Spring Revitalization

As the weather warms up, and as we clean up our houses and prepare our patios and grills for cooking out, it is important to remember that we do the same with our lives. Even having written Weathering The Storm, I constantly find myself having to reenergize, revitalize, and restore myself and my attitude. Don’t think that just because I have the book that I don’t go through the journey with you – maintaining a positive attitude is really tough day in and day out, especially with some of the external circumstances and factors that can arise at any given time. It only takes one quick action or moment for your day, week, month, or life to be altered for better or worse.

With that being said, I thought I’d make a list of things I’m working on this spring, and hopefully you can take something away from the list for yourself.

#1       Eliminating Toxins

#2      Solidifying Personal & Career Goals

#3      Healthier Lifestyle

#4      Patience, Patience, Patience
#5      Don’t Forget The Little Things    

First things first, when I speak of eliminating toxins, I’m referring to anything toxic you may have in your life. Toxic friends, toxic associates, toxic habits, toxic lifestyles, and toxic environments – we always have to work to eliminate them and disassociate ourselves from them. I have had to work hard to even start doing this, and it is a continuous work in progress. It has taken me years to understand this concept, and even as I’ve grown and matured over the years, it is still not something easy to avoid. Nevertheless, I vowed to make it one of my principle grand master plan efforts. Now that spring is here – I’ve really kicked it into high gear. I think the most important thing I’ve learned with removing yourself from anything toxic is to avoid it in the first place. Toxic situations embed themselves in your life like a virus, and often require major (and sometimes debilitating) changes or alterations to remove them once embedded. Move yourself away from the gossip and bad attitudes, and those who encourage such. Even if you did it yesterday, we can all start today by shying away from these behaviors. Bad habits and routines, same thing – vow to break them. Also realize that anything toxic can also have an intoxicating feeling that goes with it – so removing it from your life won’t be easy. Take it one day at a time to change your ways, and move a step closer to becoming a better person everyday. Give it time. If you slip up, apologize and correct what went wrong. I’m human, you’re human – errors are in our essence. Consequently, errors should also act as a map to being a better and well-rounded person.

 Addendum: As you eliminate more toxins, you create a more favorable environment for you, your life, your health, and your personality to develop and grow.

One thing I also put my hardhat on for was laying a foundation and guideline for how I want my personal goals and career pathway to develop over the next couple of years. Granted, life will always find a way to throw a wrench into things, but I felt it was important to at least get myself angled into the right direction. Previously, I didn’t do myself any favors by being scatterbrained in my career goals or completing my tasks, and not having a roadmap for how I was going to complete them. This all created unnecessary stress, anxiety, and frustration for me – because I am impatient (more on that later) and like organization, yet had complete disarray in my objectives. This resulted in me being abrasive to my own self, and grinding my own self down. I sat down, laid out what I wanted to do and placed it against a timeline. Also, I decided that going forward any project, job, or investment I make must be something that works for me, that I am an excellent fit to do, AND allows me to operate at and above my full potential, otherwise I’m denying myself the chance to use my natural talents.  

For healthy lifestyle – I sometimes think this is the most overlooked aspect of any self revitalization we undertake, especially for me. Thankfully, I was blessed with a great metabolism, but I still overdo it with the chips, fried chicken, cheese, etc. Having to deal with hypertension at 26 really helped put the brakes on that somewhat, and the “bad foods” are terribly addicting so it has been a struggle. On the flip side – the days I do eat well, I feel ten times better. I have more energy, more alert, and more able to focus – in addition to feeling just a little bit lighter (more wind in the sails). Again, I have no choice but to adopt a step at a time mentality, and change little by little until I’m at the place where my diet is healthy everyday instead of once every 3 or 4 days. With more energy – you can exercise more or get out and do things you’ve been putting off (both apply to me). I have also noticed that when you eat somewhat consciously, your sleep cycle is more routine and natural. I am not a morning person at all, so I am sometimes over-reliant on coffee – which drives up your blood pressure, makes you anxious for no reason, and then throws your sleep out of cycle even when you only drink it in the morning. Reducing my dependency has been hard (I believe foods can be just as addictive as any drugs), but worth it, and all I can keep doing is try to move more and more away from it. Added benefit – more sleep, which also makes you feel much better. Get your sleep, take some downtime and don’t always overdo it or overexert yourself, and be sure to take a few minutes to relax, even when the going is rough. It really helps you and your outlook in the long run, especially if you get in the routine of doing this.

