Chris WIllamson, the host of Modern Wisdom, often brings up a very powerful insight. It’s a flaw in our rational thinking, a short-circuit in our daily decision making, and sometimes we’re so close to it that we can’t see it for what it is.

He says “We sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that’s supposed to get it.”

What this means to me is that we’ve romanticized our dreams so much that we believe we couldn’t possibly make them true right now. We figure that what we want needs to be earned and fought for, but that’s only because we’re blind to the more direct path to getting what we want immediately.

There are three examples of this that Chris share to make the idea more concrete:

The first is related to happiness. We sacrifice our happiness right now by working hard, putting in reps, and doing things we don’t enjoy in order to earn the results that will make us happy. What’s keeping us from doing what we enjoy right now?

The second is related to self-worth. We do things that we’re not fully aligned with to impress people, who then in turn validate us and inspire us with self-worth. But why don’t we just do the things that we would do if we already felt worthy today, because that’s what will make you feel worthy the fastest.

And the third is related to freedom. We work hard for other people, work long hours and give our time away to make money so that when we have it, we can do whatever we want. I know it needs to be within reason, but why can’t we just do whatever we want to do right now? It’s very likely you can make a decent enough living doing what you want to do to cover your basic needs.

“We sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that’s supposed to get it”... But with a simple reorientation we can start getting what we want. And while it’s simple, it’s certainly not easy. But it’s possible, and something worth thinking about.

Rather than living by someone else’s playbook, start to write your own. You get to design your life. You can have the happiness, self-worth, and freedom you deserve right now. And achieving it doesn’t need to be some roundabout process, it’s actually way more accessible than you’d think.

World famous and pioneering positive psychologist, Martin Seligman, developed a framework for how to live a good life. It’s as close to a formula as you’ll find, and he calls it: PERMA-V. 

It’s an acronym where each letter represents a different aspect of a life well lived. Let’s dive into each:

Positivity is about seeing the world through a hopeful and appreciative lens, and experiencing emotions that are uplifting, encouraging, and gratifying. It’s an ability to take the events in life and create a more empowering meaning around them that suggests a safe, secure, and enjoyable future. Positivity is a mindset and perspective.

Engagement is about having things that you care about and want to involve yourself in - hobbies, interests, projects. It’s something that you invest your time and skills into because you find joy in thinking about it, working on it, and affiliating with it. Engagement causes us to be immersed and grow.

Relationships are next, and they’re critical. The longest longitudinal study in human history found that nothing predicts personal well-being more than the quality of a person’s relationships. This comes from having supportive friendships, connectedness with family, a romantic partner you share intimately with, and the acceptance that comes from those who love you unconditionally, and offering the same for others.

Meaning is probably my favorite of the group. It’s to have a purpose behind what you do. To live thoughtfully, intentionally, and with an understanding that everything you do impacts everything else. It’s about being a part of something that’s bigger than yourself and lasts beyond your lifetime. Meaning gives you reason to care and try your best.

Achievement or accomplishment is about the personal recognition that you were a part of something that matters. It’s reinforcing feedback that you contributed, applied yourself, and generated some form of result. Sometimes external sources can help validate your internal knowing, with the intention that you’re relating with it in a healthy and unattached way.

Vitality is last and actually, an addition to the original framework. And for good reason - the way you feel energetically is critical to experiencing the goodness in life. You could even count this as a layer on top of the rest because having a healthy body and sharp mind helps you infuse more quality into everything else. Vitality is a multiplier.

This is all probably not that brand new to you. The fundamentals will always be the fundamentals, and for good reason. And while living a good life is a tall task that takes a literal lifetime, hopefully this gives you some insight into which one to start paying more attention to first.

A lot of personal development is forward facing, talking about the new or better things you could be doing to improve your life. And while that’s all true and useful, it doesn’t tell the whole story. You also need to get good about avoiding going backwards.

Many people apply themselves fully to becoming healthier, more focused in their work, or being a better friend and family member... Only to erase all of the progress they’ve made in a moment.

