I’ve been spending years setting and pursuing goals but what I just learned might change all of it. I’m still processing exactly what my conclusions are, but I thought I’d share it with you in real-time.

Regardless of your experience setting and working toward goals, you’ve probably heard about how effective they are. You cannot achieve something that isn’t clearly defined, and taking the time to set goals helps you get clear on exactly what results you’re hoping to reach. Good specific goals sound something like “Run a Marathon by December 2023”, “Hit my $100k sales quota in March”, and “Give my first paid keynote speech by June 2023”.

If you’re setting goals like that then you’re already advanced in the way you think about it, but I want to share one shortcoming. How are you supposed to attain these goals? They're clear and inspiring, but what’s the process to making them reality? When we define our goals we often connect to our vision, which is abstract and dynamic. It’s great to tap into what you want to achieve but it takes you further away from knowing how to achieve it.

Instead of setting goals, maybe we start defining desired outcomes. Functionally it’s the same thing -  “Run a Marathon by December 2023”, “Hit my $100k sales quota in March”, and “Give my first paid keynote speech by June 2023”... But it suggests that there’s a process to it. An outcome is something that comes as a result of doing something else. Crafting your ambition as an outcome makes it more actionable and process based, which will hold you more accountable to doing the things required to achieve the desired outcome.

And in a strange way, it also separates you emotionally from the end result. When you don’t hit your goals it all feels like falling short. Of course 90% to quota is better than 50%, but psychologically hitting a goal is more binary. Either you did it or you didn’t. When you pursue a desired outcome, you acknowledge that there’s a spectrum to it in the very nature of it. It recognizes that there are other possible outcomes and many of them would be a good end result.  You give yourself more space to consider that when you frame it up as a desired outcome rather than a goal.

I’m curious to know what you think about this. Send me a DM on Instagram @self.improvement.daily or an email to brian@selfimprovementdailytips.com and we can chat about it!

Something that having a positive mindset really does for us is it helps us to be optimistic. But there's a difference between the two - Positivity is presently seeing things in a good way, and optimism is seeing that things will be good in the near and far future. Often times present positivity shapes your perspective to be more optimistic.

The reason I mention it is because I want to relate positivity and optimism back to feeling encouraged. We often see encouragement as coming from someone else but the real magic is how it translates to create change in your life. When you’re feeling encouraged it means that you’re more willing to go for it, take risks, and put yourself out there. You’re listening to the positive voice in your head telling you that you can rather than the cynical voice saying you can’t. It’s literally in the word itself - you are acting "in courage".

Utilizing encouragement requires action both in creating results in your life and feeling that way in the first place. You know the relationship that exists between actions and results - If you want to live a more inspired and positive life you need to do the things that create it.

The problem is, many people wait to feel a certain way to take action. They wait to feel motivated, inspired, or encouraged before actually bringing themselves into the activity itself. But that’s an unfair expectation that will leave you falling short of what you want. Mood follows action, not the other way around, so if you want to feel more encouraged you need to take encouraging action first and allow that to shift your feelings.

So here’s something practical you can do. If you’re struggling to take action and procrastinating or delaying, say this to yourself - “I’m feeling encouraged”. Or ask yourself the question "What would I do right now if I felt really encouraged?" You’d be surprised how influenceable your mind is and how tricking it in a small way will help you to start getting into action, which will change the way you feel.

Speaking for myself, I want to feel more alive, inspired, and passionate more often. It helps me feel like I’m bringing my best to every moment and fills my life with more significance and meaning. Hopefully this perspective encourages you to feel more encouraged about your ability to create the life of your dreams.

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…)

Let’s talk about achieving your goals and making your dreams come true. A worthy topic right?

A lot of us have heard the idea of the ladder to the top, which suggests that there’s a single path we can stay on to get where we want to go. While I am a huge advocate for crafting a plan and being disciplined to it (cutting out distractions and being clear on what’s required of you), I’ve found that getting to the top is a lot more like a jungle gym than a ladder.

It’s not as simple as climbing one rung at a time. It’s getting to the top of the ladder to find a dead end, jumping across to a net, climbing down and swinging over to rock wall, scaling it halfway and jabbing your foot into a small crack to grab a rope… you get the picture.

