Benjamin P. Hardy's Blog, page 14

This One Statement Entirely Explains How To Be Successful

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash“Hope looks forward. Faith knows it has already received and acts accordingly.” — Florence Shinnhttps://medium.com/media/6b6755bd93fe4231ef939abef706e0d7/href

Getting yourself into the right mindset is your #1 job.

You need to 1) know what you want and 2) know that what you want is already yours. Both parts are essential.

You have to know that what you want is not only attainable but inevitable. You have to really know.

Knowing and faith are the same thing. As one song says, “Faith is knowing the sun will rise.”

Decisions Create Obstacles

“Unless you’re in mortal danger, fear is a compass showing you where to go.”— Mastin Kipp

According to Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, when you set a goal — one in which you truly want and believe you can achieve — then immediately your mind will begin conjuring-up all of the obstacles to achieving the goal.

When thinking about what you want, if no obstacles arise in your mind, then you likely don’t want the thing or don’t actually believe it’s possible.

The obstacles directly point to what needs to be done or altered in order to have the goal. As Ryan Holiday puts it, The obstacle quite literally “is the way.”

One of the primary obstacles is truly making the decision that you will absolutely have whatever it is you seek.

Unless you’ve truly made the decision, then you will not act accordingly. And because you will not act accordingly, you will not have whatever it is you claim to want. I say claim because if you really wanted it, you’d make the decision to have it. Instead, you’re opting for something either lesser or easier. As Robert Brault has said, “We are kept from our goals, not by obstacles, but by a clearer path to a lesser goal.”

Operating From A Higher Plane

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” — Robert Schuller

When you operate with the knowledge that what you want is already yours, you act very differently.

You don’t worry about failure or success in the present moment. You quite naturally flow through the process because you know everything will work out. You don’t have anxiety about money, resources, timelines, or other external factors.

You know that everything will work.

You actually learn to love being in the place of not knowing how things will turn out.

You don’t know exactly how things will turn out, but you know they will turn out. That much is complete knowledge to you. And that knowledge translates into inspired and profound action on a daily basis.

Other people cannot replicate your process, because to them it simply is a “process” or “method” to be replicated.

But you’re not operating from some prescribed method. Instead, you’re operating out of decision and inner knowing.

This inner knowing — or freedom — allows you to attempt things that seem completely illogical. It allows you to know that success is inevitable. It allows you to create results and outcomes that are rare.

You no longer have to operate by the same time-tables as do other people. You no longer have to operate by the same “rules” as do other people. Everything you do, in fact, is an exception to the “rules.”

But you’re not trying to show off or impress anyone. You’re far more interested in growth and giving than status and recognition.

You’re completely free because you literally don’t care what other people think of what you’re doing.

You’re completely resolved and at peace with the matter.

You don’t judge other people’s journey. Actually, the further you go into your decision, the more empathy and love you have for others.

You love when even small bits of progress are made. You support other people’s progress. People feel comfortable around you because you’re not obsessed with yourself.

You’re interested in something far bigger and deeper.

You have the humility to admit that you don’t have all the answers.

You’re, in many ways, watching as everything around you is unfolding. Yet, you know that you are the initiator of the forward movement happening.

You stop playing small.

You stop setting small goals.

You allow your imagination to run wild far more.

You see, on nearly a daily basis, your life changing all around you. Your outer circumstances are a highly accurate feedback loop of what is going on inside your head.

What do your circumstances say about your decisions?

Conclusion

“Hope looks forward. Faith knows it has already received and acts accordingly.” — Florence Shinn

Hope sustains you while you pursue something bigger in your life. Faith is the knowledge that what you want is already yours — and requires that you act in accordance with that knowledge.

Without powerful and aligned action, there is no knowledge. As Dr. Stephen Covey put it, “To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.”

If you aren’t acting according to your highest goals, then you still don’t know. If you still don’t know, then you aren’t going to have.

You need to know.

If you don’t know, you need to start acting more boldly. Knowing and doing are a continuous feedback loop that supports and strengthen each other. Almost always, the doing comes before the knowing. Eventually, the doing confirms the knowing.

Success is inevitable.

Other people’s opinions no longer matter.

You are free.

The choice is yours.

You are comfortable making powerful choices. You don’t need external “security” to assure you that you will succeed. You already know that if you decide, then you will succeed. And that’s all the assurance you need.

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.

Get the cheat sheet here!

This One Statement Entirely Explains How To Be Successful was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What happens when you take full responsibility of your life

Photo by NASA on UnsplashFour realities exist:Indecision is your greatest threat.Most people are “drifting” through life, meaning they haven’t yet determined who they are going to be. They’re still waiting for something outside of them to tell them what and who they should be.Right before you have an enormous breakthrough in your life, you’re going to hit mental and emotional barriers — your life will feel like it’s falling apart.The moment you make a committed decision, you have far greater control of over your mind, emotions, and choices.

In his book, Outwitting the Devil, Napoleon Hill discusses a moment in which he met his “other self” — the side of him that wasn’t indecisive and unclear about the future. This “other self” operated entirely out of faith and definiteness of purpose.

After several months of deep depression, when Hill was at a personal rock bottom, he reached a point where enough was enough.

He got to the point where he no longer cared what other people thought of him.

He heard the voice in his head — his “other self” — and he decided to follow that voice with complete obedience, regardless of how ridiculous or seemingly crazy it was.

He had nothing to lose, and only to gain.

He listened with exactness and acted immediately — regardless of the uncertainty and regardless of the potential consequences. He didn’t allow himself even a second to question himself or hesitate.

As the ancient philosopher, Cato said, “He who hesitates is lost.”

Research done at Yale University has shown that, if you hesitate for even a few seconds when you feel inspired to do something — like help someone — that your chances of doing it drop DRAMATICALLY even after 2–4 seconds.

If you feel inspired to do something, you must act IMMEDIATELY. Every second counts.

Hence, Hill decided to act with complete obedience, immediately, no matter what his other self told him to do.

A Life Without Hesitation

This voice told him who to seek for financial aid in publishing his books. It told him to book world-class suites at hotels when he didn’t have the money to pay for it. It gave him brilliant business ideas which he acted upon immediately.

At a personal and profession rock bottom, Hill entered a mental state with infinite power. Having spent over 25 years interviewing the most successful people of his era, he had heard others talk of this mentality, yet he had never experienced it himself. Now, he was having an experience that validated everything he had learned.

