Often the best thing for our self-growth isn’t to learn some new hack or strategy, but rather to be reminded of what we already know. This idea focuses on our communication and how we can be more appropriate, empathetic, and effective in the way we deliver our message.

In the book Silent Messages, Albert Albert Mehrabian, a UCLA professor, announced the 7/38/55 rule. He says that 7% of meaning is communicated through spoken word, 38% through tone of voice, and 55% through body language. Focusing on verbal communication, this ratio suggests that your tone is 5 times more influential than what you’re actually saying.

And the reason being - We are emotional. We are hyper-attuned to the emotions around us. This is evidenced in the phases of brain development both evolutionarily and within our life-cycle. First comes the instinctual hindbrain, regulating the physiological and psychological processes that are core to staying alive. Then it’s the midbrain, involved in emotional awareness and threat detection. And then finally is the forebrain that executes higher level thinking.

What this all means is that when someone is listening to you, they're listening with their emotional midbrain. They want to know how this new information impacts their safety, security, and state.

What’s equally important to consider is how your emotions then go on to influence your logical thinking. If you’re feeling motivated and inspired you will draw different conclusions than if you’re cranky and hungry. Your logical mind is shaped by your emotional environment.

So now the question becomes - How do we control our tone? How do we make sure our communication is representative of what we want someone to understand about what we’re saying?

We need to pause more often.

Emotions are reflexive. They’re unconscious. The more we can put space between the impulse and the action, the more time we give our higher level thinking to catch up and play a role. So especially if you feel yourself aroused, triggered, or agitated, give yourself some time.

Whatever it is you're feeling compelled to say in the moment, and the tone of that expression, is emotionally motivated. The best version of ourselves gets curious about those emotions, understands them, and chooses how to respond rather than reacts to how we’re feeling.

This concept may not be entirely new to you, but hopefully this helps you remember how you can be intentional about communication. If you found this valuable, please share this article with someone who you think would enjoy it just like you!

My absolute favorite musical artist is Andy Grammer. His music is a refreshing reminder that we’re meant to enjoy life, that we can choose positivity, and that we’re on this Earth to uplift each other. 

Over the years Andy’s message has matured and it’s starting to penetrate pop culture in a meaningful way. Understanding the depth that he has to share, I know his most recent piece is going to make waves. It challenges our value system, makes us question our judgments of each other, and presents an alternative option that if accepted, would make the world a far better place.

He says that “love is the new money”.

Imagine if instead of using someone’s wealth or financial status as an indicator of their value, we asked a question to learn what was on their heart. If instead of taking a quick glance at what people are wearing or driving, we saw their purpose, passions, and ambitions before anything else and drew conclusions about them based on that.

Andy’s big point is that this idea of equating making money with success is a system that we didn’t choose. It’s something we’ve inherited and operate within and it’s run riot without us stopping to examine it.

But the problem is, this quick and unconscious judgment has wide-reaching consequences. It determines how nicely we treat people, how seriously we take people, and how much value we believe they have to offer society. This energy is then felt by them and overtime, accumulates to impact their sense of self-worth and self-confidence.

It’s not fair and not the game that we’d want to play. So why do we play it?

Another leader I’m inspired by, Adam Braun proposes that social impact could perform the same function. Quoting his book The Promise Of A Pencil “I just refused to let the size of my bank account serve as the yardstick of my success.”

My goal today is to further Andy’s challenge to you and make you think about how your own value system is affected by your relationship with money. Hopefully with a little more awareness you’ll be able to interrupt patterns of judgment and criticism before they materialize. We need a wave of leaders to step up and lead this movement, I’m committed to it myself, and I hope you’re with me!

Andy recently released his spoken word all about this topic, and I highly encourage you check it out right now. It’s brilliant, entertaining, eye-opening, and powerful. I have Andy Grammer's spoken word linked here for you to check out!

When it comes to living our dream lives, we often default to all the things that we have. It’s the big house, the fulfilling and impactful job, the loving family, travel, impact... And that’s all great, it’s perfectly fine to want all of that stuff. But if that’s the object of your effort then you’re going to be making things harder than they need to be.

