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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 19 September 2012

Most men I know love their wives. But honoring them, as the Scripture commands (1 Peter 3:7), is generally if ironically more challenging for a lot of men.

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© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012

This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 04 September 2012

Want to lose weight? Just try my foolproof Say What? Diet. It works every time.

Say what?

That’s right, you don’t need to buy expensive diet books.

Say what?

You don’t need to purchase even more expensive fitness machines.

Say what?

You don’t have to join time-consuming, maybe costly workout clubs or organizations.

Say what?

You don’t need to enroll in a One-Size-Fits-All-Diet endorsed by a Super Model who at this point in her life has never used this diet.

Say what?

You need not pore over calorie and carbohydrates books, learn enough chemistry to qualify for a degree, or memorize 20 skinny habits.

Say what?

That’s right, you don’t have to do all those things. You just need to do two things, consistently and correctly, every day.

Say what? This can’t be true.

Oh but it is. Are you ready? Here’re the two principles defining the Say What? Diet:

1 – EAT RIGHT.

Notice I didn’t say Eat Less. You can eat less and still not lose weight if you’re eating the wrong foods. Later, after you learn to eat right, eating less is a good portion-distortion-reducer, but to get started, just learn to eat right.

As I noted above, I don’t believe in finding the one super diet that works for all human beings and bodies. I believe in finding the diet that works for your body. Find the diet that works. What’s that you say? “Works” means the diet that helps you lose weight in a healthy manner. So find that diet and EAT Right, everyday, every meal. 

2 – EXERCISE RIGHT.

Very few human beings can lose weight consistently—unless they’re ill—without exercise. To lose weight you need to Exercise Right. This means, like the diet, finding the type of exercise, the routine, the amount of time, and the intensity that works for you. What’s that “works” thing again? Finding the exercise that helps you lose weight. If your exercise doesn’t help you lose weight all you’re getting out of it is weariness.

Exercise in a manner that “fits” you. I’m not a jogger or runner. Never have been and never will be. I don’t possess the endurance and I don’t like it. I do like to walk and I like to bicycle even more. When I walk or bicycle “enough” I create enough burn, crank up the metabolism, and lose weight (that is, when I’m also eating right). You discover what works for you. Then do it.

From time to time your body will hit what I call a plateau. You stick on a number on the scale and can’t seem to get past it. This is normal. Ways I break through the plateau include: 1) Eat not just right but significantly less for a day or two. Or, 2) Exercise not just right but significantly more for a day or two. Either one or both generally does the trick.

Dieting is a multi-billion dollar business primarily because people are looking for and willing to buy what might be the “Fountain of Thin” or the “Brass Skinny Ring” or the “Silver Weight Loss Bullet.” In other words, they’re looking for magic short cuts or fancy formulas.

You don’t need all that.

Say what?

Try my Say What? Diet and see for yourself.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 03 September 2012

Dreamers Dream and Dieters Diet. It’s a hard truth for some, but it’s a truism nonetheless.

I’ve said before, Dreamers Dream and Writers Write, or Dreamers Dream and Doers Do. Yes, you can dream all you want but until you write, until you do, no new story is formed.

Same principles and process in dieting. This is why I say dieting and writing have a lot in common.

First, Desire is important. If you don’t really want to write a book or lose weight you clearly never will. So desire is essential. But is it enough? No it is not. To borrow a scientific phrase, desire is necessary but not sufficient.

Whether you want to consider desire and dreaming the same thing is up to you. But I think a case can be made that they’re different. Desire is a want. Dreaming is the creation of structures for the want. Desire is aspiration. Dreaming is inspiration.

Second then, for me, is the Dream. It’s conceiving, birthing ideas about what a book, or what we in a mirror, look like. But is dreaming enough? No it is not. This is thinking about writing, thinking about dieting, thinking about doing. But dreaming involves no action. The world has no lack of dreamers. It’s doers, whether writing or dieting, we need.

Third is Decision. Our desire is so strong, our dream so compelling, that we must, we absolutely must decide to take action. No decision? We keep dreaming but never achieving. No, now we decide. We begin. But beginning, difficult though it is for many, is not enough either. Multitudes begin a marathon but few finish the race. We need something else.

Fourth, Drive is both the engine and transmission wrapped in one ongoing resolve. It’s commitment to one’s decision, hazards be hanged and come what may. Drive brooks no slacking off, no dalliance, no cheating, nothing short of being totally in the zone. Drive is based upon our own sense of honor. We have the desire. We dream of success. We decide to take action. We now drive to the finish line because we cannot abide anything less.

Fifth, Doing is the all-important final ingredient. We don’t just begin we continue. We’re not involved in an act but acting. We get the job done, day in and day out. We stick by the stuff.

Writing and dieting, I think, are amazingly similar, at least in terms of process. We Desire, then Dream, and finally if we reach down inside ourselves we Decide. And oh then there’s that undeniable Drive to Do.

Here’s the final secret: The more we Do the more it feeds our Drive to keep Doing.

 That’s the writing process for me. That’s dieting for me. No question the process is work, but the good news is the process works.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 29 August 2012

In order to "do" this thing called "living" everyone alive must "act." We must do something, and when we do something we do it based upon choices. These choices are based upon our values and, in a larger sense, our philosophy of life, otherwise known as a worldview. So when we exercise our values by making choices, which allows us to do something by taking action, we reveal more about ourselves than perhaps we know. We "are" our values.

