Day 87: Contrary to Popular Belief, You're Allowed to Calm Down...

This past few weeks my commute to work has been a pleasant experience... I drive through the oil fields of Bakersfield, CA to get to work and usually there are oil field trucks, tractor trailers and occasionally an all-out stoppage of traffic while some behemoth of a vehicle maneuvers carefully to turn a corner to relocate to some other oil well... For the most part, once I top the hill, the largest portion of this drive is two lane, no passing zone…  There is a half mile stretch of road right before the oil fields that is two lane and drivers race to get around obstacles to position themselves for a better placement in the field to enter into another two lane that winds through the working fields… In other words, for the anxious and stressed out, a cornucopia of potential triggers…  Before my 90 Day Life Change Challenge, I would drive white knuckled, jaw clenched, teeth grinding and try my best to get ahead of the town traffic before the first two lane, curse and plan my escape from the slow vehicle in front of me when I got the two lane respite, floor it to get around anyone I could manage before the agonizing two lane, no passing zone of the oil fields… Any stoppages would almost infuriate me, and I would wait impatiently with the fists clenched on the steering wheel and when it opened back into the four lane, I would speed the rest of the way to work… Doesn’t that sound lovely? When I look back at that, I wonder what the fuck I was doing… I would often show up to work drained and anxiety ridden after driving like I had a turtle head poking out… If you don’t know what that means, you can Google it...

Then came the 90 Day Life Change Challenge... As I have said before, this challenge changed far more than I bargained for... I wanted to take a break from my drinking habit, and it ended my drinking entirely… I wanted to improve a few areas and it changed the game for me… I wanted to reframe my life to reduce stress and it gave me tools to transform my entire life…

Now I drive to work with a smile on my face, and a peaceful feeling in my body. I alternately listen to motivation speeches some days and loud music on others… I dance at the stoplights and chill out when traffic stoppages occur… I’m relaxed, happy and sometimes, when I dance and sing at stoplights, I even cheer up the person next to me…

Now again, this isn’t a normal thing for me. All my life, driving has been something stressful, where I tighten up and get anxious about people around me driving the “wrong way”, being inconsiderate, being too aggressive, driving too slow in the fast lane and all the other shit I considered they were doing incorrectly… I drive differently now, I have a different mindset. I loosened up my approach and don’t feel like I need to rush anywhere. I let people drive the way they wanted to drive, and just flow with traffic. The way I frame it now is that I cannot control Grandpa Bill driving 25 miles per hour down the road with a line of cars behind him… Grandpa Bill has just as much right to be out as I do and if I am in that much of a fucking hurry, I should probably leave earlier…

In addition to that, I am rarely late… Whether I hurry or not, I am more often than not five to ten minutes early… The difference between my old habits and my new is that people notice my positive energy when I dance my way into the parking lot, greet them with enthusiasm and smile…

Now how does my drive to work relate to anything else? Well, actually it can relate to EVERTHING else…

This can be an approach to all of life.

When I was anxious, it’s because I wanted to be somewhere at a certain time, or I wanted something to happen the way I wanted it to happen. But this deadline, this goal, this need, was entirely self-created. To top it off, I wanted to be “on time” when I was already “on time”… My stress was entirely unnecessary… I created the stress to be somewhere at a certain time. I created the need for things to turn out the way I wanted it to turn out. I created the desire for other people to act (or drive) the way I wanted them to act or drive.

I created my own anxiety, and so I have the keys to solve my own problems.

So how do we do this?

Let go of wanting to rush somewhere. Let go of wanting things to turn out exactly as you’d like them to turn out. Let go of wanting people to act a certain way. It is so simple… This directly correlates with my new life rule number one… Change the things I can change and DO NOT worry, stress or create anxiety about the shit I have absolutely no control over… I cannot make Grandpa Bill drive any differently than the way Grandpa Bill drives… I cannot call the well services company and have them move that large piece of equipment on my schedule… I can only relax, drive safely and purposefully enjoy my life…

Consequently, it’s pretty hard to get a ticket when you drive to work obeying traffic laws… Think about that for a second… If you are speeding, weaving, running stop signs, and impatient, you’re breaking the law, which means you’re being vigilant for the police… Vigilance creates stress, stress creates anxiety…

Isn’t it amazing how a little mindfulness can alleviate a myriad of problems?

Relax…

Be the calm center in the raging flow of life….

To reiterate, be mindful when you’re tightening up. You might start getting stressed about your commute even before you leave… Recognize this tension stems from your desire for things to be a certain way. Loosen up on this desire and be serene, if not happy with how things are. And then flow with it…

Let your life becomes a calm, beautiful path that you can enjoy with each step.

Now go enjoy the drive…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge… Broke my ½ Murph record this morning by 19 seconds… Didn’t know I was going to when I started, I just fell into the groove and the first two sets went down easily and then it became a mindfulness exercise in controlled breathing, pain management and time… some days, the workout just comes easily, those are the best days… Right after the record breaking Murph, I knocked P90X3 Eccentric Upper out of the way, immediately went to the garage and did Yoga and then straight into meditation… It could not have been a better morning…

Three more days… See you tomorrow… Looking forward to it…

Love you all like a new guitar player loves learning to play the Stairway to Heaven riff…

Day 86: Your Way of Thinking is Affecting Your Mental Health...

