One of the worst decisions I almost made - TMWS05

[00:00:04] Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo

[00:00:14] You are listening to The Mental Wealth Show, You are listening to The Mental Wealth Show,

[00:00:20] You are listening to The Mental Wealth Show, And me, I'm your host, my name is Rich Jones,

[00:00:27] You are listening to The Mental Wealth Show, You are listening to The Mental Wealth Show,

[00:00:33] And me, I'm your host, my name is Rich Jones, Yo

[00:00:43] You know what's crazy? Two years ago this time, I swear I had COVID.

[00:00:48] I didn't know it, but looking back in Bubukin's Baysworth, Buschielcuddles,

[00:00:54] she has been trying to convince me and I think she finally did because this time two years ago,

[00:01:00] I had a horrible cough. I was sweating through the sheets a couple nights in a row and not in the fun way.

[00:01:07] And I just didn't feel great. And at the time I just thought it was a really bad cold but looking back,

[00:01:13] I'm like, yo, I probably had that shit. And I wonder about how many of us were walking around

[00:01:19] and probably did have it and didn't know that we actually had this COVID thing.

[00:01:24] And I remember being so naive at the point that I remember posting on Facebook before we traveled

[00:01:29] that alcohol kills germs and so I'm going to New Orleans to drink or we're going to New Orleans to drink

[00:01:35] and have a good time. Yo, that posted in age well at all.

[00:01:41] So I almost said happy 2020 anniversary but it's not a good thing at all.

[00:01:45] So I'm not going to say happy 2020 anniversary but it is crazy to think that it's officially been two years at this point.

[00:01:53] Now, on a more positive note, I do have to say happy women's history month because that time is upon us as well.

[00:02:00] And with all of these months and everything, my thing is like, honor these things year round.

[00:02:05] I understand that everyone needs to have their dedicated time and be happy with what you get.

[00:02:11] But I'm not just happy with what the fuck I get.

[00:02:13] I want this to be 365 days of appreciation for the full spectrum of diversity,

[00:02:20] not limited to programming condensed in the 30 days in any calendar year.

[00:02:25] But yeah, happy women's history month.

[00:02:28] I am excited to be back.

[00:02:30] And as I always say on these episodes so much has happened since the last time I got behind the microphone

[00:02:35] and it's the same thing this time around.

[00:02:38] A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to go and compete in the long jump in 200 meters in Arizona at Northern Arizona University,

[00:02:45] which was a great experience.

[00:02:47] Didn't jump as far as I wanted to but the feeling of progress to get out there and be like,

[00:02:53] yo, I just started training to do this like seven months ago and I'm already back out here competing.

[00:02:59] And I had to remember that I got to stop to appreciate that I'm out here or that I was out there.

[00:03:05] I mean, I am Alchia.

[00:03:07] So the fact that I'm Alchia doing what I said that I was going to do.

[00:03:11] And I think a lot of times we forget to stop and appreciate we hit one goal and then we're on to the next thing.

[00:03:17] So for me, the first thing was getting back out there.

[00:03:19] Now I'm competing.

[00:03:20] Now I feel better than I thought that I would feel and I'm starting to set goals for myself.

[00:03:24] And now I'm back in the athlete frustration zone where I want more out of each performance,

[00:03:30] more out of each sprint, more out of each jump.

[00:03:32] But again, I have to remember that I took 13, 14 years off and here I am in 2022 back out here doing the damn thing.

[00:03:43] So I encourage you if you're doing something that you've always dreamed of doing or that you never thought you'd be doing again,

[00:03:50] or you're surprising yourself with what you're doing today,

[00:03:53] that you are taking a moment to stop and appreciate that while it's actually happening versus pushing, pushing,

[00:03:59] because there's always going to be time to push for the next thing, right?

[00:04:02] But what about the good things that are happening around you today? Even the small things.

[00:04:07] So for me to be back out here competing while maintaining a day job, while taking care of my mental health, doing all of this other stuff,

[00:04:14] it truly is a blessing.

[00:04:16] And what is also a blessing is that I'm going to be turning 39 years old on March 10th.

[00:04:21] And I'm not sure if I've ever in all the years that I've been podcasting said what day my birthday actually was.

[00:04:27] Something was a little bit different this year. I don't know what it is, but I'm thinking about that and I'm thinking about the way that I'm entering my 39th year

[00:04:35] compared to the way that I've entered a lot of years past.

[00:04:38] And I'm not going to say that every year has been tragic or every year has been bad,

[00:04:43] but the level of clarity that I have right now and how I feel right now,

[00:04:48] even though I got some of the aches, the pains and some of this other stuff going on

[00:04:52] and thinking about how much I used to talk about being washed and how much I feel the opposite of that today.

[00:04:58] I can only be thankful.

