We’re all doing our best to pursue what we find meaningful. While it’s different from person to person we all have the same core process with the end goal of living life to the fullest. You’ve heard it before, "life is a journey, not a destination", but we all know that there are some more pleasurable destinations than others and we’d prefer to be there sooner than later. So naturally we try to accelerate the process and we want to find shortcuts in the path so that we can achieve and experience everything we desire.

With that in mind, there is a shortcut to life. There is a way to go about making progress on things that will get you to your destination faster than any other method. And that way is doing the work. The shortest distance between any two points is a straight line, and doing the work is your straight line. It is the optimized way, the key to quick success, the shortcut. 

There is nothing you can do that is more effective than taking focused action, that’s the truth, but there are two problems that hold people back and force them to take the long way: 1) Many people don’t know what they should be doing, and 2) Many people don’t want to do the work.

People think of shortcuts as being easy. I disagree, and I think something that is easy to do and might look like the shortcut is actually taking you somewhere else. Don’t fall for it and understand what truly is the fastest path to a better future. Apply yourself, step up, and do the work.

Let me take a step back and ask you this philosophically - Do you believe in shortcuts?

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Story time! This happened last week, and it’s something I know all of you can relate to. I was running an errand for my partner, driving on the road and I needed to switch lanes. I put on my blinker, looked over, saw there was enough room for me to move into but not a ton of a room. Double-checked my mirror and saw that the car sped up to prevent me from switching lanes. I let them pass then switched lanes, no harm, but it agitated me. Whey wouldn’t they just let me over? It seemed selfish to me.

5 minutes later in the drive, on a different road and focused on navigating to the right place, I drove past a car slowing down in the lane next to me. After I got past them I realized that they were trying to get into my lane, and unknowingly I sped right past them and didn’t let them in. They then turned in right behind me, no harm done, but it gave me perspective to what happened earlier.

I was way too quick to draw conclusions. I assumed someone else’s ill-intentions without having the first idea about what was going through their head, and I wasn’t proud of it because I was guilty of doing the exact same thing. That’s why, before judging someone else’s choices or decisions, try and have more perspective. It’s hard to know what their reasons are for doing something. It’s hard to know what’s influencing the situation to be a certain way. It’s hard to know if something is right and wrong because there is way more to it than meets the eye. And if we, myself very much included, took the time to think about where people might be coming from before emotionally reacting about things, we would live in a more empathetic, compassionate, and understanding world.

When it comes to creating that change it needs to start with each of us as individuals, so let me ask you this reflective question - Do you think you judge people and situations too quickly?

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.

We need to make some serious moves to truly address the world’s biggest problems. The systems, biases, and bureaucracies run so deep that it can feel near impossible to move the needle on an issue. It often keeps people from trying at all. But not you, not us! And today I want to show you how truly powerful you are. Not only is it true that you can make a difference, oh yes you can, but you are an army of one.

Not to reference war too much here, but let’s think more philosophically about what armies do. There’s a leader, or group of leaders, who want to change the world. While not always done with the right intentions or for the right reasons, these leaders assemble armies to go out and shape the future. They want to interrupt systems and uproot bureaucracies so that there’s less resistance to their objective. War has played a role in massive loss and despair, of course, but it has also been the source of incredible progress.

You, yourself, are your own army. You are perfectly capable of identifying a change you wish to see in the world and creating it. You don’t use weapons to enforce your dominance, but instead inspiration, love, and humility. You don’t need to be at war to fight for something, but you need to figure out what’s worth fighting for. What injustice you’re standing up against? What area you seek to improve within yourself and your community? What gift you want to bring to the world?  Move confidently, like you’ve got an army behind you, because you do. And that army is you. Don’t underestimate your power and never lose hope for a better future.

So you’re an army of one, now let’s put you to work - What battle are you fighting next?

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.

This is for anyone who wants to effectively communicate with others, in work and life, which I imagine is just about everyone. I wanted to dive into the differences between persuasion and manipulation. The punchline is, I feel like persuasion gets a bad reputation because it is often associated with manipulation. They both involve influencing someone to change, whether it be their opinion, their decisions, or their actions, but they go about accomplishing that in very different ways.

True persuasion is actually meant to be collaborative. The goal isn’t to convince someone of something they don’t believe, it’s to help them change their perspective and see things differently with new knowledge. Ultimately they change their mind because they voluntarily believe something new and they’ve come to that conclusion based on the details you’ve brought to their attention. In that way you’re helping them broaden their own understanding. While you might have selfish reasons for getting someone to believe something else, there’s nothing spiteful, malicious, or unfair about it.

What I just described is manipulation. Manipulation is where you coerce someone into doing, thinking, or feeling something that they don’t want to. It often involves using emotion so that people start thinking impulsively and unconsciously rather than logically. That’s why it’s so easy for us to see manipulation when it’s happening to someone else. We’re not engrossed in the emotion of it and therefore, can think more objectively and clearly. Manipulation is exploiting the other person and controlling them against their will, causing them harm.

So how can you be sure that you’re persuading and not manipulating? Well, if you want someone else to have an open mind and a willingness to change their beliefs, you need to have an open mind and willingness to change your beliefs. You need to meet them at that level. It confirms you have the right intentions.

Let’s bring this into your life - Is it possible you’re manipulating someone right now?

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.

Your self improvement and personal development all really boils down to one thing. Growth. That takes the form of broadening perspective, increasing self-awareness, developing skills... and the focus of today’s thought - Setting new limits. The evidence of your growth is that you can do things you couldn’t do before, and it’s witnessing your own progress that really delivers the reward we’re all after.

