Our conscience speaks to us through our “gut” feelings. We get these feelings quite often, for example, when we meet someone new, we might think, “Hmmm, I don’t know why, but I really don’t trust this person.” That is your conscience speaking to you.
We might expect to hear words and direct guidance, but this is not how it works. These gut feelings are meant to guide you. Your conscience will create these feelings while your mind puts them into words.
Your conscience is always guiding you through life, but we often ignore it because what your conscience wants you to do is often what is hardest for you. We know what we really want in life, but it is still hard to strive for because of resistance that comes in the form of laziness, procrastination, and talking ourselves out of what we know we must do.
Life becomes simple when you only listen to your conscience. In each moment your conscience will guide you on what you should do. There is no need to overanalyze or overthink. Just take each moment as it comes and listen to your conscience.
Conscience congruent living is following and listening to the feelings that your conscience produces and nothing else.
This is the simplest (but not easy) way to go through life. All you have to do is listen to your conscience at all times and you would never go wrong. You would get whatever you really wanted out of life. Your life would be in a consistent state of flow, and you would be walking the path of life that was meant for you.
But this is not often the case. We want to lose weight, but then we eat fast food instead of something healthy. We want to have more money, but then we go and buy things we don’t need. This is cognitive dissonance; you do the opposite of what you really want and what your conscience is telling you to do.
Cognitive dissonance is what causes anxiety, depression, and regret later in life.
When we spend our lives doing the opposite of what we really want, we will constantly be looking toward the future in fear, or anxiety. This fear of the future is caused by being out of alignment with our conscience in the present moment, and our mind is showing us the future we will have if we keep up with these out of alignment actions. We will get depressed because we are in a constant state of hurting ourselves by doing the opposite of what we really want. We will feel all of the symptoms and not know why. When it’s because deep down inside we know that we should be doing what we really want but we aren’t. The regret comes later in life. We will grow old and look back at our lives and realize we didn’t accomplish what we really wanted because all we did was sabotage ourselves through this cognitive dissonance.
When you rid yourself of everything that causes regret in your life and you listen to the call of your conscience, you walk your path.
When you do begin listening to your conscience and ridding yourself of what you regret, your path becomes very narrow. Not narrow in the sense that you will fall off if you slip up but narrow in the sense that you know exactly what you must do without many variables. Regret is your conscience telling you what not to do, so if you get rid of everything that your conscience tells you not to do, and start implementing everything it tells you to do, you will know exactly what must be done.
Try to pinpoint exactly where these feelings come from, and your mind will try to convince you that it produced them. Your mind formulates what your conscience produces. For example, our conscience will make us feel like we need to lose weight, eat less, or eat healthier, but our minds will put them into words so we can better understand them.
Our conscience can be labeled as a few different things: it can be the voice of creation, God, our guardian angel, or all of these things which could in turn truly only be one thing with different labels. Regardless, I believe that these entities are speaking to us to help guide us on our path through life that we are supposed to live. We are simply an instrument of this higher power, and the way it guides us is through our conscience. Our conscience never lies to us, and it would never lead us astray. Our conscience is something more powerful than we are and we must follow it. Some cultures believe that your conscience is God speaking to you. I agree with this idea, these feelings that our conscience produces, do not stem from our minds, they come from something much greater than us.
Listen to your conscience and nothing else, eliminate what you regret from your life, and walk the path your conscience provides for you. We get so confused about what we should do with our lives, but the answer is inside us and is revealed to us moment by moment. Stay present, stay aware, and walk your path.
To help fix this issue we must do two things
1. We must reconnect with nature. We are just as much a part of nature as a tree and staying inside all day is not good for us. We must allow ourselves to be engulfed by nature.
2. We must do the things we love doing. Do something you love doing that you normally don’t do. We often get caught up in our daily lives with work, kids, and other obligations that we tell ourselves that one day when we have more time, we will do the things we love. Stop waiting for the perfect time and do them now.
I am not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but there are three things I do that have significantly helped my mental health. These are not replacements for therapy, but they can help.
Journaling
I discovered journaling a year ago and I have been hooked ever since. In my humble opinion, journaling is like a form of self-therapy.
I have found that when I write about past events in my life and then write about how I felt about them, I am able to move past them much easier. Furthermore, if you have trouble talking to others about your feelings, or you do not like to, your journal is the perfect place for that. I find that when I talk about my feelings and get them off my chest and onto paper, I feel much more relieved, and then I am really able to reflect on the feelings and can work through them.
Journaling also helps get your thoughts out of your head because you can take your thoughts and put them on paper. This helps you reflect on these thoughts and process them correctly.
The last major benefit of journaling is it helps you work out your problems. I find that if I write out a problem that I am dealing with, I am much more likely to figure out the best possible solution. I believe this is because I am taking the problem out of my head and putting it on paper in written form and I can physically look at it now. This helps your mental health because you no longer have to sit and stew in your problems and wonder how to fix them, you just fix them and get them out of your head.
Meditation
This one is very hard for me to fully describe all the benefits, but I truly believe this is one of the most important things you can do to keep your mind healthy.
When you become better at meditation you become better at handling your mind and your thoughts. It is hard for many people to simply sit with their thoughts, and I believe it is because their thoughts just run rampant in their minds. Meditating will help you handle your thoughts no matter how crazy they get.
When you can handle your thoughts, you can better handle the feelings associated with mental health, like anxiety.
Exercise
Exercising is what gives you a fighting chance against things like anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions.
Whenever you start feeling these emotions, get your heart rate up! Burpees, jumping jacks, jump squats, or literally anything to get your heart rate up will help fight off these emotions, and prevent them.
