One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it goes “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” After all, actions speak louder than words.

But I don’t think that tells the full story. I’m someone who cares a lot about intentions. There’s a full context behind what you do that says a lot about you. That’s why perhaps the greatest testament of character is the way you act, and not the things that you do.

The way you act is the way you show up on a moment to moment basis. It’s the energy that you bring to what you do. While it’s largely imperceptible to others, doing somethin for one reason has a different meaning than if you do it for another. And sometimes you’re the only one that knows the difference.

This mirrors a stoic concept called ‘arete’, which loosely translates to ‘being the best version of yourself moment to moment’. Arete is about living a virtuous life that you’re proud to lead, with integrity and authenticity.  The things you do are a byproduct of what really matters, which is the way you act.

When you encounter a challenge or setback, you step up courageously to the task. When you have a disagreement with someone else, you reject being defensive and take the position of being patient as you seek to understand. When someone makes a mistake that negatively affects you, you respond with encouragement and calmness. Life’s adversities put your character to the test, and It’s how you show up to these events that puts your true self on display.

Speaking from personal experience, I’m certainly not perfect. Every day I experience moments where I could have done better, lost control, or wasn’t as thoughtful as I could have been. And often this leads to choices and actions that aren’t optimal. But equally, every day I reinforce my commitment to acting as the best, most virtuous version of myself.

Yes, observe what someone does because it’s often a reflection of their motivations and intentions. Believe what someone does more than what they say. But also, consider the engine behind what they do as you decide what to think about it. Public speaking might be scary to one person and commonplace to the next, so it’s impossible to judge the action itself. It’s the virtues the person embodies in taking the action that represents a fuller version of the truth.

In our pursuit to become the best versions of ourselves, and be an inspiring example for others, there are two different sources of transformation: Inside out and outside in.

First, inside out - This is when you energize your own positive change. You take the initiative to read a new book, listen to a podcast, and implement an idea into your life. We can only make choices from our current level of awareness, and by investing in acquiring more wisdom you can elevate your awareness and improve the way you navigate the world. The inside out direction of growth represents how your own internal shifts change the shape of your external world.

Outside in growth is the opposite and in my opinion, way more powerful. This is the influence that your environment has on you. It’s how your habits and lifestyle resembles the 5 people you spend the most time with (without you even intending to do so). Your walking pace speeds up and slows down based on who you’re walking with. Humans have survived many years because we are adaptable, but this also means that we are susceptible to external forces. It’s the design of the environment around us that plays a large role in determining what happens.

That’s why the fastest way to improve your life is to plant yourself in a community of people who are taking action at the level you want to. They have the health habits, business success, and thriving personal life you aspire to. They enjoy the world through a lens of gratitude, possibility, and curiosity like you hope to. Their influence disrupts your current pattern and holds you to a new and higher standard.

Or, perhaps your current community is having a negative influence on you. Perhaps your health, business, and relationships are held back by their underachieving standards. Their norms create resistance to any improvements you want to make to your life, forcing you to put a lot of effort in to make an inch of progress.

My encouragement to you today is to capitalize on these two sources of growth - What idea can you implement to change your life inside out, and what adjustments to your environment can you make to change your life from the outside in?

A belief that you are self-disciplined is what I call a foundational mindset. If you don’t follow through on doing the things you know you need to do, then all of your intentions to apply yourself aren’t supported by your own ability to execute them.

However, I do believe the idea of self-discipline is misunderstood. It’s not a notion of doing what you said you would do at all costs… I relate with it as something more beneficial - To faithfully do what you know most serves you, consistently, despite the circumstances surrounding it.

For that reason, to rest is to be disciplined. Let me explain this by running through a scenario.

You wake up in the morning with a plan to get a workout in, but your boss pings you or you have that one important errand to get done. You do it quickly but realize now you don’t have time for your workout so you start your workday. Things come up that pull you off track - getting distracted in non-essential things, requests from your boss, etc. - and you start to run behind. Maybe you squeeze a mini-workout in but most likely you put time into doing the things that others need from you. Even so, it pushes your work day a little longer.

Then at the end of the day you have dinner, spend time with loved ones and do activities that you enjoy, or even wrap up one last thing at work. But it’s not enough, and when it’s time to start shutting down for the day to get to bed on time, you have a decision to make. You have time to do more of those things you enjoy, didn’t do, or need to do… Or you can choose to go to sleep.

The right choice, that most serves you and everything else you have on your plate, is to take care of you. To get enough sleep and be well-rested for a new day. It takes self-control and will-power to get yourself to stop and actually go to sleep on time. It takes discipline to make that choice despite the circumstances and pressure of wanting to do more.

An investment in your energy is an investment in everything else. The quality of your output, focus, or presence is limited by how you feel when you show up to the moment. Going to sleep on time is harder than it needs to be, but that’s why it’s an ultimate expression of self-discipline. Challenge yourself to go to bed on time for a full week and notice how much it transforms your life.

If you want to really take things to the next level, learn about the 2 other foundational mindsets, alongside being self-disciplined, here.

With Thanksgiving around the corner, I wanted to share some actionable tips to support you in not overeating on Thanksgiving while still enjoying the Holiday. I’m going to line up a few ideas, shout out to my friend Arozo Shahabzada for organizing these insights.

