You know how people talk about going on a spending spree? How about we try going on a living spree! What if we entered a period of our life where we chase new adventures and experiences, build strong and real relationships, put ourselves out there chasing our dreams, and look back with pride at the progress we’ve made, and who we’ve become in the process.

Unlike a shopping spree, there’s no limit to a living spree. We’re not restricted by dollars and cents. The only resource you need for a major living spree is intention, which is abundant and knows no limits.

But trust me I know - This is easier said than done, and we need to be practical about the real things that have kept us from living life to the fullest. One element is distraction. We’re saying “yes” to so many things that it’s pushing the opportunity to live our best life out. Another element is clarity. What if we don’t know what we want, or how to get it?

The main thing holding us back going on a living spree, above all else, is fear. Fear that we’ll be perceived a certain way, that we’ll be judged for our decisions, that we’ll make others feel worse about themselves and their life, or embarrass ourselves by stepping into the unknown.

On the other side of this fear is the greatest opportunity for living your most fulfilling life - Will you choose to allow people to see the very best version of yourself?

Get the fear, doubt, insecurity out of the way and you’ve opened the door to your living spree.

Isn’t that what we all want? To feel capable of working really hard to make our biggest ambitions a reality. To have strong boundaries and say “no” to everything else that’s not a “heck yes!” To be intentional about your exercise, rest, and diet so that you take care of your body and mind, and allow yourself to experience life so presently.

It’s a big choice, but you don’t need to have it all figured out to get started. All you need to do is start betting on yourself, surrounding yourself with people who tell you that you can have it all instead of pointing out all of the reasons why you can’t, and taking your first step.

If you want my support with that, the first step for you to take is to register for the 21 day challenge that starts on January 1st to install the life operating system that permanently improves your lifestyle and allows you to operate at your next level.

It’s so easy and common for us to look at other people doing incredible things in admiration. People building great businesses, going on incredible trips, and making a real difference in the world. But for some reason they feel separate from us, as an example of what’s possible in the world but when we consider it for ourselves it seems untouchable.

I say this because I’m not immune to it myself, but I also choose to see it from a few other perspectives.

First is that any person who has accomplished anything is human just like me. Whatever another human has accomplished is genuinely possible for another human. A part of me was afraid to admit that, but when I started cheering for other people’s success rather than feeling discouraged when I compared it to my own, I started attracting more of it.

Another perspective is all about the come up. Everyone who has ever been on stage started in the audience. Anyone who has ever won a championship has made a critical mistake to lose a game. We see these figures at the finish line and neglect the process that brought them there.

And last, once you’re there it’s not all that it’s made out to be. Different lifestyles create different problems, and no one is above having problems in their life. When we think about the most successful people in the world I think we underestimate this. 

Ed Mylett often asks his world-leading guests on his podcast “Looking back on everything you went through to get here, was it worth it?” I think he asks that because he doesn’t know the answer for himself. Wherever we go we take ourselves with us, and often the more important work is to be content with where we are so that no matter where it takes us we can feel that same level of contentment.

That point aside, and for those of us who do have big ambitions for who we can become in the world, I want to share a simple quote for you: “If not you, then who? And if not now, then when?” 

Those dreams and desires you have, they can be your reality! That difference you want to make in the world, no one else can do it exactly like you do. And it all needs to start somewhere. Everything has a Day One.

If you want to make January 1st of this New Year that day 1, I have two things to share with you. First, I’ve put together a New Year goal achieving workshop to make 2024 your breakthrough year, featuring actionable concepts from experts like James Clear and Tom Bilyeu. And second, if you want to install a new life operating system that permanently raises your standards in 21 days, a new challenge is starting on January 1st to install the Super Habits System.

As we near the end of the year, it’s common to reflect on what we’ve achieved and who we’ve become over the course of these last 12 months. For many, this reflection is bittersweet because there’s a sense of pride for how you showed up but also an undeniable acknowledgment of how some things didn’t change, or didn’t change to the extent that you wanted them to, over the course of the last year.

But as with anything, our reflections exist on a spectrum. It’s not that you grew or you didn’t. Had a successful year or you didn’t. Implemented better habits or didn’t. It’s a matter of how much. And often we discount the amount of growth we experienced, or success we achieved, because we’re seeing the gap between where we are and where we wanted to be versus the gain from where we were to where we are.

