Phil Barth Public Speaking

  Last night I hit another post hip replacement surgery milestone. One year ago we had our annual scout five mile hike. I took off with a walking stick, even though we were hiking on a paved path. The walking stick helped for a while, but the hip was not cooperative. I had to call it a day after 3.5 miles. (This just happened to be by a parking lot where one of our parents had his car parked). One year later we had the same five mile hike. And for the first time in maybe two years I did all five miles. Check that one off! My new Big Bold Brilliant idea is a full recovery for the hip. I'm not there quite yet. But thanks to a really good surgery and therapy team, plus some hard work, I'm getting closer every day. (Is lying on a yoga mat really hard work?) Next up: Summer Camp. I'm gunning for a 100,000 step week. What's your Big Bold Brilliant idea? And what's your next milestone on the path?

I've always tied my shoes the same way: Cross one leg over the other knee, tie the shoe. Switch legs and repeat.  I did it that way up till November 9. Then I had hip replacement surgery.  From that point until today I had a milestone: One day I would tie my shoes the "normal" way - normal for me anyway.   It took a while - at first my wife had to tie both shoes. Then she tied the left and I did the right. Then I did the right the "normal" way but had to bend over to tie the left one.  Today, after many hours of therapy I crossed my left leg over my right knee and tied my shoes the old way. A silly milestone to be sure - but one more step on the way to full recovery.  (Next up: Complete an online hip yoga class... then 10,000 steps on back to back days... then leg press 50 lbs 30 times... and so on).  If you want to hit a BOHAG (Big Ol Hairy Audacious Goal... or something close to that) come up with a bunch of LOHAMs (Little Ol Hairy Audacious Mileston...

I use several sources to keep up with what's going on the world. When two of those sources point to the same thing in the same day (and in today's case back to back) that catches my attention.  When it's about stress management, it moves to the top of my "Things I want to blog about" list. That's how I c ame to the most obvious (and yet somehow overlooked by me) idea: SLOW DOWN! Here's a link to the article that started my research.  Full disclosure: I don't agree with everything they said. Full disclosure part two: They reference a study by the Pew Research Center . If you read the article, read the study as well, because I drew a different conclusion from their study. Intellectually I KNOW I need to Slow Down. I know that "moving at the speed of business" or one of 100 other buzzwords can cause stress. So when I see the idea of "Slow Down" I think "Who doesn't know that?" But there's a huge distance from knowing ...

Fair warning: Some of these items are a little more detailed than “make a banana milkshake”. This would be one of them. In June 2022 my wife, our youngest son Tom and I took a ten-day trip to England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The tour was done by Go Ahead tours. We chose a tour company because we wanted to enjoy the different culture of the countries without having to figure out things like driving directions and (in this case) driving on the opposite side of the road. (Or as they say in the UK “You drive on the right side of the road, we drive on the correct side of the road”). The tour company arranged all the transportation and tours. That said, we also had enough time to explore the countries on our own. We were treated to incredible history. We toured castles and museums, took in the beauty of the country side and enjoyed local food. Admittedly, the food in the UK isn’t dramatically different from what we eat here (outside of baked beans for breakfast, and corn in tuna salad –...

Laughter is a great way to bust stress. And an easy way to laugh is to watch a sitcom. There are plenty of good sitcoms on streaming services. Netflix and Amazon prime have some good ones. As a bonus, when you watch a sitcom on a streaming service you only have to invest around 22 minutes of your time.  If you want to go in to more detail, you can get the DVD of sitcoms. I have all seasons of The Office on DVD. Not only does it have the episode on the DVD it has bonus footage that had to be cut to fit in the half hour (aka 23 minutes plus advertisements) window. If you have an antenna (or Dish network) you might be able to access MeTV and Hogan’s Heroes (if you like old school). A totally realistic sitcom – prisoners of war are basically running World War II from inside a German POW camp. (Favorite episode: Honey Hornburg and the Stuttgart Steppers) Speaking of realistic: Big Bang Theory is another one of my favorites. (Favorite episode: All of them). Other options (with my perso...

Let's take last week's stress buster post and go a little deeper. Beth and I have been married since 1990. For most of those years we have taken an extended family vacation to the beach near Charleston South Carolina (sometimes Isle of Palms, sometimes Kiawah Island, sometimes Seabrook Island).   One week every summer. We have toured the city, eaten at some fantastic restaurants, toured historical sites, shopped, gone to minor league baseball games and much much more. But if you asked Beth or me what our favorite moment on the vacations are, we would tell you “Our walks on the beach”. Every day we get to the beach, and walk on the sand, maybe put our feet in the ocean. I pick up shell fragments (Isle of Palms doesn’t seem to have a ton of complete shells). We walk and talk. We listen to the waves. We feel the breeze.  That last one is important because it can get really hot in Charleston in the summer. But with very few exceptions, a morning or evening walk on the beach f...

The Evolutionary LOHAG Last Friday's we talked LOHAG (Little Ol Hairy Audacious Goal). Specifically we talked about planned LOHAGs - the series of projects my wife and I worked on in 2019 when the Cleveland Browns convinced me to give up football. Today we talk about what I call the evolutionary LOHAG - or  The great walking LOHAG of 2020. Every year I take the week between Christmas and New Years and do a review of the prior year and the goals (BOHAGs frequently) for the upcoming year (more on the process later). Every year I have several physical goals. And every year I have the easy one (easy to write that is): Get at least 10,000 steps every day. Here's how it went: January was an easy month - because I was fueled by the New Year's Resolution. I went to the YMCA and walked on the track. When I traveled I walked through the airport. I fly Delta through Atlanta, Detroit or Minneapolis. All three of those airports have nice areas for walking. I put at least two hours buffe...