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.

One of the great pursuits of our personal development is to maintain good health. Many of us work really hard in the gym and are very deliberate about every bite we eat to support our body’s wellness. However, perhaps the most important element of health, that is not talked about enough and deprioritized the most is, is sleep.

Matthew Walker is a leader on the subject and wrote a book called “Why We Sleep”. In it he shares a widely held misconception - He says that many people believe that they’re the exception to the rule. That they think they don’t need the same amount of sleep as everyone else.

As human beings we’re meant to get 7-9 hours of sleep a night. Studies suggest that only 0.5% of the population is actually capable of functioning fully on less than 7 hours of sleep.

The reason we are so widely ‘missing the mark’ is because we’ve grown accustomed to being tired.  We don’t even realize how energized we’re meant to feel when we wake up in the morning and tolerate a level of energy that falls way short of optimal.

So here are a few practical tips to help you prioritize sleep as the critical health habit it is.

First, every day starts the night before. The most ripe opportunity for improvement in this area is consistently getting to bed earlier. I recommend you set an alarm to notify you that it’s time to start winding down for bed, and then practice discipline when it goes off to follow through on it.

Second is to not undo and redo your progress. Our sleep cycle follows a natural ‘circadian rhythm’. Your circadian rhythm doesn’t know the difference between weekdays and weekends, so the more consistent you can be with your sleep schedule, the better quality your rest will be. If you have a lot of variance, it interrupts the rhythm.

And last, make incremental improvements. If you’re realizing you’re chronically underslept, work your way to more sleep 30 minutes at a time. It’ll be a less drastic change to your daily routine and because of that, will be more sustainable than trying to make a bigger change all at once.

Sleep is so important, and maybe even more important to your overall health than your exercise and nutrition. So let’s give it the priority it deserves!

I first heard this concept from my mentor  David Meltzer, and while I can’t directly attribute the following quote to him, he’s the primary inspiration behind it: “A single action shifts a possibility into a probability.”

We are surrounded by an infinite amount of possibilities. The future is uncertain and everything we do in every moment permanently alters its trajectory. The crazy part is, of the infinite amount of possibilities, there is always one that comes to be.

So as we think about the possibilities in our life and what we want our future to look like, we must think about how we can play an active role in bringing it into fruition. And we must use the only mechanism we have available to us to influence our reality: Taking action.

When you take action, you put something in and it causes something unique to come out. It’s our actions and the actions of those around us that offset the natural rhythm of life and steer reality in a new direction.

Actions don’t guarantee results though. They simply increase the likelihood of generating a certain result. And that’s why action shifts a possibility into a probability. 

Author of “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People”, Steven Covey says “All things are created twice, first in the mind and then in reality.”

The creation in the mind is the awareness of a certain possibility. It’s an understanding that reality could shift a certain way. But thinking doesn’t change anything tangibly until an action is taken on the thought. Again, it’s actions that influence the likelihood of the reality we experience.

An idea to supplement your income with a new business is just a possibility until you tell someone about it, or open a bank account, or try to introduce your work to your first potential client, which increases the probability it will happen. 

An idea that you want to find the love of your life is just a possibility until you tell a friend you want to get set up, or you create a dating profile, which increases the probability it will happen. 

Of course there are more actions or better actions you can take to further improve your chances of getting what you want… But for today know that the desired reality cannot happen without the action. So start there and just get started!

Something that is fundamentally important to my own self-improvement processes is setting intentions daily.

Typically when people think of intention setting they relate it to the energy they want to show up with - “I want to be more abundant today”, or “I want to have a better attitude today”, or “I’m going to be a better listener”...

While all of that is important and genuinely improves the quality of your day, I have a more behavior-based form of intention setting.

I’ve taken the time to clearly define the standards I want to hold myself to in the major areas of my life.

My daily exercise, nutrition, and recovery practices operate as my health standards. The amount of time I spend on social media or watching TV, completing my #1 goal for the day, and following a high-quality schedule are my productivity standards. And the ways I outreach to friends and loved ones make up my relationship standards.

When you have clearly defined who you want to be you radically increase your likelihood of following through on being that person.

However, there’s an extremely important nuance. Your standards are meant to be dynamic. Different days call for different expectations for yourself. Ultimately, standards are in place to help you live up to being a better version of yourself. If that best version of yourself varies from day to day, then you have to be able to accommodate for that.

Let me give a few examples of what I mean.

I have a general standard to not eat dessert. However, there are instances where having dessert is my best-self choice to maximize my enjoyment and presence with an important moment. Knowing those special occasions in advance, I update my standard for the day to be able to enjoy dessert but still hold myself accountable to a certain portion. That's my modified intention for the day.

And I have a general standard to go on Youtube for no more than 15 minutes a day. I have an app limit in my phone that holds me to it. However, there are days when I want to go on Youtube for longer than that. Maybe there’s something specific I know I want to watch. So rather than rejecting it for the sake of being accountable to my standards, I make a temporary, reasonable, clearly defined exception to the standard so that I can do what I want to do on Youtube guilt free. It's my modified intention for the day.

How amazing would life be if you actually lived out your best intentions? Thinking more fluidly about them will help you to be at your very best.

Want to be more intentional, consistent, and better in every area of your life yourself? I recommend you start here!