Self Improvement Daily Podcast

The one thing that keeps our world going around is the interdependence we have with each other. One person grows the food another needs, who offers her services to the next person. And so on and so forth the flow of value continues.

We use money as a standardized way of quantifying how much we give and get, but there are many daily things we do for each other in the name of support.

It’s by being on both sides of this energy - giving and receiving, helping and being helped - that we tap into true abundance. The truth is there’s more than enough of everything to go around, we just need to do a better job sharing it.

To facilitate this flow of value exchange, I have a simple two-sided statement you can use to tap into abundance:

“What I really need is someone who can help me with…”

It could be “What I really need is someone who can help me with building a website”… “With figuring out how to buy a house in a tax-advantaged way”… “With taking my kids to practice twice a week.”

When you finish the statement, you’ve identified your biggest personal deficiencies. You’re aware of the things you need to get what you want. What a powerful position to be in! And from there, you get to find the person who is perfectly positioned to help you with that.

Which brings us to the second part: What do you have to offer so that you can be that person for others? What skills, experiences, relationships, and perspective do you have that can help someone else get what they want? This is what you have to give, and you can offer it in a paid or unpaid capacity. 

Whether you’re giving or receiving, helping or being helped, the effectiveness of our interdependence depends on two things:

Clarity, both for what we need and what we have to offer…

And sharing, so that others know what you need and how you can help them.

Imagine the world where people knew exactly who could help them, and who needed their help. That would unlock abundance! That would fully facilitate the share of value, helping everyone get what they want.

And your first step in participating in that world is to practice it yourself. Know what you need help with, know what you have to offer, and start talking to more people about it so that the right solutions can get matched to the right problems.

Last week I made a new friend, Guinevere Stasio, because we were sitting next to each other at an event. We both were invited to speak from stage and Guin said something that I want to share with you, that I’ve known to be true my whole life but never had the right words to express it. 

Whether you want to make a massive difference in the world or not, most of us on our personal development journey want to be helpful for others. Whether it’s providing mentorship or offering a helping hand, it feels good to be of service.

But sometimes we question what help we have to offer. If we don’t have things completely figured out for ourselves, how can we help someone figure things out for themselves? That’s where Guin’s quote hit home. She said:

“10% ahead is 100% helpful to where someone’s at right now.”

We’re all a work in progress. Even if we have our own problems, we’ve already solved many problems for ourselves that other people are experiencing right now. That’s what you can help them with - where they’re at right now.

Does that mean you can help them every step of the way? No. But that’s not a requirement to help them today. And as long as you stay one step ahead, you’ll always be able to help them with the next step.

Here’s another way to think about it. Let’s say you’re playing a video game. You haven’t beat the game yet, you’re on Level 5 out of 10. Because you haven’t beat the game yet, you might think that you can’t help people with it. But of course you can. You have the experience to help someone beat Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4… Because you already have! 

The same goes for everyday guidance. Be generous with the lessons you’ve learned and seek to serve. You have no idea how many people need your help. Don’t deny them that opportunity, and don’t discredit how much you have to offer.

When most people think about the concept of motivation, conventionally they picture a motivational speech that gets them fired up… An inspiring video that talks about the importance of living a disciplined and virtuous life… Or the energy that comes from setting a new goal to pursue a new idea that they’re excited about. 

While that’s one way to cultivate motivation, it doesn’t represent what it actually is: Motivation is fuel for action, and the things you do at any given moment are evidence of the ways you’re being motivated.

Ever wonder why some things are easy and effortless to do, and some aren’t? It’s because those things align with your motivated to do. The unconscious mind uses motivation to help you take action in the direction that increases your likelihood for survival. That’s why if you’re in a threatening situation, like being chased by someone dangerous, you don’t need to will yourself to run away. You do it automatically with no mental effort. 

It’s the same fuel source that explains how a single parent works double shifts to put food on the table, or how a son finds extra hours to do research about his mom’s medical diagnosis. Our motivation comes from our necessities, driving behavior to meet our physical and psychological needs.

However, it’s possible to change the conditions around our motivation. Jim Rohn uses the metaphor of casting sails on a windy day - “You cannot control the way the wind blows but you can control the way you set your sail.” We can choose to create an environment for ourselves that aligns desired actions to meet basic needs.

