Real-life examples for real people.
Yesterday a friend came to see me to vent to me.
Long story short,
- She lives with her boyfriend, but they no longer have intimate relations.
- She has health problems and is undergoing medical tests.
- She has zero dollars saved.
They say three things in life: health, money, and love.
Well, she is missing all three.
The life she dreams of living vs. the life she has.
- The life she dreams of: she wants to live in a house of her own (she lives renting) in a small town and have children.
- The life she has: she lives in a city with a boyfriend who doesn’t want children.
So the life she wants to lead is very different from the life she leads.
Does she do anything to change it?
No. She does anesthetize herself to cope with her life: junk food, Cannabis, tobacco, and compulsive shopping.
It’s all short-term fixes.
What my friend doesn’t understand
My friend doesn’t understand that she does what she does to avoid the pain of change.
My friend doesn’t understand that the person she is has to die (metaphorically) because you can’t put new wine in old wineskins.
My friend does not understand that the reality she lives in reflects the person she is, and that person is completely different from the one who could materialize the dream of buying a house and having a child.
My friend does not understand that to fulfill her dreams; she has to be responsible, thrifty, and healthy. And she currently does not take care of herself, does not save, and is not responsible.
My friend doesn’t understand that she dreams her dream, which is very different from pursuing a goal. The one who lives on plans only fantasizes about a better life to deceive himself and get through one more day of the crappy life he has.
To pursue a dream, you have to commit; she doesn’t save because, deep down, she has the life that her current (irresponsible) self wants.
And she doesn’t give the self she aspires to be (responsible) a chance to materialize.
Why isn’t he able to get out of the hole?
Because he has too many problems, and when she sees the mountain of shit on top of her, she gets overwhelmed and is too lazy to start.
And if you tell her what she must do, she always objects.
If I tell her, you don’t have to waste money. She tells me that you only live once and that if she doesn’t go on vacation or shopping, she gets existential angst 🙂
If I tell her, you have to go exercise. She tells me she gets bored alone at the gym and has no one to go with.
If I tell her that she must leave her relationship with her boyfriend. She tells me that if she does, she would have to return to her parent’s house,e and she doesn’t want to.
- Conclusion: she doesn’t want to do what she has to do to change her life.
- Possible outcome: if she continues to live a life that deep down she hates, she will make worse and worse decisions to deceive herself and endure the vital pain of persisting in her shitty life.
- Solution: follow this quick guide to get out of the shit.
Quick guide to get out of the shit.
There is always something in your daily life that you can change.
My advice is always the same, choose something small that you can change today and focus only on that until you manage to change it instead of trying to change all your bad habits at once.
Always choose the “bad habit” that will benefit you most when you stop it. Reread it.
Following my friend’s example, if I were her, I would start by quitting smoking and forget about the rest of my problems. They would be put on the back burner.
All my energy would go into quitting smoking.
What would my friend get out of it,
- She would save $700 a month on Cannabis and tobacco. (If she kept saving that money a month, she would save $8400 per year; if she did it for ten years, she would be $84,000, much less than her dream house in the village. — As she is 30, she will achieve her goal at 40).
- Regain her health so that she can have a healthy child tomorrow.
- Gain certainty. Gain self-confidence. To raise her self-esteem.
- To improve her coexistence. Because her boyfriend also smokes, and if she stops smoking, either her boyfriend starts to change, or he will end up moving away from her (in both cases, she wins).
As we can see, focusing on a small bad habit repeated daily is much more efficient than people think at first glance. It can take you from point A (the life you have and hate) to point B (the life of your dreams) as quickly and efficiently as possible.
In my friend’s case, it would take her to completely fulfill her dream: to have a house and to be able to be a mother.
Success stories
I was an alcoholic, and when I gave up alcohol, a domino effect in my life led me to clean up all my addictions gradually and have the life I always dreamed of.
A friend weighed 291 pounds, had a rotten mouth, and had zero euros in the bank. After analyzing her bad habits, I advised her to go to a nutritionist because she was addicted to junk food, she went on a diet, and today, she has lost more than 44 pounds, fixed her mouth, and was able to save enough money to be two years without working.
It may not sound like much, but these are lasting changes.
Takeaway
- Make a list with two columns; in one column, describe your life, and in the other, describe the life you want.
- If you want to change your life, look for that habit that you repeat daily and that, if you eliminate it, will bring you more benefits (make a list of those benefits).
- Check how those benefits of leaving the bad habit affect the life you want to have, and you will see that going through that habit is the first step of faith that you have to take to achieve the life of your dreams.
Imagine that life is a chair supported by four legs; if you cut one leg, the chair falls apart. And you have to change your chair.
The same happens when you focus on eliminating a pillar habit supporting the life you don’t want but lead.
Focus on changing that habit; in doing so, the rest of your life you don’t want will fall apart, and you will have to build a new, better life. Trust in the process.
A virtual hug,
AG
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