Ready for me to share one of the most important things for you to understand about yourself? You already are who you need to be. You already have everything you’ll ever need inside of you to create and achieve everything you’ve ever wanted. Now you might be asking yourself “If I already am who I need to be, then why am I not where I want to be?” Great question - let’s dive into answering it.

As a living, breathing human being, you are already connected to infinite power. Call it source, the universe, or God, your existence is a representation of the miracles you are capable of. Your nature comes from absolute abundance, and you are simply an extension of the divine. This means that you already possess all of the qualities, traits, and abilities you’ll ever need. You are a creator who is literally designing the future based on the thoughts and ideas you have. Tell me that’s not powerful… This is how you already are who you need to be, because you have this power.

The problem is, it’s pretty obvious we don’t live with full abundance. We have financial hardship, and our ego and biases get in the way from us living the way we want sometimes. Our lives are not perfect. Even though we’re capable of so, so much, it’s often not reflected in our lives. That’s the truth and the human experience. However this isn’t a result of not being capable, it’s more a product of circumstance. 

Our connection to source or God or the universe is undeniable, but the challenge is how clear that connection is. You’ve probably heard the expression “I’m just getting in my own way.” That is literally you creating resistance and friction to having a pure connection to source. The natural flow of how things are meant to go is being inhibited and restricted by circumstance. So if that’s the case, our mission is not to strengthen our connection, that’s innate within us. Instead it’s to remove the obstacles that prevent us from having a clearer connection.

So how do you clear that signal and live a more abundant life? You become more aware of the obstacles and bottlenecks. You need to remove the things that are getting in the way. Those things are inherently human - The needs of the ego, our limited perception of reality, and the ways we’re trying to create certain results rather than have faith that the right things will happen in the right ways.

This is complex but I want to help you get started in a small way - How do you feel like you’re getting in your own way?

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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…)

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily text messages that help you grow and discover yourself every day.

Something that is the cause of a lot of misunderstanding and disappointment is not meeting expectations. As humans we have wired into us a desire to be accepted by others. It’s normal, we’re social creatures and this adds a lot of enrichment to the quality of our lives. But it also can be a source of pain.

For that reason expectations are often thought of as a bad thing. If we didn’t have expectations then we wouldn’t fall short of them and create social confrontation because of it. But expectations are an incredible influence and motivator to go beyond what is standard. Expectations help provide clarity about what you’re hoping to accomplish, how well you’re hoping to perform, and it pulls you to meet the task at that level.

However, that’s when you are living by fair expectations that you decide for yourself. So with that in mind I want to share three examples of how your expectations can be biased, or catering to something else that doesn’t originate authentically inside of you.

The first example is expectations imposed by others. This is someone projecting their belief system, values, and choices onto you. It could come from a place of love or it could be a subconscious result of insecurity, but in either case it comes through their lens on the world. Their perspective is not your perspective, and those expectations deserve to be questioned.

Another form of expectation is an outcome. The vast majority of outcomes are out of your control, and if you get your sense of self too wrapped up in something that you can’t control, then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. That’s where it’s important to be process-oriented and to celebrate the things you’re doing, the ways you’ve learned to improve your process, rather than the end result.

And then last is how expectations change with accomplishment. In fact, expectations are the shadows of accomplishment. Our culture pushes a narrative that you constantly should be striving for more. When you succeed and you prove you’re capable of more, then the bar gets raised. This is a good thing if it’s what you want, but it’s a bad thing if it forces you to compromise other priorities in order to live up to new expectations.

So as with everything, be intentional. Determine what expectations are appropriate for your life - Who you want to be, what you want to accomplish, where you’re headed. But still use them as a tool as they can become an incredible North Star for you as you build the life you desire.

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In life today we are asked for more than ever. More things to do, more plans to make, more people to appease, more books to read. More. There is no shortage of ways to fill your time and if you aren’t intentional about where you’re investing your time, then someone else will decide for you.

A piece of advice I’m sure you’ve heard before is to “say no more often”. That’s because when you say “yes”, you’re actually implicitly saying “no” to 10 other things that you might prefer to do. But saying “no” is not easy, many people struggle with it because of the social pressure and perceived confrontation it creates. But it’s incredibly important for you to be able to enforce your own boundaries.

In Greg McKeown’s pioneering book “Essentialism”, he argues that we can do more by doing less. This is because our efforts aren’t being split in so many ways, and therefore we can make more progress when we commit to fewer tasks. But he knows this is easier said than done, so in his book he outlines a few ways to say “no” more gracefully.

First is to delay. Instead of saying "no" outright, you can say “let me check my calendar and I’ll get back to you.” This creates more space for you in a moment where you feel like you’re being pressed for a decision. You always have the right to be intentional with your commitments.

Or if someone asks a favor from you, you can communicate your boundaries by saying ”You are welcome to X, I am willing to Y.” Like if someone asks for a ride you can say, “You are welcome to borrow my car, I am willing to coordinate with you to give you the keys.”

