Something you  hear all the time on your personal development journey is that you need to "step outside your comfort zone". The argument is that you can only grow when you’re experiencing new things, and intentionally putting yourself in environments that cause you to act andthink differently becomes a source for growth.

But this concept is missing something critical. There are many people who are stuck, stagnant, and complacent with a life that is uncomfortable. They’ve learned to tolerate the pains and frustrations and assume that’s just how things need to be. There’s no growth in that. But it’s appealing because it’s predictable, you know what you’re going to get and you can prepare yourself for the fears and pains you’ll experience because you’ve been experiencing them already. It's the difference between the devil you know and the devil you don't.

That’s why growth isn’t actually about leaving your comfort zone, it’s about doing things that are unfamiliar to you. It’s through doing what is new and uncertain that you grow to meet the demand. This is often uncomfortable for people to do because our brains prefer predictability and certainty. Evolutionarily anything new is considered a potential threat, so we’ve developed an avoidant relationship with things that are unfamiliar. But that’s exactly what creates the space for growth - To learn new things, try things differently, and challenge our beliefs and values. 

This is what we’re really after when we’re talking about getting outside your comfort zone, and to really open your eyes to this concept I’m going to ask you to reflect on this question - Is there anything in your life that is familiar to you but it’s also a source of discomfort?

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Are you ready to hear an unfathomable stat? A 2008 study found that comparative thought accounted for 12% of all our thoughts. Sleeping 8 hours a day, 12% of our waking hours is 1 hour and 52 minutes a day spent comparing yourself to others. I don’t think anyone would raise their hand and say that they want to compare themselves to others, let alone be consumed by comparative thought for that long. While it is important to know where others are at so you can draw inspiration from them, their lives should inform how you want to live yours rather than completely determine it.

To break it down, comparison is a matter of the ego. Our ego desires to place us relative to others so that we can place ourselves within the tribe. This had evolutionary benefits many years ago but now it’s actually the source of great distress. A few of the primary needs of the ego are a need to be right, wrong, superior, inferior, offended... All of the ways we feel that separate us from others. It’s meant to establish our independence, ego means one, but it often comes at the cost of our emotional experience.

A few notes on comparison: Comparison is never fair. If you try to place yourself relative to others you’ll never be able to make a true judgment. There are so many factors and circumstances that are not equal between any two experiences, and therefore direct comparison is truly impossible. Like a science experiment, too many things are not controlled for and therefore play a part in influencing the outcome. 

Former president Teddy Roosevelt says “Comparison is the thief of joy”. If you’re so busy thinking about other people’s lives, what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling, it gives you less time to live your own. Especially in today’s world where we only gain insight into the highlight reel of others, that comparison makes you feel worse about your career, your appearance, your mindset, and your sense of self-confidence. The negative self-reflection puts you in a place of lack instead of in a place of abundance and it steals your joy.

So think about how this affects your life - Are you often affected by the way you compare yourself to 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…)

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.

When life happens and it’s hard to understand why, you can choose to have faith in the process. Believing that these things aren’t happening to you, they’re happening for you. Having faith that there’s a larger plan helps give meaning to the pain, struggle, suffering, and challenges we experience in the short-term.

Here’s a new way to think about the life obstacles you face - Instead of seeing them as getting 'in the way' of your final destination, see them as 'on the way'. It’s not that the path is being blocked, rather it’s that these obstacles are milestones that remind you that you’re going the right direction.

For example - Instead of seeing a setback in your health as something that will hold you back, see it as a necessary reminder to slow down so that you can achieve the life health you ultimately want. Instead of feeling like your life is flipped upside down and ruined because of a divorce or break up, you can integrate the lessons learned and get what you need from a significant other moving forward. These circumstances aren’t in the way, they are on the path toward what is best for you.

And at the end of the day, things tend to work out okay. While it can be emotionally gripping and difficult to think long-term, in time you’ll find that things happened exactly as they were meant to. That doesn’t make it any easier in the moment but hopefully it gives you renewed optimism about the quality of your future.

