We’re not perfect people. There are times when we act out of integrity of who we know we can be. Many of us may have past choices that we regret and histories that we’re not proud of.

If you feel like you’ve made some mistakes… You’re not alone. All of us can be better, and that’s the beautiful thing about self-improvement - All of us are getting better!

That’s why it’s critical that we all play a long game, and if there’s something I’ve learned about the long game it’s that “The truth always wins.”

But for many of us the truth has consequences, especially when we’re unwilling to accept what we know to the truth to be or we’re unwilling to take action on it. The truth needs to find other ways to be expressed. And these ways are often more disruptive and come with more damage because they had to overcome resistance.

For example, let’s say that someone has a secret or has been holding onto a lie. Instead of the truth being fully expressed voluntarily, it can eat away at your self-worth and integrity to find its outlet. If you’re constantly convincing yourself that you’re in the right relationship, or have the right job, even though deep down you know that’s not the case… It will drag you down and hold you back.

Your truth is your alignment. It’s your internal GPS that gives you feedback on where you’re headed, and it’s the wind at your back that will take you where you want to go.

Living your truth is a journey of self-awareness (knowing what it is) and self-acceptance (finding peace in who you are). And the best way to do that is to be brutally honest with yourself, find people you trust who can be honest with you, and lean in.

While you can deceive yourself for a lifetime, you can’t deceive your life. The truth always finds a way to win. It’s your choice to get the truth on your team or to keep competing against it.

Something that is undeniable about self-improvement, and featured everywhere, is the importance of consistency.

I am a massive proponent of consistency and know in my soul that it’s the greatest unlock for success and positive progress.

But the question that I haven’t heard a great answer for is… Why?

Yes, what Darren Hardy has popularized as “the compound effect” is real. And yes, what David Metlzer says about “zeroing out” when you miss a day on your streak is true.

But why specifically do results compound and successes escalate when you’re consistent?

The best answer I have for that is - Consistency creates leverage.

As Alex Hormozi describes it, the amount of leverage you have determines the amount of output you have for a given input. More leverage means more output.

The way that I see it, when we’re consistent we create leverage by becoming more efficient and effective.

It’s by being more efficient and effective that we can literally produce higher-quality outputs from the same raw materials of input.

The core mechanism of consistency is it gives you more repetitions. WIth more repetitions you get two very important things: More feedback and more attempts.

First about feedback - More feedback gives you more clarity on what works and what doesn’t. Per the 80/20 rule, feedback illuminates the 20% of the things that generate 80% of the results. Doing more of the right things means there’s less wasted effort, and less wasted effort is more efficient. This creates leverage.

Now about having more attempts - For you to get better at anything, you need to just do it more times. Theorizing and planning doesn’t actually give you the hands-on experience you need to tangibly improve. A rule of the universe is we naturally get better at things the more we do them, especially when under the guidance of ‘deliberate practice’.

This causes us to increase our level of skill. And when we have improved skill, we can do things more effectively (and therefore with more leverage).  

The last part about this that needs an explanation - Why are consistent repetitions more valuable than just repetitions?

Well the first and obvious reason is that more consistency leads to more repetitions, so it gives the process more opportunities to work. But more pointedly, consistency causes clarity and skill-development to stack.

When there’s time between repetitions, we don’t capture the enriched state of the previous improvement. The clarity becomes less cohesive, and the skill becomes less fluent.

Improvement and skill development follow a regression curve where over time the quality degenerates. If more time passes, your next repetition has more ground to make up and needs to ‘redo’ the previous advancement that was lost.

This is why consistency itself is another mechanism for creating leverage - It creates efficiencies and effectiveness within the process of development.

Now multiply these two factors of how repetitions work to create more clarity and skill, and how consistency promotes faster levels of progress... That’s how consistency is truly an exponentiator!

Knowing this information is one thing, but doing something with it is another. You must work to be consistent in your health and daily focus so that consistency can work its magic behind the scenes. If you want to see my secret sauce to being more disciplined and consistent in all areas of my life, this is for you!

