Archive for category: Personal

Post written by Mic Johnson

Imagine yourself sitting in a chair, eyes closed, a cup of hot green tea in your favorite mug warming your hands, earbuds in, eyes closed, and sitting in silence with only your breath and mind to keep you company.

This is how I start my day several times a week. I began meditating a couple of years ago (I currently use the Headspace app) after learning how the regular practice of meditation has numerous benefits and can literally change the way your brain works.

Get out of your mind and get on with your life. 

This is one of my #micnuggets, which are things that basically come out of my mind and that I’ve been recording for years. I have hundreds of them, but this is one of my favorites.

I don’t remember exactly when I came up with it or what inspired me, but my guess is that I was, as I tend to do, spending too much time thinking about something that I likely had very little control over.

And while I find myself “in the zone” of life sometimes where everything seems to be going well, I also often find myself thinking about things that do very little but cause me spikes of anxiety, doubt and fear. And that’s when I need to remind myself…

Get out of your mind and get on with your life. 

This can happen multiple times within a day, week, month and year. It’s as though I’m in a constant mental tug of war with myself, one side pulling me away from perspective and mental clarity…and the other side pulling just as hard the other way.

And that’s just one of the reasons I choose to meditate. I want to be intentional about taking care of my own mental health.

And I have to be honest…it’s amazing to me, even two years later, how hard it is for me to sit in silence and how often my mind wanders during one of my 20-minute sessions. It’s natural I suppose.

On the bright side, I’ve gotten much better at bringing myself back to the meditation practice and refocusing when my mind does wander.

Get out of your mind and get on with your life. 

Without fail, as the meditation ends and I open my eyes, the sense of calm that I feel is a great way to set the foundation for the day ahead.

To be sure, I still get caught up in the ups and downs throughout the day, the roller coaster ride that is life and business.

But I’ve also found that I have a better overall sense of calm in my body and mind.

When I get off track, I’m able to bring myself back quicker and easier than I used to be able to.

I’m more present in moments than I used to be.

I’m sleeping better.

And I’m more aware as I go through each day of how fortunate I am on so many levels.

Get out of your mind and get on with your life. 

As I wrap up this post, I hope I’ve given you something to think about…and maybe even something for you to meditate on yourself.

If you’ve made it this far, I have a favor to ask. Leave a comment below or send me an email at mic@bluegurus.com and let me know what you do to start your day. What are your secrets to keeping yourself in balance mentally?

Author: Jason Terry

Hello friends. It’s Jason again with another Blue Gurus blog post. This story took some courage to write because it’s even more personal than normal. I hope you enjoy it, and if you use a Fitbit, please comment or contact me directly to join me in the Fitbit community so we can walk our tails off together.

My story begins on April 21st, 2017. I woke up at 3am that morning feeling like I couldn’t breathe and I had some pain in my chest. It turns out that it was an unfortunate combination of allergies and acid reflux, but it could have been so much worse. And it was one of those life wake-up calls… the ones that teach you that you only have one life to live. And that nothing is guaranteed. It was scary. At the time, I weighed the most I’ve ever weighed in my life and I knew I had to make some real changes. And the changes needed to be life changes, not just a diet.

I’ve lost substantial weight a couple of times in my life. At 46, it’s definitely more work than it was in high school and in college. But I’m on the path, and my new Fitbit Alta HR is a critical part of my journey.

I started walking.

I’ve heard plenty of stories of people in their 70s that walk every day to stay in shape. So I committed to walking 10,000 steps a day. This number represents about 5 miles of walking per day.

I rarely got anywhere close to 10,000 steps per day previously. (I’ve worn a Fitbit for a couple of years.) My job is primarily a desk job because I work on a computer most of the day. I would usually get home with around 3,500-4,000 steps. And I was tired because I was carrying too much weight and not exercising enough, so I would eat dinner and relax for the evening. Ugh.

The first week that I focused on hitting 10,000 steps per day was eye opening. It was the week of May 1st. What surprised me the most was that it really wasn’t as hard as I thought to get to 10,000 steps. Simple things like choosing to park across the parking lot, or getting up every hour during the day for a water or bathroom break made a big difference. I was getting home with closer to 5,000 steps. And then all I had to do was a 30-45 minute walk.

A walk in the park.

We live right next to Shawnee Mission Park. There’s a great path I follow that is a one hour walk from my house, through the park and back. It’s a little over 3 miles. For me, 3 miles is around 6,500-7,000 steps. So I started doing that walk after dinner every night for a couple of weeks. I was easily getting to 10,000 steps a day and starting to feel a bit better. I wasn’t losing weight, but I wasn’t feeling any soreness like I did the first week, and I found myself walking a bit faster and a bit longer. And I loved being outside walking in the park. It cleared my brain. And it gave me time to process daily issues and listen to great music on Spotify.

I love music by The Chainsmokers. Their song “Something Just Like This” is my personal anthem. I could walk for two hours to that song. Trista has complained about me shaking the house with the subwoofers in our basement when I play that song too loud. (To be clear, she is very supportive of me in this effort.)

It’s Social.

Kandy Meehan at Home Rental Services has been a client since the beginning of Blue Gurus. I work closely with her daughter Caitlin when I am there. Caitlin offered to join me with her Fitbit to compare daily steps as my accountability partner. Awesome.

There are various ways to compete with your walking friends in the Fitbit app.

Workweek Hustle is the total number of steps walked from Monday through Friday. At midnight on Friday, the steps are tallied and compared and the winner gets a badge and kudo notifications.

The Weekend Warrior challenge is the total number of steps on Saturday and Sunday with another badge for the winner.

