Hola Change Makers!

This topic has been on my mind a lot lately so I thought I’d share so you could benefit too. If you’re reading this you’re either in a period of change in your life or you’re about to begin a period of change in your life. Whichever it is, when you want to make change happen, you have to change and when you change you can make things happen. Another way to put it is, if you want more, you have to become more, you can’t expect more and continue to do the same things. It doesn’t work that way. If you want to change your body, your habits, your lifestyle you have to do more and ironically sometimes doing less, like eating less, is actually doing more, or going to bed early is actually doing more. Are you feeling me? Are you with me? If you want advanced results you have to take advanced action. O.K. That’s 3 different catchy phrases for you to make your own mantras.

Making Change Happen by 1st changing yourself so you can make things Happen!
Doing More to Become More
Doing Advanced Things to get Advanced Results

and I thought of one more from Ghandi,

Be the Change You Want to See in the World!

All of these require work, effort, diligence, persistence, grit, determination, consistency, sacrifice, courage, perseverance, action, mistakes, course correction, discipline and more. This is the work part. You have to work really hard, daily and make it a part of your lifestyle, then once, you’ve done it long enough, while making adjustments along the way, you’re desired result should come close enough to achieve, then finish.

Most people translate this into burning the candle at both ends. Raise your hand if you’ve ever burnt the candle at both ends. I certainly have. Here’s the problem with that.

Work + Work = Burnout!

Burnout = A heavy cost to pay down the road, that could be many things, health, relationships, performance, time, money, opportunities, …

We want to avoid this at all costs.

Work + Rest = Success! is what we’re aiming for. If you bust your butt working hard you gotta rest your body and mind hard so you can recover and do it again. This is the ying and yang. Give and take, ebb & flow, ebony and ivory, peanut butter and jelly, milk and cereal, ham and burger. Got it?

Rest = sleep, fun, learning, family, friends, massage, stretching, nature, walking, whirlpool, sauna, steam, yoga, sweating, day trips, vacation, weekend getaways, half days, journaling, meditation, a good book, good conversation, quiet time, … anything that fills you up and recharges you without a cost.

What doesn’t count? Anything that fills you up and has a cost*.

Example: work hard, play hard = high cost because you’re burning the candle at both ends. This is a false truth, the story of my 20’s and why I spent so many Sundays hungover, mad at myself. I thought, bust my butt all week long, be disciplined, pack my meals, train everyday, work hard at my craft and then go out on the weekends and play hard. No, that’s false and a hard pattern to break. You’re body needs rest. Look at Tom Brady. He’s 40, the Greatest Quarterback of all time. He’s not going out partying. He’s working hard and resting hard. He’s got balance. Gronk works hard and plays hard, however, he’s been injured a ton. I don’t know if they’re related, his injuries and his playing hard, because he does catch balls down the middle of the field where he’s a sitting duck for defenders to tackle him, but if he was resting as hard as he works, his body might be more resilient.

Work hard, rest hard, doesn’t mean you don’t play hard, have fun and party to blow off steam, but it does mean you have to do it within your specific boundaries and avoid sabotaging all the good work you’ve done up to that point. What does this mean?

Live 1 Life, Not 2 Lives.
If you go to bed 4-5 days a week at 10pm, and get up at 5:30am, for a total of 7.5 hours of sleep, then the other 2-3 days, you don’t want to sabotage you’re good efforts by both staying up later and getting less sleep (most people can’t sleep in on the regular if they’re bodies are used to getting up early). You’re going to wake up at roughly the same time as you do normally, but you played harder and then didn’t give yourself enough time to recover. No bueno. Especially if you drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, ate refined carbohydrates / processed foods / sugar, ate a lot of salt, were in a loud environment and stayed up late. It’s too hard to recover, especially as you age. You’ll set yourself back at least a day, but usually longer. You can work hard play hard, as long as it’s within 1 lifestyle, not 2 separate one’s, which means you go to bed at roughly the same time 7 days per week and get up at roughly the same time 7 days per week, and your play hard, doesn’t have a recover cost the next day or days. It must contribute to you JUMPING OUT OF BED the next day, otherwise, it had a cost, and didn’t meet our Work + Rest = Success, criteria: “anything that fills you up and recharges you without a cost”.

There are exceptions to this rule:
1. Don’t miss out on opportunities because you’re following this plan 100% of the time. Give yourself permission to break course.
2. Don’t have a reason or an excuse to break course more than once in a lifetime opportunities.
3. Be consistent 9 times out of 10 and that 10th time, make sure the cost doesn’t set you back more than 1 day.
4. 9 steps forward, 1 step back, not 1 step forward 1 step back, or 2 steps forward, 2 steps back or 5 steps forward and 5 steps back or worse, 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Do you get it? Don’t go crazy playing hard, splurging and living a 2nd life, that’s not true or complimentary to the life you’re building and living on purpose all the other days of the week.

In summary. To make change happen, you must change and when you change, you can make things happen. When you change you’re aim is to live 1 life, doing more so you can become more, while resting hard, so you can recover and jump out of bed to do it again the next day. When you do these advanced habits, you’ll get advanced results, you’ll become the change you want to see in the world and in your life and most importantly you’ll avoid self-sabotage and burnout, which have high costs no body wants to pay.

Burn & Earn!

Your coach,

Mike Alves

p.s. sign up now, if you want me to coach you towards your change!

[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Phone’ type=’text’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’/][/contact-form]