Let’s wrap this up by helping you see how this is true - What was the last life-changing thing that happened? Has everything worked out alright so far?

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’ve probably heard trite expressions like “less is more”, and it can be hard to conceptualize. Literally of course it doesn't make sense but the implications of it are vast and resonate true. That’s why I really liked a quote I heard from Marie Forleo that I think more accurately represents the core point to this, which is “simplify to amplify”.

When you start doing less, and narrowing in on the few critical pieces to something that work best, you give yourself more time, energy, and attention to excel. High performance in high-leverage areas can lead to disproportionate results, hacking the algorithm and enabling you to do more with less. 

This is because all actions are not equal. You may be familiar with the 80/20 rule which suggests that 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities. So if you simplify and do more of those 20% activities, and get rid of the other stuff that isn’t as effective, it allows you to amplify your results.

This is usually applied through the lens of business and financial performance (because it’s easily measurable) but the same is true with your health, your happiness, your relationships, and your sense of fulfillment. There are a few routines or habits that do incredible things for your health. There are many things to consider if you want to be happier or more fulfilled, but a few of those things create a deeper and more resonant sense for it. 

Establishing standards and systems that help you consistently do the things that serve you most will disproportionately improve the quality of your life. But in order to do more of that and less of other things, you need to simplify, trim the fat, and give yourself the space to prioritize it.

In this way less is more. Simplify to amplify. And to make this tangible in your life right now, I want you to ask yourself this question - What is stealing your energy that you should cut out of 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.

Wow, life is good! Just think about how much you still have in front of you. If you’re under 30 years old you still have another lifetime (or two or three or more!) ahead of you! If you have more years under your belt, then you get to apply everything you’ve learned and add so much richness and experience to the moments ahead. Life is precious and we’re all so blessed that we wake up today, breathing, receiving the gift of living it! Whether you have 5-10 years or 5-10 decades still to go, get excited!

There are many things to be excited about. First of course is the opportunity. There are truly an infinite number of ways that your life can go, but through the power of choice you are in control of what path you go down. You get to choose what you want to do, who you want to do it with, and how you get to feel through it all. In this way everything is a miracle. Everything came from unimaginable odds and materialized into your life, and you have a say in what miracles you bring to this Earth.

Then of course there’s contribution, the ways you’re going to leave your mark on this world. There’s a quote from Matthew Kelly that goes “Most people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a month. We overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade." There is still so much good work to be done!

And then there’s technology. Imagine what inventions you’re going to see that are still yet to be created. The sense of wonder you’ll find in the years to come will be astonishing! How lucky are we that we’ll get to witness it all, and be a part of history as it unfolds.

In my opinion it’s fun to live a life full of excitement. And there’s so much to be excited for. What if I told you that the best moments of your life are still yet to come. There’s so much to look forward to and I hope you choose to be present for everything that entails.

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.

It feels like in life we are inundated with lists - To do lists for the day, a grocery list so that you can stock your fridge, lists of errands, lists of phone calls to make, the list goes on. But an additional list I was encouraged to make that has been game changing is called a "Never Regret List".

These are the things that you might not feel like doing in the moment, but you’re always glad that you did it. Those things that you know are best for you but they aren’t always prioritized. For me these are things like meditating, going for a walk outside, doing breath work, calling my grandma, and exercising. It feels good to do the things that serve you most.

But like I said, in the moment you might not feel like doing these things. They’re among the first things to be deprioritized because they’re often not mission-critical tasks. But by listing them out you give a voice to their importance and can start to build them into your day more often.

It also creates a sense of accountability. Consciously you want to do what’s best for you, and when you set the intention of never regretting doing these routines it creates a force that pushes you to do them when normally you’re being pulled away. Having the list helps our brain rationalize why we should do it rather than why we shouldn’t, which makes all the difference when it comes to actually taking action.

