Self Improvement Daily Podcast

The day you are truly free is the day you take full responsibility for your life. When you approach the things that happen to you with a sense of ownership, it creates empowerment that you are in control of the results you generate.

There are a lot of layers you need to go through to really arrive at this place, but it’s something that I’ve found the most successful people in the world have mastered. I first heard it as one of Gary Vaynerchuk’s core philosophies. Jim Rohn says “The day you graduate from childhood to adulthood is the day you take full responsibility for your life.” Jocko WIllink even wrote a book about it called “Extreme Ownership”.

The opposite of taking full responsibility is shaming, blaming, and justifying. Instead of internalizing the results and seeing how you are responsible for them, shaming, blaming, and justifying is your way of externalizing the results. This happens unconsciously because your sense of self is threatened by whatever happened and it wants to create separation from it. But this reaction is harmful over the long run because it doesn't create any lasting change.

Taking responsibility is practicing the ability to respond. Response-ability. It means that you’re consciously interpreting what happened, analyzing the factors and conditions that caused it to be so, and the role that you played within it. Your response is your conscious choice.

The alternative is reacting. This is an unconscious, reflexive action that is optimized to meet short-term needs. This causes you to externalize and blame, shame, and justify so that you have an explanation for what happened but it's only addressing a much more superficial level.

Our growth is in the depth. The more we can elevate our consciousness, and heighten our awareness to what’s happening moment to moment, the more our higher self will be expressed in the ways we show up in the world.

Taking full responsibility is a mindset. If your mindset is just your patterned way of thinking, and you see all events through the lens of being responsible for what happens, you start to tell a story that gives you more agency and a belief that you have control of your future.

The beautiful byproduct of this is - While it’s hard to take responsibility for the challenging, seemingly unfair things that happen, it also energizes your ability to know that you equally can achieve your goals and make your dreams come true!

I want to share a really powerful reframe. In our lives often there are things happening that are beyond our comprehension. Especially in the face of hardship or struggle, it’s hard to see the silver-lining or the good in the situation. And since it’s not natural to try and see things in a positive light, let me share a question you can ask that totally changes the way you relate with what’s happening around you.

What if this is happening out of love?

You’re fired from your job. What if this is happening out of love?

A family member falls ill. What if this is happening out of love?

Your car breaks down. What if this is happening out of love?

When you reflect on this simple question, what I find happens is it forces you to take a longer term view of the situation. It’s from this broader, more holistic perspective that we can see how difficult moments are actually serving us in the long run.

You’re fired from your job. Maybe that’s the universe helping you avoid a very negative situation. 

A family member falls ill. When they’ve recovered, now you have a new heightened appreciation for your time with them. 

Your car breaks down. Thank goodness it happened this time so that you learn what you need to do, because there are going to be much more dire circumstances that will be made easier by this experience.

Everything in life is the story we choose to tell about it. In order for us to make meaning of things, we create a story to connect the dots in a way that makes sense. The thing about this is that there are many, very different stories that can justify the same set of facts. 

So what I’m proposing is that you choose to tell the story that everything in your life is happening out of love. Because guess what happens when you do that? Your life becomes filled with it.

When we’re not intentional about the story we’re telling, our mind relies on our unconscious beliefs to fill in the blanks. Without intervention this leads to us seeing the world as “out to get us” or “harder than it needs to be”. 

Instead, we can be intentional and find the meaning that serves us and supports us, helping us to find peace in the events and circumstances around us with a genuine peace that it’s happening for a reason.

That’s what’s evident in the examples I provided. Getting fired could be seen as unfairly inconveniencing you, or protecting you. A family member getting sick could be a curse or a blessing. Your car breaking down could be frustrating or a necessary learning moment.

It’s not going to be your organic response at first, but I encourage you to try it out just once. The next time your receive bad news or something doesn’t go according to plan, ask yourself this question - “What if this is happening out of love?”

A friend of mine, Chris Leon, shared with me a new expression that I like a lot. He says that “life rhymes”. When I asked him what that means he provided some great insight that I want to share with you.

When something rhymes, it means that it belongs or that it makes sense. There’s something pleasurable about a good rhyme because it feels as if it were meant to be that way, and that the melody of the words deliver the experience of a good fit.

You could reason that sometimes life makes sense, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s when you dive a layer deeper into this thought where it gets really interesting. For something to rhyme means that the same familiar sound comes back over and over again. You can predict what’s going to happen at the end of a rhyming verse because it’s going to have a similar sound to the last one.

When life rhymes, it means that the lessons and concepts are all familiar. When you read more books, listen to more podcasts, consume more materials, it all really says the same thing. Everyone has their own way of saying it, which is important and necessary, but the basic elements point to the same fundamentals.

David Meltzer says that "we keep making the mistakes until we learn the lesson". This suggests that we experience the same problems over and over again until we make an adjustment. This is an example of how life rhymes. There’s not as much variety to what’s going on as you might think.

Now in order to make the most out of life, knowing that you’ll keep encountering the same recurring things, you need to turn theory into practice. The art of personal development is taking the advice and knowledge you acquire and implementing it. It needs to create a tangible difference in the way you approach the design of your life in order for it to leave an impact. 

