Michal Stawicki's Blog, page 12

Eightieth Income Report – November 2019 ($2,805.44)

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

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In October, I closed some open loops, so I started the new month with a renewed vigor. At the first mastermind call in November, our mentor asked us about our business goals for 2020. I said I want to 10x my business. The first step toward that direction would be systematizing and documenting my customer onboard process. This is the last thing I’m really involved on a daily basis in Resurrecting Books. Anything else I could delegate.

So, hammering out this process was my first 12 Week Year goal. The other was the work on my book.

The New Ad Interface

However, on the 8th of November, I discovered that Amazon did something good with their ad interface. Loading the list of keywords moved from excruciatingly long to a mere few seconds. My team could work so much faster. Over the weekend I ordered over 1,500 ads. My team knocked them out in no time. I was busy trying to keep pace with them.

The new interface brought also a few problems. The campaign creation process changed in the Canadian and UK markets. I needed to train my team in the new process. I needed to teach it myself first.

Luckily, my elder son is very bright. He mastered the new process in no time. He even recorded the ad creation on video, so I had a training material for other team members.

The new interface, even with a couple of additional steps, was much faster than the old one. We created over 6,000 new ads in November.

A Mild Cold

And on the 11th of Nov, I got a cold. It wasn’t anything serious at all. I had a sore throat and subfebrile temperature.

For a week, I simply tried to push through. I only gave myself slightly more time to sleep. I was so used to being healthy that any curation seemed for me like wasting time.

Well, it didn’t work out at all. I had been under the weather for the whole week. Next Tuesday, I finally decided I need to give myself some grace. I drastically slowed down. I did only the necessary things and gave myself a lot of time for day-time naps. On Friday, I had the whole day training in my day job.

Saturday, the 21st of November was the first day when my productivity was up to my normal levels.

Last Week

I not exactly wasted two weeks in the middle of November, but they left a sour taste in my mouth. I could do so much more, if I’d have taken proper care of myself before I got a cold or if I’d have rested properly the moment I noticed a decline in my health.

Beating myself didn’t help much with catching up. I had prospects to attend to. I had more orders of ads to send to my team. I had a backlog of emails to deal with.

And it was Thanksgiving week. I had a Black Friday deal coordinated with 14 other authors. Needless to say, my progress was much slower than I wished for.

Also, I had more meetings than usual in my church community. This added just a few more hours a week into my schedule, but with the whole craziness, it made me feel even more overwhelmed.

The Onboarding Process

Luckily, God had my back. My childhood friend is a process engineer in a factory and he found himself recently with a lot of time in his lap. He volunteered to help me out.

I sent him my chaotic notes and he overnight put them into a simple well-organized chart. He provided some insights, so I realized where I need to add more details. I had little time to do more busy with catching up with the everyday stuff, but at least this project inched forward.

The New Book

We made good progress in November. We finally polished the content, so I could create an advance reading copy. I shared it with 60+ readers from my email list. I also surveyed my subscribers and came up with a subtitle for the book. I discussed with Jeannie, my co-author, further details, did some preliminary keyword research and modified the cover concept with my designer.

At the end of the month, I started a reach-out campaign to my author friends asking them for help with my book launch.

Fizzling Happiness

About a week after introducing the new interface, I discovered that I could create new ads again under my old corrupted accounts!

I immediately ordered ads in the USA and Canada. I also contacted a prospect who had been waiting for the Canadian market for a few months.

My happiness was short-lived indeed. One by one, the accounts got corrupted again. It was enough to create a hundred ads or so to break them.

The nice thing about this was that I got a new customer for the Canadian market.

Prospects

In November I got three prospects. Two of them were very promising, with 2-3 nonfiction books. Usually, nonfiction works much better than fiction with my ads. We created ads for them and it appeared their campaigns barely broke even!

The third prospect wanted to advertise just a single fiction book. I accepted her because she had also a couple of nonfiction books and I thought we will advertise them. We created just the test batch of ads for her book.

In a week I couldn’t believe my eyes. This book was performing extraordinarily. In fact, this was the #3 book out of 200+ I advertised. We quickly created the full stack of our standard campaigns. Then, we created also long-tail keyword ads. It was a no-brainer. This book was converting like crazy.

Lesson:

You never know what will happen with AMS ads till you start. Two prospects fit my ideal customer profile and very little came out of that. The third was a longshot, but it paid off handsomely.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income:

Amazon royalties: €2,987.8 ($3,406.42)

Coach.me fees: $138.05

Draft2Digital royalties: $22.86

PublisDrive royalties: $6.58

Audiobooks royalties: $49.06

PWIW personal coaching: $337.12

AMS service remuneration: $2,762.12

Total: $6,722.21

Costs:

$69, Aweber fee

$81.51, royalties split with co-author

$2,155.82 Amazon ads

$500, ISI mastermind

$10.93; retreat-related costs

$77, Business on Purpose monthly fee

$827.42, RAs’ remuneration (RAs = Real Assistants; my team)

$30, SiteLock fee

$95.09, an obligatory monthly fee for LLC

$70, my accountant’s monthly fee

Total: $3,916.77

Net Result: $2,805.44

Previous Income Report: October 2019

The post Eightieth Income Report – November 2019 ($2,805.44) appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Tiny Habits Book Review

[image error]This book is VERY good. One of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read (I’ve lost count, probably over 1,000 books).

It doesn’t change the fact that there are some cons, and as usual, I’ll start with them.

CONS
1. The Flaw

The main con of the book is a piece of absolute, utter hogwash that simply doesn’t fit this awesome book. One of the chapters is titled “Emotions Build Habits.”

In the very same chapter there is a sentence:

“For too long people have believed the old myth that repetition creates habits.”

BJ Fogg champions the idea that your attitude is more important than consistency. And he does it in an ugly style, which is another con.

I know where he comes from. Millions of people have forced themselves to follow some diet for a month or a quarter-year, and then they abandoned it and never came back. Repetitions alone don’t create a habit. But tens of millions of people have felt very excited about changing their habits, didn’t force themselves, weren’t consistent, and ended up without a habit in the exact same way.

Repetitions alone aren’t a silver bullet. Emotions alone aren’t a silver bullet either.

