Have you ever set goals that are so big and daunting that you feel paralyzed to even get started.?Sometimes your ambition can be so big that it blocks out the sun, casting a shadow that makes you feel unequipped and unprepared to move forward. Or you’ve somehow assumed the responsibility of a massive endeavor that now you need to deliver on. 

There are many expressions that relate to this - People call it being ‘in over your head’ or ‘writing checks you can’t cash’, but today I want to use the expression ‘You bit off more than you can chew’. This brings me to an age old question - How do you eat an elephant?

This is a metaphor of course where eating an elephant is that massive undertaking you have in front of you. How do you possibly expect to complete it? How do you even start? What’s the benefit of doing it anyway? These are the thoughts that come up, generated by your ego which is trying to protect you from failure.

But the answer to the question is… One bite at a time. That’s all you can do to make progress on any big task - Get started and commit to doing the basic actions required to make incremental progress.

Now let me ask you, what are the elephants in your life? Is there that one ominous goal you’ve always wanted to pursue but it has felt too big to take on? What’s that life change you haven’t had the courage to make that would improve the quality of your life?

Many people rule out their dreams and aspirations before they even try because they figure it’s too far out of reach. But what I’ve learned, and what I want to share with you, is that when you commit to something and consistently make small progress toward it, you get there quicker than you expected. 

Not only that, but you separate yourself from 99% of the other people who’ve had the same thought but didn’t take action. My mentor David Meltzer says “the last mile is always the emptiest”. If you want to be great and live up to your potential, you just need to be good on a consistent basis.

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.

There’s a term established by Martin Seligman called ‘learned helplessness’. The term basically describes how some people choose to stay in discomfort because they’ve become accustomed to it, even when there’s a clear way of escaping it. Examples of this include staying with a partner who you know doesn’t treat you well, showing up every day for work when it’s a toxic environment, or sticking with the same unhealthy diet even though you know it’s bad for you. 

Taking a step back, the entire theory revolves around the idea that people perceive things as out of their control. There are two really significant implications to learned helplessness. First, it creates a lack of agency. While it’s not often talked about, agency is a fundamental human need. This might be more clear when you see it through the lens of two of it’s relatives, which are free-will and freedom. A person with agency is a person that has the ability to make decisions for themselves. They can observe, reflect, and decide. As it relates to learned helplessness, people are so occupied and desensitized to what’s happening that they lose their sense of agency within it.

This leads to the second implication, which is that people with learned helplessness have no interest in changing. On one side, they have no awareness of the fact that things can change (or need to change), but more critically they have no motivation to pursue things that are different than how they currently are. They’ve simply accepted things as they are and in doing so keep themselves stuck in the same repeating patterns.

Now how does this affect you? Well like anything else, learned helplessness is a spectrum. It’s possible that you’re crippled to the extent that you choose not to remove yourself from a situation that is obviously bad for you. But what’s more likely is that you interface with learned helplessness in very small ways. Do you consistently find yourself in financial stress, knowing how to budget but choosing not to? Are you tolerating the way someone is treating you, refusing to report them or confront them about it? That’s learned helplessness. And if you feel like any of this might apply for you, hopefully this has given you extra awareness to consider how you can improve your circumstances.

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.

Tell me if you’ve ever been here… You have a ton of urgent deadlines, travel plans, people you already planning on seeing, and a bunch of other random commitments. That’s a lot on your plate and it might not sound too far away from how things are for your right now.

In the face of it all, maybe you’ve told yourself that when things calm down you can really settle in and prioritize doing what you’ve really been wanting to do. But has that ever worked?

Let’s be honest. Things never slow down. Life seems to constantly be going at a faster pace than before, and it can be hard to keep up with it.

If you’re always waiting for things to slow down to pursue something new, exciting, or important, that day will never come. You won’t start. Getting into that new routine or habit will always be two weeks away. The diet and exercise program you want to try will always be pushed off. If you want to live your best life you can’t let that happen.

