Let's talk about the book Breath by James Nestor, because especially if you have any breathing problems, and even if you don't, even if you just want to feel your best and be at your top health, this is one of the more powerful books I've read lately. A couple of months ago, I had a little sinus stuffiness for a couple of days. As a person who sets an intention to be at the highest health I can be, who consistently feels fantastic, who consistently gets reviews by other people, anywhere from doctors to my herbologist today, that I am in fantastic health, I take note and ask for help at even the smallest little symptom. So I saw it as a sign my body was a little out of balance. And this book came to me through a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was talking to him one night, and I had this bit of a sniffle, and I was just praying to get some guidance on how to be free of sniffles for the rest of my life. And this book came into my awareness through a recommendation from my friend, and I just ripped through it. Wow. I'll give you a kind of summary of it, and we'll have a discussion about everything.
The one-sentence summary: always breathe through your nose
You'll notice I just took a big deep breath through my nose there. If I could summarize this book in one sentence, in terms of an actionable thing you can do, it'd be this: always breathe through your nose. That's the simplest summary I can give you. Breathe always through your nose. You're in a good place. Your nose is intended to take all of your air in and out. The mouth is an emergency breathing system. For example, if somebody punched you in the face and your nose fell apart, then your mouth would be an emergency breathing function in that scenario. A lot of us have picked up the habit of mouth breathing in various places.
According to this book, James did a little experiment on himself where he plugged his nose and could not nose breathe for two weeks, and his health dramatically went downhill in just two weeks. And he refers to some studies where they plugged the noses of monkeys for a much longer time, and the monkeys' health just continued to spiral downhill. You can see this in a lot of human beings. In my experience, if you look at people who are in bad health, I would bet a higher percentage of them are mouth breathers, according to the research. If you look at someone who's in great health, I would bet a higher percentage of them are nose breathers. I've even found that if I've done some very long live streams where I'm consistently breathing through the mouth because I'm talking, I will feel significantly lower in energy afterward. And it's not because I was really stressed out. It's simply because of my mouth breathing. So I consistently slow my talking down since reading this book, and take some more deep nose breaths in.
What if your nose is stuffed up?
Now, one of the first questions you're going to ask is, well, what if my nose is stuffed up? I've got a deviated septum, blah, blah. I was born with a deviated septum also. And what I've been shocked to find, and what James talks about in this book, is that if you don't use it, you lose it. The less you breathe through your nose, the weaker and more difficult it will get. And the more you breathe through your nose, the stronger and more open it will get. Once you breathe through your mouth, it'll change the shape of your face or your jaw. Your body is not some stagnant, rigid piece of bones and meat, because if it is, you're probably going to die soon, since healthy bodies tend to be flexible and constantly adjusting and adapting. Even things like face structure can be changed. The more you breathe through either your mouth or your nose, the structure of your face can actually change to support that. So if you breathe through your mouth all the time, you can atrophy your nose to where it gets even more difficult to breathe through, because you're not using it. Your body figures, we don't need this, we're not going to put any energy into maintaining it.
The more I've been breathing through my nose since this book, I've found that I can breathe through the smallest little opening in my nose. At no point since I've read this book have I ever had to resort to mouth breathing. Normally, when I would go for a run or get into some intense exercise, I would mouth breathe. And reflecting on my previous experience, as soon as I started mouth breathing, it was over. My energy was going downhill and the pain was going uphill. That's because, in my experience, mouth breathing is not as good as nose breathing. When you breathe through your nose, it's like you're breathing through an air filter. When you're breathing through your mouth, there's no air filter.
How your nostrils switch through the day
Not only that, but your nose, as I've learned from this book and verified myself, actually switches which nostril is the primary breather during the day, which is really cool. Right now, my nose is primarily breathing through the right nostril. The right nostril is the get amped up, energize, fire up nostril. If you're going to work out or do something like this, that's a right-nostril breathing kind of exercise. When I was getting a massage earlier today, I was left-nostril breathing, because the left nostril is, as James says in the book, kind of a calm down, relax, go within, rest and digest kind of breathing. I've been finding a lot of good feelings breathing consistently through my nose. It's been really cool to see how the nose actually opens and closes, and how my body will actually switch sides. Nose breathing can calm nerves and anxiety.
