No Regrets

LIFE HAS NO GUARANTEES – BUT WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

“A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.”
~Yiddish Proverb

Regrets – we’ve all had them. “I wish I had more education.” “I wish I had waited longer to get married.” “I should have traveled more before I settled down.” Should have, would have, could have… But we all know, we can’t change the past, and living those regrets just keeps us hung up in the past preventing us from moving forward.

A friend of mine recently shared that a 60+ woman she works with was looking at photos of other employees during a company outing, and this woman commented about a younger 30 something woman who was overweight. Her words were “She needs to lose weight.” Then she went on to say, “I know I am fat, but I’m old.” Wow…You see this woman was about 50 pounds overweight herself, but because of her age, she accepted the way she was, chalking it up to the fact that she was 60+.

You may have heard the Serenity Prayer that begins with: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” That’s a great prayer and something we hear quoted quite often, but have you ever thought about the reverse – accepting what you CAN change? I think that’s called a “cop-out.” You see we can always make excuses about what we haven’t done, or aren’t willing to do, and we do a pretty good job at convincing ourselves. Accepting the way we are just because we’re a certain age - whether it’s being overweight, out of shape, or chalking things up to our “genes” are all cop-outs. Yes we are all aging – that’s inevitable, but is there a way to age healthy? I believe so, and it starts with you and your choices.

Most people live their lives regretting more of what they didn’t do rather than what they’ve done. We’ve all made mistakes and hopefully we’ve learned from them. That’s what life experiences are all about, and that’s how we grow. But have you reached a place in your life where you may be regretting that you didn’t start earlier on reaching potential goals? Maybe you feel like it’s too late to go back to school, meet someone new, start a new career or even get back in shape. If that’s the case, then I’m here to encourage you to stir up your dreams and your goals, no matter what age you are.

I’m a firm believer that it’s never too late to start working out, even if it’s beginning with 10 minutes a day and increasing gradually. Everyone knows that exercise is good for your heart and keeps you slimmer, but did you know that exercise also:

• Improves your balance
  
• Helps you sleep better
  
• Keeps you in a better mood
• Increases your energy level
• Improves your sex life (maybe I should have had this one at the top to keep your interest!)
• Keeps you living longer!
  

My point being - Don’t let your life be a life of regrets. You are not a victim of your DNA, your culture or the fact that you’ve slacked off a few years. Let today be the day you make a pact with yourself to become a healthier you, whether you are 20, 50 or 70! The small steps you take in the right direction will become easier tomorrow and even easier the next day.

None of us are guaranteed how long we are here on this earth, but the benefits you will reap through exercise will certainly increase the quality of your life while you are here. Your life is a gift – so don’t wake up tomorrow regretting what you could have done today that could mean the difference between years of disability or years of healthy aging. I’d love to help you get back on track.

Taking the Risk Towards A Great Outcome

"Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it, establish your priorities and go to work." ~H. L. Hunt

Decisions – we all make them throughout each day; what time we get out of bed, what we wear, where we go, people we interact with, what we eat and so on. In most of our daily decision-making, we don’t think too much about consequences. Many of us just make decisions without thinking through all the potential scenarios. Often we end up making spontaneous decisions that can leave us living with the regrets that go along with poor decision-making consequences.

Recently I read a book by Ben Carson, M.D. which is actually a call to action book: Take the Risk: Learning to Identify, Choose, and Live with Acceptable Risk.” Dr. Carson, who is a director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Maryland, has created a different way to think about risk. He calls it “Best/Worst Analysis (B/WA) formula,” and it’s simply asking yourself these four questions when a decision is on the table:

1. What is the best thing that can happen if I do this?
2. What is the worst thing that can happen if I do this?
3. What is the best thing that can happen if I don’t do this?
4. What is the worst thing that can happen if I don’t do this?

Once you take your decision in question through the four steps, you review each answer and then you’re going to want to make your decision based on the most positive potential outcome. This can apply to any area of your life – relationships, (“Should I commit to this person or not?”) career opportunities, (“Should I bite the bullet and take the new job I’ve been offered?”) or large purchases, (“Is this the right time to buy a new home?”) The list is endless, and no decision is really too trivial to not take the time to run through these four questions – even if you don’t write it on paper and it’s only in your mind.

I started thinking closely on this subject and began to dissect everything that crossed my decision-making path. Of course, I started to analyze the exercise factor and thought about those who always have a reason why they don’t exercise or belong to a gym:

• What’s the best thing that can happen to me if I exercise today? “I’ll feel very good about myself when I complete my workout.”
  

• What’s the worst thing that can happen to me if I exercise today? “I could fall down and hurt myself.”
  

• What’s the best thing that can happen if I don’t exercise today? “I won’t be sore tomorrow.”
  