When we act we reveal, day by day, something about our character. As time passes, these acts of character or the lack thereof become patterns, i.e., our reputation, which in the end becomes our legacy. If we don't see it, surely "the pattern of our life," after a time, becomes evident to people around us.

Question is this: What is the pattern of your life? Or mine?

Another question logically follows: What does the pattern of your life say to others about what and who you really are?

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© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012

This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 25 August 2012

If you’ve never understood why Theodore Roosevelt is on Mt Rushmore reading his autobiography, published in 1913, will give you a clue. I’ve read several Roosevelt biographies, but this is the first time I read his words, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

President “T.R.” Roosevelt left us in 1919, too young at age 60, but he packed into his adult life an incredible amount of achievements, any one of which could have brought him legitimate acclaim. People remember Roosevelt came to the presidency through tragedy, President William McKinley’s assassination. Some remember he was only 42 years of age, the youngest president ever. Some may even remember his “Rough Rider” days during the Spanish American War of 1898 or his later guiding the construction of the Panama Canal. Maybe some remember him as a big game hunter and the founder of the Boone and Crockett Club. 

Most probably don’t remember Roosevelt was a prolific writer, authoring the most books of any president until surpassed by Jimmy Carter. Or do people remember this list of achievements? Roosevelt was nominated by several and should have (but for politics) won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his part in battles in Cuba. As Civil Service Commissioner and later as Commissioner of the New York City Police he led extensive reforms replacing the old spoils system with a merit system for employment. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for brokering the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

Note: in 2001, Roosevelt was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, making him the only person, let alone president, ever to have won both the nation’s top award for bravery in combat and the globally recognized top award for peace.

Yet beyond all this, perhaps Roosevelt’s greatest legacy can be summarized in the word “conservation.” Roosevelt contemporary Senator Robert LaFollete paid tribute: “And then, there is the great and statesmanlike movement for the conservation of our National resources, into which Roosevelt so energetically threw himself at a time when the Nation as a whole knew not that we are ruining and bankrupting ourselves as fast as we can. This is probably the greatest thing Roosevelt did, undoubtedly.”

For the record: Roosevelt established the United States Forest Service, 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reservations, 5 national parks, 4 national game preserves, 18 national monuments, 24 reclamation projects, and 7 conservation commissions. He placed approximately 230,000,000 acres of land under public protection, an increase during his presidency of over 400%. As importantly, he nearly single-handedly launched the forest movement, which became the conservation movement, which later developed into the environmental movement. In a word, his record on conservation alone is astounding.

Interestingly, several times in his autobiography Roosevelt referred to what he called the “right stuff,” a set of virtues he believed made people ready to care for their families, to contribute to society, and when the opportunity arose, to lead. In this he predated Tom Wolfe’s popularization of the term, The Right Stuff, in his 1979 book on the space program.

There’s much about Roosevelt’s theory and practice of leadership in this book. He speaks at length about taking action, even in the face of risk, and about adopting what he calls a Lincoln-Jackson school as opposed to a Buchanan-Taft view of power, the latter being what today we’d call “strict constructionists.” 

Roosevelt said, “I declined to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the Nation could not be done by the President unless he could find some specific authorization to do it. My belief was that it was not only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws…I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power. In other words, I acted for the public welfare, I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition.”

Roosevelt also said, “I bound myself more than ever to treat the Constitution, after the manner of Abraham Lincoln, as a document which put human rights above property rights when the two conflicted.” Together with his expansive view of the use of executive power, this concern for the common man, Roosevelt’s desire to assure them a “Square Deal,” and his lifelong interest in helping people—children with physical limitations, Indians, immigrants, and laborers—makes Roosevelt a different sort of Republican than those who dominate the party today. When Roosevelt fought the big trusts and monopolies he noted that he supported corporate leaders when they were “right” and departed from them when they were “wrong.” In other words, he aligned himself with principle, not given categories or groups of people, regardless of what they did or how they behaved. Contemporary pols on both sides of the aisle could learn from this.

Perhaps the oddest thing about Roosevelt’s autobiography is what’s missing. While he refers to his family and names at least one of his children and while he speaks glowingly of family life, there’s nothing in this account about his losing his first wife and mother on the same day when he was in his mid-twenties. There’s nothing about his leaving his daughter, Alice, behind with his sister when he went west to ranch in North Dakota and nothing about later marrying Edith or the five children coming from that union. In contemporary autobiographies family plays a central role. Perhaps in the day when Roosevelt wrote this was not the case. In any event I consider this the one major flaw in the record because readers are not permitted to glimpse how his family life influenced the man or his achievements.

My favorite quote: “A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”

Contemporary Republicans could learn from Roosevelt: while he affirmed individualism, he did not believe in unfettered individualism or laissez faire. Roosevelt was not afraid to align, when needed, with labor versus management, and he stood up for the common man. He said he’d rather government help a poor man feed his family better than to help a rich man earn more profit for his company. He worked to protect minorities like Indians and immigrants and he had a soft spot for children.

Roosevelt’s autobiography contains long renditions of things that don’t carry present-day import, but mostly it’s an engaging read offering some timeless wisdom about politics, leadership, the greatness of America, and the public welfare. I recommend it heartily.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.