Nourishment for the Mind, Body, and Spirit!

A unique Free 10-minute a week Newsletter aimed at developing all of You: ​ 🧠 Mind 🧬 Body 🕊️ Spirit!

MIND

The 10,000-hour rule is a concept that states that it takes this amount of time to become an expert in a field, as popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. This amount of time is the equivalent of 5 year’s worth of full-time employment.

Then there’s the 20-Hour Rule which suggests that it takes approximately 20 hours of deliberate and focused practice to become reasonably competent in a new skill. Is the 9980-hour difference between being an expert and being competent really worth the effort?

Here are some tips to consider as we enter into the New Year:

• Less is more; we don’t need to entertain doing more but doing more meaningful things. It goes back to the cliché, quality, not quantity.
• Each quarter of 2024, try and select a new activity to invest 20 hours to learn. Become competent in photography, dancing, writing, or whatever, but just do something to exercise the brain.
• Maintain the 6-minute-per-day reading routine, the best habit for 2024 to have. So simple, yet so darn difficult.

Relevant Quote: “A man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.” ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

BODY

JD Power wrote in an article back in 2020 on what happens when you don’t drive your vehicle often enough:

• Batteries will lose their charge.
• Tires will lose air pressure or flat-spot.
• Oils and other fluids will deteriorate.
• Fuel can go bad, too.
• Pests will move in.

All this is to draw emphasis on what happens to the body when we don’t exercise it. I can attest to this since Covid-19. When I was living in London I was running 6 times per week, between 5-10 km per day. I felt great. Now I struggle to run 100 km per month.

• According to Healthline, running burns the most calories per hour, with a 155-pound adult burning just over 800 calories per hour. Running at a slow pace burns a lot of calories for 30 minutes, with an average burn of 10.8 to 16 calories per minute.
• Even walking between 4.5 and 5 miles per hour burns 400 calories in one hour.

Relevant Quote: “Your fitness is 100% mental! Your body won’t go where your mind doesn’t push it!” – Wim Hof

SPIRIT

On the 10th of December, I lost a person whom I admired, Wes Wasson (CEO of DreamStart Labs). He was a faithful supporter of World Vision and Vision Fund, until the last minute of his life. Moreover, in the past 12 months, I have had to mourn the loss of three faithful servants of the Lord, all to disease and all in their 50s.

The message is, live every day as if your last, but do so for the Lord and His glory:

• 2,240,543,592 seconds is likely the time you will live, equivalent to 71 years. Calculate how much time you have left according to averages…are you satisfied with your legacy?
• What did you do with your last 86,400 seconds?

Relevant Quote: “But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” – 2 Peter 3:8

Thank you for reading, I hope you the material and I pray you will be blessed on your personal journey!

Please note on Sunday morning (US-ET) I send an email with the “Weekly Recap”, which includes the blogs which range from 1500 words to 3000 words, more meaty but really good material, along with a copy of the weekly Newsletter.

​If you have not yet subscribed to the email list, please do so, we never spam.

Edgar S. Martinez