I believe that a flexible mind helps me to deal with chaos, loss, big life changes, small frustrations, and all the shit life throws my way. A flexible mind gets me through a bad conversation, long meetings, a bad day, bad week… A flexible mind is a sane mind… Well, sanity is relative so, yeah… Anyway…

A flexible mind has lead me to peace. I’m not as stuck in my ways, and can adapt to change which is something that I did not have in previous years. I don’t always think I’m right and it has made me listen to others. I can take on unwanted challenges with a smile.

I don’t always have this flexible mind, to be honest, but I’m working on it. When I’m not flexible, I can feel it: my mind starts to feel rigid; I feel frustration, irritation, anger, disappointment. There’s a feeling of not wanting things to be the way they are, feeling of being wronged, attacked. It’s the result of being caught up in whatever story I’m telling myself in the particular moment. Maybe I am at work and I begin to feel the pressures of my job as an outreach worker. Maybe I am struggling to finish the 90 Day Life Change Challenge like I am today… Pressure builds, frustration, anxiety, stress… I begin to grind my teeth, feel the weight on my chest… This is completely unnecessary and I know, and after talking to my friend today (happens to be a therapist…) I realized that her assessment of me was correct; I am telling myself the wrong story in that moment. 

So here’s what I’ve been working on, to develop a more flexible mind:

1. Recognize the rigidity. If I notice myself getting frustrated, hardening up, feeling that rigidness … This is the sign that I should practice reframing my story, and the good news is that practice is helping me get better, so I should celebrate! This is a lesson that life has gifted me, and I try to say thank you because if you have read my previous rants, the one thing I sought at the cost of everything else was peace, and this practice has taught me that peace isn’t sought out, it is generated from inside...

2. Don’t act on negative emotions. The most harm comes when I act out of my frustration, actions that might include shutting down and not talking to someone. So when I notice the rigidness, I try not to take any harmful action. Instead, I try to turn inward to face whatever is arising. Most people who are acquainted with me now, know that if I am in pain, frustrated or having a bad day, I will inwardly reflect. I will never “shut down” but I will become very calm and quiet as I assess the emotions I am feeling.

3. Stay with the feeling. Turn towards the feeling, and just observe it. I see it as something that is arising, but isn’t necessarily me. It’s a feeling, a cloud passing across the sky, not a big deal. What does it feel like, physically in my body? I know that the feeling will pass this I am sure of. 

4. Give it some space, and yourself some compassion. If the rigid feeling that is arising is a cloud, then I try to give it a big, expansive blue sky to float across. Instead of being immersed in the emotion, I experience it, analyze it and breathe through it... Then I give myself some compassion. I tell myself that it’s OK to feel this! And it’s good to give myself some love and understanding. Just like I would feel compassion for someone having a bad moment, I let myself have a bad moment. We all experience bad times, so why not give myself the same freedom?

5. Relax, and loosen my grip. The rigidity comes from wanting something or someone to be a certain way. I’m holding on tightly because I really want this situation to unfold my way. Instead, I try to loosen my grip on whatever it is. It doesn’t really matter that much, I can flow around this. Instead, I try to relax into the moment, and be with whatever is going on. Notice the world around me, right now, instead of being caught up in my story. Relax, and be grateful for what’s around me because as my therapist friend put it so superbly today, there is beauty in every moment and I just need to have the open mind to find it, recognize it and appreciate it. Smart lady… 

6. Saying “I don’t know...” Pay attention because this is the key to it all. Once I’ve relaxed a bit, I can now tell myself, “I don’t know how things should be. I don’t even know how they are now.” So this gives me space to not know, and to investigate. What is the truth about this moment? What would it be like to allow the future to unfold without knowing? What is it like to not know how other people should act, but be curious about why they’re acting that way? Perhaps most beautiful? Give them some compassion too… Not knowing. A flexible mind is one that doesn’t really know what should happen, and is not even sure what will unfold in this next moment. It is curious, like a baby exploring the world afresh. Remember the blog about “Beginner’s mind”? When we sit in meditation, or take each moment as it comes, we allow ourselves to not know, and to be interested in whatever arises.

That’s what I’m working with, imperfectly and forgetfully, and I find it helpful to not know… Not knowing allows me to learn and that is the most magnificent opportunity in this life…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… We are talking about four days to go… I am smashing it… I’m behind today, but there is no stress, I am organized and have a plan to finish the challenge today, tomorrow and until it is done. My body is sore, my mind feels a little stretched out but I am resilient and will not back down now… Like I said yesterday, I am no more likely to quit now than I was at day one, this just feels a lot better… hahaha

I hope this blog helped you today, I have the techniques used in it to be quite useful… Letting go of constant control has been exhilarating… Like I always tell myself, “I will not worry about things outside of my control, I will concentrate on the things I can control. These things are mostly, but not entirely limited to my words, my actions, my ideas, my effort and my behaviors.” 

