100 Days to transform a 57 year life
You’ve awoken to an awful din.
The alarm clock is clanging over on the nightstand. You’re light has come on and yet it’s 10x brighter than normal.
You are on your own and yet hear a voice telling you to get up and get dressed right away.
Stumbling about you seek out your clothes in the blinding light. Finally the alarm is silenced. The light returns to a normal level. The noise is gone.
You collect your phone and walk towards the bathroom. Not today buddy, says the voice, once again you’re aware of it’s presence. It doesn’t sound like anyone you know and yet it’s somehow familiar. Like a parent or relative and yet not. All this contributing to a sense of confusion. As you take your next step towards the door you are overcome by a sense of fear.
As you take in this disorienting situation you quickly confirm that it is real and is happening to you and you feel scared, really scared. What happens next is truly next level weird. The voice begins again, telling you go to the door and on into the kitchen. The kitchen has none of those familiar smells, no breakfast or coffee aromas. It actually doesn’t feel like your kitchen, maybe it isn’t.
As you move around in the kitchen you find a stool at the breakfast bar, taking a seat you look toward the voice and ask, who are you and what do you want?
I’m glad you ask. I’m the voice in your head literally, you’ve been listening to me for years. In fact you spoke with me yesterday. I’m the voice you hear when you ask, what am I actually doing with my life, why am I not where I want to be, my finances are in a terrible state, my anxiety is off the charts and climbing, my tolerance for a night out without alcohol is non existent and my relationships are in the bin. What is going on and what must I do to get this turned around?
Again, glad I’m you ask. You are in for a surprise and for some work if you’ll take it.
You have 100 days to get your act together and transform your current situation. This will be really hard work, difficult and challenging work. You’ll seek answers to your deepest and most meaningful questions. You’ll be completely sober and working out daily. You’ll be focused on meaningful work which will require you to be off social media and endless scrolling. You will focus on sleep and nutrition. Hydration will be an area you will experience some mind changing effects.
Question is, are you up for it?
You take a moment to reflect and weigh up what will be an enormous amount of work. Your mind takes over and asks you a question, do you really want to make all that change real? Are you ready to fully embrace 100 days without alcohol and partying? To do the work and share none of the results with anyone? To transform your life and begin to deliver on the aspirations you tell yourself you have? Well are you?
The moments feel like a lifetime and yet they are just moments. You’ve actually been here before, many times and told yourself that you’ll get to it, thing is, you never did. Not for long at least. Stacking up unavoidable failures, resets and half arsed attempts to cover the cracks.
You answer yes and wait for the next words to come. None come, you’re alone and the sunlight beams through the kitchen window. Stuck fast where you are, you begin question what just happened. Seeking the voice again you ask out loud, well, what happens next?
And, then just as you decide that it was all a dream, you see out o the corner of your right eye, a Post It note on the fridge, you recall the day you put it there. 90 days ago you committed to a 5k run in the morning. You never did run nor have you since. Riddled with a conflicting sense of nostalgia and disappointment you reason to run tomorrow.
Well that thought certainly woke the giant you were waiting to hear back from. A deafening booming voice asked you, REALLY? That’s the best you can offer after all we just discussed. You have a decision to make and work to do. No more putting anything off. You must get the work started today. The voice offers you an insight to the future you if all you do is put this off again.
The blinding light returns and in it’s glare you are aware of a slightly older you, fumbling around trying to make sense of yet another tax return you can’t pay, your credit card debts are now all in arrears, your rent due in just a few days, no car (it was repossessed) and on the reel goes. You seem to have no-one you can turn to for help, you’ve abandoned all the relationships due to your debts. Your old friends, such as they were, have all moved on and continue to party without you.
The sickening sight of you, broken, riddled with debt and seemingly helpless, catches you hard and you are brought into the NOW the right now and you feel the pull of change. You see it for what it is, a long and arduous path of work and decisions. Micro adjustments and massive ones along side one another. The gut wrenching feeling you experience as you look straight into the difficult conversations you have in front of you, makes you nauseous. Nauseous yes but nothing comes from your retching.
You seek solace in a glass of water from the tap. The crispness of the cool water, the feel of the crystal glass, clean in your hand and the way the light plays through the patterns engraved in the glass all combine to bring you back to the now.
You hear yourself say, I have a decision to make. No more playing games with my life. Time to get serious and be serious. Time to eradicate a lot of the noise, tune out the negativity and remove the people weighing me down. Oh this is going to be delicious.
You sit once again and reach for the pad and pen. You look down and the list appears in front of your eyes as if written by a person outside of you.
The list is broken into 4 focus areas, Mind, Body, Bank balance and Relationships. Under each heading, a list of the most important decisions to take , all in priority order. You see some difficult conversations and they sit right at the top of the list marked relationships.
Time to make some calls and get started. Your gut ties into a knot but you push though the discomfort and tell your friends that you’ll be heading away for a few weeks to get some things straightened out. They of course suggest that you should join them tonight at the club. You decline and dial the next number and on it goes until all have been made. What started out as the most fearsome prospect is now complete. You look at the time, it’s only just gone 09:00. Wow I have time to do more, way more.
Over the days and weeks you see your progress towards the goals, aspirations and dreams you held for so long, suddenly appearing much closer than you’d have thought. Looking back at how far you’ve come you are struck by how much you’ve done, learned and grown. Checking your phone for the first time in a few days you see that a great old friend has been in touch and wondered whether you’d join her for a run on the weekend. A flat out yes is the message you send back.
And so it goes on. It’s day 99 of the 100 the voice told you about. You think about your old self and the way you’d have felt about that anniversary. Wracked with anxiety and the palpable sense of failure you’d most likely be planning a big night out with the guys. Not this time buddy, not this time.
So why did I write this piece? It’s a way of reminding myself that even at my age, transformation is not only possible, it’s a requirement.
With so much to offer and to do, I won’t sit here and wait, instead I’m getting after it. What about you??
