At an event I heard Darrell Vesterfelt speak and he shared the simplest philosophy to self improvement I’ve ever heard.

Darrell is the VP of Growth for Mighty Networks, he's built and sold a handful of businesses, and he's created a life by his design. And while of that is impressive, what's most impressive is the way that he did it.

At every juncture and with every decision, Darrell asked “What’s the next right thing to do?”.

Bad news from a vendor or a client - What’s the next right thing?

Gets a new and exciting opportunity presented to him - What’s the next right thing?

Feeling stuck about how to proceed on solving a problem - What’s the next right thing?

You don’t need to know or do everything. You don’t need to have the perfect strategy in place. You don’t even need to know how to do it. You just need to take action with full alignment toward what you want.

It’s such a simple philosophy but it’s so effective, and connects to guidance offered by two other leaders in the space:

Brian Johnson, the founder of Heroic, makes the simple recommendation to “do more of what works and less of what doesn’t”. It’s a path that will get you slowly optimizing toward the lifestyle and realities you desire.

And in Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the power of decisive moments. We can choose to make a good choice or a bad choice, and it’s the accumulation of those choices that determines where we end up.  He uses the example of tree branches where at every decision point, you either branch up or down. More good choices lead to more positive inflections, and more bad choices lead to more negative inflections. 

Both of these theories imply the exact same thing - Doing the next right thing. 

One choice, one action, one intervention at a time, you are building your life. When you live with more consciousness to know you’re making decision, have the clarity to know what’s the right choice, and exhibit the discipline to execute it - Darrell claims that in 30 days your life would be unrecognizable.

I call this living intentionally where you’re thoughtful and purposeful about everything you do. And while the process of consistently living out this process requires more awareness, the next time you find yourself making a decision, ask yourself this question:

What’s the next right thing to do?

More often than not, the first thing that I see ambitious professionals deprioritize is their self-care.

They’re passionate about what they do, so they work long and busy hours. They have people and families that depend on them, so they fulfill those responsibilities with a good attitude.

It’s only after those two intentions are met that they make time for themselves - their fitness, their rest, their mental health, and their sanity. And the days where they get to squeeze that in might feel like a luxury.

I understand the logic behind why people choose to sacrifice their self-care and wellness. There are only 24 hours in a day. If you choose to spend more time on yourself, that means you have less time for your work and your loved ones. But if you have big goals at work that you’re committed to... And there’s nothing more important to you than your loved ones... Taking time for yourself is a trade you might be unwilling to make. 

But this rationale is missing one important part: Not all time is made the same.

Overall output isn’t just a matter of quantity, but also quality. You can get more and better work done in less time when you do it the right way. In other words, you can create more leverage. When you do things with more quality and efficiency, you can get more out for the same amount of time that you put in.

There’s nothing that elevates quality and efficiency more than prioritizing your self-care. When you exercise regularly, you sustain higher energy levels. When you go to bed on time and get a full night of sleep, you wake up ready to attack the day rather than playing catch up. When you’re healthy you have more vitality for life.

Yes, doing these things takes time from other things in your day… But when you’re energized - You’re more focused at work, better at deflecting distraction, and you get more of the right things done. And in the moments you have with your loved ones, you have the capacity to be more present and connected, and they feel it.

Self-care and prioritizing your own personal wellness creates leverage in all areas of your life because it’s not just about the time you spend doing things, but the quality infused in that time. When you treat self-care as a tradeoff, it’s a linear equation. But when you treat self-care as an investment, it’s exponential. 

It’s a simple equation: Output = Quantity x Quality.

Given that you can’t create more time in a day, the only way to increase output is by increasing the quality you put into the time you have. And in my opinion, taking exceptional care of yourself is the best way to do exactly that.

If you know it’s time to take your self-care more seriously, and you don't have the good habits and action plans in place to see success with it, I really encourage you to check out the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge. By the end of it, you’ll have built a foundation of consistency, discipline, and systems that can make that dream of a new, healthy lifestyle your reality!

Here’s a problem I see a lot of ambitious, high performing people making. They think that when it comes to introducing change into their life, it needs to be exactly what they imagine.

To be in the best shape of your life you need to exercise 5 times a week and have a perfectly clean diet...

To grow your social media presence you need to be posting high-quality content, every single day, on all channels...

To afford your dream home you need to cut all unnecessary subscriptions and expenses to aggressively save more...

And while all of that is true, it’s the finish line. It’s what you want to get to eventually.

More often than not, the difference in lifestyle between how things are now and how you picture they could be is vast. And creating full, sweeping changes is more disruptive than is sustainable. 

Oftentimes that’s because the ‘new normal’ you’re trying to create can be so unfamiliar that it actually initiates self-sabotage. Your mind actively resists the changes and tries to convince you to give up, make exceptions, and take back your commitments - which makes change that much harder.

The commitment also doesn’t fit into the current design of your life and because of that, other areas start to suffer. Think of it like a puzzle piece - if you try to force fit a big new piece into the puzzle, it’s going to displace a lot of other things. This means you don’t have the time and energy for what you really care about, making sacrifices with unintended consequences that you didn’t choose.

That’s why the very basics of behavior change is all about starting small and consistent. It’s one of the core messages in “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and the mechanism behind the idea of improving “1% every day”.

And the reason why? Because it works.

So rather than committing to getting in the gym 5 times a week, start with going for a 10 minute walk 5 times a week. Rather than building a new healthy diet from scratch, replace your tendency to snack on chips to snacking on veggies. Rather than posting every day on social media, post once a week. 

People forget that in order to reach their ideal, they need to start by taking their first step toward it. It’s something you build toward as a progression plan. And once they start to do that, they realize that there’s less of a daily battle to take action, less fits and starts of undoing and redoing progress, and more continuity in growth.