Lastly, I would like to thank Danielle for this one… Working on yourself is a gargantuan task and it helps when someone points out where you might be fucking up a little… There is beauty in everything, even silence and darkness, just not everyone can find it... I appreciate the help…

Love you guys like an old hippy likes to hear “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction…”

See you tomorrow…

Day 85: Finding Your Own Voice... A Short Guide to Making Yourself Heard...

Creators of any kind must find their voice. We must find the courage to speak the truth of our feelings, wants and needs... We are writers, poets, musicians, workers, parents, and a whole spectrum of people. But we are not truly expressing ourselves, and speaking the truth until we’ve found our voice. Finding the tone, style, and personality we use to express ourselves is difficult, but not impossible.  Our voice is our essence, our existence, and our reality.

A co-worker asked me how I found my voice, and I have no easy answer. Truthfully, I’m not even sure I can say I’ve fully developed it yet. It’s a quest that doesn’t seem to end… A continual return, a reorganizing as the construct of who I am incessantly changes. Even with this constant flux, I feel I’ve found something that has the feel of truth to it, even if only a personal perception. I’ll share some of my thoughts, but keep in mind I can only speak this truth of my own observations. I think perhaps that maybe you can use it to help find your own voice in the constant noise of our modern world. I’m learning, and I hope my learning helps your learn also. Today I want to help you begin your journey in finding your own personal voice...

First things first…

Clearly, over the past three months, I’ve taken on a new experiment that has changed my life. I’ve been writing daily about some of my deepest truths that I wouldn’t normally share and posting them here for everyone to read if they desire...Insecurities are what most often stop people in the beginning of any new project, and believe me, I have had my portion of insecurities during this process… I cannot believe some of the shit that comes out of me that I openly share with you... So I hope that my transparency has been helpful in any areas where you’re a beginner in the course of finding your voice… 

What does it mean to find your voice? It’s a concept I use frequently, and I define it as a desire to sound more authentic and genuine when I speak or communicate with others… So how do we even start to find that truth within us? I have outlined some simple steps you can take to find your own voice…

1. First, look inward. 

The process of finding your voice starts by looking inward to determine your core values. What does it mean to look inward? Consider what is important to you… What do you believe in and how does it drive your actions every single day? Identify and validate your core values; perhaps you live the value of selflessness by putting others before yourself. Perhaps you live the value of integrity by always modeling the behavior you want to see from others. Connect with what truly drives you and it will embolden you to speak up. Basically, ask yourself these two questions: 

    • Why do I do what I do? 

    • Why do I believe what I believe?

2. Next, look outward. 

After you’ve looked inward at your values, look outward at the world around you. Where are those values and beliefs being challenged? Where does your voice need to be heard? Maybe there’s an issue at work that’s threatening to destroy the camaraderie of your team; perhaps there’s an injustice in your community that no one else will confront. It’s easy to get overwhelmed because we can identify so many problems… Which issue calls to you personally or professionally? Choose one and study if from as many angles as you can. The more you learn about an issue, the more confident you will feel speaking up. Educate yourself so that when you speak, it is valid, truthful, and meaningful. 

3. Build your communication skills. 

What do you need to learn to become the speaker you have always wanted to be? People hold themselves back from speaking up for many reasons: one reason is they believe they aren’t good enough, but speaking up is a skill that can be learned. Choose 1-2 areas where you’d like to improve; perhaps it’s learning how to craft an impactful message or how your voice can project strength and warmth. Find a mentor or model in someone you admire. Practice these skills in every interaction, from a 1:1 conversation to a group presentation. Remember I have said multiple time that small victories lead to success and likewise the more you build your skills, the more you build your confidence.

4. Look for opportunities to speak and build allies. 

Look for places where you can speak up and give others a chance to speak. In doing so, you can build the most important skill that you will ever have, that of listening to others. In order to develop your voice, you have to understand the voices or lack of voice that others have. Now that you have determined the issues you’re passionate about and have started to build your communication skills, it’s time to test out those ideas. Start by holding conversations with friends and family. Remember that this isn’t about pushing your ideas; it’s about creating a dialogue and speaking up as well as listening.

5. Take action on your ideas. 

Finally, it’s time to take action on your ideas. What steps are you committed to taking to make your idea a reality? What steps can your audience take? The more focused you are on action, the more you can create a groundswell for change. Make your voice a catalyst for action, and you will become a role model for others. Remember that every person has a voice; every person has something to say and that includes you! Make it your mission to find your voice and to help others find theirs. Use the power to build your communication skills and find your confidence to speak up on behalf of what you believe in.

Finding your voice is about self-actualization: determining what’s important to you, what change you want to see in the world, and what you are going to do about it.

Self improvement isn’t all about your fitness, your diet and your health… All of those things are all parts of it, but finding your passion and making yourself heard is just as important. Find yourself, find your voice and become powerful!

