Day 49: The Endless Possibilities of Genuinely Liking Yourself...

When I talk to people about fitness, diet or making changes in their lives I get this underlying message that people feel like that there is something wrong with them…  Now, it isn’t that they come right out and say “there’s something wrong with me” but their language expresses it. People will say that their problem is that they want to be more disciplined, more focused, better at sticking to their health habits, better at finances, more mindful … So there is this wanting to be "more" of something, or "better" at something. They tell me, "I am not disciplined enough..." or "I am not focused enough..." Inevitably, they are saying that they try their best, but come up short. All of their efforts can’t solve the fundamental flaw of that suspicion that they will never be good enough. 

The most heartbreaking thing is that nothing could be farther from the truth. Nothing is wrong with us. The constant holding of ourselves up to the super-fit, the people who seem never to fail and the ones we admire as almost perfect is a travesty… The truth is, you are enough… You are whole, and you are beautiful… 

Where do these thoughts come from? 

As children we thought we were awesome and we felt whole with the world, that we could be firemen, or policemen, or doctors or whatever we imagined… The world belonged to us… Somewhere along the way between innocence and adulthood, we got the message that we should be more. We should work harder, be more disciplined, be more beautiful, be better. We ceased  thinking we could be anything we wanted and start thinking about how to fit in, be useful and become part of the machine…  Although they meant well, these thoughts came from our parents, other relatives, school, peers, media, and church. Everyone gave us this message, because everyone has bought into the fundamental agreement that we all should be better, more productive, more of everything. These thoughts are rooted in religion, in consumerism, and in the fundamental fabric of our society.

It’s a flawed message, but it’s everywhere. We can feel it when we open social media and see all the ways other people are doing or looking better than us. That makes us feel worse, and reinforces our belief in our feelings of “less than…” 

Well… In typical “me” fashion, I’m forced to say it…

Bull-fucking-shit... It’s all bullshit… You believe a self harming lie that has been handed to you from your culture… Listen up, your feelings of worthlessness, self hatred, failure and insignificance are all nonsensical based on standards that don’t even really exist and perpetuated by self loathing assholes who hide their insecurity behind a veil of snapshots on an Instagram account that have been altered to the point of deceit so profound that looking at them really makes you doubt your own self doubt…

Time to break that cycle…

Do you remember when you were about six or seven years old?  You were playing, imagining, creating, connecting with others and the world around you, full of joy and wonder and life. When people asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, your answer was spontaneous, impulsive and sometimes brash but always truthful because, well, because you believed in yourself… This is the feeling of wholeness with the world, the feeling of accepting yourself. 

It’s still there, inside you, but it’s covered in all the agreements you’ve taken in from the world around you that you’re flawed. Those agreements have been reinforced and set in concrete as covenants, but you can break them and form new agreements not with the world, but with yourself.

Start right now, and believe that the most important new agreement is that you are whole, you are loved, and you must believe most adamantly that you are enough. Say it… Close your eyes, and say it… “I am enough…”

Like Stuart Smalley, you are in fact, good enough, strong and doggone it, people do like you… We are locked in this self imposed prison of “never quite enough” and it has to stop… You can’t sit down and not have some sort of fold in your midsection… You’re human, not an advertisement for Aéropostale… Sometimes your bangs will be crooked, you might have something in your teeth and we are all awkward at times, say stupid shit and even, *gasp!*, might embarrass ourselves so badly that we look around and hope a black hole will open up and swallow up our existence… Who cares? It’s a universal occurrence… Think about it this way… Being embarrassed about being occasionally embarrassed or awkward is like being uncomfortable about having forearms… Everyone has them… So what’s the problem? 

Since it Sunday, I will let you go early but let’s get started on help for your transformation before I go… How about a couple of recommendations just launch the new you...

1. Practice kindness and friendliness with yourself. This is fundamental in beginning your new transformational practice: Start looking at yourself with gentleness and friendliness. Just like you might look at a loved one with the same feelings, or light up with warmth when you see one of your best friends. Now experience that same feeling turned around and applied to you. If not all the time, how about as much as you can? Whenever you look at yourself or something you’ve done, turn on the warm light of self care. Let go of the old ways of harshness, and transform it into compassion and affection. What would it be like to do this consistently? I know liking yourself is anathema in our culture but fuck ‘em, think about it, what if you blatantly liked you? What if you lit up your own room when you walked in? What if you were interested in your own thoughts, concerns and feelings? This has been demonized as egoistic but egoists don’t have the same concern for others that they have for themselves. I’m not telling you to hold yourself above others but I am demanding that you love, respect and honor yourself like you would anyone else that you trust, love and admire. This isn’t selfishness, its fucking self-preservation at the very least…  Let yourself off the hook and give it a rest… Forgive yourself for any failures or mistakes that you have committed in the past and move on. Be compassionate towards yourself.

2. Stop holding yourself up to the standards of others… Social media is a lie, culture is a lie and judgments from others aren’t death sentences, they’re opinions from insecure assholes trying desperately to mask their own self loathing… Let them judge, most of their judgment exists only in your head anyway, most people are too busy hating themselves to be concerned with your panic attacks…  Do you really think that the person judging you has any power other than what you allow them to have? Listen, if you don’t like my self-confidence and you write it off as arrogance, what the fuck do I care? You know all those memes and quotes about eliminating the negative people in your life? Yeah, that… Do that… 

What if, really, what if you enjoyed your own company as much as you enjoyed the company of a loved one? What if going out wasn't a time to impress others? What if your life wasn't about fear? 

Get started... The clock is ticking and nobody wants their last thought to be "what the fuck was I thinking?"

Well Happy Sunday everyone and I hope you enjoy the day! I will see you tomorrow because again, I don’t a choice and I really kinda enjoy letting my thoughts escape…  It’s empowering…

I love you guys like I love coffee but please don’t make me prove it…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… Up on time, wrote an epic poem this morning and in between thoughts while wrote this blog, I played some very pretty, calming guitar… Have quite a bit to do today but it all feels secondary to my feelings of well being…  I’m doing well, thank you for asking…

Day 48: What Do I Do When I Fail?

This morning was a SPECTACULAR fail… I overslept 2 hours and 12 minutes, rising from my sarcophagus of sleep at 7:42 AM… After ten straight days of 100%, yesterday I forgot to take my vitamins and did not meditate until 7:30 last night which led to being wide awake and staying up late and when the alarm went off this morning, part of me said, “get up” but the majority of me overruled that with a hardy “fuck off…” and that part of me was so persuasive, I listened…

Upon analysis of my multiple fails I have to blame it on getting a new guitar… I take my vitamins at lunch and I skipped lunch to go pick up the instrument… That leads to eating lunch at my desk, forgetting my vitamins because I changed my schedule…  I delayed meditation for the same reason… Instead of meditation, I spent my writing time yesterday morning online looking at pictures of the guitar I was going to order… Then, my plans to catch everything up after work turned into a marathon guitar practice… So none of this was my fault, it was that siren song of that evil guitar… It’s over there in the corner grinning at me right now… I will be playing it later I’m sure but at this point right now, the tips of my fingers are so sore I have to type like I have three inch long fake nails to keep from wincing…

Two things here…

Primarily, it is not the fault of the new guitar; it’s the fault of the guy with the new guitar who reacted like a child at Christmas who got what he wanted… Just wanted to make that clear and maintain the continuity of the last seven weeks where I consistently have stated time and time again, that blaming outside influences for personal failures simply does not work… “I” chose to re-arrange my schedule so that “I” could do what “I” wanted rather than follow the schedule that would have lead to my success… Instead of waiting until I was off work and had plenty of time to go get the guitar, “I” used the time for reserved for my challenges as wish time and then “my” lunch hour for picking it up instead of eating my lunch normally. No one forced my hand, there was no emergency and circumstances were absolutely chosen by me to set myself up for failure… Small fails yes, but I take full responsibility for them… 

So what do we do when we fail?

These were small… I forgot to take a vitamin, meditated too late and overslept… Pretty much insignificant when you stand back and look at the scope of The 90 Day Life Change Challenge.  But what do we do when our failure is more like a collapse of the system that supported our goals? When the diet gets ignored for a week, when the workout comes to a halt or that system we put in place to succeed at writing simply closes down? What then?

Well… The first thing we do is evaluate the failure and find out the who, what, when, where and why of the malfunction…

Who is at fault? What is the failure? When did I go wrong? Where does this leave me in relation to my goals? What is my plan now? These are actually standard, easy questions to answer if you are honest and truly want to succeed… Answering these questions honestly will give you some insight into your behaviors and why your goals aren’t being pursued…  If it turns out that your will is broken at work when there are donuts in the break room, that could easily be solved by avoiding the break room at least until you have the strength in yourself to not break down and reach for the donuts, leftover cake and bowl of free candy on the table… If you have trouble at night watching television, you could adjust by removing the offending food from your house which by the way, if you cannot control yourself, you should have gotten rid of it when you started… Leaving liquor in the pantry and a bag of weed in the drawer when you have no self control is, well, it’s stupid… If you left them there knowing you might give in to temptation, then you probably didn’t mean to succeed anyway… 

So what next? I have evaluated my malfunction, taken responsibility and am ready to try again… Here is what I do…

1. First and foremost I have learned to have a more flexible mindset. This does not mean I allow myself to cheat, but it gives me the opportunity to let me slip without turning it into an all out downhill slide back to where I started...  When you are rigidly trying to stick to a plan or achieve a goal, and things don’t go according to plan, then you feel like crap and things can get quickly derailed. Rearrange your schedule periodically to take away that feeling of rigidity, move your exercise to the afternoon if you are a morning person, spread out your self- improvement tasks  over the day so that you don’t feel rushed or pressured. If you have a more flexible mindset, and think, “I might not be able to go according to plan but that’s OK because things change,” then it’s not a disaster when you get off track momentarily and it doesn’t lead to quitting. There’s no single track that you have to stay on because this is your journey.

