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!

A lot of people have an issue with the idea of “faking it until you make it”. They think that it’s inappropriate in the way that you’re suggesting something is true when it’s not.

While I agree with the ethics of that argument, I also see how improvement requires it. In order to do things you haven’t done before, or do it better than you’ve ever done it before, requires that you expand beyond your current reality.

Beyond that, ‘Fake it until you make it’ actually supports a core psychological framework called the Identity Behavior Feedback Loop. Basically, you can update your belief system by taking consistent action. You can literally build up a new identity over time through your behaviors.

This is supported by Aristotles quote “We are what we repeatedly do” and James Clear’s quote in ‘Atomic Habits’ “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

But actions don’t happen on their own. We need to create the right environment so that we follow through on them consistently, overcoming our own self-sabotage and fears.

This is where ‘Fake it until you make it’ comes in. It causes you to act boldly and force your hand into taking uncomfortable actions that generate results and make it a reality.

It’s telling someone you already have a pitch deck prepared, and that you’ll send it tomorrow (fully knowing that you don’t), and it stretches you to get it done faster…

It’s showing up to an event that you don’t really belong at, and it exposes you to being ‘found out’, but at the same time exposes you to another level of opportunities…

Tapping into another corner of human psychology, people who have an issue with others ’faking it’ are just projecting their own insecurities of how they’d feel if they were called out for bending the truth. It comes from their own fears of how it could damage their reputation, relationships, or self-confidence. And I say that not to judge or say it’s wrong, but rather to help you understand where it comes from.

The way I see it - If you’re pursuing something that you care about, and you’re not harming anyone else along the way, then go for it! The world would be a better place if more of us fearlessly put ourselves out there for what we believe in.

I’ve been watching a lot of the Olympics these last few weeks. I have a soft spot for seeing people who have dedicated their life to something and watching them meet their moment of achievement.

But that’s not to say that the path to get there was easy. In fact, the three women that stepped onto the podium for Women’s Gymnastics All-Around each have their own version of overcoming adversity to make their dreams come true.

The bronze medal went to American Suni Lee. She’s the defending champion of this event but since the last Olympics, she was diagnosed with two rare forms of kidney disease that almost caused her to quit the sport entirely. But with treatment, support, and commitment - she’s competing at the highest level.

The silver medal went to the Brazilian Rebecca Andrade. Rebecca grew up in a Favela and needed to be escorted by her brothers 2 hours to train at her gym. From those circumstances she separated herself as an elite Brazilian gymnast and qualified for the 2016 Olympics. Following that, she tore her ACL 3 times but still came back in time for the Olympics in 2021. Fortunately she’s been relatively healthy ever since, allowing her to be consistent with her training and become one of the best gymnasts in the world.

And then the gold medal went to Simone Biles. She’s known as the greatest gymnast of all time and brings a level of skill and power that the sport has never seen. In the last Olympics she was the marquee athlete with huge expectations on her shoulders as the defending champion. However, at the competition something felt off to her and she chose to remove herself from the competition for her own safety. She faced a lot of criticism for her decision, but she invested in improving her mental health, kept training, and came back to Olympic competition with big expectations again and won it.

The common thread in the story of these 3 stars is how they’ve all overcome their own adversity. They have chosen to persevere through the circumstances and displayed a resilience that is inspiring the world.

And guess what… You have it within you too! The challenges you’re facing, the obstacles in your way, stay resilient and you’ll have your come back too!

We all have those things that we know we shouldn’t do, yet we still consider doing them. Having that extra slice of pie, reaching out to an ex-partner, going down a research rabbit hole rather than following through on critical work tasks.

We call these temptations, which are “desires to do something, especially wrong or unwise”.

In being the best version of ourselves, we do not give into temptation. Instead we make intentional choices that maximize our potential and the vision we have for our life. We have high-standards for ourselves that we’re committed to living up to.

But… Easier said than done. 

Every night I’m tempted to answer just one more email instead of get to bed on time… And sometimes I do. I’m tempted to open my phone and go on social media for a brain break rather than recharging with an outdoor walk… And sometimes I do.

There are two ways to overcome temptations and one is much more effective than the other. The goal is to avoid temptation rather than resist them.

When we resist temptation we must execute our willpower. Even though our mind desires something in the short term, we know that we want something else in the long term. Overcoming that temptation is a test of our will as we tell ourselves not to do it. 

However we can be more strategic to avoid temptations altogether. We can make adjustments to our environment so that the tempting thing isn't easily accessible, or better yet the temptation isn’t even presented.

Instead of telling yourself to stop grabbing handfuls of snacks, get rid of them or put them on the top shelf that requires a step ladder. Instead of telling yourself not to go on social media, delete the app and make yourself redownload it every time you want to use it.

Those are extreme examples, but they’re examples nonetheless about how we can do things in advance that make it easier to overcome temptations in the moment.

The first step is being aware of what your guilty pleasure is, that vice, that temptation, and then choosing to change your environment so that it’s no longer an option.

