Sometimes, we come across people who just aren’t very nice - Either they don’t treat us fairly, or they make really selfish decisions that negatively affect us, or are mean in some other way. It could be the person that rides your tail then speeds past you because they didn’t like the way you were driving. Or maybe it’s a co-worker who is feeling pressure about a project and needs to take it out on someone. Or maybe it’s a random stranger who for whatever reason has some hate in their heart. When we encounter these people, or these circumstances, I want you to keep this idea in mind - Hurt people hurt people. Only the person who is hurt themselves is capable of hurting others.

No one is born hurt or broken. Unfortunately, it is transferred from one person to another. Oftentimes people do things that make themselves feel better, but it comes at the expense of other people and their well-being. If someone feels the need to treat someone poorly it’s because they have been treated poorly themself.

And here’s the important part - it’s not their fault. They didn’t ask to be hurt. They didn’t want to exist that way. But someone else put this upon them and now, in certain instances, that’s who they’ve become to cover for the hurt that they feel.

So when they come at you with that anger, resentment, and fear, know that it’s no reflection on you. It’s an outlet for them, and the best thing to do is to be compassionate for them and their experience. It’s not your responsibility to wear their pain, you don’t need to accommodate to their issues, and the next time a hurt person tries to hurt you, don’t let it get to you.

“When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.” To touch on these 3 stages independently...

When you’re 20, you do care what others think. A lot of your identity is wrapped up in being cool, your popularity, how much other people want to be around you and involved in what you’re doing. It’s congruent with that phase of life as you explore who you are.

Then when you’re 40, you stop caring what everyone thinks. You’ve matured into the life you wanted to have, and you have additional responsibilities, like having a family, where it’s no longer all about you. You have enough experience behind you to have confidence in who you are as a person and you don’t require the approval of others to validate your self-worth.

And at 60 you realize that no one was ever thinking about you in the first place. Everyone else has enough to worry about on their own, and if you were so focused on living your life, you realize that everyone else was doing the same living theirs.

That final point provides an interesting tie back into the very beginning, when you care what others think, and the case of the zit. Gary Vaynerchuk has this idea that when you’re in high school and you have a zit, you feel like everyone is constantly looking at it, and you’re really self-conscious of it. But the reality is, everyone has their own zit, everyone is already so preoccupied in their own world. It’s not worth your energy to care what someone might be thinking about you, because they likely aren’t.

I share this idea in the hopes that you can be inspired to live in a way that is more authentic to you, and not in a way that appeases others, because eventually you’ll reach that place and wish you got there sooner. So if you’re 20, 40, or 60, know the long game you’re playing and pursue it fully.

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.