2. Realize that every attempt to change is about learning. When you fail, that’s actually really good information. Before you failed, you made a prediction that something would work, but then real-world information and experience came in that told you that it didn’t work. That means you now know something now that you didn’t know before. That’s excellent. Now you can adjust your plan, figure something new out, try a new method and keep learning, keep adjusting and keep going towards your goal. A donut isn’t a catastrophe; two weeks’ worth of donuts is…

3. Ask for help. When I’m struggling with something and I want to give up, I can figure out a better way by reaching out to experts, those who have the experience of meeting similar goals. They might give me simple, obvious, “why didn’t I see that?” advice that I need, or brilliant tips, or accountability. Sometimes I need encouragement but sometimes I just need a swift kick in my lazy ass… When I need encouragement, I ask my wife, a friend or some trusted family member… When I need a swift kick in the ass, I seek out my favorite motivational speaker David Goggins who will tell me to stop fucking whining… I usually need him more than I need encouragement, but we are all different and different things motivate us… Find your people, utilize them when you have to but listen, never accept advice from anyone who tells you that it’s okay to stop pursuing your goals… When you hear someone say, well, maybe you should just quit, or take a break, use that lazy attitude that they are handing you as fuel for your fire… They just want company in their failure to succeed… Then again, if you are a recovering addict who turns to an old addict friend for advice, you may not want success; you might want an excuse… Pick your team wisely, that’s the best advice I can give you…

4. Give yourself a break. If you fail, get back up, dust off, take a minute to regroup and then give yourself credit for getting back up and get on with the task at hand… Everybody fails, everybody hurts and everyone feels disheartened once in a while… Everyone fails but only the best of us can get back up for the tenth time… Perseverance is a learned skill that only comes from repeated practice. 

5. I remind myself why my goals are important. It’s easy to give up on something, because not doing it is always easier. Think about this; giving up means you’re losing something important, your goals, and I know my personal reasons for doing something aren’t just selfish, and I can renew my vigor for the struggle. I want to be the best person that I can be for myself, my children, my wife, my co-workers and for the world I live in. Being the best version of me isn’t selfish; it’s a gift to everyone around me. This alone is often enough to get me going when I fall…

I realize that I’m far from perfect, and that the guilty secrets I hide inside myself are no different than anyone else’s. We all are alike in so many ways, and every week I get emails and texts of the stories of the successes and failure of trying to meet goals and you know, I relate to every single one of them. My seven year journey to become better has had more ups and downs than a rollercoaster. Monumental fails, exciting triumphs and crushing defeats and every one of them met with the same, focused attitude… Keep going… While we all share the commonality of failing to live up to our better nature, we also share the bond of being able to start again.

So start again.

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… I just did that… I’m back on track… Cannot hit 100% this week but I can next week…

I love you all like an orthodontist loves crooked teeth and I will see you tomorrow because not only have I not given myself a choice, I want to…

Have a great day and get up off your lazy ass and get started… And if it helps you get moving, please… 

Day 47: Now That Your Anger is Gone... Improve Your Moment...

The title of this blog is a bit misleading, because every moment is an opportunity to either learn or to reinforce. Even though our experience of the moment can be fraught with difficulty, we have the power to turn every event, whether we judge it good or bad, into a learning opportunity. I know that sounds impossible because some events in our lives are simply devastating, and in the midst of our experience, the pain of it can be overwhelming, Still, think back on the most difficult parts of the journey through this life and ask yourself what you learned, how you got through them and what skills, like resilience or patience you developed as you weathered your personal storm.

The problems we face stem from our narrative about the moment: we are constantly interpreting things in a certain way, so that we don’t even notice that we have this interpretation or narrative. It is ALL about our mindset. Last night someone commented on my blog and said that they learned in an AA program that alcohol was 10% of the problem and the other 90% was attitude… I couldn’t agree more! The comment really hit home with me because the simplicity of the truth of that is astounding. There are days when you wake up with an attitude problem and not getting the water temperature correct in your shower just pisses you off… Other days, a whole host of things can go wrong and you can just laugh it off… 

Now what if you turned it around? What if the situation was 10% of the problem and your attitude about it was 90% of the solution? Wouldn’t that make overcoming the problem so much easier? 

I talk a lot about reframing in this blog. I think that is one of the greatest secrets of all time. The ability to adjust to the moment, evaluate and prioritize my experience to fit the severity of the problem I am faced with.

We tend to take the little things in life and think negatively about them. This is the definition of negative mindset. This is the mindset we have to escape…

For example:

If someone hasn’t returned my text message, I might interpret it as meaning that they’re upset with me in some way, and feel hurt or have trepidation and my mind may try to find reasons they are upset with me...

When someone asks a question, I can interpret that as a criticism of me, and get bothered by it. Again, my mind may construct reasons that they are asking questions to convince me that they are unhappy with me.

When I haven’t done all the things on my To Do List, I can interpret that as another sign that I’m doing things wrong, I have somehow failed and feel discouraged and guilty about that.

In any given moment, we have a narrative about that moment. A story, an interpretation, an evaluation and with a negative mindset, that story will determine our experience as unconstructive.

This morning, I was on set four out of five sets in my Half Murph and I stepped up to begin set four and I said to myself, “Let’s get this over with…” and as I started to bend for the set of Burpees, I suddenly stopped and I said, “No, No… Not "get it over with…" ” Instead I reframed that moment and said “Let’s do this!” and I smiled because I realized that all my patience, all my practice and all my discipline was paying off… I am starting to filter out all the negative bullshit that tries to defeat me and reframing it as ways to succeed with a better attitude.

Now when I start, I am never thinking about how I might not make it, or I won’t beat my thirty minute limit for the Half Murph or how much it hurts, sucks, etc… Instead I am realizing that I have never failed the thirty minute limit, I have never quit and I how much I actually enjoy a difficult, limit expanding workout.

My life is slowly turning around… Yours can too… I promise.

Here are some simple, yet  powerful things you can practice:

You can drop the story and just experience the moment, exactly as it is…Instead of constructing that world where you might fail, you might get embarrassed or you might panic, you can create a more powerful story.

Let’s look at how to do that…

Experiencing the Moment As Is

Right now, stop reading and take a look around, you are surrounded by air, light, sound, objects, and life. This is the moment, just as it is. It isn’t negative and it isn’t positive, it simply is.

Now, you’ll immediately begin to interpret all of that, and create a narrative about it: it’s messy, that person is irritating, you haven’t done certain things, my neighbor is playing loud music, I shouldn’t be reading this blog, I have shit to do, and on, and on, and on… 

STOP

Go back and simply drop that story and see the moment just as it is, without interpretation, without judgment, without letting your mind denounce, degrade or define anything. Even if you can only do it for a second, think of it like this… This is an exercise for your mental abilities and like all exercise; you start slow and build up. Consider this exercise as running. When you start, you walk, then you walk run, then you jog and then you run… Clear that negative out for just a second and you’re building resilience.

See it with beginner’s mind. With the eyes of a child seeing a cloud or tasting an orange for the first time, open to interpretation, but why bother, the moment is beautiful. Think of when you see a sunset, or a mountain, or majestic waterfall and how you just can’t think of any way to describe it. Just experience your moment that way, right now… As if it was a completely new experience.

You can practice this by going for a walk and on the walk; see if you can experience it afresh, without a narrative or evaluations. Just see the moment. Just experience the world directly, without a layer of interpretation. Bring curiosity to all of it. See the bird, see the clouds, watch the cars go by, this life is a marvel of things to experience and we miss it all because we are so wrapped up in this need to evaluate everything. 

The goal of this is to drop the story that creates struggling and suffering. The effect gives directness to your experience. Removes a the layer of judgment and negativity and you can metaphorically “touch the moment” and plug into it.

Create a New, Powerful Story

Now I realize that it is impossible to go through life without a narrative and I am not asking you to do that. There are moments we can bring into our experience that are helpful, even powerful and train us to look deeper into our lives. The knee jerk reactions of life are fucking you up, no other way to say that. The only possible way to have those reactions is to live with your finger on the trigger of emotions and sadly, most of the planet lives that way and their emotions are frequently negative. A misunderstood statement can ruin a relationship; a comment can get you killed… 

Now once you have dropped your old story, and just experienced life directly, here are some interpretations that I’ve found to be powerful:

Pure Wonder: It is possible to take moments in your life and just see everything around you as a miracle, wondrous and awe-inspiring. This is an appreciation for the incredible nature of life. It’s a practice of loving what is. Want to see a miracle, stop and think about what being alive means… Seriously, you don’t need LSD to notice your hand, babies do it all the time…

Gratitude: Similar to finding awe in everything, you can be grateful for what’s here in this moment, for us and others… This is not just appreciating what is there, but feeling grateful that you have it. Don’t say, well, at least I have this car and others don’t… Say “I am so grateful for what I have, I feel fortunate to be alive in this moment.”

