Things in life change and develop, expanding and retracting in a beautiful way. With all of these changes you are often presented forks in the road where you need to make a decision. There’s a pressure to get these decisions right because you don’t want to bear the consequences of getting it wrong, or miss the opportunity for having gone another direction.

There’s an unknown to what lies on the other end, so we do as much as we can to research, understand, and forecast how things will be. But you will never have all of the details to know exactly how something will go. Like it or not you cannot predict the future and at one point or another you need to make a decision.

What tends to happen is we want spend so much time in indecision that we pause our growth. We handcuff ourselves to try and understand the best and worst case scenario so that we know what we’re getting ourselves into. But we don’t know what we don’t know, and the last time I checked things don’t go according to plan. So why spend so much time making that ideal plan?

That’s not to say you can’t also be intentional and diligent about your decisions. You can, but you need to use a broader and more value based framework. A mentor of mine, Jim Bunch says he asks himself 4 questions to make any big decision: Does this align with my values? How will this improve my lifestyle? What is the ROI? And can I do this, and am I willing?

After a fair and reasonable amount of thought, just make a decision. That decision will lead to another and another, and through each decision you’ll be moving forward and navigating your life, inching your way toward the things you want. But you cannot begin that process until you make your first decision.

Something we all face off with all the time is the idea of failure. But let's introduce the perspective of Simon Sinek, who asks us to make our definition of “failing” more robust. Similar to how eskimos have different words for different types of snow, we should have multiple ways of communicating about failure. That’s because failure comes in many different forms, at all different levels, and with different implications. The problem is, anytime failure is mentioned we take it to the far extreme and treat it accordingly.

That catastrophic rock bottom failure is far from the norm. It’s actually only a small fraction of the failures we have, and to counter that Sinek encourages us to consider one additional definition. Instead of “failing”, call it “falling”. Kind of like a kid who is learning to walk, when you’re doing something new you’re likely to fall. But that’s not a major failure, it’s something that simply didn’t go completely according to plan. “Falling” is experiencing a setback that gives you feedback about how to do better next time, and in order to make things right all you have to do is get back up and try again.

When you fall it happens because you’re taking risks and pushing the boundary. Embracing discomfort and acting boldly is a trait I imagine many of us want to embody, but we’re afraid to do it because we’re afraid of failing. That’s not the real consequence. Falling is the consequence. What might happen is you take a small misstep, which is completely normal, you fall down, but you confidently stand yourself back up to try again.

With this new understanding, let’s consider falling more often because it demonstrates our commitment to making progress.

When you reflect on positivity you probably think about the emotions and mindsets of it. However, it's equally important to focus on the physical expression of positivity. Your thoughts and your feelings are extremely connected and operate as a feedback loop. What you think influences how you feel, and how you feel informs what you think.

Your happy dance is that thing you do when you’re experiencing pure joy. You feel so good, aligned, and fulfilled that your body can’t contain it and you start to physically express the way you feel. I know it’s called a happy dance but it may not have anything to do with dancing. Your happy dance is just a proxy for that way you authentically individualize your state of joy.

For me, it’s a combination of little dance moves and celebratory posing, pumping my fists in the air and hopping around. Whatever it might be for you, allow it to come out when you’re feeling it. That inner child buried inside you is desperate to be acknowledged and heard, and when you do your happy dance it gives that part of you a voice.

Why is it called a happy dance? Well, studies show that when you’re dancing you release more endorphins than you do when you exercise and your body knows no other way to experience that kind of bliss. So by nature we often dance when we feel that way because it’s the most normal thing for us to do in that emotional state. Every morning when I brush my teeth, I put music on and dance because it generates a feeling that informs my thoughts, which primes me to find more joy the rest of the day. You deserve to experience joy, so let yourself, and do your happy dance.

Society has labeled addictions a certain way, only representing a fraction of the ways it actually affects society. Even in doing research on the subject, addiction is formally defined as a compulsive physiological need for and use of a habit-forming substance. That’s a pretty narrow definition that only relates to substance-abuse, which of course is a huge problem, but only speaks to one very specific amount.

I think the mutually accepted understanding of addiction is that it’s generally a bad thing. It means that your behaviors and habits are considered to be in excess of what’s required, and it leads to some negative consequences. But even so, those consequences are a spectrum and often don’t have negative effects. In fact, I think we all have everyday addictions that we don’t acknowledge as such because the term is used in such a derogatory and extreme sense.

For example, checking social media more often than you want to is an addiction because it is a compulsion for your unmet need to belong. Compulsive lying can be an addiction to help you receive validation about your self worth. Even biting your nails can be considered an addiction because it soothes and placates during stress.

Once we open up this definition for addiction, we can see what needs aren’t being met in our lives and start brainstorming alternatives to live a more constructive life. As with everything, the first step is awareness - Knowing your negative habits that have a strong hold on you, knowing your defense mechanisms - So that you can grow through them into a more actualized you.

