September Is Self-Improvement Month

LFY 37 | Self Improvement Month

Do you want tips on self-improvement? You’ve come at the right time because September is a self-improvement month. Live Forever Young Radio is focused on helping you improve. Join in the conversation as Bob Gilpatrick and Rollie Culp explain why taking action is one of the most important things to remember when it comes to self-improvement. Taking action is magic that inspires you to achieve more. You wouldn’t want to miss these easy tips on how you can get off the couch and lead a better life right now. Tune in!

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September Is Self-Improvement Month

Welcome. I’m here with Rollie. Nice hat.

Thank you.

You’re looking very spiffy. It’s always good to get together with you and have a chat about health and wellness and things like that.

This is the highlight of my day.

It’s September 2021. September is National Self-Improvement Month.

Bob and I were looking on the internet, and we saw this cool banner that said, “September is self-improvement month.” We said, “What a better thing than to bring to our audience?”

There’s a lot of things people can do to work on themselves for improvement. A lot of the research shows that people can write down goals and maybe have some task lists and things like that. It helps a little bit in your brain to motivate you, but there’s something magical about taking action. This action that you take where you do something where you get up, move and do something, or you’re at your computer, and you turn on the webinar you’re going to watch to learn something new.

Self Improvement Month: Stand guard at the door of your mind against doubt, fear, and procrastination.

It’s that action that begins to wire your brain towards success in the desire to continue on and stack up these accomplishments during the month. We’re going to be sending out emails frequently during the month that are going to be little snippets about self-improvement with links to various videos, podcasts, blog posts, so that people can follow along with us. Open the email, click on the links and use it as your guide for self-improvement.

One of the best things is when you work out with somebody, it’s a lot easier because you have someone there with you. We’re trying to give you some reminders, give you some good advice and spur you to take action. You were talking about the magic of taking action. For me, that’s true. If you’re sitting there and you’re thinking about what you’re going to do, you complicate it, and you make it sound in your head a lot harder than what it ends up being.

For me, when I take action, that magic is realizing, “This was a lot easier than I thought. Let me go do it 4 or 5 more times, whatever it takes to get the job done. What else can I do?” It’s September, so the trees are growing. It’s time to trim them. I was like, “Those are high up. I don’t want to do it.” I’m thinking to myself, “Let me get the thing out.” I get out my thing on the pole with the chainsaw. That was easy. I did the whole tree in like 10, 15 minutes.

Now you’re inspired to clean the rest of the yard. Here’s another thing, Rollie. This is September 2021. There’s a lot going on in the world and here in the United States. A lot of people are feeling their way. Not everyone’s back to work yet. Some people are thinking about changing careers. Other people are worried about all the things that are in the news. Some people are getting very complacent as a result. I think that September is a good time to adjust your attitude.

Once you have things that you know you want to do, accomplish, this is where it’s time now to get aggressive. What do I want for this month? What do I want to do most? A lot of people think of aggressive as bad. They’ll say, “That person is so aggressive.” It can be bad, but it can also be good. If you have something that you want to go after, say you want to get your act together with your exercise regime.

It’s not going to work if you think it might be a good idea. This has to be a solemn commitment that’s in your mind with a good attitude about it and an aggressiveness, “I’m going after this.” It’s okay to be aggressive with yourself. You have this oneself that’s talking and the other self that’s over here procrastinating. One needs to overpower the other. In order for that to happen, it has to be aggressive, “Come on, let’s do it. Let’s get going. I’m going to do it this time.”

We live in Tampa Bay. I would think that aggression would be something that a champion would know. It’s something they dedicate their life to. If they get out there and they are in the game and not being aggressive, and we don’t want to talk about hurting people. We’re talking about making the solemn commitment to focus and accomplish the goal that you’re in now or looking towards or whatever it is that you’re doing. That solemn commitment can be associated with aggression, making it happen.

Action wires your brain towards success in your desire to continue stacking up accomplishments. Share on X

The other thing is, is it okay to be defensive? That might sound counterintuitive. You say, “That person is so defensive. What’s the matter with him?” We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about being defensive with yourself and for yourself. I’m defensive because I’m not going to allow that doubt to creep in. I’m standing guard at the door of my mind against doubt, procrastination and fear. I’m very defensive against those negative things. Why? You don’t want that to be part of your life. It’s like, “Yeah, I’m defensive. I’m saying no to fear. Whenever fear comes around, I’m defensive. I’m pushing it away.” You’re being defensive in a positive way.

