If you've been following my work for a while I think you've realized that I am your personal cheerleader. I believe in you, I see you for who you are, and while we’ve maybe never met or spoken I really do mean that. In fact I believe everyone already has everything they need to be great inside of them, and the fact that you’re reading this means that you’re that much closer to letting it express itself.

Anyway, as your resident cheerleader I’m featuring a classic high school cheer for our positivity quote today - “We are proud of you, yes we are proud of you!”

In today’s world we place so much emphasis on the major moments that we lose sight of the small wins. When we evaluate ourselves and see how we’re showing up in the world, the meaning we have and the things we’re contributing, we sometimes see things through this same ‘hard to live up to’ lens.

Give credit to the small things that go unnoticed. It’s not all about setting a PR in the gym, it’s also about showing up and getting 15 minutes in when you don’t feel like it.  It’s not just about closing the big deal on a call. It’s about how you put yourself out there even when you don’t get the result you were hoping for. We often chase the approval of others and try to do things that make others proud, but you know your challenges and daily efforts better than anyone else. I see them too, and on behalf of everyone I want to tell you, “We are proud of you, yes we are proud of you!”

To wrap this up I want to ask a question - What are you doing well that you should be more proud of?‍

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.

Sometimes days are daunting and feel like they never end, where there might be some long, difficult, or mundane task that you need to complete. It’s typical for someone to say “I just need to get through the day” as a way of creating the mindset they need to get themselves to do it. The intention is to 'tough it out' and 'do what it takes' to get it done. But instead of approaching everything from that negative lens I think there’s a more empowering perspective you can use, and you don’t even need to change the words you’re saying.

Think of getting through the day as receiving through the day. Whatever it is that’s long, difficult, or mundane can actually be a great resource for you that has something to offer. Don’t just count the days and get through the things that are in front of you, make the days count by extracting value from everything you’re experiencing. It’s a mindset shift and a choice for you to engage deeper in what you’re doing rather than letting it pass you by.

The mind has an amazing way of finding whatever it’s looking for, the amazing poet In-Q has a quote "You will always find the evidence for what you choose to believe.” So if you choose to look for the opportunity and growth in your difficult days, you’re going to find it. As with anything in life YOU are the greatest vehicle for change, and this mindset shift will help you to find the richness in life where you might not already be seeing it.

Let me finish by asking you this - When are you just passing time, and when are you receiving value throughout the day?

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 topic is difficult to talk about because there are so many strong emotions associated with it, but hopefully it’s a valuable perspective. I think there is a significant difference between being in pain and being hurt. In understanding the difference I think we can become better at managing both.

Being in pain is more a matter of fact. Physical pain is literally your body’s pain receptors sending signals to your brain that something is happening. While people by nature have different pain tolerances, the process of perceiving pain is undeniable. The same goes for emotional pain. There is biochemical, physiological evidence that something is affecting you and causing you pain. Experiencing pain is a universal process, and thank goodness we have it because it provides really meaningful feedback about our environment and circumstances.

After having taken in that feedback, you have a choice to determine how you’d like to respond to the pain. One of the choices you can make is you can choose to be hurt. This is simply your interpretation of the pain. Choosing to be hurt is choosing to allow the pain to limit you, restrict you, and have power over you. Choosing to be hurt takes the power away from you and hands it to whatever is causing you pain.

You can probably hear my recommendation here, but let me make it clearer. Instead of experiencing pain and letting it hurt you, you can choose to relate with it differently. You can be grateful for the intuition of your body. You can take a step back and think about how the pain is actually serving you. You can be empowered by the pain and really control it rather than let it control you.

Let's wrap up by being self-aware for a minute on this - Are you the type of person that lets yourself get hurt?

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’ve been exploring this idea for a while but my understanding of it was really solidified after being on a call with Dr. Jade Teta. As a doctor and expert in physical conditioning and spirituality, he provided a really unique vantage point into how to change your life. Something in particular that he said really stuck out to me - “Before you see it physically you need to feel it energetically.”