Many others have been gripped by their “other self.” Tony Robbins explains this notion as a 3-part process:

Make a decision while in a passionate or peak stateCommitting to that decision by removing everything in your environment that conflicts, and by creating multiple accountability mechanismsResolve within yourself that what you have decided is finished. It will happen.Make Big Decisions While In A Peak State

If you don’t make your decisions in a peak-state, your decisions will be weak and small-minded. When you make your decisions while in a clear and edified mental place, you’ll put yourself on a more elevated trajectory.

It is your responsibility to put yourself into a peak state, every single day. Why would you want to live any other way? Why would you want to drag yourself through the day and through your life?

Upgrade your standards for yourself. Upgrade your standards for the day. Put yourself into a heightened state and then make some profound and committed decisions to move forward.

What Commitment Really Means

Making a commitment means you’re seeing it through to the end. It means you are leaving yourself no escape routes. You are burning any bridges that might lead to lesser paths of distraction. Your decision has been made. There’s no going back. You’ve passed your point of no return.

Where decisions are made in a single moment, commitment is seeing those decisions into the future. Especially when life gets difficult.

Resolving Within Yourself That The Decision Is “Final”

“Resolve means it’s done,” said Robbins. “It’s done inside [your heart], therefore it’s done [in the real world.]” When you are resolved, there is no question whatsoever. To quote his Air-ness, Sir Michael Jordan, “Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again.”

When you resolve within yourself that “it’s done,” then it’s done. It doesn’t matter that the path to your goal is uncertain — come hell or high water — you’re going to get what you want.

There are two people in the world: those who 1) get the results they want and 2) those with excuses for why they didn’t get the results.

As Yoda said, “There is no try. Only do or do not.”

Are you doing, or not doing?

Seriously?

Are you committed and resolved?

Is it done in your mind?

Or are you still unsure?

Most People Want Certainty

Most people will not act on their dreams because those dreams don’t have certain outcomes.

People would prefer external security over inner freedom.

However, when you have inner freedom, you are completely fine embracing the uncertainty of pursuing your dreams. You don’t need the outcomes to be certain. You already know within yourself that if you really want something, you’ll get it. You know God will help you. You know that when you set goals and dreams, and follow the process of transforming yourself into a person who can have those goals, that nothing is impossible to you.

Resolve Means You Know Your Goals Are Already Yours

When you resolve within yourself — it means that you already know it’s going to happen. You believe it. Every day you cause yourself to believe it even more by affirming to yourself that what you want is already true. Hence, Neville Goddard has said, “Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled.”

When you’re resolved, nothing can stop you. You don’t react to situations, you impact and alter them. All doubt and disbelieve have left your mind.

You’re committed.

Few People Have Confidence

Most people have an incredibly weak relationship with commitment. People break commitments to themselves all the time. They perpetually lie to themselves. As a result, few people have genuine confidence.

Confidence is not something you can fake. It’s a reflection of your relationship with yourself. And if you aren’t consistent with yourself, then you don’t love yourself.

When you can’t trust yourself to do what you tell yourself you’re going to do, you’re not going to make any real decisions. Rather, you’ll dwell in a state of indecision, which is a weak and powerless state.

Most people are too afraid to commit to anything because they already know they’re going to break their commitment.

A Challenge to Anyone Hearing Something Deeper From this Message

If you are feeling something inside of you wanting to be more in your life, I have a personal challenge for you.

Make a decision today. Something you’ve wanted to do or have been planning to do for a long time.

Commit to doing that thing.

Right now. Do SOMETHING. Create action, right now. The moment you begin moving forward, you alter your trajectory and identity.

Act now, or forever hold your peace.

Resolve within yourself that you already have it in you. If you didn’t, it wouldn’t have been gnawing at you all this time.

Research has found that when people commit to something, their desire to be seen as “consistent” drives them to act according to the commitment they’ve made.

Commitment has been defined as, “Pledging or binding of an individual to behavioral acts.”

For example, one study found that people who made a public commitment to recycling were far more likely to do so than those who didn’t make a public commitment.

When you make a commitment, you develop a self-concept that lines-up with your new behavior. This perceptual shift is your cognitions, values, and attitudes aligning with your new behavior. Hence, your desire to be viewed as consistent — firstly to others and then eventually to yourself — shifts how you see yourself.

You begin to see yourself based on the commitment you’ve made. Eventually, if your behavior matches your commitment for a long enough period of time(this study argues it takes around 4 months), your attitudes will also change.

Fake it until you make it?

No.

Make the decision you want to. Eventually, you grow into that decision through your commitment and personal resolve.

This isn’t faking anything.

It’s living with intention.

It’s living with definiteness of purpose.

So what’s the challenge?

Publicly commit to something to TODAY. Don’t be rash or impulsive about this. Think about it for a moment. Make a plan! That plan doesn’t need to be elaborate. In the least, consider the goal you have and a few sub-goals that would be required to achieving your larger goal.

Research has found that non-planned reward-seeking is the fastest path to impulsive behavior.

Don’t put the cart before the horse.

But make a decision.

Make it highly public.

Pass Your Personal Point Of No Return

“Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.” — Franz Kafka

The best decisions you can make are the ones you cannot take back. My wife recently gave birth to two beautiful twin girls. I can’t go back on that. My life is forever changed. It was a point of no return.

I’m completely committed. And those two girls are an everpresent reminder that I need to be better. That I have big shoes to fill. They are the “conditions” that force me to become the kind of man I already want to be.

Do you have an environment that represents 100% commitment?

If you’re not 100% committed, then you still haven’t decided. If you still haven’t decided, then you’ll be required to use willpower, which will eventually fail you.

The scientific term for willpower is decision fatigue, and what it really means is that you haven’t actually made a decision. The moment you make a decision, there’s no more question about what you’re going to do.

You’re not going to eat the cookie.

You’re going to wake up when the alarm goes off.

The decision has been made. Therefore all future decisions regarding the matter have also been made.

You’re resolved.

You’re committed.

And you’ve created an environment that ensures you’ll succeed. You’re no longer white-knuckling. You’re no longer posturing or posing. You’re now being 100% true and honest with yourself and your dreams.

No more holding back.

No more being unsure.

And because you’ve made a decision, the universe will now conspire to make it happen for you. Or, in other words, you will make it happen.

Create conditions that make your success inevitable. Make true and committed decisions. Be 100%. Leave yourself “no outlet.”

