I want to highlight a profoundly simple concept and paint the explanation around it. My mentor Jim Bunch said in a coaching call the other day “Your thoughts become things”.

What does this mean, for your thoughts to become things? Ultimately it’s about how what you think finds a way to materialize into your life in one way or another. This has massive implications for the quality of our life, the amount of success we have, and the way we operate on a daily basis when we understand that the majority of our thoughts are unconscious.

This is where I want to introduce the concept of the Stick Man, which is also something I learned from Jim Bunch. And it’s in understanding the Stick Man where we can see how our thoughts actually become things.

Even before you have a thought, you need to consider your beliefs. At an unconscious level, your beliefs shape the thoughts you have. It’s the default pattern of relating with things, the quick conclusions you draw about things, and it serves as a filter that everything around you needs to pass through in order to formulate a thought.

Then once you have a thought, it induces a certain feeling and that feeling affects your level of interest or motivation to engage in a certain behavior.  As we know, what we do leads to the results we get in our life.

So the Stick Man is a simple representation of how our internal thoughts and belief systems reliably produce external results. Your thoughts become things. 

This is the unconscious pathway, but fortunately for us we are not forever at the mercy of our unconscious mind. We can choose our thoughts, we can determine how we want to think about how we feel, we can make ourselves take action even when we don't feel like it, and to some extent we can even choose our beliefs.

With this awareness, you can put yourself above the unconscious pattern, bring more consciousness to your life, and have a game plan for how you’d like to respond in different circumstances rather than figure it out in an emotional environment. 

That is living life with intentionality, where you realize you have a choice in everything you do, and you’re committed to making the choices that are representative of the best version of yourself, as often as you can.

We’ve been taught throughout our life that fighting is bad. We see the atrocities of war, we know how unhealthy a relationship can be when it’s filled with petty arguments, we understand that violence is not the best way to resolve things, yet it happens anyway...

There has to be a reason why, right?

At its core, fighting is a behavior and just like all behaviors, we do it to meet a need. War satisfies the need for safety and dominance. An argument with a partner is an expression of how something about the relationship isn’t how you want it to be. Physical fighting and violence helps people to feel tough and significant.

But with that in mind, not all fighting is bad. If fighting is the path to getting one of your needs met, and it’s a need that is genuinely important to you and your highest self, then it’s entirely acceptable.

Think about how every day we’re fighting viruses, trying to maintain our health. Think about how we fight for our colleagues and customers, making sure that they get what they need and what they came for. Think about fighting for a relationship that isn’t going well, but you believe in it and you want to resolve it.

In my opinion, the line of discernment is - What’s worth fighting for? 

I’m certainly not condoning war here, but I’m empathizing with it. Take the Crusades, a religious war in medieval times. In their minds, the warriors were doing what they thought was right. Ransacking towns and pillaging communities was worth fighting for because of how it fit into their worldview. And crazy to say, it was within their integrity to kill for it.

It’s important to understand that there’s motivation behind fighting, just like any behavior, and that motivation can be flawed or biased. People are imperfect. We are imperfect. So if you can step away from the fact that fighting is happening, understand the underlying need and motivation that’s causing it, and find a different way to resolve it, you’ll find that our problems often can be solved in much healthier ways.

Featuring a concept from Darren Hardy’s book “The Compound Effect”, it’s only now (on my maybe 20th read of it) that something really stood out to me.

Darren says “If you want change the world, to rid it of all disease, stop all war, etc - hit the off button” meaning turn off the TV, news, and headlines that talk about it.

Of course he understands that this does nothing to change the world, but it does everything to change your world. And while some people might give push back to being naive to the happenings of the world, maybe there’s a version of this that could serve you.

Our perspective, mood, and well-being is constantly being influenced by the world around us. We’re not in control of the headline we catch waiting for a coffee, or the topic on the News on the TV at the gym. It’s nearly impossible to be in full control of what you’re exposed to while still living an active life. But what is within your control at home and on your phone is a great opportunity for improvement.

I respect everyone’s political beliefs, but does it serve you to get hooked by a new claim that defames the other party? Does hearing about how the homeless problem in the city is increasing add value to your daily life?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a purpose-driven person fueled by a desire to make a difference in the world. But I try to choose when I let myself learn about the problems in the world so that I’m in the right space to process it and do the quality research the adds value to my worldview.

News sources leverage fear to keep people’s attention, which they get paid for. This is a reminder that you largely get to choose what you let influence you.

So the punchline here is - If you don’t have as positive or an optimistic life as you’d like to, it might be worth looking into your consumption habits and go on a media diet. 

Something that is central to my life is living with purpose, so for today’s positivity quote I want to elaborate on a famous Dolly Parton quote - “Find out who you are and do it on purpose”.

When we think of purpose we usually see it through the lens of our life’s mission, the difference you want to make in the world, and what you want to be remembered for. It’s really powerful to have that overarching ‘why’ that you angle toward throughout your life, but this quote comments more on the second form of purpose.

Purpose isn’t just a directional north-star, it’s also a moment by moment intention. It causes you to really reflect on your daily choices and the quality you bring to what you do. Everything has a reason and connects to a goal, strategy, or tactic that you’ve decided is on your path. That’s what it means to infuse more purpose in your life -it’s to live with more intentionality. 

Now as it relates to Dolly Parton’s suggestion, “find out who you are and do it on purpose”... The north-star that you get to orient your actions around, and keep in mind as you make daily choices, is your most authentic self. It’s the fully expressed, self-aware version of ourselves. 

