Get Mad!

DAY 6 - GET MAD!

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

Maya Angelou

I grew up in a single mother home with my two older brothers in Elizabeth, NJ. We grew up what by any standards today would be, poor. Most of my teenage years were spent sharing one bedroom with them all, because it was the only room that had a space heater in it. We had no heat or hot water for most of my high school years. My father was non existent in all of those years and didn’t come back around until I was in my 20s. He wasn’t a great husband to my mother, abuse and deception were sort of his thing…but at least he was consistent about it. As I grew into adulthood, it turned out that I didn’t learn much from what my childhood tried to teach me and history has a funny way of repeating itself if you’re not careful. I made terrible financial decisions and even worse decisions when it came to marriage and fatherhood. The generational curse was definitely continuing through me. I managed to screw up my marriage and found myself separated and without my children, right there, in my rock bottom is where I finally had a lightning bolt moment in my mind. I literally put my own family through the very same things that I went through in my younger life and hated so much. That made me angry. How can this be? How could I let this happen? These questions made me even angrier…with myself, with my situation and boom, “get mad” was born.

Get mad about what you see and don’t like and do something about it, that's what I said to myself. Let that hurt, that pain, that disappointment fuel your purpose and change of course David! Don’t like having grown up with less, get mad and become financially literate. Don’t like how your family dynamic looked, get mad and create a strong, solid foundation for your wife and kids. Don’t like what you see in the mirror, get mad and let that fuel your journey to fitness. You get the point? You can be a victim or you can take ownership of what you did not and do not like in your life, all it takes is a change of your mindset and the motivation to do something drastic. Every negative in our lives can be changed, but it takes a decision in your mind and a purpose to change it for good. Sometimes we need the right kick in the ass and perspective, and there are fewer things more motivating in life than hurt, pain and regret. Take a look in the mirror, take inventory of your life and instead of complaining about what you do not like, get mad and do something. You control the perspective your mind has, not the other way around, be sure that your perspective on all things is that if I GET MAD and determined, I can change my circumstances to what I want to see.

Day 6 of 30 days to a stronger mindset is all about this: I will no longer just bitch and moan about the things that have happened to me, the circumstances I find myself in or the situations I don’t like. I will get mad and use that to motivate me to do better and get better for myself and the people who depend on me.