4 Friend Making Skills

Friends are a good thing. This is going to come as a surprise to, oh, say NOBODY. I think we all pretty much recognize, accept, and are aware of the fact that having friends in our lives greatly enhances our quality of life. Name almost any hobby you enjoy and it will be better with friends (Obviously there are a FEW exceptions to this rule! ) Even though most of us are keenly aware of the fact that we could probably use some really good friends, not all of us are so great at MAKING friends! It can be really difficult to take things from, "Hi, my name is Josh" to, "Wanna hang out?". Or is it? I am no expert here, but I do enjoy making friends and experience has taught me there are a few ways that help push people toward having more friends.

1. Be Friendly
Now this might seem overly obvious, but we often need to focus on this first part. People are attracted to nice people. A smile can go a long way. Sometimes all that is standing int the way of having friends is, well, us! Try this: Strike up a conversation with a stranger every day for a week. You won't meet new people and have new friends if you don't start!

2. Be Hospitable

Hospitality goes a LONG way in the friendship game. Invite people to your place. Set up a dinner part. Ask people to go to dinner, a movie, the park, the golf course, on a run, or really to anything. You don't always have to wait for some perfect event to mix it up with people. See someone who looks like a cool person? Ask them if they want to watch some football, or grab coffee some time. As a general rule, people are willing to chat and make friends, but SOMEONE has to start the conversation. Why not let that be you?

3. Be Adventurous

I think most of us are held back just because we are worried about the unknown. Will people reject me? Will they be nice? What if they are serial killers? Will they think I am boring? You can ask yourself a million questions and the only way to know is to try! I have made friends simply by seeing some Indian fellows playing Cricket and I asked them to show me how to play. They LOVED teaching me how to do something they were passionate about. I learned a new sport and made 5 new friends. Try new things and you will find that you meet new people. Don't be boring. Get there and make some friends!

4. Be Observant

People like being noticed. Keep your eyes open and start SEEING people. Most of the time when we are going about our business, we often only pay attention to our own business. However, there are AWESOME people all around us and it's time we started noticing them. I remember once I noticed a guy in the gym doing a workout that seemed like mine so I asked him about it. We both were doing Crossfit and he was a trainer at the gym and is from Ireland! Cut to a few weeks later and I had the chance to go with him and compete in an adventure race. All because I noticed his workout looked like mine. BOOM. Friend made. 

So there ya go. 4 ways to start making some friends. Here is the bottom line. You'll start making friends when you make it a priority. Put yourself out there and be a friendly, hospitable, adventurous, and observant friend maker.

Now, it's your turn to give me some feedback. What is the most unusual way you have ever met one of your friends? 

Follow me on Twitter @Jericksond

6 Home Workouts That Burn Fat Fast

Even this baby likes to work out at home!

Are you ready to shed a few pounds? Tired of not having access to a gym? Well, good news jack, I have something that will work for you! I myself lost 28lbs doing these workouts and getting on a healthy diet. If you want your belly fat to get BURNT up, start working. I have 6 Workouts here that will destroy those love handles and get you on your way to getting healthy again. Now, here is my disclaimer. Workout will not get you ripped. Dieting will. You cannot eat garbage while working out and assume you will be fit and look great. You need a balanced diet as well. That being said, here are GREAT workouts you can do in under 30 mins at your house that will burn fat quickly. I am writing this because a few days ago I wrote about my experience losing about 30lbs this year (you can read about it HERE). After posting it I chatted with several people who mentioned how difficult it is to work out when they don't have equipment and are too broke to join a gym (I have been there!). I realized it might be helpful to give you some of the workouts that Tricia and I enjoy doing when we cannot make it to the gym! So, I'm just going to feed you baby birds the workouts so you can take them and use them for yourself! Here is how this works:

First, you need to figure out what you CAN do at your house. Here are 10 exercises that almost anyone can do at home:

1. Push Ups
2. Sit Ups
3. Burpees (Video of a guy doing 100 of them)
4. Air Squats (Video of a guy teaching you how to do them)
5. Tuck Jumps (Video of a guy teaching you how to do them)
6. Box Jumps (Video of a guy teaching you how to do them)
7. Jumping Jacks
8. Sprinting outside
9. Pull Ups (you may or may not have access to this one)
10. Jump Rope Double Unders (Video of a guy teaching you how to do them)

Now don't get all caught up on these 10 exercises. You are limited only by your equipment and you imagination! Do you have a park near your house? Do pull ups on the monkey bars! Have a heavy brick? Hold it over your head when you do your squats! Just be creative and it will all work out will.

Now that you know what exercises you can do now lets figure out how to put them together! Here are 6 workouts you can do very easily at home.


Workout 1:
Pick an exercise from your list and do the following sets: 21 -15 - 9. In between each of those, run as quickly as you can down the block and back. So if your exercise was Push Ups, you would do 21 and then run, then 15 and then run, then 9 and then run. Do the entire thing as fast as you can. Time yourself so you can do it again and try to beat your own time next time!

Workout 2:
Pick 2-4 exercises from you list. Then do 50-40-30-20-10  So if you picked Sit Ups and Jumping Jacks, you would do 50 situps and 50 jumping jacks, then 40 situps and 40 jumping jacks...and so on. Time yourself for the whole thing and try to beat your time next time!

Workout 3:
Pick 2 or 3 exercises from your list. Then do 10, 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,and then 1 of  the exercises you chose. So if you picked Push Ups, Sit Ups, and Air Squats, you would do 10 push ups,10 situps, 10 squats. Then you would do 9 push ups, 9 situps, 9 squats...and so on. Do all of this with a running timer and do it as fast as you can so you can try and do it faster next time!