The traditional way to think about setting new limits is to stretch yourself. You need to try new things, get outside your comfort zone, and really put yourself in situations that cause you to grow. I agree, that’s all true, but I think there’s an equally important part of the equation that many people overlook, and that’s to establish a new baseline.

Try and visualize this. There’s a scale that goes 1-20, let’s say your baseline is a 7 and your limit is a 12. This basically means there are 5 different levels of difficulty between your baseline and your limit. Yes, you can go and try to do something at a 15 (that’s the stretching yourself side). But what if you moved your 7 baseline up to a 10? Then your limit, which is 5 levels higher, becomes 15 instead of the 12 it was previously at.

By focusing on the core competencies, fundamentals, and foundations, you can raise the level you operate at with no effort. That is your baseline right? You achieve that by holding yourself to a certain attainable, repeatable standard that you consistently deliver on. For example, your baseline could be to workout for 30 minutes a day instead of 20. You read 20 pages of a book a week instead of 10. You meditate 2 times a week instead of one. When you set the intention to establish a new baseline, and you consistently execute on it, you’ll find that you become capable of more because your limit adjusted proportionately.

That’s what we all want right? To grow, and experience, and truly live! We get that at our limits. To integrate this concept into your life, answer this question for yourself - What baseline are you committed to taking to the next level?

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 had a conversation with my brother last week and I experienced something odd - We disagreed with so much certainty on a fact, and I only realized just now why that was. As part of my travels I’m driving from the Chicago airport to Milwaukee, and estimating the length of time it would take, Apple Maps told me it would take about 2 hours. When I was talking to my brother about it he said, “Oh that’s a short drive, I flew it and it only took 30 minutes. Should be like an hour drive."

Neither of us pressed the issue, but we both knew ourselves to be right. And we both were. You see, I was estimating the distance from the airport in South Chicago (Midway), and he was estimating from the airport in North Chicago (O'Hare). He didn’t have all the details, so he made a decision based on the facts he knew.

This is where awareness comes in, and it plays a key role in everything we do. With awareness we have more information to draw conclusions and make choices. If my brother were to have learned of our travel plans his frame of reference would have changed, and he would have seen how my estimate was just as right as his. Essentially, there were two right answers within the context of the conversation.

We can’t be naive to the fact that we see everything through our own perspective. While the example I gave was more objective and related to fact, this certainly applies to things that are subjective and a matter of opinion. The point being, if we don’t actively raise our awareness to the things around us, and pursue new perspectives, we will exist in the circle we already know. 

There’s not much growth to be found there, so let me ask you this question - What are you actively doing to add new perspective to 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.

Recently I saw Coach Daron K Roberts post about something that made me double take. I think the reason it did was because something clicked for me, and I hope in sharing the same can happen for you.

Coach Roberts commented on the “But What Abouts…” of life. Looking to quit your job and go full-time on your side hustle? “But what about having health insurance and benefits.” Looking to set a new goal for yourself? “But what about the last goal you set that you didn’t achieve.” Looking to dive deeper into a passion of yours? “But what about all the time you’ll spend on it.”

You can hear the nature of these 'BWAs', as Coach Roberts calls them. They’re not explicitly telling you not to do it, but they are suggesting that you take more time to ensure you know what you’re getting yourself into. While that is absolutely healthy and something you should do, the BWAs never stop. There will always be another “But what about” scenario to think through, and if you wait until you’re 100% ready, with all concerns addressed... Well that will never happen.

These BWAs can come from two sources. The first is from yourself. I firmly believe that these extra considerations are just rational stall tactics your brain uses to resist the change you’re trying to bring to your life. The second source is other people. But know that they can only see your decisions through their own frame of reference, and the caring concern of others is often the way they project their own insecurities and fears onto you.

Should you make well-thought out decisions? Of course. But can you realistically consider every last detail? Not if you’re trying to get anything done. Life is risky, you must make the leap sometimes without knowing exactly what’s there to catch you. Don’t be held back by the prospect of perfection. To wrap this up, I’d like to ask you this question - How often do you talk yourself out of doing something?

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 feature a quote that gets you feeling cozy while delivering a meaningful lesson all at the same time - “If the world feels cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.”

The first thing to mention is how this message is framed. Notice it says “if the world feels cold to you.” It acknowledges that everyone has their own experience and perception of things, and everyone needs to take their own unique approach to addressing it. The world can be a cold place but more than anything it comes down to how you see it and what you’re going to do about it. 

This quote is a metaphor, right? It basically means that everyone has their own unique way of kindling a fire, or changing certain things in their life. But there are 3 common steps that people need to take in order to do so effectively.

First is you need to gather resources. Figure out what you have to work with (brush, branch, sticks, twigs) so that you have the fuel you need to light the fire. You’ve got to know what's available to you. Then you need to prepare. Make a fire pit so that it’s safe, organize the resources so that they can be used most efficiently, and set expectations about what the desired result is - How long the fire will last. Then you need to light the flame. The pit will not produce heat until there’s fire, and you need to take action to put everything you've done to work. It’s all for not unless you get started and try your best to do something meaningful.

I know this might be a more difficult metaphor to follow so here’s the summary - When something isn’t how you want it to be, you can change it by taking the necessary steps to fixing it. Through the lens of positivity, if you feel like there is too much hate, negligence or disrespect in the world, you can collect the resources, do the prep work, and get started in a way that changes the things around you. We do these things implicitly but hopefully this framework helps you see the process behind the things we do naturally.

With that in mind let me ask you a question - What in your life could use a little change for the better?

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.