Self Improvement Daily Podcast

If you really want to start tapping into what’s next, what’s available to you, and what’s possible for you, you need to solve the problems in your life. Ryan Holiday describes this as “the obstacle is the way”. Essentially he argues that you become someone new when you overcome something big, and that we must not back down from the challenge.

This is true in our personal lives and in business. On the personal side, it’s all about how you approach the problem. So you’re not exercising as much as you’d like to or managing your time very well. You’re not being fair and compassionate with the people that are most important to you...

You can avoid the problem and act like it’s not there, which will cause you to get the same outcomes. Or you can create an action-plan, face off with the problem, and resolve it. This might unearth a new problem that needs to be solved next, but at least it’s a step forward in making progress on the issue. All you can ever ask for is progress.

In business, we’re literally taught that the best business ideas solve the biggest problems. Our mission is to find something that is so painful, frustrating, inconvenient, or scary and help it be less so through a product or service. The bigger the problem, the more people are willing to pay to solve it and the greater the opportunity.

Solving problems is more of a mindset than a means to an end. There will always be problems in life, and if there aren’t, then your mind will find one. So either you can be paralyzed by the idea that things aren’t how you want them to be, or you can work toward reconciling your problems so that the nature of them changes. 

When you get consistent with conquering challenges they’ll start to have less power over you because you’ve proven that you are greater than them. This means that the visceral pull they have on you is weaker, and they’ll affect the quality of your life less. And furthermore, it means that you can reach that much higher and tap into even better opportunities because you’ve built resilience, conviction, and resolve.

Let’s go back to one of the most ancient and profound traditions in the history of mankind - Hinduism. A defining expression featured in the Vedas, one of the core tenets of Hinduism, has shaped human behavior for thousands of years. And that term is “Namaste”

In essence, “Namaste” is a greeting, but the depth of the greeting is so much more than just a simple “hello”. It goes beyond acknowledging someone’s physical presence and communicates the presence of their soul. “Namaste” has evolved over time to mean “the light in me honors the light in you.”

That’s what’s really happening when we say “hello” to someone else. Each person is bringing their full story to each moment, and that needs to be recognized. Unfortunately we don’t naturally see the world in that amount of depth because we’re too occupied with everything else going on, and it’s not a priority.

But this is what it means to be more present with people. It’s not just about being there physically, but to be attuned and available emotionally and spiritually with them as well. “Namaste” is a simple reminder that there’s so much more to the encounter than meets the eye.

I recently had an experience that relates to this concept. I attended an event through Heroic, a personal development platform I lean on for my own growth, and we started the event with a connection exercise. After the initial awkwardness of allowing yourself to see and be seen by others, we were able to reach that next level of connection. It was “Namaste”. I felt genuine love and appreciation for people who were complete strangers, giving them all the love I had ad celebrating them as if they were family. It was a remarkable experience.

I share all of that to show how this is already within us. We’re more than capable of tapping into a deeper sense of richness and connection to others, but we hardly get to engage in it. But with a little more intention you can add a lot of quality to your life!

I believe we are in a crisis. A crisis where many people feel alone, unworthy, and incapable of doing anything about it. I want to really help add some perspective to this, but first I need to make a detour to provide some context.

As social creatures we often find ourselves in very complex social dynamics. Evolutionarily it was advantageous to constantly be comparing yourself to the group so that you can maintain your spot in the tribe and ultimately, increase your chances of survival. This is the role of the ego, to always be evaluating your position relative to others.

Well things have changed quite a bit since those early days and now we find that some of our instincts are out of place. This makes it harder to live self-assuredly because people are acting on their ego to make them feel better at the expense of others. Unfortunately, this might even affect you. You’ve seen this first-hand if you’ve been bullied, harassed, threatened, or experienced other forms of unfair treatment.

But here’s the hard truth to it. You’re human too. You have the same instincts that can negatively affect other people when they’re not controlled. I’m sure you can think of a time when you lost your temper or unfairly treated someone else. Nobody is immune to this and through your own self-work you are improving the way you relate with these impulses and urges (among other things).

Alright, so where am I getting with this? We’re only in control of what's happening in our own head. We receive what other people are doing around us and to us and we put out our own energy that then affects others. So in both cases, improving in this area involves you and only you.

So for someone who wants to feel less alone, more worthy, and more empowered… Who wants to be more accepted by others and less judged… You need to be better about accepting others and judging others less. You must tame your own ego and establish the standard for your own life because that will help you enforce what you’re willing to tolerate.

To transform the way other people treat you, you must transform yourself. Be more graceful with others and you’ll have more grace with yourself. Find the spark in someone else and it’ll help you find the spark within yourself. You’ll be amazed to see how quickly life changes when you change the eyes you are seeing everything through. As Wayne Dyer puts it, “change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”

How unfortunate would it be if you realized you were living a fraction of the life you were capable of? That you were letting incredible moments pass you by instead of being fully immersed in the richness of every moment. Life is meant to be lived completely, and some of your best times come when your heart is pumping in your chest, you feel a nervous anticipation about what’s going to happen, you're gritting at the pain of physical exertion, or that you’re on the verge of triumph (or failure).