I like to run and work out right when I wake up to rid myself of any anger, anxiety, or depression first thing in the morning. This routine also helps ward off these emotions for a few hours. Then later in the day when that wears off, I’ll do a quick little workout to refresh my high vibe.
When you work out, your raise your rate of vibration to a level where these negative emotions simply cannot exist.
I believe these three things; Journaling, meditating, and exercising, will help you and your fight against any mental health issues. These are not replacements for therapy, but I believe they are a good supplement to add-in.
I suggest implementing them at a small level that will allow you to do them daily. Good luck!
Gratitude is a highly spoken about topic. An aspect of gratitude I think some people forget about is that gratitude is something you show through action. You are what you DO, not what you SAY. If you only say you are grateful, but don’t do anything to show gratitude, I believe you are missing out on a big part of what gratitude is.
Everyone is grateful for their lives, their health, and their things, but what are they doing to show their gratitude?
Gratitude is action, so if you are grateful for your life what are you doing to show it? Are you living each day to the fullest? Or are you stuck at a job you hate? Are you doing the things you love to do? Or are you wasting your life away by doing things that leave you unfulfilled? Are you doing things to extend your life that you are grateful for?
If you are grateful for your health, what are you doing to show it? Are you exercising, eating right, and treating your body like the most high-tech vessel this world has ever seen? Or are you skipping all of the aforementioned activities because you don’t have time for them and enjoy eating fast food too much?
If you truly are grateful for your health and life, you would do things to show it. You would take care of your health by eating right and you would exercise to extend the life you are grateful for.
Next time you say you are grateful for something, ask yourself, “What am I Doing to show gratitude?”
Use gratitude to find positivity in every situation.
Gratitude is one of the best tools we can use to flip the aspect of any situation. Any time you are in a situation that you find negative, difficult, or truly tests you, use gratitude to FIND something in that situation to be grateful for.
Look for that reason no matter how hard it might be. It won’t be easy, and it won’t change the reality of the situation, but it will change your mindset of the situation which is just as powerful.
When you find that reason, you will no longer see the situation as a hindrance, but rather as something good for you.
True gratitude will bear fruit.
If someone is truly grateful for something, you will be able to tell.
Since gratitude is action, you must be doing something towards that for which you are grateful. When you do this, eventually things in that area will develop or grow in some way.
What I mean by this is if you are grateful for your health, you will do things to show gratitude and you will see yourself become very healthy. If you are grateful for the ability to run, you might show your gratitude by running every day, eventually, you will become a great runner. If you are grateful for your spouse, you will do things to show that gratitude and develop a great relationship. If you are grateful for your dogs, you will feed them the healthiest food and walk them, and you will therefore have healthy dogs.
The list goes on and on, but the point is simple, whatever you are grateful for, the fruits of your labor will bear fruit.
The past is just a memory.
The past only exists in your mind as memories that have no power over you unless you give them power. If you give them power and let them affect you, they can completely alter your current mood.
Do not forget about the past, instead, acknowledge that what happened has happened. Then accept that nothing can change it. Then understand that you are not that memory, it’s just something you experienced and detach from it. Then let it pass through you. Inhale and fill your diaphragm when you first notice your mood changing and then exhale. If the memory comes up again, repeat the process, eventually, it will pass.
The memories that still cause you pain will alter your mood because when those memories come up, the pain attached to them also comes up. When you have fully detached from negative memories, they will no longer affect your current mood
- “You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” – Alan Watts
If you have a character trait you dislike, think back to this quote. Acknowledge, accept, forgive yourself, then detach from that trait and live this moment, the next moment, and all future moments as a better person.
The future is just an imagination.
Just like the past, the future only exists in our minds. Thoughts of the future can also heavily affect our current mood. We either think of an extremely positive future and get happy, or we create negative scenarios and get anxious.
Creating negative scenarios is a problem because they affect us the most and create anxiety. The scenarios you have created may not happen. Nothing is certain and these scenarios aren’t real, they only exist in your head.
Prepare for the future, but do not fear it. Handle what events are taking place now to the best of your abilities and let the future come when it does. If you live every present moment as best you can, the future will reward your hard work.
The present moment is the only reality.
What we experience through all five of our senses is the only reality, everything else is just in your head.
You are most powerful now and what you do now decides your future. If you do positive things now the future will reward you positively and if you do negative things, you will be rewarded negatively.
When you fear the future, your mind is showing you your negative path based on what you’re currently doing.
If you are smoking weed and watching TV, but worrying about bills, your mind is showing you what will happen if you continue to smoke and watch TV. However, if you were working on a side hustle, you would not be worried about bills because your mind would show you what would happen if you kept working.
- “How you live your days, is how you live your life” – Annie Dillard
You create your future through each present moment. Whatever you want your future to be, you must do it now.
Do you want to be a writer? Write now!
Do you want to be a millionaire? Act like one now!
Do you want to be a doctor? Go to school now!
Do you want to be in shape? Eat something healthy now!
As long as you keep living each present moment in alignment with the future you desire, you’ll get there.
Stay present, stay aware, and be as powerful as possible now.
#1: Daily actions
Confidence is something that you must earn DAILY. Your level of confidence for the day starts off low, but through action, you can increase it.
You increase your confidence each day by the actions you take that are in alignment with your ultimate vision of yourself and that are aligned with your top values. If you wake up and start getting into alignment-based action, you will build up confidence after you complete each task.
My morning routine is filled with tasks that are aligned with my top values. After doing these tasks, I start feeling the confidence build up. If I did not do them, I would not be as confident that day.
