Michal Stawicki's Blog, page 11

Eighty Fourth Income Report – March 2020 ($4,212.31)

Are you curious about a 3-month delay? I explained it in my first income report.

[image error]My productivity went out of the window. My wife had not only me in the house 24/7, but also three teenagers. She didn’t take it well.

Plus, a week after the school shutdown a dermatologist diagnosed me with scabies! Heck. I probably got it at the mountain hostel at the retreat. It gave my wife more reasons to go mad.

My day job suffered the most from my productivity slump. Luckily, there wasn’t much to do. Not only the nature of my job requires most of the time just waiting for something to fix (I work in IT maintenance), but also the only project I was involved in was for an airline and their business activity dropped like a stone.

So, I usually did something for my business. It was still a big distraction three days a week. I needed to have my work computer up and running and have an eye for upcoming notifications. It didn’t help one bit that my wife was her usual distractive self and jumped into my office every time she found a funny meme on Facebook.

Consistency

But those were just external distractions. I was internally distracted and it was the real reason behind my lack of productivity. It even affected my consistency. I broke several habit streaks. At one time or another, I neglected each and every of my tracking activities, from tracking my business finances to tracking my habits.

When I look back at this mess now, I can connect the dots between putting my church community on hold and my total dissolve of routines. Yes, I only attend the meetings twice a week, but I’ve been doing that for over two decades of my life. This was the most fixed thing in my life. It lasted longer than any of my jobs, including my author career. It lasted even longer than my marriage!

And I lost this foothold.

Coronavirus Analysis

In the middle of the month, I sent a broadcast to my email list and hinted that I track the coronavirus global statistics quite diligently. I offered to record some videos sharing what I see in the numbers. The demand was huge, so I decided to follow through. I recorded the first video three days later and discovered that YouTube lost my old account?! It was bizarre. One day, I logged to YouTube and there were no videos.

With my crippled productivity, it took me another week before I uploaded videos under the new(?) account and shared them with my subscribers.

Continuing Various Projects

I tried to launch my Polish blog, the video coronavirus updates, I worked on my job ad for ResurrectingBooks, dealt with prospects, I delegated some tidbits of my workload to my son and sister… and nothing was really moving forward.

My new habit – writing thank you notes – has been disintegrated. I wrote eight notes in the whole March and only three of them after introducing the lockdown.

Any work felt like pulling my teeth with bare hands. I only created one blog post in Polish and the blog’s main page.

Lead Generation Deal

I reviewed the ads of one of my customers. We had a call and we went through my recommendations. At the end of the call, she came up with the idea of creating ads for her permafree book which serves as a lead generator for her funnel. She will pay me a commission whenever a lead from that funnel will convert into a customer.

In a few days, we created a few hundred ads for her book. We managed to get the cost of a single download from $2.4 to $1.6 in a few days and we tripled the number of downloads. Now, it’s just a question of time before something converts

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition

[image error]Perseverance pays off. After a few years of writing a book review every month, a prestigious PR firm noticed me. They sent me an advance reading copy of the 30th Anniversary Edition of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

This edition contains a new original content by Sean Covey, a son of Stephen R. Covey; namely, the preface and additional insights after each habit.

If you want to check out what I thought of the original version of 7 Habits… see this Quora answer:

Have the 7 Habits made you a highly effective person?

(spoiler alert: I liked it a lot).

The preface from Sean contains this fragment, which pretty much sums my initial thoughts about the idea:

So when Simon & Schuster, the publisher of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, asked me to add my insights to a thirtieth anniversary edition of the book, I was torn. My immediate response was “No way! This book is a masterpiece. Why add anything to it?”

So, another spoiler here: The content which Sean added is a great bonus. He doesn’t pretend that he has better ideas than his father. I loved his content because of two reasons:

-it gave me additional insight about Stephen R Covey, the personal dimension of this great man;

-it nicely expands the concepts of the original book; Sean has been teaching and practicing 7 Habits for decades, so his insights are right on the spot.

Since probably everybody knows The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I decided to cover only the additional material in this review. Here it goes.

“And I want these principles to be taught far beyond my life span.”

Those are the words of Stephen R. Covey. Well, he definitely succeeded when it comes to this particular dream.

If you want to make minor improvements, change your behavior. But if you want to make quantum improvements, change your paradigm.

For me, it was a great eye-opener. As a coach, I observed first-hand how hopeless people are with changing their behaviors. Change of paradigm comes even harder, but the rewards are proportionally bigger.