Compassion: When you notice suffering in others or yourself, you can generate a wish for that suffering to come to an end, for the person to find peace and even happiness. You can look at your own suffering as problematic or you can see it as an opportunity to learn, grow and get wisdom to pass on to those in the same or similar situation. Show this compassion outward to others. This generates a caring feeling in the heart that adds something wonderful to the experience of this moment.

We are all interconnected: This is an appreciation that we are not isolated, but instead we are all supporting each other whether directly or indirectly. Consider the “Trembling Giant”, or Pando… An enormous grove of quaking aspens that take the “forest as a single organism” metaphor and makes it literal: the grove really is a single organism. Each of the approximately 47,000 or so trees in the grove is genetically identical and all the trees share a single root system. Everything we have is supported by many others even if we cannot see it.. Everything we do has an affect on others, and can be a positive or negative influence on others. An appreciation of this interconnectivity is a way to not take it for granted, and to do what we can to be a positively influence on other people because the effect will be universal even if we cannot see it.

You might have other stories that help you, stories of empowerment, of love, of generosity. After dropping the old stories and experiencing the moment directly, try these stories on and see how they affect your experience.

Congratulations on stepping up and working on your negativity and anger, it will reverberate through everything…

With this kind of practice, you can create a beautiful experience in any moment.

I love you guys like that I used to love that weird curly fry in the bottom of the regular fries...

Have a great day... It's all on you..

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update... Fuck, I'm killing it... I love this shit... Still 100% for the week, teaching a great class on exercise and reframing for positivity this morning and I know I will succeed in helping someone... They don't have a choice, the universe is bringing them to me... 

See you... I wonder what we will learn tomorrow?

Day 46: Your Anger is Weighing you Down: Let It Go....

"Anger and intolerance are the enemies are the enemies of correct understanding." - Mahatma Gandhi

It feels like that each and every day, we blame other people for our frustrations, our lack of happiness and most of our problems…  They irritate us, don’t do things the right way, they drive too slow, or too fast, are incompetent, rude, inconsiderate, not organized, too organized, not doing enough, or doing way too much, boring, uncaring, unkind and just generally fucking irritating. We are irritated if the line is too long, we should have chosen another line… Suddenly the young mother in front of us has a WIC issue and it is all we can do not to explode, because after all we have been in this fucking line for what seems like the entire afternoon… 

Always on the verge of being angry, or upset. We are upset about being upset and yet, we will always be frustrated if we stick to this mindset. Without self realization about it, we will always be angry, offended, hurt or disappointed. There will be no end to the offenses humanity can take against us, as long as we decide that everyone else is wrong, all the time.

I have this theory about people that they don’t know why they are unhappy. Like children, they don’t know what to do with their feelings and so, like children they explode about some nonsensical thing and suddenly “that” thing has to be the problem when in fact, the real problem is avoided…

In their mind, they’re not the problem. They are never the problem; it’s always outside forces, occurrences, or some other person…

Have you ever lived with an unhappy person? Better yet, have you ever blown up at your partner or significant other over something like they put the spoons in the drawer wrong and before you know it, someone screams “you’re just like your fucking mother!!!!!” and then the insults fly and something that wasn’t the actual problem unleashes the issues that have been buried for weeks, months or even years… How the hell do you put spoons away wrong? Oh wait, the ACTUAL problem is that you’re not paying attention to me enough was the real issue…

The truth is other person is rarely the real problem. That young mom with the WIC issue that takes four minutes to resolve isn’t your problem. Your anger at her is…  The problem is your reaction. The external event (someone is rude to you) will always happen, every day, often multiple times a day. We cannot stop others from being rude, but we can change how we react. Who gives a shit if someone is rude? Does being rude back or internalizing your anger do anything to them? If you are rude back to them, then you are hand feeding them a reason that they need to justify their anger... The cycle just continues if you return their negativity… If we can react in a calmer, more peaceful manner, we will be happier, regardless of how they feel. We will then act in a more compassionate way, smile, and perhaps the other person will be transformed just a little bit by this act of compassion. In psychology, we call it de-escalating… Returning kindness, calmness and logic when handed anger, rudeness and threats… 

Now listen, I know that some consistently angry person will take this out of context and decide that I am instructing people that anger is wrong... Justifiable anger is healthy. If you do not get righteously angry at the appropriate time, I am going to wonder about your mental health. So to be clear, being cut off in traffic is not a reason to fume, make rude hand gestures and rage at your steering wheel, carry it with you for as long as you can and then relive it on Facebook... Getting cut off in traffic is a minor irritation... Now, on the other hand, if your significant other cheats on you, or lies to you then your anger is justifiable, but you are still responsible for how you handle it, what you say and how you treat that person, regardless of your anger. Even if the person you trust breaks that trust, personal attacks, the use of ad hominem, and viciousness is not justifiable.   

Here’s a little list to help you react peacefully:

1. When you notice yourself getting offended, frustrated, angry, irritated, disappointed … pause. Take a breath. Seriously, take one second to consider this situation… You aren’t a monkey ready to sling poo at someone on a moment’s notice, you’re a rational, potentially kind, logical human who can pause, evaluate and then act instead of react.

2. Don’t react. Reacting in anger is harmful. Yeah… Even dangerous… What you say can cause permanent damage. You need to find out the circumstances of the actions of the person you feel has hurt you. You may have misunderstood, you may have approached them and they were not prepared to face the issue that just came up. Consider the possibilities, do not jump to conclusions.

3. Examine the idea you have about how you think they should act. You could be holding onto an idea that it is in conflict with reality. As long as you hold onto fantasies that aren’t in line with reality, you will be frustrated. The instant you think “well, what they should have done… Stop. Right. There. To try and change all of reality to match your expectations is lunacy… Let me know when you finally succeed, then write a book, because everyone needs to know how to do that… 

4. Toss your expectation… Yep, just dismiss it because expecting that your needs will be met, how you want them met with the attitude you want it met with is not logical… Ever hear that saying about be careful how you treat people because you don’t know what kind of life they have? Think about that… You may think that you have expressed yourself clearly but you first need to check with the other person to make sure that they understand your needs. Accept the person in front of you, and yourself, as flawed humans with real issues that you may not be able to imagine. Communication is the hardest thing we do as humans and everything we do as a partner, friend, co-worker, and even perfect stranger is based on communication. Watch your verbal and non-verbal communication

5. Act with compassion. When you stop blaming the person for not acting perfectly, you can then respond appropriately, and with compassion. Accepting reality doesn’t mean you don’t take action, it just means you let go of the frustration. Instead, you can act appropriately, and be more centered in your actions. Feel free to defend yourself, but do it rationally… I’m not asking you to “take someone’s shit…” What I am saying if you are approaching life with a “I don’t take shit attitude” up front, you’re entering the octagon and you should expect your shitty attitude to be met with a shitty attitude…

6. Being kind in the face of unkindness is not weakness. Empathy in the face of selfishness isn’t weakness… Meeting a poor attitude with a positive one is not weakness… It takes more effort, more resolve and a monumental strength to meet negative attitudes head on… 

You may be asking the question: What if people you rely on are careless or irresponsible? Aren’t they the problem, then? Yes, they are but you don’t have to make it your problem… Other people are careless and irresponsible and this is the reality and it will always be this way. You can’t change that, and so the question is, how will you deal with it? You can rage and get mad at them and that is your choice…

Or…

You can let go of expectations, breathe, and act appropriately within this reality. Toss your expectations, smile, and act with compassion. The rude bastard will never see it coming.

So the next time you feel your anger rising, take an inventory of why... You might be able to reframe, deflect and smile about it...

Have a great day!

I love all of you and it has been a pleasure annoying you all this time and I look forward to doing it for as long as this lasts...

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update... Cooking with gas... Everything is on track for my second 100% week in a row. Every single day I have some minor injury, a pull, strain, or at best, some soreness... I don't think it would be possible to do this without some body ache, or injury of some kind... Everything else is status quo and I am now on the downhill side of halfway... 

Day 45: 90 Day Life Change Challenge: Thoughts From the Halfway Point...

 “I tend to think you’re fearless when you recognize why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway.” – Christian Bale 

Right after the New Year in 2021, I set myself a 90 day discipline challenge, just to see what I was capable of. As with many things, the thought just came to me in the shower. I had just finished three back to back to back 30 day challenges in October, November, and December and I was considering what to take on next. The was accepting idea that my alcohol problem had taken hold in my mind and that, coupled with the need to challenge myself pushed me to take on what would become the 90 Day Life Change Challenge… 

I love the idea of pushing myself out of my comfort zone, and I had become used to taking on multiple physical challenges at once. Usually I will choose five 30 days challenges simultaneously. This allowed me to get a low rep, easy “rest week” in after the final week in a challenge series which could include 5000 Squats in 30 Days, a Five minute Plank, 1000 Pull-ups Challenge and two more extreme tests of physical fitness. 

In addition to the extension to 90 days, I decided to choose a combination of physical, mental and creative challenges that could be broken down into morning, evening and “daily” to foster the strongest level of discipline that I could visualize.

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge hit a milestone today… I am at the halfway point, Day 45 and while I have hinted at the benefits up to this point I would like to take this blog to share some of my findings so far.

