Self Improvement Daily Podcast

Personal development is an art and a science. The science comes in with what we can observe in the physical, 3-dimensional reality we live in. The art is more faith-based. We can’t possibly perceive all of the forces that are influencing us and shaping our lives, and leveraging some of those powers is more of an art form. I mean we can’t see infrared light and we know that exists, so there has to be many other factors at play that we can’t perceive.

I’m not getting too woo-woo or spiritual today, but I did want to show one way that the art connects to the science, and that’s by talking about vision boards. Featured in the book and movie “The Secret”, and other resources talking about manifestation and ‘the law of attraction’, many of the most successful people in the world talk about creating a vision board. Basically a vision board is a series of images and scenes that represent the future you want to have, and your practice is to put yourself in the setting and experience success as if you’ve already achieved it.

One important detail is that your mind does not know the difference between the imagined and reality. So with frequent visits to your vision board your, brain is influenced by the reality you’re imagining and it begins to make it more familiar to you in your life. This then translates into the present day because the brain prefers to do what is familiar, and if these big goals that you have are becoming more familiar to you, then your brain will start pulling you in that direction out of comfort.

This is the process of manifestation. Your subconscious mind is on the lookout for ways to make your vision a reality, and as you go about your day you’re more likely to do the things that will lead to new and better results. Priming your Reticular Activating System, the part of your brain that dictates your focus, you will see opportunities and possibilities that you didn’t before because that’s what your brain is looking for.

To quickly summarize - Vision boards help you simulate a future vision for yourself, which your subconscious mind perceives as reality. With repetition this new reality becomes more familiar and influences the Reticular Activating System in the brain to focus on things that would help to make this new reality present truth. So as spiritual and pseudoscience as it might seem, the effects of vision boards have a rooted base in neurobiology.

Knowing this information is one thing, but applying it is another. If you are trying to implement but you’re wasting a lot of time and energy doing things without knowing if it's working, then you’re leaving a lot of potential unfulfilled. If you want a plan to make real strides forward toward the best version of yourself, this is for you!

It’s natural in life to encounter times when you just don’t feel like doing it. When you’re low on motivation, you’re tired, and you have no desire to push yourself. This probably happens more often than you’d like to admit. Long days of work and responsibilities are exhausting and it can be really hard to get yourself up and moving.

We’ve all been there - It’s skipping that workout you planned on. It’s putting off the errands and to-dos for another day to give you time to take it easy. It’s glossing over routines and rhythms that you’ve put in place but don’t do nearly enough. I’m not going to act like it’s easy to change and do all of these things at the snap of a finger, but I am going to share with you a game-changing understanding about it. 

When you least want to is when you most need to.

The times when you feel the most tired, unmotivated, and uninspired are the instances when you need to be the most disciplined. That’s because succeeding in these moments, and following through on the things you told yourself you’re going to do, leads to a disproportionate amount of mental development. Working out when you’re really tired shows you how truly committed you are to your health. Completing that list of errands, even when every fiber of your being doesn’t want to, proves to you how capable you are. These moments when you overcome your emotions and take intentional action deliver extra benefits.

That’s because the language of your subconscious mind is your behavior. At all times your subconscious mind is observing the things you do and uses that information to create your identity. Every time you stay accountable to your intentions serves as proof of the type of person that you are. And the instances when you stay accountable in emotional circumstances, when you’re more likely to make excuses and exceptions, it serves as extra meaningful proof that further solidifies the desired identity.

All of that to say, when you find yourself in situations where your will-power and consistency are really being put to the test, you have an opportunity to make a statement to your subconscious mind. When your tired and emotional, when the task involves obstacles and it isn’t easy, that’s when you must persevere. When you least want to is when you most need to.

If you want to be more disciplined and consistently do what’s most important to you, then click here to schedule a call with me right now so you can be more productive, feel more fulfilled, and renew your sense of confidence and belief in yourself.

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A couple weeks ago I was making a long drive, deep into the desert in inland San Diego on my way to a weekend transformational retreat, and I needed to stop for gas. It was almost 100 degrees out and this was the only gas station for probably another 10 miles. It felt like the middle of nowhere. So here I am, pulling off into this tiny town to get some gas. There was a gas station and a burger joint, and not much else.

So I’m there minding my own business and I see this man walking toward me, wearing a bright orange construction vest. He’s dripping in sweat, probably because he’d been doing some heavy lifting and hard work in the heat. But this man had a skip in his step, whistling his way through his day. He saw me from across the parking lot and gave me a big wave and a shout “Having a good day?” I responded with an enthusiastic “Yes sir!”, and he said “Alright, alright!”

In that moment I thought here we were, in the middle of nowhere and this guy is having a brutal day but he’s the happiest person I’ve encountered in a long time. I don’t know how his day will end or where he calls home. I don’t know what his circumstances are. But it doesn't matter because he has made the choice to be happy.