The 7 Habits are an Inside-Out Approach.

We have to win the Private Victory (Habits 1, 2, and 3) before we can win the Public Victory (Habits 4, 5, and 6).

This is the “self” part of self-help. You cannot help others if you don’t help yourself. Yet, so many people try to lead others without a clear vision or setting the right priorities. It’s possible because of the modern world of social media, where the public image is everything.

Yet, the same mechanisms serve to reveal how spectacular failures are born of the Public-before-Private approach.

Then, Sean enumerates the string of habits which are the opposite of the 7 Habits and conclude:

Clearly, these are not the habits we are after. But too often, we practice them because they represent the course of least resistance (me included).

This is a fine measure stick according to my experience too: if something lies on the course of least resistance, take the opposite route. It’s the high road.

From my perspective, I’d say that the most important habit is the one you’re having the most difficult time living.

Which goes neatly back to the path of least resistance.

As humans, our tendency is to play the victim.

In reality, we are not victims. We’re agents. But we have to be reminded of this all the time.

You can read the above sentences a few times to devour the deep of wisdom in those words. I’m more than seven years on this journey. I’m a coach, business owner, and author. Millions of people read my stuff. Yet, I still need to remind myself that I’m an agent, not a victim.

BTW, Sean shared a fabulous story about his father when revealed to his son that Sean was playing a victim.

We now have a great deal of empirical data that backs up everything my father wrote about proactivity back in 1989.

Sean enumerates some of them and they are the titles of the most impactful books in the last couple of decades: Mindset, Authentic Happiness, and Grit.

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Sean shared a story of a manufactory company hit hard by flooding. The company followed the principles of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

Observers were astonished that it hadn’t taken billions of dollars and many years to recover. All it took was a superb team willing to wade through mud for each other. That is the power of a proactive culture.

We’ve all been through difficult things—and if you haven’t yet experienced adversity, believe me, you will.

Sean wrote those words well before the coronavirus pandemic. Prophetic words.

Self-awareness is the catalyst for the other three endowments. When you can stand apart from your own mind and examine it—to think about your thoughts, feelings, and moods—you then have the basis for using imagination, conscience, and independent will in entirely new ways.

Self-awareness is SO important. I’m glad Sean emphasized this. “Stand apart from my own mind” is what I did numerous times in the last several years. It’s never comfortable. It’s always disruptive. It was such a moment during my lecture of The Slight Edge which allowed a new perspective of success to sneak into my mind.

You cannot practice any of the other habits until you first decide that you are in charge.

Again, victim-agent dichotomy. Going to the behavior scale (my specialty), it’s possible to practice bad habits when you are not in charge. Then, they are in charge. But developing good habits, any of them, cries for some conscious reflection and action. You must take charge to change yourself.

Reactive people make choices based on impulse.

Proactive people make choices based on values. They think before they act.

And here we go back to self-awareness. If you can step into the gap between the stimulus and your action, you can be proactive. You can consciously make choices. Otherwise, you are brought down to your instincts.

It’s easier to stick to your principles 100 percent of the time than 98 percent of the time.

At least for me. I vote for this approach.

He saw himself as a pathfinder, a trailblazer, a paradigm breaker. That was the role he envisioned: bringing principle-centered leadership to the world and unleashing human potential.

Those words tell about Stephen R. Covey. Isn’t it wonderful that he envisioned something and now, after he is no longer among us, it is realizing?

“We’re going to write our family mission statement!” A lot of moaning and groaning ensued. Undaunted, he continued…”

What a great family picture. I have three teenagers right now. There is a lot of moaning and groaning. This sneak peek into the Covey family reminded me to continue, undaunted.

“Leadership is communicating to another their worth and potential so clearly they are inspired to see it in themselves.”

A quote from Stephen R. Covey. It just touched my heart.

There is a lot more in the 30th Anniversary Edition of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I won’t spoil you all the pleasure of discovering what’s new in this edition.

Sean’s experience shines through his content. For example, he added just a few paragraphs about creating your personal mission statement and they were right on spot. I wrote a small book about this subject and I intend to steal a few questions Sean provided and put them in the new edition of my book. This man knows what he is saying!

Summary

My verdict is that if anything, Sean Covey’s material only added value to this awesome book. If you know someone who hasn’t yet read the original book (a young adult perhaps?), the 30th Anniversary Edition of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People will make a great gift. Potentially life-changing.

The post The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

How many habits do successful people have?

