I think a lot of people can relate with having a desire to be more self-confident. When you’re self-confident you’re more decisive, you stand up for what’s right and what you want, and you give yourself a chance to succeed at the highest level. It takes courage to take a chance, call in a favor, or speak your mind - especially when that little voice in your head uses fear and anxiety to try to talk you out of it.

This is something that I’m actively working on. I know that on the other side of big bold actions are big bold results, and I have huge aspirations for who I want to become, what I want to create, and the impact I want to make in life. 

I have the same fear, doubts, insecurities, and mental roadblocks as anyone else, but what’s different is I’ve implemented some strategies to support me in being bolder that I wanted to share with you.

First is routine. I’ve added “make a bold ask” into my morning routine. The stress of it diffuses because it’s bundled into a bunch of other things that I’m doing, and I capitalize on that momentum to be able to follow through on the action. 

But even still, I found myself diluting the boldness of the action, doing just enough to convince myself that I had completed it. That fear, worry, and doubt was still coming up. The routine helped me to get into doing something, the next step was to improve the quality of the action.

So what I’ve been doing is doing my ‘bold action’ immediately after completing my breath work and meditation session. This allows me to maximize the effects of the state change I create in this practice. It leaves me less hindered, less inhibited, and less mentally restricted so that I can access that next level of boldness, and do that thing that I want to do but maybe I’m too afraid to do.

Now I haven't been doing this for too long, but I imagine that in time my threshold for what I’ll classify as ‘bold’ will continue going up. This means that over time I will systematically increase the bigness and boldness of my actions as part of this routine which will lead to more big and bold results.

To summarize what I’m doing to make being bold easier - First I’ve created an expectation that I’m going to do it every day. I’ve also attached it to a routine where I know I’ll have momentum to take action. And finally I’m inducing a state change to get over the things keeping me from being bold so I can tap into a richer sense of confidence.

If you’re looking to develop your self-confidence, get in the process of doing something consistently and it will naturally increase over time.

As we go through our lives, we want to feel good. Physically we don’t want to be in pain, we want to feel able and capable of being athletic and fit. Emotionally we don’t want to be in a dark and despairing place, we want to find hope and optimism in the world where we’re genuinely excited about everything happening around us. In relationships we don’t want to be overlooked, criticized, or put down, we want to feel self-confident and strong in who we are.

Well the good news is you can have all of that, even if you don’t feel like you have it right now, and that’s because “Feeling good has never been so easy.”

Of course, one of the main factors to how we feel are our circumstances. If we have money then we can afford things that make us feel physically comfortable, like a massage. If we’re free from tragedy in our lives we’re more likely to be in a better emotional place. And if we’ve been connecting well with our romantic partners and family, we’ll naturally feel more strength in our independence.

But circumstances aside, because they’re not permanent, how is it that ‘feeling good has never been so easy’?

It’s because we’ve lived more of our life. We have our full life’s experience to have the self-awareness to know what we like, what we don’t like, and what we want. This makes it easier to feel good, and as long as you keep on living, things will just keep getting easier as you pick up even more self-awareness.

So find solace in the fact that things are improving, things are getting better, even if they don’t presently feel like it. Sure, life has its ups and downs, but it’s always trending up over time and that’s because of the self-awareness we build. 

That’s not to say it’s easy to feel good, it’s certainly not. It takes a special person to be able to reroute a bad mood in an instant. But it has never been easier, especially when you incorporate the optimistic mindset that everything that happens to you is just another point of reference that helps you home in on exactly what you like and want.

I was on a mentorship call with Jason Feifer, editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, and he provided a really insightful perspective. He challenged the normal definition of productivity, breaking down the assumptions of it so that it can be observed plainly for what it is. 

Personally I’ve always defined ‘productivity’ as “doing the things you want to be doing”. I believe that we’ve slowly been seduced into thinking that you need to be creating or building or making progress to be productive, and with Jason’s insight I was finally able to arrive at why that’s genuinely not true.

