Corey Stokes

My Thoughts : Retire Inspired by Chris Hogan

It is no secret that I hold a special place in my heart for Dave Ramsey and his team, they have changed the direction of my life tremendously. One thing that I have learned from listening to the financial gurus that come from Financial Peace plaza is to seek advice from someone who has the heart of a teacher. This way when you need to, you can make an informed decision. Chris Hogan’s book does just that. He provides you the , information along with the personal and professional stories to back it up.

Prior to picking up the book, I expected to hear lots of talk about becoming debt free. Chris, being a Dave Ramsey personality, I expected to read much of the same material that I could find from Dave Ramsey. My hope, however, was that the material present was not presented the same. Chris did not disappoint! He maintained his own theme of creating a retirement movement. Giving a brief synopsis of how our current retirement system became age focused, Chris wants to spread the message that we should not look at retirement as an age, but as a financial goal that we can reach before we can enjoy our golden years. For some of us, that means working well into the 8th and 9th inning (using Chris’s analogy)!

The point was clear! It is never too early, or too late to start thinking about what retirement looks like for you. The goal should be to actually put some thought into forming that picture (and keeping it at the front of your mind) so that you can create a roadmap to get your there. Breaking it down into a baseball analogy, this book provided a layout of what each decade should look like. Without looking at your specific information, though, Chris often referred readers to seek the advice of a professional.

Get your copy of Retire Inspired: It’s Not an Age, It’s a Financial Number here!

After finishing the book, I would have liked more of an explanation of the RIQ tool, such as an example of it’s use, but I didn’t mind going to the website to find out more information. There were also a few instances that I felt questions that were brought up, were not answered as fully as they could have been. The answers that Chris did give, however, lead me to further investigate and come up with an answer for myself.

On my visit to ChrisHogan360.com and the RIQ tool, I entered my information my information and received exactly what the book said I would. A financial number based on my goals and vision for my future. If you change, the goal and vision of your future the number changes as well. The tool gave me an overall figure as well as a monthly saviings goal in order to reach the overall figure. It also provided a checklist, with everything that I still needed to complete and a contact form to get in touch with a professional to help me reach my goals.

Overall, I consumed this book! I had a hard time putting it down. Even though, I sat on the bench for many of my run day’s while completing this book, the time that I spent listening to the audiobook was well worth it. This is definitely a book that I’ll keep on my bookshelf.

My Thoughts: Busting loose from the money game

Do you remember the scene in the matrix, where Morpheus is training Neo inside the matrix. Neo had to learn an entirely new set of rules in order to operate. And the rules were, there are no rules because it wasn’t real. All through this book, I had this vision of being plugged into the universe, watching myself. I listened to the audiobook while I was running. In one instance, the author described how what we think is our reality, is actually a hologram that our infinite being (our extended selves) has created in order to play, what he termed “the human game”. During that run, I could have sworn he asked me if I thought that was air I was breathing.

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I am no stranger to the main premise of this book. I did, however, find myself questioning much of the material that the author presented. I heard many of the concepts he referred to in many other forms such as:

You have more control (power) than what you appear to have currently
You have the power to create the life that you want
The things that you experience in life are there because you put them there.

This author, however, seemed to have a mystical twist to this message that I could not accept.

He said several times throughout the book that I would have questions and adverse feelings about what he was saying, even to the point of disbelief. But, he continued to say that even he was only in my hologram because I needed him to tell me that my life was not real and that it was all a game for me to reclaim my power.

Even, after I decided that the book was not for me, I keep reading it through to the end in order to see how deep the rabbit hole went! And the further I went, the more I realized that I didn’t want to go any deeper. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that going through the process to reclaim power, or as said in my world, taking control of your life, is an effective process. Some of the treasure hunting tools described in this book are things that will make anyone’s life better. For me, however, the notion that “I can have everything I want by realizing that it doesn’t matter and because it is not real.” Just didn’t sit well with me. Overall, I did not find what I was looking for in this book.

A small caveat. I found out as I was finishing this book that, the idea of the world being a hologram was actually an idea from Michael Talbot’s book Holographic Universe. Maybe, if I would have read this book first, the concept of the world being a hologram may have sat a little bit better with me.

To be perfectly clear, I do believe in the underlying principle laid out in this book. There is only one person that can effect the outcome of your life and that person is you. How you, get to that realization, whether you choose to believe that you are an infinite being and are manifesting the world as your hologram, or by other means, is treasure hunt you will have to take on your own. The rabbit hole just didn’t go deep enough for me. I will say that the book was entertaining.

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Come on Coach!

written by Corey L. Stokes
One of the biggest complaints that I have about my run coach (Nike Running Coach) is that the run schedule doesn’t typically fit my schedule. On any given day something comes up that throws a wrench in my time table. For example, either my children want to be driven to school, someone miswrote an appointment time and showed up to my office early, or what happens most often, the gym closed early. Regardless of the circumstances, sometimes, it is just really difficult to stick to coaches layout.

As I get older, I’ve noticed that I become more and more prone to injuries, but my wife usually advises me not to have back to back run days. I make an exception for Friday and Saturday. With the limited amount of time that I have to workout coaches long runs during the work week don’t always get done. So in order to accommodate my schedule, here is what I to do.

During the week, I allocate three days to run. Normally Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (my job allows 45 minutes of the work day for exercise). Coach normally schedules those days as short run days of 2 to 3 miles. In order to keep the total mile per week, I’ll add an extra half mile or mile to warm up or cool down on my run days. This way by the end of the week, I still have the total training miles that were scheduled.

Cross training is my biggest area of concern. I have come to enjoy running and would say that that is my drug of choice. But I know that continuously pounding the pavement will kill my knees. So unless I am working on a challenge, or have had a really stressful day, I try to stick to my 4 days per week of running (I will talk about long run days next). Cross Training days are my day’s to build a different muscle and give running muscles a rest. Since I live and work so close to my home and a gym, lunch time makes a great time for me to get some cross training done. However, since I don’t really have the time to figure out what type of exercise I want to do, I normally follow a video. P90, P90X or, what has become my favorite total body site, FitnessBlender.com. I simply complete a 25-30 video (warm-up and cool down usually included) while lunch is preparing, combat shower, grab lunch and then back to work. Kelli and Daniel’s routines have me exhausted by the time they are over. I do that and get 3-5 days of cross training and strength training instead of the one day per week that coach has planned. Unfortunately, the coach doesn’t count those extra days.

For me, long run days are my usually hit and miss. The trick, I have found, is getting out of the bed! Once you commit to getting up on the weekend getting out of the door for a run is easy. The long run days are the most important of run days this is how you build on your distance! Since one of my goals is to run a half marathon this year, long run days are vital. Every other run builds up to this run. On this run, I don’t worry about speed, I focus on running form, breathing, and completing the distance.

corey running

Rest days, are simply days that coach has nothing prepared for me. But after the strain put on my body during the week, Sunday-rest days are all about stretching. I’ve been working with the Yoga Yak videos trying to build on my flexibility as well as some relaxation techniques, wich I must say have been working out pretty well. I’m not one to brag but I can do a mean Shavasana😏!

Looking back, I must say that I’ve come a long way. However, I won’t give all the credit to my current running coach. In the beginning, I used runners world’s Smart Coach wich helped me move from someone who struggled to run a mile to now setting goals to finish races. I found that setting goals, and challenging friends help keep me motivated. I just wish that coach and I can be on the same schedule.

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