Usually, a lot. Because this is how achieving success looks like:

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(The Slight Edge chart)

Success is a process and you need disciplines, made consistently overtime to get there. You may have just a few massive habits, you can have plenty of minuscule ones or a mix of both.

However, people are wired for small habits. The stories of people who took massive action, persisted and won make great Hollywood blockbusters, but are rare as unicorns. It’s much easier to read books for 10 minutes a day than to read and think 8 hours per day, like Warren Buffet does.

“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.” —  Jim Rohn

Thus, my guess is: a lot. A dozen? Two dozens? Two hundred?

I study successful people and one thing is sure – the vast majority of them are habit-oriented. I discovered successful people’s several common areas of focus. No matter if they succeeded in sport, business, or spiritual realm, the disciplines they performed were pretty similar.

Here they come:

1. Self-knowledge.

It’s pretty hard to become a better version of yourself if you don’t know what you are improving on. To map out your journey you need a starting point as well as the destination. And because you change all the time, you should study yourself all the time.⁴g⁴0 ,’

Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves–their strengths, their values, and how they best perform. —  Peter F. Drucker

The habits that can help you in this area:

a) Meditation

There are zillions of benefits to meditation, including increased focus and finishing at lower blood pressure. Of these, I consider self-awareness the biggest benefit. Usually, you just automatically respond to your subconscious thoughts. Meditation makes you aware of those thinking patterns and allows you to step between the impulse and your response.

b) Journaling

Capturing your self-talk on paper is very enlightening. It’s a powerful tool to clarify your thoughts and to gather plenty of data on yourself.

I journal six days a week and review my entries on Sundays. Sometimes, I write about my emotions and recent events, but always from the perspective of asking why this small trigger released such a strong emotion or what caused me to behave in such a way yesterday.

But most often, I simply research my internal world, journaling about my doubts, dreams, fears, aspirations, etc.

While meditation gives you self-knowledge on an emotional level, journaling gives it on both emotional and intellectual levels.

2. Health.

A successful person rarely doesn’t care about their health. It was more common in the past when people moved more and were eating real food, not the semi-chemical crap we consume now.

But even back then folks like Benjamin Franklin recognized the importance of exercise and diet. Nowadays, health and success are almost synonyms. Of course, you can be sick and still become a better version of yourself. It is simply much fricking harder.

My friend, Rebecca Patrick-Howard has a rare genetic disease and is dying much faster than most of us. Yet, she also moved from depression and being broken into the realm of successful authors

who support their family from writing in a few short years.

I’m a very healthy person, but I don’t sell as many books as she does. I cannot imagine how I could’ve succeeded with my books while battling constant pain and dozens of pesky afflictions connected to her disease.

With today’s health fad we all know what to do to improve our health. You know it too. It’s time to do, instead of contemplating.

a) Exercise

Every single day. We are spiritual creatures in physical bodies. We need to move our bodies to stay in decent shape.

b) Eat Well

There are plenty of different diets. Some of them come from religion or lifestyle choices. But there is one truly healthy rule: eat as many unprocessed foods as possible.

What’s “processed?” You know this as well. An apple was on a tree a few days ago. A pizza was not.

c) Sleep Well

Eight hours a night is a rule of thumb. Sleep needs are individual. Some people need more (for example, Matthew McConaughey sleeps 8.5 hours a night), some people need less (I’m fine with 7-7.5 hours of sleep). Humans in natural conditions sleep 6.5 to 7.25 hours.

Find your sleep needs and get enough sleep.

d) Stay Hydrated

Dehydration is one of the modern world’s curses. Another rule of thumb is to drink 8×8 ounces or 2 liters of water a day. Those needs are individual too. A tiny gal needs less water than a 7-feet ogre.

And don’t drink empty calories (soda). That’s not a path to good health.

3. Networking.

Successful people deliberately network with others.

Your network is your net worth. ―  Tim Sanders

Your worth is not only monetary. I think the financial aspect is the least important. Your self-worth is determined to a huge degree by the people you associate with. Successful people understand that and that’s their primary motivation for cultivating their network.

Helpful habits:

a) Thank You Notes

People don’t even take the time to thank others nowadays. You will stand out using this simple technique. Handwritten thank-you notes are more powerful. They’re rare in the digital age.

You can send short audio or video. They’re more powerful than a simple email.

b) Testimonials

Testimonials are like public thank you notes. Write reviews, give testimonials, share them on your social media. The receiver will appreciate it.

c) Collaborate

It always pushes the envelope a bit. When you have to work on common projects your level of interaction increases naturally.

d) Spend Time

This simple networking method always works. You should apply it especially with the people you look up to. The more you can be around your mentors, the faster you will emulate them in your life.

