Day 19: Complete Life Overhaul.

I have been working on launching my own e-commerce brand for the past 19 days. The first store I opened in a team had been successful and is running passively right now. However, nothing stands close to working on a brand alone: taking all the decision-making + responsibility into your hands. It has been amazing. Every day from now on, I will be sharing my progress through this newsletter. What do you get out of this? 1. Daily reminder of importance of making progress to your goals. 2. Lifestyle insights for making this possible. 3. Concrete actions for attaining freedoms of all sorts to live your best life. Wow, it took me 19 days to finally start sharing my stuff. So here we go! Day 19: Complete Life Overhaul. As the majority of college students, I gained weight during my first year. Dizzy with all of a sudden living my American dream (or actually facing lack of that dream), I neglected my previously healthy diet. Although I work out quite often, reaching that ideal weight has been a more-than-a-year struggle. I kinda tried and slacked, then saw an Insta post of some skinny girl and got a hella goddamn of motivation, then it was exams, then I was tired, then I work out once and looking in the mirror I think "Hey, not bad at all." and eat a piece of cake.  This went on forever. This summer I finally got to the realization of the core principle that explains my continuous failure. A principle that is also defining my continuous success right now. IT IS REALLY FUCKING HARD UNTIL IT BECOMES EASY.  What am I talking about? A complete life overhaul.  What do I mean by that?  To achieve anything big and great, you need to fully revamp your life once and forever to get to that level and be able to sustain yourself on it. Your weight is the easiest metric to use to explain this principle because of how clearly defined and visual it is. I can clearly see losing 3 kg (6.6 lbs, sorry, but I love the metric system) and then gaining it back because I was sad one night and ordered a pizza.  Well, with your mindsets and categories of thinking(more on that later), it is way harder to be able to tell what is really going on. Like, you cannot go put yourself on a scale of let's say "How limiting are your beliefs?". Maybe there is an online test on this somewhere but the point is that you cannot see if you gained a couple of kgs of negative thoughts during the weekend. Let's get back to the weight loss example. Browsing lots of models' vlogs, I was both inspired and terrified. When you see them all shiny and beautiful, I feel like I am ready to do anything to feel this way. But then I see the "price" for this: no sugar, no carbs, no late snacks, no fried stuff, no salt, and many other nos. Do I really never eat sugar again in my life to have that model body??? This sounds really sad. There are birthdays, holidays, ice cream parties....There are cheat days sometimes but in general, if I really want that body, I will have to forget about sugar+ bad habits + feeling lazy about working out. It might be sad....but if the prospect of lifetime healthy habits and your most beautiful body is that inviting, you gotta put in the work. Not once, not for a week or a month but for the rest of your life. If there is a doubt or lack of dedication at the back of your head, you will surely fail at some point and those kgs will be coming back pretty fast. The world around you will always be screaming at me with sugar and unhealthy carbs and bad habits. It will be impossible to resist all the time. I am not a machine. So the only way to actually prepare yourself for this lifetime marathon is to completely change your thinking and attitude towards a certain question. With sugar, I am developing an actual aversion to sugary stuff because I know that burning those calories will take running 5+ miles. it is really hard in the beginning. Your friends are having something sweet and I want just one bite...but with time you become strong and most importantly your brain works differently towards these kinds of stimuli. Bottom line: To really get to the top, to be exceptional at something, to achieve great heights, you need to do exceptional actions on a daily basis to get there. Although willpower and inspiration last a couple of days, they will not carry you through the first week even. So the only way to actually do it: lose 10 kg, become a billionaire, anything big you want to achieve (if you actually want to), will require daily dedication and complete revamp of a mindset. There are no more cheat days, there are no weekends, no parties, no holidays, no "but I deserved it". There is only the relentless pursuit of your goal. Whatever you choose to do with your time or your choices either brings you closer or further from your goal. There are no cheat days, there are rest days.  If this sounds extreme, just think how hard it is to be saying no to icecream every time your friends offer you to go? With a complete mindset and attitude shift, you develop new ingrained habits and mindsets that require no will power to sustain. Same goes for mindsets that will make you rich, achieved, etc. Whatever you are implementing, do it for life.