In leadership positions, or when we’re trying to influence people, there are two ways we can show up. The differences are subtle but they lead to drastically different outcomes and levels of sustainability. It’s the difference between using power and authority.

As you can imagine, using power is more destructive. It involves using force to create a certain result with way less care for the consequences. Power is something that you impose on others and it manipulates the result because there’s a certain pressure being applied to shape it.

Authority is more grounded. It comes from a place of mutual understanding, and its effectiveness has been earned.  When you have authority it means that you have credibility on a topic and that your instructions, recommendations, or guidance should be taken seriously. The outcome of authority is that people get to respond to the influence that you offer rather than be unwillingly manipulated by it.

This contrast makes the most sense through the lens of leadership. If you want to influence someone to do something, flexing your power over them is less ethical and sustainable than leveraging your influence. Different situations call for different needs, but for the most part you’ll want to come from a place of genuine trusted authority rather than power.

But beyond the way this distinction plays in relationships, there’s a similar application in the way we view ourselves. When you use power over yourself, like will-power, it has consequences. You use power to do things that you don’t feel like doing in the moment, which works in the short-term to change your behavior (and again is needed for certain reasons) but overall it doesn’t come from a place of pure motivation or desire.

Again, authority is more grounded. In a personal application you have authority when you feel inspired to maintain a certain standard, to follow through on a certain habit, or to make a certain choice. That’s not to say all of that is meant to feel easy, but when you reflect on it you’re connected to the purpose of it. It makes consistency easier because it doesn’t take from you like power does, it gives to you in the form of self-belief and self-gratification.

Let’s use the example of choosing whether you want to have ice cream as a dessert. Using power would be telling yourself not to do it. Using authority would be connecting that reason not to do it with your health goals, and that you’re choosing progress toward that over the short-term gratification of enjoying something sweet. Again, authority has reason and purpose to it.

To make this actionable, the way you cultivate more authority in your life is through clarity. Having clearly defined goals, expectations, standards, and habits will help you to live in alignment with them.

I’m going to propose a very, very difficult question. In order to receive it I want you to know that you don’t need to take action on anything in this, a good outcome would be creating awareness to start.

There are certain things in our lives that we find ourselves not paying attention to. Maybe you’re in financial strain so you don’t want to look at your expenses. Maybe there are some red flags about a business colleague or romantic partner that you’re ignoring. Or maybe you’re telling yourself a story that 'you’re giving your all' to something and not getting the results you want.

We all shape our reality in a way that is comfortable, but in doing so we often misrepresent the facts. With that in mind, the difficult question is - What are you pretending not to know?

What are the things that you’re too afraid to give a voice to because the reality of it is difficult or painful? What thought sits in the back of your mind as a lingering fear that you don’t want to face up to? 

We all have some story we’re telling ourselves to keep secrets with ourselves. But once we acknowledge and work through the secret, we tap into a well of opportunity for self-growth and personal evolution.

Again, the purpose of this right now is to become aware of some of these things. And in order to discover it let me add a few prompts.

Is there a piece of advice that you received and pushed off because it was so different from what you are doing?

Is there a bad outcome you created that was caused by something in particular that you don’t want to admit?

Is there a different reason why you showed up, or are showing up to a certain situation, in a way that you don’t want to other than the reason youu're already telling yourself about it?

What this overall question suggests - “What are you pretending not to know? -  is that you do know what’s happening. You do know what’s wrong. And whatever it is, acting upon it would add some short-term pain to your life because it would add so much work to do, undo the progress you’ve made, lead to difficult conversations, make you question yourself and your abilities, or whatever else it might be.

What are you pretending not to know?

One of the most inexplicable, incredible things that we experience in life is love. This is romantic love with a partner, deep-seated love with a family member, mutual love for a friend, and even a passion and love for the work you do. Love is an incredibly motivating force that can drive you to do things you aren’t capable of by yourself. 

Having said all of that, many of us neglect the most fundamental form of love - Self-love. This sometimes gets a bad reputation because people are uncomfortable with the idea of giving yourself hugs or staring longingly at yourself in the mirror. That’s not all that self-love is...

Loving yourself is making decisions that are respectful to yourself, that help you maintain integrity. It’s accepting who you are with all of your strengths, weaknesses, quirks, issues, and passions. It’s being understanding of yourself and giving yourself grace when times are hard.

Adam Roa says it beautifully in his famous spoken word - “Treat yourself like someone you love.” Imagine how much doing that would change the conversation we have in our head.

