In our lives we all have a similar pursuit - We want to be happy. One of the more difficult parts of that is understanding for ourselves what makes us happy, and how much of it we need. No matter who you are or what you do, in this world there is always bigger, faster, stronger, richer, nicer, more successful... You name it. What that means is we need to find the amount that is right for ourselves. In my mind there are two different ways to relate with this, one I’m going to argue is better than the other.

The first way is to pursue satisfaction. On one hand, satisfaction represents fulfillment and a happiness found in meeting expectations, but when you look at the secondary definitions you start to see the full story. To satisfy a request is to do just enough to get the job done. It’s to attain the bare minimum required to consider something complete. When you’re satisfied you got enough of what you want, but it carries this undertone that more is out there that you’re not accessing. There’s a subtle suggestion of complacency in satisfaction.

The second way is to pursue contentment. When you’re content that means you find fulfillment and joy in the way that things are. The difference is your relationship with your ambition. Instead of feeling a yearning for more, and drawing comparisons between how things are and how they can be, you have more presence within your happiness. Your ambition is independent of your current state of happiness and therefore, it plays a healthier role in your life.

It’s tricky because being both content and satisfied means your needs are met, you have enough, but it’s how you think about ‘what is enough?' I encourage you to determine what is enough to make you content or satisfied, but then to know there’s more out there and to not feel complacent. You can be happy and grateful for what you have and ambitious all at the same time, and pursuing contentment over satisfaction in my opinion better supports that. With that in mind, let me leave you with this - When was the last time you thought about what is enough for you in your life?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

I don’t mean to be morbid, but we’re going to touch on death for a second. Something that is beautiful about life is that we need the contrast of death to see its meaning. This contrast is not unique - Light has value because there’s dark. You can only know someone’s a good person because there are evil people. The right thing to do is only right because there’s also a wrong way to do it. Life has meaning because death exists.

The thing about these contrasts is they are dynamic. Contrasts create a spectrum and at one moment things can fall in one spot in the spectrum, and the next moment it can be in a different spot. In that way, the two sides of the contrast are always competing and trying to pull reality toward their end.

Let me remind you of a famous quote from the iconic movie “Shawshank Redemption”. It says “Get busy living or get busy dying.” In any moment one or the other is winning that tug of war, and if you want to live a more enriching life with moving experiences you need to chose to live more and die less.

Now what does that look like? Be courageous and take chances. Be present when around good company. Be curious about the possibilities that surround you, and pursue them. Do the things that expand your mind and body. That’s all living is, expanding the number and quality of the experiences you have in the same amount of time. It’s fitting more of what lights you up into your life. It’s your choice to say yes, move forward, and feel the moment. And to help you tap back into that feeling let me ask you this question - When did you feel the most alive in your life?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

In Japan they practice a philosophy called Kintsugi. At the surface, Kintsugi is a way of repairing broken pottery so that it’s functional again. But what’s fascinating is that, according to Kintsugi tradition, when filling in a crack you should use higher quality materials, sometimes gold and silver, to fill the gap.

Kintsugi relates to a more common Japanese philosophy called Wabi-sabi. The core idea is that it’s okay that things aren’t perfect, and instead of treating imperfections as blemishes you view them as history of their past. It injects an appreciation for how things have been instead of just optimizing for how things are now.

That pairs poetically with what I mentioned previously about the materials they use to repair. Not only are they okay highlighting the blemishes and cracks in the pottery, but they invest in them. They use high value metals to communicate that the piece is not useless, in fact it is now more valuable because of its history.

Imagine if we treated ourselves that way. Upon looking at the obvious imperfections within ourselves, we choose to celebrate them, honor them, and fortify them. It becomes a point of pride, and each imperfection is further evidence of how much you’ve done and how great you are. Damage is objective, the evidence of it is clear. But the meaning around that damage is subjective, and the Kintsugi philosophy is your path to more positively relating with your past.

