(The cover photos is Chester Cheetah putting in his reps. source: @cheetos Instagram)

2 years since making the Noy Sauce blog public, a total of 43 posts have been published. Some were hits, and some were misses. Yet, the simple acts of writing and posting for the sake of writing and posting gave me the confidence to simply do the work.

My posts in the Noy Sauce blog centered on a simple and effective formula:

• Tell a back story that led to a challenge
• Share the good and bad emotions experienced during that challenge in an authentic way
• End the story and post on a positive note by sharing a lesson learned

After skimming through my works in the blog not too long ago, I noticed that my posts followed common themes of faith, hope, and perseverance. My mother once said, “With faith, we have hope. With hope, we have joy. And with joy, we have love.”

But what happens when simply having faith and hope does not get you to where you need to be? And that was when I discovered that hope is not enough.

It is not enough to hope that the woman of your dreams will enter your life. It is not enough to hope that your career will lead to better pay, more respect, and more satisfaction. It is not enough to hope that one day you will become a more physically healthy person.

A few weeks ago, there were a series of wildfires that burned various parts of Southern California. The wildfires caused plenty of disruption in the area that many people evacuated their homes, schools were cancelled for the rest of the week, and it was inadvisable to stay outside because of the smoke.

Because of the outdoor smoke, I was confined to stay indoors. My regular daily routine involves a form of outdoor physical activity, which can be running up the hills near my place or walking around the neighborhood to clear my mind from the work I do. When a routine that is crucial to one’s day is taken away, it can lead to a “loss of control” of a situation. The weekend before the wildfires, my mother encouraged me to buy 2 bags of Cheetos from the grocery store, because it was on sale. I mean…the sale was 2 large bags of Cheetos for $4! Go figure. Losing control over my days that week because of one critical routine being taken away caused me to give into eating the bags of Cheetos. I finished those two bags within two days that I felt like a loser from eating one bowl after another.

This feeling of regret from eating junk food led to a downward spiral of losing motivation to do effective work. The loss of motivation also led to filling my time with distractions, such as watching Pokémon Let’s Plays, video game speedruns, and Jo Koy’s Live from Seattle Netflix special, and reading news about how we are oh so doomed. My mind said, “Ahhh!! Fuck it. My day is ruined. Might as well call it a day and hope that tomorrow won’t suck as today.”

When I am aware that I am in a rut, I usually take deep breaths and express gratitude to shift my mind into the present. By being present, the clouds of negativity in my head are blown away. Then, I find hope that this rut will come to pass and that tomorrow will be better than today.

And that was the problem. If I just hope that the woman of my dreams will enter my life, then I will not take action towards becoming a more grounded and secure man. If I just hope that my career will lead to better pay, more respect, and more satisfaction, then I will not take action towards reaching those goals through learning new skills and developing key relationships. If I just hope that I will one day become a more physically healthy person, then I will not take action towards becoming more physically healthy. To add onto the problem with just having hope, “What if tomorrow does not come?”

There is an equation that goes like this:

Challenge (what is outside of your control) + Response (what is in your control) = Outcome

I am certain that you are familiar with the phrase, “It is not the challenge that really matters. What matters more is your reaction to it.” And it is amazing that even though we are familiar with that phrase in some form, we fail to live by it.

Once the wildfires in Southern California became largely contained by the end of that week, I accepted that I simply had a bad week. Now was the time to take massive action the following week. I spent the following Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday running up and down the hill near my neighborhood, atoning for the lost time from the week before. I told my mother to stop buying junk food just because it is on sale – yet that did not stop her from buying a bag of tortilla chips that still is unopened, and that ube halaya sitting in the refrigerator sure still looks tasty. I took action towards expanding my computer programming skillsets by doing and re-doing programming assignments to become better in my craft.

Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, “Put in your reps.”

The faith, hope, and perseverance that we develop through our challenges in life are simply prerequisites to take even more action towards an extraordinary life. It is addicting to read and learn all these lessons and tools available to us that we forget to actually use these lessons and tools towards building simple and effective positive habits. Learning and knowing without taking action are like eating Cheetos: it is addicting to consume, but does not serve us well if we consume too much and do not take action afterwards. Putting in the reps towards our craft, whether it is writing, computer programming, or running, gives us channels of control that we can use to redefine our outcomes.

The benefits of putting in the reps are numerous. By simply doing (and re-doing) the work after learning just enough of a concept, we become it. We transform into more grounded, more resilient people because we have something to fall back on when the world around us seems to be falling apart.

The news tells you that we are doomed in this world? Put in your reps, and you will find the blessing and satisfaction of simply being physically able to work on your craft today. We live in a world full of abundance relative to all of human history.

Friends or family do not reply to your calls and messages? Put in your reps, and you will find that you only have control of you doing your work and your own reactions. Besides, you have no control of other people because, sadly, they have no obligation to reply back to you. Oh hi there, free will!

That lady rejected your advances or people are “player hating” on you? Put in your reps, and you will have your craft to fall back on because your self-worth is not dependent on what others think of you.

When things do not seem to go as planned, we can take deep breaths to inhale fresh air and exhale the clouds of negativity in our head. We may get lightheaded doing this breathing exercise at first, but we become more present. We find faith, hope, and perseverance as we become more present. All we have is NOW. And now is when we can pick ourselves up from our ruts and put in our reps. Then maybe – just maybe – we can have that bowl of Cheetos.