Stop Bargaining with the Devil

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

What is going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome to another edition of the Warrior Soul podcast. My name is Chris Albert, and this is where we deliver tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to help The US military veteran community and anybody else willing to listen to live their absolute best lives. And, you know, today, I'm gonna talk to you about holding the line in your physical fitness. Right?

Making sure that you don't backtrack, making sure that you don't completely fall off the rails. And as I'm speaking to you right now, I am extremely sore. I just restarted jiu-jitsu, doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu after about a year off. Prior to moving out to Florida, COVID nineteen had shut down the jiu-jitsu school that I was going to out in California, the great Pinnacle MMA in jiu-jitsu run by Jake Beaney, and had not been able to go to a class because of everything going on. And I loved that school, but I ended up having to leave California and came to Florida and it took me a bit to get settled down here and moved out here in July.

And then I just found a new school going to Alliance Jiu-Jitsu here in Hollywood, Florida with master Carlos Rollison. And it's been outstanding so far, really great school, but I haven't trained in a year, and I am barely able to move. I am so sore. My muscles are aching. My joints are aching.

My whole body is stiff. And I know you guys know the feeling. Right? But what I can say is that I'm also happy. I'm happy that I found another great jiu-jitsu school.

I'm happy that I am able to continue practicing this art form, and I'm also happy that I'm sore. I'm also happy that I'm stiff. I'm also happy that I'm in pain right now, even though it made getting up this morning, getting to work pretty difficult. And what I wanna talk to you guys about today are the things that keep us from getting back on track. You know, the very feeling I'm having right now, that soreness, that fatigue, that tired feeling, that is a feeling that a lot of us fear.

A lot of us avoid you know jumping into training, we avoid taking care of ourselves, we avoid exercising because we justify it to ourselves saying, hey. I'm gonna be sore. I'm gonna be stiff. I'm gonna be tired. I'm not gonna be my best.

Maybe I should skip out. And what happens there, particularly as you as you get older, I'm 41, you make more and more of those justifications to yourself. So you're getting out of work, you know you wanna get to the gym, but, you know you're tired, dinner's got to be made, the house needs to be cleaned, your your car needs an oil change. Life is constantly telling you that, hey, you shouldn't be doing this right now. You should just go home, you should relax, you should rest, you should focus on other things, you're getting older now, you don't need to be entirely in shape, you don't need to be physically outstanding anymore.

You can let it go. You can relax. Right? And that's the dangerous thing about all this. Right?

Because we all have that voice. I don't care if you're an Olympic athlete. I don't care if you're you're somebody who hasn't trained in a long time. Everybody gets that voice of doubt in their minds telling them, hey. Maybe I should take it a little bit easy.

Alright? And I think it's that voice, it's that bargain that we make with ourselves that's the most dangerous thing in our lives because we're constantly making those bargains. If you start making those bargains, you're constantly making those bargains. Right? Starts with fitness or or or something else.

Maybe it starts with personal finance. Maybe you're justifying yourself why you should be eating out every day and not cooking your own food. Maybe you're justifying yourself why you need a new car or why you need a new truck. Maybe you're justifying yourself still why you need to take a vacation right now, spend tons of money. And as you get older and you make more and more of those bargains, you get used to bargain with yourself.

All you end up doing is bargaining with yourself. Right? And one of those things that I realized as I got older is that, you know, and I think Ed Mylett puts it this way, is that you become a lot easier to be bought. Right? You could buy yourself with a few extra minutes of resting in bed, right, hitting that snooze button.

You could buy yourself with a cheeseburger. Right? Some junk food. You could buy yourself with laziness, you know, sitting there looking at YouTube videos rather than going out and actually doing something. You can buy yourself with planning.

Right? When you start overanalyzing and overplanning something so much that you never actually get started and you never take action. And that's really what you're doing. You're buying yourself. You are buying a position that's worse off for you in the long run so that you can get comfort now.

And look, I'm gonna break this down to the simplest possible thing that I can here, the base thing that is gonna allow you to be successful, and that is your ability to put off short term pleasure for long term gain. Right? When you wanna save money, you gotta sacrifice in the short term. Right? You gotta sacrifice the dinners.

You gotta sacrifice the alcohol. You gotta sacrifice the nightlife so that you can save for retirement, for investment, for buying a house, all those different things that you wanna do. Right? That's something I'm doing right now. I'm I'm living I bought a house this year, but I'm not living in that house.

I'm living in a small studio attached to that house. And the reason I'm doing that is so that I can rent out the house, get that mortgage paid for, so that I can go out and buy another one. Why? Because my goal, my my eyes are on buying five houses this year. Right?

So I needed to sacrifice something to save money. Right? My other goal is to get my jiu-jitsu blue belt this year. Right? It's been something I'd been working at forever.

Right? I've been working at forever. I I trained for two years out in California and wasn't consistent with it. I kept bargaining with myself. I would get to jiu-jitsu class only once a week, never got my blue belt out there.

So what am I doing now? I'm sacrificing those nights sitting in front of the screen watching Netflix so that I can get to jiu-jitsu class so that I can get that blue belt. Right? Sacrificed living out in California closer to friends and family so that I could come out here to Florida and start something new. Right?

Start something that's gonna lead to a better future for me, a better future for my fiance, and hopefully a better future for our family. Right? If you want something, you've gotta pay the price. You've gotta sacrifice something. You gotta sacrifice some form of short term comfort so that you can get there.

And that's true of fitness. It's true of finance. It's true of your career. It's true of almost everything that you can think of. Play the long game.

Don't bargain with yourself. Don't sell yourself short. Because if you do end up paying that other price, which is to say sacrificing those long term goals, those long term dreams, you're the one who's gotta look at yourself in the mirror. You're the one who's got to look yourself in the eyes and say, you know what? I bought this.

I bought this feeling. I bought this feeling of regret. I bought this feeling of non accomplishment. I bought this feeling of sadness, and it's not something I'm comfortable with. Alright?

You've got to admit that to yourself. And if you've done it in the past, what you got to do is you got to let it go, and you got to establish new standards. You got to say to yourself, alright. Maybe that happened. Maybe I was weak, but I've worked on that weakness.

And now I have the confidence to know what I want in the future, and I'm gonna do what's necessary to get it. That's all I got for you guys today. Really base simple thing that if you carry it with you for the rest of your life, there's no telling where you'll go. I wanna thank you guys so much for listening. I'll be back at you later on this week with some more awesome content.

This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul podcast, and I am out.