“I’m proud of you, I love you, you finished strong”

I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on the last MORFIT Blog, “More Than A Healthy Body”. I wanted to take this momentum and write a follow-up article. Today we are going to talk about increasing your fantasticness so that you can finish strong in life.

We all have or have had people in our lives that stay close to our hearts and are responsible for making us want to be a better person. This may be a friend, parent, teacher, stranger, co-worker, or sometimes someone we never even get the chance to meet. Regardless of who they are, they’ve left an impression on us, and we will never forget them. If you made a Fantastic People List of people that have truly inspired you over the years, how many names would you be able to write down? This is my first challenge to you today.

More important than how many names are on your list; how many lists do you think your name would be on? How many people think of you as an inspiration in their life? One? Five? Twenty-five? Hundreds? We already know from the last blog the amazing potential of inspiring and being inspired by others. How satisfying would it be to improve yourself as a person, increase your fantasticness, and start getting your name on more peoples’ lists?

My second challenge to you today is to fill out the ‘Fantastic Lifestyle Questionnaire‘ which can be downloaded from the following link:  Fantastic Lifestyle Checklist

This questionnaire will give you a score out of 100. Regardless of what you score; you should be proud of your strengths, and excited to start working on the weaknesses. It doesn’t matter what part of your life you decide to work on first; as long as you pick something that will require some effort and be realistic. Increasing your fantasticness is not limited to the lifestyle choices listed in the questionnaire. Below are just a few of the MORFIT challenges that I and some friends have been working on over the past couple months:
– Chip-free till 2013 (eating no chips until January 1st, 2013)
– Eating vegan once per week
– Stop biting nails
– Calling a different person every day for a month to tell them how much their friendship means to you
– Drinking only one cup of coffee per day

Some challenges only last one month; while others are permanent improvements on our fantasticness. Even the short term ones help to re-affirm how strong we can be, and give us confidence to tackle yet another challenge.  Should you decide to take action after reading this article, and you continue to improve yourself as an individual, it won’t be long before you start setting challenges that aren’t focused on you, but on the people around you. When these people can see that you are taking steps in life to become a better person and improve the lives of those that surround you; you will start to inspire more and more of them. And that is how you will get your name on more Fantastic People Lists.

These challenges have even further reaching benefits. As you succeed in accomplishing them, you may find that you start to set more challenging goals for yourself. You’ll start to surprise yourself at how strong your will and determination can be when you set your mind to it. Over time, other tasks and problems in life will be easier to overcome and manage because you have been training your body and mind to overcome adversity.

Every day we are faced with decisions to make. Some of them are easier than others; most of them do not have a pivotal effect on our lives longterm. But now and then, we come to a crossroads that will forever change the landscape of our lives. It is common for these big decisions to be a bit of a paradox. Many times the path that is quicker and easy to navigate doesn’t get us to where we want to be. The path that leads to our happiness is longer and requires much more work to get through. We all have the will and determination to work towards our happiness, we just need to believe that the arduous trek to get there is worth the challenge. Perhaps getting to that point starts with a simple challenge that you start today…

I started this article with a quote that I heard from someone who has inspired me tremendously for over ten years. She heard the quote from someone who greatly inspires her. He heard it from someone who greatly inspires him, who in turn heard it from someone of great inspiration as well. Every single one of these individuals has failed at different times in their life. They are no different than me or you. Yet they continue to inspire those around them because they don’t always take the easy path; and they are always challenging themselves to be a better person for themselves and the people in their lives.

If you’re not sure what to do for your first challenge; I encourage you to try this one:
Live and love your life, so that if today was your last, those that you leave behind will say to you; “I’m proud of you, I love you, you finished strong”.