Benjamin P. Hardy's Blog, page 21

These 20 Pictures Will Teach You More Than Reading 100 Books

Benjamin Hardy Culture Wall (GapingVoid)“Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.”― Seth Godin

The above image is my “Culture Wall,” created by GapingVoid, a company that helps people design their organizational culture. The art is done by Hugh MacLeod, who has drawn pictures for books by Seth Godin and many other influential individuals and companies.

This Culture Wall is intended to create an environment that continually reminds me of what I stand for and what I aspire toward.

This Culture Wall surrounds me as I work. According to Jason Korman, the CEO of GapingVoid, art can be used as “cultural artifacts” that act as triggers. But even more, they create a shared vision, set of beliefs, expectations, and direction for desired behavior.

I call these artifacts TRANSFORMATIONAL TRIGGERS. The reason they are transformational is because they are deeply EMOTIONAL, to me. The only way for a trigger to be transformational is for it to be tied deeply to a set of emotions, memories, and goals.

My 3 kids holding 3 of the Culture Wall Tiles

Very few people are intentional about their own values and beliefs. Additionally, very few people are proactive about designing their environment. According to Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, “If you do not create and control your environment, your environment creates and controls you.”

How Are You Designing Your Life?

How do you create success in your life?

How do you get to the next level?

What ideas allow you to live and create at the level you want to?

What drives you, every single day, to produce something that you can look back on and remember?

Every single day matters. You can either spend those 24 hours or you can use them to create something that brings your life forward.

Money fades with time. But the things you create have the power to endure. For example, great works of art continue to impact and influence long after the creator of those works has passed on.

If you spend each day moving forward toward your dreams, you’ll be shocked how far you go. We have more than enough time to do an enormous amount of good in our lives, if we use the time we have.

If you’re committed to living your life to the highest possible level, the following 20 images will inspire within you a deeper commitment.

Commitment is necessary, every single day, to grow and succeed. Moreover, commitment is something you must consciously engineer into your life. Commitment isn’t just internal, it is a blend of both internal and external.

Commitment often comes by making a public statement of what you’re going to do. It comes by seeking help and admitting weakness. It comes from having accountability. It also comes from simply behaving in the right way.

Which brings me to the first image:

1. Behavior Drives Motivation

“You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling, than feeling yourself into action.” — Jerome Bruner, Harvard psychologist

Benjamin Hardy Culture Wall (GapingVoid)

Motivation and momentum are two highly connected concepts. You cannot have either of these without first acting in a goal-directed way.

You can’t wait until you feel inspired to act. Motivation doesn’t just happen, instead, it is a reaction to intention and integrity.

When you begin taking small steps in the right direction, motivation and momentum immediately kick-in. You need to think in advance and plan ahead, even just slightly. This may mean that you need to take 5–30 minutes in your evening to prepare yourself for the next morning.

You need to set things up so that motivation and momentum are easy. According to Stanford Psychologist, BJ Fogg, “Forming habits is not about willpower… it’s about design and revision.”

Benjamin Franklin similarly said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

The Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

Motivation, then, is about set-up and follow-through.

When you tell yourself you’re going to wake-up at 6AM and then EAT THE FROG (which is to do your #1 most important task first), and then you actually do it… then you begin to EXPERIENCE motivation.

Motivation then quickly becomes momentum because as you do the right thing, it becomes increasingly easy to continue doing the right thing.

2. Action Precedes Inspiration

“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.” — Steven Pressfield

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Getting creative insights regularly is something you can personally master. Psychologists call this “epiphany ability.” Like motivation, inspiration is not something you should wait for. Instead, it is something you need to design for and actively seek it!

The ideas flowing into your mind are heavily influenced by what you personally desire in your life. Your decisions — both the daily ones but also the BIG ONES — shape your desires.

Your desires are the product of your behavior, not the other way around. Therefore, you can train your desires. You can train yourself to want success, happiness, health, and deep connections.

You can train yourself to want to work hard. You can train yourself to want anything. You do this through specific inputs and actions. As you consistently act in powerful ways, your confidence grows which triggers newer and higher-level desires, which evoke new ideas and inspiration. Eventually, you’ll want incredible things that no one else has thought of before. You’ll become a visionary with desires to serve humanity in bigger and more innovative ways. You’ll become an idea machine.