In fact, Fogg contradicts himself, teaching his readers in the next chapter to rehearse their tiny habits. If repetitions don’t build a habit, why rehearse? You should just “feel good” about the idea of having a habit and it will magically form. Sheesh!

I found an ideal sentence describing what the author meant, the one which I agree 101% with:

“Emotions make behavior more automatic.”

This is the main focus of this chapter, and deriding repetitions, tracking, and streaks was a huge mistake and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

2. Zealotry

I don’t think any author is free of this. BJ Fogg’s ideas are truly brilliant, but stating some utterances like they are dogma tickles me in a bad way.

I noticed it only once in the book, but it left a foul taste. It was in the fragment about repetitions:

“Some of today’s popular habit bloggers still talk about repetition or frequency as the key. Just know this: They are recycling old ideas. They have not done groundbreaking research.”

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater and pretending it’s a good thing to commit.

First, this paragraph was totally unnecessary. Second, in my ears “groundbreaking research” equals inerrancy and people who haven’t done such research are inferior. How come?

Those “popular bloggers” don’t just spill their words on the internet. They write from experience. I’ve coached over 100 people in habit formation, and I did it according to BJ Fogg’s model. Repetition works. Period.

Then you can add some qualifiers: that it doesn’t work alone or that if your emotions are working against you it’s very hard to create a habit despite repetitions.

But in general, repetitions work, hence the author’s own advice to rehearse your habits.

 

Don’t get me wrong. You may think after this con that the author is some kind of self-righteous monster. That’s far from the truth. BJ Fogg is an awesome guy. I’ve been following him for years.

His accomplishments are undeniable.

He has great bragging rights.

I simply say belittling others is not his style and it doesn’t fit this awesome book. The same with fighting timeless concepts that have been proven to work in practice countless times.

3. Celebration

This is my biggest takeaway from the whole book. I bought Tiny Habits to repay BJ Fogg for his awesome job.

I’ve already studied the concept of tiny habits. I went through his free course with success. I’ve been writing about his concepts for several years. Apart from very interesting stories about the author and his clients and students, there was nothing new in the book for me.

Except for the celebration, that is.

I mean, when I did the Tiny Habits course a few years ago, I read about celebration and I discounted it. I never truly implemented this element into my habit development or my coaching. Big mistake.

Why did I put it as a con? Because it’s articulated in the book only halfway into it!!

 

What is more, the author is clearly aware of the importance of featuring this tip:

“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.”

So, why the heck didn’t he?!?!

BJ Fogg knows it’s important. For a habit expert like me, it’s the biggest takeaway. And he hid this feature in the middle of the book.

4. Typo

The last con is on the publisher. English is not my first language. I’m unaware of most grammatical errors. I usually am not annoyed by a few typos here and there. I’m an author, and I know how close to impossible it is to eliminate all typos from a manuscript.

That is, until I read “bestto” in a Kindle book for which I paid almost $17! And I know that a poor author won’t get even $5 of it because he is robbed by a traditional publisher whose products are so perfect, and so above the “poor quality” self-publishers’ books (like 5x above, as their prices are).

C’mon! My word processor noticed this typo! Drop the price to a reasonable level, or do the perfect job you are paid for.

Rant over! Sorry.

 

If you’ve thought for a moment that the above cons make Tiny Habits hardly readable or the book is not so good, that’s a wrong impression.

I wrote in such length about cons because I deeply care about this book’s success. It is absolutely fantastic. And here are the reasons that make it so:

PROS
1. Fogg Behavior Model

This is a brilliant concept, and it deserves to be taught in primary school. In the first grade of primary school.

It’s simple. It’s intuitive. It isn’t an academic theory, but it describes reality because it is based on observations more than on ruminations.

The chart of the model and several sentences explaining how it works are worth the price of the book, and the typo be damned.

2. Covers All the Angles

Tiny Habits tells the whole story of habits, from underlying principles of repeating the behavior to breaking bad habits and group cooperation in developing new habits.

This is the MOST complete book about habits I’ve read, and I read them all.

Read this book and you will learn how people actually change their behavior, why it makes tremendous sense to start small rather than big, how to grow your tiny habits into massive action, and how those small activities will result in huge results in the end.

I love this book! It says all I’ve been trying to convey to the public for years. It also says it very well. The explanations are easy to grasp. Tiny Habits is very well written. Which is the next pro…

3. Stories

I was totally impressed by the way BJ has woven stories of his students into the principles he teaches. I barely can tell where teaching ends and a story starts.

And all the stories are amazingly powerful. BJ has taught tens of thousands of people how to develop habits; he could cherry-pick some that make your head spin and your heart rate climb.

Powerful. Encouraging. Hope-giving. Authentic.

BJ Fogg has done something extraordinary in this book. He’s connected miniscule daily actions with big life transformations. What we mostly see in media are the stories of great deeds: losing 100 pounds in three months, creating a six-figure company in less than six months, etc. Tiny daily activities simply don’t connote with enormous transformations.

Until you read Tiny Habits. Utilizing the stories is at the master level here.

4. Repetitive

Repetition is the mother of learning.

Repetition is the mother of learning.

Repetition is the mother of learning.

BJ Fogg seems to know this very well. There is a lot of iterative repetitions of everything he teaches in the book.

Yet, it’s not annoying at all. I noticed the repetition often, especially in the charts and images illustrating the process, but it didn’t bother me one bit. I’m impressed.

5. Personal

I hate the guts of most traditionally published books. They are bland, tailored to speak to a general audience, and…bland.

Tiny Habits is not so. The author wasn’t castrated out of his voice. BJ Fogg shares in by-the-way matters that he is gay at the very beginning of the book. He shares plenty of smaller stories from his life related to habit building and behavior design. I enjoyed those tidbits a lot.

But he also shares the deeply personal story of his nephew’s suicide and his family dynamics.

So, a reader can not only learn from practical applications of his model and tiny habit framework from his example, but can relate to him on a personal level.

Tiny Habits is a lot of things, but it’s not bland.

6. Group Setting

Another unique trait of Tiny Habits is that it teaches how to create new habits in a group setting—in a family, company, or team. In the same methodical way in which the author explains how to build individual habits, he also explains how you can help others change.

