So it's the end of the year and my guess is that you're probably thinking about all of
the things you want to do, can't wait to do or are looking forward to changing the New Year.
So today ladies and gentlemen, friend, I'm going to reveal the seven unhealthy habits I
cut out of my life that transformed my life for the better and I'm not sharing these in
an effort to say "hey look at me and all the things I don't do that make my life so good."
But rather I'm sharing these in case maybe you've
considered quitting one or two or all of these habits yourself for a while now,
but you're just not sure where to start or maybe you're considering
whether or not you should even quit these habits,
because you don't want to be looked at as the weird one or the boring one
and I'm here to assure you that weird is good and boring is good too
and I say that because you weren't created to blend in
and if people you know whether they're in your circle or not are participating in or engaging
with particular habits that you don't vibe with or feel are serving you in the best way.
Then you should give yourself permission to quit.
And you should cut those habits out of your life because you want to.
Point Blank, Period.
Alright?! Now let's talk about the unhealthy habits I cut out of my
life and mind you these are in no particular order, and the first one is drinking alcohol.
Now the last drink I had was a complimentary celebratory beer my wife and I drank after
we ran the Chicago Bears 5K 2019 and this was right before the pandemic hit
and if I had to be honest I've never really been a big fan of beer, to begin with
I'm more of a wine type of guy or maybe a cider here and there and I think we
both ran a new personal best time in this particular race which is why we decided to
partake and celebrate and drink the free beer that everyone got who signed up for this race.
But the reason I decided to cut alcohol out of my life is because I've reached a
point in my life where I said hey I want to make sure that everything that I am feeding
my body is the best thing(s) possible to help me live a healthy and strong life.
To help me have a healthy and strong body, and I know for me alcohol is not going to help me
achieve that. And I say that because I have a personal goal in my life where I want to be
able to run a 5k, a 10K, a half marathon, or a full marathon when I'm 40, 50, or 60 years old.
I want to be able to do push-ups and pull-ups, and just go running for fun, or do some squats.
I want to be able to roll around on the floor and wrestle with my son and my grandkids. I want to
be able to do all of these things without being in pain or hurting afterward right,
and in order for me to be able to do those things when I'm 30, 40, 50, or 60 years old.
I know that I have to take care of my body now and in order to take care of
my body now, I have to make sure I'm being active.
I'm working out, I'm training my body and I also have to make sure that I'm
being mindful of what I'm feeding my body and for me like I said alcohol
is not something I want to feed my body because I know it's not going to help me.
I feel it's not going to help me achieve those goals I have.
Unconscious eating habits.
Now I've always been someone who's been pretty mindful of
what I eat. I've never really been a big junk food type of person.
I'm not a fan of cake, I'm not a big fan of ice cream, and I'm a fan of some candy but not all
candy. I've never really partaken in those things as a kid, I just wasn't a fan of it.
So I've always been mindful of what I ate. However for the last five years or so my
wife and I have been vegan and we love the vegan diet, we love the vegan lifestyle and
I'm not saying this to convince you that you need to change your diet to a vegan diet.
I'm not saying that.
What I am saying is that I want you to be extremely conscious of what you're
feeding your body and this goes back to the point I just made where I said
I want to make sure that I'm feeding my body the best things possible to have a
healthy and strong body and for me, my wife and I decided to transition to a vegan diet.
Now to be honest with you, going vegan was my wife's idea, we were dating at the time,
and she brought it to my attention I was like what?! Are you crazy?! Vegan?!
That means I can't eat chicken, I can't have steak, I can't have turkey. I was
a big fan of turkey burgers by the way. I can't eat turkey burgers,
like what are you talking about. I gotta cut all of that out?
So I wasn't a big fan of it out of the gate. I extremely.. just.. I didn't want to do it.
But she convinced me to give it a try.
We did our own research, we watched some documentaries,
we really learned about the food industry, and we say you know what let's give this a try.
So gave it a try and it's been five years and like I said we both love it. I'm not
convincing you that you have to live a vegan lifestyle or eat a vegan diet
but I want to encourage you to be extremely conscious about what you're feeding your body.
Are the foods you're eating, is the food you're eating,
serving your body in the best way that it can?
Are you being conscious of what you're eating, of your food choices?
And if you're not I want to encourage you to do so!
Cut the unhealthy habit out of your life because if you're not treating your body right now,
if you're not eating the most healthy food you can right now, that's really
going to impact your life later down the road and I don't want to see that for you.
Being around negative and fixed mindsets people.