In an effort to make self-improvement more relatable, I want to share a personal example of how I’ve been working through something that has really been holding me back. If you’ve ever felt like an imposter, low on self-confidence, or like what you do isn’t good enough, this is especially for you.

Our beliefs serve as the unconscious filter that everything in our life passes through. Solidified over years of feedback, lessons, and learnings, our beliefs are responsible for the immediate meaning that we take out of what we experience.

Here’s one way this concept has been showing up in my life - Over the last few months I’ve been aware of a belief I have that I don’t offer enough value in my work. To compensate for this belief I’ve found that I do two things.

1) I compulsively over deliver on everything I do to make sure I’m delivering enough value (which is good!)

2) I have a tendency to overload things to try and create more opportunity for value (which actually decreases value because it makes the best stuff harder to find).

And interestingly, I’ve observed this belief in action in an odd way. When I receive a text from a client or someone who is paying for my support, I automatically assume it’s bad news.

My mind defaults to thinking they’re upset or they want to cancel. All from just a notification that I received a text from them.

Of course I don’t want this to be my reality and my unconscious filter, so for a few months I’ve been working on it. As part of the daily high-performance review and reflection I do at the end of every day, I’ve been prompting myself to find one instance that suggests I’m giving ridiculous value in my work.

This means every day I’m training my mind to see all of the reasons why I’m great at what I do and how much it changes people’s lives. The way that our belief system shifts is through evidence. For months I’ve been stacking evidence to support the new belief, that I’m giving ridiculous value in my work, so that I begin to see it unconsciously too.

And, so that someday soon when I get a text from a client my gut-reaction is “they’re texting me about a huge win in their life” rather than thinking they’re upset about something.

Honestly that’s more often the case, and it’s the way I want to think because it inspires me to be bigger and bolder in my mission to change lives and change the world!

No one is above this work! I hope you realize that. And know that the more we allow ourselves to show up for it, the better we get! If you want to check out my daily performance review / routine, watch this video where I run you through it top to bottom!

As purpose-driven people who want to make the most out of life and make a difference in the world, we know that our ticket to succeeding with that is by making an impact. But unfortunately there are a few things working against us in that effort that we need to be cognizant of and ultimately, overcome.

Within each of us is our ego. It’s our sense of self and its sole purpose is to keep us psychologically safe and preserve our self-worth. But as with most of our evolutionary biology, the ego has a fatal flaw in that it is optimized to support us in staying safe and secure in the short-term.

This is similar to the well-known tension we experience related to the choices we make on a daily basis, and if we give in to receive a short-term reward or manage to delay gratification.

There are many ways that the ego is at play, but one I want to highlight is the need that we have to impress others.

When we impress, it validates that we are worthy, that we have something to offer, and that people have a positive perception of us. This need comes from the history of mankind where we depended on each other for our survival, and we needed to prove we belonged in the group in order to survive.

But in today’s world, the same need comes out but it actually serves to limit our ability to make an impact. John Maxwell says “If we want to impress, talk about our successes. But if we want to impact, we need to talk about our failures.”

It’s in the vulnerability and sharing relatable experiences that we can more deeply connect with others. Rather than creating separation by talking about how good we are, we bring people closer by talking about what we’ve struggled with.

The ego attempts to separate us. It wants us to feel special, unique, and capable, so it unconsciously influences us to see and share evidence of that. But if we want to play the long game and make a more profound impact on the world, we need to navigate the ego and control it rather than let it control us.

The best way to do that is by choosing to place yourself beside people. Do the hard work with them. Share and work your process in ways that others can see. Lead by example and be humble enough to know that you don’t have it all figured out, and that’s okay.

Try to catch yourself when you find yourself trying to sound impressive, and instead route your dialogue to be of service and be more relatable.

This is something I’ve been trying to do more! Have you noticed?

At the end of the day, what's personal development and self-improvement for? Abraham Maslow says, it’s “To become all that we can be” in pursuit of our fullest potential.

But why is even that important?

