I doubt the concept of setting goals is new to you, but this understanding of it might be. 

We know that goals are an extremely effective way to structure your effort. You set a goal because it either represents a meaningful outcome or it’s the process behind getting a certain desired result. This allows you to more easily figure out the real things you need to spend your time doing, which then drives your behavior and daily activity.

But if you’re setting a goal in a new area that you’ve never tried before, you might encounter some obstacles. If I were to ask you today how many ounces of water you want to drink in a day, you may not know. Or if you wanted to spend less time responding to emails every day, you may not have a clear idea of how much time you’re currently spending in your email.

Of course you can pull from other sources to inform your expectations, but when it comes to setting a goal that first step might feel pretty arbitrary and random. And that is totally fine! 

You don’t need to wait to have a perfectly defined and thought through goal before getting started. Again, a goal is meant to orient your efforts. So if you have a loose idea that gets you moving in the right direction, that’s mission accomplished! But a lot of people are slow to take those first few steps because they want their goals to be right.

Now here’s why this works. As you begin pursuing your goals, you start picking up more reference points and understanding the details of the context better. You start noticing that you’re drinking 2 or 3 bottles of water a day. You check the clock and get a better sense for how much time you’re actually spending on emails. 

Your experience in pursuit of the first, educated guess of goal gives you the insight you need to make your goal that much more informed. And then once you know better, you do better and you adjust it. As my mentor Jim Bunch says, “Goals are written in sand not in stone”.

So my encouragement to you through this is to just get started. Even if you feel like you might be missing the mark or off base, having a goal in place gets you on the path to uncovering the specificity you’re looking for. 

Another way of putting it - As you get closer to your goals, they get clearer. It’s not that you always need clarity before taking action, it’s that you should always be intentional about pursuing more clarity. And sometimes throwing yourself in the deep end is exactly what you need to accomplish that.

Now as it relates to monthly goal setting, I want to help you with this. If you’ve ever thought about having a monthly process where you review your past goals, set new goals, and determine the timelines to achieve those goals, I have a step-by-step process you can use to have more structure around your efforts. Getting in the routine of doing things like this will bring your daily activity to elite levels, which will help you begin to generate elite results.

I’m hosting an hour-long free workshop on Monday, May 1st, where you’ll leave with exactly that - a full plan that will motivate you and hold you accountable to making May the most impactful month of your year! You can register to attend this live May Momentum event by clicking here!

Someday soon, all of this will be behind you. The problems you’re facing, the challenges you’re experiencing, the opportunities you’re pursuing, the excitement you’re feeling - all of that will one day fade away. In fact, when we get older we’ll look back at these simpler times and want them back.

In other words, “You’re going to wish you had today again.”

Even though things feel hard and demanding, you’ll look back fondly on this opportunity to build your character. Even on the days when you feel tired and you don’t want to exercise, you’ll wish that you still had today’s physical capabilities. Even though you’re stressed out and spent from a long day of work, you’ll wish you were more present with your kids because when they’re all grown up you’ll really want to have just one of those moments back.

We only see today for what it is, the present. And sometimes that means we neglect to appreciate exactly what we have while we have it. We’re living right now in the days that one day we’d give anything to live again.

So what does that mean for us today? Enjoy it! Appreciate it. Sink into it. Try to see the bigger picture from this perspective so that you maximize every moment you get. It might be hard, you might not feel like it, and your mind might be somewhere else… But as long as you remain committed to showing up in your life, you’ll have less to regret when you want these days back.

This applies across the board. You might feel like it'd be a strain to you in the short-term, but taking that chance and betting on yourself is something that you’ll look back on with so much pride, or if not it becomes something you’ll really wish you did and wonder what could have been if you had the courage to do it. You might feel like you’re too busy with too many responsibilities to really give that new business your all, and maybe you’ll have to live with the fact that your fears got in the way of tapping into your fullest potential.

