Exercise your mind in the morning

It’s no secret that people can see physical results from working out their bodies. Yolie Aleman-Rodriguez, a five-year MDRT member from Tolleson, Arizona, also sees results from working out her mind.

Before she exercises for one hour each morning, she reads for an hour — it might be a book pertaining to her career, a biography of a leader like John F. Kennedy or Mother Teresa, or the Bible. And she notices the value in starting her day that way, rather than reading when exhausted at night.

“I’m prone to learning faster that day because my mind has been exercised,” she said. “In the morning, your mind is blank like a piece of paper; it hasn’t gone through, for example, if somebody has yelled at you, if you didn’t get to an appointment on time, you got a flat tire or forgot to pay a bill. If you pick up a book at the end of the day, your mind has no room to add anything else in there.

Yolie Aleman-Rodriguez

“In the morning, you can not only create a beautiful drawing in your mind; throughout the day you remember what you read and how you can apply it. That keeps you going all day long.”

It’s part of her constant effort to embrace the Whole Person concept, or work-life balance, which not only helped her qualify for MDRT, but also revitalized her life and helped her embrace new people, places, foods and more. “Before I’d go home and think about all the reasons I couldn’t do something,” she said. “Now I’ll take a challenge in a heartbeat. There is so much to learn.”