Confidence is something that must be cultivated daily through action. Find tasks that are aligned with your top values and vision of yourself, then figure out how to incorporate them into your day to increase your confidence.
#2: Becoming your ultimate self
Your baseline level of confidence is the confidence you would have if you did not do anything to earn it for that day. This is determined by how long you have been living in alignment with your vision of your highest self. When becoming your highest self, you will become someone you respect. When you respect yourself and what you are creating, you will have a higher baseline level of confidence because you respect what you are. This self-respect is where the confidence stems from.
If you see yourself as being in better shape, but have not done anything to make that happen, you will not have as much confidence. If you followed your vision of your highest self and started losing weight you would naturally have more confidence.
I respect people that are in great shape and have a body full of tattoos. Over the last few years, I have been working on both those aspects, I have lost weight, got in shape, and have tattooed a lot of my body. I now walk around with a higher baseline level of confidence because I am what I respect.
Figure out what you respect and admire and work on becoming that.
In Conclusion
Confidence is something you must earn daily. If you want more confidence do things that are in alignment with your values and the highest version of yourself.
Your dreams, goals, and aspirations, do them for others.
If your goal is weight loss, do it to inspire your friends and family so they can lose weight.
Follow your dreams, so you can lead by example when you tell your kids to follow theirs.
Create an individual you respect and admire so your friends, family, and children have a respectable role model in their lives.
Use the thought of others to hold you accountable and keep you motivated. When you do this, the other people become part of your mental team.
Look for depth.
What will keep you going is the depth behind your why. Depth gives you an infinite supply of reasons to keep pushing when you feel like giving up. As deep as you can take things is as far as you will take them.
Superficiality can only take you as far as the surface.
Always look for a deeper meaning behind what you do.
Much of what we write as beginners will not have an immediate effect on our writing journey. We will post something on Medium or our own blog and nothing happens. This does not mean that our posts are pointless. Once we write something, it’s already out there in the Universe causing ripples in our lives.
I like to look at each thing I write like I’m adding a snowflake to a snowball that’s on a hill waiting to get big enough to start rolling. Our writing careers aren’t moving like the snowball at first, but each time we write something we are adding a flake to the snowball.
The snowflakes we add may vary in size. If what we write really challenges us, we complete a big project, or if something we write blows up, then I consider these bigger snowflakes. Things like comments, social media posts, or less challenging writing, are just smaller snowflakes, but still effective.
I like to believe that eventually, all the snowflakes we’ve added up will cause that snowball to start moving. It could take one year of writing or a lifetime of writing before it moves. It could take one piece of writing or one thousand before you get movement, but as long as we don’t give up and keep improving, it will move.
The movement could represent anything and it’s unique to you. That initial movement could represent something as small as making your first dollar from writing or getting 100 followers on Medium. As long as you keep adding snowflakes, who knows, that snowball could get so big that one day you could write something for a million dollars.
The bottom line is this; don’t stop. You never know when your snowball will take off and how big it could get. Take it one piece of writing at a time and let’s keep growing and improving as writers.
The importance of grocery shopping
If you don’t want to eat out for every meal, then you must buy groceries. The food you bring home determines what you will eat. All of the food you bring into your house from the grocery store and eat, is going to affect your body in some way. When you are hungry all you will have is what you brought in from the grocery store. If you avoid bringing in unhealthy processed junk food, then when you do get hungry, you won’t be forced to eat unhealthily. If you bought a lot of processed junk food, then when you get hungry that is what you will have to eat. If you bought a lot of healthy options, then when you get hungry you will eat healthily.
Make sure the food you bring in will affect your body positively.
You are what you eat.
Tip #1: Plan for the week ahead
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
If you go into the grocery store without a plan of what you need to buy, you will waste time by aimlessly browsing. This will lead to two things; you’ll end up buying what you WANT, instead of what you actually NEED, and you will not want to go grocery shopping because of how long it takes because of the aimless browsing.
Aimless browsing leads to pointless buying.
Keep it simple! If you are new to meal planning, then plan for 3 square meals a day, 7 days a week, for a total of 21 meals. Decide on a healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner for every day of the week. If you don’t buy enough food for 21 meals, you will leave holes in your plan that will most likely get filled by fast food. Do not do this.
Personally, I plan enough meals for 8 days and try to get in the store on day 6 after my last trip to the grocery store, so I have wiggle room in case my food runs out and I can’t make it to the grocery store.
Tip #2: Avoid the snacks
If you want to save money and lose weight, ditch the snacks! Snacking is the worst thing you can do if you want to maintain a healthy weight.
We eat snacks because we are bored. We get bored and sometimes go straight to the snacks. This pointless grazing of snacks will just add inches to your waistline over time, so stop!
We eat snacks because we think they will satisfy our hunger. Snacking doesn’t actually satisfy your hunger. If you are hungry and you think that grabbing a bag of chips will help you, you are usually left disappointed and hungrier. All those chips did was kick start your appetite.
Once you pick them up, they are hard to put down.
Just don’t buy them! I know how pointless and detrimental they are, so I never bring them into my house to avoid the temptation. Make losing weight easier by not buying snacks.
How to plan for the week
*DISCLAIMER* I am not a medical professional; this is just how I ate to lose weight and how I maintain my body weight. In my OPINION, you need all of the macronutrients (fats, carbs, protein) in your diet, however, keep the protein the highest and fill the rest of your calories in with fats and carbs as needed.
First, plan for your protein. Pick out the proteins you will have for all 21-24 meals. I think it’s important to have a healthy source of protein at each meal. I like to eat eggs for breakfast, chicken for lunch, and either chicken, steak, or ground beef for dinner.
