Surprisingly....

I am not dead.

I'm still around, although I haven't posted on here in a long time. Around the time of my last post, I had just started getting therapy and have gone through a lot of emotional progress, coming to terms with childhood issues and deep-seeded problems that I hadn't confronted in a long time. Definitely more to come on this, as this stuff is important and is important to consider as you work to overcome your previous limitations.

Anyway, it's been several months, and I now find myself in a different place. I wouldn't say it's necessarily better or worse, just different. Let me explain: I got a job in May and have had it since. I'm basically doing watered down inside sales, looking to do something more solidly sales in nature at my company in the next few months. I've wanted to do inside sales for a while, so it's cool that I'm in that arena; definitely more satisfying than working a bum job at a restaurant I hate, amiright?

I've been in a rut lately, and definitely not on par to make my hopes for September come true. For example, I have like 2 weeks to make 55k$ to hit my goal, which seems unlikely. I didn't hit most of my goals. Why? My eyes went off the prize. I got lost in someone else's ideas of what I should be doing.

Craziness

Regretfully, I didn't update after I had finished doing my work for that day. I think I read, overall, about 4 hours, in which I read probably 40 pages. It's an incredibly slow read, and that's when I'm not being distracted by pretty much anything. I guess whichever mental "muscle" is responsible for focus is extremely weak for me.

Hoping for a different result tomorrow, despite no different set of circumstances. Insanity.

Super Sweet Update

Been a while since I updated. I'm kind of self-destructing right now, and more and more it becomes apparent that I keep on making bad decision after bad decision. I believe it's because I suffer from low self-esteem and subconsciously want to keep my life miserable. I picked up a copy of The Six Pillars Of Self-Esteem, and I can tell I'm really hitting the nail on the head because I'm experiencing extreme resistance to reading this book. The more I try to get myself to read it, the more desperately my subconscious looks for a distraction so I don't have to confront the issue.

I know it's getting cerebral and really isn't that fun to follow along, but this is absolutely the most important part of this journey: the foundation. While there aren't clear wapoints, and no clear "victory", this is certainly the most important part of beginning a new life.

Tomorrow's goal is simply to read 8 hours of the book, along with any ancillary work that needs to be done (notes, exercises, whatever). I WILL update tomorrow once I've done this, because I WILL read it. Waking up early tomorrow to get a head start on it.

Whoops!

I'll tell you something about myself and this blog: anytime I don't update, it's probably because I have nothing good to report. This blog is about progress and when I backslide, it's much less fun to reveal on this blog than when I'm doing great things that people can be inspired by. Since I haven't updated in like 2 weeks, you can probably imagine how I've been spending my time (poorly). I might as well have stuck my head in the sand for those two weeks.

I saw a video that someone linked me to the other day:


Now, truth be told, I don't believe that you should give up things that keep you alive like eating or sleeping. Those things are NEEDS. Food, air, clothing, shelter, those are things that you need to survive. Success isn't something you can NEED to survive, but you can WANT it very strongly. The trick is to fool your brain into thinking it NEEDS success or it will die. I'm still working on this.

I'm going to post up a printout of my goals for this program onto my wall, and for 15 minutes at a time, I will visualize success in those areas. Today, because I'm not busy, I will do this every hour on the hour. Let's be honest, if I want to change all of my paradigms and accomplish the extremely aggressive goals I've made for myself, I need to have an all-consuming desire for success. Anything less will lead to failure.

My areas of wealth and health pretty much suffered lately. I've skipped a few gym sessions (I always skip morning cardio the day after a night out/drinking), ate a lot of crap, and spent a lot of money that I should be holding onto during this financially slow period. I had two job interviews for server positions. I would be a perfect candidate for either restaurant, but I feel that getting fired from my last job was really a game-changer and probably soured all the other things I brought to the table. I haven't gotten a call back from either, which means I just need to apply to restaurants at a greater volume, and hope something sticks.