If you want to improve your breathing, read this book, Breath. I'm giving you the tip of the iceberg here, a little bit of discussion, but this book can help a lot with your breathing. Nose breathing helps a bunch. And what James talks about in the book is that we have this idea that more air is better. I used to struggle to nose breathe lots of times, because my nose would get a little stuffed up, or I'd have a little tiny air hole through it, say my body was trying to breathe through the left nostril, and I'd get stuffed up. I would overcompensate by trying to force it, and my nose would get all blocked up, and then I would just mouth breathe.
Slow, deep breaths and the role of carbon dioxide
One of the most helpful things to consciously do with the breath is take it in through the nose and take the absolute deepest, slowest breath possible. These breaths tend to be very relaxing, very nourishing for the body. The more you expand your lung capacity, it's absolutely fantastic for your health. In fact, James talks about in this book how people with emphysema can, essentially just through focused breathing, filling their lungs up as much as possible, minimize or almost eliminate the effects of their emphysema by using more of the lung capacity they have. Most of us, or at least a lot of us where I live in the USA, are in the habit of taking a lot of really shallow, quick breaths, and we think more breaths is better. But what I aim to do, and what James suggests in the book, is to take a breath about every five seconds: one breath in for two seconds and a breath out for two seconds. I generally aim to go slower with my breathing if possible. I've tried breaths as long as 30 seconds, so a 15-second inhale and a 15-second exhale. What you can do is just slow your breath down, and what you'll be amazed to find is that you don't need that much air. You don't need that much air to get a hell of a lot of oxygen.
I also saw an interesting thing in this book that said when you lose weight, you actually lose most of the weight through your breath rather than through other parts of your body, because of however the metabolism works in the body. You're actually going to end up breathing out most of the weight you're losing. Another cool thing in the book is that a lot of us think carbon dioxide is bad, like we want to push out all the bad carbon dioxide, but really, carbon dioxide is good for the body. It regulates a ton of functions. The key thing is to have your carbon dioxide in balance, at a good place. One of the therapies James tries in the book is taking a huge dose, a big breath of carbon dioxide, which can help with some health problems. If you have any breathing-related health problems, and even problems like anxiety, there are a lot of things you can do. There are all kinds of things that breath can assist with. If you have low energy, in my experience you can easily spin your energy up by breathing intentionally faster and slower.
Bringing conscious breathing into daily life
This book has been one of the more impactful books I've read recently in terms of changing my daily habits. One of the main adjustments I've made is breathing through my nose and taking long, slow, conscious breaths whenever possible. At first the reaction is, oh my God, what a chore to take air in and out of these lungs all day, and sure enough, I ran around and forgot about it right after that. But now today I have the opposite approach: as many times as possible, I set my intention to remember to consciously breathe. If you find you're stuck in your head and you have racing thoughts, the antidote is the breath, and I got this book right when I was praying to slow my mind down. My mind has slowed down drastically because of taking these deep, slow, in-and-out nose breaths. Nose breathing helps a lot when my kids anger me. It just helps me to calm down. I tell my son this. He's two and almost three. He gets himself all worked up, and I'm like, son, close your mouth, take a long, slow, deep breath through your nose, and you'll be okay. I realize he's three years old, he's learning how to use his body. What's silly is that some of us as adults have been alive 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years and still haven't learned it.
Even now, I still haven't got much past that point. As a three year old and as a thirty something, you can still have a panic attack doing it. You have to get a hold of your breath. And once I find I have control of my breath, everything else gets easier. It's much easier to have control of the entire rest of my body and my mind. The breath is this very basic gateway to consciousness, to relaxation, to peace, to control. It's amazing.
