Day 68 - From Mindlessness to Mindfulness: The Art of Learning to Pay Attention

It’s hard enough to change a habit that you can physically see.  Things like going for a daily walk, sitting down to write, having a salad for lunch each day. These are easily seen but can still be quite a challenge to implant in your life. In addition to the difficulty, when we do change physically recognizable habits, they have easily identifiable, tangible results. We can simply track them if we utilize data collection. For instance, if I track something like number of salads, I can write down how many salads I ate in a week and then adjust my intake accordingly to match my goals. I want to eat 10 salads a week, I ate two a day during the weekdays, thus I see the data says I matched my goal.

What about habits of mindlessness, the ones you don’t even know you’re doing? Maybe you notice it occasionally, maybe you never notice. How do you change those kinds of habits? I have a number of mindless habits that I could focus on like judging other people, getting distracted with online surfing or television, letting my self-concern get the best of me when I think someone is dismayed with me… Of course these are just the issues that stand out, the ones I am highly aware of and will even continue when I become aware of them while they are occurring… These habits, especially silently judging others are DEEPLY INGRAINED and since I have become aware of them, after reflecting I have come to realize that they have been with me since childhood.

They are not a reason to beat myself up or judge myself harshly. There is nothing wrong with me for having these habits, they are so ingrained that I do them unconsciously, or “mindlessly” and yet I can see how they’re unhelpful to my happiness, to my relationships and to the work I want to do in the world. So it would be helpful to retrain these mindless habits. If I become aware that I am surfing the internet with no purpose, I need to stop and reflect on what I am doing and maybe safeguard myself from doing it in the future and retrain myself… The question is, how should we go about doing this?

What to Know About Changing Mindless Habits…

Before we start, it’s important to know that there are two big obstacles to changing these kinds of habits…

Primarily, they are deeply ingrained in us. Things like negative judgments based on world view, self-criticism and inward negative comments that have been with you since early childhood. If you have never addressed them, they are a part of your consciousness… You’ve been doing them for years, reinforcing them for years and so you won’t just be able to flip a switch and change them in a day or a week or even a month. Mindless activities aren’t like trying to develop abs either, when you start to try and eliminate them, you won’t see any physical results to reinforce your behavior modification…  It could take months to retrain, and in some cases, longer depending on how much focus you give this retraining, and how consistent you are in your efforts. Secondarily, if they remain unconscious and you don’t know you’re doing it, you can’t retrain it. It just keeps happening without you being aware of them, or even sometimes, you don’t know that these mindless habits are holding you back. Without awareness, you’re powerless.

So it will likely be a messy process, with starts and stops, lots of “failures” that aren’t really failures if you’re using them to learn and grow your awareness. It can get discouraging, unless you look at every failure in this way, as a necessary step to becoming more aware, a necessary steppingstone to altering these behaviors.

Now even if we become aware of our issues, and work really hard to modify them and we don’t see any visible results, continuing to work on them is difficult at best, what retraining method for mindless habits can we actively pursue? With these problems in mind, here’s how we might retrain these mindless habits…

1. Focus on just one habit. Look at my list of mindless habits above… Don’t these all seem like great candidates to take on immediately? So why not do them all at once, right? It’s hard enough to be aware of just one of these habits and trying to be aware of several habits at once is like trying to pay attention five movies at the same time. I’d say it’s impossible. Pick just one at a time because you can get to all of them eventually.

2. Recognize the habit’s effects on you. Before you get started, reflect on how this habit affects you. Maybe just watch it for a few days and see how it affects your happiness, your relationships, and the meaningful work you’re doing in the world. Start to get very clear on exactly what this habit does to your life, and all of the ripples it has into all parts of your life. Then formulate a practice plan to give it focus and create a greater awareness of it. Now with this focus on one habit and clarity about what it does, you can now put your retraining plan into action. Here’s the key: create a space where you become as aware as possible of the habit. For example, if you wanted to work on the “being judgmental of others” habit, you might have a practice hour each day where you walk around in public looking at people and noticing when you have the tendency to judge them. Now you’re actively watching for the habit. Maybe it’s just 10 minutes, or even 5 minutes, depending on the severity of the habit. But it has a defined start and end, and you are deliberately practicing during this time. You can slowly expand it over time, or have multiple practice sessions a day, but it shouldn’t be all day long. Sometimes you might shrink it, or even take a day off. The key is to try to be as aware as possible of your judgmental attitude during this practice time.

3. Imagine an alternative habit that would be more helpful. What would be a more helpful habit to do instead? For example, instead of judging people, I might try to look at them with compassionate eyes. Instead of comparing myself or judging myself, I might see myself with loving eyes. Instead of shutting down when someone is unhappy with me, I might try to see their pain and what they’re going through. These are only examples, so take a little time to imagine the habit you’d rather have.

4. When you notice yourself doing the old habit, practice the new one instead. This one should be practiced during your “awareness” sessions, if you notice yourself starting to do the old habit, do the new one instead, as deliberately and consciously as you can. Every single time, as consistently as possible. If you don’t do it consistently, just notice when you don’t, just increase awareness.

5. Repeat many times. Repeat it often, until it becomes easier and more natural and more and more automatic. Reinforce each time you do it by giving yourself a mental pat on the back. Feel good about this success, even if it’s not perfect. Take a moment to feel grateful for your effort.

6. Then learn to do the new habit earlier. With some practice, you can learn to do the new habit much earlier in the process. For example, instead of judging someone and then switching to seeing them with compassion … I might look at someone and immediately try to see them with compassion, as soon as I see them. This takes a lot of awareness and practice, but it gets easier with time. You’re cutting out the old habit completely, so that the new one gets reinforced. You are actually, reframing your thinking and cutting fresh neural pathways in your brain, just like when you are retraining yourself to drop physical habits like drugs or alcohol.

7. Repeat many more times. Again, repeat this method as many times as it takes to become more and more automatic. You might add additional practice sessions. You can even try to catch yourself outside of the practice sessions, until it becomes really easy to be aware of this during the day. Practice while watching TV, or any other time you feel yourself starting to judge others negatively.

Important: see every mistake as a stepping stone to greater awareness. Remember that you’re not going to be perfect at this. It’s going to be messy. The old habit has been strengthened over years. Develop patience with yourself, understanding, and compassion. Learn to encourage yourself when things are hard, and see every failure as information to use to get better and better.

This is the method I used and it works, I promise … I’ve changed some difficult habits this way, even if it took me longer than I’d care to admit. I’m still working with this method, in starts and stops, in a sometimes chaotic way. But shift happens. It can for you as well!

