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How To Do It All

August 8, 2025

We all invest time in our personal development for the same reason: We want to be the very best version of ourselves.

But if we're being honest it’s less about being that person and more about what that brings - an unmatched fulfillment that comes from having an incredible and impactful career… Having deep and loving relationships… Having good health and being in incredible shape…

Basically we want to have it all. And we figure the best way to have it all, is by doing it all.

Career success comes from reading books, improving skills, and building a network. Great relationships come from making dedicated time together with date nights, trips, and activities. Good health comes from being disciplined and making good choices.

It can be frustrating to have so many goals but not enough time or energy to deliver on them. Commitments in different areas of your life may seem to compete with each other because there’s only so much to go around. Which is why I want to present a different way to think about it:

If you want to have it all, which comes from doing it all, then you need to just worry about what to do next. 

You’ve probably heard the Bill Gates quote "Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in ten years"... and this is what it’s talking about. We feel like we have to do it all at once, when in truth when you do things one at a time, it comes together much faster than you’d expect.

This is why the concept I practice in my own self improvement is improving “brick by brick”. My core focus every month is to maintain all of the habits, routines, systems, and intentions that I currently have, and then I add focus to one new critical area. I do that for a month, incorporate it into my core maintenance systems, and then pick one new thing to focus on for the next month.

Trust me, I have a long list of things I want to improve in my business and life. But I recognize that if I tried to work on all of it, I’d end up succeeding with none of it. And with how fast time passes these days, a month passes quickly and you’re on to the next. One at a time, brick by brick, that’s how you do it all. You start by doing what’s next.

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Have A Good Rest Ethic

August 7, 2025

People talk a lot about work ethic. It’s having the character to work hard, apply yourself, and do what it takes to make progress in your life. People work hard in their career, in their health, for their family and loved ones, and it’s celebrated.

What’s equally important is an idea that doesn’t get as much air-time, which is ‘rest ethic’. It’s exactly what it sounds like - it’s holding yourself to a higher level of discipline and commitment to rest and recovery.

One of the most counterintuitive things I’ve ever encountered is: Often the most powerful expression of self-discipline is honoring an early bed time.

It’s critically important that we give our bodies and minds enough time to rest. And the biggest limiting factor to the amount of sleep is the time we go to bed. Our alarm goes off around the same time every morning, so when you go to sleep is the variable that matters most.

Yet, how easy is it to stay up past your bedtime and do “just one more thing”. Wrap up one last household chore… Watch one more show… Respond to one more email… It all happens virtually automatically, and it’s often motivated by a concept called “Revenge Bedtime Procrastination” where people stay up late because it’s an opportunity for unstructured ‘me time’ that they didn’t get throughout the day.

What takes effort is to not give in to that, wrap up your day, and begin to wind down so that you get an adequate amount of sleep. The mind will try to fight against you with all of the things it believes to be incomplete and all of the things it wants to do. But you’re in control and you can enforce bedtime for yourself.

One of the most important pieces to having a good rest ethic is awareness. You can’t make a good choice without knowing there’s a choice to be made. And that’s where I have a little trick for you:

Just like setting an alarm in the morning for when you want to wake up, set an alarm at night for when you want to start winding down for bed. The alarm interrupts whatever you’re doing to bring your attention to the fact that it’s time to go to sleep. At that point it’s your choice to do it, or not.

Getting into a more predictable sleep schedule by responding to a night-time alarm is one of the 9 Super Habits. When you do all 9 consistently, you completely transform the energy, focus, and mindset you bring to everything you do. It’s a gateway to your fullest potential, and if you want to learn what the 9 Super Habits are and how to follow through on them consistently, you an watch a mini video-series here. In all they take only 10 minutes a day to do, but they unlock the discipline, focus, healthy choices that make you feel and perform at your very best all day.

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The Ben Franklin Effect

August 6, 2025

The Ben Franklin Effect is a psychological principle, used in persuasion, where someone becomes more likely to do what you asked them to do if you get them to do something smaller first. It’s a principle that is commonly messaged in a few different ways:

Dr. Robert Cialdini in the book “Influence” calls this ‘commitment and consistency’, claiming that someone is more likely to take action in a way that is aligned with a previous action…

The ‘foot in the door’ phenomenon takes the same approach where asking for something small makes someone more likely to say ‘yes’ to your next request…

And it parallels the famous expression “give them an inch and they’ll take it a mile.”

Given how powerfully this principle influences other people, isn’t it fair to say that it’d achieve the same effect when used on yourself?

