Self Improvement Daily Podcast

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!

Recently I picked up a book called “Rich Relationships” by Selena Soo. It was gifted to me at an event and as someone who really values having strong relationships... And has come to learn that it really is about “who you know”... I was curious to see some of the recommendations.

The book was a Masterclass on building meaningful, authentic, strategic relationships. In a world where everyone is trying to get something from someone, especially professionally, it was a refreshing reminder that the fastest way to ‘do good’ for yourself is to ‘do good’ for others without expecting anything in return.

As humans we are hard-wired for short-term reward. Evolutionarily it was most advantageous for us to take action in a way that improves our immediate situation because it best ensures our survival. But, we know that this comes at the sacrifice of a greater long-term gain.

This is just as true in our relationships. Rather than trying to extract value in the short term, the more we invest in people by serving them, giving to them, and providing for them - the more that value multiplies and returns to us.

But that’s only when you engage in what Selena calls ‘Rich Giving’. This is a purposeful way of contributing, coming from a place of abundance and with intention. It’s done with the spirit of wanting to help and is unattached to getting anything in return. No keeping score, no entitlement that someone owes you something else… Just pure contribution.

This compares to two other types of giving: ‘Transactional Giving’ where you give because you actually want something of equal or greater value, and ‘Indiscriminate Giving’ where you share everything but then overextend yourself, and feel regret or resentment for your choice to give.

And I can personally attest to this. For a while I was a transactional giver, not with bad intentions but knowing that giving was a way to get. The more I’ve transitioned away from that and allowed myself to practice true abundance, where I give because it’s the right thing to do - it’s helpful and I want to help - I’ve felt more fulfilled and I’ve attracted more goodness into my life.

If you want to learn more about how to shift your networking energy to being more abundant, my two recommendations are to read Bob Burg’s book “The Go Giver” or of course, Selena Soo’s new book “Rich Relationships”.

Two of the most important people in my life are my Mom’s parents - my grandma that I call Nanners and my grandfather Papa. Nanners is the matriarch and I make a point to see my her about once a month, and Papa passed away when I was 11 years old.

Last week I was in Boston which is where my grandparents met - Nanners grew up in a small town called Mattapan and Papa went to college at Harvard University. I decided to visit both places to experience the history and legacy for myself, and it was extremely impactful for me.

First I spent an hour at Harvard to visit two spots in particular. First is Widener Library which is where Papa spent a lot of his time. As I walked the steps up to the front door I saw how worn the cement was, and thought about how many times Papa must’ve walked these steps himself. I stood at the top and turned around picturing how he must’ve been carrying big bags full of books and sporting equipment, wearing a big trench coat on a snowy winter day. I put my hand on one of the big columns holding up the structure and prayed to him to feel his presence.  

I also went to his dorm where he lived for a few years, Kirkland house, and put my hand on the brass metal handle to open the front gates. I imagined times when he made it home after a long day, with feelings of both accomplishment and stress. Times when he had his hands full and needed help. I placed my hands exactly where he put his.

The next day I visited the street where Nanners grew up. I pictured her as a little girl playing on the street and walking around to visit with neighbors. I pictured her brothers walking up and down the front porch as they left to deploy in World War II, and came home safe. I imagined her going down the street to make phone calls, or congregate in the one house that had a TV or radio.

I don’t know that any of these things happened, but they might have. Allowing myself to feel nostalgic about my family’s history gave me a deep presence and appreciation for the way things were. It made me feel more connected to them, and inspired me to keep applying myself as best as I can in their honor.

Whether it be a place you used to spend a lot of time, or a place associated with a loved one, visit places that make you feel nostalgic. You won’t regret it.

We live in a very polarizing world where divisiveness is normal and unity is effort. It creates a lot of conflict and the saddest part is, it doesn’t need to be that way. We have so much more in common than different, and when you look at the arguments of opposing sides it often breaks down to different expressions of the same core points.

Thích Nhất Hạnh is known for saying the quote “When you understand, you can't help but love". And that’s because when you truly take the time to see someone’s point of view, and learn the context and history around it, their conclusion makes more sense. It helps you cultivate a deeper level of empathy for the other person because, even if you think their line of thinking is flawed, you understand how they got there and how that influences the choices they make.