When we’re aware of our strengths and weaknesses, limitations and roadblocks, needs, wants, and interests (which is essentially who we are), and we live in alignment wit that, a whole world unlocks for us.

And trust me I know, it’s easier said than done. It takes courage to be yourself. But I’ve found that even if it’s a little uncomfortable, or inconvenient, or scary to lean into who you are and to stand up for that person through your daily actions, it fills you with self-confidence and self-belief. 

So if there were to be a takeaway, let it be this - Keep an open mind to explore who you are and don’t rule anything out. Try not to let judgment and conditioning keep you in a box that you don’t fit in. When you’re being your most authentic you, you’re at your very best, and that’s what the world needs and you deserve.

The highest caliber of growth-oriented people are constantly asking themselves how they can make things better. That’s not to say that things always need to get better, there’s a healthy balance between accepting things that are good enough and finding room for improvement... 

But isn’t it worth asking the question to have an idea of what you might be missing? 

When we approach our lives with curiosity and a desire to generate more awareness, we give ourselves more context to make better decisions without the bias of our own judgment. Then if you discover something you feel compelled to try out, run a test without attachment to a certain outcome and see how it goes.

In the pursuit of better, my friend Case Kenny offers to interesting approaches to consider. He says look for ways to making things simpler or do things differently.

Our natural inclination is to add more on top of what we’ve already got. But complexity and volume don’t guarantee better results. In fact, as Case suggests it’s often the opposite that is more effective.

To talk more about this balance, just because things can get better does not mean that your current results are good enough. ‘Enough’ is a loaded word. One side of the coin of enough is complacency, meeting minimum requirements.

What I’m talking about is the other side, which is sufficiency and satisfaction. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, we don’t need to create problems where they don’t exist.

But again, isn’t it worth thinking about what’s possible? Is there a better way? Awareness never hurts.

Getting in the habit of thinking this way serves you in more than the immediate. Ed Mylett says that our thinking is simply the process of asking and answering questions to ourselves. So when we ask good, creative, challenging questions like this, we train our brain to think more creatively. 

This applies to anything. It could be as mundane as your current grocery shopping process - Is there a better way? Something that’s simpler or different than what you’re already doing, or more efficient? Or it could be as tactical as evaluating a core strategy in your business. What would simpler or different even look like?

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

You know how people can get superstitious? It all comes from drawing arbitrary connections between things. Like tapping dice a certain way thinking it’ll improve your chances of having a good roll, or wearing a certain outfit on days when you have a big presentation at work.

There’s actually some truth to this. While the superstition seems to literally do nothing, in certain circumstances it could cause some shifts that make you feel more confident or prepared to get a good result.

The other side of superstition is worrying about “jinxing it”. You know, when you jinx it that means that you caused a negative outcome to happen, or prevented a positive outcome from happening, simply because you brought awareness to it.

Let’s highlight the underlying concept here. You believe that one random thing influenced another random thing. This is the power of perspective. Our minds are meaning making machines. We constantly want to close the loop and make sense of what’s happening around us. Sometimes we fabricate a meaning, like a superstition or a jinx, to fill in the gaps.

Imagine how powerful it would be to shape our brains to find a positive meaning in everything we do. To flip failure into a learning lesson. To find gratitude for setbacks. To see the good in people rather than the bad.

It’s all an unconscious process that is happening regardless, might as well get it working in our favor? And just as arbitrary as what you might conclude from superstition or a jinx, you can choose to shape your perception of how you want to serve the life you want to live.

I hate to break it to you, there’s no such thing as an overnight success. Extraordinary results require consistent, dedicated, hard work. Although it might seem like success came quick, and others may perceive that it happened overnight, it's just a result of a lot of hard work that was incubating over time to make it so.

While it’s true that you can’t be a success overnight, changing your life is a different story. 

You can in fact close your eyes one evening and your life and lifestyle can be drastically different the next. Just ask someone who realized that their smoking or drinking habit didn’t serve them and in one moment made a decision, and they haven’t touched it since. Or someone who met the love of their life, that they later married, and they can’t get the excitement and butterflies out of their system.

Serious life change is much, much more possible than we’ve been led to believe. That’s not to say that quitting smoking or meeting your future spouse is an easy thing to do, or it happens every day, but when moments like this come along they permanently shift the trajectory of your life.

Ultimately, your life comes down to your choices. Darren Hardy says “You make your choices and then your choices make you.” We’re often unaware of the choices we’re making but we are constantly making them. This means that at any given moment you can choose to completely transform your life and it will actually happen.

Let me present you with one of these moments where you get to decide, right now, what you want your future to look like. It could be more of the same, or it could be the beginning of the best chapter of your life. On Monday we’re starting another cohort of the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge. 

This is a transformational process that, when you work it, will improve your daily productivity and consistency to levels that are unrecognizable compared to how you’re living today. And the process is simply 5 minutes a day for 21 days, and in this Challenge I walk you through every detail of it so that you’re fully set up for success.

If you want to prioritize your health more, you want to stop being so busy and find a better life balance, you want to stop being so distracted and wasteful of your time with social media or random things that come up, this is the moment that you decide that things will forever be different.

I spoke yesterday with someone who just completed the last version of the challenge and she said that “this challenge has completely shifted my perspective. Previously I thought that I had to just accept who I was, but now I believe I can actually change my life. And it’s exciting!”

If you feel the pull to give this a try and see for yourself how this one single, simple habit will permanently ignite your next level in every area of your life, register for the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge, especially before you can self-sabotage and talk your way out of it.