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Marlon Riddle

About Marlon Riddle

http://4mentalfitness.com

Hello and welcome, my name is Marlon. I love making candles, am learning to make money in the market, and graduating with a degree in communications in September of 2024. I live in Ohio with my wife and three (step) daughters. My life wasn’t always like this, though. For years I was a practicing alcoholic and drug user who was afraid to truly make an effort at anything for fear of failure. I’ve put myself through many troubles that I now see as unnecessary, but felt powerless against for the longest time. I now channel my efforts into realizing my goals and want to help others do so as well. I’ve realized that sometimes our greatest villain lies within, it’s a villain that is often relentless and overwhelming. This site exists to help others as well as myself overcome that internal foe and live the life of our dreams.

Posts by Marlon Riddle:

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Cleaning Your Kitchen

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Making money and being successful in life is like cooking a meal. The ingredients are your ideas, but in the end, you have to get cooking. I went all over the internet getting great ideas on how to get ahead in life, but my mind was not ready to take those ingredients and turn them into the end goal. My kitchen was dirty meaning my mind wasn’t ready to turn those ideas into meals.

What Does it Mean to Clean One’s Kitchen?

I started using the phrase cleaning your kitchen a while now and don’t know if I made it up or got it from somewhere else. The kitchen in this sense is one’s mind. Like a real kitchen, I do my best cooking when the kitchen is clean from the start. When it comes to my mind, there are so many things that cloud my thoughts and act as noise that keeps my mind from working at maximum efficiency.

Really, this is what this site is all about. Getting the mind in a position so that it can do the things it is destined to do. I want to get where I want to go. I want to live life on my own terms, but until I clear out the mess in my mind, I will never be able to do so. I am, however, on the right track and I started with the biggest step which was me deciding that I was WILLING to do what it takes to start down this road. For me, it was to start taking accountability for my actions. I had a 20 year old DUI that I finally went to the courts to face the charges. I ended up doing jail time and I was on probation for a year and a half. I was told by many people at the time that I was treated unfairly, but I wouldn’t be where I am now without it. I’m not saying that everyone needs jail and a probation sentence to get thorough their mental hurdles. What I am saying is that a person may need to put themself in a position to encourage a change in behavior. So what could I have done to mitigate my shortcomings and get myself in this same position without having to involve the court system.

What Could/Should I Have Done Differently?

I see now the easiest thing I could have done was surrounded myself with people who were making their self better in some kind of way. A part of my sentence was to become a part of a sobriety program. Going through a program would have been a great place to start since I needed to get sober, but I wouldn’t have done it on my own. I had such a stigma about those programs that I would never have subjected myself to one.

Church could have been an option, but it could not have been the church I grew up in. I needed an entirely different environment. I had to fundamentally change everything, from friends, to habits, to where I went to church, to the books I read. They all needed to change, but I didn’t truly know that until I was on my path to mental fitness.

“I see now the easiest thing I could have done was surrounded myself with people who were making their self better”

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Initiating Goal Momentum

Overcoming Procrastination: Why It’s So Hard To “Keep It Up”

Where in the world do I start? Do you have a million ideas, but seem to either stay in the same place, or worse, get worse. Why is this? It’s about setting a clear focus and sticking to it. Let’s take this blog, for example. I’ve procrastinated writing posts despite having a clear direction I want to go. I’ve said it’s because I don’t have a proper template or the site isn’t set up properly, but the truth is that I was afraid in some sense. Hell, I still am, but I am doing what I like to do and not thinking about the other stuff for a while. I like writing about self-improvement, whether it be my journey or what I believe will help someone else on theirs. I have sat down in my chair at my desk and here I am writing. Let’s be clear, for about 45 minutes I sat looking at themes for the site, but realized what I was doing after a while, and I got back to this piece.

If you were to look at this site at the moment I am writing this, you wouldn’t see much of anything at all. It’ll be like that for a bit because that’s not the main concern right now. My concern is to get things that are worth posting, that will help both myself and site visitors. I do, however, want to take this time to lay a foundation for what I initially want for this site.

First, I want this site to be a community. I haven’t always surrounded myself with people who were moving in the direction I wanted to go. In a way, I think I subconsciously wanted to hold myself back and surrounded myself with as many bad influences as I could so I wouldn’t have to take action. I want this site to be filled with people who know it is best to surround their self with other people who are walking their path. We don’t all need to be moving in the same direction, but we are willing to take the steps to move us forward.

