LIVING THE GOOD LIFE
Simple Principles for Strength, Balance, and Inner Beauty

CHAPTER ONE
A Return to Simple Principles

She girds herself with strength,
And strengthens her arms.
Strength and honor are her clothing;
she shall rejoice in time to come.
Proverbs 31:17, 25 (NKJV)

My Grandpa Huber was a farmer for most of his life in Menomonie, Wisconsin. He labored hard, as many did in that era, making a living by the sweat of his brow. He rose before the sun came up and went to bed after the sun went down.

He and Grandmother kept an enormous garden filled with every imaginable fruit and vegetable that would grow in that northern climate. Their watermelons were so good, they had to be hidden in the corn rows or risk being "cooned."

My grandmother canned and preserved throughout the growing season, and that single garden provided most of my grandparents' food all year round. Grandma started baking early in the morning, and by breakfast time had loaves in the oven and hot, fragrant biscuits on the table. Meat and dairy products also came fresh from the farm; the only supplies my grandmother bought from the grocery store were flour, sugar, and salt.

Every day after lunch, Grandfather sat down in his rocking chair for a half-hour nap before returning to the fields. Evenings tended to be quiet-a good time for conversation, reading, or a game of checkers.

My grandparents rose early, worked hard, ate wholesome foods, and got plenty of sleep. They also honored Sunday as a day of rest. Grandpa would let hay rot in the fields rather than labor on the Sabbath. The tapestry of their rustic life was woven with devotion to family, faith, and working the land.

This simple lifestyle illustrates something I've long suspected-that human beings are equipped with enormous potential to live the good life. The lovely, down-to-earth rhythm my grandparents experienced was consistent with the way people had lived for centuries. Life wasn't easy, but it was less complicated than what we know today: People didn't worry about getting enough exercise, since physical activity was built into their daily rounds. Food wasn't an issue unless it was scarce, and it tended to be unrefined and healthy. Folks didn't worry about weapons of mass destruction, global warming, or guns in school. Terms like "multi-tasking," "24-7," and "burnout" hadn't been invented. But perhaps the most striking characteristic of my grandparents' time was the absence of the intense need most of us feel for amazing personal achievement, acquiring material things, and looking perfect on the outside.

Today, as we routinely deal with stresses never before known to the human race, including the enormous pressure we put on ourselves, it's no wonder we struggle to attain even a small measure of well-being and satisfaction in life.

I became acquainted with this struggle my first year in college. Armed with the unrealistic dream of becoming a concert violinist, a dream I'd fostered since the age of eight, I walked into my freshman year with a long list of self-imposed expectations. I tried to adhere to my well-laid plans, which included carrying a double major in music and English, practicing three hours a day, improving my complexion, and attracting the perfect husband. But I began to bump into my human limitations. My tendency to eat for emotional comfort, something that started in high school, was catching up with me. In addition to almost never managing to get in that three hours of daily practice, my skin was getting worse, and I was putting on unwanted weight. By the end of my freshmen year, I'd gained nearly thirty pounds and was miserable with myself.

This difficult period coincided with the early days of the fitness revolution of the 1970s. The first Jane Fonda workout videos had hit the marketplace, running had become a national pastime, and every women's magazine had the latest diet promising quick and easy weight loss or the best exercises to get thin thighs and a flat stomach.

Intrigued by the beautiful bodies that promoted the fitness craze, I decided to start running as a way to lose weight. The day I put on a pair of running shoes marked the beginning of a lifelong love of being physically active. It also made for another achievement to add to my list: physical perfection.

In an ensuing ten-year obsession to be model-thin, I would try all kinds of diets, fasting, and frequently take exercise to unhealthy extremes. By the time I reached Juilliard, where I finished my music degrees, I was weighing myself three times a day. But no matter what the scale said or how well I was doing at school, it never seemed to be good enough.

Today I feel unspeakable sadness for the perfectly appointed life I tried for so long to attain, at the cost of wasted years and life experiences. Yet I also feel the exhilaration of being free of my relentless expectations, and gratitude for having the chance to live my life differently. Perhaps you're reading these words and feeling the weight of your own expectations and disappointments in life. If so, I encourage you to consider the possibility that you too can experience a different kind of life.

