5 Methods to Lean Out Your Life

Method #1: Lean out your Mind!

Clear your thoughts. Find out what ideas are causing you to be distracted and eliminate them from your mind. For example, I always find myself thinking about creating more content for my YouTube channel or website. Then I would think about the strategies for what content I should make, and eventually, I wouldn't create anything because all the ideas I had cluttered my mind. I would come up with tons of ideas, and before I could set my mind to start working on one, I would be distracted by another thought. This incident happens to many people, and more often than not, it becomes a person's downfall.

How do you lean out your mind? Write down your thoughts. When you write something down, it is out of your head, and when it’s out of your head, it gives your mind room to focus on more important things like family, school, work, etc.

Some of these thoughts may lead to million-dollar business ideas or books, and some may look so silly written out that you would be happy to get rid of them. The first step is to get them out of your head. Much like clearing out a closet filled with old clothes to make room for new ones, clear out your old thoughts to make room for new ones.

Now that you see your thoughts written out. Lean out your mind by selecting one idea to focus on, then eliminate the rest. Use a black sharpy or ballpoint pen to scratch the other nine ideas. It will be tough because we naturally want to hold on to our thoughts, but you must eliminate them to lean out your mind. This process is how you clear out the mental clutter from your mind. Using this method, you will focus better because your mind is clutter-free and ready to work.

Method #2: Lean out your Friends!

This process is challenging because no one wants to end a friendship, but some friendships can be detrimental to your life. On the other hand, some friendships can be a massive asset to your life. You can only see the difference by leaning out your friends.

How do you do this?

There are two ways. Determine which friends are your anchors and which ones are your trampolines.

An anchor friend brings you down. It may not be noticeable at first, but they drag you down by asking you to do things against your belief system or supporting you in going off track from your dream. For example, a friend who allows you to quit on your dream by saying things like "it's ok, you probably wouldn't have made it anyway" or "maybe you should try something else” is an anchor. They are the negative nooses that pull you down by your ankles as you strive to get to success. These people tempt you to quit; they draw you to stay away from your goal or pick a new goal that is less threatening to them.

Now, this is going to be tough. Get rid of those friends from your life. Delete their numbers, block them from social media, whatever you must do to distance yourself from them. You must remove people from your life that hold you back. You cannot excel to greater heights with unnecessary weight around your ankles.

The process is challenging but imagine having to go through life wearing a 40lb weight vest. You eventually get used to it. You sleep with it on; you eat with on; you even work out with it. Ultimately, you don’t notice the vest anymore. The vest becomes comforting. You’ve had it on for so long that it has molded to your body. It keeps you warm; it has pockets to hold your stuff. You have stitched your name on it.

It’s now a part of you.

Then one day, you have to run the biggest race of your life. This race will be long, and it will be tough. You will need all your strength and energy to finish. Your coach says you can win this race easily. All you have to do is take off your vest and never put it back on again. The warm vest is comforting; it hides the flaws and insecurities of the person wearing it, but in reality, it is still a weight holding a person down. It sounds like an easy answer, drop the vest and win the race, but most people cannot drop their vests when it’s something that has been a part of them for so long.

The vest represents these anchor friends.

People you grew up with who won’t let go of the mindset you grew out of. The vest represents family members who believe their way is the law, and you only keep allowing them in your life because they are part of your bloodline.

As much as it hurts to drop these people from your life, you must take off your vest to win your race. Now it's time to identify the trampoline friends in your life. These are the people that boost you up. These are the people that propel you to new heights in your life. These are the people that continue to make you excel. A trampoline friend is one that, no matter what you do, finds a way to absorb the energy you give them, negative or positive, and uses it to accelerate your growth. 

What happens to an anchor with no chain?

It falls to the bottom of the ocean and cannot be recovered because it weighs too much to waste the effort to get it.

Now think about a trampoline you put in the backyard; you play with it all the time. It propels you to heights you could not reach on your own power. It also absorbs your weight when you fall back to it, uses it as energy, and sends you higher.

Use that analogy to lean out your friends. Think about your friends that are anchors and let them sink out of your life. Think about your friends that are trampolines, and let them catch you when you fall. What seems like criticism is just them using your energy to push you higher.

This process will be painful, but the spiritual weight you shed from releasing these people from your life will leave you feeling light enough to sprint toward your goal.

Method #3 Lean out your Business!

If you own or manage a business, there is nothing worse than clutter in your business. This clutter can be old reports—insubordinate employees, or old habits that lead to bad business practices.

Leaning out your business is easy. Keep it simple.

Focus on mastering one aspect of the business, then try to excel at its most profitable portion. For example, as a personal trainer, my specialty is group classes instead of offering one-on-one training. Once I decided only to offer group classes, I could focus on being the best in one area, giving me a clear vision for my business. This decision resulted in more sales for my business.

Having too many business ideas causes clutter in your business, and it will cause you to lose money working on areas that are not relevant to your success.