When you take action on a small commitment to yourself, it often opens the door to you stepping up to a much larger commitment, one that feels too overwhelming to commit to from the start.

This is why James Clear in ‘Atomic Habits’ popularized the idea of ‘the 2 minute rule’ where your minimum standard is to take a desired action for just two minutes, and naturally the full behavior follows suit. It’s the reason why people are constantly encouraged to just get started, even imperfectly, because it creates momentum. 

It’s often explained as overcoming the ‘activation energy’ or inertia of an action such that there’s an upfront energetic demand. There's work that needs to get done to get over the initial hump but then it’s all downhill from there.

And this is what it looks like in practice. Need to get through a major backlog of email? Just commit to 5 emails. Don’t feel like doing cardio today? Get on the bike and go for just 5 minutes. Feeling resistance to making sales calls? Put your list together of the 10 people you want to follow up with.

The simple step of taking the first small action sets up the rest of the action to happen with way less resistance. Before you know it, you’re powering through emails, extending your cardio, and picking up the phone. 

Don’t underestimate the power of the unconscious mind. When you get it to start working for you and not against you, you become unstoppable. The mind is constantly making snapshot reflexes - and if you want to create a reflex where you quickly take initial action, which I call your best-self reflex, so that you to make the healthy, focused, productive choice unconsciously and by default… Check out the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge. It sets you up for success in ways you couldn’t imagine.

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Gossip Is Food For The Ego

August 5, 2025

Something we probably agree on is that it generally isn’t good to gossip. And that’s because gossip has a certain connotation where you’re talking poorly about someone behind their back, in their business unnecessarily, often with the intention to criticize them. There’s certainly a time and place to talk about other people from a place of curiosity, with fairness and respect… That’s just not gossip.

And even though we know it’s not good to gossip, we find ourselves doing it anyway. Why is that? Why would we engage in something we clearly don’t want to do?

It’s because gossip is food for the ego, and on an unconscious level, we’re deeply attracted to it.

The ego’s purpose is to create separation. It’s to establish independence so that you’re inclined to act in ways that are self-serving and beneficial to you. This stems from a core need in evolutionary psychology for safety, and when we have a strong sense of self, we’re more likely to keep ourselves alive.

Gossip serves a purpose in that it makes you feel better about yourself. When you air out someone else’s problems and mistakes, it makes your own problems and mistakes seem not so serious. When you talk about someone else’s flaws and issues, you become morally superior to them which inflates your status within the tribe.

And again, unconsciously we’re hardwired to want that. It makes us more psychologically secure and positioned to be a more valuable asset to others. It serves us to pull other people down because it makes us appear to be higher.

But it’s misguided. Because while there’s a short-term payoff when you feed the ego with gossip, the long-term consequence is that it erodes our self-worth. We see ourselves as good not because we’re good, but because we’re better than bad. We learn to think highly of ourselves only when in comparison with others externally rather than arriving at that proudly internally.

And the hardest part is, it’s hard to control when it enters our lives. If you’re not the one starting it, others bring it to you. Which is why it’s critical to be vigilant about shutting it down. But that’s much easier said than done, especially because our unconscious mind and ego are hungry for it, which makes it a very important best-self practice.

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You Don't Want Better Habits, You Want Higher Standards

August 4, 2025

When someone talks about getting into better habits, it often means that they want to get more consistent in making better choices. They want to prioritize their health and wellness by exercising consistently, preparing nutritious meals while resisting unhealthy foods, be more productive by having routines to plan their time and organize their tasks…

But what they really mean is they want to hold themselves to a higher standard. They know what’s best for them and they want to be more accountable to doing it more often. 

There’s a long list of things we know we should (or shouldn't) be doing, yet we often don’t do them. We make an excuse or exception, or somehow rationalize that it’s not what we want to do or what we need to do. Only for us to look back and regret the choice we made, making a decision that we don’t agree with.

That’s where the idea of having standards comes in. A standard is a personal expectation. It’s the level of performance or intention you want to hold yourself to regardless of outside conditions. The problem is many people have a hard time enforcing a higher standard for themselves because they haven’t clearly defined the expectation.

They want to eat healthier, but what does that mean? They want to get a workout in every day, non-negotiable, but does that include a long day spent walking around a theme park with their kids?

When there’s gray area, there’s room left for interpretation and the unconscious mind will shape it into whatever it wants. And by nature the unconscious mind wants us to be lazy, experience short-term pleasure, and do the ‘safe’ thing… Even though we know it comes with long-term consequences.

