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The Daily Man-Up

Mediocrity is a Virus

Little things become big things.

When you justify and allow even little things into your life which your intuition warns you against, you permit a virus to enter your life. It spreads to other areas.

When you introduce a change to any system, you simultaneously change the whole system. The other areas of the system will begin arranging themselves to better fit with the new.

Going against your higher intuitive voice is a slippery-slope. You don’t realize day to day how out of whack things are really getting.

Any small problem or indulgence cannot be viewed in isolation. It reflects something much bigger and much deeper. Sometimes it takes an intense wake-up call to become aware of the signals.

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The Daily Man-Up

pain is temporary

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever”.

Build character, when you give up you aren’t just giving up right now. You’re giving up for all situations that gets that tough in the future.

I used to see it as just another variation of pain is temporary but victory lasts forever, but now I see it’s portraying a completely different message to it. It’s about the two different mentalities you can have in life. You can either be a quitter or getter. The problem with being a quitter is that it becomes a habit. You will always start to quit when it gets hard to that point, and you wouldn’t able to push yourself any further. Meaning, you won’t be able to evolve as a person. When you quit, the exact same pain doesn’t ever go away. It remains there until the next time you have to face it. The exact same pain that’s temporary becomes permanent as long as you keep quitting. So the next time you think about quitting think about what you’re projecting to the universe.

– BrawlStarler

The Daily Man-Up

the time is now

When I was 13 I wanted to learn guitar but I saw on TV some kid who was 11 and a child prodigy and I thought "I waited too long, now I’ll be a beginner while kids like that already are great".

Then I was 23 and thought "oh man if I had just started at 13 I would have ten years experience by now! But now why bother?"

At 33 I realized, damn if I had just started at 23 I would probably be pretty good at this by now, but now I’m old and would feel weird in a beginner class at this age, so I didn’t.

At 43 I thought, why did I ever care about what people would think instead of realizing I wanted to do something, but didn’t out of fear and regret, and because I kept thinking about the amount of time I’d already wasted, instead of the fact that RIGHT NOW is simultaneously the oldest I’ve ever been, and the youngest I will ever be again. Now is the time. For everything. Always.

Just start a new game.

The Daily Man-Up

Stop considering whether people like you and start considering whether you like them

I used to always have that voice in the back of my head, do they like me? are they judging me? Always thinking that it held me back from being social.

You can control how you act. You can’t control whether or not people are going to like you. Some people might be really insecure and find reasons to dislike you for no reason. But even if you changed those things about yourself they would find some other reason to dislike you because you’re not the problem.

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The Daily Man-Up

lessons learned from prison

The World Breaks Everyone: 3 Steps I Learned In Prison to Put Myself Back Together

I was arrested by the FBI, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and was sentenced to two years of Federal Prison.

I lost everything. All because of the choices I made.

It’s been an incredible, challenging, frightening journey. A massive part of that journey was the fall to my personal rock-bottom.

That fall led me to write the following on New Years Day, 2015, my TEDx chronicles that journey in even more detail if you are interested.

“I cannot shake the image that 2015 is going to be the year I put a bullet in my head. I see myself making it through prison, making it to halfway, and the next vision I see is a pistol in my mouth or at my temple. I want to tell someone but I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of being weak. I know how much it would hurt my loved ones. But the way I feel, the self-loathing, the amount of shame I carry, I have a hard time being in front of my loved ones. I’m no good to them, I can’t even face them. Why won’t it just end?”

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The Daily Man-Up: 5 Lessons Learned In Prison

lessons learned in prison

Everything is Temporary

When I was in prison, it felt like I would be there forever. That my permanent state of being was uncertainty and pain. I felt as though I would be worthless for the remainder of my life. Once I looked beyond the fear and anxiety, I understood there was an expiration date. I didn’t know when, but I knew there was one. That alone gave me the strength to endure. This is the power of impermanence.

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The Daily Man-Up

(Photo: Modern Affliction)

Over 40 years ago I was a young boy, the future still a thing of excitement and mystery. Who would I be? What would I do? Where would I go? Everything was still possible. But I squandered my potential and wasted my life.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the way my parents treated me scarred me deeply. They gave me all the toys a boy could want. But I have no memory of being hugged. I have no memory of them ever telling me something I did was good. I would show them a picture I drew and they would say “Not now.” They made me feel worthless, useless, unwanted. My mother would play sadistic games where she’d frighten me and then laugh when I cried out of fear. My father was brooding and unapproachable, quick to temper and irritated by my presence.

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The Daily Man-Up

Galvanize yourself into taking positive action.

Your conscious/intuition/better judgement, whatever you want to call it, generally knows what’s best for you and what it takes to get there, but is often overpowered by the pessimist in us. Here are two techniques you can use to confront that pessimistic voice;

1. Retroactive self-reflection. Here’s a confronting visualisation activity to motivate you into taking action; When faced with a daunting decision or challenge (one that you want to take but are hampered by your negative thoughts or anxiety), quickly visualize yourself as an old man or woman – Zimmer frame, toothless, baby food, incontinent, lonely, family only drop in once a month if you’re lucky – and you’re propped in front of the TV…but you’re not watching daytime talk shows or lawn bowl championships, rather you’re viewing a montage of all the opportunities you’ve passed up in your younger life, and you’re writhing with regret because you’ll never know what could have been.

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The Daily Man-Up

Do Something You Hate EVERYDAY! This phrase is more of a lifestyle than a simple saying. Even though people don’t believe me, I have always said I hate all physical activity other than weightlifting. I believe there is no better way to grow as a person than to do something you hate everyday. For me, the worst feeling in the world is waking up knowing that I have to push myself. I know every morning when I wake up that I am going to be pushing myself through worse pain than I did the day before. That is not a very comfortable feeling.

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