One last note before I finish for the day… You might ask me why I wanted to stop my negative judgments of people.  When I took inventory of my life during my self imposed 90 Day Life Change Challenge, I saw that my negative attitude was like a thread that ran through nearly every part of my life. I wanted that thread pulled out and I decided that I would embark on a journey not only to clean up and condition my physical body by quitting alcohol and drugs, but also clean and condition my mind. Negative world views poison a person, and I believe that life is too short, too valuable and much too important to waste time judging people that I probably don’t want to have anything to do with anyway, so why waste time even thinking about them?

I’m still an asshole, just not a judgmental one…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… This morning was quite awful actually… I did everything I was supposed to do and completed the series for the day but man, I did not want to fucking do it… hahahahaha  Well, it’s been a long week and sometimes even the toughest of us want to tap out… Luckily for me, tapping out isn’t on the list of options that I have made available to myself… Perhaps a broken bone, or death of a family member might stop me, but I’m really going to have to like that family member a lot to quit this far in… 

Well, I will see you in the morning, just like always… Love you like The Pittsburgh Steelers love losing in the last quarter…

Day 67: Why in the World Would You Doubt Yourself? Turn Off Your Fear...

There exists not a single person who has overcome the human condition of self-doubt. I say with full confidence that no matter who you are, a supremely confident person, a content Zen monk, a successful writer … it doesn’t matter. You have doubts about yourself. The question is whether these doubts stop you from doing amazing things, from leading the life you want to lead. Because if the most successful among us have doubts, then we all have the ability to become the best even with self-doubt…

I am one of those people who has a difficult time believing my own bullshit… See? See how I framed that? I call my beliefs, my goals, and my success “bullshit” and although I do it jokingly, there is a painful undertone of truth in it… Because I was raised in a house where I was never good enough, not quite fast enough and never as good as I could be, I have doubted myself my entire life. If you are raising a child and always telling them that they can do better, then you’re a fucker who doesn’t need children… 

Because I doubted my ability, I doubt whether I am a good enough writer to succeed in a world of immensely talented writers. Because I doubted my ability, I doubt whether I can become the health guru that I desire to be…

These doubts weren’t overwhelming, but that’s the sneaky thing about them. They aren’t in your face they creep into your subconscious so that you don’t realize they’re there, tugging at you, wearing at you, grinding your progress to a halt…. They lurk in the dark, extending an influence so pervasive that it seems a part of the fabric of our being, even if it’s only a corroded thread that’s snaked itself into that fabric. But these doubts are there, even if we rarely think about them. They’re that silent voice in our heads that say, “I can’t do it. I’m not good enough. I’d never make it. I’d only fail and embarrass myself. Why should I dare dream?” They silently guide you as you try to formulate plans, set goals, and pursue excellence…

They’re there, and they are more powerful than we can put into words.

I let them hold me back. I have worked for years, decades doing things I wasn’t even remotely happy doing, just for the safety of a job and a steady paycheck. I tried several times to work for myself but always chose something I thought might be lucrative rather than what I wanted to do with my life… This blog is my start… This is training me to write every day  one and give me confidence that I will succeed in the world of real writers… What was an impossible dream is now within my sights as an accomplishable goal…

Now, how did I beat the demons in my head?

I was wrong. I overcame those fears not through a tremendous burst of courage, not with a push through the front lines of doubts but through systematic action… This action came in little doses, doses that a few of you have watched and participated in for the last two months…  These actions are not occasionally but daily. I started this blog on a free, amateur blogging platform. I wrote posts that I have no expectations of and only a few would read religiously. For the few people that read them, they give me excellent feedback that the posts are good. This is positive information. I am overwhelmed by the support from you who read these… I sometimes doubt myself , like I always have but then I will get that one comment that tells me that I am doing someone, somewhere some good and although it was twenty reads that day and a single comment, it gives me such a boost of confidence, it totally makes my day, and I can’t wait to do it again…

I kept doing it, and kept getting good feedback, even if it was just from a handful of readers. One of those early supporters was a guy named Jose, a great guy who I know in person here in Bakersfield who reads my posts every day and sends me a text to let me know he supports me…  . He told me I was good, that I spoke from the heart, that I would be big one day. Then there is Marcie, who reposts me, comments on how helpful my writing is and let's me know that my sometimes "raw" writing isn't offensive, it's honest… Tristan, who reminds me often that my posts are a nightly read and of a great help to him personally...  I appreciate that these people believe in me, and this is more positive information.

Through these little packets of information, I am starting to build a database, a prototype in my heart that tell me my old doubts were wrong. They were just flimsy façades that I had built up into something so solid they seemed indestructible. They seemed so real they were unquestionable, the foundation for my everyday reality and now, with all the support and a growing reader base, they are starting to fade… They were wrong, this new information is telling me. That is disruptive, and it shook me. How could everything I had believed all these years be so wrong? But the new information I am getting is consistent, and it never stops coming in. Every day, I get more positive feedback…

 

My reality today is changing, thanks to this new information, and though I still have self-doubts, I no longer let them define my reality. They’re just hypotheses, waiting to be tested by actual data, waiting to be disproven, just like the hypotheses of previous doubts have been disproven time and again. 

Do you feel that self-inflicted doubt? Believe me, you are not alone…

Everyone has these doubts. I can only speak for myself about the effect they had on me personally, but  they held me back for years and years. Now I am slowly punching through that façade brick wall and you know what? I found out its nothing more than a paper tiger… The moment you reach out and begin working towards your goal, you will find all of your self-doubt is just smoke and mirrors… A lifetime of believing that you aren’t enough disappears. Some of you have beaten them to the point where you’re doing what you love. Others haven’t yet and might not even realize those doubts are holding you back. They are and you can beat them. I’ve done it, thousands and thousands of others have too. We’re no better than you we’ve just stumbled on better information, but we got that information through trial and error, turning wants and dreams into actions.

Get the information... Do something, even if it is small and get that feedback, keep doing it, get better at it, get feedback all along the way, and see what the new information says. Put your doubts to test, let them be disproven, and when the results finally come in, and you know what reality really looks like, be proud of yourself for at least putting the doubts to test. I’m already proud of you, just for reading this far, and letting some small light shine on the doubts quivering in the darkness.

Live your dreams, be fucking fearless!

It is  me that is my enemy

Me who doubts me

Me who creates the tyrant

Me who strips my courage

I am my own worst enemy

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… Up early, killed that first workout and went for my outside yoga... It has been a beautiful watching th sun come up doing yoga was healing after yesterday... So lots of water today and I am going to have an intentional, meaningful day where I will pay attention to my state of mind and remain calm and happy all day... 