So my challenge for 90 days was to follow these 14 things each day:

Morning

1. Wake between 0500 and 0530

2. ½ Murph (100 Burpees, 150 Squats, 100 Push-ups and 50 Pull-ups)

3. P90X3 (Also a 90 Day Program)

4. One Extreme Physical Challenge (So far a Five Minute Plank Series and now 150 V-Ups)

5. Meditation

6. ½ Hour Writing This Blog

7. CBD Oil

Daily

8. Fast from 8:00 PM until Noon the Next Day (16 Hours)

9. Never Overeat

10. Stick to a Strict 100% Plant Based, Whole Food Diet

11. No Drugs

12. No Alcohol

13. Take Vitamins Every Day

Evening

14. Practice Guitar

I should note that none of these is individually that hard for me, and I’ve done most of them before at one time or another for 30 days…. Even putting them all together isn’t crazy hard because although on the surface it sounds insane, it is a moderately difficult morning, the “daily” challenges aren’t hard at all because I have been a vegan for years and it was just a matter of eliminating the garbage food and I have been fasting for a couple of years now. As far as not overeating, that is simply a matter of slowing down and listening to my body say, “that’s enough”. Amusingly enough, my biggest number of failures (six times!) was to fail to take a vitamin… Finally got that under control by using my alarm to remind me at lunch until I developed the habit of taking them… The only true difficulty I had with all of this was the alcohol… That persisted for about 21 days until the screaming need to take a drink of vodka finally calmed. The last few weeks, the desire has been mild, if at all… I am beginning to believe that I can put down alcohol for the remainder of this life. Seems like the more information I take in, “eliminating alcohol” shows up on every single study done on longevity…  The two true challenges that I have met so far are the daily grind of all of it combined and the extension to 90 days and what that has done to my mind.

I have lost weight; taken two inches off my waist (I have my high school waist size again!),)added muscle and if I may brag just a little, I have eight pack abs… All of that is just a given though, because put a human body under the conditions I have subjected it to, and the organism has no choice but to react in the way it has. As it has unfolded, surprisingly, it has been my mind and not my body that has had the biggest changes. I expected some of what has happened. A heightened sense of pride in myself, a sharper mind, and better focus were all expected and delivered. All that said, I had no idea the psychological, intellectual and emotional changes that were about to occur.

I seem to relish taking on difficult, if not impossible challenges.  The first few days were a lot of fun. I get excited at the start of a new challenge, and that initial rush of soreness, pain and overwhelming sense of doubt is like being in a new relationship with yourself. The pep talks, the “so sore I cannot sit down on the toilet” days and that feeling of starting a long journey are some of the greatest experiences in my life.

I started waking at 0521, snoozing once until 0530, with the intention to slowly move it to 0500, and, over time, I have accomplished this. I really enjoy that silent morning time and getting more of that has been healing for me.

I have consistently exercised and meditated before work and most of the time, gotten the lion’s share of the blog done before my shower, then I try to finish the blog on my lunch hour and polish and publish after work. By far, the daily blog has been the most difficult thing about my Life Change Challenge. I will blog about blogging one of these days to explain for those who aspire to write and need a little push. People ask me a lot of questions about where my ideas come from, how long it takes me, writer’s block, etc and I haven’t been moved to write but the idea has tickled my cerebellum a few times and I will eventually get to it. 

 I often see and hear my mind coming up with excuses why I should stop, or reasons I could take a day off. I see them as what they are though, excuses, and I simply ignore them. Interestingly, when I voice them to my wife they seem to fade in their rate of recurrence. During the first few weeks, every single time I did a half Murph, my mind would tell me, “you aren’t going to finish today” and “this is too much”… I would always finish. In fact, I have only failed to do it a couple of times and both of those were because injuries that occurred during the execution of the series. When I verbalized it, my wife said, “you don’t fail…” and since that time, I laugh in between sets and just count down until I am done with no serious thoughts of failure. Okay, truth time, I wink and point, and smile at myself in the mirror between sets now… I have developed this sense of self confidence that is simply fucking amazing… I keep asking myself just how much I am capable of… Yeah, the kid who grew up doubting every single move he ever made suddenly has this unbreakable sense of self worth…  Self-aggrandizement?  No… Just a therapeutic and curative assessment…

Being a vegan is not new to me, I have been doing it for a while. In fact, my phone tells me that I have been a vegan for 1,364 days… I have been on an off and on strict whole food diet since last January. That adjustment was difficult because I love tortillas… Right before I began The 90 Life Change Challenge, I went on a tortilla bender and ate Taco Bell bean and rice tortillas for a week straight…  I admit I have a tortilla problem… Almost had to get on a 12 step program but I avoided Tortillas Anonymous.  Fasting was also not new to me, but it is still challenging. I’ve been eating my first meal at noon for about a year, but since I added a huge, calorie burning, body destroying exercise regiment I drink a protein shake before I go to work so I do not die until it is time to eat… Amusingly, I have learned to hate the word “hangry”… Hangry is about sugar addiction, not calorie deficiency…  A Snickers Bar does not “satisfy” anything more than a sugar craving… If you find yourself getting angry after not eating for two hours, you really should do some soul searching, not look for a candy bar… After 16 hours of not eating, I find myself really wanting to eat at noon, but I don’t turn into a moody teenager if I don’t get to it immediately. Hunger is hard for me, not because it’s painful but because my mind really tries to find a way around fasting. I don’t dwell on it, because I know I will eat lunch eventually…  

One last thing about eating… I don’t want to sound like a parent guilting a child, but about 9% of the world’s population goes to bed hungry every day. That is 690 million people with about 35 million of those being right here in the United States with a large proportion of that being children. If you get angry because you haven’t eaten in a couple of hours, you should explore that physical feeling of your “hunger” and consider how it feels to be a child who hasn’t eaten for an entire day going to bed on an empty stomach… Your anger isn’t justified, it’s a marketing tool you bought into to sell candy bars…

*Climbs down off of soapbox*

No alcohol is also not new… I developed the 5-1-5-1 Method years ago to combat the damage of alcohol dependency. I would drink from January until May. Go sober for June and then drink from July to November and sober up in December. Not the best policy but I suspect that it let me partially heal up and the discipline of the system kept control of my alcoholism. Then,  everyone who has read my blog over the last few weeks, knows the story of my loss of control… Enough said… 

The rest of the stuff was easy — I enjoy meditation… Hell, I wrote a short book about it…  Vitamins took a minute to remember daily and the CDB oil solved my pain issues so that was pretty easy to remember…  Sometime in the future, I will discuss my marijuana beliefs and use… That is a complicated issue for me… The California Compassionate Use Act allowed me to utilize it for the pain I suffer from my car accident and the subsequent permanent damage to my physical body and Federal Government’s refusal to remove it from the schedule one classification kept me afraid and pissing in a bottle… I refuse to take opiate based drugs because after my accident, I am embarrassed to admit, I became addicted to them and fought a hard battle to recover. Then I used marijuana to manage the pain of multiple surgery, steel implants, incorrectly healed bones and the ache of a deeply damaged body. For years I lived in fear of being exposed, being fired and having to deal with the stigma of marijuana use. Alcohol became a problem and I simply became tired of being scared that I might have to piss in a bottle to prove that I wasn’t a “deviant” drug user. CBD oil takes the edge off of my aches, but mostly I deal with the pain now. As soon as marijuana is removed from the list of drugs that my urine is screened for, then I will return to it for pain management. 

I will say this… I despise the “Cheech and Chong” movies, the songs glorifying marijuana as the drug of the stupid, and the giggling halfwit pot smokers who unknowingly gave marijuana the bad name it currently has…  The marijuana culture is the dumbest movement that has time and time again shot itself in the foot and literally stigmatized itself for the glorification of “being fucked up…” Had they treated marijuana differently, people would not be incarcerated because of it. Please unfuck yourselves, giggling about your “munchies” and acting like a fucking stoned idiot isn’t furthering your cause… 

*Climbs down off of soapbox*

 I’ve still been very consistent with The 90 Day Life Change Challenge… I’ve missed a few things in the first few weeks but as I stated before, it was a missed vitamin or overslept and nothing more than that. I am unswerving with meditation every day. In order to see progress I have kept the data that was important. The first five week, I was at a steady 83% success rate. The last two I am consistently 100% and will do my best to maintain it barring unforeseen disaster or injury… Overall, I’ve been focused and consistent. It’s interesting because my mind is so interested and excited in this challenge and I have gone from consumed with it, obsessed with it to not thinking about it much. It is simply what I do every day. My sharing is mostly this blog. There are aspects that I share with people like my co-worker who plays the guitar, I talk about my progress and get tips and pointers from him. I share my weight, physical changes and altered mental states with my wife… Occasionally, someone who knows what I am doing will ask questions, I always answer them as honestly and compassionately as possible. By compassionately, I mean without arrogance or conceit, because I know what I am doing sounds like utter lunacy and I want people to improve themselves but I do not want to be used as a example. This isn’t normal, I know that. I want to be a teacher to help people attain a healthier, happier, more positive lifestyle and so I push myself to limits that appear unattainable to better understand the plausibility of personal life changes. Perhaps by gaining the understanding of insurmountable, seemingly impossible change, I will have a greater understanding of the mechanics of how it is done.

In the end, that’s what this challenge is about. It’s about learning.  It’s about my mind, and I’ve definitely altered myself. I think if people chose a single thing to focus on each day in their personal challenge journey, they would be much more focused and better off, so it has been interesting to see myself try, and succeed to manage 14 things at once. It has taken a monumental effort, discipline, motivation and rising above my emotions and desire to quit. Again, I think if I can pull off 14 challenges simultaneously for 90 days, maybe I will have the knowledge to help people start with one.