Make it a habit, your deepest devotion, to respond to your conscious voice immediately. Never drown it out.

What you will quickly find is that by acting upon these subtle impressions, they will quickly get bigger and bolder. Your confidence will increase. You will continuously make more powerful decisions because you’ll consistently be in more powerful conditions.

Good luck!

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.

Get the cheat sheet here!

What happens when you take full responsibility of your life was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Surround Yourself with People Who Hold You to a Higher Standard than You Hold Yourself

Photo by Becca Tapert on Unsplash

There’s some interesting research in social psychology explaining how most people form their peer groups. Especially as children and adolescence — but often as adults — people select their friends based on proximity more than anything else.

Even in a college classroom, who are you going to make friends with? It’s not those who have similar personalities and interests. It’s the people you literally sit next to.

As a general rule: Human behavior is almost always based on the path of least resistance. If it’s convenient, it often happens.

Socioeconomically, there is loads of research showing a person’s social mobility — or ability to upgrade their economic status — is highly determined by the county they live in. In certain counties, your chances of improving your financial situation are very good. In others, like the one our three foster children came from, your chances of improving your financial situation are slim-to-none.

Put most simply, what stands in nearest proximity to you has enormous implications. As Jim Rohn has wisely said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Similarly, Tim Sanders, former Yahoo!director, said, “Your network is your net worth.”

Your Input Shapes Your Outlook

“Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.” — Zig Ziglar

Quite literally, you are what you consume.

You are the product of your environment and experiences.

While growing up, there is a great deal you cannot control in your life, when it comes to your environment and experiences. As economist, Mark Caine, said, “The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.”

Very few people grow up unscathed from the experience of growing up. Many people — if not most — go through deeply traumatic experiences. Very few people do the deep work of solving those internal “thorns,” but instead build their life around them in the form of reasons.

Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, has said, “There are two types of people, those who get results and those who have reasons for not getting results. Don’t be a person with reasons.”

If you’re the product of your situation and experiences, then what are you to do?

You absolutely do have agency — or the ability to make choices.

Without question, external influences matter. But it is your responsibility to shape those external influences and experiences.

It is your job to shape the garden of your mind.

It is your job to shape the people you surround yourself with.

It is your job to create life-transforming experiences.

If you’re waiting for your external situation to change on it’s own, then you’re being a victim to circumstance. In other words, you’re being an object which is being acted upon.

As a human being, you have the innate ability to not only react to your circumstances, but to impact your circumstances and make them a product of you.

It starts with the decision to change.

You must proactively choose to start changing your life, your surroundings, your inputs, and your experiences.

You need to raise your standards for yourself and your life.

You raise your standards by improving the external inputs you let it. You start listening to better music, learning from better sources, surrounding yourself with better friends.

Overtime, you’re going to adapt to whatever you consistently interact with. This is a concept in biology known as “structural coupling,” which means that with repeated interactions, two things become more closely alike.

As psychologist, Dr. Wendy Watson Nelson, has said:

“Structural coupling involves two entities having interactions with each other over a period of time. Each interaction between the two triggers changes. Through this history of interactions, the two distinct entities become less different from each other — they become more alike and there is an increasingly better “fit” over time. Like feet and shoes, like two stones rubbed together, they change in concert with each other.”

When you realize how flexible your brain, identity, and life are — you begin to be very thoughtful about how you live your life.

You begin to think about how every thing you allow into you life has an influence on you.

Structural coupling is a real thing.

Therefore, the more elevated your standards become, the less willing you are to let low-quality inputs into your life, knowing they could have a negative effect. As BaseCamp founder, Jason Fried, said, “I’m pretty oblivious to a lot of things intentionally. I don’t want to be influenced that much.”

If You’re Feeling Stuck — Upgrade Your Surroundings

Who are the people in nearest proximity to you?

How did they become your peer group?

Was it on purpose or based on convenience?

Do these people hold you to a high standard?

Or, do they hold you to an even lower standard than you hold yourself?

If you want to improve and succeed in your life, you need to surround yourself with people who have higher standards than you do. As Tony Robbins has said, your life is a reflection of your standards, or what you’re willing to tolerate. Most people are willing to tolerate unhealthy relationships, poor finances, and jobs they hate. If not so, those things wouldn’t be in their lives.

Recently, I’ve been getting help from Ryan Holiday, author of several books, on a book proposal I’m working on. Personally, I was extremely satisfied with the manuscript several iterations ago. Yet, every time I send him a draft, he shows me why and how it could be 10X better, and he holds me to that standard.

Looking back now at the product I was formerly satisfied with, I actually cringe. Wow, my standards for my work are so much lower than Ryan’s standards for my work.

The same is true of my Ph.D. research adviser. I’ll send her a research paper I’m satisfied with and she’ll not be satisfied at all. She’ll then challenge me to rethink things and go much deeper. Although this is challenging and even frustrating, it’s how you get better.

This isn’t true just in working relationships.

What about your romantic partner?

Do they hold you to a high standard?

Do they help you become more than you currently are?

Do you help them?

The 80/20 rule applies to people and peer groups. 20 percent of the population is moving forward, 60 percent of population reactively mimics whoever they are around at the time, and 20 percent of the population is moving backwards.

Most people are a direct reflection of those around them. If the people around them have lower standards, they drop theirs’ as well. If the people around them have higher standards, they raise their game.

You’ve been around people who, simply by being around them, elevated your thinking and energy. Those are the kinds of people you need to surround yourself with. Those are the kinds of people you need to be like yourself, so that others are better simply by being around you.

The quality of your life and the quality of your work is determined by the standards you have for yourself, and the standards of those around you. If you’re fine doing mediocre work, than those around you are as well.

If you genuinely want to become better, you must surround yourself with people who will hold you to a higher standard than you currently hold yourself. You want to be around people with a higher and better vantage-point than you have, so that you can quickly learn from them.

Your level of talent and “potential” are irrelevant if you’re surrounded by people who don’t help you realize it. We all know many people who have unfulfilled potential. Don’t let that be you.

Who you surround yourself with has huge consequences. You can’t ignore this. What are you going to do about it?

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.

Get the cheat sheet here!

Surround Yourself with People Who Hold You to a Higher Standard than You Hold Yourself was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thank you! Very generous!

Thank you! Very generous!

Couldn’t agree more.

Couldn’t agree more.

How To Change Your Life In 30 Days

Photo by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash

Your identity is not fixed, but highly fluid.

