Self Improvement Daily Podcast

I was having a good discussion with some of my colleagues in a Mastermind and I wanted to share the conclusion with you. We were talking about the two versions of acting out of character, one negative and one positive, that exist in complete opposition to each other.

When most of us think about acting out of character it’s related to doing things out of integrity. When someone does something unethical, deceitful, or out of alignment with their best self, that’s typically thought of as being "out of character". This is because you have a certain set of values that you aim to uphold in your actions, and any deviation from that standard is considered out of character.

This has negative consequences for yourself and others because you’re not showing up at your best, compromising all of the goodness you have to offer others. Obviously that’s not ideal and in this way we should try to avoid acting out of character.

But then there’s a second, more creative, more positive way to act out of character. This is when your behavior is inspired by your character. It comes from your character. When you feel pulled to act in accordance with your values, and to be held accountable by them. With a positive reference point you can keep your good intentions top of mind so that they guide your moment by moment decision making. This serves to proactively shut down any potential lapses in character, being able to soften the power of temptation and the allure of making exceptions in pursuit of upholding your values.

What’s really empowering about this distinction is that both options of “acting out of character” surface at the same time.  And given how opposite the two definitions are, it presents you with a binary decision. Either you can use your character to inspire you to act in accordance with your values, or you can act in conflict with your higher self. It’s a choice we’re constantly making but we’re often unaware of it. In creating more consciousness around who you want to be, and understanding that you do have a choice in more than you realize, you can follow through on being the best version of yourself.

It requires discipline to consistently make the right choice. Contrary to common belief, self-discipline isn’t something that you just have. It is developed and improved upon like anything else. And the benefits of being more self-disciplined are limitless because it touches all areas of your life, not the least of which is helping you live in alignment with your values and character.

The New Year is fast-approaching and if you aren’t intentional about it, it will pass you by before you ave the chance to make the most of it. Or you can make the choice to get ahead of it and build a foundation that will allow you to conquer more in the New Year than you thought possible. This includes building the habit of self-discipline, and that’s exactly what I’ll help you to do in the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge. If any part of you knows you’re leaving some potential on the table, click here to register for the challenge right now!

I recently heard a perspective that made me realize why so many people struggle with staying consistent with new positive habits. It was shared by Rob Dyrdek, a man who has mastered business and life, and has consistently found unimaginable success in so many different areas.

The bottom line is, everyone wants to have better habits and routines. It means you're healthier, more productive, more active, more present, and more immersed in the experiences of life. But people neglect something very important - You can’t expect for things to be exactly how you want them right from the beginning. You need to earn the results over time and grow into the fullest version of what you’re hoping to achieve.

Many people aren’t aware of this. They put in the effort to establish a habit and then complain that it’s not producing for them like they expected it to. So they deviate away from the fundamentals and lose momentum. That is until they feel inspired again and start over, creating a disjointed process of fits and starts where they never settle into anything lasting and sustainable.

Habits are not the end all be all to getting the results you want in life. It’s actually just the beginning to what you’re looking for. Highly fine-tuned habits that have been calibrated to create very specific and intentional results, that’s what you really want. But many people aren’t patient enough to let their habits mature and improve.

Dyrdek says that there’s 3 steps to really honing in on the life that you want - Discipline, Habits, Optimization.

You first must develop the self-discipline to follow through on completing things consistently. Without discipline you will be fighting against yourself. Then, you apply that discipline to engage in habits, which are pre-determined, routine ways of doing things. Then at that point, you get feedback about your performance within that habit and you optimize various elements of it so that it starts working for you. Life is dynamic and constantly changing so you must always be adjusting your expectations, processes, and environments to obtain the results that you want to achieve.

This is personal development. This is the practice of being a high-performer and becoming capable of achieving elite results in your life. If you feel in your heart that you’re destined for greatness and want to make waves in the world, then you need to make sure you have the fundamentals down from the very beginning. In the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge I will give you everything you need to build the habit of self-discipline and exponentiate results in your life. I’ll also teach you how to use the exact same self improvement system I use to make real progress in my health, relationships, work and productivity, and anything and everything else!

Fulfilling your potential is a longer game than you may realize, but this 21 day challenge will get you in the game and give you a running start! The challenge starts on January 2nd. Register now!

If you really want to start tapping into what’s next, what’s available to you, and what’s possible for you, you need to solve the problems in your life. Ryan Holiday describes this as “the obstacle is the way”. Essentially he argues that you become someone new when you overcome something big, and that we must not back down from the challenge.

This is true in our personal lives and in business. On the personal side, it’s all about how you approach the problem. So you’re not exercising as much as you’d like to or managing your time very well. You’re not being fair and compassionate with the people that are most important to you...

You can avoid the problem and act like it’s not there, which will cause you to get the same outcomes. Or you can create an action-plan, face off with the problem, and resolve it. This might unearth a new problem that needs to be solved next, but at least it’s a step forward in making progress on the issue. All you can ever ask for is progress.

In business, we’re literally taught that the best business ideas solve the biggest problems. Our mission is to find something that is so painful, frustrating, inconvenient, or scary and help it be less so through a product or service. The bigger the problem, the more people are willing to pay to solve it and the greater the opportunity.

