One of the great differentiators between those who are successful and achieve their goals, and those who are disappointed that they’re not getting what they want in life, is a willingness to do hard things.

If the big vision you have for your life were easy, then everyone would have it. If the road to changing the world was easy then most people would be at the end of it by now. 

If you’re pursuing something that matters to you and it starts to get hard, that’s a good thing! It’s an indicator that you made it further than most other people would. And that means that you’re on the brink of getting the results most people can’t.

Les Brown says “To be successful, you must be willing to do the things today others won't do in order to have the things tomorrow others won't have.”

I tend to agree.

This is also the core message in Darren Hardy’s “The Compound Effect”. Being able to do the boring, monotonous, repetitive, unsexy and uninteresting work that others can’t bring themselves to do is precisely what separates them from the rest. This is something I do my best to live out because I know it unlocks my fullest potential.

It’s the reason I haven’t missed sharing a weekday podcast episode for over 6 years. It’s the reason I’ve done 50 pushups every day as consistently as possible since I was 13 years old. And it’s the reason why I send a voice note of gratitude to a friend or family member every day. 

And it’s led to millions of downloads, hundreds of thousands of pushups, and many strong and meaningful relationships.

But hard things don’t need to be as hard as they sound. When you invest in setting up your environment for success, hard things become easier. Accountability makes it less negotiable. A standard operating procedure makes it straightforward. Setting and revisiting a goal makes it clear what you’re working toward. 

It’s the system behind the boring, monotonous, repetitive, unsexy action that helps you do it consistently. And when you do, you have the things (like incredible health, an inspiring career, and a loving personal life) that others won’t.

An idea that I believe is extremely important, but has lost its edge because it has been overused, is the intention to add value. Those who add value to a project or relationship tend to benefit from it themselves.

This is a cornerstone to what Jim Rohn says about getting wealthy: “We get paid for bringing value to the marketplace.” In one of his iconic lectures, Rohn talks about how dynamic value is. One person gets paid $20 an hour, one person gets paid $50 an hour, and another gets paid $500 an hour for doing the "same thing". 

And all 3 people probably put in the same amount of effort… What’s different is the value that was created by that effort.

But the amount of value that’s created isn’t only determined by the giver, it’s also determined by the receiver. Value is a perception for how well something satisfies a need, and if someone is of greater need then they assign a greater value.

For example someone might pay a few dollars for a bottle of water. But if that person went 3 days without drinking and there was only one water bottle left for many miles, they’ll pay a lot more for that water. It’s perceived to be of greater value.

Or let’s say someone invested in a new course. The person who hardly pays attention to it doesn’t think it’s that valuable because they didn’t get much out of it, but the person who studied the material diligently places great value in it because it left a huge impression on them.

Value is relative. It’s completely dependent on the circumstances. Understanding that, it serves us to think about how we can position what we do to maximize the value we can offer. When we get more effective at identifying, communicating, and solving people’s problems, the value you create attracts a lot of value in return.

So think about how you can be of service today. What’s the biggest thing you have to contribute, and how do you get yourself contributing that more often?

Something that a lot of busy, purpose-driven leaders struggle with is achieving balance in their life. It’s easy to let our passion and ambition make us too one-dimensional, and as a result the equilibrium of our lives calibrates to an unsustainable level.

While a true, healthy balance is an incredible catalyst in your life, what we actually want goes a step further. It’s not just wanting balance for what it is, we want it for what it does.

Achieving full-life balance maximizes the quality we put into everything we do.

Working long hours means that we're more likely to get behind on our exercise and cut corners in our nutrition, or trade hours of sleep for your health routines. It also means we might be short with loved ones, or rude in situations that don’t call for it, because energetically we don’t have our best to offer.

So if we don’t invest in doing the things that help us to be at our energetic best, then the quality that we put into our work and relationships suffer.

At the same time, ambitious, impact-oriented professionals don’t want to do meaningless work and just check the box to get a paycheck. We draw inspiration from being able to contribute to society, and our best lives include applying ourselves fully to solving real problems and serving others.

For that reason, it’s often preferred to describe balance as a ‘harmony’. Your work, personal life, and self-care don’t compete with each other, they synergize to positively impact each other. Your best work performance comes when you’re in exceptional health. You deepen relationships when you’re ridiculously productive during the day and you can put it away guilt free after hours.

In my life, I’ve found that arriving at my ideal balance requires two things. First is intentionality. When you’re intentional, you’re as aware as possible to make well-informed choices. You’re clear on the desired end result and the implications that come with it, believing it’s the best option for you and all of the factors that go into it.