It reminded me of something fundamental. Happiness is in your mind. Your perception is simply the meaning you assign to your circumstances. It’s all about the story you tell yourself. This man could have felt sorry for himself and allow the discomfort of working hard on a hot afternoon to ruin his today. But he chose to find joy in what he was doing. He created his own meaning in the circumstances and chose to have a positive experience.

Just like him, you can do this in every moment of your day. It’s within your control. But I don’t want to discredit how difficult your circumstances might be, and the value of negative emotions, but if you can choose to see the bright side of things more often you’ll live a brighter life.

If you want to hear more about my transformational retreat experience, and what I’ve been working on in my personal development, I made a video about it you can watch here!

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Author Greg McKeown outlines a really interesting trend that he calls the Clarity Paradox. The punchline is, when you start achieving success it becomes your greatest source of failure. He describes this paradox in 4 phases.

Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success.

Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.

Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.

Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

To walk through this a touch slower… Phase 1 is when you become very clear on what you want it leads to success. This is because you can hyperfocus your efforts and attention on a narrow target, and you have clear criteria about what’s in alignment and what’s not. This helps you concentrate and creates leverage for you to do more effective work.

Phase 2 is about the consequence of being successful. People will start asking to work with you and wanting a piece of your momentum. This leads to a whole new frontier of opportunities that you’ll have to make decisions on, which is exciting but ultimately, distracting.

That’s what leads to phase 3. When we have more opportunities to choose from, and we’re so excited about our recent successes, we take on some of those new projects. This then diffuses your efforts because you have more going on, which leads to phase 4…

Diffused efforts undermine the clarity that led to your success in the first place. The new opportunities, and your pursuing those opportunities, inhibits you from performing as well as you could in the core activities, which is required to attain the true success you are seeking.

The interesting part about all of this is that it’s predictable. It’s human nature to want to jump onto new things and expand your scope when the opportunity arises. It’s fun and validating to be presented new opportunities and new things. But as this paradox clearly articulates, this leads to your demise, and your success becomes your primary source of future failure.

So what are you to do about this? You need to maintain focus. Limit your scope and pursuit to the core value drivers that you determine are most important to your purpose. You need to live in phase 1. This is easier said than done, so it helps to have a clearly defined vision and a decision making criteria that helps you think logically about new opportunities rather than emotionally. 

This holds true at work, in relationships, in hobbies and interests, in skills you’re developing. Once you start having success that’s a sign to double down on what’s working rather than pursue what might. It’s not sexy, but it certainly is effective.

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.

At some point you’ve probably wanted something so much in life that you’d do anything for it, and it’s quite possible you didn't get it. It’s frustrating and deflating to fall short of what you want, but if you let those moments define you then you’ll continue to be disappointed in life.

Maybe you faced some serious difficulties and you just couldn’t do it. Maybe the timing wasn’t right or things happened that were beyond your control that prevented you from achieving it. Or maybe you succeeded in accomplishing a version of it, but your priorities or vision changed a bit along the way and it compromised the end result. In all of those cases there’s one thing in common that explains why things didn’t go completely according to plan - Resistance. 

Resistance comes in a few forms - Not having strong enough skills causes you to be inefficient, self-sabotage convinces you of things that aren’t true, and sometimes you just need to put in the time and effort to build enough momentum to get things to click. You must overcome resistance to create the results you want in life. You must overcome to become.

To achieve anything in life you need to be resilient and consistent. Resilience helps you to have a positive attitude when facing resistance, allowing you to stay optimistic and hopeful that you will succeed. This gives you the fuel you need to take consistent action, which will in time create the results you desire. And what happens through consistency is you get more reps to build the skills, you prove to yourself over and over again that you’re better than your limiting beliefs, and you feel confident staying in true alignment with your original intentions. But you won’t have the presence or motivation to stay consistent if you don’t have the right mindset.

This is the core message in the book “The Obstacle Is The Way” by Ryan Holiday - If you want to succeed and grow in life, you must attack your problems head on. The only way through is through. And when you overcome the obstacles, challenges, and resistance in front of you, you become the person capable of defeating similar obstacles in the future.

If you’re looking to build more resilience, consistency, and discipline into your life, I’d love to chat with you and tell you more about how I might be able to help. Find a time that works for you to chat here!

As much as we’d like to think we’re in control of our lives, we’re really not. A factor that dictates just about everything you experience is your environment. A physical environment could make it easier to access healthy or unhealthy food. A social environment makes certain decisions more or less acceptable. But what I want to focus on today is our emotional environment. Your current emotional state puts a lens on everything you experience and whether you realize it or not, influences every facet of your life.

