179 Health Is Wealth

You can feel unstoppable in your 20s and 30s and still be quietly stacking consequences. I’m 48, and I’m sharing the message I wish I had earlier: health is wealth, and shortcuts don’t just cut time, they cut growth. If you’ve ever told yourself you’ll “lock in later,” this is your sign to start now while your body still forgives you.

We get into men’s health habits that actually move the needle without turning life into a science project. I talk about why you should master a diet instead of hopping between plans, and why completing a process for six months to a year teaches you what works for your body. We also cover simple, repeatable basics like hitting 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day and drinking about half your body weight in water, plus how hydration can reduce false hunger and help you avoid unnecessary weight gain.

Then we shift to effort, focus, and long-term skill building. If you’re trying to level up at work, in school, in sports, or in a creative craft, you’re probably not working hard enough, and the “trying to get over” mindset leaves gaps you’ll pay for later. I share how the 10,000-hour idea applies beyond careers, into communication, relationships, and daily disciplines like journaling, reading, and training. We close with a real conversation about removing distractions that subtract more than they add, including being responsible with alcohol and choices that can change a family’s life overnight.

If this hit home, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs a push, and leave a review with the habit you’re committing to starting today.

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Message

SPEAKER_00 0:11

What up, Doe, and welcome back to I'm Growin' Man. Shaman John D in the building. Today's episode, I am going to focus on what I would tell people that's younger than me. For those of you that don't know, I'm 48, and I've been on this journey uh probably about seven years, maybe a little longer than seven, but less than eight for sure. I was definitely over 40. And when I say this journey, I'm just talking about where I took an active approach to trying to improve myself. And it started through my diet, and probably in the last six years, I've been so intentional about everything that I do. I have become this person, but I was thinking about the benefits of what I'm doing and why I'm going to do it for the rest of my life. And if I was younger, I don't know what I would be today if I'd started this earlier, but I didn't have the best guidance when it came to, I guess, I don't want to say right from wrong, but taking advantage of opportunities that probably weren't mine, cheating, taking shortcuts. Um, since taking learning to take the long way home or the long way to anywhere instead of taking shortcuts, I have learned I missed a lot of messages on the way. And where I am now, I feel like I've grown so much more than I did in the previous 40 years of my life. That's the reason why we have this podcast because I want to reduce or help reduce the chances of men following the wrong message. So I'm out promoting a different message. And being that I'm 48, if I was any at any point, doesn't matter what your age is, but if I was young and I was filled with filled with energy, I would have to understand this. Your health practices are very important. People don't take it as important as they should at your age because you guys heal so quickly, you guys can drink a lot, you could smoke a lot, the next day you have a hangover, you still go to work, you're a champion. But over the course of time, your body is getting beat up. And although you're bouncing back and you're not thinking about tomorrow, nobody thinks about dying either until it's time. So I'm telling you, if you could do research on your own diet, and when I remain when I talk about diets, I don't care what diet you use. This is my goal in promoting this message. When I was growing up and till I became a seasoned adult, people always said that, you know, you gotta find what works best for you. This is absolutely true. But you do have to learn how to complete the diet before you know what's best for you. Because these people that come up with these practices, they work. But if you don't complete it, you won't understand the process. That means that no matter what, which one you get to, you're gonna hit a brick wall. Everybody's thinking that I'm gonna find a diet that's going to pretty much complement the person that I am. This is what I've learned in your diet. You really don't need one if you knew what you were supposed to have. And when I say that, I mean you you're you're allowed to have delicious foods. The problem is that people take advantage of those things. And like I said, your body's young, it burns off this energy. But we even have people where their metabolism is not as fast and they're overweight and they're practicing the life lifestyle of bad practices in food that develops into obesity. That's pretty much what it is. And if we could get a hold on it when we're younger, it will change your self-esteem later when you get older because you'd already be practicing it. I don't want you getting to my age thinking about I have until this age. The problem is that nobody knows when their body is going to be done. But if you do plan on living a healthy amount of life, I I'm gonna say just the average age of men is 75 and average age of women is like 78. If you plan on living that long, your health is very important. And if you don't get a hold of it, it's gonna get a hold of you. That's one thing that I can say that if you're plan if you plan on having some quality in your life in your later years, your health practices today is gonna affect that. I'm saying that because I I've had people die in their 30s due to bad practices, 30s, and so forth. But my point is you don't have to die immediately. You could die in a painful, like, like slow death. And those days are really long and agonizing. I don't I don't suggest anybody say that I'm I'm I'm the exception. So I'm telling you, find a diet and master it. It's gonna take some time. But if you do what they say, you will get what you want. And this is when if you complete your diet, what's gonna