The 3 Pillars of Personal Transformation: My One-Year Journey

A lot can change in one year.

One year ago, on the 24th of April 2023, I heard that I was kicked out of school.

I was immediately lost in all spaces of my life.

I had no job because I thought, for some reason, that I didn't need one, and I was too arrogant to see that sales were not going well enough to rely on.

My relationship was hanging by a thread.

I drank a lot of alcohol on almost a weekly basis, and I smoked weed almost every day.

Looking back, I was a lost loser with a big mouth, no results, and big goals.

It was all one big joke.

Now, after a year, I have a steady income that keeps on growing but is now between 2500 and 3500 a month.

I do what I like to do and grow a bit more every day in what I do and personally.

My relationship is steady, just as my mental and physical health.

I work towards my goals and the person I want to become.

What happened in that one year?

What are the main takeaways?

What changed, how did I change?

These are questions that are going to be answered by the end of this article.

I am going to dive into the topics:

• Detox yourself

• Radical honesty

• Get into the right surroundings

• GO and KEEP GOING!

This is all based on personal experiences and the results it brought me so far.

I didn't know much about business, so I needed to start at the beginning.

Detox Yourself

Let's start with what is most important, your health! I smoked and drank a lot, I worked out, but did not eat that healthy.

I was guilty of loving to eat a bag of chips empty on my own.

So, I started with detoxing myself.

I detoxed myself from all the unhealthy habits.

The small changes I made included not buying any chips or unhealthy food, and changing it to things like roasted nuts.

Reducing my screen time on my phone was another change.

A trick you can do on Apple is to add a widget with your screen time to your home screen.

Also, App Blocker is a really good tool to put a lock on things like Instagram.

I recommend you to delete TikTok, because it is made to make you addicted, making you brainless as a side effect.

The harder thing I did for the first time was something called a monk mode protocol, which I got from Iman Gadzhi.

For a month, I worked out every day for at least 60 minutes, meditated every day, and abstained from alcohol, drugs, or smoking.

Then, you can add three extra components of your own choice.

For me, it was reading for 30 minutes every day, praying every day, and listening back to a sales call every day.

Doing this for a month straight helped kickstart a healthier lifestyle.

I did three other monk modes, one I failed, and the other one I achieved.

I also increased the duration of the monk mode.

The point is that I learned to be more conscious of my health and healthy habits that have a positive effect on my behavior.

Now, I often make agreements with myself.

For example, I just came out of a three-month period with no alcohol, drugs, or smoking weed or anything else.

My average screen time on my phone is about 1.5 to 2 hours a day, often less, with a block on Instagram after 10 minutes, and no Snapchat.

I only use TikTok for marketing, but I never spend a second on it watching other TikToks.

Also, the habits of reflecting every evening, reading more often, and taking walks without a phone or music or working out 3 to 6 times a week became a part of my life that increased my mental and physical health.

Start small and find out things that work for you, try a couple for certain periods, at least 21 days.

Radical Honesty

This is something I struggled with a ton, and that is being radically honest.

Not specifically to others, but mostly to myself.

Every exception that you make for yourself, within your own values, rules, or things you agreed upon with yourself, is a lie you tell yourself.

If you feel the need to defend yourself in any case, you can recognize yourself lying.

Excuses are lies.

It makes you weaker if you're not truthful to your word.

It makes your tongue meaningless if it is not truthful.

Think of excuses to not go to the gym.

Think of still having a drink when you told yourself not to.

Think of leaving out a couple of unhealthy things that you eat when you talk about how healthy you are.

Say what you do and do as you say.

Do it in a radically honest way.

Lying to yourself is lying to others.

Be honest and if you bring it the right way, people will only respect you more.

Why?

Because so many people lie to themselves and to others.

What helped me with becoming more honest with myself is talking with people who you know don’t have a filter, the people that most people describe as rude, those people are worth gold.

Look at where you are now and look at where you want to be.