I believe It’s because there’s nothing more fulfilling, purposeful, and blissful than feeling like we gave life all we’ve got and made the absolute most of it.

Bronnie Ware is known for popularizing the number one regret of the dying, which is “they wish they would have lived a life true to themselves, and not the life others expected of them.” Making the most out of life certainly involves having as little regret as possible.

More realistically, a good life is made up of good decades, which come from good good years, good months, good weeks, and good days. And even further, good days all boil down to the only thing in our control, which is the present moment. To tie the loose ends together, a good life is fueled by good moments.

The best way to explain the emphasis we should have on our lifestyle choices is the greek word “arete”, which roughly translates to moment to moment excellence, or virtue.

To live with “arete” means to act in alignment with the best version of ourselves and in service of our potential.

The problem is, it’s incredibly difficult to have the consciousness required to constantly be evaluating your choices. We haven’t reached the levels of enlightenment required to be fully aware of what’s happening at all times...

So instead we reflect on the variety of choices we make, and the excellence and virtue we live with, in daily cycles. That’s why it’s common for people to bundle it all together in an attempt to “win the day”.

Our daily performance is the most reliable unit of evaluation we have, and the quality of our daily review impacts the quality we bring to every moment.

If you don’t have a foundational performance tracking routine, this is the greatest opportunity you have for personal growth. You can’t improve what you don't measure.

It’s the reason I call it the Meta Habit - it's the habit that catalyzes all other habits - and if you can learn all about it as one of the 9 Super Habits by clicking here!

Last week on my Honeymoon I had an unforgettable experience. My wife Irene and I wanted to pamper ourselves a little bit so we treated ourselves to a nice massage. A man named Willian was highly recommended so we booked him to visit our accommodation for a session each.

When he showed up, Willian had a pure energy about him and a peaceful spirit. We instantly connected. What I wasn’t prepared for was how he was going to basically stand on me for most of the massage and dig his heel into muscles I didn’t know existed. It’s one of those “hurts so good” kind of experiences.

After the massage we had a long conversation about life and his wisdom was profound. As a Colombian man who used to be a pastor in Los Angeles and now is a massage therapist in Hawaii, he talked a lot about how he faithfully listened to wherever he could be of service.

But there was one line he said that I wanted to share with you: “Everything you do should be life-giving”. He elaborated on the two different expressions of this thought.

First is that in the way we contribute toward others, we must be life-giving. This goes beyond the miracle that is creating life and serves as a filter that we can view our actions through. He talked about indigenous traditions and how our actions transcend 7 generations, and we must treat each choice with care and diligence.

Second he talked about how we must do things that are life-giving for ourselves. A lot of Willian’s massage practice is rooted in disrupting pockets of stored energy and getting energy moving throughout the body and ultimately, discharged back into the Earth. I can personally attest to how different parts of my body felt like I was buzzing throughout the session.

This reminds of the language I use about serving the self. If it’s inspiring then its energy giving and if it’s expiring then its energy draining. Simply put, our goal is to do more of what inspires us and less of what doesn’t.

“Everything you do should be life-giving”.

It’s an interesting perspective to take, and my encouragement to you is to explore how this idea interfaces with the choices you make over the next few days.

Something that is commonly talked about in romantic relationships, that I want to broaden, is the concept of red flags.

The origin of the expression comes from war zones. If someone held up a red flag it signaled that danger was near. But in today’s vocabulary, for something to be a ‘red flag’ means that it’s a warning or a sign that something’s wrong.

There are very obvious red flags (like going into business with someone who has gone to prison for embezzlement) and there are more subtle red flags that are more intuitive (like having the feeling that someone doesn’t have good intentions).

What’s interesting is while we wouldn’t knowingly choose to step into a situation with clear ‘red flags’ we often find ourselves in them.

One reason is we choose to ignore them. For whatever reason, our sense of hope and possibility outweighs the negative perception of how a ‘red flag’ might impact our life. Having optimism causes us to be more tolerant of things we otherwise wouldn’t want.

