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!

We often think about the short-term cost of taking action. It's the energy, resources, and effort required to do something that isn't guaranteed to have a positive impact on your life. I get it, no one wants to feel like they’re wasting their time and it’s important to be intentional with how you invest your time. But what you’ll come to see is more important than that is considering the cost of inaction. 

Let’s quickly run through how this all works. The thoughts you have influence your feelings. Your feelings then influence your interest and motivation to take action. And then taking action consistently is what generates outcomes and results for you in your life. Everything else we do to improve our self-awareness, emotional control, empathy with others - It all is meant to support us in taking positive action more often. Knowledge is useless unless it’s applied. Action is the mechanism that materializes ideas into reality. 

So what does it mean if you don’t take action? It means that nothing happens. It means you have a vision for a more fulfilling and inspiring future but it’s all ideas and there’s nothing tangible about it. It’s a very passive way of living, like having your foot on the break waiting to see what happens to you instead of accelerating toward the life you want.

But for you, that’s unacceptable. You’re capable of so much more and your potential is so much greater than that. I know for a fact that there’s a part of you that wants a better life for yourself. That’s why your personal development is so important to you! And because I know that I feel like you’re open to be challenging you on this.

As it relates to your self-growth, what is the true cost of inaction? Is it losing self-belief because you let the fear of failing keep you from proving your worth? Is it compromising everything you could be for the people you care most about because you don’t want to fall short and disappoint yourself? Or is it tolerating a stagnant life that is only a fraction of your potential?

Take action, even before you feel like you’re ready. It’s better to make decisions with the intention of improving your life (even if you fail) than to sit on the sidelines and wait for the day that will never come. Build stronger habits and routines that help you show up at your best. Take risks and make mistakes, but gain confidence and momentum while you do it because you feel empowered by the future you’re creating for yourself. Invest in yourself and gain the skills you need to take positive action and change your life.

If you’re looking to kickstart your personal development and start living up to being the person you know you’re capable of being, you can install the Super Habits System In just 5 minutes a day, doing just one thing for 21 days, you’ll build an unstoppable momentum in your life that inspires you to defeat procrastination, raise your standards, and be more productive than ever with less will-power.

Based on your past experiences and lessons, you’ve developed a certain set of beliefs. On a subconscious level these beliefs govern every decision you make and in that way influence the output of your life. This is a defaulted set point that you return to unconsciously despite external circumstances because it’s where your brain is most comfortable.

These beliefs make up your identity, which is simply who you believe yourself to be and how you believe the world is around you. You may have heard this analogy before but I wanted to bring it up because it is fundamental to being the best version of yourself.  

Your identity is like a thermostat. 

A thermostat is designed to maintain temperature. No matter how hot or cold a room gets, it’s purpose is to bring the room back to the temperature it is set to. The room gets a little too hot, the thermostat cools it down. It gets a little too cold, the thermostat heats it up.

Your subconscious mind functions in a similar way. You will return to the level you’ve established for yourself through your beliefs and identity. What does this look like? It means that when you accomplish something beyond your level you regress back down. It means that when you feel motivated to change it’s really hard to sustain because you’re fighting against your subconscious mind. This is where self-sabotage creeps to knock you down a few levels so that you strike that balance your identity is most comfortable with.

Or, maybe you’re in a rut right now. Not feeling inspired, procrastinating, lazy, feeling like you're not making the most of your time. This could be because your identity has a low set point and you’ve come to tolerate that kind of life.

But fortunately, your identity isn’t permanent. You can update it intentionally. I believe one of the most fundamental identities to have is one of self-discipline, where you can get yourself to take action even when it’s hard, even when you don’t feel like it. In the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge I'm hosting, that starts Thursday, I help you systematically upgrade your identity so that your default level pulls you to do what you tell yourself you’re going to do. 

Imagine how much more productive, energized, and fulfilled you’d feel if you stopped procrastinating and delaying, and started acting and achieving like the person you know you’re capable of being.

If you feel like you’re leaving your full-potential on the table, or like you need a shake up to get you going again, register for the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge right now!