Every morning we wake up with a fresh start and a new chance to reach our goals, big or small. We can set the tone for the day with one simple decision.

“one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day"

This positive thought can take many forms. It could be waking up and forcing yourself to smile. It could be reflecting on things you are grateful for. It could be kissing a loved one and letting them know they make you happy. It doesn’t need to be big. However, in order for it to work, it does need to happen.

A positive thought or action is enough to jumpstart neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. This will serve you throughout the day. In doing so, you are priming your brain and body to seek more positive moments, and encourage your reward system to acknowledge other positive moments throughout the day.

You can think of it as a branching tree. Where every decision you make takes you either up toward happiness or down toward anxiety. Starting your day off on the right foot by having a positive thoughts generates momentum that compounds into a positive day. So trust that, "One small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day”.

If you want to read more often and more consistently then listen up! If not, then listen anyway. I am going to share a tactic I have employed for the last few months that works for me and has helped me improve my reading habits. It is to simply read two pages of a book every night.

I hear your questions already, Brian, you can’t possibly learn anything reading two pages a night, and it’ll take you forever to read a whole book. Well first off, it’ll take you 100 days to read a 200 page book so that’s not forever, and second and more importantly, you usually end up reading more than two pages when you get around to doing it!

It’s all about building the habit!  For me, two pages is just enough to feel like I put in the effort to take action, but it’s short enough that it doesn't seem like a burden to do on the nights I’m really tired and just want to go to sleep. As I mentioned, often times the two pages is just the foot-in-the-door to me sitting down and reading for longer, because getting started is the hardest part. Just by guaranteeing I put myself in a position to start, I end up reading a lot more!

What’s powerful too, is since I read consistently before bed every night, I now identify as a reader! And with this new found identity, I want to engage in behaviors that strengthen this association. I have come to take pride in reading at night. 

Give it a try for a week and see what happens. I bet you read more than 14 pages!

I heard something really interesting at an event recently that I wanted to dive deeper into. It’s one way to understand how to enter a flow state. By definition, a flow state is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized, uninterrupted focus. That forms the ceiling of their cognitive capacity. The idea we talked about, is that one can find a flow state at the intersection of discipline and surrender.

Doesn’t that just sound deep?

Well, I think there’s some pretty solid reasoning behind it. As for discipline, it is the ability to execute under all circumstances. It’s an ability to prioritize what is important and to ensure that it will be taken care of, and in some sense you identify with it. That’s where the uninterrupted focus part of the definition comes in. Discipline is a personal accountability to the things that you know you need to do. However, it has its own limitations in that is exists solely on the execution side and not on the capacity side.

Surrender on the other hand, is powerful. It is placing complete faith in the process. In surrendering, you can get out of your own way and lift the limitations you put on yourself, allowing you to enter a new level of operation. It’s important to note that surrender is different than submission, because there is zero resistance to it happening. No fight, not second guessing, just peace.

By utilizing the accountability and executional properties of discipline, and pairing it with the liberating expansion of surrender, you can reach a state of mind that otherwise couldn’t be achieved.

The importance of being on time. Being on time means that you are reliable. This in turn means others trust you more, which will result in better relationships and more opportunities coming your way. Did you notice what all of those reasons have in common? They are external. It’s what being on time does for others perception of you.

What about how you perceive yourself? You show up on time because you identify as being reliable. You show up on time because it’s important to be prepared. You show up on time because that’s the standard you hold yourself to. These days people are always talking about how time is money. Time is our greatest asset, and if you can’t be on time, then you affirm to yourself that you aren’t taking yourself seriously.

At the end of the day, being on time is the foot in the door to showing up in life. over time, with consistent action, this show up mentality compounds into an unspoken confidence that allows you to be more effective any time you enter the room. Now that’s a goal worth pursuing, but don’t over complicate it, it all starts by showing up on time.

if you just aren’t good at it, then design for that. Give yourself an extra 20 minutes in scheduling, set alarms and reminders, be proactive about taking care of things that slow you down. But fundamentally it’s about more than all of that. it’s about having the self-respect to show up on time.

I wanted to pose this question because there are a two opposite angles to it that I’ll get into. Should you trust your experience? We’ve been told from a very young age to have confidence in our abilities and believe that we have the right answer within us. Is that good advice?

Yes, experience is a great teacher, and it is something that is powerful when evaluating how to move forward in certain settings. By living through a situation, you have a set of expectations that will service you moving forward. But, no two situations are the same, so it’s not everything. 

Let’s look at the limitations our experience has that needs to be accounted for. With no two situations being identical, there is always so much more to know and learn that you didn’t get from the previous experience. So, it is natural to seek to learn more. However, you get in a slippery slope of never being completely prepared for any situation, so this approach has its own shortcomings as well.