This is okay. If you start the month with this attitude, “I’ve got a great attitude about this. I got my goals, and I’m going to aggressively go after my goals. If something comes that might try to block me, I’m going to be defensive.” At the same time, you don’t want to get into such a worked up aggressive attitude that you might be unkind to someone else or insensitive to their feelings. This is where you can balance it with NVC, Nonviolent Communication.

If you’re very skillful with non-violent communication and you are able to focus on other people’s feelings, what their needs are, and what’s a reasonable request, while at the same time, you’re being aggressive for your own goals, defensive against potential obstacles. While you’re working with other people, you’re using NVC. You have a good balance, a commitment to yourself to improve and sensitivity towards others. This gives you a dynamic combination of skills that can move you towards your goals.

If it’s exercise and you’re the type of person, like a lot of people in the United States, where 60% of the people are overweight. They don’t do a lot of exercises. Why? It’s easier not to and sit on the couch. What’s a tool that can help you to exercise in addition to feeling aggressive? Use the emotional freedom technique. Use tapping for procrastination. It’s very easy as you tap on your fingertips, which you can learn to do in one of our other episodes.

It’s called Tap Away Stress And Anxiety. Check it out. It’s a good one.

When you learn tapping, you can apply it to procrastination. If September is Self-Improvement Month, procrastination is probably the biggest obstacle. Tap on your fingertips and repeat a phrase that says, “Even though up until now, I thought I had to continue to sit here on the couch watching TV, instead of getting up to go exercise. I completely love and accept myself anyway. I’m so grateful now that I realize I’m getting up off the couch. I’m lacing up my sneakers and heading outside for a walk up over the bridge and back. I’m feeling completely peaceful about the whole thing.”

Cross your hands over your heart and breathe in. Let it out. Now you’ve anchored this new affirmation you made getting up off the couch to a peaceful feeling. There’s no resistance. There’s no anxiety with it. The anxiety, “I got to get up off the couch. Now I’m feeling anxiety. I have to exercise. If I don’t go exercise, I’m going to feel guilty.” Now you have anxiety about it. Tapping eliminates the anxiety, and you will find yourself magically rising up off the couch to go exercise.

Self Improvement Month: Tapping eliminates the anxiety.

Action is magic. Take action equals magic.

Here’s another thing, Rollie. You mentioned earlier about self-care. September is a great month to say to yourself, “What is it that I’ve always wanted to do in regard to self-care, whether it’s for an important health issue or an emotional issue, or if it’s because I want to go and get pampered a little bit at the massage therapist?” Some of the things that are great for people’s overall health is find a person that knows how to do Lymph Drainage Therapy.

We talk about that a lot. We had a show about that.

You can learn to do it yourself, but there’s nothing like going to a professional lymph therapist and having an hour-long lymph massage. It’s good. The other thing is Craniosacral Therapy.

We’ve talked about that a lot too.

You can find a craniosacral therapist in your area. There are many thousands of people trained in it. It’s a great reset for your cerebral spinal fluid. It can also lead to, and if the therapist is also trained in, what’s called SomatoEmotional Release, you can have some great emotional releases. You don’t want to go for an emotional release unless the person’s trained in it. It’s not good for you if you’re with a therapist that doesn’t have the credentials to do SER.

I was going to mention Upledger Institute.

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It’s Upledger.com. You can find a therapist. If you think you might need some emotional release, be sure that the person has the initials SER in their list of things that they’ve been trained in. You don’t want to go for SER with an untrained person. It could do you more harm than good. Some people might say, “Yeah, I want to go and get some Matrix Energetics Therapy. I might want to go and get some Healing Codes Therapy.” You can look these things up, find therapists, and September is a great month to have this type of self-care with an associate that can guide you who’s a trained professional.

One of the easier things, you’d get a massage. That’d be nice. A lot of people get their nails done or anything like that. If you could take the time to maybe look a little deeper, check onto something that you might’ve been wanting to do with for a while, it’s a good month, September. That’s why they dedicate it to self-improvement.

The other thing is sleep. A lot of people still don’t get enough sleep. If you want to see our episode about sleep, you can check that out. You can also get an effective sleep aid from us called Good Night Formula.

It’s a very good formula.

Make this part of your self-improvement because there isn’t anything that’s going to help you improve faster than being well-rested. It has a ripple effect on everything else in your life. It’s also stress management. If you’re going to make an improvement, how about improving your ability to deal with stress?

That’s one of the major things that people are dealing with now with everything that’s going on. It’s September of 2021. We’ve had lots of flooding in New York and New Jersey. There are people dealing with all that. It’s probably not a better time than dealing with stress and anxiety.

