Alright you read the title... Don’t rule out this concept and give me the time to explain! We’ve been conditioned to believe that being selfish is a bad thing. We’re taught that being selfish means you only care about yourself, that you don’t consider others, and that you don’t have anyone’s interests in mind other than your own. I agree that living that way is a bad thing, but that is not the only outcome of being selfish. I want to introduce you to some alternative ways of thinking.

First, let’s think about selfishness through the lens of its more acceptable counterpart - Selflessness. Selflessness is about being of service to others and truly caring about improving the quality of other people’s lives. Well, aren’t you a person? Is it possible that you can be of service to yourself? For some reason we don’t think that counts as being of service, but you deserve to be taken care of and happy just like anyone else. And you have a lot to do with making that your reality.

Continuing on this thread, at times you need to be more selfish to be selfless. You’ve heard of the expressions “You have to fill up your own cup before you can fill up someone else’s”, and “Put your oxygen mask on before assisting someone else with theirs.” What do those mean? Your capacity to be of service requires that you invest in yourself so that you have more to give.

So with that in mind, don’t rule out opportunities to be selfish. Enforce your own boundaries to protect your needs. Take someone up on that favor they off-handedly mentioned. Take the last bite of food off the plate. Be more selfish in these moments and don’t feel bad about it. 

You know why? 

Because you know the bigger picture. You know your intentions are to give more than you get. You know how much you do to help others. These small moments of selfishness are in support of your larger mission to be selfless, and your ability to do so requires that you invest in yourself and get your needs met.

Now don’t take this out of context and give yourself a hall pass to be selfish whenever you want, but hopefully this shifts your perspective a bit about how to make sure you’re taking care of yourself in service of others.

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…)

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Seriously think about this for a second… Think about some of the best moments of your life. Major life events, major breakthroughs when your hard work starts to pay off, incredible times of connection and discovery. That’s what life's all about! These moments make us feel emotional, filled with love and fulfillment, and we remember them as some of the best memories we’ve ever made.

But what if I told you that the best is still yet to be? That those moments where you thought it could never get better, you’ve only tasted a few of those and you have so many more to go? The reality is any day could be the best day of your life, and it’s something to really look forward to.

Not only is this a real possibility for you, but it’s a mindset. Those who choose to see positivity in the world will find that they’re blessed with more positivity. Those who choose to believe in themselves, and that they’re capable of achieving whatever is on their heart are more likely to achieve it. Our perception is merely our lens into the world and we get to choose the glasses we wear.

Something I really admire about my girlfriend Irene is that she chooses for things to be “the best thing ever”. We literally need to use a scale of 5-15 instead of 1-10 because an average thing for her is, in her mind, a 10. Of course it’s highly unlikely that everything is truly the best ever, every time, but when she looks into the world she sees a whole lot more good than someone else because that’s what she’s looking for.

So that’s my encouragement for you today. Don’t be stuck looking back at your past and reflecting on the good old days. Create a better future for yourself by deciding that it will be, and watch it come into fruition in ways you could never have imagined.

Have you been feeling stuck for a while and need a small-win that ignites your self-confidence and inspires you to dream bigger? Start becoming the best version of yourself with the Better Habits Playbook.  

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

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I don’t know about you, but my best days are the days that I’m most productive. The days when I’m brushing my teeth, looking in the mirror before going to bed when I feel like I really made progress on things that are important to me. When I spend time with people and activities I genuinely enjoy. When I feel like I applied myself fully and wasn’t held back.

Of course this includes the things I got done at work, but productivity is a much broader concept than how much work you did. Productivity is simply doing the things you want to do, and that’s in work, play, and love. The days I feel most fulfilled I feel like I spent my time exactly how I wanted to, balancing all of my commitments and responsibilities in really elegant ways. Living a more productive life is actually very simple. It’s spending time doing the right things. The most difficult part is knowing what those right things are.

That’s where intentionality comes in. Being intentional is about investing yourself in the right things. You limit distraction by being laser focused on how you want to be spending your time, which connects all the way back up to your vision and goals. Intentionality is the art of knowing what you want, who you want to be, and making commitments to doing the things that accelerate you toward becoming it.

Intentionality is about intentions. It’s how you want to live and seeing your activity through a lens of purpose and being really deliberate with your choices. It’s a North Star that you define through reflection and introspection. This means that productivity is just the process of living your intentions - Creating the right balance, making your priorities a priority, and controlling the ways you invest your time. It’s the translation of your intentions into your day and the things that you do.

In other words, intention is the idea and productivity is the action.