And if you don’t, you’ll keep hearing the same rhyming lines on repeat with the familiar feeling that you’ve heard the song before. But ultimately the message won’t leave a lasting impression until you choose to do something with it.

You’ve probably heard the expression “Nothing in life is guaranteed except death” before, and It’s not meant to be morbid. What it’s trying to do is change your perspective around what is certain to happen. That’s what a guarantee is - it’s that the probability of something happening is 100%. But there’s just too much going on that’s outside of our control for it ever to be the case.

While it’s true that nothing is 100% guaranteed, it is certainly within your control to make things more likely to happen. This means that the odds are not stacked against you, but rather that the likelihood of something happening is more dynamic and influenceable than you realize. 

Want to hit your sales goal? It’s more likely if you make more sales calls and have an organized follow up system.

Want to run a half marathon? It’s much more likely if you sign up and have a date set that you can train for.

Want to have a good relationship with your significant other? Its much more likely if you have routine conversations to check in on the state of your partnership.

In fact all of this highlights something very, very important. Every action we take affects the likelihood of the outcomes we get in our life. This means that our daily choices are constantly shifting the probability scales, in one way or the other, making one result more likely.

So if we really want something, we need to see things through this lens. If you want to get fit, does making this choice increase the likelihood that I’ll get in better shape? If you want more life balance, does staying up late working increase the likelihood that I’ll create more balance?

The more we can tip the probability scales in our life, the more likely we’ll get what we want and achieve at our highest level. And that’s why in every moment of every day it’s on you to be disciplined to the choices and behaviors that are in alignment with your best self.

One of the things that many people want more of in their life is enthusiasm. It’s showing up with more fire, more excitement, and more energetic attention to whatever it is in front of you. We all know that person who just lights up a room with their energy and enthusiasm, and when we observe it, we want a little more of it for ourselves.

As I’ve learned through the Heroic program, the number one virtue most highly correlated with human flourishing is zest. That’s just another word for enthusiasm, and it’s not just something that would be nice to have, it’s a fundamental ingredient for a high quality life.

In order to add more enthusiasm to our lives, first we need to understand what it is. The root etymology for the word ‘enthusiasm’ is ‘en-theos’, where ‘theos’ means “god” and ‘en’ means “full of” or “within”. 

Without making this a religious conversation, what does that mean?

To be “full of god” is analogous to saying you’re “filled with spirit”. Our spirit is the deepest essence of who we are, without the conditioning or expectations of the world imposed on us. It’s the purest form of our unrestrained, uninhibited, unlimited being.

When we think of living with enthusiasm, we connect it with being active. You can’t have latent or potential enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is something that is actively being expressed in order for it to be labeled as such. Which means essentially, to live with more enthusiasm, or to do something with more enthusiasm means to infuse more unrestricted spirit into whatever is actively happening.

The reason I bring this up is because many people aren’t tapping into their most enthusiastic self. They’re not being their quirky, spunky, most authentic version of themselves because they’re afraid of what that would do for their life - How it would be perceived by others, that they might embarrass themselves, how it would hurt their self-confidence, and how it might change things in unpredictable ways.

If you want to live a more enthusiastic, zesty life, here are a few recommendations:

1) Reframe judgment. The forces that seem to come from other people, keeping you from being yourself, only hold weight because you allow them to. So recognize that it’s your own perception of judgment and not others’ opinions that’s holding you back.

2) Get moving. It takes energy to make energy. When you get your physiology properly supporting you, you’ll find that you naturally put more energy and spirit into whatever it is you’re doing.

3) You’re not the only one who has no idea what they’re doing. When you approach things through the lens that you don’t know what you’re doing, and it’s okay because no one knows what they're doing, you approach things from more of a learner’s mindset and it allows you to immerse yourself in things without holding yourself to a certain expectation of result.

Let’s find ways to get that spirit within, your enthusiasm, your zest, out into the world so that it can make a difference in the lives of others, including your own.

I was reflecting on a few areas of my growth and came upon a realization I’d never had before. Today’s world caters to the extreme ends of the spectrum and it shapes our perspective. It’s the strong political views of people in opposing parties... It’s the 5am club crazy morning routines... The people who read 50 books in a year.

The truth of it is the far majority of people don’t operate at the extremes, but that’s where the focus is, and it creates a biased reference point that leads to us having unrealistic expectations for ourselves.

Back to my realization - I’ve found myself getting self-conscious about my level of achievement because of this. But then I made a discovery. I realized that growth is a progression, and that the people at the far ends of it are just further along on their growth journey in that area.

This surfaced for me in a real life example. I was at the grocery store checking out at the cashier. As I was bagging up my food, I heard the person behind me ask for a job. The employee said that they are always hiring but she didn’t know what they were hiring for. The person behind me thanked her for the information and he walked away.

Something I’m trying to get better at in my life is finding more ways to be of service to others. I heard the conversation and I have enough experience to know that if you want a job, you need to probe a little harder than turn away at the first obstacle. I had this thought process, wanting to encourage him to try harder and navigate to someone who can give him a better answer, but then I felt myself get nervous and began to dismiss it.

