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“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”

March 28, 2024
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One Drip At A Time

March 27, 2024

An analogy that I like to use all the time for self-improvement is that of a garden hose. How often in our lives can we relate with the fact that we’re working hard and applying pressure, the hose is turned all the way up, yet only a weak stream of water is coming out the nozzle.

Our natural response is to try and pour more on and work harder, turn up the water even more, when logically we know that there’s probably a kink in the hose that we need to fix. When we become aware of the kink and take measures to fix it, our life can very quickly and dramatically start flowing with only minor adjustments.

However, the tricky part is not all of the hang ups in our lives are that obvious or that dramatic. Rather than there being a big bulging kink, maybe there are a few areas that are leaking or dripping out of the hose.

Let me take a step back. As people dedicated to accelerating on our path and in our self-growth journey, we want to do it all. We want to get into a better morning routine and work on our public speaking and spend less time on our phone and experiment with new productivity tactics and learn a new language and… and… and.

And trying to do it all at once stretches us too thin, causing us to make progress on none of it (or holding ourselves to a standard that is unsustainable).

That’s why our approach should be to address one thing at a time, to focus on one drip in the hose at a time. When we patch up our first, then we can work on our second. And we fix that one we move on to our third. 

It’s unnatural for us to be patient in a world that’s trying to hijack our attention at every moment, but you’d be surprised to find how fast you can get many things done when you do them just one at a time.

This is where I think it’s important to have a focus in your self-growth. If someone asks you the question “What are you working on?”, do you have a simple answer?

While it doesn’t make sense to neglect every part of life in service of just one, we make the most progress, fastest, when we have one emphasis that stands out among the rest.

So what’s your focus right now? What’s your one drip that you want to shore up to get personal and professional results to flow in your life?

If you’re looking for a place to start, I recommend you learn about the 9 Super Habits. These are the 9 most high leverage, most impactful, best ‘bang for your buck’ things you can do to fix your hose and get things flowing to the extent that they should be.

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If You Search More, You'll Find More

March 26, 2024

As complex as we can make life out to be, it really operates on one simple rule: Cause and effect.

You put something in and you get something out.

And while the full end-result is influenced by many things, most of which are out of our control, that doesn’t mean we can neglect the opportunity for us to feed into our lives what we want more of.

Using this concept more narrowly, what do we do if we’re feeling lost, stuck, stagnant? Well we need to input something different in order to get something different. Which leads me to something that my friend Ben Chung shared in a presentation we collaborated on last week: 

"If you search more, you’ll find more."

You can’t find what you’re not looking for right? And equally you can’t find anything if you don’t put the effort in to search.

If you need a solution to a work conflict - Search for guidance and advice, engage others with the challenge and get their take, journal to get clear on what you want and what they want to inform your perspective. It’ll help give more direction to what feels lost.

If you want to find your purpose - Search for it by hearing people speak about their passions, testing out a few things for yourself to see how connected you feel to it, introspecting on your own personal story and gain insights into what impacted you. New actions break you out of your current pattern and help you see and experience things differently.

If you want a romantic partner - You’re much more likely to find one if you’re looking for one. You’re clear on the type of person you’re looking for and you tell friends you’re available and ask around. Years ago my Uncle told me “You’re not going to meet the woman of your dreams sitting on your couch.” (With dating apps and everything these days that lands a little differently, but you see the concept.)

If you search more, you’ll find more. So don’t shy away from doing the work because it’s the only thing within your control. Hoping is not an effective strategy. If you want to find something, get something, be something, you need to get up and start looking for it.

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Awareness, Action, Accountability

March 25, 2024
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The primary theory of transformation I use is a 3 part process that elevates in commitment over time. I learned this framework from my mentor Jim Bunch and have found countless ways to integrate it into my own self-growth, and those who I coach.

The 3 part process is - Awareness, action, and accountability. Let’s talk about each.

Awareness is a requirement for change because you can’t choose to change something you’re unaware of. But beyond it just being required, it is also an extremely effective life-catalyst. The far majority of the bad habits we want to change, the patterns we want to break, and the weaknesses we want to improve upon exist in an unconscious comfort zone. This means that they happen without us even realizing it.

However, this also means that when we become aware of it, we actively and easily choose otherwise. So simply becoming aware creates many quick wins.

This explains something called “The Hawthorne Effect” where performance improves just because it’s being observed. It's why “behavior tracking” is the #1 most recommended way to initiate change - Because it stimulates awareness.

The step beyond being aware of what’s happening is being intentional about what you want to happen. That’s why having a clearly defined action comes next. When you have a clearly defined action it helps you follow through on your good intentions because you know exactly how you’re meant to do. In the sea of options, having a predetermined action helps you arrive at your specific strategy for reaching a goal.

And last, the ultimate catalyst for change is accountability. With awareness and a clearly defined action, now we can layer on expectations. Knowing what to do is not enough... Getting support to actually do it is critical.

When we introduce accountability it suggests that a commitment has been made, and with a commitment your internal decision making no longer is about ‘if’ you’ll take the action but ‘how’. Whether it comes from a friend, a coach, or yourself, accountability is the driving force of change because it forces you do things that are uncomfortable or different, but in your best interest.