Hang with me as I dissect this.

The word productivity is just the combination of two words - Productive activity. It’s to be active in productive ways. A simplified way of restating ‘being active’ is just to call it ‘doing’. So we’ll leave that one there.

Now let’s dive deeper into the meaning of ‘productive’. ‘Productive’ is simply having the high ability to produce. This is where interpretation comes in. To produce what? Society and culture have taught us that we must always be thinking about producing results, revenue, and efficiencies. But can’t we also choose to produce joy, presence, mindfulness, and connection?

Ultimately, you get to decide for yourself what you want to produce. It’s your life, your time, and your attention. To think that the only ingredients to a full, worthwhile, meaningful life is knocking off all the things on your to-do list is extremely short-sighted...

A fulfilling life is finding the harmonious balance of everything that’s important to you and unique to what you want. Excelling at work, yes, but also taking care of yourself, growing strong relationships with people you care about, collecting unforgettable experiences, and living with integrity..

That’s why productivity is actually just “doing the things you want to be doing”, because in that broader definition you get to fill in the gaps of what you uniquely want to produce.

Just to recap how we got there: Productivity = Productive activity = Doing things that produce the results you want = Doing the things you want to be doing. 

At the end of the day, the result we’re all looking for is to live a harmonious high-quality life. Anything we do that contributes to that goal then becomes productive.

What’s amazing is when you live by this truer definition of productivity that is intentional and represents the balance that is authentic to what you want, you’ll ignite flow in your life and multiply your experience with less effort. 

Hopefully now you see how productivity has been misunderstood, and you have a new, more empowering way to relate with it that makes you feel less guilty when you do what you want to do within the big picture of your life.

One of the core focuses in my personal development is to be more intentional. I want to have more awareness of the fact that I’m making choices in every moment, and I want to improve the quality of those choices so that I’m living in alignment with the best version of myself.

This means that throughout the day, especially when I start getting distracted or feeling unmotivated, I’m trying to catch myself so that I can reroute my thoughts and behavior. The questions I’ve been beginning to ask myself, that I’ve found to be really powerful, is “What do I want to do and how do I want to do it?”

Instead of mindlessly scrolling on social media, I can interrupt the pattern and immediately re-establish my intention - What do I want to do and how do I want to do it?

As I catch myself daydreaming and procrastinating, I am bringing myself back to the core thing in front of me - What do I want to do and how do I want to do it?

The second part of the question is especially important. It’s easier to just go through the motions and not really be engaged in what’s in front of you. But what’s of the utmost importance is the quality that you bring to what you’re doing. And bringing to mind how you want to do things can really wake you up and hold you accountable to be more present with what’s in front of you.

At the end of the day, we usually know what we should be doing, what we want to be doing, what we’d rather be doing. Pair that with an awareness of how you want to be doing it, you create an incredible force for good.

Take the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge for example. Many people signed up for it, they decided what they want to do, but they never determined how they wanted to do it. And if it’s not treated like a priority, if it’s not given serious attention, then it’s going to be just another unmet commitment that makes you feel worse about yourself.

So whatever it is for you, especially when you catch yourself not showing up as the best version of yourself, interrupt that by asking yourself “What do I want to do and how do I want to do it?”

Many people misunderstand what it means to be self-disciplined. They think that it involves taking action at all costs, having the will-power to grind it out, and to never make excuses. This is just a sliver of the full definition that we hear most about because ‘hustle culture’ gives people the motivation they need to take action. 

But what I just described isn’t self-discipline, it’s self-control, and certainly there’s a time and place for it - To practice restraint and not have that extra dessert, to get up and get in the gym even when you’re feeling tired, to make yourself step into a cold shower even though you know how uncomfortable it is.

