You have a destination in mind, a goal has been set whats next. Movement towards that destination. Between you and that goal is a massive dense dark forest, overgrown, gnarly enough to make Tolkien proud. The brush is so thick you cannot see past what’s in front of you. You must clear the path if you to want proceed, better get to work.
You want to build a life, a career, a family, a business, a rocking instagram worthy bod. Maybe you want to build a shed or a special cabin out in the woods to get away from it all. What about a skyscraper or a ivory tower. It doesn’t matter what the project is, in order to construct anything physically, mentally, or emotionally, you must have a clear piece of ground to work upon. You would not and most likely could not build a skyscraper on top of a land fill. It just doesn’t happen in real life. It would be a total waste of time energy and resources. Your foundation would be shit, which means that the rest of the construction would be shit and not to mention probably impossible to construct. The obstacles must be removed and the garbage cleared away.
All building requires preparation and clear ground. This is where every person who wishes to change themselves must point their efforts and will. Your path must be cleared of all debris to the best of your ability. Everything that is not cleared is just one more obstacle left for you to jump over, lift, destroy whatever… Any obstacle takes time and energy away from the process of building. Obstacles, until they are removed occupy the space you want to build on thereby making it impossible to construct anything.
Those are images and metaphors to hold in your minds eye when working on changing yourself. Change is a big enough project in and of itself, so do your best to clear your space enough so correct growth can take place.
There is a reason I use so many metaphors here to represent my point. I want you the reader to really have it hammered into your consciousness, because this is such a big problem with most everyone. It’s simple to picture how ridiculous it would be to build a giant skyscraper in the middle of a landfill or a Ivory tower in a swamp. However this is exactly what most people do when attempting to transform their lives. Whether it is, through relationships, dietary changes, developing businesses, they all make the same mistake in the beginning. They try to build castles on bogs that they don’t see. These landfills or bogs are all of the physical, mental and emotional things existing in a persons life that get in the way and drain energy and time. Like I said they don’t even see it and this is usually the source of most individuals early frustration with change and a major reason most don’t achieve it. They just don’t realize they are building on top of the worst, debris filled, obstacle ridden piece of metaphorical land, ever. No one ever told them that clearing away and preparation are just as important as the idea and actual construction. Were just not taught that way. It’s all about just getting to the destination, reaching the goal, end result thinking.
Along with this, we are taught that failing is really, really bad. Do everything thing you can not to fail, is a mindset bred into all of us since day one. However without failing you don’t learn what you did wrong so you can make improvements. Still people avoid taking the right amount of risks and pushing their limits because of the fear of what lies on the other side.
To discover what these obstacles might be, takes a concerted effort and a focused honest look at yourself and life. What part of your life? Where should you start? Why should you start there? My thoughts on this relate back to two things I talk a lot of about and are guiding concepts (principles) in my life. First their is definitely a natural order of things, or as I call it NOOT (pronounced Nute). This natural order of things has a number of commonalities that I have observed everywhere. One of those commonalities is something I call Center Out. If you observe natural growth in nature you witness a fundamental process. Many things start at a single point and then grow outwardly in all directions. Seed to plant, egg to animal, idea to business etc… There is a natural process that most growth follows. For instance a business doesn’t exist without an idea sparking in someones mind. A bunch of people don’t just wake up, go meet at a building, randomly associate roles to themselves, start working on projects they are unfamiliar with, while answering phone calls from yet more people who don’t have a clue why they are calling, they just are to buy whatever you are selling. The idea ( the point) comes first and then the rest follows. Refining the idea, finding funding, getting the materials, the office space, hiring, assigning roles, manufacturing, marketing and on and on. It just doesn’t happen any other way. (yes their is always an extreme outlier example that can be made, good for you.) The same holds true for a seed that is planted. The seed germinates, sprouts out and continues to grow outward in all directions to whatever final form it has. I am not sure what came first the Chicken or the Egg, but what I do know is how it works right now. The egg comes first, it hatches and then grows into a chicken. All this being said my point is we must follow the same route as nature and start with the most import point in your life, you. What represents this point the best is the physical you, because we are primarily physical forms, so we need to start there and move outwards.