James talks in this book about how monks can use the breath to lower their heart rate. He shares a bunch of amazing things that monks can do with their breath. These are people who have focused on, practiced, and spent a lot of time and energy paying attention to the breath, seeing exactly what they can do with it. He has stories of monks who are able to heat their body up so much that they can sit outside with almost no clothes on and melt snow in freezing temperatures.
I, of course, gave this a nice try at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting one morning that was outside in the sun. It was about 55 degrees and windy. So I come out there in a pair of light pants, take my shirt off, and sit in the sun to work out and get a tan. And I sit there and take more breaths than I need to. One way you can heat yourself up and energize yourself is to simply take more air into your lungs. The longer I did that, the more the energy and the metabolism in me picked up, and just doing that for a little bit, my body started sweating and heating up a little.
Your breath is a gas pedal
I have a fitness class I go to Monday and Thursday. One thing the instructor has us do some days is get out there while I'm breathing real slow, and then he has us take these deep breaths. And my God, my energy goes from relaxed and chill to cranked up and ready to work out in a minute or two. Your breath is like a gas pedal for your body and your metabolism in terms of your energy. You crank up your breath, and you can crank your entire energy level right up with it.
This is what I'm excited to chat about, because I think by sharing this book and what I've learned here, it could have a huge positive impact on your life, or on the life of someone reading or listening alongside you. This is a book that has been life changing for me. My health has gone up significantly by consciously shutting my mouth whenever it comes to breathing. Clearly not for talking, but even talking less, because the more I talk, the more I end up mouth breathing. When I'm talking I'm at least breathing out, but a lot of times for expediency I'll breathe in through my mouth, because if I take a quick deep breath I can pretty much keep talking. You can hardly tell. I can sneak some air in while I'm mouth breathing and just about continuously talk. But if I want to nose breathe, it takes a little bit longer.
Getting sober, and the books that followed
I've been sober from alcohol for almost seven years. Somebody asked me what book has had the biggest impact on my life, and it's probably the book Alcoholics Anonymous, because that was the book that was read alongside the AA program. Reading that book and experiencing the program it was created from, and that goes along with it, changed everything. When I saw how powerful the book Alcoholics Anonymous and the fellowship of AA were in creating real change in my life, in helping me stay sober and enjoy myself and get connected with people, I thought, well, what other book can I read that will change my life? Since then I've read about 200 books.
And yes, I realize it might be funny that the first book I wrote was called Video Game Addiction Stories. I just posted that to see if I could get an audiobook up, and it was a little fun project I worked on. I've got 200 or so books I've read, and honestly it's really not any one of them. What it really is, is the totality of all the books I've read. This book on breathing had a significant positive effect on my health, but this book alone wouldn't do much overall. When I put this book together, plus the book Alcoholics Anonymous, plus The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, plus The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer, The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer, The Power of Vulnerability by Brene Brown, and all the other books I talk about, doing one of these on almost a daily basis live on Facebook and then putting part of it on my podcast, it's the 200 books all combined that have an incredible effect, because it's a bunch of little improvements.
For example, the book Alcoholics Anonymous helped me make maybe a 10 or 20 improvement in my life, at a minimum, a massive improvement. And almost every single other book I've read, maybe a one to 10 improvement. So you put 200 books together, each making maybe a one to 10 improvement, and that adds up to just an amazing life today.
I am so grateful for those of you who consistently ask questions and want to hear what I've got to say. I look around and I see people suffering and struggling with things, and I think, wouldn't they want to know how my life is going so well when it was going so poorly before? In some ways I'm surprised and in some ways I'm not that everybody would want to know what the hell happened and how they can get some of that. So I'm glad you all do.
