How These 5 Lessons Boosted My Life and You Can Do the Same

Life will keep teaching you the same lesson until you have learned it.

There is no better teacher other than life experience.

You can tell someone about certain life lessons until you are blue in the face but there isn’t a substitute for life experience.

You have to feel the pain so deep that it cuts your soul.

This is when the lesson is truly learned.

Health is wealth

2020 was the year my health changed for the rest of my life.

My entire life I have been in great shape and have great health. I have been participating in some form of athletics since I was a child.

My immersion in the fitness culture from my weight training days in basketball and football has never left me. This has been the main cause of my athletic physique and excellent health.

In 2020, that changed for the worse. 2020 changed my life but not how you think.

Just like the rest of the world, I developed some bad habits during lockdown.

This journey started when I fled San Francisco as soon as the lockdown started due to COVID-19.

I returned back to Arkansas to be with family.

Just like the rest of the world, I became a slave to my environment and indulged in some vices such as nightly red wine combined with binge-watching my favorite Netflix shows.

All of my life I have had an athletic physique which included lean abs.

One random day late that year in 2020 that changed. I looked down at my stomach and noticed I had a beer belly.

I was in complete shock. One month later I went to the doctor and learned that I had diabetic symptoms such as blurry vision, frequent urinating, and extreme sleepiness.

What I learned from that experience:

Nobody is immune to sudden sickness
Health is more than having a great set of abs
Pay attention to what is going on in your body

How you can improve your life:

Treat your body like you would a newborn baby, with commitment, dedication, and compassion
Understand that you will pay a price regarding health. You will pay in the gym or you will pay in the hospital but you will pay.
Make understanding your body a priority. What foods are you allergic to? what autoimmune diseases are your genetics vulnerable to?

The timeline of life

Your life is a timeline of nostalgic events.

10 years ago, I started journaling and writing everything that I did down in a secret notebook. This was a secret because it was like a diary. There were some embarrassing moments in the notebook.

5 years ago I got tired of writing things down so I just used my phone to journal how my day went or random thoughts.

A week ago I found my old phone with my random notes.

I had come across events, feelings, and moments in my life that I had forgotten about. It was weird and nostalgic at the same time.

I asked myself, why did I want to keep my life stored on this mobile device as if I were writing a script about myself?

The answer was simple, I needed a life timeline to reference whenever I faced confusion in my personal life. It was like I was reading a manual on me.

What I learned from that experience:

I noticed patterns that helped me connect the dots in certain areas of my life.
I got to reflect and see how far I have come in life.
I got to see what areas in my life still need improvement.

How you can improve your life:

You have over 100 thoughts a day, you can write down how many negative thoughts you might have.
You will bring more awareness about yourself which will help you make better life decisions.
Writing things down will bring clarity to some of your confusing thoughts. This relieves a lot of anxiety and stress.

What you go through you go grow through

Life will continue to give you opportunities to build mental toughness.

Life is a continuous cycle of ups and downs. Every time you climb one mountain, there is another one around the corner that needs to be climbed.

It is a never-ending cycle as long as your heart continues to beat.

Every time I have been faced with adversity, there is a process.

It begins with anger or sadness depending on the situation. This is followed by a day or two of doing nothing still processing my feelings about the situation.

I don’t like making decisions in a vulnerable state of mind because it usually is the wrong one.

This is why it takes a few days for me to gain clarity.

Then the final stage is acceptance and problem solving. I finally make a committed choice on how I am going to move forward.

What I continue to learn from this process:

Life doesn’t get easier, I just get better at handling adversity through practice.
I always need time to process my feelings.
Resilience is a skill that needs to be built over time.

How you can improve your process:

Give yourself time to go through the gauntlet of emotions until you have clarity.
Stay even-keeled about life because it is an emotional roller coaster.
Use each adversarial opportunity to build mental endurance.

Accept that you are different

Being different from others can be a gift and a curse.

In a society that values aggressive and loud behavior by men, I am the complete opposite.

I am strategic, calm, and calculated. As a man, these traits are often perceived to be weak or soft.

In my younger years, I did my very best to appear “Alpha”. I often fooled many people but my sole purpose was to get women. Foolishly misguided by pop culture, I should have gotten an Oscar for my award-winning performance.

At some point, maturity started to take over and I got tired of playing a role for the sake of society’s approval. I finally accepted that I am a man with strong introverted tendencies.

This doesn’t mean I am soft or weak, it just means that I am more in tune with my strengths and weaknesses. My strengths and weaknesses were no longer defined by society, I defined myself.

What I learned from accepting myself:

Acceptance helps you relieve unnecessary stress.
Being a part of the minority makes me unique.
People highly respect those who are comfortable in their skin and dealing with the good, the bad, and the ugly of their differences.

What you can learn from accepting yourself:

Giving power to others for approval is a dangerous game.
You won’t get along with everyone and it has nothing to do with you.
Your flaws can be strengths in the right situation.

Getting a job that you can tolerate not hate

You will spend over 90,000 hours working in your lifetime.

When I was a teenager, I quit every job within three weeks. I haven’t met a job that I didn’t like.

After years of learning the hard lesson that life continued to teach me which was, there isn’t a thing as a perfect job.

Three years ago I left my airline job to become a digital nomad and travel the world.

I have since then returned to the USA but only on a part-time basis. I have chosen a part-time job that allows me to travel and drop shifts which gives me a flexible schedule.

The job itself is not enjoyable but it allows me to live the lifestyle that I want.

I get freedom in time, I get to build my writing business on the side, and most importantly, I get to travel the world on my journey to visit 100 cities.

What I learned from getting a job that I can tolerate:

Working a job that aligns with your values keeps you in the game.
There is no such thing as a perfect job.
Having a passion project or side hustle outside of your job creates a sense of urgency.

What you can learn from this experience:

You don’t have to work a job that you hate but you can tolerate it.
Find what you value the most and seek a job or career based on that.
Your job will come to an end one day and it is better to have other options when that happens.

Let’s recap the lessons:

Take care of your health
Keep a log of your life experiences
Build mental toughness through adversity
Embrace your differences
Get a job or career that aligns with your values

Break free from the mental matrix of everyday life, start living in freedom, and start to create your ideal life. — https://bit.ly/3tCBvjK