What is more, he describes two paths: the path of a Ringleader and the path of a Ninja. The Ringleader is a person with the authority to lead others (father, CEO, manager, coach, and so on).

But when people resist the change despite your formal authority or if you are not a person in power, you can still help others by walking the Ninja path. Which, by the way, I found very helpful. Most people hiss at the sound of the word “change” like a devil at the sight of holy water.

Summary

Tiny Habits is so good that I cannot properly articulate it. Just ignore the one idiocy that emotions build habits and repetitions don’t, and you can absorb the rest with your whole mind and soul.

This is the book that explains everything about habits.

This is the book that teaches you the simplest system.

This is the book that makes your personal changes not only possible, but totally doable.

This is the book that inspires you to take bold (but tiny!) action.

This is the book that helps you feel successful from day one.

This is the book.

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The Recap of My 2019 Goals

[image error]I definitely need to listen to Jim Rohn and Brian Buffini more. Those folks are so satisfied with their goals. For me, goals are a source of unrelenting misery.

My 2019 goals went better than usual, but still, I want to pull my hair out in exasperation. OK, let’s go over them.

1. Communication in My Marriage

It quickly appeared that it takes two to have a conversation. My wife wasn’t willing at all to chat for an hour with me, especially about the deep topics I’m interested in. Superficial gossip about celebrities or relatives was OK, but those aren’t topics I want to discuss.

Thanks to the advice of my Mastermind buddies, I decided to scale down my discipline to much shorter daily conversations. It didn’t go much better, yet a little better.

Maybe we both weren’t ready yet for deeper stuff? I still find myself in a state of withdrawal more often than not.

However, out of all my efforts, something else materialized—we spent more time together. In 2019, we took a five-day trip to Prague and a one-week vacation to Crete: just the two of us, no kids.

We were together in a cinema or theatre more than 20 times in 2019. We also spent some time communicating about the business, since Anna was helping me with it.

Verdict:

So, the progress, however painful and slow, happened. It also didn’t happen exactly the way I’d anticipated.

BTW, we had a couple of big arguments, exactly as I’d “hoped for” when setting this goal.

2. Build a Business

My initial reaction when reflecting on this goal was disappointment. Definitely, my business is not working on autopilot.

But when I zoomed in on what happened in 2019, I saw that a lot of things have gone right.

For the first time, I enlisted the help of someone outside my family. She is a sister from my church community who needed additional income.

My sons took over the monthly process of calculating results for my customers. My eldest son works as my assistant; I gave him plenty of smaller tasks I don’t want to dabble with and nobody else is willing to learn.

My sister took over creating the monthly reports and managing the orders for new ads. She can create template ads out of existing ads. Instead of spending three minutes creating an order, I just sent her a couple of sentences, indicating which customer and which books we need to work on.

The experience convinced me that automatization beats customization. I still got a few customers bypassing the normal onboarding process because they were referred via my existing customers or my mentor. Most of them weren’t a good fit, and I only lost my time trying to help them.

There are still gaping holes in my business processes—for example, checking the bids in existing campaigns or checking the results of all the customers in a regular fashion. There are still things that only I can do, like onboarding customers and explaining what exactly they need to fix on their book pages.

Verdict:

The progress was much better than I thought, being involved in day-to-day actions all the time. Comparing where I am now to the situation at the beginning of 2019, I almost have a real business. And despite my ambiguous feelings, the systematization and delegation worked well enough. We served 22 customers and the revenue grew by 40%.

3. Implement 12-Week Year

This goal was trickier than I anticipated. In the midst of the fight, it appeared that I’m still unable to manage quarterly goals. I’m a daily guy.

The biggest benefit of implementing the 12WY process for me was managing my time in a weekly calendar. It caused multiple benefits.[link to blog post] And the need to create the plan in the first place gives me about 30 minutes every week when I have to reflect on what is to be done and how I should go about it.

I learned a few things thanks to working within the 12WY framework:

a) Accountability is overarching.

For the first three months I worked with a coach in a small group. Those were good months. Then I fell off the wagon. After that, a few guys from my Mastermind group created another small accountability group. As long as it was strong, my progress was strong.

b) My progress journal is my real accountability.

I quit posting in my online journal at the end of August. However, I kept my personal file, where I was writing the same stuff I wrote online. Unfortunately, without the external motivation to show off with my entries, I stopped keeping the journal regularly.

Even without the help of a small 12WY group, I noticed that whenever I was diligent about journaling my actions, my progress was solid. When I let myself be so overwhelmed that I didn’t journal, my performance immediately decreased.

c) A quarter is too long for me.

Since September, I’ve focused only on one month at a time with my bigger goals. It has worked well for me. I barely mastered the weekly level, and a month of planning is still a challenge for me. Once I master one month, I’ll move to longer goals.

Verdict:

Of course, I didn’t implement the 12WY system flawlessly! Why should I? This is the first time in my life I’ve tried it. My ability wasn’t very high. Yet, I reaped multiple benefits and learned a lot along the way.

And I finally published 99 Habit Success Stories and orchestrated a solid launch (740 copies sold in three weeks). This was my 12WY goal for December, and I did it despite the fact that I took a week off three days after launching the book.

The 12-Week Year will remain a part of my overall work process.

4. The Big Potential

This was a very vague goal, and I strived toward it in a very vague manner. Yet, it bore much fruit.

I got a whole bunch of new customers, and the best ones were those who were referred to me by my friends. Well, I got one via my own actions: I reached out to him in a truly Big Potential way, out of the blue. After one call he ended up as my customer. Then, he referred a couple more guys to me. I make about $700 per month with those three customers.

I took part in a few book promotions and giveaways. A few of them were organized by my former customer Som Bathla. I sold hundreds of my books and got well over 2,000 new subscribers thanks to those events.

In-Person Meetings

During my retreat in Nashville, I met with my friend Rebecca Patrick-Howard and my mentor Dave Chesson. And, of course, I attended two Mastermind retreats in the USA and met my Mastermind buddies there.

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Podcast Interviews

I booked six interviews via a podcast booking agency. I was also approached a few times directly by hosts and gave interviews on their podcasts.