It’s a week of healthy eating and then splurging at dinner on the weekend. It’s working hard all week to enable a free ‘catch up day’, and then you get distracted doing things that aren’t meaningful. It’s being present in your time with loved ones except for that one time you’re tired, on your phone not paying attention.

And it’s not like we actively choose these things to happen - they unconsciously pop up. And if we don’t have the awareness or energy to intervene, then a single poor choice can do a lot of damage and offset many good choices in an instant.

My favorite way to keep myself from going backwards, and make sure I don’t undo the progress I’ve made and the momentum I have, is to define standards for myself. I establish a high standard so that I’m clear on how my best self would choose to show up in various areas of my life - exercise, nutrition, sleep, work, time on my phone, connecting with loved ones, etc. This gives me a target to aim for that helps me push the boundary of my growth and consistency.

But pursuing that ideal isn’t always practical, or realistic, so I also establish a minimum standard for myself.

This is the line I don’t want to cross, that I’ve determined to be what’s minimally acceptable on an average day. It’s helpful to know because as I notice that things are starting to slip, and I’m not following through on my best intentions, I have a safety net of awareness. I have a second criteria that I get to measure my choices against that shouldn’t be hard to do, but still enforces a certain amount of thoughtfulness and intentionality.

When you hold yourself to a minimum standard, it means that you’ve identified the point where you’d start undoing forward progress if you were to continue.

For example, I have a sleep standard. My high standard is that at 9:30pm I transition into my night routine, with the intention to turn the lights off by 10:30. My minimum standard pushes that back to 10pm and an 11pm bed time. Functionally what this does is - if I miss my high standard for bed time, hypothetically I could stay up as late as I want with no consequence. And that could do some serious damage. But having that second timestamp at 10pm holds me accountable to a making another choice that keeps me from missing the intention entirely.

Defining your standards is a process of knowing what you want, and once they’re in place, they give you heightened awareness as you approach them. Being disciplined to make the right choice against those standards is easier when you have that clarity in place, and when you bundle in a daily reflection about how you did and goals around your consistency in this area, it promotes follow through.

I’d love to show you how I do that on a daily basis, and the system I’ve built for myself in my Self Improvement Scorecard.

If you’re curious to check that out, I made a video showing you how it works!

One of the most critical skills of the century is time management. In today’s world we are inundated with distractions - things to do, demands from others, so many responsibilities - and those who are the best at making the most of their time are the ones who find success with it. 

But the problem with time management is, and you’ve probably heard this before, you can’t manage time. Time is a constant. You can’t make more or manipulate it. So ultimately, time management is actually more a matter of where you choose to invest your energy and attention in the moments you have.

Time management is energy management.

Where you put your energy is how you spend your time. So you really should be more thoughtful about maximizing the energy you have to do things so that you can fully apply yourself within the time that you have.

But we’re not going to stop there. How do you know where to put your energy and attention? That’s the problem - there are so many things demanding of your energy these days that you could spend a whole day putting it into things that aren’t meaningful to you.

If time management is knowing where to put your energy in the time you have, then energy management is having clarity on what you want to do with your energy.

What’s a worthwhile investment? What’s important to you? What are the things that most directly contribute to the life you want to live?

Put your energy into that!

One of my favorite brands Vuori coined the mantra “Clarity is the ultimate currency”, and I agree. We don’t spend time... We allocate our energy within it. And we maximize our energy by doing the highest leverage thing, the thing that is most likely to create the result that we want.

It’s only when you have clarity that your time becomes incredibly valuable.

Clarity has a few different levels to it. There’s being clear on what you want (the goal). Being clear on the path to getting it (the strategy). And being clear on what you need to do by one to take action on it (tactics).

Clarity is efficiency. The more of it you have, the less energy you waste. And the less energy you waste, the more of it you have left to be channeled into high impact actions.