Take accountability for example - You leverage the human need to belong to support you in taking consistent action toward something you normally don’t feel like doing. It’s the risk of letting someone down, and the threat of social isolation, that creates motivation for the commitment. 

What’s ironic is - One of the things we’re most motivated to do is to be lazy. Again our unconscious mind is hyper-vigilant about keeping us safe, so in order to maintain a safe environment and ensure our survival, it wants to conserve energy at all costs. That way, should we encounter a threat, we can respond to it effectively.

In other words, motivation isn’t something that we’re supposed to get more of, it’s something that we always have. Ironically, it just so happens that our motivation is naturally directed toward a state of laziness and energy conservation out of an instinct to survive. 

But that’s not permanent! It’s within your power to change the direction of the wind more than you realize, and certainly set your sail, so that the things you need to do to be healthy and successful come easily. It’s what I help people to do in the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge, step by step, and it just might unlock your fullest potential.

I want to feature an incredible quote from Sahil Bloom’s book “The 5 Types Of Wealth”. If you’re curious, and without going into detail, the 5 types are time, social, mental, physical, and financial. If you want to learn more about that I recommend you get his book. 

When you read it, you’ll find that all forms of wealth have one commonality. They all encounter the same problem, a core theme of the book, which is knowing what ‘having enough of it’ is.

What’s enough time to yourself? What’s enough money? What’s enough quality relationships?

Without defining it for yourself, you’ll get caught up in the insatiable pursuit for more. ‘More’ is the scoreboard we’ve been taught to pay attention to, even though it doesn’t serve us. Which is precisely why Sahil shared the quote:

“Never let the quest for more distract you from the beauty of enough.”

When we’re not appreciative of what we have and always desiring what’s next, it strips the present moment of its richness. It creates an emptiness that’s impossible to fill because it’s always falling short of an unachievable expectation.

But don’t mistake this as permission to be complacent or settle for less than you desire. When you clearly define what ‘wealthy’ looks like in different areas of your life, it gives you something to measure against. You create a reference point that you can evaluate your lifestyle and progress against to see if you’re satisfying it. It makes success in life a winnable game because you’ve established the rules of it.

Defining ‘enough’ is tricky. On one hand it communicates sufficiency and satisfaction, and on the other it’s a threshold for what’s tolerable but not fully desirable. 

That’s where defining what ‘enough’ is becomes critical. In doing so you decide what’s required to be wealthy. This is a dynamic process. Over time as you get feedback on what actually feels right for you, and what meets your needs and makes you feel ‘full’, that’s how you arrive at your own amounts. And when you have that memorialized as something to measure against, you can overcome feelings of insufficiency because you have your success metrics in place.

I understand that this is a more philosophical point, and I usually speak more tactically. But nonetheless I think it’s a helpful perspective as you determine what a meaningful life looks like for you.

Have you ever made a decision in a moment - whether it was changing plans, reconsidering a commitment, or changing your mind on something - only to realize later that you made a mistake? That you somehow talked your way out of doing what you actually wanted to do?

It happens all the time, and the reason why is because all decisions are dependent on your physical and psychological state. 

Every present moment brings its own set of pressures, constraints, opportunities, needs, and context. We’re always operating within an environment that’s influencing the way we think about things. This means that every decision is biased by what’s present, inside and out, when you make it.

Let’s say someone wanted to spend an hour writing their book. When it comes time to do it, whether they choose to do it or not depends on the context:

Something popped up at work that needed to be addressed…

They didn’t get good sleep the night before and they’re not feeling up for it…

They just received some bad feedback from a client and are feeling down on themselves.

Urgency, tiredness, discouragement - These are just a few examples of the different states someone could be in that influences their decision. Do they stick to writing the book or not? Is there something else that’s better to do instead?

Whatever decision they end up making could be perfectly logical. It could make all of the sense in the world, then. But was it actually the right choice?

It’s hard to say and it’s especially hard to know in the moment. That’s why if you want to be more confident about the decisions you’re making, so that you know you mean it, is to reflect on them later. 

Take a moment when you’re not being influenced by the pressures, needs, and context of the current moment to see if you agree with the decision you made.

It’s powerful. 