I adopted a new habit, writing thank-you notes, after listening to Brian Buffini’s preaching about this. I doubt I would’ve adopted it if not for the pursuit of Big Potential. I gave more than a dozen notes to my family members during our Christmas get-together and to my Mastermind buddies at the retreat.

Cooperation

A company working for Bellevue University found my book and offered me a deal. I gave them the right to give away 1,000 copies of my book about personal mission statements, and I will give a webinar to their clients. It’s unreal! They paid me to sell my book and spread my message!

My co-author, Jeannie Ingraham, started a publishing company. We bartered services. Her team is proofreading my stuff, and I am doing ads for their books. And we published 99 Habit Success Stories this year.

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The whole book launch is one big example of cooperation. The book sold over 600 copies in 2019, and I credit no more than 100 copies to my efforts. The rest was thanks to my author friends who shared my book with their audience, and thanks to contributors to the book who spread the message.

Verdict:

The results were surprisingly good for such a vague goal. Well, after so many years of following un-SMART goals, it is not such a surprise to me.

I’m still not satisfied with the effort I put in, but those results further opened my eyes to the power of Big Potential. I’ll try to double my efforts in 2020.

Summary:

Despite the vagueness of my goals, I’m quite satisfied with my progress in 2019. Like almost always, I didn’t really reach my goals. However, I could put a finger on some areas of progress in the case of each of them.

My marital goal has gone the worst. Or maybe I’m just the most critical about it because I care about it the most?

The Big Potential is actually big. Despite the relatively tiny effort put into it, the benefits exceeded my expectations.

The post The Recap of My 2019 Goals appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

A Reader’s Delight: Two Reviews in One Blog Post

In this post, there are two reviews, not one. And there are not usual reviews of business / personal development books usually posted on ExpandBeyondYourself. The first one is a brilliant autobiography and the second is an awesome thriller.

The Man Called Red

This is very a good book. The writing style is rough, but not clumsy. So it doesn’t hinder enjoying the book’s content. And the content is golden, mostly because it is so refreshingly authentic.

The book tells the story of one man. It says it without hiding very little, and it’s stripped of superficial bells and whistles. It’s a bare life and it’s true that life writes the best stories.

 

And, like life, this book is for everyone. Yes, it’s full of hunting stories and told in a dry man’s style, but gals can enjoy it and learn from it too. For example, they can discover what real men really appreciate in women.

 

I could see two parts within the book. The first half or so is Red’s story of becoming a man and building his life from scratch. The second half reads more like a bunch of essays. Red established his outfitting venture and he finally settled in one place. The story is not cohesive anymore, but it makes it not a dime less interesting. I equally enjoyed both parts.

 

I wolfed the first half of the book. It revealed a different culture for me.

 

I have no idea why I find the post-WWII period in the Western so captivating, but I do. When I read a memoir from those times from the UK I was equally hooked.

I loved seeing how Red transformed from a boy into a man. There was no single overarching event, it was a long process over many years. It was fascinating how a man could secure his living practically by developing respect in the local community. Once Red was known as a competent, hard worker he never had problems finding the employment.

It was also very enlightening to see how he gained his experience: by doing. Everything – from driving a car through taking care of cattle to road building with a dynamite – he learned by trial and error. No long lectures but the practice was his teacher.

Hard Work

It amazes me to no end how hard people worked in these times… and in these regions. Often, it was labor, slug and drudgework from dawn till dusk. Whenever Red started a new phase in his life, he had to build everything from scratch with little help other than some horsepower and manpower. He built his own homes and his farms not once, not twice, but multiple times. When he started his outfitting business and bought a plane, he also had to build landing lanes in multiple locations in the wilderness.

Red’s descriptions of his legwork reminded me my grandfather who was a farmer. He also worked from dawn till dusk, and always had something more to do. I remember visiting his farm in my early years and trying to avoid the whole bunch of chores my grandpa was always eager to pass on me.

Hilarious

Red’s writing style is not beautiful or witty. Yet, I laughed more than once when he described in his dry style different anecdotes from his life or the mischiefs of his children. Life writes the best stories, this is so true. The events he described were funny in their own right. Just imagine a man chasing a grizzly bear with a brush… and then being chased down by the bear when it came to his senses after the madman’s onslaught.

Honesty?

For a man whose handshake is as solid as his signature, I found it amusing how many times (more than a few!) Red wasn’t entirely truthful when speaking with authorities. To his credit, Red was absolutely honest in front of his readers and confessed each lie he sold to authorities on various occasions.

I guess, when dealing with liars, by definition you cannot be entirely truthful. Don’t play according to their rules or you will be doomed from the start.

Canadians Are Not Nice

I don’t want to spoil the story, but once Red purposefully burned a blockhouse with some hunters’ possessions inside. Oddly brutal for ‘nice Canadians’, don’t you think?

And yes, he was in his rights and I would have done the same.

Adventure

Red faced death more than once. He saved others from death more than once. And this was all while living his ‘normal’ life. When you live your whole life among livestock and operating heavy machinery, the danger is just a part of your life. It goes without saying that wild animals and firearms are not especially safe too.

Red was an ambulance driver, a cowboy, a forest ranger (in Canada it means fighting forest fires), a farmer, a hunter and an outfitter. None of those occupations are connoted with cozy safety.

Add to this mix the places where he dwelled, when he was often the only human being in dozens mile radius… adventures were inventible.

 

The second half of the book, when Red finally ‘settled down’ in one place and started his outfitting business, after the initial setup phase, reads like a bunch of essays. Most of them apply to his clients’ hunting adventures, but he also describes encounters with wild animals, plane crashes, dangerous accidents, rescue actions and the power of nature at work. Practically each chapter tells a different story. Sometimes there are several, loosely related, stories in one chapter.

Summary

I am no hunter, I have never had a rifle in my hands. Some of the details of the book were puzzling to me. Calling hunting ‘a sport’ triggers an uneasy feeling in my gut. But I enjoyed the book thoroughly nonetheless. It was better than 90% of the fiction adventures book I read and I read hundreds of them.

