Self Improvement Daily Podcast

Some of us simply have a more chaotic existence than others. 

Perhaps it’s because of a work environment that is unpredictable, fast-paced, and reactive in nature… It’s hard to organize in those conditions. 

Perhaps it’s because of a living situation where a roommate is messy and volatile, or your household is full of a handful of beautiful kids who are a whirlwind of after school activities and commitments…

The honest truth of it is, that chaos isn’t permanent. All of it is a choice. Having said that, it could genuinely be the right choice. You could have a good reason to stay in that job, the timing isn’t right to change, or the good outweighs the bad in how it provides for you. And with your kids, it’s not like you want to get rid of them or deny them a full childhood with varied experiences…

In those cases, chaos is a chosen constant. It’s a condition you’re choosing to accept as your reality because changing things are actually undesirable overall.

If that’s the case, then the question becomes - How do you manage chaos? 

Here are a few perspectives that come to mind:

The first one I just shared: Accept that it’s a choice you made. Invite the perspective that given the big picture, it’s actually your preference. In its own way, this lightens the sense of frustration, inconvenience, and urgency you feel because you’ve decided that’s how you want it to be.

A second perspective is to design flexibility. Rather than trying to make a perfect plan that’s set up for failure, build in some tolerance. When you allocate uncommitted time in your day to manage whatever might come up, then when it comes you’re not put behind. You’ve accounted for it. 

For example in a fast-paced work environment, you can still plan your day so that it incorporates your most important projects. Quantify how long that will take, protect it in your calendar, but also quantify how long it takes to address the requests that come up that you could not plan for. You can commit to less, so you need to be more discerning about what you take on, but it also makes you more accommodating.

And the last perspective I’ll share is to just stay in the game. To further the sports analogy, it’s to keep a “next play mentality”. You can’t change the past, but you can influence the future. So when things start to go awry, try not to get all caught up in how far off track you are… But get thoughtful about your response. Think through how plans need to be updated so that you redefine what ‘on track’ is.

My way of practicing this is literally updating my schedule throughout the day. If something takes longer than expected, I reshuffle my commitments. If something new comes up that I genuinely want to do, I add it to my schedule and choose what gets pushed out.

By being in the practice of accepting, designing for, and updating your expectations to accommodate chaos, you’ll find that its anxiety-provoking nature doesn’t sting quite the same.

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The book that most changed my life is ‘The Compound Effect’ by Darren Hardy. It was the first book where I actually implemented something from it. Darren writes: “Track every action that relates to the area of your life you want to improve.”

I don’t remember what specifically I started tracking, but what I do know is it ignited what has become the most important part of my self improvement. And in helping thousands of people implement their version of daily performance tracking, I’ve noticed a common pattern that is causing people to not be consistent with it.

Here’s the nuance: You’re measuring your performance, not you.

What’s the difference? When you’re measuring your performance, you are observing what happened. You can objectively look at the facts without being as caught up in what it means about your character, discipline, or commitment. 

Tracking works because it gives you an awareness for things you either didn’t see or were unwilling to allow yourself to see. And with that feedback you can diagnose the factors that go into poor performance, analyze the way you’re impacted by your conditions, and use all of that insight to improve efforts moving forward.

Taking a 3rd party lens by making it about your performance creates the space you need to be more honest about how things went.

And that’s because when you’re measuring yourself, it gets personal. It’s not about what happened, it’s about you. You didn’t get in the gym like you said you would. You had more dessert than you should have. You had an outburst on a loved one. 

You are responsible for the poor choice or negative result, and that clicks on a cycle of guilt, shame, and discouragement. Then as an act of self-preservation, your mind rationalizes the behavior and creates a biased representation of the story that protects you in the short-term but doesn’t help you in the long-run.

That’s why at the beginning of my personal performance tracking routine, I ask myself a very important question to prime the experience: Am I tracking my performance today with curiosity and without judgment?

