There’s a topic that has come up a few times for me in the last week and I’ve taken it as a sign that it’s something I should really pay attention to. The first mention of it came in a call with my coach - As we were talking about a challenge in my life he encouraged me to “Stop being inside the problem and start being outside the problem.”

Also, right now I’m re-reading the book “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown and he has a whole section dedicated to intentional exploration, because after doing that, you have more information to work with to make your fewer commitments the right ones.

In the busyness of our lives, how often do we get to take a step back and think. To think about the goals we’ve committed to, the direction we’re headed, and even the ways we’re currently doing things. The essentialist mindset offers one echoing encouragement, how can you do “less but better”?

The answer is to think more and open the door to the ideas and opportunities that were being overlooked. 

Now does that mean that you need to change everything, all at once, all the time? Of course not. There’s a fine line between being too spontaneous and putting thought into your current circumstances. But the awareness that thinking brings you, shining light on where things might be deficient, suboptimal, or incomplete, could give you insight into what needs to change first.

Here are a few examples of how thinking might help you step outside of the problem:

Do you know exactly what you want in your career or are you just frustrated that you’re not there yet?

Do you know what a better relationship with your partner actually looks like or are you just griping that it’s not good enough?

Do you know what else might be contributing to you having a hard time losing weight, even though the nutrition plan you’re on is supposed to work?

Getting clear on some of these finer details, and making decisions on how you want to proceed differently, could make all the difference. And that’s what some carved out, dedicated “thinking time” could help you to do.

If you feel like it’s been a while since you’ve really thought about what you want in life, doesn’t it make sense why you aren’t living it? If you want to bridge that gap and adjust the trajectory of your life so that it’s pointed in a more fulfilling, inspiring, and energizing direction, I’m putting on a 45 minute workshop called Visioneering Dreams To Reality. 

If you want to allocate some time to think about what’s important, and find ways to make your life easier and better all at once, register for the free workshop right now and I’ll run you through a process that will really open your mind and get you excited again about what’s possible!

There’s one day in our lives when everything starts to click. It’s when we finally start to get consistent with the habits and routines that are best for us. It’s the day that our attitude permanently shifts. It’s the day that we stop being so busy and start having more balance. It’s the day that we start living by our own design.

Do you know what day that is? 

Tomorrow.

Our best intentions, healthy choices, new beginnings - They always seem to have a start date of tomorrow. But the problem with tomorrow is it’s the day that never comes. Tomorrow will always be one day away, and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

Except this…

Do you know what today is? “Today is yesterday’s tomorrow”, and that means something wonderful for us.

All of those things that we want, that are important to us, and that we’ve been putting off for tomorrow… Their time has come. It means we don’t need to wait to live the life that we want to. We officially have permission to do it today.

This is represented in the Day One Mindset. Stop putting your dreams off for one day, you can begin pursuing them right now and make today Day One.

But in order to do this, it requires two things. First, it requires that you know what you want. Sometimes we’re so deep into how things are right now that we have a hard time seeing how things could be. We need to be aware of what different and better even looks like if we want to go create it.

Then the second requirement is, you need to know what to do something right now that puts you on the path toward achieving it. Once you put some real action behind something you want, achieving it is no longer a possibility, it becomes a probability. This means that there becomes a real, mathematical chance that it could happen, whereas before it was just a fantasy.

Every single day another tomorrow comes and goes because “today is yesterday’s tomorrow”. (Credit to Jim Rohn for the quote). And if you’re tired of waiting for things to change and realizing that’s why the never do, let me give you a real thing you can do today to make your dream life not so much of a fantasy, but a potential reality that you’re actively pursuing.

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In one week from today, Thursday August 31st, I’m leading a free workshop called “Visioneering Dreams To Reality” where in just 45 minutes you will have a clear vision for the life you want to live and immediate next steps to start magnetizing it into your reality. Your first step to materializing your dream life is to register for the Workshop right now. Click here to register for it, for free!

I’ve talked to hundreds of people about their self-improvement journeys, been in mine for a decade, been teaching about it for over half of that time, and I hear the same things come up again and again. 

In our personal development we all want similar things: To have better habits. To get more consistent with our routines. To be more productive, structured, and organized. To eliminate distractions and wasted time. To work through negative mindsets and conquer self-sabotage. To make healthier choices. To be more self-confident. To be the best version of ourselves that we possibly can be for the people and causes that depend on us. 

There are more but maybe you can relate with a few of those.

And in pursuit of that better, improved version of ourselves, I’ve found that many people are getting carried away being active in their self-growth without building the foundation they need to actually transform their health, time management, and relationships.

This is the #1 mistake keeping so many people stuck and it’s costing them energy, wasting their time, and causing them to doubt if they have what it takes to live the life of their dreams and reach their goals.

What does this look like?

It’s the compulsion to always want to be doing something productive.

It’s the constant itch to find that one insight or perspective that you think will activate that next level of growth.

It’s committing and recommitting over and over again to goals and intentions in a draining pattern of fits and starts.

