Escape The Vices

I have never been one that has been a big alcohol drinker.

Sure, I can enjoy a glass of whiskey here and there, or maybe even a beer. But, if we are talking about drinking to get drunk, it is not something I particularly find to be very appealing.

The feeling of waking up and feeling my brain and my body not at 100% is not a feeling that I enjoy. Granted, I know that I have stated before that my body feels like it wakes up broken everyday, but you get the idea - being hungover is not a feeling that I enjoy.

First, I don't like waking up slow. I set my alarm for 6am everyday regardless of what time I went to bed the night prior - I feel that the earlier I get a start to my day, the more I can get done.

I don't want my alarm to go off and lay in bed for 30 minutes to an hour, groggy and waiting for my head to explode.

I want to wake up, feed my dogs, make my first cup of coffee, and immediately get on here to start my work for the day.

I have always been one that needs to operate on structure. I need to have my day mapped out from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep. I need to know what I am training in the gym that day, what exercises I am going to do, what order I am going to do them in, and how long it is going to take me. I need to know what food I am eating and what times I am going to eat at. Most importantly, I need to know what I am going to work on for the day for growing this brand.

Things HAVE to get done and I need to be fully functional so that they can get done quickly and efficiently.

I can't waste my time going out drinking, partying, or gambling until all hours of the morning when I know that I have to be up at 6am to start my day the next day.

Over the past year, I had been working on a horse ranch in South Florida.

My job at the ranch was to feed, and care for horses, while having to maintain and fix up the property as needed. If something needed to be fixed or installed, I was in charge. If a horse needed special care, I was in charge.

Working at a ranch is hard labor and also meticulous work. With 50 or so horses on the property, every horse had their own protocol. Certain horses needed certain supplements everyday - some horses had certain hay that they ate - all of the horses were on a turnout schedule, and the list goes on and on.

Long story short, I had to remember which horses needed what care, while still working in the barn and outside in the Florida heat every single day.

If you think for one second I would have been efficient at my job by drinking until all hours of the night before I had to wake up at 5am to be at the barn at 6am to start feeding the horses and prepare for a 12 hour long work day, you would be wrong...

I eventually started my own horse training business, on top of being a ranch manager.

When I began training horses, I was then working 7 days per week and working at LEAST 60-70 hours a week at the ranch. I would work a full 12 hour day and still have to ride for another 3-4 hours after my work shift before I could go home.

The days were extremely long and strenuous on my body. But one thing I learned is that when it comes to training horses, I need to be 100% focused on what I am doing and what I am asking the horse to do.

If I showed up and rode a horse hungover, sure I could do it and still do it well, but the risk involved dramatically increases if I am not at 100% state of mind. That risk is not something that appeals to me - especially when horses have minds of their own and the horses I was riding weren't fully broke.

As I have matured over the years, I have been steadily removing all vices from my life - things that served more as a distraction than anything.

I used to be a heavy advocate of marijuana and I smoked plenty of it for 5 years straight. At one point, it was an aid to help me sleep, until it became a vice and became something that I just enjoyed doing everyday, multiple times per day.

While I will say that marijuana has benefits in terms of thinking more creatively about certain things, it has just as many negatives if not more negatives in terms of scaling down productivity in most cases.

I no longer smoke marijuana and I have noticed a significant increase in my productivity and my mental clarity.

I also quit masturbation.

For many young men, and even older men, masturbation is just a part of being able to release pent up testosterone - it is part of the male experience.

In today's day-in-age, with pornography being so widely "accepted" as just a part of the norm, it has created weaker men by 10000x.

Pornography is true poison to the human brain. It weakens the sense's and has negative effects to the grey matter of the brain. It is a waste of time and is a market filled with nothing but degeneracy. Men become weaker, women grow ego's, and everyone's morals and priorities go to absolute shit as a result.

Masturbation is a distraction for men because it isn't something that a man needs. A man needs a real woman, not a digital fantasy of whatever woman they choose that day.

With the exception of caffeine and the occasional nicotine from a cigar, I can say that I have escaped all of the vices in my life. Things that were once distractions, no longer have have real estate in my mind. 

I have much better focus and mental clarity with everything that I think about. I am able to visualize more clearly exactly what I want my future to look like.

As I sit here and write this, I will be honest in admitting that I did drink alcohol last night for the first time in over a year. Two of my best friends got married and there was no way I wasn't going to celebrate with them. This morning I woke up 30 minutes later than I normally do and that is no excuse. I should have been up at my normal time and for that, I earned myself 200 more pushups today.