69. get specific
Sit down and make a list of the things you want the most. Make sure they’re specific. You want to lose weight; how many pounds? You want to get stronger; pick an exercise? You want to be a small business owner; how much capital do you need to start? You want to be in a relationship; what do you need to get someone to swipe right? It’s your world, so there is no wrong answer. It’s just that if we don’t have what we want, it’s probably for lack of focus.
Now take that list, and look at those specifics. What systems do you need to put in place or what variables do you need to change in your life to get you to the second part of those questions? That is where your attention needs to be. Most people get tripped up because they’re blinded by what they want, instead of focusing one what it takes to get there. If you take the time to put the necessary things in place that will deliver the result you’re after, you will be able to achieve it.
By focusing solely on the outcome, you lose sight of the small things that need to be done day-after-day. Pretty soon, you have little to no results, lose steam and quit. To get closer to what you desire, you need to get specific on what it takes to reach the larger outcome. If you show up everyday and consistently check off the necessary boxes you will be able to lose the weight, get stronger, start your business, have a relationship, or whatever it is that you’re after.
Get specific and have faith in the process.
68. default programming
If you’re consistently getting frustrated from getting the same results, perhaps you need to look at the story you’re telling yourself. If you take the same way to work, eat the same foods, watch the same shows, complete the same workout, or listen to the same advice as you always have, you’re running on default. Our lives consist of a few simple stories we’ve gotten comfortable with repeating over and over again. They’ve become our programming, and are the reason you’re experiencing the same results in your life, health, relationships, and business that you always have. The most interesting part is that because you’re telling yourself the same stories, the results are predictable.
This fact shouldn’t be discouraging, but liberating in the fact that you can change your life by telling a new story. By adding a new variable into your story, you can change the outcome and produce a different result. In fact, it’s really the only way to change. In terms of health, you can’t get well by telling the same story that made you sick, or unhealthy. You have to change your approach, and it starts by leaving your default narrative. If you want to lose weight or optimize your health, you’re going to have to revise what you’ve been telling yourself, whether it’s improving your nutrition, sleep habits, activity levels or better yet all three. Once you do, you’ll be distancing yourself from your old story by creating a new one in the process, and surprise, you’ll be on your way to a new healthier lifestyle.
Diving a little deeper, it’s an unfortunate truth that most people just want the outcome without having to create a new story for themselves. In doing so, they never rewrite their default narrative, but simply put it on hold to get a temporary result, then eventually put the weight back on. To affect long lasting change, you have to rewrite the whole story, both inside and out. You cannot simply change the external variables — nutrition, sleep, exercise — without also changing the internal variables — mindset, systems we have in place, stories we tell ourselves. This can be more difficult to address in the short term, but far more impactful to achieving the best quality of life you can. For example; if you’re trying to make healthy changes in your life, maybe as a child your parents rewarded you with cookies and cakes every time you did something good, or maybe every time you messed up, you were told to do something physical like mow the grass or chop some wood. It’s possible that you’re subconsciously equating sweets with reward, and physical effort (exercise) with punishment. So you will always derail your progress if you cannot address both internal and external variables when rewriting your story, and getting out of your default programming.
If you’re living your life through the story you’ve always told yourself, expecting things to change, hopefully you can now see why it’s not going to happen. To change, you need to get out of your default programming by rewriting the story you’ve been telling yourself.
67. lions, tigers, and bears. oh, my!
The news has been nothing if not a promotion of fear, alarmism, and anxiety. There is no real mention of how to actually take care of ourselves or how to improve our health. Why? All we get are message reminding us to social distance, wear a mask, stay inside, and hold out for a vaccine because this virus is so bad. Maybe it’s so bad because no one has any clue of what it is feels like to be healthy. But the facts are that Corona disproportionately affects the metabolically challenged and immunocompromised the most, a.k.a. the least healthy among us. Not surprisingly, both of these conditions can be exponentially impacted with positive lifestyle changes. Yet, we hear nothing of value, just how bad it’s getting.
