A model many people use to describe the way life works is the “Hero's Journey”. Popularized by Joseph Campbell, there are various stages we all go through as part of our personal evolution, that are all meaningful in their own way. 

The Hero's Journey begins when you respond to your ‘Call To Adventure’ where you step up to the challenge in front of you rather than stay back in comfort and complacency. There are guides that help you navigate the path ahead, dragons to slay, a foe to defeat, and a return to normalcy but with a fresh perspective

Without getting into too much detail, the engine behind the Hero's Journey can be simplified into 3 parts: Character, Desire, and Conflict.

In other words, somebody wants something, but then something happens or there’s something getting in the way...

It’s a classic story arc. Little Red Riding Hood wants to get to grandmas house but there’s a wolf in the way. Froto wants to protect the ring but evil is trying to steal it from him. Even Napoleon Dynamite wants to make friends but his quirkiness and social skills make it difficult.

It’s a dynamic that happens in macro and micro ways, and it’s woven into every area of our lives. The only thing keeping us from having what we want is the resistance in between, and in our own ways we’re each on a quest within our own Hero's Journey.

Like wanting to get into better shape but you have bad habits. Wanting to double your business but you don’t know how to market yourself. Wanting to be more focused throughout the day but you get bombarded with distractions...

While it’s great and validating to get what you desire, the Hero's Journey isn't designed for achievement. It's a cycle. There will always be a next step to courageously step forward into. That’s why the real purpose of it all is to support your growth as a person. And that’s why you’re always exactly where you need to be, because whatever lies ahead of you on your Hero's Journey is what you’re meant to experience as part of your personal evolution.

So rather than feeling like you’re falling behind or being disappointed in yourself, trust that there’s something bigger happening for you. The only way you stay stuck is if you choose to stay complacent and refuse to fight the battle in front of you.

And an interesting question I heard Sahil Bloom ask that I want to propose to you, that illuminates your next battle, is: “If you were the main character in a movie, what would the audience watching it be screaming at you to do next?”

I recently came across something fascinating called the Pygmalion Effect. Basically it’s a psychological principle where an individuals’ performance is impacted by someone else’s expectation for them. It’s based on the urban legend of a sculptor named Pygmalion who loved his sculpture so much that he willed it to life. 

The Pygmalion Effect works positively and negatively. Someone who has high expectations imposed on them, like the child of two doctors, is more likely to rise to higher levels. And equally someone who has low expectations for their life is more likely to tolerate low levels of performance, like a child who has limited family support. 

In other words, the Pygmalion effect explains how others' expectation of you serves as an environment that influences you. Our environment is constantly feeding factors that impact our choices, and from there the actions we take that create the results we experience. Our environment is unrelenting as it constantly nudges us in a certain direction, and the power of its influence is often underestimated and unknown. 

This mechanism operates in a way that’s similar to the concept of manifestation. Manifestation isn’t a result of just thinking things into existence, it’s a process of priming your awareness so that you notice pathways toward achieving something specific. It’s not that manifestation creates new options, it reveals the options that were already available. And those who take action on those options then manifest the results they’re seeking. 

Your future isn’t determined by accident or randomly... It’s the byproduct of the factors that are designed into your life. Your health, income, and relationships are all a specific and calculated output. You can analyze what happened behind the scenes to produce a certain end. It’s called ‘cause and effect’ and it’s a universal law that all things are affected by.

If your life isn’t where you want it to be, it’s likely because your environment is pushing you further away from what you want, and creating resistance to you being consistent with the right actions that will generate the right results. But you can get the environment to start working for you, not against you, so all of the success you’ve earned starts to flow naturally instead of it being a constant fight!

We all have our moments...

Where we lack self-discipline and negotiate with ourselves about a commitment we make...

Where we feel the urge to cut corners even though we know there are consequences to it...

When we lose self-control in conversations, in our choices, and in our emotions that lead that’s out of integrity with who we want to be.

There’s nothing wrong with you, or me, or anyone who goes through this. It’s in our human nature where psychologically the unconscious mind is trying to convince us to conserve energy and stay comfortable, and it’s a constant battle to override it.