So let’s broaden the lens and look at the 3 different layers that our existence resides in - Be, do, have - And we often have the order backwards when it comes to the chain of command within these layers.

We expect that when we have the things we want it’ll give us the freedom we need to do the things we want to do. Then once we’re taking action in the ways that inspire us, we believe that it will make us feel the fulfillment, satisfaction, and inner peace that we desire.

And it makes sense. We can much more easily perceive tangible things to have rather than the implicit actions we’re taking (or even harder being self-aware of our state of being). So the things we want to have is what we pursue.

But I’ve learned that’s not actually how it works. A state of being is not the byproduct of what you have and what you do, it’s the origin. If you can focus on showing up present in every moment embodying love, you will have a loving family. If you embrace and entertain your adventurous spirit, you’ll find yourself halfway across the world on an exotic trip. 

The natural byproduct of the energy you put out influences the actions you take. Subconscious transformation expert Jim Fortin puts it “What you do is only as effective as the being doing the doing”. This ‘doing’ then dictates the results you achieve, and the things you get. 

This is where we need to slow down and be more potent with our approach. When you picture your dream life, have you considered your state of being? Have you defined the virtues and characteristic traits that you hope to embody rather than the achievements or possessions you’ve accumulated?

I can only speak for myself and say that I’ve had it backwards myself. But the more I challenge myself to tap into the energy of who I want to be, the more I find myself accelerating on my path toward it, picking up everything else along the way.

Something that is insidious and making our lives harder than they need to be without us even realizing it, is interference.

This is when something keeps getting in the way, making it more difficult for you to reach your goals. When you feel resistance to incorporating a new habit or making a bold decision. When you question yourself and your abilities so you don’t take risks with the confidence you’d like to.

The concept really breaks down into something very simple, which is communicated in the word itself. Interference is just “fear” getting between where you are and where you want to go.

And it’s powerful. Fear is a paralyzing emotion. But often when we feel resistance, restriction, or limitation, we don’t always label it as fear. But that’s really what it is - If you are having a tough time doing something new it’s because you’re afraid of what might happen in the uncomfortable, unfamiliar space it would require you to enter.

My mentor David Meltzer says that overcoming interference is our greatest opportunity for getting everything we want. We don’t need more of anything, we are already connected to abundance and more than we’ll ever need. The reason why we don’t have what we want is we’re getting in our own way from accessing what’s already there.

In other words, there's too much interference preventing us from tapping into abundance.

Fear is a form of self-sabotage. It’s a story that the mind produces to prevent you from taking some new action or thinking in some new way that threatens the way you currently see the world. In treating it as such, what you must do is take action despite the self-sabotage, overcome the resistance until you become who you want to be, and have faith that the right things will come to be as a result.

And if it doesn’t go how you expected - Dave Meltzer has another perspective. The universe always gives you what you asked for or better, and it’s just a lack of awareness that is keeping you from seeing how that is true.

There’s an iconic Maya Angelou quote that you’ve probably heard before, that when put into practice can absolutely transform the quality of your relationships. The quote goes “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

In particular, people are missing feeling one certain way - Special. We all live in the center of our own world and see life through our own two eyes. As much as we pursue different perspectives our experience is limited by the vantage point we view. 

Even though we exist in a sea of people, as part of complex cultural and societal systems, we don’t want to feel like just another person. We want to feel like we’re different, like we’re extraordinary, like we’re special, to find more meaning in our lives.

And that’s something that you can help with. You can be intentional about making someone feel special.

Talk about the qualities and characteristics you see in them that you don’t see in most people. Tell them how well they’re doing and how you see them putting in their very best. Validate their uniqueness and give them encouragement that they’re doing things no one else can do, and capable of things no one else is.

If you can successfully start to do this, you’ll find people become really attracted to you.

