Self Improvement Daily Podcast

A common expression you hear is getting “caught up in the heat of the moment”. It’s when tensions run high and often leads to actions born from emotion and passion. In some cases people step up to the moment and alchemize the ‘heat’ to find flow and elevate their performance, but more often the ‘heat of the moment’ causes people to lose their cool and do things they later wish they didn’t do.

This happens all the time on the soccer field. I played college soccer and have seen it countless times. Someone slides in with a hard tackle, whether it was a foul or not the other guy has an issue with it. He gets in his face and starts talking smack. One guy headbutts or pushes or spits on the other as an act of claiming their dominance and physical presence, and they get a Red Card.

This is the heat of the moment. The game is competitive so people are already running hot. It’s high stakes and the game is on the line. So when something questionable happens that sets someone off, tensions can escalate quickly.

The irony is, these are professional athletes. You can imagine they’ve been trained how to regulate their emotions, and have been instructed not to do anything stupid that jeopardizes the team. Yet, in the heat of the moment, they lose control and make a mistake that hurts their team. 

I imagine you’ve found yourself in high stakes, highly emotional, passionate moments. Maybe even you’ve done things you weren’t proud of that you apologized for. What happens psychologically is our emotions take us out of the highly-developed prefrontal cortex and activate more primitive structures in the Amygdala. This makes us act more instinctually and seek to defend ourselves out of self-preservation and protection. The defense is intended to secure both our physical and psychological safety.

That’s why we say things we don’t mean and act violently in ways we’d never want to. It’s because our primitive brain takes over, dominates our thinking, and influences us to act in ways we later regret.

The key to navigating the heat of the moment is to deescalate emotions. When we need to slow down our nervous system, breathe, and then assess. That’s how you can take all factors into account as you decide how to respond rather than impulsively and reflexively react.

It’s easier said than done, but the next time you find yourself in the heat of the moment, you can use this understanding to navigate the situation in a way that represents who you want to be.

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I work with a lot of people helping them to improve their consistency, performance, and the quality of their choices… and there’s one part to the process that people overlook more than the rest. They’re great at being accountable to answering honestly to how things went, but when things don’t go according to plan, they neglect to learn from it.

The reason this is important is because what manifests into your reality doesn't happen randomly or by accident. It’s an output of the design and factors that preceded it. It’s cause and effect. So when people don’t follow through on a commitment or enforce a standard they have for themselves, and leave it at that, they have no better of an understanding for what caused the lapse in performance. 

In a moment there’s a lot that influences us unconsciously in our environment. We’re not even aware of how different factors are pulling us in different directions and impacting the likelihood of our behavior. When we pause to understand what was happening behind the scenes, and learn more about the conditions that caused whatever happened, we make the unconscious conscious.

It’s a form of diagnosis and the process of completing it is very simple: You ask the question “Why” enough times until you get to the heart of it.

For example, I had a client who didn’t make great choices in his diet and because he’s accountable, he knew it. He reflected on what happened and realized it’s because he was traveling. That’s helpful awareness - to know that when he’s traveling he’s less likely to make an unhealthy choice.

Should he want to, he could go a layer further and ask “Why?” again. Perhaps it’s because the shortest line at the airport was pizza. Maybe it was because he had to clear out his fridge and ate some unhealthy leftovers. Another step of diagnosis presents a deeper understanding for what caused it. With each step you learn more.

The challenging part is, shortcomings or lapses in performance can make you feel emotional. You get embarrassed or self-critical about it. This makes looking at your choices that much harder to do. And when you don’t, you neglect to learn and increase the chances you’ll make the same mistake again.

So do not neglect to learn! If you’re curious to see my personal system for reflecting on my choices, and accelerating my growth when I fall short, then check out this video I made where I walk you through it. It could be the missing piece to your masterpiece of a life!

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I was talking to my friend and he made a comment about how much he was looking forward to a trip he was going on, 3 days of fishing with his father. This friend has been going through a lot recently - a messy divorce, financial hardship, and losing a sense of purpose. This trip was meant to do a lot for his soul and healing.

