Self Improvement Daily Podcast

I was on a group call with Pat Flynn, and what he said was so simple but so deeply true. Pat has invested years in becoming one of the strongest brands in online marketing which he’s done by cultivating real relationships and being human in the way he does business. He even wrote a book called “Superfans” where he talks about all of the tactics he’s used to create a real connection with his many followers.

And it’s with that experience that this one line of wisdom really hit me. Pat said “People are tired of fake.”

Unfortunately, the world is full of fake. Social media creates an impossible expectation we all try to live up to. Artificial intelligence is impersonating people better than ever. People talk in business lingo that doesn’t mean much but sounds smart... 

It’s happening everywhere, and because of that, people are more cautious. They’re slower to trust. They think twice. They pass everything through a very sensitive filter meter to see if something’s legitimate or 'BS'.

The opposite of being fake is being real. And being real is a major differentiator in today’s world. It’s the reason why you believe someone can help you succeed if you first know about their failure. It’s why people crave real stories of real people, which makes them more relatable. In a world where so much is fake we have a deep need for authentic connection

So how can you be more real in a fake world? 

Be honest. Rather than inflating your situation so that it looks better, represent things how they actually are. It’s likely that you’ll meet people where they’re at rather than try to paint an unbelievably impossible picture. 

Be vulnerable. Share the parts of you and your story that aren’t perfect. Relive the emotional moments, the decisions you made, and how it shaped you into who you are today. Rory Vaden often says “you are most qualified to help the person you once were.” Give people the gift of getting to know that person.

Be raw. You don’t need to have a perfectly polished plan. Messy action is magnetic. People want to join you in the trenches because it creates a more realistic expectation of what it actually looks like to do what you do. An objective view into the hands-on, messy process teaches more than telling people how you did it ever could.

Again, people are tired of fake. So whether you’re looking to grow your business, invest in friendships, strengthen a marriage, get healthier, or whatever it is you want to see for yourself - be real about it.

Your real example will inspire more people than you know, and your authenticity will attract people who can help you and want to see you succeed.

A character trait that is widely looked down upon is arrogance. Someone who's arrogant is someone who thinks they’re better than they are, who doesn’t respect or honor the process of becoming and has an inflated sense of self that biases their worldview.

A common expression people use to describe someone like that is to say that they’re “full of themselves”. But looking at that quote directly, I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to be 'full of yourself'. It’s just a matter that you’re filling yourself with the right things.

For example, it’s good to be full of confidence. Someone who believes in themself and their abilities makes bigger waves in the world and plays a bigger game. The problem is when over-confidence becomes a lack of humility, and you overestimate yourself and underestimate the challenge ahead.

It’s good to be full of character and authenticity. If you’re not full of what’s genuinely yours and instead you’re full of what someone else wants for you - that’s a recipe for disappointment. As Bronnie Ware discovered, the #1 regret of the dying is that people on their deathbed “wish they would have lived a life true to themselves, not the life others expected of them.” 

Brian Johnson, founder of Heroic says “You’re the hero the world has been waiting for… And Oscar Wilde says “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.”

In truth, it’s a tricky balance to find: You’re supposed to be unapologetically yourself, but not so much that it’s over the top and cause for concern. How does one manage that?

My understanding is that you want to maintain equal parts of confidence and humility. Equal parts ambition and receptiveness. As you become more confident and fill yourself up, also become more humble and open-minded. As you get louder about who you are and what you can do in the world, get louder about asking for help and seeking perspective. It helps to maintain the tension.

It's a worthwhile problem to solve because the world needs you on fire! So be full of yourself in all of the best ways, while increasing your checks and balances so that your boisterous confidence is also grounded in reality.

An amazing thing in life is that we don’t just set goals and have dreams, but they can actually come to fruition! What we want isn’t just an empty promise to ourselves but a potential reality that we’re called to create. And oftentimes, we succeed in creating it.

Within the process of that pursuit, something I’ve noticed is that people value their achievement less if they didn’t work hard for it. It’s almost like an achievement is more meaningful when it was earned against all odds and worked hard for.

But why does it need to be that way? Why can’t our dream life just be something that is effortlessly attracted to us? Why can’t success come easy?

