This thought isn't so much a positivity quote as it is the philosophy of someone I deeply respect. Charlie Rocket is an entertainment mogul turned philanthropist who has a deep understanding of the quantum field.

Charlie says that instead of thinking that the world is out to get you and feeling paranoia, you can believe that the world is conspiring for you by something called “pronoia”.

Your reality is made up of the way you perceive things to be around you. Your whole life changes when you realize that you can choose how you want those things to be. One of my favorite formulas comes from Jack Canfield - E + R = O. Event + Response = Outcome. As long as you are choosing your response you will always be shaping the outcome in a more favorable way.

In essence, that’s what Charlie Rocket teaches about "pronoia". When you choose to see the opportunity, possibility, and positivity in the world, that’s exactly what you get. As Wayne Dyer puts it  - “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”

Just like any patterned way of thinking, the “pronoia mindset” is something that you must intentionally cultivate into your psychology. The goal is to make it the subconscious response pattern that is constantly shaping your outcomes more positively without you even being aware of it.

And the way you do that is by feeding your mind opportunities to learn this new skill. Journal about the failures or shortcomings you experienced and reframe them into blessings. Take the most challenging thing you experienced and reflect on why you’re grateful for it happening that way. This trains your mind to use a new lens to see the world through and it shifts your perception, and your reality.

Our natural state is to be paranoid. To be looking over our shoulder, wondering what might go wrong or how things might fall through. It’s our innate negativity bias making things seem worse than they are in an attempt to keep you safe. But when you tap into "pronoia", and believe that the whole world is at your fingertips, then it will be!

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We take ourselves very seriously at work and with our core responsibilities. We know that certain things require our very best and because of that we show up with more focus, concentration, and intention. But why does the buck stop there? Why don’t we take the same approach to the fun and enjoyable side of life?

We spend so much time creating optimizations and efficiencies in an attempt to maximize our productivity. We want to squeeze every bit of value we can from how we’re spending our time with the things we take seriously. Let’s commit to trying the same in the lighter things we do as well!

Every day is a masterpiece in how we’re balancing the personal and professional faces of our lives. But right now we’re treating it as if we’re either ‘on’ or ‘off’. Unfortunately this means that we resort to ‘turning-off’ for our personal time, which then impacts its quality. 

It’s sinking deeper into the couch instead of playing an engaging board game. It’s scrolling on social media during a half-conversation with someone instead of going for a walk and connecting more deeply. If we don’t intervene, we’ll tolerate spending our time with a fraction of the presence, enjoyment, and enthusiasm we could experience if we had done things differently.

So take your personal time seriously. Play seriously.

My recommendation for that is to be clear on your intentions for doing things. Keep it top of mind so that you can be more accountable to it. When the intention is to work, you are vigilant about limiting distractions. Similarly when the intention is to play, engage yourself in it. And when your intention is to rest, don’t occupy yourself with nonsense.

You’ve heard it this way before - Work hard, play hard. The edit I’d make to that is “Work serious, play serious.” You’ll be amazed to see how much more fulfilled, enriched, and inspired you’ll feel when you start making the most out of the way you spend your personal time.

A universal emotion that everybody experiences is pain. It is so variable person by person, moment by moment, case by case, but nonetheless it’s something we all deal with in our own way. 

A perspective I’ve learned from my mentor David Meltzer is the role that pain plays in your life. We’ve been taught to avoid pain at all costs but that might be too dismissive of it to extract the value from what it’s trying to communicate to you. 

Pain is always there for a reason. Physical pain tells you that something is wrong with your physiology. Emotional pain tells you that you had a bad experience. In all forms of it, pain is a signal telling you that something went wrong.

In other words, pain is an indicator providing feedback. Improving anything in life requires feedback so it’s imperative that we understand what our pain is coming from, and why we’re experiencing it, in order to improve that area of our life.

As David Metlzer says, pain has two purposes. It is not there to punish you, rather it’s there to promote you and protect you. It’s meant to steer you in a direction that sets you up for more success in the future. The short-term suffering has a role to promote and encourage you to something better. The negative experience teaches you what you should specifically avoid moving forward as to not put yourself in harms way again.

Pain is an indicator should you listen to it.

And in order to tap into the value that pain has to offer, you need to make yourself conscious of it. Instead of unconsciously and emotionally reacting to the presence of pain, you can choose to assign meaning to it, approach it with curiosity, and uncover what it’s trying to tell you.

This is so much easier said than done, but the transformation always starts with awareness. Now you’re more aware of the depth your pain has to your experience, and hopefully you’ll be more open to exploring it.

