7 November 2007 No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Preventative maintenance can go a long way for your car or your home. We do regular oil changes, and tune ups to keep our cars running smoothly and to prevent costly breakdowns. We replace the roofs on our houses every decade or so to prevent interior water damage. Unfortunately, if you forget to do these things, it costs more time and money to fix it once the problem already happened. Therefore, we need to remind ourselves to perform regular preventative maintenance in not only our cars and homes, but our bodies, soul and lives as well.

Escape Rising Health Costs

If you’ve ever saw a hospital bill, you’ll know that health care costs are by no means cheap. Even if you have insurance it can be expensive. To make sure you keep these costs at a minimum, you have to perform preventative maintenance on your body. Regular exercise is like driving your car often. You have to keep the parts moving. Non-moving parts are not a good thing. Ferrari owners often don’t like to buy “garage queens”, which are exotic cars that spend more time in a garage than on the road. Because the motor doesn’t run regularly, the car has more problems down the line and its very expensive to fix, especially on high end cars. The same goes for us. We need to keep moving and exercising to prevent bigger problems down the road. These problems, such as heart disease, high blood pressure among other more serious conditions are detrimental to your family’s finances and your life.

Remember to control yourself when you eat. Be aware of what goes into your body. If you’ve ever put regular gas into a car that required premium, you’ll notice that it performs very sluggishly and it shakes wildly. If you keep eating foods with high fat content and sugars, down the line your body will not perform as well as it could. I don’t know if you’ll start shaking wildly, but you might. I gave up sodas about two years ago and I’ve never felt better. I was overweight and down all the time before that. It was a small change in my daily routine, but ever since I switched to water or healthy drinks like soy milk, I found that I have more energy physically and mentally. Along with exercise and eating right I’ve lost a lot of weight. Be aware of what you put into your body and you’ll avoid the costly break downs in the future.

Maintenance for the Soul

Just like physical maintenance, we must do preventative mental maintenance to give ourselves the best chance for a happy, fulfilled live. If you’re not happy, having money just isn’t as fun. Stress is a big problem in today’s fast paced society. I see this in friends and family. Sometimes I get calls and the person on the other side is stressed about something and sometimes I’m the one making that call. Stress has long term effects. Stress is like engine buildup in your car. One day it’ll make your car break down and leave you in a cloud of smoke.

Don’t let that happen. Remember to give yourself a mental tune up. Ever noticed how much smoother your car drives after a tune up? We need mental tune ups every so often, so take some time out during the day and just take a walk in an area that you find pleasant. Get away from the stress of work and other responsibilities. Don’t bring your cell phone with you. Just by taking a little time and giving yourself a minor tune-up, you can do wonders in relieving stress. Try taking a quick 15 minute nap in the middle of the day, or better yet do a physical activity. Then when the time is right, you can go in for your major tune up, like a 60k mile service on your car and take that much deserved vacation in the Bahamas.