There are three ways to lean out your business:

1. Create a business focal point. What are you known for?

2. Ensure your business is aligned with your personal goals. You must do what you love for a living.

3. Calculate a financial goal that you can reach. 

Once these three key points are written down, create a game plan to reach these goals. Creating a game plan will streamline your focus and allow you to be successful in your business.

Write down your business game plan. (For example, your business will be featured in the next city trade fair.)

Finally, have an end game. We can’t live forever, so don’t spend your life on the hamster wheel. Create a timeline for your business by setting a retirement dollar amount (the amount of money you want to make that will allow you to retire), a retirement date, and a successor to keep your business going. Creating endpoints will help you work harder to build your business and give you more mental relief when it’s time to let go of your business. Having an end game will keep you stress-free and consistently motivated to reach the finish line. Don’t be greedy; if your business overshoots your expectations keep that tunnel vision approach toward your goals.

In the end, you will be able to rest a lot better when it is all over.

Method #4 Lean out your Body!

Leaning out your body might be the easiest method on this list because leaning out your body is based on two components.

Limit your food intake. Increase your cardio.

The less you eat, the fewer calories you intake. The more cardio you do (running, jogging, walking, etc.) The more calories you burn. Fewer calories, with more calories burned, equals a lean body.

Now that is easier said than done; you must find time for cardio and endure hunger pain. These two feats are not easy to achieve, which is why the obesity rate in the world is climbing. Now, if you want to know why leaning out your body is essential for leaning out your life, imagine this:

Your body is like a car; your heart is the engine, the transmission is your organs, the frame is your bones, and the mechanical interface controls the GPS, air conditioner, radio, Bluetooth, etc., is your brain. You need a new engine when you allow gunk to clog up your engine and don't get it cleared. When transmission fluid is not changed regularly, your transmission will need to be changed. When a fuse blows out, your whole system will start acting up, and a battery may need to be changed. All these changes (repairs) cost time and money. If you can’t make them, most likely you will have to buy a new car.

Car lovers always lean out their vehicles by getting rid of lousy oil, changing out fluids and fuses, and having regular checkups by mechanics. Even old work trucks that have been used for years last long when maintained correctly. These same concepts apply to leaning out your body. You must lean out your heart by not clogging your arteries with unhealthy food. You must lean out your intestines by consuming the right amounts of fiber; always stay hydrated to cleanse your overall system. You must consume brain foods to keep your mental health intact. You must exercise daily to burn more calories than consumed and make working out a habit.

Leaning out your body will help with the other methods of leaning out your life because it lets you clear out the different areas of your life in various ways.

Exercise requires space, meaning you must lean out your area and clear the clutter from your home.

Exercise requires time, which means you must spend less time with your friends, who are anchors.

Exercise requires focus, which means you must clear the clutter from your mind and take a vacation from your business to focus on your fitness goals.

Method #5 Lean out your Spirit!

Leaning out your spirit means getting rid of the things in your life that promote bad intentions, such as hatred, anxiety, anger, depression, and complacency.

Finding something to believe in is the best way to lean out your spirit. Believing in something refocuses your spirit on a more significant entity that trumps the negativity trying to tear you down. For example, people who believe in God focus their spirits on God. They use the church as an outlet to lean out their spirits. Most spiritual teachings focus on letting go of anger and hatred toward others. Developing a spiritual focus on God gives people a space to drop their negative emotions and leave them for God to eliminate.

How does this process lean out your spirit?

Let's go back to sports. There is an iconic picture of Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps swimming toward another gold medal victory, and his opponent is focused on him. In contrast, Michael Phelps is focused on the finish line. The picture is iconic because it symbolizes how no matter what strife comes against your spirit, you will not be affected as long as you focus on a goal. Eventually, these issues disappear because you have shifted your focus to a higher power, and since you are not feeding these negative entities, they starve and die, which leans out your spirit.

Imagine getting rid of cancer cells by starving them out of your body. It's the same process. Starve negativity out of your spirit to lean it out. Starving negativity out of your spirit is a challenging process, but just like fasting is tough on the body due to hunger pains, it's the best medicine for your body in the long run.

Starving your negative emotions is challenging because it requires removing harmful habits, such as being rude when you are in a bad mood and being unforgiving to people. It requires you to replace them with practices such as forgiving and being nice to people even when you don’t feel like it. In the long run, you will receive that lean spirit you seek, which manifests as inner peace that allows you to have a better life.

In conclusion, leaning out your life benefits all three areas (mind, body, and spirit). You must pay close attention to the clutter around you and take the time to filter through it.

Lean out your mind by exploring only the thoughts that matter the most to your life.

Lean out your business if you have one. Clear out old files. Delete old game plans that haven’t been explored in years. Focus on what is profitable.

Lean out your friends. Identify your friends that are anchors and your friends that are trampolines.

Lean out your body by creating healthy habits. Eat fewer fatty foods and burn calories by doing at least 30 minutes of cardio daily.

Lastly, lean out your spirit by forgiving people. You cannot walk around life weighed down by negativity, and most of the negativity you carry around is the negativity inflicted on you by others. Let those weights go and enjoy a new leaner happier life.