happen? This is what I hope to happen. That you learn while all these other diets work. And then as you do it, and I say in order to really get the benefits of a diet and do what it says, you need six months to a year. You know, I could say anything less, but you want like a lot of time your body goes in shock and you'll lose weight, and some people will get lax and it'll all go to waste after a few months. But I'd say six months to a year, you could see some really good benefits. As you try different diets, ultimately you're gonna learn that you just have to understand what works well with your body. And if you do your own research, it'll make you better. It's not like you're going off of what I'm saying. That's the reason why I'm not telling you what to do. I just want you to complete it. Do your own research. Find out what do you think you you can live with, what you can't live with. And when you do that, those of you that accomplish this part, you're gonna look into different things on how do you get the best performance out of your body? And that's probably the most fun that I enjoyed in the journey because at the end of the day, whatever you're working on, you want to be able to be at your best. And once you start watching what you put in your body and you start taking care of it, you start thinking differently. And when you start thinking differently, your product that you're creating looks totally different from whatever I could describe. Because you're actually working on who you are. And as you work on who you are, like I said, your self-esteem makes you become more confident. There's certain things you don't worry about because you already know you're working on yourself. So please work on your diet. A lot of people at your age feel like I just go into the gym or I run it off. But as you get older, your body's gonna break down and you don't want it to start hurting where you're trying to keep off this poor diet or poor practices you've been doing your entire life. It's gonna catch up. So if you make sure to look, I've always was told this the real workout is in the kitchen. If you do what you're supposed to do in the kitchen, you don't have to work out like everybody else, unless that's in your job profession or you just trying to catch something. But at the end of the day, it's a distraction. All you want to do is be healthy. 8 to 10,000 steps a day. And I do, I suggest you do that every single day. Like if you look at your uh smartwatch, anything that counts steps, just look at it, what you've done in the last year. You want to average 8 to 10,000 steps a day. A day. If you can do that, I can almost guarantee you're gonna see, you're gonna see increased energy, you're gonna be more positive, you're gonna start recognizing things, you're gonna be more present. You gotta also don't forget, drink half your body weight in water. This will help whatever diet you're doing. Most of the time our body is dehydrated, and a lot of times we go get unnecessary carbs and we put in our body, and we're not really working out, so it just turns into fat. And if you just drank a glass of water, eight ounces of water, it typically suppresses your appetite to remove all the sensors that says you're hungry. And once you get into the habit of drinking half your body weight and water, it reduces your appetite where you don't pick up unnecessary pounds. So, diet, your activity, all of this, your health is very important at this age because the sooner you establish better practices, the less you have to worry about when you get older because you're gonna look around and people are gonna die and people are going to get new symptoms of anything that's dealing with poor eating, and you're gonna be like, I'm glad I didn't have to go through that because nobody wants to be that person. But if you are not practicing better habits, you're gonna be one of those examples. I'm not saying I'm gonna stop you from getting anything, but I'm telling you you can reduce the chances of you getting all of these things. The second thing, work hard in your whatever you're doing. If you work at a fast food restaurant, try to become employee of the month. And if you get it once, try to do it again. This is this is what I'm recognizing. Your effort will separate you from people who are just trying to get over. I was one of the people that was trying to get over, and I recognized people just kind of left me, left me by the wayside. And I didn't realize when I was taking shortcuts that I wasn't really learning what it actually took to complete a process. I've learned that I had some gaps because there's some parts of my journey that wasn't filled because I took shortcuts and now I'm learning from them. But take the long way and go hard in the pain. Like you don't have to compete against anybody, but you should be trying to find a better version of yourself every time you put yourself in a situation. If if you're in school and you have straight C's, you should be trying to increase that. You shouldn't be like, well, you know, it's better than not failing. That's average. If you are an average person, it's gonna be a tough life for you because in order to live the life you want, you're gonna have to put more of an effort to separate yourself from people who are average. People who are average work really hard. You do not want to work really hard. Well, let me take that back. You don't want to work hard in something that you don't want to do. You want to work hard in something that you want to do. But in order to do that, in your young age, you have to learn that process. You have to go hard in the paint. Like, if you're a rapper, you should be writing four to five hours a day, especially if you like you in school. Like, that should be your part-time job. You should be putting pen to paper, you should be creating, creating, creating. And after you get to a certain point, if that's what you want to do, it'll develop. But most of the time, people are looking for one hit to be put on the map and don't realize the amount of work it actually takes. And the reason why I just said rapping, because I don't know why that popped in my head, but this is anything. Like if you're gonna be, if you're gonna play a sport, understand this. Everybody