New Tricks, New Habits and New Lifestyle
Almost every day of my entire 51 years of life was connected formally to politics. My mind was always focused on the next election cycle and posturing for opponents. My father, Pete Turnham, was elected to the House of Representatives in Alabama in 1958. I was born in 1959 and my father served for 40 consecutive years. I became involved in his campaigns since I could walk. I managed his last 4 successful campaigns. Then over a 20 year period I became a party officer, party chairman on three occasions, a two-time congressional nominee as well as the founder of the state’s environmental lobby. Just recently, I retired from all of that!
It has only been a few months since I formally gave it all up, but I am already enjoying my new focus – including writing this thought for the day for you each day. My newfound freedom also gave me the topic for the day of ‘New Tricks, New Habits and New Lifestyle’.
For every transition in our life, regardless of how dramatic or subtle, we have an opportunity to mold our lives by recalibrating our time, priorities and by molding a new and better self through new disciplined routines. One new trick for me is learning and taking greater advantage of social networking, blogging and building worldwide portals to reach new friends – thus, changes coming to www.joeturnham.com
The skill sets, experience and networks built in the political process can be readily adaptable to other endeavors in life. I love business, entrepreneurship and building enterprise. I am having a great time pouring myself into some really exciting adventures. Like real life, some will succeed and some will fail. Like politics, I will pour time into as many losing as winning ventures. But I love seeing the hunger and enthusiasm in the eyes and hearts of people looking for opportunity in the real world. It is in the toughest of times that the best ideas sprout out.
I am building a new habit of purposefully seeking out experts in fields that I am interested in learning. Another new habit is daily seeking to help someone who themselves are in transition in life. Often when someone says they are in ‘transition in life’, it means they are broke, broken and possibly unemployed. Too many great, smart and talented people are on the sidelines. Part of my new lifestyle will be to become involved with them in building new business, wealth and opportunity by bringing them along and utilizing unrealized talent!
Even though I will be spending time online researching and networking, I am developing a new habit by turning it all off and walking with my wife and by doing something extra special with my 14 year old son who will soon be grown. Transition in life often shows us what is really most important.
A mentally, physically and spiritually fit lifestyle is usually gained by building very small and routine habits that are edifying for you. Reading new material; going to a lecture; finding a fascinating person to listen to after a meeting are small things that expand my mind. Forget diets! Make small changes for fitness. Park in the back of the lot and walk; take the stairs; ask your friend or spouse to go for a stroll; lift some weights, eat something fresh from a local garden; learn new recipes and show others that you can cook great and lite by preparing meals for others! Set aside some quiet time each day to read, meditate and pray; find a small group of friends who love you and don’t care what title you hold or how much money you have; adopt a person who is in need and constantly forgive others through thinking eternally and by worship.
The cables of our life are really built from the small things we chose to do or not do on a daily basis and how we dare ourselves to get outside of our comfort zones to develop new habits and ways of living our lives. Life is exciting, even with all its cold winds and certain surprises. Live, love, learn, give and believe…