Now get to work…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… I have five days left after today… Can you believe it?!?!?! That’s update enough… I made it… It’s as good as done… Really though, it was as good as done on day one… That’s just the way I look at things… I hope that I have given you the same mindset…

Love you like a surfer loves that big wave… See you Tomorrow… Again… You’re gonna miss me aren’t you?

Day 84 - Every Struggle Reminds Us of a Question: How Bad Do You Want It?

 Success… Everyone has a different definition of this word, but today I want to talk about success as a mindset and not as some sort of a destination that most believe it is… “Someday I am going to be a success…” is the carrot and the stick philosophy that actually holds us back because “someday” usually means “never” because we consider success coming on the other side of the work we will never begin… So we see success as something that could happen for us but usually only happens to others… Success is an Instagram blurb with a happy person in a beach house or some guy climbing out of a Ferrari 812 GTs smiling at us explaining that we too could get the lifestyle he supposedly lives…

No… Bullshit…

What if success was a daily mindset? What if you could feel like you succeeded every day of your life? The psychology of motivation teaches us that little victories lead to growing self esteem and self confidence. Take for instance playing a guitar… You learn a few chords, you get good at them and you learn a few more. Now you’re not playing a rock anthem after two weeks but you are playing six chords… Isn’t that a success? A burgeoning chef isn’t perfecting their Baked Alaska in their first months but they are learning and growing their menu within days of starting. Little successes make us feel like we can go on and become that person we are working to be… 

Losing a little weight should make us feel like we could lose a little more, instead, we see someone on Instagram holding up a gigantic pair of pants telling us that “someday”, if we buy their program or their book, we could be a success… Let me tell you, if you lost two pounds last week, you’re a fucking success… You don’t need to lose 100 pounds to succeed…  You need to start and you need to stick with it, that’s the triumph…  

Changing your mind, getting off the couch, making a plan and getting to work is the greatest success that there is… Picking up the guitar, finding a program to begin lessons is a success… 

Let me be very clear here… Let’s make it really simple… If I want to visit the beach, standing there by my truck and  looking off into the distance and thinking that someday I will make it to beach isn’t going to get me there…  Thinking about success isn’t success… Starting the process is the first part of succeeding…  Starting is the success… 

Get started…

The height of your success probably won’t be a Ferrari, or being able to do impossible variations of pull-ups, having a perfectly chiseled body or a six figure salary with a seven figure bank account… So why hold ourselves to these impossible standards and never start our own journey? I think that is what held me back for so long with my guitar playing… I knew I would never be Eddie van Halen and somehow, that held me back from starting my journey… I lamented at how I asked for a guitar when I was 12 and my parents pretty much ignored me… I was constantly telling myself that “if I had started sooner, I would be so good at guitar…” Are you seeing this? I couldn’t get started because I didn’t get started when I thought I should have and just continued to delay…

Well… A couple of nights ago, I learned a B chord so I could start learning to play a Four Non-Blondes song  and after I learned it, I had to laugh at myself… As of that chord, I now know 15 chords and am learning to play different variations of chords, strum patterns and snippets of recognizable songs as well as just playing shit that I make up as it comes to me… I am building on my skills daily and guess what? I will never be Eddie van Halen and that’s perfectly okay, I’m much better looking anyway… I don’t want to be, play like or even resemble him… I am a wild success when you compare me to me from last year… Did you hear that? Should I say it again so that you can catch the subtle hint that lies within that statement?

I am a wild success when you compare me to me from last year…

How did it happen? I succeeded the second I picked that guitar up with a commitment in my heart. I found a mentor in a co-worker… I purchased an app to help me further my skills… The point is, I stopped my rationalizations and excuses and began my journey… Guess what? I AM A SUCCESS… I’m not an expert, and in fact I will never be an expert… I just wanted to play and now, at any time, I can pick up a guitar and play it… That’s success…

Most of it is the slow speed at which we meet our own expectations of what we consider success… We can lie down on the couch and watch an entire Netflix series and hate the first few episodes or even the entire first season with the promise from those who have watched it before us and told us that “even though it starts slow, it gets SO MUCH BETTER!!!” So we suffer through it with the belief that it will get better…  Now why can’t we accept that yes, starting off with improving yourself sucks major ass… It hurts to adjust; it’s tedious when we don’t see as much progress as we would like to see but we can lie on the couch and suffer through shitty television for nothing more than to be entertained but we can’t stand it when give self improvement a half assed try and we don’t look like a super model in two weeks… Yes, I am admonishing you for being lazy… No worries, you can hate me all you want, just use that negative energy to get up off the couch and prove me wrong… I will not mind at all…

Now listen, this just isn’t about you… I want you to get a mentor for a reason… A mentor is a symbiotic relationship when you are a student who truly wants to learn… Here is why…  

An apprentice actually motivates the mentor to excel… The person who adopts you to help you puts themselves in a situation that they have to be a teacher… As my mentor says “Teaching always makes the best learning…” 

This is a relationship between a student and the teacher where we feed off of one another and both push themselves harder and become better than we were yesterday… Last night, my mentor texted me that he had been practicing for three hours and his fingers were aching… He said that he was pushing himself beyond his boundaries and playing like never before… Do you think that fucking motivated me? I was up this morning and practiced for an hour before I did anything else…  This isn’t a competition and it certainly is not a race, because as a novice up against someone playing for decades, there is no contest… What this is is a pursuit of personal excellence…  A beautiful symbiotic dance with two people helping one another to excel… All this time, you thought that your being a novice was going to be a burden… Now, doesn’t that sound like a reason for you to start your journey?   