At the beginning of each News broadcast, you’ll hear these frightening statistics — 800,000 deaths and 24,000,000 cases world wide! (Lions, tigers and bears OH MY!) Why not tell people that around 95% of the cases are mild, with only 3% being serious, and less than that being deadly? Why is fear the best option? Newsflash, it’s not. Stress induced states of mind lower our immunity, but I’ll play the game. Here’s some scary statistics: globally, 60 million people die every year. Locally, the latest mortality report from the CDC stated there were roughly 3,000,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2017. That breaks down to around 650,000 people dying from Heart Disease; 600,000 from Cancer; 80,000 from Diabetes; 50,000 from Suicide, just to name a few. And the scariest fact about that is these things are largely preventable! Where are the daily updates for these? Why has Corona been chosen to be the “crisis” that it is? Better yet, why are you waiting until now to think about your health?
66. life is too easy
Life is too easy. We’re all suffering from a deficit of physical challenge, exposure, and adversity. Modern life simply isn’t hard enough to promote optimal health. We sit too much. Move too little. Spend too much time indoors. And graze on “food” far too frequently. Our lives have become so easy that it’s detrimental.
We no longer need to hunt, gather, expose ourselves to the outdoors, fight or flee to survive, and rarely are we ever truly starving. Virtually everything our ancestors struggled for is now readily accessible to us. We’ve taken complete advantage of our ingenuity, and shifted away from the necessity to actively survive. Our bodies are inadequately challenged and our health is paying the price. The environment we built to serve our desires for comfort is failing to challenge our original programming past down from our ancestors. The stressors that made our species thrive are no longer applicable. We basically live in a zoo of our own creation.
If we wish to optimize our health we’re going to have to get out of the zoo and back into the jungle. This isn’t to say that we need to go live in a tree, but that we need to reintroduce ourselves to a little bit of discomfort. Everyone from Ancestral Health enthusiasts to Exercise Scientists understand that challenging the body in almost any form makes us stronger individuals — both in body and mind. We need to add some adversity back into our lives. Physically challenge our bodies by engaging in activities that push us to move in different ways. Expose ourselves to some of the elements by sweating in the sun or catching a chill from the ocean. In a sense, adversity nourishes the resiliency we once had, and without it, we will surely lose. It may be unpleasant to get started, but in the long run we’ll be better off.
65. emotions are just a gauge
The emotions we feel serve as a gauge for what is happening in our life, not as a guiding light. Just like the gauges on your Uber drivers dashboard allow us to know how fast we’re going, how hot the engine is running, and how far we’ve traveled. Emotions are feedback from the situations we find ourselves in, letting us know that things things are or aren’t working out well. However, it is a mistake to blindly let emotions dictate your responses to those situations.
There is a protocol pilots know about when they’re in flight called “flying on instruments,” which basically means the visibility outside the plane is so low — due to fog or various other types of inclement weather — that the only way to continue flying is to rely on the instrument panel they have directly in from of them, instead of a clear line of sight. By doing this, a pilot surrenders a certain amount of control over the situation to what the instruments are telling him. Emotions arise in a “stormy” situation, just like the need to “fly on instruments” during inclement weather. But, when you let emotions take over, you can’t clearly see the situation for what it is. You relinquish the control you have over choosing to objectively see how things are impacting your path forward, blindly letting your emotions control your way forward, just like the pilot on a stormy night.
You don’t blame the air speed indicator for how fast or slow you’re cruising through the air. You know the speed you’re traveling is controlled by how much pressure you give to the handles providing the thrust. You don’t blame the fuel indicator for running out of gas. You know you need to put in a certain amount of fuel to get you to go where you need to go, or you’d fall out of the sky! The gauges are like emotions. They simply let us know how things are going.
