Have you ever thought about the concept of choosing your life? Recently I was reading about a gentleman who was overweight and broke. And one day he decided he was going to be slim and wealthy and wealthy. Simple as that. All he did was make a decision that now he was going to be wealthy and now he was going to be fit. And this was a man who was struggling with finances for most of his adult life and also was quite overweight. About 250 pounds, if not heavier. He wrote something to the effect that one day, he decided, I’m going to be slim, and I’m going to be wealthy. Then about within a year of making that decision, he was fit. He was no longer overweight, and he was in very good shape. And indeed, he was wealthy. He had created an online business, and he was succeeding. He had built a very successful online revenue while working fewer hours and could also stay slim and fit. So, I thought to myself, well, how can this be anybody could decide to be healthy and wealthy and who wouldn’t make that decision? Right? If I had to decide between being healthy and fit or being overweight? I definitely choose to be healthy and fit. Or if I had to choose between being broke or being wealthy, I’d choose to be wealthy. So part of me was not fully buying into this concept. Surely, it could not be as simple as that. And the truth of the matter is technical. It is that simple. The only difference is you have to make a choice consistently. The day that you’re going to be healthy and wealthy and then you’re magically healthy and wealthy the next day. No, you make that decision. You stick with it. Every decision you make is aimed toward that overriding goal. Then, within six to 12 months, lo-and-behold, you are healthy and wealthy, so it’s not in that first decision. Where the magic happens, although technically, if you understand what is your goal. All of your decisions are going to be easy for the next 12 months. Then it is that simple.
Diet
Let us take diet as an example. Or health and fitness. If you decide today that you’re going to create a very healthy diet and stick with it for the next year or two years, or even better for the rest of your life. Then you devise a fitness plan and you stick with it as well. Then that decision today and every micro decision following suit for the next 12 months will create a healthy and fit version of yourself. So I thought to myself and then I bought into this concept that yes, we can decide today. That will positively affect us for the rest of our life. As well, we could make a decision that could negatively affect us. The decisions we make today are critical. If you think about your diet, the decisions we make about our diet are critical for our health and fitness. When you have to decide between eating a bag of chips or a box of cookies, it would be far healthier to choose an orange or an apple. If you can follow this logic where you make decisions all the way going forward, that ties you in to your goal. Then you will have success and you will be able to lose weight.
Started to Gain Weight
Take me as an example. I can say that about a year ago, I started to gain a few extra kilos and then I moved to another country and I gained even that much more kilos. Lo-and-behold, within five to six months, I had gained about 15 to 20 pounds. And the bulk of it was I just let my diet go. Perhaps, I was under stress. Perhaps I didn’t know what I should be eating at that time or just didn’t have the time to figure out what are the best ways to eat and how to maintain my diet. But after gaining about 20 pounds and realizing that I went from pretty healthy and pretty fit to now definitely on the unhealthy side, I decided that I had to lose about 15 to 20 pounds and do it pretty soon.
I realized right off the start that 90% of the effort is going to come from my diet. Yes, 10% will come from exercise or 20% from exercise, but the bulk of my results will be from getting correcting a diet. And the great thing about correcting a diet is generally would not mean adding that much more time. Because you’re eating healthier. It might take a little longer to prepare the foods, but this is a very small amount of time. Hence, I realized by making the right choices in the kitchen, I can have great results without having to spend three or four hours at the gym. I did not ignore the gym, but what I did was I’m going to work out at home and I’m going to work out three to four times a week. Maybe about half an hour each time. So for an additional two hours of working out a week and very little cardio, I should do some more cardio, so that’s on my to-do list. But most importantly, I am going to focus on creating a good eating habits. One of the other things I incorporated into the mix was redoing my intermittent fasting. I would start my first meal at noon and I would have my last meal at eight at 8 pm Though the rest of the time I was fasting. So my eating window was from 12 pm to 8 pm, an eight-hour window, and my fasting window off was from 8 pm till noon the next day. And this worked very well. I did not have any hunger issues. I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for years. So it was not much of an adjustment. I just turned it back on. I like it. And what I would add to the mix is every once a week, I would take a day where I just didn’t eat anything. And this basically would bring me into definitely into a calorie deficit. Which enabled me to lose about a pound a week without that much difficulty. Now the other thing I’m focusing on is not only choosing the right foods and also choosing the right quantities. Also, to make sure that I never or very rarely overeat, I tried to maintain about a 1500 to 2000 Calorie load per day. Were never exceeding 2000 calories. And by doing this, was not that difficult. And the results came in very quickly. Within three months, I had already lost about 12 pounds. I was back on my form, the bulk of my pants that were no longer fitting was now fitting again. I was back on track and now four months from that time I’ve lost the whole extra weight and purely met my goal. So just by making some small tweaks, I can change from going unhealthy to becoming healthy.
