters, you could see a funny movie, you could play with children, spend some time telling jokes with friends. All these activities fill you with positive stimuli, which in turn promotes positive attitude.

Although it is impossible to keep ourselves from the negative things around us, you can still carry a positive attitude by focusing on the good things, the positive things in life.

And this positive attitude you now carry can be of benefit to other people. Sometimes when other people feel down, the thing people mostly do is try to give them advice. But sometimes, all they need is somebody to sit by them, and listen to them. If you have a positive attitude you may be able to cheer them up without even having to say anything.

If positive attitude is really great, why do people choose to adopt a negative attitude instead? One who carries a negative attitude may be actually sending a signal for attention. Before you get me wrong, feeling sad, angry, or gloomy is not wrong itself. But dwelling on these thoughts for far too long is not healthy either. There is a time to mourn.

As always, if you are beset by troubles, even in your darkest hour, focus on the good things in life, you will always have hope. Problems become something you can overcome. My mom always said, if you feel bad about your situation, you can always find somebody worse off then you are.

You don’t have much to lose by adopting a healthy, positive attitude. Studies show that such an attitude actually retards aging, makes you healthier, helps you develop a better stress coping mechanism, and has a very positive effect on all the people you meet every day. So, what’s not to like about a positive attitude? Adopt one today.

It’s not easy to be positive in this economy we have right now, but as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. (Proverbs.23:7) Try it.

(Philippians 4:8) “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Fear of Success

When you bring it down to its basic ingredient regarding the lack of (or inconsistency of) achievement – it’s the fear of rejection! It doesn’t matter what dream you want to pursue or what you want to achieve in your life or career, if you can’t get over the fear of, “NO”, the chances are slim that you’ll gain the success you’re after. After all, fear is a learned process.

When you create a foundation built on the permanent elimination of the fear of “NO”, as well as, the internalization of rejection, everything else will automatically fall in place! All the training and knowledge that you gained from books, webinars and seminars will be put to good use without reservation and without fear! Instead of focusing on the pain of rejection; drive, ambition, passion, purpose and persistence will be your new found focus! This is why I say, “When you can conquer your fear of “NO”, everything else falls into place!”

Your Perception Changes Everything!

Our interpretation of life experiences is what creates the baggage that weighs us down. From our childhood to today our interpretation of events is what shapes our perceptions. Often times, (especially when we were very young), when someone was rude to us we sometimes interpreted it as if we did something wrong to cause this rudeness! Now that we’re older, because of our interpretations from events that happened to us in the past, when we we’re much younger, we become fearful when we think we’re going to have to put ourselves in a similar situation. We find ways to avoid the situation altogether! The reality is, how we react to rejection and the word “NO” today, started in our childhood from how we interpreted rejection then.

As an adult we still carry those “scars!” and those “scars” rear their ugly head every time we place ourselves in a situation where there is a potential for rejection! So, we avoid having to suffer this “pain” by finding excuses why we “can’t” …oh I can’t, I have a dental appointment that day …oh I can’t, I’ve got to take my cat to the vet that day …I’m sure they wouldn’t be interested! …I don’t want to seem “pushy” I’ll wait until I think they’re ready! etc. etc. Sound familiar?

So, what does one do to change one’s perception so that rejection and the word “NO” has no more power over one’s life and career? How do you handle rejection? How do we overcome rejection? Start with this…

An Exercise to Exorcise!

For years I’ve asked entrepreneurs to do an exercise that, to a person, has always had a profound effect on them. Try it on yourself and see if it doesn’t do the same for you. Find a quite place where there will be no distractions for a while. On a piece of paper write at the top of the page the following question, “What am I afraid of?” Then, list your fears both big and small, arrange them in order of importance, examine each one closely, and when you do; ask yourself, “Why do I fear this? Why does this particular thing cause me so much anxiety?”

When you can ‘step back’ and objectively define, as well as, analyze your fears you can conquer those fears! The more you understand why you fear what you fear, the less that fear will have any more control over you. There is just something about seeing it in black and white right in front of you.

Do You Know Your Children’s Friends?