wants to play a sport, they want to get paid these millions of dollars, but there is a sacrifice to become really good at what you do. And most people don't know the amount of time it actually takes to get there. And I think this is what I this is what I do though. Before I got on this journey, I could tell you the things that I used to think about, and none of that was making me a better person unless I was with my family or I was at work. But most of the time, my mind was just any and everywhere. But now I see the focus. But let's just imagine if I was focused at a younger age. In order to be that good at something, these guys were young, focused in a specific craft, specifically basketball. Like I used to love basketball, but I didn't love basketball to the point where I thought it had to be a part of my daily routine. And that's why I respect young people who found a craft and became that good in it. What they don't know. I see a lot of professional athletes, they don't know what they should do after. They have the formula. They just got to figure out what they want to do and put that same work that they did to get into the league into something else. And a lot of times you have retired athletes who's still famous. So you don't even really have to be good in it yet because people like you. But just imagine if it's something that you want to do. You put in the work, it'll eventually people will forget that you even played the sport because you'll be able to talk and converse and give people your wisdom from your experiences the rest of your life. And like, just imagine if you can help people get a little closer to whatever they're looking for because you are able to do it in a specific area. Like, to get paid millions of dollars to play a sport, that means they put in so much work that your common average person who gets C's won't ever understand. You know, I've seen these messages where they say, you know, people dropped out of college and they discovered this or they was a C student and this. Like, they're the exception. And unless you're going to put in work, you're not gonna get it. Nobody's gonna say, you know, I see the potential in you, I'm gonna invest in you. You have to put in a work where people who's been there, they recognize this person knows what it takes because nobody's gonna invest in you, because a lot of people are looking for that shortcut. So young people, people that are looking for a change, you're probably not working hard enough. And if you think you're working hard enough, you need to find somebody who is better than you in your mind, who's better than you. What do they have that you know? And you need to go figure out how, you need to go figure out how you can incorporate that into your life so that you can get it and get to the next level because you could be really, really good at something, but if you don't have the other things to illuminate that one thing, it's not gonna be enough for anybody to say, I'm gonna invest in you. So you're gonna have to step out of your norm, your practices to encompass a set of skills that will allow you to live the life that you want, but you have to put the work in. And then if if I learned about Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours at a younger age, my performance would have looked completely different up until this point. And I'm not even gonna say that it turned my life around immediately, but I started wanting to accumulate 10,000 hours in languages that I've that I study in communication in the relationship that I have with my kids, the relationship I have with my wife. It and just getting better, like the free time I was telling you that I had in my head that was going every which way, I started to focus on the things that were important to me. And I had to remove everything outside of my family, immediate family, my wife and my kids and my job. If it's any didn't have anything to do with that, I didn't have anything to do with it unless somebody called and I was available, but I did not seek anything because I realized that I was so distracted by the things outside of my house, I didn't even have the relationships I should have had inside it. So when I learned how to do that, I started to open up and start to look at things that I was interested in. I started to figure out how I can improve my performance so that I can get what I want later in life. When I started putting the effort in, I started to see results that made me feel like I was on the right path. If I was younger, so all of you guys, even if you're not younger, I'm just saying if you have the energy and if you believe if you truly believe you're important, try to become the coldest version of yourself every single day. On your bad days, you can have a bad day if you want. It's gonna slow you down, but at the end of the day, just reduce the bad day to maybe like a bad afternoon, or maybe a bad hour, or maybe just a bad moment, but you shouldn't let it dictate the person that you're gonna become. That was an experience you learn from it and you move on. Once you learn the art of not worrying about things you can't control, you realize how important you really are. And you start gathering those moments as learning lessons so that they don't happen again. Who wants to ruin a whole day on something that was out of their control? Think about it. So I'm asking you, find a better version of yourself every single day. You have to write it down too. If you don't write it down, you won't get it. You will not get it, I'm telling you. You have to write it down, put it in your phone, write it down in a notebook, put it in a few places, remind yourself to get these at first, it's gonna seem like you're not gonna be able to do it. But just do like two or three things every single day that's gonna make you better. Whether it's meditation, journaling, reading, exercising, breathing exercises, studying something that you like, like whether it's chess, playing an instrument, learning how to write music, learning how to read music. Anything that can make you better, like anything, just do two or three things every single day and just stay committed. Like I'm gonna do this and be like, by the time I'm 70, I'm gonna be super cold in this because I'm just