Caitlin and I started talking about and comparing our daily step counts when I went into the office. And then more of the team started getting involved when Jennifer joined us. Then Kandy. Then Oretta. Then Caitlin’s husband Brad. Then David. And recently Joshua. It’s now a team thing involving most of the company and it’s helping to keep me accountable more than anything else I’ve tried in my life. And the interesting thing is that it’s positively impacting the culture at HRS.

People are walking at lunch. People are taking their kids on walks in the evenings like never before. And when we’re very close at the end of a weekly competition, I’ve heard things like, “don’t make me do laps around the living room and kitchen again, it scares the dogs!” It’s not just my life that’s being changed or impacted with healthy exercise and improved discipline. This is the ultimate win/win for me… helping myself while helping others. Wow. (Thank you HRS… love you guys.)

It’s Working.

I’ve been doing this for 7 weeks now. I am stronger. I regularly hit 13,000 steps a day and have had 3 days in 7 weeks over 20,000 steps. I’ve done quite a few 5.3 miles walks in the park. I’ve lost 16 pounds and I am starting to see it in pictures. It’s early, and I have a long way to go, but it’s a really good start.

For the week of June 5th – June 11th, I had the following statistics:

• I hit my 10,000 step goal every day during the week
• My best step count day was on Sunday with 20,321 steps
• I walked 94,419 steps during the week, about 43 miles
• I burned an average of 5,448 calories per day. (With a 3,000 calorie diet, that’s at least a 2,000 calorie deficit every day. That usually equates to losing a pound or two a week.)

Join Me

If you have a Fitbit, I would love for you to join me on this journey. The most important part of this is going to be the ongoing discipline of maintaining this lifestyle change. It’s already becoming a habit for me, but every person involved helps. Comment on this post or send me a message if you want to connect in the Fitbit app.

And thanks for reading our stories. It means so much to us. And after reading this, if you decide to get involved, you will be part of a story that ends with me losing 65 pounds. From the bottom of my heart… thank you.

 

Post author: Jason Terry

Hello friends. Coming up with an idea for this week’s blog was easy. We celebrated Blue Gurus turning 7 years old on April 26th. It’s amazing to me, and I’m so thankful!

None of this would’ve happened without the people that have trusted us to help them. Thank you to our friends and clients who allow us to make a living doing work that matters. Anybody that wants a hug or fist bump, just let us know. We’ve got an endless supply for you.

I remember being nervous about taking the leap even though there was no doubt I was committed to starting my own company.

Thank you to my wife Trista for believing in me. I told her that I wanted to start my own business on a rainy day in April 2009. And then I proposed to her. I hit her with a lot to process all at once and thankfully she said “yes” to everything!

She has encouraged and supported me through the ups and downs ever since. I heard a great story recently from a really good guy talking about getting his wife to marry him. He said she was out of his league, but convincing her to say yes was his best sales job ever. And that’s exactly how I feel about Trista. She’s amazing and I am lucky to have her in my life.

I remember thinking when I started Blue Gurus that I wanted to work with someone because otherwise it would be really lonely.

I’m glad it took less than a year to figure that out. Thank you to Mic for believing in me. Mic and I reconnected at a Kansas City Chamber event right around the time I was starting Blue Gurus. It was too early to bring him on financially, but we wanted to work together and stayed in touch with each other.

Several months later, we were finally able to start working together. He’s become one of my best friends. He’s done so much for me, our clients and for Blue Gurus. This journey has been even more rewarding because Mic has walked most of it with me…always trying to keep me from getting distracted by shiny things.

I remember the list of clients from our first year.

I use Quickbooks Online to manage our accounting. (It’s GREAT for service-based businesses!) I remember wrapping up the books in December 2009 and looking at the list of clients who had written us a check. It wasn’t a long list, but it was an important one. I remember hoping that someday I would have to click the “next” button on the list of clients because there were so many that I had to page through them. I was so happy at the end of the next year because we actually got there… Woohoo!

And now when I look through the list, every company name brings back memories. I remember how we met. Who referred us. The work we did together. And the fun that we had getting things done. Thank you!

Challenge #1: The Great Recession

We all went through the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009. So yeah, I started Blue Gurus in the worst economic decline since World War II. Smart, right?

People weren’t spending much money on training or marketing. They were slashing head counts and doing whatever they could to get by. In spite of that, there were enough opportunities to make a living. One of the nice things about LinkedIn and blogging is that you get so much bang for your buck. I’d had success using these tools to double the revenue of my previous company in 18 months and was able to tell that story confidently and passionately.

The measure of a person is the amount of adversity it takes to make them quit. Click To Tweet

I had that quote on a piece of paper on my desk that first year. It was a good reminder to stay the course.

Challenge #2: Social Media Infancy in Business

It’s true when I tell people that we were doing LinkedIn and blogging way before they were cool. Today, most people know it’s an important part of doing business. The first few years we were selling the vision required much patience and constant education. I remember sitting in a boardroom full of business owners saying things like, “I’m not going to spend a dollar on social media if it doesn’t make me two dollars.”

Wow. We’ve come a long way since then.

Thank you. You mean so much to us.

I don’t know how you found this blog post. It could have been a link you clicked from a status update on LinkedIn. You might be subscribed to our blog updates through email. It might have been a link on Facebook or a tweet on Twitter.

But no matter how you found it, you’re reading it.

My gut tells me you wouldn’t have clicked or read if you didn’t care about us personally. We believe that the relationships we have with family, friends, clients and peers are incredibly important…some of the most important things in life.

So thank you for being such an important part of our world!  We appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

Thank you for celebrating 7 years with us. We’ll continue to pour everything we have into our relationships for many years to come.

[Virtual hug and fist bump.]