 

I just scratched the surface in this review. I mentioned only a few anecdotes out of hundreds of pages. “The Man Called Red” is a great read. It would be especially beneficial for young folks who dream about adventures to confront the Hollywood images with the real life. And it contains countless lessons on what it means to be a man cloaked in dangerous adventure, so those young folks will be easily tricked into reading the book

You Are Cursed: Unlock Your Big Potential

You are cursed since your birthday. We all are, because we live in a cursed society.

Practically every single of us lives with this curse. We grew up with it. We didn’t even notice it. We accepted it, like a person blind from birth to accept darkness as a default.

We are cursed and the name of the curse is the Small Potential.

The Small Potential is a belief that at least 80% of what matters in life is your individual qualities, possessions, character, achievements and performance.

We accept it as an axiom. Of course, you need to have good grades! Of course, you have to shoot goals and get points! Of course, you need to be in top shape! Of course, you need to deliver your projects on time and within a budget! Of course, you need to live in a great house with your family!

Of course.

But there is one awful thing that underlines this “of course” – and the others be damned.

It Starts in Childhood

Our school system is to be blamed for a big piece of this sad state of affairs.

I had been indoctrinated since my first class that getting good grades is my only education goal. What was worse, no one taught me the importance and value of collaboration. I was limited to the Small Potential since day #1 of entering the traditional school system. Each day, month and year only deepened that indoctrination.

Even when I finally got involved in some collaborative classes in a high school it felt like it was an afterthought. Those group projects “didn’t really matter” in the eyes of the educational system. What mattered were good grades.

It Continues at Work

Work systems were no different. I remember only one environment where group effort was important – when I worked on a salad field in the UK. We were paid by the job and if I slacked, the whole team suffered. Also, if the whole team worked hard we all made more money in the effect.

However, it is hard to say that this system was directed toward Big Potential. There was no growth built in that job. There is a certain limit on how efficient you can get with repeatable manual tasks.

And that was the only instance my performance was connected to my team’s performance in the work setup. I worked for several companies and I’m all too familiar with the infamous corporate yearly performance review system.

 

Even if there were some points about the team’s performance, they were thrown into like a third wheel. No one has ever paid attention to them. And they were indeed few and far between.

Everything was focused on me: Did I achieve my goals for the period? Did I improve my knowledge as it was assumed? Did I take classes and pass exams? Did I finish my tasks on time and with reasonable quality?

Me, myself and I, all the time.

No wonder I was tricked into Small Potential thinking. I have been indoctrinated for my whole life.

We Look in the Wrong Direction

We kind of realize, there is more than the individual performance, but we consider it to be a small factor, when in fact, it is the biggest one.

I remember when I was changing primary schools at the age of 11 or 12. My mom enumerated all the advantages to her friend and I was listening: the new school was closer, it had better equipment and better conditions.

At the end my mom added with a light air:

“And, by the way, the class Michal goes to is the best in the whole school.”

She had no idea that this was the biggest factor in my educational success. I was a bright kid and I got As’ more often than not. I remember my mom saying how proud she is of me. She never commented about the whole class’ performance.

 

My boys went to the same high technical school. When I browsed the school’s website looking for a list of textbooks, I discovered that this school is the best in the whole county when it comes to final exam results. To be exact, the average grades of all students are the best. It’s the individual metric, but in this context, it says something about the whole community’s performance.

This metric should attract my attention when my sons were looking for a high school. It should be my primary concern. It wasn’t. I discovered it by accident when my elder son was already attending the school.

We Sense the Littleness of the Small Potential

We know on some subconscious level that Small Potential is small. Several months ago I got a solid verbal spanking from my supervisor. I had been slacking in my day job. It was my problem and my fault. But the argument that was the strongest and hurt the most was:

“The whole team suffers because of your laziness. They have to make up for what you neglect.”

We sense what’s important, but because of lifelong indoctrination, we choose to ignore it. We focus on the Small Potential, instead of the big one: a team’s performance.

But We Choose to Ignore the Big Potential

I have access to several awesome support groups. I’m active in a Facebook group for authors, a couple of groups for online entrepreneurs, and another group for those who advertise their books on Amazon. I still keep a lively contact with my friends from the Transformational Contest. I have a couple of accountability partners. I’m in a mastermind. I have my church community; those folks have been known me for 14 years!

I don’t utilize those connections even in 2%.

And I cannot break out of it. I’m indoctrinated. I focus on myself all the time.

 

I could’ve got so much more from those communities. I could’ve bounced around every question about ads on Amazon; every question about running an online business; every question about resources for self-publishers; every doubt about my faith; every life’s dilemma.

But I don’t. I don’t ask questions. I don’t ask for help. Interacting rarely even crosses my mind.

What Can You Contribute?

I could’ve helped everybody around so much more.  I have so much knowledge about self-publishing, running book ads on Amazon or marketing and technical aspects of creating an online business.

I’ve been married for 18 years; I have three kids – I have life wisdom to share.

I have rich experience about what works in personal development and what doesn’t.

I’ve been in the church community for over 20 years, I study the Bible and read books written by saints every day. I have some spiritual experiences to share.

But I don’t. Why?

Because my knowledge about the Big Potential stays at the intellectual level. I don’t truly realize how important it is to cooperate and interact. I should’ve realized; my church community, mastermind and the experience of the Transformational Contest weren’t theoretical. I gained a lot from them.

Yet, I still don’t feel it at a gut level. It’s like with kids and the importance of education. When I was a kid – and I see the same attitude in my kids – my parents’ preaching about the significance of education fell on deaf ears. School and learning is, in the eyes of kids, a drudgery.

Networking and connecting is drudgery for me. I’m an introvert. I feel good alone. Nothing beats an hour or ten spend with a good book. Certainly, it beats 10 hours spent with other people.

I’m cursed with the Small Potential

You are too.

It’s time to change it. Go out and interact. Ask for help; provide support. Ask questions; give answers. Spill your heart in front of people; encourage others when they suffer. Get some guidance; share resources.

This is how your performance grows. This is how you truly reach your full potential, your Big Potential that is an order of magnitude greater than what you can achieve alone.

Don’t Limit Yourself with the Small Potential

Self-help is a big fat lie. You cannot expand beyond yourself on your own. I cannot as well.

