After writing Healing From a Broken Family, the idea of writing solely on choosing yourself came quickly. Not only have I inspired a few people, I thought that the part of choosing yourself should be developed in a separate post. Therefore, I wanted to go deeper into this subject and explain how you can choose yourself every day.
What exactly is Choosing Yourself?
I happen to understand what choosing yourself is all about. After reading Choose Yourself! By James Altucher, I began to understand the importance of putting yourself in front of everything else.
In Emmerance words, choosing yourself is realizing that in your life, you will have to take care of two different things to be happy. Those two things are; your health and your social life. Your health comes in four different categories, which I learned from James’ book: your physical health, mental health, emotional health, and spiritual health.
Choosing yourself is all about being okay with the fact that not everyone is going to like you and live life as yourself without acting like someone else. Being able to do things that interest you and not to copy what everyone else is doing. Moving at your own phase, to get whatever you want in life because you put more value in yourself.
In James’ book, Choose Yourself! He points out that as long as those four categories are working together and obviously in a good state, you should be able to function in this world. I added social life because this is an essential part of human survival. Sometimes, we forget to choose ourselves when we’re with other people, which I will explain further.
How do you take care of your health?
Without spoiling the book, I will share what I learned and have applied (still trying in some categories) so far. Maintaining these categories in a good state is not easy and won’t happen overnight. So you need to check your mentality in order to improve yourself every day.
To improve your health in these four categories, you need to focus on harmonizing everything together. You have to maintain the right level of health in each of them to function properly.
Physical health:
I think that we take our physical health very lightly. Today, you either see people ruining their physical health by overeating (I’ve been there) or overdrinking. And on top of that, some people can barely get motivated to go out there and do some exercise.
To stay in good physical health, you have to take regular walks every day for 30 minutes. You have to pay attention to what you eat (more veggies and fruits). And sleep for at least 8 hours or more.
The few changes I did: When 2020 started, I went extreme on the 30 days challenge, I wanted to change my body quickly because I was tired of sitting down and seeing my belly fold in two. Everything about getting “fit or rich” quick doesn’t work for everyone, and I paid the price for it.
However, I realized this soon enough. After 60 days, I recognized that I would have to give it a year or even a lifetime to stay in shape and have an impressive body. Ever since that day, I stopped eating bad carbs and white sugar, I tried my best to work out five days a week, and the result is, I lost a few weight (my belly is also showing sign of abs).
In short, you should find balance in what you eat and move your body regularly. The goal should be for life, not only in 30 days. The best way to improve your health without losing anything other than your extra weight is to walk every day, to eat healthily, and to sleep well.
Emotional health:
I got introduced in emotional intelligence this year; I didn’t know what it was or that it existed. I looked it up and tried to understand the whole idea behind it. I figured that you would need to control your emotions to be able to cope with social life.
But the reality is simple; you only need to surround yourself with positive people for your emotional health to improve. This kind of goes in with social life; however, you have to realize that when you surround yourself with negative people, you turn out to be negative yourself.
Negative people can also be your own family, so I can’t tell you to cut them off. In James’ book “Choose Yourself!” he suggested talking less when you’re around negative people. You don’t need to talk much at all. His habit is to say around 2,500 words within 24 hours, and that improved his emotional health.
For me, I don’t talk a lot either way, so I don’t have many words to cut in my day. However, I try to follow positive people only on social media. I have my closest friends that inspire me to be better every day.
To maintain your emotional health in a good state, if you’re a talker, try to listen and say less every day and see if that works for you. Stay close to positive people who inspire you, people that can see the light at the end of a tunnel.
Mental health:
We burnout every day with thoughts. Our mind continually goes above and beyond with thinking, you think about what you’re going to eat, what you’re going to do, etc. Our mind makes us worry, fear, feel anxious, overwhelmed all kinds of emotions, and that’s only by thinking. All we do is think, think and THINK until you burnout.
What I learned from “Choose Yourself!” is becoming an idea machine. The idea behind it is, you have to train your mind before it starts controlling you. I struggle to do this because my mind always wants to be the boss of me, but I try to exhaust it before it burns out.
A simple exercise that you can do is to come up with 10 ideas every day. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good or a bad idea, you just write it down. It doesn’t even have to be ideas; it can be 10 ways to spend more time with yourself or 10 things you can create today. You don’t need to know how you’re going to do it or where to start, all you have to do it write it down and make your mind work.
I tried doing this many times, and it worked for me. Sometimes, after tiring my mind out, I just want to relax by napping. So try it for yourself and see how that works out for you.
Spiritual health:
When it comes to spirituality, I’m not talking about religion here. You see many people going through life trying to figure out why they’re here, their purpose, etc. When you start to look for these kinds of information, you start worrying about the future or becoming anxious.
I went on many different spiritual journeys. I read a few books, tried a few prayers and even explored the ancient Egyptian spirituality (gotta dig deep into my roots). After studying, I’m not going to deny it, but James’ explains it better and in a few words.
Spirituality is all about living in the present moment. Understanding that the past is just a memory, and the future doesn’t exist will keep you in touch with your spirituality. If you don’t have a religion and want to maintain good spiritual health, whenever you have an issue or anxiety, try to stay present.
On my end, this was extremely hard to do. We all have a past that’s always haunting us, either we start acting differently or are constantly anxious. However, I always reminded myself to remain calm, take a deep breath and stay in the present.
When trouble arises out of nowhere, this is a challenge. I often forget to remain calm and stay present because it’s easier said than done. However, I’m not giving up. When you try to change a habit, it’s reasonable to fail.
So, if you challenge yourself to stay present every day, know that it will be hard because life throws many challenges. However, don’t be too hard on yourself and cheer yourself up for trying.
Social Life:
I added social life separately because our social life affects the way we see ourselves. Some people don’t realize it, but ever since we were born, we were told what to do, who we should be and how we should act.
As we grow, we try to be accepted by society, or else we won’t be able to function. Therefore, to be socially accepted, we go to the easy route, which is wearing different masks when we’re around different people.
I remember one of my co-workers telling me that they must know about everything. What’s trending, what the other people like and all. So when I was reading my manga one day, they suddenly started talking about it. Honestly, I like to read my manga, and we can discuss your favourites. However, it doesn’t require a 10-minute conversation, especially if I can see that you’re not that interested in the subject.
I agree that it’s good to know a bit about everything. Still, don’t do it to be socially accepted. I don’t watch sports, I’m not the type to talk about basketball, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t talk about something that I’m interested in, and I realized that people don’t care at all.
Being okay with rejections
Stop letting other people define you; you should identify yourself. If you’re afraid of rejections, try to unlearn that fear. I get rejected often, so often that I’m used to it. Of course, there’s a little fear there, but time passes, and we move on.
When you get rejected often, you become okay with failure; you become happy that someone rejected your love. Once that person leaves, another opportunity arises, just don’t give up. When I got rejected by my crush, it was devastating, but I learned to be okay with it. When I got rejected for a job, there’s usually a better one waiting for me.
In summary, the foundation of setting up for freedom is to choose yourself. When you’re in harmony with your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health, you’re setting up for a good life. When you’re okay with being rejected and accept that it’s not everyone that’s going to like you, you become a better version of yourself.
I hope that I made you think throughout this post.
Remember to choose yourself 🙂
Check out The beauty of Self Love Series:
How To Maximize Your Singleness
Reasons Why You Should Never Settle Down
How To Turn Self-Criticism into Self-Love