If you want to make the absolute most out of life, you cannot live a diluted version of it. Life can be so sweet if only you allow yourself to taste it, but many people water-down their life because they’re being held back by the fear of what might happen. That someone will disagree with you, or they won’t like you. That you’ll lose all of your money. That your reputation is at stake. Or worst yet, that you might disappoint yourself if you try your best and realize you weren’t actually good enough.

While all of those things are real points to consider, what I’ve found to be true in my life (and something I’ve validated in the story of many incredible people) - The greatest payoffs of life require that you expose yourself to the biggest risks. The upside of a business is proportional to the risk you take on. The ecstasy of falling in love means that your heartbreak will hurt that much more. 

There are real consequences to your decisions and they can cause pain, but I think it’s better to allow yourself to feel both the good and the bad rather than nothing at all. And to further complicate things, your negativity bias defaults you to think discouragingly about all the things that can go wrong rather than optimistically about how great it would be if things go right. This makes the risk and fear that much stronger, and it holds us back that much more.

There’s an expression in baseball that goes “You can’t let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” I think that summarizes it well. You’ve got to put yourself in the game and take a big swing. It’s in those moments of wonder and uncertainty where everything is on the edge. It’s when you feel most alive, and I want you to feel that way more often. 

This is so much easier said than done. Many of us don’t have a tolerance for the risk or a sense of self-belief that gives us the confidence to put ourselves out there as consistently as we’d like to. That’s where I believe the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge can support you. In the 21 Day challenge, that starts right when the New Year begins, you’ll create momentum in your life that will help you to take more risks and succeed in ways you never imagined possible. You’ll have the confidence to take action through negativity bias and really squeeze the juice that life has to offer you. If you’re ready to have an unrestrained, unstoppable 2023, click the link here to sign up for the challenge.

Let’s make an important distinction between consistency and frequency. While they might seem like redundant terms, I believe there is something critically different about them that needs to be highlighted.

First let’s talk about consistency. Being consistent is about reliably doing something in fixed intervals. Succeeding with being consistent means you follow through on certain tasks or activities without fail over a long period of time. As we know, it’s the consistent completion of core activities that generates the end results we’re looking for. Per Darren Hardy’s book “The Compound Effect”, small things compound over time to create really big things. But that process cannot be interrupted, and consistency is required to make it so.

Then there’s frequency. Frequency is about the amount that you do something. If you do something with high-frequency that means you do it every day, or multiple times in a day even. Being frequent with your behavior means you get into action often, almost repetitively.

The important difference to note - Consistency does not require frequency and frequency does not require consistency. You can be consistent with a workout routine but that does not mean you need to to it every day. You can do it once a week if that’s the timetable you’ve established you want to be consistent with. Alternatively you can frequently do  pushups as an energy management break multiple times throughout the day, but you don't to do it every day.

Another example, you can frequently make calls to the people you care most about but when you add intentionality about how much you want to be reaching out, then you can be accountable to doing that consistently.

Again, consistency does not require frequency. In fact the enemy to consistency is often frequency because we try to stay consistent with expectations that are too high. Ultimately being consistent is about identifying the amount of something that serves you and following through on that amount. Oftentimes that minimum viable amount is actually less than you thought you needed.

Another way of putting it - Being intentional with your consistency allows you to strike the right balance in your life. It's the right amount of days to commit to exercising, or the balance between hours spent on work, with loved ones, and in your passions. Striking the balance that best meets your needs allows you to achieve holistic life harmony so that your responsibilities don’t exist in conflict with each other, but rather they are strengthened by your consistency in all areas of your life.

The best way I know to hone in this balance and get consistent on the fundamentals is to implement your own self improvement operating system. It's the mechanism that makes it all go. Not only can I walk you through exactly how that something like that will work for you, but also I’ll teach you how to be more self-disciplined so that you can really be consistent on doing the things that are most important to you. If you want to start maximizing your potential and leveraging consistency in 2023, I encourage you to register for the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge where I guarantee in just 21 days you’ll build the foundation for a high-performing, high-achieving, and balanced life.

Lets make 2023 the year where you really start becoming everything you’re capable of being. And I promise you, the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge is your start. Learn more about the 21 day challenge that will kickstart your next level of growth right now!

In reading Ryan Holliday’s newest book “Discipline Is Destiny” I encountered a really interesting misconception. When you normally think of temperance, you think of abstaining from something that is a vice or an outlet. Historically the idea of temperance is closely associated with prohibition when alcohol was outlawed in the United States through the 1920s.

Holliday takes an even older approach to temperance and uses the original definition practiced by the stoics. Temperance has nothing to do with eliminating something from your life and everything to do with striking the right, best-fit balance with it.

So what does this mean? Temperance isn’t about never drinking alcohol, but it is about only drinking for the right occasions and under the right conditions. It’s not to say that scrolling social media or playing video games is a bad thing, but rather that those things should be done in moderation to meet genuine needs and desires.