The truth is we only get today once and then relive it forever as a memory. So let’s create more memories that represent that life we want to have, being the person we want to be, experiencing things the way we want to experience them, and being courageous in the ways we know that challenge us. Easier said than done, but it all starts with planting the seed and making the choice, today.

Many of us have a strong desire to be more self-disciplined. The best version of ourselves is more consistent, less willing to make excuses, and more capable of taking positive action even when we don’t feel like it. Discipline has many different elements to it but today I want to talk about one that is very overlooked - Clarity.

Something our minds naturally do is try to take the path of least resistance. It’s hardwired into our minds that we should try to do things with as little effort and energy as possible. This means that when it comes time to be disciplined, we’re fighting against an unconscious force to 'not take action' and it makes things feel so much harder.

Your brain will try to tell a logical story that convinces you that the lazy, unproductive, energy-saving decision is the right one. This becomes problematic when there’s any gray area because it gives your unconscious mind space to draw its own conclusions.

This is where clarity comes in. The more clear you are on your standards and expectations, the less room you leave for interpretation. It’s by having a clearly defined action plan that you can quiet the voice in your ear seducing you to be less disciplined.

For example, exercise. Let’s say you want to workout 3 times a week. When you’re deciding if you want to work out, your brain might try to convince you to save energy by considering that walk you took around the mall as a form of exercise. But if you have clear expectations and specificity on what your exercise activity involves, like a planned 30 minute walk without stopping, you can overrule the emotional bias and follow through.

Or how about eating dessert. If you have clearly defined standards that you eat no more than 2 scoops of ice cream, when you feel tempted to have seconds you can make the right decision and resist instead of succumb to that voice that says “just this one time, you’ve earned it, it’s not a big deal.”

While we more naturally think of self-discipline as pertaining to our health behaviors, it all translates into the way we spend our time as well. And this applies not only on a daily basis but also on a monthly basis. If you have clarity on your goals, deadlines, and intentions for the month, you’ll be that much more likely to follow through on the behaviors required to achieve them.

And that’s something I want to share with you. On Monday May 1st, I’m hosting a free workshop where I walk you step-by-step through a monthly review and goal setting process so that you have full clarity on your focus points for May. This clarity will help you feel less busy while getting more done, and getting the results to show for it! If you want to attend this free live event, reserve your spot in the May Momentum Workshop.

I want to quickly share a perspective I heard about our vision. We have two different eyes that we see through. I’m not talking biologically of course, I’m talking psychologically.

There are two lenses that we observe the world through and today I want to make a distinction between them.

The first eye is the observing eye. This eye is the present experience of how things are objectively in front of you. It determines what is fact and what is not.

The second eye is the perceiving eye. This eye is the more complex representation of how things are. It incorporates additional considerations that help you to assign meaning to what you’re seeing.

Just like we can see better when we use both of our eyes, giving us 3-dimensional vision and more information to work with, similarly we need to employ both of our psychological eyes to see the truth in what we’re understanding.

That’s because we spend 99% of our time seeing through our perceiving eye. We want to know what everything means and how it impacts us, and for that reason we’re constantly evaluating, assessing, and perceiving.

But the process of perception is distorted. It is biased by our current emotions, it pulls from our lived experiences and histories, it’s influenced by our unconscious belief systems, and it manufactures a truth we want to see rather than allows us to see it for what it is.

This will run out of control unless we use the other, observing eye, to challenge what we’re concluding. It helps us to think more holistically rather than in the same patterns we’re accustomed to.

A great example of this is in communication, particularly conflict resolution. Many people share their opinions, judgments, and perspective on the situation to make their point. What they often omit are the undeniable facts that help to level-set the conversation.

The conversation transforms from “You texted me late in the evening and that was disrespectful” to “You texted me at 10:30 pm after I had already fallen asleep, and it made me feel like my time was being disrespected.”

The observing eye takes the color out of the perceptive eye, and sometimes we need that to better see how things actually are rather than how we’ve made them up to be.

The impact of our personal development fundamentally involves one thing. Everything that you're learning about, trying out, and coming to understand is all with the intention that it helps you make forward progress in your life, business, health, and relationships. 