While on his trip I sent a message to him saying “You deserve the goodness and peace coming your way”. Embedded in the message were so many implications, I really liked the way it came off, and I wanted to share the details around that for you. Because if you’re going through some challenging times and need a perspective shift, this might do it.

Let me break it down in reverse order:

What’s “coming your way” has two meanings. It’s both future-facing in that it’s yet to arrive, but you can expect that it will. This inspires hope. It also could be true in the present where what’s coming your way has been coming your way. You’ve been actively receiving it. This means things are “coming your way” today and tomorrow.

Then, there’s the “goodness and peace”. In the crazy and busy world we live in today, we all want more goodness and peace. Goodness involves all the good things in life: quality health, great relationships, more presence and connection, more financial abundance and freedom to be the person you want to be. And peace gives you the satisfaction that you’re right where you’re supposed to be, not strained or overstretched, but filling the role in the world you were meant to without it feeling too demanding. Who doesn’t want goodness and peace coming their way?

And then there’s the beginning: “You deserve”. Especially as it relates to personal hardship, it often comes as the byproduct of our own mistakes, errors, or lapses in judgment. There are certainly things out of our control, but when our life gets harder and we know it’s our own doing, we can feel shame and guilt about it, and reason that we deserve the challenging things happening to us. That’s why framing it this way is so powerful. It takes the responsibility you associate with getting what you deserve but applies it to phenomenal and uplifting things. It reminds you that you are responsible for the blessings in your life.

So let’s put it all together again: “You deserve the goodness and peace coming your way”. 

I’m saying to you. Whatever you’re being too hard on yourself about, struggling with, or anxious about… You deserve the goodness and peace coming your way. 

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As we seek to build our best lives, we certainly don’t want to get stuck or held back in any way. Yet that’s where we constantly are. It’s not a matter of not caring, not wanting it enough, or it not being important to you… It’s part of the inherent limitations we face as humans.

We cannot overcome blindspots in our awareness. We can only operate based on what we know from the level of consciousness we’re at. For that reason, one of the most effective things to do to accelerate your self-growth is to increase your consciousness. When you do that, you better understand the dynamics that are shaping your world and put yourself in a better position to intervene.

Some of the points of awareness that we’re missing are hidden in plain sight, right in front of our noses. There are details of our lives that are obvious to others but hidden to us. And sometimes all we need to do is tell ourselves to look for it in order for us to see it.

Chris Williamson, host of the Modern Wisdom podcast, often shares this question as a way of heightening your awareness: 

If your life was a movie, and the audience were watching up to this point, what would they be screaming at the screen telling you to do?"

I mean just picture that. People who are observing every moment of your life know exactly what’s wrong. It’s so obvious to them that they’re frustrated you aren’t doing anything about it. What might that thing be for you?

You’re not making enough money… Quit giving people discounts!  

Stop going out with Johnny, he's such a bad influence on you!

Stop being so scared and propose already!

You have way too much going on and your schedule is packed! For the love of God hire somebody!

It’s an interesting question to reflect on because it helps you remove yourself from the emotions of the situation and get out of the weeds. It’s objective. You’re not as far along as you should be on this thing and it’s for this reason! Can’t you see it?

Don’t put pressure on yourself to be so self-aware that you get stuck on it. Explore the possibilities. What might they be screaming at you to do? I’m curious to hear what comes up for you.

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If you’re deeply invested in your personal development, we need to take a moment to define terms. So much of our effort and growth is in the name of getting better. But what is better? What does getting better even mean?

Let’s think about it through the lens of inputs and outputs. The current relationship between inputs and outputs is the current state. So if you want something to be better, you want to improve the relationship between the inputs and outputs. And there are only two ways to do that.

First is you generate more output for a given input where the time, effort, energy, and resources you put in generate more of what you want. This is being more effective. For example, it takes the same amount of time to send 20 outreach emails for your business. But if you have a more effective approach where you send a higher-quality message, you’ll generate more interest. Being more effective increases the impact of a single unit of input.