And while all of this effort you’re putting into being a better version of yourself is great for your ego and feeling good about yourself, it doesn’t do much to actually drive results in your life.

It all comes down to the one truism and oversight that people have in their self-development, and once it’s corrected, it unlocks all of that latent potential that they know has been incubating for so long…

You can’t improve what you do not measure.

In order to improve anything about your life, you need to make sure that you actually know what’s working. You need daily feedback to understand how you’re actually doing. And you need a way to know when your performance is lacking so that you can be aware of the excuses, exceptions, conditions, or circumstances that caused it.

It’s with this understanding that all of the habits, routines, mindsets, efficiencies, systems, and optimizations you desire can be built on top of! That’s why I call the measurement system of daily behavior tracking your Keystone Habit. And I’ve got a whole philosophy built around it that I call “Upgrading Your Self-Improvement Operating System”.

If you want to install your new daily performance tracking system that serves as the foundation for improvement in every area of your life, join the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge and watch your health choices, daily productivity, and professional progress soar!

When you’re feeling stuck in not knowing how to do something, or how to get started, all you have to do is make a commitment. It’s incredible what happens when you step forward and commit to something, and how the path reveals itself once you’re on it.

But before getting into how that works, let’s explore why it’s so hard to get started with anything…

Our human nature is to do less and conserve energy. It’s wired into our evolutionary psychology. On top of that, the main function of our brain is to keep us safe.

When we’re considering a path forward and we don’t know exactly what it looks like or how to do it, it triggers a state of uncertainty in the mind. The mind interprets uncertainty as a threat to our safety because ‘different’ could be dangerous. So our brain actively makes it hard to take action as a way of keeping us safe, leveraging things like limiting beliefs and perfectionism to keep us where we’re at. This is a textbook explanation of self-sabotage.

This is when our brain finds all the reasons why we shouldn’t rather than why we should, which delays our decision making and postpones us from getting started. And it’s a false, manufactured sense of fear that often doesn’t serve you.

But when you make a commitment, despite the ways your brain is trying to tell you not to, something really interesting happens. No longer is your brain spending energy trying to figure out ‘if’ you’re going to do it, which dominates your mental bandwidth. Instead you get to start putting all of your thought into ‘how’ you’re going to do it, and with that extra attention all of the ideas and insights you need to make it happen start coming through.

So if you’re feeling stuck in any capacity, make a commitment because it will shift you into motion.

Want to start exercising more often? Tell someone that you’re going to start going for a walk every day and guess what happens, you figure out how to prioritize it in your day instead of saying that you “just don't’ have enough time”. 

Been wanting to start a new hobby for a while but haven’t gotten around to it? Book one lesson, take one class, or schedule time with a friend to do it once.

Making a commitment completely changes the dynamic in your life. Instead of trying to fit it into your schedule, you start to build around it. And with a new design you start to play a new game.

I’m not so wildly successful that I have the authority to comment, but I’ve observed that people view success through the wrong lens. Many people treat success as a destination to achieve or a line in the sand to cross, whereas it more appropriately should be considered as a state to be maintained.

But even beyond that, the people who are the most successful don’t get complacent with sustaining a certain level of performance or results. They’re hungry to grow upon it and push the boundary for themselves.  

They know that their last play is in the past. They can’t rely on past success to drive present results. They understand that we recreate our reputation on a moment by moment basis in the way we continue to show up. Rory Vaden puts it this way: “Success is never owned. It’s rented, and the rent is due every day.”

So what does that mean? Well, if we consider success as a form of result, we know that it requires certain inputs to create certain outputs. Understanding that our daily choices and actions are in our control, and not the outcomes, a commitment to the process is the engine that drives results.

It involves having high-performance habits in your health and work-life. It’s maintaining clarity on what’s most important and cutting out distractions that compromise the quality of your attention. It’s enforcing higher standards for yourself in the way you interact with others and the boundaries you set. It’s executing your routines with consistency. 

This all ensures that you make the right choices, and take the right actions, feeding the right inputs into the machine so that it creates the right outputs. And not just doing it once, but following through on it with quality every single day. 

That’s how we recreate our reputation every day. You can’t let past performance and success give you permission to make excuses or compromises. Life is hectic and people move on quickly. If you don’t keep moving forward with it you’re going to be left behind no matter who you used to be.

So be committed to your growth as a process. Understand that success is more a daily discipline than it is a status or achievement. And what happens when you focus on this internal engine is it carries you to the external recognition you’re more accustomed to using as your metric for success. And when you get there, you’ll be more inspired than ever to bring it back to the basics and earn it all over again, every day.

What you’re about to hear is a fundamental concept to personal development that a lot of people overlook, and it’s causing them to get frustrated that they’re not where they want to be in life. 

I imagine your life looks very different today than it did 10 years ago, 5 years ago, or even one year ago. 

Do you know why? Because things change. Maybe you have a new job, new home, new relationships, new responsibilities, commitments, and interests… Things are not how they used to be and they’ll keep changing, fast. 

This isn’t new to you nor is it new to humanity. Heraclitus, a Greek Philosopher in the 6th century BC said “The only constant in life is change.” 