But the tricky part is, you need to train your perspective to see the good in everyone. You need to be able to reframe their weakness into a strength, see the force in people’s flaws, and have an open-mind to consider how their differences are actually the best thing for them.

It demands that you are secure with who you are so that you don’t project your own limitations and insecurities on others, and you can see them for who they truly are.

So many people are in desperate need of this. They’re questioning their path, questioning their intentions, and even questioning themselves. You can give them a boost by helping them see themselves through your more positive eyes.

Like I always say, a better world starts with a better you. This is true not only for how you see your world, but the impact you can make in other people’s lives by making them feel special.

Let’s talk about the fundamentals of improvement. Improvement is simply a change in state over time where the finishing state is better than the original state. In order to quantify any type of progress or improvement, you need to be clear on how things used to be and how they are now to draw a fair comparison. It’s the difference between those two states that serves as your evidence that something changed, and ideally, that the change led to better results.

Growth follows the same principle. To grow requires that you have a previous capacity that has expanded to be able to handle more, a previous limitation that has been defeated to no longer be so restrictive, or a previous obstacle that has been overcome to reveal new possibilities. 

But these changes don’t happen on their own. No matter the form, in order to achieve growth something must happen that interrupts the way that things are currently going to steer it in a new direction.

With that in mind, there’s one condition that is required for growth - Challenge. Challenge and growth work as a cause and effect relationship. Challenge A leads to Growth A, and Challenge B leads to Growth B. No matter what, you’re going to be facing challenges and therefore, you’re always growing. The opportunity lies in our ability to choose our challenges so that we can dictate the direction of our growth.

This concept is a cornerstone philosophy in what is now known as ‘deliberate practice’. If you want to improve at anything, you must be pushed to perform just beyond your comfort level. What this does is it cultivates a necessity that you must respond to, causing you to develop skills or abilities to meet the need.

Dr. Michael Beckwith agrees, and he says “Without challenge the activation of potential doesn't happen.” That’s because when things are too routine it leads to automaticity, and things normalize and plateau.

You can’t expect to grow if you keep doing the same things. According to Albert Einstein’s definition - “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”  

So if you want to grow as a person - to get more consistent, have better habits, improve your mindset, acquire new skills - you need to take on a challenge. And particularly if you want to grow into the best, most confident, most productive, most inspired version of yourself, you might want to consider taking on the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge. It’s specifically designed to cause you to upgrade your structure and organization, your systems, and your daily habits to elite levels so that you can successfully apply everything you've learned. Should you accept the challenge, you’ll be choosing the direction of your growth and accelerate toward the best version of yourself. And all it takes is 5 minutes a day for 21 days.

Worth a try right? The challenge goes live on Monday so I highly encourage you to register for the challenge right now, before you let the moment pass you and you miss out on reaching your potential.

We’ve inherited a beautiful, magical cycle that is one day. Our bodies have evolved to experience the cycles of light and dark in a way that allows us to renew our life-force everyday. We’ve built our whole culture around this cycle where the world basically stops for a handful of hours as we all transition from one day to the next.

While days and time and all of that are just constructs that support our perception, there’s a lot of potential in it. And when you wake up in the morning it’d benefit you to think about that - “Another day, another opportunity”.

This serves as a form of intention. When you prime yourself first thing in the morning to see the possibility in the world, throughout the day you’ll find it. Another day, another opportunity. Your world conspires around your thoughts and beliefs, so why not choose to make your world a little brighter and a little more positive?

In order to build momentum for the day so that you can consistently seize everything it has to offer you, I have a few best practices. First, know that every day starts the night before. Make sure you’re prioritizing your sleep and wellness so that when you wake up, you have the energy to shape your mindset. The first moments of the day dictate the pace and cadence of how you’ll do everything else.

A second recommendation is to set yourself up for success by having a plan for the day, but not just that, one that you can do really well with. Don’t try to flood your morning, particularly your first hour with too much to do. The sooner you get behind, the sooner you stay behind and feel like you’re playing catch up.