So rather than judging or criticizing someone who screams at their child, you feel sadness for the abusive childhood that taught them it was normal. Rather than developing a rivalry with someone at work who cheated you or tried to destroy your career, you hold space for them knowing that their insecurities made them act out of fear.

When you understand, other people’s behavior and choices make sense to you… And with a heavy heart for what caused them to be that way, you love them.

Most disagreement happens because two people are operating off of incomplete information. More often than not, people will arrive at the same understanding of a situation when they are working from the same set of facts. The problem is so much information and context is unspoken, and this leaves more space for interpretation.

So the next time someone frustrates you, challenges you, wants to make you upset, or completely disregards you… Reject your natural reaction to fight back and instead seek to understand.

Ask with curiosity “What about this person is causing them to act this way?”

That’s not to say you always need to agree with others, but you do become way more likely to hold your judgment. Because when you assume that someone has a good reason for doing what they're doing, you’re more likely to see it, understand it, and be empathetic to the parts that make them who they are.

People ask me all the time about my system for creating content. Now that I’ve been sharing on Self Improvement Daily for over 7 years and have reached nearly 2300 episodes, the process is pretty dialed in. 

Originally I took Seth Godin’s advice to write every day, so for the first 2 or 3 years that’s what I did. But then out of a need for more efficiency, I started batching my work and it has made things way faster and way more sustainable. 

Basically, when you 'batch your work' you do a lot of the same things at the same time and it can streamline productivity. Rather than needing to find and open resources, get recontextualized, or get in yourself in the mood to do something multiple times... You can just do it all at once. My process isn't perfect but generally I prepare a week’s worth of content in one sitting, record all of it the next, and then add edits.

You’re probably already naturally batching your work. You answer all emails at the same time, run errands one after the next, and maybe even meal prep for the week all at once. It’s not a novel concept but it’s a very effective one, and what I wanted to do today is invite you to consider how you can batch your work more intentionally.

Fundamentally this involves three things: Being clear on what you want to get done in one focused session, creating the time to do it, and protecting it from distractions and other things that might come up. So let’s walk through that one by one.

First, what’s something that you know you need to get done faster, more consistently, or more efficiently? Quantify the task and list it out in more detail… The less specific it is the more space there is for your mind to interpret.

Second, create the time to do it. Get in the habit of creating a schedule for your day where you allocate time for what’s most important. Rather than being reactive to everything the world has to throw at you, you can design your day in advance by being proactive and planning.

And third, you need to make sure you stay focused and don’t slip into distractions. We are inundated by pings, dings, and rings that are constantly interrupting our consciousness and hijacking our attention. Those who can effectively stay on track have a competitive advantage in the world. It’s the reason author Nir Eyal calls being “Indistractable” the skill of the century.

If you feel like you could be more productive and focused throughout the day, and that you aren’t always disciplined enough to follow through on your good intentions, let me show you how I do it. It’s the system I’ve used to consistently create a schedule for the day and maintain the podcast for 7 years. You can use it to improve absolutely anything, and you’ll see what I mean when you watch the video where you can see my Self Improvement Scorecard in action!

Think back to the last time you had a conversation with someone who was close-minded. I bet that no matter what was said to them, they created a version of it that served their understanding and reinforced their viewpoint.  

Or how about someone that you convinced way too easily? Where you expected pushback but they didn’t give any, or you had an argument prepared but it wasn’t needed. Almost like someone was too easily persuaded by what you have to say.

Our belief system is basically our mental model for how the world works, what our preferences are, and what we believe to be true. It has been formulated over the course of our entire lives and is based on the things we learn and experience. When we receive new information, our mind naturally seeks to put new information into the mental models we already have in place. We defend our understanding until we have reason to believe otherwise, and different people allow their beliefs to change or shift at different thresholds.  This explains the natural variation that exists, and it comes down to two things: 

The first is how certain you are about something. If you confidently know something to be true, then there’s more resistance to that belief being changed. For example it’ll be hard for someone to convince you that the sky is green and plants are blue when you’ve know the opposite to be true your entire life.

The second is more mosaic, which relates back to how willing someone is to change what they think. This is a comprehensive metric. It involves ego, insecurity, personality type, and consciousness. All of these factors combine dynamically to output some way of being, which serves as the way a person expresses open-mindedness as a quality. Someone who knows less can be more resistant to changing their opinion than someone who knows way more. 