Benjamin Franklin agrees with this and says “Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation”. Temperance is the first of his 13 virtues because he understands the effects practicing temperance has on your life. It emphasizes intentionality in every choice you make, ensuring that it’s being done for the right reasons, and builds the habit of self-discipline to follow through on other virtues.

Temperance is about setting yourself up for success by acknowledging the honest balance you hope to achieve. Every piece of your life is meant to be in harmony with every other part, allowing you to create a fully-harmonious existence. This will allow you to immerse yourself in the things you enjoy doing without guilt, come to terms with how much you exercise or meditate without judgment, and optimize every part of your life so you can show up as your best self to others.

Is that a balance you want to strike in 2023? Where you're at your best for yourself, the people you care about, and the mission that you serve? If so you need to install a self improvement operating system. It’s not enough to keep learning about how to make the most out of your life is a start, or have good intentions but no follow through, you need to apply it, and that’s exactly what a self improvement operating system gives you.

If you want to make 2023 the year you look back on where everything changed for the better, I got you! I’ll share the exact operating system I’ve created with you so that you can be more productive, energized, and fulfilled!

There’s a man I met in college that dedicated his life to understanding the way different people relate with compassion. He would literally stand on a street corner having conversations with people about it to refine his definition. 

Being compassionate is about being kind and caring toward others. It’s being empathetic to what they might be going through and trying to be there to emotionally support them. The world would be a better place if we saw the depth of humanity that exists in each one of us more often. Every person you encounter has a life-time of experiences, challenges, dreams, and setbacks. As Rumi puts it, “you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop.”

Compassion is incredibly powerful in that it helps people be seen and respected for who they are. This idea leads nicely into today’s positivity quote - “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.”

When someone is upset or frustrated about something, learn more about what might be causing those feelings and hold space for them to share. When someone is going through a personal tragedy, remind them that their well-being matters just as much as anyone else’s. Instead of quickly making judgments about who they are and what they’re experiencing, approach people with more curiosity and unbiased presence.

Simply being acknowledged, heard, and seen can give someone a greater sense of meaning and ultimately, happiness. Each person is beautifully unique and deserving. They’ve been through a lot. Seeing the goodness within them, with patience, goes a long way in communicating that someone else cares about them. This is practicing compassion.

And you’ll find that just as much as your compassion impacts them, it impacts you. That’s the good thing about doing good - it’s always a win-win!

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…)

I apologize if I push your buttons today but I’m doing it out of love and I promise it’ll be worth it. I want to know, what irritates you?

What are those things that frustrate you and hijack your focus and mood? These things that make your heart race and create anxiety for you are actually a great source for personal learning.

Maybe what irritates you is something that you’re afraid to admit is true about yourself. Almost like being a hypocrite - You complain when people are running late but you very often run late yourself, or someone makes an unhealthy choice and you judge them but you don’t have the best diet yourself. 

The comparison that can come out of this can sometimes be a projection of your own insecurities and how you fear you are viewed by others. So psychologically it helps you feel more at peace to find evidence where other people are violating something you’re afraid might be true about yourself (and unwilling to admit it).

Also, tapping into your irritations might help you affirm your standards. If someone else’s choices or behavior irritates you it might be because that thing is just so important to you, and it pains you to think about the consequences of compromising it. So instead of irritation being an avoidance mechanism, it can actually be a feedback signal telling you where your alignment and integrity lands on the subject.

In both cases, your irritation has everything to do with you and nothing to do with them. It’s your perception of their behavior that irritates you, not the behavior itself. The irritation is you reacting to things and not the thing itself.

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…)

A lot of people have a hard time setting boundaries but it's extremely important to do. The reason it can be hard is because it feels selfish and even rude at times in the way you need to interact with people and enforce them. It can get uncomfortable communicating your boundaries to someone and it might even feel like you’re creating confrontation in doing so. 

But when you do establish boundaries for others, what ends up happening is you protect yourself. It helps you maintain certain things as a priority and honor the previous commitments you’ve made. It aids you in removing distractions, temptations, and other circumstances that pull you away from what you’ve determined to be most important. For example, telling people at work that you won’t respond outside work hours is a boundary. Letting someone know that you don’t want to talk to them if they keep complaining is a boundary.

Having boundaries doesn’t only keep things out of your life, it helps you to stay in it. They give you a clear and objective criteria around the things that you simply aren’t willing to consider doing. Not drinking alcohol on weekdays is a boundary. Not watching TV until you’ve finished your mindfulness practice for the day is a boundary. Boundaries are dynamic and can adjust once you get some good feedback, but that adjustment happens best after the boundary has been enforced rather than allowing yourself to make an exception in real-time.

Every part of this process requires something really fundamental - that you’re honest. You need to know what you want and stand up for it. That needs to be represented in the way you invest your time and you must guard it so that you don’t get derailed. This is both in setting boundaries with other people and establishing them for yourself. 

It’s easy to build the expectations, protocols, and standards of your life around what already is. However, when you really start to understand what you want and disrupt the current pattern you need to enforce that change by implementing stronger boundaries.

So now let me flip this on you - What boundary do you need to set to stay accountable to the life you want to live?

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…)