3 Habits for Achieving & Maintaining Personal Excellence
By Steve Mayeda
Austin, TX
Whether your life sucks or you have got it together today we are going to cover somethings that will make your life better. In fact if you want your life to be the best it can possibly be then at some point in your life you’re going to have to do these things. Why not start now.
I didn’t learn them or do them all at once. I am a slow learner. I screw up a lot, and slowly added things to my life. This is also how most people are. I also do not do these perfectly, nor do I really know anyone that does.
The reason why I am writing this is because in coaching and working with men I have realized that no matter where we start, if a man achieves a level of excellence in that area it moves into his whole life and he starts doing these things. In fact you could almost say this is the ‘hack’ for personal excellence. By the way I hate that word hack…you’ll see why in a minute.
If you’re saying things like –
“I want to meet more women”
“I want to be more successful in my career”
“I want to get in shape”
“I need more purpose in my life”
or
“My life sucks”
START HERE –
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1) STOP LOOKING FOR A QUICK FIX
There’s no quick fix to personal excellence. Happiness, purpose or physical, mental and emotional health are not simple hacks. Anything that is a life skill is something you to live it and work at it on a daily basis. The faster the change, the more unstable the change. Human behavior, choice and the expression of what you believe are things that take a long time to cultivate.
Looking for a quick fix and expecting that from life one of the biggest pitfalls of personal change and development. The pursuit and expectation of this will ultimately make you less in touch than your true potential than specific action. The reason being is that you will always be looking in the wrong place. If you truly believe in yourself, life, relationships, sexuality, body and mind stop treating it like it is some kid you’re giving candy to, just to stop it from screaming. Respect your life, start making decisions and commitments to a solution that lives past a few days, weeks or months.
Some of the things you might be thinking are, ‘being the best is simple, all I need to do is (fill in the blank)’, ’if I could just get this one thing solved I’d be happy’ or ‘If I can just fix this one simple thing everything else will fall into place’. Living these ideas, bringing them to life and making decisions about who you are will ultimately lead you down a path of getting less. No great change, no great man ever comes from them. Leave them for someone else to get into, brag about and hopefully find success in them…if they do that’s great. Make a better path for yourself.
Your story is worth more than living life with a stack of ‘get out of jail free cards’.
2) THE LOST ART OF AUTHENTICITY
Authenticity is an art. It is an art of being honest with yourself and ‘being you’. It is learning when and how to do that, as well as when and how do you abandon authenticity. Sounds funny? Keep reading.
First let’s cover some key points, when you live as you and compromise yourself as little as possible you have 2 things will happen. First you live in reality. Second you create a life that is a true expression of you. This is one of the hardest things you will ever do in your life.
We run from reality in everyday shape or form. If we feel a little bit uncomfortable about a situation, relationship or how we are perceives we can easily distract ourselves from that. We have the opportunity to broadcast our own image not based on how we are at the moment, but how we want other people to see us.
It is amazing. Our society and culture, which has so many great benefits and gifts, also gives us so many opportunities to not have to accept the responsibility of now.
Right now words like authenticity, integrity and being a ‘man of his word’ are hot topics in today’s pop-culture-marketing. But sadly we don’t live this. We have a debtor’s integrity, a moral compass that is guided by Facebook, and being yourself is an image set by what will make you look good. We have learned that it is not to our benefit to be ourselves, and we have many other options to that.
Authenticity is not an image or set code of man that you follow, it is being you. Who you are, for what you are and connecting that to the world. To put things bluntly we are rarely ourselves. Many times this is in our best interest. We have to go to work, we have to hold our tongues for the benefits of not driving people away and so on. However we need to learn a real wisdom of how to truly be ourselves when we can. We need to see true authenticity (not some misused notion to pat yourself on the back) as our really value that we strive for.
When you do this it means not accepting a false life in front of you. If you get a result or an achievement it is useless if you’ve sacrificed who you are to get there. It doesn’t matter if you look good, get social acceptability or hit a code of honor that is outside of yourself. What will give that result meaning is if it is really you.
If we live life where we have compromised ourselves consistently we will end up with a lifestyle that is so distorted and detached from us that things like life’s meaning, purpose and fulfillment will be lost from us. Happiness will be impossible. Think of it like a man who has built his life on debt. Nothing is his. He may have all the great things he always wanted, but it is owned by someone else. More so, he has lived, bought and surrounded his life materially with never accepting his reality. He may have started out with little fear and insecurity, but the thought of living within his means now is terrifying.
Stop living in debt. Stop living in the self-debt. Be you. Start where you’re at. Stop posturing. Stop the fearing of looking bad.
Start asking yourself – “What is it about right now that you can’t be yourself?”
3) FEED YOUR BODY & MIND
If you want to get the most out of any personal development possible you need to feed the machine. Your body and your mind need to be in their best state possible. In fact you could make an argument that if your body and mind are not properly fed and taken care of you’re not yourself.
Anyone who is serious about personal development I tell them to start here –
For 30 Days do these 3 things then let’s get to work.
- Eat Real Food
- Get 7-9 hours of sleep a night
- Exercise once a week
This isn’t a diet or a fitness plan this is a plan to put your body in a functionality where we can cut out a lot of the static that modern day living has brought us.
To put it simply eat real food means, don’t eat food that has a label on it. If you see a bag of spinach that has a label on it, I don’t mean that. I mean processed food. I don’t care if you’re eating meat, if you’re vegetarian or vegan, spend 30 days eating only things that are selected from these options – Meat, Vegetables and Fruit.
Don’t eat bread, processed sugars and some fitness milkshake. Try just eating real food for a month. For that month, don’t worry about how much you eat, don’t count calories after the month is up you can focus on all that. Then you can pick your diet, or get into the different nutrients and how it affects your body. Those changes will be way easier to make once you have done 30 days of this.
What I mean by sleep 7-9 hours a night, that means every night get enough rest. Try and go to sleep at the same time, cut out as much artificial light as possible and get your body used to a pattern of sleep – your sleep cycle. Sleep is the great healer. It balances everything. The only problem is, it is simple and free and because we all want the quick cool flashy new gadget no-one pays attention to it. Do it for a month. If you’re not sleeping regularly, you’re literally not yourself.
Exercise once a week is pretty simple. 1 hour of exercise a week cuts your risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer in half. That’s a pretty good deal. This could be walking for an hour. This could be doing Crossfit for an hour. This could be Jiu Jitsu 5 days a week. Use your body once a week for an hour. After the 30 days is up you can get into something more complex, or you can keep it simple. Just make that commitment.
Most people don’t start here when they are working on themselves. I know I didn’t. It is just too hard to commit to. Your eating habits and your sleep pattern are hard things to break from. But if you do, start here your change ability to change, your sense of self and purpose will be on completely different level.
Your expression in this world is unique. It is special. It is literally your greatest value and will prove to be the source of your entire meaning.
That is what this post is about. If your life sucks, or if your life is pretty damn good, and you focus on these suggestions you’ll know a completely different potential of self and awareness of self.
If you want some more detail on our group where we are committed to Men’s Development, receive Direct Coaching and work with a Community of men that has been driving towards the goal of ‘Being the Better Man’ for a decade, then check out TSL Men’s Development. It really is the next level of learning (click the big button)
Hope you see you there!
Be well my friends
Steve Mayeda
Austin, TX
