Featuring one of the best souls to ever grace this earth, today’s positivity quote is an intention that will benefit all of our lives and the world. It comes from someone who has embodied love as much as any person in history, Mother Teresa. She says “Let no one ever come to you without feeling better and happier.”

We live in a shared world. The air we breathe is in my lungs in one moment and your lungs the next. The same sun rises to kiss our skin with the same rays. We are more connected than we think, which is why it’s such a shame that the world focuses on our few differences rather than our many similarities.

But in understanding how connected we are we can recognize how powerful we are. The world and its energy exist as a symphony where everyone is a part of it at the same time. Everything you do creates ripples that shift reality for everyone else, creating a universal and global impact. So stop looking around you and waiting for someone else to do it - You are the source of change in the world!

So if you want to see a positive change, Mother Teresa has a great intention for you to consider - “Let no one ever come to you without feeling better and happier.”

You cannot control everything but you can control the way you hope to make people feel. It’s within your control to show up in life with enthusiasm, authenticity, compassion, and presence. While it might seem like a drop of warm water in the ocean, it may not seem like your positive energy does anything. But truly the ocean gets a fraction of a fraction of a degree warmer because of you. 

Eventually, your impact inspires others who inspire others, and what seemed like an inconsequential contribution became something much bigger.

To further this metaphor, the best way you can great that global effect is by adding warm drops of water one at a time in your positive interactions with others. And living within Mother Teresa’s beautiful intention, you’ll play your role in creating a better world.

So my ask of you is simple. If you can find one moment today to be intentional about the way you make someone feel, you’ll have made someone’s day and begin your journey on this path. Just one person, in one moment, is a perfect place to start.

This is for anyone who has been working hard and waiting for their breakthrough - for that opportunity to knock or that piece to fall into place. I’m going to share a little story and while it does have religious language in it, the concept applies far beyond the religious context.

--

A terrible storm came into a town and local officials sent out an emergency warning that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes. They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately.

A faithful Christian man heard the warning and decided to stay, saying to himself, “I will trust God and if I am in danger, then God will send a divine miracle to save me.”

The neighbors came by his house and said to him, “We’re leaving and there is room for you in our car, please come with us!” But the man declined. “I have faith that God will save me.”

As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps, a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him, “Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!” But the man again said, “No thanks, God will save me.”

The floodwaters rose higher, pouring water into his living room and the man had to retreat to the second floor. A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window. “We will come up and rescue you!” they shouted. But the man refused, waving them off saying, “Use your time to save someone else! I have faith that God will save me!”

The flood waters rose higher and higher and the man had to climb up to his rooftop.

A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder. A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man, "Grab my hand and I will pull you up!" But the man STILL refused, folding his arms tightly to his body. “No thank you! God will save me!”

Shortly after, the house broke up and the floodwaters swept the man away and he drowned.

When in Heaven, the man stood before God and asked, “I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?”

And God said, “Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car. I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?”

--

I share this to bring awareness to our role in life. We cannot wish things into existence, we must play an active role in making them so. The truth is, we live in an abundant world where we already have access to everything we need. That lucky break is always happening right now. The once in a life-time chance exists in every moment. 

When you raise your awareness to see all of the forms that these things are taking, and you gain the courage to take action on it, that’s when things really start to happen. But if you’re wishing and waiting for something to intervene and do it for you, it’s going to be a while.

A lot of people ask the question “how did you sleep last night?” but I think we’re missing the mark. When we ask that question what we really want to know is how the person is feeling now - are they rested and ready to go or still dragging a bit? So let’s be more direct and think about that more specifically.

The moment you wake up and open your eyes your new day starts. It’s a pivotal moment because it sets the tone for how the day is going to go. But beyond just trying to feel rejuvenated from a night of sleep, you can be intentional about the way you spend the first moments of the day to connect with what you want the day to represent. This is just as much a factor for how you feel in the morning as getting rest, yet many people overlook it.

With this in mind, there are some things to avoid and best practices first thing when you wake up to set the tone for the day.