Protect Your Children

Don’t let them go to Parties or Sleepovers until You Know Who They will be Spending Time With

One of the most important aspects of raising children is to ensure they are well socialized. This process usually begins early in life and is one of the main driving forces for parents to enroll their children in preschool. Play dates are also a big part of the early socialization process.
As they grow older, children forge bonds with other children from school, church, and sports. Part of the social learning process is for them to take part in parties, sleepovers, and other group activities.
How can you keep your child in a safe environment?
Every parent wants their child to grow up happy and healthy, and to have the companionship of friends. As they develop an increasing amount of independence, their need to have mom or dad close at hand diminishes. As difficult as this is, it is a necessary part of growing up.
However, it is important as a parent to ensure we know as much as possible about our children, especially when they are out of sight – how they are spending that time, and with whom they are spending it. This period of early social activity occurs during some of the most impressionable years of children’s lives, and we want to ensure they have nothing but nurturing experiences. We want all of their childhood memories to be good ones, which evoke memories of safety and security.
Be a smart parent – know exactly what type of people surround your child
Before letting your child out of your sight for a slumber party, team pizza party, or any other type of gathering, make sure you know everything you can about the people with whom your child will be socializing.
A simple, computer-generated background check can tell you right away if it is safe for your child to attend the function, or if it would be wiser to keep him at home. For example, Net Detective, an online background check service, makes it easy for you to delve into the personal history of the parent or parents who will be watching your child.
In a very short period of time, you can find out a great deal about virtually anyone’s criminal and financial history. Learn whether there are any civil actions pending against the parent, or learn of the existence of any restraining orders. Find out if the family has a violent history, or a peaceful one.
The main idea is to review the private life of anyone who will be responsible for your child’s care, and ensure the person is qualified for the task. After all, you would not want to unwittingly place the care of your child into the hands of a hardened criminal.

Intimacy Can Be a Mess!

You need to understand that God created intimacy as His plan to build oneness in marriage. The way men and women respond to intimacy is vastly different. Sometimes those differences can complement each other and sometimes it complicates the experience. Those differences can tear apart the very fabric of your mutual fulfillment.

Satisfying intimacy is much more than focusing on the physical aspect. There are four levels of intimacy and they all need to be playing a part for the experience to be successful for both husband and wife. Those four levels are mental, emotional, spiritual, and then physical. All of these areas are vital in establishing intimacy and when used as together they will enrich and deepen your oneness as a couple.

Does your marriage need more intimacy?

Cleaning Up After The Cat

My Father-in-law passed away about six weeks ago. About eighteen months before that, my mother-in-law passed away. It has been a rough road that my wife has been on for the last two years.

The estate trust is still not completely settled yet, but my wife and her brother have come to one conclusion. He does not want the house, and my wife does. So my wife has been going through all of their belongings, sorting, cleaning, and that is no easy task. My mother-in-law was a pack rat. She saved everything, as most people from the depression era, did. You never know when someone will need what you are about to throw out. A little of that has rubbed off on my wife, and needless to say, we have accumulated are own arsenal of goods, that my wife insists has some sort of value, weather monetarily or practically. This is a project that could go on for years. I have tried to be as supportive as I can. My philosophy is, if you haven’t used it in the last year, throw it away or give it to someone who can make good use out of it. But that’s another whole blog post.

Bob and Janice, ( my father-in-law and mother-in-law ), have a cat. Boots was twenty years old. He was losing his eye sight. He was losing his hearing. He was struggling to walk. His one leg was so bad that he didn’t even sit down all the way on it, and he had a kidney infection also. He was hurting.

We talked to the veterinarian that they used and he said that he talked to Bob about putting Boots down awhile ago, but to Bob, that was Janice’s’ cat, and he was not going to put him away for nothing. He would keep him alive as long as he could, no matter what the cost.

Boots was treated like royalty. He was given distilled water, and he always had a hearty appetite. Special pillows and blankets that belonged just for his use were placed where he liked them. When ever he wanted to take a nap on the bed or the couch, he would stand by it till someone would come rushing over to lift him up on it, and then they have to cover him with his blankets and put his pillows in place.

Because of Boots age or kidneys or a combination of both, he would sometimes go and relieve himself in the corners of a couple of the rooms. Needless to say, ooooh that smell was awful. I was over there trying to power scrub and clean those corners, but Boots would just go back and do it again and again. No one would ever do anything about it and no one would ever dare make the suggestion that Boots was ready to go to kitty cat heaven. boots

This is the home that we inherited, and this is the home that we are going to be moving into and paying off in a couple of years with the Money Merge Account program from United First Financial.

I said all that to say this.

The first thing that had to happen, was the carpet had to be removed. All of it, and we even thought about replacing all the sub flooring also. But we learned that this might not be necessary.

We tried to soak the stained sub flooring with a strong, 10 to 1 ratio of bleach and water. Ten parts bleach to one part water. I would suggest a mask to wear over your nose and mouth and lots of ventilation. If the cat smell didn’t kill you, the bleach would. It was very strong. We left it to dry for a couple of days.

