1,000 Days of Relentless Intentional Action

Are you exactly who you want to be? Are your actions today creating the future you actually want for yourself?? Do you even know the answers to these questions?

Story

I spent my entire adult life not being who I wanted to be. I did not know who I was or my ‘purpose’.? I was extremely unsettled and anxious that I was not good enough.? From the outside you could have compared me to many others and determined I was successful by societal norms. I was not good enough for myself.? I struggled against that.? There was the person that I sort of dreamed existed who was often the one that others may have perceived from the outside, but I was entirely disconnected from it.? I felt a lot of personal responsibility for a story in my mind that I am a failure.? I discounted any positive talk immediately by feeling that you just did not see the whole picture yet of how I am actually a failure. I did not like this, I resisted it, and it still felt overwhelmingly true.??

I threw my own self-pity party in my mind even though it was not warranted by any external measure. I had done plenty of the right things to have all the trappings of success with a family, a house full of stuff, and a small business to run. I also had an elaborate emotional escape system built up to avoid actually having to confront problems with myself.? There was always an urgent next thing that I had to show up for and I would afterward quickly fall apart and do anything to escape the pressure and overwhelm I felt from it all.??

That is all very different now.

All change begins by telling the truth.??

I did not know this concept at the beginning of my journey to actually change.?

When I share bits and pieces of my experience with people, they nearly always ask what the tipping point was.? How did I get myself to change my mind?

This is difficult to answer.? Years of entrenched programming to ignore, avoid, and escape emotions with such an intensely negative personal story playing in my mind does not have a quick fix.? It is a journey. I am still on it.

Where do we discover the truth?

We create awakenings to see something in a slightly different way.? Awakenings help us to uncover more of what we do not even know that we do not know.? This is the unknown of the Johari Window. We have to keep exploring till we change our minds.

Actions that create internal and external awakenings are key to opening that up to ourselves.

• Internal awakenings - Actions that we take with our body and mind.??
• Body actions - Stretching, walking, any movement
• Mind actions - meditation, journaling, gratitude, abstention
• External Awakenings - Outside stimulus we bring our attention to that affects us
• The content we consume and the relationships we keep

Progress over Perfect

Having the desire to change my own mental state led me to do some reading (external awakening) on self-development and leadership.? Inevitably I started to create connections in my mind (internal awakenings) on what is true and became open to an alternative point of view.

Each of these are powerfully meaningful statements of truth for me.

“Ordinary things consistently done produce extraordinary results.” - Keith Cunnigham

80% of life is showing up

What you do is who you are.??

Our actions form our identity over time.?

Who do I have to become in order to achieve what I want to achieve???

Changing my behavior to be who I want to be is the key.? BUT, I have tried and failed countless times to get myself to do what I need to do.

Enter Atomic Habits by James Clear.? A formula of the 4 laws of behavior change.? I have to optimize my life around starting the exact actions to make progress every day. Get 1% better.

Our identity of who we want to be is tied to the roles we want to play in life and we can see that in the type of person that has that role in the way we want to have it by their actions.

I need a 2-minute habit that creates an external or internal awakening to have the identity I want to have.

The Habit Stack

My identity statement that I was working to re-write 1,000 days ago:

I experience the wonder of the world as a leader, father, and husband.

The Core 4 Actions:

1. Gratitude - Internal Awakening - FIRST thing when I wake up, open the photos app, look at pictures from ‘this day’ in previous years and send one to my wife - 2 minutes
2. Listen - External awakening - Listen to an audiobook for at least 2 minutes
3. Physically Engage - Internal Awakening - personal identity of being Able - 2 minute intentional walk
4. Meditate - internal awakening - all roles - Use guided meditation app - 2-minutes

I wrote out a habit contract that detailed every single component of Atomic Habits points on how to Make it Obvious, Attractive, Easy, and Satisfying to keep these core 4 commitments to myself.

These actions are how I start every single day.? I wrote out timelines, and backup plans, and created check-ins with others.? I committed to making the upfront effort to get myself to show up.

Outcomes

Percentage of Success after 1,000 days

1. Gratitude - 89%
2. Listen (reading) - 87%
3. Physically Engage - 71% - This is the only one where I moved the definition.? Now a ‘yes’ requires a physically challenging workout.
4. Meditate - 87%

Gratitude - I now have a general sense of knowing ways to respond to intense unwelcome emotions with ways of connecting back to the joy and abundance that exists in life.? I have a respect for my own journey that simply did not exist previously

Listen - This increased my book consumption from ~10 books a year to 40+.? I am continually deep diving into incredibly interesting topics that have allowed me to form so many new connections in my mind. I feel like I actually have more of a sense of what my own point of view on the world is.

Physically engaged - I started at 340 pounds with chronic back pain and a general lack of energy always fighting myself to do what I had to do to get through.? I had never run 1 mile in my adult life.? Now I am 75+ pounds lighter, regularly jog a 5k, and know I am on a sustainable path to health longevity.

Meditate - Have you spent any time with me lately?? You may have noticed calm, compassion, and presence.? It is because I sit still every day.??

My core story now?? Relentless intentional actions towards 10x joy and abundance.

What is in this for you?

Unfortunately, in sharing bits and pieces of my transformation.? I have received some feedback of envy or feeling ‘lesser than’ that absolutely does not serve us as individuals.

A hater could look and say with no other context, that I had it easy.? That their situation is unique and harder than mine.? They could very well be right about that.? This message could still be useful for them to make a choice to take action.

What is my sincere hope?? That someone reading this who similarly struggles with deep discontent with how things are and feels completely stuck sees a new way worth exploring.

My advice on what that exploration looks like

1. Questions - Answer these questions…What is 1 role in your life that matters to you?? What is 1 thing that someone who is more like who you want to be in that role does on a daily basis?? Do you believe it is possible that taking action would help you to see things differently? What action could you start every day (for only 2 minutes) that aligns with this?
2. Habits - Step through the Atomic Habits laws of behavior change - Make it Obvious, Attractive, Easy, and Satisfying - do ALL the things to help stack everything in your favor to follow through
3. Action - Make a choice and do it. When you fail for a day, a week, or a month, just keep returning to the answers to the questions above(your Why?) and your notes for the behavior change you created by reviewing Atomic Habits (the How?).? It may just change your life.

From someone that is 1,000 days in…I cannot wait to get to 10,000 days.? I will update you in September 2047 on that one.