You’re 60 days away from more inspiration than you know what to do with. All you need to do is begin acting in far more powerful ways than you’ve been acting. Pay attention to what your mind tells you. Write it down. Then keep acting in an upward cycle.

3. Success Precedes Confidence

“Do what is right; let the consequence follow.” — Anon., The Psalms of Life, Boston, 1857

Benjamin Hardy Culture Wall (GapingVoid)

Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, explains that CONFIDENCE is the thing that entrepreneurs need to protect more than anything else. When you lose your confidence, you lose everything.

How much fire do you currently have to pursue something powerful?

How much fire are you lighting in others?

Money follows confidence.

Leadership follows confidence.

Influence follows confidence.

Like motivation and momentum, confidence is something you must create every single day. Confidence must be designed for. You must be highly proactive and intentional about it.

In order to develop more confidence, you’ll need to continually upgrade who you are. As Leonardo Dicaprio has said, “Every next level of your life will require a different you.” Similarly, Marshall Goldsmith said, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

In other words, past confidence will only take you so far. If you rely too heavily on prior experience and stop pushing new boundaries, you’ll get stuck. Eventually, everything will start crashing down. Because to maintain confidence, you must continually be growing. You scare confidence away by trying to maintain the status-quo. Confidence, by nature, requires that you take bold new risks to seek new growth and opportunity.

4. Behavior Shapes Personality

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” — Albert Einstein

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A 2014 study done at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Dr. Nathan Hudson and Dr. Brent Roberts shows that over 97% of people want to change significant portions of their personality. Sadly, despite wanting to make permanent positive changes, most people have been taught that personality is a permanent fixture of who they are.

Your personality is not who you are. Your personality is how you show up in certain situations and relationships. According to Dr. Gabor Maté, personality is an environmental adaptation. In many ways, personality is the product of previous trauma. Once that suppressed trauma is healed, the personality will change.

For most people, personality is reactive and unconscious. However, personality can be proactively designed for. You can transform who you are and how you live. But in order to do so, you’ll need to change how you act. You’ll need to begin living, right now, as you desire to become.

You have great power within you to BECOME. In order to do so, you must be intentional. Who do you want to be?

5. You Make Or Break Your Life Before 8AM

“Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.” — Richard Whately

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Having a powerful morning routine is important for all of the reasons listed above.

If you do not start right, you will have a hard time reversing negative momentum.

If you do not start right, you signal to yourself that you’re completely fine with the status-quo.

If you do not start right, you decrease your motivation and confidence throughout the day, which leads to increasingly impulsive and negative decision-making. It’s a vicious cycle.

You make or break your life with how you start your day. However, beyond simply starting right, you need to design correctly. The ordering of how you engage your morning routine matters.

You need to put first things first.

You need to know your triggers. What are those things that will completely throw you off? How can you control for those?

If you design your day correctly, you can get more done by noon than most people get done in a full week. But the order of operations matters. Don’t try to multitask and don’t try to do too many things. Deep work is far more important than shallow. Staying focused on one thing for a long period of time will create more long-term results than doing lots of little things that may give you short-term dopamine and seduce you into thinking you’re actually doing something powerful.

6. 100% Is Easier Than 98%

“If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal-cost analysis, you’ll regret where you end up. That’s the lesson I learned: it’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time. The boundary — your personal moral line — is powerful because you don’t cross it; if you have justified doing it once, there’s nothing to stop you doing it again. Decide what you stand for. And then stand for it all the time.” — Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business Professor

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“Willpower is for people who are still uncertain about what they want to do.” — Helia

Anything less than 100% doesn’t work for most people. 100% commitment is what creates resolve. Once you’re fully resolved about what you’re going to do, you then go about creating environments and circumstances that make that commitment real.

Trying to be 98% committed to something doesn’t work because it leaves everything up to chance. For example, if you’re trying to eat healthily, but haven’t fully decided BEFOREHAND what you’re going to do, then you’re always living reactively to the situation at hand.

98% commitment is a slippery-slope. When you’re not completely certain what you’re going to do in a given situation, you must then rely on willpower. And of course, with enough experience, you quickly come to realize that willpower doesn’t work so well. Decision is far more powerful. There’s a reason most people live far beneath what they could. They never make truly committed decisions and then stick to those decisions.