Workout 4:
Pick 4 exercises. Do 100 of each of them. Do them in any order you want and as broken up as you want, just get all of the reps done. Do all of this with a running timer and do it as fast as you can so you can try and do it faster next time!

Workout 5:
Pick 3 exercises and try an AMRAP workout (As Many Rounds As Possible). So lets say you picked Pushups, situps and air squats. Do 5 Pushups, 10 Situps, and 15 Squats. Then, when you are done with those, start over. Finish as many of those rounds as you can in 20 mins. Go for the highest number of completed rounds as possible.

Workout 6:
Pick 4 exercises and try a Tabata workout!  It works like this: You do and exercises for 20 seconds and then rest for 10 second. After you do this 8 times, move on to your second exercise (But DO NOT take a break yet!)So say the first 8 intervals are pull-ups, the second 8 are push-ups, the third 8 intervals are sit-ups, and finally, the last 8 intervals are squats. You only rest 10 seconds between each exercise. When your pullups are done, you have 10 seconds to start Push Ups, and when those are done, you move to the next and so on.  So you workout for 20 seconds and then rest for 10 and you keep doing that until you have finished 8 sets for each of the workouts. Your score will be your total number of reps. You can try and beat your score next time you do it!

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, some of you are WAY better at this stuff that Tricia and I, so we would LOVE to hear from you about what workouts you can do at home! Paste your favorite home workout in the comments below so we can all share in the goodness!

5 Lessons I Learned While Getting Healthy

The last time I posted a blog was at the end of January. That is sad, but is pretty indicative of how much has been going on in my life since then. When I posted that blog, AudacityChurch.tv (the church that I love, am on staff at, and have been honored to help launch) was averaging about 50 people a week at our Worship Services. Last week we saw 113 people walk through the doors! Holy Crap. God is good.

Since that last post I have lost almost 30 pounds, renewed my focus on being a healthy person, and experienced tremendous joy in my marriage because of it. At the start of the year my wife (you can follow her on twitter @tricia_erickson) and I decided that we were getting fat, lazy, unhealthy, and stressed and we did NOT like it. We began a journey that has resulted in an overhaul of our eating habits, workout planning, and general outlook on life. Together we have lost nearly 50 pounds and are VERY pumped up about it. This is not a weight loss blog. This is not a post about why you should stop being fat. This is me telling you that your health is pretty much indicative or you priorities. If you value your health, you will make time to be healthy. If you put other things in front of being healthy, you will more often than not be unhealthy. The following is a list of things I have learned in the past 6 months:

1. Eating right is as simple as PLANNING to eat right! - If you have crappy food in your home, you will eat crappy food. Plan good meals that are balanced and then eat what you plan to eat. You can't stuff your face with cookies everyday if you never have access to cookies. When guest come over and bring desert, we will often have a very small portion and then INSIST that they take it home with them. DON"T LEAVE CRAPPY FOOD IN YO HOUSE!
2. Body composition is a measure of nutrition NOT a measure of fitness. - This one sounds complicated but is not. If you are fat, it is more often than not, because your diet sucks and not because you don't work out. We do not get fat because we don't go to the gym. We get fat because we eat poorly. Does going to the gym help? Yes (provided that you actually work out when you are there!) However, your love handles will be removed in the kitchen and not in the gym. Something to think about.
3. Couples that fight together, have fun together! - My wife and I have had SO MUCH FUN learning about fitness together. When we spend time encouraging one another in the gym and practicing a healthy eating habit together and cheer one another on when we hit weight loss goals, we grow together as friends! So, if your spouse is trying to get fit, JOIN THEM! Don't JUST cheer them on, support them by doing it with them. It is an amazing way to strengthen  (pun intended) your relationship.
4. Find something that can work for you! - If you want to get healthy and fit and loss weight, you had BETTER be doing it for the long haul. Short term diets are dumb. You need to be healthy ALL the time, not just for a few months at a time. Stop trying to use diets that are not sustainable. Pick a way of eating that is sustainable for life. Figure out how to make it work for you and then DO IT. My wife and I chose to use Crossfit.com for our workouts and we LOVE it! We use the ZonePerfect.com nutritional eating system which balances our diet nicely and is pretty easy to do on a busy schedule. Bottom line is this: Figure out what works for you, that you can enjoy doing, and get after it.
5. Make health a priority. - As a general rule, you will be as busy as you allow yourself to be. Never get so busy that you stop taking care of yourself. If you are not able to stay healthy and you get fat, get obesity related health issues, and lose the ability to do fun things with your kids, you have thrown away a gift that God gave you. Some of us have health issues TOTALLY unrelated to fitness or diet. I myself have blown out both of my knees and no amount of dieting could have prevented early onset arthritis. However, if you are unhealthy as a result of poor dieting and not taking care of your body, then shame on you. Get it right. Stop being a glutton, put down the fork, pick up some weights or something and GET AFTER IT. Make time for being healthy because it is important. At one point I would push my fitness time to the side to make room for meetings and such and I think that was wrong. If I do not stay fit physically, mentally, and spiritually, how can I ask others to do it?

Thanks so much for reading my blog. I am learning a lot these days and I would like to keep posting the things life is teaching me. However, I learn a lot from all of you as well. I would like to know:

1. What is your favorite way to stay active?
2. Do you agree or disagree that health should be a priority over most other things? Why or why not?

Please answer in the comments below! Follow me on Twitter at @JericksonD