Now a quick example - Let’s say you want to improve your diet.

Step 1 is to create awareness. Keep a daily food log, reflect every night on how healthy 1-5 your diet was today, and seek to understand the factors that contribute to your daily food choices. 

Step 2 is action. Pick what diet you want to try, have clarity on how many calories you want to aim for or how many cups of vegetables. Get clear on your strategy for limiting sweets and snacking throughout the day. Action points your awareness in a specific direction.

And Step 3 is accountability. Make a commitment to fulfill that action, outline the expectations, and engage someone else to follow your progress. Knowing that someone else is invested in your success will help you to consistently make better choices.

If you want to change your life, eliminate bad habits, and leverage this catalyzing framework to create the transformation that you’ve been missing out on… It’s all built into the 9 Super Habits. That’s part of what makes them so incredibly effective! Click here to learn about the 9 Super Habits and how to implement them into your life through a simple 15 minute process.

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Weekend Recap 3/18 - 3/22

March 23, 2024
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Don't 'Yuck' Their 'Yum'

March 22, 2024

A beautiful thing in life is how different each of us are. One person loves a food that the next person is disgusted by. One person is at their best doing things one way, and another is at their best doing it another way. This is something that should be celebrated and encouraged because diversity is a rich source for innovation.

However, with the limited perspective we have experiencing life through our own lens, at times we can find ourselves projecting our own preferences on others. We assume that our way or recommendation is correct because it’s correct for us. And when we care about something, we want to be helpful and try to improve it. But our way of doing that is often by making it similar to how we want it rather than what’s right.

An expression that touches on this, that I heard from my friend Lina that I love is “Don’t yuck their yum” meaning, if someone finds something else delicious, don’t tell them it’s not. If someone has a certain set of preferences about how they like things, don’t take that from them and tell them it’s wrong. 

If we do, then we’re invalidating their sense of self and disrespecting their uniqueness. We’re telling them that what they want or think is right doesn’t matter in our eyes, and that we know what’s better for them than they do. Clearly, that’s not a supportive thing to do.

Don’t ‘yuck’ their ‘yum’.

And the best way to do that is to approach things with curiosity. Rather than judging how things are and having assumptions about it, explore the context around it and seek to understand. When you see where they’re coming from you’re in a much better position to accept their perspective and find ways to be supportive within the context that has been outlined to you.

Ultimately, wanting to impose our preferences onto others is driven by the ego. It’s our own desire to maintain our self-image and validate our own worthiness that causes us to discredit other people’s preferences. But with tools and awareness that we build through our self-growth, we can show up as a better supporter to those we care about most.

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“You can’t take anything with you, but you can leave something behind.”

March 21, 2024

This quote is more existential in nature, but I think incredibly important to consider.

Referring to Steven Covey’s “7 Habits Of Highly Effective People”, habit #2 is “to begin with the end in mind.” We’re going to take that recommendation to the furthest extreme and relate it with the ultimate end we’re aware of, which is our death.

That’s where today’s quote comes in: “You can’t take anything with you, but you can leave something behind.”

When we pass, everything that has ever existed about us in the physical plane stays in the physical plane. Our possessions continue on taking up space in the world. Our home occupies the same piece of land even though we’re no longer in it. Even our bodies decompose into organic materials that are recycled and reused by nature.

Everything gets left behind.

And that’s not just the material, tangible things we have in our life, but also the intangible, immaterial deposits we’ve made as well.

This is what it means to leave a legacy. It means that when you’re no longer here, the impacts of your existence are still being felt. The larger the impacts, the stronger the legacy. 

You can leave wealth for your family. You can leave ideas, philosophies, values, and lessons with family members, friends, and followers. You can leave businesses, movements, and projects that continue on with their mission even though you don’t. And importantly, it’s the way that you helped redirect people’s life paths, which then creates infinite ripples into the future.

Our capitalistic society tells us to consume and acquire more things. That the more we have the better. But if we think about what we leave behind through this broader lens, what matters more - The leftovers or the legacy?

So let’s be intentional about what we want to leave behind because it shows us where to invest ourselves today and we can make sure to bring it into our world. 

The truth is, when we reach the end of our life is uncertain. There are people going to sleep tonight who won’t go to sleep the next. Tomorrow is their last day, and they have no idea. While unlikely, it’s foolish to think that person couldn’t be us. 

So how can we show up today so that something meaningful is left behind, that our lives did make a difference. What head start and opportunity are you providing for loved ones? What ideas and lessons? What projects and movements will continue on. What lives have been permanently changed by your presence?

If you’re not happy with the extent of your answer right now, go out and change that, today.

Do you want to make your life a story worth telling? My good friend Gregory Benedikt put together a step-by-step guide to help you define your legacy and take action on it! You can get that guide here!

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Making Decisions Right

March 20, 2024

Our life is governed by the choices we make on a daily basis. The small daily choices impact our energy levels, our focus, and the way we show up to everything else.

Make good choices and feel great. Make bad choices and feel worse, which makes it harder to make a good choice next.