4. Vision.

Successful people are obsessed with their vision, whatever it is. But first, they need to create one. That’s why I started with self-knowledge. It takes some soul searching to discover (Victor Frankl said “detect”) your life mission.

Once they realize what they want to achieve, they keep that vision in front of their mind as often as possible. Average people are often amazed by the drive of successful people. But this drive is not a result of single enlightenment, as we like to imagine. Successful people habitually refer to their vision every day.

Useful habits:

a) Personal Mission Statement

Well, you need to first create one. Once you have it, there are many methods to use it. You can read it, listen to it, repeat in your mind, visualize it, and so on. The point is to refer to it every single day, so your mission is always in your mind’s agenda.

b) Vision Board

Humans think in images. If you have a visual reminder of your purpose, you can look at it multiple times a day.

c) Visualization

You can simply imagine the joy of fulfilling your purpose. Visualizing yourself in the process of getting there would be even better.

5. Education.

The biggest mistake you can make is to think that you are finished learning when you earn your degree. Education is a lifelong process.

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. –  Jim Rohn

And it is you who have to take charge of your education. Today’s education systems are outdated and expansive. What is more, you need proper learning habits. It’s no longer about appearing in the class 5 days a week. It’s about studying on your own as often and long as needed.

Handy habits:

a) Reading

Read books, blog posts or articles in specialized magazines- whatever makes you more knowledgeable about your subject.

b) Listening

YouTube has countless hours of useful lectures, workshops and speeches. You can convert them into audio and listen to them while doing semi-mindless tasks like driving or washing dishes.

c) Watching

It’s not my cup of tea, but there are people who learn well from watching videos. If that describes you, go for it.

d) Teaching

You retain more if you teach what you’ve just learned because you create more associations with your knowledge. Also, your students may challenge your assumptions and you need to reflect on your knowledge base to come up with convincing arguments.

e) Doing

There is no better learning method than practice. Each time you use your knowledge you gain experience and create more associations. Practice makes you also a better teacher. Internalized knowledge is four times easier to transfer than dry theory.

6. Habits.

Successful people recognize the utmost importance of habits in their lives. They don’t let their habits be a conglomerate of the social and physical environment. They consciously work on avoiding bad habits and developing good ones.

Your beliefs become your thoughts,

Your thoughts become your words,

Your words become your actions,

Your actions become your habits,

Your habits become your values,

Your values become your destiny.

― Mahatma Gandhi

I don’t have useful habits here for you. My point is, you need to analyze, develop and maintain your habits. Self-knowledge and education are very handy for accomplishing that goal.

I have two great resources for you:

a) Tiny Habits course

which is free, short, and easy. It also teaches the basics of habits development by implementation and experience, not pure theory.

b) My blog post series Infallible Framework for Habit Development

explains in great detail all the necessary elements to develop lasting habits. When I stuck to this framework, I always succeeded. When I didn’t follow it, the output wasn’t as good.

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7 Best Free Resources for Developing Habits

While answering hundreds and hundreds of questions about habits on Quora I found myself referring to some free resources for developing good habits over and over again.

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They are free. They are effective. They are helpful. So, here I share them with you.

1. Tiny Habits course

It’s free. It’s jam-packed with valuable knowledge about habits. It gives you the exact framework to develop habits.

It’s ultra-short. It takes a week, but it only consumes about one hour of your time overall.

And here comes the best: After this one week, you end up with three brain new good habits.

Ignore the rest of the resources and you’ll be good. Tiny Habits is 80% of the Pareto rule when it comes to those resources.

2. How habits work by Charles Duhigg

Charles is the author of the great book, “The Power of Habit.”

Yes, as the title says, there is some theory about habits in that article. But I refer people to it mainly to learn how to actually rebuild habits you are not satisfied with, aka bad habits.

It’s the best resource on the Internet, meaning the best in the whole world, about reprogramming your habits.

3. Coach.me

This platform was built as a habit tracking app called Lift. Later, they pivoted into coaching.

This application has absolutely everything you need to successfully develop new habits: the tracking system, the social aspect, and even the educational element – you can ask coaches and other users, for free, about specific habits.

I’ve been using it for years and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

4. BJ Fogg Behavioral Model

This model is a state-of-the-art piece of scientific research. BJ spent over two decades studying how to change people’s behaviors. His conclusions are to the point and very practical.

