Self Improvement Daily Podcast

What if life, growth, and improvement were as simple as completing a two step process? What if everything you’ve ever wanted, and the version of yourself you’ve always wanted to become, was on the other side of consistently engaging in just two things?

My mentor Jim Bunch originally taught me a 3 part framework for transformation that has become central to my understanding for behavior change:  Awareness, action, and accountability. 

-Awareness is critical because positive change lacks direction if you don’t have clarity for what you want, or where you want to go… 

-Action is the world’s only mechanism for creating change, and the extent of that impact is only as strong as the quality of the action and your ability to execute it…

-And accountability adds follow through because without doing something, all you have is another idea for how you could change your life.

You have those elements in place and you create alignment that serves as a powerful force forward.

However, dissecting this further, I’m realizing that the process is even simpler than that, and that this 3-step process is actually just a never-ending cycle of awareness and action.

And that’s because accountability is awareness. True accountability is an honest observation of if you did or didn’t do what you intended to. It’s a feedback loop that informs you on how things went, brings consciousness to weaknesses or influencing circumstances, and prepares you to do better next time.

This means that the 3-step process just became a cycle: Awareness <-> Action.

As long as we are always seeking feedback and refining what we want, we are always cultivating more awareness. Then in order to materialize that awareness into reality you need to take action, in the best way you know how.

It’s a cycle that mirrors Jon Assaraf’s ‘Think-Plan-Do-Review’ and Tom Bilyeu’s ‘Goal-Hypothesis-Test-Evaluate’ that he calls the “Physics Of Progress”’

But seeing both of those through this new perspective, both of those are just two parts awareness (what you want + feedback) and two parts action (planning + follow through), connected in a never-ending cycle. 

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Humans are hard-wired to be hyper-responsive to our environments. Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, argues that ‘the most adaptable survive’. This means that it’s highly advantageous to process what’s around us and reposition ourselves to fit better within it.

For that reason, the biggest lever we can pull to positively change our lives is to redesign our environment. Like a stick in a river, we unconsciously go wherever the river’s current is taking us. When we change the direction of the current in our favor, we go in a more favorable direction.

That’s why, one of the best things we can do for our personal development is take on a challenge. A challenge creates a certain environment that causes us to show up, take action, and make decisions differently. A challenge’s influence temporarily pulls us into a higher level of performance, and when done right, makes that newly discovered higher standard permanent.

Why is a challenge such a powerful fixture and tool for environmental design?

First, a challenge is time-bound. With a definite timeline, your mind can quantify the effort needed to fulfill the expectations you’ve set. So rather than rationalizing that a new habit or routine isn’t sustainable, you can get yourself to do it because your mind sees it as temporary.

Second, when you take on a challenge, it often involves some form of commitment. This makes us more willing to do things that are hard or inconvenient. We can rise above our emotions and act with more discipline. Making a commitment puts your integrity on the line and if you don’t make good on it, it suggests things about yourself that are painful to admit. So you follow through to prove those things wrongs.

Which leads well into the final element - A challenge welcomes competition. Competing brings out your most resilient, dedicated, persevering self. You’re less willing to make excuses and more consistent with getting the job done. This becomes even more powerful when there are leaderboards or gamification introduced into the challenge, because then you get to see your performance relative to others, which is motivating.

People show up differently in a challenge because the environment of a challenge brings it out of them. It creates the right conditions for real life-change and success.

And this is what I’ve seen from people taking over 1000 people through the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge. It’s a perfect storm of commitment, clarity, and competition that all come together to help you hold yourself to a higher standard for 21 days. It proves to you what’s possible when you really apply yourself, while building the foundation for a healthier, more focused, more productive life. 

If you know that you have so much more to give, and that you have so much more potential but you’re too inconsistent to make good on it, check out the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge. It’s the jumpstart you need to reach your next level.

I was at the grocery store and was exposed to something I’d always known to be true but never thought deeply about the implications of it.

I was in the produce section grabbing some salad kits and a woman was kneeling in one of the refrigerators. She was being supervised by another employee and being trained. As she was pulling out bag after bag of romaine lettuce, I overheard her ask a question:

“Wait, so what happens to all of this expired food? This is so sad.”

She’s right. It is sad. Yet, when we have the great privilege of going into a store and picking out whatever we want, it doesn’t make us sad. We hardly think about what happens to all of the food that goes bad. Maybe it’s something you keep in mind when you shop, maybe not. But in either case we’ve learned to accept that’s just the way it is.

Because this woman was in training and throwing away the food herself, she had a new perspective on it. Rather than being desensitized to the reality of the waste, she confronted it. And she allowed herself to feel it.

There are things throughout life that we just learn to tolerate over time. Things that aren’t ideal and violate our values, yet we don’t worry about them or do anything about them. What was impossible to understand becomes commonplace, and what we used to feel passionately opposed to becomes normal.