Big decisions set the framework for our lives - Where we live, what we do for work, who we date and marry, where we go for vacation, where we go to school, etc. As you can imagine, any small changes to any of these things completely shifts your environment and puts you on an entirely different life trajectory.

Choices are powerful and extremely influential. This is why we invest so much time and energy into making the right decisions for ourselves to put us on the life-path that we feel is best for us.

But no matter how informed we are, how much research we’ve done and how diligently we’ve thought about the decision, the end result is unpredictable. In fact what becomes of our decisions is way more variable than we realize.

This is where I want to borrow something I heard Ellen Langer say - Instead of being so consumed with making the right decision, what if we poured ourselves into making our decisions right?

This means that no matter what path we find ourselves on, we invest ourselves in helping to shape it into what we want. It means that we don’t overthink the inputs and we save our best selves to manage the outputs.

Yes it’s important to be really confident about your partner before you choose to marry them, but it’s still up to you to build it into a wonderful marriage. Yes it’s critical to know if you’d enjoy the lifestyle of a certain town and can practically afford it - But you still must follow through on doing things you enjoy to make a new town a better home.

My intention is not to discredit the importance of being really thoughtful about the decisions we make, as I mentioned choices are everything. The perspective I wanted to add is that the outcomes of our decisions are quite variable, and if we want to experience the best parts of those decisions, we need to make it happen ourselves (and we have more control over the end result than we realize). 

It’s not just about making the right decisions, it’s also about making your decisions right.

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What To Do On Your Worst Days

March 19, 2024

Trust me, I get it - Not all days are sunshine and rainbows. Some days are simply harder than others and it’s often out of your control when they come. As much as we’d like to have a strong mindset and leverage gratitude and perspective to improve our perception of the day, that’s not to say we can magically make hard days easy.

Let me share a fact that offers an important point of reference. Let’s say that the worst days of the year are the days that fall in the bottom 10% of all days you’ve experienced. That seems pretty fair. With that logic, 10% of the 365 days in a year means that you have 36 really bad days. And further, if 1 in 10 days are really bad and they’re spaced out evenly, then we can expect to have one every week and a half or so.

The argument I’m making is that our bad days are much more common than we realize. 

To me, this means that we should not judge ourselves for having them. We should not allow ourselves to completely deflate when we face them because we have them often. And most importantly, we should prepare ourselves for them so that they don’t drag us as far down when they do come.

A core idea I learned from HEROIC that I’ve integrated into my personal philosophy is the idea of raising your baseline. Yes, 10% of our days are going to be our worst days, but we can control how bad these worst days get. 

Rather than getting completely derailed from your work, you still get your main needle-moving task done. Instead of bingeing sweets as a way to cope with negative emotions, you stay determined to maintain a certain level of nutrition. Instead of allowing negative news to completely impact your emotional health and wellness, you have tools in place to help you process more healthily.

Our baseline is directly correlated with our standards. When we raise our standards we raise our baseline for how we show up on our worst days. Having higher standards makes your good days better and your bad days better because it gives you clarity around what you’re willing or unwilling to tolerate. It gives you a clear expectation for the quality of your daily choices even when you don’t feel like it.

In order to be more prepared for your worst days, so that you don’t slip so easily off track and recover fast, you need more structure, discipline, and clarity to your standards.

If you don’t know where to start with that, I’ve put together a video series about the 9 Super Habits that teaches you exactly where to start in helping you be more consistent in your health, more productive and focused every day, and more disciplined in your mindset.

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You’re Living What Used To Be Your Goal

March 18, 2024

You might not even realize it, but there’s something about your life right now that used to be your goal or dream.

Maybe you bought a house or moved to a new city... You’ve completed that project... Launched that thing... Landed that job... Brought that event to life... Or ran that race.

The reason I mention it is because maybe it doesn’t feel like it. It’s unnatural for us to see all of the life milestones we’ve reached because we’re facing forward and those are now behind us. And now we see new goals, new aspirations, new dreams on the horizon that we’re passionately moving toward.

The psychology behind this is what Dr. Benjamin Hardy calls “the gap and the gain”. Rather than measuring our progress from who we used to be to where we are today (the gain), we more often measure the difference between where we presently are and where we want to go (the gap). 

And that’s why I want to shake up the pattern and bring your awareness to the fact that right now, you’re living what used to be a goal of yours.

When we acknowledge the gains we’ve made in our lives and recognize how far we’ve come, it inspires us that we have what it takes to keep on going. I’m not arguing that we should forever stay complacent with what we have - ambition is healthy and important - but that we’ll feel more fueled and energized by the fact that we can in fact reach our goals.

So let’s take that pause right now. Think about the one area of your life where you feel like you’re falling short, or your present performance within it isn’t where you want it to be.

Now I want you to think back one year, and reflect on where things were at in this area of your life then.

And again, another year, reflect where things were at then.

Maybe that perspective helps you give credit to all of your growth, advancement, and improvement. Sure, you see the gap and know there’s more progress to be made, but now you also see a little more of the gain.

If the idea of making fast progress excites you and you want to know the most effective things you can do to accelerate your self-growth and success, that take less than 15 minutes a day to do, click here to learn about the 9 Super Habits!

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