Letting your emotions run the show is akin to flying on instruments, also known as “flying blind.” It’s a reaction to the moment you find yourself in, but it’s very hard to land a plane successfully. That storm of emotion doesn’t always allow you to make the best decisions. It’s easier to fly on a clear day because clarity in action allows us to see the best route forward.
Allowing the emotions that arise from getting flipped off in traffic or being reprimanded for poor work performance should not serve as a guide to your next action, but to gauge that your actions aren’t in line with what you should be doing. Letting anger, shame, resentment, embarrassment, etc. dictate the response to a situation is equivalent to trying to land a plane blindfolded. You’re blaming the symptom for the root cause of the problem when it could simply be that you’re actually a terrible driver or aren’t as productive at work as you think you are.
It’s a difficult matter to confront, but we all need to be check from time to time, because that is how we grow. Besides, isn’t that better information? Choosing to be offended because someone nonverbally suggested that you’re a bad driver is insignificant to the actual understanding that you many actually drive like shit. Choosing to resent your boss for bringing up that you failed to hit you numbers is irrelevant to the understanding that you are in control of your performance. The former state of mind keep you where you are, while the latter enables you to grow.
This is why emotional awareness is key on your journey to becoming the person you wish to be. Allowing the feelings that come up during any given situation to dictate your response is only going to keep you a slave to those emotions. All experiences are learning experiences. Learning to let those emotion serve as a gauge that something needs to change, instead of a green light for your first thought of action, will produce a much more powerful outcome.
64. excuses
We all want something different, yet we’re too scared to try. Instead of facing fears that allow us to become who we want to be, we insist on making excuses. The problem is, all excuses are valid. It’s a trap anyone can fall into. For example, I often hear “I want to lose weight, but I can’t eat like that” or “I wish I could look like that, but I don’t have the discipline to go to the gym.” While I appreciate the honesty, it’s really a bunch of bullshit. What these people fail to understand is that they are more interested in looking for a way out, than a way through. If you want something different, yet you are too afraid to do anything other than what you’re doing, you’ll never be able to achieve anything more than what you have.
They say things like:
“Oh, but Ryan, you don’t understand my situation.”
“Would love to eat better, but it costs too much money.”
“That sounds great, but there isn’t enough time for me to workout.”
“It must be nice to have great genetics.”
“Let me just get through today, so I can worry about that tomorrow.”
If you’re looking for excuses, the list is endless.
If you’re caught yourself making statements like these, you’re more attached to your excuses than you are committed to being deliberate and intentional about your life. A simple and fundamental law of life is: you get to keep what you defend. If you think you need a specific amount of money to start eating better, you’ll always find cheaper options and declining health. If you feel that you just aren’t disciplined enough to make room in your schedule to incorporate a small amount of daily exercise, you’ll always live a less than optimal life. If you believe it’s not possible to be a certain weight or look a certain way because your parents dealt you a bad genetics hand, you’ll continue to be that person. If your mindset is founded on excuses that keep you from moving forward, then you’ll always be where you are, but it’s okay because you’ll always have an excuse.
63. what is love?
The opposite of fear is love. To love is to be without fear on your unpredictable journey through is life. It is an indefatigable belief in whoever bears the object of your affection. That they will always show up for you, and never doubt who you aspire to be. Most of us gain our concept of love from our parents, but their methods of love may have been expressed more like fear than love. Their anxiety and worry could have held us back from trying new things because it meant we might take a different path or be something different than what was intended. In that sense, fear looks, feels, and sounds more like control. Love on the other hand, feels like unquenchable fulfillment. It is unconditional understanding and acceptance. It is a willingness to trust that, together, things will always work out. It is unconstrained and unbridled. Love is just “being” in the moment, with no past or future worries. It is freedom.
62. money isn’t freedom
People say they want freedom. To most, that means the ability to go and do whatever they want without the burden of having to worry about money. It sounds nice, but it doesn’t make you free. The thing is, money is like an ocean, it ebbs and flows. There will always be enough, but there is only a finite amount of things that can truly fulfill you, or love you back. Giving up on something you’re passionate about will never make the world a better place. Settling into a life where you have to trade what fulfills you for money will never make you free. Yes, you’ll have money to escape the life you chose, but wouldn’t it be better to build a life you don’t need an escape from? Freedom comes from finding something or someone you love, that fulfills you, and allows you to be You.