Your identity follows your behaviors.

How does this work?

It works based on two very important psychological concepts:

Self-signaling: which means that, as a person, you evaluate and judge yourself the same way you judge others — based on behavior. So, if you watch yourself do something, you identify yourself with that behavior. If you drink alcohol, for example, you begin to identify yourself as someone who drinks alcohol. If you wake up early, you identify yourself as someone who wakes up early. If you write articles online, you identify yourself as a writer. Thus, how you see yourself is highly fluid and based on your own behaviors. As your behavior changes, your perceived identity changes. Precognition: which means that thoughts don’t necessarily lead to behaviors, but that behaviors can also lead to thoughts. In other words, common wisdom suggests that your inner world creates your outer world. Hence, “mental creation precedes physical creation.” This is certainly true. But behaviors (and environments) can also create internal states. For example, if you jump into an ice-cold bath, you’ll begin to experience a cascade of emotions and thoughts. Or lack of thoughts. What precognition shows is that you can actually PREDICT your inner state by behaving in certain ways, and by placing yourself in certain environments. Thus, change doesn’t only happen from the inside out, but also from the outside in.

Both of these ideas are strongly related to other research in psychology, which suggests that behaviors generally come BEFORE psychological states. Again, this goes against most common wisdom.

My favorite example is the research on self-efficacy (confidence), which shows that confidence isn’t what produces high performance. But rather, that high performance is what produces confidence.

Put simply, if you want to have confidence, you can have it. All you have to do is behave in desired ways, even for a short period of time.

Why does all of this matter?

It matters because you have the power to radically change your identity.

Even at a biological level, new science in epigenetics and neuroplasticity is showing how malleable and fluid our biology is.

The Problem With Succeeding

Most people plateau.

Even successful people.

It’s actually very common for people who are succeeding to get stuck.

Think about some of your favorite authors, musicians, and even companies.

At some point, they generally stop being as innovative.

We all have that band we love, whose first album or two had way more soul. Then, once they became famous, their music became far tamer.

The same is often true of world-class chefs.

Once a restaurant becomes highly successful, they usually stop innovating the menu as much.

Once something is working, it’s hard to go back to ground zero.

In psychological terms, your motivation can go from approach-oriented to avoid-oriented.

Specifically, all goals are either offensive or defensive.

If you’re seeking to advance your current position, you’re “approaching.”

If you’re seeking to maintain your position, or avoid something bad from happening, you’re “avoiding.”

When you’re approaching, you’re less concerned about risks and more focused on rewards. You’re willing to take risks. You’re willing to fail. You’re being PULLED forward.

When you’re avoiding, you’re less concerned about the rewards and more focused on the risks. And you have no desire to proactively confront those risks. Instead, you’re simply trying to shield yourself from any problems that come your way.

I’ve seen this with many of my role models. For example, some of my favorite authors have shifted from approach-oriented to avoid-oriented.

I can see it in their work.

It’s become far safer.

They are making far less significant ideological attempts in their writing. Their books are becoming more mainstream. Obviously calculated and less intuitive and inspired.

When you begin succeeding, your focus can shift from WHY to WHAT. Instead of operating from your core, you're simply trying to maintain success.

This is how you get stuck.

This is how you get confused and lose your identity.

Are you on offense or defense?

Are you approaching or avoiding?

Are you proactively becoming the person you want to be?

Or are you holding on to the person you think you are?

The Antidote: Never Stop Re-Inventing Yourself

In the brilliant Netflix documentary, Chef’s Table, which highlights the lives of the world’s most successful chefs, one particular episode stands out.

The number one chef in Asia, Gaggan Anand, is known for spontaneously throwing out his entire menu and starting from scratch. Even when his current menu is getting lots of attention.

This may not seem like a big deal, but it is.

When a restaurant starts getting recognized and certain awards, it’s generally based on the menu and overall atmosphere.

Being literally number one in Asia, it would make sense for Gaggan to keep his restaurant how it is.

But that’s not what he does.

Creativity, and always pushing his own boundaries, is what he is about.

So just because something is working doesn’t give him permission to stop evolving.

So he reinvents himself.

Over and over and over.

No matter how hard it is to walk away from something brilliant.

A true creator never stops pushing their boundaries.

They never stop reinventing.

Once you become awesome at something, use your new LEARNING ABILITIES to become awesome at something else.

The whole notion of “finding your calling” has led people to have fixed views of themselves.

There isn’t just one thing you were born to do.

You can expand and grow in countless ways. Especially after you learn the process of learning. You can take all of your experience becoming great at something, and quickly become proficient at something else.

In this way, you never plateau. You’re always growing and evolving as a person.

The 30-Day Challenge To Finish 2018 With A Bang

Given that your identity is fluid and malleable, you have an amazing opportunity to redefine who you are.

All you have to do is consistently and boldly reshape your behavior.

You can do this in the form of a 30-day challenge.

What’s something you’ve wanted to do, that you haven’t done?

Or, what’s something that would clearly lead you to a place you’d like to be?

It could be 30 days of extreme health and fitness.

That would definitely change things.

It could be facing an extreme fear: like 30 days of asking people on dates.

It could be 30 days of writing articles, or filming videos.

Whatever it is, if you do it for 30 days, your identity will change.

Your fears will become cauterized and neutralized.

You’ll adapt to your new behaviors.

Your psychological state will change.

You’ll begin to identify with your new behaviors.

Will you have to deal with some negative emotions along the way?

Will you face a load of resistance and fear?

Will you want to quit?

The answer is probably yes to all of those questions.

But THIS is how you separate yourself from the masses.

This is how you make quantum leaps in your progression, while most people make incremental progress.

This is how you consciously shape your identity and future.

Where will you be in 30 days from now?

WHO will you be 30 days from now?

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.

Get the cheat sheet here!

How To Change Your Life In 30 Days was originally published in The Mission on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Scientific Process To Heal Any Emotional Trauma

Photo by Melissa Chabot on UnsplashIn Greek mythology, Medusa was a monster, often described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair.

Those who gazed upon Medusa’s face would turn to stone.

In a similar way, people who go through hard experiences can turn to stone, emotionally.

As trauma expert Dr. Peter Levine has said, “It is how we respond to a traumatic event that determines whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Medusa turning us into stone, or whether it will be a spiritual teacher taking us along vast and uncharted pathways.”

