Based on your past experiences and lessons, you’ve developed a certain set of beliefs. On a subconscious level these beliefs govern every decision you make and in that way influence the output of your life. This is a defaulted set point that you return to unconsciously despite external circumstances because it’s where your brain is most comfortable.

These beliefs make up your identity, which is simply who you believe yourself to be and how you believe the world is around you. You may have heard this analogy before but I wanted to bring it up because it is fundamental to being the best version of yourself.  

Your identity is like a thermostat. 

A thermostat is designed to maintain temperature. No matter how hot or cold a room gets, it’s purpose is to bring the room back to the temperature it is set to. The room gets a little too hot, the thermostat cools it down. It gets a little too cold, the thermostat heats it up.

Your subconscious mind functions in a similar way. You will return to the level you’ve established for yourself through your beliefs and identity. What does this look like? It means that when you accomplish something beyond your level you regress back down. It means that when you feel motivated to change it’s really hard to sustain because you’re fighting against your subconscious mind. This is where self-sabotage creeps to knock you down a few levels so that you strike that balance your identity is most comfortable with.

Or, maybe you’re in a rut right now. Not feeling inspired, procrastinating, lazy, feeling like you're not making the most of your time. This could be because your identity has a low set point and you’ve come to tolerate that kind of life.

But fortunately, your identity isn’t permanent. You can update it intentionally. I believe one of the most fundamental identities to have is one of self-discipline, where you can get yourself to take action even when it’s hard, even when you don’t feel like it. In the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge I'm hosting, that starts Thursday, I help you systematically upgrade your identity so that your default level pulls you to do what you tell yourself you’re going to do. 

Imagine how much more productive, energized, and fulfilled you’d feel if you stopped procrastinating and delaying, and started acting and achieving like the person you know you’re capable of being.

If you feel like you’re leaving your full-potential on the table, or like you need a shake up to get you going again, register for the Best Self Breakthrough Challenge right now!

I want to preface by saying this reflection does not come from my recent personal experience but rather what I’ve observed recently. For whatever reason, in the last few weeks I’ve seen a number of people drive right through a red light or a stop sign. Fortunately none of these incidents led to an accident, but interestingly this put me in a unique position to think about a few different instances of this mistake and draw some unique insights.

In the first instance, someone blew through the stop sign and they knew it the second they entered the intersection. Her posture tensed and attention focused. You could see a wave of fear and embarrassment grip her instantly. It’s a pretty normal reaction when you realize you make a mistake, especially one that puts you in danger.

Then I saw someone who went through a red light but didn’t realize it until she made it through. But it wasn’t a full moment of regret and acknowledgment, you could tell that something felt off. It’s that sinking feeling that something’s wrong and you can’t quite place it. This created more a puzzled, introspective response rather than a strong anxiety or stress response.

Then last, there was a man who ran a red light with zero knowledge that he even did it. He drove through the intersection unaffected and undisturbed. Not good, but it happens!

The reason I bring up these different examples is because it highlights the power of awareness. The same situation with three different lenses of awareness creates three very different personal outcomes. It also shows how your emotional experience is tied to the meaning you give to the events that happen in your life. 

I realize that some of these topics we talk about are difficult to conceptualize, so I wanted to take this moment to show it with real, tangible examples I found in my life. Your life is already everything you’d ever want it to be, it’s just a matter of starting to see it that way.

Register for the Best Self Breakthrough 21 Day Challenge!

I’m sharing this on one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a time to be with the people that are the most important to you. Gratitude is rooted in the Holiday and it also serves as an annual timestamp to reflect on how things have been over the past year.

The truth is, “we have so much to be thankful for.” Thanksgiving marks another year of abundance where we’ve gotten everything we need. It’s a reminder to reflect on all of the blessings we have in our life that we’ve taken for granted. And it’s a chance to renew your faith that everything happens in the right way at the right time.

Even those things that we might not realize in the moment were there to serve us, we get to write our own story and determine the meaning we assign to the event. That health scare is a wake up call. Getting laid off is a redirection to where you’re meant to be. All pain is just an indicator to a better destination. The challenge is being able to listen to it.

Gratitude is a perspective, and it’s a choice. You can choose to see a situation with anger and fear or you can choose to see it with gratitude and acceptance. And when you choose to see life in a way where there’s too much to be thankful for, you’ll start recognizing the abundance you’re surrounded by. 

