As I look at my own experiences and as I consider my observations of Black men at large, many of us have done ourselves a disservice by selling ourselves short in areas that could boost our overall quality of life simply due to our negligence in employing simple fundamental practices in a major area on a committed basis. 

I believe that using a being conscious of a key principle, combined with a core belief and a simple habit can be the code to the combination lock that serves as a game changer in any given area.

We can do this by setting baseline standards for ourselves, which should be designed to protect us from harmful situations, to have dignity and to serve as the catalyst for a satisfactory quality of life in the respective areas that we set a standard in.

Your baseline standard should be sophisticated and powerful in that it is should be reasonable enough to see the merit of it establish it, while not being burdensome to the extent that you question your ability to maintain and yet it should stretch you to go beyond where you are at present and it should have compound benefits that you look forward to inheriting by living by it in that it takes you further away from what you don’t want and/or brings you closer to what you do want.

Establishing baseline standards should start with areas in which you have been negligent in and that you have been dissatisfied with and where you see a need for change because of the damaging results of not setting up and living by this standard. 

Your baseline standards should be emotionalized meaning that you associate discomfort with neglecting to live by them because you see the value and prudence of doing such and find it unacceptable to do less than the standard that you have set out for yourself and anytime you do bot I’ve up to your standards, they should be designed to where you associate such displeasure with not aiding by them, that you feel eustress which means that you are doing something that is neither necessarily difficult nor easy but a beneficial challenge -a healthy pressure to make any needed adjustments to get back on track which helps you to avoid the habit of neglect within that area.

Now while there are many areas that we can work on, I want to touch on three areas that I believe lay the foundation for a life of mastery meaning a life of artfully being able to control one’s self in any given area and to have the belief that whatever is within your power you can make happen. 

The first is in managing our money.

The second is maintaining a satisfactory level of physical fitness.

Getting in controlling our thoughts.

For each of these areas, we are going to employ one major habit based on a principle along with supporting helpful practices to tie it all in to help make the new standard: desirable, attainable and sustainable.     

Personal Finance

I thought that it was important to share that excerpt because I recall being in a similar situation like this several years ago.  I remember having a bank account with a negative balance and literally less than $1 to my name.  Having a $20 bill in my pocket at that time would’ve made all the difference in my world – it would’ve changed my life.   

I recall walking down this trendy strip in Buffalo and seeing all the families out on a weekend afternoon, smiling, buying food and drinks for themselves and I looked like I fit right in with a business casual attire but inside I was fighting to keep a finger grip on my self-esteem because I knew that I had messed up.  My lights and gas were turned off, I had fallen behind on rent and was very depressed.

I remember looking at a gourmet pastry that I wanted from this bake shop and realized that I couldn’t afford it though it was less than $3. 

How did this happen?  I have worked since I was a teenager.  Granted I feel back on hard times and was looking for work and had made some investments into business that I was banking on being fruitful and I basically put all my eggs in one basket and once that fell through, I was hurting bad.  Soon enough, I got back on my feet and found work, but had I been a better manager of my money in the first place I would have likely avoided such a situation whether I was in between jobs or not. 

You know the tipping point for me was that I went to the social security website, and I looked at my earnings over the years.  As long as you’re on the books, you can go check yours too.  And when I saw how much I had earned since paying taxes on an annualized basis, I was disgusted with my poor savings habits.  Because there was no reason that out of all of that money that I had earned I didn’t even have 1% of that money in any sort of equity or liquid cash. 

Then I began to think about all the times that I went to dinner over the years, all the money that I had spent on entertainment, and I examined my living expenses over this time and concluded that poor money management on my part put me in this situation. 

Yes, higher earnings may have helped, but better habits in managing what I had would’ve helped me even more. 

Shortly after that time, I made a decision to put myself on the pathway to a reasonable and attainable degree of financial security as a baseline standard.   

I concluded that I should always have the means to take care of my basic needs independent of anyone else as long as I am able bodied, of sound mind and have earning ability to keep up with the cost of living.

My core belief became that sustaining myself financially would allow me to manage most situations that I would encounter in life. 