Solving problems is more of a mindset than a means to an end. There will always be problems in life, and if there aren’t, then your mind will find one. So either you can be paralyzed by the idea that things aren’t how you want them to be, or you can work toward reconciling your problems so that the nature of them changes. 

When you get consistent with conquering challenges they’ll start to have less power over you because you’ve proven that you are greater than them. This means that the visceral pull they have on you is weaker, and they’ll affect the quality of your life less. And furthermore, it means that you can reach that much higher and tap into even better opportunities because you’ve built resilience, conviction, and resolve.

Let’s go back to one of the most ancient and profound traditions in the history of mankind - Hinduism. A defining expression featured in the Vedas, one of the core tenets of Hinduism, has shaped human behavior for thousands of years. And that term is “Namaste”

In essence, “Namaste” is a greeting, but the depth of the greeting is so much more than just a simple “hello”. It goes beyond acknowledging someone’s physical presence and communicates the presence of their soul. “Namaste” has evolved over time to mean “the light in me honors the light in you.”

That’s what’s really happening when we say “hello” to someone else. Each person is bringing their full story to each moment, and that needs to be recognized. Unfortunately we don’t naturally see the world in that amount of depth because we’re too occupied with everything else going on, and it’s not a priority.

But this is what it means to be more present with people. It’s not just about being there physically, but to be attuned and available emotionally and spiritually with them as well. “Namaste” is a simple reminder that there’s so much more to the encounter than meets the eye.

I recently had an experience that relates to this concept. I attended an event through Heroic, a personal development platform I lean on for my own growth, and we started the event with a connection exercise. After the initial awkwardness of allowing yourself to see and be seen by others, we were able to reach that next level of connection. It was “Namaste”. I felt genuine love and appreciation for people who were complete strangers, giving them all the love I had ad celebrating them as if they were family. It was a remarkable experience.

I share all of that to show how this is already within us. We’re more than capable of tapping into a deeper sense of richness and connection to others, but we hardly get to engage in it. But with a little more intention you can add a lot of quality to your life!

I believe we are in a crisis. A crisis where many people feel alone, unworthy, and incapable of doing anything about it. I want to really help add some perspective to this, but first I need to make a detour to provide some context.

As social creatures we often find ourselves in very complex social dynamics. Evolutionarily it was advantageous to constantly be comparing yourself to the group so that you can maintain your spot in the tribe and ultimately, increase your chances of survival. This is the role of the ego, to always be evaluating your position relative to others.

Well things have changed quite a bit since those early days and now we find that some of our instincts are out of place. This makes it harder to live self-assuredly because people are acting on their ego to make them feel better at the expense of others. Unfortunately, this might even affect you. You’ve seen this first-hand if you’ve been bullied, harassed, threatened, or experienced other forms of unfair treatment.

But here’s the hard truth to it. You’re human too. You have the same instincts that can negatively affect other people when they’re not controlled. I’m sure you can think of a time when you lost your temper or unfairly treated someone else. Nobody is immune to this and through your own self-work you are improving the way you relate with these impulses and urges (among other things).

Alright, so where am I getting with this? We’re only in control of what's happening in our own head. We receive what other people are doing around us and to us and we put out our own energy that then affects others. So in both cases, improving in this area involves you and only you.

So for someone who wants to feel less alone, more worthy, and more empowered… Who wants to be more accepted by others and less judged… You need to be better about accepting others and judging others less. You must tame your own ego and establish the standard for your own life because that will help you enforce what you’re willing to tolerate.

To transform the way other people treat you, you must transform yourself. Be more graceful with others and you’ll have more grace with yourself. Find the spark in someone else and it’ll help you find the spark within yourself. You’ll be amazed to see how quickly life changes when you change the eyes you are seeing everything through. As Wayne Dyer puts it, “change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”

How unfortunate would it be if you realized you were living a fraction of the life you were capable of? That you were letting incredible moments pass you by instead of being fully immersed in the richness of every moment. Life is meant to be lived completely, and some of your best times come when your heart is pumping in your chest, you feel a nervous anticipation about what’s going to happen, you're gritting at the pain of physical exertion, or that you’re on the verge of triumph (or failure).

If you want to make the absolute most out of life, you cannot live a diluted version of it. Life can be so sweet if only you allow yourself to taste it, but many people water-down their life because they’re being held back by the fear of what might happen. That someone will disagree with you, or they won’t like you. That you’ll lose all of your money. That your reputation is at stake. Or worst yet, that you might disappoint yourself if you try your best and realize you weren’t actually good enough.

While all of those things are real points to consider, what I’ve found to be true in my life (and something I’ve validated in the story of many incredible people) - The greatest payoffs of life require that you expose yourself to the biggest risks. The upside of a business is proportional to the risk you take on. The ecstasy of falling in love means that your heartbreak will hurt that much more. 

There are real consequences to your decisions and they can cause pain, but I think it’s better to allow yourself to feel both the good and the bad rather than nothing at all. And to further complicate things, your negativity bias defaults you to think discouragingly about all the things that can go wrong rather than optimistically about how great it would be if things go right. This makes the risk and fear that much stronger, and it holds us back that much more.

