Perhaps humanity’s greatest challenge is to delay gratification. I wish it weren't this way, but most behaviors that are healthiest for us, help us achieve our personal professional goals, and bring us the most fulfillment are things that don’t feel good to do in the moment. 

The world seems to operate like this: Immediate superficial reward = Delayed consequences. Delayed meaningful reward = Immediate consequences.

Oddly enough, something that reminds me of this is the water filter we have in our kitchen. It’s better for you to drink filtered water rather than water from the tap, so this is an important aspect of my health. But the thing about a water filter is it’s not ready for you immediately. You pour tap water in the top and the water runs through the filter slowly, drip by drip. This means that in order to drink filtered water when you want it, you need to be proactive about making it available.

It gives me satisfaction to fill up the water filter because it reminds me of how I choose to do the things that are good for me. It’s a subtle flex that I’m committed to doing things that serve more over the long term. Because if I don’t, then I’m forced to drink unfiltered water or waste time and wait until it’s filtered. 

Every time I prepare the water filter, it’s a small gift I’m giving to my future self. And that’s what delaying gratification is all about. The more we can be connected to the impact our choices today will have on us in the future, the more reward we feel in the short-term when we make good choices. And it makes it easier to do the right thing.

Filling up a water filter is the smallest, stupidest, most boring thing to talk about… But it’s the concept behind it that speaks volumes. Imagine if you did more things that your future self will thank you for. Imagine if you traded giving into temptation, getting distracted, and reacting emotionally for self-control, laser-focus, and emotional regulation. 

Your health, daily progress toward your personal and professional goals, and relationships would improve tremendously. And I guess it all starts with investing the 15 seconds to be proactive about filling up your water filter.

I was on a call last week with someone who I just met but I can tell is going to become a fast friend. Her name is Lexi and she said “Choose yourself every day.”

Isn’t it crazy that this needs to be a reminder? How many of us are choosing our families, work, social commitments, and so many other things over ourselves? On a busy day the first things to be deprioritized are the things we do for our own self-care, health, and wellness.

And while it’s done with good intentions, the unfortunate part is that this choice comes to the determinant of everything else. Your family, work, and everything else actually gets less of you when you don’t make you a priority. There’s a framework I share called the “Time Pie Analogy”. Basically, think about your day as a pie and your different commitments as different slices - let’s say cut into thirds between work, family, and yourself. 

Logically, you’d think that more time spent on yourself would be a bigger slice that takes up more pie, leaving smaller slices for work and family. While that’s true mathematically in terms of percentages, this assumption is overlooking something critical. When you invest in your self-care, the pie gets bigger. 

Sure the slice for your family is less than a third, but the quantity of slice is bigger because it’s being cut from a bigger pie. And the slice for your work might be smaller too, but you actually get more done because you’re investing in your capacity to do things with more quality.

That’s why choosing yourself makes sense on two levels: First is because you are worthy of it! We talk about making a difference and helping people… Don’t forget the fact that you’re a person too, and choosing to help yourself is an act of charity. And not only that, but the best thing you can do for others is to take care of yourself because it allows you to do everything with more quality.  

So what can you do to choose yourself today? Is it getting some ‘me time’ away from the kids for an hour? Is it paying a little more to get a really healthy meal? Is it going to sleep on time and making people wait until the morning to hear back from you?

Whatever form it takes for you, take action on it! It’s the best thing you can do for others too.

In a meditation last week a very powerful question popped into my head that I want to share with you - What’s more important to you, to be liked or to make an impact?

I fully understand that you can have both at the same time, and they’re actually on the same team more than they oppose each other... But given the raw materials of the two, my consciousness tasked me to genuinely respond to it. And I think the reason is because I have let wanting to be liked take precedence over making an impact.

This brings up something called a ‘competing commitment’. Kind of like self-sabotage, it’s an odd phenomenon that creates resistance to doing what you tell yourself you want to do. It’s a pattern where an unconscious need wins out over a conscious want.

A personal example, I’m deeply inspired about a New Year campaign that I’m launching (that you’ll hear about soon). Professionally there are few things that take priority over that, yet there have been a handful of events I’ve been invited to that I’ve chosen to attend. I believe that if I was choosing to make an impact I would decline and stay focused, and if I accept then I’m allowing other things, like a desire to be liked by others, be more important.

Another example, and probably the one that brought this to mind… In order to really tap into my fullest impact through this campaign I’m going to need to get bold in my outreach, call in favors, and challenge people to support. I need to get bold, and it might scare some people away or make people think differently of me. Perhaps I’m hanging on to a need to be liked and letting it compromise my impact.