Next, plan your carbs. Carbs are tricky because everyone has different opinions on carbs, all I know is that while I was losing weight, I ate carbs and I still continue to eat carbs. Carbs are in a lot of food, so if you don’t want to cut them out of your diet, just eat them in moderation! My go to carbs are oatmeal for breakfast and rice and bread for lunch and dinner depending on the meal.
Lastly, fats. You need some fats in your diet. Keep your fats low while still feeling energized and eat them sparingly for maximum weight loss. My go to sources of fats are peanut butter in the morning with my oatmeal, and then I will toss some shredded cheese and mayo on my food for lunch and dinner.
Eat as many veggies as you want! In my opinion, there are no rules for veggies, just eat as many as you want.
In Conclusion.
The food you bring into your home is what you will eat and will affect your body, so be very picky about what you bring in. Make sure to plan for the week and avoid the snacks!
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You must love yourself first.
When you love yourself, you will fill the void of emptiness. Not until YOU do this, will anything make you feel love. Once you fill that void you can truly feel love and genuinely love others.
How much love you have for yourself will reflect in all of your relationships. If you don’t love yourself, you will not give love to people because you don’t know what it feels like, and you don’t have any love to give away.
When you love yourself first, you can give yourself an infinite supply of the most sought-after feeling. You can be your biggest source of love. You can fill your cup and then give the overflow away.
Imagine this; everyone you meet tells you how beautiful or handsome you are, but no matter how many people tell you this, you still feel ugly. Not until YOU think you are beautiful or handsome, will you believe it, no matter how many people compliment you. It’s the same concept for love. Not until you love yourself will you be able to feel love from or even be able to love others!
Do not rely on others.
When you don’t love yourself, you may rely on others to give you that feeling. Relying on others to love you is unfair and makes you a victim to circumstance. It is unfair to the person who you are expecting to love you because you just gave them an impossible task. You are expecting them to fill the void with their love which will never happen, only you can fill the void. You become a victim to circumstance because now you think that this person will be your source of love.
What if they don’t love you?
What if they stop loving you?
You put yourself at their mercy and make them the source of your love. At any moment, this person can be taken away or walk away and there goes your source.
You are always there for yourself.
If you rely on others to make you feel love, you are expecting someone who might not always be there, to always be there for you, and to provide you with the feeling of love. Since you were a child there has always only been one person by your side no matter what. That person is you. It has been and will always be YOU.
At the end of the day, you are the only one you can rely on to be there for you. There is no guarantee that your significant other, parents, or any other loved one will be there for you. Things happen, people can die, and partners can leave you. No matter what happens in life you will always be there for yourself, if you love yourself, you will always have a source of love.
In conclusion;
Self-love must be a priority. When you love yourself, it will reflect in all areas of your life and make your that life much better. Be your biggest supplier of love!
My Weight loss Transformation
You!
Yes, you are your biggest obstacle on your weight loss journey. You are the one who does not want to stick to a diet, you are the one who does not want to work out, and you are the one who is tired of eating the same food.
You must get out of your way.
When you are in your way, you let your feelings and actions slow you down. Each time you have to argue with yourself or convince yourself to do something like working out or sticking to your diet, you are causing unnecessary hardship for yourself. When you choose to skip a workout or cheat on your diet, you are slowing yourself down!
Once you get out of your way, your path becomes much easier. Instead of making everything you have to do to lose weight an argument, step back, get out of your way, and look at it differently.
Change your mindset
Instead of looking at the healthy food you are going to eat as something you have to do, think of it as something you get to do. The food you do not want to eat while dieting is the food someone from an impoverished country wished they could eat.
Instead of thinking about how boring the food you eat is compared to all the other processed junk food you used to eat, think about how this food will actually allow you to live longer. Think about how this food will actually provide you with energy. Think about how this food will allow you to live life more fully instead of slowing you down with all the processed chemicals.
Instead of thinking about how you might not want to work out, think about how you get to work out! There are thousands, if not millions of people, who are unable to exercise. It might sound mean, but the people who are wheelchair-bound would do anything to go on that run that you are trying to talk yourself out of.
Using your body for what it is designed for is a privilege, not a right. Be grateful you get to make your body stronger during a hard workout.
Instead of thinking about how hungry you are, think about the people in this world that are actually starving. You are just hungry from eating less food. When you are on a diet you can still eat 3-5 square meals a day of nutrient-dense food when there are people out in the world who might not even get one meal a day.
Stop the self-sabotage
Self-sabotage is when you let your desires take you further away from your goals. When you overindulge in snacking, you are sabotaging your real goals of weight loss. When the weekend comes and you decide to go out and have a bunch of beers, that is self-sabotage. When you do not feel like working out, so you skip the gym, that is self-sabotage. When you go out to eat with friends or family and you choose to get a big portion of something unhealthy, self-sabotage.
Any time you self-sabotage you are stopping yourself from attaining your goals. You must stop letting your desires keep you from reaching your goals
In conclusion
You are your biggest obstacle in your weight loss journey.
Get out of your way.
Change your mindset.
And stop the self-sabotage.
Exercise is the best way to cultivate positivity in your life.
Most people have heard the quote, “You reap what you sow.” When you exercise you are doing something positive for a certain amount of time. That time spent doing something positive will always be repaid to you with more positive time. If you spend one hour working out, somewhere down the line of your life you will be rewarded with one or more hours of positivity.
This reward can be dished out to you in many different ways. You can either be rewarded with living longer or by being able to go to the beach without being self-conscious about how you look and truly being happy and present.
The most direct and obvious way that you will be rewarded for exercising, is through the rise in your vibration following the workout.