You’ve probably been doing this for yourself without you even knowing it, so let’s figure out what that is - What broke you but caused you to grow back stronger?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

I’m taking a more spiritual approach today and it might not take you down the path you’d expect. There are probably a lot of things that you want to improve about your life - Things you want to have and do, relationships you want to strengthen, opportunities you wish were in front of you... I want to remind you that for everything I just mentioned, you already have it.

My belief is that we are connected to and exist within a universal energy. Call it God, Source, or the universe, in my mind it all speaks to the same point. This means that we can directly tap into a divine intuition where 1) We know everything and 2) We have access to true abundance, giving us an infinite amount of resources. But let’s be honest. We certainly don’t know everything, and if you look around you’ll quickly see you don’t have everything. 

So what happened? While yes, we are connected to everything, we experience a lot of interference and that interference makes us incapable of accessing abundance. We can’t pull from ultimate intuition because our minds limit us from doing so. We can’t snap our fingers and make our dreams come true because there are other pieces getting in the way which are a natural part of our human experience. 

So if we want to live a more abundant life, the task isn’t to establish or strengthen our connection with abundance. Instead it’s to get all of the junk out of the way that is interrupting the connection we already have. And that takes the form of doing the work - Getting clear on what you want and taking faithful action toward it, healing your mind, asking for help, and silencing the ego. You’re just getting in your own way, that’s all it is, but here’s the best part about it… You can fix that!

To finish here I want to ask you a question - How are you keeping yourself from having what you want?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

First impressions are key to growing strong and meaningful relationships that serve you. Energy is contagious and the way that you approach other people and situations sets the tone for how those interactions are going to go. I’ll explain why here soon, but the next time someone is greeting you and says “How are you doing?” have something better to say than “I’m good”. Be fantastic, extraordinary, on fire - Give them something more to work with!

When we think about making an impression we really only relate it to when you meet someone for the first time. But your energy plays a role in every interaction you have, constantly influencing the dynamic of the relationship and nature of the conversation. With that in mind, it is entirely in your control to shape certain interactions based on the way you approach them. In negotiations Chris Voss, the author of “Never Split The Difference” calls this asserting your frame. This idea applies here - If you want to have more collaborative, enthusiastic, and productive conversations, you can create that yourself simply by how you engage them at the very beginning.

It’s easy to do. Make them excited to be with you and leaning in to learn more. Everyone wants to spend more time with people that make them feel good, who show up with good energy, and if you can accomplish that then other people will be more open to considering the ideas you have to share with them (and ultimately move the needle on getting things done.)

It might feel uncomfortable to be enthusiastic like this at first, but that’s only because it’s new. If it really does feel that out of character then it’s probably because you don’t have that something you’re working on that really lights you up. Go find that and your enthusiasm will be much more authentic, and things will start conspiring in your favor.

Instead of reflecting on this idea let’s implement this topic in your life right now - When someone asks you “how you’re doing?”, what do you want your default response to be? It could be: “Things are amazing”, “Man, things are so good”, “I’m fired up there’s so much good stuff going on!” Those are examples, what’s yours?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

I want to share a lesson I was reminded of at the gym last week. I was on the treadmill pacing through a pretty solid pace and I saw a woman on a treadmill in the row in front of me working really hard and practically sprinting on the treadmill. Out of curiosity I wanted to see how fast she was going and I was able to read that she was going the same speed as I was. After watching closer, I saw what she was actually doing was picking up pace for one minute intervals and then resting for a bit at a slower pace.

My ego wanted to make meaning out of this. I started feeling good about myself saying ‘Yea, her fast pace is my baseline. I’m fitter than her’. I’m competitive, so it makes sense that I would do that, but then I thought more about it and realized there were many other things to consider before jumping to conclusions. Sure, I was going faster than her on average, but maybe that means she was pushing herself harder than me. So who’s actually having the better workout? And I had no idea how long she was going to go for compared to me, which certainly dictates the pace. And what about yesterday - What if she worked out hard yesterday and this is more of a recovery day for her?

