Here is today’s Game and what’s going on.
Here is what I discovered today in Chapter 2 of Stop Doing That Shit by Gary John Bishop. The title of this chapter is “A Life of Sabotage.”
Today’s readings discusses saboteurs we employ in our lives. Let’s dive into today’s highlights:
- It’s always much easier to measure the decline of others than your own.
- Sabotage is something that happens in lots of little ways throughout the day. It’s something we all do, and we’re doing it pretty much all the time.
- Self-sabotage can be something as simple as constantly hitting that snooze button in the morning, or the tendency to show up a little late to places you’re scheduled to be. Not so late that it becomes a major problem, but you still find yourself rushing out the door as you shove your feet into your untied shoes and arriving five or ten minutes later than you’d like. Sometimes it looks like skipping breakfast and settling instead for a candy bar. Or maybe you’re one of those people who chronically procrastinate but always manage to get things done at the last moment, so you don’t think too much of it.
- Think about the times when you argue over nothing, hold onto grudges too long, hide or lie about your emotions, judge yourself or others too harshly, or just don’t call your mom or dad or friends as much as you should.
- The straight of it is, these are all actions that diminish relationships over time. They eat away at and destabilize healthy connections with the people we care most about. Sometimes to the point where we no longer care about them.
- Self-sabotage can manifest itself in the ways we eat all the wrong stuff at all the wrong times, how we put off our exercise plans or use the excuse of getting caught up in the mundane details of our daily lives to explain our lack of action. We might give ourselves excuses to have “just one” cigarette or glass of wine or slice of cheesecake (which, of course, turns into more), skip doctor’s visits and checkups, or just not pay enough attention to our body and what it’s telling us.
- This self-sabotage thing is a product of something larger, and it’s affecting every part of your life. There’s a reason why so few make it out of the trap of their own mind. The trap all too often seems to be just fine from day to day.
- It’s little wonder that those big dreams of yours seem nigh impossible, given how challenging you’ve made it just to get out of bed in the morning.
- On one hand you talk about wanting to be an author or a business owner or going back to school, while at the same time you’ve reduced your life’s potential to the lofty aim of getting up at the first alarm buzz or fighting the meaningless battle of prizing yourself away from your cell phone a little more often.
- If you really wanted to advance in your career, why would you be giving all of your attention to crappy little problems like not being able to get up in the morning? Why are you getting wrapped up in petty no-difference crap rather than the kinds of issues and actions that are going to move mountains, that are going to authentically engage you with real progress, real accomplishment, and real purpose?
- Why would you keep screwing around in such ordinary and uninspiring ways when it comes to making the changes you say you want to make? You just can’t keep responding in ordinary ways if you are truly out to live an extraordinary life.
- We chalk the problems of our lives up to one of two things: either we believe there’s a failure in our character or we blame our problems on external factors.
- In reality, what we consciously think we want isn’t lined up with what we are actually driven to do in the depths of our subconscious.
- Our soul is a tie-dyed fabric of all the thoughts and impressions and dreams we’ve had or have been given since we were babies. In the same way the dye seeps into the fabric, these thoughts are deeply embedded in our mind, in our subconscious.
- And it’s all too often not the color we want it to be.
- That color you’ve dyed your soul, that set of invisible rules that have been embedded in the back of your mind, in your subconscious, is what determines your path through this life. It’s not your determination, not your circumstances, and most definitely not your luck.
- Luck is for those who cannot define their success, and if you cannot clearly define it, you will most likely never be able to repeat it.
Those gems lead us to today’s Dadly Daily Declaration:
There has to be a potent demand on yourself to rise, to reach for greatness when compelled to take your typical low-road route, and there’s no magic potion for that demand. It’s not a feeling or an attitude. It’s more like a sick-of-your-own-nonsense approach to certain areas of life. If that deflates you, look again. It needs to enliven and inspire you. Telling yourself the truth is rarely easy, but it’s a surefire way to free yourself from your own subconscious self-sabotage trap. What makes self-reflection challenging is that you’re both the con artist and the one being conned.
The important thing is that you do not check out. Push through. On the other side of that state is a life you’ve always wanted to get to but somehow never could.
