Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 109 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! I hope this finds you happy and healthy. I also hope that if you love this episode you share it, you can copy and text it to someone that may also love it, you never know who’s life you will change. And subscribe so you are notified when new ones come out. So I’m not sure where you are in the world, but I am in TN. You may not know what the weather is like here but it’s nice. We have 4 seasons. Winter is very mild. Maybe we get a couple inches of snow per year, But not this year, nope we got almost a foot of snow. All in one week. Everything was closed. Everything. If you weren’t prepared. You were figuring out you should have been. We had to laugh, that’s all you can do right? Because of course in the weirdest year we’ve had in my life, of course we would have a foot of snow.
So pretty much everything was closed for the whole week. That’s what happens in the south with 2 inches, now imagine 101/2. Ok. I’m going to get to my point. Resilience, determination and getting back to basics. That’s the name of the game and if this year hasn’t taught you that then you aren’t listening. We may have gotten a little off course in the last few years, making everything complicated, but when things go wrong, you go back to basics.
When I was younger I worked for Jere Bowden, he is still a friend to this day. Jere is a genius when it comes to building and selling homes. He used to always say, when things get rough or when they aren’t going so well, you have to go back to basics. You have to make sure you are doing the basics. He was selling homes when the percentage rate was upwards of 15%. You had to be smart to survive and thrive in that world. In home sales at the time, that meant making sure you had a sign up, making sure you always had brochures on the sign, making sure you did your follow up calls, those sorts of things.
Well I think right now is a time for all of us to go back to basics. We’ve been living in somewhat of chaos just trying to hold everything together for the last year. COVID being a big reason, maybe politics plays a role as well and throw on top of it a snowstorm that shuts down an entire region for a week unexpectedly and you have a mix that can easily be called the perfect storm. In the words of Ed Latimore “Noone is coming to save you”. I will repeat that for as long as I can because it helps me remember that I am responsible for myself and you are responsible for yourself. If you are a family unit then that family unit comes next. You may want to disagree with me, but just like putting the oxygen mask on yourself before you help others is important, you are no good to your family if you are sick, poor and your mindset is a wreck. So what are the basics of life? I thought you’d never ask.
- Your physical health
- Your mental health
- Your community (This includes but is not limited to family and friends)
- Your security (This includes but is not limited to financial security)
- Your home, your refuge
This is my list. Yours may be different. For me personally and I’m being transparent here, when COVID hit, I was probably in the best shape of my life. I was working out 6 days a week, which I love and I had cut my drinking alcohol to only 2 days maximum per week. I’m a social drinker, so I enjoy a glass or wine or two at dinner with friends. The gym is open then closed, masks required while working out, restaurants are weird…with all that going on, my drinking went up to probably 5-6 days a week and my workouts went down to maybe 2-3 times per week. I’m a lightweight, 2 drinks and I’m a little tipsy. My body isn’t as fit as it was. I also struggled because the hormone specialist where I get my hormone therapy was closed for a while and so my moods were not good for a month or so. We were able to fix that quickly though because I knew exactly what it was. I talked about this in episode 56. My mental health has stayed pretty strong because I know how important that is to my overall well being. This podcast and other podcasts have helped that tremendously. My morning routine is crucial. I notice when I don’t meditate and journal then my thoughts can veer negative pretty quickly. Just like working out, your daily mental wellness routine is crucial. Do you roll your eyes when I say that? If you do, you need it more than you know, I love you though. I tell you all of this because I didn’t become a raging alcoholic and I didn’t put on 10 lbs and I didn’t go into a deep depression because I know to maintain the basics. And Look. It’s ok to have a bad day, we are all going to have those but don’t let it turn into a bad week. Don’t let a bad week turn into a bad month. And God forbid you have a bad month or a bad year, don’t let it turn into the rest of your life. Regroup and get back to basics. Having good habits and making sure you are covering the basics is the key to resiliency during hard times.
Sometimes we think we are the only ones with problems because everyone on social media looks so happy and successful and their families and bodies are perfect and they live in bliss every single day. But you have to know we are all human. There are seasons of life. We all have ups and downs. But taking care of the basics, creating good habits NOW wherever you are in the season of life, it is NOT too late to create good habits. NOW is the time to get back to basics, to get yourself mentally and physically prepared to live a joyous, inspired, fulfilling life now and when shit hits the fan, which it will, you’ll be 10 steps ahead and those 3 or 4 or 7 steps you get knocked back won’t mean the end of the world because you are resilient. My challenge to you this week is to figure out the basics of your life and master them so that you are living a life that fills you with joy in the present but are prepared for whatever this beautiful crazy unpredictable world throws at us. I love you and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
