The ultimate force that governs the way we unconsciously interact in our life is our identity. When we have the self-image that we are a certain type of person, or do things a certain type of way, it guides our daily decision making in invisible and unnoticeable ways.

This is commonly accepted in personal development teachings - It’s the reason why someone who says “I don’t smoke cigarettes” is way more likely to avoid smoking than someone who says “I’m not smoking tonight.” The former is based on who they are and the latter is based on what they do.

But practically how does our identity work to have this all-powerful presence in our lives?

This is a newer philosophy for me, but I believe this happens because we have a need to be consistent with our identity. 

The core function of our subconscious mind is to keep us safe. That means every influence our subconscious has on us comes with this objective.

Our identity, which connects closely with our belief system, is our best understanding of what has best served us in keeping us safe in the past. Looking forward, we naturally use our identity to guide our decision making so that we make choices that are most likely to keep us safe in the future as well.

So when we begin to act inconsistently with our identity, our subconscious mind flags it as threatening because ‘different is dangerous’. During this processing our mind produces an unmet need for integrity and immediately gets to work on changing our behavior or surroundings to meet that need. 

This is really dense so let me take a step back and summarize: The great pull force of our identity works because it creates a need to take action in ways that are consistent with it. And that’s why the unconscious path we take is in alignment with that identity, because our minds are evolutionarily designed to meet our personal needs. 

For example: I have the identity of being self-disciplined. This comes not only from me wanting to feel genuine about practicing what I preach but also from the hours of subconscious priming I’ve completed to install that identity. One of the personal routines I practice every night is keynote speaking. 

On the days when it’s late at night, when I’m tired, or when I really don’t feel like doing it, sometimes I tell myself “I can skip just this once.” But the instant I have that thought, my identity kicks in and creates a need. 

I get anxious, internally I feel like I’m doing something wrong, and I start to convince myself why I can’t skip a day of practice. I feel out of integrity with my choice. It’s a literal example of my identity creating an emotional need that redirects my choices and behavior.

This is why identity is so important and our focus in our self-growth must be about becoming a certain type of person rather than doing certain things. 

Last week I was finishing up a run and as I was walking up to my house my neighbor was outside. He saw me dripping in sweat and panting after a good workout and jokingly said “Pick up the pace next time, will ya?”

I laughed it off and we had some witty banter back and forth, but when I got inside and sat down I had a huge realization that touches on a massive concept in personal development.

There was no part of me that felt threatened by my neighbor’s comments, and I believe that’s because I have such a strong identity about my fitness.

I have always been in really good physical shape and exercised consistently. I also know that I’m a good runner. So I had a mountain of evidence to believe that there wasn’t any truth in my neighbor’s jab at me for not being in good shape, and therefore it didn’t trigger any kind of emotional response.

However, oftentimes a comment like that could bring to light something else that we don’t have so much confidence in, that hits us more personally, and it could lead to a different result. 

Let’s say instead my neighbor made a joke and it triggered something I was more insecure about, like “What, you can’t afford nicer running shoes than that?”

My money mindset and confidence in my ability to provide for my family isn’t as strong. And I probably would’ve been able to joke it off all the same. But it would’ve left a different psychological imprint.

The comment would filter through my belief system and unconsciously bring to light a weakness about me. In an effort to protect myself, my mind would deflect attention away from this weakness and influence a different output. It could have led to me getting defensive and jabbing back about his old car, feeling embarrassed and flustered, or it could have caused me to shut down and not say anything at all. 

We don’t realize it but constantly we face stimuli that kick off unconscious processing. This processing than influences our logical thinking in ways we don’t even realize. And as long as this all stays unconscious there’s nothing we can do about it and it will continue to cause issues behind the scenes. 

There are two things you can do to gain consciousness and therefore, begin to offset the impacts of unconscious mind.

First is to journal and reflect on a daily basis. Get curious on the times where something might have triggered you into an emotional response. Second is, while experiencing a temporary emotional response, getting into the habit of attempting to understand it and what caused it.

I wanted to feature an important life lesson from Albert Einstein where he subtly reframes the foundation that our society is built around.

Something that so many of us value, that we see as the ultimate end goal of everything we do, is to be successful. The tricky thing is, success is different for every person. 

We all have different interests, preferences, and values that are leading us to our own version of living our best lives! But the problem is all of this individuality gets tossed into the same bucket that is labeled as “being successful”. As a result we conform to society’s convention of what success is at the expense of pursuing our own, and wonder why we’re not happy when we get there.

This is what Einstein comments on -"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."

No matter what form it takes, value is the true underlying driver of success.

The business who provides the most value for their clients usually wins in the marketplace by having the most revenue.

Having deep and meaningful relationships are built on the value that you offer one another.

Getting in the best shape of your life helps you feel more confident, which allows you to show up more authentically and deliver the value that only you have to offer.

