How Crazy Would You Get To Find Your Best Self?

So, how crazy would you get to find your best self? That might be a question that not all of us have thought of, but should. What if I suggested that your best self comes with the happiest version of you? Now if you are reading this and saying that you would do whatever it takes, I hope you are thinking about what moves you on the inside. Material things will not help any of us keep real, heartfelt focus over a lifetime, at least I hope that is true for most of us.

I’m talking about the kind of self that is complete mentally, spiritually, and physically in everything we do. I’m halfway through a book where a businessman convinces a Navy Seal to live with him and train. The book is,” Living With A Seal” by Jesse Itzler, it is both a fascinating and hilarious read. Jesse is a marathon runner and a part-time athlete, so not completely without physical ability. I’m not going to tell the story, I’ll let you enjoy the book, but no match for a hardened Navy Seal. Outside of the humor, what resonated with me most was the lesson inside the lesson. It is one thing to tackle something brutally physical, it’s another thing to give in to that challenge completely. You start having to tap recesses of your mind and soul that may be a first for so many people. Those moments will expose both your strongest and weakest attributes and can be the very point of true freedom and spiritual strength. The point where you have to reach down to your core and push through. The special part of the book and its story is that Jesse sought it out to embrace finding what he was capable of.

The hard part of growing for a lot of people is, you must look for something every day to better yourself. Read that again, there has to be a pursuit from you seeking something to challenge your mind by provoking real thought, while feeding your soul. Everyday! It’s not as tough as you think, I just gave you a great example, find and read a good book. Sit down and actually take the time to read a book you sought out and wanted to explore. Do not wait for it to come to you, don’t wait for whatever new thing is on your Smartphone, search it out.

Get up every day and pursue something, then start looking at someone or something as a mentor or inspiration. We all need references of where we want to be, guiding us on a similar path. Pursuit and having a good reference is a great start on being able to achieve a step or two every day towards the kind of person you want to be and what you want to achieve. We should all be in pursuit of feeding our minds with positive things and people that can motivate us in everything we do. I would suggest trying to find sources of things that inspire and help you get up every day with different ways of feeding your brain. You can find ways to do that with a good book, inspiring movies, a place that brings your best thoughts, or sitting down for coffee with someone you consider a mentor. Consistently putting that positive fuel in to nourish your mind, can not only progress your thoughts, but it does a lot to fend off depression and negativity.

I always prefer to write or read over other modes of inspiration, but we should never close our minds to all forms of motivation in life. Growing up with some questionable father figures left me wanting for a positive male role model, and over the years I looked for it in many different forms. There were a few family members that gave me pieces of what I needed, some male family friends as well. I also had that influence in some teachers, like one of my English teachers and a Wrestling coach that was always helpful with some guidance. I was inspired by so many characters that I found among the pages of my favorite books. I looked for similar kinds of characters in movies that were strong, caring, and had a good moral compass at the same time. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was using examples in actual life and art to create a very high standard for how I wanted my life to go and what I expected of myself. At a young age, my circumstances had pushed me to feed my mind, without being conscious of it until years later, when I had realized my standards were higher than the people who had raised me.

If you are reading this and in a situation where you feel that you can’t see past the darkness in life, you are not alone. It may be hard to feed your mind when you are at your lowest, but if you push yourself in the worst of times to do it, that will become who you are no matter how down things get. The more times you push through, hard times will get the best of you less and less. Try to surround yourself with people that want a better life or have been down and fought out of it. How many times have you heard the saying,” I have yet to meet a strong person with an easy past”? It is a hundred percent true, and each time a person with that type of past shares, we need to listen… Every one of those people, I would suggest, had a guide or a few along their journey, and some of those come from unexpected people that pass through our lives. Every guide I have had, whether it be from art imitating life, or vice versa, all of it challenged me in positive, thoughtful ways. It fed my mind when I didn’t realize at all the process I was going through.

I have come to appreciate the more I challenge myself, the more complete I feel, I don’t think people as a whole are much different. People that are giving up on fitness, mindset, and feeding the soul are only hurting themselves. Sticking to those things starts with small steps that are easier to achieve. Go for a ten to fifteen-minute walk all weekdays and stick to it. You will be getting much-needed exercise, sticking to it feeding that mindset and both are soul nourishment. At this point, I would go back to the beginning and ask you again,” what extreme would you go to for the best version of you? Before you feel pressured to answer, I don’t expect you to hire a Navy Seal, even though that would be pretty cool. When you start thinking about that kind of training and effort, a couple of minutes a day doesn’t seem all that tough. Getting a 15-minute walk in, reading a good book for a half-hour, and writing down an action plan in your journal for your best life seems a little easier now. So not even an hour every day would feed your mind, your soul and you would become physically healthier, it kinda seems like you wouldn’t have to go that crazy after all. Commitment towards this amount of time would ultimately make you a better, healthier version of yourself with more to offer. You would be more willing to contribute, help and share the things that you accomplished. From that, success would take on a different and more complete meaning for you and everyone in your life. You get all that done without having to be punished by a Navy Seal. Now, I have given you a good recommendation for a book and you can walk anywhere, so what are you waiting for? Get out there and get after it, I may even run into you on the journey somewhere. I don’t plan on stopping any time soon when it comes to going after and pursuing making myself, and life, the best it can be.