Writing this blog has been good, because it has helped me retain my focus, overcome my laziness, held me accountable and shamed me into succeeding more than once. Many times, I have thought I wanted take a day off, skip a segment or just fucking quit altogether, but how could I when I have people out there watching, waiting to see if I can pull this off… I have motivated many of you to make small changes in your life and I accept that not only as a compliment, but a huge responsibility. You started because I sparked something in you, and that is amazing… With that in mind, I keep my promise to blog daily because I hope it helps you reflect on how things are going and you can find ways to re-commit , re-focus yourself and continue your journey. 

So I’m devoted to my challenge… I am halfway home and although I cannot see the sun rising yet,  I know it’s coming. Inevitability is one of my favorite words. 45 days will elapse regardless of my actions and I want to celebrate the end of this with a victory lap, nothing else will suffice. I calculate somewhere around April 10, 2021 will mark the end… With Sundays off, that’s only about 3600 Burpees away…

I really do love most of the things I’ve challenged myself to do.  For now, I face them as a test but I hope to retain many of them for the duration of my life. Healthy things aren’t always the most pleasurable in the moment, but they are, over time, the best things you can do….

 Love ya, mean it… Is the doubt about that shrinking yet?

See you tomorrow at least until mid April… : )

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update is unnecessary today, I think I just did it…

Day 44: The Other Side of Midnight: An Evening Routine Makes All the Difference...

Yesterday, I talked about the importance of a morning routine… It’s a great way to integrate your goals into each day and organize from the beginning giving you the opportunity you need make your day a success. When you wake up early with a purpose, it gives you the edge you need and while all is quiet and the world sleeps, you are off and running, ahead of the pack.

But there’s another part of the day that I love, and that can have great benefits for you at a cost of only 10-30 minutes each day: the time right before you go to sleep. When you wake up, the goal is to bring all your systems online as quickly and efficiently as possible. To maximize the speed to awaken refreshed, with the ability to focus, solid sleep is critical. Like waking up has stages, going to bed at night and falling asleep easily also has stages. After dinner, I usually practice guitar as my last task for The 90 Day Life Change Challenge and that starts my prep for finishing my day. After guitar, I start my morning prep by setting up my workout area, laying out my workout clothes, laying out my work clothes, prepping for either work from home or onsite working depending on the day. Next is any small chores I have like a load of laundry or vacuum, empty the trash, and  make sure the house is relatively straightened. No one wants to wake up to shit that needs done…Then I mix my workout drinks, fill my water for bedtime and then turn out all the overhead lights and turn on my dim, evening lights. 

About two hours before bed, I shower, and start purposely winding down. Some reading and writing, a little music or spend some time with my wife watching a documentary or just talking. This routine signals my brain that it is nearing time for shut down. So like my morning when I wake up in stages, at night I shut down in stages and allow my brain time to slowly go offline rather than racing through my evening and laying down at night with an anxious mind, I am climbing into bed knowing that I can sleep because I accomplished my goals for the day and set myself up to succeed the next morning. Our brains do not have on and off switches and like anything else, we need time to gear up and gear down… Think of it like an object in motion and how the object starts from a point (morning) and gradually comes up to speed and then begins to slow and slowly comes to a stop (sleep)… This will ensure a calm and focused life… 

Why do we do this you might ask… For those of you with children, one of the most important things we try to instill in our children is a sense of routine. Routines are soothing for a child... Think about that for a second. If we get our kids into a routine, our lives are calmer, and we can get things done rather than the chaos for “I don’t know when they will go to sleep…” If that same approach is taken with our lives, we can get more done, have less stress, less worry about tomorrow and meet goals as well as have that unstructured free time we all crave. Unstructured free time that you are stressed about is not free time… 

Now from an outside perspective, a person might look at my life and see the schedules, the data gathering on my workouts, the structured challenges, the blogs, the podcasts, meal prepping and to do lists and think that my life is a chaotic whirlwind of never ending tasks and no free time… On the contrary, my life may be highly structured, but my days are filled with completed goals, learning, holistic health including my mental and physical body and I have to say it, my life is filled with a deep sense of satisfaction now. Yes, I have my moments, but I consider those “unfortunate emotions” as nothing more than ripples on the surface of a lake, because deep down I can breathe whenever I want. This last 45 days has taught me that there can be joy in the midst of the storm of a demanding life. Humans under pressure perform miracles, humans on the couch worried about all the shit they’re not getting done coupled with all the angst about what they would like to be doing grow continuously more worried.

If you’ve decided to follow my advice and try to become an early riser, good job! So take just 10-30 minutes sometime before you start to wind down your day or use it to signal your brain that the day is ending because this is “my last task” before I start to get ready for sleep, try going through an evening routine that can make a huge difference for your morning.

Of course each person’s routine will be different, some will work out, some will rise and relax while some are students and others take care of their children. Waking up to a prepped morning is a joy and you don’t have to run around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to remember all the shit you need to get done to start the day… Instead, wake up to a prepped life, some beautiful, quiet time to mindfully experience the birth of a new day and you can greet not only the day with a calm mind, but your family will wake up and experience and internalize your peacefulness.

I have my routine and here is a small list of some things that may give you some ideas that most people can use:

• begin to be mindful of the “last tasks” of the day

• get your clothes (and other gear) laid out and get ready to workout in the morning

• pack lunch (for yourself and the kids if necessary)

• check your calendar

• plan your MITs (Most Important Tasks)

• review your day

• wash any dishes, clean the counters

• pick up so that you’re greeted with a clean house in the morning

• set your alarm

• dim the lights

• limit use of electronics

• spend quality time with your family

• read or listen to music to ease yourself to sleep

You will of course modify this to fit your needs, but you can see some of the most important elements: you’re cleaning up so that the house is straightened when you awake, you are reviewing your upcoming day and planning for it, and you are prepping your gear for the next day, so you don’t have to do it in the morning. Nothing stops a workout faster than not being ready for it...

Create a personal evening routine today and get a jump start on tomorrow, you will not regret it!

Love ya, mean it!!!! Why else would I do this?!?!?

Now go get to work!

See you tomorrow, as if I had a choice…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… Followed my own advice and shut down my day last night, woke up to a prepped and organized morning… Exercised, meditated, wrote for a half hour and then showered and was ready for work when my house began to wake up… I am struggling with looking forward to my next big 90 day challenges… I need to return focus to this challenge and be mindful of the moment rather than keep looking ahead…

Day 43: To Snooze or Not to Snooze: Creating a Solid Early Morning Routine For Peace of Mind....

Waking early has been one of the best things I’ve done since I’ve changed my life. I thought I’d share my secret because if you had known me five or six years ago, you would have seen the ultra-snoozer in action. As always, my life of extremes was almost unbelievable… Ten snoozes on a work morning weren’t unusual… My partners hated me… BEEP BEEP BEEP *snooze* BEEP BEEP BEEP *snooze* endlessly until they were pissed off and I was late as hell…   Once, on a day off, I distinctly remember hitting the snooze for two hours, resetting the alarm for 10:00 a.m. and then hitting the snooze until lunch... You heard that right, four total hours of hitting the snooze button... It was, and always will be a very good memory...In the past I  have written about my morning routine, and thought you might like to know how I changed my internal clock and now get up at 5:15 a.m. every day with a smile… 

As I said before, for many years, I was a late riser. I loved to sleep in. Even as a child my mom would have to rouse me several times until she would step in with her “discipline voice” and I would roll out of bed, groggy and confused… I spent the better part of my life getting up at the last calculated second in order to be where I was supposed to be… Commuting with a cup of coffee, tired, bleary and dazed…

Prior to the pandemic, in the middle of my glorious and quite unnecessary (Let’s talk about home workouts soon, mmkay?) return to the gym, I got a job with the county and I decided that I wasn’t going to forfeit my new found motivation and discipline because of a job. I started getting up at 4:30 every day and going to the gym, coming home to P90X3 and then shower, commute and work… This worked well for a few months and then March of 2020, the world closed… I didn’t know what to do so I started getting up a little later each day until I was rolling out of bed, putting on a t-shirt and a backwards baseball cap and sitting down in my underwear with what would turn into a pot of coffee working from home… Yeah, I said it, I have been to Team Meetings in underwear… I participated but you know, showing up anywhere in your underwear is showing up wildly unprepared and I am sure I reflected that…  The only time it’s appropriate to show up in your skivvies is for sex and then you’re overdressed anyway… While I kept a “kinda, sorta” exercise routine and a “kinda, sorta” healthy diet, everything pretty much turned to shit for a few months… I’m not going to lie, there is a ton of vegan food out there in fast food land that will just make you feel fucking awful… Bean and Rice burritos with hella packets of Extreme Sauce from Taco Bell for instance… You know, five bucks can buy you almost 2000 calories for a single meal if you play your cards right, er, uh, wrong… Interestingly enough, Skittles are also vegan… So what I’m saying is I may have drawn a line in the sand, but it was far from any difficult goals… Just for you aspiring vegans, frozen cauliflower pizzas are so gross and if you eat enough of them, you will start to gag when you pass by them in the grocery store…  I know that isn't about getting up early but listen, processed food is processed food is processed food… Its dogshit filled with flavor and chemicals and has a label slapped on it that says “VEGAN!” like that’s supposed to be healthy… Like I said, Skittles are vegan, but far away from anything related to healthy… That's some free information for today... No charge...