What does that even mean? Well the spiritual approach argues that our physical existence has a cause and effect relationship with our metaphysical existence. That which changes in our metaphysical world will influence things to adjust in our physical world. This is difficult to believe because we seldom see the evidence of our metaphysical world. We’re designed to perceive things in our physical world. But that’s where our energy comes from, and that needs to go first if you want things to change in your life.

A more common way of relating with this idea is by calling it your personal thermostat. No matter how you will things to change around you in your physical environment, it will always gravitate toward the temperature you have set by nature - Your thermostat. Your thermostat is your energetic equilibrium, that set point that your life always returns to. You know how people like me talk about attracting things into your life? This is exactly it, the frequency you put out is a magnet that pulls everything in your physical life to match it. So if you want to change your perceivable physical life, you need to adjust your thermostat, or the baseline energy you’re putting out into the world.

Let’s finish up by reflecting on this: Good, bad, and otherwise - What are you attracting into 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 need to give today’s thought credit to the incredible orator Jim Rohn. His philosophies are so simple yet cut straight to the heart of what he’s trying to inspire. One of his thoughts that I strongly agree with is “What is easy to do is easy not to do.”

In some cases making a decision is that easy, either we do it or we don’t. But what Jim Rohn brings such great attention to is that neither choice is all that hard to do, it’s just a matter of making the right choice. We know that lasting positive change requires consistency and it’s your choice to do the small things consistently that make all the difference. Having an extra glass of water, choosing the healthy snack, taking a 10 minute walk break in your work day, giving your partner a good night kiss, - It’s all easy to do. It takes very little effort and it’s probably something that you’d be happy you did when you do it. But it’s just as easy to ignore or skip it, because what difference does that small decision make anyway?

Rohn calls this idea of not prioritizing positive choices as neglect, and he warns you not to neglect doing what is easy to do. It’s the discipline required to constantly make small empowering decisions that will carry you to your goals, and neglecting to do those small tasks will put you on an entirely different trajectory.

So how do we turn our positive intentions into action, and consistently do what’s easy to do? Well you need to take the time to build systems of triggers, accountability, and contingencies that support your success. You need to change your environment so that it’s more conducive to doing the small positive behaviors you hope to do. Discipline isn’t all about will-power, it’s about having a comprehensive plan that supports your positive action taking. 

It’s hard to see just how everything is coming together for you. The pain, stress, and hardship of life is real and it can feel unfair. For some things there can’t possibly be an explanation that makes everything okay. But I’d like to provide a different, more empowering perspective that is centered on having faith in the process and that everything happens for a reason. While it’s easier to look back, observe, and have opinions on how things went, I think it’s equally as important (and generally more effective) to bring that philosophy into the present moment. That’s why today we’re building around the quote - “Trust the timing in which things are happening.”

It can feel as if things are going too fast or too slow, like they’re incomplete or ready too early, but things are happening exactly as they’re meant to. Like a seed that takes time to sprout, the processes around you are following their natural progression so that they can mature and activate at the right time.

Something I like to do to really practice this philosophy is to choose to surrender. I put my arms out wide and I say “Universe, thank you for taking care of me and giving me everything I need right when I need it.” And then I also have a casual conversation and say “Look, I’m not that smart. I can’t see all of the very clear signs you’re leaving for me. Please help me be more aware so I can be a part of helping everything come together.” And then I say “Thank you for being so patient and giving me so many chances.” 

This practice takes the pressure off me trying to force things to go how I think they should and reminds me that there’s more going on than I can see. With that perspective I’m less prone to judge or be frustrated about how life is unraveling because I am choosing to trust the process, and trust the timing in which things are happening.

To wrap this up I want you to reflect on a time when this was true for you - When was the last time things happened exactly as they should have, and you didn’t realize it until later?

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.

