Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 525 of The Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Good to be with you. Im glad you’re here. We are living in exciting times and it’s even more exciting if you are part of the movement towards personal empowerment and personal responsibility for your own health, wellness, and wealth. I already know that you are because you’re listening. Often people think self improvement is just some woo woo thing you do to get yourself to go to the gym as a New Year goal but by Super Bowl you’re right back to where you were when you made the goal in the first place. Have you ever experienced that? I have. I don’t make New Years goals anymore, I’ve just decided that every day can be a new day for a new beginning. We don’t have to wait for the New year to be healthy or mindful or wealthy or whatever our goal is, we can just start today taking one little action that we know we can keep doing and then once that becomes a habit, we take another one and before you know it, it’s 5 years down the road and all of the little shifts in habits have created a life that is very different than the trajectory you were once on. People are drawn to get rich quick schemes because we don’t want to have to do the hard work…but it doesn’t have to be hard, it just has to be consistent. So saving a little money and putting it back each week, cutting back on sugar a little each day, cutting your alcohol intake little by little. Big changes don’t happen overnight, and if they do they generally aren’t sustainable, big change happens little by little over time. I really didn’t mean to go down that path but I got a thought that we think we want things only if they happen fast but look it’s gonna be summer whether you get fit or not. If you are fortunate to live, old age will happen whether you’ve saved money or not. 4 years from now is gonna happen whether you go to college or not. So decide exactly what you want and go after it little by little, you just have to start today and if you mess it up today, tomorrow is a new day to start again. Alright.
We were recently traveling and sitting in front of us on the airplane. There was a tall, beautiful blonde
woman and her mother and they were dressed very well. I loved their outfits and I noticed it because I thought how put together they looked. It was just the two of them traveling so when we got to the baggage claim, I saw a man walking up to them, and I knew exactly that he was the husband and the father because he was tall and dressed perfectly very healthy looking and fit. They looked like they went together often times when we are out and about I will see a family and The mom and dad are very overweight, wearing T-shirts and sweatpants and tennis shoes and coming behind them are their kids, and they look exactly the same as their parents.
Very rarely, will you see a family that has one person that is extremely put together and healthy looking and fit and everyone else in the family is not that’s rare.
So does this mean that it’s all genetics? Does this mean that our health our life our destiny is predetermined? Does this mean that we are not able to break away from the culture in which we were raised?
Just how much do we control?
Society really hasn’t done a good job of counteracting what Wayne Dyer calls “The Big Lie”. In his book “Real Magic” he lists 5 aspects of the big lie that most just assume are true. Things like:
I can’t help the way I am. I’ve always been this way. . It’s my nature I inherited who I am and it can’t be changed. My personality is controlled and predetermined. And if you look around society you see that to be seemingly true. But is it? Really? Or is it that no one has told us “hey if you don’t like your life you can change it.” It is possible. Most definitely. But it does matter a lot who you are around. It takes a lot more mental discipline to be healthy and fit when no one in your family is healthy and fit. If everyone in your peer group is obese, you probably are too. If everyone in your peer group drinks, you probably do too. If everyone in your peer group exercises you probably do to. If they eat healthy, odds are so do you.
So what does that mean for people who desire to be healthy and fit but their peer group isn’t? For starters it means you have to work a lot harder and if you acknowledge that to be true than the hard work won’t seem like such a drag because you already know it’s going to be hard. My mom and dad and big sister don’t eat like I do so when I visit them, I pack most of the food I’m going to eat. Now, my mom is a sweetheart and usually makes a dinner that I will eat. But often she will make my favorite cookies too. And I eat them. But I know going into it that that’s the case which is why I pack my other healthy food so that I’m not completely derailed every time I visit. The reality is that if I eat on the 80/20 plan *80% whole foods and 20% doesn’t have to be whole foods, I try to save the 20% for when I go out with friends or when I visit my family, overall I still come out hitting my goals. We have to be more intentional. The more intentional we are, the healthier we are. I also like to dress a certain way and I don’t live in a city where there’s a lot of fashion so I have to train my eye somehow which I do by following online blogs and Pinterests outfit influencers. They are in a way my peer group for fashion. It’s not perfect but I know that the only way I’m going to live the life I want to live and feel the way I want to feel, I have to maintain control, I can’t be a victim to my circumstances. That’s what it means to live on purpose. You don’t just do what the people around you do because that’s what’s popular or easy, you have a plan in mind of how you want to be and then you put yourself in situations where that plan is made possible. We recently were on a sailboat or 2 weeks with some of our best friends. We had an amazing time, but we bought a portable ninja and packed it in our luggage so that we could make our green protein smoothie every day, which we did. That way at least one meal we controlled and we knew would be packed full of nutrition. Now, we also ate dessert and had drinks and French fries and all the things, but we were intentional about at least one meal of the day. Small steps lead to big change. We didn’t try to be perfect, we just tried to be consistent in the one area where we knew we could. One of my friends on the boat decided she was going the whole month of February with no alcohol and that happened to be half way into our sailing trip, she actually inspired me to do the same, I allowed my self a couple exceptions, Valentines day being one of them. Small steps, not shooting for perfection but shooting for consistency in the thing you’ve committed to. You see our peer group matters a lot, but it doesn’t have to determine our every action or our every habit. There’s only one person that can determine that and that’s you. You could be the one that makes a difference in someone else’s life. My sweet big sister is still doing her green smoothies since she stayed with us, she decided that was what she wanted to do too. Pick and choose the habits you pick up from the people you’re around most. It’s not their fault if you decide to eat the way they eat, really that applies to everything, you gotta remember that.
You have the power to say no.
My challenge to you today is for you to be in charge of your daily habits and pick and choose what habits you pick up from the people around you. Eric, my husband did something one day that seemed like something I would do, I honestly don’t remember what it was…but I laughed and said “you’re not supposed to pick up my bad habits!” Im supposed to pick up your good ones! We had a good laugh about that, but in reality if we aren’t careful, we will pick up bad habits easily but good ones usually have to be intentional. Intentional by you, for you. Share this with 3 people who inspire you to be better. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