They describe the reality on the macro level, and at the same time, on the level of a single repetition of your habit. This model is the basis of his Tiny Habits concept.

I found it both convincing and enlightening. Like Duhigg’s piece about reprogramming habits, it’s the obligatory lecture for anyone even remotely interested in the subject of habit development.

5. The Four Tendencies Test

Short, funny, and enlightening test that will tell you how you approach habits in your life. Are you a Questioner or a Rebel? Find out and learn what tactics you can employ to make your habits stickier and struggle less.

6. James Clear’s blog

James Clear is the author of the book Atomic Habits. His blog is absolutely amazing when it comes to long articles packed with scientific research.

For example, I refer people all the time to his guides on sleep or creativity.

7. Zenhabits blog

I followed this blog at the very beginning of my transformation. This is where I got my Uncopyright idea from.

It’s created by Leo Babauta. This guy is a true practitioner. The reading experience is unparalleled. Leo removed all the distractions from his blog.

You think “only seven?” Well, they can keep you busy for weeks. And they are no fluff at all! Only seven, but they are the best free resources for developing habits available on the Internet.

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Eighty Second Income Report – January 2020 ($2,480.41)

Are you curious about a 3-month delay? I explained it in my first income report.

[image error]January 2020 was the month of overwhelming hustle for me. In the first week of the month, I had three holy days and I had only one day of work prior to January to catch up after the Christmas break.

I was playing catch-up for the whole month. Seriously, I remember working on the 30th of January and dedicating the whole day to creating ads orders for my team and replying to emails.

So many things happened that I have a tough time picking one to begin this report.

Stack promo

In the second week of January, I promoted to my subscribers a bundle of productivity resources. Frankly, I did that to make some money. However, the bundle was ridiculously discounted, so I had no remorse in promoting it. In the end, several people bought the stack. I made in commissions enough money to pay for three months of my Aweber fees.

It was also an opportunity to get rid of plenty of subscribers who were freebie seekers or had been on my list only because they participated in some book giveaway. I “lost” about 200 such subscribers.

Webinar for Bellevue University

I had quite a lot of work preparing my presentation for the webinar conducted at the end of the month. Considering the time spent on a couple of calls before the webinar and on slides preparation, the fee I received for the webinar wasn’t as exorbitant as I felt when signing up for the deal. I got about $50 per hour of work.

I could employ my freshly learned presentation skills from training in my day job. Cooperation with Bellevue was flawless. I got the feedback that 800 leads (a combo of book downloads and webinar participants) we generated was a huge success for such a campaign. The pinch of feedback I got from the webinar participants was very encouraging too.

5-day ads challenge

I also joined Bryan Cohen’s 5-day challenge. I hoped to eventually learn something, but my real ulterior motive was to engage with people in his group and shine with my expertise.

Well, it didn’t pan out very well. I didn’t learn much. My thoughts about most authors’ ineptness with ads were fully confirmed. That was my main takeaway from the challenge. In a way, it’s been encouraging, I’ll never run out of prospects.

But other than that, the challenge was a waste of my time. In the midst of January’s craziness, I didn’t have time to properly connect and contribute to Bryan’s group. I exchanged my time for nothing. It is called a learning experience. Well, normal people call it a failure

Takin’ Care of Business Book Review

[image error]This book is a small valuable gem. I breezed through it within an hour, but it gave me multiple light bulb moments.

Traditionally, let’s start from (a couple of):

CONS

1. No Kindle version.

C’mon! We have the 21st century here! Who am I, a caveman, to read the paperback version?



2. No summary at the end of the chapters.

What’s going on here? Maybe the authors work only with smart people who don’t need a bullet-point summary after a lesson? Well, I’m dumber than that. I badly needed such a summary.

The book may be short, but it’s packed full with ideas and actionable disciplines. It’s easy to breeze through the book and forgot 95% of the awesome advice it contains.

In the end, I had to go over the book once again and make such bullet points by myself.

Does it look like suspiciously few cons? Well, it’s a great book. It has many more

PROS
1. The opening.

Brian Buffini starts the book by quickly sharing his rags to riches story. But he doesn’t leave you with the impression of being a winner in shiny armor. Instead, he shares his top 10 mistakes in business.

It’s been refreshingly vulnerable.

2. The beginning.

The whole book is packed with great ideas and practices. But the first chapter is packed full and then some.

“An economic downturn or recession is ultimately a great thing for your business—if you can survive it.”

That’s the core message of the book and it was never more actual than during the recent coronavirus pandemic.

A good message, if you ask me.

