I’ve reached a point nowadays where people have begun to ask me what I do because I am noticeably slimmer. And while I try not to get into too much detail—since I already know that people react to the cold, hard facts differently—I don’t hide what I do either.

“I wake up at four-thirty in the morning to run almost five miles a day.”

Sometimes I wish I could just say “I work really hard on it,” but even if I did, they would think I’m a smug bastard anyway. The general reaction from folks is “I wish I could do that,” or “I wish I had the will power for that,” or “I wish I could find time in my life for that.” Most of the time, sentences like those are said with almost a sense of longing, or self-pity, as if they lived a life that didn’t have enough time for it.

Well, dear friends, everyone gets about twenty-four hours a day. It’s what you do with it that counts.

Want to lose fat? You have to really want it.

Want to be good at something? You have to really want it.

And not only do you have to want what you want, you need to be willing to change things, make sacrifices, suffer through some discomfort, and set measurable goals for progress. Lastly, once you’ve reached your goal? It’s not over. You want to keep what you’ve achieved.

Life may be the longest thing we will go through, but life is too short to simply sit back and wish you had what you wanted without going for it.

[EDIT: I was just reading through some of the blogs that I like and found out that an old friend, Venomous Kate, is having a bad day with the way she's receiving orders from Amazon. So, read about her plight, of which I have experienced too when I built my computer four years ago. And by sending her a link, I get a link back, too.]