But when you clearly define your standards, and you make them more objective and easy to measure against, you remove the gray area. You set the expectation and clearly know if your choices are in integrity with it or not. Susan Peirce Thompson calls this ‘having bright lines’ because if you begin to cross the standard you set for yourself, you know without a doubt it’s happening.

My system for reviewing my day and knowing how I did against my standards is: I fill out my Self Improvement Scorecard. If you want to see how it works, I’ve created a video where I show off my self improvement system and explain how it works in detail.

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Weekend Recap 7/28 - 8/1

August 2, 2025
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How I Fixed My Messy Task List

August 1, 2025
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One of the things that has made the biggest difference in my life and productive work output is getting really organized with my daily tasks.

I used to be a ‘write down your list for the day on a piece of paper’ kind of guy, and when I made the step up to using an organized digital task list on Todoist, everything elevated. Using a good tool is great, but what’s more helpful is designing a system so that your using that tool is a process that’s simple, consistent, and easy to maintain. For years I’ve been able to create a hierarchy of tasks based on importance and urgency, and it has radically improved my daily productivity and focus. I’ve got a video explaining how it works linked in the description if you want to check it out.

What I wanted to talk about today though, is how things went haywire recently...

The system I devised is basically this: 1) Put all of the things that come up throughout the day in one central location, 2) Categorize those things all at once at the end of the day into the appropriate places and assign them their relative urgency and importance.

The system works if you’re consistent maintaining it, and it becomes very overgrown if you don’t.

I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but a few months ago I missed a week of categorizing tasks… So the list added up. It became too much to do casually at once, so I avoided it, and the list got longer. Before I knew it, it was completely out of control.

It took longer than I’d like to admit, but eventually I dedicated an hour to biting the bullet and getting through it to get caught up. And it was only once I finished that I realized I could have tried a different solution.

Rather than committing to organizing all of my undesignated tasks at the end of the day, I could have taken chunks out of it. Like organizing 5 or 10 tasks a day at minimum. This would slowly put a dent in the list until I got all caught up.

And that’s the lesson I learned: The next time I get behind on organizing my task list, I can implement this new 'piece by piece' strategy. I’m confident this will help me solve the problem faster, get my systems working better, and accelerate my progress.

It also opened my eyes to the unconscious tendency I have to do things ‘all or nothing’. If it showed up here, where else might it be showing up, and where else might this be a solution to a problem I’m currently experiencing.

That’s how I approach my improvement! And hopefully it’s helpful to get a tactical glimpse into it. If you want to see how the productivity system I’ve built and use for myself works in more detail, I call it my Every Day Productivity Machine. I have a video showing you the system linked here.

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5 Levels Of Confidence

July 31, 2025
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Something that is central to the conversation around personal development is becoming more self confident. More confidence means that you’re willing to dream bigger, try harder, stand up for what you believe in, and play a greater role in influencing the world. Not to mention how good it feels to love, accept, support, and believe in yourself as you navigate life’s challenges.

Recently I heard on a podcast the various degrees of self-confidence (I wish I remembered who said it). It was helpful to hear the distinctions, so I wanted to forward the lesson to you about the 5 different levels of self-confidence, sharing them in increasing order via confidence statements:

  1. “I can’t” - This is extremely low confidence where you’re convinced that you’re incapable of taking action in such a way that will generate the result. It’s disempowering, deflating, and keeps you from even trying.
  1. “Perhaps I can” - This is the next step up because rather than being convinced you’re incapable, there’s the faintest suggestion of a possibility that you can. It offers a very weak signal and doesn’t reach the threshold of inspiring you to strongly consider taking action on it.
  1. “I think I can” - This level of confidence offers the first true level of hope. It might actually work out. It could actually happen. There’s still significant doubt, but it’s offset by a sense of belief as well and that makes you more likely to proceed with it.
  1. “I know I can” - This is a fully convicted sense of confidence. There’s no doubt. In fact there’s certainty that you’re capable if only you had the willingness to apply yourself. Which leads us to…
  1. “I will” - This is where you’ve already made the decision. You’re going to do it, and it’s not up for interpretation, negotiation, or discussion. It’s an expression of commitment, and the only thing getting in the way are figuring out the details around it.

What I want to point out directly is the correlation between being more confident and having a readiness to take action. And it makes sense - the more confident you are, the less you expect to go wrong or the more prepared you or to fix what went wrong.

Here’s another dimension to reflect on: The more prepared someone is to take action with less confidence, the more successful they’re likely to be. Ed Mylett, who is and speaks often with the most successful people in the world, says that the most successful people he knows are the ones who can take action with the lowest amount of preparation, readiness, and understanding - aka confidence.

