The Holistic Journey | September 14, 2023

Throughout my life, I notice that my emotions - my very thought process and identity vary vastly.

There are phases in my life where I’m operating at 110%.

Phases where I’m fully:

• Motivated
• Disciplined
• Consistent

Yet there are the other phases in my life…

Which are far more common than my phases of 110%.

These are the phases where I’m operating at a standard that would bring me even 8 year old me shame.

Phases where I become:

• Cluttered
• Complacent
• Lazy as F*CK

It wasn’t until recently that I recognized the patterns that influence life’s phases.

Let me boil it down to one word for you.

Order.

Keep Your Ducks In A Row

To have order in your life.

You must seek it.

You can’t expect someone — or society do it for you.

That’s when we lose any order that we had in the first place.

You must take the initiative.

Organize yourself.

Create planners for yourself.

Create routines for yourself.

Surround yourself with individuals who dare to create order in their lives as well.

It is only through the conscious practice of ordering ourselves, of keeping our ducks in a row - that we begin to actualize it’s benefits.

Let’s take a look at people from the polar opposite perspectives.

• He who is in order - Jackson
• He who is in disorder - Connor

Both Jackson and Connor are high school students.

They’re taking the same classes, and experience the same objective difficulty, day to day.

But Jackson averages A’s, in his classes, and as the semester ends he finishes with a 4.0 GPA.

On the flipside, Connor started the semester off great, with A’s. But, as the months flew by he slowly became a C student.

So what exactly happened?

Disregarding the fact that one can be genetically smarter than the other…

It all boiled down to they ordered themselves.

Both started off the year strong, since everyone starts at the same place during the start.

But as the year progressed, Jackson developed a consistent study routine and purchased a student planner (the one I use) for himself.

While Connor depended solely on his mind to keep track of all his information, and procrastinated on his work till the last second.

​Read my previous letter on procrastination here.

The way that you operate depends on the cleanliness of both your environment and mind.

A clean environment imparts low-friction to start working.

A clean mind yields flow state. (free flow guide)​

The 1 Habit Of Every Successful Person

STOP!

Before reading any further…

I want you to guess what this habit is.

And no — it’s not making your bed.

(still do that though)

3…

2…

1…

Introspection.

Introspection is the act of self-analysis.

It is the process of understanding the culmination of one’s self.

When you’re in a rut, lost, and feel like your life is crumbling to pieces…​

The traditional option is to divert your attention to something else, to a distraction if you will. All in an effort to numb yourself to the reality of the situation.

The more uncommon option is to be introspective.

To analyze yourself and look deeply within.

For all the answers you seek lie within you already.

The place where the questions come from is the same place where the answers lie.

So how exactly do we put this philosophical non-sense into practical sense?

How do we attain order within ourselves?

There are many ways to do so, but I find that the best way to encourage a radical shift in your life ASAP is to write.

Writing can mean many things. It can mean to journal, to create, to script, to communicate. (click here for my free journaling guide)​

Simply the act of sitting down with a pen and paper and writing physical words out — not on technology brings the following benefits:

• Enhanced stream of consciousness
• The skill of articulation gets leveled up
• Stress & anxiety reduction

And how could we forget that it’s going to be a cool place to look back to :)

Imagine you start journaling today and 1 year down the line you pick your journal up and start reminiscing on old memories…

I live for that feeling of nostalgia.

Do you?

Systems Of Order

Journaling is dandy and all.

But it’s not expected to be something that you can turn towards every time you want to put your life in order.

Or is it?

Well yes and no.

While sitting down and grabbing a pen and paper to introspect are optimal, sometimes life gets in the way — and you won’t have the luxury of a dimly lit room with a fine piece of paper and a fully loaded pen.

Sometimes… we need to be more practical.

Let me introduce to you meditation.

Now before you click off this letter, embrace the following information with an open mind.

Meditation doesn’t only mean sitting down in a quiet room, closing your eyes, and breathing deeply.

While that’s great.

Meditation is simply the act of being conscious.

Conscious of your thoughts.

Conscious of your feelings.

Conscious of your emotions.

Conscious of everything around you.

In it’s simplest form — Meditation is holistic awareness.

So the next time you’re overthinking, stressed, worried, and in desperate need for your life to come back in order.

Take a deep breath.

Recognize you’re in the present moment.

Feel that presence.

Know that you can’t change the past, but what’s going to happen in the future will be because of the actions that you take (or don’t take) during the present.

Let your mind claw away that revelation for a sec huh?

Clean up once you’re down and let me present to you the realistic morning routine that anyone can do in less than 30 minutes.

Don’t worry, since I’m a student and have to put up with the BS waking times, I’m thinking in the most efficient way possible.

The 3M Morning Routine

There is a reason that so many of these so called “self-help gurus” preach a morning routine.

The morning sets the precedent for the rest of the day.

Conquer the morning, conquer the day.

Step 1.) Make Your Bed

As trivial as making your bed may sound, it’s the best habit for beginners to cultivate.

Making your bed first thing in the morning is a guaranteed win, as small as you may think it to be.

Small wins and small changes lead to unprecedented change over time.

That is the power of the compound effect.

Invest to learn and read about the compound rule here.

Step 2.) Meditate

Meditation is a must-have habit for any and all people on the holistic journey.

There’s a reason that every guru preaches it’s power.

Because it actually works.

Right after making your bed, dive right into a meditation.

Did you know that meditating right after waking up, you are able to better align your brain with your circadian rhythym?

This is because upon waking up and going into meditation, you tap into your brain’s alpha waves. And doing so aligns your circadian rhythm and sets you up perfectly for the rest of the day.

​Check out my free meditation guide here.​

Bonus Step 2.5.) Decide

This step is a bonus step for a reason, it isn’t 100% necessary.

But it’s not 100% useless either.

In fact, if you combine this step with the rest of the 3M Morning-Routine, your day is (pretty much) guaranteed to go well.

After you meditate, you should be in a state of intense focus, calmness, and mental clarity.

This is the best time to make the key decisions of your day.

Open up your journal, or use my Decision Making Matrix (50% off) to make high-leverage decisions.

High-leverage decisions are calculated and precise actions that act as the catalyst towards success.

After all without a plan, you’re planning to fail.

Step 3.) Move

Once finished with the calmness of your meditation (and making your decisions)…

Snap back to reality with the intensity of movement.

It doesn’t matter if it’s something small, like some light stretches — or something more rigorous like 50 pushups.

Whatever it is, make sure you incorporate some sort of movement into your morning routine. Walk Jog Pushups Abs Jumprope It doesn’t matter.

Exercise releases endorphins.

This prompts your brain to release the feel-good hormone : dopamine.

Chase real dopamine from hard work, good habits, and routine.

Escape cheap dopamine from drugs, alcohol, junk food, and degeneracy.

That’s it for this week’s letter of The Holistic Journey.

Thanks for your time, and as always…

Remember why you started.

Stay on the persistent pursuit of your fullest potential.

— Ethan P.

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