Of course I don’t wish pain upon you, or anyone, and I certainly don’t want to discredit the pain you’ve been through. But I do hope that you can see more purpose in it so that you can find a better way.

As ambitious, high–performing humans there’s a lot we want to get done in a day. We hold ourselves to high standards and expect that we give our very best as often as we can. Ultimately what this means is we want to play a part in creating the best outcomes possible, whether that be in the impact of our own lives or in collaboration with others.

With that end goal in place, we need to recognize the very human elements of ourselves....

We all have an ego that is constantly trying to make things about ourselves. We want to establish and confirm our place in the tribe, and feel better about the quality of our existence relative to others. 

That’s why we find ourselves constantly comparing, criticizing, and judging. It’s the ego's natural state.

One of the challenges of the ego is that it gets in the way of us achieving the outcomes we’d like to see. We want to hit our new fitness goal as we’re getting back in the habit, but we’re influenced by someone else who's in better shape and set goals that are unsustainable. We want to find the best fit solution at work but we’re holding on to our idea or our way of doing it, delaying progress.

To clarify the role of the ego in this - In order to feel better about ourselves we unknowingly make decisions that don’t lead to the best outcomes.

In the face of the ego and the emotions it arouses, we can commit to a simple intention. It’s about what’s right and not who’s right. In other words, it’s about doing what’s best for the desired outcome rather than what you want to do, knowing that what you want to do is biased by the ego.

So the next time you find yourself emotionally invested in something, pull out this intention and remind yourself of how you want to show up in the moment. It’s about what’s right, not who’s right. Build that into your personal culture and you’ll start making decisions that are in integrity with who you want to be more often.

While we’re on our individual pursuits to become the best versions of ourselves, it’s important to recognize the limitations we have. If you want to join me in leading this space forward, share this article with a friend, boss, co-worker, or family member that you think would find value in it!

When you think of the idea of collecting people you might have a negative reaction to it. That it feels too transactional, impersonal, and possessive to line up the humans of your life. But I’d argue that just like coveted collectibles, that mean so much to you, the people you collect and keep were chosen for a very specific reason.

You have different people for different occasions. Your high school friends might remind you of being young, naive, and the challenges of discovering yourself. With college friends it’s always a good time when you reunite, picking up right where you left off. 

Then there are those deeper relationships you collect where you feel connected to them on a soul level, knowing that there’s something about them that gets you like no one else. And there are the people you collect that you know will always be there for you unconditionally because of the history you have.

Just because people are part of a larger collection does not take away the importance they individually have. There’s a story and intention behind everyone that you encounter in life. Some people play a small passing role, and some people you build a life around. 

When you find the good ones, make sure you keep them. You have a wide variety of needs to be met, and when you collect the right people and engage them to play the right role, you’ll have an incredible foundation of support.

When it comes to the arguments of quality over quantity, it never rings more true than in relationships. Yet we’re enticed to meet new people, expand our network, and pursue more because it’s baked into the fabric of everything we do. 

So my recommendation is to resist that inclination, slow down, and strengthen your connection with the incredible people you already have right in front of you. Your life will feel so much more full when you collect the right people.

I don’t mean to be morbid, but I’m going to touch a little bit on the imminent reality that is death. It’s nothing to be afraid of, in fact the best thing we can do is embrace it.

A classic stoic philosophy is “Memento Mori” which translates to “you will die”. Once you embrace that truth and understand that your days are numbered, without fear, you’ll feel liberated to start living.

And that’s why for today’s quote I want to tie death to gratitude - “Waking up is the first thing to be grateful for.”

This hits in two different ways. There are people going to sleep tonight who won’t be waking up. They’re old and sick, and they’ve lived their last day, breathed their last breath, and moved on to whatever’s next. What they wouldn’t give to have another youthful, care-free morning to wake up with the world ahead of them. That’s what you have today, even if it doesn’t necessarily feel like it. So take advantage of it!

And then equally important, there are people waking up this morning for the last time and they have no idea. Accidents happen, it’s just the way things are. Imagine if they knew that this morning was the last time in their life they’d be opening their eyes to start a new day. They’d treat it much differently wouldn't they? We feel invincible in the face of these tragedies and figure it would never happen to us. But it could. Anything is possible. So let’s live like there’s something on the line because every day, there is.

So every morning when your alarm goes off get in the habit of rehearsing two words - “Thank you”. Thank you for another opportunity to experience a new day. Thank you for the miracle that is life and a fully functioning body. We have so much to be grateful for, not the least of which is the chance to live out another 24 hours.

While this isn't necessarily a new perspective, sometimes we need to be reminded of what we already know to really understand its meaning.