Remember. “Another day, another opportunity.” and you can make whatever you want from it. You don’t need to keep reliving the same days with the same problems and the same issues. You can intervene, solve your problems, step up to your next level, and choose to make things different. 

Imagine if you made your prior best your new normal? I promise you it’s achievable, but only if you’re serious about making it so. And that’s something you need to consistently choose every day, but good news - another day, another opportunity!

If you want to start sustainably improving the quality of our life and make progress day after day, I have a process that will help you do it. And it addresses the one thing holding you back from tapping into it. I made a video explaining it all that you can check out here!

Okay, this is something I really battle with and I bet some part of you can relate with it. I care a lot. I really want to do something meaningful and special in the world. I want to experience things that are new, enriching, and fulfilling. And I want to discover what I’m truly capable of and witness the full extent of my potential.

Unfortunately, this desire is a double-edged sword. While on one hand it keeps me active and motivated, on the other hand it has become a bit of an obsession. If I’m not actively doing something to better myself I have a tendency to get anxious… A fear that I’m going to regret that I didn’t make the most of my time… So I find ways to occupy my time with what I’m convincing myself are “productive” things to do.

This overall topic is something called “Compulsive Productivity”. It’s being productive for the sake of feeling better about yourself rather than doing what’s actually most critical, most important, or most needed. In the short-term it keeps you busy and stimulates you so that you don’t have to be alone with your own thoughts for too long, but ultimately what it does is it robs you of the presence, mindfulness, and clarity you’re desperately seeking.

Less presence because you’re multitasking and distracted from the current moment. Less mindful because you’re too “in your head” to allow yourself to perceive the things around you. Less clarity because you prioritize the things that “kinda sorta” need to get done that are immediately or spontaneously in front of you.

Don’t get me wrong, being productive is an incredible thing and a skill to be mastered… But it must be done with intention in order for it to truly serve you. It must be balanced so that you’re coming from an inspiring, energy giving lens rather than an expiring, energy draining lens.

I’ve found that the solution is to get radical clarity, awareness, and accountability for your needs. People call this balance, I like to call it harmony because it allows the sum to be greater than the individual parts.

If you identify as a personal development junkie, with a podcast in your ear and a book on your nightstand at any given moment, trying to get your hands on everything you can to advance yourself... It’s likely that you are experiencing compulsive productivity. 

And if you want to break out of that cycle, to start getting somewhere with your life and level up your game permanently, I want to invite you to take on the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge! This process teaches you to install the core Operating System that gives you the awareness, accountability, and intention you need to master productivity and make the very most of your life.

Click here to learn more about the challenge and how it will change your life in just 5 minutes day for 21 days.

One of the craziest, most unexpected, most incredible things that happens to people is they win the lottery. It’s so rare and so special that we literally use it in expressions to talk about how lucky or perfect something is.

If you do the math, the odds you win the lottery on an average day are 1 in 292,201,338!

Pretty spectacular huh? Well what if I told you that the odds that you exist right now are even crazier than that? There’s an estimate that the odds of you coming into existence are 400 trillion to 1. In other words, the fact that you are alive is just about as likely as winning the lottery 133 million times!

To put it another way - You are a walking, talking winning lottery ticket!

It’s an absolute miracle that any single person is alive. It’s extraordinary really. Not only did you have to win the most important race of your life as a sperm cell fertilizing an egg cell, but the world needed to manifest in a way that your two parents met how they did and when they did. And the same goes for their parents and their parents. Basically human history had to have gone one way and one way only to lead up to you coming into existence.

So treat your life like the miracle it is. Make the most of it, take yourself seriously, be present and follow your heart. With the odds stacked against us like they were, none of us were supposed to be here. But we are, so let’s do something about it!

I’m grateful that our paths have crossed, however unlikely it is that they did! I’d love for them to converge even more, so I wanted to invite you again to consider joining the 21 Day Best Self Breakthrough Challenge. If you've been dedicated to your self-growth for a while now and feel ready to take things to the next level, let me show you how! We’re getting started on Monday April 3rd!