I’m sure you’ve experienced a time when you’ve been in chronic pain. It’s uncomfortable, limiting, and exhausting. It puts a heaviness on top of everything, making everything harder to do because of the physical and emotional energy it takes to get yourself moving.

Something that is less physically debilitating is a toothache. But if you’ve ever had one, you know how consuming it is. It takes up your entire existence because you cannot ignore it or act like it’s not there. 

When you have a toothache the only thing on your mind is "Man, I wish I didn’t have a toothache! Things would be so good if only I didn’t have a toothache.” The crazy part is, all of the time you spent in your life without a toothache, you never thought twice about it. You didn’t even notice it. But now that you no longer have a pain-free mouth, it’s what you want most, and you realize how much you took it for granted.

The toothache is a metaphor for many things in life. What blessings do we pass by every day that we’ve grown accustomed to just being part of our lives? Running water, a garbage person who comes and hauls your trash away, your ability to walk, speak, and think. Your ability to call a parent, kiss your partner goodnight, drive to get groceries. Like a toothache takes away a painless mouth, imagine if any of what I just mentioned was taken away from you. Your quality of life would be different and you’d be envious of how good you had it.

That is how good we have it right now! We’re living in these privileges and blessings. It’s incredible, but we don’t think about it. But the toothache reminds us that things can change quickly, and we should be better at appreciating what we have before it’s gone.

Do you want to live blindly and passively, unaware of the good fortune you live with? Or would you prefer to exist in a state of gratitude and appreciation for the quality of life you have? To make that tangible for you today, take a moment to reflect on this - What have I taken for granted my entire life, and how can I acknowledge it right now?

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Take this moment to pause and see how great you’re doing! In self improvement we’re constantly looking for ways to strengthen our mindset, hold more self-love, strike a better balance, whatever it might be. And often it’s hard to know that your efforts are working. But trust me, whether you see it in the moment or not, things are getting better.

Just because you don’t have a measurable or noticeable outcome does not mean it’s not working. This is because of something called invisible progress. Often you need to invest in building toward something for a little bit before anything changes about it. A great example of this is boiling water. When water is heated up to boiling temperature it doesn’t immediately start vaporizing.

The physics of this is fascinating. What happens is there are additional invisible bonds and forces between water molecules that need to be broken in order for liquid water to change into a gas. So for a time, with extra heat it appears as though the temperature is not changing nor is the water starting to boil. It looks like nothing is happening. But in reality the heat is supplying energy to complete a process that is invisible to us.

Similarly, the reps you put in at the gym might not show physically on your body right away. The ways you limit technology usage around bedtime might not lead immediately to feeling more energized the next day. But does that mean it’s all doing nothing? Of course not. Over time, if you stay consistent through it, you’ll start to get noticeable results.

Your job in this is to trust the process. Know that you’re investing time and energy into things that are worthwhile. The overwhelming reason people try new things and don’t get results is because they didn’t give it enough of a chance to work. But with time, it will work, and you’ll be so glad you pushed through!

Let’s wrap this up by reflecting on this question - What can you be doing to make more progress in 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…)

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Do you feel busy right now? Like when you look at the week do you see an overwhelm of meetings, commitments, errands, plans, and responsibilities? Not just your plans but also the plans that involve others in your care and life? It so I’m with you, but it’s not necessarily how we want things to be or what's best for us.

When you think of being busy that means you already have so much on your plate that you don’t have the space to take on anything else. This means that you’re spending time maintaining things how they are, doing just enough to keep your head above water. A growth oriented life involves doing new things, new ways, with new points of excitement and challenge. Being too busy to take any of that on prevents you from creating that growth.

Or when you do add something even though you don’t have the space for it, which we do all the time, it will integrate with the wrong energy. Instead of being a source of excitement this new commitment immediately becomes a source of stress, and you immediately associate it as something that is making your life more difficult.

But why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we choose to live in a way that is overly demanding and busy? It all relates back to our basic human needs to belong, to be liked, and to be appreciated. We live in an achievement-rewarding culture, and for us to gain the acceptance of others we need to live in a way that fits the mold and is worthy of their praise and attention. So we stretch ourselves to do and achieve even when it’s not the best thing for us.

But the more influential piece to this is our ego. This also relates to our need to belong but addresses it in a different way. We’ve learned to associate what we do with what we’re worth, and in order to communicate our value to others we need to show that our time is valuable… So valuable that we don’t have much of it! So we choose to be busy and less available so that others value time with us more. This loop for external validation is completely driven by our ego.

Now the consequence to this is pretty significant. Being busy means we have less time to do things. Having less time to do things means we can’t take on new things that help us grow. If we’re not growing then we don’t have the momentum and excitement we need to pursue our dreams. And if we don’t pursue our dreams then we may look back at life and have regrets about how we spent our time.

Be busy doing the things you enjoy doing, of course, but that’s not all you’re busy doing. To make this real let me ask you this question - What are you busy doing that you don’t want to do or need to do?

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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?

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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.

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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.