Now here’s what’s scary. Sometimes, trees decay from the inside out. Meaning on the outside, it still looks like this powerful strong healthy tree. But on the inside, it literally is decayed. So much so, and I learned this actually when I was stacking lumber up in Canada for three months, doing a hard labor job there. They had me cut down a tree one time and I think they were joking with me.
But I thought they were serious. So I took an axe and went to go hack at a tree. And I swung this axe and hit the tree and when I hit the tree, the axe literally went straight through the tree. And I probably almost took my own head off, because it came through so fast.
And they were all laughing like crazy, all the guys on the work site. And I didn’t know what happened. What it was is that on the outside this tree looked really strong. But on the inside, it had completely rotted away.
And the crazy part is some people’s lives are like that. You look at them on the outside and they look like they’re a strong person, living this amazing life. But on the inside, because they stopped growing, because they stopped feeding their mind and their emotions and their spirit every day, because they stopped really finding ways to improve who they are as a person, they started to decay from within.
And over the years, even though the outside shell looked so strong and healthy, the inside has been torn down and there’s nothing there anymore. It’s empty. And all it takes is one strong strike of life and all of a sudden, it puts them on their knees.
So my advice is to never be that kind of person. Always be the type of person that’s filling and fueling every single day of your life, to make sure that you’re filled up and fueled up with so much powerful, positive information that drives you forward. That nurtures and grows your spirit and your mind and your mental capacity, that is causes you to become the best version of yourself.
Now, how do you do that? Another thing we talked about in our book is there’s a chapter on mental strength. When I talk about when I was told I had five days left to live, I made the decision that I was going to find a reason to live and fight like hell. I had to figure out what were the things I did every single day to actually build that mental strength.
And we go through a whole variety of options, but just a few of my favorites we talked about is #1, having a ritual every single morning to start your day off. And we actually wanted to help people with this, so we created a free gift. I’m sure we’ll tell you about it at the end of the podcast here. But a free gift, which is a simple five minute audio track you can pop in every day and listen to.
And all it does is help walk you through a simple visualization of how your ideal day that day is going to be. Map it out in your head. It always starts with a vision. It always starts with a roadmap of where you want to go and what you want to do. So that’s what we start with. Start off every single day by literally outlining how you want your day to be.
From there, you’ve got to take time for gratitude. There are numerous studies that show people who’ve gone through depression or gone through any type of struggle in their life, when they spend time keeping a gratitude journal, it massively increases their overall attitude and overall happiness over a simple period of time. Ten days, five days, twenty days.
So it’s amazing. It’s simple. You’ve got to start off with your vision. Next, go to gratitude. Fill your mind for at least three minutes. Ideally out loud, so you can feel it and experience it. But speak aloud everything you’re grateful for.
Once you have that, now, start to use affirmations or incantations. Phrases to build into your nervous system how you want to feel and the thoughts you want to think. I mentioned earlier that we all have that little voice in our head that when we least expect it, it starts to beat us up and nitpick and tear us down. You should have done this. You should have done that.
And it’s this annoying little voice that beats us up every now and then. You want to override that voice by filling it and flooding it with all these amazing thoughts that you want to think.
So that’s the next step. Fill it up.
And then the final step is building somethig physically that activates your mind and body and gets you ready for the day.
So we talk about these different types of rituals in this chapter. And it’s stuff that I did literally every single day to get myself on track. And I started that and didn’t realize this.
And I’ve really been doing these types of things for about twelve years now. And I have many, many friends who, they were my roommates when I was living in that little room in the front den of the house. They were my friends when I could barely run a mile. And they watched me all of a sudden running marathons and triathlons within six months to a year later.
They watched me transform as a human being. And it’s not because I got fricking lucky. It’s because I started building these little tiny rituals in the major categories of my life that have caused me to become the way I am today.
