If you are just beginning your journey of self-improvement and success then you may dread the thought of sacrificing some of the less productive aspects of your life. Don’t fear the sacrifice. Learn to love it. Love the change. Love the challenge. Trim the fat and scrap the waste in your life. Leave the rubbish laying in the shell of the old you.
Lazy Time
You *may* spend less time just hanging out. If you develop a passion and an addiction (or compulsion) to learning about it, then you’re likely to fall down the rabbit hole of knowledge gathering and practice. You'll have far fewer lazy days and spend less energy on things which are a waste of time. You won’t want to veg out in front of the TV as often. Peel yourself out of the Lazy Boy.Those episodes of “90 day fiance” aren’t teaching you much anyway.
Personal relationships
Many of your relationships will change. Some will degrade, while others deepen. People from your past often say, “ You’ve changed.” They mean to insult you. But don’t take it as such. Your personal core will change as you walk your journal of self discovery, improvement, and self realizations. Who you value and why, will change as well. As you set higher goals for yourself, you will seek relationships that help you reach those goals. Some of the destructive or wasteful relationships will fall away. Let them go.
In college I studied hours on end for a very difficult calculus class. It required hours of daily study to complete those problem sets each week. It put a major strain on some of my friendships. My inbox filled up with “where are you?” and “are we even friends?”. The solid friends understood. The superficial ones drifted away.
You will fight for the relationships you value highly. Those also tend to be the loved- ones who stick around through the struggle. It takes effort, but maintain these relationships as best you can.
Money
Invest in yourself. Self improvement takes the investment of capital. Mental capital, time, emotional capital, and of course money. In order to gain new skills, new knowledge, sometimes it costs money. In this age you can find a lot of information for free, but this takes time to sift through and organize.
Excuses
OK, so you will still have plenty of excuses. They eat at you though. Once your values, principles, and goals are set you’ll HATE your excuses. Let them go. Some legitimate reasons will arise which obstruct your progress. These are not excuses, they are obstacles. Eventually your resourcefulness and ingenuity will drive you right past those obstacles.
Your former self
Be ready to birth your new self. The old you will diet. This should be celebrated. You’ve earned it.
Please understand these sacrifices are necessary to develop into the new you. Don’t let the sacrifices scare you off. Your life will get lean and efficient when you dump the waste. Some folks cannot maneuver due to so much waste in their life. You may have to sacrifice some things before you start the process of self improvement. Either way, the life is yours. Make of it what you will.
Until next time my people.