You can only help someone who will receive it
Someone told me his friend is addicted to alcohol and he's tried helping him, but the friend just won't accept help. That's the thing. We can only give our help to someone who will receive it, and we can only receive help if we're open to accepting it. There were a lot of people who yelled at me. There was a girl I dated who screamed at me in the middle of a drunken fight one night that I needed to get sober. My dad was an alcoholic and got sober at 40, and he told me I abused alcohol and led by example with a sober life, consistently encouraging me to be sober. At my job I got in trouble, and I was honest about my issues with alcohol, and I went to an AA meeting because of that, but I went home and drank right afterward in 2005. I lost a job before because of things that almost all happened while I was drunk, a job I'd worked really hard to get. In my career as a police officer, my drinking was the only issue. The sober mind that thought drinking was the best idea was clearly the real issue, but all the stuff I did while drinking caused a lot of problems in my career, which eventually led to leaving it.
I wouldn't let people help me until I finally realized that this is killing me, and I want to live. I have a very strong desire to live, and I'll do whatever it takes. I'll accept whatever help is out there that's right for me, and I will stay sober. That's how I ran into this book, because I was talking to somebody after an AA meeting, and so many of the books I've discovered have come from talking with somebody after an AA meeting. One of the first books outside of Alcoholics Anonymous that somebody inside AA referred me to was The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, because I wanted to be more spiritual and really work the steps. A woman named Janet suggested, why don't you read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle? I read that book, and it was a massive breakthrough.
The one thing you can do if somebody in your life is struggling is you can pray for them. You can absolutely pray for them. That does make a difference when they're ready to accept the prayers.
Somebody mentioned reading 48 Laws of Power years ago and how it turned them into a bit of a different person. I read 48 Laws of Power too, and I did go on a bit of a power trip myself after that as well. That was a good experience. With every book, I trust that if I'm enjoying it and I want to keep listening to it, there's something there for me.
On writing more books, and keeping it all free
Someone asked whether I want to write a book that's quite spiritual given my insight. I've written 14 books. I've got two of them that I consistently recommend. One is Speaker Meeting 2017, especially if you've struggled with addiction, because I go through my struggles with all kinds of addictions in that book. And if you want a book that's just interesting to listen to and gives you some insight into my life as a police officer, which was kind of the craziest time in my life, then Officer Banfield goes into all those stories. I've also done some books with daily affirmations. I don't feel like I'm being called right now to narrate another book. However, I imagine another book may manifest in the future.
What I like is having all of my content out there for free. I sold paid courses and sold these books and focused on selling things a lot, and I love that all my stuff is out there for free now. Whether somebody's got a fortune and is sitting in a mansion looking at my streams on Facebook, listening to my podcast, or searching for my videos, or whether somebody's in the middle of Africa and can barely get an internet connection but has a mobile phone and can download one of my podcast episodes when they're on wifi and listen to it, I love that my teaching is available to anyone, anywhere, totally for free. For the entire course of my life and my teaching, I see that as the ideal space to put it in. Maybe someday, if a publisher offers me a boatload of money and it feels exciting to me and I really want to write the kind of book they want written, maybe I'd publish another book. But for now and for the foreseeable future, I'm very happy making things that anybody can watch and interact with anywhere in the world.
Someone shared that they're in recovery too, not in AA but in NA, and I'm glad to hear it when a person lets it be known. I put it right out there myself, because I've come to believe it's when we're willing to talk about our dark side out in the open that real healing starts.
Light and dark are complementary
I call it a dark side, but really we want both light and dark, because if there was only light, you couldn't know it as light. And if there was only dark, you couldn't know light either. They define each other. This is one of those books that will change your life, and it changed how I hold that idea.
I prefer to listen to audiobooks and podcasts. I already do so much with my eyes: gaming, and when my eyes are free I like to watch live streams and share other streamers. In other words, I prefer not to read a book with my eyes. I listen to this book, and almost every book I tell you about, on Audible as an audiobook. I'm also looking to get into some podcasts. I'd love to find a podcast like mine, where it's the same person sharing these kinds of things and not doing interviews. There are so many interview podcasts. I've listened to Wayne Dyer, and I would honestly listen to my own podcast, but creatively that's a little like masturbating. I can only listen to my own stuff so much. I love what I create, and precisely because of that I think it helps me to take in somebody else's work, so I'm not just repeating myself all the time.