[00:05:00] And there's a lot of stuff that I'm still working through and maybe I'll talk about some of that today as I'm working through all of these thoughts that I got going on in my head.

[00:05:08] But this is a Pisces season where I'm like, yo, life has really changed for the better.

[00:05:14] And it's something to be exciting about even though there's still a lot of stuff that I've yet to accomplish a lot of things that I want to do.

[00:05:22] And as I've been going through this therapy process, a lot of mourning of lost time.

[00:05:26] And you know, that's something that's part of it as well because when we talk about wellness, we talk about making progress.

[00:05:33] It's a journey.

[00:05:34] And particularly when we talk about wellness and for me, I'm thinking holistically,

[00:05:37] I'm thinking you could have career wellness, financial wellness, mental wellness, emotional wellness, physical wellness.

[00:05:42] There's so many different types.

[00:05:44] And for me, wellness is really about continued and sustained effort because at some level, wellness is maintenance.

[00:05:54] It's doing the things that you don't want to do because you want to be able to continue to do the things that you want to do.

[00:06:02] And so for me, I'm starting to think a lot more about nutrition, which is a big part of wellness.

[00:06:07] The physical, the working out great.

[00:06:09] The mental and emotional health, I'm not going to say I'm perfect, but I've got the right structures and the right people around me.

[00:06:14] Fantastic.

[00:06:15] The nutrition though, the eating healthy, that's what's killing me right now.

[00:06:20] Like these snacks.

[00:06:22] Another sign I'm getting older at least to me is or maybe something's changing with my appetite is when I wake up in the middle of the night

[00:06:31] and I see like a bag of chips or some empty candy wrappers next to me.

[00:06:36] And I'm like, yo, when did I eat those?

[00:06:38] Or when did I eat that?

[00:06:40] You know, I almost caught myself a midnight muncher, but I don't know if this is that that's it's what I mean, but it's not what I mean, depending where your mind goes.

[00:06:48] But yeah, let me talk about the morning of lost time real quick because it's not something that I would have ever thought about if I didn't start going through this process where I'm going to EMDR therapy.

[00:07:00] I've got my therapist that I've been seeing for a number of years now.

[00:07:04] But part of what I'm realizing as I wake up is the number of years where I just wasn't in alignment.

[00:07:13] I thought that I was or at least maybe I told myself that I was but that I wasn't actually in alignment and, you know, I was in bad situations.

[00:07:21] And I made decisions that looking back, I think I can appreciate now that like, yo, I was not equipped.

[00:07:27] I didn't have the right tools.

[00:07:29] I've been through so much different shit that what else could I really have expected of myself at that time, but to look back and to think about all of the years where I was struggling, whether it was mentally, emotionally, or I had different challenges going on in my life, that I was stuck in a cycle and I was stuck in a vicious loop.

[00:07:51] And I was making decisions not as the person that I am now, but as somebody that was operating with a trauma brain and first and foremost was trying to survive, even if it didn't necessarily feel that way or appear that way to, you know, anyone that I was interacting with or that I was with.

[00:08:06] So yeah, I'm right where I'm supposed to be and all that.

[00:08:09] But the truth is there is a lot of lost time.

[00:08:11] There's a lot of years that I was not competing and not out there running and jumping because I was drinking or I was doing other stuff.

[00:08:19] But yeah, that is lost time.

[00:08:21] But the difference or one of the key things now is that I also see this as a new chapter going forward.

[00:08:27] Whereas, you know, if I was competing in the past and I'm competing against people who have the genetics and have access to the coaching, it's not really a level playing field.

[00:08:36] You know, it's kind of like that in college.

[00:08:37] I was decent, you know, but I wasn't jumping out the gym.

[00:08:40] You know, he wasn't with me jumping out the gym.

[00:08:42] But now as people get older, things level out a bit.

[00:08:46] So there's people who I'm competing against who are 40 years old who at one point in time were jumping several feet further than I was jumping in college.

[00:08:54] But now we're all even today because we've got life.

[00:08:58] We've got jobs.

[00:09:00] We've got families.

[00:09:01] We've got shit that's going on that we're dealing with.

[00:09:04] But we're getting out there for the love of the sport and for the love of doing what we do.

[00:09:08] And don't get me wrong.

[00:09:10] I mean, from time to time, I'm going to keep thinking about lost time, lost years, but I can't do anything about that.

[00:09:18] You know, we can't do anything about the past and my therapist will ask me that actually I had my regular therapy session today.

[00:09:24] And she was asking me about some of the things in the past about the energy that I'm expending focusing on certain things and what I can actually do about it.

[00:09:32] And the answer is nothing.

[00:09:34] And that's going to be the case for some of the things that you may be dealing with in your life or that you're still thinking about.

[00:09:40] There is nothing that you can do about the past, but there are things you can do to improve your future.

[00:09:44] And that could be whether it's your job situation.

