A Fast Track To Your Best Self

How many of us are guilty of silencing our inner voices regularly?

Be it, a physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental signal of discomfort one may silently neglect.

What excuses do you tell yourself, that dampen your plans for change?

This post is a cast of positive vibrations into the universe. This post is uncovering optimal self-hacks that will catapult you over that wall of excuses. This post is for us to tread into uncomfortable conversations with ourselves. Why though?

Well...why not?

Instant gratification, is that you?

The reason is simple. The journey of self-improvement is not appealing to those who thrive on instant gratification.

According to Forbes contributor,

Neil Patel, he says:

"Instant gratification is the desire to experience pleasure or fulfilment without delay or deferment. Basically, it is when you want it; and you want it now" (Forbes, 2017).

Ask yourself this. Would you be disappointed in yourself if the energy input today to become a better you only resulted in 0.01% worth of tangible change daily?

I would have answered the question with "so what's there to gain for such a tiny reward than". Truth be told, the hardest lessons in life had not touched me yet.

My storytime…

I can vividly recall my life when I lived in the bubble of invincibility. I was about 22 years old at the time (to breathe context into this story, I was beginning to make very good money in a contracted government position) and I had gotten into a disagreement with my momma dukes about money.

I do not recall what preceded this statement, but I said "…so, twenty dollars is nothing".

Very arrogantly at that.

She reminded me to "hold on to that statement because believe me, you will face a time in your life that you wish you had that twenty".

My downfall manifested itself about a year after that disagreement with momma dukes. A mother's intuition perhaps?

Summary: May to October 2013 I lost my job, my place of residence and became homeless because I was charged with four serious offences by TPS. I beat all charges without a lawyer but lost myself in the process. Then I left Toronto for western Canada to start anew.

I started a family with Mr. right now and that ended up badly. I was then granted sole custody of son and moved two provinces to then become homeless again now with a 12-month-old child at the time.

The year 2016 "a time in your life that you wish you had that twenty" was a strong understatement. This time, there was no need of a twenty, but a need to provide a stable environment to raise my son. I put my pride aside and entered family shelter services in March of 2016.

The first night in the shelter, I cleaned and sanitized every surface of that room with Pine-Sol and Lysol wipes before we could even lay down for the night. After I settled my son into bed for the night, I just started sobbing into the palms of my hands.

To be transparent with you, I cried myself to sleep that night. Waking up the next morning with puffy eyes, headache and sleeping toddler I typed into google "quotes about going through tough times" and stumbled across this one:

"One day she finally grasped that unexpected things were always going to happen in life. And with that, she had realized the only control she had was how she chose to handle them. So, she made the decision to survive using courage, humour, and grace. She as the Queen of her own life and the choice was hers."

- Queenism™

It was at that moment of reflection that things just clicked for me. The quote paired with the previous night's cry was the spark needed to promise myself to never give up on myself. I am sharing the list of 5 ideas that I have used to manifest and overcome change when I face crippling adversity. I hope you hear me; whoever you may be.

Articulate Tee’s Fast-Track to Your Best Self List

You need to invest time into healing yourself to embody the change by:

I. Committing and actively reminding yourself to think bigger

II. Write down s.m.a.r.t** goals to hold yourself accountable to flag progression

III. Recharge your motivation while understanding that it takes time to grasp new concepts/behaviours

IV. Spend your time wisely; make the time for self-care, and chats with loved ones

V. Never stop believing in yourself so when faced with failure; it's a molehill and not a mountain

**s.m.a.r.t is the acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.

Here's a quick way to form your goals by asking yourself these five things:

S= State your end goal and envision what you want to accomplish

M= Make mini markers to hold yourself accountable for progress

A= Ask yourself if this is a reasonable goal that I can accomplish

R= Remain mindful of your current state of reality as a factor

for change

T= Take time daily to make conscience actions towards your goal

* This is my wording for the acronyms so feel free to copy it if it helps as a template <3

Conclusion:

“Hold on wait a minute, ya’ll thought I was finished?” (Dreams & Nightmares – Meek Mill) that’s the caption I assigned to life and its pop-a-mole adversities. So please, just forgive yourself and never punish yourself for mistakes you’ve already made in the past. Just find the lesson in it and come back stronger!

- Articulate Tee