40 Thoughts for Turning 40 (part 1)

To mark my 40th birthday, I have compiled this mostly random list of 40 thoughts about life. Part 1, with the first 20 ideas, comes today. Stay tuned for the final 20 tomorrow.

1. Walking is the single best thing you can do for your health. It's just a fact. No need for fancy sports equipment or private sessions at the gym. Just get outside and take a walk. That's it. No excuses.
2. Children are a blessing (part 1). When Sarah and I were new parents we were scared to death about messing up our kids. When should we feed them? What should we feed them? When should they go to bed and awake up? Our own sleep deprivation of those early months made the paranoia even worse. Then we heard someone say that the main goal in parenting should be to raise children who are a blessing to others. Not geniuses. Not Olympic champions. Blessings. For some reason that advice put us at ease and brought back a level of sanity to our lives. 
3. Children are a blessing (part 2). There are too few opportunities in life for generations to mix. It's proven that elderly folks do better when kids are around. Ideally, day care centers and preschools should visit nursing homes (or locate themselves on the same property). The church is one last place in society where the generations can meet. Make sure your church is kid-friendly, and by all means encourage parents to bring their kids into the services. 
4. Exercise in the morning. If you think that you will hit the gym or the pavement after work, think again. 90% of the time you won't. Get it done first thing in the day, or it won't happen.
5. Accomplish something first thing in the day. This is related to the last point. Knocking out a small-ish task first thing in the morning can give you such a rush. Get something crossed off the list before answering email or reading your Twitter feed. It puts you in charge of the day, not the other way around.
6. Keep your inbox at zero. There are only a few things that you should do with an email message: delete it without reading it, read it (quickly) and delete it, forward it to someone else, file it for future reference, or respond. If the response will take a while or requires you to gather more info first, then hit reply and save it in Drafts. Or pick up the phone and call the person instead. Emails are not for pondering over for days and weeks.
7. Password managers are awesome. "Internet security" is an oxymoron. The fact that every website requires you to create a username and password makes it worse, not better. But I found that LastPass really works. I think I'm in love with it. I'm (almost) ready to delete the very conspicuous list of usernames and passwords that I keep on my hard drive.
8. Facebook has jumped the shark. Sorry, Mr. Zuckerburg. Each day I find it less rewarding to go to your site. Maybe it's because I've now re-connected with all the long-lost friends that I care to. But mostly what I see in my newsfeed are links to videos and recycled materials from elsewhere on the internet. I don't want to know what 18th-century poet or NHL team I am like. Boring.
9. Most things worth doing aren't things you want to do (at first). If we only did the things we felt like doing, then we would never get off the couch. I realize you don't want to go to that meeting, or get up and attend church. (And of course you don't want to go to work every morning.) But you will be glad you did. 
10. Any empty stomach makes me think of God. Sadly, I can go for a long time without thinking about God. I've found that fasting from food prevents this from happening. When I skip a meal for spiritual purposes, the hunger pangs always remind me to pray. Want more God in your life? Fast from a meal now and then.
11. It's better to pray often than long. I used to try to be like the spiritual superstars of old and pray for hours on end. In fact, I wouldn't even pray unless I had at least 30 minutes to do so. Then I realized that I wasn't praying very much. So I gave myself a break and started praying shorter prayers. Now I pray more than I used to, all during the day.
12. It is hard to beat an S&P 500 index fund. If you have your money in any other investment, you aren't getting the return you deserve. That's because you are probably paying someone else too much to manage it. (If you are invested in gold, then you are betting on society as we know it to collapse. In which case your gold won't do you any good anyway. Someone with weapons will come and take it from you.)
13. Singing with others in church brings me closer to God. I hate (hate!) worshipping in an environment where it makes no difference whether I sing or not. The accompaniment shouldn't drown out the congregation's voice. When I can hear other people singing, it reminds me what the church is--a choir of imperfect but (usually) sincere people trying to offer their best to God. 
14. For every person that really likes me, there is another who really doesn't. When I was in the 10th Grade, I attended a leadership seminar for young people. One speaker taught that we need to get over the desire to have people like us. He said that 25% of the people we meet don't like us. Another 25% really do. The other 50% are still making up their minds. He said that's true of every person, and there is not much any of us can do about it.
15. Myers-Briggs has never made sense to me. Not much to say here, just that I don't get it. I've never been able to explain what all those letters mean. Nor can I ever remember what letters have been assigned to me. Definitely haven't figured out what difference it makes to how I'm supposed to treat people.
16. Spend time with people who are better than you. Your social environment is so much more important that you think it is. If you want to be thin, hang out with skinny people. If you want to be sharp, intentionally look for people who are smarter than you. It works the other way, too: Want to spend more money than you can afford to? Make friends with someone who maxes out their credit cards. 
17. Baggage stays with you. As a pastor, I firmly believe in forgiveness and new starts. However, there are things we do in our younger years that stay with us. Some relationships will never recover from certain kinds of neglect. Some brain cells will not grow back. The older you get, the more baggage you accumulate. Better to have less baggage, especially when your health starts to fail. (By the way, this is my paraphrase of the entire book of Proverbs.)
18. I'm still unconvinced that a smart phone is a worthwhile investment. I just can't justify paying the phone carrier over $100 a month. Instead I use a dumb phone on a prepaid account, and I have a Kindle to use when I have wifi coverage. 
19. Playing doubles (in tennis) is less challenging than singles, but it's better than sitting at home. There are few things in life that I enjoy more than squaring off against someone on the tennis court, one-on-one. (Especially against someone who is better than me. See point #16.) Lately I've been playing a lot of doubles, because that's what we do here in my town. It may not be as awesome as singles, but it's still pretty great. My tennis skills are improving, and I'm making new friends. If I restricted my tennis-playing to only singles, I would get to play a whole lot less. 
20. You have to be terrible at some things for a while before you can be good at them. Listen to Ira Glass say it in his own words: http://vimeo.com/24715531.