Sorry, I wandered away there for a second… And now, back to the show…

So, after degrading like a vegetable left out in the sun for a few months, I decided to stop being stupid and find a way to get back to some actual self-creation and I decided to set out to make waking up early a habit again. I started by getting up at 7:00 a.m. Then 6:30 a.m. and then 6:00a.m. and then 5:30 a.m. over a period of a couple of weeks. Yes, I floundered, yes, I failed, overslept, still groggy as hell but then something happened… I fell asleep exhausted one night at 9:00 p.m. and I woke up at like 4:15 ready to workout… I know, I know, old people fall asleep at nine and get up at 4:15 but hear me out… After consideration and a lot of begrudging acceptance, I came to the conclusion that all I was doing with my late evenings was sitting in a chair watching television and since these were pre-alcohol and drug recovery days, what I was really doing was getting hammered and passing out at midnight… My point is, I wasn’t doing dick after 8:00 except being stubborn and stupid… So I started going to bed early and guess what happened? Yeah, I adjusted quickly…

When waking up at 5:30 a.m. became a habit, then 5:15 a.m. wasn’t a problem. And last month, when I initiated the 90 Day Life Change Challenge I decided to get up at 5:15 a.m. to exercise, meditate and have a relaxing shower and a stress free commute on days I work in the office and pants on my lower extremities when I work from home… . Now, when I complete my 90 Day goal, I will have an established routine to wake early…

Here are my tips for becoming an early riser:

• Don’t make drastic changes. Really, don’t leap from 0745 to 0500 because you will fail… Start slowly, by waking just 15-30 minutes earlier than usual. Get used to this for a few days. Then cut back another 15 minutes. Do this gradually until you get to your goal time. If it takes weeks to make your goal comfortably, then it takes weeks. What’s the rush? Did realization of your laziness startle you? Relax, you have time…

• Allow yourself to sleep earlier. You might be used to staying up late, perhaps watching TV or surfing the Internet. But if you continue this habit, while trying to get up earlier, sooner or later one is going to give. And if it is the early rising that gives, then you will crash and sleep late and have to start over. I suggest going to bed earlier, even if you don’t think you’ll sleep, and read while in bed. If you’re really tired, you just might fall asleep much sooner than you think. I know, you might be thinking that you used to just be getting started at the time you are now going to bed… Remembering the days when a 10:00 p.m. shower and plans for “The Club” were exciting… Well, you used to also shit in your pants when you were younger and you outgrew that… Take your memories at face value, enjoy them and just accept that the stupid times are over and you have shit to do in the mornings now that don’t involve hangovers and vague recollections…

• Put your alarm clock far from you bed. If its right next to your bed, you’ll shut it off or hit snooze. Never hit snooze. If it’s far from your bed, you have to get up out of bed to shut it off. By then, you’re up and you just have to stay up. Now that’s the experts’ advice… Here is my personal experience… I hit the snooze one time now. That startling wake up and single snooze is a way that I adjust from a dead sleep to waking. I rarely fall back asleep but it is so comforting to lie there for nine minutes in the warm bed while my systems slowly come online and by the time the alarm goes off again, I’m ready to roll… 

• Go up as soon as you shut off the alarm. Don’t allow yourself to rationalize going back to bed. Just force yourself to get out of the bed. My habit is to stumble into the bathroom and go pee and then IMMEDIATELY make my bed. By the time I’ve done that,, I’m fully awake and ready  to face my exercise challenges. I know many of you will balk at the “make your bed” rationalization but listen to this motivational speech and you will know why I do it…

• Do not rationalize. If you allow your brain to talk you out of getting up early, you’ll never do it. Don’t make getting back in bed an option. Here is where developing a habit to make your bed will come in very handy…

• If you must, allow yourself to sleep in once in awhile. Despite what I just said in the previous point, once in awhile it’s nice to sleep in. As long as it’s not a regular thing. I don’t like to do it, because it fucks my whole day up. Once you get a rhythm and establish a habit, you won’t need to unless you’re sick or had to stay up late but try to sleep the same amount of time every day so you don’t throw yourself completely out of your sleep cycle…

• Make waking up early a reward. Yes, it might seem at first that you’re forcing yourself to do something hard, but if you reframe your thinking to make it pleasurable, soon you will look forward to waking up early. My reward used to be to make a hot cup of coffee, exercise and meditation in a quiet house. I’ve recently changed my coffee to after I exercise so I can have it on my commute, but I still enjoy the stillness of the earth and a quiet house. The silence is so soothing and watching the sun come up every day while I am exercising is motivation because it reminds me that I have become disciplined and I am in charge of my life. As much as you can, open a curtain or blind and look outside and watch the sky turn light. It’s beautiful. And it’s quiet and peaceful. It’s now my favorite time of day. Getting up early is a reward in itself for me.

• Find something that’s pleasurable for you, and allow yourself to integrate it as a pleasurable part of your morning routine. I hear so many people who say that they hate mornings but I don’t think they have ever awakened rested and watched the birth of a new day. 

• Take advantage of all that extra time. Don’t wake up an hour or two early just to surf Facebook. In fact, only use your phone sparingly. Think of it this way, you weren’t checking your social media at 0530 before you started waking up so why the hell would you waste time to see if someone liked your post about some nonsense last night? Your email will be there after your routine, so will your messages… Don’t wake up early and waste that extra time. Get a jump start on your day! I like to use that time for exercise and meditation  and then for me to relax and plan for the rest of my day. By the time 0730 rolls around, I am showered, ready for work and I’ve gotten more done than many people do the entire day. 

Waking up earlier is a necessity if you want to succeed… Fuck even Ben Franklin knew that… “Early to bed, early to rise makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise… Of course old Ben didn’t have electricity, Facebook, or Netflix but he did have the right idea and guessing Mrs. Franklin kept him up late once in a while...

Love ya, mean it with all my heart…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… All systems go… After work, all I have is my guitar practice… What was difficult has now become a routine… Up, exercise, meditate, write, shower, work, guitar… Pretty easy once the dust has settled and the pain has subsided… Hard to believe that I am coming up on the halfway point and will be headed downhill from there… 45 days is long time to stay focused on such a monumental task but the longer I go, the more dedicated I become… 

Get started… You won’t regret a thing… I Promise…

Day 42: How Are Those "Cheat Days" Working Out For You? Seeing That Progress You Want Yet?

Day 42… I am stoked because I have kept my word to myself for almost a month and a half… In fact, I’m so proud of myself, this afternoon after I finish up my challenge I think I’m going to sit down and have a few drinks… A couple of strong vodka and cranberries to celebrate my steadfastness…

Anything wrong with what I just wrote? 

Changing your life is really hard… So, lots and lots of experts recommend that you cheat… When you are “good” for a long time, then it’s okay to be “bad” for a meal or a day and sometimes, according to some diets, for an entire week… Then, right back to being “good” again…  I, uh, I’m going to call bullshit on this one…

Going backwards is not psychologically healthy and in fact, in my personal experience and my involvement in the life change efforts of myself and others, it doesn’t work… Again, this is my experience only and the handful of people that I have interacted with who have tried to change their bad habits into good habits… Exercise for a few days, oh wow, I should take a day off… Fail… Eat right for a few weeks, oh wow; I’m going to get a giant frosted chocolate chip cookie because it’s my birthday… Fail… I haven’t smoked for a week, I can certainly control myself with just this one… Fail… 

Just one… Just a little… Just for a second… 

Yep, I will let you argue and say “well, sugar isn’t heroin…” You are absolutely right, sugar isn’t heroin, it’s sugar… However, according to science, sugar activates the exact same part of the brain as heroin, sugar is addictive like heroin and sugar destroys your body… Just. Like. Heroin. Researchers at Princeton University studying bingeing and dependency in rats have found that when the animals ingest large amounts of sugar, their brains undergo changes similar to the changes in the brains of people who abuse illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin. Heroin is also linked to tooth decay and diabetes... See any similarities? Just a fun fact, sugar cravings can be reduced with Naloxone, you know, that drug they give to opiate overdose victims… 

Damn it, I hate facts as much as anyone, especially when they point out that I am not being intelligent about my health…

So why do we tell everyone that eating a piece of cake once in a while will be just fine but once you kick almost any other habit, you can never return? I guess feeling like shit from something you buy at your local grocery store is way better than feeling like shit from something you buy in the alley behind your local grocery store?

