You aren’t always aware of the narrative that circulates in your mind.

Even when the words you say to yourself are internally audible, you’re not likely paying real attention, because if you did you’d likely be disappointed about how not-so-nice you are to yourself.

And you are often not aware of the language you might use in conversation and how it sets the table for how you experience the world around you.

Words like:

Challenge

Difficult

Hard

Impossible

Unlikely

Not bad

Fine

When you use these words in sentences to describe how you feel about something that might or might not happen in the future or to describe what is happening now, you make it so.

You create the outcome before the outcome has occurred.

One of my very favorite books, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, is an important read for just about anyone, and I highly recommend you read it if you never have.

The thrust of the book is to help the reader recognize how everything we know and understand has been driven by the social, cultural, and environmental influences of being human.  

As he describes, the domestication of man/woman.

We believe what we believe because we’ve been told to believe it, or we’ve experienced it.  And even when we have experienced it somehow believing it was what we experienced, we don’t recognize that so much of the experience has been defined by what society told us to expect or understand it to mean.

The four agreements are:

• Be impeccable with your word
• Don’t take anything personally
• Don’t assume anything
• Always do your best

When you really get down to living, and you live by these agreements, a lot of the complicated becomes far more simple.

The first agreement is the table set.  Be impeccable with your words.  Say what you mean.  Use the words both in external interaction, and internal narrative that truly align with your intention.

But even more importantly, understand that the choice of words you use to describe something immediately colors your interpretation, and the interpretation of those with whom you speak.

Perhaps even more importantly, the tone and facial affect in external conversation can literally redefine the words and their intention.

When you say something like, “This is so hard”, and you accompany it with an emphatic tone and a facial expression of difficulty,  you impart the weight of the intention to others, and even more important, you place an exclamation point on the essence of your description.

You make it hard.

Live with that for just a few seconds.  

You make it hard.

It doesn’t mean there is no effort, or that you must not overcome, but saying it is so only serves to make it so.

When you realize that the language you use to describe circumstances, situations, or personal states to yourself or others establishes meaning, you begin to realize you can use language and words that set the table in a manner that empowers rather than limits you.

When someone asks you how it’s going, instead of responding, “Oh, busy!” Take a moment and simply say, “My life is full”.

Said with the right tone and expression and the person across from you experiences your sense of fulfillment.

What’s that you say, then I would be lying…….

If that’s true, that’s an even bigger discussion, one I have covered in previous posts in this blog. But if you are fulfilled and doing many things you love, labeling it “busy” only serves to position it as overwhelming rather than inspiring.

Inspire yourself and others through your language.  Be impeccable with your words.

I hope what I write is valuable, if it is, please take the time to share it.

How many times did you take your car in for an oil change last year?

How many times did you have it cleaned, maybe even detailed?

How many times have you paid extra to have some work done that was needed before the car broke down?

If you’re like most people, you take your car into the shop on a regular basis, you sit in the waiting room waiting to find out what you owe, and you shell out the money, even after you scream “It’s how much?!?!”

But a lot of people seem to have this strange viewpoint around proactive care of their bodies.

They avoid going to the doctor?

They don’t go to see a manual therapist of any kind unless they are in pain?

They cringe at the idea of spending money on a massage, or treatment of some sort.

They don’t invest in the services of a Neuro-Reconditioning professional who can build them a program that will make them more resilient and fit.

They’ll spend hours waiting at an emergency ward when they’re sick as a dog, but won’t spend a quarter of that time waiting at their own doctor’s office for a check up!

Early detection has been proven to cut a lot of pathology off at the pass, and make some things that used to kill us, very treatable!

But the only way to detect early is to get in the habit of being examined.

In my personal Neuro-Reconditioning practice, I have so many people say to me; “I only wish I’d met you ten years ago”.

Because we sort so many movement dysfunctions out, get them moving better, and all of a sudden they are performing better, and they are injured less often and for less time.

I often say to them, “If you met me ten years ago, you probably wouldn’t have done what I told you to do”.

Truth is, people are averse to putting in the work until they reach a point where sickness or injury are getting in the way.

Unfortunate really!

So what should we be doing regularly anyway?

A Yearly Check Up with Your Physician

Every year, get in to see your doctor, discuss how you are feeling, have your BP checked, blood chemistry, and let them send you for any tests they think you should have based on preventative care recommendations.

It’s that easy! Most of this stuff is covered by personal insurance or government healthcare, but even if it isn’t, what did you spend on your car last year please?

See a Good Manual or Massage Therapist Once a Month

Making sure your body is in alignment, keeping things moving pain free, and clearing the limiting factors can make a huge difference in your day-to-day movement. It also keeps the bigger issues at bay.

