Past Episodes:

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Reset Filters

You’re Living What Used To Be Your Goal

March 18, 2024

You might not even realize it, but there’s something about your life right now that used to be your goal or dream.

Maybe you bought a house or moved to a new city... You’ve completed that project... Launched that thing... Landed that job... Brought that event to life... Or ran that race.

The reason I mention it is because maybe it doesn’t feel like it. It’s unnatural for us to see all of the life milestones we’ve reached because we’re facing forward and those are now behind us. And now we see new goals, new aspirations, new dreams on the horizon that we’re passionately moving toward.

The psychology behind this is what Dr. Benjamin Hardy calls “the gap and the gain”. Rather than measuring our progress from who we used to be to where we are today (the gain), we more often measure the difference between where we presently are and where we want to go (the gap). 

And that’s why I want to shake up the pattern and bring your awareness to the fact that right now, you’re living what used to be a goal of yours.

When we acknowledge the gains we’ve made in our lives and recognize how far we’ve come, it inspires us that we have what it takes to keep on going. I’m not arguing that we should forever stay complacent with what we have - ambition is healthy and important - but that we’ll feel more fueled and energized by the fact that we can in fact reach our goals.

So let’s take that pause right now. Think about the one area of your life where you feel like you’re falling short, or your present performance within it isn’t where you want it to be.

Now I want you to think back one year, and reflect on where things were at in this area of your life then.

And again, another year, reflect where things were at then.

Maybe that perspective helps you give credit to all of your growth, advancement, and improvement. Sure, you see the gap and know there’s more progress to be made, but now you also see a little more of the gain.

If the idea of making fast progress excites you and you want to know the most effective things you can do to accelerate your self-growth and success, that take less than 15 minutes a day to do, click here to learn about the 9 Super Habits!

...

See More

Weekend Recap 3/11 - 3/15

March 16, 2024
No items found.

...

See More

What Do We Do With Emotions?

March 15, 2024

It’s tricky to figure out what to do with our emotions. There is a lot of consensus in self-improvement with different people saying the same thing in different ways. Emotions are different though, and there's more variety in recommendations.

On one hand, there’s the Stoic side of self-improvement that talks about being in control of your emotions. Often misunderstood as emotional repression, Stoic philosophy very much encourages you to acknowledge and feel emotions, but to not let them influence your decisions or behaviors. Stoicism is about having a fortified mind that is stronger than the environment, whether that be emotions internally or unfair externally. 

Then there’s the somatic side of self-improvement, which encourages you to fully embrace and embody your emotions. It suggests that if you feel something, let it be expressed because otherwise the energy will be stored in your body. Somatic exercises encourage you to uncover past emotions so that you can heal the traumas associated with them and free up your meridians and energetic pathways.

And then there’s the more biological approach led by people like Joe Dispenza who talk about how emotions are meant to be observed because they’re the body’s way of communicating something to us. The line of thought suggests that emotions play an evolutionary purpose to help us self-regulate and survive. And Dr. Joe talks a lot about how we can train ourselves to replace the emotions we feel with new emotions that are representative of who we want to become rather than who we are.

With that brain dump complete... What do we do with emotions? What’s the right, healthy thing to do with emotions?

I can’t possibly answer that and I see value in all of these approaches. My basic encouragement is to be intentional about it. WIth your needs and your desires for who you want to become, find the points on the spectrum that serve you. 

If you want to be more resilient and less reactive, try the Stoic approach. If you want to be more emotionally available, try somatic. If you want to create more alignment, congruence, and manifestation, try biological.

No matter the path, emotions are a part of our human experience, so it suits us to find our ways to navigate them.

...

See More

“It doesn’t need to be forever for it to be right.”

March 14, 2024
No items found.

As a culture we’ve romanticized the idea of ‘happily ever after’. We’re told to ‘never quit’, ‘always be loyal’, and to 'stick it out'. And in that there’s an extra suggestion that anything else is weak or selfish.

I think that’s a bit unfair.

I’ve found that life has seasons, rhythms, and flows. Certain times requires certain things, and other times require other things. That’s why today I want to add this very important perspective: “It doesn’t need to be forever for it to be right”.

There are friends that come and go in your life, and play a really pivotal purpose while they’re in it. When the friendship slowly fades away it’s no one’s fault, it ran its course. I have many friends like that who I’m not as close with but am still deeply grateful for how they impacted my life.

The same goes for a hobby or interest. Right now I’m doing Jiujitsu and I already know that it’s not something I’ll do for the rest of my life. But that doesn’t discredit what it’s doing for me now. Because even though I know I’m going to move on from it some day, does that mean I shouldn’t have the same enthusiasm for it today? That would be a disservice to the opportunity.