This site will employ both long form posts that really dive into its subject and short form posts that act as snippets for ideas or full ideas that do not need a longer post. Additionally, there will be links to interesting and helpful media whether it be written materials, audio, video, really anything that makes sense for the site.

I want ideas to

  1. A place where the community can seek advice from other members about how they should tackle any issues they come against and want help with.
  2. Have a sense of humor about things
  3. Long-format posts will have a table of contents and headings to easier navigate the site.
  4. There will be a place where the community can post their achievemnets.
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How I became a stepdad-The breathalyzer

How I Became A Stepdad-The Breathalyzer

I got to the point in life where I needed to change quickly, I had gotten a DUI 20 years(!!!) prior and avoided the responsibility of the repercussions all that time. But it was hanging over my head and restricted me from being truly free. I rarely had an ID, and I couldn’t drive whih made it so that I had to cater my life to busses, walking, taxis, and ride-sharing companies later down the line.  I was so afraid of taking responsibility that my bad habits were thriving as I continued down this long rabbit hole of avoidance. Making the decision to avoid responsibility allowed other bad decisions to piggyback along and the guilt from them made it easier to avoid progress. As I went on this path, my self-esteem dropped making me feel I was unworthy of accomplishing what I was capable of. It was like the law of inertia, bad decisions stayed in motion as my true inner self stayed at rest. I had to stop it. I had to plant my feet on the ground and say no more!

Now, it wasn’t that easy and it took a lot of nagging from family members, especially Mama, that was my grandma from Alabama so no sugarcoating from her. “You better go see about your license” is what she constantly told me. I hated to hear it then, but I am ever so grateful now. Without her urging, where would I be now? Drunk? High? Dead? I digress though because that is not the point. It doesn’t matter how much nagging or how much sense something makes. It had to be my decision to get it done. I had to be willing to face the consequences, and there were many, but in all the ways my life was more difficult it never spurned me to make the change. It was only until I was WILLING to do it.

Willing is a word I’ve grown interested in since this life turnaround. You will beat yourself up with should, want, or need, but it’s until you are willing to do it is when things will be different. I wanted to stop excessive drinking and doing drugs, but was I willing to say no to those things? Better yet, was I willing to say yes for the life I was destined to live? What even was the life I was to live? I had checked out so long ago I didn’t know where I left off.

 Fast forward ahead and we are at my then girlfriend’s daughters track meet. She rode with the school, but she wants to go home early since she was done with her events. At this point in my life, I have a breathalyzer in my car. The breathalyzer was used, of course, to start the car for one, but the kicker was that I had to periodically blow in it to keep the car running. So, on a drive that took more than an hour, I knew she was going to notice something me and her mom had previously kept from the kids.

I thought it would be the end of the world, but she later stated that her thought was, whatever the reason the breathalyzer was in the car that I was no longer that person. Wow, she was seventeen years old and able to make that determination? It was all because I chose to make changes and I was willing to see them through. 

It’s never too late to change and it is not impossible. Worst people have overcome worst things in their life.

Breaking Seal

Breaking the Seal: How To Get Derailed From Accomplishing Any Goal.

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Whether the goal is to quit smoking, cut junk foods, or anything else that takes work to achieve, sticking to the goal and not relenting to internal or external pressure is they key to success. This is the “Old Self” coming to seize control. The further along towards a goal we go, the more the old self wants to regain control and subvert progress. Old self is resilient and will always lurk until it finds a weak moment to pounce and regain its position as the one running the show. The first time a promise is broken to oneself is the most difficult, it only gets easier from there. No matter if that it was agonizing or easy, the first time is the most resistance the mind will put up. This makes coming back from the broken promise more difficult.            

           The easiest person for me to break a promise against is myself. With others there seems to be some moral obligation to fulfill what I’ve promised to do. With me, I have an easy time going against what I’ve set out to do. Why? I just racked my brain trying to find an answer, I thought I should have three things that came to mind. I thought they would come quickly, but the only thing I thought was that it is ok for me to be lied to which is an issue with worthiness. So why do I feel unworthy of having promises kept towards me?Whether the goal is to quit smoking, cut junk foods, or anything else that takes work to achieve, sticking to the goal and not relenting to internal or external pressure is they key to success. This is the “Old Self” coming to seize control. The further along towards a goal we go, the more the old self wants to regain control and subvert progress. Old self is resilient and will always lurk until it finds a weak moment to pounce and regain its position as the one running the show. The first time a promise is broken to oneself is the most difficult, it only gets easier from there. No matter if that it was agonizing or easy, the first time is the most resistance the mind will put up. This makes coming back from the broken promise more difficult. 