• What’s the worst thing that can happen if I don’t exercise today? “It will be easier for me not to exercise tomorrow or the next day.”
  

• What’s the best thing that can happen if I join a health club or gym? “I’ll get in shape and become healthier.”
  

• What’s the worst thing that can happen if I join a health club or gym? “I’ll pay the money and never go.”
  

• What’s the best thing that can happen if I don’t join a health club or gym? “I’ll use the money that I would have spent and take my out-of-shape self to happy hour or buy “things” that I won’t remember a month from now.”
  

• What’s the worst thing that can happen if I don’t join a health club or gym? “I’ll stay the way I am, possibly becoming more out of shape and experience poor health.

The above examples make it pretty easy to see what your best decision would be. OK, so maybe your answers wouldn’t be the same as these, but you get my point. If you take the time to assess your decisions and then analyze what the potential outcome could be, it helps you put things into perspective and make the best overall decision. Try it with any area of your life. It has helped me see things differently especially in my business decisions.

So whether you are contemplating a change in a career, relationship or even a health and wellness decision, ask yourself Dr. Carson’s four questions. You might just risk a great outcome!

How Are Your Communication Skills?

There is an energy field between humans. And, when we reach out in passion, it is met with an answering passion and changes the relationship forever. ~ Rollo May

Most of you are more than just familiar with social networking – whether it is through LinkedIn, Facebook, My Space, or Twitter. How many of us can’t even go through an hour of the day without texting, emailing someone or checking your Facebook? Yes, I realize you are reading my blog right now, which is a relatively new way people interact with others – building communities of people who are interested in what others have to say. And yes, many of you correspond with me via text, email, Twitter or Face book.

There is no doubt that social media is opening the doors for people not only like me, but others who have a message to share and who want to get it out to as many people as they can in the shortest amount of time. It is an honor to me that you find something I may have to say of interest.


I am all for these ways of marketing or networking yourself; however, recently I started thinking about all of this and began to notice something everywhere I went. Whether it was on public transportation, walking through the mall or the airport, driving down the highway or just walking through the gym, I noticed a common theme. People were consumed with texting, emailing or listening to IPods of some sort via earphones. I never even made eye contact with these people. Their faces were buried in their phones while their fingers were typing away. The only way I would have noticed this was simply the fact that my own cell phone had stopped working! How we immediately freak out when that happens and try to get to the nearest Verizon store before we miss another call or text!


I began to think about interactions of humans. I was in my backyard recently just soaking up some sun (between the rainy days) and I heard birds all around me going crazy with their chirping. My first thought was – “Wow – are those birds annoying!” Then I started thinking about how those sounds were the birds communicating to one another. They were relating to each other. I thought for a minute about how it would be if they were too part of the information technology of the world and communicated via machines and such. Yes, it sounds a bit off the wall, but it did help me to see what we miss when we stop interacting with others one on one. Maybe we’re trying to become like the birds with Twitter! (Ok a bad analogy!)

A friend of mine recently shared that he drove his 14 year old son and one of his close friends to baseball practice and it was a 30 minute drive. He described the drive as “silent” as both boys were buried in their cell phones texting. And one of the craziest things he said was that often the boys were texting each other sitting a foot apart in the back seat! Have we become so dependent on these devices that we no longer know how to interact with one another face to face or even voice to voice?

This also reminds me of something I recently saw on Facebook, and I actually clicked on it myself. It said: Become a fan of “I love my mom.” I joined along with countless others, and then it occurred to me. Why do I have to click on something on a social networking site to show that I am a fan of loving my mom? I laughed to myself because I do call my mom – she isn’t on Face book, Twitter and the like. She is a wonderful mom and I let her know that often – and not just on Mother’s Day.

My point being – sometimes we can get so caught up in the latest gadget or networking tool that it keeps us from being relational one on one with people who may possibly make a huge impact on our lives or vice versa. How many times have you called someone and they don’t pick up, but they’ll text you right back? What’s up with that?? Often we lose our social skills and when it comes to a situation where we have to relate face to face, many are left feeling awkward and less confident. My kids even tell me about how boys and girls who break up with each other via text messaging!

I know many of you do belong to fitness clubs and you go in with your gear, get to business with your earphones and IPods, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But my challenge to you is this – next time you go into your fitness club, keep in mind that you are there with like-minded people. These are people who care about their health and are making giant steps of faith to either maintain or reach goals that are important enough to take them away from perhaps an evening at happy hour or a night on the couch eating junk food. Step out of your “me zone” and make eye contact, give a word of encouragement to someone next you on the treadmill or weight bench and simply acknowledge that person. You never know - that person could be an important key to helping you unlock your future or possibly even theirs!

I may not be able to personally interact with all of you, but if you see me and I'm head - down buried in my phone, remind me of this blog! Let me know how I can help you reach your goals.