Some people create businesses and movements to address the problems they can’t stand to see in the world, but most of us don’t. Most of us just live our lives and forget about it. And that’s not a knock on you or me, but a reality of the human condition. Over time, we acclimate to our surroundings. We desensitize to issues and experience things less intensely because they become less novel.

My recommendation today is more challenging, but necessarily so. I don’t want you to grieve, but I do want you to allow yourself to feel more. Admit that some things are unfair, unjust, and unsustainable. Have a problem with the systems society operates within. Because when you do, you become a brighter advocate for what you want to see in the world, and in the smallest of ways, play a bigger role in fixing the problems you can’t stand for.

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I was on a group call with Stanford Professor and author Jeremy Utley, and he offered a really interesting perspective. 

As an entrepreneurial advisor, when starting a business, he notices that people often get ahead of themselves. They think about the business´viability (if something has a sustainable business model) and feasibility (if they have the skillset to develop a product or service at the level they need to) to evaluate the opportunity.

What Jeremy recommends, though, is that those evaluations hold no bearing if they don’t have a validated foundation of desirability. In other words, if people don’t actually want what you have to offer, then everything else is useless. And it’s for that exact reason that he recommends any entrepreneur does rapid ‘desirability testing’ before starting any venture, to make sure there’s real market need.

While that’s a great business lesson, there’s a fitting corollary into personal development as well. In our self-growth and pursuit of positive change, many people are approaching things in the wrong order.

Here are a few examples: 

Say someone wants to be more disciplined and mentally tough so they buy an ice bath at home. But then they’re not in it consistently because the only time they can use it is in the morning, and it prevents them from getting a workout in.

Or say someone wants to start a side business so they pay a designer to create a logo and build a website for them. But then, when it’s time to work on it, they realize they don’t have as much free-time as they thought, and it causes unintended consequences at home with their family.

In both cases, the person in question thought they knew what they wanted, but they didn’t see the full picture. And before making big moves on it, they could have tried it lightly. 

Instead of buying an ice bath, they could have hopped in the community pool for a few weeks and see if it’s a routine that works for them… 

Or before investing so much in starting their business, they could have gotten their first client to see what it was like.

The lesson is, what you think you want in your head could be very different in practice. So be intentional about allowing yourself to taste it, and validate its desirability before investing more time and energy into its viability and feasibility.

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Hey self improver, a better world starts with a better you and YES YOU CAN! So let's take another step toward your best self today.

You’ve probably read before that 95%+ of the things we do on a daily basis are done unconsciously. The way we feel and the way we act is determined by our own internal beliefs. Like a pre-written script and without even thinking about it, we live out our lives according to some predetermined narrative.

Nothing plays a bigger role in what happens unconsciously than the one thing that our unconscious mind was designed to do. Generations of human evolution revolved around this thing, and to this day it’s the core operating system running the show:

The human mind’s sole purpose is to keep us alive.

We often miss that because our modern environment is so much about everything else. But when you look at the natural inclinations humanity has toward certain things, it all comes back to creating more safety for ourselves.

First, let’s talk about money. The reason people are so motivated to make money is because it gives us buying power to ensure our survival. We can pay for the food we need, live in nicer areas, and solve catastrophic problems when we have lots of money.

Second is power. People naturally want more power because it’s an expression of status. When you’re high-status within a group, it means that more people are going to invest in supporting you. If there are a limited amount of resources to go around, the most powerful get the first pick at them. 

Similarly, we want other people to like us. Why? Because if we’re incapable of supporting ourselves, we need to rely on the help of others to provide for us. High quality relationships leads to more altruistic behavior, which gives you a better opportunity to survive personal difficulty.

And of course, it explains why we tend to avoid situations that put us in harm’s way. We naturally avoid things that seem dangerous or risky for fear that we’ll injure ourselves. Interestingly, this risk-aversion translates beyond physical danger and also applies for psychological harm.

The reason I write all of this is because it’s good awareness to know what’s happening behind the scenes. All feelings around wanting money, power, to be liked, and to be safe are all hardwired into us evolutionary. This means that if we determine it doesn’t serve us to feel that way, we can understand why we do and make an alternative choice. 

And that’s why it’s so important to constantly seek to increase your consciousness - it allows you to live more consciously and aligned with what you want, and not blindly follow whatever old path is laid out in front of you.

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We live in a culture and society that is constantly pushing us to do, be, and have more. This unspoken but ever-present pressure causes us to work faster, multi-task, and never miss a moment.

Being busy has become a status symbol that signals importance externally, but adds stress internally.

After taking James Wedmore's advice for just one morning to invite more silence and space into our lives, I experienced a real shift and a new awareness.