Tony Robbins goes on to say that “Happiness is progress” because there’s a deeply rooted part of ourselves that wants to see what we’re capable of, and as David Meltzer puts it we’re compelled by the idea that “we must be what we can be”.

But chasing this idea of making progress, without a real plan to achieve it, is wasteful. Branching off to another brilliant personal development mind, Tom Bilyeu from Impact Theory says that we must understand the physics of progress so that we can leverage it to maximize our growth.

Bilyeu breaks down the physics of progress into 4 parts: 

1) You need a goal. This is the outcome that everything must optimize around, and the more specific your goal the better you’ll be able to evaluate progress.  

2) You craft a hypothesis on the best approach you know of to achieve that goal. This pulls from your own experience, advice you’ve heard, and other data points you have access to. 

3) You run a test. You test your hypothesis and observe the results of how things went. 

4) You evaluate your outcomes against your goal and understand patterns, limiting factors, and new things to consider.

Then you go right back to the top, you start all over again with a new more informed goal and more information to formulate a new hypothesis.

This very closely mirrors the process I use to improve my life and work, which is called the “Think Plan Do Review” cycle. It follows the same steps as Bilyeu’s process to run through an iterative loop that helps you make progress toward any goal. 

If you don't have a process in place to leverage the physics of progress, then it's likely that you're stuck getting the same results over and over again. In order to know what's actually working for you, and what to invest in, you need a way to track performance.

That's just one of the 9 Super Habits that accelerate you toward your personal and professional goals!

Alright, do you find ways to discredit yourself or am I the only one? 

I had a moment of this when I was taking a cold shower. My rule is any time I start a shower before 8pm I stand in the cold water for at least one minute. In fact, the way I do it is I stand in the shower and then turn the water on so that I get jolted by the first drops of cold rather than step in after it’s already on.

Cold exposure isn’t easy in any capacity, but in the shower I caught myself thinking “Man I’m a baby compared to what they do in the Cold Plunge Crew!”

Let me take a step back...

The last time I went to Mexico to build a house for a family in need (where I’ll actually be again this weekend), I went with a group of Canadians called the Cold Plunge Crew. They’re crazy. Basically they’re a community group that finds rivers, streams, and water all over Canada to plunge in. Needless to say, they’ve set the bar for me in terms of how extreme a cold plunge can get.

Comparing myself to them made me feel like my commitment to the practice was insignificant. Or at least that’s what I caught myself thinking…

Then, I remembered the ocean dip I took with them when we were in Mexico together. While the water wasn’t as cold as what they were accustomed to, my friend Natalia, one of the leaders of the Cold Plunge Crew, said a really interesting line to me. I was talking about my cold showers and she said “Wait, you do what? In the shower? And you just stand there and turn it on? That sounds awful!” 

To her the idea of inconsistent, pressurized cold water was more unpleasant than her full submersions. I have to disagree.

But that’s exactly the point I want to make here. We will naturally discredit ourselves, our commitments, or achievements, and our capabilities relative to others. That’s what I did in the shower and that’s what Natalia did in the ocean. 

When we compare ourselves to others we see the best qualities in them but the full spectrum in ourselves, leading to a sense of inferiority and a negative self-judgment. So give yourself credit where credit is due! If you’re in the game, showing up for yourself and feeling like things are right for you, don’t get too biased about how you’re perceiving others. Gain inspiration from them, yes, but compare yourself to them? That’s a slippery slope.

Today I wanted to share a grounding reminder and encouragement about how to live a more fulfilling life - “The richest moments are often the simplest”.

Living a rich life doesn't mean having a lot of money, possessions, or fame. That’s being rich, but it’s not living a rich life. A rich life is about genuinely enjoying what we have and savoring everything we’re experiencing. When something tastes rich it means that its contents are powerful. The mix of flavors are overbearing and so layered that you can’t eat too much of it.

But the irony is, the richest moments, that pack the biggest punch, are the simplest. And the most fulfilling experiences in life are often the ones that don't cost a thing.