However, something that's really effective at overcoming those forces is having other people watch you. It’s called “the audience effect”. It works because it taps into our unconscious mind’s desire to be accepted and seen positively within a group, and causes us to show up with more discipline and conviction than we otherwise would by ourselves.

But I want to take that a step further. Rather than the observer being someone random, imagine that your hero was watching. The person whose opinion you care a lot about, whose respect you want to earn, and who can tell the difference between you applying yourself and going through the motions.

When you bring that person’s perspective to mind, it illuminates the path forward. You’re less willing to convince yourself of doing anything that’s less than your best, because your heroes demand excellence. It injects clarity and awareness for what you need to do, and helps you muster up the motivation required to follow through on it.

This is especially helpful in a moment of laziness, uncertainty, or distraction. When you catch yourself doing something out of alignment, the thought of what your hero would say in that moment will drive you to change. You notice that you’re mindlessly scrolling social media and get back on schedule. You’re procrastinating a workout, so you get right to it. You pull yourself out of a research rabbit hole and get back to work on the project.

You can use this technique by simply asking yourself “What would my hero be thinking about me and my choices in this moment?” the next time you’re off-track. Even though it’s fake, it adds a perspective that works better than you think it would.

That is, as long as you pick the right heroes whose values match yours, and who appreciate that holistically healthy, successful, present, impactful life you see for yourself.

There are just some people who make you feel good when you’re around them. Whose energy is uplifting, encouraging, and makes you feel like you can take on anything! It’s a gift that they have and something we can do our best to embody in our own ways.

However, many people don’t have that personality type. But that’s not to say you can’t make people feel that way too! You just need to go about doing it differently, which is where I want to introduce the idea of ‘being a day maker’.

Being a ‘day maker’ means that you’re the person that makes someone else’s day. That when they're reflecting on the day and putting their head to bed at night, your interactions with them come to mind as one of the highlights. If it doesn’t come naturally to be the light in the room for others, then we can make an effort to infuse our energy into other people’s lives in our own way.

And the best way to know how to do that is by thinking about how people have made your day. Was it a call out of the blue because they were thinking about you? Did someone leave a note behind for you to read? Was it a random act of kindness, a thoughtful connection, or running an errand for you that you didn’t want to do? Was it someone who shoed up to your event or appointment when it was inconvenient, getting that perfect piece of advice, or receiving some good news?

Chances are, these moments will make other people’s day too.

One way to be a day maker is to create these moments. You can make a habit of reaching out to people and being thoughtful, and you’d be surprised to learn how far just a little effort goes. 

But beyond that, this can become more of a lifestyle that is a part of everything you do. I call this “serving the moment”. Often there are times where you don’t know how to make someone’s day until the opportunity is presented to you. When you carry the intention to be generous, present, and helpful into every moment of the day, you’ll naturally take action in ways that make people’s day.

This is one way to be abundant. To give what you have to offer - your love, kindness, listening, encouragement, guidance, energy, spirit - without expectation of receiving anything in return because you know it makes the world a better place. But interestingly enough, all of those good things come back around and you’ll be surrounded with people who start to make your day too.

I just discovered something that I always knew to be true but I didn’t have the words, or psychology to explain it.

Throughout my life, I’ve always been able to set intermediate goals to help me push me through hard, long or difficult tasks. Getting through an 8 hour drive by playing a game to just make it another 45 minutes… Doing 2000 burpees in a day by focusing on just 500 at a time… Chunking down a big project to redesign my website into daily steps.

These big deeds got done by mentally reframing them into more doable amounts, and only recently I heard Former Navy SEAL Rich Diviney talk about his formula for how this works. When there’s a difficult, uncertain task that you need to push yourself to get through, you need 3 elements: Duration, Pathway, and Outcome.

Duration is picking a point in time that isn’t an endless horizon, but something concrete and digestible. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the impossibility of a task, you mentally reframe it to the next milestone. Psychologically this works because when you hit it, then you get rewarded by the achievement and get infused with more motivation that will help you attack the next milestone.

