So today I want to, talk about something or really address a struggle that I face on a daily basis. And I'm assuming that a lot of you out there, face the same thing. It's what I'm gonna call being a consumer versus being a creator. I would like to think of myself as a creator because I do enjoy engaging in activities that allow me to express my creativity and help others.

That could be creating photos with my camera, editing those photos, making videos, producing podcasts, assisting others in creating their own podcasts and on and on. I find joy in utilizing my skills to make a positive impact. Additionally, I appreciate the process of learning new things that I can apply to my life and share with others.

However, I constantly find myself, torn between creating things and consuming things. When I mention consumption, I'm referring to the act of mindlessly spending money or consuming content without any productive outcome. I'll give you an example. This morning I woke up a little late because I had a stomach flu that kind of kept me up throughout the night.

But despite this, the first thing I did, after waking up was I started browsing social media on my phone for about 30 minutes just while laying in the bed. After that, I got up and made myself some coffee and a simple meal to try to help settle my stomach, and then I put on a podcast about artificial intelligence, which was about an hour, hour and a half and while listening to that podcast, I started mindlessly surfing the internet on my computer. My intention was after listening to the podcast was to go to the gym, but my stomach was still upset, so I just decided not to go. So what I ended up doing is just finishing the podcast and then I started surfing the internet, Instagram, and then watching videos on YouTube.

Before I knew it, it was already about one in the afternoon and I really had done nothing. So today I ended up being mostly just a consumer. A consumer is someone who I would say just passively, uses their time and money on things created by others, just wasting it without any benefits. Um, How much of our day do we spend being consumed by distractions instead of doing what we should be doing. How much of our day do we spend being consumed by distractions instead of doing what we should be doing?

We all have obligations, but a lot of times we find ourself procrastinating by getting tied up in YouTube videos, TikTok, Social media, video games, on and on. Honestly, I feel, uh, a little bit of sense of guilt when I realize that I really haven't been productive all day, which is, hence this is the reason for this podcast.

So, once again, ask yourself, when you're being a consumer, what do you get out of the deal? What do you gain from it? In reality, the only thing that you receive is wasted time or neglect of the things that you should be doing or spending unnecessary money. What have you created today? What have you done that contributes to your personal growth or the advancement of your goals?

Ask yourself that question every day. One of my favorite , quotes that I have, actually framed, I framed it recently, but it says, how will the person. I want to be, do the things I'm about to do. How will the person that I want to be do the things that I'm about to do? So ask yourself that every day and ask yourself, when you're sitting, watching videos, wasting time, like, is this contributing to my overall goal or is this just wasting wasting time? So, But anyway. What I aspire to do is to live a life where I'm actively creating. I want to be intentional with my time, and I wanna make the most of every opportunity that's in front of me. So when I have spare time, I wanna spend it with friends or getting outside of these four walls and explore the world and doing things.

Screen time, whether it's just a TV, computer or phone, shouldn't consume all of our extra time. It does for a lot of people, but it shouldn't. Having 24 hour news on in the background, watching YouTube videos, doing all these things, even if you consider the YouTube video educational, it's great to watch a bunch of videos on, you know, taking photos with your camera or whatever it is you're trying to learn. You can watch enough videos, but at some point you gotta actually do something or create something. It's easy to get just caught up in just consuming and not creating. So please note that I'm not suggesting that you eliminate all downtime instead of, I'm just encouraging you to be intentional with your time and your life and how you spend your time and prioritize the things that matter over mindless activities.

So I'll just leave you with this. Set some goals. Try to have a daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly goals, and this will help you stay focused. You know, if you wake up in the morning and you don't really have an idea of what you're gonna do today, you're just gonna sit around and waste time. If you wake up in the morning and you know, okay, today I wanna cut the yard. Today, I wanna record this podcast. Today I want to do this. You'll get those things done early and then you'll have time to just kind of like do the other things that are not as important. So have goals. And when I say goals, these goals should be small goals and larger goals. Manage your distractions, control the time that you spend on social media or other time wasting activities.

It's not about completely eliminating 'them, but just rather , being intentional. Like me, I'm sure you have friends that send you stuff. You know, you may have to even go as far as to mute those friends temporarily while you get your activities done. Um, I have friends that send me videos and and stuff all day.

So during the time that I'm actually trying to focus, I will probably just mute my phone so that I'm not getting distracted, and then create a routine. I would just say create a daily routine that again, you have dedicated time for creation, which could be in the morning, maybe when your mind is fresh, and then, uh, dedicated time for other activities.

And then make sure you have tasks. When I talk about tasks, that could be your daily tasks, but those tasks should align with your overall bigger creative goals. And if you have smaller tasks that you can accomplish, you know, a lot of times that helps drive the bigger goals and give you confidence to tackle some of the bigger projects that you should be working on.

So once again, I just want to emphasize I'm not really suggesting that we can't be on social media or anything like that. I just want to encourage everyone out there to be intentional with your time. There's time that you should be creating and then there's time, which should be smaller for other distracting activities. Just be intentional with your time and just don't go around this world aimlessly and not doing anything and letting other people suck your time and suck your energy. It's easy to just get distracted and just be stuck on social media watching the 24 hour news and, doom scrolling through, you know, YouTube.