If you do that honestly, the question you can keep on asking yourself is: is this the person I want to be?

I do that more often and often and it helps me confront myself on my own crap.

The honest people you know can always help you with this.

To start this journey of honesty, answer this question: how do I become more like the person I want to be?

Everything that does not fit in that persona, cut it out, and everything you get defensive about, you know for certain you need to cut it out because that is where lying to yourself starts.

In all honesty, I am not always the perfect example of this, but starting to be honest and open about all of this and also going into the uncomfortable conversations with all honesty is the thing that saved my relationship.

It helped me cut out people from my life that will not help me further, and it helped me better reflect and in that way grow.

Get Into The Right Surroundings

Your surroundings are really important.

These are the people that you take things from, it is in our nature to copy so be sure you copy the things that will benefit you.

Almost all people I hang around with now are further on their journey than I am or in a way as far as I am.

You can categorise people in your surroundings into 3 types.

People that will not help you up, are less far than you and do not have a good influence on you.

Peers who are as far as you maybe, less far or further at some points than you, people that you can learn from at different aspects, or learn together to help each other up.

And you have mentors, coaches, or just people who are way further than you, know more, have more experience than you and have some achievements added to their name most of the time.

The first group, cut them out of your life, they will do more harm than good.

If you only hang around with losers you will become one as well.

The second, your peers.

Those are people that will fasten your process, it is always more fun to do things together than alone.

Your peers are more on the same page, learn alongside you and can support you and you can support them of course.

I did not have peers for a really long period of time and it made me feel really lonely.

The lonely phase is a phase that you need to get through, but when that is behind you you will be thankful for it.

Now I find peers in the places that I work, or at the meetings or events that I go to that are supportive of my growth and development.

Go to courses, workshops, and join communities, that is where you will find your peers or people from the third category.

The people who are further than you, technically you can find them everywhere.

How?

Through YouTube and podcasts, if you listen to more successful people you can copy their leagues, routines, and ways of thinking.

Also, look at the people who work in the same branch and do it better than you, ask them questions to learn and ask for feedback.

Having the right people around me brought me opportunities and motivated me to follow through with what I am doing.

It also shortened my learning curves, I think that is one of the reasons that I now make between 2500 and 3500 a month.

I started with no sales experience or entrepreneurial knowledge, coming from the world of theatre.

The right surroundings helped me immensely, that got me to the point of where I am now.

It took cutting some people out of my life, experiencing loneliness, and letting new people into my life.

When you close some doors, new ones will open.

GO AND KEEP GOING!

Life happens while doing.

If I did the things I always did, I would get the things I always got.

Taking risks, making mistakes, falling down, feeling miserable sometimes, experiencing insecurities.

Those are all things that came across in the past year.

Those things are all part of life.

The difference between someone who wins and someone who loses is that the winner never stopped until he or she won and that the loser at some point decided to quit.

If you never quit, you never fail.

Through ups and downs, I followed through.

And that made me able to give you these three pillar points of my growth in the past year.

From no job to working for 2 good companies where I can learn and grow as a self-employed.

Through the power of the right surroundings.

From a relationship that was hanging on 1 small thread to a good, strong healthy relationship of 1.5 years by now.

All because of the power of radical honesty.

From drinking a lot of alcohol and smoking weed almost everyday to a healthy lifestyle, with discipline and clarity of thought, and consistent personal growth.

This never could have happened if I did not detox myself.

I started as a loser, lost and I worked towards a person who is actually able to achieve things.

As one of my friends put it, you've grown from a puppy to an entrepreneur.

And as another friend said to me, you are now an adult but still need to grow up.

Time will tell the story, I am proud of myself from where I am today knowing that I still have a lot to learn and that I am by far not where I want to be.

To everyone, I would say go, just start.

The best time to begin on your journey was yesterday.

And if you went, keep on going.

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That's it for now.

I wish you a good day - Job Baltes.