I’m of the opinion that we are powerful beyond measure and each have access to exactly what we need to create whatever we want. We have an inherent connection to what we want, and who we want to be - Yet we it's not our reality exactly because there’s a resistance that dilutes our ability to access what we’re connected to.  If only we were to remove that resistance, all that’s left is a direct connection to the skills, character, and beliefs we need to make it all happen.

The reason this seems so unfathomable to us is because of the belief system we’ve been raised in. It’s a collective understanding that people are rewarded for hard work, that there’s virtue in persevering through adversity, and that it’s more meaningful to be an underdog.

And unfortunately it’s creating an unfair expectation, and causes many people to discredit the successes they’ve achieved because they feel it was just a fluke, and it wasn’t earned.

But again, that’s operating from a more traditional way of thinking. If we adopt a new belief system that doesn’t judge the mechanism that creates success, and instead welcome it when it comes, success will show up more often.

Success can come easy when you get out of your own way and let it. Until then, it’ll be the type of thing that you have to keep working hard for.

I heard Chris Williamson define a term that explains one of the biggest problems in my life. It’s sad to say, but if I had a weekend to myself at home, where I didn’t have any plans and I couldn’t work - I don’t know what I’d want to do. I love having fun but in my adulthood I feel like I’ve forgotten many of the things I like to do just because I enjoy doing it.

This is what Chris Williamson calls ‘Productivity Purgatory’ - things you do for fun only because they create more productivity later.

For years I’ve called this ‘Compulsive Productivity’ and it’s exactly what I do with my free time. It's the desire to want to get a really good workout in, challenge myself to a long meditation, go for a walk by the beach, watch an intellectual interview on Youtube, or do something that contributes to my long-term well-being in my free-time.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with those things, but if you’re like me and have a hard time seeing past that on an average day, then perhaps you’re in productivity purgatory too.

For me, I’ve convinced myself that doing things that refresh my mind, body, and soul are fun. I really like the idea of filling my time with rejuvenating things today so that I take care of the vessel I’ll be using tomorrow.

But I also acknowledge that it’s healthy to have hobbies, activities, and outings that you do just for the fun of it. And in that category, fewer things come to mind.

I think the main point I’m trying to make is - Trying to do productive and healthy things in your down time contributes to the narrative that we always need to be doing something. That if we aren’t making the most of an opportunity, we’ll later regret the things we missed and wonder how high we could’ve climbed had we applied ourselves.

So for a moment, let’s reject that notion and just do something because we want to. Because it’s fun to do! And weave in grounded joy as a counterbalance to our big ambitions.

The most undisputed, most valuable thing that we have in life is time.

The classic question that proves this is: “If I gave you $1 million but you died tomorrow, would you take it? What about $10 million?” For the far majority of people, the answer is ‘no’. There’s no amount of money that’s worth more than another day of life. 

William Penn is known for saying “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst." Isn’t that interesting? We believe that if only we had a few more hours a day we’d be able to take care of ourselves better, spend more quality time with loved ones, pour ourselves into the hobbies we enjoy, build up a new project we’ve had in mind for a while… Then our lives would be exponentially better.

We do those things and our health, careers, relationships, life experiences and fulfillment will flourish

The irony is, we have the time to do all of it. We just aren’t using our time well.

Proper time management comes down to three things: Knowing what to do, doing it, and doing it really well. It’s the trifecta. 

From the sea of everything, you have to know what to do. These are the things that are most important, most urgent, most impactful, and most likely to generate the results that you want. That level of discernment requires both organization and strategy, helping you commit to the things that are most aligned with your goals.

You’ve got to follow through and actually do it. The best plans do nothing for you if you don’t put them into action, and action is unlikely to happen unless you’ve created the right environment for it.

And this is a bit of a bonus, but if you want to reach the levels of success that you envision for yourself, you need to do things really well. This requires that you hold yourself accountable to a higher standard of quality. You get a lot out for what you put in by creating leverage through having the skills to do it well, and you give tasks your best within the time by having the energetic capacity to focus.

What I’ve described are the ways that you unlock your personal productivity, getting more of the right things done day after day, so that you can live the healthy, influential, meaningful life you’d be excited to wake up to.

