Kensray.com

“Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway.” – Unknown author

What if you are an ambitious person? What if you have learned to motivate yourself? What if you are a goal oriented person? What if you are getting your life back on track? What if you have started earning a decent income? What if your credit rating is improving? What if your debt is finally being paid off? And what if you do not even gossip anymore?

Then you realize that something somewhere is missing. You set more goals, improve some areas of your life and yet a little voice inside your head keeping nagging you. To make sure you discipline yourself you try to be more efficient, you manage time better, you get more work done.

Then you get sick! You ignore it and hoping that if you just work through it, it’ll just go away. That’s not the case. It gets worse. You finally decide to take one day off of work to rest and get better. Now you’re better and you are back on track.

Instead of taking that as a warning you go at full speed again and the same cycle repeats next month.

That’s been the story of my life for the past six months or so. I started noticing that every single month I was getting sick. I even started doing cardio every single morning but the next month I got sick again. I finally started taking vitamin C but again I got sick. I am eating almost 100% diet consisting of organic foods. So, what is the problem?!!

It is not that I mind getting sick. It’s just that it slows me down quite a bit. Also, I am on a contract so I get paid for the time I am at work. If I have to take a day off at work, either I lose the pay for that month or make up that time.

Finally I started taking one a day multi-vitamin and vitamin C. This month again I felt the fever coming on but I was able to fight it and I did not need to take a day off work. So, I think the combination of multi-vitamins and vitamin C is doing the trick.

Granted that I sometimes skip breakfast but overall I am still eating at least 3 meals a day. I have come to the conclusion that even though diet plays a major role in keeping you healthy, it’s not the only thing. I think your state of mind plays an even bigger role. If you are not unconditionally happy then your health suffer regardless of how good your diet is.

“Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady.” – François Duc de la Rochefoucauld

I think I have been a little too strict with my diet. I have been eating a diet of the foods that I do not actually enjoy. I never really look forward to any meal. I am just having meals because it’s what I should be doing and I get hungry. I am going to start having more of the things that I actually enjoy. I do not eat unhealthy anyways so I think I do not have to worry about getting fat etc.

It’s not just that I am eating really healthy food that I do not enjoy it’s also the poverty consciousness. When I did not have enough money I would buy foods that were the cheapest regardless of what happened to my health. I would look for the special deals and the cheapest deals were always at McDonalds, Wendy’s, Taco Bell and so on. If I was at a coffee shop I would just get the tea because it was cheaper than coffee and also drinking tea killed the appetite so I did not need to buy food. All of this ruined my health as well.

That is actually exciting! I seem to have found the cause of my bad health. I am going to have food that I really enjoy regardless of the cost. If I really feel like having something then I am going to have it. I get really excited when I set new goals. So, I am going to set some new and different goals now. Looks like another 30 day challenge is coming up. I will keep you posted.

“Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.” – Redd Foxx

Keeping everything organized is one of the most important habits that everyone should develop.  For example if you have your receipts organized you won’t have to stress much when it comes time to do your taxes.  This is especially important if you are a business owner and can write off a lot of your expenses against your income.

Even if you are not collecting your receipts for the purpose of reducing your taxable income you can still benefit greatly by keeping them organized.  Reason being, it helps to know where you are spending your money so you can make wiser financial choices.  It is one of the first rules of money management.  Whenever you go see a financial adviser, they would want you to keep track of your expenses and based on that would devise your future financial plan.

Here is what I found to be extremely helpful.  By my bedside I have a big yellow envelope and it’s named march 2008.  Every night I put all my receipts for the month of march in it after I write them down in my notebook or computer.  Every month I get a new envelope for that month and put all my receipts in that envelope.  I have tried to keep the envelopes in a nicer and safer place but I found that that just deterred me from putting my receipts in it.  I would always procrastinate putting receipts in that envelope until a few months worth of receipts piled up by my bedside.  So, one day I just decided to keep the monthly envelope by my bedside and it’s worked like a charm ever since.  At the end of the month this envelope gets sealed while a new one opens up.

And I got these envelopes from the dollar store.  I believe 10 envelopes for $1.00 + tax = $1.13 or so. Not too bad of an investment.  And it keeps my accountant happy  as well.

Prior to doing any sort of organizing for my receipts I used to keep them in a plastic bag.  Plan being that I would just sit down one day and copy everything to an excel sheet instead of wasting time every single day.  Well, that doesn’t work!  It is an overwhelming task when you have to do it and not to mention that the ink on a lot of the receipts got erased.

So, try it out and I am sure you will like it.

Have you thought how much money we spend each year on shaving blades alone? It can easily be hundreds of dollars. When trying to live on basically no income I was faced with a dilemma. Should I just stop shaving or extend the life of my shaving blades? I chose to go with the latter. Now how I was to do that was another question.

Eventually I found out that if I shaved in the shower, my blades lasted much much longer. They seemed to be in a decent shape even after a month or two. I was not only getting a better shave, it seemed much easier and my skin felt nicer afterwards. So, here is how I did it.

In a warm shower, instead of shaving cream, I used soap for shaving as well and I bought a small mirror from a dollar store to see what I was doing. That’s it!

Apparently shaving in the warm shower, right after your warm shower, or just splashing your face with warm water before, during and after the shave is really good for you.

The hot water actually relaxes your facial muscles by opening the pores of your skin and thus making your shave more effective.

I never researched shaving before and just learned this out of necessity.

My blades were lasting longer, I was saving money, I was saving time, and it was better for my skin. So, why not!