Listen, I know it’s hard to get started and even harder to stay on track… Often we come out of the gate like a racehorse and overextend ourselves and immediately burn out, get discouraged and find ourselves back on the couch with yet another reason why whatever we wanted “just isn’t for us…” I mean, we tried again, failed and why keep trying… Right? No… We all know the story of the Edison and the light bulb… 1,000 experiments to find the filament that would work… When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." "Great success is built on failure, frustration, even catastrophe." I have to agree here because every practice is an experiment for me and some of those experiments are absolute failures… Gotta love it and I gotta laugh sometimes… The journey is so fucking wonderful, and it started out with such trepidation…  Remember, this was my last attempt, it was a do or die proposition… I committed because I had thought about it for 20 years, and never progressed beyond my first year. I wanted it, but I didn’t try… At all… I started probably 30 times in that span of time and quit within two weeks every time… 

Which brings me to my final point today…

Just how bad do you want it?

We all have these dreams of excelling at something… the list is incomprehensibly long… From everything from music, to  making films, art, fitness, language proficiency, and anything a human can dream of, someone wants to be an expert, if not strive to be the best… 

You can you know… all you have to do is want it… I say that because if we think about it philosophically, if you simplify it, it is as easy as wanting it… If we make it straightforward to understand, let’s say  you are on the couch and want to go to the bathroom, you get up and go to the bathroom and usually get a bonus drink or something to eat… what you don’t do is piss your pants on the couch…Simple, right?

So do yourself a favor, don’t piss yourself on the couch… Get up and get to work…

Yeah I know, you can argue that my example doesn’t quite fit… But listen, is failing to live up to your potential with almost unlimited opportunities at your disposal the same as pissing your pants on the couch with the bathroom ten feet away? Yeah…

So again, get the fuck up…

Stop saying “I wish I could…” There is no magic genie in a bottle; there is only the hard work to make it happen… So make your dream happen…

The90 Day Life Change Challenge update… Yesterday I broke my 1/2 Murph record again… 100 burpees, 150 squats, 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups in 14 minutes and 22 seconds… That is a full 27 seconds faster than my previous record but can I be honest here? Last week has hellish… My body is starting to reject the level of brutality that I am putting it through… That makes me want to finish this all the more… After today, there are 6 days left in this cycle and I am going to finish it in pain, sprinting towards the end giving it everything I have left… Then I will rest for a few days and make a plan for round two… No stop, no quit… I demand the best from myself and nothing less will suffice… 

For me life isn’t about easing into it, cheat days and time off… It’s about going as hard as I can, as much as I can, and cheating is for those who don’t want it as bad as I do… What do I want? I want to let people see that anything they want to achieve is possible, you just have to make it happen… Nobody else is going to do it for you…

See you tomorrow… The last week of the first 90 day challenge… I’m kind of excited about it… I want to watch that last progress data sheet get thrown away… 

I would like to take a second here and thank everyone who texts me, emails, me, makes comments on the blog, and stops me in the hallway to tell me that I inspire them... You have no idea what that means to me... I have made off hand comments that impact people's lives in major ways... That is the greatest thing to get your feedback... You're awesome... This is another example of a symbiotic, give and take relationship that could make the world a much better place... 

Love you… I really mean it… Go be the best person you can be…

Day 83: Something to Seriously Consider...

I have spent 83 days transforming myself… 

Today I thought all day long about how I started and wondering how I can convince others to begin that journey…Today will be the shortest blog in this series… In fact it will be more like a Tweet than a blog post…

So how do you start a life changing transformation? I mean a real transformation that shocks people who know you and makes you unrecognizable even to yourself?…

It’s really quite simple…

Ask yourself this powerful compound question…

“How tired am I of this level I exist on and how badly do I want to transcend it?”

Get up off your ass and get to work… You have the tools, I cannot hand you the commitment… Transformative change is all on you... All of it... 

We will talk about it tomorrow… 

Day 82: The Flip Side of Negativity... Learning to Fly...

I have been talking quite a bit recently about negative talk, negative thinking, and negative people… Time to switch gears… Now that you can identify different forms of negativity and have some tools to deal with it, I thought we could spend a little time on the other side… 

Positive thinking is a choice. It is a mental attitude that expects good and favorable results. It brings inner peace, success, improved relationships, better health, happiness, and satisfaction. It also radiates to people around you, and one way or the other, they are influenced by it. They might love your energy or hate your fucking guts for being so annoyingly positive but they will react... 

