Now that I have finished my Master Life and Leadership coaching program, I feel an immense sense of accomplishment and pure JOY! It's something I have desired for over 15 years and to have it finally come to its fruitful and abundant fruition, I ponder the path it took to complete the feat while maintaining a full time job, several coaching clients, and running The New Age Nerd concurrently. While it certainly has not been easy by any stretch, I have NEVER felt a deeper sense of SOUL purposed connection!
During the past 9 months, I have had a daily barrage of inquisitive individuals inquire how in the hell I was able to juggle all these tasks and stay sane! So I thought it would make a perfect post topic to share with the New Age Nerd community in the hopes that you all can incorporate my process into your daily duties to accomplishment your heart's most deep felt DESIRES! And I promise I am going to keep my method to the madness as a KISS (Keep It Spiritually Simple) Paradigm! Deal?!
The Secret Sauce to my success came from one single change in my daily routine. And that has to do with CHANGING MY DAILY HABITS! As they say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. In order to experience new things, you must incorporate new action steps into your daily routine! We are so conditioned to live like robots, carrying out each and every day as though we are in the movie GROUNDHOG DAY. Our lives on complete autopilot, with daily routines that alter very little. Sound familiar?! I'm more than willing it does! And please DO NOT judge yourself for that behavior. Society as a whole has an intrinsic conditioning pattern that we follow like rats on a wheel. That's why so many of us say we are living ‘The Rat Race’. Because WE ARE! And it's time to wake up...........
In one of my favorite books, ‘The Four Desires’ by Rod Stryker, he declares that the single most powerful thing anyone can do to drastically change their life is to start changing their daily habits. Here is an excerpt from the book that is so transformative, I felt urged to share it in its entirety:
“There is, in fact, power in learning to let go of even a single habit, a kind of power that can generate real momentum toward achieving either a specific desire or simply more of the life you truly want.
In my book, “The Four Desires: Creating a Life of Purpose, Happiness, Prosperity and Freedom,” I detail a simple yet profound process for increasing your capacity to positively shape your future and, more specifically, for achieving your intentions. I developed this process based on the ancient teachings and a simple truth: One way to affect real change is to break a habit — not necessarily a habit that seems related to the specific change you want to achieve, but simply any habit that you recognize as being unhelpful or counterproductive.
I call the first part of this process, in which you simply refrain from doing a “less-than-constructive” habit, Departure Point. I call it this because the very action of ceasing to engage a particular habit allows you to depart from the momentum that has shaped your life until now. The next step of the process is Seeding the Gap. Applied in conjunction with Departure Point, it refers to “planting” an intention into the mental and physical “space” that opens up each time you avoid indulging in the habit you have chosen to give up.
The Departure Point technique is based on the principle that by giving something up, you create space and, as I have said, you separate yourself from the momentum of your past. In the process, you create the possibility to see, think and act differently, and to attract new opportunities.
Here’s why: Each time you pause and choose not to indulge habituated behavior you enter into clear space, a “gap” which is, by definition, free from the distortion of your unconscious. The instant you do this you create an opportunity to link to sacred and sublime intelligence. Experiencing this, if only for an instant, connects you to boundlessness, a place free from the doubts, contrary beliefs, and/or misapprehensions that oftentimes obstruct you from taking greater control of your life and even achieving your goals.
This point is essential. From a yogic perspective, stillness, coupled with expanded awareness, is by far the most powerful medium by which you can affect your destiny. From the perspective of the ancient traditions stillness is a far more compelling force to influence and attract, and thereby help you fulfill your desires, than is desperation or even willpower alone.
Break free of old patterns enough times and you will create a new and different future. This may sound too simple to be life-changing, but I’ve seen people accomplish incredible things, achieve profound changes in their life, simply by letting go of a habit and placing new, positive, life-affirming intentions into the space once occupied by their habit.”
And I am a true testament to the MAGIC of putting habit changing into practice. I am not an ‘early morning person’. Yet, in the last six months, I started a NEW HABIT of getting up at 6 AM every day, including the weekends. At first, I'll admit it was pure torture! I mean, a “You've got to be frickin kidding me, its still the middle of the night” kind of feeling the first couple of weeks that the alarm went off at its new set time. But that new habit alone has continued to have a ripple effect over my entire day. I use the extra time to write my daily blog, and then go to the gym, all before my day job begins! I have put on 20 pounds of muscle and written almost 800 pages with the extra time afforded me by making this ONE CHANGE! And from this one shift in my day, my blog has gone from 20 readers a day to over 1,000! I then began receiving invitations from self improvement/spiritual podcasts-YouTube shows to be their eventual guests. Not only that, I was invited to be a VIP guest of Bob Proctor's at his three day event ‘The Paradigm Shift’ in LA in October!! All byproducts of making a single habit change! It really works folks!!