The first thing to avoid is pressing the “Snooze” button. When you “snooze” and delay starting the day, you’re giving yourself permission to allow your emotions to affect your decision making. This often causes you to start the day running behind, which then is an energy that affects how you show up to everything else. I have a lot to share on this, but the main thing I recommend for people who are “snoozing” in the morning is to pre-determine 5 minutes of activity that you begin the second your alarm goes off. If you want to go back to bed and get sleep after that, by all means do it, but now you’re doing it from a place of choice rather than emotional reflex.

The second thing to avoid is checking your phone. Again, this is training yourself to be okay with being reactive to other people rather than captaining your own day. And especially try to avoid social media unless you have a very specific purpose to checking it because it’s designed to hijack your attention and set you off course.

On the best practices side, it’s all a matter of being intentional about how you want to feel. That could be grateful, joyful, inspired, loved, whatever it might be. And what really looks in that feeling is doing a specific activity that allows you to tap into it. For example, the first two things I do when my alarm goes off is I brush my teeth and dance to a high-energy song to prime my day for joy, and then I go back to bed to snuggle my fiancé and tap into a moment of love. And then it’s gratitude journaling.

Similarly for you, start experimenting with what little actions you can start doing to generate positive feelings.

The summary is - If you want to have a great, inspired, productive, present day, you need to intentionally set the tone. And your best opportunity for that is to paint on a blank emotional canvas as the first thing you do in the morning and fill it with how you want to feel.

I know I might be crazy because of the things that I do, but I’m happy. And to me that’s way more important.

‍

One of the most influential minds of the modern personal development movement (that you maybe have never heard of) is Phil Stutz. He’s a psychologist and therapist for celebrities as well as a high performance coach for some of the world’s most successful people. I’ve been diving into his work more recently and wanted to share some of his best with you.

Stutz says that 3 unavoidable, universal aspects in life are pain, uncertainty, and hard work. He finds that a lot of people find themselves in conflict because they don’t have the right relationship with these things and therefore, they become negative influences.

To quickly define each - Pain is an aversive response you have to emotional, physical, or psychological strain. Uncertainty is the doubt and fear we experience around an unknown future. And work, in particular hard work, is the mechanism that changes any circumstance.

Put them all together in an acronym and you’ve got PUH - Poo!

If we want, we can choose to treat these things like poo. The default response is to be disgusted, avoidant, and dismissive of pain, uncertainty, and hard work. I think we can all agree that feces are nasty... and similarly we default to relating with PUH a bit negatively as well.

But here's the opportunity. From a different perspective - poo is a fertilizer! It is the ingredient you need to support growth, development and proliferation. In that way poo is a great thing and a catalyst to things changing and improving.

In order for this PUH to serve you - pain, uncertainty, and hard work - you must choose a positive way to relate with it.

Instead of feeling like a victim in pain, get curious about where that pain is coming from and what you have to learn from it.

Instead of being paralyzed from taking action by uncertainty, use it as a training ground to experiment and get better at predicting how things will be.

And instead of being allergic to hard work, find more value in the ways you’re investing your time so that you can build the life of your dreams.

I don’t mean to be grotesque - My aim is to get your attention so that you can improve your life. If you feel like this insight was interesting or helpful for you, it will certainly be helpful to other people you care about.

Sharing is caring! Forward this along to someone who you think would be curious to learn about it.

‍

I want to take a moment to expand on some pretty standard advice in the personal development space. When it comes to creating a better life for yourself, you can only do that in the present and in the future. Thinking about the past and replaying old scenarios is often a distraction that robs you of the effort and attention you need to show up in the present.

Now in terms of where we should place our focus, the present is pretty straightforward. It’s about what’s happening right here and now. When you’re more mindful of the moment and perceptive of what’s around you, you deepen your experience, allowing you to be more present in the present.

The second, more ambiguous factor to a better life is the future. It’s the land of possibility, expectancy, and opportunity. But there are two different relationships you have with the future, it has two faces, the first one is wishing and the second one is creating.