But here’s the problem. Many people refuse to evolve and match the way things have changed around them, and it sets them up for failure.

I’m a perfect example of this. I am a former collegiate Division 1 Student-Athlete. For my entire life my identity was wrapped up in being among the most athletic people in my peer group - Making All-Star teams, earning awards, being named captain of the team, the list goes on. 

And that served me until life changed…

When I no longer was a collegiate athlete, I struggled. I still saw myself as an elite performer, but I didn’t feel motivated to stay in top shape and wondered what was wrong with me. I was used to excelling in school, but when I started my career I was average or worse at my job. I had grown accustomed to people telling me how great I was, how I’m on the fast-track to success, how I was going to make a difference in the world, but I was starting to doubt if any of that was ever true.

Looking back at it, I know exactly what was happening and it’s the same problem I see people experience both through major life transitions and on a daily basis. The problem was - I had not changed my standards and expectations when my life changed.

What has served me since was to get clear on the role my fitness plays in my life, what level I want to maintain, and how I can proceed with fulfilling that in the current context of my life. It’s not what it used to be but it’s not supposed to be, and it’s still phenomenal.

I had to change my understanding about what success means. For years I was evaluated based on wins and losses, awards and accolades. That wasn’t fair anymore, so I needed to update my mindset and get clear on what success means to me and how I wanted to pursue it in this chapter of my life.

And in all areas, once I evolved my standards and expectations, I stopped feeling the resistance of trying to live up to how things used to be and started meeting the current moment as the person I needed to be now. 

And that has led to me getting the elite results in the game I’m playing today (startup acquisition, 18+ million download podcast, meaningful social impact business), on a new and different playing field.

In summary, I share my story to drive home the key point here - If you’re too hung up on trying to be the person you used to be, that was the best fit and optimized for how things used to be, you’re going to fall short of making the most of how things are now. So stay ambitious, be practical, and design your life so that you’re set up to win!

This positivity quote comes from a man named Jeff Moore, the CEO of Everyday Power. He says “The most important thing you’ll ever wear is your attitude.”

I think this is a really interesting articulation of attitude. Just like when you wake up in the morning and decide what clothes you want to wear, you can choose the attitude you bring into the day. I’ve noticed for myself on the days where life is more chaotic, and I’ve chosen to be patient, that I’m not so stressed by the chaos. And on the days where there’s a lot to do, and I’ve chosen to be helpful, I find myself being more supportive in helping out.

Your attitude is your way of thinking or feeling about something, which in turn usually is expressed through your behavior. But this idea that we can choose our attitude on a daily basis, and shape the way we show up for the events and activities in front of us, is a very powerful concept.

Choosing to have a good attitude is a specific form of intention. It’s knowing that there may be challenging, inconvenient, and stressful things that come up and specifically choosing to relate with them in a more positive way. And the crazy part is, simply telling yourself what attitude you want to have about things will change the way you feel in the moment about them.

Ultimately, this is one of the greatest things we can do in our life. One of humanity’s fatal flaws is that we are so incredibly biased by our emotions, and if affects our moment by moment decision making and causes us to do things that we later regret.

But when we set an intention and have clarity on the attitude we want to bring into an emotional situation, we can overcome the emotions of it and make better choices that are in alignment with our highest self.

So as you take time getting ready in the morning - Choosing your outfit, brushing your teeth, doing whatever you need to do to start the day - also decide what attitude you want to wear for the day. Try it on and see how it looks on you, because a good attitude just might be your favorite!

The renowned philosopher Socrates has a quote that goes “The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know”. Ask anyone who’s a leader in their field about their understanding of how things work, and you’ll hear humility in their voice. The more you learn about something, the more you realize how little you know and see how many things there still are to learn.

This is an interesting paradox because these thought-leaders know so much, and that mentality is better fitting for someone who is just beginning to learn about something. But that’s the beauty of perspective - You don’t know what you don’t know, and once you know better than you can be and do better.

So as it pertains to our expansion and growth, it points to one core truth. It’s endless. There is always more to pursue and explore. Again, with this extra perspective, the most successful people in the world are the people who embrace this understanding and do something about it.

That’s why I believe this to be true - You’re never too good for a mentor. There will always be someone who either has been where you want to go, or is at the same level as you but sees it from a different angle. In either case, it serves you to enlist the support of someone else to support you in your progress.

This elaborates into another interesting observation… The most successful people have the most coaches. The people who are in the best position to help others get more help themselves than those that they support. Isn’t that interesting? 

For example, I coach a number of people, yet I have 3 coaches myself. And each of my coaches has more than 3 coaches… This ought to teach you something. You’re never so good that you don’t need help. The trend suggests that the better you get, the more help you need. 

So whether it’s from a coach or a mentor, the pathway to accelerating your growth and progress is by piggybacking on the knowledge and experience of others. So if you’re really serious about improving in any area of your life, enlist the support you need and you’ll get there so much faster, and you’ll gain the awareness that you can go further than you realized was possible.