Welcome to Erebus Growing, a weekly email where I share little snippets of life to help you change and grow into your highest life.

It’s been a week.

I have been struggling with keeping things going because the exhaustion of managing my 9-5, my part-time, and my desires for a personal business have all set in.

Combined with job searching, it is incredibly busy and I find myself spinning more than I would like.

But, I will find my way through. I will focus on and address the issues now to make it easier.

We’ve also reached the end of the life tenet series, for now. I may always find more out there that I want to add as a core belief. But for now, this is where we stand.

Without further ado, I’ll see you in a week!

👨🏻‍💻 Meditation

The secret to growth in life is ultimately simple: the more you do when you’re younger, the less you have to do when you’re older.

Time is the most valuable resource for everyone in the world, whether they realize it or not.

With time, money grows.

With time, knowledge grows.

With time, power, love, emotion, patience, peace, the mind, they all grow.

But so does your body.

It ages and physical capabilities begin to diminish.

Your life will peak and begin to diminish.

That’s okay. It’s good, even.

Your life is meant to end.

We are meant to be born, grow, mature, and then go into the dark night leaving the memories of our life with those who loved us.

In the time leading up to that, however, the quality of life can be drastically different.

It’s simple. How you live your life now will affect how your life changes as you age.

If you don’t spend time honoring your body, your body will fail faster than it should.

If you don’t work hard and create money while you’re younger, your financial life will become exceedingly difficult later.

If you don’t cultivate relationships now, it will become more lonely and difficult to do so later.

Easy now, hard later or hard now, easy later?

Which path will you choose?

A life of ease where you eat what you want, continually splurge on items you don’t need, and time lying around watching video after video?

Or discipline with your diet and exercise regimen, managing your finances to build an “eff you” fund, and learning and growing personally?

To be clear, eating what you want, splurging on items, and binge-watching tv shows are not inherently bad. But they will diminish your life if left unchecked for too long.

You can choose the easy path now and have far more to contend with when you are older, or you can choose the difficult path now and have a significantly less stressful future as you age.

Right now, this is a reminder for me.

Because I’ve been choosing the easy path recently. A lot.

And I’ve been blaming the part-time for it.

I can get junk food or fast food because I worked at my 9-5 and then the part-time on the same day. Or I worked the part-time after working Monday through Friday.

The reality is this:

I’ve given up.

There’s something about this period of life that, I’ve just given up trying to change it.

And it’s not the way I want to be. Not the way you should want to be.

Because I’m looking forward.

I see the future, the difficulty that is waiting if I don’t make the change.

It’s going to be a lot harder to do things if I don’t focus now.

If I don’t build now, it’s going to be another year without honoring my body, mind, or life.

And I don’t accept that.

I refuse to give up. I refuse to give in.

I’m going to borrow from Dan Koe for a moment, from his new book, The Art of Focus.

This tenet, really all nine tenets together, they’re pushing me and should push you as well to greater depths and higher heights.

We are here for such a short time and we should strive to do the important work, the critical work, the central work, while we are younger so that when we are older we can share the riches of our spoils.

It reminds me of the Elder Scrolls Online. I haven’t been playing much lately, but while it sucks at first because things are never easy when you’re a level 1 character, as you persevere and grow, it all becomes easier and easier.

That is what life should be. That is how it should go.

At the center of it is this memory for me.

My grandfather had a heart attack followed by open-heart surgery to address some resulting concerns. And he wanted to just get back to work because he was the income earner between himself and my grandmother. He died less than a week before he could go back.

I never want to be forced to go back to work after anything.

Once I become work-optional, I want to keep working because I want to.

Never because I have to.

So, what path will you take?

Easy now, hard later or hard now, easy later.

📚 Inspiration and Resources
Every week we all consume content and I share my favorites here.

Personal Growth.
Dan Koe is easily one of my favorite people (if not my absolute favorite) to follow and read from. He recently published his book The Art of Focus. You can see the pre-order page here. But the key component before you make any decision is to review the book summary that Koe wrote himself. Give it a read here.

📓 Journaling Prompt
Journaling is one of the most important things to do when exploring our own lives. A new prompt for you to use this week is below.

Do you want to change your life?

Until next time, I wish you enough and send you off with love and a sense of urgency in your life.