Freedom isn’t about what money can buy, it’s about the intangibles. It’s finding love, passion, support, fulfillment, and chemistry from something that you want to escape to, not from. Yes money can take you places, but it’s never going to get you closer to what you need. Finding that thing, or that person that delivers those intangible emotions with intensity is freedom. That is not to say we don’t need money to take care of things, but at what cost are we willing to “pay”? Staying in a situation that doesn’t make you happy, that isn’t working for you, that hasn’t worked in the past, or is causing you to miss out on something far more fulfilling for a chance to be financially stable isn’t freedom, it’s servitude. How long do you want to continue paying off a debt you don’t owe? It’s not easy, but it’s a choice. You want freedom? Find what you love, and never look back because the money will come.
61. stop complaining
It’s all about where you place your energy. If you are always thinking about how much you dislike something, you will be consumed by the complaints and negative thoughts. In doing so, you are not giving yourself the freedom to think about how to overcome the situation. It’s a spell that’s only broken by taking ownership of whatever it is that’s causing you to complain, choosing to see that you have the power to control where you place your energy, and understand that what the world is giving you is just a reflection of what you’re putting out. If it’s always complaining and negativity, you will continue to see the world as a victim. Whereas, if your energy is focused on creating a better world for yourself, then that is what the world will award you with.
It’s about where you place your energy. If you are always thinking about how much you dislike something, you will be consumed by the complaints and negative thoughts. In doing so, you are not giving yourself the freedom to think about how to overcome the situation. It’s a spell that’s only broken by taking ownership of whatever it is that’s causing you to complain, choosing to see that you have the power to control where you place your energy — into complaining or into overcoming, and understanding that what the world is giving you is just a reflection of what you’re putting out. If it’s always complaints and negativity, don’t be surprised if you continue to be a victim. But, if your energy is focused on creating a better world for yourself, then that is what the world will award you with.
I used to believe this line of thinking was bullshit, but the more I shift my energy, thoughts, and emotions toward what fulfills me, the more I feel I am able to achieve.
60. you never get today back
If you’re not careful, occasional enjoyments like watching Netflix can turn into a chronic activity that fills your free time. The result is a lost opportunity to take action towards the life you want to lead, the body you wish to have, or the person you need to become. By choosing idleness over effort, you fall slave to your weaker impulses. Spending time watching TV, or any wasteful activity, means less time exercising, reading, writing, or working on your dreams. You are exchanging your future fulfillment for temporary pleasure. There is nothing wrong with enjoying your free time, but if it is consistently taking the place of putting in the necessary effort to fulfill your dreams, you are effectively trading your future for entertainment. And Tiger King was not that good!
Be mindful that the habits you choose to live by should be built upon the person you wish to become, So, be sure to use the time you have to your advantage because you never get today back.
59. i hope you fail
Improvement in any endeavor is based on thousands of tiny failures. It is never easy, but it is necessary because the magnitude of your success is based on how many times you’ve failed. Wondering why you’re not as far along as the next person, is a waste of time, as that energy could be better utilized on creating your next opportunity. If someone is better than you, it’s because they have taken an opportunity, and failed more than you have. If someone is worse than you, it’s probably because they haven’t been through all the painful learning experiences you have.
I’ve failed plenty of times, but I can honestly say I’ve learned something from each opportunity that I taken. I have been saying I wanted to write for at least 10 years. I’ve started at least a dozen different blogs or websites over that time and failed every time. Either because I didn’t know what to write about, or I wasn’t getting the feedback I needed, or it just wasn’t good enough. All of that led me to the website I have now. Will it work this time? We’ll see. I hope it does, but if not, then I know the next one will be that much better.