First let’s dive into wishing. This is what you do when you have determined that you want something. You have enough knowledge to know that it would add to the quality of your life. The very nature of wishing is hopeful, it’s aspirational, but it’s not very concrete. Kind of like the law of attraction, you hope to arrive at something but you aren’t taking an active role in it coming to fruition.

That is exactly what we do in the second face. The impetus is the same - you want something. But when you’re creating you realize that you have the power to shape your future. You get how the ‘now’ connects to the ‘then’ and that there’s a sequence to it. You see the future as more of an evolution from the present, and the direction of the development is something you have the power to influence.

To restate it, the difference between wishing and creating is how actively you’re playing a role in shaping the future. If you’re removed from it and observing, then you’re wishing. If you’re making moves, strategizing, and connecting the dots, then you’re creating.

The highlight is - Don’t fool yourself that your future will be better just because you want it to be so. You must take control of it, be a participant in its evolution, and be the source of the change. You must invest in the present to effectuate the future, or else it will come to be without your say in the matter. That is the heart of creation, and when you realize that it’s within your power, you will become on fire and unstoppable!

‍

Featuring a quote from 18th century poet Alexander Pope, I must say that there is more to this thought than his immediately perceived. There’s a silver lining to it. The quote is “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."

When I first read this I had the impression that this is too far on the side of being unemotional and detached from reality. I thought that if you don’t expect anything then sure, you can’t be disappointed. But the consequence to that is it’s also restricting your ability to feel enjoyment and celebration.

But then I really thought about the first word of the quote -Blessed. “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

This highlights the extent of the gift that detachment is. So many people are preoccupied with cause and effect of things and the expectancy of results that it prevents them from being present in the moment. It causes people to be less engaged in the input, which is where moments live and life is experienced. 

It’s a blessing that you expect nothing because it means that you have no attachment to the output and you can dedicate your full-attention to the input.

The beautiful part is, this helps you focus on what’s in your control. We can shoot to attain certain results but at the end of the day we cannot guarantee them. What we do have fully agency over though, is the way we position things and set them up for success.

When we’re too invested in the outcome and we fall short of achieving it, it’s disappointing. That’s a universal response. But that’s not to say we can’t celebrate the wins of life! Of course we can, and we should! But the focus here is we cannot expect them because that will affect the way we go about doing things.

And that’s the silver-lining of positivity - to live a more joyful and uplifting life it serves you to prevent contrasting emotions like disappointment and frustration. Understanding now that those emotions come when reality didn’t meet your expectations, you can curb their influence on you by not having set expectations in the first place.

Now I must say, I’m not suggesting you don’t have any expectations for anything. I believe there are certain standards you must uphold for yourself and those around you to create your best environment, but I share this perspective because it might help you interrupt the pattern and give you a new way of thinking about your relationship with generating results.

I don’t talk a lot about nutrition or diet because I don’t know nearly enough about it to contribute anything meaningful. But even so, despite conflicting articles and information, there is a consensus about what is the best diet. If you want to start eating healthier this is what you need to do:

Pick the diet that you can stick to.

It’s that simple. The best diet for you is the one you can stay consistent with. The reality is all different diets have a widespread of benefits - vegan, paleo, intermittent fasting, gluten-free, and each of our bodies are different so it’s hard to make any recommendations about it. What matters most is your compliance with it - the best diet for you is the one you can stick to.

When you can pick a diet that is reasonably within your financial means and your social interests, you’re more likely to follow through on it and therefore discover how it affects you. You’ll be able to start figuring out what makes you feel at your best when you commit to a sustainable diet and reflect on how much energy you had throughout the day, did you have any discomfort, etc.

This also helps you align on what’s most manageable for you over the long-term. Is it healthy for you to have dessert and drink alcohol every night? Probably not, although of course there’s research that suggests chocolate is great for you and a glass of wine at night is too. But the point I’m trying to make is if you tell yourself you can’t have dessert, or you can’t drink alcohol ever because it’s part of an unhealthy diet, then you’re setting expectations that aren’t organically compatible with your life!

In my coaching I encourage people to find that best fit amount so that they have the right amount to shoot for. This is the true definition of temperance - it’s not completely eliminating something from your life, it’s about finding the right amount of it that is in alignment with your values.