I noticed a tendency to be less present in my morning routine, rushing to get to my next thing…

I noticed that unconsciously I wanted to put on something educational during my workout to make the most of the time…

I almost didn’t answer a phone call from a friend because it pulled me off schedule for my day…

But instead, with the intention to create more space for myself - I took my time in my morning routine and added some grounding in nature. I worked out in silence. I answered the phone when my friend called and chatted for 20 minutes.

After, and all day, I felt lighter. I felt more connected, less anxious and overstretched, and more present with everything else I chose to do.

While the outside world is responsible for a lot of the chaos and distraction we experience, we are personally responsible for a lot of it too. We’re the ones who try to pack too much into a single day. We’re the ones trying to make every moment highly productive. We’re the ones choosing to deprioritize what we value most.

We are the ones that are causing our own overstimulation. And if you feel like you’re too busy, stretched, or overcommitted to create space in your life, know that you’re the one creating that.

And, let’s say you are doing all the things you want to do, overbusy to accommodate your career goals, personal responsibilities, and everything else… Then accept that you've chosen that. Your life is full, and that’s perfectly fine, but don’t criticize what’s in your control.

My simple recommendation is this: Just for a day, choose to not overstimulate yourself. Eat food and workout without technology. Add an extra 10 minutes to a self-care routine. Be with what’s around you, there’s already enough to hold your attention.

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Hey self improver, a better world starts with a better you and YES YOU CAN! So let's take another step toward your best self today.

For the last few weeks, I’ve had a thought that I can’t shake out of my mind:

If you could snap your fingers and be wherever you wanted to be, doing exactly what you wanted to do… What if you still felt exactly as you do now?

Think about that. 

What if reaching the levels of success you imagined for yourself didn’t actually bring you more fulfillment? What if incredible progress and hard-earned achievements were celebrated externally but you still feel the same internally?

If I’m being honest, the reason this has been so top of mind is because I’ve noticed a creeping dissatisfaction about my life recently. And I fear that rather than it being temporary discomfort, it’s a more permanent reflection that will be present no matter what I do.

We’ve heard it before… The destination isn’t as good as you thought it would be. The climb didn’t offer the view you expected. Putting all of our joy and fulfillment into something that will just be underwhelming when we get it is a formula for disappointment.

You, me, everyone - No matter where we go, you always take ‘you’ with you. In other words, however you see the world today is exactly how you’ll see it at the mountain top. Your belief system acts as a filter that colors everything in your life. Put on a pair of red glasses and everything you look at appears red. The same goes for the way we see our accomplishments.

So if today you view yourself as successful, like you’re making a difference in the world, and you enjoy your life - fantastic! But if you don’t, then don’t expect a change in external circumstances to transform your self-perception of how successful you are. 

But, if you see yourself through a chronically underachieving lens, that perspective isn’t permanent. You can work to change your belief system so that you change the way you see things from inside out.

The two central beliefs to this shift are having a growth mindset, and having a positive outlook on life. If you want to work on that, and start giving yourself credit for how amazing you’re already doing rather than feeling disappointed that you’re falling behind, click the link in the description and rewire your mindset with the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge.

Hey self improver, a better world starts with a better you and YES YOU CAN! So let's take another step toward your best self today.

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One of the biggest fears we all share is that we're afraid to look stupid. 

We think that if we go after a big goal and fail, other people will think less of us, or worse we’ll have to accept that we aren’t as good as we thought we were… 

We think that if we try our best but make a mistake, other people will think that we’re incapable and can’t be relied upon, or worse, we’ll destroy our own self-confidence…

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If you’re not living as big or as bold as you know your goals require of you, here are two things to think about: 

1) The more cowardly thing to do is to hide in your comfort zone than to be seen with your imperfections.

2) Not only do you earn others respect when you try and fail, but you believe in yourself more because you proved that you’re willing to do hard and scary things.

In every moment when we fall short of expectations, miss a goal, or don’t live up to our personal standards, we can either become wiser or wounded. 

‘Failure’ is a fertile soil for growth. Losing will teach you more than winning ever could because it offers you more feedback. But that’s only when you allow yourself to see your shortcomings as an opportunity for improvement with a growth mindset. That’s getting wiser.

Or, you can be wounded by poor performance. You see it as a reflection that you’re not good enough. That you’re wasting your time and never had it in you in the first place. Failure reinforces limiting beliefs, suggesting they’re more true than they are, which acts to hold you back out of protection.

The mantra to use, that epitomizes a growth mindset, goes: “Either I win or I learn, and learning is winning, so either I win or I win so long as I learn.”

It’s natural to feel disappointed when you fall short. It means you care. But in that moment, you get to choose what the long term implication of that instance is going to be: Either you become wiser or you become wounded.

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We’re predisposed toward self-preservation. Our unconscious mind chooses ‘wounded’. But we can overrule that and choose ‘wiser’. But first, you’ve got to put yourself out there and give yourself a chance to fail.

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