We’ve all experienced “trauma,” whether we think we have or not. According to Dr. Lisa Firestone (emphasis mine):

“A trauma can be defined as any significant negative event or incident that shaped us. It can emerge from any impactful instance that made us feel bad, scared, hurt or ashamed. By this definition, we have all experienced some degree of trauma in the process of growing up.

Having “suppressed emotions” is another way of saying we have unresolved trauma in our lives.

But what does this actually mean?

How People Become Emotionally Stuck

If you’ve had a hard experience in your past where something negative happened, or where you failed miserably, you might never step far outside your comfort zone again.

In that case, you’ve become incredibly limited because of your past.

Your emotions own you, rather than you owning your emotions.

When this happens, your personality stops developing, and you become incredibly predictable as a person.

Your life becomes quite repetitive.

You may continue to develop mentally and cognitively, such as learning from books and school. You could have a head full of facts and knowledge, which are easily acquired in an information world. But emotionally, you are stone. You are frozen at the same level you were when you got hurt.

If we never resolve the emotional pain, then we are forever damaged and crippled in our lives. As a result, we begin avoiding situations that would make us vulnerable to experiencing similar pain again.

We become “frozen” in our development as a human being, unable to embrace and fully take-in new experiences.

An easy way to examine your level of emotional maturity is how often you step outside of your comfort zone. If it’s rare to put yourself into the vulnerable position of not knowing the answers or how things will turn out, then you likely have trauma from your past that is holding you hostage — emotionally — and stopping you from fully developing your potential as a person.

Research shows that the older people get, generally, the less open they are to having new experiences.

In this article, I’m going to break-down the science of how to overcome all emotional blocks and become emotionally-free.

When you become emotionally free and flexible, you become far more dynamic and fluid as a personality. Your ability to learn and adapt skyrocket.

Your lifestyle and interests will continually change because you have the freedom to take on new things. You’re no longer hostage to your emotions.

You’re not afraid of getting hurt.

You’re not afraid of being wrong.

In the words of Dr. Susan Jeffers, you know that regardless of what happens, “You can handle it.” Hence, she says we should, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

According to educator Sir Ken Robinson, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

One of the primary reasons many people don’t view themselves as creative is because art and creativity are emotional and vulnerable experiences. You have to put yourself out there. You have to try something that might fail.

As a result, many people discard the idea altogether, claiming that some inherent part of their personality or genetics is simply not “creative.”

This isn’t true.

Extreme creativity is available to anyone who is emotionally flexible and healthy.

In fact, creativity is often the doorway to emotional freedom, because, through art and creativity, a person can courageously put themselves “out there,” and that very act of courage shifts a person’s relationship with their emotions and their past.

Shifting Your Relationship With Your Emotions

It’s important to note that when it comes to healing suppressed pain or trauma, that you don’t have to sit on someone’s couch and re-hash the past.

Instead, you need to courageously move forward in your life.

As you step outside of your comfort zone, you will experience the stress-response — fight, flee or freeze. Being out of the comfort zone is a beautiful experience because it is entirely physical and emotional.

It’s a full-on sensory experience — something many people stop experiencing as they grow older.

The main reason this “somatic” experience arises is that when you’re out of your “comfort zone” — or in a new situation where you don’t fully know how things will turn out — you’re in a state of uncertainty.

Many psychologists argue that “uncertainty” is the foundation of all fears. This makes complete sense because our brains are actually designed to predict the outcomes of our behavior.

Therefore, when we’re in a new situation, all sorts of physical and emotional red lights start to signal — our stress response. What our brain is telling us is that we’re in uncharted territory.

It is your relationship with THIS EXPERIENCE — your stress response while dealing with new things — that reflects your level of emotional maturity.

When you re-establish this relationship, you actually change your memories of the past.

But you only change your memory of the past if you don’t freeze up. Because undoubtedly, the act of stepping outside of your comfort zone and trying something new may trigger negative emotions and memories from the past.

You’ll try to sabotage yourself.

But instead, you want to be “psychologically flexible,” which means you fully take in the experience, and move forward toward your goal anyway. In other words, you feel the fear and do it anyway.

What you’ll quickly realize is that you can do hard things. You can “handle it.”

Even if things fall apart or don’t work out the first time, you can figure out. You can commit to big things and you can keep those commitments, regardless of what you have to learn and become along the way.

You can do it.

This is how confidence is developed.

But there’s more.

This is also THE ONLY WAY a person can become fully self-actualized.

Breaking-Down The Process Of Self-ActualizationImage

According to Abraham Maslow, “self-actualization” is the emotional state of a person who is in a position to achieve their highest potential.

They have had all of their “base” needs — physical, emotional, and relational — met. They are a healthy, happy, and mature human being.

Having a healthy sense of self-esteem is great. But self-actualization is something totally different.

You need far more than self-esteem to become self-actualized.

There are lots of people out there who feel good about themselves but aren’t willing to pay the emotional price of expanding their personality.

You cannot become self-actualized if you’re comfortable where you are.

According to Maslow, a key requirement to becoming self-actualized is having what he calls, “peak experiences.” He defined peak experiences “as rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter.”

Peak experiences are those moments that stretch and shift your perspective of yourself and reality.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”

The only way to have your mind stretched is to step outside of your comfort zone and have a new experience. In other words, “peak experiences” are simply those moments where you go through deep experiential learning.

These moments of deep learning and transformation leave you in a state of awe, wonderment, and gratitude.

You need to have these experiences regularly in order to reach a state of self-actualization.

Actually, you need to make having soul-stretching experiences your “normal” way of life. Because once this becomes your way of life, then you are completely emotionally-free and flexible.

When you are emotionally free and flexible, then you as a person also become free and flexible.

This doesn’t mean that you no longer experience emotions or fears. Rather, it means that you are completely fine experiencing whatever is required to achieve what you believe you should, or what you believe is right.

You’re no longer constrained by your emotions, and thus, you’re no longer STONE. Instead, you’re highly fluid and flexible, even spontaneous.