So to wrap this up, make your mental list right now! What are 5 things that you never regret doing?

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I wanted to highlight one way you can shift your vocabulary to support your dreams, desires, and pursuit of your best self. When we transact in society we’ve been taught to spend. Spending money to watch a show, buy some groceries, or get someone a present. We spend time with other people, learning new things, commuting, etc. But by choosing to spend so much on the things you do, you’re choosing to relate with it in a certain way. The implication here is that when you spend you trade the resource for something else. It’s transactional, and more importantly, it’s limiting.

I’d encourage you to start investing not spending. Invest your time with other people. Invest in learning new things, invest in tickets for a show, invest in groceries. Invest, invest, invest.

It seems unnatural to think of these things as investments because you don’t see an extended return on value. The expectation is that investing creates compound interest, where $1 turns into $2 in 7 years. But that’s too narrow of a lens to appropriately see value. There’s a lot more to your choices that have future considerations that are more difficult to quantify.

For example: Investing in groceries. Yes, there’s a fixed amount of food that you get for a certain amount of dollars. But when you think of the way that food fuels you and enables you to do more things, it becomes an investment because it facilitates future value. Or investing time with friends. Yes, there is a very obvious amount of time that you spend together, but it’s the insights you gain, the depth you cultivate in that relationship, and the way it serves you moving forward that is better viewed as an investment.

How about I put it this way. Are all hours spent at home equal? Of course not, one hour spent scrolling on social media is different than spending an hour reading. That’s where it becomes an investment. Your intentional choice about how you invest that time creates different amounts of value for you.

What I’m really trying to say is, everything you choose to do is an investment in your future - Your health, your happiness, your relationships, your emotions, and your finances. When you spend you’re accepting a loss of something you can’t get back. When you invest you’re opening the door to receiving gains. To wrap this up let me ask you this, what do you want to invest more time into?

If you’re feeling inspired to invest more time in your development, I wanted to invite you to a workshop I’m hosting on Saturday. If you have a really big vision for your life, and you know you’re destined for more but you feel like you’ve been stuck living a life that’s "good enough" for so long that you’re losing sight of what you’re truly capable of... Then this session will help you discover what you’ve been missing so that you can start making the absolute most out of life! If any part of that feels like you, don’t ignore your best self calling you and take massive steps forward today!

Holy smokes! Lean in and pay extra attention to this one because in the last few days it idea has changed my life.

Tom Bilyeu, the founder of Impact Theory and one of the most respected minds in personal development today, shared a game-changing insight. As someone who has made hundreds of millions of dollars and has an incredible amount of influence, Bilyeu lives a life that many people admire (myself included). But having seen success in so many different forms, he warns us that becoming successful and trading the life you’ve always wanted for the life you have doesn’t affect you like you think it would.

He says that we fall into this dangerous trap. Many people don’t feel accomplished, deserving, or capable living their lives today. They don’t give credit to the success they’ve achieved and work doggedly to be more like the people they admire. They attach their present happiness, fulfillment, and worthiness to the idea that one day they will achieve more.

They believe that when they become the person that they look at with admiration, they will feel that same admiration for themselves.

That is simply not the case. The insecurities and thought patterns you have now will be the same then. Until you internally update your psychology, it will govern your life in the very same way it always has regardless of external circumstances. Your admiration of others is a representation of who you long to be, and you will continue to feel incomplete until you change the nature of that relationship.

David Meltzer once taught me the solution to this - He said instead of admiring someone, which creates a sense of lack and separation from what you desire, be inspired by them. Let their example teach you that if they did it, you can too. No matter who you are or what you accomplish, you will always find someone to look up to and feel inferior to unless you do the work to overcome it.

So get to work on that and you’ll find that you might not need something more to feel genuinely fulfilled and happy. Think about someone you admire and ask yourself. ‘Why?’ What is it about them that creates desire within yourself, and what’s the nature of that desire?

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.