Beyond the fact that you’re worthy of love and you deserve love, self-love is important because it enables you to give love. So those people and projects that are most important to you - You’re only going to be able to pour into them as much as you have to give.

That’s why today’s positivity quote is “Love yourself first”.

It’s not selfish to tell someone you don’t have the energy to do something for them. It’s allowing you to show up that much better when it is time to help.

It’s not selfish to take a mental health day at work if you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Respecting your needs is the best thing you could do for your work so that you move forward enthusiastically with it.

Jim Fortin says “Your doing is only as good as your being doing the doing”. So make sure you’re taking care of yourself, challenging yourself, and loving yourself in the ways that feel right to you so that you can be the person you want to be everywhere that takes you.

Self-love is a much larger topic than this, it's difficult to do, and it's uncomfortable at times. But like anything it’s something that can be improved and that only happens when you give attention to it.

This week I had the pleasure of meeting Ben Newman, a performance coach who works with elite athletes and executives, and embodies high performance himself. As someone who supports people to succeed at the highest level, he noticed a very interesting trend that I wanted to share with you.

He calls it being ‘seduced by success’. When someone tastes success, big or small, a natural reaction is to find comfort in it. It’s the payoff you’ve been working hard for and earning it appears to be an opportunity to enjoy it. However what Ben calls out is that there’s a complacency that comes in the shadow of success that keeps people from sustaining and elevating their success over the long-term.

This reminds me of Greg McKeown’s “Clarity Paradox”. The paradox goes:

1) When we have clarity of purpose, it leads to success.

2) When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.

3) When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.

4) Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

The Clarity Paradox suggests that there are elements of success that make it more difficult to reproduce, just like the seduction we experience by getting favorable results.

So Ben Newman’s recommendation is simple - Do not neglect the process. In Steven Covey’s “7 Habits For Highly Effective People” he emphasizes a relationship between production and production capacity, which he calls it the P/PC balance. It’s a reminder that you must maintain the factors that produce success in order to consistently achieve it.

With a little more awareness around how this works, hopefully you are more prepared to capitalize on success when it comes your way, and push it even further by doing the right things to maintain it.

When someone acts courageously and boldly, especially in the face of fear, and gets a good outcome from it, people use the expression - “It takes nerve”. Have you ever slowed down to think about what it actually means?

When we encounter fear, distress, or high-stakes opportunities it provokes a host of emotions. In major cases it could be the fear of death or harm. Poor performance could lead to less respect. Those who perform best in these situations have a way of being able to deal with the stress and anxiety of the situation so that it doesn’t affect them.

In other words, these individuals are great at calming down their nervous system. “It takes nerve”. It takes self-control and nervous system regulation so that their skills are not compromised by the emotion of the circumstances.

That’s what emotions do, they hijack the brain. They make us feel a certain way, causing a physiological response that then changes the mind’s environment. This is why people ‘freeze’ from speaking when they’re nervous, or why they’ll agree to (or say) something something they normally wouldn’t if it weren’t for the heat of the moment. Our cognitive ability is impacted by our emotional environment.

Like a surgeon who makes the perfect cut in a complicated procedure, or the pro athlete who hits the shot when the game is on the line, the people who ‘have nerve’ do a great job of not letting spontaneous emotions impact their overall abilities.

Another more formal term for this is equanimity. It’s a stoic philosophy of not getting too invested in your current emotions because it could lead to biased judgment and performance. 

If you want to get better at performing when the stakes are high, so you can maximize the opportunities in front of you, I’m going to share two things to consider for now. 

First, per this expression, the more you can down-regulate your nervous system, the less distracted you’ll be by your emotions. Slow and deep breathing is a great tactic for doing that. 

Second, preparation is a great antidote to underperforming in the moment. With preparation and repetition you create stronger subconscious imprints for yourself, helping you to take action even when your conscious mind is flooded with emotions.

Overall, the better you start handling these challenging moments, the more self-confidence you’ll develop and the easier it will get to have ‘nerve’ and equanimity moving forward.

One of my good friends, David Terzibachian, taught me an analogy about a picture frame that I’ve found creates a really compelling point around perspective.

In each of our own lives we experience the things around us through the very narrow lens that is 'us'. We’re limited by our own perception, we shape things to fit into our mental models and beliefs, and we struggle to take a truly objective look at our choices and reality because we’re emotionally invested in it.