The second way to improve the relationship between inputs and outputs is to get the same out by putting less in. This is being more efficient. Using the same example, let’s say that you develop a new process where you can produce an outreach email that’s at the same level of quality but it takes less time to write. The action generates a similar amount of interest but it doesn’t take the same amount of time, effort, or resources to produce. 

The byproduct of becoming more effective and efficient is the same. Fundamentally, increasing the relationship between inputs and outputs is a matter of leverage. You get more out for whatever amount you put in.

The really exciting part about getting better is it’s always possible. The upside is endless. You can always make something more effective, and you can always streamline processes to make things more efficient. That’s why improvement isn't a destination but a pursuit.  It’s always available and always in progress. 

So the next time you recognize you want to improve or for something to get better, it’s a matter of leverage. How do you take inputs and turn them into higher-producing outputs? Once you determine how you want to intervene, then you can get to work implementing a new and better approach.

One of the most important clarities you can have to accelerate your growth is knowing what to focus on. While there’s no shortage of things we can do to change our lives, there are a few things that are genuinely the most impactful. If you manage to figure out what those are, your results will change much faster. That’s the value of figuring out your focus.

I’ve found that getting to that point is actually a more elaborate process. Ultimately what you want is to shift your reality in your favor. You want your lived experience to map closer to the vision you have for it. The first step is to quantify the gap. Where are you now compared to where you want to be? Make it measurable. I’m currently 180 pounds and I want to be 160 pounds. I’m currently making $80k and I want to make $100k.

When you do that, you make the problem clear and highlight the transformation. It’s obvious what you want to see change. But the results you’re experiencing are a byproduct of something else. It’s the effect of the factors that are causing it. So that’s the next step. When you look at the problem, what’s the main thing causing it?

For weighing 180 pounds instead of 160 pounds, what’s the main reason why? Is it poor eating habits? Not exercising enough? Is there something off metabolically? 

Or for making $80k instead of $100k, is it that you’re not being compensated enough in your full-time job? Do you need to increase the money you’re making on the side? Do you need to pay yourself more out of your business?

Get as honest as and as thoughtful as possible. Think of your problem as the symptom of an underlying issue, and you need to diagnose the root cause.

Once you are clear on what’s most causing your problem, then you can determine the focus. The work you do to make change to your life and business are most effective when you intervene at the level of the cause. You essentially invert the cause into an affirmative focus that then can be engineered into strategy and tactics.

If metabolic issues are causing your being overweight, your focus is to find the right supplements to balance your hormones. If the cause of your income challenges is that your full-time isn’t compensating you enough, then the focus is to find a higher-paying full-time job. It gives you a decision-making lens that your next steps are determined through. It maximizes your ability to actually shift an undesired result into what you want.

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Last week I texted a friend inviting him to join me and some other friends for a walk. He responded saying “Maybe, TBD”. Unfortunately he didn’t end up making it out. Reflecting on my relationship with him over the last year or two, I don’t know that we’ve spent time together outside of spontaneously bumping into each other.

He’s the type of person that doesn't like planning things.  Now it’s not like his way doesn’t work, he gets a lot done and is a functioning member of society. But what I’ve noticed is that our different ways of operating within the world are incompatible. I am pretty structured. I like making plans in advance and being proactive about allocating time for people and things that I want to do. 

It’s clearly not a good recipe for our friendship, but what does it mean about our different approaches to life? What are the tradeoffs?

I can certainly speak for myself. Being organized and structured helps me to live more intentionally. I design my days so that they’re full of the things I want to do. As a result I live a balanced life, make progress on things I care about, invest in the people I want to spend time with, and keep space for the personal time that I need.  The downside is, I’m less flexible and cannot accommodate new plans as well. I miss out on some great moments because I’m already committed to doing something else.  

On the flip side, my friend who is less scheduled and more open can feel into what he wants to do in the moment. He probably can be more present with what he’s doing because he doesn't have in the back of his mind what he needs to get to next, or what he was supposed to be doing. He probably meets the moment a little bit better because he chooses it in real-time rather than planning it in advance. However, I imagine the downside is that he’s not as deliberate about investing in things like relationships, and struggles to build momentum toward longer term goals.