This is such a terrific transformative tool, that I am including Rod's six step process to habit changing below:
“The following is the six-step process I developed for creating a Departure Point and Seeding the Gap
Step 1: Choosing A Habit to Give Up: Your Departure Point
The habit you are going to give up needs to be one that you deem non-constructive and that you are prepared to let go. It also needs to be something you do on a regular basis, perhaps once or several times per day or at least that you think about doing several times a day.
The habit you are going to give up needs to be one that you deem non-constructive and that you are prepared to let go. It also needs to be something you do on a regular basis, perhaps once or several times per day or at least that you think about doing several times a day.
It’s important to know that giving it up is doable and that you’re willing to give it up. Giving up a habit that is deeply engrained and has a powerful sway over you will give you maximum leverage if you succeed — but if it’s too hard, you may fail to give it up.
You know best which habit will be the most effective for you to give up. Examples of habits that students have successfully given up include sugar consumption, excessive internet use, fingernail biting, gossiping, high-fat foods, coffee, pornography, wine, shopping sprees, listening to talk radio, “salty snacks” and watching too much television.
Step 2: Using Your Departure Point to Seed the Gap
After you have decided which habit you are going to give up as your Departure Point, here’s how the Seeding the Gap method works.
1. At some point in the day, you will have an impulse to engage in your habit.
2. Rather than satisfy the impulse, stop.
3. At this instant, turn your attention away from your impulse to engage in the habit and toward to a higher source: either an inner source of peace and calm, an infinite intelligence outside of you, or, if you prefer, God, nature, or even a remembrance of the love and support of people to whom you are closest.
4. For an instant, rest in this experience. Relax. Surrender into it. Be nowhere other than right there.
5. Now, mindful of that experience of a higher source, remember your resolve or goal — think and with full feeling invoke the sense of a new and better future. Have the certainty and confidence that this intention has already been fulfilled.
6. Give thanks.
After you have decided which habit you are going to give up as your Departure Point, here’s how the Seeding the Gap method works.
1. At some point in the day, you will have an impulse to engage in your habit.
2. Rather than satisfy the impulse, stop.
3. At this instant, turn your attention away from your impulse to engage in the habit and toward to a higher source: either an inner source of peace and calm, an infinite intelligence outside of you, or, if you prefer, God, nature, or even a remembrance of the love and support of people to whom you are closest.
4. For an instant, rest in this experience. Relax. Surrender into it. Be nowhere other than right there.
5. Now, mindful of that experience of a higher source, remember your resolve or goal — think and with full feeling invoke the sense of a new and better future. Have the certainty and confidence that this intention has already been fulfilled.
6. Give thanks.
This is the entire process of Seeding the Gap. Its six steps should take you less than a minute and can be done any time, any place; no one ever has to know you’re doing it. Simply repeat the steps each time you find yourself thinking about or craving the habit you’ve chosen to give up. It is ideal to do this a minimum of once or twice each day, more often if the impulse toward your habit comes up more often.
Granted, giving up a habit is not necessarily easy, but the fact that you may feel some resistance to stopping it is also a signal that there is untold power in sacrificing your habit for the sake of something better, something you really, really want. As simple as it may sound, the technique of Seeding the Gap makes you increasingly capable of achieving your goals and shaping your destiny by one, helping you break free from the negative pull of your past two, enabling you to more effectively engage the power of resolve and three, by providing you with leverage to regularly remember and to connect to your source — a refuge of boundless power, possibility, and Grace. ”
Excerpt adapted from The Four Desires by Rod Stryker.
So I hope this is all proof positive that we could all greatly benefit by applying this life altering tool into our daily practice!! I'm Super Excited to hear about the AMAZING changes that start to manifest into your experience if you choose to start CHANGING YOUR HABITS!
BE SUPER HEROIC!
Serve-Laugh-Love-Inspire
Nerdmaste,
Jeffrey Louis Martinez