To demonstrate the connection between time management to clarity, let me ask you an insightful question:

If I gave you 5 extra hours this week to support your biggest goals, do you know exactly how you’d use it?

Answering that question requires clarity. And it dictates what you should do with your time.

I believe a foundational mindset that anyone needs to have to create the life they want for themselves is a disciplined mindset. They need to consistently do what most serves them, their goals, and the life they want to create. Otherwise their actions (on inaction) will be actively manifesting a different, undesirable reality.

Discipline is a complex topic because it has a lot of layers to it. The top layer is self-control and willpower where you can make yourself do whatever it is you tell yourself to do. At face value, this can be useful in the short-term... But it’s way more useful when used strategically.

There’s a concept called ‘Willpower Leveraging’ where you make yourself take uncomfortable action in such a way that it greatly promotes discipline in future moments. It’s making the intentional choice to use a small amount of willpower right now so that you have a lot of discipline when you need it later.

For example, telling a waitress to “Skip the french fries” is an easy sentence to say, and an effective way to intervene as it prevents you from actively needing to restrain yourself from eating french fries when they’re on your plate.

Or how making a precommitment to a mentor that you’ll get a project done by a certain date makes it much easier to start working on it the following week because now you have a promise you need to deliver on.

Leverage is when you put a certain amount in and you get more out. The higher the ratio between inputs and outputs, the more leverage. Thus ‘willpower leveraging’ is about being a little disciplined in one way such that it produces major discipline in others. 

Essentially, willpower leveraging is a form of environmental design because it impacts the context of future moments. As author Steve Levinson says in his book “Following Through”, it influences ‘the situation’ so that vices aren’t present, commitments are clear and known by others, and poor choices aren’t as accessible.

Practicing willpower leveraging is simple, but it’s also a skill you develop. You need the awareness to know what ways you can effectively intervene, and have the ability to summon the will to take action on the intervention. It’s easier said than done, which is why I’ve tried to make it as systematized as possible for myself: 

In the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge, I share a variety of ways you can use willpower leveraging to help you be more disciplined in your health habits and more focused by warding off distractions throughout the day. It also helps you implement a foundational system so that you can create more leverage in your life overall and start getting more positive results with less effort.

If you’re curious to check that out, I have more about the 21 Day Super Habits, check it out here!

The most important clarity to have in life is knowing what you want. This is true in the long run as you decide the career you want to be in, the lifestyle you want to have, and the friends you want to keep… As well as in the micro where you choose the tone you put in an email, the tradeoff between enjoying fries or opting for a side salad, and who you want to invite to an event.

I believe that consistently realigning around what you want is embedded in the process of living intentionally. It involves being more thoughtful about things so that you understand the short term and long term implications of your choices. And when you’re clear on what you holistically want, considering all the tradeoffs, then you can take action to achieve it.

What happens naturally is your internal clarity then gets expressed externally through the actions you take. The more clear the intention, the more directly an action can contribute toward fulfilling it. So much so that there’s a stark difference in effectiveness between making a specific ask and having a vague wish.

The difference between the two is the level of clarity you have with a request:

A specific ask is narrow and precise. A vague wish is open, undetermined, and intangible.

Here’s an example of how this played out in my life. Last year I ran a fundraiser called New Year For Good, a campaign to help people make good on their big goals for the New Year while donating 100% of the revenue to charity. Talk about a win-win!

As I was hustling to grow the movement and taking calls with people, I’d often ask for introductions and referrals. I’d say “Do you know anyone who’s into personal development and social impact?” To that they’d respond, “I’m sure I do! Let me think about it and get back to you.” Very few did.

So I changed my strategy from making a vague wish to a specific ask. Instead I started asking “Do you know any former athletes who are ambitious, have big dreams, and care about social impact?” The right person came to mind right away.

When I got more clear on who I wanted to collaborate with to build this campaign, my efforts to do it became more effective. The universe rewards a specific ask because it doesn’t know how to deliver on a vague wish. Or when it does, it’s not as impactful because it wasn’t exactly what you wanted.