Fortunately, the way to defeat competing commitments and self-sabotage is through awareness. You can only do something about it when you know it’s happening. With awareness you have the opportunity to push through the resistance and take actions that align with what you’re telling yourself you want. 

I’m committed to making an impact. I don’t want to rub people the wrong way, but I must be willing to. I am learning to trust my own intentions over the feedback others give me, and fully execute my mission even though it might come at a greater cost. It’s all in service of changing the world, as we’re on our way!

A major emphasis in self-improvement for many people is to be more self-disciplined and do what they say they will do. For whatever reason, when it comes to getting something done for work or another person, it’s no problem. You’re an action-taking machine! But when it comes to doing something for yourself, it’s different. And there’s an explanation for it - it all comes down to consequences.

When someone else expects something of us, we get it done because we don’t want to let someone else down. It’s the pain of damaging a relationship, being unreliable, or leaving someone worse off that motivates us to act. The consequences are significant and public. But when you don’t follow through on doing the thing you tell yourself you’re going to do privately, the consequences aren’t the same. The mind can easily deflect and rationalize to steer you off course, failing to step up doesn’t sting as much, and not meeting expectations becomes more acceptable.

So if you want to get more consistent in your health and wellness, and more serious about your goals and dreams, you need to add consequences. When you share publicly that you’re going to the gym in the morning, online or to a friend, you’re so much more likely to do it. Why? Because now there are consequences to not doing it. When you tell your family you’ll stop working by 5pm and help prepare dinner, even though that’s been your private intention for weeks, you’re more likely to put work away and transition to being with your family on time.

Humanity is motivated by two things - the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. When you’re playing a game privately, the pain isn’t so severe. When you’re playing a game publicly and people know what’s on the line, you feel it. 

This is why accountability is one of the greatest drivers of performance. Most people know exactly what to do, they understand what's healthy and what's not, the problem is people just can’t bring themselves to doing it. But accountability adds a layer of awareness and public expectation that transforms the way you step up to the commitment.

So for you, as you’re thinking about that one thing you want to be more consistent with and more disciplined toward, brainstorm what you can do to create consequences for not doing it. It’ll change everything.

Something I’m really focusing on in my self-growth right now is deliberately putting myself outside of my comfort zone, setting me up to rise to the occasion. I have a pattern of wanting to be fully prepared for everything - if I’ve got a big month-long sprint in my work, I’ve got a plan. If I take on a big workout, I chunk it down into smaller parts and pace myself. And while I’m really effective at getting things done with this process, I also see it as limiting.

Ed Mylett says that one of the traits he sees in the most successful people in the world is that they have a  lower threshold for what they need to know to take action. Even though they don’t have it all figured out, they have confidence that they’ll figure it out when it presents itself.

This is precisely why I want to do more things I’m not prepared for, and put myself in situations where I can prove to myself that I have what it takes to succeed through uncertainty. Recently this has taken the form of physical challenges. In September I went to Atlanta to an event called Runningman. I trained to run a half marathon but end up pushing myself 31 miles, completing a 50k and going more than twice as far as I intended. I didn’t have a plan for how I’d go that far, but I figured it out.

And then today, on Veterans Day, I’m taking on another physical feat. I run a campaign called Burpees For Vets where fitness leaders across the country do one burpee for every dollar donated to their fundraiser. We’ve raised over $700,000 for veteran nonprofits in the last 4 years. I participate in the campaign myself and this year have personally fundraised $2,000, meaning that I’m doing 2,000 burpees today.

The process-oriented side of me has already done the math - that’s 6 hours and 40 minutes of doing 5 burpees every minute! And while that’s the game plan, this challenge will certainly push me into new spaces I’ve never been.

I share all of this because there is growth in doing things that you aren’t prepared for. You discover new sides of yourself because they’re forced to come out, and you get to see your mindset on full display. And that’s my encouragement to you - if you notice that you feel a bit too comfortable or settled in, think about something you could do to interrupt the pattern and give you a new experience,

I was driving to a meeting in LA a few weeks ago and was presented with a really interesting lesson about choices and risk.

I gave myself plenty of time to make the drive, and left early in the morning so that I missed the majority of the traffic. But in LA, that’s nearly impossible. As the traffic started to pile up I noticed an Express Lane available on the far left-hand side. As someone who has learned to value my time, I chose to pay a few dollars to expedite my trip.