What I want to highlight is the role consciousness plays in it. You can choose to be more open-minded, receptive, and collaborative. In fact it’s generally positive to be the type of person who’s willing to change their mind, admit a mistake, or say they don’t know something. Yet it’s hard to do, and that’s because the ego actively tries to create independence and separation from others.

But you can overcome unconscious needs or insecurities with consciousness. When you feel like your authority is being challenged, switch into an intention to ‘get it right’ rather than ‘be right’. When you feel emotionally triggered by something or someone, explore the circumstances with curiosity rather than with judgment.  The more you can build the muscle of pointing your thoughts in the direction of ‘How might this be true’ versus ‘This can’t be true’, the more you allow yourself to see evidence for it as a possibility.

That’s what helps you put your guard down, be okay being wrong, and more willing to change what you think. And what I’ve found in my own experience, when I’m more receptive, collaborative, and open-minded, it has served me.

Perhaps the most well-known behavioral psychologist in history is a man named BF Skinner. To complement Ivan Pavlov’s theories on Classical Conditioning, Skinner created a field called Operant Conditioning which is all about how you can use rewards and punishment to induce behavior change.

Fundamentally, Operant Conditioning has 4 ways of driving someone to take action:  

- Positive Reinforcement where you add something good or desirable 

- Negative reinforcement where you take away something bad so that it feels better

- Positive Punishment where you add something bad to create a more negative experience

- Negative Punishment where you take away something good so that the current condition feels worse

There are some fascinating and questionably ethical studies Skinner and his team conducted to draw these conclusions… But from the body of work emerged a really interesting insight called Skinner’s Law.

Essentially, you can make something so unpleasant not to do that it forces you to do it.

A lot of focus on behavior change goes on the side of offering incentives, which interacts with the motivational lever that is the pursuit of pleasure. But the far more powerful force for change is the avoidance of pain or discomfort. Skinner’s Law leverages exactly that, and you don’t need to take the concept to the far extreme where you’re imposing something so painful that it’s impossible to imagine not taking action.

For example, someone who wants to quit smoking cigarettes can use Skinner’s Law to their benefit. They can make a commitment that for every cigarette they smoke, they text their child “I just smoked a cigarette. Must mean I want to spend less time with you.”

If it sounds harsh and personal, it’s supposed to. You need to make it hurt.

Or for a salesperson who has a weekly commitment to put 10 hours into their prospecting. Every week they miss their commitment, they take 5% off of their commission check. Not doing the work means they make less money on the work they do, so there are real and significant consequences to not getting it done.

Skinner’s Law stings! And it’s not for everyone or everything. But at the very least, hopefully this awareness gives you insight into how the mind works and you can be more successful in the areas you care most about.

If you want to change your life and get consistent with a new habit, you can't rely on your willpower and you must leverage your environment. 

To explain this concept I often use the metaphor of a river - If you’re sitting in a canoe on a river, the current will take you effortlessly downstream. If you want to go in a different direction, then you need to paddle. And you’re capable of overcoming the current temporarily but eventually, when you tire out and stop paddling, the river’s current will take you exactly where it wants you to go. It is unrelenting.

The river is your environment, and paddling is using willpower. If you want to consistently go a certain direction, you need to make changes to your environment so that the current naturally pulls you the right way.

There are many things you can do to improve the influence of your environment - change your surroundings, add accountability, change your unconscious beliefs - but the one I want to focus on today is making a financial investment. When you pay for something it completely changes the way you show up for it, and that’s primarily because of something called ‘loss aversion’. 

Our minds are literally wired to prevent us from wasting money, time, or effort we put into something. It’s like a psychological need, which means that we’re unconsciously motivated to take action in ways that allows us to preserve what we have. So if you want to exercise more, you’re more likely to follow through on it if you pay for a gym membership, and even more so if you pay for a personal trainer, to avoid wasting the money you’ve invested.

Fundamentally, when you make an investment in something, you’re designing your environment for success. You’re redirecting the river’s current so that it takes you in a more favorable direction. And that’s because when you pay for something, you’re aligning with this concept of ‘loss aversion’ and getting it to work for you.

That’s not to say it’s all you need to do, but it’s one variable that’s more effective than most in driving sustainable behavior change. And that’s the goal - When you take positive action consistently, you increase the likelihood of producing a positive result.