And if you want to learn not just what to do… But how to become more productive on a daily basis... I created a Masterclass called “The 6 Productivity Fundamentals For Overbusy Business Owners”. It goes over the exact 6-part process I just described but in way more detail, with specific action steps. You don’t need to be a business owner to get a lot out of it, and if you want to watch the replay from when I presented it live, it's available for free when you click here.

Something that passionate, ambitious high-achievers strive for on a daily basis is to give it their all. To give their 100%. 

The intention is good but the problem is, any time we give less than 100% we begin to judge ourselves. We question how committed we are to our goals and becoming the person who’s capable of achieving them. It’s discouraging to fall short of the expectation you set for yourself.

And the reality is, in today’s world, giving 100% is really hard. 

Unexpected things pop up in your family and work every day that suck your energy and attention. Our bodies go through natural rhythms, cycles that are impacted in known and unknown ways, that carry a certain energy or attitude into the present moment.

There’s a reason for the expression “give it all you’ve got”. Some days you have more to give than others. Your 100% looks different every day.

And with that in mind, there are two important things to consider:

First, a lot of what you ‘have to give’ is in your control. By making good lifestyle choices, you can do your part to offset energy drainers and protect yourself from their influence. When you can act with discipline and do what you know most serves you when you feel tired, inconvenienced, or overly busy - that’s how you can decrease its impact on you. So always do your best to make good, healthy choices.

And second, you must be fair with yourself. Be self-aware of the circumstances around you and how you’re receiving them. If you’re in a season of demanding work, choose to decrease your exercise commitments. If you’re on vacation, give yourself permission to splurge on some dessert. You're human and the variance is okay.

However, this all needs to be done with guardrails. Rather than slipping to the far extreme and giving yourself permission to take unrestricted action you’d later disagree with, you need to be clear on setting a fair level of commitment. Maybe it’s not an hour long workout every day, but 15 minutes of bodyweight exercise on a day when you’re traveling. And maybe it’s not having as many drinks or slices of cake as you want at a friend's wedding, but 2 drinks over the course of the night and a reasonably sized piece of cake to try. 

Evaluating what your 100% is on any given day, and how you want to show up in different areas of your life from that space, is a dynamic process. 

The way that I do it is I have clearly defined standards for myself: A high standard that is a doable challenge every day, and a minimum standard that is the amount required to maintain progress. From that reference point I tap into how I’m feeling, what I’ve got going on, and set an intention for how I want to show up.

Recently I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting stuck on my phone more often than I’d like. Yes, even the guy who talks about this stuff all day struggles with it. Why do you think I talk about it?

In particular, going on YouTube on my phone has been a slippery slope. I usually turn to it when I want to put on something mindless to help me reset my mind. This can be during a meal alone or just for a midday break. There’s nothing inherently wrong with social media, the real issue is simply doing something you don’t want to be doing. 

The technology is literally designed to hold your attention, and a few days in a row I stayed on longer than I wanted to. And I knew that because every night I reflect on my social media usage in my Self Improvement Scorecard. This brought to my awareness my vulnerability for it, which helped me make some adjustments.

There was a day a few weeks ago when I wanted to take a break and watch some YouTube. But knowing that I wanted to watch on my own terms, with control, I decided to take a few steps of intervention.

First, before I started watching I set a timer on my watch for 10 minutes. That way I would know when my usage started to get into undesirable territory. I also voiced to my wife “I’m taking a quick break, if I’m not back in 20 minutes, tell me to get back to work.”

Because I implemented those two strategies, I was very intentional with my time on social media, got the mind reset I was looking for, and went back to work right on time.

And I can explain why this worked so well in one word: Environment.

Rather than entering the same environment where I’ve been struggling to control my time on my phone, I shaped it in my favor. The timer interrupted my consciousness so that I knew exactly when my time was up, and it allowed me to make an empowered choice. The accountability I established with my wife added a layer of commitment to the plan, with painful consequences of letting my wife down if I didn't follow through, which made it easy to close the app. 

When you take action to shape your environment in your behavior, what you want to happen becomes way more likely to happen. And that’s simply because you change the path of least resistance. A supportive environment takes you closer to where you want to go.  

I have endless examples of how I’ve shaped my environment for my success, but it all comes back to having critical awareness in my Self Improvement Scorecard.