I was cruising in it for a while, passing many cars in the standard traffic as you’d expect to in the paid Express Lane until it started to slow down too... Then it was stopped altogether. Meanwhile the standard line crept along and all of the progress I made was erased. As we were still stopped, I reasoned that the overall I was going slower in the Express Lane than I would have ifi I just stayed in the normal lane.

This is a moment that would make many people frustrated, paying more to get a worse result. But having given myself ample time, I didn't feel the stress and instead was able to extract this lesson.

I had certain assumptions about what the Express Lane would do for me. Based on past experiences, I unconsciously determined that getting in it was the right choice. At some level I calculated the likelihood of the different scenarios and found it reasonable that the Express Lane would be faster and worth the money.

But just because that’s what I concluded does not mean it’s guaranteed. There was risk. When you quantify the risk, you’re determining the probability that an undesirable result will occur. Sometimes you take action with lots of risk, where the upside is unlikely but impactful. In this case the risk was small but happened nonetheless.

That is calculating this all from my limited level of awareness. Had I made this drive during rush hour more often, I would have more experience and information to work with. I’d be able to better quantify the risk because I’d have more data points.

And I think that’s the overall message I’m trying to share - You need to take ownership of the choices you make. I was solely responsible for choosing to take the Express Lane, which means that I need to accept the consequences. Things don’t just happen - there’s a reason why they don’t go the way you expect them to. In taking time to understand what’s in your control, what could be done differently, and what factors are at play, you can prepare yourself to get better outcomes.

We’re in a world where so much attention is dedicated to division. There’s so much talk about this side being right and that side being wrong. There's a difference in opinion on whether a certain action is moral, fair, unjust, or unacceptable. All of this variation is a byproduct of people having different beliefs.

But these differences between us are indisputedly critical.

Living in an echo chamber where we only hear what we want to hear limits our perspective and awareness. What we believe to be the truth is often more subjective than we think, and represents our unique values rather than the facts of how things are.

But no matter who you are, where you come from, or what side of things you’re on… We all share the same thing - a deep connection to love. So putting the differences aside, let’s commit to loving each other.

But what does that even mean? Well think about how that plays out with your loved ones:

Love is a deep care for someone’s well-being, and a willingness to make personal sacrifices for their benefit.

Love is a deep acceptance for who someone is, and that what you might see as weakness or flaws are ingredients of their uniqueness.

Love is intimacy, being able to vulnerably share parts of yourself and receive those parts from others without judgment or feeling judged. 

Love is a commitment to all of the things just mentioned, even when you have reasons to think otherwise, even when emotions run high, and even when it’s inconvenient. It’s letting your care, acceptance, and intimacy shine through the cloudy moments.

Everything I just described, it’s not too much to ask. We’re all capable of loving strangers, and each other, more fully. The bar isn’t that high. We just need to stop looking at the differences as something that threatens us, and start embracing our similarities. Because we all want to love and be loved. So let’s commit to loving each other.

The human mind is designed for pattern recognition. It happens in the neocortex, which is one of the most advanced parts of the brain, but it still plays an evolutionary purpose. We all have a predisposition to seek familiarity because whatever is understood to be more certain is determined to be more safe. Detecting patterns is fundamental to that, those who were better at it were more likely to stay alive.

In the modern world, it also happens to be that those who are better at identifying patterns tend to do better in life and business. When you recognize that something is happening again, and the result of it is undesirable, it prompts your awareness quicker to make an adjustment. It offers a faster feedback loop that allows you to optimize your efforts.

But one of the biggest challenges we have is knowing when something has become a pattern. How many times does something need to happen for it to be significant enough to call it a pattern?

While this is oversimplified, an expression I heard recently is “Once is an instance, twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern.”

This addresses both sides of the problem. Some people change course before they’ve given something it’s fair chance to work. Some people tolerate things that continue to not work well enough for too long. Getting to three points of feedback gives you that optimal tension where you’re accommodating both. 

But just because you’ve observed a pattern of results doesn’t mean it’s easy to disrupt it. You need to be really creative to understand what’s informing that pattern and what forces have shaped it. From there you can make the necessary adjustments to your environment or action to create a new design, that then produces a new pattern.

There are trends and patterns to be recognized in simple tactics, like observing that you’re more consistent with your exercise and have a better diet when you get a morning workout in. Or it can be as complex as understanding your relationship with rejection, and the emotional cascade that comes from it and how it impacts your relationships.

That’s the work! And there’s always more to do. But you’re in the game, and that’s the exactly where you need to be!