58. let go
Holding on to past traumas or emotional stress can be the limiting factor when it comes to successfully overhauling your life and setting the stage for long-lasting change. Without doing so, you will be sabotaging your progress. Freeing yourself from negative thoughts is just as important to sustaining weightloss or reversing disease as improving your nutritional habits or removing toxic chemicals from your body. This is because the body and mind are connected. You literally need to detox emotional negativity from your mind in order to bring about the physical change you seek.
Unfortunately, overcoming the negative thoughts that hold us back is an overlooked aspect of the process of implementing healthy lifestyle change. Perhaps, it’s because the hardest thing to do is look in the mirror and confront ourselves, but without doing so it’s easy to fall back on our old ways and hinder our progress. Confronting your demons, and letting go of the past frees your mind from the stress of emotional baggage allowing for physical manifestations of health to occur. Without this alleviation, emotional stress — whether past, present, or future — has the ability to affect the body the same way that physical or environmental stressors can.
All forms of stress affect our body the same. Negative thoughts stimulate stress hormones (like cortisol) that impact our detoxification pathways, digestion and nutrient uptake, the bodies capacity to heal efficiently or defend against viruses (like the RONA), our sleep habits and patterns, our relationships with others, energy production, and just about everything else you can think of. The stress you’re causing yourself, by continually replaying things you cannot change over-and-over in your mind, slows or shuts down many biochemical processes in an effort to deal with the stressful situation your body thinks is going through. And those are just the the physical manifestations.
Negative emotions can also affect your mindset. If you’re unable to “get over” what is bothering you, it will result in self-limiting beliefs such as anxiety, hypochondria, worthlessness, failure, pessimism, and depression. All of which can undermine your most earnest attempts at improving your life and health because they can turn on the stress response. It’s really a vicious cycle that is worth the pain of confronting, so that you can lead a better life.
So what can you do about it? It is easier said, than done, but…
Acknowledge that it happened. Accept that it cannot be changed. Forgive those involved. Move on and be Grateful for what it made you.
How you do it is up to you. You can talk to someone, or even yourself. As part of my coaching, I help people construct a new narrative to live by on their way to a healthy lifestyle. But for me, it’s writing. Which I recommend for everyone to at least try because it’s a way to get negative thoughts out of my head, and put them somewhere else so they aren’t able to get to me anymore. It’s a cathartic experience, where the process of doing it is far more important than the product. It doesn’t matter what you write down, so much as that you do, and when you do, you feel a sense of relief that it isn’t running around in your head anymore.
57. inadequate nutrition
Why do we get fat? The simplest answer is that we’re eating food that we know we shouldn’t in quantities higher than we should. But why am I always hungry? Well, at a certain point gaining weight is a symptom of inadequate nutrition. If your body found what it needed to function in the food you were consuming, then you would no longer be hungry. Problem solved!
Unfortunately, the hyperpalatable, over-processed, chemical-laden, mystery concoctions we classify as “food” these days are all deficient in the nutrients we need. And because of that, our hunger stays elevated. Essentially, we’re hungry because our body is continuously searching for nutrients the food we’re consuming doesn’t contain. It’s a cycle of your body saying “feed me”, and when you do it says “wtf is this, let’s try again.” Think of trying to complete a puzzle — you need a certain piece but keep getting pieces you don’t need and instead of throwing them away you have to stack them on top of the existing pieces, eventually there’s way more than you need and you still have a missing piece. When this happens the weight starts to rise alongside things like inflammation and metabolic dysfunction that create more issues.
The mechanism of hunger is designed to help regulate nutritional requirements. When you need vitamins, minerals, or other nutrients, hunger serves as your guide for which foods you should be eating, when, and how much. Once those baseline nutritional requirements have been met, the hunger stops. But, if the food being eaten lacks the adequate nutrients the body is looking for, the mechanism of hunger never really shuts off and you expand horizontally. Therefore, weight gain is a reflection of your nutritional status. To lose weight, start eating more satiating food!