gonna continue accumulating these hours. And the reason why I say 70 is because you should be in some good shape if you've taken care of number one, your health. By the age of 70, you are going to be cold. But it's gonna be well before then. It's just something to shoot for to say, because if you say for the rest of your life, you still got some more life to live. I want people to enjoy their life with a quality that they invested in it so that when they do get there, they could be like, I'm glad I did that when I was younger. So that's disinformation. Invest in yourself and make yourself better in every way possible. Last but not least, this was kind of going in with the last part with making yourself better, improving yourself. Remove distractions that potentially could subtract more than add. Like, I'm not telling you what's important to you, but if it can take way more than it can add, we have to ask ourselves, are we making the best decisions? So let's say hypothetically you're a gambler, right? You don't have any kids, you're doing pretty good, you're gambling, you got a girlfriend, you get somebody pregnant. Now you're thinking about a marriage, you're still gambling, though. Like, potentially you could subtract more than you can add. And I know, like, you could hit big, but we all know gamblers, you have to lose at some point. Is it the best profession to have when you have a family? Because no kid or wife or woman or partner wants to be in a situation where they don't know if they they're gonna live a different lifestyle because you're playing this life. And I'm not knocking any of them that's doing it, but I've heard some of the stories, and I don't want to give my family those emotions because, yeah, I can't do that. Like, I don't think there's a life I could give to take away to say, like, you know what, I would rather just live as conservative as possible if I have to live a life of gambling. Because I know they say big bank take little bank, and scared money don't make money, but I can't I can't put my family above that. Like, my job is to make sure that that life that I protect my family about that is smart. And it wouldn't be smart if I'm letting them know that I'm willing to gamble on something and be like, okay, I know we live in this mansion, but we gotta live in this apartment for the next five years. But that six year, like, I know I'm gonna hit. And let's say you do hit, that five years is so painful for the family. Outside of you, you made it back, but people had to go through whatever. So let's just be mindful of the decisions we make. So if it can subtract more than it can add, let's remove. And before I go, I'll just talk about this. Like, I used to drink all the time, like every single day. And but I used to drink irresponsibly. How about this? And this is when when I was young, 20s, 30s, and I didn't know how important I was because I was driving behind the wheel under the influence. And any accident could either take in my life, somebody else's, got an accident, paralyzed myself, paralyzed somebody else. There's so many different things that could happen. There's no rewards and just getting home safe. There was so much more consequence. Like that could subtract away from my life. I'm not saying don't drink, but if you do, you need to be responsible. You need to consider how important you are because somebody else can make that mistake for you. Nobody wants to go through that. So we have to be more responsible in the decisions we make, especially when we're under the influence of things that will make us feel a little braver than we should be. So the three things health is wealth. Focus on your health, do your best to Master a diet, drink half your body weight in ounces of water, get eight to ten thousand steps. If you make that an everyday practice, I promise the later you, your kids, your family will be very grateful the older years they become because nobody wants to die. Nobody looks forward to it unless it's just been a tough life or whatnot. But as I've seen, people want to keep living. Even the people that's kind of struggling, they they still want to keep living because they're waiting for something. But at the end of the day, nobody was like, it's not that many people like that that want to end it all. With this wealth. Find the best version of yourself every single day. If you're a student, let's let's get all A's. If you got all A's, let's see what kind of A's you can get. Ask your professors, you know, what you their thoughts on something. You want this is what you want to do as a student. If you're a great student, you want to create a relationship, a healthy, productive, professional relationship with your teacher if they'll allow you, because they know they have this wealth of information of something that you want. And if you could create the relationship, they could give you so many gems. And I tell you this, I don't know a teacher that wouldn't want a student that says they have an interest in their area where they'll talk about it. And that is so much information where you could get by just a conversation. And you have to go over and beyond. You can't just think that somebody's supposed to pull you to the side and say, I see your potential. You have to be the exception by doing the extra things. And what I've seen, people who do well, they go over and beyond for themselves. And if you do, you'll get rewarded. But if you don't, you'll complain about why other people got the chances and you don't know the actual work they did to get to where they are. Last but not least, remove all of those distractions that can subtract more than it can add. If you keep playing that life, you don't even have to. How about that? I know some of these bad habits were given to you through childhood and you think that's just something you're supposed to do. You don't have to live that way. You have to make an intentional effort where you will, you'll benefit. It's almost like, I get it. I know why I have to do it. If you don't put that effort in, you're gonna complain more than you have to. Y'all make today better than yesterday. Don't worry about anything you can't control. G A T A. Get after that action, or that action will get after you. Be great on purpose. Boom.