There’s an expression in baseball that goes “You can’t let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” I think that summarizes it well. You’ve got to put yourself in the game and take a big swing. It’s in those moments of wonder and uncertainty where everything is on the edge. It’s when you feel most alive, and I want you to feel that way more often. 

This is so much easier said than done. Many of us don’t have a tolerance for the risk or a sense of self-belief that gives us the confidence to put ourselves out there as consistently as we’d like to. That’s where I believe the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge can support you. In the 21 Day challenge, that starts right when the New Year begins, you’ll create momentum in your life that will help you to take more risks and succeed in ways you never imagined possible. You’ll have the confidence to take action through negativity bias and really squeeze the juice that life has to offer you. If you’re ready to have an unrestrained, unstoppable 2023, click the link here to sign up for the challenge.

Let’s make an important distinction between consistency and frequency. While they might seem like redundant terms, I believe there is something critically different about them that needs to be highlighted.

First let’s talk about consistency. Being consistent is about reliably doing something in fixed intervals. Succeeding with being consistent means you follow through on certain tasks or activities without fail over a long period of time. As we know, it’s the consistent completion of core activities that generates the end results we’re looking for. Per Darren Hardy’s book “The Compound Effect”, small things compound over time to create really big things. But that process cannot be interrupted, and consistency is required to make it so.

Then there’s frequency. Frequency is about the amount that you do something. If you do something with high-frequency that means you do it every day, or multiple times in a day even. Being frequent with your behavior means you get into action often, almost repetitively.

The important difference to note - Consistency does not require frequency and frequency does not require consistency. You can be consistent with a workout routine but that does not mean you need to to it every day. You can do it once a week if that’s the timetable you’ve established you want to be consistent with. Alternatively you can frequently do  pushups as an energy management break multiple times throughout the day, but you don't to do it every day.

Another example, you can frequently make calls to the people you care most about but when you add intentionality about how much you want to be reaching out, then you can be accountable to doing that consistently.

Again, consistency does not require frequency. In fact the enemy to consistency is often frequency because we try to stay consistent with expectations that are too high. Ultimately being consistent is about identifying the amount of something that serves you and following through on that amount. Oftentimes that minimum viable amount is actually less than you thought you needed.

Another way of putting it - Being intentional with your consistency allows you to strike the right balance in your life. It's the right amount of days to commit to exercising, or the balance between hours spent on work, with loved ones, and in your passions. Striking the balance that best meets your needs allows you to achieve holistic life harmony so that your responsibilities don’t exist in conflict with each other, but rather they are strengthened by your consistency in all areas of your life.

The best way I know to hone in this balance and get consistent on the fundamentals is to implement your own self improvement operating system. It's the mechanism that makes it all go. Not only can I walk you through exactly how that something like that will work for you, but also I’ll teach you how to be more self-disciplined so that you can really be consistent on doing the things that are most important to you. If you want to start maximizing your potential and leveraging consistency in 2023, I encourage you to register for the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge where I guarantee in just 21 days you’ll build the foundation for a high-performing, high-achieving, and balanced life.

Lets make 2023 the year where you really start becoming everything you’re capable of being. And I promise you, the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge is your start. Learn more about the 21 day challenge that will kickstart your next level of growth right now!

In reading Ryan Holliday’s newest book “Discipline Is Destiny” I encountered a really interesting misconception. When you normally think of temperance, you think of abstaining from something that is a vice or an outlet. Historically the idea of temperance is closely associated with prohibition when alcohol was outlawed in the United States through the 1920s.

Holliday takes an even older approach to temperance and uses the original definition practiced by the stoics. Temperance has nothing to do with eliminating something from your life and everything to do with striking the right, best-fit balance with it.

So what does this mean? Temperance isn’t about never drinking alcohol, but it is about only drinking for the right occasions and under the right conditions. It’s not to say that scrolling social media or playing video games is a bad thing, but rather that those things should be done in moderation to meet genuine needs and desires.

Benjamin Franklin agrees with this and says “Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation”. Temperance is the first of his 13 virtues because he understands the effects practicing temperance has on your life. It emphasizes intentionality in every choice you make, ensuring that it’s being done for the right reasons, and builds the habit of self-discipline to follow through on other virtues.

Temperance is about setting yourself up for success by acknowledging the honest balance you hope to achieve. Every piece of your life is meant to be in harmony with every other part, allowing you to create a fully-harmonious existence. This will allow you to immerse yourself in the things you enjoy doing without guilt, come to terms with how much you exercise or meditate without judgment, and optimize every part of your life so you can show up as your best self to others.

Is that a balance you want to strike in 2023? Where you're at your best for yourself, the people you care about, and the mission that you serve? If so you need to install a self improvement operating system. It’s not enough to keep learning about how to make the most out of your life is a start, or have good intentions but no follow through, you need to apply it, and that’s exactly what a self improvement operating system gives you.

If you want to make 2023 the year you look back on where everything changed for the better, I got you! I’ll share the exact operating system I’ve created with you so that you can be more productive, energized, and fulfilled!