The truth of the matter is, it is not clear whether you should act on experience or seek to learn more. The way I like thinking about this is as an athlete. It’s the difference between practice and training. In practice, you run through the exact same play, because the situation is going to be consistent enough that following strict guidelines will be effective. In soccer, this is like a corner kick or a goal kick, meaning those areas of the game that are predictable. Then the majority of the game is a group of elements that requires real-time decision making. This is where training comes in, because it helps you gain experience making decisions in a dynamic environment.  

As David Meltzer puts it in his new book, Game Time Decision Making, this can be thought of as situational knowledge, which is basically a learned experience from being in the situation before. Your experience turns into situational knowledge that can be applied to a dynamic and new setting. You can expand your situational knowledge through learning, and when you find confidence in your situational knowledge, you begin to act into your fullest capabilities. 

So, to answer the question, don’t rely on your experience, build situational knowledge.

I feel like the word selfish is misused a lot. I fully believe that I am in a phase in my life where I need to be selfish so that I can develop and be in a position to be selfless.  Does that mean the outcomes from the choices I am making come at the expense of the well-being of others? Of course not! In fact, I’ve been told I am extremely generous with my time and energy. However, the reality is it all is happening in a very selfish phase in my life, and I do believe it is best for me.

As always, it all comes down to intentions! Over a lifetime, my selfish decisions are going to be judged more than my selfless actions. I know that I am doing the right things for the right reasons, and that I give more than I take, even if I prioritize myself more than I should sometimes. I believe what is best for me is my own personal development and self-awareness, which will convert into being able to show up better for others.  

How does this tie into positivity? It’s about having faith in yourself and trusting your process, keeping a positive outlook on your path, and incorporating self-love. You need to have a full bucket before you can fill someone else’s. Keeping a positive mindset through every decision will help you arrive to that final destination.

People do not always get along. And often, there is a lot of resistance to introducing change. However, if we can get people on board with our vision we can accomplish things greater than we ever thought possible. We are going to be listening to process innovation expert, Bill Sanders who talks about how to get the most out of your team in the face of innovation and change. He gives his solution to how to work with those who are resistant to change.

"The first piece is asking the right questions, and the second piece is having empathy for where people are. If you can put yourself in their shoes, and feel the pressure that they are under to produce, the pain that they are under relative to the systems they are trying to work with, and ask questions from that perspective, you will get a lot better response. I do not believe that people fear change. They fear the unknown. They fear what they are going to loose. People spend about 9 billion dollars a year in the U.S. on lottery tickets trying to change everything about their life in one swoop. Their perspective is that is what is going to benefit me regardless of the change involved. So, if you can show people the benefit of what you are bringing, that gets you a test".

The reasoning behind today’s tip is so simple and logical, but the results are compelling.  It’s about making effort pacts. Basically, if there is a negative behavior or routine you want to limit in your life, you just need to make it a little more difficult to do or add small consequences to the behavior. Something that requires more effort. Then, you make a pact to that consequence of how you will reprimand your negative behavior in advance. This topic is covered by Nir Eyal in his new book, Indistractable, and he has a great but trivial example that shows it in action.

So, the small discomfort of killing a virtual tree was just enough of a reminder, and provides that little bit of mental effort that helps Nir reduce taking action on a negative behavior. Another example Mir has used is he has his wifi router timed to shut down at 10 pm. Therefore, if he really wants to browse the internet after 10, he has to go through the work of plugging it back in and setting it up, which just isn't worth his while.

Incorporate an effort pact for that behavior that you want to limit, and get ready to get results.

This lesson was inspired by the experience of Daron K Roberts, an individual who earned his JD from Harvard Law but instead decided to grow his career from the ground up as a professional football coach. In his book Call an Audible, Daron talks about the strategy he employed to slowly gain responsibility. 

At the bottom of the food chain in the Kansas City Chiefs coaching staff, Daron relied on being really consistent and beating expectations on the most mundane of tasks. He started earning respect by filling that role and he began building a reputation, but his involvement grew when he did something very simple. He asked.

Reflecting on his decision, Daron wondered if he was overreaching by asking. Then he reasons that in order to advance in any position, you need to take on new frontiers, and you can either way for that work to be assigned to you or you can ask for it. Well, in his case, Daron was able to secured the responsibility and cement himself as a fundamental contributor to the coaching staff.  

You too can accelerate your progression if you ask for what’s next. As long as you have performed to standard, feel prepared to make the jump, and have confidence the positive results will continue, you can open up the next opportunity on your path.

Have the ambition to overreach, stick your hand in the cookie jar and see if you pull something good out. You’ll realize you have a lot more to gain than you realized!