What I realized in that moment, striding on the treadmill, is there are way too many factors to accurately compare my workout to hers. And more broadly, it made me realize that the majority of the comparisons we make are only based on the handful of facts we see.

The metaphorical and literal lesson in this case is - Go at your own speed. The only fair comparison to make is that with yourself. And when you start competing with yourself you are inspired to raise your personal capacities for the intrinsic value of it rather than the extrinsic pat on the back. I tried to take that to heart, so what I did was instead of comparing myself to her I let her example inspire me, and I picked up my pace to finish the workout with a one minute sprint.

I became more self-aware about this and I’d like the same for you - In what situations do you feel like you compare yourself to others the most?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

I just finished reading the book “Courage Is Calling” by Ryan Holliday and it gave me a lot to think about regarding the ways I relate with fear in my life. I think we all admire the person that is courageous and we hope to have more of that in us, but it’s unnatural to do. That’s because being courageous is literally taking action through fear.

Holliday makes an important distinction between being afraid and having fear. Fear is a totally normal response all humans have when things are unfamiliar, uncertain, and threatening… Being afraid is letting that fear limit you. He argues that being afraid is unacceptable, and that the great innovators and leaders of the world manage to conquer fear courageously and not let being afraid get the best of them. But he also says, if you must let fear take ahold of you, and cause you to be afraid, then fear the following - and I quote from the book:  

“Fear what you’ll miss. Fear what happens if you don’t act. Fear what they’ll think of you down the road for having dared so little. Think of what you’re leaving on the table. Think of the terrifying costs of playing small. The fear you feel is a sign. If courage is never required in your life, you’re living a boring life. Put yourself in a position that demands you leap.”

Ultimately, fear is a great motivator and you can harness it to push you in the ways you know are best for you. Fear exists at every stage of your personal transformation and growth journey because you are becoming something unfamiliar and uncertain. That fear can keep people from pursuing their development in the first place, but when you meet that fear with courage you open up new frontiers. That’s what I want for you - To leave your comfort zone. To explore the boundary of what you know and believe. And to find more ways to let your unlimited self express itself into the world. 

Let’s bring this lesson into your life right now. Ask yourself this question - What do you wish you had the courage to do?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.

Something I love doing is dissecting song lyrics to pull out the true meaning embedded in the words. I’m taking inspiration from Bob Marley, an iconic voice for peace in the world. One of the most famous lines he ever wrote comes from a song called “3 Little Birds” - “Don’t worry about a thing, every little thing gonna be alright.”

What Marley knew that we don’t is the power of faith. Every day we encounter obstacles, challenges, struggles, opposition, you name it. But Marley saw the bigger picture. Through suffering, death, and despair, he knew that at the end of the day it was all going to be okay. “Every little thing gonna be alright.” And if that’s always the end result then it’s wasted energy to worry about anything because you’re doing so unnecessarily.

But diving deeper into his word choice, even more lessons are illuminated. He says “every little thing”. This is a commentary on what takes away the peace of the average person. There are a lot of issues in the world, but the far majority of us listening to this are safe and relatively taken care of. What takes away our personal peace are the little inconveniences of the day - Your car breaks down, you misplace your wallet, you make some silly mistake. Every little thing like that that adds stress to your life is gonna be alright. When it’s all said and done, you’ll get through it all. Every single one. You will be okay. And again if that's what happens, it’s not worth worrying about. Don’t let the little things consume you.

Little things will go wrong and likely they’ll go wrong every day, that’s just how this imperfect world works. Our perception of these imperfections is what makes all the difference and creates our personal reality. So with full faith and a fresh perspective, sing it with me - Every little thing gonna be alright. And to make this true for you I’d like you to reflect on this question - What things do you worry about more than you should?

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day. 

If you’re looking to grow alongside a community of like-minded improvers, then click here to join the Better Together Community.