I’m in a season of thinking bigger, being bolder, and taking more risks. Because of that I’ve been thinking a lot about the ideas of courage and bravery, and in my exploration I came across this quote from Robin Sharma:

"Bravery is the solution to regret."

Man, regret hurts.

Regret is when you wish you would have done something differently, or made a different choice. What ignites regret is an undesired result - That we didn’t pursue our passion, appreciate something while we had it, or capture the life experiences we want.

Regret is an acknowledgment that something else could have been, that you genuinely desired, and now the opportunity is lost. 

Sharma claims that “Bravery is the solution to regret.” 

That if we take courageous action then we eliminate regret. And I find that really interesting because the thought exists on two different planes - ‘Regret’ is a function of not getting the results or outputs we wanted, and bravery is a function of taking courageous actions and controlling the inputs.

And furthermore, it suggests that we wouldn't feel regret if we did the courageous thing and still didn’t get the result we wanted.

So ultimately, regret comes down to this: Being too afraid to take action.

It’s one thing to not be aware of the action you could have taken, it’s another to have known the action and not do it.

Here’s a personal example that explains this nuance. My grandma is one of the most important people in my life and she’ll be an inspiration for me forever. She’s still alive and well, but when she passes (as we all do) I wonder what I’ll regret about our time together. 

This brought to my awareness that there would be questions I wish I would have asked her, lessons I wish I had learned, and details of her life I wish I would have known. And my idea to account for all of that was to interview her and capture her life story. 

So I did! But if I didn’t and missed the chance, it’s something I certainly would have wished I did and would later regret. 

"Bravery is the solution to regret." So let’s be more brave and not let fear get in the way of us living the lives we aspire to.

One of the pillars of what Carol Dweck calls having a “growth mindset” is the way we interpret poor results. A growth mindset sees lessons in poor performance and uses it to be better moving forward. It implies that results can change, that we can change, and that our level of skill or ability to generate a certain result aren’t permanent (as opposed to having a ‘Fixed Mindset’.)

Many people talk about a growth mindset as being able to bounce back quickly from failure, and I don’t think that’s fair to say. ‘Failure’ is just a conclusion that you can choose to assign to a certain result. Nothing is a failure until you get discouraged, give up, and choose to make it so. 

When we don’t hit our goals or meet expectations, which happens all the time, it’s a value-rich opportunity. There’s so much insight to be gained in our shortcomings than our successes. But our negativity bias makes it harder to see as we interpret results in a way that protects our sense of self…

This is what causes us to label our performance as a failure.

But let’s capitalize on this moment and begin to see failure as feedback. How do you do that?

I had a really bad sales call last week. I was unprepared, fumbling over my words, and got completely off track from my strategy. Rather than wallowing and being overly self-critical, I chose to see the opportunity for improvement instead. 

With that awareness I took immediate action to polish up some of my speaking points, review my game plan and sales strategy, and dial in some of the parts that got unhinged. And because I took corrective action to shore up some of my weaknesses, the sales call I had 2 days later went so much better!

Rather than allowing a bad result to make you emotional and self-critical, seek to understand what caused the result. Do it in an unbiased, 3rd party way as if you were helping a friend.

And I encourage you to try it now! Think back to the last time where you fell short. From the outside looking in, what caused it? What in particular didn’t go well? What could you have done differently? 

Ironically, detaching from the outcome helps you to achieve it.

Accountability is one of the strongest forces we can put in place to help us be disciplined and pull us into taking positive action. But the reason it works is probably different than what you might have thought.

Humans respond to two great motivational forces: The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

The latter, the avoidance of pain, is a much stronger force because it’s in reaction to threatened wellbeing and taps into our most basic needs for safety. Pleasure, however, is ‘nice to have’ and not a matter of life and death (and therefore has less power over us).

Accountability leverages the avoidance of pain by creating social confrontation. When you make a commitment to someone that you'll do something, you risk damaging that person's trust in you if you don’t follow through. Less trust means less belonging, and less belonging means less support in keeping you alive -  which was essential in humanity’s primitive history.

Knowing the value accountability offers, we can be more successful by implementing an accountability system. This is just a standard procedure for how you make commitments to someone and report back on how you did. And to support you in getting this to work for you, I wanted to share a few recommendations and best practices.

1) The best way to be a good accountability partner is to be accountable yourself. When you take your commitment seriously it demands the other person does the same and raises the stakes for being out of compliance.

2) Have a pre-determined consistent cadence for check ins so that expectations are set. The more specific and designed the system is, the more effective it will be

3) Provide supportive awareness and intervention for each other. It’s not necessarily about saying “You didn’t do good enough” but helping each other understand the conditions and circumstances that led to different choices and results. When you know better you can do better!

Darren Hardy calls accountability buddies a “peak performance partner”. Someone where built into the dynamic of the relationship is this extra focus of wanting to be the best that you can be. 

Accountability is one of the fastest ways to change your behavior, and if you aren’t accountable enough to yourself, then maybe it’s time to involve someone else. Send this to someone you want to be your “peak performance partner” as an invitation, and let’s get to work!