7. When You Make A Decision The Universe Conspires To Make It Happen

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” — Napoleon Hill

Every single day, you need to make powerful decisions. When you make a committed decision, you signal to yourself and the universe that you’re serious about this. Said Tony Robbins, “Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.”

If you really really want to change your life, you must make that decision. It must be firm and resolute. It’s okay if you fail along the way. But in order for it to be a true decision, you must be willing to see it through to the end.

In order to see it through, you must live in accordance every single day. You should start and end your day by writing down and visualizing the completion of your decision.

8. Write It Down Watch It Happen

“Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know — and what we don’t know — about whatever we’re trying to learn.” — William Zinsser

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When you write down your dreams in vivid detail, you begin to engage both your conscious and subconscious minds. Drawing out your dreams in the form of a mind-map is also very powerful for engaging both sides of your brain.

Writing down your dreams and deeply visualizing them will make them more emotional for you. Until your dreams become emotional, they won’t be powerful enough. You need to reconstruct your identity and memory through developing a new and emotionally-driven vision of your future.

As you write your dreams down every single day, write down the ways in which you will actually achieve those dreams. Focus more on WHO than HOW. When you focus on WHO, you allow yourself to think much bigger.

WHO can help you achieve this?

WHO do you need to learn from and be mentored by?

WHO has the networks and connections and capabilities to help you achieve this?

WHO can take everything else off your plate so you can focus on what you do best?

WHO-thinking immediately takes your vision to a much higher level.

As you write down your dreams and goals, the right people will start popping into your mind. A key part of your success will be learning how to position yourself such that you can connect and collaborate with the right WHO’s.

You’ll need to first develop lots of personal capability yourself in order to be someone worth connecting and collaborating with. You need to:

Make a firm and committed decision about what you want to become a master ofEmbrace fully the “process” of developmentOnly care about what certain people think and ignore everyone elseBecome so good you cannot be ignoredHelp the right people further their goalsInvest in the right mentorshipsMake it about your mentor’s goalsBe a giverNever lose track of your WHYNever become complacent about the success you experienceMake huge requestsAsk to collaborate with your heroes once you’ve established credibility and helped them in incredible ways

All of this stuff can and should happen in your journal long before it occurs in reality. You then act and continue acting in powerful ways and watch as your journal entries become more vivid and clear. Watch as your goals become realities quicker and quicker and quicker.

9. We Tap Into A Vast Ocean Of Abundance

“Giving as you get acknowledges the Universe as truly abundant. Giving taps into the spiritual dimension that multiplies us, our thinking, and our results. The Enlightened Millionaire knows this: There is an ocean of abundance and one can tap into it with a teaspoon, a bucket, or a tractor trailer. The ocean doesn’t care.” — The One Minute Millionaire

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Everything you want is available to you. You just need to make the decision about what you want and how big you’ll play.

10. Gratitude Changes Everything It Touches

“When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.” — Dr. Wayne Dyer

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Expressing gratitude changes you. It changes how you see things. But it also changes whoever or whatever you’re grateful for.

There is potentially nothing in the world more powerful than gratitude. It is considered “the mother of all virtues.” The benefits of gratitude are endless. But more than anything, gratitude helps you realize the abundance of all around you. What you focus on expands. When you focus on the abundance, you invite an endless stream of it into your life.

Said Napoleon Hill, “If you make your prayers an expression of gratitude and thanksgiving for the blessings you have already received, instead of requests for what you do not have, you will obtain results a great deal faster.”

11. Nothing Happens Until After You Commit

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.” — William Hutchison Murray

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If you’re serious about making huge advancements in your life, income, and situation, you’re going to have to make some bold bets.

You’re going to have to put your chips on the table.

Throughout my doctoral research as an organizational psychologist, the singular concept I’ve focused my studies on is what I call, “The Point of No Return.” This is the moment it becomes easier to move toward your goals than to avoid them. Actually, it’s the instant that pursuing your highest ambitions becomes your only option.

How does this work?

Primarily, it happens in the form of an intense investment, which forces you to move forward out of compulsion.

Once invested to the point you must go forward, your identity and complete orientation toward your objective changes.