Let it penetrate your thick skull: you are sentenced to minimal results in all areas of your life if you focus primarily on yourself. If you don’t interact with others, if you don’t consider them MORE important than you, you limit yourself to a fraction of what’s possible.

“Nothing is to be done out of jealousy or vanity; instead, out of humility of mind everyone should give preference to others, everyone pursuing not selfish interests but those of others.” Philippians 2: 3-4

Get out of your shell.

I’m going out starting today.

Here are some communities that can help you are self-publisher/ online entrepreneur:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/357112331027292/ – Pat’s First Kindle Book

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sidehustlenation/ – Side Hustle Nation

https://www.facebook.com/groups/spicommunity/ – The Smart Passive Income Community

The post You Are Cursed: Unlock Your Big Potential appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Sixty Sixth Income Report – September 2018 ($1352.21)

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

The beginning of September 2018 was tough. My two employees (read: my sons) went to school. My third employee (my wife) was busy with the start of a school year too. When she wasn’t busy with it, she spent time with my mother or were preparing the whole family for a trip to my hometown. My cousin was getting married.

Can you imagine? I even had to create some ads with my own hands! Awful!

Never Binge Again Book Review

I loved this book.

Mind you, I didn’t have balls to write my own Food Plan and commit to it 100%, but I still love the concept.

Just writing the Food Plan down will help you realize how much ambiguity you allow in your life. And this grey area is where you truly fail.

I sometimes have a binging problem. That’s a fact. I gained about 12 pounds a few months ago, and it took some rigid discipline to lose them again.

I can see how I could achieve it and maintain it with Never Binge Again framework.

I only refuse to make my eating habits such a central part of my life. Thank you, I lost 15% of my body weight, and I kept my weight in a very narrow range for the last 5 years.

I shouldn’t have focused too much on my food habits in a way I shouldn’t fuss over my alcohol intake (which is about 1 beer, a few glasses of wine and a couple shots of vodka a month). It would have been a waste of my mental energy.

But I recommend the Never Binge Again approach to anyone who has an eating disorder (read: often binging). If you simply struggle to maintain your weight, it will be beneficial to design your Food Plan just for the sake of clarity.

Not Just Eating

What I liked best in this book were not “food struggles,” but struggles with your subconscious mind. Many techniques Glenn described could be used in overcoming different kind of addictions.

I’m a big fan of planning on paper and discussing with your subconscious in writing. Glenn is so very right that its arguments usually come down to “because I want it!”

If you don’t fight on the battlefield of subconscious’ choice – your head – and take the battle to a piece of paper, your position immediately improves. Now you can use the power of rational mind and see how irrational (read: stupid) are remarks of your subconscious mind.

And the separation of those vicious voices in your head from what you consider your “self” is a brilliant idea.

A very interesting and thought-provoking read.

The post Never Binge Again Book Review appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Power up Your Self-Talk and Reclaim Your Life

There is very little “self” in self-help. I already said that self-help is a big fat lie.

However, there are still areas where outside help can do very little for you. Self-talk is the most important of them and I tackle this problem in my next book, “Power up Your Self-Talk: 6 Simple Habits to Stop Beating Yourself Up and Reclaim Your Life.”

But what is self-talk?

“When we tell ourselves something is too hard, or easy, or that we are successes or failures, it’s self-talk.”

You are familiar with this voice in your head, this is a universal human experience. Unfortunately, it rarely says good things, especially about you. It hinders your progress like nothing else because it’s preventive in its nature. You don’t change because in 99% of cases, your self-talk convinces you to give up even before you start.

You read a self-help book that recommends doing some exercise and you think: “Later”, “It’s stupid”, “That surely will not work for me”, “I’m too stupid for that”, “It’s such a hassle.”

And you skip the exercise. That’s why, despite the countless self-help volumes guru’s readers’ success is not very common.

The authors of self-help books kind of know this problem, but they choose to ignore it. What can they do about it anyway? Sneak into your mind and say something else? They just hope the seed of their message will fall onto receptive soil.

Faulty Advice

Self-help books bombard you with a great advice: “Imagine that…”

“Tell yourself…”

“Ask yourself…”

The advice is completely useless, because it tries to break into your habitual self-talk. You don’t really know how self-insults appear in your mind. You don’t know where the damaging questions (“Why am I such a failure?”, “Why does it always happen to me?”) come from. You cannot stop yourself in the middle of your self-tirade and say something else instead.

Why? Because self-talk is one of your most ingrained habits. I’ll picture its power by comparing it with walking.

You Think. You Walk.

If you are a reasonably healthy human being, you don’t give even an ounce of conscious attention to your steps. You just walk.

Of course, you can break down the whole process into smaller parts. When you walk, you raise your leg a bit, bend a leg at the knee joint so your foot won’t touch the surface, lean forward just a tiny bit, move your left arm, lift your right arm- both synchronized so you keep your balance, move the leg forward, put the foot on the ground, move your center of weight and support your weight on the lead foot.



Changing how you walk is possible, but extremely hard. You will fall back into your old walking habits as soon as your attention gets away from conscious control over your movements. You can steer your self-talk in the same fashion in which you can control your steps. In theory, it’s pretty simple. In practice the power of habit will always win and you fall back to old patterns.

Those good tips from self-help books are like advice to raise your foot a bit higher, bend the knee harder or take bigger steps. They may work in isolation and when you put your whole attention on implementation. They try to affect your thinking patterns, which are already firmly established. In fact, your thinking patterns are fossilized.

Fight Habit with Habits

It’s easier to start a new habit than to modify an existing one. And removing an old habit is downright impossible. They are hardcoded in your brain. Besides, removing your self-talk altogether is not possible. It’s one of the things that make us human. You also cannot replace self-talk with some new habit.

Improving of your self-talk, as hard as it is, is the only option.

 

And I can teach you how to do it. In fact, I have four times more chances to teach you this skill because I’ve been there and I’ve done that. My self-talk was crappy. I insulted myself habitually. My self-esteem wasn’t even so-so. I had a negative spiral in my life.

I thought badly about myself, I thought I’m a failure and that prevented me from taking any action. Why bother? I was a failure, so I would failed again. With no action no improvement could happen in my life. So my life was getting worse and my self-talk gathered more ‘evidence’ that I was a failure.