When I sat down and completed my personal SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) one of my biggest weaknesses is my lack of patience. This has been something I’ve worked on and worked on, and while I’ve gotten better, it’s still a major flaw. My lack of patience has gotten me in trouble more than once; overextending myself, rushing into bad decisions, making choices too abruptly, and so on. Part of the problem I’ve found is because I don’t have any patience with my own self, I can’t have any patience anywhere else in my life. If I were patient with myself, I would be comfortable letting things run their natural course knowing everything will be alright. Instead, when you are impatient with yourself (especially with the poorly assembled personal and career goals I mentioned earlier), you begin to develop a controlling mindset and subsequently “aggressive” actions – that is, you try to force things to happen in your life. As you can imagine, this aggressiveness usually results in disaster. I must learn that there is a difference in taking initiative and having a high work ethic versus trying to manipulate myself into the higher planes desired. This isn’t just for careers and endeavors either, it’s for everything. Relationships, businesses, projects, goals, ambitions, education – practice patience with yourself first, and then let it develop in all facets of your life. You might not be where you want to be or have everything you desire at the time, but know there is nothing wrong with taking a methodical pathway to success. Rewards will always come to those (even if in a form we don’t care for) who work hard, work tediously, and work continuously for their accomplishments.

If you’re like me, I can tend to overlook the little things in focusing on a grander prize, but the truth is our success as a person and in life is heavily reliant on making sure all of our little things are in order first. For a lot of us, the little things form our foundation – they make us who we are. It’s highly important they’re catered to as well – things such as spirituality, our daily routines, time management, our hobbies, social interaction, even something as simple as downtime to unwind and relax (vacation!). Perfecting a lot of those things works as a natural stress buffer and reliever for some. Getting closer into your religion and its practices, should you choose to, will often help you focus your attention on gratitude and appreciation versus all that may be going wrong. Not everyone will take this route, and if you don’t, be sure to find what in your life does bring you satisfaction and focus on building that – family, friends, hobbies such as gardening or reading – or as I’ve chosen to do, become active in the National Psoriasis Foundation advocating for psoriatic patients. Of course, we are all different, so these little things will vary from person to person and that’s ok – I did say these things make us who we are! Find your niche(s), and work to excel in them!

Keep pushing.

Keep growing.

Keep striving.

Keep your head up.

Keep living unconquered.

J. Junior

5/7/13

Instant Inspiration: Jimmy V

As someone who has struggled with psoriasis, I often find inspiration and motivation from those who struggle with chronic diseases of their own. Being employed at The James Comprehensive Cancer Center reinforces the struggles, pain, and losses ones can experience in battle with disease, and reinforces it everyday.

Part of my breakthrough in 2013 has been finding a treatment plan that works well for me and that I can easily incorporate into my life (home phototherapy treatments); this is often the case for anyone with a chronic condition. As with cancer, there is no treatment for psoriatic disease, but an excellent treatment plan can bring about “remission” of the disease – basically an eradication of the symptoms and side effects in this case. Because there is no cure – that’s only a portion of the battle.

Another part, sometimes the biggest and most complex aspect of “remission”, is recovering on the emotional and mental side of things. To do so, I believe it is important to heed the advice of inspirational epicenters – one of them being the late coach, James “Jim” Valvano. I am a huge fan of sports, so this name is a common one for me. For those who aren’t, Jim Valvano won the 1983 NCAA championship at North Carolina State before succumbing to cancer some decade later at the too-young age of 47.

Before his passing, he gave one of the cornerstone speeches in sports. Aching, ill, and with cancer having metastasized all over his body, he gave his motivational “Don’t ever give up” speech at the 1993 ESPY Awards. His mettle during one of the worst imaginable circumstances one can ever be presented with should give pause to us all – persevere no matter the situation, and not to ever give up.

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.” – Jim Valvano

We all have our struggles, and will encounter situations that create anxiety, stress, melancholy, pain, and turmoil. No matter what, I urge you to always handle them with class, with dignity, with humility, and with the mindset that things will improve with time, patience, and dedication.