Professional Life
What about your professional life? Well, believe it or not, the same is true for being wealthy or being broke. Making that decision is completely up to you. So you can decide as an example to spell a span beyond your means. This is very similar to eating beyond your calorie intake. What does spending beyond your means mean? It means that if you look at the disposable income that you have in a month if you’re spending more than your disposable income. That means you’re getting into the red and it’s very similar to overeating. Spending too much is like eating too much. So, it’s kind of the opposite because one’s going out and one’s coming in.
Eating and Spending
But there are similar concepts because with spending you should not spend more than your disposable income. If you spend more than the disposable income that means you never save anything. So by spending under your disposable income. You now can save money and therefore you can invest money. And the same is true with diet if you want to lose weight. try never to eat more than your calorie limit of the day. For example, if you see that you normally burn about 2000 calories. If you want to lose weight, create a 500-calorie deficit. If you want to be wealthy, create a system where every month you’re able to save money and then invest that money. It’s not rocket science. It’s as simple as mathematics. The mathematics of what you eat versus what you calorie-wise what you spend. So calories in versus calories out. If you want to lose weight, create a calorie deficit.
Financial Life
It is not magical, in terms of your finance, to spend less than what you earn. So if you earn $100,000 A year and the taxman takes 25,000 You got 75,000 left to spend make sure you spend less than that. And ideally, you would be able to save about let’s call it 1/3 of your after-tax income, or 25% of your pre-tax income. Whatever it is you should be aiming to save about $25,000 per year. And if you can do that you’re going to be wealthy because you’re going to be investing about $2,000 per month. And if you follow some simple techniques which we can get into you will be wealthy over a certain number of years. The concept of choosing to be wealthy and the concept of choosing to be fit are totally within anyone’s means to choose. But it means putting in the time you can choose tomorrow to be 140 pounds. If today you are 240 pounds, but you can choose tomorrow to be 140 pounds and within one or two years depending on your weight today you can get there. Now. Make sure that the weight that you choose is healthy. If you’re six foot four, don’t aim for a weight of 140 pounds but if you’re five foot three or if you’re five foot eight or whatever you are and 140 pounds is within your BMI then within a healthy BMI. When I was about 18 years old, I was 145 pounds. For me, that’s my ideal weight. My height is about five-nine. So 145 is a little bit on the slim side but it’s healthy it’s still within the healthy range. Now if I put on a little bit more muscle, then I’m fine with going up to 151 55 but it should be more on the muscle side rather than just extra pounds or extra fat. I hope this was helpful and I hope that in the end, we realize that in fact, choosing to be healthy and wealthy are choices. They are within our means to make.
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Happiness
The other thing is it’s a very interesting fact but to be happy is also a choice. So what’s very interesting is that I did not know this years ago, but a simple act. The physical act of smiling makes you happier. So if you want to choose to be happier, just take a second and make a smile and hold them for a few seconds and you will become healthier. Your brain realizes that you’re smiling and that makes you happier. So when you’re happy your brain causes some changes that make you smile or grin. And that also works in reverse so if you smile and grin it also makes you happy. So if you want to be happier, just choose to be happier. And the way to do that is just put on a smile. Practice smiling five times a day. 10 seconds a day. It doesn’t take that long and you will become happier. So if you have any comments or you have used any of these techniques in the past, I’d love to hear about them. I’d love to hear your success stories. I’d also love to hear if you had any challenges. Feel free to comment and if you have any questions I will try to answer as to the best that I can. So have a great day and please choose to be happy to be healthy, to be fit, and to be wealthy.
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