But as you’d expect, Albert Einstein chose his words closely. "Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." The focus isn’t on what happens as a result, the emphasis is placed on the pursuit, the process. His hypothesis is that we choose to use the lens of being of value to orient our strategies and actions.

The ironic part is, the people who have this value-facing orientation tend to be rewarded the most too.

So how can we be more of value? Let’s use a few other words to make it more concrete.

Helpful. Find ways to be more helpful, and how you can help people overcome the problems they’re facing.

Useful. Be more useful so that the skills that you do have can be applied and contribute to something.

Thoughtful. Being thoughtful about what people might need or want brings to awareness ways to be proactive.

And while I don’t have enough life behind me to state as fact, I am very confident in saying that to the extent that you choose to be of value, you will experience a congruent amount of feelings of success.

If you know me, you know this is what I’m all about. Together we can live an extraordinary life and make an extraordinary impact. And in my opinion, the path to both of those is by being of service and adding value.

If you’ve ever struggled through life more than you would’ve liked, or feel like life has beat you down more times than you’d like to admit, perhaps this perspective shift will inspire you to push forward.

What if life isn’t meant to be easy? As much as our evolutionary nature prefers comfort, what if all of life’s challenges were serving us in maximizing our human experience?

This idea is featured as the second tenet of Brian Johnson and Heroic’s philosophy about antifragility. Essentially, rather than being fragile and susceptible to breaking, or resilient and more resistant to breaking, when something is antifragile it becomes strengthened with strain. Being antifragile means that the only way we become our strongest is by experiencing challenges, and that hardship is an ingredient to becoming all that we can be.

So the perspective shift is - Rather than being avoidant of the hard things that have come and are coming our way, instead we can use them as the fuel that catalyzes us in accessing our greatest potential.

Alex Hormozi says it in a more relatable way. He says “the bigger the dragon, the bigger the hero”. This suggests that our greatness is quantified by the size of the challenge we overcome. A person who overcomes minor hardship is nowhere near as impressive as the person who hit rock bottom and beat all odds to achieve the remarkable.

There’s even a thread of this in Buddhism. A foundational phrase of Buddhism is “life is suffering”, and while the real essence of this thought is more complicated than a 3-word expression, it suggests that it is human nature to experience constant dissatisfaction and discomfort.

If life is hard, good! It’s supposed to be. That doesn’t mean that you’re doing anything wrong… It just means that you’re alive. And if the difficulty of life is something that is outside of your control, then it’s on you to accept that condition and make the most of it however you can.

How? It starts with this perspective. It’s supposed to be challenging. Now step up to the challenge and give it all you’ve got!

One of the expressions many of us learned in class growing up is to “not be a know-it-all”.

A ‘know-it-all’ is someone who has an answer to every question and a comment on every topic. While it’s hard to articulate, there’s a clear difference between being smart and contributing to conversation, and being smart for the sake of sounding smart. ‘Know-it-alls’ are the latter.

A ‘know-it-all’ brings a certain energy to every conversation they’re in. It’s an energy of entitlement and superiority that makes other people feel diminished. The reason I know this is because I am a recovering ‘know-it-all’ myself, and having personal experience with it I know the real forces that drive the behavior.

Being a ‘know-it-all’ is truly an expression of the ego. The ego desperately wants to feel unique, different, and special. It wants to reinforce our sense of worth and value. That’s why I found myself inappropriately inserting my knowledge, and being overly occupied with coming off as smart, as a way of protecting myself from my insecurities.

Interestingly, one of my pet peeves is when people make something about them that is clearly not. I believe that’s because I am projecting from all of the times when I’ve been so focused on coming off as smart rather than really being present in conversation and serving the moment. 

Having said that, it’s still critical that we are abundant with our knowledge and share relevant insights that can be helpful...

So where’s the line? 

It’s all about the intention for sharing. When you contribute something for the purposes of adding value, then it’s authentic. When that’s the case, what naturally happens is we share things that are appropriate for the context. But when a bit of information doesn’t seem to fit the needs of the circumstances, or seems to be motivated by other reasons, that’s why it gets flagged as misguided.  

To have a clear way to know and practice the difference, let me remind you of Steven Covey’s 5th Habit of Highly Effective People - Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Don’t participate in a conversation simply to have something to say back. Come from a place of service, contributing what feels right and is done for the right reasons.

The one thing that leads to more disagreement than anything else, or when considered leads to more alignment than anything else, is context.

Stated simply, the context is all of the information that relates to an event. It’s an estimate on the likelihood of different results, an understanding of benefits and consequences, and the perception that causes us to draw to certain conclusions.

When people share context with each other it leads to more agreement. When people seek more context for themselves they make better decisions. 