When you work out you raise your rate of vibration the most effective way known to man. This increase in your vibration will last for a few hours directly following your workout and you will gain clarity and productivity from this increase. While you are thinking clearly and being productive, you will continue to do more positive acts, thus cultivating more positivity in your life.
You can create a positive feedback loop for cultivating more positivity in your life.
And one minor benefit is the time you spend exercising is time that you cannot spend doing something negative.
In conclusion, the amount of time spent exercising will be rewarded back to you with more positive time. You will be rewarded with a few hours of an increased rate of vibration, clarity, and productivity following the workout, and then a few more hours of positivity possibly later on.
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Dieting, in my opinion, has developed a negative connotation. When people think about dieting, they think about how much it is going to suck, how much they will dislike it, how they are going to be miserable, and how they are going to starve, all negative thoughts attached to dieting. When people think about dieting, they also know that it has a start date, an end date, and a detailed plan.
What happens when it ends? If you want to maintain the weight lost from a diet, or sustain lifelong healthy body weight, you must change your eating habits! So, in order to maintain that healthy weight, you must look at your eating habits. I feel that a lot of people view healthy eating as dieting and thus think negatively about it. Eating healthy is something that everyone should do and is not the same as dieting. Eating healthy all the time is how people with healthy body weight, maintain healthy body weight. They are not on a diet that starts and stops. They just eat healthily as much as they can. When you develop healthy eating habits, eating healthy becomes second nature and no longer something you dread doing. Like any other habit, start small! Changing your eating habits can be a lifelong process, so make small healthy changes over time. |
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Karmic debt is the amount of karma you have accrued in your life from doing negative things that has not yet been repaid. Karma cannot always be repaid all at once, especially if you have done a great deal of negative things in your life. Now, these negative things can be big or small. They can be as small as being rude to people, thinking very negatively about yourself or others, or just any minor negative acts.
Karmic debt gets built very quickly when you do many of these minor negative karma actions. All of the minor things I mention earlier are extremely easy to do compared to something like murder, but they still have karma attached to them and it will get built up.
All of these little actions will not have as major of an effect on your life as something like the karma attached to murder. These minor things manifest themselves in different ways.
One way these smaller karmic debt actions manifest is through “bad luck.” I do not believe anything happens by chance, there is always a cause, no matter how small. The trivial things you do to accrue karmic debt most of the time manifest as inconveniences which is the cause for your “bad luck”, while the major negative things manifest themselves in large ways.
The karmic debt you get from being rude or mean to someone can manifest itself by causing you to relive that moment over and over in your mind for the next few hours and leaving you in a negative state of mind. When you are in a negative state of mind you will attract negativity, and this can also cause your negative karma to manifest. And this is what leads you to attracting “bad luck.”
If you do the opposite of what I mentioned earlier and now you are kind to everyone, you will be rewarded by feeling positive for the next few hours and attract more positivity and attract “good luck.”
The bottom line is this; all of the small negative things you do can quickly add up to a large amount of karmic debt, this karmic debt will cause negative things to happen to you and cause your life to be much harder because of the ways the karmic debt will manifest.
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I want to preface this by saying I am not here to give you advice. I am by no means a relationship expert, nor do I know more than anyone else. However, in my six short years of being married, my wife and I have been through the ringer and there are three things I have learned that I would like to share.
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The first thing I learned is that you and your partner will know exactly how to push each other’s buttons in order to get the other one riled up.
You and your partner will constantly be pushing each other’s buttons either intentionally or unintentionally. The fact that you know each other’s biggest triggers will lead you both to test each other and these tests are so important to your personal growth, this leads me to my second point…
Relationships are meant to help BOTH partners grow as individuals.
Those tests from your partner to get you to react are there to help you grow. How you react determines your growth this far into the relationship. When your partner does something to trigger you and you completely overreact, this just shows what area you need to improve in. When they do it again (which they will) and you no longer overreact, that is your growth.
You will also grow as an individual because you and your partner should both do your part on calling the other one out when they do something that is unpleasant. Things that cause resentment or unpleasant behaviors should be called out right then and there, on the spot, and stopped. As long as you and your partner are calling each other out on behaviors that one does that causes resentment, you and your partner will both slowly get rid of your unpleasant behaviors.
The third thing I have learned is that every couple has problems and the couples who last the longest are not couples with out problems, but the couples that work through their problems.
I can only speak from my experience on this. My wife and I have been in a relationship for eight years. To many people, it looks like we are a perfect couple that does not fight, just like most other relationships. Most relationships look perfect when viewed from the outside and this is where a lot of confusion comes from. People see a couple and think that they are perfect and never fight, so they think that their relationship should be the same. This is wrong. My wife and I give off the perfect couple vibe, but we are the farthest thing from a perfect couple. We have fought and been on the verge of splitting up, but then made up, more times than you would believe. I have done so much damage to our relationship that would end other relationships. We have problems, every couple does, we are working through our fair share just like the other couples that last.
To summarize my three points:
-You and your partner know exactly how to get under each other’s skin to test each other either intentionally or unintentionally.
-Relationships are meant to help both parties grow.
-Every couple has problems, and the couples that last the longest are not the couples without problems, but they are the couples that work through their problems.
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Nobody has a choice on what they do and do not regret. If you do something that causes you regret, you cannot just choose to not regret it. Regret is one of the most powerful feelings. Regret will tell you what not to do in your life. If you regret eating unhealthily, regret will let you know not to. If you regret skipping the gym, regret will let you know not to skip the gym. If you regret being a jerk to your loved ones, regret will let you know not to be a jerk. Regret will always be there to let you feel it when you do something you shouldn’t do. It is that simple how regret works. Regret is there to teach you how to act and what things you need to change.