Breaking The Process Down Into Bite-Sized Steps

“Courage is the Gateway. This is where you start to see life as challenging and exciting instead of overwhelming.” — Dr. David Hawkins

Wherever you are in your life, it will require courage to get to the next levelCourage means you proactively face risks and uncertainty in order to achieve a noble and worthwhile endCourage is ALWAYS the gateway to the “next level”As you courageously step into the unknown, you’ll experience the stress-response — flight, flee, freezeYou experience the stress response because your brain is designed to predict the outcomes of your behavior, and when you’re in a totally new situation, you cannot fully predict what will happenUncertainty is the foundation of all fearsThe only way to truly be “free” is to embrace the uncertainty of moving forward in your life — of not knowing exactly how things will turn out yet remaining committed to your values and purposeBecoming flexible and successful while outside of your comfort zone is known as emotional flexibility or having a tolerance for ambiguityAs you step outside of your comfort zone and successfully move forward, you’ll have peak experiences which will stretch your perspective of yourself and even of realityThe more peak experiences you have, the more emotionally flexible you will becomeAs you have new experiences, your memory of the past will changeYou’ll no longer be bound by your pastAll “trauma” or “suppressed emotions” will be goneYou’ll be healedYou heal yourself not by going backward but going forward (hence: the best defense is offense)Once you get to the point where you are no longer in your own way, emotionally, then you are self-actualized

Self-actualized people are those people who are willing to be and do whatever must be done to live their values and fulfill their purpose. They act courageously regularly. Daily.

They are flexible and powerful.

They weren’t born that way. Instead, they proactively chose, over and over, to become who they are.

You can choose to become self-actualized yourself.

But one thing is certain. Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

You must be bold in your action.

You can’t be frozen to your past.

You have to move forward.

This will take courage.

It will involve failing a lot and learning a lot.

But with each step forward, you’ll have peak experiences. Those brief windows of time where you’re in awe of everything. Life will become more spiritual to you.

You’ll develop a sense of mission and purpose.

You’ll stop overly defining yourself and what you can become and what you can do.

Your potential will increasingly expand.

You’ll continuously watch yourself do things beyond what you previously thought was possible.

You’ll watch as your life continues to take on a new form, and as the goals you set are quickly realized.

Are you going to take the journey?

It’s not easy.

It never will be.

And the fear is never going to go away. But for this, you’re grateful. Because you know that this life is an educational experience. You have the emotional freedom and relational protection to go big.

So you’re going to go big — whatever that means to you.

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.

Get the cheat sheet here!

The Scientific Process To Heal Any Emotional Trauma was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How To Overcome All Emotional Blocks And Become Self-Actualized (Rare)

Photo by Melissa Chabot on UnsplashIn Greek mythology, Medusa was a monster, often described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair.

Those who gazed upon Medusa’s face would turn to stone.

In a similar way, people who go through hard experiences can turn to stone, emotionally.

As trauma expert, Dr. Peter Levine has said, “It is how we respond to a traumatic event that determines whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Medusa turning us into stone, or whether it will be a spiritual teacher taking us along vast and uncharted pathways.”

We’ve all experienced “trauma,” whether we think we have or not. According to Dr. Lisa Firestone (emphasis mine):

“A trauma can be defined as any significant negative event or incident that shaped us. It can emerge from any impactful instance that made us feel bad, scared, hurt or ashamed. By this definition, we have all experienced some degree of trauma in the process of growing up.

Having “suppressed emotions” is another way of saying we have unresolved trauma in our lives.

But what does this actually mean?

How People Become Emotionally Stuck

If you’ve had a hard experience in your past where something negative happened, or where you failed miserably, you might never step far outside your comfort zone again.

In that case, you’ve become incredibly limited because of your past.

Your emotions own you, rather than you owning your emotions.

When this happens, your personality stops developing and you become incredibly predictable as a person.

Your life becomes quite repetitive.

You may continue to develop mentally and cognitively, such as learning from books and school. You could have a head full of facts and knowledge, which are easily acquired in an information world. But emotionally, you are stone. You are frozen and stuck at the same level you were when you got hurt.

If we never resolve the emotional pain, then we are forever damaged and crippled in our lives. As a result, we begin avoiding situations that would make us vulnerable to experiencing similar pain again.

We become “frozen” in our development as a human being, unable to embrace and fully take-in new experiences.

An easy way to examine your level of emotional maturity is how often you step outside of your comfort zone. If it’s rare to put yourself into the vulnerable position of not knowing the answers or how things will turn out, then you likely have trauma from your past that is holding you hostage — emotionally — and stopping you from fully developing your full potential as a person.

Research shows that the older people get, generally, the less open they are to having new experiences.

In this article, I’m going to break-down the science of how to overcome all emotional blocks and become emotionally-free.

When you become emotionally free and flexible, you become far more dynamic and fluid and a personality. Your ability to learn and adapt skyrocket.

Your lifestyle and interests will continually change because you have the freedom to take on new things. You’re no longer hostage to your emotions.

You’re not afraid of getting hurt.

You’re not afraid of being wrong.

In the words of Dr. Susan Jeffers, you know that regardless of what happens, “You can handle it.” Hence, she says we should, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

According to educator, Sir Ken Robinson, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

One of the primary reasons many people don’t view themselves as creative is because art and creativity are emotional and vulnerable experiences. You have to put yourself out there. You have to try something that might fail.

As a result, many people discard the idea altogether, claiming that some inherent part of their personality or genetics is simply not “creative.”

This isn’t true.

Extreme creativity is available to anyone who is emotionally flexible and healthy.

In fact, creativity is often the doorway to emotional freedom, because, through art and creativity, a person can courageously put themselves “out there,” and that very act of courage shifts a person’s relationship with their emotions and their past.

Shifting Your Relationship With Your Emotions

It’s important to note that when it comes to healing suppressed pain or trauma, that you don’t have to sit on someone’s couch and re-hash the past.

Instead, you need to courageously move forward in your life.

As you step outside of your comfort zone, you will experience the stress-response — fight, flee or freeze. Being out of the comfort zone is a beautiful experience because it is entirely physical and emotional.

It’s a full-on sensory experience — something many people stop experiencing as they grow older.

The main reason this “somatic” experience arises is that when you’re out of your “comfort zone” — or in a new situation where you don’t fully know how things will turn out — you’re in a state of uncertainty.

Many psychologists argue that “uncertainty” is the foundation of all fears. This makes complete sense because our brains are literally designed to predict the outcomes of our behavior.

Therefore, when we’re in a new situation, all sorts of physical and emotional red lights start to signal — our stress response. What our brain is telling us is that we’re in uncharted territory.

It is your relationship with THIS EXPERIENCE — your stress response while dealing with new things — that reflects your level of emotional maturity.

When you re-establish this relationship, you actually change your memories of the past.