It’s easier said than done, I know. In life there are competing commitments, new responsibilities, and urgent things that come up causing you to neglect other things that are important. But the better awareness you have around what you want, the more intentional you can be, and the more likely it is you fill your time with the things that bring you the most fulfillment.

If you think I can help you start taking control of your life and succeeding in doing the things you struggle with, but that know are best for you, let’s find a time to chat. I consider myself to be a productivity and intentional living coach, and I’m here for you. Click this to schedule a time to connect!

There’s an insight from Aristotle, one of the most profound Greek Philosophers in history, that has become a fundamental philosophy for me. Aristotle is quoted saying “We are what we repeatedly do.”

When it comes to our ambitions, aspirations, and visions for a better life, we think about the person we need to become to achieve it. We focus a lot on who our best self is, their values, qualities, character traits, and mindsets. Our goal is to bridge the gaps between who we are and who we want to be. Aristotle gives us a mechanism for this - If you want to change who you are, you need to change what you do. “We are what we repeatedly do.”

I’ve studied this concept in depth and have discovered something that I call the identity behavior feedback loop. Basically our identity is who we are, and our behavior is what we do. In this Identity Behavior feedback, your identity influences on a subconscious level what you do. That’s why you take action so often on autopilot, or self-sabotage without even knowing it. This happens subconsciously. Your behavior then acts as a feedback loop and validates who you believe yourself to be. Your behavior is the evidence that your subconscious mind uses to figure out who you are.

The identity behavior feedback loop is a central part to what I call the Subconscious Transformation Process, which is the single greatest opportunity you have for changing your beliefs, habits, and mindset. I don’t have the time to explain it here but if you want me to explain the Subconscious Transformation Process to you in depth you can click here to access an 11 minute video I made about it!

Beyond what I’ve already shared, Aristotle goes on to confirm this idea in the rest of the quote. He says “Excellence therefore is not an act, but a habit.” This gives us an incredible amount of power to choose who we want to be. If you want to be excellent, you think about what “excellent” people do and start doing it on a daily basis. If you want to be someone who is responsible with their finances, you start doing the things a person like that would do. If you want to be someone who prioritizes their health, you start meal prepping, or exercising consistently, or doing the things that you know healthy people do. It’s that simple.

It’s all about starting with the end in mind and building up toward that identity with supportive habits and behaviors. Again, I show you how all of this works in a whiteboard video session if you want to really start understanding the forces of your own psychology at a higher level.

I came across a really interesting question that I asked myself, and I think you’d find it insightful to ask yourself too. Remember, the quality of your life is closely correlated with the quality of the questions you ask yourself. But you can’t just ask the question, you need to be really honest with yourself. You need to represent your deepest desires and urges to prompt truly meaningful introspection.

So the question is - What are you sick and tired of?

Your line of thought could go in so many different directions. You could go internal and think about the ways that your beliefs are not serving you, and how frustrating your subconscious tendencies might be. You can go external and think about what you’ve been tolerating - A way you’re being treated at work, an expectation being imposed on you that doesn’t feel right, something that has been too normal in your life for too long, or something that has been weighing you down for too long.

I’m going to be vulnerable and share what I discovered about myself. I’m sick and tired of playing small. I have this massive ambition for the ways I want to change the world but I’m not even putting myself out there to make it happen. You might disagree, it might appear like I’m playing a big game, but I know deep down how much I’m holding myself back. I know how much my fear of judgment and criticism is affecting me, and how much more I have to offer if I got over this part of me that’s holding me back. And it’s unacceptable! I’m a genuinely happy, excitable guy, don’t get me wrong, but getting this extra piece to click would really fuel the flame for me to go out and do what I truly want to do with my life.

Not to make this about me, but I thought it would be a helpful perspective. What are you sick and tired of? When you uncover it, I want to know what it is because I might be able to personally support you with it. Send me a DM on Instagram @self.improvement.daily, or an email to brian@selfimprovementdailytips.com so we can connect about it!

If you want to change the quality of your life you need to change the quality of the questions you ask yourself. Your thinking is simply the process of asking and answering questions to yourself, and when you ask better questions, you live a better life. With this core understanding, we can introduce an intervention that gives you a real way to stop your mind from spiraling into negative self-talk and instead find ways to empower you and support you in a constructive way.

The negative self-talk and limiting beliefs come as a response to the questions you’re unconsciously asking yourself. Something happens and you start playing the ‘what if’ game… What if I run out of money? What if I fail? What if I make a fool of myself? What if I hurt myself or someone else? This is called “What-If Down” and it represents all of the questions you ask yourself that make you consider worst case scenarios. This is the brains natural process, by the way, because the brain’s core objective is to keep you safe, and pointing out the negative is a survival mechanism.

