One of the most human things about us is our ability to think. We can take complex topics and make sense of them, use memory and reasoning to understand the nature of our emotions and past, and create our future because we can use the present to plan and strategize. But have you ever thought about what exactly thinking is?

Ed Mylett has a great theory on this. He says that thinking is the process of asking and answering questions for yourself. While we don’t always recognize it as such, our brain thinks by constantly oscillating between thinking about what it wants to know and figuring it out. 

The same applies for negative thought patterns. Any time you hear that negative voice in your head, it’s simply a negative response to an open loop in your mind. Question: Do I really think I can do this? Answer: No, I’m not good enough. Question: Why are they so successful and I’m not? Answer: I must be falling behind in life.

But within this process there’s an incredible opportunity. We shape our thoughts with the questions we ask ourselves. Therefore, we can control our thinking by changing the questions themselves.

For example, after you do something, instead of asking yourself “How did I do?” you can ask yourself “What about that went really well?” The question requires you to provide a more positive response. Or if you notice something about someone that you’re jealous about, instead of asking “Why is she so much better than me?” (which would cause you to list all the ways why you see yourself as worse than them) you could ask the question “What about this person inspires me?”

To succeed with this process you need two things: Awareness that a question is being asked at all, and a plan for how you want to be thinking so that you can insert the question that provokes it. So let’s create some momentum there right now - What are some of the negative thought patterns you have that you’d like to improve?

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Something that has completely unlocked my ability to pursue my best-self, and stretch toward my potential is having a keystone habit. When you think of a pyramid, everything on top of it rests on the base. It’s the foundation. Like the pyramids of Egypt at one point there was nothing, but once you put the work in to build that first layer then there’s something tangible you can grow upon. The same goes for your habits and having a consistent, reliable, effective keystone habit will propel you to build positive habits everywhere in your life.

One way this works is through something called “habit stacking”. When you have one habit that you do frequently you can use it as a trigger for your other habits. One of the most difficult pieces to succeeding with starting a new habit is remembering to do it, bringing your awareness to remember to take the action. Your keystone habit can become that trigger that brings awareness to everything else that you want to do to improve your life.

What also happens is succeeding with one habit creates a new sense of self-belief and self-confidence. You start building momentum that carries into other areas of your life, and your success with your keystone habit makes you genuinely believe that you’re capable of success everywhere else. The voice of self-doubt in your head won’t be as loud. And your self-sabotaging tendencies like having limiting beliefs or irrational thinking won’t be so prominent because you have proof to suggest otherwise.

To get this all working for you, you need to invest in building that first first keystone habit. It will feel harder than it needs to be, your brain will try to convince you that it’s not important or doing anything for you, but all of that suggests that it’s working. Then through consistency and dependability you’ll break through those barriers and unlock a whole new level of possibility for yourself.

My keystone habit is my nightly behavior tracking routine. It is something that I do every night with very few exceptions. Within it I see how I spent my time during the day, review my energy and sleep, note progress on my goals, and audit life systems. But it didn't start there. It all started with the simple act of getting in the habit of checking in with myself every day. It helped install the habit of self-discipline, which has grown to become the strongest character traits about me and it has supported me for years.

This is a tangible, real, immediate step you can take to change your life. And if you’re interested to get the exact same keynote habit that I use working for you, then I’m inviting you to join the private group I’ve put together. It’s free and you’ll need to earn your place in it, but when you join I will help you live more intentionally with better habits, rock-solid systems, and more balance. If you’re ready to look back at the end of 2022 and be proud of the person you’ve become, and everything you've accomplished, you can get started here.

In the book “The Everyday Hero Manifesto” author Robin Sharma makes a really important distinction between what we think we want and what we actually want. Having coached some of the most elite, highest performing individuals in history, he intricately knows what success is and what it’s not.

He says most people think success is FFA - Fame, fortune, and applause. We admire people who on the outside look like they have it all because they have the influence, wealth, and presence to justify it. But that is all externally facing and it entirely neglects their internal experience, which is far more important.

Sharma says the actual pursuit of success is JPF - Joy, peace, and freedom. Yes, this is a privilege that is earned through hard work, but the outcome of it relates to a better perceived life. You experience more positive emotions more often, you live with minimal conflict and anxiety, and you have the ability to do what you choose to when you want to.

Reading between the lines, what’s really important to note is that your joy, peace, and freedom by no means requires that you have fame, fortune and applause. What happens is we mistakenly translate that having FFA means you have JPF, and that is absolutely incorrect.

