I turned 50 this year, and like many baby-boomers who are experiencing the joys and heartaches of growing older, I am determined to keep this body in shape to make the most of my life for the rest of my life.
Heading up my list activities to accomplish this is a three to five mile run, four times a week.
The good news is, I am pretty consistent at running, rarely going two days without pounding the pavement. This exercise impacts not only my physical health, but my mental health as well. In fact if I don’t go running for a couple of days, I start to feel lethargic, if not a little depressed, and so I hit the alarm and hit the streets one more time.
The bad news is, I don’t really enjoy running. I would much rather be playing tennis or golf. I never wake up and say, “Oh boy, I can’t wait to go running,” like I do on a Saturday morning, when I am heading out to the links.
But I run. The 30 minute cardio exercise can’t be beat. For me, the hardest part of running is the five minutes leading up to the run, putting on my shoes, and getting out the door. There are what seems like a hundred other things I would rather be doing at that moment than running. I give myself a little pep-talk, a mental boot out the door, reminding myself that after the run I am going to feel great all day.
“The hardest part of any journey is the first step,” and how true that is, at least for me and my running.
The same is true when it comes to establish a plan to reach my financial goals.
The first step in our journey toward reaching our financial goals is so darned easy and yet so incredibly difficult. As a result, instead of embracing that simple first step, we choose to focus on things that can be fun and entertaining, like studying stock charts, mutual funds reports, standard deviations, and the like. And while these activities might be entertaining, not only are they irrelevant, but counterproductive to building wealth.
Any idea what the first step is? If you have followed the Coffeehouse blog over the years, you probably already know by now, because I have written about it many times.
Send us your guess, or tell us about your challenging first steps, and we’ll send a copy of The New Coffeehouse Investor, to the first three folks who respond our way.
Stay tuned, I will reveal my important first step next week.
(that’s me below, running the New York marathon)