So my recommendation to you is: Get clear and ask away! Not only will you waste less time and effort when you do, but you just might get what you asked for.

One of the big, existential questions we’ve all asked ourselves before is “Why am I here?” What’s underlying the question is an interest to discover what our unique purpose is, who we’re meant to help, what we’re meant to contribute, and how we’re meant to be involved in shaping a better future.

As someone who founded the For Purpose Foundation… And speaks often about the importance of finding your purpose… I actually argue that we all share the same purpose. I believe we’re all here to become all that we can be, to the very best version of what we’re capable, and use our gifts and talents in service of the world. 

The way we express that purpose varies person to person and even day to day, but I’m not going to get into all of that. I’m going to take it in a different direction today…

What if we’re all here for the same reason, and that reason is to just be here?

Take that in.

What if it doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that? We’re here because we’re here. What other reason do we need?

We put so much pressure on ourselves to do all of these things, but what if what we do doesn’t even matter? What if the only thing we ever needed to do is just be present with what’s in front of us?

What if we enjoyed taking in the nuances and details of every moment… Experience what’s happening around us and integrate it into the feelings of an emotional response… And observe what’s happening within us so that we can better understand ourselves and our essence?

As you can tell, I have many more questions than answers for this one. And that’s because a part of me is scared to admit that it might be this simple.

I’m wired for high-achievement. I’ve designed my life to be in control, disciplined, and making progress toward what I find meaningful. I have goals, ambitions, and dreams that drive me forward.

But what if the pursuit of all of that is taking away from the experience of just being here in the now? What if I’ve chosen to orient my life in a certain way where I’m hyper-focused on 1% of reality and missing 99% of it? 

Maybe monks and hermits living in isolation have it all figured out? Or maybe not. And as I process this, I’m not ready to completely uproot the life I’ve constructed for myself... The life I believe that I want…

But, I will take this as a very important reminder to be more mindful!

If someone were to share the secret to success, it’s not actually a secret...

We all know what it takes to produce unbelievable, overwhelming results in our life - Consistency.

When we consistently make good choices, follow through on our daily commitments, and take action toward our goals… We become exponentially more likely to achieve them. Darren Hardy has popularized this as “The Compound Effect”.

Some of the key ingredients to consistency are self-control and self-discipline. They’re often used interchangeably, but there’s actually a significant difference between the two:

Self-control relates more to our ability to resist an urge or do what we feel tempted to do. It’s to avoid the allure of pleasure, or hedonism, knowing that overall we’re a lot better off without it. In many ways self-control is self-restraint, keeping you from doing what might feel good in the moment but actually does you harm - like overindulging on sweets, being unfaithful to a partner, getting distracted on your phone when you’re supposed to be focused, or whatever it might be.

Self-control is like will-power where you make yourself make a good choice that aligns with what’s most important to you, rather than what you feel like doing in the moment. Self-control is effortful.

And the important distinction is… Self-control is just one of the expressions of self-discipline. We conflate the two because it’s the one we’re most aware of, but if I’m being honest, it’s also the least significant.

Self-discipline relates to your overall ability to follow through on doing what most serves you, consistently, despite the circumstances. Only a small fraction of what we do on a daily basis is done consciously… Most of it happens without us even realizing it. Every day we take consistent action and we don’t even know it because it falls into this unconscious category.

So what guides self-discipline behind the scenes, in every moment when you’re not choosing self-control?

In one word: Environment.

Like a canoe on a river, your actions flow automatically in the direction of your environment, effortlessly downstream.

This means that if you want to master self-discipline, it’s much more a matter of changing the design of your environment than it is making yourself do things consistently.

What I’ve just described is so important that it’s what I call one of the 7 Fundamentals To Self Improvement. If you want to learn more about the power of environment, and how to get it working for you and not against you… And learn what the other 6 game-changing fundamentals are, click here and discover them for yourself!