My mind today needs calmness from the whirlwind of my thoughts. After starting my shift at work at a 5:15pm, I did not come to a point I felt caught up. It wasn’t until 1:00am break that I realized it was the next day, so at that point I took a 5min break to eat since my stomach had been growling louder than a woken lion. After that 5min break, that was my last moments to myself until leaving work over 11hrs of go-go-go on a small night.

With only 4hrs of sleep yesterday, I’m rather awake at this time for it being over 18hrs since I woke. Lack of sleep and long days I’ve been accustomed to over my life of insomnia. Tossing and turning for hours has been the norm, however, that is changing. With officially launching my LivingLife (previously called LiveIVLive, Live4Life, but are taken), I’m excited to begin to hold my feet to the fire and change the life I’ve let myself live.

One of the purchases I made this year was by Timothy Ferriss. I previously became aware of Timothy Ferriss from his book The 4-Hour Chef I bought in August 2016 (and repurchased in October after losing it on vacation). If you have any enjoyment of cooking or want to learn, I recommend The 4-Hour Chef as it’s not cook book with recipes and nothing else. It includes an arsenal of fun facts and experiments with not only food, but with your mind and body. Couple of my favorites non-cooking sections in his book is Meta-Learning and the Long-Term Learning Suggestions, such a fun read!

After purchasing Tools of Titans late January of this year is the real reason I’m here writing at this moment. Tools of Titans is a collection of tips and tricks, quotes and regimes of a few highly successful people. A quote from an interview of Chris Sacca that hit me like a bag of bricks to the chest was:

“I think that as you survey the challenges in your lives, it’s just: Which of those did you assign yourself, and which of those are you doing to please someone else? Your inbox is a to-do list to which anyone in the world can add an action item. I needed to get out of my inbox and back to my own to-do list”

Chris Sacca / pg 166 of hard back version Tools of Titans 2016

After reading that quote I set the book down, and sat in physical silence, but if you could see through my skull it would have looked like an entire city of firework stands caught fire, sparks flying everywhere and huge explosions. I was in awe and dumbfounded, its simplicity boggled me how accurate that statement was in my life. At work I’m constantly taking on more and more responsibilities to prove I’m not a failure, to show that my age means nothing and that I’m beyond my years.

However, in all honesty, my success a has left me feeling more empty than all my failures combined. With the more challenges I raised to, the higher the level of expectations continually grew, until I’ve developed a crew far more successful and consistent than ever before, but nothing ever seems good enough. If we out perform 2-1 with other branches, then anything less is failure, if we’re 3-1, then 2-1 is slacking off. The more hours I work, the more other departments expect me to take over their responsibilities so that they can go enjoy life.

“You’re night shift, what else would you be doing?” is something I’ve heard too often. As if because I work nights, that automatically makes me the mandatory volunteer of any extra project and excessive hours. I’ve given many dagger-eyes to people who’ve expected sympathy that they worked 30min of OT in his/her day and had plans to meet up with friends. This is typically after I’ve worked 12-16hr shift. Empathy I have, I fully understand, however, if you don’t work an average of 10-12hr days on normal and slow days, then proceed with caution when complaining to someone who does work consistently 60-80hr weeks and is paid salary for strictly 40hrs only.

Back to the quote (sorry, rant above, as you can tell, summer drags on and the only way to enjoy it is with lots of coffee and lack of sleep). Challenges of life I frequently assign to please someone else. I won’t exactly say I’m a social butterfly, as I have don’t have friends, but I do like to make other’s life better. I either consider people an acquaintance that I will be respectful to, or you’re family, I don’t have friends. I feel friends need to be either family or acquaintance . You fight for family, you’re loyal to family, you’ll stand up for family, so why minimize people to being called friends? If you can’t trust someone enough to call them family, then they’re an acquaintance. Family is no longer blood bound, family is who you love and sacrifice for, and family will sacrifice and love you. I spend too many hours attempting to make acquaintances happy with my efforts, but they don’t provide the family values that I need to be focusing on. My crew, I do call my family, they can drive me crazy for sure, as any family does, but I care about them, would fight with them, and stand up for them at any time.

With the quote from Chris Sacca, I’ll add another quote from Tools of Titans that corresponds to Chris Sacca’s quote, but is from Derek Sivers.

“When deciding whether to commit to something, if I feel anything less than “Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! HELL YEAH!” then my answer is “no”. When you say no to most things, you leave room in life to really throw yourself completetly into the rare thing that makes you say “Hell Yeah!”

Derek Sivers / pg 386 of hard back version Tools of Titans 2016

These two quotes are what set the stepping stones to begin LivingLife-blog. Although I read these quotes several months back, they’re slowly chipping away my life habits of over sacrificing myself to work, and began to grow roots into my choices. I’m heavily working long hours and still dedicated to my career and crew, but I’m officially taking steps into my life to begin LivingLife.

And with that, I’ll begin my 1st MIND activity of LivingLife:

Write three challenging, but achievable, goals to accomplish within 28 days:

• Go to a safe and quite area with larger body of water. Sit and reflect on life for a full hour. No phone, music with instruments only allowed, but just my thoughts. Paper and Pen also allowed, but no laptop or looking on phone.
• Read 2 books, at least 100 pages each. One that helps focusing goals, the other that focuses calming my thoughts.
• Stay focuses on LivingLife and complete an activity every day.

Until next time, keep LivingLife, and take care of yourself and those you love!

Have comments/questions? Please feel free to email me at my2cents@livinglife-blog.com

“Remember, I’m NOT a qualified doctor, trainer, physiologist, philosopher, or have any other certified qualification. I’m only someone who’s passionate to learn & develop personal skills, habits, goals & finding a balance life-style, while sharing my journey through experiences.

– Developer of LivingLife-Blog”