The only day you can truly effectuate is today. The only decision you can make is in the now. The goal is not to postpone what’s important to you hoping that you can accommodate it later. Instead you need to make it a priority and integrate it in a manageable way immediately.

Reading this at the beginning of July, when we've just begun the second half of 2022, you’re at an inflection point. You can choose to start doing it and take the rest of this year to prove to yourself that you can build the life you always dreamed of, or you can keep waiting for the perfect day that will never come. If you’re ready to make that switch and step up to the next best chapter of your life, and you feel like you've been postponing making it a priority, you'll want to check this out :)

Last week I was reminded of a quote that might become my personal mission statement. “Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.” It’s attributed to former president Teddy Roosevelt and it serves as an incredible rallying cry for people that feel disqualified to make a meaningful difference. Let’s break down all 3 parts of this quote one by one.

“Do what you can”. To me it all starts with intention. You first need to make the simple decision to do rather than not to do. It’s a choice to direct your efforts toward meaningful causes that improve the lives of others. To use another Teddy Roosevelt quote, it means you’re willing to be 'the man or woman in the arena', putting their hat in the ring and committing to making the attempt. Those are the people committed to doing what they can.

Then next is “With what you’ve got.” This offers an important reminder that you need to focus on your current capabilities. A lot of people place a ton of value on an uncertain future, and believe that what they have now isn't enough, but one day it will be enough. This comes from a dangerous undertone in culture that pushes us and rewards us for doing more. Make more money, lift more weights, make more friends. But it’s all relative, and when you reach that future date it’s likely you’ll still feel like it’s not enough because your frame of reference changed. So instead of being paralyzed by the idea of needing more, simply do what you can.

And last is “Where you are.” This relates to the earlier point about your capabilities and developmental process, but also to the environments you’re surrounded by. While it might not feel like meaningful impact, the positive influence you have on your family, friend group, work colleagues, and other people you encounter create ripples that extend further than you can imagine. It serves as an extra highlight that you can’t do it all, so pick what’s right in front of you and start there. 

Holistically, this quote comes together to emphasize one key point - Start now. There is plenty of need and you are more than qualified, with more than enough to contribute right now. Get started and you’ll see 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. 

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

I wanted to take some pressure off of you by sharing a bit about myself, and adding some perspective to personal development. I am nowhere near perfect when it comes to my habits and mastering my mindset. It’s very unlike me, but two days in a row last week I missed my morning meditation and journaling session. I broke my 50 day streak of consecutive days exercising. I experienced some setbacks and even though I’ve trained my mind to be grateful in the face of failure, I sometimes have a hard time authentically believing it. And despite all of that, I do still see myself as one of the most disciplined people in the world.

The expectation for yourself should never be perfection. You will make mistakes. You will overlook or forget about things. You will have lapses in judgment and do things outside of your integrity. It’s human nature, but we’ve lost sight of that because we’ve been raised in a culture that condemns poor performance. In fact, and this might sound counterintuitive, you should not always hit the goals you set for yourself. Goals are a way of designing a certain pace into your life, and if you always achieve your goals then you might not be pushing yourself in ways that cause you to grow. Allow yourself to dream and give yourself a bright North Star to chase, but understand that it’s okay when you fall short of the things you’re accountable to.

While the expectation cannot be perfection, it absolutely must be that you’ll do your best. If you fall down 9 times you better get up 10, because the only way you can truly fail is by no longer trying. Yes, I missed two meditations in a row, but that doesn’t mean I stopped doing my morning routine altogether. I got back into the practice the next day. Yes, I broke my 50 day workout streak, but I got in the gym the next two days and pushed myself harder to make up for it so I could keep the momentum. 

You will fall short in life, that’s guaranteed, but what matters most is what do you do about it. Do you feel bad for yourself and do more damage, or do you respond in positive and empowering ways? Some days you’ll feel better than others, that’s a reality. But even if it’s small, doing something to get yourself back on track goes a long way in supporting you as you pursue the best version of 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.