For me, it’s a reminder of the mindset I need to bring into my review. If my intention is genuinely to improve, then I need to be more critical of my performance. But that isn’t effective unless your self-image is removed from the situation, and your reflection can be pure.

If you want to see my Self Improvement Scorecard in action, watch this video where I show you how I hold myself accountable to improving every area of my life.

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One of the things I get complimented on the most is being consistent. I guess that’s the reputation you earn when you put out a new episode every week day for almost 8 years. And I’ve been able to back it up - with my workouts, in choices I make around friends, and in most areas of my life I’ve been very consistent for many years.

However, that doesn’t mean I’m consistent in every area of my life. Just like anyone else I’ve gone through my seasons of making commitments that didn’t last, seeking to raise a standard I couldn’t sustain, and have had my fair share of fast starts that wear off.

How can that possibly make sense? How can someone who is extremely self-disciplined struggle to do the thing they’ve set their mind to?

It all comes down to identity and resistance.

In some cases it’s easier to be consistent. When you identify as a self-disciplined person, it’s actually more painful to act contrary to your identity than it is to just follow through and take the action. In that way, people actually self-sabotage their way into positive action.

Just like any action, we unconsciously follow the path of least resistance. And in this case, with a belief system that finds comfort in taking action a certain way, it creates an environment that nudges you toward consistency.

But if the action is more disruptive - it’s effortful, unproven, or scary to do - then it awakens a different belief system: A need for safety. 

We hesitate to put ourselves out there because we don’t want to embarrass ourselves or offend someone. We play smaller even though we’re telling ourselves to go bigger, and it happens as an act of self-preservation.

The environment is pulling us away from doing the new, big, bold actions that we know will generate new desirable outcomes. Our unconscious need for safety and congruence outweighs our preference for consistency, even if we view ourselves as a self-disciplined person.

And in my experience, that’s the most frustrating part. On one hand you have all the evidence in the world to suggest that you can be consistent… But then when it comes to applying it toward something that really moves the needle in your life, it seems to vanish.

And that’s because discipline and consistency aren’t character traits - they’re the byproduct of environment, just like anything else. So to bridge that gap in the areas that matter most to you, you need to structure your environment so that it supports your being consistent.

How you do that tactically is a much bigger question that involves overcoming resistance, creating systems, generating clarity, improving your social context, improving your physiology, reshaping your beliefs, and so much more. These are all things I’ve implemented to help me get consistent with the big, bold, trajectory-accelerating things I used to struggle to do, and I’m about to begin writing a book that goes into way more detail on all of it! Stay tuned.

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I don’t know if you can relate with this, but I feel a tension in my life. On one hand I am fully committed to becoming the best, most impactful, most successful version of myself. I want to experience all that life has to offer and contribute to the well-being of others in ways that most people can’t.

But at the same time, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to make others feel worse about themselves and their life. There’s a fear that if I grow a big business, others will feel more insecure about there’s. If I build a global impact movement, people will see their contributions as less meaningful.

Even in my marriage - my wife and I have a beautiful love story about how we met and got together, and I fear that our relationship makes other people question the quality of theirs.

As you can tell this is something I’m very much working on, a dynamic that’s still present for me. But I’ve heard some great advice, a favorite quote from Marianne Williamson, that you’ve probably heard before, that I want to share within this context:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,

talented and fabulous?

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Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won’t feel insecure around you.

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We were born to make manifest the glory of

God that is within us.

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It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people

permission to do the same.

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As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others.”

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To summarize this beautiful quote: Your success doesn’t threaten anyone else’s potential for success. 

Sure it might threaten their character and surface their insecurities, but it doesn’t mean they’re less capable of being successful themselves.  In fact, it could inspire and bring out something better within them. Your bravery to be bigger and bolder could push someone else past their tipping point, and catalyze their greatness.

And that’s what I’m actively choosing to believe. It’s still a bit unnatural to me, but I’m seeing all the reasons why my success benefits others. We’re always in progress, and that’s the most beautiful part!

