As usual, I will start out with pointing out the obvious using fitness levels… The biggest excuse out there for fitness “goals” is the ever popular “I just don’t have the time…” We say “I just don’t have the time” when life gets busy or when we don’t want to feel guilty about skipping something… If we don’t have enough time to work out, it’s easier for us to be okay with wheezing after a flight of stairs or accepting that we need medication for some ailment that could easily be repaired with proper diet and fitness… I know students who work full time, go to school full time and have “the time” to work out a few times a week. There is no excuse for “no time”… As I pointed yesterday, our lives are on auto pilot about 80% of the time. Running from task to task to task without stopping to recognize anything more than hunger or the need for sleep is our normal existence. The only thing we are really paying attention to is the absolute necessities of life like the need to be places, the tasks necessary for being in those places and a machine like life that cannot possibly be rewarding in any meaningful way. When you lie down at night and feel like you have accomplished something, even then, it is a list that does not edify your life, and instead, it simply maintains it enough to keep repeating your days endlessly. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Don’t worry, we can fix this…
Take my hand and let’s walk through this together because like always, the first part waking up to your continuous mistakes is horror and the first fix for a horrific life is realization… So let’s go realize together…
"I don’t have the time" is bullshit. We waste time every day of our lives and we call that wasted time “self care” when in actuality, it’s really time that did nothing for you because what you probably did was worry your way through it because you know that your priorities are fucked up and you don’t know how to fix it… Instead of saying "I don't have time" try saying "it's not a priority," and see how that feels. Often, that's a perfectly adequate explanation. I don't have time to iron my sheets, it's simply not a priority. When I say “ironing my sheets isn’t important, our brain auto rewires to accept that because you know that ironing your sheets is really kind of stupid… It gets better though because other things are harder to assign the status of “low priority”. Try saying this to your child: "I'm not going to edit your résumé, because it's not a priority." How about this: “I will play with you later sweetheart but right now, you’re not a priority…” Oh… Now that doesn’t sound so good does it?
You have time… Unless your life is scheduled from 6:00 AM until 9:00 PM at night, you have time for self care, your hobbies, your health and learning something new every single day of your life. Now listen, if you’re the person that I spoke of with the rigidly scheduled life and you’re happy, then power to you. I will even let you off the hook if you’re not busy all the time and not self improving… If you are satisfied with average, by all means, go to it… If you can seriously tell yourself that good enough is good enough, and you are happy, then you can just stop reading right now, because I am wasting your time here.
For the rest of you, bothered by what you want versus how hard you are willing to work for it, come with me…
Now look, when you take all your desires to improve and make a big (or little, no judgments…) actual list of them… Go ahead, stop now and take the time to do that… Sit down with the notepad on your phone or open a word document on your computer and just list some things that you plan to do in the near future… Leave out the that obvious shit, like take out the trash and clean the kitchen, instead make a list of those things you would like to do… Play a musical instrument, learn a language, read War and Peace (not recommended because Tolstoy is drier than a skeleton buried in the desert for 100 years…), learn to paint, write a book, forge a relationship with your father/mother, get in shape, lose weight, etc… You get the picture and I am sure that the human experience can come up with some really good things that would make us smile. You could explore your kinky sexual side, restore a car, learn to cook Cajun style, or choose from the literally endless list of choices we have to experience life in a personally satisfying way… Fuck, become a realtor and escape your shitty job… Now here is the key… Prioritize them now... Things you truly want and things that can wait... It's okay to be selfish here, because this is your list, not anyone else's... If learning Italian is a priority, then make it one....
Get ready, it’s a Bob Perrine enlightenment moment… Instead of taking up all your time thinking that you want to, or “I should”, use that time to do… What? Oh shit… If you just thought “I think about becoming a realtor every day of my life, I fantasize about escaping this shit job and selling million dollar properties but I NEVER DO ANYTHING TO FIND OUT HOW…. Then read on because I want to show you how and I'm not going to sell you a system! I'm just gonna tell you how to do it!!!! Because fuck capitalism keeping people down, I'm tired of it...
Remember a few weeks ago, we discussed the five minute rule? If it takes less than five minutes, go ahead and do it… You can spend three days worrying about what actually takes five minutes or you can waste three days thinking about how that stupid thing that only takes five minutes needs done… Two things happen… First you get it off your mind and give yourself time to get other, more important things done and you accomplish something which rewards your brain with one “Atta boy or Atta girl or Atta me” and all those “hey you did a good job” chemicals floods your brain and you get in the habit of getting shit done because your brain likes that shit...
Let me tweak that rule just a bit and show you how stupid you’re being… For an extreme example, if you read like the average person 200 WPM (words per minute) it will take 46 hours and 46 minutes to read War and Peace. Now, at five minute intervals, that would be 562 days to read War and Peace… About a year and half… Start today and by the end of next summer, you could read Tolstoy’s War and Peace with almost no effort. You could read War and Peace while you shit every day… Think about that… Now, don’t start today, continue to plan to Read War and Peace and you will die thinking about how you wished you read War and Peace...
5 minutes… Every day… Seriously…
"I want to play the guitar…" Then get a guitar, play five a minutes a day. Sooner or later, you’re going to get so good at practicing your chords, you will start playing longer… Then strum patterns, then finger style and before you know it, you will mixing the chords and styles and making up music… It takes about roughly 34 days in my case… I started out five minutes a day and by the end of week one it was ten to fifteen minutes and week two became twenty minutes and now on day 34, I was early this morning softly practicing and my wife bought me a guitar stool and a strap for Valentine's Day because she saw that my desire had become reality and my excitement grew into something more than a wish…
Why? Because I took the time…
Want to learn Italian? Don’t have the time? Don’t have the money? What other excuse do you have? How about a free app on your phone and you learn Italian on your commute and then buying a $25 app won't feel like such a waste because you really have leaped to the skill level to actually need it...
Better yet, get the realtor test study books and study it on the way to your shitty job… Come on man, this is a no fucking brainer here. Five minutes a day, that’s an opportunity to make your life so much better! Think about how that person who is studying to become that realtor suddenly has purpose. The job they hate now becomes the useful job they have to help them leap to the job they want. A sense of purpose, meaning and a future where they don’t have that job anymore…
The person who wants to learn to paint… Five minutes a day reading at free sites online on what they need to acquire to paint, five minutes a day on Amazon until all of it is on the way, five minutes a day setting it up and then guess what? You’re a painter dude… Come on, think it through…
Five minutes a day and you can change your life so drastically that you will shock not just everyone around you, but yourself as well…
Now go get to work… It’s only five fucking minutes and I know you’re not that busy… It took you five minutes to read this…
Love all of you… I mean that…
See you tomorrow…
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