But you only change your memory of the past if you don’t freeze up. Because undoubtedly, the act of stepping outside of your comfort zone and trying something new may trigger negative emotions and memories from the past.

You’ll try to sabotage yourself.

But instead, you want to be “psychologically flexible,” which means you fully take in the experience, and move forward toward your goal anyway. In other words, you feel the fear and do it anyway.

What you’ll quickly realize is that you can do hard things. You can “handle it.”

Even if things fall apart or don’t work out the first time, you can figure out. You can commit to big things and you can keep those commitments, regardless of what you have to learn and become along the way.

You can do it.

This is how confidence is developed.

But there’s more.

This is also THE ONLY WAY a person can become fully self-actualized.

Breaking-Down The Process Of Self-ActualizationImage

According to Abraham Maslow, “self-actualization” is that state of a person who is in a position to achieve their highest potential.

They have had all of their “base” needs — physical, emotional, and relational — met. They are a healthy, happy, and mature human being.

Having a healthy sense of self-esteem is great. But self-actualization is something totally different.

You need far more than self-esteem to become self-actualized.

There are lots of people out there who feel good about themselves but aren’t willing to pay the emotional price of expanding their personality.

You cannot become self-actualized if you’re comfortable where you are.

According to Maslow, a key requirement to becoming self-actualized is having what he calls, “peak experiences.” He defined peak experiences “as rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter.”

Peak experiences are those moments that stretch and shift your perspective of yourself and reality.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”

The only way to have your mind stretched is to step outside of your comfort zone and have a new experience. In other words, “peak experiences” are simply those moments where you go through deep experiential learning.

These moments of deep learning and transformation leave you feeling in a state of awe, wonderment, and gratitude.

You need to have these experiences regularly in order to reach a state of self-actualization.

Actually, you need to make having soul-stretching experiences your “normal” way of life. Because once this becomes your way of life, then you are completely emotionally-free and flexible.

When you are emotionally free and flexible, then you as a person also become free and flexible.

This doesn’t mean that you no longer experience emotions or fears. Rather, it means that you are completely fine experiencing whatever is required to achieve what you believe you should, or what you believe is right.

You’re no longer constrained by your emotions, and thus, you’re no longer STONE. Instead, you’re highly fluid and flexible, even spontaneous.

Breaking The Process Down Into Bite-Sized Steps

“Courage is the Gateway. This is where you start to see life as challenging and exciting instead of overwhelming.” — Dr. David Hawkins

Wherever you are in your life, it will require courage to get to the next levelCourage means you proactively face risks and uncertainty in order to achieve a noble and worthwhile endCourage is ALWAYS the gateway to the “next level”As you courageously step into the unknown, you’ll experience the stress-response — flight, flee, freezeYou experience the stress response because your brain is designed to predict the outcomes of your behavior, and when you’re in a totally new situation, you cannot fully predict what will happenUncertainty is the foundation of all fearsThe only way to truly be “free” is to embrace the uncertainty of moving forward in your life — of not knowing exactly how things will turn out yet remaining committed to your values and purposeBecoming flexible and successful while outside of your comfort zone is known as emotional flexibility or having a tolerance for ambiguityAs you step outside of your comfort zone and successful move forward, you’ll have peak experiences which will stretch your perspective of yourself and even of realityThe more peak experiences you have, the more emotionally flexible you will becomeAs you have new experiences, your memory of the past will changeYou’ll no longer be bound by your pastAll “trauma” or “suppressed emotions” will be goneYou’ll be healedYou heal yourself not by going backward but going forward (hence: the best defense is offense)Once you get to the point where you are no longer in your own way, emotionally, then you are self-actualized

Self-actualized people are those people who are willing to be and do whatever must be done to live their values and fulfill their purpose. They act courageously regularly. Daily.

They are flexible and powerful.

They weren’t born that way. Instead, they proactively chose, over and over, to become who they are.

You can choose to become self-actualized yourself.

But one thing is certain. Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

You must be bold in your action.

You can’t be frozen to your past.

You have to move forward.

This will take courage.

It will involve failing and learning a lot.

But with each step forward, you’ll have peak experiences. Those brief windows of time where you’re in awe of everything. Life will become more spiritual to you.

You’ll develop a sense of mission and purpose.

You’ll stop overly defining yourself and what you can become and what you can do.

Your potential will increasingly expand.

You’ll continuously watch yourself do things beyond what you previously thought was possible.

You’ll watch as your life continues to take on a new form, and as the goals you set are quickly realized.

Are you going to take the journey?

It’s not easy.

It never will be.

And the fear is never going to go away. But for this, you’re grateful. Because you know that this life is an educational experience. You have the emotional freedom and relational protection to go big.

So you’re going to go big — whatever that means to you.

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.

Get the cheat sheet here!

How To Overcome All Emotional Blocks And Become Self-Actualized (Rare) was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thank you man! Much appreciated!

Thank you man! Much appreciated!

This 10-Minute Night Routine Guarantees Success Your Next Morning

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash“Design trumps willpower.” — B.J. Fogg, Stanford psychologist

Every night before going to bed, you can have the feeling, “I already know tomorrow is going to be successful.”

This is the feeling you want to have.

You want to anticipate success.

You want to be so excited you almost can’t get to sleep.

You want to know EXACTLY what’s going to happen.

You want to be mentally committed to specific actions and outcomes.

You want to have everything set up so that you’ve completely removed all friction and decision-making when you get up the next morning.

Instead, you want to wake up and have immediate energy because you know exactly what you’re going to do, and you’ve laid it all out.

Here’s how it works:

The Simple Science Of Behavior Change

According to Stanford psychologist, BJ Fogg, “Design trumps willpower.” What he means by this is, human behavior generally defaults to what is most convenient.

If there is junk food in your fridge, you’re probably going to eat it.

However, if there is junk food sitting right on top of your kitchen counter or table — out in the open — your chances of eating it skyrocket.

When something is easy and convenient, we often act without thinking very deeply about our behavior. We default to the situation at hand.

You can leverage this to your benefit.

BJ Fogg has found that by simply placing a piece of dental floss on your bathroom counter next to the sink, that your chances of flossing increase dramatically.

Hilariously, most people don’t floss despite believing they should, simply because there is too much decision fatigue involved in doing so. In other words, there is friction to making the actual decision, and if there is friction, we probably won’t do it, let alone make a habit out of it.

In the case of flossing our teeth every night, what is that “friction”?

