MoxieLifestyle.net

I was talking to my friend Courtney last night and she said that “To be honest, your self-sufficiency scares me.” Most people might have been offended but I took it as a compliment. Because most people aren’t self-sufficient, they rely on others entirely way too much.

The way I look at it, 99% of all people go through so much of their lives looking back on missed opportunities. If you really sit down and think about it though, you start to realize that you have nothing to lose. I’d rather step up and strike out than sit around and come up with 1000 excuses about how there is no way I will do anything but strike out. You learn from experience.

Whenever you attempt to change yourself as a person or change your lifestyle to a moxier one, it isn’t going to be easy. Tyler talks about how when you start something new, progress is going to be non-existent at first and will go up in a j-curve if you can make it through the shitty adjustment period. That’s why people quit, or even worse don’t start something at all; because starting something new is REALLY hard and usually feels directionless for a long time. The people who make it through that initial adjustment will eventually get to a level where progress is really fast and noticeable, and for them it will become natural and fun. But at first it is purely banging your head against the wall to make the most minuscule advancements. Not fun.

“I am an old man, and I have known of many great troubles, but most of them have never happened” – Mark Twain

When I first decided that I wanted to travel a lot and leave most of my old life behind it was really hard for me to even take the smallest step towards actually LIVING it. I sat down and decided to write down the pro’s and con’s of what I wanted to do. In the end I came up with a thousand different reasons and scenarios of what could go wrong and only a few of why I should go through with my plan. Then I realized I was looking at this the wrong way. I should be focusing on the things that can go wrong and how I can FIX them, even temporarily should they happen.

“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.”

Here is an exercise I want you to try. Get out a piece of paper or open up a word document and write down all your regrets.

I guarantee that most of them happened because of one thing, not taking action. You never asked out Suzie Sanders, you never skipped class once to go to the beach, etc. Don’t think that I am saying you should act on every impulse you have, I’m not. But if you jump the gun on a decision, 99% of the time whatever happens to you isn’t permanent, it’s temporary. And I think realizing that is key, anything you do, no matter how poorly you do it or how bad the timing is, the end result isn’t permanent. On the other hand if you DON’T do something, you can’t go back in time and take that chance again, that’s permanent.

I’m going to end this with a great quote from Jack Canfield, that will show you that you don’t always need to know exactly where you’re going, as long you are just taking action…

Think of this, a car driving through the night. The headlights only show 100 to 200 feet ahead, and you can make it all the way from California to New York, driving through the dark because all you need to see is the next 200 feet. That’s how life tends to unfold before us. If we just trust that the next 200 feet will unfold after that and the next 200 after that; your life will keep unfolding and it will eventually get you to the destination of whatever it is you truly want because you want it.” -Jack Canfield