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Dear Tessie,

I want to join a gym and a fitness group, but my husband says that it’s too much money for the gym and why do I need it anyway, I’m not going to go. He also says why am I worried about my weight, nobody is looking at me. I don’t care about people looking at me, I’m just tired of my clothes being too tight. If I spend money on a gym and not on bigger clothes, what’s so bad about that? What do I tell him?

Help!

M.C.

 

Dear M.C.,

I know a bit of wisdom that you can share with your husband to start with. Jim Rohn is the one who said it: “Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live.” You really do only get the one body. I know we’ve got all kinds of new technology these days, but it turns out that’s not really a technology we’ve figured out.

You don’t have to be concerned with people’s opinion of your body to want to change or take better care of it. I went through a period of time that I did quite a lot of work to lose weight and be active, and it was purely because I was uncomfortable, and it hurt to walk up the few stairs to my own front door. Three stairs and my knees couldn’t take it! I had slowly let myself get sedentary and not even noticed it!

A lot of gyms and fitness programs have resources to help you work on yourself without letting you get injured, too. It’s a valuable resource to take advantage of when it’s possible, and a healthy body can’t be beat.

Dear, if you would like to take care of yourself, you take care of yourself. There’s no reason not to, and all the reasons to do exactly that. Your physical health cannot be replaced. Join that gym!

Love,

Tessie

 

Dear Tessie,

I’ve always dreamed of writing a novel. I know I’m a decent writer, and I’ve got an idea for a story, the characters for it… all sorts of ideas. I’m afraid that it won’t be as good as I think it will be, and a lot of people have told me that people from around here don’t write books and get them published, that I just need to get a job somewhere. Do you think that’s true?

S.G.

 

Dear S.G.,

You never know what you can do until you try. If you already have an idea for your story, characters, setting, and the likes, I’d say you’ve got a good idea of what you can do and you don’t seem to have even tried to actually write the novel yet.

And you really can’t be listening to folks around you. Don’t let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do. Don’t let anyone tell you which dreams and goals you can or cannot achieve. I promise you that you can do whatever you set your mind to, because that’s the way we people were made. Made to achieve our goals.

Naturally, I have to ask why it would matter to anyone else if you wrote a novel anyway. Plenty of folks from all over the world write plenty of stories of all kinds. Write to your heart’s content! Just because someone around you lacks imagination does not mean you can’t dazzle them wit your own.

Love,

Tessie