Take it from a former sugar junkie… In high school, my buddy Darren and I used to go to the Foodland and buy a quart of chocolate milk and a box of Little Debbie Cakes and sit on the curb and eat them for our lunch… When my son was a teenager, he and I would kill a 24 pack of Dr. Pepper together sometimes in a single day, depending on how hot it was… Thirsty? Dr. Pepper… Meal time? Dr. Pepper… This binging was standard for me all throughout my life up until about 6 years ago… My wife and I would go to the store on a Saturday afternoon and buy two one pound boxes of candy and binge eat them while watching a movie on Saturday night… 

No, that doesn’t sound like addiction… 

Now you might not go to extremes like this but listen… A pack of cigarettes throughout a day or a chain smoking a pack in 4 hours is the same thing… Because you do a slow burn on sugar all day, I will challenge you to remove your “functional addiction” and tell me how you feel at three o’clock in the afternoon and there is a sheet cake in the break room because Cindy had a birthday… Binge and purge or slow burn, an addict is an addict… Own it…

So when I decided to stop, it was a fucking nightmare ride that lasted three full years and then a rollercoaster of start/stop/start/stop until I finally beat it a couple of years ago… Way worse than cigarettes, way worse than my 35+ years tobacco habit and I can now say that beating alcohol compared to sugar was like fighting a 500 pound, angry silverback gorilla versus taking on an elderly man… Alcohol was a couple of weeks and then I saw the light… Sugar was a months longs battle that turned into a multi-year war… I can finally say that I don’t want sugar anymore and my consumption of it is maybe two to three tablespoons a day of a combined fruit sugar, raw palm sugar and maple syrup… I NEVER eat white processed sugar because that shit is satanically, epically evil… I have it in my house for one reason; I have two hummingbird feeders and I mix my own food for them… Other than that, fuck white sugar…  

Wow... I didn’t realize just how much I hate that stuff… Sorry for the rant… Yikes…

Back to my point… You can do whatever you want; it’s your life, your body and your prerogative… Nonetheless, I challenge you to go the next 24 hours without sugar… Look at every can, every bag, and every meal and realize just how much sugar you are ingesting… 

That’s my challenge to you… Get some Tylenol because you will have a headache, body aches, upset stomach, dizzy, weak, tired and a general feeling of malaise and all you’re going to think about is a bump of sugar all afternoon… Now that doesn’t sound like addiction… Does it?

Good habits are difficult to form and easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to form and difficult to live with. I’m sorry but that’s just the way it is… Pay attention. Be aware… Or better yet… Beware…

Before I go, let me let you in on a little secret… A week isn’t going to solve your issues or change your life in any significant way other than build your self confidence a little… Cheat after a week, erase that self confidence and go back to day one… A month is improvement but listen to me, cheat day after a month and you again, erase your growing self confidence and take yourself back to square one… At two months, here is where things begin to change… You’re still going to want to cheat but this is the pivot point for most everyone. Your neural network has begun to use different avenues more often and you are carving new grooves in your brain… You will notice that you go longer and longer periods with a craving… Cheating at this point becomes a decision based on massive progress and just how proud of yourself you are now…  At three months, you have new and deep grooves carved into your brain and while the old habit avenues are still open, they are much less likely to cause you to stumble…  

If you can hang on for sixty days to your recovery, your exercise program, your new habit of writing every day, your new habit of practicing a musical instrument, the choice to cheat starts to look like a non-choice and more like idiocy… Hang on for three months and I swear to you that you will see the world through new eyes, one with good habits, less addictive behaviors and fewer instances throughout the day to fall into self destructive behaviors…

That’s the good news… Now for even better… 

Once you beat something big… Your life will change dramatically… All it takes is one victory and you will get this wonderful epiphany that you are so much more powerful than you realized and a world of infinite possibilities will open for you… Opportunities for self improvement, better life, health and confidence will present themselves every day and you will need to write them down to keep track of all of them… 

90 days… 

Get started, a better, happier, healthier and confident you is 90 days away…

Have a wonderful day and smile at someone, even if you’re being intelligent and wearing a mask, they can still see it in your eyes…

Love you to death, why else would I bother?

Life Change Challenge update… Today was kind of cool day where a lot of rest coincided… No Murph today, just like all Sundays and my V-Crunch Challenge is also a day off… P90X3 was just stretching so I’m really left to rest and do the things I love doing every day… Meditation, writing, guitar… The rest is a given… As I mentioned in a previous blog, I finally completed all 14 aspects of my challenge for seven straight days… I made my goal of 100%and now my new goal is doing it for two weeks straight because what do you do when you get to the top of your mountain? Easy, you look around for a higher one…

Get to work…

Day 41: An Impromptu Encounter: How Not Caring Is The Best Thing You Will Ever Do...

Had one of those weird, interactive and connective experiences with a sales person at Carpet Outlet Plus today as I was ordering a rug for my hallway… The computer went down for a few minutes and while it was restarting, she apologized and I said it wasn’t a problem I was ahead of schedule anyway and she asked me what I was doing… Me, being me just stated the truth… I told her I recorded a podcast this morning that needed editing and talked about this blog…

“Oh, so you do fun stuff!” she exclaimed… Now I’m not sure if she was truly interested at this point because she was a sales person and I just spent $250 dollars but she asked me the wrong question… She said, how do you find the time to go to work, write a daily blog and podcast? 

This is the moment when this particular blog slid down the birth canal… 

When I gave her my response, the question of whether or not she was genuinely interested became a non-issue… I said, there is a secret to getting to do “fun stuff” as you so eloquently stated; it has basically two parts… Part one where you decide what you care about you care about those things… Part two is you decide what you don’t give a fuck about and then you don’t give a fuck about those particular things and suddenly you will find your whole life rearranged to suit you… She leaned forward, made eye contact and said that really made sense to her because she always wanted to write a book but so many things she didn’t care about or didn’t want to do got in her way… I said, well, you need to stop doing unnecessary shit you don’t want to do because you might write the next great American novel… I told her that there are short stories, poems and novels out there looking for a writer and they keep running into people wiping down baseboards mumbling stupid shit like “as soon as these baseboards are clean, I’m going to start that book…” 

The computer came back up and we finished the transaction and paperwork was signed and she continued talking to me about how simple that really was and I told her “you just had an epiphany, don’t waste it…” I told her that I have to pick up my rug next week and I am going to track her down and make sure she put words on paper, or into some type of electronic document… I don’t know, but I suspect she might, she looked relieved, excited, motivated and a little stunned all at once. That’s the look that I write about, dream of and pursue in my life… That little “oh shit, that makes TOTAL sense” moment… 

As I have said before, I use to think about writing blogs, painting, poetry, working on multiple books, scripts, podcasting, playing guitar and a thousand other things that I swore I would somehow, some way find the time to create and foster my talents… I used to dream of these things while I cleaned my toilet twice a week, on schedule and always without fail… How fucking stupid and self destructive can you be? The coulda, woulda, shoulda Bob Perrine is dead… I drowned him in his clean toilet... That same  toilet isn’t nearly as clean as it used to be but just how clean can something you shit in be anyway? I mean really? Now I have hundreds of drawings, a book on meditation, I play guitar, I write blogs, I exercise and I do pretty much what I feel like doing… Don’t get me wrong, I take care of my family but that helicopter partner bullshit is O-V-E-R… I like my life… 

Isn’t that strange? I won’t keep you long tonight because my podcast pretty much sucked up my time today and if you want to listen you can do that here but I understand if you don’t I have created a lot of content lately and uh, yeah, I know… You can be tired of me, I don't really mind... I still wanted just point out that one simple, profanity laced statement one more time because it is profound in its simplicity but the weight of its profundity is enormous if you can truly grasp it… The secret isn’t in the choosing the things you care about because choosing things you care about is easy. Taking care of those things is easy, it’s just a matter of showing those things your attention. The trick is in choosing the things you don’t give a fuck about… I gave up television pretty much… I don’t even know what is going on anymore… My television is more of a large screen Pandora Radio player now… In fact, The Counting Crows are singing whilst I write and it makes my heart so happy… Way better than the news, Jeopardy!, or some other inane nonsense shit that I really never truly wanted to watch… I don’t “binge watch” shows, I write or paint or practice or do something productive for me and healing for my soul… Now if binge watching is your thing, by all means binge until you have memorized every episode. Seriously, I am not preaching and ever since I lost my religion I don’t tell people what to do… That’s silly... If you’re here reading this, it’s because you want to be… What I am saying that if alarm bells are going off in your head and you feel restless when you’re binge watching television, that’s your creativity being starved… When you feel that, act on it… You will be a lot happier…

So get to work deciding what is meaningless, eliminate it, don’t feel bad about not wasting your fucks and jump on something that makes your soul happy…

Love you, truly mean it... If I didn’t I wouldn’t bother… 

See you tomorrow…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… I am going to make my goal of 100% this week for the first time… Everything checked off, every day… In the last 7 weeks I have lost 8 pounds, took 2 inches off my waist, added to my chest and arms, am experiencing boundless energy, last night I learned how to play Happy Birthday on the guitar in about 20 minutes, I have written well over 100 pages, and pretty much changed the game for me… Unbelievable that just 40 days would make such a difference in a person’s life but yeah, this is amazing… I am in great shape, sharp minded and am wondering that if I can do this, just what the hell am I capable of? We humans are able to achieve amazing things.. We just have to put down the alcohol and the Taco Bell and get off the couch… 

Get to work…

Day 40: Doing the Math On Some Motivational Nonsense... You're Welcome....

They are everywhere… Countdowns, clocks and timers doing their relentless enumerations… Counting backward from some arbitrary number to indicate the time remaining before some random event or some chronometer with that chosen time where you have to be somewhere as you race in your car hoping to beat the clock..  Tick, tock, tick, tock… Every day is countdown to bedtime, every week is a countdown to the weekend, every month is a countdown to your birthday and every year marks the time until your demise… Hello, and welcome to the rest of your life… Quit wasting it but for the love of god stop feeling bad about it... It's really not your fault, but you can still do something about it...