This should empower you to know that we’re all after the same thing and we can go about attaining it in different ways. You don’t need to speak on stages, be a celebrity, or have a million dollars to achieve life success. You’re already getting tastes of it today with your life exactly how it is, and if you want to improve the quality of your life your task becomes doing more of what brings you joy, feeling more at peace with the decisions you make, and choosing to do what you want without restriction or guilt.

So let’s start making that happen right now - What small things can you do today to bring more joy, peace, and freedom into your life today?

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.

I wanted to breakdown a quote from Helen Keller that I think holds a lot of wisdom. The quote is “Nothing can be done without hope and confidence." I like the focus on hope and confidence, and I find optimism in it because both can be developed. With the right perspective, we can create hope and confidence in our lives, giving us the ability to do the things we hold in our heart.

Hope is a fundamental ingredient to a good life. It means not only that you believe things can change, but that things are likely to change for the better. This positive expectation pulls you forward, adds meaning to everything you experience, and restores your faith in your life’s greater path. If you don’t have hope then you don’t believe that things can be better. You assume that things will always be the same and you strip yourself of your own power to change your future. When you hope you have a better state in mind and, with that clear picture, you feel more motivated to pursue it. That’s why nothing can be done without hope.

Now about confidence. Confidence is sorely lacking in the world today. Many people (myself included) are held back from taking action as decisively and assuredly as they could because they lack self-confidence. This takes the form of having low self-esteem in your abilities and little self-belief that you’re worth investing time into and believing in. 

My definition of confidence is “your perceived ability to perform well in uncertain circumstances.” If you’re confident, you have no issues doing things that are new because you believe you can do them well. If you have low self-confidence you feel anxiety or stress about the quality of your performance. Nothing can be done without confidence because your brain is so good at talking itself out of doing things, and that voice can be really loud telling you that you "can’t" or "shouldn't". But being confident helps you quiet it down.

Let’s return to the quote. “Nothing can be done without hope or confidence.” Hope helps you believe that it’s worth it, that taking action will produce a new and positive result for yourself. Confidence actually gets you to take action without being held back by your own limitations. What you do is your choice, but best believe that hope and confidence play a role in it. And to start developing more hope and confidence for yourself, ask yourself this question - What positive things in your past should you give yourself more credit for? Your past wins are representative of your future potential!

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

Something that’s really unfortunate is our collective relationship with making mistakes. Logically we have the opinion that mistakes are learning opportunities, but deeply embedded in our human development we’ve created an avoidant relationship with mistakes.

Originally as babies, we couldn’t be held accountable to anything. Mistakes were expected and to us, had no consequences. We could throw temper tantrums and soil ourselves without any judgment from others because we didn’t know any different. Then as young kids we were constantly exploring our environment, learning more about how things work. We were in more control of ourselves but still acting without any real expectations, carrying a youthful naivety that taught us many lessons. Mistakes were simply data points we could use to better understand how the world works around us.

But then this relationship shifts around adolescents. In this phase of life we tend to get hyper-conscious about what we’re doing and how we’re being perceived. We’re much more calculated about the things we do so that we don’t draw too much negative attention our way. Making mistakes leaves us vulnerable to this negative judgment, so we act more conservatively and without taking as many social risks. Then as adults (and this is probably overgeneralized) we’re completely accountable to taking care of ourselves and we focus on the things that work well so that we can get predictable results for ourselves. A mistake is often seen as a representation of our capabilities, and because of that, we usually try to avoid making them.

To that last point - While we’d rather perform well than make mistakes, we really need to give ourselves more permission to make mistakes. Not repeating the same problems over and over again, that suggests that we're unwilling to learn, but making new mistakes. Entering new environments, trying things a new way, making new decisions and seeing how new standards work for you. Improvement comes from innovation and discovering new ways to do things more efficiently, effectively, and reliably. You cannot expect things to change unless you change the things you do, and that’s why I’m telling you it’s okay to make new mistakes in the name of growth.

To wrap up this thought and integrate it into your life let me ask you this question - What same old thing do you want to try doing a new 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…)

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 I’ve allowed to affect my life more than I’d like, is comparison. At times I’ve found myself so preoccupied in someone else’s life that I forget to live my own. I’ve gotten a lot better at this over the last few years, and I want to share a few things to practice to have a better relationship with comparison.

First, don’t judge or think negatively about yourself if you catch yourself playing the comparison game. It is a natural behavior embedded in our subconscious psychology. As social creatures we need to understand the dynamic of where we fit relative to others, this is the entire pursuit of the ego, and it’s necessary. Comparison is okay, but being so negatively affected by it is not. So that must be the focus - To improve our comparative tendencies.

