Gabriel Hummel

Like a Phoenix From The Ashes: Picking Yourself Back Up

phoenix-from-ashes

Ever felt like a supermodel jumped on your chest and injected your heart with a combination of Red Bull, cocaine, and vodka?

I have been there before, but this time it felt so much more invigorating.

Everyone has peaks and valleys in their lives, there is no such thing as the perfect person, with the white picket fence, and a family that looks transplanted from the Brady Bunch. That fairy tale never has and never will exist.

This isn’t depressing though, this is god damn liberating. If you don’t have to worry about creating the perfect world that you live in, you can focus on everything that is immediately in front of you, thereby turning the volume of your life to 11.

Its almost and existential feeling, when you truly realize that no one else really matters. Sure its, “living in the moment” and sure Eckhart Tolle may achieve wood from seeing this writing live, and in action, but that’s not the point. The point is that when you are completely focused on the two feet in front of you and less concerned about the undesirables that surround you that you feel as if you could have part ownership in world domination.

It’s a rising from the ashes because everyone has their blunders and failures. It’s the people who realize that their life is in ruins and actually do something about it that create the fairy tale endings. After all, what good is rising from the ashes if all you do is catch back on fire?

I heed that anyone who has felt downtrodden, depressed, unsatisfied, resentful, unhappy, unmotivated, and tired to recognize that they are currently knee deep in a bed of suet.

This isn’t the time to look to god, or to family, or to friends, because you probably have already done that (and you know damn well that it won’t work). What needs to be done is the same thing that the human population has been doing since its conception, rise once again.

But unlike the second coming of Christ, this does not take a miracle. Anyone who can recognize the shit position that they are in and make a mental, physical, and emotional change in regards to their daily actions can create a domino effect that will end in a second coming.

I have been shit, you have been shit, everyone get out of it and focus on right now.

Pick yourself up

Gabriel

How Not To Completely Loose Your Mind: Personal Standards

Personal-Standards-album

One of the biggest conflicts that one can struggle with is the notion of, “keeping up with the Joneses”

In case you have been living in an underground vault for the past century, it basically means that you are in a constant battle to have as much as the guy living next door to you. You are constantly in the zone of, “caring what other people think”.

This can be interpreted in a variety of ways. From making sure that you have the same new stuff that they are getting (cars, house renovations, lawn gnomes) and it can also mean being as successful as the guy living next door.

Success can be anything from a trophy wife to a high position within a company, and it can eat away at your soul if you don’t get it in check quickly.

This has been a constant area of struggle for me personally; as I have always not given a shit what others think about me and my actions or how much cooler stuff the guy/gal down the street has.

However, I have always had an innate desire to be as good if not better than anyone else in any area of particular interest to me. From women, money, and self reliance to minimalism, cooking, and passport stamps, there was always some bastard doing things bigger and better than I was.

What I realized is that while I could care less about how people perceive who and what I am, I really got self conscious about how I stacked up against the next guy. I quickly realized that this was a recipe for failure.

How in the hell would one man be a master chef, world traveler, master seducer, fitness athlete, enlightened human being? The only way I could see one man achieving all this is if he didn’t sleep, injected a combination of steroids and adrenaline into himself, and subsequently died of a heart attack at the age of 40.

Hilariously, I still struggle with this problem, when I set my mind to something (something’s x 1000) I will not settle for anything less than mastery, even if it means a lot of painful trip ups and emotional breakdowns as a result of trying to craft myself into the perfect being.

I now know that I have to, in laments terms, chill the fuck out, or I will end up in an early grave or in an insane asylum.

The new policy that I am adopting, and I hope you will too is the notion of personal standards.

A personal standard is akin to a code of conduct; except it has its roots in the future with a reach into the present as it guides your daily activities as you pursue your goals/dreams/world domination plans without falling off the deep end.

Everyone should set their own personal standards for their life, so that you can not only better achieve your goals, but also prevent yourself from careening down a cliff.

My standards, my life

Gabriel

The Never Ending Story

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What do you do when your whole life revolves around wanting to be something greater than yourself?

When all you care about is doing something bigger, better, and more amazing than the next guy?

If your drive in life revolves around making your life a never ending upward trapeze act?

Depression is the answer ladies and gentlemen.

I have found myself constantly back at square one, wondering why I am unable to achieve the results of my dreams. How is it that I can continually push forward in nearly every aspect of my life but only find myself back at the beginning, with nothing to “show” for it?

Sure, maybe it’s a quarter life crisis that only a person in abundance can achieve, but problems in ones life are only as big or small as the person sitting in the middle of it all.

I have always felt that I was capable of doing amazing things in my life, and as a result I have pushed myself to the breaking point in many areas of my life. From dating to physical fitness and everything in between, I have seen the highest mountain tops and the lowest of valleys, but where does it all end up?

Is there a fairly tale ending? Does the knight get his princess along with six pack abs and a passion filled full time job?

Or does it all end horribly wrong? Does everything culminate to a near death breaking point and one is relinquished to a life of solitude, obesity, lack of motivation and utter despair?

Morbid? Yes

Possible? Who knows?

What I do know is that constantly comparing myself to others while at the same time not giving a fuck what anyone else thinks might be one the biggest juxtaposition in the self help industry.

Fuck everyone else’s opinion? Hell yes

But fuck me if the guy next door actually can pay his bills while I eat 2 pound bags of oatmeal a day? Yes

I am unsure as to what the next move is for me, the rollercoaster that is my life never seems to end, but one can only persevere to the next step, whatever that might be.

Waiting for a miracle

Gabriel

Friendship

“The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

and of course….

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Welcome to Your New Self

self image pills

What happens when a bunch of people with above average IQs get into a room and talk about existential topics?

Enjoy

“You don’t exist.
You just think you do.

We’re nothing but the stories we tell ourselves.

We know in our hearts what kind of people we are, what we’re capable of, because we’ve told ourselves what kind of people we are. You’re a carefully rehearsed list of weaknesses and strengths you’ve told yourself you have. (Self-confidence, for example, is a particularly nebulous quality you can easily talk yourself out of having.)

You owe no allegiance to that self-image if it harms you. If you don’t like the story your life has become – tell yourself a better one.

Think about the person you want to be and do what that person would do.

Act the way that person would act.
Amazingly enough once you start acting like that person, people will start treating you like that person. And you’ll start to believe it. And then it will be true.

Welcome to your new self.

Like a Phoenix From The Ashes: Picking Yourself Back Up

How Not To Completely Loose Your Mind: Personal Standards

The Never Ending Story

Friendship

Welcome to Your New Self

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