Love you all more than a union rep loves a grievance… I will see you all in the morning, and you better goddamn well be feeling better about yourselves and have some plan to find a way if you don’t… 

Day 66: Why in the World Would You Avoid Something Difficult?

Most, if not all of us have something on our to do list that we’re avoiding. Or a project we’ve been putting off. You know that thing you would really like to see get done but you would rather run with the bulls in Pamplona than actually do it yourself…

Stop and think for a moment: what’s the task or project you’ve been avoiding lately? Is it that book or blog you’ve been meaning to write? Perhaps that business you’ve wanted to create for years that you have the idea for but no plan? Maybe the garage, closets, and drawers you’ve been meaning to declutter and simplify your life a little more? What about that email account that has 1500 unopened emails that’s been sitting in your inbox for three months? Maybe you’ve been wanting to start exercising or starting some health plan? 

So what is it you’ve been avoiding? Sit back, close your eyes and identify it now before you move on. If you have more than one, open a note in your phone or if you’re old, get a pen and paper and write that shit down… Make it real, not just an idea floating in your head...

In this blog, let’s take a look at why you’re avoiding it, and how to actually make it happen…

Why We Avoid the Thing

We often spend our days doing everything but the hard thing we don’t want to do.  We will research something to death instead of actually just doing the thing. We’ll talk about it, read about it, buy all the equipment for it, but not actually do the thing. We’ll do all of our small tasks, and check social media or the news instead of doing the thing. We can plan all week to do it on Saturday and Saturday comes and we have a whole list of little things we want to do “so we can focus” on the task and then when we burn the morning on the small things, we figure, “that’s good, I got a lot of shit done…” Except we didn’t get a lot of shit done, we got some stuff finished that maybe even didn’t need done and nothing was done that we planned… That’s not progress…

 Why? We are overwhelmed…. We don’t want to feel like we don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t want to feel weighed down, we don’t want to feel like we’re not good enough, and we don’t want to feel like a failure or disappointment. Most big projects take large amounts of effort and we simply don’t want to expend that much time and energy and end up half finished… We’re protecting ourselves from feeling that. So we do everything else, out of protection.

 Of course, it doesn’t work. Avoiding doing the thing actually just makes us feel more overwhelmed, more like a failure or disappointment, more stupid or not good enough.

Avoidance does not work. The garage isn’t a guy you went out on a date with last weekend and if you avoid him long enough, he will give up… The garage is a crazy ex that’s just going to get worse if you don’t take care of it… 

 So how can we stop avoiding, and actually do the thing?  Well, we do the thing by deciding to do the thing. Like, deciding decisively to do it. The best way? Don’t over think it, in fact, don’t think about it at all, just walk out into the garage, turn on your music and just start working… Or sit down and just start writing… Or just start doing whatever it is you need to do… Pause for a moment and actually consider that thing you are personally avoiding, that something that I asked you to identify at the beginning of the blog. Did you do it then? Do you already have a little plan? Make it happen…

We usually don’t want to face fact that we are avoiding something, so it can help to have someone else to talk to about it, to report to, to discuss that commitment. Every day, tell someone close to you what hard thing you’re going to do, and by when. Then report to them when you get it done… 

Use these techniques to get there…

Decide to do it, and then don’t waver. Don’t let yourself argue about it. When you decide to do it, just commit and do it.

Do it at a certain time: tell yourself you’re going to do it at 1000 on Saturday, then set a reminder. Do it when the reminder goes off. Psyche yourself up, if it helps. Play some motivating music, get a cup of coffee, clear distractions, and then pour yourself into it. Do the countdown I taught you… 5-4-3-2-1 and then do it! Don’t talk, just work.

Get into the action habit. The habit of recognizing what you’re avoiding, turning towards it (instead of away from it), and then just starting. Get small victories. Small victories are incredibly powerful. Avoiding doing a big task? Do 5 minutes of it. Do 10 minutes. Eventually, doing an hour of it will be much easier, but do the smallest possible chunk, and get a victory. Celebrate it! Do a dance, do a Michael Jackson crouch grab and squeal, just acknowledge to yourself that you are winning… Then get another victory, and another, and another…. With practice, the habit of doing the thing you’re avoiding can become so much easier. 

Paradoxically, by doing the things you are avoiding, it will make your life so much easier… By getting things done, you’re life will streamline and by stopping the bullshit avoidance lies in your head, your thoughts will streamline…

Listen, you’re going to die with a To Do list in your pocket, so just work through it and enjoy the ride but for god’s sake, quit procrastinating, the only thing it does is frustrate you...

Now go have the day you intend to have… A little side note here from one of my readers… She said that she had took my advice and intended to have a good day and it turned to shit on her… Intelligently, she considered what was happening and turned it around, but not by controlling her day, she controlled her emotions about the day… She figured out that you can have a totally fucked up day and still manage to be happy at the end of it… Smart chick… It’s all good, she doesn’t mind when I call her a chick, because she is cool like that…  

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update… Relaxed morning... Went about it slow and steady without the\"gotta get this done" feeling... So that means I am about 10 minutes behind schedule today... Whatever... P90X3 was The Challenge so today I did 359 push-ups and 168 pull-ups in a total of 49 minutes... Let's just say, typing is hard right now... I wonder if I will be able to comb my hair after my shower? 

Can you believe we are getting so close to the end of this? I’m pretty stoked… I’m up 2% on body fat... I’ve been eating a bit too much peanut butter… Oh well, I enjoyed it… Time to lean back out… Fuuuuuuuuuuuck….. hahahahaha

Love you like Johnny Cash loved singing about prison… See you tomorrow… 

Day 65 Move that Mountain: How To Break Down Big Goals and Actually Achieve Them...