Your Physical Obstacles
Physical heaps of garbage or obstacles are all around you. They come in many forms. They could be junk food, alcohol and drugs (all kinds). Digital distractors like TV, computers, smart phones, video games, apps, porn etc… Activities that you participate in like going to bars, watching sports, excessive dating, excessive working out, working to much, social media, sleeping too muc,h hanging out etc.. It could be people in your life, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, nay saying family members, co-workers, bosses, clerks at the secretary of state, everyone is a suspect in this mystery of discovering your “hidden” obstacles.
If you want to change; anything and everything must be examined, like it was under a microscope. That means it’s going to be work and take some time, so prepare yourself.
Our ancestors didn’t have convenience stores with everything our hearts desired or fast food options. They had to find their food everyday and ate a lot of things that didn’t taste, how shall we say… amazing. So this is a good place to start from. Make your diet as simple as it can be, some guidelines to follow are below.
Guidelines
If it isn’t found naturally in our environment, you shouldn’t eat it. This means unless you find a tree that grows loaves of bread and bushes with bags of chips growing on them, stay away from it. You shouldn’t eat them because you didn’t evolve to eat materials of this kind (I call this garbage food). Especially really processed foods like candy, pop, chips, artificial foods and flavorings. They don’t belong in your body and sap resources just to digest them, for which you receive almost no benefit. Most of them are just empty carbs, devoid of any real nutrients. What this means is your body actually has to rob healthy tissues of minerals and other nutrients just so this garbage can be slightly digested and moved out of the body.
Another way to put this would be you getting a job and your employer demands you to work all day and pay him instead. Nobody would ever do this because it’s insane. So is eating what is basically garbage and then expecting your body to stay healthy. It just doesn’t work.
Now it is at this point where people start to try to cheat and/or come up with compromises. They say “well, what if I eat really good things, take vitamins, drink vegetable juices, do a herbal cleanse and still eat that other stuff(candy, pop) as well. This is exactly what I mean when I say, building on top of a landfill. Most people have treated their bodies badly and ate a lot of garbage, so the landfill is pretty full. Taking a little bit of garbage out and then adding a little health stuff isn’t going to get you anywhere. Nothing is changing, the landfill still stays full. In order to clear that sucker out you need to get dump trucks rolling in there and hauling away truckloads for recycling and repurposing. On top of that a complete ban on garbage dumping must be put into place immediately. By doing this eventually most if not all the rubbish is cleared away and you are left with a open piece of ground to start building.
People get so caught up with finding out the correct eating patterns, diets, fads, cleanses, supplements, programs, biohacks, shortcuts, superfoods whatever. Easy routes lead to nowhere special.
Reader listen up, I am going to share with you a very true and special piece of info. The original superfoods were vegetables, plants, fruits and fresh wild game. Our genes developed and evolved living off these foods and will remember how to continue to do so, once you start eating them again.
Yes there are definitely some special diets, supplements, programs and techniques that will accelerate and improve results. I will be discussing alot of those methods in the future.
However most of them would be a waste of time unless the groundwork has been done first and the landfill cleared. Some of them would actually be a very bad idea to attempt unless you have properly prepared yourself. I would never think it a good idea for a total junk food eater to jump right into drinking 3 shots of wheatgrass a day. I have seen what happens in that situation and it is messy and smelly.
Part of real knowledge is knowing that true transformation has to take place at a certain pace. You shouldn’t try to force it, that just makes things worse. Just do the work everyday and focus on the growth that is happening, it’s very simple really. when your ready, move to the next level and possibly try some wheatgrass.
Simplifying your diet is almost always the first place I suggest people to start. Just focus on this one thing. Don’t try to change anything else for the moment. To much change shocks the brain and the nervous system. Usually too much change causes the system to go on alert and view whatever is happening as a threat to survival. When this happens a connection to whatever you are doing starts to form and your body and subconscious will resist it. Also our eating patterns are such a deep part of who we are it really takes a lot of energy and willpower to change them. So don’t rush it, just keep your focus everyday on this one change.
I really cannot stress this enough. Do not attempt to change anything else when working on changing your diet. Quitting smoking is child’s play next to changing your diet. Whenever I would work with people in the past this is where the most trouble always came from. They could take supplements, do a cleanse or detox, start exercising and so on. However when it came to changing what they ate on a daily basis, forget it. So many people just couldn’t find the strength. I was told every excuse under the sun for them not being able to change.
