Challenges will help me reach my goals...

So part of the reason why I am so motivated to become healthy is due to my family history of cardiac diseases.  
My paternal grandfather died very early in life due to a heart attack and my uncle (who is only in his mid-50's) just suffered a severe heart attack that left 50% of his heart so weak that he could not undergo surgery.
My late maternal grandfather suffered a number of strokes and had kidney cancer.  My grandmother has diabetes, my aunt has high blood pressure, and some of my other aunts and cousins have thyroid problems. 
Yeah,  I need to be healthy now in order to try to avoid these issues being my personal ones in the future.
When I did the step test last week and I saw how high my heart rate was, that scared me.

What am I doing to improve my physical self? 
I have never been a runner by any means, so the idea of running or even jogging makes me nervous.  One of the reasons is because I have a hard time controlling my breathing, or better said remembering to breathe.  I also have this irrational fear of falling. 
So what I am doing to overcome this fear is running on the treadmill; I only jog/run for 1/4 of each lap that I do.  It looks silly but eventually I will be able to jog/run a whole lap and then eventually the whole time I'm on the treadmill (which is usually about 30 minutes).  I am also keeping track of my heart rate, I need to get that under control as well.
Today while I was working out with Wesley (my trainer) he asked me to work on push-ups, crunches, and squats daily.  He explained to me that the stronger my upper body becomes the leaner my abdomen will get... makes so much sense.  So I am going to make it a personal challenge for myself ; to do this everyday for 30 days, and hopefully once day 31 is here it will just be part of my daily habits. 

I am so excited about this new chapter in my life. 
I'll keep checking in.   Oh and P.S., today while I was getting dressed I couldn't help but notice the slight differences in my body- It was a great feeling!