Anxiety is what you feel when you look too far into the future in a negative way. You are looking into the future in a negative way because most of the time the current action you are doing is negative and it’s your minds way of showing you where you’ll end up if you continue doing said action. Your mind, body, and soul are going to make you feel anxious. They do this in order for you to get up and get into positive action. When you get up and do something positive, you are being extremely powerful in the present. When you do positive acts in the present moment you are creating a positive future, so anxiety is there to make you get up and do something positive to create a positive future.
Depression is when you look at the past in a negative way. Just like anxiety, depression, is there to put you in the present moment. There is nothing you can do about the past, so your mind, body, and soul are there to get you up and do something in the present moment to create more positivity.
Also, when you do positive acts, your brain produces certain hormones that actually boost your mood, like, dopamine. Kind of coincidental how that works right? You do something positive now, to create a positive future and your brain rewards you, kind of crazy.
In conclusion, regret is there to teach you what you need to start doing or stop doing. Anxiety and depression are both there to get you back to the present moment and do something positive in the current moment.
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We all have a vision (or should) of ourselves at our highest potential, or at least a slightly better version of ourselves. You might see yourself as more in shape, more tattoos, or acting in a better manner. And even if you have not developed this vision, your subconscious mind still knows you could be better and will try to get you there.
Your conscience is always talking to you through out the day. Every little thing you do and every choice you make, your conscience is right there talking to you.
Your conscience will talk to you in every moment and every situation, however, hearing it, listening to it, and trusting it takes time.
To hear it you must become aware of it, and you can gain this awareness through meditation.
When you look in the mirror your conscience will always be telling you to do something to your body to get it to look better. All of these things it is telling you are superficial, but the most obvious. When you change these things and start listening to your conscience, you will notice them much easier than other things your conscience is leading you to do, because they are more obvious. This will create the trust in your conscience because you listened and noticed a very obvious change that might not take as long as other things.
After doing this enough times you will soon be able to hear and trust your conscience when it is guiding you towards a goal or a choice.
Your conscience will only have you do what is most difficult because whatever is most difficult for you, will create the most growth for you. This is where everything starts getting hard. When you are actually in a situation, and your conscience is telling you to make the difficult choice, the little voice in your head will tell you to take the easy route. It is up to you as to what choice you make; you can choose the difficult one and get the most growth, or once again choose the easy option.
In conclusion, your conscience is essentially your higher self, and its purpose is to guide you to get you to where it is. You must build awareness to first hear it, then, you must listen to it for trivial things, after you are aware enough of It and trust It enough, it will guide you.
When you learn BJJ you are learning how to defend yourself, fight, and stay calm in uncomfortable situations. Learning how to fight gives you confidence because you know that if it came down to a fight you would be ok and you would be able to handle yourself. If you are a man, any interaction between another man has the potential for violence and knowing that you will be ok gives you confidence.
You also get the added benefit of learning to be comfortable in close, tight contact with another human. Most people have never been in a situation where they are being held down or smothered by another grown human. By doing BJJ you get comfortable with that kind of situation and once again if it came down to a time where you in this situation, you would be ok.
2.You become a lifelong learner.
Practicing BJJ gives you plenty of room to grown and learn, this will in turn push you to grow and learn as an individual. BJJ has a never-ending list of techniques, counters, and reactions to practice and master. You can practice the same technique on 100 different people and get 100 different reactions. This gives you something keep coming back to, to learn, practice, and master. Humans benefit from having a hobby or an activity that requires hours upon hours to improve and master. When you have this activity that keeps you learning, that drive and motivation you feels spills out to every area of your life. And with something so deep as BJJ you will continue to learn into old age and keep your brain fresh.
3.Discipline
Learning BJJ will give you discipline. When you first start going, you will get beat by everyone. You will not want this to happen, so you will find things to do off the mat to help you get better. You will want to go to class everyday in order to get better. You will want to do extra cardio in order to have better endurance. You will want to toto the gym to get stronger. You will want to eat better to perform better. Everything that you do off the mats will affect how you perform on the mats, so whenever you feel like slacking off, you will think twice because the motivation to get better will keep you disciplined.
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The two biggest driving forces for humans is sex and food. These are the most primal of urges and desires and the hardest to have discipline over. If you can control these desires, you will level up to a degree not many can reach.
When it comes to food and eating it is very easy for people to overeat and eat nothing but junk food. Not many people have the required discipline to not fall victim to their desire to eat unhealthily. How do I know? Look around, how many in shape people do you see? I’m not trying to be mean or offend anyone. I was once fat and out of shape, so I know exactly how hard it is to try and gain control of your eating habits.
Everyone has a certain level of discipline. This level may be higher for some and lower for others. There are only a few chances people get throughout the day to practice being more disciplined.
Eating is one of those chances. Every time you eat you are testing your discipline. You are either raising your level of discipline by eating food that is good for you, or lowering your discipline by once again eating unhealthily. Every time you eat it is a chance for you to give in to your temptations and overeat or eat unhealthily.
Most people when they are trying to break a bad habit or get a bad habit under control it is “very easy” to distance themselves from said bad habit. Eventually they can break it with enough time away from it. When trying to fix bad eating habits it’s much harder because you cannot distance yourself from eating because we must eat to live! Every time you eat it’s like playing with fire, can you control that flame or is it going to burn you?
So, every time you eat and choose to be disciplined, you’re building your level of discipline. Each meal is an exercise for your discipline, and when you choose purpose over pleasure, you just raised your level of discipline.
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Living in alignment is the best way to rid yourself of fear, anxiety, depression, and any other low vibrating emotions.
