The Rules

The “Rules” – as determined at 3:00 am on a Tuesday morning.

1. Discipline: Especially when it comes to food, money and insecurities. Not giving in to short term desires and emotions, and sabotaging long term goals.

2. Health: Exercise, reading, sleeping, drink more water. No crap food. If it was once alive, in the ground or walking on it, eat it. Sucrose glucose…bleh.

3. Kindness: I cannot control what people think of me, stop worrying about it, but I can control how I treat other people, and this affects my heart more than how other people treat me anyway.

4. Love myself: I have one me, one life. Stop the constant and crippling criticism, it permeates into every aspect of my life – see what needs work and work on it, but from a place of knowing I’m worth it, not from believing I’m worthless unless it’s immediately fixed. Do not let others convince me I’m worthless, particularly if I don’t meet their vision of who I should be.

5. Let go: I cannot fix everything. I cannot change everything. Everyone will not like me. Work will not always be good, Elias will not always be happy, I will not always make the right choices. Let go and move forward.

6. Don’t let everyone in: Move on from the negative people – life’s too short to give any single person that much influence; if you make me hurt often, I will leave you in the dust. I am not perfect and will make mistakes, “If you cannot accept me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best”. I always thought you should never give up on anyone… I will always hope that good things happen to people I care about or have cared about in the past, but I do not need to wait around for that change. I can wish you well when I say goodbye. I can forgive your mistakes as I hope you forgive mine, of course, but there are those who seem to believe they never make mistakes…

7. Ego: Pride comes before a fall… as always, remember just how mortal, fallible and flawed I am (this does not mean hating myself). I am not better or worse than the person standing next to me; we are just on different paths through the same forest with the same ultimate destination. Do not compare sins or accomplishments – only compete with myself.