You know they say you're an average of The Five People You spend the most time with
and I firmly believe this because for the last several years of my
life as various relationships have come and gone.
I see now right and they say hindsight is 20/20. I see now how my energy,
my attitude, the actions I took, my overall personality, and how
who I am as a person has changed along with whoever I'm around at that time in my life.
Depending on that season in my life. And it's not a good thing necessarily
right because it has nothing to do with whether you're an independent thinker,
or a leader rather than a follower because whoever is a part of your circle,
is always going to have some sort of influence over you.
So you want to make sure your circle is filled with people that are supportive,
people that have a growth mindset, a mindset of abundance.
People that celebrate you rather than tolerate you. But if your circle is filled with people
that have a fixed or negative mindset, you can't be surprised if you have a
fixed or negative mindset as well and I wasn't surprised when I started thinking negatively.
When I started having a fixed mindset,
thinking that I was stuck, thinking that my life was stagnant, thinking that I
wouldn't be able to achieve the things that I know I'm capable of achieving.
But that was because people in my circle were speaking that language,
they were speaking the language of negativity, speaking the language of a fixed mindset.
But when I cut the unhealthy habits of being around people like that and started
surrounding myself with people with a growth mindset, people with a mindset of abundance.
I started thinking with abundance. I started thinking more positively, and I noticed that
hey my circle really does influence me and if I want my life to reflect a certain way
or if I want to achieve the things that I know I want to achieve in my life.
I got to make sure that my circle is also on that same wavelength. I have
to make sure that my circle is thinking the same way, is living the same way
and is breathing the same oxygen I'm breathing. And if they're not then
I can't be surprised with my life takes a turn in a direction I don't want it to go.
Consuming media that did not add value to my life.
Now similar to the people you surround yourself with, the things you listen to,
the things you watch, all of these things have a major influence over your life, and for me,
for the last 10 years of my life, I've really become extremely mindful of what I listen to,
what I watch, who I follow on social media because I know whether it's directly or indirectly.
These outlets, social media, these interactions, the music I choose to listen to,
all of these things are influencing the way I think, the way I act, and what I
believe and I know for me that I want to live a very intentional and very purposeful life.
I know that I want to live with less clutter and more clarity.
And in order to do those things, in order to remain in that space of clarity,
in that space of intention, I had to be extremely mindful about what I listen to.
And if what I'm listening to, if what I'm watching,
if who I'm following is not serving me and is not adding value to my life
then it's got to go right. And like I said over the last 10 years of my life I've been
extremely mindful of that and have since cut this unhealthy habit out of my life.
Spending money that wasn't budgeted on things I did not need.
Now if we take a step back and look at what I just said this is really two habits in one
because I can easily talk about spending money that wasn't budgeted, independently of buying
things I did not need. Right?.. because both of these are unhealthy habits I cut out of my life.
But for the sake of time and trying to limit how often I repeat myself in this conversation,
I'm going to kill two birds with one stone.
Now growing up I didn't know a whole lot about budgeting or how to write a budget.
I did know however how to balance a checkbook and I understood the idea and the concept of
living on less than you make and then trying to save whatever you could at the end of the month
and that's exactly what I did especially when I got my first job at Aeropostale in high school.
Comment below if you know which clothing store I'm talking about.
I was that person who stood at the front of the store and would greet the customers
that came in and would tell them about the sales we had going on for the day.
I was also a cashier, and I was also a "Jeanius."
So I would work the gene wall in the back of the store and I was supposed to know
all of the different cuts and styles and colors and how the jeans would fit
the body so I could help the customers find the right style of jeans for them.
Man of so long ago.... ok, I digress!
The point I was making before I flew off on that tangent there for a second,
was that budgeting and not buying things I did not
need wasn't something I was very good at or did at all if I'm being honest right.
And having an employee discount at a clothing store was part of the reason
I accumulated so many clothes, to begin with, right but that's a separate story.
See it wasn't until my wife and I took Financial Peace University at a local church
that we both really understood the importance of budgeting your money, tracking your spending,
telling every dollar where to go, and the benefits that would have on your life.
And for me, in that moment, on the first day we took that class, I said you know
what I'm cutting this unhealthy habit out of my life, and from that day forward I stopped
buying things I didn't need, I stopped spending money that wasn't budgeted for.
And that doesn't mean I wasn't having fun,
that doesn't mean my wife and I didn't go do different entertainments and different things.
It just means we budgeted and set the money aside for those things rather than spinning
willy-nilly and hoping we had enough money at the end of the month to set aside for savings.
