Sometimes inspiration strikes at the weirdest times. Maybe you come up with a new creative way to solve a problem you’ve been working on, or maybe you remember an errand you forgot to do or a call you forgot to make. As great as we think our memory might be, it’s only capable of storing this new information for 40 seconds before either encoding to long-term memory or being lost forever.

Something you should think about doing is having an easy and accessible way to capture your ideas. You can choose to write your ideas down in a little notebook you carry around, or store them somewhere in your phone. The important detail is you need to be able to access your tool of choice consistently and easily to facilitate the process.

Taking it one step further, when you document the thought that comes to mind you’ll actually be able to recall it better. The physical action of doing something carves out a deeper representation in your brain, so when it comes time to recall the thought you can better place yourself in the context of that original moment and remember more details than you would have otherwise.

This is exactly what I do to think of a new personal development tip every day! I’m constantly observing and curious about the world around me, and when something inspires me I write it down in my phone. Then when it comes time to sit down and prepare an episode, I pull up the list and have hundreds of things to reflect on.

You are full of great ideas, but unfortunately many of them are lost and gone forever because you didn’t have the system in place to store them. This can be your system, give it a try!

There's a great lyric from a James Taylor song that goes, “Shower the people you love with love.” It seems pretty obvious but unfortunately in today’s world it’s not as straight forward as it should be. For whatever reason we have a culture that limits self-expression, and sometimes makes you feel silly for telling people how you feel. I think the source of this is that many people care what others think, and if you stand out in the way you behave it makes you vulnerable to judgment and criticism. So in order to avoid that we don’t always show our true colors.

But for those people that you really care about, they probably really care about you too and won’t feel like it’s inappropriate for you to let them know. They won’t judge, and they’ll actually embrace your vulnerabilities, which will allow you to deepen your relationship with them. How good would it feel to build that intimacy with someone else? Well then you go first, because they’re likely feeling the same limitations as you do, and if you lead with vulnerability then it opens the door for it to be reciprocated.

So don’t hold back! And that’s what the rest of the lyric says - “Shower the people you love with love. Show them the way that you feel. Things are going to work out fine if you only will.” Send texts and letters, give big hugs, Call out of the blue. The little effort it takes to tell people how you feel leaves a massive impression, and it makes a difference. It makes their day. And as it goes with positivity, it’ll probably circle its way back around to you.

The far majority of our actions, moods, and mindsets are dictated by our environment. Our environments hold cues that are associated with long histories and relationships with the things in our lives. Whether you realize it or not, your environment has molded your subconscious mind in varoius ways to generate certain thought and behavior patterns.

You’ve probably noticed, if you change up that environment just a little bit then it feels different. It’s simply because the associations you have with the things around you have been broken. For that reason, if you’re looking to construct more positive habits, a change in scenery might be a really good idea.

You can do this by leaving your normal working or living space for a bit, getting out of your office to work at a coffee shop, or taking a weekend away. Or even you can move furniture around and change your typical set up around. It’ll allow you to be more conscious of your behavior, and when you notice how things are different,  it’ll cause you to be more present and conscious of your own behavior.

The value of changing your scenery is you refresh your slate, and you can build in new associations within your new environment. Move your desk in your room and commit to reserving that space for work. Move your bed, or even change the color of your bedsheets and vow to stop eating in bed. A new environment means you have a blank slate to create the triggers and associations you want. And all it takes to kick it off is a little change of scenery.

I don’t mean to sound morbid, but death really is a great equalizer. What if you lived life doing things as it were the last time you’d ever do it? How much would you cherish that last phone call with a parent? How meaningful would it be to tuck your child in goodnight, kiss your spouse good morning, or give your friend a goodbye hug for the last time? The significance of those experiences takes on an entirely new level, and becoming absorbed in the smaller moments makes you feel that much more alive.