Why is it so much easier to have a negative attitude than a positive one? The situations and challenges we face in the world each day expose us to negative thinking which, in turn, pulls us down. When these situations and challenges enter our minds, they generate negative thoughts and feelings. The BIG question here is ‘How do we develop a reasonable positive mind?’ You cannot be positive all the time but like negative minded people, your thoughts can influence your personality… Negative thoughts make negative people and positive thoughts make positive people… Hopefully, the following tips will help you develop a more positive outlook…

1. Be conscious of your thoughts.

Examine critically what you think about. Negative actions and words often come from negative thoughts and what goes through our minds. Like I said at the opening of this article, positive thinking is a choice. We have the ability to choose our thoughts, regardless of our beliefs. As soon as a negative thought comes into our minds, we should purposefully make it a point of duty to replace it with a positive one or at the very least, a more neutral thought. This may seem difficult at first, but like automatic negative thinking, replacing it can cause less negativity over time. 

2. Write your thoughts in a thought dairy.

Keep a list of your thoughts, attitudes, and actions. Carry a notebook and write them down as soon as you notice them. This may sound like a pain in the ass but jotting down a few notes will help you see patterns in thinking. Then at the end of the day, critically analyze them and honestly assess your overall thinking processes. Do you automatically criticize or consider worst case scenarios?

3. Challenge the negative thoughts.

The purpose of challenging our negative thoughts is to be able to see quickly whether the thoughts are wrong or whether they have some reasonable useful content in them. If you have written down your thoughts and actions you will be able to recognize the negativity… This will enable you to determine the degree negativity overall and will also enable you to take appropriate actions. However, we should always make sure that our thoughts are genuinely important to achieving our goals. Some critical analysis is important. Some experiences do not have positive outcomes no matter what we think about them…

4. Try to see things in a positive way.

Having positive eyes helps us to develop positive thoughts. Try and identify the positive aspects of situations, people and experiences. 

5. Dream of success.

Before you start any plan or action, clearly focus your mind on a successful outcome. It’s perfectly okay to be excited about a positive outcome before it occurs. Discover that childlike hope that whatever you take on will succeed. This will bring you amazing results. Avoid negative reactions and statements. Quickly find adequate solutions to problems or challenges as soon as they occur, rather than reacting negatively to them.

6. Look for positive people to associate with.

As I stated before when I discussed negative people, be careful the company you keep. It is good to be around positive thinking people who radiate positive attitudes. However, encountering a positive person and engaging them may seem a difficult task if you are still adjusting to your new mindset. 

7. Develop new habits.

Our present attitudes are habits, built from the feedback of parents, friends, society and self, and these form our self-image and our world view. We can develop new habits and start a new life of positive thinking. The best way to form a new habit is to tie it to an existing habit. Look for patterns in your day and think about how you can use existing habits to create new, positive ones. How about a little mindful thankfulness at the first sip of coffee? Perhaps you can practice balance yoga or do squats while you brush your teeth? You have things you do every day that you can add a positive spin… Think about it, doing positive actions brings positive thoughts about yourself and the world around you…

Start tiny! Big behavior changes require a high level of motivation and discipline that often can’t be sustained. Starting with tiny habits to make the new habit as easy as possible in the beginning. Taking a daily short walk, for example, could be the beginning of an exercise habit. Or putting an apple in your bag every day could lead to better eating habits. When I began my exercise challenges, I chose routines that started out with as little as three sets of one pull-up per day! Easy at the start lets you succeed and  you get great thoughts about yourself! Start small, think big!

Listen, the hardest thing I have ever done in my life was admit that I was wrong… My entire personality was tied to my negative thinking. People expected my sarcasm, my doom filled outlook on life and my belief that hope was a disease for idiots… My sense of humor, sense of purpose and my entire disposition thrived on it. When I began to suspect that my thoughts, speech, and actions were wrong, I was terrified… What would people think? I had spent decades denouncing and making fun of positive people… What would I do with my circle of friends and family who knew me only as the snarky, negative, and funny asshole that I had always been? 

Well… I found out… I have dropped some people along the way, but I have gained more friends, developed better relationships and now I have a circle of people who I trust, learn from, and rely on to help me find my way down this new path. 

Which brings me to the last recommendation…

8. Practice gratitude…

I am exceptionally grateful for my new attitude and way of looking at the world around me… It is exhausting and lonely in a world that has no hope and no path to redemption. The only people you can commiserate with share your world view and having the thought that this is a hopeless situation hammered home constantly tears you down… I was caught in cyclic reasoning where my negativity fed my attitude and my attitude fed my negativity and even though it was having devastating effects on my mental health, I still refused to change. Escape from that dark line of reasoning changed everything...

It only takes one decision to change everything... Make that decision now... Tell yourself that in the morning when your feet hit the floor that today will be the day... Make a commitment to yourself that you will work on every aspect of yourself for the next 90 days... Your body, your mind and your attitude... Commit to making yourself a better person not only for those around you, but for yourself... Will it be easy? Fuck no... Will the transition be smooth and painless? Fuck no... But if you commit to it, decide to not waver from it, will it work? Yes, and in ways you could never imagine... It only takes a second to make that decision, but it takes real commitment, real discipline and real hard work to become the absolute best version of yourself... You have the drive? The information you need, the science, the data, the ideas and the hundreds of people who have done it before you even thought about it are at your fingertips... 