Mine started to change after graduating from Juilliard. While floundering for career direction in New York, I'd become intrigued with the freedom and beauty of other styles of music, including folk, country, and bluegrass fiddle. So I moved to Nashville in 1986 to pursue this new genre, and stumbled into a new career interest-health and wellness. I signed up for classes at a Nashville fitness studio, concerned as always about my exercise regimen. But, fortunately, and I think not accidentally, this studio was years ahead of its time, touting a philosophy of wellness more than the pursuit of body parts of steel.

In this positive environment, I became interested in being certified as an instructor. As I learned more about the complex nature of the whole person, I grappled with my misguided zeal for a perfect-looking body. In order to teach others balanced exercise routines and the importance of good nutrition and rest, I knew I had to resolve my own unhealthy habits and body image issues. I embarked on a humbling and sometimes painful process of emotional and spiritual healing, and discovered along the way what I had to offer as a wellness professional.

Gradually I found myself less drawn to the extreme mantras of the fitness revolution and more interested in the big picture of being healthy and well. I became certified as a personal trainer and wellness advisor so I could take on a more meaningful role in people's lives. As I worked closely with others, especially women, in the quest for a better life, I was struck with the universal nature of this challenge. Every person wants to live the best life possible. Every person wants to be physically and emotionally strong, know a measure of balance every day, and develop their potential for beauty. Despite best efforts, however, these desires too often become just another burden to bear, another agenda to never get right, another disappointing and elusive dream.

I'd love to tell you that by reading this book you'll be able to break through all your failures and disappointments, and that you'll finally live the good life you always dreamed possible. But I can't. I can tell you, though, as someone who has dreamed, failed miserably, and lived to dream again, that you can discover a different way of looking at things, a new understanding of the basics of taking care of the self, and new tools for making life-enhancing choices.

This different perspective on self and health improvement begins with three important principles.

The first is the concept of the whole person: Whatever changes you hope to make in any area of your life must respect and integrate the physical, emotional, and spiritual components within. It's futile to embrace the discipline of exercise and good nutrition without addressing the emotional and spiritual issues that might thwart your efforts. After all, your physical body (experienced through your five senses) is intrinsically intertwined with your emotional blueprint (affecting feelings, reasoning, and behavior), and with your spirit (which yearns to connect with eternity). This fascinatingly complex package shows up everywhere you go and in everything you do.

The second principle is the challenge of our times: Your precious, unique, whole person is bombarded daily with unprecedented cultural change. The simpler life my grandparents knew is no more; people are ill-equipped to handle the combined stresses absorbed daily from our culture's environment, media, and breathtaking pace in every area of life. While understanding the challenge of these times will not return anyone to a simpler existence, it can put a name to what we're up against. Also recognizing this challenge is the first step toward dealing with it.

Finally there's the principle of the power of choice: Every day you make small choices that add up over a lifetime to powerfully affect your wellbeing. Yet how often do you feel helpless about all the things that affect your life over which you have no control? How many times, when starting a new regimen, do you fall for the myth that you have to do something huge, expensive, or time-consuming in order to make a difference? Most folks today could transform their quality of life by simply choosing to get a little more sleep each night and drinking two liters of water every day. Instead of berating yourself for the things you never accomplish, you can acknowledge the value of the small things you do

So what is the good life? While there's no single definition, and certainly no wrong one, it involves a basic foundation. It requires a childlike joy and fascination for the minutia of life: The ability to appreciate the smell of coffee brewing first thing in the morning, or the miracle of a puppy's soft, sweet face, or the awesome splendor of the sky at sunset.

The good life is something we're more likely to experience with a sense of physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. It helps to have a sense of financial peace by living within our means. It includes feeling involved in something beyond our own happiness and understanding the value of all life. And it's perpetually changing-the good life desired at midlife will be different from what you dreamed of in your twenties, which is as it should be.

So I invite you on this journey toward living a better life. Bring your personal hopes and dreams, whatever they may be, and prepare to explore the multifaceted elements of personal change-including motivation, exercise, nutrition, balance, self-responsibility, and spiritual and emotional health. As you do so, your dreams will come into clearer focus.

The strength, balance, and beauty you seek in yourself and in life, are part of a quest as old as time. It's an honorable one. My grandparents sought it in their time, and our children will seek it also.

Living The Good Life by Ruth McGinnis is used by permission of Fleming H. Revell, a division of Baker Book House Company, copyright © 2001. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Book House Company.