If you have something you want me to look at, send me a text or a message and come join my community. I'm happy to take a look.
Some souls came here to sing the blues
It's nice when we reach a place of acceptance where things don't need to be chased away. Some immortal souls have incarnated in this lifetime to sing the blues, and all they're going to do in this life is have an awful childhood, a miserable adulthood, and then die. That's all they're going to do. They're never going to get it together or have what someone else might picture as a wonderful, happy, peaceful, useful life. From the time they're born to the time they die, all they're going to do is suffer, and maybe get a few moments of joy as a kid and some fleeting moments of joy as an adult. But pretty much they're going to sing the blues. And that's okay, because as immortal souls we choose these lives and these bodies. We want a variety of experiences.
In my experience, I'm grateful for the variety of experiences I've had, because those experiences are what drew me here. They drew me to the things I've been through before. For example, that's what drew me to this book. I doubt I would have read it if I hadn't been looking for two specific things: a way to consistently calm my mind and be in my body, and the elimination of any sinus issues, colds, and sniffles. I was looking and praying for those two things when I came across this book.
It's the darkness that makes the light. They're complementary. What helps me is to let people be in their darkness and to love them in their darkness, without needing them to change or be better, because that helps me honor the same thing in myself. Ironically, that's what keeps me reading new books like this all the time.
The man screaming at his phone
I saw a man on the street today. He was screaming and cursing at somebody on his phone, or maybe he was recording a podcast episode, I don't know, but he was screaming at his cell phone on the sidewalk. I had arrived for my massage, so I was exactly in the place that felt right for me to be. Now, years ago this kind of situation would have gotten ugly. I would have had conflict. I had screaming fights with people in situations like this. I even went to my car to get my gun in situations like this before. Those dark times showed me clearly what I don't want. I don't want conflict with people. I don't want to add to somebody else's darkness. I want to be the one who shows somebody there's a way out, and I want to be the one who brings peace, a peace that's felt at any distance from me.
What I've come to believe is that just by being here on this stream, or by listening, you can feel better. Just by being physically next to me, without me even talking, you can feel good. And the really cool thing is that I've come to a place where I love myself so much, and I know how much good energy I can give out, that when I'm where I need to be, it flows naturally. I don't go into a bar looking to lift people up, because I don't belong there. The people in the bar are not looking to hear about my experience with recovery from alcoholism. I go where I feel excited and called to go, and when I'm there, I put out love and joy at other people.
So this man was screaming at his phone, and I walked over and waited to go in the door, and I consciously focused on him and put out a blast of love, acceptance, and hope for this man. Guess what he did? Promptly, without even looking at me, he walked away. The man inside the building told me that this guy had been there for hours before I walked up. I walk up, and he walks away. That's what I've noticed: the more I take good care of myself, stay in my light, and refuse to engage in thinking, contemplating, and focusing on thoughts of harm and what I don't like, the more I focus on love and joy, the more that people who are committed to being miserable find my presence intolerable.
That means someone will not be able to keep messaging me if they have all this negative stuff to say, no matter what, if I don't energetically respond the same way. If I respond with love, I often won't send much, if anything, back, and they'll find that boring. I'm not engaging, I'm not giving them anything to feed on, so they'll stop messaging. And if it's in a physical presence, this same thing has happened to me repeatedly since I learned it.
