Try these practical steps to reach your desired future self
The long, never-ending to-do list sucks!
That was really hard for me to say, considering that there’s nothing that I enjoy more than ticking items off of my never-ending list of things that I “need” to get done.
Having that never-ending list is actually not helpful, nor is it good for your health. If you’re like me, it causes you stress and gets very hard on yourself when you do not get things ticked off your list.
I am in the process of testing out a different method for getting things done but more on that later. …
Be Careful What You’re Telling It
You have got to start proving your brain wrong!
The problem is you’ve spent your entire life teaching your brain what you can’t do. For me, it was I’m a piece of crap. I’m never going to be a good husband. I’m always going to screw things up. I can’t do anything right.
And guess what. Every little mistake I made confirmed this and taught my brain to believe these lies that I kept telling myself.
The result was self-hatred and a life with very little to no transformation or self-betterment.
I was stuck in a constant spiral of proving…
You must choose the path of growth.
As I sit here and think of what I want to write as a killer introduction that will cause you to want to read my entire article, the following lyric came to my mind by Jason Isbell.
Are you living the life you chose? Are you living the life that chose you?
I love this song and think about these lyrics often. You see, I’m beginning to realize that I have been living the life that chose me rather than the life I chose.
I have quit dreaming!
Have you quit dreaming? Are you living the life that you chose…
Success leads to confidence, not the other way around
When you Google confidence, you get article after article talking about how confidence leads to success. They’ve got it all wrong. Success leads to confidence.
If you want to be more confident, then you’ve got to experience more and more success.
For most of my life, I seemed to fail at everything that I tried. I was rejected by most of the girls I liked in high school, I never finished college, and my first marriage failed after almost ten years.
All of these failures, along with many others, left me lacking confidence in a significant way. Once I found…
Then you must take time to recover.
“Time alone is really essential, to get away and contemplate, think, and wonder.”
- Jim Rohn
You must build time in your busy life to recover.
This means unplugging from your devices, getting out of your normal environment, and spending time in meditation, prayer, and contemplation.
I was fortunate. A couple of weekends ago, I got to take a trip to Florida by myself and drive my father-in-law's old Jeep to Knoxville. It was just their dog Jameson and me.
I spent some time in meditation and getting lost in my thoughts. On the drive back, I rode in silence…
Be careful not to kill the tree.
Everyone wants to get better!
The problem is most of us aren’t taught how to get there. Instead, we are given personality test after personality test to find out who we are.
There is nothing wrong with personality typing if used as a tool to see where you are and what you need to improve on. My favorite is the Enneagram.
For a while, though, I thought that I was my number and that I had to learn to live with it. That’s not true. Our personality is not permanent, and we can decide who we want to be.
Personal Development. Growth
Hot, wimpy, or mild
Real relationships are hard!
I say real relationships because most people think because they have 2,000 friends on social media that they are good at relationships.
Honestly, relationships and connection is something that I have almost always struggled with. I was always shy as a kid and had somewhat of a hard time making friends. I was in my mid-thirties before I realized that I had social anxiety.
I found myself unconsciously avoiding people that I did not know and running from uncomfortable situations throughout my life because of the unpleasant feelings that came from them.
And 10 benefits of speaking up.
Standing up for yourself and what you believe is hard. Especially when our entire life has been spent telling ourselves that we are not worthy and do not deserve to stand up for ourselves.
I have learned that the root cause of our reasons for not standing up for ourselves is due to shame, and I am on a mission of creating a lifestyle of reworthing myself.
John Kim said,
If you don’t believe you have value, you’ll never live a meaningful life. You will merely exist. So the question is, How do you believe your’re worth more?
Worth is…
How to confront your fear of confrontation
Pleasing others is something that many of us want to do.
It always feels good when the boss pulls you aside and tells you that you are always the first to complete your tasks.
When I was an area supervisor for a well-known restaurant chain, I was almost always the first to complete my tasks. I was the first to get to the office on Monday mornings to turn in my restaurant's weekly paperwork, I was the first to complete the installation of our current marketing campaign, and I was the first to respond to emails.
I was constantly praised…
Chase your future self instead.
I spent most of my life chasing the person that I thought I did not want to be. In the end, I became a person who really doesn’t know who the hell he is.
I grew up feeling abandoned because my birth father left me when I was three or four years old. It took years of therapy for me to finally realize this. But because of it, I knew that I did not want to be like that. I knew that I never wanted to abandon my kids, ever.
I am not saying that it’s a bad thing not…