In Jenna Kutcher's new book “How Are You, Really?” she talks about spending fat minutes. I’m not asking you to eat as much as you can in 60 seconds, instead I’m inviting you to add more juice and richness to the way you spend your time.

Something that is sorely missing in today’s society is being present. With our smartphones never beyond arms reach, 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. This is because of something called attention residue, which is this idea that we stay preoccupied with what we were previously paying attention to for much longer than we’d like. So instead of doing one thing with 100% focus and attention, at any given moment we’re doing 5-10 things at once, leaving us with 10-20% of focus application. That’s simply not good enough.

To make your minutes fat is to really let time feel like it’s stretching because you’re so engrossed in every detail. It’s to create moments of hyper-presence so that you extract all of the beauty around you. This is doing deep work in a task, in conversation with someone, or enjoying time to yourself like a walk outside. Pack those minutes with so much juice and sauce and richness that it makes you feel like you’re getting so much more than you usually do.

This is more of a practice and process than something that you can immediately adjust about your life, but a few ways you can be more present are to disconnect from technology more often, limit how much you’re choosing to multi-task, and pausing throughout the day to be more observant of what’s around you. It’s a mindfulness practice, and the happier and fatter you can make your minutes, the happier and fatter you’ll make your life.

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.

In general we put structure and creativity at opposite sides of the spectrum. Structure is a rigid, organized way of doing things, while creativity is a flowing, spontaneous way of working on something. Some people prefer structure and some people prefer more creative freedom, but in both cases your efforts are strengthened when you use structure and creativity in tandem.

As it relates to being organized, you need to invest time in building infrastructure that supports everything you’re hoping to do. In designing that infrastructure it benefits you to incorporate creative thinking so that you can maximize the structure you’re building. For example, let’s say that you’re trying to create a structured morning routine. You want to time yourself for a 10 minute meditation but you don’t want to look at your phone. Creative thinking would help you brainstorm other solutions, like using the kitchen timer, to create the system the best serves you.

Then when it comes to creativity, people don’t actually realize how much structure is already embedded within it. The creative mind is told to draw outside the lines and do things their own way, but that’s overlooking how the lines serve as a structured reference point. The structure helps you know where to get started, what the task is, and it contextualizes how your creative efforts can be applied. It’s hard to create from absolutely nothing, so having some kind of structure serves as a starting point to be creative from.

In all, whether you’re a left brain organized thinker or a right brain creative, don’t overlook the value of the other side. That’s why the brain has both, these two elements are intricately intertwined and they need each other. To create some self-awareness around this - Do you identify more as an organized person or a creative person?

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 heard a quick sound bite in an interview between peak performance coach Jon Gordon and former football star Tim Tebow that really intrigued me. Tebow was talking about economies. We usually think of the economy as the financial state of a country - We flourish when the economy is good and we struggle when the economy is bad. But a true economy is actually a broader concept that applies to many things that our financial system fits within. 

An economy is a closed system that manages the flow of resources. This resource can be money, but more abstractly it can also be energy, knowledge, relationships, and basically anything with utility that can be transferred between people. These are all resources that improve the quality of life, and they’re used and transacted as a form of currency (which is also too narrowly understood).

In today’s life we overvalue our financial economy and therefore, prioritize money as a primary currency. Money is very important, don’t get me wrong, because it helps us meet lower human needs - Acquiring food, water, safety through shelter, etc. But it’s not everything, and in fact there’s a 2010 study that suggests that quality of life does not statistically improve beyond making $75,000 a year. Basically, money helps us live our material life.

The second economy Tebow mentioned was that of a spiritual economy. In this economy, the way to obtain higher fulfillment and value is not to receive, make, or take more. It’s to give more. When we make our resources more accessible for others we experience a sense of fulfillment that is unmatched in the material world. That’s why there’s a difference between being rich and being wealthy, rich is having material fulfillment, being wealthy is having material and spiritual fulfillment.

This is really dense, I know, and I’ll write a book about something related to this one day. But as for today I hope you see how we need to both give and receive in life to get all of our needs met.

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.