But there’s so much more to self-discipline than self-control. There are subconscious elements to it and environmental factors that are more influential in your self-discipline than your conscious will alone. Practicing self-control requires that things need to feel hard, that you’re actively restricting yourself from something that you feel like you want. Self-discipline is much more grounded and when you set yourself up in the right way, being self-disciplined can actually be the easy thing to do. And here are a few of the ways you can do that.

First is to build a self-disciplined identity. I call this your “Best Self Reflex”. This means that when there’s a choice to be made, you pick the option that is in alignment with the best version of yourself on autopilot. You don’t need to negotiate with yourself or convince yourself of what you want because your default response is an expression of your best intentions. This requires that you build an identity of being self-disciplined, stacking evidence of all the ways that you’re practicing self-discipline, until it incorporates as a subconscious belief you hold about yourself.

Then the second way to set yourself up for self-discipline success is to structure your environment. James Clear talks a lot about this in “Atomic Habits”. If you want to make a desired positive behavior easier to do, set up your environment to decrease the amount of effort and strain required to do it. For something you want to do less often, add friction and pain to make that behavior less desirable.

Get these two things working for you and you can reserve your self-control and will-power for when you really need it.

Now if you feel like you’re not as self-disciplined as you’d like to be (making excuses and exceptions more often than you’d like to admit) or you aren’t consistent doing the key behaviors that you know prime you to show up for your personal and professional life at your very best, let’s start thinking about self-discipline differently and do something to change that...

Take on the Super Habits Challenge and reprogram your mindset to make self-discipline automatic.

Trust me I get it… Life is busier than ever. So many responsibilities, places to go, people to see, errands to complete, projects to keep up. It’s hard to imagine adding anything more to your plate because, where would it fit?

But with all of these things going on, I want you to ask yourself this - Is this the balance that you want in your life? 

The current level that things are at is the result of your current environment. The stress and strain are a product of the too many things you need to do. Your health and wellness isn’t where you want it because your self-care is the first thing to be deprioritized with so much going on. 

This is a real problem because there appears to be no end in sight as anything you add in would make things even more unsustainable. As to not offset this delicate balance, you choose not to make a change because you don’t want to inherit the unpredictable consequences of it, so you keep things right where they’re at and tolerate the chaos that is familiar to you.

But it’s exactly this cycle of thinking that keeps you where you’re at, reliving the same problems over and over again, and continuing to not have the time for everything you want to do. Further it’s your disinterest and fear to try anything new that guarantees that there’s no end in sight. It’s the way you’re waiting for things to settle down or be more convenient that will ensure it’ll never be the case. 

If you want to get a different result, you have to do something different. Plain and simple.

So if you want to create more stillness and peace in your life but you can’t because you don’t have the time for a morning routine with mindfulness… If you feel your good health slipping away and you want to reclaim it but you don’t have the time to exercise more and prepare healthy meals… If you want to have more simple, undistracted time with your friends and loved ones... You need to do something different.

And what I have put together is the most effective, most efficient, most valuable thing you can do that is different. It’s to install what I call your Self Improvement Operating System, the single tool you can use to truly improve every area of your life. And after the 21 Day Best Self Breakthrough Challenge, you’ll have it fully incorporated into your daily routine so that you can consistently make the time for the things and people that are most important to you, live with more consciousness and intentionality, and revitalize your self-discipline so that you can enforce a higher standard for yourself.

This challenge is 100% free and it only takes 5 minutes a day for 21 days to complete. This is the ‘something different’ that will cause everything to shift for the better in your life, and if you want to lock that in before you can talk yourself out of it, I encourage you to register for it right now, even if you’ve already done it. That’s the first-step to a new normal, and you can choose to take it right now registering for the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge here.

When you close your eyes and picture your dream life, what does it entail? Is it a happy and healthy family enjoying quality time together? A strong physique and mindset that gives you confidence? Is it collaborating with leaders and mentors that inspire you?

Whatever it is, listen closely because I want to tell you something important - “You’re closer than you think.”