           
            I am capable of handling disappointment or is it that I expect to be disappointed and it is my way of fulfilling that expectation. Thinking about it, I believe it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I feel comfortable, in some twisted way, of being mistreated. It makes me comfortable and is probably a way of me not achieving excellence. Why? Because I am not comfortable with these feelings. My brain is not comfortable with achievement to this level, if I were to stay my commitments to myself it (my brain) would feel there is a threat to my wellbeing. The brain’s purpose is to keep us from being harmed so if it is fed the wrong information it will produce the wrong solution. It is seen all the time with athletes. If an athlete’s brain is not comfortable with a high level of success, he may post a scathing video online making a team think twice about drafting him, in a declared for draft situation. His mind will lead him to act in a way that is detrimental to his success because he is not psychologically ready for success. Not pre-draft, but afterwards at the onset of his career, Ryan Leaf comes to mind. He sabotaged his whole career because he was not ready for success.

            

            A lot of people see others who seemingly have it all and wonder how they can throw it all away. The change that needs to happen is not to delete their online profiles or if the person drinks too much, to stop going to bars or have liquor in the house. Though those may be good temporary fixes, they are nearly bandages and the source of the problem needs to be addressed to truly fix the problem.

            Breaking the seal can start out small. It is much easier to start with a little white lie than to jump right into the deep end. It is like the way you cook a live frog. When an action is done to sabotage oneself, it can take the urgency of trying to save one’s own life because, in a way, it is. Or at least that is how the mind sees it. The mind can be like a drama queen and think “if I fuck this up, I’ll just die.” It will not say it to its host like that, it will say things like, “you deserve to go out and get wasted after all the work you’ve done.” It is lying to you. The devil does not attack the heart first, it attacks your mind and it has you kill your heart.

Not to do list

The Not-To-Do List: Eliminate time wasters and bad habits

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I don’t know about you, but I can be creative when it comes to wasting time. My old standbys are social media, video games and online shopping. The biggest problem is I can feel like I’m actually being productive doing many of these activities. There are so many distractions nowadays and most of them are right there in the palm of our hands. Self-induced distractions, friends, family, and advertisers are all vying for a piece of our time. We’re lucky we have any time at all for ourselves.

What were the issues?

When I open Twitter or turn on a video game there is a feeling that washes over me. A small tinge of guilt that I have learned to block out and dismiss. It is still there lurking in the background chipping away at my happiness and esteem (have you ever felt that?). Still, there are time wasters like agreeing to meet when I really don’t want to that has become a habit. Finding a way to combat these, can save precious time, and consequently happiness and esteem can and will increase.

I wrote down a list of things that would curb those distractions and eliminate the guilt associated with them. I created a list of things I won’t do to increase my productivity. Bad habits, time-wasters, and saying yes to frivolous activities had to be written down and they needed to be read daily. Some were to be exercised in life and some pertained to a given situation. The first place I started was life.

Where I started.

I started with my phone. I swiped down from the top of the screen and looked at the number of app notifications. Most of them had no business interfering with my life. An online sale or an app alerting me that Lindsey ate crawfish for the first time was not necessary. I looked in the settings and saw what apps had permission to send me notifications and removed the unnecessary ones. If I wanted to see what’s going on in that world, I would hop on and check it out. I don’t blame the companies, they are trying to increase and maintain their customer base, which is fine. They do not pay any price as it is all automated, so I stopped around 90% of them.

My list contains about 10 items for anything I feel guilty about or that I must rationalize to do. If I can’t do something, I let them know I am busy or that I wish I could. I really hope they have fun doing it. I wish I could find what they are doing to fulfill something inside me. If it doesn’t move me then I politely decline. I eliminated the rationalization of “well, I’ll do it just this one time”. The first time I break a pact with myself is the hardest, it only gets easier after that. 

            Other things on my list include:

  • No caffeine after 4 pm
  • Many restrictions on playing the football video game I like
  • No rabbit holes on social media or YouTube
  • Don’t stay up past 11 pm during the week
  • No email before 4 pm (For important emails, I have a VIP list that lets those select senders through)
  • No social media before 4 pm

The goal.

             I’m not 100% on these things, but they are what I know will move me forward. I strive for progress and not perfection as I am human and this is life. So, in your life what are some of the things you could implement today? What will increase your inner peace and make you more productive? Whatever it is, write it down, and don’t fret when you’re the last person to find out about the crawfish.

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