And I’d argue it’s the same for our purpose. We feel so much pressure to know what our purpose is in life. But your purpose can change. In fact it should! For me in high school and college it was to be the best student-athlete I can be. In my first jobs it was to help people with their pain management and physical ability. And now it’s supporting people like you who want to ignite their potential in service of making the world a better place. None of these purposes were right or wrong - They were all appropriate for the time. 

“It doesn’t need to be forever for it to be right”, and I feel like we miss out on being present with what we have now because we know someday it’ll be gone. But even then, it matters immensely because it shaped you into who you became.

...

See More

Don't Start With What Went Wrong

March 13, 2024
No items found.

A key piece to improvement is reviewing our performance. But when we enter our evaluation with the intention to find opportunities to make things better, we naturally see things through the lens of what wasn’t good enough.

We can be more intentional than that! Rather than reenforcing our negativity bias, let’s commit to seeing what’s going right before addressing what went wrong. There are a few reasons why this is such a powerful perspective shift and they all build around the concept of priming.

The first moments of an interaction, reflection, or evaluation set the anchor. Everything else that comes after that is placed relative to the anchor. So if we start with a more positive reflection of all the things that went right, it sets the tone. This means that areas that fell short or didn’t meet expectations are viewed through the lens of opportunity rather than criticism.

In addition, priming naturally shifts our awareness. When we start with what went wrong, it’s easier to find more things that went wrong. But the opposite is true too. So we can prime positive awareness and ultimately shape our perspective.

All of this leads into an important end - Our intention is to do well.

We’d prefer not to have a lapses in performance, but ultimately when they happen it serves us to turn them into learning lessons that help us do better next time. Starting with what’s going right infuses more belief that you can succeed, that the goal is achievable, and that belief helps fight off any doubt or discouragement that might creep in. 

This is why I like starting my conversation with either gratitude or wins. When you do that, you establish the anchor, prime positive awareness, and set yourself up to believe that you’re capable of the results you want. Give it a try and see if it changes the nature of your conversations.

...

See More

Maintenance Mode

March 12, 2024

I’ve been experiencing a theme recently that has come up in myself and in others. Self-improvement is all about making progress, pushing forward, and growth. That’s what the word ‘improvement’ suggests, telling us to urge forward at all times.

But what if it’s not a season to push and grow? What if now isn’t the right time to initiate personal change and transformation?

I want to introduce the idea of being in maintenance mode. Maintenance mode is when you use all of the focus, attention, and energy you normally put toward growth to sustain your current level.

Life can change fast and it can place unexpected demands on you. It could be a new responsibility at work, a family or personal health issue, a temporary difficult situation we must manage, or anything else that life has to throw at us.

Rather than trying to step up to the challenge and keep growing, it often makes sense just to keep things where they’re at. The reason that’s the case is because if you try to take it all on and continue, it’s likely unsustainable. This causes you to strain yourself to the point where you need to recover, and progress is lost.

Alternatively, if your core focus during trying times is to maintain your current level, and make sure you do not compromise your baseline, when it all passes you’ll be poised to pick up right where you left off.

What does maintenance mode look like? It means instead of setting stretch goals or trying to elevate your standards, you hold yourself to a level that you’re familiar with and you know what’s required of you.

Shifting things into maintenance mode is not weak. It’s self-aware, and as one of the pillars of self-improvement, it’s a necessary ingredient to living a fulfilling and purposeful life.

...

See More

Breakthroughs Come From Breaking Out Of Routine

March 11, 2024
No items found.

I’m a huge advocate for having structure and routine in life. Jocko Willink says “Discipline creates freedom”, and I believe that we have more license to be creative when we have lines to draw within because it helps us know where to start.

However, there are some downsides to having overly rigid routines. When we do the same things over and over again it leads to something called ‘automaticity’. This is what the mind does - It tries to offload the cognitive demand of repetitive tasks so that you can save your higher-level thinking for more important things.

While this is a great and helpful mechanism for many things, it creates problems when it causes us to be unconscious for things we’d rather be more present for (and engaged in). For example, gratitude journaling. Automaticity slowly makes the practice a little more automated, meaning you become less connected to the experience, experiencing less gratitude only receive a fraction of the benefits.

So, when we settle into routines over time we start to get less out of them. 

The engine behind automaticity is that we gravitate toward what we’re familiar with. It’s an evolutionary trait that we all share as humans, so if we want to create breakthroughs to our next level we need to break out of our current routine.

This means that we need to create a pattern interrupt. We need to inject consciousness and awareness into what we’re doing to bring us back to it. When you pierce the facade of how things have been you get more choice in how things end up.