My habit became to save at a minimum of 10% of all my net earnings, meaning after taxes and if it’s in the way of profits, after expenses.  At a minimum, 1 dollar out of 10 goes towards my rainy-day fund in the event that I’m going through a rough time in life so that at least I know that I’ll have a nest egg of savings.  The goal is for me to have a buffer if at least 6 months of savings to take care of myself.        

Another minor practice to employ to support those efforts would be to cut costs where I can on things like buying lunch through the week at work and instead packing a lunch.  A simple change like that is enough to see a dramatic increase in one’s savings goals.

Now after I mastered 10%, I increased my percentage and now, I look forward to eventually saving half of my earning comfortably.  Notice that this doesn’t yet include retirement investments like a 401k, it doesn’t include other streams of income, it simply involves managing what you do have first and progressing from there.  This isn’t a financial literacy video as much as it’s about what the average brother can do to stay a few steps ahead of making sure that his money isn’t funny.

What’s a financial baseline standard that you have for yourself?  What’s one that you can set?  If you can, I would encourage you as rule of thumb to keep at least $1 out of every 10 that you bring home to yourself, to be untouched unless absolutely necessary.       

The second area is in the way of physical fitness.  I’ve been fortunate to be able to maintain a very lean frame however even as a slim guy having a healthy weight is one thing but being in shape is another.  While I haven’t had any severe issues around not being physically ft, I have had several reminders over the years to place emphasis on having good cardiovascular health and strength.  You ever take off running and forget that you’re not in high school anymore and before you know it, you’re bent over gasping for air?

Or what about when you thought you still had it, and you dropped to the floor to do a set of pushups and you’re struggling after 7.  Men need to stay fit, to stay healthy and to stay in shape.  We need to take care of ourselves and to have sustained levels of energy in addition to having a satisfactory aesthetic to ourselves.  What’s a rule of thumb to know if you’re aesthetic is satisfactory – how comfortable do you feel with your shirt of walking down the street in the Summertime?  That tells you all that you need to know.  But it’s not just about the body, it’s about health and strength overall as well.  As a baseline standard, there should be a minimal level of fitness that each of us aspires to maintain. 

For me, it’s being able to jog at a moderate pace without stopping for at least 45 minutes.  The reason is that I associate a healthy set of lungs and a strong heart with a sustained level of cardiovascular fitness.  Walking long distances has always been easy for me.  I could walk for hours without stopping.  But my fitness baseline standard is to keep a moderate jog at a moderate pace for without stopping for 45 minutes. Now unless I’m severely sick or have some type of health issue that wouldn’t allow me to do this, there’s no reason for me not to be able to perform that task.  I often times think about the need for me to be able to jog because it’s crucial to my survival.  I often think about how many people in the United States would find it a struggle to put on a pair of sneakers and to walk several miles either due to being severely obese or just out of shape.  And I wonder how some of these people will survive if there was a state of emergency that called upon a person to travel by foot for a long distance.   So, when I imagine being able to jog for a good distance, it helps me to feel capable overall within that type of functional fitness.  Not only that but it’s rejuvenating to work up a sweat. 

In addition, I find that strength training is important to me, but I’m not trying to look like Terry Crews, but shout out to that brother for being in incredible shape but I know that it’s important for me to feel confident in my full body strength, so my commitment is to doing at least 1 full body workout every single week where I work all the major muscle groups with adequate reps to push them to grow and have more endurance 

Now while it’s nice to be able to say that I go to the gym 4-5 times a week, that’s not my goal and neither is that something that as of right now something that I’ll keep pace with, because my lifestyle doesn’t really call for that, but to know that I’m dedicating at least 1 day out of a week, to do high rep moderate weight exercises and body weight exercises is something that I can be proud to give myself.  To beat the hell out of my body once a week so to speak, to give myself a full body physical challenge is a baseline standard for me to maintain. 

Now what benefits do I get from that.  For one, being fit helps me to feel more confident.  My clothes look better on me, I feel capable of undertaking different physical workloads.  My energy will stay up and my belief is that if I take care of my body then my body will take care of me. 