What are some of the goals you’ve set over the last year? The last five years? Being 100% honest, are you on track to achieve any of those goals? As you look over the last ten years, what’s your track record for setting and achieving even your smallest goals? Experience tells me that very few people achieve their goals. Whether their goal is to lose weight, reduce debt, get in shape, buy a house, go back to school, increase income, build a side business, or accomplish some other challenge, it doesn’t matter. Most people do not achieve their goals. The worst part is that each time you set a goal and fail to achieve it, the negative experience damages your self-esteem and self-confidence. After all, how can failing to achieve an important goal not negatively affect you?  You can tell yourself it’s no big deal, but deep down inside you know the truth. If you continue along the path of setting goals you know you aren’t going to achieve, then you fall into despair and suddenly find yourself accepting your reality as your fate, your lot in this life. Enough unmet challenges and you will change your personality to match your surroundings…  When people continually fail to achieve their goals, they stop dreaming and no longer believe they can achieve anything worthwhile. Then, like millions of other people, they aimlessly drift through life simply accepting it as it comes to them without trying to alter the course at all… Sadly, the best of us, the smartest of us, the ones who have the most to offer often just give up…

I firmly believe that you can achieve any goal that is truly important to you. You just need learn the keys of setting and planning your attack on your goals and then use discipline to achieve them…

I know I talk incessantly about goals on this blog… More often than not, they are health and fitness, or music related… So I thought I would switch gears and talk about some financials for a change… Again, not an expert, just my experience from doing research on my problems and how I solved them…

Now, everyone who reads this blog knows that I had a massive car accident that changed the course of my life in a single afternoon… New to California, I was celebrating a recently secured job with Haliburton as a computer analyst on a drilling rig and out enjoying the Memorial Day weekend with my family and in an instant I’m being cut out of a car by an emergency crew and found myself in a hospital room with a shattered family, shattered body, and a shattered life… After fifteen years of surgery, patterns of joblessness, addiction to opioid drugs and generally just wandering through life trying to recover, my financial situation was so fucked up, I accepted it as permanent, and it became a joke to me. After so long with school loans in default, inability to hold a job, credit cards in default, zero assets, multiple overdrafts in my bank accounts, and living from paycheck to paycheck, I accepted my 460 credit score as what it was, permanent… How could I escape it? It was so bad that I never even looked at it, and in fact even know how to check it… I mean seriously, what would be the fucking point? The only time I ever knew what it was is when I went to a credit place to buy a couch and the salesperson would tell me that the only way I could get the couch on credit was to accept a 33% interest rate but “It would help my credit…”

So I just quit… 460 was my joke… I stopped caring… Why waste my time… Then the school loan people started calling me… They enquired weekly about my status, telling me that it was going to affect my credit if I didn’t find some way to pay off $32,000 in school loans… I laughed and asked them “What are you gonna do, take my birthday because it’s all I have left?”

I had no job, no money, no way to fix the situation…

Its classic isn’t it? You have shitty credit, so they charge you higher rates of interest… In order to fix it, you need more money, but they take all of it, so it becomes this weird cyclic construct that you cannot escape… You need more money and to do that you need a better job but to do that you either need to be really lucky or go back to school, but you can’t go back to school because your school debts are in default and on, and on, and on… You’re always one automotive breakdown from absolute disaster…

I would fix it, if I could fix it, But I can’t fix it, so fuck it… 460 credit score? Well hardee har har ain’t that fucking hilarious?

Then, well I got pissed off… I wanted to fix it, but I needed to formulate a long term plan to do it… What if I wanted to return to school? I couldn’t… What if I needed a loan? Nope, not unless I could find a loan shark… I changed my mind and 460 wasn’t funny, it as my nemesis, my enemy… 460 went from being funny to being like Ricardo Montalban  as Khan was to Captain Kirk… I had to figure it out… I saw stories all the time where people had dug out from worse situations and I didn’t think of myself as stupid in any way, shape or form… Crazy? Maybe? Mentally ill? Definitely, but there had to be an escape route here somewhere…

So, I started looking around… Sounds fucking crazy right? A jobless, broke, financially clueless house husband with a 460 credit score wants to figure out how to get that score above 800 and stabilize his $32,000 school loans…

Long term goal? Yeah, it took five years…

I called the people holding my loans and asked if there was any way I could fix this with no money and no job… My first break came when I got ahold of a great call center woman who told me that school loans in default could be fixed with “loan rehabilitation” programs… She hooked me up with some people who specialized in loan rehab, and for a year I paid $5 a month to get them out of default…

Now wait though… Long term goals need a complex construct… When I started my Loan Rehab Program, I knew that as soon as I finished my year, my loan payments would shoot up to $250 a month and I certainly didn’t have that yet so I called back and asked some questions and they said at the end of the process, I could enroll in school again or put them into forbearance for up to 18 months…

Light at the end of the tunnel…

Now I won’t bore you with the rest of the financial self-rescue story but today my credit scores are 762 and 757 respectively and still climbing… This weekend I got a mattress with no money down and zero interest for 60 months because my credit was so good…

Things can be fixed, no matter what the situation, no matter what the obstacles… So using my example as a case of success, I’m going to give you some pointers to achieve your own personal success in planning long term goals…

Pretty sweet, right?

1. If it has been a while since you followed through on anything, start by setting small short-term goals. Every time you set and achieve a goal, your confidence and sense of competence increases. Start your journey by setting small achievable goals and then taking the steps necessary to achieve them. As you build your confidence in achieving small goals, you will believe you can achieve big goals.

EXAMPLE: I achieved this by doing small things like planning to drink more water, journaling daily... These small goals realized made me more confident that I could achieve bigger things...

2. Set goals that are important to you. Let’s be honest, to achieve any meaningful goal requires you to do things you would prefer not doing. If your goal is not HIGHLY important to you, you won’t do what’s required of you to achieve it. The obstacles in your path won’t be worth overcoming because the prize isn’t important enough.

EXAMPLE: My long term goal of fixing my finances included a return to school. That was very important to me and while that changed over time, my reasons to repair my finances changed, but the goal of fixing them did not.

3. Identify the largest obstacles to your biggest goals. When you look at your goal, ask yourself, “What will be required of me to achieve this goal? What will be the biggest obstacles I will have to overcome?” Make a list of all the things you will need to do and challenges you will likely face.

EXAMPLE: My long term goal list and plan included all the things in my way like no job, no clue, and no money…

4. Ask, “Am I willing to do what’s required?” This is the time when you need to be honest and ask yourself one more time, “Is this goal important enough to me that I will make the sacrifices necessary and do what is required of me every day to achieve my goal?”

EXAMPLE: I HATED calling people on the phone and consequently despised asking anyone to do anything for me. I had to decide if I was willing to be on the phone, ask questions, ask for help and navigate a situation I was very uncomfortable with. Not just weekly, but daily for quite a long time. Was I willing to fill out the paperwork, pursue the avenues and find my way out?

5. Perhaps most importantly, put together your plan and break it down into daily activities and smaller goals. If you are going to achieve any worthwhile goal you must know what you should be doing each day or at the every least, at each stage of the operation..

EXAMPLE: When I set a goal in 2015 to turn my 460 credit score into an 800 credit score, I knew how many calls I would need to make every day. If I fell behind one day, I made it up the next day.