Tip #1 - Don’t linger by the snack table. It’s so easy to mindlessly keep having one bite at a time when you’re hovering over the food. If you want to eat, make yourself a plate and then move away from the table.

Tip #2 - Drink 8 ounces of water before you get started. By getting something in your stomach first, you’ll find that you have less of a craving to keep eating.

Tip #3 - Keep your eating schedule regular and have breakfast. Many people skip the first meal to “make room” for a bigger meal later in the day. Doing that can cause more harm than good and may leave you prone to overindulging.

Tip #4 - Give yourself 8 minutes before going back for seconds. Instead of instantly reloading your plate with more good stuff, let it settle for a few minutes. This gives your body time to catch up and update your perceived hunger level.  Even if you do choose to get seconds, what you put on your plate, and the amount of it, will be radically different than if you didn’t take a pause.

And Tip #5 - Decide your dessert in advance. There are often a lot of different sweets to sample, when you set an intention for how much dessert you ideally want o enjoy, it’ll keep you from stuffing yourself full. Especially when it comes to rich foods like dessert, it’s important to practice moderation.

This information is great but it’s using it that what will actually help you be proud of the choices you make on Thanksgiving. So pick one or two of these tips and really commit to practicing them, helping you to eat more mindfully.

And if you're reading this not around the Holiday... Then these are good practices for any setting where you might be tempted to mindlessly overeat.

Recently lists have been getting a bad reputation. A ‘todo list’ plays into the overwhelm and busyness that so many people are experiencing, creating this unreal expectation for the day that leaves us disappointed when we don’t get it all done. 

Goal lists are great at getting clarity on what we’re working toward, but sometimes we stick to them too rigidly and actually pull ourselves off alignment in an effort to achieve the things that no longer represent what we want, or what most satisfies the true intention. 

However there’s another type of list that is underestimated, which is a checklist. A checklist is a step by step, written out procedure that helps guide our actions. Rather than trying to remember every detail required to complete a complex task, a checklist outlines it for us and makes it easy for us to produce the desired result with minimal effort and error. Atul Gawande wrote a book called “The Checklist Manifesto” to demonstrate the incredible power of a checklist, citing examples of how pilots, surgeons, and other high performers use checklists to ensure the quality of their work. 

The reason checklists work so well is because they’re a type of system, creating leverage that maximizes value out for what you put in. It takes time to build out a check list, but it’s just an upfront investment that makes things go smoothly every time moving forward.

In my morning routine, I have a checklist. There are specific tasks I want to do every single day, and in order to not forget them, I run through the list. This ensures that I maximize my daily priming and set myself up to have a killer day.

When I make my schedule for the day, I have a checklist. Instead of randomly putting things on a calendar I have a process for putting in external commitments and appointments, then my exercise and self-care, then my most priority tasks, and so on.

Using a checklist is not a sign that you’re less capable and need help doing basic things... It’s a failsafe way to create efficiencies in your life, hold yourself to a higher standard, and improve the quality of what you do. If that’s not one of the intentions of self-improvement, then I don’t know what is!

As part of the Self Improvement Fast Track series, today I want to elaborate on the fifth and final reason why people like you choose to invest time in their self-improvement, which is to to meet their insatiable desire for self-growth, taste their fullest potential, and be a high-performer.

These are people who want to be in incredible shape and physically be able to do things very few are capable of at their age. They want to excel in their career and be a part of extraordinary projects that make a real difference to improve lives and change the world. And they want to share incredible experiences with loved ones to cultivate a deep sense of connection and joy for life. 

The challenge is many people go about ‘scratching this itch’ by consuming more content - reading more books, listening to podcasts, watching Ted Talks. They figure that if they’re a sponge for self-improvement material their life will change as a result. But it leads a lot of people astray because they’re spending so much time learning and active "doing all of the right things”, yet they’re not getting out anywhere near as much as they put in. 

It’s people who’ve read ‘Atomic Habits’ and know all about habit formation, but still struggle to be consistent with their health routines. They’ve heard on a podcast that it’s not healthy to be driven by achievement or compare themselves to others, yet they unconsciously seek out opportunities for external validation and feel insecure that they’re not doing enough. People who pick up “Essentialism” and learn the value of focusing efforts on the critical few, yet find themselves still overstretched with too many things on their plate. Someone who knows the benefits of cold exposure, or intermittent fasting, but hasn’t implemented it as a consistent practice, or if they have it’s just because they think they should and they don’t really know if it’s doing anything for them.

It’s not uncommon for people to learn about a new idea, recognize that it addresses a problem that they’re facing, yet nothing changes about it.

A high-performer knows that taking consistent action and integrating feedback is the path to improvement. But just because they’ve learned that doesn’t mean they have the structures and systems in place to actually optimize their life... And because of it they feel like they’re not good enough and constantly falling short of being the person they know they’re capable of.

Knowledge and information is like fuel for a car, you need some to go but if you want to go further, go faster, or be better, it’s probably not going to do much. Instead what you need is a new system that utilizes the fuel, a new engine, that takes what you’re learning and turns it into real tangible growth.

Once you get in the process of observing your growth every single day, and use feedback to make adjustments that improve your health, productivity, and level of intentionality in everything you do, that’s when you become capable of accomplishing extraordinary things and living an extraordinary life.