Second is experimentation. Your intentionality optimizes with feedback. So experiment after experiment, you slowly fine-tune your overall balance based on the objective and subjective results you get from each iteration. Your first pass at balancing life will not be perfect. Experimentation will expand your awareness so that you can keep getting closer. 

This process is something I do every single day as part of my night routine in my Self Improvement Scorecard. I made a video walking you through it if you'd like to check it out!

Even though we have to go back 1.6 billion years to find humanity’s common ancestor with bamboo, we have a lot more in common with it than we might think.

Bamboo grows in two phases. First is the “Establishment Phase” where the plants grow robust root networks and store up their nutrients. And second is the “Shooting Phase” where the bamboo stalk grows out of the ground and becomes visible for all of us to see.

The crazy part is, bamboo plants are in their “Establishment Phase” for 3-5 years before initiating their “Shooting Phase”, where they grow sometimes 3 feet a day and reach their fully matured height in just a matter of weeks.

This means that for years there’s no observable progress. All of the growth and development happens in ways that you can’t even see. Invisible progress compounds until it reaches a tipping point where it transitions into explosive growth that few organisms in the world are capable of.

While this isn’t true of our physical growth as humans, there are elements of it that are certainly part of our personal growth. We work on our communication skills and then all of a sudden, we’re invited to share our perspective on stages. We invest in building a relationship with someone, and then finally it clicks and the level of mutual support quickly elevates. 

We’re making invisible progress in every area of our life, and as long as we stay disciplined and consistent, we’ll meet the day where the growth occurs. But too many of us stop too soon because we don’t think it’s working, or our efforts aren’t effective.

The next time that thought comes to mind, remember the bamboo. Patiently invest in itself and your foundation. One day, when the conditions are right, you’ll shoot toward the sky and realize the new heights you always knew possible.

In our personal development it’s perfectly normal to want a lot of things. We want to improve our health and energy levels. We want to be more productive and get more of the right things done in less, so that we can be more present in our personal lives. But just because you want something doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.

The best step forward to actually getting what you want is being committed to it. This means that you’re prepared to make sacrifices in the pursuit of making something a reality. Being committed sounds like a lot of work, and it is, but against the alternative it’s not as much as you’d think.

If you’re not committed, then you’re just interested. It means you’d like that something happens but you haven’t dedicated yourself to it yet. And this space is extremely inefficient.

Rather than putting all of your energy and attention into the thing itself, you spend it thinking about if and how you're going to do the thing. Energy gets wasted by indecision, hesitation, and negotiation. It’s like getting to a fork in the road and not making a decision about which direction to go. That thinking time could have been time spent on the road itself.

I’m not suggesting you make a rushed decision, but in most cases we spend way too much time evaluating our options rather than getting started and learning along the way.

When you make a commitment, you make a decision. Etymologically to ‘decide’ means ‘to cut off’, so commitments are just as helpful at eliminating options as it is aligning with them.

And primarily, what you cut out is all the wasted energy of wondering what you’re going to do about something you want and just getting started with doing it.

So to accelerate you forward, you can leverage a commitment device. Take decisive action in such a way that it commits you to a path.

This is exactly what I did when I finally committed to writing my book, telling a mentor the date that the first draft would be done by. No longer was I debating if or when I’d write my book and channeled all of that energy into doing it!

An important character trait that many of us hope to embody more of is humility. In my research on the topic, I’ve found that many of us have a limited perspective about what humility is, and it serves us to see all of its dimensions.

Standardly we think of someone who’s humble as a person who’s not above the task. They’re a leader who isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty. A colleague who gives credit to their team for their personal achievements. This first dimension of humility is all about being willing to give without expectation of receiving something in return.

The second, complementary dimension of humility is that you’re open to asking for help. Rather than being a know-it-all, or driven by ego, they can accept that other people have a lot to offer. This is a leader who can defer to the expertise of a specialist, or who can admit that they made a mistake. This is evident as someone who’s willing to receive without expectation.

(Side note - Combine these two traits of being able to give and receive without expectation, and you have abundance!)

And last, the 3rd dimension of humility, which is incorporated in the first two, is making things less about yourself. That’s what CS Lewis says: “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” 

You don’t need to put yourself down to be humble, you just need to be authentic and unattached to the ways you facilitate abundance. It’s not feeling entitled that you shouldn’t do the hard work, or being so self-assured that you don’t need help…. But finding ways to maximize the value being created while resisting the temptations of your ego. 

My encouragement to you today is to find one area of conflict in your life where you can use humility. Seek perspective and don’t be above the task, and it’ll resolve in a more ideal way.