What’s that? It costs $100 to go see a therapist, maybe more, maybe less?

How much does an oil change cost?

Do 20 Minutes of Exercise Three Times a Week

That’s all you need to do to get the beneficial effects of exercise when it comes to heart disease and stroke.

Just get out and do something three times a week for 20 minutes that raises your heart and breathing rate to a level where you struggle to have a consistent conversation.

More exercise than that, or harder exercise than that is great, but when you’re doing it, it’s all about your fitness goals.

What do you want to accomplish?

If you want to move more efficiently, feel more mobile, and perform at your best, then spend more time with a qualified training professional.

But if your goal is simply to increase longevity and quality of life, just get those three little sessions in a week!

Buy A Scale and Weigh Yourself Regularly

Yes, you read the correct heading.

If you weigh yourself regularly, you are more likely to do something about the occasional rise in the number.

But if you never weigh yourself until that trip to the doctor’s office, well, now you have even more reasons not to go!

Being overweight, especially getting close to obesity (which some 60% of the population is considered to be these days!) is a huge health risk.

So monitoring your weight, and managing your weight are very effective ways of staving off pain and suffering down the line.

Eat Good Quality Food

Some people are filling their gas tanks 2–3 times a week to the tune of $200–300, but won’t spend that on groceries because they’re too expensive.

Instead, we buy processed foods, quick low quality snacks, fast food, and junk food to solve the energy demands.

That’s like filling your car with gas that has sand in it!

Eventually the motor is going to seize and your car is going to be useless, and eventually your body is going to crash and you will be in a very dark place.

Eat more real food. Cook for yourself. Stop buying stuff that’s already made for you.

There is just so much to be gained through good quality food and so much to be lost through eating crap!

Take better care of yourself than you do your car, that’s just the minimum you should be doing.

KISS Principles are key.

There are three forms of currency we use every day in our lives, one of them is limited, one requires constant consideration and monitoring, and the other has no limits.

The one we often think of as being limited is money. We only have so much, we have to earn it, if we don’t have it we get stressed, and if we need it we become desperate.

But when you think about it, it is truly limitless.

There is no effective limitation to the possibilities of how much money we can have or accumulate.

You may not believe this if you don’t have a lot of it, but listen to this and hear it.

Money is not your problem, how you manage time and energy is your real problem.

These other two forms of currency are far less abundant, and yet we spend far less consideration on how we manage them.

Time is functionally restricted.

We all have 24 hours in each day, we all get 365 days in a year, and depending on our life span if we’re lucky enough to live to a ripe old age of 90 or 100, we will have roughly 40–45 million minutes on this earth to live out all our dreams and aspirations.

Oh ya, and if you spend 6–8 hours sleeping each night, which we all need to do, you can cut that number down to roughly 30 million minutes of productive time.

Energy, the third currency, is like a gas tank, there is a certain amount available to us each day, and we need to manage it, we need to re-fill it each day with nutrients, sleep, rest, etc. But we generally only have so much.

Ultimately, it is this over-fixation of acquiring the first currency that eats up our available time and energy. So we need to become far more considerate of how we use these more limited commodities in our lives.

So the first thing you need to do is to understand where you are bleeding time and energy so you need to time audit your day.

For at least three to five days, write down in a log either by hand or in an EXCEL file, what you did for the last hour through all your waking hours.

Once you have this data, look for the dead spots (watching TV or spending time surfing social media), the spinning wheels spots (when you appear to be doing things, but are really achieving nothing valuable), the circle back spots (where you keep revisiting the same problems or stuff and you are not being productive) and the energy out elements (when you are doing stuff you hate doing).

I bet you dollars to donuts that you will find that when you do this, you will be spending much more of your time doing a lot of the stuff in that last paragraph rather than being productive, enjoying energy in the elements, and recovering your energy so you can come back and do more when you need to do more.

Once you have a handle on how you are using your time, the second thing you need to do is take a longer look at where you are spending your energy.

There are things you are passionate about doing, they make you feel energized, sometimes you walk away from them (which can be hard to do) feeling like you are on cloud nine. These are energy IN elements of your life.

Take out a sheet of paper, or make an EXCEL document again and create a left column and a right-hand column.

What are your energy in elements? List them in that left-hand column.

Now list your energy OUT elements in the right-hand column.

Look at it for a while.

Digest how much of your life you spend doing things on the right-hand column, and how much of your life you spend doing things on the left-hand column.

Scary isn’t it? Shocking!

We all spend far too much of our precious currencies wastefully or inaccurately.

So the third thing you need to do is reconstruct your day so that you are wasting less time.

Get rid of the time wasters, or position them and understand their role in your day.