Having to open a drawerFind the small box of dental flossOpen the boxMeasure the right size of flossPull out a pieceand then… start flossing

All of those micro-actions may only take 5–10 seconds to execute, but they are actually incredibly taxing to a person’s willpower over time.

If instead, you simply had to walk into the bathroom and saw a piece of dental floss waiting for you next to the sink, you’d almost instinctively just pick it up and start flossing.

In other words, the decision was already made based on the situation at hand. The night before when you put out that dental floss there, you made the decision. That decision is now influencing your immediate behavior, and you don’t have to sit and waffle. You just execute. Done.

Make All Decisions The Night Before

Decision fatigue is the scientific term for willpower, and what it really means is that you haven’t actually made a decision.

The reason people’s willpower becomes exhausted and depleted over time is that they are weighing in their mind what they want to do. In other words, they haven’t actually decided yet. They’re still thinking about it.

Do I floss my teeth? Or not today?

Do I eat the cookie? Or pass it up?

Do I wake up at 6? Or hit the snooze button?

In all of these scenarios, the person is waffling back-and-forth. They don’t actually know what they’re going to do.

Are they going to floss or not? Who knows.

Are they going to eat the cookie or not? Who knows.

Are they going to wake up early? Who knows.

They certainly don’t know.

And this is why people’s willpower gets exhausted.

The opposite of decision fatigue is simply to make a decision. When you make a decision, that means you “cut off” alternative options.

The worst time to attempt making a decision is while laying in bed, groggy and cozy and semi-unconscious. In such a situation, if you haven’t already decided what you were going to do, and set up conditions to make it happen, then you actually don’t know what you’re going to do.

And this is where decision fatigue sets in. This is why being consistent and powerful and motivated can seem so random and inconsistent.

Make A Few Key Decisions The Night Before

“If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.” — Jim Collins

The most fundamental thing you can do in your evening routine is deciding what you’re going to do the next morning. Harvard psychologist, Ellen Langer, calls this a “cognitive commitment.”

This means you actually write it down.

You write down when you’re going to wake up. And you write down the top 1–3 things you intend to accomplish with your morning.

However, writing down what you plan to do isn’t truly a commitment.

In order to ensure you succeed, you need to remove ALL FRICTION. In other words, you need to set everything up the night before, so that when you wake up, you literally have nothing to do but get up and get moving.

If you plan to go to the gym, then you have all of your gym clothes laid-out by the front door.

If you plan on taking vitamins and other supplements, you have those laid-out next to your gym clothes with a cup of water already sitting there.

If you haven’t removed all micro-decisions, which act as friction and decision fatigue, then your chances of getting out of bed are far less likely.

Why?

Because you have several things you need to do.

It’s the reason you don’t floss your teeth regularly even though you think you should.

You haven’t yet decided if you are going to flossYou haven’t removed the friction by simply setting up the environment so that it’s convenient and practically subconscious

According to entrepreneurial and business expert, Eben Pagan, most people approach their desired outcomes ineffectively. When they want a specific outcomes, they directly approach that outcome in a brute-force manner, which generally leads to failure and giving up.

Creating conditions so something will happen by itself is very different from trying to make the thing happen.

Pagan calls this concept “Inevitability thinking,” which he defines as “Thinking and acting as if what you are doing is a forgone conclusion because you set up the conditions for it to happen.”

A key question when you desire a specific outcome, according to Pagan, is to ask: “I want to have this particular outcome happen. What do I have to do so that it’s inevitable?”

Asking this question changes how you look at the goal you’re trying to achieve or problem you’re trying to solve. You immediately begin thinking of “conditions” that need to be set up for success.

As a few examples:

If you want to become a millionaire, what are the conditions that would make that outcome inevitable?If you want to have a happy marriage, what are the conditions that would make that outcome inevitable?If you want to be healthy and happy, what are the conditions that would make that outcome inevitable?If you want to wake up at 5AM, what are the conditions that would make that outcome inevitable?

A brilliant component of this type of thinking is that it forces you to look beyond approaches like “willpower” — which suggest you simply need to try harder. Our brains are sophisticated enough to come up with more creative solutions than what chimps would do.

Putting It All Together

Having an amazing morning routine is one of the best things you can do in your life.

If you get really good at morning routines, you’ll experience a huge shift in your life. In reality, with a solid morning routine, you could quickly become “successful” at whatever it is you want to do.

With an amazing morning routine, you start to live your life on purpose. You stop living by default. You start meditating, visualizing, and strategically planning out your goals. You then begin living your days on a higher plane of activity and attitude.

You begin to see success more because you tune your brain in to notice things you couldn’t see before. Your eyes can only see what your brain is looking for. Hence, most people’s brains are far less effective than they could be because their brain is simply on autopilot, responding to whatever is happening in their environment.

The reverse of this is to spend your downtime, which is usually in your evening, taking 10 minutes to decide what you’re going to do the next morning and putting everything in place.

It’s really that simple.

Decide what time you’re going to wake up and set the alarm for that time (but put your phone or alarm clock in a different room so you physically have to get out of bed to turn it off).Have a few key objectives for your morningSet up literally everything that needs to be set up so that you don’t have to waste mental energy during your morning

If you aren’t motivated to wake up in the morning, it’s because you failed the night before.

You made it hard on yourself.

You set yourself up for failure.

While laying in bed after waking up, you’re in no condition to make optimal decisions. The more micro-steps you have to complete to BEGIN your morning activities, the less likely you are to do them.

Make the decision the night before.

Put everything in place so that it’s convenient and mindless.

Start doing this every day and watch what happens.

Your behavior will change.

Your motivation will change.

Your confidence will change.

Why?

Because when you begin making true decisions, then you stop dealing with decision fatigue. You start simply operating how you want to operate. You stop living your life in a constant state of wondering, “What am I going to do?”

You stop having to beat yourself up for continually lying to yourself about waking up or moving on your dreams and projects.

Instead, you start building true confidence and character by living intentionally.

You start making huge progress because you become consistent. You do what you said you would do.

You’re excited.

Every night when you go to bed, you’re like, “Tomorrow morning is going to be amazing.”

And then you wake up several hours later and you’re like, “Let’s go!”

Then you execute.

Overtime, you see huge progress.

Your life is in your hands.

But you have to make the decision.

The opposite of decision is decision fatigue. Don’t make the mistake again to rely on decision fatigue :)

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This 10-Minute Night Routine Guarantees Success Your Next Morning was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.