Life has a funny way of shifting very quickly when you’re intentional about it. You can enjoy quality time with family tonight if you make special plans and put your phone away. You can make some serious progress toward the fit body you aspire for with a month or two of consistent exercise and healthy nutrition. You’re a text message, social media comment, or phone call away from getting the attention of a mentor who wants to start working with you.

All of this is available to you right now and way closer than you think, but there’s one thing getting in the way of you seeing it...

It’s the belief that you can.

You tell yourself you don't have the time like you used to for family and friends. You’ve tried exercise and nutrition plans in the past that didn’t work for you. You wonder why a mentor would even care about you and what you have to offer them. And this lack of belief keeps you from even trying.

Do you know what that guarantees? That none of it happens. That you fail to shape your reality how you want so you settle for the mediocrity of how things are because you’re unwilling to even try.

But like I said before, things can shift very quickly when you start taking bold, intentional, consistent action. You’ll make progress on bridging the gap between where you are and where you want to be faster than you could have predicted. And when momentum kicks in it’ll just continue to accelerate you forward.

This only happens when you do something about… When you take action. And if you’re looking for something to shake you out of your current normal so that you can create a new more inspiring, more productive, more achieving and fulfilling normal for yourself, I’d like to invite you to step up to the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge. 

It starts on Monday and over the course of just 21 days together in the challenge you will implement the core life-process that holds you accountable to operating at the next level - Living with less excuses and more quality. Less distractions and more purpose. Less admiring other people’s lives and more maximizing your own.

To learn more about the challenge, and to register, click here to check it all out.

Alright, on Monday June 5th at 9am PT we’re starting another round of the 21 day Best Self Breakthrough Challenge and if you haven’t made the decision to sign up for it yet, I’ve written this article to show you the transformation you can expect when you do.

Many people on their personal development journey focus on acquiring more information. 

They buy that next self-improvement book hoping to find the one sentence in it that will unlock everything. 

They listen to another podcast episode to hear that new perspective that might shift theirs in a powerful way. 

They put in all of this time and effort into learning and it feels productive in the moment but at the end of the day it doesn’t change their outcomes nearly as much as they’d expect it to, and they wonder what they’re doing wrong…

Now don’t get me wrong, education is great! We need new ideas and insights that fuel our growth. But education is so easily accessible these days, and if you’ve been on your personal development journey for a while now, you probably already have more than enough of it.

You don’t need more information to change your life, what you need is a new system to better use all of the information you already have.

Let me demonstrate this by using the metaphor of a car. A car runs on an engine and that engine uses gas as fuel. You need gas to work the engine of course, but at a certain point the engine will work just the same no matter how much gas you have. 

Seeking more information in books, podcasts, and TedTalks is like filling up a car that already has a full tank. If you want the car to go faster, to be more fuel efficient, or to be more powerful, it has nothing to do with the fuel and everything to do with the engine.

That’s why you might feel like you’re not making progress or getting anywhere right now even though you’re investing so much time in your personal development. It’s because you’ve been stretching yourself to acquire more information (fuel) when what you actually need is to start getting new and better results by having a new and better system (engine).

Your self-improvement engine consists of the processes and tools you use to hold yourself accountable, to enforce boundaries, standards, and routines, to iterate your habits, to reflect on your performance in key areas on a daily basis, and to intentionally cultivate more self-awareness. 

If you don’t have anything of the sort in place then I promise you... You are on the brink of having a massive breakthrough!

And that’s where I want to invite you to join me in upgrading your engine over the course of 21 days in the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge. Through this challenge I walk you step-by-step to install your Self Improvement Operating System, the single tool you can use to improve anything about your life and help you to reach new levels of self-discipline, consistency, performance, and productivity. And all it takes for this to become your new self improvement engine is just 5 minutes a day for 21 days.

Again, the challenge starts on Monday, and if you’re looking to breakthrough to the next tier of your potential, to get the results you’ve been working so hard for, I really hope you join me live in the first session. Click here to register for the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge, for free, today!