For example; if you want to watch TV, try to determine an amount of time for your indulgence, and choose programming that is positively affecting you. If you come away from the show motivated, uplifted, and rested, then keep it in your day, but if it’s only serving to increase your blood pressure (the news of the day!!) or leaves you disturbed or stressed, then get it out of your play list.

The fourth thing you need to do is maximize energy IN elements and begin to remove, allocate, or authorize others to take care of those things for you. If you hate cleaning the house, then see what a house cleaner will cost you. If you don’t like doing business bookkeeping, look for a bookkeeper.

What’s that, you say, you can’t afford them? Is it that you can’t afford them, or you haven’t prioritized these costs so they open up time and energy flows for you?

Craft your day, own the time you spend, and pump it full of energy IN essentials.

Finally, the last thing you need to do is to take stock regularly and review how you are doing with your schedule and your elimination of energy OUT, and injection of energy IN.

• Plan IT
• Execute IT
• Review IT
• Revise IT
• Run IT again
• And be consistent!

These five things, if really considered thoughtfully, and constructed with you in mind, will yield huge results, and you will be amazed how much the first currency will appear to rise in your bank account! Give it a try!

P.S. There might be someone out there who you think this post can help, please consider sharing this with them so we can all reach higher! 

My mom always told me that when my friends were coming over, it was really important that I share my toys. How could I expect people to share with me if I didn’t share with them?

The fine lesson of setting an example from mom, so true!

As I grew older I realized that sharing doesn’t always come naturally to everyone, it is certainly a learned phenomenon. One that our parents all likely tried to instill in us early on, but didn’t always succeed!

There are three things we should be willing to share without compromise with the people in our lives. If we do so, we will live a far more fulfilling and rewarding life.

The first share is love.

We set out on a course in our lives from the beginning that should include a great deal of love. Our parents love us unconditionally, right?

Not always.

A lot of people, for whatever reason, have children for the wrong reasons and start their relationship with their children on the wrong foot. Their unhappiness becomes the focal point of their child’s unhappiness.

Love is withheld. The child suffers.

No child should ever suffer from a lack of love. Love is our emotional fuel, without it, we remain deeply unfulfilled.

But let’s assume for now that we start life at least, with a good dose of love from mom and dad and the rest of our family (hopefully!).

From then on in, love is a crapshoot. We connect with people as we roll along, hopefully falling in love as we roll through a few early relationships.

Unfortunately, every break up causes us to withhold a little bit of ourselves the next time we connect, and after several failed relationships, we lose sight of the intention.

Our love is a reciprocal gift.

The first law of thermodynamics, also known as Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another.

Our love is a form of energy.

So it is within us to share it, to give it to someone else so that it can be converted by another person into something that feeds their soul.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The simplified version of this phenomenon has been expressed as, “You cannot touch without being touched.”

What we give to someone else will be reciprocated in equal measure, but it is in this phenomenon that we lose trust. We hold back the depth of our love, protecting what we believe is our core energy, concerned that it will not be reciprocated, or worse, it may be taken advantage of by the other person.

This only results in a lesser expression of love on their part, a “hedging of bets” so to speak.

The result is an unfulfilled life.

We must love whole-heartedly, unconcerned by the “what if they don’t love me back?” Or “what if they take advantage of me?” questions. These questions only cause us to withhold further, and the cycle of less energy in, less energy back is perpetuated.

Share your love, for when you share it unconditionally, the love that you will feel will be positively overwhelming.

The second share is your knowledge.

Too many people learn how to do things or create success, but decide not to share it with the community at large. The assumption being that if they share, then they won’t stand out, and their success will somehow be diminished.

In reality, when you share your knowledge the return equation becomes exponential!

If you share your knowledge, those around you will in turn share their knowledge or contribute to your further understanding. 

One of the most powerful ways of better understanding subject matter is to actually teach it and entertain questions afterwards. You gotta know it!

The simple act of sharing forces you to clarify, be clear and concise, and be ready to receive feedback.  Not always easy, but the ROI is immense.

Share your knowledge and you will be a brighter mind.

Finally, share your wisdom.

There is nothing more valuable for a younger person than the perspective of an older more seasoned veteran.

Perspective is a hard thing to have if you haven’t experienced something, and though we should all experience many things in life, sometimes it is a good thing to have the advise of a wise person on which to base our decisions.

As we age, it is our duty to guide, to provide direction, and to save some others a little time, energy, and stress by simply opening our vault of experience.

When we share with others, we grow deeply.

When we share we experience a true sense of legacy, and we leave our imprint on the world. 

We leave the world a better place.

I encourage you to share and to leave your world in a better place.

P.S. If you enjoyed it, please share it 😉