Get a mentor in a blog, book or a person and get to work.. Decide right now... 

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update... Tomorrow when I get up I will have eight days to go... I "Hulk smashed" today and plan on it again tomorrow... Stopped at the meathead store again after work and those guys cheered me up... Gotta love a meathead... The discussions in there are limited to pre-workout drinks, protein and I'm a pussy for being a vegan and we all laugh... I consider them a part of my circle of support... 

See you all tomorrow... Just like always...

Love you like girls love diamonds... Stereotyping? Yep.... True? Oh yeah... 

Day 81: Using Self Control and Willpower to Change? That May Explain Your Consistent Failure...

"Willpower: The Biggest Failure in Behavior Change (and What Works Instead) Surveys consistently show people believe they need willpower to make healthy habits stick. According to the American Psychological Association’s Stress in America study, most people cite willpower as the reason their health resolutions fail." - Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen, MS, RD

There is no secret why so many high-achievers make a habit of success while others struggle to get out of bed: they consistently do that things that will produce the results they are looking for. You want a fit body? That would mean you exercise and eat correctly… You want to be an author? That means you write, on a regular if not daily schedule… The idea is simple: If you want to succeed, then you have to get off your ass and do it… But if it’s so simple, why doesn’t everyone follow this formula? What factors allow some people to create their ideal future while others stay stuck and overwhelmed? There are blogs, books, podcasts, and motivational speeches easily accessible to everyone, but with my usual pleasant contention, I have to say that I think well-meaning productivity experts everywhere have got it wrong when it comes to high achievement using “willpower”…

First, lets define that dastardly word… What is willpower? The dictionary defines willpower as “control exerted to do something or restrain impulses.” Now look, I know that sounds great but the serious problem with this definition is that most everyone lacks the one thing needed to make willpower an action step… Control… Control as in “Self-Control” which almost no one has… In order to utilize willpower, you would first need to foster self-control…

I hate to tell you this but if you want to make any permanent change in your life, willpower won’t get you there. The good news is that knowing this can help you stop struggling and reframe your plan to move closer to your goals… Remember that we discussed this before, information is god and eliminating bad information is absolutely necessary to success… Whether you want to get healthier, stop using social media so much, improve your relationships, be happier, write a book, or start a business , willpower won’t help you with any of these things. So now what? The best chance for personal progress and achieving success should be approached like you’re overcoming an addiction. Because, quite literally, that’s what you’re doing. As human-beings, we all have addictions.

I openly admit that my past includes being addicted to alcohol, drugs, the internet, bad food, television, an incorrect belief system, my comfort zone, and my excuses. Now, one by one I am eliminating these addictions, replacing them with good behaviors that do not contradict my goals. The truth is, we are all addicted to something or multiple things, and the cognitive dissonance of wanting one thing and exhibiting behaviors that indicate the exact opposite is mind numbing

If you’re serious about the changes you want to make, willpower won’t be enough. Quite the opposite. Willpower, or more concisely, lack thereof is what is holding you back. Let me be very clear here… Willpower is a broken approach to thriving and success… It rarely works…

If you’re required to exert willpower to do something, there is an obvious internal conflict. You want to eat the cookie, but you also want to be healthy. Now we have environment versus goal. The tension is mounting… You’re standing there, the cookie is laying there.  What are you going to do? Are you going to be strong this time and resist? Or are you going to crumble?

Most will crumble like the cookie and then lick the counter to make sure they got all the crumbles…

According to research your willpower is like a muscle. It’s a finite resource that depletes with use. You struggle all day long with your addictions and your goals and as a result, by the end of your strenuous day, your willpower muscles are exhausted, and you’re left to your naked and defenseless self  with zero control to stop the night-time munchies and the time wasters. After an entire day of “being good”, we end up rewarding, over rewarding and then binging as we slowly lose control of our willpower muscles…

So now what? If willpower isn’t enough, what do we do?

We commit…

How do you lose weight? You marry the fucking idea… You ask yourself the question “What do I want?” If your reply is you want to lose weight, you vow to yourself to make the leap from willpower to determination and resolve yourself to do what it takes, to the best of your ability to lose weight… You do research, you correct your mistakes, reframe your thinking, and alter your behaviors to achieve and then exceed your goals… Like a boxer who eyes their target six inches past the chin of their opponent, you punch through your goals… Willpower is weak, resolve is a powerful means to gain access to a new mindset of accomplishment and success.

If your life requires willpower, you aren't fully determined to get what you want. Because once you make a decision, the internal debate is over. As Chicago Bulls great Michael Jordan has said, “Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again.” To clarify, I think Mr. Jordan meant that he never had to think about whether he would fail or succeed once he made up his mind. When a decision is made, there is no more room for debate… This is why I suggested that you marry your goals… Taking a vow defines the goal… There is no room for failure past that point. After you decide what you want, the decision is made. Thus, all future decisions regarding that matter have also been made. No questions.

