Day 25 the truth or not the truth

 June 30th - July 2nd, did really well with all of the habits that I set forth for myself. July 3rd, I worked from 830 am, not getting home until after 10 pm. That night, I gave myself an excuse. I am tired, I worked all day, my computer is about to die, etc. What I did that night was go back into my thinking brain and I began to renegotiate the contract I made with myself to follow through with a few simple habits for the entire quarter, with the exception of my course. 30 min of course work or a practice test until my testing date, 1 TT basics list, 1 self-forgiveness blog, and not watching porn. Well on the night of the 3rd when I got home and I wanted nothing more than to just hang out and watch a show, I decided that it was ok to not do my TT with the limited computer charge that I had left. I decided it was ok to not use my phone to do my self-forgiveness writing, and the following day which was yesterday I continued this negotiation with myself extending it to my habit of not looking at, searching for, or watching porn, by doing all of those things. I continued with this pattern of breaking my agreements with self by engaging in the inner dialogue of whether or not to hold myself accountable to track the habit of not looking at porn or by doing it in such a way as to hide the true result from my wife. Well phew, good thing I woke up this morning and decided to fall back on the decision I made instead of continuing down this path of self-destructive decisions. I admitted to my wife the decisions I made, told her the truth of when and how many times I broke that habit, and then even told her about how I was planning on not following through to track this habit self-honestly. Why?? Because a big factor in creating the person I desire to be is by giving my wife 100% honesty 100% of the time, why?? because when my wife and I got married we did so based on an agreement and within that agreement, we decided that we would both live self-honestly. Well if I am lying to her then I am lying to myself and that is no way to build a successful relationship. The long story that is too long to be short is, participation in an inner dialogue that allows me to renegotiate the agreements and commitments I have made with myself are destructive and need to be remediated.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to renegotiate the agreements and commitments that I have made with myself

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in an inner dialogue that allows me to not live up to my full potential

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to live in such a way that does not fit the definition of peak performance meaning to compete with myself with the goal of outperforming the person that I was the day prior

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be content with complacency, meaning to be ok with settling as the person I was previously, or less

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see realize and understand the detriment of not pursuing growth, within this, if you are not growing you are dying and what that truly looks like. being chronically tired, constantly in pain, unable to focus, stress and irritation, etc.

I now see realize and understand that prior to beginning this new quarter of my life the person that I was, was ok with not taking a step forward every day, was ok with not following through with his commitments, was ok with breaking his agreements to himself, and I now see realize and understand that to be better than I was is to make new decisions. 

I commit myself to follow through with my previous commitment of reading the self-perfected principles and to do that today

I commit myself to read through the tree of life and see what I have participated in by not following through with my commitments and to see what I need to do to remediate that point within myself

Day 24 and so it continues

 "this too shall pass"

Time after time in my adult life I have made very strong, very passionate, and at times very stupid decisions (shoutout to me for being able to make a decision), but sticking with the decision... well we've got some work to do in that department. 

This time feels different, but it's not about how I feel. If I just did what I felt like, I wouldn't be writing this right now, I'd be approximately 2 minutes into my next episode of vampire diaries. But therein lies the problem, is that historically I do have a track record of making my decisions based on the way I feel, which can be beneficial at times to leverage energy, but the problem within the pattern lies in the discontinuation of the feeling that led to the decision being made. 

I felt like I needed a complete rework of my life in 2020 when I quit valley strong, so with all the emotion and passion and drive I could muster, I quit my job, I cleaned out my closet, and I set course for the rest of my life and thennnn something changed in my feeling and I didn't really work that hard at creating the life I wanted 

and then I felt like I needed to shed my identity so I shaved my hair that I had been growing for 7 years, told everyone around me I am taking control of my life and thennnnn something changed in the way I felt and cared more about porn and video games than creating anything or developing myself

and then and then and then

"this too shall pass"

the double edged sword. pain, trauma, fatigue, it doesn't last forever. neither do feelings. but principles those can stay the same

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to revolve my life, my actions or lack thereof on the way that I feel

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to change the way that I live my life when the way that I feel changes

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give myself such a fickle foundation from which to grow by not grounding myself in a set of principles to live by

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to change the principles that I live by when the way that I feel changes

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see realize and understand that when I make emotional decisions based on how I feel, if there is no foundation of principle within that decision then as soon as the emotion fades or the feeling changes that there will be nothing left to stand on and I will free fall until a new emotion or feeling arises for me to make a new decision

I see realize and understand the point of why it makes no practical sense to make decisions or live based on emotions and feelings alone, and so

I commit myself to read the self-perfected principles aloud to my self to establish the foundation in which my decisions should be made

Day 23 I get to decide

 Today is the start of quarter 3 in the year 2025. July 1st. Also Austin’s birthday, I need to text him. Anywho, following the advice of Jon Corteen and planning habits/creation on a quarter system I have put into effect a few simple things to measure over this quarter. Completing my course, doing my TT basics, self-forgiveness writing, and then stopping the habit of porn. I made these charts and as I was about to place them around the room I stopped because I had written in big letters on the side of all the sheets, Q3. And that’s what I wanted to reflect on. It’s quarter 3 of the year, sure. But it’s quarter 1 of me taking on life with a renewed sense of direction. With a renewed sense of clarity. With an idea of what I want and what it takes for me to accomplish that. The definition of peak performance is outperforming the person that I was yesterday. A few days ago that was an easy mark to hit, but when I woke up this morning it was time to get straight to work. These ideas are why I decided to mark my sheets with a Q1 because now I have an effective system of measuring my progress and making sure that every day when I lie down to rest I can self-honestly say to myself, today I did better and tomorrow I’m going to do it again. I am on the same page as my wife seeing where we are at and what needs to happen, and at this point in my life, at this point in my process, I really need to raise my standards, I really need to increase my baseline because what I’ve been doing just wasn’t cutting it. So when I look back 1,2, 10 years down the road and I see Q5, Q10, I’ll know it’s not an arbitrary title, but rather an indicator of where I am and where I am going, because when it comes to my own process and my own growth, that’s all that matters is where I am, and where I’m going. 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not live by a standard of growth

“If you’re not growing your dying” 

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allows myself to see realize and understand that life is growth and that I have not even been living because I haven’t been intentionally growing in any way 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deny myself my birthright which is to be as life by not striving for my utmost potential. I see realize and understand it is very easy to get lost in the system of the rat race and falling into the habit of working without purpose 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stop striving for growth when it gets challenging, within this seeing realizing and understanding a common trend within myself that when something gets difficult I tend to avoid facing it, whether it be picking/chewing my lips while having a difficult conversation, picking up my phone to check for messages while doing some self-reflective writing, or eating to feel good when I’m experiencing physical discomfort. I see realize and understand that there will be no progress if I am unable to look myself in the eyes and challenge the man in front of me to do better  

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to only want to challenge myself if there is little to no risk in the challenge, within this participating in the fear of loss whether it be my social standing, money, or my station in life. In all growth there is loss 

I see realize and understand a common trend within myself where I want things that require big action and big risk, but talk myself out of it or around it in the name of the preservation of my current character. Within this I see realize and understand that I have been actively fighting for my limitations and that to continue to do so will mean to continue this internal struggle of self wherein I do not stand up and face myself and so 

I commit myself to track the few habits that I have set out for myself every single day of this quarter and at the end of it to come back to this writing and see where I stand today vs where I stand 12 weeks from now to objectively determine if I have stood up and faced myself or continued to participate in the same limiting beliefs that have enabled me to create the current reality that I am living in