VOW OF EXCELLENCE: Making the promise to do your best and actually succeed

https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-6r2hz-1b05979

 I have come to the conclusion of I have not been doing everything I can to be my best self.  I am very defensive and reactive and I have had some time to reflect on this.  So I talk about that and I speak on what I am willing to do to change it.

• The speaker reflected on personal struggles with emotional fragility and reactivity, especially during recent life ‘storms.’
• Acknowledged a pattern of overreacting to criticism and being defensive, often hurting loved ones in the process.
• Recognized the need for a stronger personal foundation and more consistent mindfulness practices.
• Admitted to lapses in self-care routines like yoga and meditation, and the impact of negative self-talk and past trauma.
• Emphasized the importance of self-assessment, accepting discomfort as part of growth, and making conscious efforts to change.
• Stressed that real change requires personal responsibility and cannot be expected from others.
• Expressed a desire to be more mindful, less reactive, and to practice what is preached, especially in relationships.
• Highlighted the value of having supportive loved ones and the motivation they provide for self-improvement.
• Invited listeners to join in the journey of self-work and mutual encouragement.
• Concluded with a message of hope, perseverance, and the importance of ongoing effort in personal growth.

Being fragile is not always the worst thing in the world, but I when we talk about the storms that affected the Fourth of July, we think about the trees. Some of those trees broke, and some of those didn’t, and the ones that broke were the ones that didn’t have a solid foundation. Now, I’m not going to lie to you, I have not been built on a solid foundation for a long time. I keep trying to solidify that foundation in my life, and storms come and shipwreck me. And when that happens, I do not react well with it. I do not act mindfully. I do not act as much as I talk on the show. I really fuck it up, and a lot of it is because I really have not been working on my mindfulness lately. I have not been working on what I need to be working on, and I think I’m gonna have to go back to the mat for that, but I think it goes beyond that. I think it goes beyond the fact that growing up as a child I never thought I was good enough for anybody, and some of that was in my own head, and over the last few decades my body of work professionally says that all that shit was in my head, because I’ve done things that are pretty cool, you know. I had a public access show, and on this public access show, I was able to interview people with the likes of, like, Rob Zombie and Slayer, and those were not easy interviews to come by, but I got them. I would put together all age shows, and I did it with a very limited budget, and at one point it started to become profitable. So, it makes me think about maybe I should go back into that, I was out of my ass, fired, not knowing what my future was going to be, and I ended up building a pretty strong school transportation company, and then because we needed extra money, I built a good airport transportation company, and this is all stuff that I should be proud of, and this is all stuff that I should say to myself, “Damn, that’s fucking good, Mike, but it’s not enough, and the reason why it’s not enough is because that foundation isn’t strong. Last week we talked about loving yourself and finding yourself, and I find myself, but then I lose track of what’s important because of the storms that come my way when I get criticized, when I get called out for past behavior, when I talk about, you know, things not going well, I don’t handle it well at all. I yell, I accuse people of shit, I do a lot, and yes, I’m a work in progress, and yes, I’ve. Made improvement, but I think what it comes down to for me is that foundation I have found a moral compass, but that moral compass has to be stronger. Part of the reason why I made so many mistakes in my younger years, because I didn’t have one, I didn’t really give myself boundaries, I didn’t give myself any lead way, I just basically did whatever the fuck I wanted to, and when people got me mad, I would, I would fire back, and I would even go on to say, if there were people that I fired back at that seemed like they were going to beat the shit out of me. I kind of cowered a little bit, and that has not served me at all. It has not served loved ones in my life. It has not served anybody. So, I think the first thing I have to realize is how fragile I truly am. How sensitive I really am. I have to have an understanding of what am I going to do about that, because I think ultimately that’s where we have to start, is we have to start with that self-assessment. We have to start with that feeling of understanding that we can be tough, we can be strong, but we’re not at this moment. That’s part of the reason why I go to the gym, is because I get try to get myself stronger, I try to get myself in better shape. But what am I doing to get my mind in better shape right now? Do I go to therapy? That’s great.   meditate from time to time, that’s great, but it’s not when I.. it’s not consistent. I stopped going to yoga, and I stopped going to yoga because a lot of the nuances of yoga have pissed me off, and I just saw a lot of judgmental folks there, and I’m like, How do I know they’re not judging me? Well, what I need to say to myself, is who cares what they say about me. I need to, I need to get into this. I need to go back, because I think that’s something that helps, that calmness, that stillness, that feeling of just being with yourself, learning how to breathe with one movement, one breath. I got to get back there, because I cannot live my life fragile forever. I have to become stronger. There are people counting on me, and most of all, I need to be able to count on myself, so I So, how do I move forward? How do I continue to move forward when I have gone through everything that I’ve gone through? When I have brought people down with me, you know, I may not be the same person I was before, but there are still parts of that same person here now, and they are parts that are no longer serving me. There are parts that are not helping me in my cause. They are not parts that are helping anything. You see, it’s a matter of just understanding that I fall down all the time, I fall down, I lose my temper, I can be really persistent, I can be really crazy, I do a lot of stupid shit when I, when I get, and I think maybe it is the BPD, because there is that fear that that person’s never going to speak to me again, and I, but that’s something I know, so if I know that, then I can use that to my advantage to saying, okay, are these people really never going to be there again? I need to start asking myself questions, I need to start asking myself facts, I need to start understanding what’s reality and what’s fiction, and that’s what happens all the time when I have these issues, and I walk around every day of my life with this fight, this reality verse fiction fight, it’s happening all the time for me, because someone could say hello to me, I want to talk to you, and the first thing I do is my mind goes to a bad place, if someone says something critical of me, I get fucking agitated, a friend of mine once told me to become butter, and I have not done a good job with that. I hold everything in my heart that people say to me, I care so much, and I think it’s because I do that. It, that’s why I continue to fall down, but the thing about falling down that’s beautiful is you have the chance to get back up, but I have fallen down and gone back up so many fucking times in my life, I don’t know how much more you can do it, I don’t know how much more is in me, am I just an epic failure in life, or am I a tough son of a bitch? The whole thing to me is just really hard. Life is hard, adulting is hard when you’ve been in defense mode your entire life. It’s so hard to surrender. It’s so hard to just let go, and it’s my inability to let go that makes me to continue to fall down. Think the hardest part for me is giving into the temptation, giving into the temptation of needing that, I guess, that feeling of being right, feeling just, feeling like my feelings matter, and my feelings do matter. When my feelings get hurt, that sucks. But there’s a difference between someone saying something to you and making you feel like shit because of something you did, and someone just saying something to you and just making you feel like shit, and sometimes maybe I cannot differentiate between the two.