I was walking down the street at maybe seven p.m., just as it was getting dark, in front of an AA meeting. There was a man screaming, perhaps homeless, screaming at people, "F you." Same thing. That actually wakes me up even more. Sometimes I can afford to slack a little bit, but when I see somebody like that, it's like the lights come on at full. The lights turn all the way up to the max, and I'm like, love and peace and joy, come on, who wants a hug? And the guy who was screaming at people comes up and starts walking by me, gets completely quiet, puts his head down, and walks by. Once he physically gets about twenty feet away from me, and my aura wears off a little bit, he returns to screaming. And I'm like, wow. Having your own energy in control of where you want to be has a noticeable impact on the energy you attract out of other people.
I've run that scenario a bunch of times, with a bunch of different people. It happens with my kids sometimes too. They'll be in a fuss, and as soon as I walk in the door, they'll calm down. Other times, my son cuts my hair, takes the clippers and throws them on the floor because I was pinching his hair, and then he screams and cries. So I'm not coming to you claiming I'm some saint that nobody ever cries around or has a hard time with. What I am saying is that you can read books like this, even just a little bit, maybe thirty minutes to an hour every single day, and you will be blown away at how good your life can get.
Small changes, dramatic shifts
This is one of the books that significantly raised my whole consciousness, and every single book that does that gets you into a place that's unrecognizable from where you started. Where I am today is unrecognizable from seven years ago. Back then, me and that person on the street might have been having words. I might have been threatening them, or calling the police on them, or avoiding them out of fear of what would happen. That's why I share this stuff every day: because I'm genuinely excited about it, and some of you are latching onto it, reading the books I'm recommending, getting the results I'm getting, loving it, and coming back for more.
I've come to believe I even remember being reincarnated. I remember dying, and I've remembered it in dreams, in hypnotherapy, and in regressions. I've gotten little memories just listening to a CD by myself, and I've gotten memories just walking my dog listening to some Deadmau5, and they just came to me. Another book that came to me is The Science of Self-Realization, written about meditation and inner chakras. I love that book. I've noticed that whatever books I need to read next, or would love to read next, will often come directly to me. I love reading anything of a similar vibe, because by reading these things I'm programming myself to be like that. So I'm going to read this book, and I'm going to read something by a monk who said to do this, because it dramatically improved my life and I overcame my fear of death. Every little thing you can do like that is massive.
It's like when you're flying a plane. James Nestor, in his book Breath, or maybe it was another one, used the example of flying a plane, that little changes in your habits make an enormous difference. Actually, that plane example was from Atomic Habits, we'll talk about that another time, but the point holds. All you need to do to go on a drastically different course in your life is make a small adjustment today. For example, if you're flying from LA to New York and you just change the trajectory of the plane, you turn the wheel a small three degrees, which is less than one percent of all the ways you could turn the plane, you make a change of less than one percent, and the difference is that you'd arrive in Washington, D.C. instead. It's these tiny changes we make in our lives that give us dramatic shifts and dramatic improvements. That's why every day I've got something to tell you about that can help you.
Follow your passion the way little kids do
Make a dramatic shift or a dramatic change in your life today. Someone asked how come I never play Call of Duty anymore, and the honest answer is because I don't want to. To me it is incredibly important that we do whatever we are passionate and excited about, because that is guidance from God, from my highest self. That excitement is where I belong. Little kids are so good with this. They are consistently running around led by their excitement, and they consistently have a great time and love their life because they are following their passion.
For some reason we think it is better to tell kids to ignore their feelings, forget their passions, do what they are told, and pay their bills. We act as though it does not matter whether you want to do it or not, you should just do it because somebody else told you to, and somehow we think that is the better way to live. I believe Jesus suggested the value of living like little children, and that is what I am practicing.
What to do with a creative block
Someone asked what I do when I have a creative block, when I am stuck for something to talk about. Video games are very helpful for that one. There was a day I was not really feeling anything inspirational to talk about. I was feeling a little bit down. I want you to know that how up I am here is an accurate reflection of the rest of my life. Most of the time I am very up, very excited, and very grateful for my life. Occasionally I get a little down, and it happens whenever my thinking and my actions do not align with how my source, my highest self, God, is thinking.