The analogy is - Each of us are figures in a picture frame. We’re the main character, front and center, dominating the picture. But since we’re in the photo we have a limited awareness of what’s happening around us in the rest of the photo. We might have some idea about what’s going on, but we cannot see the full-picture because we are in it.

When you acknowledge that you have a limited understanding of your own life, and you embrace what you don’t see with an open-mind and curiosity, you can allow yourself to see the bigger picture and accept yourself. You can forgive yourself for mistakes you make because they came from a limited awareness.

In other words, to fully understand ourselves and to maximize our potential, we need to see the full picture. But if a lot of what’s in the picture are things we’re incapable of seeing ourselves, or unwilling to see ourselves, then how are we meant to accomplish it?

This is where other people can come in and inform you on what’s happening. Other people are not in your picture, which means that they can take a step back and see more than you can. 

Have a hard time seeing the blessing and lesson learned in failure? Someone else might.

Not realizing how a belief is guiding your behavior and manifesting the same problem over and over again? Someone else could.

Reaching your goals and making serious progress but you don’t even see it? Someone else is already celebrating for you.

Now this isn’t a perfect process because when it comes to sharing what they see, everyone brings their own biases, judgments, and assumptions into their conclusions, which may or may not be helpful. That’s why it’s recommended to have a coach, or someone you trust to give you feedback, to tell you what they see.

In the last 2 years I’ve been working with a coach who is helping me to see my full picture and I cannot understate how much it has accelerated my growth and self-awareness.

To wrap this up - You are too close to your life to see everything that’s happening around you and even who you are within it. If you’re committed to breaking through your current limitations and grow into the next best version of yourself, you need an expansion of awareness and perspective to tell you what you’re not seeing, and that often comes from someone else who can see the full picture.

An incredibly effective way to orient your behavior and achieve a certain outcome is to set goals. Having goals in place gives you the clarity and focus you need to actually make progress on one thing and not get distracted by the infinite amount of things that are asking for your attention. 

However, it can be discouraging when we set goals, work hard for them, and then don’t reach them. It can make us feel like we failed or like we’re not good enough. And that’s where I want to introduce an alternative way to think about setting goals, with all of the same benefits, but without the guilt.

Something I learned from Brian Johnson at Heroic - Instead of setting goals, what if we set targets. This gives us something tangible and concrete to aim at but also is understanding of the fact that the end result is often out of our control. In aiming at targets, it transitions our focus from the outcome to the process. Your behavior, which is the input required to achieve a goal, is within your control - So that’s where your attention should be.

This also accounts for something else that people struggle with related to goals, which is that they change. And that’s what should happen. As you get more information, familiarize yourself with better context, the details of the goal may reveal itself. You get more clarity on what you actually wanted to achieve, what an actual good result would be, rather than the lesser-informed intention you set to get you started.

That’s why treating it like a target is helpful too. As you get closer you can narrow your aim even more, or you can change your aim altogether. Again, all a goal is meant to do is direct your behavior, and if seeing that force as something more dynamic and ever-changing, it gives you more permission to adjust your processes.

One day, you’re going to miss the way life is right now. You’re going to miss the pain and challenge of today because you’ll be so grateful for how it shaped your world of tomorrow. You’re going to wish you had today’s moments with your loved ones where you could ask them questions about their current perspective, experience one more thing with them, or share one more hug.

I think we undervalue the present because it’s a given. It’s all we’ve ever known and we’ve acclimated to it as a form of hedonic adaptation. It isn’t until it becomes something more novel, like a memory that you reflect on, when you can fully appreciate the moment for everything it is.

Speaking for myself, there’s one video I have of my nephew that makes this real for me. It was around Christmas time and we were playing with some of his toys on the couch. I remember at that moment realizing “This is the exact moment I’d trade anything for a few years from now.” It stood out to me because it so strongly contrasted with how I was feeling, counting down the minutes until it was his bedtime and I could get a break for the night. 

But recognizing how that moment would come and go, and how I’d later regret not making the most of it, I was able to immerse myself in the experience and be deeply present with my nephew. It has become a cherished memory for me and fortunately I had the awareness to record a video of it. Watching it back often only a few years later, I already want that moment back. I miss it.

You’re going to want today back. It might be hard to see but what’s happening in your life right now is a formative time in our lives that everything else is built on top of. It’s an incubation period for your future and that’ll only make sense once the future has arrived. So don’t wish that it passes, be present with it, enjoy it, and experience it. 

Whether times are simpler or more challenging, free or more restrictive, you’ll think back fondly on it all and want to be able to experience it all over again.