Right behind this big inspiring message follow a string of neatly tailored ideas:

-the three fundamentals every business must have in place in order to succeed;

-an image of a business as a three-leg stool;

-a simple rating system, which predicts your yearly revenue;

-and the light bulb at the end: which element is the most important.

Spoiler alert! You may get the idea from this quote:

“Customer service is your job; sales & marketing is your business.”

3. And it gets better with every chapter.

An explanation of why relational marketing is so superior to transactional marketing.

Simple tips that will help you create your contacts database and sort and qualify your contacts.

4. Takin’ care of sales.

There wasn’t a single selling tactic in this whole chapter. It was all about methods to build relationships with your customers. This is really what sales are about.

5. Content.

Two other stool’s legs are as thoroughly examined as the first one. Why customers refer? Finance 101 for small business owners – it’s all analyzed and explained in very few words.

You don’t get overwhelmed. You get the specific practical tips to instill in your own business.

Brian and Joe’s advice is very actionable. You will get everything spelled out, including the list of daily, weekly, monthly quarterly and yearly disciplines to follow to take care of your business (sales & marketing).

6. Short and to the point.

There is no fluff in Takin’ Care of Business. Yet, it contains plenty of personal anecdotes from the authors’ business life. Those stories aptly illustrate business principles Brian and Joe are teachings.

7. True stories.

BTW, authors don’t just use their stories. Each chapter ends with a story of one person and business. They are both role-model type of lessons and warning-signs lessons.

Human beings absorb knowledge by sharing stories. Including them was a very smart move.

8. Nice design.

That was the icing on the cake. Not only the book was practical and laid out. It was visually appealing too. The formatting and images in the book were top-notch. You couldn’t have discerned this book from any traditionally published bestseller.

Summary

Takin’ Care of Business is beautiful. Inspiring. Practical. Simple. It contains no fluff. It’s full of actionable tips.

And it works. Tens of thousands Buffini & Company customers who make 8x more than average realtors are enough as a proof of concept for me.

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3 Roles of a Friend in Good Habits Formation

I can see at least three ways friends can support forming good habits right away. Probably, there are more.

1. Role Model.

Human beings are mimicking machines. We mimic without thinking, unconsciously. So, if your friend has some good habits you are in a much better position to adopt similar habits.

This is the one real hack when it comes to developing habits: spend more time with people who already have those habits. You will absorb their behaviors in a background mode, no conscious effort required. Putting some purposefulness into following your friends’ habits will accelerate the process, but it’s not necessary.

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” — Jim Rohn

This “function” of friends with regard to developing habits is highly overlooked. We understand that others can teach us something, give us tips, observe us and correct; but we don’t even think we are becoming like them simply by being around them.

2. Encourager.

Most people are not naturally good at celebrating their own wins. BJ Fogg, the expert in behavior design from Stanford University, considers a celebration of your habits the most important aspect of swift and solid progress:

“I would train you in celebrations before teaching you about the Fogg Behavior Model, or the power of simplicity, or Anchors, or recipes for Tiny Habits.”

In other words, he would train you in celebrations before anything else. That’s how crucial it is.

So, the next best thing a friend can do for you to form good habits is reminding you about the celebration.

“Have you done your exercises today? Man, that’s awesome! I’m so proud of you!”

A good friend should be looking for your right behaviors like a hawk and catch you “doing good.”

3. Accountability Partner.

I personally trained over 100 people in developing habits. About 80 of them barely needed my advice. They just needed someone to watch them and keep them on track.

There are different statistics about this phenomenon, but one thing is sure- you have MUCH higher chances for success if you report your progress to an accountability partner (the range was easy from 20% to 80% more chance for success).

Just the awareness that you need to tell somebody if you did your new habit or not makes you many times more likely to follow with the new behavior.

And this is what forming habits is about – consistent repetition.

Be a good friend. Instill habits that you would like your friends to follow. Encourage them like crazy. Keep your friends accountable for their progress.

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Eighty First Income Report – December 2019 ($2,314.5)

Are you curious about a 3-month delay? I explained it in my first income report.

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I shudder when I recall December 2019. My life was a total madhouse.

The first week of December was a normal frenzy of calculating customers’ profits and issuing invoices. Plus, of course, all the accompanying activities – gathering and sending invoices to my accountant, calculating remuneration for my team and paying all the team members, and so on.

Plus, my best customer got this brilliant idea to send some authors my way since I was doing such a good job for him. So, I got three new additional prospects in the middle of all that.