On the particular day I am thinking of, maybe a week ago, I was a little bit down. I signed on and played some Magic: The Gathering, and I felt a little bit better. That is exactly why I play video games: because they help me feel good. If you are feeling bad, video games can give you a great distraction and escape from feeling bad, which is a significant improvement in how you feel. In my experience, the better you feel, the easier it is to keep feeling even better. So if you are feeling all upset and you can distract yourself with some video games for a little while, you have made it easier to reach up to an even better feeling, instead of just laying in bed depressed all day and not reaching for any better feeling at all.
So when I have a creative block, I play some video games on my stream first, before doing one of these chats. I find that creative blocks often show up the more I am trying to force myself to appear somewhere I am not truly inspired to be. If I am showing up as a means to an end, I get more creative blocks. For example, when I was posting on Steam, I would hit creative blocks and really struggle with things to share. What I find is that the more I am living my life in my purpose, just doing what I do because I love it, the fewer creative blocks I have. But if I would not do something for free just because it is fun, and I am only doing it to get money out of it, then I face more creative blocks. That is often a sign to go do something else. It does not mean I have to give up the activity entirely. It is just a sign to back off, go do something fun, enjoy my life, and then often I am able to come back to the very same thing with a new creative idea.
Watch how each game makes you feel
Someone said Warzone messes them up sometimes, and that connects to something I have been encouraging: look at how you feel when you play certain games, because not all games affect you equally. Warzone, to me, is a game that gets you really amped up and excited, which can be stressful and is not what you need sometimes. Sometimes you need a game that will just help you relax, forget about your life, escape, and enjoy a different universe. If your life already feels like a warzone, where people are constantly trying to screw you, metaphorically shoot you and take you down and compete, and then you go play more Warzone, that is often going to make you feel worse, because your brain and your body are already sick of that all day and they want something different.
If you just watch how you feel before you do something and after you do something, you can get a good idea of whether it is a good thing for you. That is exactly why I stopped playing Warzone. I noticed I would feel great before playing it and often feel pretty low afterward, and I decided I am not going to do something that takes my energy down.
Keep reading, keep learning, keep feeling good
Someone asked how to go forward after letting go of your toxic habits. One of the best things to do is keep reading and keep learning something new, because often the solution you need will not come at you directly through the front door. Take a book like this one. Just looking at it, you might think it has nothing to do with what you are experiencing. But when you actually read it, you might be surprised to find it has some really cool solutions and techniques that can help with anxiety, with fear and panic, that can help you feel better and have more energy. If you are human like me, you probably want to feel better, have more energy, control the energy you have, and not be stuck with anxiety in your head all day. This book has a lot of good tips for that.
So what helps me is that I am consistently reading and learning something new. I am also disciplined about what I let in. If it is some negative drama about what is wrong with the world, I am tuning that out. I am not reading your horror story about why the world is horrible today. I am not watching your news story about what these people did. I do not care. In my heart I know all of the things that are happening on this earth. I realize not everybody is living in the middle of a rose garden and having such a fabulous life like I am right now, because I remember my own life and what it was like before, and how dark it got. I realize there are people who have experienced darkness that would make mine look like light.
So keep reading, keep learning, keep listening. Do little things every day that help you truly feel good, not things like drinking alcohol, which in my experience does not truly help you feel good because you pay for it. The things that make you truly feel good do not have any side effects or negative results, no hangovers, no regrets the next day. Do as many things as you can that help you truly feel good, that feel inspired and excited, in everything around you.
And if you are from the South and can't read, listen to books on Audible, which is what I do. I love listening to audiobooks. I prefer to listen rather than read, and I love listening to podcasts. I am going to start looking up some more I can recommend. I have Tim Ferriss's podcast and Brene Brown's podcast, and I will do some talks on those soon. If you want to keep following along with this way of living, you can find much more of it in my Life playlist. I appreciate you being here for this one, and you can look forward to a lot more of these each day.