The guiding principle is that I should always be preparing my body to be in training for war.  So when I work out, even if it’s once a week, I give it all I’ve got like a warrior.  This is why I set the baseline standard to once a week, because I know that through the week, I can prepare myself for the big day and I give my body enough time to rest and recover through the week.  To assist me in that regard something as simple as limiting my sweets and other types of junk food and increasing my water intake and fresh fruits and vegetables, and quality proteins and carbs go a long way.  Here’s a simple rule of thumb with sweets and junk food: take half of what you eat in a week and replace it with fruit or another nutritious snack.  Just doing that alone is enough to see beneficial results for a long time.  So what physical fitness standard can you set for yourself?  What is your baseline standard for your physique when you look at yourself in the mirror.  Deciding to devote a day or more every week towards your body and cardiovascular health can serve you a long way. 

Third area to establish a baseline standard.  Emotional control through leveraging our thoughts. 

I think about how over the course of the years, I developed a very disempowering habit of letting my thoughts get the best of me by focusing on things from the past that I wish that I could have handled differently.  Where I constantly replay extremely frustrating and disappointing experiences to the point that those thoughts would interrupt me for sometimes days at a time – harping on things that have taken place several years ago but are still haunting.  It’s a terrible habit and I hope that you never form it and if you have already then you know what I’m talking about. 

I notice that my body would feel tense, I would look and feel very angry, distracted and disturbed and it would completely interrupt my productivity and throw me off of my game of whatever it is that I was trying to accomplish.  Trying to fix the past through confronting memories and altering their outcomes.

I remember watching this movie called Buried and you should check it out.  It was a very moving film.  It focused on one main character throughout the entire movie.  The main character was an American working as a truck driver in Iraq and he was kidnapped and buried alive for ransom in the middle of the dessert.  When he awoke in this coffin and realized his plight of course to say the least he was petrified, extremely panicked and felt hopeless and yet he was resilient as well, there was a range of emotions during this dramatic event.  The only thing that he had in the coffin was a cell phone and a lighter.  The lighter allowed him to look around the coffin that he was in, and the cell phone was his only communication tool to try to get someone from the American government to rescue him in an unidentified location in the middle of nowhere.  Now, I won’t tell you how it ended but I would definitely say that it’s a movie well worth watching.

And as I watched this movie, I was touched by it.  The director did a very good job at capturing the despair of the main character’s situation.  But I mentioned this movie because I thought about it and said, what if I were in a similar situation.  This would have to be one of the worst predicaments to be in for any person.  But I thought about the type of emotional control that I would have to exercise in a situation like this.  To barely be able to move in a tight box with oxygen running out, not knowing where you are with a dying cell phone in a race against the clock to contact someone, anyone to help you raise $5 million for your release or it’s your life.   

You know it’s something – all of the sources around you where you can extract a lesson from.  For me it was this movie.  And then I thought about how I formed this terrible habit of letting my thoughts escape me and get the best of me.  What real excuse do I have in exercising limited emotional control over things that I cannot control, things that I’m not even being confronted with?

What reason is there in allowing things that I cannot control to dictate my state?

“Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We, however, are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.”

Now to achieve a state in which I control my entire range of emotions to always work in my favor, to always feel empowered would be a lifetime achievement – to have complete control over my experiences in life and to not let anything disempower me. 

One who achieves the spiritual estate of possessing total peace of mind and absolute faith is someone who walks as a god among men for they are no longer just an ordinary person. They have reached a level of superiority among the populace. 

My baseline standard is a work in progress and that is to begin controlling my thoughts by controlling my breathing consciously.   I’ve heard it mentioned in Eastern philosophy that to control the breath is to control one’s life.  Controlling my breathing sets me on the path to focus and concentrate on what I’m doing.  Think about the way that you breathe when you’re upset vs when you’re relaxed.  Typically, the breaths are slower and deeper when your mind is at a state of relative peace.    

Remember when we talked about how baseline standards should neither be easy nor hard, but rather challenging?  Developing the habit of controlling one’s breathing is neither easy nor difficult, but rather it takes having a conscientiousness of our emotional state.

Long-term goal, to be in complete control of my emotional states. 

Baseline standard, to commit to controlling my breathing and thus regulate my thoughts, feelings and behaviors.  Self-Mastery.

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Written By: Waymon Brown. Creator of theesquireproject.com. Email info@theesquireproject.com