It did work to some degree, but there still was a faint smell of urine in the air. We were also told that in the hot muggy days of summer, the smell might return. This was not going to work. Something else had to work.

Next, we got some advice from a builder friend of ours and a friend who buys rental properties. He has come across this problem before, and they both recommended a sealer primer called Kilz. Not the latex brand, but the oil based one. We applied this to all of the rooms, and we put on a very heavy two coats. surgical-mask

Again, I suggest a mask and lots of ventilation, as the Kilz has a very strong oder itself. Also you want to use a heavy nap roller so that you can get into all the cracks and crevasses with the sealer. paint-roller-and-tray

A couple of days drying and the smell was gone. We were amazed. We invited lots of friends in to test their noses…. and no smell.

We continued are remodeling with some fresh paint on the walls and some rooms got the ceiling done as well. The carpet was laid and we don’t have any smell. No hint that a cat was even there at all. Nothing but new paint and carpet.

The real test will come when we bring our cat over to the new home. He is about five years old and has never been anywhere but in out house. He has never seen another cat. He is a male, and I know that they are very territorial. We hope that the smell of Boots will not be present, but we know that he is going to smell him in that house somewhere. Boots lived there for all of the twenty years of his life. We aren’t going to be able to get rid of all of his presence. We just hope that our cat won’t care and just go back to doing what he does best. That’s sleeping.

cat-sleeping

Sneezing

Ever wonder about all the variations of sneezing that there is in the world today? There are loud sneezes, quiet sneezes, long sneezes, short sneezes, wet sneezes…whoooooo. There are about as many different sneezes as there are different types of snow flakes.

actual snowflake on the seat of a snowmobile

My brother is a big guy, but when he starts to reel back, puts his hand to his nose, starts the sneeze chant; ahhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh….. Chooooooooooo! Only thing is that his chooooooo is more like a ch, without the, ooooooooo, at the end. In other words, it is a small and quiet sneeze. For a big man, he has a little sneeze.

There was a girl that I used to go to school with, that would honk like a goose when she sneezed. What a disruption that caused in the classroom when she would get into a sneezing fit. Everyone would laugh so hard, that the teacher would have to ask her to go out into the hallway until she was done. That was so funny.

There are also the number of times that a person will sneeze. I always sneeze just twice. Maybe once in awhile, three times. There are people who can sneeze up to eighteen times in a row. There was a sneezing girl, reported in The New York Times, Jan. 29, 1899, that sneezed sometimes a hundred times in an hour. She sneezed for forty days until the doctors discovered a growth in her throat. After it was removed, her sneezing stopped. True story.

First, what causes sneezing? We sneeze because of an irritant or a tickling inside the nasal passages. When that happens, our brain sends a message to the area and orders a sudden and forceful burst of air expelled from the nose and mouth. Particles expelled during sneezing can leave the body at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. (Wow, that is fast.) It is the body’s way of removing those irritating intruders from our system and keeps things clear and flowing.

sneeze-cartoon

Sneezing can also be triggered by a sudden exposure to a bright light, a slightly full stomach, and sudden changes in the climate or temperatures. This is something that I can relate too. How many of you are sneezing after eating? Whenever I get done eating, and I go outside to the bright sunlight, or to a room where there is exposure to some bright light, I will always sneeze.

Ever feel a sneeze coming on and it just won’t come out. (I hate when that happens) Try looking at a bright light and see if you won’t sneeze. It works every time for me.

Does your heart really stop when you sneeze? My mom used to always tell me that, and I walked around, scared to death, (literally) to sneeze. Don’t tell your kids that, because it is not true. Sometimes we may feel like our heart is going to stop, but it doesn’t. Because of the pressure that it is creating in the chest area when we sneeze or cough, it may feel like our heart is going to stop.

Are sneezes ever life threatening? Yes, when you are driving. DON’T SNEEZE! There is a protective measure that the body does automatically when we sneeze. We, for a split second, squeeze our eyes closed when we sneeze. Who hasn’t sneezed when we are driving? The car may swerve just a tad, and we have to explain to the police officer, that just pulled us over, “no officer, I did not have anything to drink. I just sneezed.”

Oh yes. One more thing to always remember to do when you sneeze. Never get caught sneezing without COVERING YOUR MOUTH! There are thousands and thousands of tiny saliva droplets, or molecules, that just came from your mouth and are dispersed into the air. They may float around in the air for an hour. You can’t see them, but they are there, and you are spreading your germs to others around you. Think of others when you sneeze, and put your hand over your mouth.

COVER YOUR MOUTH!

Happy sneezing.

Brian Gosur

Advice and Strategies That Will Take You Out of This World

Category Archives: Health