6. Work your plan. Once you know the actions you need to take every day, you must use your personal initiative and discipline to do what you know you should do, even when you don’t feel like doing it. This is when your resolve to overcome those obstacles you knew you would face will be tested.

EXAMPLE: I am goal oriented and when things didn’t go my way, I could feel the frustration and despair rising up in me and I simple reviewed my list of things that I knew I would face, owned up to the struggle and kept trying.

7. Hold yourself accountable. The truth is no one is going to hold you accountable to your goals. It’s your life and these are your goals. You know what you should be doing, and now it’s your responsibility to hold yourself accountable to working your plan and refusing to allow excuses.

EXAMPLE: When I would request to have paperwork sent to me, it was up to me to fill them out, get them notarized, copies, signatures, etc… My plan required my time. If I got something in the mail, it became a priority.

8. Lastly, enjoy the ride... You're going to have small victories along the way and come up against shit you didn't even imagine would happen... People will help you and people will hinder you but all of that is unimportant... Every day is a puzzle to put together the picture you are imagining in your mind... Whether it is financial stability, learning to paint or sculpting your abs... This is your life and your dream, make that shit happen...

___________________________________________________

So listen, this blog is about long term goals and this financial situation of mine is just an example… You can apply this to anything you want. Large weight loss, running a marathon, buying a house, a new car, or anything that takes a massive amount of effort and time.

Start small, think big… If a jobless, broke guy with a 460 credit score and defaulted school loans can do it, so can you.

I am very protective of my financial stability now. If I want to return to school in the future, I now have that option. If I need to borrow money, I now have that option… My life is not controlled by my circumstances anymore…

1. Write down your goal

2. Break it into manageable parts

3. Commit

4. Get started

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update...  I crushed this morning... Up at 0455, broke my 1/2 Murph record by 47 seconds, 170 Squats and P90X3 Agility... A very sweaty, satisfying morning routine... Looking forward to the day... Sleeping like a baby with a full belly again... All the broken sleep from caffeine, alcohol and drugs seems to be fading away... I keep looking for a peak in feeling good... Damn, why didn't I do this years ago? hahahaha!

Have a day that you intended to have... I will see you tomorrow, Love you like a possum loves playing dead... Hmmm... How very Wednesday Addams of me... I like it...

Day 64: Setbacks, Delays and Bumps in the Road... Keep Moving Forward...

Sooner or later you're gonna have a snag in your routine... Like riding a motorcycle, it’s not if you wreck, it’s when and how bad you're going to wreck... Not a problem though... There are ways to deal with it... I like to think that there are three levels of people in the self-improvement world... Beginner, Intermediate and Beasts... The setback for the beginner will occur frequently, and there is nothing to panic about... Just look at it like you missed something and you will do better tomorrow. The intermediate will make fewer mistakes, miss fewer targets, and will usually make  it up either later in the day or if time runs out, they will pull a double the next day... The Intermediate doesn’t like to miss parts of their challenges but will occasionally forgive a missed workout, or a missed guitar practice… The Beast, well, The Beast will not let it go until the day's tasks are completed and it doesn't matter if they need to do squats at midnight even when they get up at 0500 the next day... The Beast will trash an entire set for a missed rep and start over. If they miss a workout on day 60 of a 90 Day Challenge, The Beast will return to day one. Nothing usually stops them, and few things get in their way.

Yesterday was hectic, I had a podcast, had to cook for the week, had to go shopping for food before I cooked… I got up early and knocked out the first workout but then the day got away from me and with Daylight Savings kicked in, my timing for the day was off and suddenly its 1900 and I’m looking at the day is gone, and my Challenge was only half done…

So I was doing squats at 2000 hours and Yoga at 2100 hours, shower, and guitar practice at almost 2200 hours… I got in my meditation and fell asleep afterwards… I don’t quit, I don’t cheat, and I will do pull-ups at midnight if that’s what the day called me to do… This isn’t a call for anyone to perform like me, but it is a call to everyone to perform to the best of their abilities, which, by the way, only very few do…

Strive to become a Beast but until then, learn to handle your setbacks with intelligence… They are not an excuse to quit, quite the opposite… Overcoming obstacles gives you pride and creates a new mindset of courage and strength.

So when my day got away from me and I had to stack up my tasks last night, it brought to mind that we all fail, we all stumble and sometimes we need some guidance on how to handle it…

Missing a workout once in a while or a section of a Challenge isn’t failure, when we look at these situations as failures, it distorts our reality. This distorted view can prevent us from seeing a situation for what it is. Without a clear picture of a situation, it can be impossible to pivot… A setback doesn’t have to be the end of the story. In fact, a setback might be exactly what you need to get where you want to be. Sometimes you need an obstacle thrown down in front of you because even though you are working out, your brain has shifted back into cruise control and when that happens, you aren’t performing at peak… You’ve lost your focus again and need to shift your mind back to the tasks at hand…

Here is how successful people handle setbacks. Take note.

 

1. They expect setbacks.

Everyone, including the successful person experiences setbacks. It goes hand in hand with trying something bigger and better. If you haven’t had one in a while, you’re not improving because improvements mean failures… Setbacks happen, so expect and accept them when they come. Setbacks are a badge of honor. It means that you are doing something hard. Embrace your badge of honor and own it.

2. They set time limits for disappointment.

Okay, you missed something… Yes, it is a failure, we all experience them… Allow yourself time to acknowledge your feelings of disappointment but put a time limit on how long you will focus on that feeling. You might still feel disappointment but redirect that emotional energy toward progress. Explore that emotion and learn from the effects it has on you. Let the negative sensations motivate you to avoid failing again. Once recognized, quickly move on to “now what?”

3. They rely on “now what?”

Successful people find a path to progress. They don’t stop… Reevaluate the “why it happened” and move forward from there making sure it either does not occur again or if it was unavoidable, have a plan for the next incidence.

4. They manage their blind spots.

If failure causes you to lose perspective, anticipate what will cause you to lose yours. I am naturally impatient, so when I can’t see the progress I had hoped for, I know my blind spot is lack of improvement. When I don’t see advances in strength gains, workout times or flexibility, I get impatient… I may see this as a setback that is entirely my fault and completely miss other contributing factors like I may have maxed out in strength or flexibility. That will keep me from accurately assessing what is really happening and what I need to do to adjust. So what’s your blind spot?