We all want a breakthrough. A breakthrough in our health and wellness where we start crushing our workouts, buzz with energy, and get really good rest. A breakthrough in our work where we do a great job with that project, are assigned more responsibility, and increase our income. And the fastest way to achieve that is by doing things different from how you’re currently doing them.

So what can you do differently to ignite the breakthrough you’ve been looking for? For me, right now it’s by experimenting with my eating and sleeping schedules. Reflect on it for yourself and see what you come up with! 

If you want to learn a few small things you can do to radically increase your energy, productivity, and mindset, I’ve put together a video series about the 9 Super Habits that have the power to transform your life with little effort behind the scenes.

...

See More

Weekend Recap 3/4 - 3/8

March 9, 2024
No items found.

...

See More

Asking Deeper Questions

March 8, 2024

If you’re looking to cultivate more depth, intimacy, and connection in your relationships, it’s within your control.

If you have superficial relationships is because you tolerate it, or maybe even manifest it.

The beautiful part is, when you take 100% ownership everything is your fault (which means you can fix it) and everything is earned based on merit (as a testament to your hard work).

Relationship expert Matthew Hussey says that we can quickly breakthrough the mundane and ignite more meaningful conversations when guide the discussion toward these three things: Values, beliefs, and experiences. The reason these categories are so powerful and connecting is because it requires that you add more context, and in doing so share more personal information about yourself.

First are values. This is what you care about and what matters to you. When you get people reflecting on what matters to them, and understand how different values are expressed in different situations, you get to peak into their inner workings that aren’t readily visible. This allows you to appreciate the person more and see where they’re coming from.

Next are beliefs. Our beliefs are latent in everything we do, influencing our every thought, action, and reaction. Often unconscious, conversation about beliefs helps people to get really introspective. During this self-discovery they more naturally share details about themselves that they wouldn’t think to share. Meanwhile, you get to learn more about what makes them who they are.

And last are experiences. This one is more obvious and it’s a common topic of conversation. But there are more advanced levels of asking about experiences. It’s not just what happened, but how did it change them? What else did that influence or shift in their life? Often we can talk about experiences as the entry point to having deeper conversations about beliefs and values.

To make this more actionable, let me give you one question you can ask to help dive deeper into conversation.

Relating to values, you can ask “Why is that important to you?”.

Relating to beliefs, you can ask “Why do you think that?”.

And relating to experiences, you can ask “How has this changed you?”

Cheers to having better conversations, asking better questions, and living more connected lives!

...

See More

"Only those who risk going too far find out how far they can go."

March 7, 2024
No items found.

Former Navy SEAL David Goggins - Who’s known as an accomplished military service member, an ultra-endurance athlete, and the toughest person in the world - Knows a lot about our personal limitations. In his book “Can’t Hurt Me” he talks about something in our mind called ‘The Governor’. 

The Governor is our brain’s fail-safe off switch. It’s the voice of reason trying to keep us from overexerting ourselves. It’s there to protect us, but Goggins estimates that The Governor is activated at only 40% of our physical potential. This means that we’re capable of more than double what we think we are when our mind says we’ve hit our limit.

It takes courage to expose yourself to what lies beyond your comfort zone. It’s uncertain and potentially damaging to push too far. But here’s the truth: "Only those who risk going too far, find out how far they can go." 

When you “risk going too far”, it suggests that it’s very possible that you hurt yourself. That you end up on the wrong side of the bet you made. That’s what risk is! But in order to find out just how far you can go and the true edges of your personal limits, it requires that you put yourself in harm’s way. 

This is obvious in a workout where you commit to a weight, speed, or amount that challenges you. That’s how you find out what’s on the other side.

In business you take financial risks or try strategies that aren’t guaranteed to produce results. That’s the only way you tap into the scale of results that you’re capable of.

In relationships you need to be willing to save 'I love you' first and risk heartbreak, or make contact with a new friend first and risk rejection, to discover just how strong your relationships can be.

Darren Hardy puts it this way - Life is like a pendulum. If you want to experience a certain level of success, you need to expose yourself to a certain level of failure. As long as the pendulum has the energy to swing high on the side of success, it has to also have the energy to swing high on the side of failure.

If you want to live a more outstanding life you need to be open to taking on more outstanding risk. 

And that’s what this quote tells us. "Only those who risk going too far, find out how far they can go." You don’t need to be the person that is all or nothing, burning the boats and being reckless in pursuit of discovering their full potential like David Goggins. That’s not enjoyable to everyone…

But maybe bumping yourself up a on the spectrum will serve you in experiencing the next level of depth that you’re after in life. And then when you get there, maybe you bump it a little more!

...

See More
No results found. Please check your filters.
Reset Filters
Learn More!
Subscribe For Daily Emails!
Send Me The Fundamentals!