Of all the people to have ever lived, in all moments of history, I’d say we have it pretty good. If you have a full stomach and a roof over your head, you have your baseline needs met. That’s something that many people would trade anything to have. So be grateful that you have it. We have so much to be thankful for and on a day like Thanksgiving, when you’re prompted to think about it, you really start to see it!

On your personal development journey, you need to be sure you have the right foundation in place. Discover the 7 Fundamentals To Self Improvement and instantly accelerate your growth! (Who knows what you might be overlooking and how it’s holding you back…)

When you think of the word self-discipline, what usually comes to mind? For most people it’s thoughts of restriction and restraint. Many people think that when you practice self-discipline you’re overcoming temptations in order to prioritize what’s best for you in the long-run rather than what might feel good in the short-term.

This negative approach to self-discipline is likely because of it’s associations to other meanings of the word “discipline”. When you discipline a child it means that you’re scolding them and showing that there are consequences when they have bad behavior. When you think of self-discipline in this way, it creates a pressure to be a certain way and the motivation to be disciplined is pulled from the wrong source.

A more constructive, productive, and positive approach to self-discipline is to make it that your staying discipline more about doing things the right way rather than not doing it the wrong way. Meaning, if you ‘play to win’ and reward yourself for positive performance rather than reprimand yourself for lapses in performance, you feel much more inspired to be disciplined.

So how does this philosophy transfer over into your life? It’s about celebrating more and acknowledging yourself more often. It’s taking a moment to remind yourself about a job well done even if you might not naturally think to celebrate it. That means when you set higher standards for yourself and feel stretched to achieve them, you feel pulled by positive emotions to follow through rather than pressured to meet the task at minimum to stay compliant.

While your self-discipline practice will always include both positive and negative motivational forces, it’s important to recognize the ways in which both serve you. I think just about everyone in the world agrees that having more self-discipline and self-control is a good thing, and just like anything else you can improve it with practice and consistency.

So if you want to start being more self-disciplined, getting more consistent with the health, professional, educational, and mindset practices that make up the best version of yourself, I want to invite you to the Best-Self Breakthrough 21 Day Challenge. In this challenge I take you through a step by step process that helps you build more self-discipline in your life so that you can feel ready to take on the world and have unstoppable momentum. We can make 2023 the best, most productive and fulfilling year of your life that sets the tone for your future. And this challenge is your first step forward toward it. Register for the Best-Self Breakthrough Challenge here!

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One of the most well-known, prolific baseball players in the history of the game is Alex Rodriguez. His career includes 696 home runs, 3 MVPs, and he’s a 14 time all-star. For those who don’t know much about baseball, these statistics suggest that "A-Rod" is one of the most dominant players to have ever played the game.

In an interview with Ed Mylett A-Rod brought attention to the opposite side of the spectrum, which is equally true and worth considering. Alongside all of the positive accolades, he also has the 5th most strikeouts of all time. That’s pretty surprising to be associated with someone who is considered one of the best of all-time.

More than anything, A-Rod’s career represents the power of resilience. In a sport where you get a hit one-third of the time if you’re really good, you need to move past the failures quickly to be present for the next opportunity. With all of the strikeouts and all the failed attempts, A-Rod attracted a lot of criticism. But he was a master of his craft, always keeping an optimistic mindset about the next opportunity. Had he chosen to feel bad for himself, he wouldn’t have been motivated to keep improving and certainly wouldn’t have accomplished what he did in the sport.

What does this mean for you? It means that if you want to achieve remarkable things, you can’t be afraid to expose yourself to failure. In fact it suggests that for every success there is a string of corresponding failure that came before it. In the face of the critics and the doubters and the naysayers, you need to stay focused on your own mission and believe in the process that will achieve it.

No one is immune to this reality and hopefully in seeing it firsthand today, you feel more empowered through your struggles knowing that they’re necessary stepping stones to your ultimate destination.

On your personal development journey, you need to be sure you have the right foundation in place. Discover the 7 Fundamentals To Self Improvement and instantly accelerate your growth! (Who knows what you might be overlooking and how it’s holding you back…)

Last week I showed up to a meet up with my mentor Dave Meltzer and he shared a shocking but important lesson. He says that he’s a hypocrite, he only hires hypocrites and that everyone should try their best to be a hypocrite. He was proud about it and he explained why.

Usually we have a negative reaction when someone is being hypocritical. It means that they’re two-faced, that they say one thing and do another which suggests that they're unreliable. It serves as a negative strike on their character. But Dave very insightfully reframed this whole concept.

