Win the Invisible War with Yourself.

Whether any of us want to admit it or not, we are all in constant battle with our inner selves and have a tendency to let our minds get the better of us. Through many struggles and a lot of adversity, I have learned a lot about myself and about what it takes to truly experience victory with the inner you that seems to always have a lot of crap to say about you.

I have been quiet in my posts because I have felt that the energy I have possessed the last couple of weeks has been largely negative and focused on things I cannot control. I have taken a lot of time to breathe, reflect and really look within myself to figure out what it is that has been causing so much inner banter, and decided to challenge my mind to go past what I am comfortable within doing the 75 hard challenge. I am currently on day twenty-seven and I have learned a lot about myself in the past month. I am not boasting or trying to gloat about the things I have accomplished, I am simply providing the findings I have discovered from doing something like this. This challenge entails two 45-minute workouts, one of which must be outside, along with a gallon of water a day, 10 pages of reading, no cheat meals, no fast food, and no alcohol for 75 consecutive days. It has been challenging and I really had thought I was going to fail the first couple of weeks with some tough days and strong urges, however, I am still going and reaping many benefits. I feel much more clear and confident. I have developed a much larger amount of self-discipline, I feel much more worthy of good things in my life and I constantly feel proud of my ability to stick with something as this has been a constant challenge for me my entire life.

The mental chatter we all experience on a day-to-day basis that puts us down and creates setbacks that we were not counting on is something that can cause a great deal of anxiety and lack of motivation. I understand this from personal experience and it got to the point where I needed to be medicated for my depressive symptoms. The past couple of weeks has been super empowering for me because not only has this challenge gave me a lot of self-confidence and allowed me to win the invisible war with myself every day; I have also worked with my doctor and am no longer on the medication that I needed to be on as I have much greater control of my mind and emotions. The greatest piece of advice I can give to anyone on this day is that we all are so much stronger than we think, we are so much smarter than we think, and we all have the ability to be great at whatever we are doing no matter what your mind may try to convince you of on a day to day basis. This challenge has been great for me and even though I do not think it is required, I just brought it up because it has been and continues to be an eye-opening experience for me in that I do not have to negotiate with how I am feeling at a particular moment because I have begun to develop the discipline required to find a sense of trust in myself and have fallen in love with the process.

The last thing I would like to touch on is that in order to win this invisible war with ourselves we all have to realize one pivotal statement: our lives mean something. I think that although many of us are afraid to admit it, we have all felt useless or inferior at some point in our lives. This is a debilitating feeling and must be stopped in its tracks. It is quite irrelevant to me what exactly you do or want to be great at; whether it is wanting to lose 15 pounds, become a better salesman, increase your bench press, become the best golfer in your city, or even just something as simple as being a better friend/brother/mother/son, etc. We are all intelligent enough to know the steps to get there and all have the ability to take action on those steps, not just talk about what we need to do to get better, take action and win the invisible war.