Focus on creating things that matter and then, uh, enjoy your life. So I hope this message inspires someone today, and I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to listen. If you have any comments or feedback, feel free to reach out me at [email protected] and I will talk to you next time.

This episode is about Stuff. Really it is about all the unesessary stuff that we have. I wanted a documentary on Minimalism and got fired up about the concept. Check out my thoughts and let me know what you think.

Hey thanks for listening. In this weeks episode, I talk about friends and who you surround yourself with. It might be time to leave some friend behind or at least limit your time with them. I've made the choice that some of the friend that I have, no longer fit in my life.

Take a listen and let me know your thoughts? !

I wanted to do a quick episode on investing money in a turbulent economy. Now is the best time in the world to keep investing money while stocks are cheap. Although, its easy to get distracted with all the crazy things that are going on right now with politics, the economy, and the world, we have to stay strong and stay focused on our goals. Let me know what you are doing to keep sane? Are you taking advantage of the cheap stocks, are you hording money, are you meditating daily?

Lets talk about money. It is a new year and its a good time to start talking about money. In this episode, I go a little into our ideas about money and where it could come from. I also share a little about how I grew up and how it impacted me as it related to my money mindset. I hope you enjoy this episode.

After listening to this episode, feel free to share some life lessons you have around money and the psycholigy around moneyt trauma.

Thanks for listening.

Hello everyone. This is the first eposide of the TOW podcast. I look forward to what the future has to offer.

• Intro
• Who am I ?
• Why start this podcast?
• What is wellness?
• Wrap up.

Show Notes:

So welcome to the theory wellness podcast. This is episode one. So this is it. I'm starting a new journey of first of all, this podcast, which is called theory of wellness podcasts, but not only that, It'll be more than a podcast, but this is just the first step. So for at least the next 120 days, I'll be recording, 15 minute episodes for hopefully you to enjoy, as you go about your day-to-day life.

So let me just start by giving it a little bit of background on. MI, I'm a pretty, fairly healthy guy. I've been working. I've been working out in the gym since the early nineties. Yes. The early nineties. So that should give you an idea of probably how old I am, but I'm what people in this country call, a person of color.

And therefore there are some things that people of my complexion are a little more prone to having. So. One of the reasons why I wanted to start this theory of wellness podcast and what goes along with it is, you know, I look around in my family, my extended family and friends, and I can see, some of them have issues.

Some of them are extremely overweight. Some of them deal with diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia, backaches, high cholesterol, and many of them. Elements. Not only that, there's other, you know, issues that go along with that, you know, self-esteem lifestyle, all those things that kinda go along with, just living an overall healthy and well, life, you know, not just health wise, but mentally as well.

So far, luckily from the health side, anyway, I haven't had any of those. I haven't had, any of the diabetes, any of the high blood pressure or anything like that. And really the only way that I can, the only thing I can attribute that to you is that, you know, I do work out when I can and I try to eat somewhat healthy.

And so I think just by the little that I do, I think it kind of mitigate some of those, extenuating symptoms that you see a lot of people with. So, so with that being said, even though I don't have any of those elements, one of the things, That I've noticed is that based on modern science, you know, I might be considered, overweight.

I'm over 40. My height is about 5, 10, 5 11, but I'm pretty you know, my weight is over than what you would consider normal because I do work out and I do have, you know, extra muscle, including some COVID weight. It's just part of, you know, what they consider, what the science considers, I guess you would say, quote, unquote overweight.

And so, you know, that's, that's neither here nor there, but, one of the reasons why I wanted to do this, which is so that. I can live a better lifestyle. I can be healthy. And of course there's a little bit of the Veni vanity aspect to this. And. And even though most people would consider me fairly helped the, you know, I can always improve, I can always do better.

And the other thing is, you know, I don't want to end up like some of the other people that I know, friends, family work, et cetera. And I don't want to be on a bunch of medications. I don't want to have to live a life, the rest of my life, that. And, you know, I just want to live a long life. So one of the things that I want to do is be able to put out information that I've learned and also learn from the audience.

That means you, where we can exchange ideas. I can learn from you. You can learn from me and, you know, basically improve and be a more, a person who leads by example. And helps others. That's one of my biggest things for 2021. I want to be able to create and do things that help people and also learn from others and you know, that circle of life so where we can all improve.

So the theory of wellness is a really, it's not just about health and weight. It's about just a state of being. So if you go to, the. World health organization is one of the things that I, I found a good quote from them that says, what wellness is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

And from the wellness Institute, it's a conscious, self-directed evolving process of achieving, full potential. So that's the way I look at it. I look at it as feeling better, looking better, making better decisions, meditation, all those things that, help you to, have a better overall life and feel good about yourself.

So with that, all being said, this is the first podcast. That's a short one. I just wanted to put this out there as a placeholder, episode one is down. So thank you for listening. And we look forward to hearing back from you and hopefully you won't get something out of this journey as we go along. So thank you.

This is a theory wellness podcast. This is Derek. I'm your host from here on out, and I hope you have a great 20, 21 and beyond.