Sure, a hypocrite can be someone who is frustrating and not dependable, but oftentimes it’s also a metric for growth. It’s evidence that you learned something new and now you’re choosing to relate with a topic in a different way. Might this contradict beliefs you’ve had and arguments you’ve made in the past? Absolutely, and it takes a strong person to admit that they were wrong and change their opinion.

The real problem isn’t that we go back on our word or flop on a stance... It’s that we’re unwilling to consider the idea that we made a mistake. Our ego desperately tries to maintain the beliefs we have which leads to us digging deeper into our current belief and putting all of our energy into proving ourselves right rather than getting things right.

Realizing that you were wrong, or changing your opinion on something can seem pretty hypocritical can’t it? But it’s a strength. It shows that you’re willing to learn, adapt, and evolve. And it helps you get to the right answer much faster so that you can perform at a higher level and be effective.

So the next time you feel yourself starting to get defensive in an argument, try to take a different standpoint and really prioritize how you can get it right rather than prove yourself right.

I want to pose a difficult question today, and the reason is we can discover a lot of opportunities for improvement in our blindspots. When you reflect on your life, what are you afraid to admit is true?

Before drawing any conclusions let me add a little context.

Fear is a powerful emotion. It is designed to keep us out of harm's way and protect us from things that can hurt us. Primarily fear was evolved to keep us out of physical danger, but given how cognitively we’ve developed as a species it now also applies to emotional and psychological protection.

Having fear means that we’re afraid we’ll be hurt in some way by a potential outcome and fear is meant to prevent us from entering that situation. The problem is fear is very instinctual and it doesn’t have the capacity to consider the nuances of a situation. It’s often in our best interest to be courageous, which is taking action despite fear, but more often the resistance keeps us from doing so.

As it relates to not admitting what is true about your life, the brain has a very clever disguise. It’s called ignorance. You can literally refuse to admit the existence of something because the idea of it is too painful to consider. Our awareness of something may cause us to take action on it, or to change something significant, which poses a threat. So ignorance is the brain’s way of completely avoiding this thing altogether.

With that in mind, let’s ask this important question again - What are you afraid to admit is true? Is it that you’re in unhealthy habits like smoking and taking years off of your life? Is it that your commitments have made you not as good of a parent, friend, or sibling as you want to be?  Are you lazy and feel like you’re wasting the best years of your life?

This stuff is real and it’s your life. By no means should you settle for anything less than the absolute best, yet you might be imprisoning yourself in a life where you’re diluting your happiness, sense of fulfillment, and the difference you can make in the world.

If you’re tired of losing out on what life could be and want to start making the most of every single moment, register for the Your Best Self Breakthrough 21 Day Challenge. The principles in this challenge have changed countless lives and it will change yours too so that you can have more fulfilling days staying consistent with more productive habits.

We all know this story way too well. You feel really motivated to change something about your life - more exercise, a new diet, less time on social media, consistent meditation and journaling… And you get into a good rhythm of doing it for a while. But then life happens and you find yourself right back where you started, neglecting what you worked so hard to build.

At this point we look at what appears to be a mountain ahead of us to get back on track and have a hard time motivating ourselves to start again. We're consumed by how we were recently  disappointed with the result of our effort. But let me share with you an important perspective - “It’s never too late to start again.”

You might be waiting for life to calm down or for the time to be better to give it another go. Things are just too chaotic to give it a fair chance. But guess what? Life will never calm down. It will always be chaotic and the time will never be perfectly right.

You might feel like postponing the decision to start again helps you stay in integrity so that you don’t set yourself up for failure. But the reality is, as long as you’re waiting, you’ve already made a decision that you didn’t realize. You decided that your well-being is worth putting off for later. That becoming a better version of yourself isn’t a priority right now.

But I firmly believe this to be true - The time hasn’t passed. You can still have the routines, relationships, and self-care habits that make you feel at your best. It’s a real possibility for you and your future, and all you need to do is listen to that little voice in your head suggesting you do it. 

If you want to really feel the enjoyment and fulfillment of getting more out of life, you need to get into action. Life won’t change if you want it to, it will change when you start doing something about it. And if you’re feeling stuck and could use a reboot to kickstart your personal development I’m launching a 21 day Best Self Breakthrough Challenge! If you know you have a lot of potential that you’re leaving on the table, this challenge will pull it out of you and set you up to achieve whatever you set your mind to in life.

I believe in you more than you know, and I want to play a bigger role in helping you become the best version of yourself. We’ll definitely be doing that through this challenge!