Knowing that comparison is going to happen either way, our task is to create a healthy relationship with it. You can easily do that by being intentional about how comparison is serving you. When you approach comparison from the lens of curiosity instead of judgment, you can learn a lot about yourself. You can become aware of the people, environments, and circumstances that cause you to feel insecure. You can begin to note what needs of yours need attention. You can discover that safely by being curious about the root of your motivation to compare.

Then also, to contextualize comparison, you need to realize that your perspective is limited. Any conclusions you try to draw from comparing yourselves from others, they’re going to be under informed because you simply can never know everything about anything. 

This is most clear when you compare your performance to someone else’s. Let’s say you and a colleague give a presentation. You evaluate your performance one way because you know every detail that was going on in your head, the things you didn’t touch on that you meant to, etc. … Whereas with your colleague you can only judge their performance based on what they said and did. But trust me, they are in their own head as well and noticed all of the little imperfections and slips in their performance too.

At the end of the day, comparison can be harnessed into a great tool. You can see the example of others and let it inspire you. You can uncover things about yourself that you didn’t realize were true and get to work on healing or growing. And you can flex your empathy and perspective muscles for yourself and others, knowing that there’s more than meets the eye in just about everything. So don’t reject comparison in your life, use it in a healthy way to serve you and your best self.

I don’t want to just tell you about this, I want to help you with it. If you feel like you often compare yourself to others, I've put together a 3 step process that you can use the next time you have comparative thoughts. It takes only 15 minutes and will help you turn any comparison into a superpower.

I’m sure you’ve been told “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet or see on tv”. It’s good advice because what is being presented to do you is biased, opinionated, altered, and positioned to achieve a certain outcome. 

What if I told you that your brain was the same way? 

In many ways the thoughts you have are no different. They are shaped, crafted, and ideated in ways that you aren’t even aware of to meet needs you didn’t know you had. For that reason, I’m going to add that you shouldn’t believe everything you think.

Your brain is filled with cognitive biases - Negativity bias where you’re hardwired to find and care about negative things around you. Confirmation bias where you overvalue the information that lines up with what you already think... A great example of this is endowment bias. In a research study, a group of people were split into two groups. One group was given a coffee mug and asked how much they’d sell it for, and the other group was not given a mug but asked how much they’d pay for the same coffee mug. The group that perceived it as theirs, who were given the mug, said they’d sell it for over $5 on average and the group that was buying it valued the same mug at $2.5 on average. The only difference is the mind’s environment in determining the value of the mug. That is bias.

Just because you think something doesn’t mean it’s true or that you mean it. What’s happening is your subconscious mind, with its biases, is informing your conscious mind about the context of the decisions it’s making. Your conscious mind is not aware of the context, it is simply responding to the emotional environment created by your subconscious mind. But with the right awareness, you can override all of this and make more intentional decisions - You are in control of your conscious thought.

The natural question becomes, 'If I can’t trust my thoughts, what can I trust?' You can trust your process. The way you’re curious about the thoughts you have to explore what might be motivating and influencing them. You can trust your own evaluation to determine what’s real and what is manipulated, what serves you and what doesn’t, so that you can choose to reshape your thoughts in a way that is in alignment with the life you want to live.

To implement this today in your life, let me ask you this - What are the checks and balances you use to manage the thoughts you have? Believe it or not, your thoughts are your choices.

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.

I know it’s easier said than done, but today I want to encourage you to change your relationship with failure. This is one of those things that I struggle with, where logically I know the meaning I want to assign to coming up short or not getting the outcome I want, but when it comes down to it I still have old subconscious beliefs that override the training and make me feel bad about myself.

Ideally, we see failure as an opportunity to learn a lesson. We take Albert Einstein’s philosophy of “I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that do not work.” What Einstein brilliantly does here is he detaches himself from the outcome and he treats every attempt as a way of getting more data. With that data he’s more prepared to do better moving forward and ultimately succeed, without being held back by 'not being good enough' or 'having figured it out yet'.

The best way to define that perspective is to treat everything as an experiment. Instead of being so emotionally attached to creating a certain result, experimenting helps you to observe everything as a third party. It prevents your ego from getting too wrapped up in the outcome, and therefore, helps you persevere when the feedback you get is unexpected.

I had a realization about this last weekend. I was spending a few nights at my friends Juliana and Martin’s house, and I wanted to take a shower. I didn't know which way to twist to make it hot or cold so I guessed. I made small adjustments and tested the water until I was confident about how to change the temperature. 

It was all an experiment and I didn’t think twice about it. Now imagine if I would have given up because the first setting I tried wasn’t hot enough. That would be absurd, and similarly in life, we need to experiment more and give ourselves more opportunities to understand exactly how to effectuate what we’re trying to do. It’s all experimentation.

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.