Kick Butt Tip of the Day for July 7 – No Excuses

As you get this beautiful and steamy day started, may I encourage you to be stronger than your excuses! Do not let excuses prevent you from creating the magic that only you can create. Go get em tiger. You are awesome!  Expect Great Things To Happen!

- Don Chase's Kick Butt Tip of the Day is a daily motivational feature designed to give you the inspiration you need to power through your day. Check out all the Kick Butt Tips here.

More From Beasley Media...

While getting away on a vacation this year may sound desirable, sometimes we just need to find the best places for a staycation instead.

Uncle Fred said Don, "most days are sunny and hardly ever hotter than 80." My wife Debbie has an aunt and uncle that live in Honolulu, Hawaii. We both spent a week in paradise a few years ago and like uncle Fred said, every day was full of sunshine and blue skies and no matter where you are on the island of Oahu, the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean are only a few minutes away. Those seven days were some of our best days ever.

Recently, our good friends at Wallethub released its annual survey of the Best Places for a Staycation. Results of the survey were based on attractions, food, entertainment, rest and relaxation, spas, museums, zoos, aquariums, swimming pools, tennis courts, golf courses, ice cream shops and coffee shops per capita.

If you happen to be a local living in any of the top areas on the list, consider yourself lucky. But don't fret for those of you on the bottom of the list, there's still hope if you're creative and find ways to make the most of your staycation.

Oh, and if you're around the Fayetteville area, we came in at No. 131 on this list. 

Check the list below and see how many of the locations that you have visited. We've also added all the North Carolina cities appearing on the list, so you can see where we rank.

In order to determine the best staycation spots, WalletHub compared 182 U.S. cities — including the 150 most populated U.S. cities, plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state — across three key dimensions: 1) Recreation, 2) Food & Entertainment and 3) Rest & Relaxation.

We evaluated those dimensions using 44 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for staycationers. For metrics marked with an asterisk (*), the square root of the population was used to calculate the “Number of Residents” in order to avoid overcompensating for minor differences across cities.

We then determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.