I was born short.. ok, everyone is born short.
To be precise my genetic code was vertically challenged so when it was executed the full grown version of the Miguel blueprint turned out to be 5′-6″.
For many years this bothered me a lot. It affected my confidence, by masculinity, my ability to reach items on the top shelve (ok, that hasn’t changed)
I think it bothered me more than the typical short human because my mind tends to over-analyze everything.
By 20 it seemed pretty obvious I had reached my full vertical potential.
Immediately I’d started pondering all the possible consequences of winning this unfortunate genetic lottery.
The problem was that I kept fixating in all the negative consequences of being a short male in society.
I read that in general shorter people make less money, have lesser promotion opportunities, are respected less, have less sexual partners.
I couldn’t find a single article that said being shorter was a fantastic advantage except to clean chimneys and ride horses.
These series of realizations kept chipping away at my self esteem, at my confidence.
Some times I didn’t feel like going out and meeting people. I felt inferior, unworthy.
I was convinced I’d never find a partner. I considered taking growth hormone, even having bone extension leg surgery.
In the darkest moments I even considered committing suicide.
To give you an idea to what extent my obsession with height went I spent hours going over the profiles of most successful people and making a note of their height to calculate the average of the successful male in Western society.
I think it came to be 5′-9″ which happens to be exactly the average male height in North America. So for a few years I told myself I would always be 3 inches “short” from success in life.
It took me many years to get over this.
Luckily my worst fears never became true. I was able to find great jobs, start a profitable business, have awesome friends, date wonderful girls and marry a beautifully elongated 5′-10″ Canadian woman.
What saved me?
A dog… yes a dog, keep reading.
The thing that bothered the most about being short was not what statistics said but the fact that I had zero control over this physical trait.
I never chose to be short but there was nothing I could do about it!
I could work hard to accomplish almost anything in life but gaining 4 miserable inches was completely out of my control.
I was another victim of the unfairness of genetics.
Then, one day I realized that being short only bothered me when I thought about it.
Turns out being short was not the issue, it was the thought of being short.
And within that simple realization lied the key to defeating this decade long metal self flagellation.
I realized that I could control my thoughts and since the source of anguish came from my thoughts, I could therefore eliminate the anguish itself!
This was my first encounter with the power of metacognition.
From then on all I had to do every time I caught myself suffering internally about any physical shortcomings (or anything) was to stop the negative mental chatter and voluntarily focus my thoughts on something positive or constructive instead.
Once you fully control your thoughts you become mentally invincible!
How you feel and what you do in life is directly correlated to your inner thought process.
So how do you win the negative thought battle?
You need to train a dog.
Think of your favorite dog.
Now give it a name. Maybe Spanky, or Fluffy, or Bieber, or Chorizito, or whatever you want.
I call mine Javirulo and it’s a cute 1 year old tricolored Papillon that likes to lick everything within tongue reach.
You are going to train your Javirulo to be alert wand watch your thoughts 24/7.
Every time Javirulo sees a damaging bad thought appear, Javirulo going to start barking like a maniac.
Javirulo is going to keep barking, louder and louder until you cannot hear your own thoughts.
Javirulo will only shut up when you stop thinking whatever stupid thing you were thinking.
Once you stop thinking your shitty thought you will ask yourself a simple question:
Is this thought positive?
If the answer is No then you immediately kill the thought and force your mind to focus on a positive thought.
If the answer is Yes, then.. happy thinking!
This takes a lot of training but Javirulo will get better at catching bad thoughts and you’ll get better at replacing them with good ones.
I’ve been using this strategy about 10 years now and my mental watchdog has become very good catching bad thoughts.
But let me tell you… Javirulo is super busy all day long. For some reason we tend to have 5 to 10 times more bad thoughts than good ones.
A good way to train your mental watch dog is to develop a daily positive thinking habit such as expressing gratitude every morning.
This may explain why meditation can be so beneficial. When we meditate we try to kill the mental chatter and we can use mantras to replace it with positive thoughts.
So the lesson for today is… buy yourself a mental dog and train it well!
Mr. Javirulo has saved my life countless times.
What’s your mental dog called?
Peace, Love and doggie treats,
Miguel
P.S: I’ve found that the source of a lot of psychological pain is pure selfishness. Oh poor me, Oh, I’m short, fat, ugly, old, stupid, too young, oh my dick is small, oh, I’m bold, Oh, my tits are sagging, oh, look at this wrinkle..oh me me me myself and I.
Great fulfillment comes when we shift the focus from us to helping others. Probably one of the best examples of someone overcoming true genetic adversity and finding happiness by helping others is the great 3 feet tall Sean Stephenson.
P.2: Who else belongs to the awesome size club? you may have heard about some of these fine gentlemen: Winston Churchill, Bruce Lee, Mahatma Gandhi, Prince, Robin Williams, Martin Short (ha!), Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, Bono, Pablo Picasso, Ben Stiller, Woody Allen, Harry Houdini, Dustin Hoffman, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bruno Mars, Beethoven, Elton John, Martin Scorsese, Genghis Khan, Truman Capote, Lionel Messi, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Mark Antony, David Sedaris, George Lucas, Ralph Lauren, Mel Brooks, Salvador Dali, Bob Dylan, Al Pacino, Michael J. Fox, Voltaire, Isaac Newton, Ringo Starr, and of course, three legged Ron Jeremy 😉 (full list HERE)
P.3:
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