Self Improvement Daily Podcast

One of the things that has changed the way I live on a day to day basis is orienting my life around the standards I set for myself. Goals are nice, but they’re often aspirational and require that you stretch yourself to achieve them. Standards are more grounded in who you want to be on a daily basis, the level of expectation you have for yourself, and they serve as the bass drum to your daily performance.

Many people talk about wanting to hold themselves to a higher standard but fail to do so, and I have two hypotheses as to why. The first is that people haven’t clearly defined them. How can you know if you reached the level of performance you expect for yourself if you haven’t outlined what that even means? 

Beyond that, you need to objectively reflect on a daily basis as to whether you did what you intended to do. Your mind can make up some convenient perspective about your performance, but when you state the facts and compare them to the target, you can see them for what they are.

Let’s use the example of holding yourself to a higher standard in your diet. What does that even mean? First you need to define it. Perhaps it means hitting your macros, fulfilling a gluten-free or vegan diet. Or maybe it means not eating processed foods, oversnacking, having more than one serving of dessert, or eating within an intermittent fasting window. The more detailed you get about those daily standards, the more you can objectively compare what you chose to do with what you intended to do.

A standard is not meant to be completely unattainable or overly ambitious. If you’re looking for improvement, you can make adjustments one criteria at a time. Start with a gluten-free lunch before converting your whole diet. Change one serving of dessert to one bite to taste it. Like a dial, your standards evolve one intention at a time.

Your standards also change in different seasons of life. If you have a child, start a new job, move to a new city or have a new condition, that calls for new expectations of yourself that are more compatible with the opportunities, commitments, and limitations you’re currently facing. When you choose to orient your life around your standards, you create the foundational health and productivity you need to strive for bigger goals!

I’ve got a brand new process to share with you. If you’ve been wanting to raise your standard and tap into your greater potential, knowing that you can be more consistent and international on a daily basis, then click here to book a time to chat - I’d love to find a way to support you.

‍

Here’s something that rocked me and is turning my world upside down. I was chatting with my good friend David about life, relationships, dreams, and self-awareness. Something unexpected surfaced. He asked me why my wife Irene loves me and after a few obvious answers, I continued to say “Because I give her space to be herself”. 

After saying it, I paused. I wondered… “Am giving myself space to be myself?”

For many years I’ve built a certain persona and perception. An identity if you will. I’m a high performer who holds himself to a high standard. This means that when everyone’s having dessert or a drink, I’m not. When people want to go out and party, I go home and get a good night’s rest. When spontaneous plans pop up in the middle of the week, I make sure I cover my commitments before choosing to be a part of them. 

On one hand this is great in helping me to be fit, well-connected, influential, and successful in many people’s eyes. But is that who I am at my core? I don’t know that I’ve given myself enough space to do anything else to find out. 

My current way of doing things, behaving in ways that others know me to be, is comfortable. It’s easier to maintain who I am now than it is to experiment with who I might actually be. On the rare occasions when I do indulge in a meal or have a few drinks or stay up late on a spontaneous adventure… I’m quick to criticize myself and judge it as wrong.

But I’m intrigued to explore it because it’s the root of the way that I receive others. I can’t fully love and accept others for who they are if I haven’t fully accepted who I am. The only reason I have opinions of others is because I still hold opinions about myself. And that’s something I really want to improve.

We are all mirrors to each other. What we experience about everything is purely our own. Sure other people may prompt scenarios that we engage with, but our interaction, interpretation, or judgment of that scenario is a reflection of ourselves.

I want to pose the same question to you: What if who you are today isn’t who you’re meant to be? Have you given yourself space to be yourself?

‍

No matter what we try to do in life, there’s going to be competition. On a sports team one player is on the field and the other sits on the bench. In business one company wins the contract and the other gets denied. In dating one guy gets the girl and the other one stays single. That’s just the way it works - in a shared world we’re going to go after the same thing, and sometimes our efforts are going to conflict.

What matters immensely is how you approach that competition. Either you can rise up or bring others down. Gary Vaynerchuk uses the analogy of a skyscraper. If you want to have the tallest building in the city there are two ways to do that: Build taller or tear every other building that’s taller down. 

Competition is an important catalyst for growth. Not making the starting line up, losing the deal, or missing out on the lady can be used as fuel to make you better. Someone else’s success or prominence doesn’t threaten your own but actually brings it out. There’s rich feedback in understanding how your performance fell short to someone else’s. It highlights opportunities for improvement.

This is a healthy, abundant approach to competition and it’s something I’ve really had to work on personally. For many years I wasn’t good at receiving feedback. I realize now the root of that was that my sense of self-worth was in my achievement and if I lost, I interpreted it to mean that I was a loser. But I’ve grown a lot in that area.