Sometimes I feel like we can go through our lives on autopilot, not allowing ourselves to completely invest ourselves in what’s going on and immerse ourselves in the feelings of the moment. The reality is, anything we do, we don’t know if it will be our last time. It’s sad and scary to think about, but it’s true. And if that’s the case, then to me the question becomes “How can you live more in the present? How can you enjoy the richness and depth of each moment we experience?” The day to day moments are worth cherishing, and reminding yourself that they may be the last one is a great motivation to commit to experiencing them differently.

On a psychological level, treating things as if it’s the last time you’ll ever do it adds scarcity to the equation. If we have less of something, we tend to value it more. So if we want to live with more depth, and allow ourselves to be completely engaged by each opportunity and interaction we have, then we can use the ominous reality of death as our reason to immerse ourselves more completely.

Is it an emotional thought? Absolutely. But if you get the sense that life is just passing you by, try incorporating this idea into your experiences in the next few days and see how it makes you feel.

When you think of arrogance you probably think of it as an external process, where someone is flaunting their knowledge, bragging, or proving to others how good they are or how smart they are. Well arrogance also has an internal element to it, and Matthew Morales has his own reflection on arrogance based on his own experience, and how it affected him.

"Arrogance is to avoid one’s own ignorance." It’s to ignore the things you don’t know enough about, and project a false confidence. And while it often fools others it certainly can’t fool the person who is being arrogant, and over-time it wears them down.

We can all get better at saying the sentence “I don’t know”. It’s not weakness, it’s a strength that you have the humility to let others in and support you. Humility is the antidote to arrogance, and we all can be better at practicing it more often.

I wanted to feature a warm reminder from Hellen Keller, whose perspective is unlike anyone else’s. The quote is, “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”

Everything in life has a tradeoff. As Issac Newton put it, every action has an equal opposite reaction. If that’s the case then we can choose where we put our attention in order to surround ourselves with the things we want. That’s not to say that the shadows of life don’t exist, but it does suggest that we can focus on the light and not the dark.

With this idea there’s an interesting undertone of self-awareness. The quote talks specifically about keeping your face to the sunshine. It doesn’t directly mention seeing light, and I think that’s on purpose. It’s meant to have us take a step back and think about how we can decide to position ourselves, knowing the implications of that decision and how it affects our abilities. It is within our control to choose where we want to direct our attention, and literally moving your body to face the sunshine makes it impossible to see the shadow behind you.

When it comes to living a more positive life, that’s the first step. Prepare your environment and mentality so that it’s easy to see the light more often. Set an intention before going to bed. Surround yourself with positive messaging. Commit to routines that make you feel good. Our brains are already hardwired to discover the negative so don’t give it more fuel than it needs - Choose happy and sunshine in your life, walk boldly toward it, and it will become your experience.

I’ve been learning a lot lately about the power of your thoughts and feelings. I’ve always understood them to be a two way feedback loop, but recently I’m starting to think a bit differently. Traditionally you think of your thoughts and feelings as a two way street. The things you think about affect how you feel, and then the way you feel affects the things you think about. So the two of them are extremely intertwined.

Taking a step back and understanding that we were animals before we humans, and that our brains only recently became the superpowers they are, we probably utilize more primitive hardwiring then cognitive hardwiring. This is in alignment with what I’ve learned recently, which is that 90% of our psychology is dictated by our physiology. Another way of putting it, the way we think is at the mercy of the way we feel. So yes, the feedback loop I described earlier does exist, but if you want to manipulate that loop as much as possible you’re best bet is to take care of your physiology rather than your psychology.

As Brian Johnson describes in the Optimize App, the primary element of your physiology is your energy. Are you eating the right foods, getting the right amount of rest, and doing the right things to prepare and engage your body? Your brain needs energetic fuel to be at its best, and you truly can’t will your way into things if you don’t have the right environment to do so.

The way we think and the way we feel are extremely important, and gaining an awareness of them are indicators of our well-being. But if you really want to identify a major opportunity for growth then focus on how you feel, starting with making sure you’re adequately energized.