Because you must go forward, you’re no longer confused about what you need to do. You’re no longer uncertain if you’re going to act. You have already acted, and now you need to make good on that action. And there are several psychological reasons why you need to make good on that action:

To not look like an idiot (although this isn’t very powerful)To justify your investmentTo be consistent with the behaviors you’ve performed (hint: your identity follows your behavior, not necessarily the other way around despite “common wisdom”)Because you truly want to achieve a particular goal, and you’ve now created external conditions that will eventuate in a self-fulfilling prophecy

Here’s my favorite narrative from my Master’s Thesis, where I interviewed several entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs. The main difference?Entrepreneurs have had some form of “Point of No Return” experience, whereas wannabe entrepreneurs haven’t created such experiences.

One of the people I interviewed was a 17-year-old kid who wanted to sell shoes. He and his “partner” — one of his high school friends — invested $10,000 into a shipment of shoes. Here’s how he describes his “Point of No Return”:

Yeah, once we had all of our money in the same inventory it was all or nothing. That really scared me, just knowing that it was like do or die. I had to sell the shoes. You couldn’t turn back, you couldn’t just get rid of them and get cash back, you had to go forward.

My follow-up question was, “Did anything change after this moment?”

Here’s what he said:

After that, once I realized that we were truly going and everything, I think it really just opened me up to what I was able to do. At that point, I was like okay, I actually started a company, I’ve invested in it and now I need to run this thing. That’s when I think I really saw that I was running the company. It really changed my leadership role, I think, with my partners.

Once you’ve passed your point of no return, you’ve fully bought into your own vision. You’re committed. Your role, and thus identity, change. You’ve removed alternatives that were nothing more than distractions anyways. You’ve forced your own hand and now must move in the direction you want to go. You’re all in.

12. The More You Invest The Greater The Psychological Upgrade

“The unconscious will allow us to have only what we believe we deserve. If we have a small view of ourselves, then what we deserve is poverty. And our unconscious will see to it that we have that actuality.” — Dr. David Hawkins

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Dan Sullivan has coached more successful entrepreneurs than anyone living on the planet. He currently has over 3,000 people in Strategic Coach paying him between $10,000 and $50,000 annually.

In the past 12 months, he developed and opened his “Game-Changers” program, which is $50,000 per year to be a member. According to Dan, he would not have had the confidence to charge that much money had he not previously written a check for $100,000 to be a member of Joe Polish’s 100K Group.

When he made that investment in himself, he started to get way more ideas. He had the confidence to do likewise.

Obviously, you don’t need to invest $50,000 right now in order to achieve your dreams. But if you begin investing even a little bit into your goals and dreams, you’ll begin to get a 10X return psychologically, relationally, and then financially. You then re-invest in yourself and watch as the confidence and connections increase. As these increase, your ability to succeed changes dramatically.

What’s the difference between wannabes and the pros? The pros invested in themselves and bet on themselves big-time. In the words of James Altucher, the pro’s “Chose Themselves!”

They chose themselves and then created motivation, momentum, inspiration, and confidence. In due process, they designed themselves into the person they wanted to become.

13. Expect Everything And Attach To Nothing

“Expect everything and attach to nothing!” — Carrie Campbell

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If you over-attach yourself to the outcome, you’ll generally be let down. Recently, I launched my first major book and despite the book being successful, I was completely shattered. I expected everything and attached completely to the outcome.

A far better approach is to expect everything and attach to nothing. Lowering your expectations isn’t the answer. According to motivational psychology, expectations both for yourself and from other people are crucial. High standards give you something to stretch for and rise-up to.

In an interview with Success Magazine, actor Jeremy Piven explained that as an actor, the only way to work is to go out and audition for specific roles.

The challenge most actors/actresses face is that they get in their own way. It doesn’t matter how much homework they’ve done. If they’re too tied to a specific result, they can’t be present in the moment. They can’t truly perform their art. They come off as desperate. They get in their own way. Their performance isn’t what it could have been.

Jeremy said that when he quit worrying about a specific result, he was able to be present during his auditions. He was able to be completely who he wanted to be. He wasn’t trying to be what he thought others wanted him to be. He performed his art.

If he didn’t get the gig, either they didn’t get it or it just wasn’t the right fit. So he moves on to the next. In this way, he’s able to get the jobs he’s supposed to have. He’s not just trying to get anything he can get.

According to Robert Kegan, Harvard Psychologist, the only way to truly experience the highest levels of transformation and “conscious evolution” is to detach from the need for specific outcomes.

14. It’s Better To Be Prolific Than Perfect

“It’s better to be prolific than perfect.” — Joe Polish

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Done is better than perfect.