Pathway is about the action plan. It’s clearly defining what needs to happen within the constraints you’ve outlined, and how you’ll go about making progress toward. There needs to be a belief that what you’re doing will work in getting you to the milestone.

And last is Outcome. You can’t completely trick yourself out of the larger task at hand, in the back of your mind you know that there’s more to come after the immediate milestone. That’s why you need to believe that the overall mission is meaningful. That the outcome you’re pursuing is worthwhile, and that you believe in the overall result you’re set to achieve.

After learning this framework I put it to the test, and it worked. I got on the treadmill and wanted to run on it fast for 15 minutes. The original plan was to run the first half fast and then drop the pace down a touch to ride it out. Once I got halfway, I figured I’d stretch the fast pace a little more to 10 mins. Then when I got to 10 mins, instead of slowing the pace I chose to speed it up for the next 5 minutes to push myself. And even further, in the last minute I sped it up even more to finish strong!

I don’t know that I could have committed to the workout I just described... It was way faster than I thought possible, and the only way I achieved that was by setting intermediate milestones on the path to something greater. 

This is a framework you can apply to anything that feels hard to do. Reframe to an intermediate duration, align your pathway to achieve it, and connect it to the larger outcome. Step by step, you’ll go further than you knew you were capable of!

There are two great motivating forces in life: The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of discomfort.  But that’s not to say they’re even… Our need to avoid discomfort is a far more powerful motivator than getting more of what we want. We are all psychologically wired to avoid pain.

I saw this recently with a client of mine. He’s an ambitious entrepreneur whose business isn’t growing like he wants it to, but he hasn’t been doing much about it. He’s been stuck in a disappointing, underperforming cycle and has grown comfortable with it. And he feels justified about it because he thinks he’s “doing all the right things” and just doesn’t have enough time for anything else, stuck and at full capacity.

That is until I had him complete a time audit, and it was compelling. Just one week of reviewing how he spends his time, on a half hour by half hour basis, completely shifted his perspective. He’s been telling himself that he didn’t have the time to put into more marketing, and that his travel schedule has been keeping him from being more successful, but this exercise illuminated something different. He’s been wasteful of his time. He’s been irresponsible. And the pain of accepting it struck him like a dagger.

This elevated pain is creating ripples into his daily choices. Instead of rationalizing that he doesn't have the time for thing, now his self-image is being put into question. And it hurts, so he’s changing his habits. And now that he’s aware of how distracted he’s been doing unimportant things, he’s more unwilling to tolerate it.

Motivation is just a fuel for action, and the more reason you have for changing your life in a specific way, the more likely it is to happen. 

The same psychological concept ties into the idea of loss aversion. People are more motivated to avoid losing something they already have than they are to gain something new. A study from behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman suggests that ‘people feel the pain of losing $100 about twice as strongly as they feel the pleasure of gaining $100.’ 

This is why subscription services like Netflix position their renewal message as “Don’t lose access” vs “get more entertainment”, and apps tell you to “not break your streak” instead of encouraging you to “increase your streak”. It’s a tactic you’ll start noticing everywhere, and they do it because it works - pain influences behavior and motivates change more than pleasure ever could.

I heard Sahil Bloom say something that really stood out to me. He said that “life is more about direction than speed”.

It’s an interesting distinction because so often we get caught up in treating life like a race. We’re impatient and we want to achieve our goals sooner so that we can move on to achieving the next one. So much of our focus goes into doing things faster and doing them better, but before any of that, what’s most important is to make sure we’re doing the right things.

Think of it like climbing a mountain. Of course, first you want to make sure you’re climbing the right mountain. David Brooks has a book called “The Second Mountain" talking about the mistake many people make… Climbing the first mountain of wealth, status, and notoriety, only to realize that there’s the mountain of meaning and purpose behind it. 

I also like talking about progress using the metaphor of a mountain. Let’s say the goal is to get to the top of the mountain. There are many different ways you can achieve that. You can follow the paved trail, you can make the difficult climb up a steep face, you can even cut your losses, go back down to the bottom and take a different way up. You choose the path that is most likely to take you where you want to go. In other words, you pick your strategy for how you’ll achieve the goal.