Let me share an example that comes to mind for me from this year.

I’m still not where I want to be as it relates to how I want to respond in emergencies. I want to be the type of person that springs into action and is very helpful. In college, a friend of mine in a new comical stunt jumped off my couch and hit his nose on a beam. He went down hard, started bleeding from his face, and I froze. Other guys I was with sprung into action and took care of him, but I froze.

Different story: Only a few weeks ago, I was having a peaceful picnic at a park and all of a sudden there was this vicious barking as one dog started to attack another dog. I hesitated when it happened, but was one of the first to jump up and help separate the dogs and fortunately, there was blood but no serious injuries. In the aftermath I was there to support the woman whose dog was attacked to see how I could help, but in a semi-traumatized state left the park.

I criticized myself a bit because I didn’t respond as quickly as I would’ve liked to, although I did respond, and didn’t think to offer her a wipe to get the blood off her arms.

But look at the growth from that first incident with my friend to how I responded in this dog attack! It’s a great step in the right direction, and I’d miss that if I only saw the gap between where I am from where I wanted to be rather than the gain from where I am to where I was.

If you want to give yourself credit for your growth this year, the first part of the New Year goal setting workshop is to walk through a facilitated year in review exercise. In this workshop you’ll also set your goal for the year and establish a plan to make it infinitely more likely you’ll achieve it. You can access the video session for that immediately by clicking here!

A lot of people wonder if affirmations even work. The idea that saying something to yourself can fundamentally change your life seems too good to be true. If that’s you, once you understand the chain of events that comes from affirmations you’ll start to be more of a believer.

Saying affirmations is just a technique to begin controlling your thoughts. The majority of our thoughts are unconscious and based on old patterns that we’ve learned and reproduce. An affirmation is a conscious thought that breaks your unconscious thought pattern and makes the suggestion that something new might be true. The strength of that belief grows over time with consistency until eventually it has reshaped your thinking.

That’s why we call it reprogramming the mind. Affirmations help replace the previous thought pattern with a new one of your choosing.

This shift doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a while for a new belief to take root and become a predominant thought. For example, let’s use the affirmation “I am abundant”. We won’t all of a sudden start living completely free and unattached from things because we’ve told ourselves to be more abundant.

However, what will start to happen immediately is a new awareness and accountability toward the affirmation. Because you’ve primed your brain with an affirmation, it will start to notice more instances where that new belief is at play. This new awareness creates consciousness, which then serves as an opportunity to follow through in alignment with the affirmation.

To extend this ‘abundance’ example - Let’s say someone asks to be introduced to someone you know. Your natural, scarcity based approach may be to protect that relationship, but you’re more likely to make the intro and act abundantly because your brain flags it as an opportunity to be abundant.

I deeply, deeply believe in this, which is why I use affirmations as a tool every day to prime myself to be self-disciplined. I believe that having the power to follow through on making the right choice on something, when you do have the awareness, is a fundamental ingredient to changing your life. The habits, routines, to do lists, and growth moments don’t happen if you don’t have the discipline to get yourself to do them.

That’s why every evening I listen to a subconscious audio program called Discipline On Demand to reinforce my self-discipline, so that when I encounter moments where I’m more likely to make an excuse, or collapse into comfort rather than step into growth, I seize the opportunity and accelerate forward.

The affirmation is the consistent thought that over time rewrites your belief system. It basically trains you to start thinking differently, and with new thoughts and beliefs, you have an entirely new life!

A belief in abundance and being self-disciplined are just two of the three most fundamental beliefs we need to have to be the best version of ourselves! Find out what the last one is, and incorporate all of them in just 21 days when you install the Super Habits System

Featured by one of the most appreciated and enjoyed artists in modern history, the singer and songwriter Jewel, today’s positivity quote takes on an extra depth of meaning. She said this on Ed Mylett’s podcast: “Make your life your greatest piece of art.”

When we think about how we can be more creative in our lives, we default to thinking about traditional expressions of creativity like painting, dressing, singing, writing, dancing, or whatever it might be. And what’s interesting about is is how we approach the act of creating for these purposes - We have more patience, we’re willing to experiment more, we don’t judge ourselves harshly when things don’t turn out how we envisioned it, or even we’re open to liking things more once we see how new unintended styles come out.