Neither is better or worse. They’re different operating systems. I design what I want out of life, he responds to what life presents. Both can make a person happy. 

No matter the nature of the differences, It’s a bummer to me because I value his friendship and we don’t spend much quality time together. And I wonder if he notices that we aren’t as close as we could be. In any case, it’s interesting to observe how different people with different approaches to life attract different things into it.

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An area that I’ve been really focused on in my life and business is strategy. As I understand it, your strategy is the best approach you know to achieve a desired result. The better the approach, the more likely you’ll achieve what you want.

I’ve found the most effective way to incorporate strategy into my life is through strategic planning sessions. This involves on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual basis reviewing how things are going and understanding what’s working and what’s not. When you step away from execution to observe your performance, you can gain insights that improve your efforts.

In attempting to maximize the impact of my strategy and strategic planning sessions, two main roadblocks have come up.

The first is related to actually completing the session itself. When you carve out time in your calendar for it, it often gets deprioritized because long-term strategic planning isn’t as urgent as short-term task completion. Especially when compared to the projects that you’re behind on, people you need to get back to, and the things that broke that you need to fix. So we naturally feel a pressure to compromise our commitment to complete a strategic planning session and fill the block with more time-sensitive things.

The second is on the opposite side of the spectrum where you reconsider your strategy too often. When you execute a strategy for a while and don’t see results yet, it can get discouraging. And given the flood of information and ideas we’re surrounded by these days, there’s no shortage of new things to try that might work. It’s a version of shiny-object syndrome where you jump from strategy to strategy in an effort to find what works. But when you’re not committed enough to a single strategy, nothing will work.

That’s why you need to find that sweet spot: You protect a strategic planning session so that you can determine the best strategy to meet your goals, and then you stay committed to that strategy and execute until it’s time to revisit it.

Underlying successful strategic planning are systems of measuring performance, organizing your tasks, organizing your schedule, and taking consistent action. If you want to see the systems I use on a daily basis to help me with all of those things, I’ve got videos overviewing all of them. Click here to check out some of my high performance systems.

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Something that people like us, who are ambitious and deeply invested in their self-growth, are chasing in their life is to be successful. And while society measures success in one way, we’ve learned that the secret to success is defining it for yourself.

Understanding the role that seeking success has played in my life, I’ve gone through a few iterations of it myself. I adopted Darren Hardy’s definition whereby you reflect on how you’re doing in 6 areas of your life to audit your holistic success. I love John Wooden’s definition for success, which is “Peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable".

For whatever reason, last week something came to mind that suggested success is even simpler. Knowing if you're successful comes down to your answer to 3 questions:

1. Are you happy? It’s a hard question to answer, but such an important quality in life. To be happy means that you generally feel positive emotions of contentment and inner peace. While sensations of happiness are informed by experiences, it really is an internal relationship with how you view life around you.
   
   
2. Are you and your loved ones provided for? This is primarily financial but by a different definition. It’s a matter of if your baseline needs are met or not. Most people associate making more money with being more successful, but what if financial success is a game of meeting a quantified minimum standard rather than filling an endless pit of more?
   
   
3. Do you feel like you have a sense of purpose? That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re making a big difference in the world, it can just be that you have a role to play in your world. To have a purpose means that you have a reason to wake up in the morning, and whether it’s helping people who depend on you, clients in business having a more positive experience, or something else, all you need is some engine that actively fuels your life.

Maybe we look at it from the other side. The opposite of being successful is being a failure. What ultimately means that someone is failing at life? Perhaps they’re not enjoying it, they’re not provided for, and they don’t have a sense of meaning.

For whatever reason, the criteria for feeling like a failure is way more lenient than for being a success. In many ways we’ve set an unreasonable standard, and simplifying it down to these 3 questions helps to see it for what it is. 

Having said that, much of personal development is a process to increase your confidence in responding to the same 3 questions. There’s always more to uncover, create, and become, but don’t mistake that you need all of that to be successful. You already are, and now it’s just a matter of cultivating more goodness so that you can share your success with others.