Let me share two examples of how important context is:

Bob needs directions to drive to Washington DC so he calls a friend who goes to DC all the time, and he gets confident instructions to take the 95 Freeway North. After a few hours of driving he ends up in Canada. Bob calls his friend back angry about the poor directions. It turns out you can’t miss DC on 95 North coming from Richmond Virginia, but Bob was driving from Philadelphia. The instructions were technically right, the missing context was where Bob was starting his trip from.

Now take this excerpt from Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” - “A cold January day, a forty-three-year-old man was sworn in as the chief executive of his country. By his side stood his predecessor, a famous general who, fifteen years earlier, had commanded his nation’s armed forces in a war that resulted in the defeat of Germany. The young leader was raised in the Roman Catholic faith. You know who I’m describing, right?” 

Most people would assume American President John F Kennedy, but the same set of facts are true for Adolf Hitler. Certain details were omitted, leading to incomplete context and therefore a very incorrect conclusion.

The problem with context is we don’t know what we don’t know. It’s hard to seek out answers to questions you don’t know to ask. That’s why, if you’re serious about making sure that you are more aware of the context in your life, it’s important to have these two things.

First is a performance tracking tool that helps you to see the unbiased, unfiltered truth of your performance rather than the rational story you tell yourself about it. One of the best ways to bring consciousness to what happens unconsciously is getting in the routine of reflection.

Second is a coach. Someone who can see what you don’t from the outside looking in. You know why? Because they don’t have the same context as you do and therefore they can see the same situation differently than you do (and with more objectivity because they’re less emotionally invested in it). “You can’t see the forest for the trees”. A coach tells you what’s in the blindspots of your life, which allows you to make decisions with more context than you’d otherwise have.

if you’ll have me, consider me your coach! My mission is to help you be at your very best.

I don’t usually make this about me but I wanted to let you into my world a little bit. Today is one of the best days of my life and I want to share with you why!

First, I'm getting married today! I’ve been engaged to the love of my life Irene for over a year, and we have friends and family coming from all over the country to celebrate with us! It’s going to be one of the most special, magical, memorable, love-filled days we’ve ever experienced and ever will. We have so many little surprises and details planned to make the day unmistakably ours and I can’t wait to enjoy every moment of it. It’s the beginning of the rest of our lives together!

Also today, our wedding day is on the 6 year anniversary of the day that we met! We planned it that way, but every year we celebrate the anniversary of the day we met by recreating the scenes that led to us meeting. Every year it has served as a reminder of the commitment that we’ve made to each other, and how a small change of plans led to me being introduced to my life partner. Obviously after today the day takes on a whole new, larger meaning with the same sentiment, but we don’t want to lose sight of that!

And completely by coincidence, it just so happens that the day I met Irene is the same day I launched my first episode of the podcast, making Self Improvement Daily officially 6 years old. Happy Birthday podcast! If you would’ve told me 6 years ago it would grow to earn more than 20 million downloads, have over 1900 episodes, help me meet my heroes and even become my full-time business, I would’ve thought you were crazy. But life had other plans and I am so grateful for every single person who has made this possible, which includes you!

My intention for today is to be present so that I can really experience the love around me, to be patient with all of the things that pop up so that it doesn’t affect my ability to enjoy everything, and be of service to Irene to make sure that she has the most incredible day of her life too.

Let’s learn from an incredibly inspiring historical figure, Amelia Earheart. To understand where this comes from let’s first be clear on how pioneering she was. Amelia Earheart is best known for being the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, but it’s important to understand the context of the time. 

She did this in the 1930s when women weren’t really allowed to be pilots, and only a decade after women earned the right to vote. This pioneering role is further cemented by her involvement as the first president of the Ninety-Nines, an organization dedicated to advancing female aviation. 

And this is what makes Earhart's words so powerful: “The more one does, the more one can do.”

She’s a classic example of “give me an inch and I’ll take a mile”. I’m sure that when she asked to learn how to be a pilot people laughed at her and told her she couldn’t. But she persevered and became a pilot. Then when she shared the idea to cross the Atlantic I’m sure people told her she was crazy. But she did it anyway. And of course when she became a vocal advocate for women’s opportunity in aviation she faced headwind (pun intended). But it didn’t stop her and she shifted an industry.

“The more one does, the more one can do.”

Our ultimate potential is undefined. It is impossible to ever reach our fullest potential. Self actualization is a process and not an endpoint. And the more that we breakthrough what we used to think was impossible, the more we find ourselves in new spaces to break through. 

So if I can encourage you - If you’re serious about living an extraordinary life and making an extraordinary impact, you’re not going to do it on the sidelines. And you’re certainly not going to arrive anywhere new if you keep doing the same things you’ve been doing.

Having the confidence to dream bigger and see more for yourself requires that you stand on a strong infrastructure. There are universal fundamentals that everyone needs to put themselves in a position to be at their very best. 

If you want to do an audit on where you’re at with them, and learn about the 9 Super Habits that will help you easily reach your next level of daily performance, then this is for you!