Another reason is fear of change. The way things are, even though they aren’t ideal, is predictable. You know what you’re going to get. And our minds crave certainty because there’s a sense of safety in it, so we postpone change in an attempt to maintain the level of safety we have right now for fear we’ll have less if we intervene.

And last is emotional investment. When we’ve poured time and energy into a person or job or lifestyle, we experience a cognitive bias called ‘sunk cost fallacy'. This causes us to try to salvage the deposits we’ve already placed in order to avoid wasting them. But often this keeps us locked into a situation that isn’t going to improve.

Standing up to the red flags in your life takes courage. Your mind will try to convince you that you don’t need to initiate change. But when you do you create space that allows more positive relationships and opportunities to fill in.

So be honest with yourself and what serves you. Don’t pretend ‘not to know’ what’s going on. The more you allow 'red flags' in, the weaker your boundary becomes and the more you enable other red flags to find their way into your life.

To integrate this concept with awareness, you can reflect on this question: What am I pretending not to know?

Something that I really desire more of in my life, that I am extremely focused on cultivating, is enthusiasm and excitement. 

There are some people that just exude enthusiasm. They’re buzzing with energy and it makes you step up your level of presence and engagement with what’s happening.

One of those people is my wife Irene.

In my vows to her on our wedding day I commented on how the looks at life with a sense of wonder in everything, and it inspires me.

But some of us don’t naturally find reasons to be excited about life. Our demeanor is more reserved, introverted, and composed. We prefer to not let emotions sway us off center too far.

But we’re missing out on experiencing life fully without enthusiasm! According to Heroic, of the 8 cardinal virtues the one that is most highly correlated with flourishing is ‘zest’ aka enthusiasm.

When you strip it all away, excitement and enthusiasm is a perspective. We can choose to assign an excitable meaning to anything. In other words, you don’t need to create hype… You just need to start seeing it!

I’m not saying you need to 'turn it all the way up' from stoic to bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm, but you might enjoy how your next level of daily excitement makes you feel. So let’s do it now!

Ask yourself this question - What am I really excited about today?

And then continue on with this follow up question - What can I do differently today to bring out that excitement?

Give it a try! And if you find that it really serves you, the consider anchoring it as a consistent practice in a morning or startup routine.

The more you train yourself to see excitement, and the more prepared you are to act on it, the more natural it will be for you to experience it and the more embedded it will be in everything you do!

One of the most important things we can have to live a high-quality life, full of rich experiences and meaningful personal challenges, is a growth mindset. Popularized in Carol Dweck’s breakout book titled “Mindset” she unlocked a new era of personal development.

A ‘growth mindset’ is a foundational belief that things can improve. That you can influence the results in your life through practice and experimentation. When you have a growth mindset it means that you receive failure better because you know it’s not permanent. It means that you have more natural motivation because you have the power to bring improvement into your life.

That compares to what Dweck calls a ‘fixed mindset’. This is when you believe that things cannot change and simply are the way they are. You accept reality as it is right now without challenging it for what it could be, feeling little to no agency for what happens in your life.

Let’s take this one layer deeper and talk about self-worth.

Many people attach their sense of self to what they achieve. Even those who have a growth-mindset are vulnerable to this thinking and get frustrated when they don’t create the results that they desire.

The healthy thing to attach to, reenforce, and validate about our performance is the effort we put in.

Here’s a parenting example that will help you see how it works, and how to apply it for yourself: A kid works really hard on an art project and gets an A on it. Rather than celebrating the grade they received, compliment them on the time and effort they put into their piece. It’d be something along the lines of “I’m so proud of how focused you were to create such a beautiful painting” or “It must feel really good to do your best.”

We as adults look at our paychecks, our weight on the scale, or our social media likes to determine how we want to feel about something. But a healthier way to look at it is to reflect on the quality of our work projects, our consistency in the gym and in our diet, and how present we are in our memories to draw conclusions. 

The effort is in our control, the outcome often isn’t. And we can build each of them up by being intentional with the way we relate with both.