5. Less emotion and more information.

Objectively size up what happened. Was there an event or decision that created a change in course? Like yesterday was Daylight Savings Time and there were only 23 hours in the day and it completely fucked me up… Felt like no matter what I was doing, I couldn’t stay motivated and my concentration was off… there are lots of things that will come by to slow you down… Car break down, family emergencies and personal illness can stop you in your tracks, but you cannot let these unknown problems affect you emotionally when they arise unsuspectingly… Instead, when you find yourself getting frustrated, stop immediately, take a breath, and look at it analytically. If you make it to your desired goal that day, you don’t want to show up angry and frustrated, because that certainly won’t be a pleasant experience… When I realized it was almost 2000 hours last night, I felt anxiety arising in me because I still had so much to do, but I stopped and asked myself if that frustration was going to help me meet my goals… I decided that anxious yoga and stressed out guitar practice weren’t my plan and laughed… So facing negative emotions and analyzing your failures are much better choices than getting down on yourself and being angry or disappointed.

6. They think the long term rather than the short term...

If you look at the short term failure as catastrophic, you need to reframe your failure. One workout won’t affect your health goals, one missed practice won’t affect your long term goals to play the piano… A missed day doesn’t have much impact on the long term. Relax, adjust, and move forward…

7. They learn what must be learned.

You must possess a confident willingness to learn what must be learned. Rather than saying I could never lose the weight, successful people determine what they must learn to become what they imagine they can become. Learn to surround yourself with those who knew what you don’t know. Read blogs, read self-help books, talk to others around you who have succeeded at what you are trying to do. Your lack of knowledge is a path that must be followed rather than a dead end.

8. They manage their self-talk.

Setbacks and disappointment create self-doubt. Manage your internal self judgements so you stay focused on the future and what you can do next. That self-talk can be destructive, but it can also be the most powerful, life changing force available if you can change your inner monologue.  Give yourself credit for doing important work and trying something new. You are in the game, play as hard as you can and when you make a mistake, or miss something, don’t quit, the next shot just might change everything.

 

After all, a setback is a setup for a comeback.

 

Day 63: Waking Up Early... The No Bullshit Guide to Being a Better Person...

To put it mildly, I used to be a late riser. I mentioned in a previous blog that one of the reasons I used to be late in the past was from oversleeping. The only times I ever woke up early were when I absolutely had to like when I had to catch an early flight, which was rare. By rare I mean once every three years… The rest of the time it was a snooze-a-rama infuriating anyone who had to sleep in the same room with me…  Even when I had to get up early, I’d wake up at the very last minute, scamper around the house to get ready, rush out in disarray, and barely make it in time. On my regular days, most of the time I was 5-10 minutes late; in the most extreme cases I would be 30 minutes or even an hour late. On a work day, my sleeping time would be maybe 4-6 hours and my time to get up would be a precise calculation of how long it took to drive to work, plus an 11 minute shower and three minutes to get out the door… I lived a life mathematically on the edge of tardiness. During the weekend, I would sleep somewhere between 9 – 10 hours and then stay up sometimes all night and really fuck up my sleep schedule so that Sunday night was spent worrying about not getting any sleep to face the day... You know exactly what I mean, laying there doing the math all night… “Well, 4 hours is enough, toss, turn, toss, turn, well three hours is enough, toss, turn, toss, turn, oh fuck two hours isn’t enough…”

I never once thought to wake up early as a habit. Why would you wake up early? I could not understand why people would want to do that. If I ever met someone who was an early riser by choice, I would look at them in bewilderment. People who got up early had no lives was my primary thought… I mean, how could you go to bed at 10:00 o’clock at night when that is when I was just getting started? Fuck the bar didn’t even get properly rowdy until 11:00 so why would I be sleeping? I saw waking up early as an act of self-deprivation, ludicrous, unnecessary... If I can sleep in late, why not just let myself rest rather than be forced to wake up at a certain fixed time? It felt like borderline masochism to me. While I am not adverse to masochism in the right context, this wasn’t one of those times…

Then, injury forced into the chair for almost 8 months and I got curious about self help books… All my life I had avoided these texts for the simple reason that I was raised in a culture where men didn’t need help… Isn’t that odd, how we grow up in a culture that surmises that whatever the men teach you and the women reinforce must be the right way and anyone who deviates from the norm is wildly and soundly denounced as dangerous and incorrect… Sitting there devouring dozens of books, I came across testimonials in favor of waking up early. Overwhelming numbers of testimonials, in fact, from different places. In fact, ALL of them had advice promoting the habit of waking up early and even proclaimed that waking up early as the single best habit one can ever develop (along with meditation). So then I did some Googling and I came cross interviews with very successful people who mentioned that they wake up early (like 5am) and how it has helped them become much more effective.

The first time I read that, I thought it was just specific to that person. Of course Bill Gates got up early…The light didn’t come on yet, but I think I was reaching for the switch at this point… The second time, it piqued my curiosity. The third, forth, fifth, sixth time…… it was clear that there was a trend. It seems that there is a connection between waking up early and success.

Now as a lifelong procrastinator and guru of sleeping as late as possible, I could have just brushed this off and say, “Nah, waking up early doesn’t work for me. I’m not a morning type of person because I work better at night.” Or, “It’s just all in the mind, you can be really productive any time you want to be...” However, just looking at my life and the results of sleeping in showed clearly that I was Thoroughly Wrong… Being tired all day from staying up late, sleeping in late and being late all the time wasn’t productive… I was too tired after work to get anything done, and with no time in the morning and consistently running behind all day, I wasn’t doing myself any good at all…

But I knew that until I really test this out for an extended period and give this my best shot, I couldn’t conclude anything. I had to try to know for sure. Just because my previous attempts to wake up early failed miserably didn’t mean anything and it certainly doesn’t mean that waking up early doesn’t work. Those attempts were always done without a serious intent anyway, which largely explained their failure.

A little side note before we go on…

A half hearted attempt at something means either you don’t want it anyway or you actually don’t want it to work at all to justify your own beliefs… If you are truly curious about anything, you will suspend disbelief and give it your best shot and if you are wrong you should admit it, even if you don’t utilize it, you can still admit that you are wrong… Don’t be a dick about things… You can say, I don’t get up early because I don’t want to without denouncing everyone who does…

On we go…

So you know the story, one of my 90 Day Life Change Challenge goals is to wake up early at 0500. I figured that if it worked, I’d cultivate an incredible habit that would aid me tremendously. If it didn’t, I could just discard it and return to waking late after the 90 days elapsed.

