Blog #1  3-11-2025

Happy Healthy Successful

Welcome to the Blog! My Name is Devin Reilly. I am 26 years old and I am from Albuquerque, New Mexico. The purpose of this Blog is to Document my Self Growth/Improvement over the course of my life. I have been through many ups and downs in my life, but I want to take control of what I can to improve my life and live to the fullest. I hope to inspire, learn and teach on my journey to live the happiest, healthiest, and most successful life I possibly can.

Back in 2020, during Covid-19, I was very depressed and needed to change my lazy and unaccountable mind. Leading up to this time I had been hospitalized over 5 times for suicidal thoughts and actions. Being diagnosed with Bipolar from the young age of 14, (almost needless to say) high school was a brutal time for my health (both physically and mentally). Abusing cannabis, alcohol, and psychedelics, I was looking for a way to distract myself from the realities of growing up and handling more responsibilities going into adulthood.

In the spring of 2020, I started to tell myself a mantra to believe in myself. While I was in the shower I would repeat to myself, “ I am happy. I am healthy. I am successful.” This mantra helped me transform my identity from someone who was incapable of achieving my highest goals and aspirations to somebody who was. I subconsciously and intentionally changed the person I was for the better. I knew when I looked back on my life I wanted to be proud rather than someone who was selfish and unwilling to give 100 percent.

This slowly started changing my habits as well. At the time, I was a perpetual cigarette fiend and smoked more than all of my friends. During this time I didn’t just stop right away, but I did cut back. I felt so guilty to myself and sorry to myself. That was a rough cycle that went on for a couple of weeks. Still I was saying this mantra, “ I am happy. I am healthy. I am successful.” I think it reminded me of the consequences of not being healthy every time I felt like smoking a cigarette. After I cut back and a couple weeks later, I decided to finally quit, for good. This was a very dark time in my life, but I had decided to finally pick myself up from the bottom. There really is no other way to go but up (if you put in a little bit of effort).

At first I had just started exercising everyday (push ups, curls, squats, and walks) and not smoking cigarettes. Within just a couple of weeks working out and not smoking tobacco, it also translated into waking up earlier, cooking breakfast, and stretching. I had slowly started to benefit from my actions and started to feel physically and mentally a lot better. Its hard to realize how much better you’ll feel mentally and physically by doing the simple things you know   to be good for you. I started by taking one bad habit away (smoking), and adding a good a habit (working out everyday). This along with my daily mantra kept me grounded.

Two months later I started looking for jobs, going back to school, and being more creative with my music. I was in a perpetual state of working on improving my life and it felt so good. For once in my adult life, I had finally felt free from guilt and impending doom. I felt like I was finally treating myself how I deserved to be treated. I think part of the resent for myself was my lazy complacent and unaccountable mindset. I didn’t even realize how mentally Ill I actually was.

Six months later I was journaling in my gratitude journal everyday, working, exercising and saving some money. I felt better than I had ever felt in my adult life. I was striving for more everyday while also being keenly aware of how lucky I was. Even though there were a lot of days where there was stuff I didn’t want to do. I stuck my head down got my stuff done and felt a sense of accomplishment for doing it. It was that simple.

That is the origin story of my Happy, Healthy, Humble and Successful mantra. I didn’t think that it would actually work, but talking to myself and changing my identity one thought at a time made all the difference in my world. A mans perception of themselves, their abilities and their worldview really matter. Im sure there are a lot of reasons why this succeeded and lead to other realizations about life. Follow me on my journey through life and self improvement as I share what I have found to be most helpful with tangible, repeatable, actionable information.