And no matter what it is you’re looking to improve in your life, I have a first step for you that will help you be more consistent and accountable. It’s the underlying engine that makes all growth possible, and helps you put this lesson into practice. Because learning more won’t change your life, taking new action will. And that’s exactly what I show you how to do in the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge.

What is life? It’s a deep existential question that people like us ask while we’re on our self improvement journey. We desperately want to make the most out of life, experience everything the world has to offer, and become who we’re capable of becoming. So a question like this is definitely worth a reflection.

In the grand scheme of things, life is very simple. We’re born, we exist, and then we pass away. Garrain Jones calls it “the dash”, referring to the dash on a tombstone that connects the day you’re born to the day you die. Everything that you’re involved in, that happens between those dates, is your life.

And while it might not seem like it, how we spend time is always broken down into the same singular unit: The present moment. A decade is a 10 year series of moments. A minute is 60 seconds worth of moments. All we ever have is the present moment.

So in order to maximize our life by taking advantage of each present moment, it’s critical that we are intentional about where we put our attention. In a sea of everything, our attention dictates what we actually experience. Our attention determines how we spend any present moment. And given that’s the case, what we pay attention to deserves a lot more discernment.

First, we need to pay attention to what we want - thinking the thoughts we want to think, feeling the emotions we want to feel, taking up the space we want to take up. When we can control the focus of our attention, our life follows. Focus on more of the right things and you’ll get more of the right things.

But beyond the ‘what’, we also must consider the 'how'. This is a matter of quality. It’s the difference between being fully in a moment, or your attention being fragmented. It’s no surprise that trying to do multiple things at the same time negatively affects your ability to do any one thing as well as you could. When it’s time to listen, speak, think, observe, work, or rest… Do that and only that. It helps you squeeze more value out of each present moment.

And what that means is - if you’re serious about making the most out of life, it starts with the moment you’re in right now. Then the next, and the next. It’s impossible to be fully conscious all the time, but if you set the intention to be more mindful more often, and more present in more moments, then you’re headed in the right direction.

In today’s world we’re taught that if we want to be successful, we have to be tough. To get what we want we can never quit and never give in. It’s a narrative that comes from a society that is oriented around achievement and accomplishment at all costs… But I think it’s a bit misunderstood.

This is best demonstrated by the idea of ‘surrendering’. To surrender is thought to be a bad thing - it means that you let someone else defeat you, that you weren’t strong enough, and that you’re giving up on something that you care about. Like surrendering in war or sports, it means that you forfeit and let the other side win.

But let’s open up the concept of ‘surrender’ to its fuller meaning. To surrender simply means 'to choose to release your resistance'. On one hand, yes, opposing forces can impose their power over you... But on the other it helps you stop resisting things that can truly serve you.

For example, from a spiritual or religious sense, we’re called to surrender to a higher power. There’s a divine plan or destiny written for us that maximizes the contribution we can make to the world. However our own internal resistance, fear, and uncertainty keeps us from accessing it. Our logical, rational minds are getting in the way of what we’re meant for. But when we surrender, trust, and have faith that what’s meant to happen will happen, we open ourselves up to a new level of alignment and impact.

Having said that, this is difficult to do because the ego wants us to be in control. It wants to architect our reality so that it’s more predictable and stable. To surrender is to release control. But you can reject the ego and open yourself up as a vessel for divine intervention. And the deeper you surrender, the less anxious you feel about everything because you know that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, experiencing exactly what you’re meant to experience, and guided in the exact ways you you’re meant to be guided.

As humans we all have a deep need for meaning. Our souls feel malnourished without it. And I’m far from perfect, but I believe that one of the best ways to find and serve your unique purpose is to choose to surrender.

A few weeks ago I was visiting my family and spent time with my brother and nephews. My 4.5 year old nephew, JT, is in a phase where after everything he says, he adds a drawn out “Right?”

“I get to pick my PJs, right?”

“We’re going to watch one show, right?”

“We’re seeing our cousins tomorrow, right?”

Most of the time the intention behind him saying it is that he knows it evokes a verbal acknowledgment. It’s his way of knowing that he’s being listened to. He’ll keep saying “right?” to get our attention until we answer “Yes, that’s right JT.”

But sometimes he uses it to be a clever, persuasive little boy. He asks for things in an assumptive way. Like saying “We’re having pizza for dinner tonight, right?” even though that wasn’t the plan at all. He positions what he wants in such a way that makes it harder to say “no” than it is to say “yes”.

And there’s something to learn in that. Humans take the path of least resistance. When we’re unconsciously navigating a path forward, we’re going to take the one that requires less effort. So if we can be creative about the way we relate with what we want, we can add friction to any alternative so that we’re more likely to get what we want.

It’s similar to a ‘glass half full’ approach. When your attention is fixated on all of the reasons why something can work, the variables that are in favor, and why success is a likely outcome - it influences the result. It inspires you to take more confident action. It encourages you to work through a challenge or setback. It gives you can make what’s on your heart a reality.

That, compared to the ‘glass half empty’ approach that comes more naturally. Our negativity bias automatically points out the things that are wrong with the plan and makes us focus on all of the things that are getting in the way. But when you let that be the line of thinking, your actions follow suit and you it manifests accordingly.

Kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy - When you assume success, you show up as someone who expects it. But when you don’t, then you’re writing your own demise. Henry Ford said it best "Whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right!"

You get to choose which way you let yourself spiral: You can be uplifted with encouragement or slowed down by discouragement. And while most of this happens unconsciously and in ways you don’t control, you can still architect it in subtle ways. You can present yourself as if you already know that you’re going to get what you want, and success is presumed.

You want to make your dreams come true, RIGHT? Then you ought to root for them.