So, are you serious about this? Or are you just bullshitting yourself to assuage your guilt? Are you still on the fence, or have you decided? Until you decide, you’ll be required to use willpower, and will continue making minimal or zero progress. That choice is up to you…

If you’re truly committed to something, in your mind, it’s as though you’ve already succeeded. All doubt and disbelief are gone. Recently I interacted with a person with an addiction problem and I witnessed the process of moving from conflict and struggle to resolve…  She told me that once she made the concrete decision to kick the habit, the whole world changed in an instant. You see, if you’re committed to getting into shape, you’re going to put everything in place to make sure it happens. You’re not going to leave it up to chance. You’re going to start by signing up for a gym or formulating an exercise plan (investment). You’re going to make it public by telling people your plans. (phase one of accountability). You’re going to get a workout partner or someone who will hold you accountable (phase two of accountability). You’re going to track your progress with data, schedules, and monitoring equipment like an Apple Watch (feedback) and report your progress to your accountability partner. Lastly, you’re going to remove things in your life that keep you from working out. Commitment means you build external defense systems around your goals to protect and foster them.

This is known a “creating conditions that make success inevitable.” If you’re trying to stop drinking alcohol, you must stop being 1) around people that drink alcohol and 2) stop going to places that serve alcohol. Your willpower will fail if you don’t. You need to truly decide you’re done, to commit, and then to create an environment to make the success of your commitment inevitable.

If you want to become a professional rock-climber, you need to surround yourself with professional rock-climbers, get the proper equipment and orient your whole lifestyle to fit that goal.

This is how evolution works. We create a new environment and then adapt to our new environments. Thus, conscious evolution involves purposefully choosing or creating environments that mold us into the person we want to become. Everything in life is a natural and organic process. In conscious evolution, we create a new environment and then adapt and evolve based on the environments we select. You are who you are because of your environment. Want to change? Then change your environment. Stop the willpower madness already. Willpower sucks. Forget about it.

Instead of focusing on your behavior, focus on your environment. Your environment ,  including the people you surround yourself with  is the clearest indicator of who you are and who you’re becoming. The idea is a simple one, in order to succeed we must change just one thing, that one thing being everything… You have to make up your mind and change your environment and get to work because like my co-worker Brady says, “no one else is going to do it for you…”

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… Apparently I was wrong about finding that motivation to finish this 90 day Hell Ride strongly… This blog was born because this morning I had no desire to get up, workout, go to work or even get laid… I would have rather just laid there staring blankly at the ceiling in the dark… Instead, I sat up, turned on the light, drank my pre-workout drink I keep on the nightstand, got dressed, bathroom, into the kitchen to mix the after workout protein and then back into the bedroom to get to work… I started the timer and started doing burpees... During my workout I thought about this blog… Today was not about “willpower” because today I had no willpower… Today was about a commitment I made to finish… There may be discussion in my head about whether or not I want to, but there is clearly no doubt about what I will do... I will ignore the doubts, the voice that asks me to stop or delay and I will start the timer and get to fucking work because that is what I do...

Another update... After a fucking crazy day in the field, I stopped by my happy place on the way home from work to talk to my meathead fitness friends at REV Nutrition and decided to do a BodyScan for body fat content...  I was a little hesitant because I didn't need a disappointment after the day I had... I have a broken toe and it was a long ass day full of pain in addition to the human misery I experience in my daily life as a street outreach worker... So I got rid of all my excess weight, keys, wallet, phone, badges, and took off my boots and stepped on the scanner... 14.50% Body fat...

LOWEST BODY FAT PERCENTAGE EVER!!!! Woo! I'm up two pounds in muscle weight and down in total fat weight...  It was the pick me up I needed to finish out my work week... Hard work, lots of good food, good sleep, lots of water and an iron will to meet my goals... Closer now than ever before... I am shooting for 13.5% because that is what the professional athlete has for a body fat percentage... One last hurrah before age takes me down to the place where I simply can't... For all of you who read this blog, this is my Look Good Naked Project Last Dance... I will damn well meet my goal of 13.50%... I don't give myself any other option... It may take me longer than the average 25 year old, but hey, it takes me longer to do a lot of things a 25 year old does and that ain't always a bad thing... Enjoy your youth boys, but work as hard as you can because when it fades, like my dad used to say, getting old isn't for pussies... 

So maybe that motivation I was looking for printed out of the BodyScan printer today... Looking forward to getting my mojo back, finding the edge I needed to make that percentage a reality... When I started I looked up the body fat percentage average for professional athletes and I set that as my goal.. It looked fucking impossible and I meant for it to be... I love making the impossible happen, makes me me a cocky bastard but then again, when you can back up what you say, that isn't cocky, that's confidence... 

I love all of you... you help me make this shit happen and that isn't something to sneeze at... I appreciate all the reads, the comments, the texts and the amazing conversations I have with people about making and meeting goals... In the last three months I have made an amazing transformation, watched people get started making theirs, assisted people beating addictions, setting goals and making their lives better... Fuck, there isn't anything better than that... Have a great day and I will see all of you tomorrow... Another day, another workout and another blog...

Love you like street outreach worker love hand sanitizer...