You can be incredible.

I mean that. You can be incredible. You can be the kind of person where people say, “Wow, I have no idea how he/she does it. I wish I could do that.” You can close your eyes at the end of each day reassured that you’re just a little better than you were the day before.

The best part? It’s easy to do and it only takes a few minutes a day.

This may come across a bit as a personal rant, so I apologize in advance, but I’m sick to death of people who whine about their situation or talk about improving it but never actually do anything.

I call them Underpants Collectors – inspired both by Steve Kamb of Nerd Fitness’s excellent article and the hilarious South Park episode that inspired it. Underpants Collectors are people who want to accomplish something, lose weight, learn a new language or maybe start a business and quit their 9 to 5 but never actually do anything to get there. These people feel like they’re working hard, but they never actually reach their goal.

If this sounds like you, keep reading – we can fix it.

You’re stupid.

Don’t take that the wrong way though, I’m stupid too. We’re all stupid. It’s not insulting, it’s not even something to be upset about, and best of all it’s something we can all work on fixing.

No one knows everything. Regardless of who you are there is some area of life in which you’re completely stupid. You don’t know the first thing about it. I know there are tons of things I’m completely stupid about, from complex things like astrophysics to relatively mundane things like the rules of cricket. In general I’m ok with that. Being stupid in certain areas doesn’t bother me.

Just about everyone wants to live a long, happy life (if you don’t, it may be time to sit down with someone and talk about that).

Thankfully, on the side of things we can control, there are a lot of small, easy changes we can make immediately that will have a huge effect on not only improving our lives in the present, but also ensuring that we have lots of fulfilled years ahead of us. Whether you’re 7 years old or 70 here are six things that you can start doing today that will have a lasting effect on your life.

With Thanksgiving day right around the corner a lot of people’s thoughts are inevitably turning to food, feasting and fat. Whether you’ve been struggling with weight loss for a while or are already fit and dreading the extra fat you expect to be saddled with, Thanksgiving Day generally marks the start of a holiday season characterized by complete dietary hedonism followed by shame fueled resolution making on January 1st.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Here are some things you can do before, on and after Thanksgiving day to mitigate the damage.

There’s something you’re doing that’s making your life shorter. This is something that most of our U.S. readers do on average for at least 11 hours each day. It’s even something that I would bet you’re probably doing right now as you read this. Ready for the big revelation? Are you sitting down? Well then stand back up because that’s what’s killing you – sitting.

Yes, you heard me right. The more you sit in a day the sooner you are likely to die.

This is a bit of an impromptu update, but we’ve recently been shown some love on the Lift Big Eat Big Facebook page and wanted to say welcome!

Here are a handful of our more popular posts that you may be interested in:

• The Pros and Cons of CrossFit
• 5 Reasons to Practice Parkour
• Meditation 101
• Caffeine as a Performance Enahncer
• 6 Reasons We Don’t Own a TV

If you like what you find here you can like us on Facebook or sign up for e-mail updates on the right side.

Thanks again to Lift Big Eat Big for sharing!

Batman’s life sucks.

It does. He has nearly unlimited wealth and freedom as Bruce Wayne and he can never enjoy it. It’s nearly impossible for him to form meaningful relationships without the fear or pain of having that person murdered as a result of their involvement with him. His days are filled with rigorous training and his nights with battles that often come very close to being fatal. He’s eternally haunted by the memory of his parents and I don’t know when he gets any sleep.

So how does he put himself through all that hell? He has serious willpower.

Caffeine is the number one most consumed drug in the world. It’s in soda, chocolate, coffee, tea, energy drinks and even a lot of herbal supplements. Most people are extremely familiar with – if not dependent on – the energy boost it provides. I know I tend to be somewhat less than peppy if I miss my morning coffee. What most people don’t know is that caffeine is an extremely effective performance enhancer for training.

If you know how and when to supplement with caffeine you can not only improve your endurance, but improve your strength output and prime your body to burn more fat during exercise than it normally would. That means you get more out of every workout for the price of a cup of coffee. Sounds good to me.

If you’ve gone through the school system or have attended a university in the U.S., chances are you’ve spent some time in a foreign language class. What’s more, unless you majored in that specific language, you probably don’t speak it all that well for having spent so much time in class. In fact most people, when asked, could barely function in the language they studied.

So why is it that most traditional language classes fail, and what do we do to fix it?