Now the benefit this really has in your life is one, extra money right. Extra money at
the end of the month, not just a few hundred bucks that you can transfer to your savings
account but real extra money at the end of the month that you can put towards travel,
that you can put towards investments, that you can put towards the down payment on
your first home or saving for the down payment for your first home.
These are all things that my wife and I are experiencing because we're budgeting
and because we're not spending money on things we don't need.
Now another benefit is when you have this extra money you can put it toward your debt.
Now my wife and I are debt free and we've been debt free for a while. I
paid off $23,000 in 12 months, and my wife paid off $19,000 in 13-14 months.
Now, this wasn't easy, it took some major sacrifice for us to do this. But we knew
that hey... if we stop spending money that's not budgeted for,
on things we don't need. And if we take that extra money and throw it on our debt.
Now once we're in the clear, and we're debt free,
and we're not buying things we don't need, and spending money that's not budgeted.
We will have so much extra money at the end of the month that we can not
only transfer some to our savings account. But we also transfer some
to our individual retirement accounts, we can transfer some to our savings fund
for traveling, and we could transfer some to our son's investment account.
All of these different things that we're doing because we've decided to cut the
unhealthy habit out of our life spending money that wasn't budgeted for on things we
don't need because if you're not being mindful of this you will be very very surprised with
how much money you're wasting every week and every month on things you don't need.
Speaking negatively about myself.
Now I like many people sometimes have self-doubting thoughts,
which then turn themselves into negative self-talk right.
But the one thing I've had to learn to remember is that I'm human and it's okay to be human.
Which means sometimes I'm going to doubt myself, and sometimes I'm going
to think negative thoughts, but the peace that I continue to forget but
have to continue to remind myself of is that I'm 100% in control of
those conversations and I could change the topic of those conversations at any time.
I don't have to continue to think negative thoughts. I don't have to
continue to have negative self-talk. I can change the topic at any time.
Now that doesn't mean I'm not human. That doesn't mean that I don't have
emotions or may feel that way sometimes. But it's my responsibility to change those
topics to change those conversations that I'm having with myself because
at the end of the day I am only capable or as capable as the thoughts I have.
I am only as capable as the conversations I have with myself.
And if I want to be capable to achieve great things in my life,
I got to make sure that I'm not talking negatively about myself right.
So I want to encourage you and remind you that hey you're human,
it's okay to be human, it's okay to feel the way you feel sometimes.
But remember that you are 100% in control of
those conversations and you can change the topic at any time.
Bottling up emotions.
Now to give you some context behind how and why I cut this unhealthy habit out of my life.
As a kid I was extremely quiet, I was an introvert, I'm still somewhat of an introvert now.
But I didn't really express my emotions much and because of that,
my parents encouraged me to start writing and journaling to express how I felt on paper.
And I kid you not the moment I started journaling it transformed my life for the better in so many
ways, because rather than bottling up how I felt to the point that I would explode and
I've exploded countless times in my life over the last 10 to 20 years of my life, I've exploded.
I've had mental breakdowns, and burnouts because when you hold on
to all of your emotions and feel like you can express them, that takes a toll on you.
But when I allowed how I felt to spill out onto the pages of my notebook,
it transformed my life for the better.
Now sometimes I would go back and read the emotions I would write down,
and other times I wouldn't.
Now for me, journaling wasn't always writing in a notebook. Sometimes it was poetry,
lots of the times it was poetry, and sometimes the poems I would write would be for myself,
and sometimes the poems I wrote I would perform at open mics.
Now I can't expect everyone to do that,
but that worked for me and it helped me no longer bottle up my emotions.
So I want to encourage you if you're someone who bottles up your emotions,
who holds on, who internalizes a lot of things.
I really want to encourage you to find a way to express those. Whether it's through journaling,
or through writing poetry as I did, or whether it's through conversation with a professional.
Whatever works for you I want to encourage you to find that outlet because internalizing everything
and bottling up those emotions is very unhealthy and it will take a toll on you emotionally,
mentally, and physically, and I don't want to see you wear yourself down!
I don't want to see you wear yourself down!
I hope this conversation was helpful.
I hope you seeing that I cut many unhealthy habits out of my life,
is encouraging you to cut the unhealthy habits out of your life.
And again remember weird is good and boring is good too.
Remember you weren't created to blend in, and if you want to cut these unhealthy
habits out of your life whatever they are for you, cut them out of your life.
It will transform your life for the better!
Keep growing, keep learning on your journey friend, and always remember to stay true to you!
I'll see you next one.
Peace!