It wasn’t easy. I realized that waking up early is so difficult for many because it’s a holistic lifestyle change that goes beyond just changing your waking time. In the beginning, I failed quite a few times, rising at 0545 or even as late as 0600 a couple of times, but I never stopped setting my alarm for 0500.. I kept getting push back from myself and gradually over the expanse of a month, the habit began to form and the failures were fewer and then something really fucking weird happened… I started waking up a few minutes before the alarm… My bed time became 10:00 and sleep came easily within 15 – 20 minutes… This was unprecedented in my life… 55 years of being tired, being late and procrastination became early morning writing, exercise and showing up at work 5 to 10 minutes early… Organization skills increased, brain fog is never an issue anymore and my waking hours became shockingly productive… What I thought was going to be the hardest part of this 90 Day Challenge, became the cornerstone of its construct… There is no success without rising early in my life now. I became a morning person which is like saying that Dracula can become a day person…

In the ever present style of motivational writing here are some really good reasons to start waking up early… 

1. You Get a Head Start on Everything…

It’s like my life became this race to success and we all lined up and every morning I jump the gun and the judge never notices… I’m off and running way before he pulls the trigger so I am winning the race easily every day now… 

Of course, it can be argued that this is very subjective and entirely in my mind. It doesn’t mean that waking up early will guarantee an increased productivity nor does it mean that waking up late will lead to reduced productivity.

True and true. However, I believe that this psychological effect of having a head start has more far-reaching effects than people give it credit for. I’ve experienced it myself, not to mention that being a late riser often results in late sleeping and reduced sleep as you catch up on the work you missed out on because you were late, tired and disorganized..

2. A Serious Increase in Productivity…

My efficiency soars now that I wake up early. Simply a benefit that comes from getting a head start… I feel motivated to continue my lead, resulting in getting more things done and tasks getting completed faster. When I used to wake up late, I spent more time getting the same stuff done. I find this the oddest part of this whole idea… Say on a Saturday I get up at 0500 and spend the day doing my Life Change Challenge, chores around the house, shopping for the week, cooking for the week and spending time with my wife and daughter… I spend the day relaxed and get everything done with time to spare in the evening to chill out with my guitar…  I think it’s very much linked to reason #1 on getting a head start, which puts you in the right frame of mind to get big tasks done quickly. Now if I take the same Saturday and wake up at 0900 or even 1000 I spent the day doing the same things at a frantic pace, always pressed for time, always struggling…This difference is clear if you’re someone who has your to-do lists mapped out for the day. It’s something you have to try to know what I’m talking about, but 8 hours working from 0500 to 1300 is much different than 8 hours spent working from 1000 to 1800… Clearly different…

3. Morning Creates the Perfect Environment to Work Due to the Peace and Quietness of Solitude

Have you ever complained about not having any time to yourself? Ever felt like you never got to be you? All of us have struggled to get things done because the world invades our minds and takes our time away and usually it doesn’t have any reservations about doing it… I have the solution… Get up before the world gets up… I get up every day at 0500 regardless of the weekend or what time I went to bed. When I get up the world is quiet and I have at least two to two and half hours of complete solitude. If I do outside yoga, it’s just me, my yoga and some birds.. I exercise, blog, listen to music and relax with myself. I recommend this beautiful experience to everyone.  

4. Discipline, Commitment and Self Mastery

Waking up early is about self-mastery. As I mentioned above, there were many reasons that would prevent my waking early plans in the past. Reasons like working late, being out late, delaying my exercise till late at night, being on the phone… these reasons were a result of my lack of self-mastery. To wake up early, I had to learn to have a hold over these activities, which would mean becoming more organized and disciplined. Self mastery is commitment and commitment over time becomes discipline… Gaining control over your time is essential…

5. Again, You Have to Hear Me Talk About Exercise…

I’m gonna bet that you don’t exercise in the morning and always plan it in the evening... Does this exercise arrangement happen according to plan or does it sometimes get rescheduled or even cancelled due to last minute changes? Happily I would like to inform you that doing it first thing in the morning doesn’t get rescheduled because nothing is in the way… Waking up early gives you time to exercise in the morning. There’s nothing like a great workout to boost your day… To top it all off, you come home from an evening workout and eat, which leads to the couch, which leads to slower metabolism which leads to… Yeah, countering your exercise… Morning workouts lead to breakfast (unless you are fasting, which is even better…) and then activity which burns your food more efficiently… 

6. Finally, You Get the Privilege of Watching the World Wake up… 

I love my morning where I literally see the whole city wake up before me. I finish my exercise at about 0630 in the morning when the sky is dark and there are few people on the streets and few cars on the road. I witness the whole place coming alive. The human traffic increases as I watch people start their morning walks and the traffic becomes heavier, steadily. The sky starts to light up in different shades, first dark blue, then in gradients of purple, red, orange, and yellow, before long, sunlight starts to envelop the whole sky and the world takes on a very serene color. It’s a very beautiful experience. It’s amazing being an observer to the whole scene. I like to write as the sun comes up; it sets the tone for creativity… 

So listen… Get up early for a while… Not just a couple times and give up, let your body and mind adjust to it and you will see that the quiet, serene, dark world is a beautiful place… You can rest, heal and think before you have to be a dad, or a mom, or take on the title of your job… At 0500 in the morning, I am just bob (with a little “b” because I choose that…) and I can just quietly be alone with myself… It has been a long time coming, but I like me now, and I don’t have to be anything but that guy I like when it’s early in the morning…

Have an intentional rest of the day… See you tomorrow…

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge Update…  Sunday morning and the exercise was light, the requirements are few… It’s a day of rest with some squats and a yoga session… Isn’t that how everyone rests?

Love you like chimps love to sling their own shit… 

Day 62: Stopping the Negative Self Talk in Your Head... Yeah, Totally Possible...