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The first part of being in alignment begins with your thoughts. Thoughts are the most powerful things humans have. Anything that was ever invented or created, at one point was just a thought in someone’s head. So, if you are constantly thinking about your vision and all the ways that it will work out, the power of your thought will find a way to guide you to creating your vision. Your thoughts are the first step in any action. Always think that your vision is working or will work, and you are done with the first step.
Your words must also be in alignment with your vision. You must only speak about how your vision will come true. If you talk down on your vision, or talk about how it wont work out, you will create doubt and take your self out of any alignment you might have had. It does not matter if you are joking, the Law of Cause and Effect does not care. Talking about your vision in a negative way will attract what you say about it. When you talk about your vision in a positive way and only talk about how it will work out, you are bringing your thoughts one step closer to reality by recreating them in audio form. Only speak about how your vision will work and the Universe will hear.
Your actions must also be in alignment with your vision. You do this by doing things that take you closer to your vision. Your actions are anything that you physically do. Every action you do will either get you closer to your vision or farther away from your vision. The action may only be one small step closer or farther, but it still moves you in one direction. If it moves you closer, you are in alignment. If your goal is weight loss, eating healthy and exercising are actions that are in alignment, while actions like overeating and skipping your workout are out of alignment.
Lastly, your feelings must be in check. You must feel as if your goal is already achieved or that it will be achieved no matter what. You cannot feel any doubt that your vision or goal will not be accomplished, if you do, you will attract that which you feel. Feel as if the thing has already happened or feel that it will happen, any feelings that go against this will lead to a massive delay in the manifestation of your goal or vision.
When you think, speak, act, and feel out of alignment, you are neutralizing the manifestation process. Neutralizing will cause you to delay your vision or cause you to never achieve it.
To recap.
-Your thoughts, words, actions, and feelings must all be in alignment in order to manifest your vision or goal.
-Alignment means to think, speak, act, and feel in away that takes you closer to your vision.
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In this blog we will be talking a lot about personal development. We will discuss nutrition for weight loss, exercise, meditation, self help techniques, and much more!
I hope to connect with others who are the same path of finding inner peace as well as those individuals who are trying to improve themselves in all aspects of their lives.
My goal is to publish a blog every Friday for you guys and gals and see where we end up! Thank you for reading this far, have a good day!
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- Weigh yourself every day. When you weigh yourself every day it makes you aware of your daily weight as well as keeps you accountable to your weight. Many people refuse to weigh themselves over the years and then they gain a lot of weight because they get scared of seeing the scale go up. When you weigh yourself everyday and if the scale is going up, hopefully you will make the choice to do something about it. Use the scale as a tool to accurately track your progress. At the end of the week find the average of your weight for that week. Add up all your daily weights from the last seven days and get the average for them. This weight is the weight you can say you weigh. Your body weight varies from day to day, so it can be tricky to see if what you are doing with your weight loss journey is working. If you can get a solid average from that week you can use that weight to track your progress. Do the same thing the following week and then compare your average weights, if your weights are moving in the direction you want to keep doing what you are doing, if the weight is not moving in the correct direction you need to change something.
- Track everything you eat. If you are trying to lose weight, you need to accurately track the amount of calories you are ingesting. Just because you think you are eating less calories, it doesn’t mean you actually are. Eliminate all of the guesswork from your diet and accurately track your calories. When you are accurately tracking your calories you can accurately make changes to your diet if your weight is not doing what you want it to do.
- Eat the same foods every day. Now this one may only apply to some people, because other people might be pros at meal prepping. Tracking calories is very tedious, so if you eat the same thing everyday you can safely assume that the calories will be the same and you can input the calories into your calorie tracker faster and easier. Also, eating the same thing everyday will make your meal prep much easier. When you eat the same foods every day you will get into a really smooth groove of meal prepping and find more and more efficient ways of doing it. When you try to cook many different things it can cause your meal prep to get too complicated, and possibly cause you to stop.
- Do cardio for time. When beginning a cardio routine it may be hard to figure out where to put it in your schedule. If you do cardio for time you can easily cut out a specific amount of time in your schedule to fit your cardio in. If you wanted to run three miles everyday your times may vary from day to day depending on how you are feeling that day, but if you say that I am going to run for 20 minutes everyday, no matter how sore you are, 20 minutes is 20 minutes. Also, if you do cardio for time it makes it possible to do different types of cardio that can’t be measured by distance. I started out jump roping for 20 minutes, if I would have been married to the idea of doing cardio for distance only i would have never thought about jump roping for cardio. Lastly, the American Heart Association suggests doing cardio for 120-150 minutes a week, so if you divide 150 by seven you get 22 minutes (rounding up). 22 minutes is a super do-able everyday.
- Be consistent. You have to apply all of the tips I have pointed out EVERYDAY. You have to do them everyday until you hit your goal weight. If you only do them every other day or only when you feel like it, you wont get anywhere. Weight loss does not happen overnight. It takes weeks and months to get to where you want to be, if you give up and stop being consistent you will not achieve your goals.
- Stretching. Stretching is often something that gets neglected once you graduate middle school P.E. Stretching your body will allow you to stay limber and mobile. I believe that anyone can stretch no matter how bent and broken they are. Depending on how stiff you are it will take more time to get mobile, but anyone can do it. Before I started stretching I was unable to sit criss cross, now after stretching for a year I am finally able to sit criss cross and this alone has changed my life. Before anywhere I went if I didn’t want to stand I would obviously need to sit in a chair. Now that I can sit criss-crossed, I just feel like a whole new world has opened up to me because I can actually sit on the floor. If you are able to sit criss cross you won’t be able to relate, but I used to be envious of people who were able to sit criss cross because I was unable to for years.
