One thing that I guarantee will make your life better is being more grateful. In fact implementing a gratitude practice is my first recommendation for anyone looking to change their life. But what’s interesting is there are two sides to gratitude, the first we’re more familiar with is how it affects us in the present, and the second is how it affects our future.

In case you needed to hear it - It is entirely possible and perfectly acceptable to be grateful for what you have and still want more. If you’re like me, maybe you carry around a guilt that you aren’t truly grateful for what you have because you place so much value on what you don’t have. What I’ve come to find is that these two elements are not connected, and the self-criticism we carry often inhibits us from pursuing the things we want as whole heartedly as we’d like.

Yes everyone’s circumstances and means are different.  But knowing that you have access to the internet right now, you benefit from some sort of privilege. But everyone in the world is worthy of aspiring for more. That's not reserved for the privileged, it’s accessible to everyone, so why reject that within yourself?  I’d argue that your privilege allows you to dream bigger, and you should, because then you can create more value for others and help pull them up.

I’d like you to reflect on this question - How much are you allowing yourself to dream?

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’ve probably all been there. As you are ending your day, ready to go to sleep, you resolve to be different. I’m going to wake up at 6am, jump right out of bed, meditate, journal, get a work out in and cook breakfast all before 8am. Then I’m going to do the 20 things I need to do for work, the 10 chores and errands around the house, and just do it all. Have you ever felt that? I call it night-time motivation. It’s way easier to say you’re going to do it than to actually do it isn’t it? 

Of course we know how this story ends - The alarm goes off and you’re feeling absolutely exhausted so you give yourself another 20 minutes of sleep. Then when you wake up the last thing you want to do is work out, and you’re already behind on your day, so you don’t deliver on your priorities like you intended to. You go about the things you need to do without any real organization or structure, you felt busy but not really productive, then you put your head down for bed and again resolve that tomorrow will be different.

I’m not here to just tell you that this happens, I want to share how you might be able to fix it. The intention is good, I’m a huge advocate for deciding what you want to do in advance to avoid emotional decision making, but you need more than an intention. You can use a commitment device - Threaten $20 of your own dollars if you don’t follow through, tell someone else what you’re going to do. You can make a plan detailing what specifically you’re going to do when, and for how long. Or you can tie a reward to a successful day that you can only access if you got it all done.

The important piece to highlight is you need to do something else, anything else that converts that intention into action. Nighttime motivation is useful in getting clear on what you want to do, but it’s bad at getting you to actually do it. So if you have a big day coming up make sure you put in the work and elements required to pull you through it, knowing that at times you’re not going to feel like it.

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 realized that throughout my life I’ve carried a lot of unconscious fear and energy. Like many people I fear failure, but what’s interesting in my case is that I don’t fear failing at something new I’m trying, I’m plenty happy to do that. It’s more that I fear the overall idea that I’ll be a failure in my life - Someone who is irresponsible with their money and gets into really bad and unhealthy habits, becoming homeless or worse. 

It’s completely irrational and once I brought my attention to it I realized that it wasn’t something I need to be afraid of. I’m fortunate to have people who love me, and who will take me in if I really needed it. I’m fortunate to be smart where I have something valuable to offer, and I can always be employed. And I’ve never touched drugs, so thinking that I’ll start making some bad decisions now in my late twenties is pretty illogical. Ultimately I realized that this fear I’ve had is ridiculous and this idea that I’m a complete and abject failure... Well that will NEVER be me.

I share this perspective because I want you to think about that worst case scenario in your life. This is real talk - Do you fear you’ll be abusive to a loved one? Do you fear that you won’t be able to put food on the table for your family or that they’ll have nowhere to turn if things turn South? Think about that worst case scenario would actually look like. You’ll probably realize that there are many things you could do to climb your way out, and even before that there are many things in place that will prevent you from ever getting there in the first place. I want you to look at that fear and say “That will NEVER be me.” Release whatever it is you’re holding onto unconsciously so that it doesn’t take up any more of your energy. That’s not you.

If you're up for it, let me prompt you to get to the root of it - Think of that deepest, darkest moment you’re afraid of experiencing, and prove to yourself how that will never be possible 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.

An important topic for all of us to understand is stress and the role it plays in our lives. Of course, most fundamentally stress is a physiological response that is in place for our safety. It gives us the energy and focus to fight or flight when confronted with a threat. Biologically our sympathetic nervous system is activated, releasing cortisol which creates these downstream effects.

Unfortunately stress in today’s human world is a bit out of place. I read a book in college that explained this phenomenon perfectly, and it’s called “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” by Robert Sapolsky. But now that humans are cognitive beings in a modern world, we experience unhealthy levels of stress because we perceive many psychological threats that activate our sympathetic nervous system on a daily basis. These chronically elevated cortisol levels create health issues for us, whereas a Zebra only activates a stress response when it’s being chased by a lion.

Recently I heard stress defined as a perception that your demands exceed your needs. This makes sense because then your body reacts to expand your capacities in the only way it knows how. But on the other side of it, I want to propose more mindful practices to manage stress where you intentionally lower the perceived demand. Writing out a plan, doing objective thinking, or utilizing gratitude or perspective can help to reframe the meaning of the stressful stimulus and make it more manageable.

At the end of the day, it’s important to be aware and in control of our body’s process, paying extra attention to the ways our bodies might not be caught up to the times. So let’s wrap up by reflecting on this question - What causes unnecessary stress 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.

Many things only have meaning because there is the opposite to compare it to - Life and death,  health and sickness, night and day, success and failure… What I want to highlight for positivity Thursday is that same idea but the relationship between positive and negative.