But fortunately, I remembered my intention, mustered up the courage to speak to him, and provided some insight to support a stranger on their job-finding process.

I felt accomplished and proud of myself for showing up for the moment, but when I got in the car to drive home I started comparing my actions to the greater acts of kindness other people did in similar situations. People who don't just give advice but buy that individual clothes, help them write and print a resume, coach them up on how to get a job, and support them at a higher level. 

That’s not what I did... But that’s the point. Progression is a spectrum. I’m not ready to serve at that level yet so I can’t expect myself to be there. I didn’t even have the awareness in the moment to consider it. 

Is that the type of person I want to be? Absolutely. But that’s not where I was at on the spectrum on this day, and I’ll continue growing toward it.

So the insight here is - Just because you’re not operating at the ultimate level you want to does not mean you haven’t made progress. Do not discredit your growth! Everything is a progression where we improve over time, and the longer we’re in it, the more we improve!

I wanted to share this quote with you today because hopefully it will give you the encouragement you need to start living at your next level.

“The committed person, win or lose, is the one who finds the real excitement in living.”

This is a classic example of how the beauty of our human experience is found in the process and not the outcome. We hear it all the time, it’s about the journey and not the destination. That’s not just a feel-good saying - the most successful people in the world have said over and over again that their happiness is not found in things or accolades. It’s in the pursuit of all of it that they feel most alive.

But what does it mean to be a committed person? As Teddy Roosevelt says, “it’s the person in the arena”. It’s putting yourself out there in ways that challenge you and evolve you. When you’re committed it means that you’re in it, finding your way and doing what you can to do better.

It’s so easy to be content with how things are. Where things aren’t that bad, but they aren’t that good either. It’s that space where it’s all ‘good enough’ and you don’t feel really motivated to do anything about it. This is where too many people spend their lives and miss out on all of the richness, excitement, and enthusiasm life has to offer.

Being the committed person means doing things differently to create new results and experiences. It’s an intentional effort to bring consciousness to how you’re existing and not just exist. To create that consciousness you need to find your edge a little bit, to test your boundary, to expose yourself to ways that you can fail or put yourself in a position to make a mistake.

Why put yourself in that kind of situation? Because that’s where you find the real excitement in living. Win or lose, that’s where you feel most alive

And do you know what that requires? Being bold. Taking risks every once in a while, not letting fear or scarcity hold you back, being courageous and optimistic as you take action to shape your future.

So what can you do today to be this person? What have you been putting off, neglecting, ignoring, or fearful of that will unlock a world of opportunity should you work through it? If you don’t have an answer to that, I’m hosting a free live workshop today, August 31st at 5pm PT called Visioneering Dreams To Reality where you’ll get to clearly define what you want and lock in on what you need to do to achieve it.

If you’ve ever experienced success in your life maybe you’ve noticed something. The world opens up to you as you’re flooded with new ideas, new possibilities, and new opportunities. This is very exciting and validating in the short-term, but it’s also the shadow of failure.

Ben Newman, peak performance coach says that your response to success is actually your indicator for greatness. He talks about this at length in his book, “The Standard: Winning Everyday At Your Highest Level” and says that when most people taste success they become less accountable to the actions that produced it, and start to drift off. 

That’s why it’s so hard for teams to repeat championships. The natural response is to let off.

To put it another way, Greg McKeown in Essentialism talks about the success paradox where:

1) When we really 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.

What this does is it causes drift. Drift is when your trajectory slowly starts to change and leads you to getting further away from your goals. Whether it's success or life transitions or new chapters or whatever it might be that's causing drift, it all means that you’re slowly losing sight of what’s most important to you.

The best way to prevent drift is to have an extremely clear vision on where you’re headed. So that no matter the success or failures, blessings and curses, wins and losses - You don’t lose sight of what it’s all about. As deviations present themselves on your path, having a clear picture of what you want helps you to make more aligned decisions and ultimately, accelerate you toward your goals.

Think of it like Bumper Bowling. When you start to get off path, your vision acts like bumpers helping you make forward progress. But if you don’t have those bumpers in place, you’re likely to end up somewhere else and only realize it well after it’s already happened.

This is what a vision will do for you: It’ll help you define the life-balance you want to have. It gives you a decision making framework that you can run everything through before making a commitment. It helps you enforce the healthy and social lifestyle you want to live even when there’s a lot of money or status on the table. It holds you accountable to living within your core values so that you have a life that makes you feel deeply proud and filled with joy.

If you don’t have a clear life vision, or you haven’t revisited it in a while, tomorrow I’m hosting a workshop where we’ll create your 10 year vision that will serve as your guiding star, and makes it infinitely more likely that you’ll end up where you want to be in life. It won’t happen on its own, it’s up to you to take action, and showing up to this workshop is your way of getting on the path to making it happen!

That’s really it isn’t it? Either you can put your energy into building your dream life, or you can see what happens. The choice is yours!

Click here to register for tomorrow's live workshop: Visioneering Dreams To Reality