You know how people get hangry? That’s because when someone is hungry it affects their emotions and they become more agitated, irritable, and unpleasant to be around. This is a relatable example of how emotions influence your rational mind. This influence is unconscious and it affects you in ways you’re not even aware of.

A few weekends ago I did a weekend retreat in the desert that was life-changing for me, and that’s because I was hyper-aware of everything going on around me. This caused me to question everything I was feeling to get to the root of what was really motivating it. I’m not going to go into much more detail here, but if you want to hear more about my experience you can watch a video I made about it here. The reason I bring this up is because I discovered how quickly you can change your experience when you become aware of how you’re feeling.

Awareness is all about making the unconscious conscious. In other words, through awareness you can start to see how things have been influencing you and, if it’s not serving you, start doing the work to change it. So when it comes to your emotional state, the more consciousness you can have around the experience of feeling it, the more easily you will be able to change it. Most people wouldn’t choose to feel upset, defeated, insecure or angry, but at times they do. The best way to move through those emotions in a healthy way is to execute this two step process.

First, observe the emotions. Acknowledge that it’s your current state and don’t reject the fact that you feel a certain way. That will only bury the emotions. Then once you’ve done that, you can provide new meaning to the experience or redirect your focus toward another more preferred emotion.

You can recite this to yourself: “I have been choosing X emotion (that’s you observing and acknowledging), I now choose Y emotion (the redirected focus)." Give that a try the next time you notice yourself feeling agitated or emotional in ways that you don’t want to be.

Again, if you want to hear more about my experience at the retreat, the moments that brought me to tears and the breakthroughs I had, then click the link here to check out that video I made.

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Alright you read the title... Don’t rule out this concept and give me the time to explain! We’ve been conditioned to believe that being selfish is a bad thing. We’re taught that being selfish means you only care about yourself, that you don’t consider others, and that you don’t have anyone’s interests in mind other than your own. I agree that living that way is a bad thing, but that is not the only outcome of being selfish. I want to introduce you to some alternative ways of thinking.

First, let’s think about selfishness through the lens of its more acceptable counterpart - Selflessness. Selflessness is about being of service to others and truly caring about improving the quality of other people’s lives. Well, aren’t you a person? Is it possible that you can be of service to yourself? For some reason we don’t think that counts as being of service, but you deserve to be taken care of and happy just like anyone else. And you have a lot to do with making that your reality.

Continuing on this thread, at times you need to be more selfish to be selfless. You’ve heard of the expressions “You have to fill up your own cup before you can fill up someone else’s”, and “Put your oxygen mask on before assisting someone else with theirs.” What do those mean? Your capacity to be of service requires that you invest in yourself so that you have more to give.

So with that in mind, don’t rule out opportunities to be selfish. Enforce your own boundaries to protect your needs. Take someone up on that favor they off-handedly mentioned. Take the last bite of food off the plate. Be more selfish in these moments and don’t feel bad about it. 

You know why? 

Because you know the bigger picture. You know your intentions are to give more than you get. You know how much you do to help others. These small moments of selfishness are in support of your larger mission to be selfless, and your ability to do so requires that you invest in yourself and get your needs met.

Now don’t take this out of context and give yourself a hall pass to be selfish whenever you want, but hopefully this shifts your perspective a bit about how to make sure you’re taking care of yourself in service of 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.

Seriously think about this for a second… Think about some of the best moments of your life. Major life events, major breakthroughs when your hard work starts to pay off, incredible times of connection and discovery. That’s what life's all about! These moments make us feel emotional, filled with love and fulfillment, and we remember them as some of the best memories we’ve ever made.

But what if I told you that the best is still yet to be? That those moments where you thought it could never get better, you’ve only tasted a few of those and you have so many more to go? The reality is any day could be the best day of your life, and it’s something to really look forward to.

Not only is this a real possibility for you, but it’s a mindset. Those who choose to see positivity in the world will find that they’re blessed with more positivity. Those who choose to believe in themselves, and that they’re capable of achieving whatever is on their heart are more likely to achieve it. Our perception is merely our lens into the world and we get to choose the glasses we wear.

Something I really admire about my girlfriend Irene is that she chooses for things to be “the best thing ever”. We literally need to use a scale of 5-15 instead of 1-10 because an average thing for her is, in her mind, a 10. Of course it’s highly unlikely that everything is truly the best ever, every time, but when she looks into the world she sees a whole lot more good than someone else because that’s what she’s looking for.

So that’s my encouragement for you today. Don’t be stuck looking back at your past and reflecting on the good old days. Create a better future for yourself by deciding that it will be, and watch it come into fruition in ways you could never have imagined.

Have you been feeling stuck for a while and need a small-win that ignites your self-confidence and inspires you to dream bigger? Start becoming the best version of yourself with the Better Habits Playbook.  

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

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