56. social engineering
In the early part of the 20th century, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and their biggest of baller friends believed that society was overflowing with less than desirable people — “feeble minded”, physically defective, disease ridden, and everyone generally from a lower station that didn’t make for good workers. So, they decided to implement a program of systemic change called, “eugenics.”
The purpose of eugenics was to eliminate bad genes from the gene pool, in an effort to create a better society. In other words, reduce the population of undesirable people. The approach and philosophy of eugenics was to incorporate all means possible to elevate desirable traits in humans, while decreasing those with undesirable ones. Unfortunately, that meant killing off people that didn’t measure up to the standard, or at least keep them from procreating. That included diseases, chemical sterilization, pacification through lifestyle modifications, and anything else that provided them with the leverage necessary to carry out their ideological plan.
Led by the Rockefeller Foundation’s Science of Man Project, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation, they made no secrets about their beliefs or intentions, as they openly talked about their contempt for the common man. They influenced government policy, set up medical research institutions among other things. Rockefeller and Carnegie poured money into Caltech, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, and the University of Chicago to study how best to reengineer man.
They pursued their agenda in full view of the public for decades, until the term fell out of favor. The term “eugenics” was tarnished after discovering the atrocities carried about by Germany in WWII. Never faded, Rockefeller & Friends decided to rebrand. Eugenics became known as “social engineering.” Sound familiar?
The influence of the policies laid out by Rockefeller & Friends during the early part of the 20th century set the bar for the system we currently find ourselves in. Although the message is never relayed truthfully, it’s hard to deny the institution of large scale massive control that sucks the health, life, and liberty out of everyone you know. Straining the financial stability of all and weakening the solidarity of the masses through things like the promise of vaccinations, social distancing, social tracking, weaponizing fear, the continual dumbing down of people with immediate gratification, destruction of immune systems through the promotion of inflammatory diets, and no mention of how to improve health other than wearing a mask, stay quite, and stay inside, all seems like it fits the narrative of “social engineering.” But maybe I’m crazy.
The same protocols implemented in the early 20th century can be seen today: Diseases; metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, and the RONA. Chemical sterilization; pollution of our air, water, and food is evidenced by our catastrophic drop in fertility rates over the 50 years. Pacification through lifestyle; panem et circenses.
conflict leads to resolution
Conflict is necessary for growth. without it you will never be able to find resolution. Whether emotional, monetary, physical, or anything else you’re confronted with, conflict acts as the universe’s way of revealing you to yourself. It acts as a mirror to show you that your current path isn’t working. When you love someone but they break your heart, or you find yourself overweight to the point that you do not fit into something that you should. That is conflict. No amount of information, or glaring signs along the way can bring you to the realization that something needs to change quite like a moment of conflict. It’s painful, but necessary.
Coming to a realization is the most painful part of the process. It’s why most people fail to progress because it’s hard to look at who you are, all you identify with, and tell yourself you need to be someone new, or be with someone else. We all wish it were easy. We all want the “happily ever after” without the pain of being confronted with conflicts, but it needs to happen. You need to feel the heartache. You need to see experience the discomfort. Only then will you be shaken out of your paralysis of complacency.
Think about a fairytale that goes like this… There’s a fabulous kindle with the most beautiful princess and handsome prince who decided to get married and live happily ever after. These people would make the absolute fucking worst dinner guests. How could anyone relate?!
Conflict brings awareness to our transgressions, and leads to our eventual resolution. It’s a necessary part of everyone’s journey in life, love, and health. When we think back, never do we regret a moment of conflict. Instead we embrace it as a turning point in our life that allowed us to take the first steps of who we can be. Don’t waste your moments. Use them to find a better life for yourself.
look both ways
The Law of Attraction says you should only focus on what you want to attract, but that is the quickest way to be unpleasantly surprised by the bus that hits you as you’re crossing the street to pet that cute puppy. It’s good to focus on what we want, but to get there we must be conscious to the reality we live in.