It was actually highlighted last week! I’m building out a new technology in the self-improvement space. On Thursday I spoke with someone who consults with a major competitor, and he shared all his insights seeking to support me. Friday I was texting back and forth with someone who isn’t as far along as I was, building an app that does the same thing, and I willingly offered my honest insight.

That’s what healthy, abundant competition is really about. How do we help each other be better knowing that we’ll need to get better ourselves to keep up? When that happens, everybody wins. We all improve and take a step closer toward our potential.

‍

Some people are more impulsive than others. They see the thing they want so they buy it without thinking it through. They feel a certain way about a person and they share it. They get caught up in the moment and overindulge themselves. In many cases impulsivity creates an immediate and short-term reward but it often comes with long-term consequences. Some people like spontaneity, and so be it. If that’s what they choose to do, they need to understand the implications.

This negative connotation to doing things impulsively is built into the definition: It was done urgently, without much forethought, and despite better judgment. If something is labeled as an impulse or temptation then intuitively you know it’s something you probably shouldn’t do. Having the awareness to admit something is an impulse forces you to acknowledge the truth hidden behind the feeling.

In his book “Indistractable” Nir Eyal offers a way for people to overcome impulses by “surfing the urge”. When you first feel compelled to do something that you know is a vice or an expression of a lesser self, allow yourself to sit with it for a bit. The simple practice of giving yourself more time with it decreases its influence on you. 

Today’s world is full of reasons to splurge on instant gratification. It’s always available within arms reach and at our fingertips. For me, I can get impulsive by checking something on my phone or grabbing a snack. That’s why I’ve implemented strategies to support me in being more intentional with both:

With snacking, I try to set a 10 minute timer. If I’m still feeling hungry in 10 minutes, then I serve myself a specific portion of a healthy snack to tide me over. As for checking my phone, I’ve set boundaries that I don’t use social media for personal reasons or consumption before noon and after 8pm, and I have accountability around it. I also have set up app limits that notify me when I’ve been on for too long.

These are examples of how you can tactically design around the impulses you expect to feel. If you have something specific in place, you’ll be that much more effective at managing an impulse when it comes.

‍

We make so many decisions in a day, so many of which we aren’t even aware of. What we neglect to realize is how consequential each one of those decisions are and how it permanently shapes the future. As simple as it is and for whatever reason, this became real for me last week when I decided to shave.

When I was making my schedule the previous night, I decided I wasn’t going to shave. I thought a little scruff looked good and was appropriate for one meeting in particular. I went to bed and my mind was settled. Then the next day, when I hopped in the shower something compelled me to shave. I had no good reason to change my mind. But I did and quickly shaved in the shower before fulfilling the rest of my plan for the day.

While I was shaving, I realized all of the downstream implications of the choice: I was now going to be later to the Bible Study I was headed to which would change who I’d talk to when I got there and the conversation I’d have… Which then impacts the seat I’d take in the circle which affects where everyone else sits… Which creates an entirely different experience during the group conversation.

Further it meant that I was driving a little later than I planned to… Which means I would be surrounded by different cars and people than I otherwise would… Which then changes the time they get where they’re going and the downstream effects of that on everyone they interact with. 

Isn’t that wild? All because I decided to shave in the morning, and it changed everything.

I understand it’s impossible to quantify the difference, we’ll never know the reality that could have been, but isn’t it interesting to think about how the life we experience is perfectly designed by all of your choices and the choices taken by people around you? 

In that way we’re much more interconnected than we realize, everything we do matters for everyone, and it inspires you to be more intentional. Because if those changes can all happen passively as a byproduct of a single random decision… Imagine what’s possible when you actively choose the inputs you want to contribute to our shared ecosystem.

The world runs on cause and effect and in everything you do, you’re creating cause. With great power comes great responsibility!

‍

There is nothing that changes your life, or changes the world, like taking action. Existence follows its natural course until something is done externally to disrupt it. Many people default to living in the flow that comes from all the events and actions taken around them, but some choose to create their future by taking intentional actions that shape it. 

Follow through involves having a clear intention for what you want to do and then executing it. The shift in reality is only as good as the clarity you have for what you are going to do… And the clarity means nothing if you don’t put it into practice. 

There are two different types of follow through that each need their own explanation: Following through once on something you need to do, and following through consistently on what you know is best.

Following through on something once is often thought to be an act of will. You need to sit down and submit your taxes, make that hard phone call, ask that person out, and bite the bullet one time. You know what you need to do, now you just need to do it - and it will change your reality when you do.