The second week was the most peaceful. Meaning that I finished all the above, had some processing power to tackle new prospects, and order some new ads for my customers and I even worked a bit on creating the onboarding process for new customers.

However, the end of this week was the start of a book launch frenzy. The third week of December was as crazy as I could get. I had a book launch and I needed to prepare the manuscript for it. A day before the launch, I had a call with a prospect and we agreed to start with three books… before Christmas! On the 20th of December, I discovered that my Canadian account has been fixed. I could finally create new ads. So I did. And I requested more ads from my team.

All of this happened in the midst of Christmas preparation, collecting gifts, coordinating the get-together with my siblings and parents, and packing for a trip.

The fourth week was a holiday week matched with the book launch. We spent six days in Plock at the family get together. I was one of the sober drivers, so I was making 3-4 trips a day between a rented house where we slept and my grandfather’s home where we had the get-together. I managed not to break my writing streak during the whole time, which was a small miracle in itself. I checked on my coaching clients a few times.

A day before Christmas Eve, after exchanging greetings and hugs with everybody, we just hang together for several hours. During that time I processed over 100 emails in my inbox. I just moved to relevant folders plenty of them, but I also took action on some and replied to a few of them.

And then just two days of December were left and I spent a few hours of my most productive time fixing the broken toilet at our home. According to my wife, it was the priority number #1

Legendary Book Review

[image error]I have so many issues with this book. Not because it’s bad. Rather, I know it could be so much better.

So, I found numerous CONS and, as usual, will share them first. It doesn’t change the fact that Legendary is a very valuable book. Read my review till the end and you discover even more, and better, PROS of this book.

CONS
1. Not Enough of Tommy’s Story

His story is heartbreaking on so many levels. The author of Legendary had a truly difficult start in life. He also boldly shares some of his darkest ‘secrets’. You know, the ones we usually share only with closest friends because we are afraid of sharing them with anyone else will cause them to think less of us.

But it’s not the whole story. I don’t know the full story of this man, but I know there was more than in the book. I know folks who got to know the whole story and they were moved to their core. Every single one of them.

Of course, it’s the author’s decision to reveal as much as he thinks relevant/appropriate/helpful. But I’ve seen the effect of sharing all of Tommy’s struggles with the audience and I felt he could do better than he has done with Legendary in this aspect.

2. Overwhelming Advice.

Unfortunately, this is a common affliction of personal development books.

A reader is showered with so many great tips, advice, tactics, and techniques that it’s easy to get paralyzed by this multitude. Also, I couldn’t find a clear pattern of what should go first and what to use next. Which brings me to Con #3…

3. Too Much, Too Shallow.

I’m a self-help junkie. I knew most of the methods and techniques enumerated by Tommy. And I noticed shortcuts at least a few times.

The author wanted to cover too much too quickly and sometimes he skimmed over the actual minutia of implementation.

One example: personal mission statement. I wrote a tiny booklet on how to write one (46 pages of content). Tommy wrote one chapter.

Another example: when talking about the importance of habits Tommy speculates it takes from 21 to 60 days (nope, it doesn’t; it’s 66 days on average) and mentions unspecified “studies”.

4. Too Much, Too Late.

Going further with the personal mission statement example – I wrote my book less than half a year after I went through the process for the first time. Tommy waited about a decade before he wrote Legendary. And it feels.

He skims over details because he mastered this whole stuff to the point that he doesn’t even consciously realize half of the things he knows. Thus, the overwhelming number of techniques. Thus, omitting some crucial details. He thinks they are obvious to the point he doesn’t notice them. And he didn’t put them into his book.

Do you feel like Legendary is a piece of junk written by an ivory tower guru after reading the CONS? Think twice. It’s a great book. Let’s dive into its greatness.

PROS
1. It’s Shipped.

“The book you don’t read won’t help.” — Jim Rohn

I could criticize Legendary because Tommy wrote a book and published it. So many people accumulated wonderful experience, but never bother to share it with others in the form of a book.

So, yes, this book has some shortcomings, but nothing is perfect in this world. Maybe it was too late, but it finally happened. Tommy turned his life around. Then, he documented his journey and shared it with us, so we can become legendary too.

2. Tommy’s Story.

Maybe it’s not a full story, but Tommy was vulnerable to the highest level. His story is brutal. In today’s world of shiny social media feeds, it’s more than enough to create a sobering shock.

If anything can get you out of complacency of the rat race, his story can do that. Tommy went over and above what was necessary to paint the painful picture of his internal misery despite the external success he enjoyed.