Reaching your goals requires that you’re flexible, nimble, and resourceful. Sometimes you need to be really creative to maximize an opportunity, take steps backwards to go forward faster, and change plans when your route doesn’t look as promising. 

Kind of like a puzzle, some jungle gyms are more complex, and some are straightforward. But in both cases, in order to succeed you must constantly evaluate and reevaluate your plan to innovate, optimize, and improve. That’s the art of the whole process - you need to give your well-thought out plan a fair chance to work but also know when it’s time to pivot.

I’ve found two things that are really helpful with this challenge. First, create opportunities for reflection. When you take a step back and look at the system rather than make decisions from within it, things became way clearer and you’re less emotionally attached to it. This helps you make better decisions. Second is, to surround yourself with other people who can add more perspective to you understanding. Again you might be too close to see the full picture.

Life is anything but predictable, and the path to you dreams is anything but linear. You might some wrong turns and get stuck in some tough spots, but as long as you’re committed to the process you’ll find your way.

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…)

For years now I’ve been in the routine of taking cold showers to build resilience and discipline. But recently I’ve noticed that the decision hasn’t been inspiring me, that it’s something I’ve been resisting and avoiding, so I decided to revamp my habit so that I’m more excited about it.

You see, the things that we choose to do that are in our best interest, we should deep down feel like we want to do them. Even if it’s hard or uncomfortable, if there’s not a part of the activity that you can look forward to you won’t feel rewarded by doing it and therefore, fail to be consistent with it.

So for me and my cold shower routine, I made one simple adjustment. As I turn the shower on cold, preparing for the discomfort, I’ve been telling myself “I am in control of the way I feel”.

Now, a cold shower represents an opportunity for me to prove to myself that I can control my thoughts despite external circumstances. And I know the power of that and how that translates into other areas of my life. So instead of being resistant to the cold shower, I’m inspired and tapping into something way bigger.

I’d be remiss not to bring up Jack Canfield’s life destiny formula: E + R = O. Event + Response = Outcome. Our outcomes are not simply the result of what happened to us, but rather our perception of and response to it. 

Knowing the power in this, I have become really intentional about my response and knowing that my response is within my control. Taking a cold shower is my way of reminding myself every day and strengthening this mindset so that I can use it in other challenging circumstances.

To wrap this up, there are two things I really want you to understand. 1) If there’s something that you’re committed to doing but it doesn’t inspire you, change it up! The worst thing that could happen is you go back to how things were. Then 2) Your mindset is simply your patterned way of thinking and you can train yourself how to think.

Either way your mindset is evolving, and the direction of that growth can either be dictated by your circumstances or you. Be intentional about your growth and you’ll find that you’ll start taking off in the best of ways!

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…)

We are inundated with advice. New things to try, ways to do things differently, stories, lessons, case studies - there’s a lot out there. And to further complicate it, a lot of this advice isn’t that good (whether that be because the source isn’t quality or the approach isn’t particularly relevant to your life.)

A lot of people get caught up in the race of more. Read more books, listen to more podcasts, take more courses… But information isn’t the limiting factor these days. The limiting factor is applying what you know so that it starts changing your life.

I was very stuck in this for a while and I realized it was for the wrong reasons. I was learning just to feel good about how much I was doing. To convince myself that I was really committing to my growth and development. I was motivated by the wrong things, and having become aware of that I’ve really been able to home in on what actually serves me and helps me move the needle.

The things that started to work for me was to revisit and study fewer materials. I have a small handful of podcasts I keep up with, a few leaders in the space that I follow much more closely, and processes that I am actively fine-tuning. This helps to provide more consistency in the message so that it can more effectively encode, be recalled, and used. It also provides more focus around the tactics so that they are set up to perform.

It must say, this will always be a balance. I don’t want to be blind to new ideas and perspectives. It’s dangerous and limiting to be isolated in echo chambers, so pursuing more knowledge will always be a pillar to my life. But instead of that pursuit of more always being the focus, I’m spending much more time mastering the concepts that I feel most aligned with.