The best way to make taking action one time easier is by implementing acute interventions into your environment. You can put yourself in a peak state that fills you with confidence before making the phone call. You can lay out your mail all across your desk to make it inconvenient to do anything else. You design your environment one time such that it nudges you toward taking a specific action.

Alternatively, and the focus for many people in their personal development, is to take action consistently. Consistent follow through is so powerful because it constantly nudges existence in your favor. Building a new exercise routine, getting in the habit of creating a schedule for the day, or choosing to review your family finances once a week are all meaningful actions to follow through on consistently.

Designing your environment for consistent action requires structural interventions. These are fixtures and features embedded in your life that change the way things flow. Adding structural interventions often involves upgrading the systems that run your life - writing out an exercise plan for the week, having a scheduling procedure, and setting a recurring meeting with your partner to review finances all function as new and improved systems.

‍

The single most important question you can ask in your self improvement is “What do I want?” You can’t decide who you need to be, what you’re going to do, or how you’re going to get there until you answer it. Clarity precedes progress. The more you know where you’re headed, the faster you can navigate your way toward it.

But… It’s a really loaded question, and in some cases a trap. Not only is it hard to figure out what you want but it’s even harder to actually mean it. What you want doesn’t exist in isolation. There are embedded tradeoffs and consequences to everything. For example you could say you want to run a 7 figure business, but the reality of it might make you miserable. Perhaps it requires a lot of travel away from your family and the stress of supporting families financially could be overbearing. The true experience of achieving what you think you want might not actually be what you want.

To further complicate things, oftentimes the things that we want are achievement and outcome-oriented. They're not a state of being but accomplishments that we expect would make us feel a certain way about ourselves. They’re proxies to a state of being. It’s wanting a big business because it will make you feel successful. Or wanting to run a marathon because it will make you feel better about your body.

The state of being is the real payoff. That’s what your effort is really in service of. And the tricky part is, creating a shift to your state of being is more the byproduct of your belief system than it is your accomplishments. 

There’s a quote popularized by Jon Kabat-Zinn that reads “Wherever you go, there you are.” This doesn’t just apply for the places you physically travel to but also the belief system you bring to any life moment. You perceive your accomplishments through a certain lens. This is how more financial success can never feel like enough or physical feats don’t change your relationship with your body. It’s just the same old belief system painting another accomplishment the same color it always has. 

All that to say… If you actually get what you want, it might not feel like it. The wrong goals could set you up for disappointment, especially if your relationship with your results doesn’t change when your results themselves start to change. There’s a lot more that goes into changing that, but if you’re looking for a place to start - commit to 30 days writing down 3 things you’re grateful for every day. It will literally change the way you see life.

As Wayne Dyer says “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at, change."

‍

Something that I see as a huge need in the world today is that people want to believe in themselves. They want to feel like they can actually answer life’s call and achieve the things set on their heart. They want to feel empowered by who they are and what they can contribute to others. The world would be a much better and brighter place if people more confidently pursued their passions.

The reason so many people have self-doubt is because they’re given so many reasons to doubt themselves. They see the person with a great body on social media but they haven’t heard about the underlying eating disorder. Or they see someone with a huge business but not that they missed payroll and aren’t paying themselves. 

Reality is not as it appears. If people were to be more vulnerable and honest in sharing how things actually are, we’d realize we’re not the only ones who don’t have it figured out. While that’d be great, it’s not the world we live in. So instead we need to meet people where they’re at if we want to support them. 

Something I’ve found really valuable, that is a cornerstone to the way I hope to influence people, is to believe in others more than they believe in themselves. When someone starts to doubt if they have what it takes, I do my best to remind them of how capable they are. When someone can’t see the progress they’ve been making, I share my perspective so they can see it through my eyes. 

It’s so critical to my message that it’s in the intro for the podcast: “A better world starts with a better you and YES YOU CAN!”

Believing in someone else is kind of like having an accountability partner. The intention is that you can hold yourself accountable, but if you slip someone else is there to catch you and get you back on track. The same goes for self-belief. When you start to doubt yourself, it really helps to have someone else remind you just how amazing you are.

But this isn’t meant to be about me. I’m only sharing my experience because it reveals what I’ve found to be one of the highest-leveraged ways of making an impact, and changing lives. It takes so little effort to send a note of encouragement or share how you see how hard someone’s working, how far they’ve come, or their beautiful character shining through… Yet it produces multiples of positive impact.

I’m not perfect about it but I have a daily routine where I send a note of gratitude to one person in my life - Just letting them know that I’m there and that I believe in them. People tell me all the time that it’s exactly what they needed to hear. 

It only takes a minute to do. If you’re feeling up for being a real world-changer, then commit to sending one note out to someone that you care about and believe in. You’ll be shocked by what happens!

‍