Six things we can take away from Jimmy V’s speech to not only help us live unconquered, but to live life in general –
 

§                                      Remember where you come from

§                                      Know where you are headed

§                                      Enjoy your life, and the precious moments

§                                      Keep your dreams alive in spite of hardships, pressures

§                                      Work hard to make your dreams a reality

§                                      “Don’t give up, don’t ever give up”

Full Jim Valvano ESPY Award Speech

L | u

J. Junior II

Abracadabra Positivity

It’s been a while since I last posted, and since my last post, a new year has been ushered in for all of us. Whenever we begin our journey into a new year, I’ve found it important that we go into with a “clean slate” mentality. For those of us who have trouble finding a “starting” point for a lot of initiatives we want to implement in our lives, New Year’s Day is a breath of fresh air – hence the throngs of new year resolutions most of us enact.

In my experiences, I’ve found one of the hardest things to alter when we create our resolutions is mindset/ mentality. A lot of the times, when we do attempt to tackle mindsets and mentalities – we really only dress it up with a shiny coat of paint (versus the hard work – sanding it down, identifying imperfections and repairing them, then putting up a new coat of paint). After a while, if you add enough “new coats of paint” to anything without removing some of the old ones – blemishes will permeate through, and whatever you’re painting over will become weighed down.

Think about it – you can paint a pig green, but there is still a pig underneath. Cover it in yellow, and that green layer is still there, along with the pig itself. Proceed to cover it in red; the yellow and green won’t go anywhere unless you clean them off first.

One step in tackling adverse mindsets and mentalities is to indentify the root of the problem and why that mindset/ mentality exists. For example – you won’t just have grudges or prejudices just because (if you’re of a sane mind); they are either learned (taught at an early age) or developed by the examples of negative influences and environments. Maybe a terrible incident happened that created a grudge or a prejudice you hold, sometimes a misunderstanding can cause those feelings as well. The point – the negativity had a seed that grew. It must be uprooted and destroyed for it to dissipate. Visualize all pessimistic thoughts, mindsets, mentalities, and environments as your house in disrepair. To fix it, you can’t simply put up a few coats of paint and new shingles; you’re going to have to do some extensive construction and renovation to get it back to the pristine shape you want.

This is where the term abracadabra comes in. Abracadabra is a word very familiar to conjurors – as it is most often a word used by magicians in magical acts and performances. In elder times, it was a magical charm/ incantation that had the power to ward of disease, famine, or catastrophe of any kind. Unfortunately, try as we might, there is no magic or incantation of any kind that will snap you out of an unconstructive funk – only hard work, restructuring, dedication, and discipline will. You aren’t going to wake up and instantly have all the stars aligned and be this bright and completely optimistic person overnight – abracadabra positivity does not exist – it takes time so be patient.

Since we’re unable to instantly conjure up that state of perfect optimism, we have to draft plans on how to get there the old fashion way – a journey to success. Here are a couple of examples; the more detailed are just a couple of the ones I created for 2013, with a list you may find helpful afterwards.

- Eliminating hurdles present within my controlled environment (those who are voluntarily placed within your realm) – family, friends, associates, co-workers, church members, significant others, etc.

- Work on any physical things that can contribute to me not performing at my best – improving diet, new psoriasis treatment plan, significantly increase exercise, become less dependant on caffeine, vitamin supplements, etc.

- Narrow my focus onto my goals, principles, and objectives for 2013. This would include school, manuscripts for the next couple of books, continue to grow career, continue to professionally network in my career and writing fields, etc.

- In the words of the infamous magnet principle: remember that “like attracts like”. What I become, I will attract. With that in mind, grow in a pattern that will allow me to continue to attract positive/ constructive like-minded entities versus those of the unconstructive/ uninspiring/ stagnant nature.

- Mentoring

- Proctor for inspiring writers

- Volunteering

- Running

- Actively advocating (psoriasis)

- Writing more

- More involved with family & friends

- More extroverted (shake off your winter rust)

- Keep busy (draft daily agendas and objectives)

- Be (or become) more proactive versus reactive

- Be (or become) more aware

- Appreciate everything (and show it)

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. The biggest thing is to find something that brings you joy and peace within your life, because it assists with you disassociating with the negative. This can take time, but work on it everyday. Distancing yourself takes on a snowball effect, for the positive and the negative, just make sure you get the ball rolling in the right direction. 

Don’t focus on your anxiety – focus on your productiveness.

Don’t focus on your depression – focus on your gratitude of life.

Turn your eyes away from your fears – embrace change and flexibility.

Abracadabra positivity doesn’t exist – but permanent positivity sure does, and it’s ok if it takes a little time to get there; it’s worth the wait!

Live Unconquered.

1/26/2013

J. Junior II