The Lesson of the Water Hyacinth

Hey! Susan here. I'm so pleased to announce that Zach is going to start helping me keep this blog active by sharing some of his fitness and general life tips/observations. That's good because if you really want to know, he's the brains behind anything fitness that goes on in our household. He is a major researching and experimenting enthusiast, and as an ultra-marathoner (you'll never hear him call himself that, but I will!), he has some really great insight into the human body and mind. Our goal is to help as many people as possible, so I hope you enjoy a new perspective on the blog!

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The Lesson of the Water Hyacinth

The water hyacinth is one of the most beautiful and unusual plants on earth. A delicate flower with six petals, it ranges in color from  blue to lavender to pink and floats on the surface of ponds in warm areas around the world.

What makes the water hyacinth really special is that it is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world. A single water hyacinth can produce as many as 5,000 seeds and sends out short stems that become new plants. Over time, a single water hyacinth continuously doubles itself - one plant becomes two plants, two plants become four plants, four plants become eight plants, and so on.

One day there was a very beautiful (and very small) water hyacinth growing near the edge of a big pond. Nobody ever noticed it. Nobody noticed the second day either, when it had doubled and there were now two plants. Nobody noticed the water hyacinth on the third day or the fourth day. Even though they kept doubling in numbers, the water hyacinths were so small on the big pond that you’d have to look very hard to see them.

For two weeks the water hyacinths continued to double, but still covered only one square foot of the pond, just a tiny part of its huge surface. On day 20, a person passing by the pond noticed something floating along the shore, but mistook it for a lost towel or a discarded trash bag. But by day 30, it was impossible to ignore the hyacinths, because a blanket of beautiful flowers now covered the pond’s entire surface.

The lesson of the water hyacinth is this: Small actions may not seem like much at first, but over time they have a compounding effect. All that means is that actions add up or intensify over time - you can get big results from small, daily steps. this is perhaps the most important lesson of the slight edge and it applies directly to your life.

Source: Success for Teens, by the editors of the Success Foundation

The water hyacinth in our lives are our choices. We make choices every hour of every day. The impact of these choices will spread throughout our lives like a blanket of water hyacinths covering a pond. We may not see or realize the results of our choices today, tomorrow, or even next year. However, the results of our actions become apparent by the fabric of our life that has been woven over the years.

This concept can be applied to any aspect of your life: losing weight, getting healthy, starting a business, learning to play the guitar, saving for retirement, etc. It sounds so easy. Just make the right choices day after day.

But if it’s so easy, why are we not all successful at the things we pursue? I think it’s because, while it sounds easy to do, it is also easy not to do. It’s easy to think that the burger we order for lunch isn’t going to make a huge impact on our life. But when we order that burger again and again over the weeks and months of our lives, it makes a difference. That doughnut on Sunday mornings? It makes a difference. That workout you chose to do instead of sleeping in? It makes a difference.

We must remember and understand that little steps make a difference. What results do you want? What actions will you choose today?

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Zach's Workout of the Day

8-mile run

The Tale of Two Laundry Bags

This is the story of how two laundry bags taught me how people can look at life in two very different ways.

This is our laundry hamper.
It sits in my closet, as it has each day for the past nearly thirteen years of marriage.

A week ago, a spied a dreaded roach scurrying into my closet. In my desperate attempt to squash the life out of it before it took up residence in a shoe, I threw that hamper across the closet. When I determined that the roach was lost (probably to make its next appearance, I imagined, crawling up a sleeve onto my neck), I threw the hamper back in place and went on with life.

A day or so later, I noticed that, inexplicably, my husband had started putting the "whites" in the back hamper, when they had always gone in the front. I chalked it up to a miscue, but when it kept happening, I asked him why he was throwing the universe off kilter by throwing whites in the back and not the front.

"Because whites go in blue, and darks go in black," he replied.

"No," I politely replied. "Whites go in front and darks go in back."

"Front and back has nothing to do with it. It's about the color of the bag."

Mind = Blown.

In 13 years, not once have I noticed that the whites happened to go in the blue bag and the darks in black. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense...blacks...dark. But I never looked at it that way. I was all about the position of the bag, not the color.

Isn't life like that in so many ways?

"There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare

I read a really great book this summer that I want to recommend to you. It's not new; in fact, I've been meaning to read it for years.

Chapman proposes that there are five different ways people give and receive love: acts of service, quality time, gifts, physical touch, and words of affirmation.

This book made sense to me on so many levels. If you're running around giving gifts to someone whose primary love language is quality time, you're going to be upset because it seems that they don't appreciate the gift. And your partner is wondering why you're wasting money on gifts because they just want you to quit spending money and start spending time with them.

I learned that I'm a "Words of Affirmation" gal. I run around doing acts of service like cooking great dinners and attempting to keep a clean house because I'm fishing for compliments...I really just want people to tell me I'm a good cook...and also that I'm smart and pretty.

Zach is a quality time kind of guy, and always has been. I remember even back when we were first dating that he was adamant about spending weekends hunting with his Dad because that was precious time that he wouldn't have once his Dad got older and couldn't do that stuff anymore. Looking back, I'm glad he took those weekends.

It works on kids, too. When I asked Kate how she knows I love her, she said it was because I "kiss and hug her." That was an easy one...that "Physical Touch" girl has had to be on someone's lap since she came home from the hospital. Drew's answer to that same question? "Uh...I dunno. When you make me lunch." I guess that's Acts of Service?

Anyway, it was eye-opening, and I highly recommend you find out for yourself the dynamic you have going in your own household.

As for us, you can tell by the picture above that once we cleared the confusion, I went ahead and moved the blue bag to the front so that we can both be "right" when it comes to the whites.

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Workout of the Day

Beachbody on Demand Challenge Du Jour - Insanity Round 18

I'm loving these daily workouts on the On Demand channel! Our television in the garage blew up, so our entire library of DVDs is basically useless. We've been streaming our workouts on the phone or computer and it's opened up a whole new group of workouts I've never done before! Love it.