I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me - spiritually and financially.

Stop what's draining you first

There's something almost embarrassing about how straightforward this sounds—cut out what's holding you back, and good things happen. We want the breakthrough to be more complicated, more mysterious. But when you actually try it, you realize the simplicity is the hard part. Most of us aren't waiting for permission or a perfect plan; we're waiting for ourselves to actually stop doing the thing we know is draining us.

What's interesting here is the connection between the two kinds of improvement. We often treat physical health, mental clarity, and material success as separate problems requiring separate solutions. But Washington's point suggests they're actually tangled together. When you stop numbing yourself or filling your time with distractions, you don't just feel better—you have energy for things that matter. You notice opportunities. You show up differently in conversations and work. The "floodgates" don't open because you're suddenly lucky; they open because you're finally present and capable enough to walk through them.

The harder truth underneath this: we probably already know exactly what's holding us back. The work isn't figuring it out. It's accepting that the cost of keeping it is higher than the cost of letting it go.