So if you want to get into a healthier lifestyle and commit to a more healthful diet - pick the one that you can stick to. It might be oversimplified but when you set that expectation from your logical, reasonable best-self, you’ll find that it might be a little challenging, and it will hold you accountable, because with good intentions you set a new standard.

If you're reading this right now and have found these insights valuable, please share it with a friend or two! They'll find it valuable too!

I want to use a metaphor to explain how we’re affected by the things around us. I want you to picture a big powerful ship.Whether it’s a military ship, a cruise ship, or some other vessel, it spans long across the water. This ship is capable of traveling long distances through difficult currents to get to its destination.

A ship has one primary purpose, which is to stay afloat. It has been expertly crafted to maintain buoyancy with the right distribution of weight and materials to ensure that it can glide on top of the water. Now here’s the lesson - ships don’t sink because of the water around them, they sink because they get water in them.

The same is true for you and the influences of your life. You might be surrounded by the very thing that is your demise but it does not need to negatively impact you. Like a ship on top of water, you must navigate the danger, temptation, and vice around you without letting it affect you. Just because you’re surrounded by something does not mean it will dictate your life. Of course it has the potential to, should you let it win, but there are real things you can do to decrease the chances of that.

First is preparation. Understand the environment you’re entering. What storms are out there and how might that expose your weaknesses. Think through the physics of what materials and structures you need to maximize your frame. ​​Sun Tzu says in “The Art Of War” - “Every battle is won or lost before it is ever fought”. Preparation creates confidence, which creates more presence to make the right decisions in the moment.

Then also, it’s really about highlighting the intention. What is the mission? What are you meant to do? When you add that perspective to the moment you have more awareness to know what is in alignment and what’s not. A ship chooses to leave the shore and take on the open ocean for a purpose, and when you connect to yours you find more direct ways to navigate the waters as effectively as possible.

The expectation cannot be that you avoid risk and danger at all costs, but rather that you can confidently move through it knowing how to prevent its influence on you. Like a ship surrounded by water, you must keep the negative influences out of your life if you want to stay afloat.

I’m a huge advocate for building life systems. I find that when you have standardized routines and processes you get reliable results. Having said that, there’s an interesting caveat I want to add that I’ve only recently been thinking about.

What if your routine is feeling too routine? Meaning, what if the things you’re consistently doing are only functioning at a surface level. The sequence of events have been carefully determined to create a certain result, and it’s possible that you’re only receiving a fraction of that result because your mind isn’t in it. Similar to how sometimes we do things to “check the box”, when we aren’t fully-engaged in the activity it’s possible that the benefits are diluted.

In 2023, I really wanted to revamp my morning routine. I do it consistently but felt like the process wasn’t preparing me for my day as much as it could or how I would have liked it to. So I implemented something to interrupt that normal process and my experience with it so far has been tremendous. 

Basically, instead of just going through the list of things I do in my head, I now have a list written down with an intention assigned to each. This gives a voice to the reason “why” I do it rather than just doing it. With this new list, now my process is to first read the intention before I begin. After that I do the behavior with the intention in mind, and then I acknowledge that I completed by reflecting on how effectively I fulfilled that intention at the end.

What this has done is it has brought consciousness to what had become unconscious over time. The more you routinely do something, the more subconscious it becomes. It’s is a process called automaticity. This is great when you want to stay consistent with something because you can do it on autopilot, without much effort. But in order to get the full benefits of doing that behavior, you must pay attention. The more engaged you are in something the deeper the imprint it leaves.

So beyond being in good habits, which is a challenge in itself, the next step is to stay full-engaged in those habits. The benefits will decay over-time if you’re not intentional about cultivating them. Your task is to be more present, more often, doing the things that serve you most, so that you can be as prepared as possible to take on life and make the most of it!

On your personal development journey, you need to be sure you have the right foundation in place. Discover the 7 Fundamentals To Self Improvement and instantly accelerate your growth! (Who knows what you might be overlooking and how it’s holding you back…)