If you’re a self-improving, aspiring high performer like me then there are a lot of things you want to get done. What if I told you that was actually possible? It is possible if you set yourself up for success, and there are 2 major things to consider to be able to do it all.

First is setting the right expectations. What does doing it all mean, and what is a reasonable amount to get done? If you expect too much then you’ll fail to live up to it, and along the way you’ll start doubting yourself more because of the overwhelm you experience by the growing list. Getting everything done starts with knowing what the right things are to get done, which closely ties in with your core values and major commitments.

Second is having a system in place to not let anything slip through the cracks. This requires a certain amount of organization and structure so that you can manage it all. The structure I learned is from my mentor David Meltzer and he shares it in a quote I absolutely love - “100% of the things you do now get done.” He calls it 'do it now', and his approach encourages you to either 1) Do the task immediately if it’s something you can do quickly (and he argues it will save you time overall), or 2) Capture the task immediately so that you can reliably return to it later.

It’s pretty simple if you put it that way, right? You need to have the right expectations so that you commit to doing the right things and only the right things, then you need a process in place to actually do it, whether that be immediately or later on. You’ll find ‘doing it all’ actually involves doing a lot less than you think because we keep ourselves busy doing so many things that are non-essential.

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 reflect on a word that has taken on an entirely new meaning for me in the last few days, and I’ll explain why. The word is “appreciate” and it has a few different definitions that all actually feed into each other.

Of course to start, to 'appreciate' is to be thankful for something but not just that. It’s to recognize the value of something. When you appreciate you acknowledge the blessings and circumstances of your life, and you are intentional about not taking things for granted. There’s a presence to it.

The other definition of 'appreciate' is to grow in value, like an investment. There’s a growth and increase that is indicative of the appreciation process and it usually only relates to positive things where there’s a benefit to having more of it.

This all ties together in the expression “What you appreciate, appreciates” which draws a direct correlation between gratitude and the amount of good things in your life. But the major realization I had relates more to a value exchange. 

Take a simple sales scenario. You’re selling something for $100 and someone else wants to buy it. That means that they see at least $100 worth of value in it, which makes the cost justifiable. Good transactions like that involve someone getting good value for what they invest, and this helped me realize that I want to be an appreciation machine. Yes, I want to be grateful, but also I want my core focus to be that everything I touch or am involved in delivers more value than I ask for in return. I want your 2 minutes of time reading this to be worth 10 minutes of knowledge, and I want every dollar I earn to facilitate $10 worth of value delivered.

With all of that in mind I’d love for you to think about where you can be an appreciation machine too, so I’ll ask this question - What is the most valuable thing you do for other people?‍

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.

Life can be challenging and test us in various ways. Sometimes things just aren’t clicking like you’d like them to, or the small things become bigger headaches than they need to be. These annoying, inconveniencing moments can start to add up and feel overwhelming. This happens because you start running low on will power and emotional control. More simply put - these things can start to wear you down. Unfortunately, after carrying this weight for a long time you are most prone to outbursts.

I don't think anyone would choose to have big emotional releases, responding in ways that are outside of their values. Yet it happens to the best of us, so it’s important to learn how to manage emotions and keep our composure.

First, you need to think about how to limit impulsivity. We do and say things we don’t mean because we don’t give ourselves the time we need to process things, and determine that we don’t want to respond in certain ways. What happens is your brain takes a psychological short cut and operates unconsciously and instinctually, but we can combat this by giving ourselves a pause. When you’re in the heat of an emotion take a deep breath. Give yourself the time to think and let the conclusions you draw determine your response rather than succumb to an impulsive outburst. In that way you can be more accountable and led by the outcome you want rather than the emotional release.

Keeping your composure is an important skill to develop because it is inevitable we will be tested, and our ability to manage our emotions directly correlates with the quality of our performance. You can be better at managing tight deadlines at work, growing stronger relationships, and being someone others turn to.

What are some of the inconveniences life throws at you that you’d like to be able to manage 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.