 

Short and sweet today... It is Saturday and this old man needs to not get some things done but I wouldn't dream of not posting, after all, it is part of the goal, right? Not going to lie, this morning I wanted to quit... With two months down, everyone I know watching me to see if I can finish this monstrous task I have taken on, and I wanted to tap out... My alarm went off at 0455 and my first sensation was pain… My back hurt, shoulders ached and I had that feeling of being so tired you just kinda want to, sorta, yearn for the world to just ignore your existence for a few more hours… I slept for 8 more minutes and Lady Gaga again reminded me that she had a Million Reasons for me to get up… There were no games this morning, I didn’t count down, didn’t reason with myself, didn’t anything… I kicked my pillows out of bed, sat up and steeled myself for the blinding light of the bedside table lamp…  Stepping out of bed my ankle felt like it had two stainless steel pins in it (it does), my back screaming to remind me that there was no way in hell that I was going to do anything this morning…

Then the flood of bargaining started… I could surely blog this morning instead of doing that hated ½ Murph… I reminded myself that I actually like the ½ Murph… Well, my mind continued, it’s only 49 degrees outside so you can put off outside yoga until later, Right? Nope, by the time I finish this ½ Murph and my squat challenge it will have warmed up enough and I can wear a hoody, I said… But, my back hurts and I’m limping, I whine… I will stretch out good before I start, I said…  I’m tired… This will wake me up I reminded myself again… I groaned, but it’s Saturday, I have been doing this for two months and I can certainly write this morning, work on guitar practice and do all this shit later when I am feeling better… Right? I continued brushing my teeth, not paying much attention to the voices in my head… Suddenly, my mind burst out, YOU HAVE A PODCAST AT 9:30 AND THERE IS NO TIME TO GET ALL THIS DONE, YOU WILL HAVE TO POSTPONE EXERCISE! it triumphantly shouted… I poked my watch and it said 0528 and I laughed reminding myself that I could certainly do one ½ Murph, 145 squats and a ½ hour of Yoga in 4 hours… My mind went silent, brooding… I hesitated to see if it had something useful and it pouted at me as I fired up my television so I could run my timers and music…

I laid down on the floor to stretch out my back… I was stiffer than a wedding boner and immediately, it started… “See, you’re never going to get this loose enough to do a ½ Murph, maybe you can get it good enough to sit and blog and this will be better this afternoon…” I continued stretching and slowly it began to free up again and within a few minutes, it felt alright but the entire time I was stretching out, my mind was in free fall, saying everything it could to stop me… I stood up to start the timer for my 1/2 Murph and desperately, my mind whimpered, “at least go pee first…” I could feel myself trying frantically to find some way, any way, to delay starting that ½ Murph series…

I walked back in the bedroom, put my hand on the mouse and started the timer… As soon as I started the timer, My mind said, “well, you will never beat thirty minutes...”

Let me hesitate right here… I have been doing a ½ Murph for a about a year and the three goals I have for doing a ½ Murph are one, finish, two, finish in under thirty minutes and three, try to beat my fastest time if at all possible… Now I always finish and I have never exceeded thirty minutes… Occasionally, I beat my best time but that isn’t always possible… So when my mind said, you’ll never finish in thirty minutes, I knew it was grabbing at straws and would shut the fuck up soon… Or, at least until the ½ Murph was over…

I finished in less than 25 minutes and my mind congratulated itself like it never said I wouldn’t make it… Then it said, you know, those squats could be done this afternoon… I said five sets of 30 would go quickly… It said how about a couple sets now and finish up this afternoon? No, I said… I started squatting and it was silent for a while considering if I could indeed, do five sets… It rambled on like an angry drunk for three sets and then resigned itself to silence as I finished the fifth set…

Well, it’s much too cold to go do outside yoga as sweaty as you are… I sighed… I will put on my hoody and you know as well as I do, yoga will keep me warm… My mind rebelled, and said, you will catch a cold! I said, listen, that’s a stupid hillbilly myth, shut up… I went to the garage, opened the door and as soon as I felt the cool breeze on my skin and heard the birds on a quiet Saturday morning, I felt accomplished, successful and powerful beyond measure…

Does this sound delusional or is it an almost exact copy of the conversations you have with yourself that you lose almost every day of your life? Do you plan on exercising in the morning that turns into exercising in the evening that turns into exercising tomorrow that turns into doing absolutely nothing?  Exercising in the morning sounds great when you consider it the evening before… The next morning the thing that sounded like you were going to conquer the world, now sounds like you would rather not conquer anything except for your snooze button… Last night you were Alexander the Great of morning exercise, and the next morning you are the Genghis Khan of the snooze realm…

Why? Because you let your mind talk you out of it…

Yeah, I get it… But why are some people healthy, fit and kicking life’s ass and you are walking among the dead? That would have a rather simple retort… You’re weak…

Ouch…

I wish we candy coat that a little and I guess I could if I wanted to mute the blow, but I really don’t… I wandered among the walking dead for decades wanting, needing, pleading with myself, to please stop being so fucking lazy… Start, stop, start, stop… Plan, break the plan, plan again, and break it again… Give up, hate myself, start again, stop… It was a vicious cycle that I couldn’t break out of… I certainly didn’t want to be what I was and I was horrified with myself… Truthfully, I had so many problems that I could have solved if I would have just ignored the voices in my head telling me that it was too hard…

Listen, truthfully being in shape sucks sometimes… Eating a healthy diet sucks… There are times when I want to stop this nonsense of running on the hamster wheel of self improvement… I want to watch television, and drink beer while I’m waiting on my pizza to arrive… I want to sleep in, wake up, get stoned and lounge about the house in my underwear scratching my ass and looking into the refrigerator every 15 minutes not knowing if I am hungry or bored out of my mind…

I can’t...

That sounds good and then I remember how much I hated myself when I lived like that… No self esteem, no confidence, no joy… Always sick to my stomach, always tired, groggy, brain fog…. Why would I sacrifice what I have now for that? This is two hours a day and then practicing self control… I still hear the same arguments that you hear, except now, they aren’t valid anymore… They’re like a far off drum beat that I can tune out… The other life is a 24/7 fight that I lost every day, slowly eating away at my self esteem, confidence and self worth…

Pizza ain’t worth that…

Sorry to be so harsh but today a guy in the mall ask me what I was doing, because he said that I had an aura of health around me that he could feel… We discussed the struggle to stay healthy and he said he was fighting every day to keep motivated, so I thought about it all day and I wanted tell you CJ, the only thing I could come up with is that I stopped listening to the negative fucker that lives in my head. The voice that says I can’t, because I can… The voice that says I shouldn’t, because I should and especially  the one voice that claims conclusively that I will fail, because listen dude, I won’t fail… I fucking refuse to go back to that misery I used to call my life. That life that I settled for, accepted and hated…

I absolutely love the challenge life… Like my morning motivational speech says, “Give me 10,000 men and I defeat them with my heart alone…” So if that is true, what’s one voice in my head going to convince me of again? Not a damned thing…

Get. To. Work.

The 90 Day Life Change Challenge update.. Just did it… Day started trying to choke me out and I fought back, fought back viciously and knocked it out… You can too you know, it’s just a lazy voice in your head stopping you…

Well… Sorry, lied to you… That was going to be short and sweet and it turned into long and quite punishing… *shrugs* Sorry, not sorry…

Love you like Angelina Jolie loves weird sex… Have an intentional rest of your day!

See you tomorrow when we are going to talk about a very valid reason for getting up earlier…