And last, you can make an alternative suggestion. You can refer to someone else who might be more capable to help, or suggest a different version of the request that you want to say “yes” to. As in when someone asks for a phone call, you can say “How about next week?” or “Could we try seeing if we could handle this over email first?”

When you get better at saying “no”, and do so in a respectful and tasteful way, you start really making your priorities a priority, and you’ll feel proud of yourself for how you’re making positive choices that serve you.

To apply this right now, let me give you this challenge. The next time someone asks something of you that you’re not prepared to do, commit to saying a version of “no” and see what happens.

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…)

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily text messages that help you grow and discover yourself every day.

Everyday in our personal development we’re chasing something. There’s a force and urge that pushes us along. It’s pretty unconventional when you think about it, and I’m wondering if you’ve ever been able to place where that desire comes from.

It’s easier to keep it low key, yet we stretch ourselves in ways that challenge us. It’s more comfortable to keep things the same, but we choose to pursue change and the unpredictability that comes with it. I believe there’s something inside of us that is desperate to see who we were capable of becoming. It’s innate within us to explore self-mastery and work toward self-actualization. Dave Meltzer defines this invisible force by saying “We must be what we can be.” It’s just wired into us, and while we all approach this same force from unique angles (which are drawn from our own unique experiences), at the end of the day it’s just a different skin to the same core factors.

But within this pursuit, sometimes life gets in the way. Your priorities change and you lose sight of what used to be a priority. Circumstances change and you no longer have the same means to work toward things how you used to. Or even your interests could evolve into something that don't line up that vision you used to have for yourself. And sometimes we can go so far down the path without realizing we’re doing it, and when we look back we see how different things were then we expected, and give up on feeding that fire.

That’s why I want to share this quote with you - “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” Just because you’ve been out of shape for a few years now doesn’t mean that you can’t still get into the best shape of your life. Just because you neglected certain relationships doesn’t mean that person is gone and out of your life forever. Just because you have a certain reputation right now does not mean that the way others perceive you will always be that way. Just because you had a dream, and you expected to be further along on it by now, does not mean that it’s out of reach.

You can make the choice at any point to change your life! I mean this. But so often we disqualify ourselves because it seems like there’s so much that needs to be overcome to make things right. That’s a limiting belief. It’s self-sabotage, and the best day to reclaim the things that are most important to you in your life, is today. “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” That word ‘might’ is indefinite and undetermined. As long as it’s undetermined you can still create it for yourself.

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…)

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily text messages that help you grow and discover yourself every day. 

Something that I think many people desire in life is to live with more passion. They want to genuinely care more about the things they do, contribute toward something that they find meaningful, and feel the emotions of life. I do believe that the quality of our life is closely related to the quality of the emotions we feel, and passion is an incredible source of filling your world with positive and fulfilling emotions.

But something that is misunderstood, and reveals a great truth about passion, is its true etymological meaning. It comes from the latin root word “pati” which means 'to suffer'. This suggests that the things we care most about, that lights up our heart, comes from a place of suffering rather than joy.

This might come as a surprise to you because we have such positive associations with passion. We’re all told to pursue what we’re most passionate about. And that’s because you can harness an incredible sense of purpose and fulfillment by contributing toward something that is connected to your own personal pain.

This relates back to another piece of advice I heard recently, which is that you are most capable of helping the person you once were. Read that again - You are most capable of helping the person you once were. This is in business solving someone’s problems and being paid for it, offering support and guidance to a family member or friend, or even in a more formal role through volunteerism. We feel called to support people in that way because we know how hard it can be, how painful it can be, and it’s meaningful to be a part of alleviating that pain for others.

For example, I am deeply passionate about helping people believe that they can change the world. I want to help people who have so much to offer and who have really, really good intentions, overcome the roadblocks in their path keeping them from becoming who they know they can be. 

This passion comes from the most challenging moments of my life. I’ve always believed in my heart that I’m going to change the world, and after college I got into a great job but one where I felt like I was replaceable and not making a unique contribution. I was a star athlete and Dean’s List student, and when all of that was stripped and I became just another person in the workforce, I lost sight of what I was capable of and started to doubt if I was good enough to do what was on my heart. My passion comes from a version of my personal suffering.

All that to say, lean into the pains and adversities of your life. Your experience makes you uniquely qualified to help people in ways others can’t. And to internalize this right now I want you to ask yourself this question - What have I experienced that I’m really passionate about helping other people with?

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…)

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily text messages that help you grow and discover yourself every day. 

Have you ever set an intention, had strong reasons to do something, but when it came down to doing it you found a way to talk yourself out of it? Maybe it was a new exercise or diet plan you committed to, a tough conversation you needed to have with someone, or a big decision you thought you made that you backed out on. 

The reason that happens is because your brain can make sense of just about anything. No matter what you throw at it, it will find a way to find meaning in it. But unfortunately, if your brain detects something as new then it flags it as a threat. This creates a problem where your brain actively resists changes you’re bringing into your life, and it is incredibly gifted at telling you a convincing story that is biased and meant to protect you.

