All of us want *to kick ass* in our everyday, sometimes we just need a little help in order to do so.


*for a helpful translation guide for all of our British readers*

I often chuckle to myself during the late hours of any given Monday, as per usual, I am always trying to come up with an article and get it out the door by midnight, and as is my own way, I have carved out Monday’s to be the day I write my “Words of Wisdom” pieces, which means I need to have cultivated a certain insight, in order to expound upon, in starting with a core concept of relative universal value that applies to oneself. The chuckling I mention stems from the notion that most of the week, I am usually bursting with insight, and espousing pearls of wisdom left and right, but when Monday night comes? I’ve seemingly given all of my pearls away.

I’ve become better at realizing this, and therefore write some thoughts down with which to inspire myself at this point, and that helps cultivate a certain self-efficacy of sorts, so that I’m not just surviving, but thriving in my every day, and that cultivation of self helps in enhancing just how often I will see myself *on the public footpath to butt lane*. So, the spirit of the old notion “work smarter, not harder”, which holds a lot of wisdom in and of itself to propagate new ideas from, we may start to refocus on efforts on how to switch from surviving to thriving, with just a few simple steps of refinement.

This is all key in helping to create the ground floor of reliability for an individual, as part of a “good practice regiment of sustainability“, and everything that entails. Everybody works a little differently of course, so it’s all about the small nudges and tweaks to get things just right for yourself, but at least for me, I’ve found that even in my most ambitious moments of energy, and well equipped with a get it done kind of attitude, all of that intentionality and mentality to go along with it, ends up amounting to Jack Bubkus, as all of the ambition in the world will equate to nothingness, without the means to develop, enhance, and eventually catalyze it with the right set of circumstances.

I’ve referenced past words of wisdom before, to help continue building into new words of wisdom, to help showcase that consistency starts with an idea, and then must be built upon to become a reality. With that in mind, we can look at ideas like framework thinking and intentionality, in order to understand how to go about maintaining a level of consistency, to help make more efficient both the mind and body in tandem as one cohesive system. If either one is out of sync, the whole thing falls apart, as you aren’t dualyzing your best elements, and therefore become a disparate individual onto yourself, and starting from a place of division is no place to start from at all, now is it?

So yes, making sure you are of both healthy in mind and in body, in order to better align yourself, in the name of consistency and self-efficacy, is essential in getting a grasp in how you start the prep process, but also how one keeps it going moving forward, never losing sight of this idea of how to start from a better place of refinement, and going from there. Once that is in check, you’ve got to ask yourself: what is my endgame here? What am I trying to accomplish by getting everything in order in my own life? This is another great focus that I feel is an undervalued part of the everyday, and that is building a stronger internal foundation related to a set of core values. A lot of the world, you being a great example of s necessary element of that setup, makes a lot more sense, when you have a more defined standard of who you at least think you are, in order to build off of it more successfully. I’m not saying you need to have yourself totally figured out, but you must have some sense of yourself, and where you want to move forward, yes? If not, then perhaps you need to go back to square one, and spend more moments creating a sense of self, before cultivating a schedule to keep the preservation process of self continual, or all of the effort will be in vain.

With self in check, mind and body corroborating with each other, and a defined enough goal to set yourself against, the last best context of how to bring it all together is scheduling. As I reiterate time and time again, one of the biggest realities any responsible adult has to deal with, is that you’ve got time for anything, but not time for everything, so prioritizing what you care about, in order to give yourself a chance at focusing on something, is integral to the process. I enjoy borrowing a quote from Stephen King to shed some light on this process, as it always seems pertinent to me, even if he meant it in the context of writing, I find its applicability far more wide reaching, and works well in the realm of self-improvement. He says: “learn how to kill your darlings”, which means that in the process of growth and refinement, you’ve got to let go of some stuff that you like, in order to make an overall better final “product” of sorts. As mentioned, he was talking about the editing process and stripping away large chunks of text involving non-essential parts of his story, but in a moment of not too a radical leap in comparative processing, is not a human being a story onto themselves? And self-improvement not a form of self-editing in and of itself? So know what to let go of or come to terms with that you may have to part ways with, in reference to something you might like or you enjoy, that perhaps realistically, you just either don’t really have time for, or is in fact, maybe more of a bane, vice, distraction, or perhaps just straight up an obstacle, and getting in the way of your best self. Remember: the whole point of this process is that we want to see you not just surviving, but thriving, so do what you need to in order to flourish.

With that all in mind, perhaps now, you have a set of good building blocks to start with, in making the best version of yourself, moving forward. I wish you the best of luck.

And as always, take care of yourself, and others.

-Pashford