[00:09:46] That could be your health and fitness situation.

[00:09:49] That could be your relationship situation.

[00:09:51] That could be so many different things where you can apply that same attitude.

[00:09:55] What are you going to do to make things different going forward?

[00:10:01] It doesn't have to be complex.

[00:10:03] It doesn't need to be grandiose and extra.

[00:10:07] It can be as simple as, you know what?

[00:10:09] I'm going to stop eating after 9 30 p.m.

[00:10:12] I was going to say nine, but I'm being real with myself the first week.

[00:10:15] I'm going to stop eating after 9 30 p.m.

[00:10:17] Or you know what?

[00:10:19] I'm going to eat in one day per week, whatever it is.

[00:10:23] Maybe it's even looking into a certification or at least opening a browser tab on psychology today.

[00:10:30] So you can start the process of identifying a therapist.

[00:10:33] Start small, start simple.

[00:10:35] Start with shit that you can actually control.

[00:10:38] And yo, I had one more thing I wanted to talk about before I get out of here today.

[00:10:42] And that is this experience of being back at work because the more that I think about it,

[00:10:47] the more that I realize how bad a decision it would have been if I chose to exit my day job

[00:10:53] and just jump 100% into entrepreneurship.

[00:10:56] And it's not because I think there's anything wrong with that.

[00:10:58] It's the reasons that I was considering doing it.

[00:11:01] And it's something that I can only appreciate now because I'm a bit removed from it.

[00:11:05] But at the time there was some ego involved.

[00:11:08] There was wanting to appear successful and because I see people who I would consider peers

[00:11:13] quitting their day jobs and they're out there doing the damn thing.

[00:11:16] Or I have people who are I have guests who come on the show who they're living these awesome lives

[00:11:20] and doing these amazing things.

[00:11:22] And of course, I know there's what people see and then there's what happens behind the scenes

[00:11:26] because there's the experience even that I've had for myself.

[00:11:29] But still, there was this feeling of the longer I'm working, the more unsuccessful I am.

[00:11:35] And there was a voice in my head that was even kind of saying like,

[00:11:37] yo Rich you still working or yo Rich is still working?

[00:11:41] Man, he been working.

[00:11:42] Man, he been talking about leaving for a long time and I would continuously hear voices like that.

[00:11:47] And it would feel like this pressure like, yo, I got to get my stuff in order.

[00:11:50] I got to get this fun set aside.

[00:11:52] I got to get ready to get out of here.

[00:11:54] And when I think about it now work has really allowed me to achieve a dream that was enshrouded in a nightmare.

[00:12:01] And to imagine not having access to benefits, having to worry about money coming in,

[00:12:06] having to live off of savings at a time when I want to get out here and travel and compete.

[00:12:11] And we want to go on trips, see the world can pick back up with our lives like things were before the pandemic.

[00:12:17] I would not be able to do that right now had I parachuted out.

[00:12:21] It wouldn't be possible.

[00:12:23] And I partially share this because of the power of choice where I did have that time to step aside and figure out what it was that I really wanted.

[00:12:32] As opposed to going with the flow and going with the movement and going with what I thought my gut was telling me,

[00:12:38] which was I got to get out of here.

[00:12:40] But then as I realized a lot of what I was feeling back in August before I went out on leave had nothing to do with the actual job.

[00:12:47] It had nothing to do with my actual work situation.

[00:12:50] In fact, a lot of what I felt that I thought had something to do with work actually had nothing to do with work and more to do with the work that I needed to do on myself.

[00:13:00] Yo, I can't believe that I got through that in one take.

[00:13:03] But seriously, that's the conclusion that I got to at the end of this and I'm still very much on a journey because like I said,

[00:13:09] wellness is a journey and there are still things I'm going to be upset about even right now.

[00:13:14] I mentioned earlier today that based off of some stuff that I learned during my EMDR session yesterday,

[00:13:20] that I'm a combination of angry, sad, disappointed, but also thankful at the same time.

[00:13:27] Because much like working out, therapy, confronting past trauma, confronting things that we know are awful, having difficult conversations,

[00:13:36] it's painful just like working out is painful.

[00:13:39] But it's necessary for you to build strength and it's necessary if you want to move toward wellness as opposed to just being well at a point in time.

[00:13:50] And so that's all that I have for today.

[00:13:54] So if you enjoyed this episode or found it useful, be sure to share with your network, a neighbor, a colleague, a cousin, a friend,

[00:14:01] anyone you think could benefit from this because the more people we reach, the more people we help.

[00:14:06] And if you haven't already, be sure to join the email community by visiting findmorebalance.com again, findmorebalance.com

[00:14:14] where you'll get access to interesting reads to help you get ahead personally, professionally and financially so you can achieve your goals and the freedom you want.

[00:14:23] So thanks again for listening and until next time, do something dope.