(ThyBlackMan.com) This article is written to shake you up. Why? Because the person you are is NOT the person you were born to be. You were born to be better than you are today, better in every way. But somewhere along the way life, pandemics, depression, traumatic experiences such as illness, the loss of loved ones or financial chaos got in the way of the person you were supposed to be and ushered in complacency instead. Your spirit or subconscious became imprinted and comfortable with a much lesser you. The good news? That can be reversed. While the solutions are simple, implementation is hard and consistency is a bit harder. Building a better you is complex, but it does not have to be complicated. So in this article I am going to keep it simple and exclude both the data and much of the psychoanalysis. And unlike many of my other articles, I will keep this one short and to the point so you can use it as an easy reference guide.
TO BUILD A BETTER YOU, IT STARTS WITHIN – AND YOU HAVE TO WANT IT BADLY!
The first step is honest, thorough self-assessment:
taking a good look at who you really are and recognizing that you can do and be better. Most people do not want to look in the mirror physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually all at the same time, if at all. They don’t like what they see, yet find themselves too overwhelmed to do anything about it. Are you overweight? Are you a smoker, drinker or weed head? Are you masking depression, anxiety and/or low self-esteem? Are you a hoarder? Are you a spendthrift? Are you just plain mean? Or never satisfied? Or always ready to blame someone else for your problems? What are you hiding or hiding from? All of the above are mechanisms used to compensate for feelings of inadequacy. But you do not have to feel inadequate. And for those of you who believe medication can take away your problems, your day of self-deception needs to end. Michael Jackson sang to start with “the man in the mirror”. In her song Anti Hero, Taylor Swift said “I’m the problem it’s me”. What can you say about yourself?
HAVE YOU BECOME PART OF YOUR OWN PROBLEM?
The second step is to stop making excuses.
It is a fact that the world is not full of your best friends and most people don’t care about you. Family members may backstab you. Someone at your job wants you to get fired. And the people even at your church or place of worship who smile in your face probably don’t give a hoot about you either. Yes there is a devil. God may not do what you ask. Your children may get on your nerves. Friends who borrowed money will probably never pay it back. Your spouse likely gets on your nerves, as I do with my wife often but completely unintentionally. And life is not fair. Now what? Now you move forward anyway.
TIME TO GROW ALL THE WAY UP BECAUSE THE PITY PARTY HAS TO END
No more blaming other people nor circumstances for who you are. Not the employer. Not your spouse. Not the police. Not whomever is president. Not guns. Not political parties. Not those who won’t help you fix yourself. That is under your control much more than you think and under their control much less than you think. The power to change your life is yours. The only person on planet Earth who can effectively stop you time and time again is YOU! Unfortunately you, your fears, attitudes, emotional pain and negative thoughts have stood in your way more often than anybody else has. Because no matter how strong you thought yourself to be, the one person you were not prepared to deal with is YOU!
The third step is to stop complaining.
Attitude is everything and complaining about anything only amplifies the problem. When you see your problems, faults and vices as giants, they tend to intimidate you. So it’s time to shrink them down to a size where you can step on them, not the reverse. No matter what you need to change, amplifying the problem will only serve to amplify its power over you. When we complain, we listen to ourselves, program ourselves and distract ourselves from real solutions. Complaining never helps anything but to focus on your problems more than the solutions. That part of your thinking has to change right away.
The fourth step is to create a plan – and stick to it.
A plan for what? A plan for everything you need to correct about yourself to build a better you. I always say life is about 20% of what happens to you but 80% of what you do about it. Change requires sacrifice. By now you may say that I have no idea what you have been through and how hard it is. Well tell you what, try finding out that you had stage 3 colon cancer at your first colonoscopy, spending 10 hours in surgery, waking up with a catheter, drainage tube, IVs and ostomy bag all hooked up to you when you had never been in the hospital for anything before. Try having your intestines separated for months then reconnected. Try going 4 days without 1 minute of sleep, not 1 minute. Try going to the bathroom 27 times in one night. Trying cycling thru every emotion you can think of and some you never knew you had. Yes I have an idea about how bad things can be. But I am here and 6 years later, I’m back.
I had a plan to walk back into life, no matter what. A plan to build a better me, and it’s still happening now, a day at a time. Hard was not the word for it. In fact, I cannot even think of a word that describes the road back. Still it could be done and it is a work in progress that will be completed. So I have to ask you, what is your plan to build a better you?
EXCUSES ARE YOUR ENEMY AND MEDIOCRITY ONLY HOLDS YOU BACK
I cannot give you the specifics for building a better you. However, in the process, I can guarantee you a few things. If your plan seems really simple, it probably won’t work. If your plan involves others doing it for you, it probably won’t work. If your plan is too soft, too slow or comprised of half-stepping inconsistency, it probably won’t work. If your plan is too easy and too comfortable, it probably won’t work. If your plan does not require you to make sacrifices, it probably won’t work. If you have somebody else create your plan for you, especially without your immense input, it probably won’t work. If your plan includes help from people whose lives are full of problems, it probably won’t work. If your plan does not address the roots of your problems that require change, it probably won’t work. If your plan is largely based on the approval of others, it probably won’t work. Nothing worth having comes easy and you might as well face that now instead of later. The core of your plan has to come from within you, not somebody else.
The fifth step is to surround yourself with positive “I can do this” energy.
There are sooooo many negative, lost, confused and disoriented people in the world today, people full of negative energy. And misery loves company. Negative energy is draining and there are energy-draining vampires all around you. Make sure you are not one to yourself nor anyone else. Do not share your plan(s) with anyone who will shoot them down. Your plans to build a better you are on a need-to-know basis. Trust only those you have to with your plan and those you need to be a proactive part of it.
Many of you were mentally, emotionally and financially destabilized by the Covid-19 pandemic. As an Advanced Life Coach, I see and hear it everywhere. But you need to dust yourself off and get back on track because another pandemic is coming. You need to build a better you at the speed of life because you do not have the liberty to casually take your time. I am not saying the better you will pop up overnight, but I am saying the process needs to get underway right away. That means you have some hard and fast decisions to make.
THERE ARE MORE STEPS, BUT THIS ARTICLE WILL GET YOU STARTED
Do not be afraid to usher in and embrace the better you. The better you is more capable than the you of today. The better you is more confident, more courageous, more victorious, more resilient, more prepared, smarter, wiser and more powerful than the you of today. Your best life yet starts when you begin the process of building a better you!
Staff Writer; Trevo Craw
A Free Thinker, who loves to talk about Politics, etc. Also, all about uplifting the Black Community even if it doesn’t fit your mindset. One may hit me up at; TrevoCraw@ThyBlackMan.com.