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We’ve all been raised to know the importance of telling the truth. Being truthful is a sign of good morals, integrity, and character. That’s something we all want for ourselves and for our loved ones, isn’t it? And that’s precisely why it’s so valued.

Yet, many of us struggle to tell the truth. At one point or another I imagine we all have lied, exaggerated, or misrepresented something about ourselves. I’m certainly in that camp. But don’t consider that to mean that we’re all horrible people… It’s more a comment that it’s hard to tell the truth, and how human it is to feel a pressure to portray yourself a certain way to others.

Thinking through the factors that might cause someone to not tell the truth… Perhaps someone is scared of what others might think of them if they had certain preferences or interests. Perhaps they worry that they won’t be taken seriously if they’re truthful about their finances or levels of success. Perhaps they don’t want to create conflict in a relationship they value, and potentially damage it.

No matter the form or expression, the common thread that explains all unwillingness to tell the truth is fear. And given that context, I want to propose a deeper point:

Fear must also be the thing that keeps us from being honest and truthful with ourselves

In a coaching session with Gina Piggott, she once asked: “What are you pretending not to know?” It’s a creative way of probing into the truth you’re unwilling to see, accept, and take action on.

I know for myself, once I see something that doesn’t serve me - that explains something that is responsible for why I don’t have the life I want to live - I can't unsee it. I feel compelled to do something about it or else I feel like a hypocrite, or I’m not truly maximizing my growth and potential.

And that’s why we’d pretend not to know. We fear the negative consequences of life-change. We’d prefer to not do things that might make our life harder, put ourselves out there in uncomfortable ways, or hurt others. In this case ignorance is bliss, but it comes at the expense of our ultimate potential.

A technique I use to break through that layer of fear, and uncomfortable commitment that comes with more awareness, is to approach the issue in a lighter way. I use the word ‘might’:

“How might this client be bad for my business?”

“Why might I be unhappy with my weight?”

“Why might this volunteer role I’m in be a bad fit for me?”

It invites curiosity before commitment, and it helps you see truth in ways you might have been unconsciously avoiding. Telling yourself the truth is just as hard as telling others the truth, but it’s vital that you do. Or else you’ll keep playing out unfortunate patterns in your life.

“The truth will set you free”, right?

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In a world that’s busier than ever, it's often hard to get it all done. We know that consistency is important but it’s difficult to get into routines and daily disciplines when there’s so much going on pulling you out of your way. 

It’s exactly this problem that has popularized the idea of time management. Of course we can’t change time itself, but we can manage how we use our time so that our days are full of the things that are most important to us. And the idea is - those who are really good at managing their time get more of the right things done, are more productive, and feel more complete at the end of the day.

This is where strategies like time-blocked scheduling, having an organized task list, and having protected Deep Work blocks can be really effective. I’m a huge proponent for all of these things and use them myself! However, those strategies alone are missing an important nuance:

Better time management is preceded by intentional time design.

Time design helps you establish the overall rhythm you want for your life. It takes into consideration the season of life you’re in (which may make you more or less available than usual), the overall balance you want to achieve so that priorities aren’t compromised, and helps you truly quantify your time.

And this is critical because once you’ve been thoughtful about the parameters of your days, then you can create a time-blocked schedule that builds on your overall design. Time design gives different days, and times of days, specific intentions so that you can make sure your daily activity maps to it.

In working on my own time design and supporting others with theirs, people often arrive at these conclusions:

1) They didn’t have  a real game-plan for how they enjoy every day and get all of life’s responsibilities to fit together optimally

2) They see why their life is stressful, and how their self-care gets pushed out

3) They realize that their days could run so much more efficiently, and their capacity expands, with a little more structure and intention

Now this might be hard to picture so if you’re curious to see how I use Intentional Time Design to map out my weeks, I created a video walking you through exactly how it works, alongside other high-performance systems I’ve built into my life.

‍Click here if you want to check those out and create more freedom in your life so that you can get more consistent with the things that matter most to you.

