Operation Boss Up and Change Your Life in Operation Boss Up

I’ve only got about thirty pages of material for my “Boss Up Book” so far. Just from minimal research and from various motivational speakers. I am writing it for myself, I’m making an ultimate action plan on how to swerve that voice in my head that is constantly telling me to quit before I even try. Worrying is just a habit. It’s a part of our habit loops. Anxiety is just the habit of worrying spiralled out of control and that has manifested into physiological sensations in the body. The physical sensations of feeling worried and feeling excited are the exact same. The only difference is in your mind and what it is thinking. For those who don’t know what a panic attack is, it’s like when you’re driving your car and you go to change lanes and suddenly a car comes out of nowhere and you freak out. Your heart races a lightyear a minute, palms get sweaty moms spaghetti, you grip that steering wheel and struggle to catch your breath as you then proceed to try and calm yourself down. A panic attack is exactly that but it happens when you’re standing in front of your coffee pot. Only your brain does not have any context because there is no threat that it can find so your habit of worrying kicks in and you start to feel freaked out over everything. If one can break that habit of worrying in the first place then one will not have to struggle so much anxiety and panic attacks.

The one skill that all successful people have in common is confidence. Confidence comes from the ability to not listen to self-doubt. Learning to stop hesitating and to just take action. Confident people are not afraid to feel the stings of failure and to be out of their comfort zones. They have so much courage because they’ve mastered the skill of being confident. I’ve always thought of confidence as a character trait, that extroverts were all very confident people but in reality, they all have self-doubt and insecurities just like everybody else. Only they’ve conditioned their minds to be confident. The skill to believe in themselves and to believe in their ideas instead of listening to that little voice inside of their heads that always promises safety if they decide to not make those life-changing decisions. At the end of the day, listening to that voice is a choice. We always have a choice.

I realized the other day that I am not alone. I didn’t feel like anybody could possibly understand or relate to me anymore. I barely even understand what I am going through right now myself. I lost my job of thirteen years and I haven’t been able to empower myself enough to move on. To boss up. I was watching a Mel Robbins interview and she told her story of when she lost everything and then got stuck in a rut. We make decisions all day long. Some of us it’s to not get up on time, to not eat the right things, to not exercise, to not speak up, to drink too much, to yell at our spouses or kids, to not look for a new job, to not deal with our finances and decisions like those that take us so far off track. Until we eventually wake up and we’re like “how the fuck did I get here?” We know what to do to get ourselves out and how to get further in life but how do we bridge that gap? How do you find your power to solve those problems? That’s what I want to explore. Mel has the 5-second rule and I know that I can apply that to my life and use it to make better decisions but there is still an obstacle in my way that I am trying to figure out. Mel’s tool, the 5-second rule, is about learning how to stop hesitating. It’s a starting ritual that you use to condition yourself to just take action. To speak up at work, to apply for that job or whatever. Currently, I am struggling to have faith. Faith is easy when you have a steady job and when your bills are paid and when your health is good and when you’re in a good relationship but you don’t actually know how strong your faith is until you start to lose those. Until you get knocked down. I heard a quote the other day that I liked. “If you get knocked down try and land on your back because if you can look up, you can get up!“

Level Up
Metacognition is the awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes. People who can regulate their own thinking really are on a different level. That’s the level that I want to be on. That’s the level all successful people are on. The world has two pandemics right now. One of the body and one of the mind. Our choices got us to where we are. That’s the real meaning of karma. Life is what you make it. If you find yourself trying to discredit that message… you’re probably on that level where life is just happening to you. We are all one choice away from completely changing our lives. Matthew McConaughey was once asked who his hero was. His answer was this: “Me in ten years.” I have a vision of who I want to be in ten years and I am the only one who can bridge that gap. I am working on this little self-help point plan for myself and then I am applying it to myself and then documenting it because once I get to the level that I want to be on… it will be my duty to turn around and help lift others up. To pay it forward.

I have broken it up into a few phases. Kind of like writing “new chapters” in your life. Changing your body and mind requires a lot of work. It’s going to hurt, I’m going to have to be vulnerable and I am going to have a lot of failures but that’s what it takes to change a lifestyle. To become a person with good positive thinking and good positive actions. I’m not changing my life per se, I’m changing myself. I guess this will be more about learning how to rebuild oneself. If I keep doing the same things I am going to keep getting the same results so clearly I am going to have to try something new because, by definition, I’ve gone crazy. I’ll post the skeleton of my point plan:

Operation: Boss Up And Change Your Life
Phase 1: Reimage. “When the going gets tough the tough reinvent themselves.”
Phase 2: Rethink. “Practice safe design, use a concept.”
Phase 3: Restructure. “It’s not when you wake up, it’s how you wake up.”
Phase 4: Relax, Refresh and Recharge. “A calm mind is the ultimate weapon.”
Phase 5: Realize. “Be in line with the way the world really works”
Phase 6: Reinvest. “Always invest in yourself.”
Phase 7: Relationships. “Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every relationship you have.”

I started exploring each phase. What it is, why it is and how it works and how we can make the big changes that we need to make. To divide and contour. Phases 2 & 3 are the big ones. Our mind’s job is to protect us from pain. The moment we hesitate it sends stress signals to the brain and the brain goes to work and magnifies the risk to pull you away from the danger.
That is the exact habit that we need to break and replace with a better one. We can absolutely reprogram our minds to think differently. It’s simple but it’s not going to be easy. The relationship I need to build is the one with myself, the one with that voice in my head so that I can tell it that everything will be okay and not to worry. If I ever get the level of success that I want in life I will develop this mission into another silly self-help book one day, maybe. I’ll, of course, document my journey here on PB.