I found this also, Rollie. Organization is something that most people can always use improvement on. The best tool that I’ve seen for this is a planning book that’s called the High Performance Planner. I have one on my desk. Brendon Burchard is the person that put this planner together. They’re not expensive. It’s not like these $300 planners. They’re like $24.

Nothing helps you improve faster than resting well. Share on X

They’re cool because it has an introduction that tells you all about how to use the planner. When you open it up, it’s got some planning tools where you can plan for a month and for a week. It’s got a day by day. Each day by day is two full 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper in a bound book. It’s got columns. On the column, it’s your morning mindset column.

You fill in the answer to ten questions. One of which is something like, “Who is a person that needs me on my A game today? If I was going to write one word that would characterize me today, what would it be?” Things like this, and there’s ten of them. The inside is your actual planner, 6:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night, where you can put in what it is you want to do. It’s also a space for three things I absolutely have to do today. On the far-right side is your evening recap. “How did I do?”

I remember we were talking about that on a show called Habits To Help Seize The Day.

This is a great thing for helping people get organized. Not only that, it helps with the attitude and mindset part because it forces you to think about your mindset at the beginning of the day and then look back at the end of the day to see how you did and grade yourself.

There’s a section in there where you look back and see if you did any good by grading yourself. That’s cool because self-accountability is one of the things that work on.

We also, Rollie, have an issue where our planet and society have a lot of toxins in them now. A good part of self-improvement is to pick 1 or 2 things that you’re going to commit to avoid toxins. Perhaps also to do a cleanse. Self-improvement for September could be, “I got to get cleansed of my toxins.” If you’re going to pick two things to avoid, the two best ones are to leave your shoes outside the house and don’t eat cooked meat over 300 degrees on dry heat.

Commit yourself to do a slow cooker at a lower temperature or always add liquid. Whether you’re going to be baking things or broiling things, have them in a pan where you can add a liquid, even if it’s water. That will stop the glycation that makes the toxins that are so bad for you in this overcooked meat, leaving your shoes outside because your shoes pick up toxins all day. Whether it’s in your workplace, walking on the sidewalk, in the grass, you bring them in the house, they off gas all night long toxins. These are great self-improvement things. To get rid of toxins, we know superoxide dismutase helps with that.

The High Performance Planner

That’s a big one. It scavenges the free radicals and the toxins.

People can get that in our sprouted barley seeds. Either Heirloom Barley or Gladiator Barley. It does a great detox. If you want to get rid of heavy metals, you can use a product called Zeolite. It’s a great, easy way to do it. Don’t start with both of them at the same time. It will be too much detoxification.

No. Use them a little bit between each other. That definitely would help.

The other thing I was thinking of is people usually have room for improvement in their diet. What to eliminate and what to eat more? Obviously, it’s finding out where the hidden sugars are.

It’s lots of stuff. The carbs, sodas, we always talk about things like that.

There’s even hidden sugar in things like yogurt sometimes. There’s a great book called the Sugar Impact Diet by JJ Virgin that you can get to find all those hidden sugars, but then also processed foods. If you’re buying processed frozen foods, there’s a lot of trans fats in them and other toxins. They build up over time. It’s bad for your health as time goes by. Make a little commitment in September that you’re going to prepare some of your meals, real foods, whole foods, and try to avoid the toxins as you possibly can.

It’s to avoid the chocolates and the sodas.

September is Self-improvement Month. If you stack a bunch of self-improvements one on top of the other, pick 3 or 4 that we’re talking about that ring true with you and begin doing it. You’ll notice that as you stack these up, you’ll start to feel different. When you feel different, you’re going to act differently in the future because it’s pleasurable to have accomplishments. They say, “Don’t hurt your arm, patting yourself on the back so hard.” I say, “Go ahead. Have a great day. Make your list of what you’re going to do in your new planner, accomplish everything, give yourself a great grade at the end of the day, pat yourself on the back.”

It’s the Self-Improvement Month. We talk about that in a couple of other shows where you got to celebrate your win. You got to celebrate.

There’s the other episode we did on habits. If people need help in developing these new habits, go and look at the episode on habits. Go through all the whole thing, the anchoring event, the behavior you want, and the celebration. The celebration can be a pat on the back, go for it and be aggressive.

Don’t do it too hard. That’s why we wanted to bring the news to you of the September Self-Improvement Month. We always probably have a little bit of room for improvement, and it’s your health. Take advantage and take care of it. You only have one body. It’s your temple. Self-care, take care of yourself.

Thanks everybody for reading. Rollie, thanks for joining in with us. We’ll see everybody on the next episode.