My relationships probably improved. I saw an old friend, really cemented friendships with the people I hang out with, it was overall a good thing. And more good news as well- I talked to a few girls (mostly while drinking), and although they all shot me down/blew me off, I feel good about putting in that effort. The effort needs to be like 10x stronger and 10x more consistent for me to achieve 50 dates in a one year span, though. I'm going to have to be clockwork on this point.

I'll let you know how everything goes tomorrow. Get amped!

Improvement

One very exciting thing has taken place today which I want to share with you. I achieved one of my year-long goals! Already! Of course, it's probably the easiest goal I had set for myself, and it was a goal I set for myself ignorant of the facts around it. I feel kind of silly, in retrospect, setting a goal that I was basically already fulfilling as I wrote it.

I finally applied to the local gym at a great rate (Thanks, Mark!), and got a free session with a personal trainer, Hil. She gave me a bodyfat caliper test as part of the introductory session. This consisted of taking off my shirt and sharing awkward jokes about a striptease. Hil then pinched some fatty areas of the body tightly, and measuring the angle of change with an instrument that looks somewhere between tongs and an astrolabe. Her result was that I had a bodyfat located somewhere between 9.5% and 10.3%, which means an average of 9.9%.

This satisfies part of my "Health" goals, which is to achieve less than 10% bodyfat, and I'm editing the goals section of my blog to reflect success in this area of my life.

Apparently, my confusion arises from hasty and poorly executed bodyfat tests I had performed myself earlier, which would have told me that I was 15-6% bodyfat right now. It was because I wasn't pinching my fat hard enough, which seems pretty understandable. Giving myself titty twisters and Indian rug burns didn't seem appealing at the time. The other part of the confusion is that I was using my chest and abdominals as visual reference for how low my bodyfat is, when in fact that's where my bodyfat naturally accumulates.

The upshot of this is that unless I'm actively working out, even with a healthy bodyfat percentage I will look out of shape because of my gut. :(

Beyond that, though, read 100 pages of The 4 Hour Work Week, although I specifically failed to learn one of the lessons and read some chapters that didn't even apply to me (how to hire assistants to outsource your workload, etc). Thankfully, a lot of lessons are coming out of this book on my second read, and I'm thinking I should just buy it so that I can review it and keep it around as a reference (Right now I'm just using a library book). Still have to really get through the part about setting up an internet-based business that would operate well and without a great deal of personal oversight.

Romantically, another dismal day. Sigh. The only girl I hung out with was my mom, who was helping me buy houseware for my new apartment. Tomorrow I will either talk to a girl or eat an entire sheet of printer paper. My promise to you, my reader(s?).

After these messages...
We'll be right back.

Update

Read some of the 4 Hour Work Week. Tomorrow, I will focus on two major tasks alone: Reading the parts about creating an automated company, and then rereading it, AND sending out emails to Craigslist for jobs waiting tables. That will be a pretty heavy Wealth day. I'm also going to be starting out the day by signing up for the local gym, because I finally ascertained how much reserve money I have to work with and it should be ample enough for two months or so. Also, I'll be spending time with Mom going shopping for stuff I need in my apartment. Looking forward to a productive day!

On another note, I should start writing these things earlier, as I usually want to just fall asleep halfway through the update. Anyway, a thought for later.

Distractions

(Accidentally posted this in the wrong place last night)
I'm going to make this an abridged entry, because I fell asleep after writing like two sentences, and I want to go back to sleep as soon as possible. Right now, I feel like dealing with distractions and staying focused is the biggest liability I have. I can get distracted by stimuli so easily and so regularly that doing simple tasks can take forever and be a total burden, instead of a passing thought. I have created a plan where I will increase my efficiency of thinking, my focus, my clarity of thought, etc. Right now, I have very poor discipline when it comes to thinking and acting on thoughts. There is probably nothing more integral to success to than this skills, so I certainly don't take it lightly.

I'm a strong believer in the power of consistency and persistence, and I know that if I systematically just keep my nose to the grindstone and stay on TOP of all these goals and plans, I will inevitably come out on the other side better. My problem isn't one of faith, it's of self-doubt; can I actually keep my eyes on the prize for the next year? When I wrote the original idea out, I made a promise to myself to do it, so the answer is: I'd better!