I would always get confused by this. I thought, well you want to improve your life don’t you, then just do it. This was basically a lack of understanding on my part. Eventually learning more about the brain and subconscious survival patterns, I realized that part of the problem was asking people to change too many things at once.
Telling someone to attempt all these new things, taking supplements, exercising, detoxes, yoga etc and changing their diet completely was and is too much for most people to handle. Another thing I realized is the emotional intensity of the person involved is also a major factor. Many people think they want to change and a lot definitely would like too improve themselves. But very few approach it as something that has to happen, they must change because they will not accept living any longer the old way. Tony Robbins calls this raising your standards. Attaching an intense emotional state to your goal of changing. By convincing yourself and subconscious that this change is a must and that your survival depends on it, it gives the person much more power to create a lasting change.
This is why sometimes the only way for a drug addict to finally beat his addiction is by almost dying. Coming so close to death convinces the subconscious that an absolute change has to be made. It does this by having such an extreme threat to survival such as death, to be connected to the pattern of drug use.
Either way this type of programming is needed for some people but not everyone. If you really would like to change, I don’t feel it necessary to go to this extreme level. Just stay committed to one change at a time. Starting with dietary habits is one of the hardest places to begin, but their is a great advantage to achieving success there first. Once you do accomplish this change then you have removed one of the biggest obstacles that stands in your way of building a better life. In addition eating better and more naturally gives you more power/energy to put into creating other changes. Stoping the influx of garbage and toxins, frees up so much energy you will be asking yourself how you could have lived any other way.
This again is why I suggest starting with diet first because of the extra strength a person gains.
Another way to relate to this concept would be to think about it in terms of your cell phone. What happens to your battery if you have a lot of apps open and windows not closed out. The battery drains super fast right. You may be working or busy with something else, not even using your phone. Your phone doesn’t care whether or not your there, it just keeps performing its functions. So, your battery gets drained super fast for no other reason then you just didn’t close out your windows and apps. Which is a complete waste of energy. This is what eating tons of garbage food does to your system, it drains your battery all the time.
The more toxins you have in your body the more time and extra energy has to be spent on dealing with them. Even if you are just sitting around, your system is still wasting energy removing and processing this extra crap that shouldn’t be there. This precious energy could have been used for so many other important things, like repair, managing stress, thinking, solving problems, exercising, storing info, body movement etc..
Ever gotten really drunk and the next day everything seems so much more difficult than usual. That annoying co-worker or boss seems almost unbearable today instead of just being mildly bothersome. Or your normal workload seems 10x as much even though it’s exactly the same. You find yourself snapping at a friend or relative almost for no apparent reason. Or your morning run seems impossible to get through or you don’t even go running. This is because you have so much less energy at your disposal. A lot of what you normally would have, is now going into dealing with all the poison you overloaded your system with the night before. Your system is in survival mode, it needs to clean out all this extra gunk because it perceives it as a threat to survival. Being nice and exercising are of completely secondary importance compared to immediate survival.
Now imagine another scenario which is the opposite. Now that you have stopped eating bad unnatural foods your body doesn’t have to waste energy on taking care of extra waste products. Now you have extra energy to put into your daily life and activities. This extra energy can be used for coping with that awful co-worker, now they hardly even bother you. More energy allows you to think better and faster, so your workload seems less than before, even though it is still the same. You run a littler longer than normal in the mornings. You have more energy now so your perform better at everything, your significant other also appreciates this, for when it comes time for …well you know. Now that you are getting so much done at work, your boss notices and makes a mental note to keep an eye on you for a possible promotion, if you keep it up. By having extra energy to manage stress you have less irritability with people you care about. This in turn increases your enjoyment of life and the people around you also benefit. Not only are you improving yourself but your changing your environment around you. Your growing as a person, starting at the center and expanding outward, affecting other people.
These are all things to consider when attempting this first and very important step of change. Clearing the physical landfill is the first step in very important self improvement.
Get simple, basic and natural with your eating. Once this is achieved and a new pattern has been set (usually 30-60 days), where you don’t feel like your fighting with your self. Then you can start working on a special diet, techniques, supplements, programs etc.. Take care of this huge obstacle first and make the rest of your future work so much easier.
Good luck.
Look out for the next part in this series- Clearing the landfill part 2
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