It's called self-sabotage, and one of the main forms of it is called rationalization. This is literally your subconscious mind biasing your conscious thinking to draw certain conclusions about what you should do or want to do.

So if you want to pursue your growth you’re going to need to have a system that double checks your own thoughts so that you can be accountable to your original intentions, and not the convenient story you mind is producing to protect you. That’s why I want to introduce this idea that specificity creates accountability.

When something is specific it has extra details considered. It gives you a more objective criteria to determine if something happened as you wanted it to or not. This is important because when that rationalizing thought in your head comes up, trying to convince you of something you don’t want to believe, now you have extra reference points to make that comparison conscious and more reliable.

Let’s say you want to read more. Your intention is probably to read more to acquire specific knowledge, but setting a goal to read more is too ambiguous and non-specific to really do anything for you. Maybe you read an article on social media or somewhere else that your brain could classify as “reading more”. 

But if you add specificity, by committing to reading a physical book and a certain amount of it, you give your brain way less wiggle room to interpret things incorrectly. You cannot hide and the end result - You remain more accountable to your intention because you have better criteria to ensure you’re delivering on 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…)

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily text messages that help you grow and discover yourself every day.

You may have heard before that you get in life what you’re willing to tolerate. Instead of naturally reaching to achieve your wildest ambitions, your life hovers at whatever level you determine is acceptable. These are the standards you have in life but the thing is, if they’re not enforced, then they’re not actually your standards.

That’s where tolerations are really interesting. They are the things that either breach the standards you set and established a new and lower benchmark for what’s acceptable, or they’re preventing you from raising your standards and improving the quality of your life. When you hear talk about self-growth it often is in the form of stretching your capacity or getting outside of your comfort zone, but an underrepresented opportunity for growth is raising your baseline standards.

With that in mind, it’s important to understand what you’ve been tolerating in your life because they are a limiting factor in your growth. Tolerations take many forms. They include the little things in your physical environment like the things around the house that need to get done - A lightbulb that doesn’t work, a corner that needs to be cleaned up, or an appliance that needs to be repaired. It also includes your social environment and the people who are asking for too much, who don’t have reasonable expectations for you, or who are a drain on your energy but you’re afraid of confronting them about it and setting boundaries.

Again, you get in life what you’re willing to tolerate. But these little things that aren’t ideal couldn’t be that big of a deal, right? Wrong. Not only do they add up to weigh on you, adding avoidable pressure and friction to your life, they’re compromising your standards and dictating what you feel like you’re worthy of. And you know how it goes, it feels so good to get something done or fix something that deep down has been affecting you! It’s liberating, and if you’re ready to take on a challenge I have something for you.

I’m participating in a 24 hour challenge that is explicitly designed to help you identify the things you’ve been tolerating and commit to fixing them. I know from experience you’ll be amazed by how much you can get done when you allocate time to doing it. So if you don’t want to be held back by these small inconveniences, which are restricting your growth and happiness, I encourage you to register for the challenge right now.

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It’s very likely you’re going to encounter times when you’re not good enough. That’s the truth, and while it might not feel good to hear, it shouldn’t be a concern.

I believe that we’re in a major worthiness crisis. Many people are riddled with self-doubt and low self-confidence because they fall short of the expectations they set for themselves. But not being good enough is okay. In fact it’s inevitable. If you were good at everything then you’d be good at nothing… So what’s most important is how you respond to your feelings of not being good enough.

With all of that in mind, I encourage you to adopt a growth mindset. A growth mindset is a belief that you can improve, that things are not fixed but within your power to change, and any adversity or setback is merely a lesson you need to learn so that you can be better for next time. So instead of taking it personally when you’re not good enough at something, or failed to rise to the occasion, use it as an opportunity to grow by using these three expressions.

“I don’t know how” - It’s likely that you feel like you’re not good enough because you don’t know how to do something. You can learn! Not knowing how is not an issue, that’s easy to fix.

“I need more time” - Some things come naturally to us, and some don’t. But just because something takes longer for you to do doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. With practice you’ll get faster at it, but while you’re learning it you can’t expect to begin at a fast pace.

“I need help” - This is HUGE! Just because you need help with something does not mean you’re not good enough. Everyone needs help and everything is better when people get help. Asking for help is a strength not a weakness, remember that.

You’re supposed to encounter situations where you don’t feel like you’re good enough. It means that you’re doing new things, pushing boundaries, and exploring your own capacities. Life is hard as it is, and through this process you don’t need to add an extra layer of pressure on yourself. 

Commit to changing that voice in your head to one that is empowering, supportive, and has your best interest. It will begin to conquer the influence that your weaknesses and inadequacies have over you.  Reflect on this - How would the best version of yourself respond to times when you don’t feel like you’re “good enough”?

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…)

If you’re in the US or Canada, text me at 949-799-0788 and I’ll send you daily text messages that help you grow and discover yourself every day.

Not in the US or Canada? Send me a DM on Instagram to @self.improvement.daily