Are You a Selfish Athlete?

On one hand, making healthy lifestyle changes is a personal responsibility. But if not to benefit those around you, then what good is it? Health is a long term investment. Who wants to live a long life of loneliness?

As we are living health-conscious lives, there are many things we will not leave to chance. We chose carefully at restaurants, cook more food and buy less pre-packed food. We act with intention regarding exercise duration and intensity and carefully plan out recovery time and methods.

In any of your relationships, you're a big part. So, as you're changing, your involvement in your relationships change. If you won't leave your lunch to chance, why would you leave your relationships to chance?

I am going to suggest that we act with intent and purpose in our relationships. First, as we change, our relationships change. Second, we steal time from our daily lives to exercise and often that time is taken from time spent in our relationships. And even if we don't take time away from our relationships, often our focus is bent so narrowly on running or a race, that when we're there, we're really someplace else.

We all have busy lives. The days are completely full. We will steal time here and there to exercise. We make a week's worth of lunches on Sundays because there's no time during the rest of the week to prepare them. But we're as good at squeezing extra time as we are at gauging our perceived efforts on a long run. The thing is, how many of us have intentionally scheduled daily activities to improve our relationships?

We have a lot of support for nutrition and exercise. A little community support here for all of us to be better in our relationships would be a good thing. Maybe you could respond with ways you've created to spend time with your families, or perhaps some ways that you could spend more time with them. I'm talking about small, day to day things.

A few ideas I have are to, doing chores together, evening walks, play games together, unplug the TV and see what happens. While my wife can't run with me, perhaps she could ride a bike along as I run once or twice a week.

So, please share any ideas or thoughts you may have along these lines. I know a lot of us here have families. How do you create time for them on a daily basis?