When things are too complex they lose their authenticity. The more something is engineered the less natural it becomes. In a world that is so manufactured and optimized, it’s really meaningful to go back to the basics and immerse yourself in the simplicity of life.

So what does a rich life entail then? It’s not just spending quality time with a loved one, it’s finding fascination in who they are. It’s not just pursuing new experiences, it’s chasing the thrill of something spontaneous and exciting. 

In other words, the richness of life doesn’t involve the things that we think make us happy. It’s about discovering what is already there in front of us and being extra mindful of the moments when we’re in them. A rich life happens in moments. 

Simplicity is less but better, calmness in chaos, and undecorated beauty. And it’s within this simplicity that life becomes more full, and rich.

Let me know if this sounds familiar. You put a lot of work into your self-growth (listening to podcasts, reading books, getting your hands on anything that you think can improve your life) but despite all of that effort and time invested, maybe you don’t feel like you’re getting where you want to go with your life. Still lacking discipline on simple things, still stuck facing the same hardships and problems, still living at a fraction of your potential.

I guess I can only speak for myself... That was me for many years and it was exhausting.

The core issue was that everything I was learning wasn’t being implemented even though I thought it was...

When it comes to what we’re learning, we oversaturate ourselves with information, meaning the current infrastructure we have in our lives can’t take in everything we’re giving it. Another way of saying it is you’ve hit your capacity. At any given moment you can only support so many habits, so many intentions, and so many focus points. It’s like a cup filled to the top with water - You can pour more water in the cup but it just flows over. 

That’s exactly what’s happening in our self-growth. We put in the effort to acquire more information, pick up new insights, and search for golden nugget advice hoping it will bring positive change to our lives, only for it to slowly wash away without it being put to use.

This is why in our self-growth we experience a plateau. This is feeling stagnant, stuck, and like things aren’t changing. That no matter what we do, what we add, or what we try, we continue to sit at the same level of results.

So if you want to make meaningful changes to your life, you need to expand your capacity. You need to create space for all of this information to go so that it can actually be incorporated into your daily routines, activity, and mindset.

A way that you can increase your capacity is to install a new Self Improvement Operating System. Similar to how a computer working on an old operating system can only execute certain functions at certain speeds, our self-improvement works the same way. Unless we update our systems, we’ll always be constrained to the limitations we currently have.

And once you do, that’s where everything starts to click. Where all of the lessons and learnings can be put into action, helping you accelerate at the rate you always wish you could! That’s when your previous best becomes your new normal, and you feel like you’re unstoppable!

The infamous Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, who was born as a slave, pioneered a movement that we now call mindset. He called it "reasoned choice". His core teachings center around taking ownership for your actions and responding to the events around us with emotional control. A classic Epictetus quote is “You can’t learn what you think you already know.”

This opens the door to a larger conversation about perception. We are surrounded by an infinite amount of stimuli, too much to process at any given moment. Our perception takes the fraction of a percent that seems to be most important and creates meaning from it. 

However, this is not a perfect process because what ends up being prioritized as “important” is biased - influenced by our past, patterns, and preferences. Our perception has been shaped in such a way that we don’t see what has been hiding in plain sight and therefore, it doesn’t have the chance to impact us.

Who we are, and the lessons we have to learn, are vulnerable to the same challenges. Once you build a mental model around a concept your brain will look for ways to verify it. You will always find the evidence for what you choose to believe. 

“You can’t learn what you think you already know.”

So as growth-oriented, humble life-long learners, what are we to do about it? We must always keep a curious spirit and an open-mind. As long as we believe that there are other ways to do things, and that it’s possible the current way may not be the best way, we allow our perception to stay more open. We’re willing to consider new ideas because it no longer threatens the way we see the world.

And when you do that, you leave space for improvement, experimentation, and iteration. If you want to evolve you cannot reject the process that induces it. And with that in mind, I’d love for you to reflect on this question - What do you feel so certain about that it might be limiting your ability to explore alternatives?