If you want to set up your life for (1) success, (2) fufillment, (3) meaningful relationships, and (4) profoundly positive experiences, you must first change your habits and routines. It is the small things you repeat every day that determine the quality of your day-to-day life. Once I got in the habit of exercising, I became addicted to it and I now feel like crap if I ever go longer than 4-5 days without any exercise... which is how 90% of Americans are just used to feeling 100% of the time. A lack of exercise can cause me physical discomfort, lack of physical energy, lack of mental energy, insomnia, and even pangs of severe anxiety. Similarly, ever since I got in the habit of eating a 100% healthy whole foods paleo diet, I have had absolutely no sugar cravings. Now, if I eat junk food, I feel like total crap the next day... which was how I got used to feeling 24/7. I used to have several social anxiety disorder but exercise and nutrition were both instrumental in helping me cure my social anxiety disorder. I need to write an article about how I did that for other people who want to try completely eliminating their social anxiety. It takes a couple years of effort but it is most certainly worth it! Bottom line: if you want happiness and a stable and positively-oriented mood, you need your health and you cannot enjoy being in great health without exercise and nutrition.
So yeah, it only took me 22 years of failure before I found God and could believe in myself enough to follow through on living up to my potential. 22 years ago, I read Get Strong: Body By Jake's Guide to Building Confidence, Muscles, and a Great Future for Teenage Guys. Then I read other, far more insightful and powerful books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and, while I did grow from reading those books, you need more than books a few solid friends, and new habits to believe in yourself. For twenty-two years, I tried to have complete control over my diet but for 22 years I cycled between periods of eating 100% healthy and long periods of binge eating junk food and being unable to stop myself day-after-day-after-day. Having binge eating disorder when you are not overweight really sucks because no one thinks it is a serious issue since, "who cares if you eat too much junk food, you're not fat," but I could look great in the mirror and still feel like crap from just one night of binge eating... and lose an entire day to just feeling sick and watching TV all day. That used to be my life. Until God saved me. Now, after 22 years, I can write a compelling article about how terrible those years were but what they taught me and how they prepared me for what I need to do now. I am so excited!
It is nothing short of a miracle that I now have complete control over what I eat and how much I exercise. However, I do not have complete control over my nighttime routine yet.... and that is my most important routine due to the fact that your sleep quality is your life quality. Eventually, I will have control over all my habits, routines, and behaviors... and then I will become a true leader in my community and then online and across the globe. Someone like Tim Pool, Charlie Kirk, or Joe Rogan given that I will be engaging with college students and starting a podcast. That is my hope, anyway, and it is exciting enough of an idea to inspire me to make radical changes to many of my habits and routines.
Regardless, last night, I screwed up and did not follow my nighttime routine. Thus, I fell asleep with my shoes on and my legs hanging off the bed. I woke up at 11PM because I never moved my knees... I just woke up when my knees hurt too much from hanging off the bed and the pain woke me up. Very pleasant. Even worse, the two nights previous to last night I only got 3-4 hours of sleep (for different reasons) and I knew I desperately needed a full night's rest. So I used my weed vape to fall back asleep last night. Which sucks, because I am now in Alabama instead of New Jersey where it was legal. Many of the jobs I am applying to will require a drug test and I need to test negative for marijuana... and it takes 2-3 weeks to get out of your system. No prescription pills last the long in your system. So you're less likely to get caught misusing xanax than marijuana because xanax is out of your system in 2-3 days. So that's what making marijuan a schedule 1 drug does; it incentivizes people are self-medicated for PTSD to use pills instead of marijuana. When I become active in bipartsian political issues, I will address this.
It's not that big a deal that I used marijuana last night, since I did not decide to quit until last night. That same night, I woke at 11AM for the third night in a row, because I am too stupid to follow instructions until I fall asleep—I am too stupid to follow my step-by-step nighttime routine—and I decided one more day of using marijuana was worth it to finally get some freaking sleep! Regardless, I swear to you, my readers, that I will completely and utterly abide by my nighttime routine every night for now on. I also promise to start utilizing and upgrading my morning routine as well. I should start using my morning routine document right now, actually.
I do not want to write blog articles about repeatedly failing to make necessary changes to my habits and routines. That would make me pathetic, and I am competing with every other man in Tuscaloosa, AL to grow as much as possible. As far as I see it, all men are locked in a competition to see who can grow the most, and thus succeed the most in life. However, most people do not set goals for themselves because when they set goals in the past, they failed to achieve them, and could not figure out how to make themselves change their behavior in the manner they wanted. It is quite upsetting not to be in control of your own behavior, so mots people just stop setting goals. However, if you have no goals, that does not mean you are not losing in life. It simply means you are losing but have no idea what you are losing and why. For example, you are not saving money, you are in credit card debt, you are out of shape, you do not have as much physical or mental energy as you used to, you feel crappy all the time, and you have no idea how to effectively go about changing your habits and routines. These things can all be true, and you can still be happy with your life if you have high-quality friends and a decent career. However, you could be much more effective in every area of life, and be an inspiration to younger men, by taking control over your health and fitness today, regardless of your age.
I hope to publish approximately 100 articles over the next 50 days.
I wish to publish at least 5 compelling posts to my public-oriented self-improvement blog before I start sharing it with people.
I am still working on this self-oriented and partner-oriented self-improvement blog: by partner-oriented, I mean that when I look for accountability partners, I can show them this blog to prove that I have been updating the world about my self-improvement progress every day for months. (Wow, that will also be a great thing to put on my resume!) This blog has me so motivated to fix any problem I write about here, since I want to impress everyone I meet with how talented I am at overcoming obstacles to self-growth and I want to inspire as many young men as possible to come to my self-improvement small group meetings I hope to start here in Tuscaloosa, AL or to join the #SelfImprovementJourney movement online and start their own self-improvement journey blogs and vlogs. I want to put together a large group of people all with different priorities and goals but all of whom are obsessed with achieving a life guided by wisdom and thus a life that is meaningful, purposeful, and as fulfilling as humanly possible. I believe every problem in life has a solution, and I will prove it here! I will also prove it is never too late to turn your life around, and it always worth it, regardless of how difficult it may seem. Abraham was called out of his father's tent at the rip age of 80, wandered the desert, fought a tyranny, and became one of the most important historical figures in existence. There is a reason he was 80-years-old when he was called out of his father's tent and not 35-years-old or 45-years-old: it is God telling us it is never too late to "leave your father's tent" and go on your "Hero's Journey," as described by Joseph Campbell.
I am such a moron. I keep writing these posts in a stream-of-consciousness style rather than (1) deciding what I'm going to write about (2) deciding the unique value my article will provide (3) creating an outline (4) otherwise utilizing my talent for writing correctly. I really need to pick up some books on writing just to go back over my fundamentals. Then I need to take college courses so that I can get feedback from my writing from various different professors in the English department, professional writing professors in the business school, and, of course, and professors of education to see what their thoughts are regarding my new paradigm of education. See? When I just write stream-of-conciousness style without a plan, it's all ADHD, all over the place, and that's fine for journalling but not for an audience. So yeah, for now on, PLEASE ALWAYS CREATE AN OUTLINE AND PLAN OUT WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE BEFORE YOU ACTUALLY WRITE IT IF YOU WANT TO ACTUALLY BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AS A WRITER.
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