Everything is beautiful – or is it?

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched ... but are felt in the heart. ~ Helen Keller

When asked to define beauty, how many of us automatically picture in our minds something aesthetically beautiful? You may imagine a rose bud opening up or a majestic landscape. If we were to think of a person as being beautiful, I would have to admit that I would imagine an outwardly very attractive person - someone who captivates me by their physical beauty. We've all heard the old saying "Beauty is only skin deep," and we try to act like we believe that, but show us someone like Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent, and before she even opens her mouth, people are laughing and making fun of her based on her outward appearance. Yes she did “wow” the crowd, but after she’s discovered to have such an amazing voice and she’s got a signed contract, what happens? She’s given a makeover - to conform to what society believes acceptable beauty to be.


It's very easy to get caught up in the "beautiful people" zone. It's become such a staple, that even extraordinarily good looking people are left feeling bottom of the barrel, like they don't measure up. We are bombarded with what Hollywood and New York tells us is beautiful. Even people in their 20’s are reaching out to aesthetic medicine and other ways to hold on to their youth or to just keep up with what society says they should match up to.

On a recent visit to the Sonoran Desert’s Botanical Garden in Arizona, I learned a great lesson. What I thought would be a somewhat boring tour through the desert helped me to see things in a totally different light. I always thought of the desert as dry and desolate with prickly cactus, snakes and scorpions.
What I discovered was that many of those prickly, sticky, plants contained numerous food properties, as well as medicinal benefits, and I left there with a reverence toward the desert that I would never have had without hearing from a knowledgeable tour-guide the purpose of each of those desert plants and how they provided housing, medicine and food for countless people throughout the centuries.

You see those plants were strategically created with a purpose in mind - often multiple purposes. Just as we come in different shapes, looks and sizes, we all have purposes. You may not even realize what your purpose is, or you may feel you have so many purposes that you are overwhelmed, confused and therefore unfocused. Many often make the mistake of thinking they are supposed to have one giant purpose that sticks out like a sore thumb, and when they don’t recognize it, they become confused thinking “What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I know what my purpose is?”

I’m a believer that throughout the course of our lives, we have multiple purposes and it’s the things that we have passion for, things we feel compelled to change or make a difference in – those are the callings we have, and we need to press forward with those things.

You all know what my passion is by now. Fitness is such a calling in my life that I live and breathe it. I won’t try to force my passion on you, but one thing I will do is reach out to inspire, encourage, train and motivate you to become a healthier you. You see, when we exercise our physical body, we not only cause it to conform to the state it works most efficiently in, but we also generate a sense of confidence in ourselves that exudes out of our pours; and we all know that confidence is attractive.

Although you may not be “Hollywood worthy” from the outside, once you develop a solid wellness plan, a healthier, more confident you will emerge as your true beauty shines, tapping you into a more purpose-filled life.

Enthusiastically,

Joe Gigantino Jr.

The Spirit of “Busyness”

“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau



“I don’t have time – I’m too busy.” “There are just not enough hours in the day.” Sound familiar? I’ve often thought about counting the number of times I’ve heard people refer to some aspect of their lives as “busy.” Of course, with all the people I interact with directly each day, whether by phone, in person or online, I’m sure I would lose count very quickly! What is it about that word that we seem to always feel the need to include in our vocabulary? Do we use it to validate our actions or our lack of actions?

The truth is, and we’ve all heard it – everyone seems to make time for the things that are most important to them, or is that entirely true? Your family is important, right? What about your job? I’m sure we would all agree on the importance of those things, yet often we neglect the very people closest to us – whether it is a parent, child, sibling or even spouse with all of our other “busy” activities. We assume they will always be around, and take them for granted, while we place our priorities elsewhere. We become toxic in our own relationships with the very people we should be nurturing.

What about your job – very important, right? This is an understatement in this job market! However, many employees spend so much time talking about how busy they are in the workplace that the time they spend complaining could be used to be productive, thereby increasing the bottom line of the company and contributing to their own job security.

Now let’s talk health. Many people, especially those who have never experienced a debilitating illness, just keep trucking along thinking they don’t really need to take the time to nurture their health. They may count on their “good luck genes” to get them through. No matter how wonderful your genes are, there is good chance that a time will come when your health may be challenged, and then it may or may not be too late to turn things around.

Life is about balance, and maybe as you are reading this, a cord is being struck in you and you’re realizing that you have busy with the wrong things in your own life. Yes, there is definitely a “spirit of busyness” running rampant in our society, but I believe that today can be a day where you draw a line in the sand. Nurture your relationships by giving and receiving love, practicing gratitude, forgiveness and acceptance. On your job, work like it’s the day before your vacation. (I once heard Zig Ziglar say that.) Think about how hard you work to make sure everything is in place before you set out to leave on holiday. If we worked with that kind of productivity daily, imagine what could be accomplished!