Positivity only has meaning because the fulfillment, enthusiasm, and optimism of it can be compared to the feelings of despair, pain, and struggle of negativity. Oftentimes a positive mindset is tasked to see everything in a positive light, but that can be harmful to the necessary contrast it has with negativity. If you ignore negativity, or act like it doesn’t exist, then it dilutes the value of positivity because you won’t have the same spectrum to reference. It also makes you more vulnerable to negativity when it pierces that barrier because you don’t have as much experience managing it. That’s why for today’s positivity quote we’re going to talk about how we “conquer the negative”.

To say it another way, negativity is not meant to be avoided. It is meant to be felt because it provides more richness to your positivity, and in order for us to receive that value we need to allow ourselves to feel it. Just because you’re negative in the moment doesn’t mean you’re a negative person. You can be a positive person and have negative feelings… I am a positive person and I often have negative feelings. But it’s about what we do with those feelings.

To conquer the negative you need to see above it. You have an opportunity to reframe the meaning you attach to the negative feeling with perspective and gratitude. You can do whatever it is that helps you feel good, like exercising or talking it over with a friend to get it off your chest. You must not ignore the negative, you must move through it, you must conquer it.

So with all of that in mind let’s get self-aware about how you personally experience negativity: What do you do to best conquer negativity?

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 come upon an interesting and unique idea that I wanted to share with you. I recognized that the words “aware” and “beware” have the same root - ‘ware’. In fact the only difference is the very beginning - A-ware or B-Ware. Knowing what the words mean I started relating it back to something I’ve been fascinated to learn more about, which is seeing life through the lenses of love and fear. The qualities of love and fear arguably distill the human experience into its most fundamental basics. On an instinctual level these are the two forces that influence everything else, and we evaluate everything against them. Just about everything can be related back to how it helps you experience love or avoid fear.

Our A-wareness brings consciousness to the things we’re experiencing, and when we choose what we want to experience it’s typically the pursuit of pleasure through self-mastery (or self-love), and connection (loving others). Even when we’re aware of something negative, that awareness is a means to move it toward love. Alternatively, bewareness is our brains subconscious background process that when triggered, provokes fear. It’s the threat detection system that’s on high alert at all times to protect us from all kinds of harm (physical, financial, emotional, etc.) and danger.

We have this tug of war between the two - Go for it vs hold back, 'this is great' vs 'what’s the catch?'. But what’s exciting about this relationship is love always wins. Our awareness can beat our bewareness, meaning that we can think through the nature of our threats and make more logical decisions when we allow ourselves to. A great way to do that is to take deep breaths, deactivating the sympathetic nervous system and allowing you to think more intentionally, unemotionally, and clearly. Let me leave you with this question - What is your favorite way to bring more awareness to the emotions you’re experiencing?

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 all the know the feeling of being deeply motivated to do something. There’s an energy to it that allows us to experience heightened focus, concentration, and effectiveness on a certain task. The time to do it is right now and there’s no exception. Typically you think of motivation through the lens of productivity and doing positive activities, but motivation exists within everything you do. You’re motivated to ease the burden of emotional pain, so you cry. If you have OCD you’re motivated to line things up just right to feel a sense of organization. You’re motivated to find a bathroom when you really need to go. Ultimately, all of this motivation inspires you to take a certain action that helps you on some level psychologically.

That’s why today we’re focusing on this equation: Motivation = Motive For Action. And while the examples I provided were more related to subconscious motivators, I want to also touch on conscious motivation, because if we cultivate the right motivation we can get ourselves to do the actions we know are best for us.

When it comes to creating motivation there are a few important things. First is the reward. What is the payoff of doing the action and what need is that satisfying? Remember we’re more likely to avoid discomfort than pursue pleasure. And also keep in mind how likely is it that you’ll get the reward. This all interfaces with the second piece, which is your emotional state. How you’re feeling influences what your short-term needs are. If your current mental state isn’t sold on the value of the action, that leads to procrastination, the enemy of motivation.

There’s a lot more to explore here but I’ll leave you with this: What actions do you want to be most motivated 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.

Our days are so fast-paced and rushed that sometimes we do things with unexpected consequences. For example we eat way too fast for our body to optimally process it, we shovel food into our mouths and go about our day, and eating too fast can cause digestive issues.

Digestion doesn’t just happen when your stomach is gurgling and rumbling… It happens way before that, even when you see food. Your saliva has enzymes that help breakdown starches so that they’re more manageable for your gut. What I want to talk more about today is mastication, or better known as chewing. If we don’t take the time to chew enough then the bits of food that arrive in our stomach can be too big to be broken down properly. This makes the digestion process more energy intensive and harder to extract nutrients. So slow down and start chewing your food.

The recommendation is that you chew 30 times before swallowing. I’ve been doing trying it on certain meals and it’s a lot. I don’t focus on it every meal, and I don’t expect you to commit to it either, but with this new knowledge maybe you will start to be more intentional about your eating habits so that you can fuel your mind and body as best as possible.

So let’s finish by reflecting on that habit - Do you feel like you could chew your food more?

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 your lowest lows are actually just your path into something better! Join us in this discussion where we explore how what hurts the most often times is a blessing in disguise.

In this live podcast interview with Heather Monahan, you learn how to:

• Reframe negatives into opportunities
• Have the humility to ask for help when you need it
• Embrace the power of an alter-ego

Learn more about Heather on her website and buy Heather's latest book "Overcome Your Villains".