But instead, how about you choose the script you want to play in your head. Just like you unconsciously go through a line of negative self-questioning, you can prompt yourself to engage in a line of positive self-questioning. This is called “What-If Up”, and the questions you’d ask yourself are: What if this works out how I hope it would? What if I beat expectations? What if this is exactly where I’m supposed to be? These positive questions cause you to reflect in positive ways and generate a more empowering narrative. This causes you to feel more positive emotions, which then leads you to take positive actions, that lead to positive results.

The “What-If Up” approach plays in even seemingly negative scenarios. Let’s say that you notice yourself falling behind on a goal, you can ask yourself more supportive questions. What if I made up a ton of ground today on my goal? You’d be inspired to find ways to bridge the gap. What if I asked for help to achieve this goal? You start to think about who you might reach out to. What if I comeback and succeed? You start getting in the energy of achievement and it will motivate you. All of this helps you arrive in the emotional state that will carry you to take action toward your goal!

Another way of putting it - You get what you focus on. Start using “What-If Up” questioning to focus on the positive elements and create positive change in your life.

Now you have an extra tool in your tool belt to take control of your life. If you want to really transform your life, and become more disciplined than ever so that you can pursue your dreams with confidence and self-belief, check out the new program I put together called The Better Habits Playbook. Do it right now before you forget and miss this opportunity to change your life.

I’m sure you're familiar with the iconic Jiminy Cricket song “When you wish upon a star”. It has inspired generations of people, but I doubt many people slowed down to really process the meaning in the message. Let me read the song write now as a poem:

"When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you. If your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme. When you wish upon a star as dreamers do. Fate is kind she brings to those to love the sweet fulfillment of their secret longing. Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you through. When you wish upon a star your dreams come true."

The lyrics feature the power of fate. It suggests that anything you authentically believe and want for yourself can be yours. Fate does not discriminate or play favorites, it simply listens to those with the strongest desires and it gets to work on delivering for them. No dream is too big to have. Fate wouldn’t be so cruel to give you a dream you weren’t capable of achieving. But it takes courage to voice what you want, and resilience to stay committed to your dreams even when you don’t see immediate evidence that you’re making progress.

Now let’s add the layer of what role Jiminy Cricket plays in the movie Pinocchio. He is the conscience. He is a pure connection to source, spirit, and abundance. We all have a Jiminy Cricket within us, but we also have a negative voice in our head that creates self-doubt and insecurity. 

These voices are constantly at battle against each other, just like the Cherokee legend of the two wolves - One wolf is evil - full of anger, lies, guilt, and resentment. The other wolf is good - full of joy, peace, love, and hope. The wolf that wins is the one you feed. 

Choose to believe in your dreams, be inspired by your potential, and to feed the voice that serves you. “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you.”

Have you been feeling stuck for a while and need a small-win that ignites your self-confidence and inspires you to dream bigger? Start becoming the best version of yourself with the Better Habits Playbook.  

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.

Are you the type of person that fearlessly steps into new things, or are you someone who is more careful about what you get involved in? If you identify more with the latter, you’re going to want to pay extra attention to this. If you want to really start changing your life, you’re going to need to act before you’re ready.

I’m not suggesting that you act recklessly, or without intentionality. In fact this is a more calculated and intentional approach. This is because it puts things in action. You cannot wait for things to be perfect or ready because either the day will never come or you will have waited too long and put yourself too far behind. 

The reality is, the only way to truly put finishing touches on something, and make those final tweaks, is to step into the environment and see how it does. You will never get things completely right the first time, so why is that the expectation? What’s more valuable is taking action, getting started, and integrating the feedback you receive to improve your process.

The most successful people in the world take action with the least amount of knowledge. Do you know why? Because they understand how this works, and they’re willing to expose themselves to failure or disappointment if it means that they’ll accelerate their progress.

So maybe that’s what it is for you. Maybe you want things to be perfect before taking action because you’re afraid of what it says about you if you fail. Because it will highlight how you’re not smart enough or good enough. But that can all be embraced with an intention. Instead of being so attached to the outcome, embrace a learner's mindset and see how you can improve things. It changes the meaning of failure. And trust me, you’ll start to figure it out once you get going, so don’t let fear get in the way of you even having a chance to succeed.

So think about this - What do you want to do but you don’t feel ready for it? Hopefully by now you understand the only way to get ready is to get started.

Have you been feeling stuck for a while and need a small-win that ignites your self-confidence and inspires you to dream bigger? Start becoming the best version of yourself with the Better Habits Playbook.  

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.