And once you’ve decided on your strategy and chosen your path, now you need to walk on it. These are the tactics, the action steps you take in executing the strategy. Of course, the faster and better you take these steps, the faster progress you make.

With that in mind, saying life is more about direction than speed is analogous to saying that life is more about strategy than tactics. The tactics depend on the strategy just like the speed depends on the direction.

What does this look like? It’s doing work you enjoy rather than what pays you the most. It’s investing in building relationships with people who you deeply connect with, not those who make you look cool. It’s building toward the lifestyle of your dreams rather than spending money on the things that make you feel good in the short term.

Every step forward has a direction associated with it, and if you’re going the wrong way, going fast will take you even further off alignment. And if that happens, hopefully you realize it and can course correct before it’s too late.

When we look back at our lives, some things can be kind of cringy.

You can’t believe that you took so long to finally make the big move you’d been thinking about, and wish you’d done it sooner because you lost time. You look back at the way you showed up in a conversation or situation, and you’re embarrassed by how immaturely or irresponsibly you handled it. 

And while it’s a very normal response to look down on yourself, it’s not a fair thing to do. The version of you that’s looking at things today is not the same person that made decisions in the moment. Don’t shame yourself for who you used to be. I bet you were doing your best... And it was all a necessary part of you becoming who you are today.

My favorite quote comes from Maya Angelou and it goes “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” And the reason this resonates so much for me is because it explains how we could play small and make mistakes, without discrediting that we made an attempt to apply ourselves.

Every moment we experience - past, present, or future - is limited by the level of consciousness we meet it with. We can only act with the awareness we have, information we know, and options that are available. We use that context and apply it in the best way we can. So any shortcoming that comes as a result of that isn’t a negative strike on our character, it’s representative of the limited consciousness we had.

And that’s why "when you know better, you do better.” WIth more awareness and new information you can make a different choice. You learned something new so now you can do something new. Our personal evolution is a product of this trial and error feedback loop.

It’s kind of like how hindsight is 20/20. What that means is that you can see things now that you couldn’t see before. You have a different awareness for the situation today than you did when you were in it.

So why find fault for things that you didn’t know about? Why shame yourself for the mistakes you made, when you were simply doing your best with what you had?

If we approach our lives with that level of grace, and curiosity to uncover the things hiding in plain sight that we’ve been missing, we accelerate our growth and improve the quality of our lives.

As someone who has been obsessed with the idea of behavioral design, and how to help myself and others be more likely to take action in the ways that align with their best self, I just realized I’ve been overlooking something critical:

If you want to increase the likelihood that you take action, make the action more fun to do.

How simple? We are naturally attracted to doing things that are fun. We don’t need any incentive, or any discipline, or any willpower, or anything to do what we genuinely think is fun. We are wired for it, and we can use it to improve our approach to living our best lives.

It’d be ridiculously hard to make yourself work out in the gym all day, but it’s a no brainer to spend the day on the ski slopes and get the same amount of exercise in. It’s hard to sit down and create content to market yourself, but it’s easy to have a deep conversation with a friend and record it. 

The reason that’s the case is because ‘fun’ is one of the factors that your unconscious mind considers when it creates meaning, produces emotions, and makes choices for you. 

And that’s because our mind’s processing works on two different layers: Conscious influence and unconscious influence. 

Conscious influence comes from the way you determine things to be. You can shape your reality when you have the awareness to do it. However, 95% of the time, it’s unconscious influence that’s calling the shots behind the scenes. Things like necessity, perceived difficulty, belief systems, and social pressure all contribute to what the unconscious mind resolves to do.

Now add ‘fun’ to that list. If something’s fun it can offset the influence a negative belief or the perceived difficulty has, and supports you in following through on that action.

Here are some quick, easy, and generalized ways to make something more fun to do: Do it outside in nice weather, do it in a different setting, do it with people you enjoy, make it a game, make it an adventure, or add variety.

One of the things I’m excited to explore is how to apply this to my own personal development systems and filling out my Self Improvement Scorecard. I’m very motivated to use my self improvement systems, but if I could find a way to make it fun, I know that would take things to the next level. Stay tuned until I have updates on that!