We all know the value of communication. It’s our way of sharing our internal world, whether that be our thoughts, feelings, or desires, so that others can understand what we’re experiencing. Communication is at the heart of every form of collaboration because it helps people get on the same page, no matter if the collaboration is personal, professional, romantic, or creative.

There’s one fatal flaw inherent to communication though. It is extremely inefficient. There are no amount of words you can say that completely represents an internal experience, and for that reason I don’t think you can communicate enough. In fact, I recommend that you overcommunicate when possible.

You’d think that overcommunicating would be too much and beyond what’s required, I mean that’s what “over” means. But that’s also the point because you don’t want to limit your communication. You don’t know how much of your communication is being received, or how well it’s being received, and you need to be sure you’re sharing your message in its entirety. Overcommunicating helps you voice the things that you believe to be assumed and verify that there is a mutual understanding.

And what’s the tradeoff? Maybe you’re a little long-winded and you ramble a little too long. Worst case scenario is someone tells you to stop talking. That’s not so bad to ensure you’re getting your message across.

If communication is at the root of collaboration, and communication is already naturally inefficient, it makes a lot of sense to share more and make sure that you vision and experience is being fully understood.

You know when things work out even better than you hoped, and seemed to magically materialize from nothing? How things came together by no doing of your own and just fall into your lap in the best of ways? That’s "dumb luck", but I think the term itself discredits what is actually happening.

First to call something 'dumb' is simply incorrect. With the infinite intelligence that exists around us it’s naive to call anything related to your environment 'dumb'. Just because you can’t see or measure what’s happening does not mean that it doesn’t exist. There is more design and intention behind every element of your life than you realize and it’s important to respect that.

Then the word luck. I think a better word to use is "coincidence". I don't mean the traditional definition of coincidence that involves randomness, but instead the root etymological meaning. To co-incide means for things to happen together. There doesn’t need to be an element of luck or chance in what things coincide. What often happens is that we can’t perceive the synchronicity in the event, and therefore we rationalize it as a random occurrence. Again, this isn’t respecting the nature of what is actually happening in a more divine way.

In either case, if you choose to see dumb luck as a random fluke or pre-destined serendipity, it’s important to maximize the opportunity in front of you. Those who get the farthest in life do the most with the advantages they have access to. So if you want to find ways to advance your career, network, or skills, you’re going to need to take advantage of your strokes of good fortune so that they produce real outcomes.

It's important to take action and be the doer that creates your world.  While I still do strongly advocate for that, there’s more to the equation than you might first think. Obviously everything you do is an action-step in your life, but also everything you don’t do is an action-step as well. More briefly put, inaction is also an action.

When we think about taking action we think about the new and novel activities or behaviors we introduce to our lives. They leave an impression because they are being done consciously within our awareness, and therefore are very top of mind. But the far majority of our actions and behaviors are done at an unconscious level. They’re still actions, we just aren’t aware of them and therefore we don’t label them as such. Your inaction on one thing does not lead to nothing... It leads to you doing something else that you’ve been habituated to doing. That is still action. Instead of beginning a new workout routine, you resort to the inaction of scrolling through social media. Instead of speaking up about a new idea at work, you recoil into a sequence of self-defeating thoughts about your creativity.

Your behavior is the language of your identity, and what we call “inaction” is actually just a proxy for taking action on the things that are already comfortable, habitual, and sub-conscious. By not taking the desired action, we revert to doing the same things we’ve always done and strengthen the sub-conscious belief we have about that thing.  It makes overwriting that your identity (which is done by taking a new action) that much more difficult the next time.  

Every choice you make is a tradeoff. You can do new things that generate new results in your life. If you don’t you’ll be relegated to taking the same old actions that lead to the same old outcomes. The choice is yours but recognize that even inaction is actually an action.

There are random moments that may come up in your day where you do something “small” to help someone out. At a grocery store they drop their basket, and you help them pick up their groceries. Or you give a subtle compliment to a stranger and then walk away. While these things don’t take much effort on your end, the impact is truly infinite. Which means they’re not actually that small of acts of kindness, even though they feel that way.

Something I believe to be true about the world is that it has a disproportionate nature to it. The amount of effort, difficulty, or intention you put into something creates an outcome that is disproportionately large in return. A perfect example is introducing two people. You take the 5 minutes to draft up an email and it could lead to mentorship, collaboration, or a new business. The possibilities are endless and far greater than the amount of effort you put in.

Your kindness is the same. Your smallest contribution creates a permanent shift in the universe that grows and continues to interact with people, creating change on a larger magnitude than you can conceive. The world is not linear, it is exponential, and if you want the world to be a kinder place then you just figured out your solution. Add more kindness and let it compound!

There is no small act of kindness, truly, even though it might feel small to you in the moment. I hope this encourages you to invest your energy and attention into more acts of kindness, knowing that the universe’s natural process will amplify it and allow it to touch those who need it.