But I turned my life around and I turned it by taking action, not by talking to myself. Well, I thought so. Anyway, my self-talk is definitely better now than it was six years ago. I modified my inner conversation from the very beginning, I just wasn’t aware I did.

I reverse-engineered what I was doing that caused a shift in my self-talk.

Improve Your Mood

First, you need to start feeling better. Crappy self-talk beats the crap out of you. Or rather, it beats the crap into you, so it stays there ready to emerge every time you want to do something outside the status quo. Thus, for the most of the time you feel like sh*t. No wonder, if you say to yourself things like:

“You worthless piece of sh*t!”

There is little sense in trying to change your life, if you feel beaten to death all the time. You need some habits that will bring sunshine into your internal world.

The easiest remedy? Smile.

Know Thyself

Then, you need self-awareness. A sh*tload of it. The grip of your self-talk over your life is so strong mostly because you don’t even notice it. It’s like those elephants which were chained as a puppy. They learned that chain constraints their movements and they stopped trying to free themselves. Later on the powerful animals don’t even try to break from a thin chain.

A lot of your self-talk comes from your childhood and adolescent years. You were weak, vulnerable and not used to using your rational mind to solve life problems. Later, as an adult, you don’t even notice that your childish self-talk keeps you in captivity.

Hence, you need a few habits that boost your self-awareness. You need to notice your self-talk to be able to do something with it. This is where most authors and coaches fall. They give you advice that you are not able to implement. I’ve just listened to a podcast with a top psychiatrist. He advises people with depression to stop when they feel sad, overwhelmed or disappointed with themselves and analyze their thoughts: Is this even true? Is this always true? Why do I think this?

The problem is those poor folks aren’t aware when they feel sad, overwhelmed or disappointed with themselves. It’s their default state! They have no idea WHEN to stop the vicious cycle of self-beating that goes on autopilot.

You need to practice simple habits, easy to do, day in and day out, which will bring to your attention to what’s actually going through your mind. Only then you can stop and challenge your thoughts.

Power up Your Self-Talk

Once you do something to elevate your mood and gained some self-awareness, you can actually do something with your self-talk. One of the most prevailing thoughts at the beginning of my transformation was “It’s impossible.”

It was so annoying! Whatever I tried to do, whatever I dreamed of “it’s impossible” had appeared in my head. Thus, I introduced a new expression into my vocabulary. Whenever “it’s impossible” crossed my mind, I replied with a mantra singing in my mind to a catchy tune four times “It’s possible, it’s possible, it’s possible, it’s possible.”

There are also other methods that work on a more subconscious level, like gratitude journaling.



And once you start doing something about your negative self-talk, once it’s improving, your whole life improves.

…and Reclaim Your Life

I learned how to temporarily boost my mood often. I became more self-aware of what was going through my mind on a daily basis. At last, I started responding differently to my offensive self-talk.

This was a lengthy process between the first decision and getting tangible results. It took me eight months before I published my first book. It took me 17 months before I earned significant amount of money from my side hustle.

But some results were speedy. I almost doubled my reading speed in a month. I achieved my dream weight in less than half a year.

However, the most important effect was my overall quality of life. As one review on Amazon says:

“I had no idea how much I mentally or verbally beat myself up all the time.”

I had no idea how this self-beating kept me down all the time.

I improved everything in my life. I doubled my income. I was sick only three times since July 2013. I bought the first house for my family.



I started three successful new careers – as an author, a life coach and a book marketer. I pray about 10 times more than six years ago. I obtained a few professional certificates and changed my job getting 30% salary raise. My answers on Quora got over 5 million views. I published 15 books which sold over 50,000 copies.

All of this happened because I dealt with the vicious voice in my head.

Take Action

I’m far from being a master of my internal dialog. But I significantly dropped the level of emotional turmoil in my life caused by what I tell myself. My self-talk didn’t change enormously, I still talk to myself like a drunken felon all too often. But it doesn’t hurt me as much as in the past.

And most importantly, it doesn’t stop me right in my tracks. I act. I’m above the whispers in my head. I steer the direction of my life, not the random thoughts that are bouncing inside my skull.

I want the same for you. Take action.

Sign up below and I’ll send you a notification at the book launch, so you can grab it for 99 cents.

The post Power up Your Self-Talk and Reclaim Your Life appeared first on ExpandBeyondYourself.

Sixty Fifth Income Report – August 2018 ($2011.59)

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

August 2018 was an extremely busy month. Apart from my considerable daily workload, I published a monster anniversary The Slight Edge report and worked on my new book. I also spent more time with my family because my kids had vacations.

The Daily Grind

Every day, I wrote my 600-word quota, published an answer on Quora, checked on my coaching clients and of course did my morning ritual and 10-minute habits.

I had also my hands full with growing my book marketing service. I had a lot of inquiries and corresponded with prospects almost every single day.

I also played a lot of catch-ups. One day I spent some time updating my online progress journal because I neglected it for 11 days. Another day, I spent a couple of hours managing our finances. Because of a few big purchases in July and borrowing from different accounts, I created a big mess that I needed to straighten out.

I promised my subscribers a consistent publishing schedule and I wasn’t used to it. About each time I had something to publish, I did it at the last possible moment.

The Slight Edge Report

For the first five days of August 2018, I was busy with finishing the anniversary report. A day before the deadline, I spent a couple of hours on spellchecking and formatting it. The next day, I spent another couple of hours on correcting the report returned by my proofreader and formatting the post on my blog.

But I managed to publish the report on time.

Family Activities

When I went through my August entries in my journal I was surprised by how much of my time was occupied by family activities.

I went to the cinema a few times with my wife and with my kids.

The back porch was finally finished, so my wife started displaying it to her friends. I remember one afternoon spent on the porch with our former babysitter and her husband.

Back porch of our home

One Saturday we had our friend’s son’s wedding. We were back home at 5 am and went to the afters on the next afternoon.

At the end of August, my mom visited us. My cousin had a wedding at the beginning of September, she arrived early to spend some time with us. Again, the porch was in use

“The Daniel Plan” Book Review

I liked this book very much. It’s so holistic and comprehensive and it makes so much sense!

