I live in the Gator Nation of Gainesville, Florida, so it’s something of a requirement that I start my story with the big news swirling around town (and around the nation if you are a fan of college football) namely that Urban Meyer, one of the most successful and well respected coaches in the industry, announced that he is stepping down as Head Football Coach for the University of Florida due to health concerns.

Urban and his wife, Shelley, and their kids live right down the street from me. Of course their house takes up a lot more space than mine. Urban is a pretty young guy – 45 – and compared to a lot of head coaches, he appears to be in decent physical condition. He has to be considering the intense physical, mental and emotional stress that comes with running the kind of high caliber program he’s put together this past four years – recruiting and coaching the likes of Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and taking the Gators to two National Championships, just to name a few accomplishments.

In his announcement on Saturday, however, Meyer admitted that his body is telling him that something has to give - that it’s time to stop and regroup. And, while the news came as quite a shock to everyone, for me, the most surprising news of all was that Urban actually chose to LISTEN and not ignore what his body is saying.

As an 11-year veteran of the fitness industry, I can tell you first hand that the majority of people wait way too long to listen, especially when armed with dozens of “justifiable” reasons NOT to pay attention. Right now I can’t imagine anyone with a longer list of those reasons than Urban – a list he could have easily used as his excuse to ignore the warnings and keep going.

The fact is that, too often, we treat the body as a side line to the rest of our lives – as a dumb annoyance that, if left to its own design, would happily run us off the road in our rush to get from point “A” to point “B.” We treat it as a thing to be forced and manipulated. We deprive it of sleep, work it too hard, feed it too much of the wrong stuff and drown it in a sea of caffeine, constant worry and stress. Then, one day, it starts to talk back, often in a voice that’s hard to ignore.

The truth is, the body is a big fat know-it-all and, if you insist on ignoring that voice for too long, the body will, in an attempt to grab your undivided attention, respond by handing you what often becomes the biggest challenge of your life. It’s all a product of what I call “living too deeply in any one of the four life corners.”

Here’s how I explain it in my soon-to-be-released book, In The Box: Forget about thinking outside the box. Imagine instead that you live In The Box. In each of the four corners of this box lie the areas that are most important to your existence. Your four corners might look something like this:

Love: Family, friends, leisure time, writing, reading, meditating, playing, cooking, painting, creating things that connect you to the world and the people you care for.

Body: Health, fitness, nutrition, grooming, exercise, sleep, water, or anything pertaining to physical energy or the physical experience.

Work: Job, education, vocation, volunteer work, any regular activity that defines your purpose or provides you with financial means and/or the means to live a meaningful life.

Home: Home, housing, shelter, transportation, car, personal and material possessions. While some believe that living in a balance of all four corners is the key to happiness, the truth is, many people live very happy lives spending a larger block of time in one corner over another.

For instance, a good number of people spend a huge block of their lives in the work corner. Until retirement and even after retirement, the work corner often “defines” who we are. Most of us make the mistake of thinking that we must pay equal attention to all four corners in order to strike true balance and harmony, but this is not necessarily true.  The real problems begin, not when we choose one corner more often than the others, but when our attention is so locked in one corner that we totally and completely ignore the others and, ultimately, become disconnected from them.

The end result is often an abrupt shift of attention away from the dominate corner - as in the case of a sudden heart attack or the imminent threat of losing a loved one - when we are left with no choice but to focus all of our attention on the body corner or on the love and home corner.

The bottom line is - the body is always the Know-It-All indicator that something has finally tipped off kilter. It will tattle on you every time by way of sleepless nights, excess weight gain, dizziness, chest pains, and every other range of health issue imaginable. My hat’s off to Urban.

Personally, I will miss him, but I am thankful that he had the courage to LISTEN. As a man who has always led by example, this may be the best play he’s ever called. Thanks coach.

Dianne Orwig is a international fitness expert, success coach, motivational speaker, and founder of LivingFit Online™, a fitness program that has helped thousands of men and women completely transform their bodies and live healthier, happier lives though her less-works-better approach.
 
For more information on how you can get better results in less time and with less effort than you ever thought possible, visit http://www.lovelivingfit.com.
 
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