Because when you do that, you look at the same moment but with an entirely different, more unbiased perspective. You take the viewpoint of your highest self and see what they think about your choices, versus trusting your rationalization in the moment. 

This is my own life hack that I use to help me be more disciplined and aware of when my mind tries to pull me off track. If you want to see my process for how I do that, here it is!

I heard the legendary entrepreneur and philanthropist David Meltzer describe gratitude in a really unique way, that is spot on!

For many people, gratitude is a spirit of appreciation. It’s being thankful for the blessings we all have in our lives. And while that’s true, it’s only representing a small piece of it. Gratitude isn’t just an acknowledgment of the things that are good, it’s a belief system and consciousness that everything is good.

That’s why Dave describes gratitude as “The perspective of finding the light, love, and lessons in everything.” Rather than feeling inconvenienced by a change of plans or victimized by something unfair, living in a state of gratitude is the ultimate reminder that everything is working for you.

It’s the belief that life (the universe, God, karma, or whatever you believe is the ultimate authority in life) only wants to promote and protect you. And it often delivers its goodness in ways that you don’t immediately see as good for you. It’s our limited awareness that keeps us from seeing how everything that happens to us is always the best thing that could ever happen to us.

I know that this comes off as a polyanna. Practicing this form of gratitude is easy to say but much harder to actually do. Especially in the grips of despair, discouragement, defeat, and loss - the last thing your ego wants to admit is that it’s all happening for you.

But consciously, you can try to pull yourself out of it and manufacture gratitude. To change the story around what you’re experiencing. And how you do that is exactly what Dave recommends: Finding the light, love, and lessons.

The ‘light’ is the positivity, the silver lining, the way that things could actually be brighter for yourself and others. 

The ‘love’ is an encouragement to be empathetic and understanding of what someone else might be going through, or the pain someone else might be feeling that’s causing them to show up a certain way. 

And the ‘lessons’ are the breadcrumbs of insight that you can use to drive improvement and accelerate your personal evolution, which is what everything we ever experience is all about anyway.

That’s gratitude not as an action, but a way of life. The more you can intentionally create this perspective, the more it integrates unconsciously as your everyday lens into the world. It’s the reason why gratitude journaling literally changes your outlook on life, and how to actually change your belief system so that you start being more positive.

If you want support with making that transformation for yourself, that’s what the 21 Day Super Habits Challenge helps you to do: Transform your health, daily productivity, and mindset from the inside out in 21 days.

Tom Bilyeu, founder of Impact Theory, is known for saying “all that really matters is how you feel about yourself when you’re by yourself.” And given that few people have studied high performance and fulfillment as much as he has over the last decade, I figured it was something worth exploring.

I believe Tom makes this argument because we live in a world that is externally facing. We achieve and get applauded. WE do the right thing and get recognized for it. We perform to maintain a certain perception.

The approval of others can feel really good and be validating, but it’s superficial. The only opinion that matters is the opinion you have of yourself, when you turn internally. You always have to be with you. And if you don’t like what you see in the morning when everything else is stripped away, then what good is everything else? 

But to say that nothing else really matters is a bit of an overstatement. For things to be only about your own self-perception is an overly self-centered approach. While it’s true that what we experience is our world within a much larger world, and our awareness is limited, it doesn’t mean that nothing else matters. Of course other people’s health and happiness matter. The world would be a gloomy place if it didn’t. 

Tom’s point wasn't to convince you to only care about yourself. At the heart of his message is a note about agency and self-efficacy.

We are in control of our lives and we have the ability to influence every facet of it. The encouragement is to be able to answer honestly that you wielded that power responsibly and with integrity. That you choose to show up in a way that you’re proud of and that doesn’t compromise on your values.

Because if we were to optimize our lives around the concept of getting external validation and approval, it would come at an internal cost. It offers short term positive feelings when you’re around others, but leaves you with a deep emptiness when you’re by yourself.

So in that way, I agree with Tom’s thought: What really matters is how you feel about yourself when you’re by yourself. And within that is an evaluation that you also showed up in ways that benefited others too.

What you do is the external expression of who you are.

Let the essence of your being shine brighter than the acknowledgment of what you did. Only you know how authentic and honorable you’ve been. Only you know your truest, deepest intentions. So let the feelings you get around that be a powerful point of feedback as you consider how to navigate forward.