First of all, The Daniel Plan was in complete agreement with my personal experience and what I studied about health and fitness. Which, BTW, is so rare. Many health “gurus” toot only their own horn that their system/diet/workout regimen is wonderful, and everything else is for people too dumb to see the truth.

The Daniel Plan preaches its own system, but this system is holistic and it excludes very little. But most importantly, it’s darn effective in the lives of everyday people.



The plan is based on five F-essentials. While some of them are pretty obvious – like Food and Fitness, others are not so – like Faith and Focus. And only all five put together create a powerful mixture that can skyrocket your health. I think this is the biggest strength of this book – it combines all the elements and doesn’t leave them hanging in a void.

Diets and fitness have been discussed in the context of weight loss and health zillions of times. The Daniel Plan discusses them as well and I found the most flaws in those parts, but it also put them in the context of faith, focus and friends, which makes the whole plan more down to earth, practical, and most importantly – effective.

For example, let’s take “friends” essential. I met with a serious study done for “American Journal of Preventive Medicine” that concluded simple tactics like ‘move more, eat less’ are more effective than professional weight loss group programs. But a group program is not a pack of friends. While accountability considered in a void may be less important than simple tactics, accountability PLUS the right tactics make all the difference.

OK, as usual in my reviews, let’s go to cons first. They are few and far between, but The Daniel Plan is not all rainbows and unicorns.

CONS
1. Preachy.

Unfortunately, The Daniel Plan falls, in a few areas, into the typical ‘healthy books’ narration: “You’d better listen to this advice to the T or anguish, hell and damnation await you!” Well, not in those words, but you can clearly read it between the lines. The detailed fitness and diet advice provided with the tone of an oracle doesn’t work for me and doesn’t work for many critical-thinking people.

I agreed with at least 90% of what the authors had to say about fitness and diet, but the remaining 10% or so spoiled a bit of the pleasure of reading.

I consider regular cardio completely useless and you cannot convince me otherwise, because it’s against my experience. For the last 10 years, I avoided it like a plague, and I am usually the fittest specimen in any group that does not include fitness professionals.

The same goes for other advice given in magisterial tones. One example that struck me the most was: “Sleep 8 hours a night.” Period. No discussion.

And it’s terrible advice. Yes, probably 60% of the population will thrive sleeping 8 hours a night. But what about the rest?

Sleep needs are individual. Matthew McConaughey sleeps 8.5 hours a night. I took a lot of effort to assess the optimal amount of sleep for me, and it’s 7 to 7.5 hours a night. If I sleep 8 hours, I wake up with a headache every single time. It’s too much for me.

There are more of such unconditional tips within the book, hidden like raisins in a cake. Unfortunately, they give a foul taste to an otherwise very good book.

2. Self-promotional.

One of my friends remarked that the book wasn’t content-rich enough for him, and I get what he meant. There are plenty of readers’ and plan participants’ stories smuggled into the book.

I totally get the intention of the authors. These stories prove that the plan is not tailored to a few very special individuals, but a lot of everyday folks can benefit from it.

I wasn’t disgusted by the number or content of those stories. Whenever I felt like they were standing in my way to further parts of the book, I simply skipped them. But for some readers, interested in “how-to” content, it may be a bit too much. Be warned.

PROS

And this is as far as cons go. There are many more pros in “The Daniel Plan.”

1. Faith.

This is a silver bullet of motivation if you are a believer. If you put your physical transformation into the context of your Christian faith, it disarms you from each and every excuse.

I didn’t find it in any other ‘health book,’ and I read quite a lot of them.

I was struggling with my weight for years. Well, I didn’t even struggle; I neglected my weight and my health. Only when I admitted that God wants more from me than just to get by did I find the motivation to become a fitness machine, lose 15% of my body weight and become healthy for good.

For a believer, there is no better motivator than faith.

2. Food.

Yeah, I complained above about food advice… but only about 10%. The rest was ideally congruent with my experience and studies that I trusted. One important point – eat unprocessed foods – and it deals with 80% dietary problems.

3. Fitness.

Move more is the name of the game. I liked a lot the variety of activities that “The Daniel Plan” prescribes. The fitness industry conditioned us to think that if you don’t go to a gym or spend hours on the road (running, cycling, etc.) you don’t exercise. Bollocks! Playing with your kids is an exercise and better than most at that.

I also liked the emphasis on bodyweight exercises. You can do them anywhere, anytime — and even a few minutes, if done intensively, can break a sweat and provide all benefits connoted with long pieces of training.

4. Focus.

I consider it a very strong point of the book. This area is rarely mentioned in other books and usually treated as an afterthought or an ornament.

Not so in “The Daniel Plan.” There is so much more in health than eating right and moving your butt. Jim Rohn called it “a healthy attitude.” I found all the tactics mentioned in the book – more laughter, stress-reducing habits, prayer and better sleep – exactly in accordance with my personal experience.

The book is worth its price just for this section.

5. Friends.

Accountability is an important factor in achieving one’s goals, but “The Daniel Plan” takes it to another level. The true potential of the plan was generated in those small groups of friends who worked together on common goals.

The book doesn’t tell about simple accountability. What is understood by “friends” here, means the mastermind. A few or several people who brainstorm and work together to reach a specific outcome. People who simultaneously care about you and are detached enough from your daily drama to provide unbiased external insight.

I was blown away by multiple examples of how a small group of friends decided to implement The Daniel Plan. That’s how masterminds work. They produce their own solution to their own situations. They generate ideas and implement them without external supervision.

6. Holistic.

This book includes everything which is good or great about getting healthy and keeping it that way. Yes, there are some questionable tips here and there, especially when applied to an individual. But every pinch of good advice is here as well. In the last few years, I improved my health immensely, and I found all the tactics I used, some even subconsciously, in this book.

In Summary:

I recommend this book wholeheartedly. The less you know about getting healthy, the more profitable it will be for you. The more your health is in shambles, despite your knowledge, the more you will benefit from reading and APPLYING it.

I identify with the book’s message so much, that I could’ve become a certified Daniel Plan’s coach tomorrow if they have a relevant program.