I’m working on my professional six pack. Hard.
Crunches, in the form of daily writing. Planks, in submitting my work to publishers format. Knee ups, in the form of finding ways not only behind but in front of the camera. All portfolio boosters and all sweat breakers.
A steady, healthy diet is complimentary to the gym regiment. Creativity are my salads. Working on a piece of writing is my protein, sustaining me ’til the next feeding. Eight glasses of water are my next big idea.
Isn’t it so true though? Where you spend your time, or your money, and how you feed it and grow it is all up to you. Could be a positive like your body or as I’m referencing in this posting, my career. And easily enough, you could be nursing a bad habit to greater health than you’d knowingly allow it.
Look at alcohol. I used to think of it as a friend. We visited one another regularly and I gave him a solid foothold in my almost day to day life. Not once did it cross my mind that I was breeding a monster that would one day begin robbing from me and was becoming more powerful than I was myself. I fed it and he comforted me. I didn’t realize he was rallying an army against me. He was my enemy the entire time.
Look at the body. Sure, as one gets older, wisdom takes over where cockiness once lived. But let’s consider this point through a 25 year old male. Metabolism still burning bright, he generally eats what he wants when he wants. Exercise isn’t a big deal as he figures he has good genes and doesn’t need the hassle of breaking a sweat or investing his money in a gym. Party is a way of life, as is his casual smoking habit. Hey, he’s no alcoholic or even a full time smoker so there’s no harm. Fast forward a decade and all of a sudden he wakes up, Mister Together, and realizes his choices have him in horrible health, possibly irreversible the effects of his long term physical assault upon himself.
Look at the mind/soul. Take the same guy, put him at age 15 and forget all his other later-in-life problems. This young man falls in love (if it’s actually a thing) with pornography. His every day life is thwarted with when can he next view sexuality at its raunchiest. It changes him. He views women wrongly. He degrades his own mother and eventually his future girlfriend and wife. At one point, it’s not enough so he graduates to violent porn and when that doesn’t excite him, he toys with the thought of raping a girl and maybe he follows through. He loses his wife and he loses his freedom but guess what he has to face every hour of every day, staring at those cold prison walls? The grotesque monster that he allowed in his mind and in his very soul, so now to the point where it’s larger than him and it taunts him day and night.
Extreme examples but only to say that one little foot, or even a toe in a door, and you will reap what you sow. This is why it’s so important to plant those positive seeds, the ones that bring us life and peace and dare I say success. Be very careful what you entertain.
And so I continue to sweat profusely as I work my professional six pack. I want low professional body fat. I want to be career ripped. It’s a workout I love and will keep flexing these professional muscles every flipping day.