Habits In Youth Make All The Difference
Written by Derrick H.
Most people my age are either:
Getting hammered
Spending time off at the club
Following the path of their parents
If you:
Remain sober
Show up to the gym
Create your own vision
Then, you will blow the competition out of the water in less than a decade. Young people, including myself, need to understand the value of long-term thinking as well as long-term habits.
Too many young people are lost, isolated, uneducated, and following the momentum of the herd. The resulting impact is a major rise in depression, anxiety, and suicide.
This is unacceptable, from my perspective. We need more people spreading messages of value that the youth can become attracted to.
Take a look at the actions that most young people engage in and you will find that those actions are driven by short-term thinking.
Excessive partying
Excessive drinking
Excessive junk food and eating out
Excessive lounging around and gossiping
Now, this is part and parcel of being young, but the line into dysfunctional actions has clearly been crossed as a culture.
There’s nothing wrong with partying, drinking, eating out, or relaxing and lounging around. But, when that becomes your primary mode of living, how can you expect to not become depressed, anxious and suicidal?
Aristotle has an amazing quote that I often love to refer to:
“Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.”
Well, the question that naturally manifests is the following: “What are good habits?”
Good habits are healthy habits.
Good habits are habits that give you more in both the short and long term.
Good habits are those actions that produce unbelievable rewards in the future.
Here is a list of good and healthy habits:
Mindfulness Meditation
Eating Nutritious Food
Getting to sleep by 10:30 PM
Breathing deeply through the nose and out the mouth
Taking walks
Reading timeless books
Training consistently and lifting weights
Giving more than you take in an interaction
Choosing the emotionally difficult path
Creating instead of consuming
Hugging those whom you love and admire
Surrounding yourself with people 10+ years ahead of you
Investing in your own psychology and character
Spending time in nature
Listening to podcasts and audio-books
Revising your vision for the future
Engaging in daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly reviews
Focusing on high ROI (Return On Investment) activities
Remaining sober
Building up a side hustle and business
Each of these habits, in and of themselves, can produce a dramatic change within the quality of your life if you commit to it.
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it is a wonderful place to start the process.
The short-term, instant gratification habits are not worth it.
Over time, I have come to the realization that the short-term gratification habits are just not worth the few seconds of pleasure.
Whenever I eat unhealthy food, I immediately feel the negative impact on my own body and this further ingrains the idea that such behavior is not worth it.
Whenever I get a poor night of sleep, I am reminded the next day in regards to how shitty and out of it I feel.
Guys, that shit is just not worth it. Instead, what is worth it is progress and the understanding that you are creating a powerful future for yourself.
The long term, healthy habits are an acquired taste.
A number of people cannot stand self-discipline, yet they do not understand that self-discipline is about doing the things that you do not want to do.
The process of self-discipline is exactly like the process of tasting wine. For the first couple of times, you won’t like it that much.
But, over time, you begin to gain an acquired taste for it.
The problem that most have is that they don’t stick with it long enough to experience any benefit. They don’t stick with the process of self-discipline long enough to acquire the taste.
You will always have two fundamental choices:
Mediocrity
Excellence
You can only have one or the other and with excellence, comes imbalance.
Love you all,
Be relentless and prolific,
Derrick H.