You don’t need to dwell on the dark side of things, but you need to be aware that they exist. In doing so, you can navigate through life effectively — e.g., look both ways as you cross the street, and live long enough to get your own puppy one day. If you’re able to hold onto a sense of awareness, along with the intention to create a better life for yourself, then the dark side can be kept at bay. You will always be one step ahead of the proverbial “bus.”
data over dogma
If you come to me with a problem, I can tell you how to solve it and show you why, while another “expert” can show you something completely opposite and present you with “evidence.” So, who is right, and what should you believe? Today, it’s increasingly harder to answer those questions because the other guy is saying the same thing.
It seems we have arrived in a world where there are no real facts, only dogma presented as truth. There are studies to support literally any viewpoint, most prove very little, but are used as a statistic to elevate one side of the argument above another. A large part of the problem is that people are more concerned with being right, than effective. In other words, what they’re selling is more important than the results.
There is only what is true and what isn’t, right? How could it be any other way? I don’t know. Somewhere along the line we lost the ability to tell the difference. Choosing what feels “right” versus what is correct. We now follow advice based on the emotional appeal, instead of rational speculation. Because we make decisions based on our emotional attachment, if it challenges us, it must not be true. We believe what we want because we can always find what we need to support it, and that is comforting. We have abandoned truth, and with it we’ve abandoned authority an authority on any given subject.
If nothing is true, then no one can effectively debate the narrative critically because there is no real basis to do so. All becomes a spectacle. The biggest wallet can afford the most blinding lights. Just as the loudest voice can deafen the most diverse thought. It’s dangerous. We are all aware of how much corporate influence has one what we are told to think about our health, and even politics.
No longer do facts about your daily life matter. All that matters is what you believe. It has been dubbed the “post-truth” era. The narrative we choose to follow separates people, just as much as it unites people under a different banner. Truth means both sides can’t be right. Blurring the lines of what truth is, so that the emotional attachment becomes paramount means that anyone can be “right” simply by the depth of their convictions to a cause, not their merits.
I agree, it’s fucking confusing. The facts should remain the facts. Only from there can we build a foundation which can elevate all people. We all want to belong, to have a special connection, to live our best life, and sometimes it takes coming to a painful realization that we were wrong about something we have believed so strongly in. It is a necessary process of transformation that is profoundly lost. If no one knows where to find truth anymore, where does that leave us? I have no answer other than for everyone to take complete responsibility for your life and your health.
Unfortunately, this whole scenario has the ability to lay the foundation for terrible ideologies to arise. Not because they’re better than any previous beliefs, but since facts don’t matter it’s all about baffling people with bullshit. Whoever screams the loudest must be right because they are getting all the attention. If we don’t have access to the facts, nor can we tell the difference when we’re being misled, we can’t expect to ever find the right answer. If there is no barometer in which to measure the “hose of knowledge” that is the internet, there is no facts to live by. If there is no facts to live by, there can be no foundation to build upon, If there is no foundation to build upon, then everyone will just gravitate toward whichever dogma fits their narrative the best, whether it’s true
what comes out is what’s on the inside
Your reaction to anything is the most powerful thing you can control, because it will influence all future events in your life. As Viktor Frankl, a man who survived the worst of the Nazi prison camps, said, “it is the last of the human freedoms to be able to choose how we act in any given situation.” Whatever happens to you, you have the ability to choose how you respond.
Whether you get fired, dumped, lose something, or get cut off in traffic, it’s important to remember that all these events are distinct They often pass as quickly as they happen. The problem is we often can’t let go of the feeling they created. We choose to hold on.
You never die from a snake bite. It happened. You die from the venom. The lasting impact of the event that created it. If you cut yourself, the natural process of the body is to heal. It doesn’t remain open as it would be subject to greater complications. When something happens to us, it is the choice, the holding on to the pain the event caused, not the event itself.