- Resistance training. This is something that mostly everybody does but there are those who neglect it for whatever reason. When I say resistance training I mean doing an exercise with the goal of building muscle or getting stronger. This can be done through body weight exercises like pushups and pull ups, through cable machines, barbells, resistance bands, and dumbbells. Basically anything that makes you use your muscles. This also has been shown to decrease the rate at which our cognitive ability declines, because as we get our muscles pumped up it causes blood to circle throughout our body including our brain. If you don’t want to be weak into old age you need to use your muscles and you can do this anyway you want. If you use them you won’t lose them!
- Cardiovascular training. This is another thing that many people do, but there are still a great deal of people who refuse to do it. Your heart is a muscle and if you don’t train it, it will get weak. Having a weak heart will lead to many many health issues that can be easily avoided. The American Heart Association recommends doing between 120-150 minutes of cardio vascular training a week. If you do it everyday (which I suggest) you only have to do between 18-22 minutes a day (rounding up). This is not a crazy amount and is very doable. Now when it comes to doing the actual training there are so many forms out there, so just find something that will elevate your heart rate and that you can sustain for 18-22 minutes a day. One way to tell if you are doing something at the correct pace is that you are still capable of having a conversation with someone who is standing next to you. You should be breathing hard, but not too hard to where you can’t speak to someone with minor strain. The way I regulate my cardio is that I only breathe through my nose. If I can’t breathe through my nose that means I am going too hard and need to tone it down a bit. I’m not going to list them all but here are things that I do for cardio; burpees (slow steady pace), jump roping, running, and jumping around my living room just to get my heart going.
- Eating clean. I’m no expert on what is the best diet out there, but I do have just a few suggestions to what to eat and to find out if what you’re eating is good for YOUR body. First, which is the most obvious, cut out as much processed foods as possible. One way to tell if what you’re eating is processed is to ask yourself if the food you are buying has a marketing department. If it does then it is most likely processed, but this isn’t always the case so do use common sense. Next you have to ask yourself how you feel after you eat your food. If you feel sluggish then that’s a sign that your food could be better for your body. Lastly, increase your fruits and vegetables right now!
Do’s
- Sit with your back straight. You can do this either in a chair or on the floor. If you do it on the floor I suggest you sit criss cross or in lotus position. I sit criss crossed with my back straight against the wall. I do not suggest meditating while lying down, especially as a beginner as it makes it very easy to fall asleep.
- Before you start, take in three deep breaths and exhale with some force. This just gets you in the mode to meditate.
- Only breathe through your nose. Keep your face relaxed and tongue lightly pressed against the roof of your mouth.
- Focus on one of these; the space in your nose where you feel the air moving in and out of your nose, the rising and falling of your belly as you inhale and exhale, or the space between your eyebrows.
- With each inhale then exhale count one rep and count up to ten. You will get lost in thought many many times, that’s ok, that’s why we practice. Each time you notice yourself getting lost in your thoughts, stop and just sit there and notice that you got lost; then reset your focus back on your spot and start counting back up to ten from one. I like to think that each time I get lost in my thoughts and bring my awareness back to my breath, that I have just completed one “awareness rep” and it’s building my “awareness strength”.
Don’ts
- Don’t try to stop yourself from thinking because it will not work.
- Don’t plan things in your head while you meditate. When you sit down to meditate you will not have control of your thoughts, they will just come and go, but you will have control of whether or not you sit there and plan your day or life. When you sit down and meditate you will see what I am talking about. Just focus on your breath.
- Don’t give up after one session.
- Don’t expect every session to be a life changing session. Meditating is like anything in life that takes practice, you will have good sessions and you will have bad sessions. As long as you don’t give up you will get better and better.
I suggest starting small. If you are one of the people who thinks you have ADD or ADHD, and think you can’t meditate… you are wrong. Anyone can meditate and become good at it, but people who have ADD or ADHD just might take longer to get better. I would suggest starting at a very low amount of time, like five minutes, and then each day you successfully complete the full time you have set for yourself, increase the time by ten seconds.
- I reflect on the previous day. If I had a good day I will write about why it was good and how I can make it happen again. If it was a bad day, I write about what might have caused it, and how I was responsible for having one, and how I can prevent whatever had caused the bad day in the future.
- I write about how I am feeling. I think this one is very helpful for the fellas. Sometimes it’s hard for us to talk about how we really feel inside because of the society we live in. Journaling can be that outlet to talk about how you feel. Writing about how you feel will give you almost the same relief you feel when you actually speak about your emotions.
- I write down my goals. Sometimes I’ll write down my goals just for that day. By doing this you set an intention for the day instead of moving through the day aimlessly. I will also write down my long term goals. This will help you clarify what you actually want out of life instead of letting the years pass with nothing to show for it. Your goals have to be what YOU actually want, not what society has made you think your goals should be. When you write your goals down, it brings them one small step closer to reality. The goals started out as thoughts in your head, but after writing them you have brought them into reality in a way.
- I make plans. This one ties into the goal setting. Once I have my goal for the day, I will write out how I plan to accomplish that goal. Same thing for the long term goals, I will write down how I plan to achieve them and what I can do on THAT DAY to get me one step closer to that goal. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
- Gratitude. This one is cheesy and everyone says to do it, but I still think it is important. I write down three things I am grateful for. Don’t always make them super obvious like “I’m grateful for my dog,” try to find gratitude in the things that are hard for you like “I am grateful that my partner and I fought today because it showed me where I have weakness and now I can work on it.” I think doing that will help you out when times are tough because it will always make you look for something to be grateful for.