Action is the mechanism of transformation, and if you want to transform, it’d serve you to start before you’re ready. But you’re not alone, I’m here to do it with you.

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If It’s True That When You Don’t Use It, You Lose It…

July 30, 2025

A very common expression that you’ve probably heard before is “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. 

It’s most often used with reference to things like physical ability (you don’t stay strong and flexible if you don’t actively try to get stronger and stretch), skills that you have (like speaking another language or playing an instrument), and even good intentions (you want to eat healthy or go to church, but the longer you don’t do it the harder it is to get back into doing it).

And if that’s true, which I believe it is, then must it also be true that when you use something a lot, you get more of it?

Of course it is! But the reason I bring it up is because it highlights that there are two directions of growth: Maintenance and improvement. 

Maintenance helps you keep your current capabilities. It’s the side of “if you don’t use it, you lose it.”  

It’s necessary because the natural direction of growth is regression. If we don’t use a muscle, it atrophies. If we stop playing a guitar, we can’t pick it up and play with the same fluency as we used to. Taking proactive action toward maintenance helps to offset decline and keep things where they’re at.

Improvement is all about expanding upon your current capabilities. It’s the side of “if you use something a lot, you get more of it”. It’s why lifting heavier weights leads to muscle growth, and deliberate practice improves a skill. 

I bring this all up because when you think of the direction of growth, there are actually 3 options: Move forward, stay the same, or slip backwards. Slipping back is the only passive process - staying the same and moving forward both require effort (just different amounts of it). 

This is why it’s very important to be thoughtful about what you want in this season of life. If you’re being challenged or want a challenge in one area of your life, understand the commitment required to improve. 

If it’s not time to improve something but you don’t want to lose it, make your commitment sustainable. This makes you less at risk of regressing because you don't take on something that can’t be maintained, and therefore you're not overcommitted and headed toward burnout.

It takes courage to desire improvement and push yourself, as well as humility to accept that now’s not the time for it. It’s that level of self-awareness and self-regulation we all need to embody as we seek to make our dreams and missions a reality.

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How To Get What You Want Or Better

July 29, 2025

Years ago I heard David Meltzer say “The universe doesn’t make mistakes. It only gives you what you want or better.” It’s a deep lesson where when we have faith that the world is conspiring in our favor at all times, even when we don’t have the awareness to know how, we are being divinely guided exactly where we’re meant to go.

Of course this is all easier said than done… And I’m still in the process of understanding it. It’s hard to believe that the gripping pain of heartbreak is actually what’s best for you. It’s not easy to convince someone that they didn’t get the job they wanted, or land that big deal, because there’s something else that’s better and more aligned in store.

It’s one thing to say “Everything happens for a reason” and another to trust it when it’s being put to the test.

I’ve personally come a long way with it, with much more road to travel. And while I’ll keep walking the path, last week a new understanding came to me in a conversation with a friend. While I’m learning to accept that this is true, I’m now beginning to wonder how. What’s the mechanism behind getting what you want or better?

My new, unpolished answer to that is this:

In order for the universe to give you what you want or better, you must aggressively pursue what you want.

The possibility has been planted in your mind. It’s attractive to you. What you 'want' is what you believe is the ultimate version of the life you want to create based on the limited awareness you have. If you knew better, then that would become what you want!

And that’s the tricky part about this. You can’t pursue better than what you want, you can only pursue what you want and trust that if it doesn’t happen, then ‘better’ happened instead.

But here’s the thing. We’re afraid to pursue what we want. We don’t want to look stupid talking a big game, taking ourselves seriously, trying our hardest… Only to disappoint ourselves and others when we fail.

And here’s the lesson: It’s only by taking the risk and going for it, by trying to make what we want a reality, that we give the universe the ability to deliver something better. Pursuing what we want is the training ground that unlocks better within us, puts us in a new space where better can reveal itself, or both. What we want is the only thing we have to work with, so that’s where we need to start.

This is also easier said than done, but if you really want to live an extraordinary life and make an extraordinary impact, isn’t it worth a shot?

That’s why I’m about to get aggressive in really going for what I want, doing everything I can to make it happen, with faith that if it doesn’t work out then I opened the door to somewhere better instead.

If you’ve thought for a while that it’s time to get more consistent, dial in your health, be more organized or structured, have better habits and routines, raise your standards and be more accountable… then that’s what you want. And that’s exactly what I’ve dedicated my career to helping you with in the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge. If you’re ready to become your most disciplined, consistent, high-performing self… Let me show you how!

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