Holding on to the pain we’ve experienced can only manifest in negative emotions. Those negative emotions do not let our “wounds” heal. Instead, they create larger problems by influencing our future decisions. Pretty soon you start to think that it’s not you, but it’s other people, or things that happen to you, that re causing you to feel those negative emotions, but those outside events can’t create those internal feelings. Those feelings come from within. We’ve chosen to react in a certain way, by holding on to the pain we’ve been caused.
What comes out of you is what’s inside of you. Ask yourself the following question — if you squeeze an Orange, what comes out? It’s not a trick question. The only acceptable answer is Orange Juice.
Extend that metaphor to when someone “squeezes” you. Someone says something you don’t like, behaves towards you in a way you find offensive, does or says something that you perceive as hurtful, and out comes anger, bitterness, callousness, fear, hatred, resentment, stress, anxiety, or tension. Immediately, you say that you’re feeling this way because of how someone else acted toward you, or what someone else said, or did, but in reality — what comes out is what’s on the inside.
If we have chosen to hold on to the pain of our past, it will always be there to remind you the next time something similar happens. We have to make a conscious choice to respond to the challenging events in our life in a way that will allow us to heal and be open to the future we wish to have. Don’t let yesterday, take up too much today, because that’s how we build tomorrow.
health begins with you
The implicit message centered around achieving health is that “if you do what you’re told, everything will be fine.” There are no shortage of government mandates, guidelines, and recommendations to keep you “safe” and “healthy.” Most people buy into the mainline narrative around safeguarding their health with little hesitation or thought into what is being recommended. I often wonder what needs to happen for people to take responsibility for their health. We’re experiencing both an epidemic of obesity, and at the same time, a pandemic that proportionately affects metabolically challenged people the worst. AND YET, people still fail to take full responsibility for their health. They falsely assume that someone else has it all figured out because it was reported on the evening news.
If these people get sick, it is never their fault because they listened. They did the low-fat, high-stimulant, low-protein, high-carb, and moderate exercise regimen. It failed them, and because of that they are a victim. They’ll say; “society failed me, that is why I am in poor health.” When in reality, they are in poor health because they failed to take responsibility for their actions. This is the same line of thought that people cause people to ask their doctor for medication’s, instead of searching for a cure. It’s outsourcing your health.
I’m assuming this attitude of victimization developed in childhood where all of us were forced to sit, read, and learn to regurgitate information with the promise that if we did, we would have good life. However, I think current events should dictate that responsibility should be taken in all avenues of life. I don’t know anyone who became successful at anything by following someone else’s plan. To be successful in life it is very hard to follow someone else’s map. Similarly, I don’t know anyone who presents as a vision of health, who follows the governmentally mandated dietary guidelines, or fad diets.
We are all so uniquely different that having one general guideline about how to eat, or how to live your life is never going to work towards building a healthier future. We need to get away from being victims of circumstance. We need to take responsibility for our health. We need to take what works and get rid of the rest.
You have an obligation to yourself only. You can only change yourself. You shouldn’t let other people dictate what you should be doing, or tell you who you need to be. You have to take responsibility. You have to decide what is best for you. True health improvements always begin with I, not we.
failure is a signal for change
In our effort to change, we often get derailed. We think that because we failed all we need is to exert greater effort or persistence. That may be true, but it could also signal that it’s time to change tactics or strategies. Rarely, should failure be a signal that we’ll never be able to succeed in our efforts. For example, imagine you find yourself with a half eaten donut in your hand on your way home from the gym. Should you come to the conclusion that you’re unable to stick with the nutrition plan laid out by your wonderful trainer? Or should you realize that since it’s too difficult to resist the temptation of stopping in the donut shop when you see that “hot light”, you should probably change your route home?
The first conclusion serves as a discouraging departure from progress that your are trying to make, whereas the second creates a solution that serves as a corrective guide, allowing you to refine your strategy. Creating healthier habits can be as simple as changing your environment.