Have you taken that same level of curiosity and openness to how you approach your life? Do you experiment with the balance you have between your work and play? Do you try new products, supplements, or diets to see how it changes your energy levels? Do you change the way you show up, tolerate, or enforce boundaries in relationships to see how it’s received by others?

This is what Jewel meant when she said to “make your life your greatest piece of art.” It requires some innovation, some trial and error, some ‘knowing how not to do things’ in order to really understand how you like to do things.

There was an experiment run in a ceramics class where half of the students were told they’d be graded based on the quality of a single piece of work, and the other half of the class would be graded based on the quantity of pieces they produced. At the end of the semester, it turned out that the group who created more pieces actually also created higher quality pieces than the group that had been working on one project the entire time.

What if that’s the same for our lives? What if we need to live multiple versions of our life to really know which is our best one?

Now I’m not suggesting that you completely uproot everything in the name of self-growth, but I am inviting you consider how this approach might be incorporated in more subtle ways to give you more feedback to work with. So what’s one thing that you want to experiment with in your life to help you incorporate the spirit of an artist in the way you live?

If you’re open to taking on a 21 day experiment, maybe you’d benefit from having a new life-operating system! I call it the Super Habits System where you incorporate the structure I’ve optimized for a decade to build new productivity routines, improved awareness in your health, real ways to upgrade your mindset, and a baseline process to run more micro experiments in your life in the name of finding your best version.

Advancing in our lives is a constant game of going from where we are to where we want to be. Another way of putting this is we have the current reality we are living in the present moment, we have a future reality that we feel inspired to have instead, and we want to bridge the gap in between the two in order to attain that new future reality.

It’s going from overweight to being in the best shape of our lives. From wasting too much time on social media to having indistractable daily focus. From growing apart from a friend or partner to creating extraordinary levels of intimacy and love. From having a bold idea you’re too scared to take action on to standing on the mountain top announcing it to the world.

While it might be a simple concept to understand, when it actually comes to achieving our goals and covering the distance between our current and future reality, there are a lot of things that get in the way like self-doubt, uncertainty, distractions, confusion, limiting beliefs and imposter syndrome…

But there are also a lot of ways to do it once you understand all of the options, resources, and approaches you can take to it. Let’s use the metaphor of driving from LA to New York as an example of where you are and where you want to go.

How might you navigate that journey?

Well first you might want the specific address of where exactly in New York you’re going to.

You might consider preparing yourself and studying the highway systems that connect the two cities, and the milestones along the way.

You might want to use tools like Google Maps to help you stay on track.

You might ask someone else who’s done it before for their advice to see if they can share insight into making your trip smoother and avoid making some mistakes.

And then when you’re on the road, you’ll rely on the feedback from signs reflecting back on the path you’ve already taken to help guide you forward.

Or maybe even you’ve been on this road before and your memory helps to make things more familiar to you. 

Why do I share all of this? It’s because it’s the same raw materials will help you get anywhere.

Knowing the exact destination is having a clearly defined goal.

Orienting yourself on the highway systems is knowing the overall plan moving forward.

Google Maps is a tool that helps you stay on track.

Asking for advice from others helps you avoid making common mistakes.

And signs on the road give you feedback and confirmation you’re making progress.

Plain and simple, the more of these things you have in place, the more likely you are to get where you want to go, no matter what the destination is. 

Now like driving in a car, it’s very important that we know what’s in our blindspot. So let’s do a quick audit. Do you have clearly defined goals and a solid plan to achieve them? Have you talked to other people who’ve achieved something similar to what you want to achieve to ask them for advice? Do you have tools in place to get feedback on how things are going? 

Because if you don’t, then it’s not surprising how you might get lost, or not have the confidence to even take the trip in the first place. And if that future reality is important to you, where you have the life, health, and career that makes you feel alive and purposeful, it’s a disservice to not have these basic elements in place.

Give yourself your absolute best chance to reach your goals, and live an extraordinary life and making an extraordinary impact, by taking on the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge. In just 3 weeks you get the structure, plan, tools, and routines you need to become navigate forward toward the best version of yourself.