I am sure that you have heard that there are 86,400 seconds in a day and that’s quite a long time… Just to put that in perspective, if you were to count to 86,400 that would take you all day long… That would be one helluva day wouldn’t it? I would kinda like to give it a try, you know, just to say I did it…

Now, I know 86,400 feels like a long time but stick with me for a second, let’s do some math… Yeah I know some people just glazed over like a Crispy Crème Donut but hang with me… Skip a paragraph or six if you feel a seizure coming on but we are going to put this stupid, useless, “motivational” guilt causing nonsense to rest…

Using myself as an example and then starting at midnight… I sleep until 0500 so we lose 18,000 seconds… Now I know we aren’t “losing them, because sleep is in the top five necessary things that promote health and wellness. If you don’t get enough sleep, you’re hobbling your progress… In fact, it is impossible to be holistically healthy without proper rest periods… What we am talking about is the time you actually have in a day to be actively pursuing your goals…

So 86,400 minus 18,000 leaves us 68,400 seconds… Not bad but you have to consider sleep again at the end of the day… I go to bed at 2200 hours (10:00 PM) so take off another 7,200 seconds and the window of opportunity open to pursue your goals drops to 61,200 seconds. Still looking pretty good, but we do have to work… Now to save time I am going to add up work, getting ready for work, commuting to and from work and stopping by the store on the way home from work and call it 10 hours… Now we subtract 36,000 seconds… Wow… That leaves us with 25,200 seconds…

Dinner, clean up and my after work, pandemic world shower…  1.5 hours… Subtract 5,400 and you are left with 19,800 seconds…  The glittery world of motivational memes is such bullshit… They happily scold us that we have 86,400 seconds in a day!!! Oh my, what should I do with all my time? Good golly, I’m wasting my life… Not really folks, life isn’t the happy motivational place the internet would lead us think and instead we feel guilty that we are not experiencing it properly… It’s hard…

But wait… You still have 5.5 hours that belong to you… Parents of young children are excused and you have my condolences… Your lives are filled from eyes open to eyes shut and if you get to do anything it costs you money for a babysitter and you just worry the entire time you’re gone… Sorry about that…

For the rest of you lucky people, you have 5.5 hours almost every day… You don’t have much time so sitting in a chair watching television is not the way to spend it… The cycle of being tired can be not just broken, but shattered, swept up and erased… The reason you’re so tired is that you’re out of shape. Sounds counterintuitive but it’s true… When you have energy and you expend that energy and that gives you more energy… When you have no energy and you exert none, you just have no energy…

Back to those 5.5 hours… Let me tell you about mine… For starters, I write this blog for about 30 minutes in the morning and finish it during my lunch so it only takes 30 minutes out of my 5.5 hours… I’m left with five…. I exercise daily for 1.5 hours like it’s my religion… Sick, tired, angry, happy, whatever, it doesn’t matter; this body knows better than to try for an excuse… 3.5 hours left… I practice guitar for an average of a half hour daily , ranging from 15 to 45 minutes depending on how I sound that day because NO ONE, including myself wants to listen to really bad music… I think sometimes the spirit of a musician enters my body through one of those channeling things and other times, I am possessed by a chimpanzee… I always spend at least 15 minutes even when it’s the chimp banging uselessly on the strings… I’m going to take away another 1.5 hours because there is always some pain in the ass little job, the writing takes too long, I fuck around during exercise, or something else like a stop at the store, fix the truck, wax a floor nonsense to rob me of some of my  time… So that leaves me 1.5 hours per day on average to spend freely… When people exhaustedly tell me that “they don’t have the time for self care or exercise I kinda have to wonder what the fuck they’re doing… Structure is available to all of us but structure is not enough… Mostly, it’s about discipline and I have blogged about that cursed word before… Expect some more in the future...

You can push back if you want, I don’t mind… The modern age has taken up so much of our time that it feels overwhelming to think about time for you, time for exercise, etc… On top of that, our culture makes us feel guilty for personal time… In most jobs you have to feel bad for taking a personal day, a sick day or a vacation… Luckily I don’t work there… I hear a lot that jobs have to be brought home and that’s wrong but we can talk about that later…

So the next time you see some meme on Facebook or Instagram that’s says you have 86,400 seconds in a day, feel perfectly satisfied to view that notion as bullshit… You got about 90 minutes if you’re highly motivated, disciplined and organized… And seriously, every now and then, not a lot, don’t be greedy, just hit the snooze button… If the last forty days have taught me anything, the snooze button is the thing I miss the most and as soon as this 90 Day Life Change Challenge is over, I’m going to waste an entire day…

See you tomorrow, because I have no choice in the manner…

Love you a lot…

Now go get organized like your life depended on it, because it does…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… Same as yesterday… I cannot believe the life changes… Oh shit, wait a second, IT’S WORKING!!!!!

One other thing… What do I do with those 90 minutes every day…. Well… To tell you the truth, I do evil shit… Have a great day…

Day 39: Three Minutes in the Ring With Lethargy: Put Procrastination in a Rear Naked Choke....

Do you a few minutes? I think that even the busiest of us have a few minutes to spare throughout the day…  Let me show you something…

Now this pretty much only applies to creative thinking and processes that are progressively structured activities that start out simple and becomes more complex as you advance… We can cover a few examples so you can catch on to the method…

Learning the guitar and I suspect any musical instrument like the piano, banjo, horn, drums, ad infinitum has similar structures. Let’s start with the guitar… The most basic guitar is learning a chord, memorizing the finger placement and the name and then doing that chord repetitiously until that chord is in your arsenal... Then, next chord, next chord, next chord… There are really so many that most amateur players will never learn a fraction of them, but you can play literally hundreds of songs with about eight to ten chords… Now, after learning the most popular four, you can begin learning songs, but before you learn a song, you have to learn how to switch chords…. So then every day you run through the chords you know, then you can start switching between them until you can smoothly go from G to C to D, etc… Before you know it, you’re getting better…

I am going to stop right there because I think I can introduce you to the concept of the "TABOBTA180 Theory of Learning Shit… The “TABOBTA” is taken from my Twitter feed (@RobertPerrine14), the 180 is seconds and The Theory of Learning Shit is just me liking to use profanity…

180 seconds is three minutes… Pick a chord, practice that chord for three minutes a day… Set a timer because when you start three minutes is going to feel like an eternity as the top E string cuts into you like a cheese slicer after about 60 seconds… It won’t actually cut you, but the pain is very, very real… When the timer goes off you will be grateful but you will also be intrigued because just about anyone, when shown how, can strum a chord on a guitar.

The next day, sit down and practice the same chord, and the day after that and however long it takes to make that chord sound out correctly… The three minutes will begin to pass quickly and you may find yourself wanting to play more, and that’s okay, go right ahead… However, on the days when three minutes drags on like a bad date who has horrid breath, do not play less than three minutes… I mean fuck, you’re the one who wanted to learn to play and if you’ve been paying attention the last few weeks, forming new habits is sometimes worse than getting teeth pulled and it's only three minutes... Don't be a wuss...

180 seconds a day and after a few weeks, you have a few chords under your belt, some decent calluses on the tips of your fingers and a sense of growing confidence… All because of less time than it takes to watch a set of commercials during your favorite television show…

Yes, it is rudimentary but if you have always wanted to learn the guitar, it’s more “learning” than you’re doing by just talking about it… 3 Minutes a day is not on par with Eric Clapton, but it will get you started, interested and motivated enough to go further... I'm just here to push people off their comfort cliff, it's up to you how far you want to go after that...

This can apply to just about any musical instrument I suppose, but as I mentioned above, it can be applied to almost anything that has a progressive structure to it. Learning a new language, teaching yourself to knit, etc... Most things we learn to do that are creative can be broken down into sections starting with the most basic, and then getting more and more complex as we progress… The TABOBTA180 Method overcomes the primary intimidation we feel at the onset, burnout when you get overwhelmed and lets you learn at your own speed, starting at 3 minutes a day…

Strategies like this work because they reinforce the identity you want to build. If you pick up a guitar five days in a row, even if it’s just for three minutes, you are casting votes for your new identity. You’re not worried about the amount of time it takes to play a song. You’re focused on becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss practice. You’re taking the smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be.

We rarely think about change this way because everyone is consumed by the end goal. You want to shred on a guitar but you have zero idea of where to start to get to that goal… Three minutes of guitar practice is better than none at all. Three minute of reading, art or meditation is better than never picking up a book, never doodling or never trying to calming your mind. It’s far better to do less than you hoped for than to do nothing at all. Whenever you are struggling to stick with a habit, you can employ the TABOBTA180 Theory of Learning Shit. It’s a simple way to build the skills you have always wanted…

The TABOBTA180 Method of Learning Shit is Free but if you order now, I will let you use it twice plus, you get free shipping... Now go learn something, it's all on you...

Enjoy the day…

Love you all fiercely… I mean that…

See you tomorrow…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update... You know what, A half Murph is starting to feel more like a warm up rather than a workout... P90X3 still sucks but I know it is good for me... The need to drink has faded to almost nothing... I practiced my guitar the other night actually in front of people and lastly... i was talking to a co-worker in the parking lot after work and she asked me how it was going and I told her that the last 40 days has altered me in ways that I had not expected... I am 39 days down with 51 to go and although I don't see light at the end of the tunnel, I don't foresee failure anymore... I cannot wait to finish so I can see what I am going to do next... I know, I know, I should focus on this moment but hey man, the future is so bright, I gotta wear shades... If I can find a fucking mask that doesn't fog them up after 30 seconds...