Lastly, treat your body like the temple it was created to be. Nourish it with whole foods and nutritional supplements and exercise! An investment in a fitness program will not only make you look and feel better, but can also help you become a better mother, father, parent, spouse or even employee! I want to motivate you to become a better you. Let me know how I can help, or are you too busy?

Enthusiastically,

Joe Gigantino Jr.

Owning Your Life

It’s your life – Own it!

”True freedom begins and ends with personal accountability.” - Dan Zadra

“It’s not my fault - if only I had grown up living with both parents, I wouldn’t be the way I am.”

“If only I had more education, I would have gotten that promotion at work.”

“I don’t have good genes – so there’s nothing I can do about my weight.”

Sound like excuses? All of us at one time or another make similar comments, usually to justify a situation or a place we are in our lives. To say that you can always control situations is certainly not true, but you alone are responsible for your thoughts, emotions, and actions in regards to that situation.

Don’t allow a label to define who you are

The truth is – you are not a victim. You have full ownership of your life, and it is up to you to make the most of it. Take your health for example. You own full rights to your body – you can choose what you eat, how much or little you exercise, and even how much risk you subject yourself to. Your parents may have raised you on Twinkies and potato chips, but you can change those bad habits by making appropriate lifestyle choices today. You may have been labeled with a particular ailment or disorder. The diagnosis may be true, but try not to use that particular “label” as a crutch to excuse or justify your behavior or lifestyle choices.

Emotions must be managed

The same holds true for spiritual and emotional matters. You can choose to be happy regardless of a comment someone makes in passing or whether your friends remember your birthday or not. If you choose to be sad, that’s fine, but don’t blame others for your emotions. Feelings need to be managed, and although emotions are part of life, it’s your decision as to how you translate those emotions into actions. You are not entitled to blame others. No one can make you feel or react in a certain way. By accepting your emotions as part of who you are, you are empowered to control those emotions and actions.

Perfect timing is generally a myth

You often hear people use the term “perfect timing.” Maybe they’ll say they’ll stop smoking when their stress level goes down, or will exercise when it’s cooler/warmer outside. These are all examples of people waiting for just the right day and time when their “cosmos” align. The truth is, if you’re waiting for “perfect timing” to make important changes in your life, whether it be a relationship, a job move, a good time to stop smoking or start exercising, you’ll wait forever. There will never be the perfect moment as making choices always involve risk.

If you want to change your life – stop waiting for perfection and act now. You have more freedom than you realize. Where you are in life is based on decisions you made in the past, and where you will be in the future is determined by what you change today. What are you waiting for? If you’ve been thinking of getting fit or even moving to another level in your fitness routine, there’s no time like today. Take responsibility and go - it’s your life, so own it!

Make This Your Season for Renewal

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." – ANAIS NIN

Recently I was walking through some streets in New York City. It seemed quite chilly for April as I adjusted my scarf around my neck. Passing by different Brownstones, I noticed frozen plants everywhere – dead looking vines hanging from window sills and brown foliage around the base of trees hundreds of years old. But then I noticed new plant life spurting up from the ground, seemingly random in the midst of the dead plant life - almost to say, “look at me – I’m new, I am small, but I am full of life.” Turning the corner, I saw trees bursting with beautiful spring blossoms that exploded with color on what seemed like an otherwise bleak morning.

Springtime is my favorite time of year. It represents a time of renewal, rebirth, new life and rejuvenation As Easter just passed, many celebrated a time of new life. A friend of mine recently shared a story about her daughter who just gave birth to her first child. Witnessing new life coming into the world is truly a miracle. A child is nurtured from the time of conception and once he is born, even more nurturing takes place. The cycle of life is interesting - the anticipation builds up throughout the months, and once that new life is brought forth – whether it’s a small plant, a flower, or even a child – it is one of amazement.

We all want to be nurtured to some degree; however, just as much as we want to be nurtured, we must nurture ourselves. You may have fallen behind on resolutions that you made in January and you’re thinking to yourself – “Why bother – it’s already the middle of April.” However, every day you step forward by doing something positive to improve your health, you make a huge difference not only now, but in later life as quality years are added. Just as that new blade breaks through the hardened ground to eventually become a flourishing plant, you too can break through your procrastination of becoming a fitter you.

Let this be your season of new life and new beginnings. As you know by now, it is my passion and purpose to help others in their quest for fitness. You only have one body, but you have lots of opportunities to treat that body as it deserves. I encourage you to “spring forth” to a healthier you – I’m here to help encourage and provide options for a fitness plan that will work uniquely for you.

Enthusiastically,

Joe Gigantino Jr.
"A gym membership is a cheap form of great entertainment."