But I’m done. At least with this arc. I know when I was at my worst moments, I focused on improving four things in my life.
Whenever I worried, or woke up anxious, or woke up filled with so much regret and shame, I would just ask myself: are these thoughts contributing to me improving 1% in these specific four areas of my life?
Physical Health: eating better, sleeping better, moving better
Emotional Health: being around people I love and support and who love and support me.
Mental Health: being creative every day. Writing down 10 ideas a day
Spiritual Health: finding the craziest things to be grateful for.
If it didn’t fall under those categories, I didn’t do it, or think it.
I hoped. Because sometimes you get so anxious and afraid and ashamed that it’s like someone punches you in the throat and you can’t breathe.
It’s hard in a crisis. And it’s hard when things are going well.
And even somewhere in the middle, it’s hard not to think, “What’s 1% anyway. That does nothing!”
But I know my life has changed completely every six months, in ways there was NO WAY I could’ve predicted, since I started doing this. Since I got honest with myself.
I don’t care about being honest with others. If I’m honest with myself, then the rest follows. Then I know what to do.
So then I wrote about what I did. Ever detail. All the mistakes. All the embarrassments. All the reasons I couldn’t even handle living but then I did. And then the day after I did. And the day after that.
I wrote “Choose Yourself”. “The Choose Yourself Stories”. “The Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth”. Claudia wrote “Becoming an Idea Machine”.
And I just released the final book in this “series”, “The Rich Employee”.
The idea being that choosing yourself, and the power of change and reinvention that emerges with it, comes from within. It doesn’t (although it might) mean be an entrepreneur.
Nor does it mean, put up with a bad boss. Or think positive. Or visualize and attract.
None of those things matter. That’s self-help BS. It’s invisible people preaching. The many ghosts we put on the bookshelf.
All that matters (to me) every day is 1% growth in physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
To others, maybe different things matter. I can’t say or judge.
All of the books together have sold almost 500,000 copies. I self-published each one and in the books I show people how.
After “THE RICH EMPLOYEE” I’m going to write more books (in the middle of two right now) but that one really wraps it up in terms of “what happened to me at the bottom” and what I did about it.
I know it resonates with some people and I’m super grateful for that. I also know some people hate them and I’m grateful for those people also. I listen with an open mind.
Everyone has different things they suffer from. Everyone is at a different point in their journey.
The hardest part about these journeys is when there is a fork in the road and we have to decide which way to go. Sometimes the choices don’t seem very pleasant.
These books, for me, are about how to make that decision. Which fork to take.
Many days are a horror film. Where at some point in the day we are held hostage by our deepest fears and insecurities with damnation as a possibility. I shouldn’t say “we”. I say “me”.
Because these books help me. I wrote them because I needed to read them. And, no bullshit, I re-read them every day.