I’ll say a few words about this in my summary, too.

3. The Methods.

Tommy is not an ordinary guy. Not many of us had a childhood as traumatic as his. Not many of us spent their sentence in prison, attended a prestigious university, or were partners in the multi-million financial company.

But we don’t need to. The personal development toolkit he presents in Legendary is applicable for everyone. I used at least 80% of the methods he described to turn around my life. I invested zero dollars into my personal development for the first six months or so. Yet, I used the same methods he did and transformed my life.

You don’t even need a supportive spouse. Tommy’s wife is a saint. My wife isn’t

10 Simple Habits to Greatly Improve Your Social Skills

Those habits are simple indeed. However, they elevated my social skills from the level below zero to a point where people who meet me for the first time think I’m a social butterfly.

I consider their biggest benefit that for half of them you actually don’t need cooperation from others at all. You can practice those habits in the security of your own mind.

1. Notice Other People

Start recognizing the people around you. Look at them and think about them.

What things do you have in common? What things in them spark your interest?

2. Observe Other People

Stop digging lonely in your own mind. Look at the people around and think about them.

How do they behave? How they are behaving toward you? If you had to praise a specific man or woman, what would you say?

3. Mind Games

Once you notice people around you and think about them in the positive light, imagine striking conversations with them.

Visualize how you approach them, say “Hi”, start a conversation and tell them about that nice good thing about them you’ve noticed.

4. Eye Contact

The first step of the conversation is to make eye contact. Stop avoiding other person’s eyesight. If you don’t notice them you won’t talk to them. After breaking eye contact give this person a minute of reflection.

What things do you have in common? What things in them spark your interest? If you had to praise him/her, what would you say?

5. Smile

The next important factor in your becoming sociable is using your smile. Often we are so locked in our fears and insecurities regarding other people that we don’t notice they have their own difficulties. We all are so isolated in our fast-paced society and the simple act of smiling can knock down the barriers between us.

So, make eye contact and smile. You will be surprised by the mix of responses you will get. Some people will flinch, wince or recoil: “A stranger smiling at me? This is so unexpected!”

Many people will look away to break the eye contact, plainly feeling uncomfortable. Many will look at you incredulously: “Is it real? Is this person smiling at me?” They will take a quick peep around looking for the person who you are really smiling at, then get back to you, realizing that they are the receivers of your smile.

And I love best those handful that smile back at me. There will be such people in your case too.

6. Say “Hi”

Or “How do you do” or whatever people in your culture say to each other when they start a conversation.

If you made eye contact and smiled at them and they smiled back at you, it’s a no-brainer.

That’s it. You don’t need to do anything else. No obligation to discuss life and death matters. A simple “Hi” is enough.

7. Praise

Everybody likes to be praised. I’ve never met with the reaction of rejection when I praised a stranger. No one has ever told me “Get lost!” when I praised him.

The range of reactions is wide and mixed, but it always stays in the positive spectrum.

So praise. Look at the stranger and think what you could praise — an image; their clothes; a cool tattoo; maybe certain behavior?

Starting a conversation with praise is rarely as rewarding as talking about the purpose of life, but it’s an order of magnitude easier.

8. Ask about Them.

This is powerful. Everybody loves to talk about themselves. And people think you are so smart and likable when you make it all about them!

I have some contacts with really high-profile people, millionaires and the like. Those folks have a truly magical ability to make me talk.

A hack to make it work: be really curious about them. Reflect that in your language: “That’s fascinating! Can you tell me more?”

Listen with Your Body.

Master a few simple habits which signalize you are listening to the other person. Lean into them. Look at them, preferably right at their face. Make small head movements indicating that you are trying to listen to them with all your might.

Listen

This is huge. You may have a habit of asking deep insightful questions, but if you don’t listen to the responses of others, you could’ve as well ask no questions.

It’s a common struggle. We all love to talk, especially about ourselves. Especially when you ask a question, shut up and listen carefully to what they say. You may add another habit on top of that – ask another question at the end of their utterance:

Is that all?

What do you mean by that?

or simply repeat their last words with a questioning tone encouraging them to continue.

Some helpful tips to cultivate this habit:

-make sure you always speak less than the other person,

-say fewer words than the other person,

-shut up; use grunts and gestures to communicate;

-use twice as many questions in your conversations than you use declarative statements

-never give your opinion in a conversation unless you were specifically asked for it

There are more social habits, but the above ones cover the basics. Master the basics and other skills will be easier to practice.

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