MAKING CHANGES

I’ve been making changes in my life. I had some health issues that led to crippling anxiety, fatigue and massive, hospitalizing panic attacks. I’ve had to take a good look at my life and how I had been living it and make some changes.

CHOICES

I’ll explain some of how I was living my life. I was smoking two packs a day, drinking often, dabbling with recreational drugs, I was working out seven days a week, and working 50-60 plus hours a week.

I didn’t care much about anything, and I was living life fast and loose. My family didn’t care to talk to me much, I kept getting dumped by the people that I was dating.

My life wasn’t going anywhere fast and I didn’t realize what was going on.

SUCCESS

I had just been dumped and I remember reading something that said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “If you can’t take care of your partner and your future kids, you’ll never have a basis for a relationship or a successful life.”

That had a major effect on me, I promised myself to start taking the idea of work and business seriously, in order to have a relationship that worked, a job and profession that mattered to me.

But I kept on partying, I kept living life loose and fast. That is what I thought a man was supposed to do.

MY BODY QUIT ON ME

I am so grateful my body didn’t let me do that. I ended up in a hospital, with my nervous system completely fried, and if you’ve never suffered from this, lets just say I had a hard time going outside, my limbs were heavy from fatigue and I felt as though I might become agoraphobic.

I still suffer from acute anxiety, but I have learned how to deal with it.

I gave up alcohol, drugs, caffeine, sugar, cut back on work, had to stop exercising because it would cause my to have panic attacks.

I had to take a good long look at my life, and what it meant to me. I couldn’t continue living it as I had, I had a lot of spare time to think about it, and about what I could do.

WHAT WAS I GOOD AT?

I had to think about what I was good at, and what I was grateful for in my life.

I’m good at writing, and at barbering so I started a blog so that I could share my experience with you.

Tomorrow I’m celebrating my 3rd anniversary with my girlfriend, we’re engaged and plans to have kids.

My work life is incredibly satisfying, I feel as though I’ve learned so much about barbering and have become a student of the craft, and am working on becoming a master. I’ve been in this industry come seventeen years, and I’ve got so much to learn if boggles my mind.

I’ve started teaching with YouTube videos and through my blog, everything from technique, to lifestyle, to business, to gear reviews. I feel as though teaching has allowed me to understand how I approach hair, and has allowed me to share some of what I have learned with others, which has incredible benefits of its own.

I have changed a lot of how I approach life, looking at the building blocks of how I walk through life from day to day, and am now constantly attempting to review how I interact with others, how I interact with myself, and am attempting to take these lessons and apply them to my career and my approach to living my life.

I can exercise again, am leaning out again, while including yoga and meditation into my daily routine.

I am filling my brain with business knowledge, reading a variety of self-help and business books in order to expose myself to the thoughts of the successful. I am attempting to include these thoughts into my daily life, in order to become the best me that I can be.

I plan on attending business school in the next year in order to prepare myself for the being successful with the money that I make. This comes after years of not caring about where my money went and being ignorant about how to manage it.

I am supporting my girlfriend as she works her way through her schooling so that she too can realize her dreams.

I am preparing myself for my future children, who will come in the next 5 years.

I turn 39 this year, and for the first time in my life I feel like I have a direction, and a way in which to invest my time that is productive and healthy.

I have goals, I am working towards their realization, making one small step at a time.

YOU CHOOSE

I tell you this because no matter where you’re headed, no matter the life that you choose to live, if you want to exact change, if you want something, you are the only one that chooses to stop yourself.

I chose that path for years, and I have no regrets, but I am an incredibly slow learner. I have chosen to live the life that is best suitable to me, and I am finding it incredibly satisfying.

We all have our own paths, our own ways of being a barber, our own ways of being a businessperson, and I hope that you find one that motivates you to wake up every morning and be grateful for what you have, for the skills that you can share with the world, and for the people that you have in your life.

Pick what you want in your life and do what you can to get yourself there, make the changes that need to be made. I would say that I wish you all the luck in this, but it isn’t about luck, it's about making choices that allow you to further your position in life, and be able to care for those around you.

Thanks for reading,