So when you encounter something that stands out to you, dive into it so that you really understand it. When you try something that’s starting to work for you, double-down on it. Everyone has their own speed and frequency, and the sooner you can tune into yours the more fluid your life and growth will become!

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…)

I really like today’s positivity quote - “Joy makes the longest journey too short.” Joy is one the most underrated qualities in life. There’s an energy, enthusiasm, and fun-loving nature to it that consumes you and transforms an experience. Time seems to just pass without your awareness of it, which is implied in the quote - when you’re experiencing joy you never want it to end.

As adults, I feel like we don’t let ourselves experience joy very often. We feel like we need to maintain a certain perception about who we are that is professional, composed, and controlled. We don’t always allow our personalities to shine because we don’t want people to think of us differently.

If I may, I think this actually comes back to our deepest insecurities. Sometimes we restrict our own self-expression because we’re afraid that we’re going to mess things up. This could threaten our livelihood and ability to take care of those we care most about, and the cost doesn’t seem worth it.

But that’s a misguided conclusion. When you can be yourself you’ll find that you actually create more opportunities for yourself. People develop a stronger impression of you, they feel like they know you, and they want to invest in you. So tap into more authentic joy more often and be your silly, goofy, weird self! As with anything there’s a time and place for it, and I’m encouraging you to be yourself more often and in more places.

Beyond overcoming some of the restrictions you’ve placed on yourself, how can you experience more joy in life? I have 3 ideas. 

First is to be more curious. When you find intrigue and a fascination for things, you’ll feel more emotionally moved by it. Second is to work toward mastering something. There are few things more gratifying than solving a puzzle, finding ways to improve and optimize even the smallest things, and observing the way you make progress on something. It is intrinsically enjoyable! And then last, doubling down on your personality, surround yourself with the people that bring the best out of you. The people you can confidently be yourself with, doing the things you want to do, because it will help you gain confidence that who you are at your core is valued, appreciated, and good enough.

When you tap into more joy more often you’ll find that you’ll go farther, faster, and harder without even realizing it. And that will carry you toward more fulfillment and more abundance!

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…)

As high-performing, ambitious achievers we really want to make our days count. There’s an unmatchable fulfillment to knowing that you made the most of your time, moved the needle on the things that were most important, had meaningful experiences, and didn’t neglect priorities. It’s a lifelong pursuit to master this and consistently tap into the balance that lights you up most.

The key to living full, inspiring days is the exact same advice for how to live a full, inspiring life. You just need to keep on chunking it down. A great life has great decades, which has great years, great months, great weeks, great days, great hours, great minutes, and finally great moments. The more present and engaged you can be doing the right things in the right moments, the richer and more full your life will feel.

Jenna Kutcher has an interesting perspective on this that she calls making minutes "fat". We are constantly vulnerable to getting distracted and pulled away from what we’re doing. This means that we’re constantly switching tasks and don’t allow ourselves to fully sink into the things that we’re doing. It also means that we’re occupying our time doing things that we’d rather not be doing, like endless scrolling on social media, giving a fraction of our focus to our work, or having our minds somewhere else when spending time with somebody we care about.

Full days are not just about keeping yourself busy. In fact being busy is a defense mechanism against the real problem, which is not being comfortable sitting with yourself and your thoughts. Instead we should pursue being active. Not just physically active, but emotionally and cognitively active. This involves a focus and attention to whatever is in front of us. It deepens our experience so that you're accessing more within it, whether that be benefits for you or results in the world. 

I liken this thought to my personal north star, which is intentional living. How do I immerse myself in doing the things that I want to do, that are most important for me, in as many moments as I can every day? It holds me accountable to putting my phone down, exercising when I don’t feel like it, courageously making that phone call, and being fully present. 

This is all easier said than done, I know, and that’s why it’s a lifelong intention. But you can get there by getting started, and that’s what I hope to help you with in the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge. If you need something to get you going and kickstart you into becoming the best version of yourself, this challenge is for you. And it launches tomorrow, Thursday December 1st, so this is your last chance to register. If you want to start feeling inspired and on fire about life, register for the challenge right now it’s unlike anything you’ve ever tried before!