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I’m sure you know this by now… But the most influential element to the actions we take on a daily basis is our environment. Like sitting in a canoe in a river, we unconsciously go downstream wherever the environment is taking us. That means, if we want to go somewhere else we need to redesign our environment so that we naturally get pulled in a more favorable direction.

The thing about our environment is it’s much more complex, interconnected, and nuanced than you might think. Its influence is constantly evolving given the way small things change. It is dynamic, fragile, and vulnerable - which means we’re actually more capable of restructuring it than we even realize.

It doesn’t take much to disrupt the environment, and last week I did just that.

I was in Mexico for a housebuild impact project and after a long day working in the sun we had a group meeting to go over stories from the day, and logistics for the next. After that we usually play a few games and enjoy each other’s company. 

At the end of one of the games I could sense that some of the group wanted to play again, but some of us wanted to get some rest to prepare for a big day - myself included. There was a brief moment of tension, of uncertainty about what comes next, and given my people-pleasing nature, if someone voiced that they wanted to play another game I probably would have reluctantly accepted.

But rather than letting the tension resolve on its own, I took the first action and simply stood up. 

It was an action that disrupted the environment. It changed the energetic landscape as I subtly communicated my intention to say “goodnight” and get to bed. My action took over the frame of the environment, reshaped it in a way that was more favorable for what I wanted, and  quietly gave other people permission to do the same and skip the next game if they wanted to. And I got right to bed, on time, mission accomplished.

A visual that often comes to mind is shaking a snowglobe. When all the snow goes flying through the globe, things are turbulent. You don’t know exactly how it’ll settle. These are inflection points where the influence of the environment is being negotiated and restructured. Sometimes all it takes is a little shake to disrupt the previous pattern and design a new one.

It requires consciousness to take that action, but the action itself isn’t that effortful. It’s high leverage and strategic. And I encourage you to do something like this the next time you’re noticing that you’re being pulled the wrong direction and you want to make a correction.

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The most important influencing factor on our behavior is the environment we’re in. 

Our walking pace literally speeds up or slows down to match the person we’re walking with… 

A desired action becomes way more likely to occur when it’s more accessible, prevalent, and easier to do…

One of the most overlooked fixtures of our environment is ‘necessity’. You are radically more likely to do something if you have to, or else suffer the consequences. 

It’s the driving force that gets someone showing up for work even when they have an abusive boss, or else they’ll lose their job and not be able to take care of their family. It’s what makes a mom capable of lifting a car to save her child. It’s what gets someone serious about quitting smoking, or losing weight, for fear that they’ll die young if they don’t.

The reason this works is because when necessity is present in an environment, it helps to overcome the action threshold required to follow through on a behavior.

Not quite as serious as the previous examples, but earlier this week I had a totally normal, everyday experience that showed the power of necessity when I was taking a cold shower:

As long as it’s before 8pm and it’s not immediately after intentional cold exposure (that’s my standard), I start all my showers with cold water. It’s not freezing but enough to make you hyperventilate a little and get your attention.

For this shower in particular I was running behind and needed to make it quick. I stepped into the shower, got hit with a wave of cold, and rather than sitting there and trying to coach my way through it, I immediately got to soaping and shampooing myself. 

Why the difference? Because of necessity. I didn’t have the extra minute I would usually take to settle into the shower, I was in a rush, and that environment drove me to take a different action and more easily overcome the sensation of the cold water.

And while a lot of the examples I’ve provided show ways necessity is imposed on us from external circumstances, we can design necessity into our lives to intentionally support our follow through. 

For example, we can make a commitment to a friend to create a sense of accountability. We can set a goal to invest in a certain professional development program, but only from new funds not accounted for in our budget. We can put a half-marathon on the calendar and it forces us to train for it.

Anytime there’s something influencing our behavior, we should get curious around how we could leverage it for our benefit. And when it comes to necessity, it’s a powerful force when wielded correctly.

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