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…)

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Abraham Lincoln was quoted saying “If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my ax.” There’s an obvious lesson in this quote, but beyond the immediate I want to use this metaphor to illuminate other under-spoken lessons.

Sharpening the ax is all about preparation and working smarter not harder. Instead of wasting a bunch of energy swinging a dull ax trying to chop down a tree, you’ll be much more efficient if you improve the quality of your effort. That’s where it might actually be more time efficient to invest in having your activity produce more concentrated value.

But despite this quote, a sharp ax doesn’t cut a tree down by itself. You need to show up and swing the ax. Life rewards those who show up, who aren’t afraid to put in the required work that advances an idea or generates the desired result. The law of attraction is useless without the law of action, and swinging the ax is showing up day in and day out to take action.

Then last, it’s not enough to have a sharp ax, and to swing it at a tree. You need a strategy. You need to find the weakest point of the trunk and you need to be precise and consistent with hitting it exactly in that spot. This is why taking the time to evaluate a situation, and then building a plan to execute that strategy is so vital because then it tells you how you need to show up and take action.

I want you to embody all qualities of the ax. Sharpen your skills so that you can do more with less effort. Show up and do be afraid to take swings. And be strategic and consistent with how you apply yourself to maximize the impact of your effort. 

To incorporate these principles into your life right now I want you to reflect on this - How are you swinging the ax right now, and what can you do to be more effective with it?

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 believe one of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever make, and one of the greatest regrets you’ll ever have, is to give up on yourself. But what that means isn’t exactly what you’d think.

Giving up on yourself isn’t about quitting, it’s about losing faith in yourself and your abilities. It takes humility to know when it’s the right time to move on. Giving up on yourself isn’t characterized by having low energy and motivation to perform, it’s about not having the desire to make things better and to get back on track. Giving up on yourself has nothing to do with external results, it has everything to do with the way you internally relate with the decisions you make.

The reason giving up can feel so appealing in the face of anxiety and overwhelm is because it’s easy. Humans are hardwired to avoid discomfort, and giving up on yourself is a defense mechanism that protects you from the fears or pain you’re experiencing. 

But that approach is flawed and doesn’t work in the long run. While you can give up on yourself you can never leave yourself, so every day you’ll need to look at yourself in the mirror and live with the reality you’ve chosen for yourself. It’s a sad life, and even if you fall into it know that it’s not permanent.

Know that failure is a normal part of life, so don’t internalize it as a reflection of you. Things never go perfectly according to plan, so don’t judge yourself or your capabilities when they don’t. If you feel like giving up, Ed Mylett has an incredible philosophy on it, born out of his father’s recovery from being an alcoholic. It’s called “the power of one more”. Commit to trying just one more time. Choose to stay sober for just one more day. That’s how you never give up on yourself, and I encourage you to step into it with resilience.

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. 

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As much as we try to prime our brains to see the positive in the world, the reality is there’s a lot of bad stuff that’s unavoidable. We naturally are exposed to various forms of trauma and take on pain that leaves physical and emotional scars in our beings. Our natural evolutionary response to this is acting like it’s not there. To push it down and repress it so that other people aren’t aware of it. But that tendency was developed as an old survival instinct, and in modern life it is now out of pace. The unfortunate consequence is that when pain is not acknowledged, it bottles up and begins to grow deeper roots that inhibit you in many ways.

Repressed emotions can overwhelm your psychology and dominate your perception. It can act as a lens that you see everything through, molding facts and circumstances to fit within the context of your emotions. This happens as a mix of a self-fulfilling prophecy and confirmation bias, and it can be so strong and innate that you don’t even recognize it’s happening.

So if you want to overcome the grip pain and trauma has on you, and reclaim control of your reality, you need to do something really difficult. You need to allow yourself to feel the pain. When you bring it to the surface it can be processed in a healthier way, and while the events that brought that pain will never go away, you can change the way you relate with it. There’s an expression “If you want to heal a wound, you need to feel a wound” and it’s much easier said than done. But the obstacle is the way. You cannot go around matters like this, you must go through, and getting vulnerable with yourself and others allows you to begin healing the pains you’ve been carrying.

This is heavier than usual, and if you feel up for it I want to ask you to reflect on this question - Is there something negative that has happened to you that you haven’t allowed yourself to feel?

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. 

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One of the most important things we can do in life is set expectations, for ourselves and for others. Setting expectations has a few critical benefits.

First, it allows you to live with more intention because it leverages advanced decision making. The reality is we often know what we want to be doing, we want to work out, eat healthy, make that phone call, but our present emotional and physical state encourages us to do otherwise. But setting expectations reminds us of what our best self wants to do, not what our mind is telling us in context.

The second thing it does is it creates accountability to act in accordance with your expectations. When you don’t it creates cognitive dissonance, which is simply a tension in your mind between what you expected and what happened in reality.

Taking a unique spin on this, I want to encourage you to think about how you can reset expectations. Sometimes, when you set expectations you don’t have enough information to determine what you truly want. You know what you think you want, but when the time comes it could be different.

For example, let’s say that you’re out at a birthday party and you decided you only want to spend 2 hours there because you have a lot of errands to do. But then say that a friend you haven’t seen in ages turns up to the party right as you’re leaving. Is it worth dismissing your commitment to only stay for two hours to spend time with your friend? Maybe, maybe not, and that’s where you need to reset expectations in real-time.

The value of setting expectations is it brings more consciousness to your decision making. It helps you make choices that align with what you want from a wider lens than simply responding to the moment. Having made a judgment in advance then gives you a point of reference to make new decisions against, with new information, to evaluate how things have changed.

Is this a slippery slope? Sure, it could be, but life is unpredictable and it’s important to be able to accommodate spontaneity and opportunity when it arises. What’s important is that you address this spontaneity with intentionality and stay in the habit of doing what serves you most.

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. 

As a society we’ve been taught to think in a very linear way. When it comes to problem solving, the school system has told us that there is one right answer. In order to get the question right we reproduce a formula that we’ve learned in the past and apply it to the data set in front of us. Creative thinking was reserved for the arts and more expressive tasks. But as we’ve gained experience over the years, not only have we learned that there often isn't any right answer, but there are many potential and viable answers. Through this we’ve learned to appreciate creativity in problem solving to discover new ways of doing something well that are more efficient or higher quality.

This is called divergent thinking and it’s best represented in this thought experiment. Answer the question - What can you do with a brick? Well of course you can build with it, you can use it as a door stop, you can pin a piece of paper down with it. You can even get really creative and say that you can use it like chalk and draw with it. But then even expanding upon that, what if you could make the brick different sizes, different shapes, different materials? That opens up a whole new world of potential uses.

Divergent thinking is realizing that there are multiple perfectly suitable solutions to one problem, or reasonable answers to a question. Instead of being fixed in the normal, traditional ways of doing something, you can be an innovator that gets resourceful and creative.

When it comes to the problems you encounter in your life, I encourage you to try divergent thinking. Let your imagination run and think outside the box, you never know what you might come up with! To help that integrate today let me ask you a question to ponder - What should you be approaching with more creativity in your life?

If you’re 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 prompts that help you get to know yourself better and build a more meaningful life every day.