In the book, Art & Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland shared the following story:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

In the book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant explains that “originals” (i.e., people who create innovative work) are not reliable. In other words, not everything they produce is extraordinary. And the same is true for you. In order to produce your magnum opus, you’ll need to create a high volume of work. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.

For example, among the 50 greatest pieces of music ever created, six belong to Mozart, five are Beethoven’s, and three Bach’s. But in order to create those, Mozart wrote over 600 songs, Beethoven 650, and Bach over 1,000.

Similarly, Picasso created thousands of pieces of art, and few are considered to be his “great works.” Edison had 1,900 patents, and only a handful we would recognize. Albert Einstein published 248 scientific articles, only a few of which are what got him on the map for his theory of relativity.

So I ask: Are you creating a large volume of work?

Are you inputting or outputting?

If you like building, build more stuff. If you like writing, write more stuff. If you like connecting, connect more. If you like running, run more. Do stuff. Output. Do it more.

You give your ideas value by acting on them. A good idea, not acted upon, only brings pain and fear. Conversely, action brings confidence. Action is fun. Inaction slowly kills you inside.

Don’t wait to be moved by the spirit. Move the spirit yourself through action. There is no inspiration without action. Action is inspiration. That’s how it works.

Faith is action, and thus also power. Faith and fear cannot co-exist in the same person at the same time. Thus, action (i.e., faith) and inaction (i.e., fear) are opposites. Do what you love. Do it more. Output all the time.

15. Creativity Banishes Recurring Thoughts

In 2005, the National Science Foundation published an article showing that the average person has between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.

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Recurring thoughts are not a good thing. Most people have recurring thoughts on a daily-basis.

Recurring thoughts reflect unfinished projects, unresolved inner conflicts, or needed conversations. If you don’t resolve or complete the loop, then your mind will continue to be occupied and weighted-down by whatever is unresolved.

For a long period of time, I had a negative and impulsive relationship with caffeine. I thought about it for years. Hours and hours of time were spent thinking about caffeine. Those hours could have been spent thinking about something else. It wasn’t until I resolved my relationship with caffeine that I was able to FREE MY MIND of that pointlessly recurring thought.

Sadly, many people have recurring thoughts for years, sometimes decades. They haven’t resolved the inner conflict or completed the needed project.

For example, I know lots of people who have wanted to write a book for like 10 years. The idea has been on their mind and they’ve been ruminating about it for a really long time. If they had written the book 10 years ago, they would have opened themselves to so many other thoughts that they never got access to, because their mind was too busy holding onto or thinking about their freaking recurring thoughts.

If you have recurring thoughts, BANISH THEM! Resolve them! If you need to, CREATE! Then watch as your mind is given space to think about the next project, and the next, and the next.

16. Good Timber Does Not Grow With Ease

“Good timber does not grow with ease: The stronger wind, the stronger trees; The further sky, the greater length; The more the storm, the more the strength. By sun and cold, by rain and snow, In trees and men good timbers grow.” — Douglas Malloch

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David Bednar tells the story of a young man had recently purchased a pick-up truck. Needing some firewood, he thought it a great opportunity to test his new truck.

After driving up the snowy mountains and out of cellphone service, he found a spot to park near some trees. He pulled off the road to park and got stuck in deep snow. Desperate, he tried everything he could to get out. Switching from reverse to drive and spinning-out his tires, his truck got deeper and deeper stuck.

He put twigs under the stuck tire in hopes they would provide traction but to no avail. He used a shovel and tried digging around the tire, but he was stuck too deep.

Eventually, he became incredibly discouraged. The sun was hastily descending and weather bitterly chilling. He wasn’t sure what to do. He offered a simple prayer and got the impression to start cutting wood.

He worked for a few hours, chopping down trees and putting large pieces into the back of his truck.

Once the truck was full, he hopped in and turned it on. After a moment of humble silence, he tried reversing out. The heavy load of wood provided the needed traction to get out of the snow, to get back onto the road, and to move forward. Without the load of wood in his truck, he would have remained stuck.

Most people mistakenly believe that happiness is the absence of a load. We want life to be easy, without challenge or difficulty. However, it is by having a load that we can have the traction needed to move forward in our lives.

When we don’t carry a substantial weight of personal responsibility, we can quickly become stuck.

I have found this in my own life. It wasn’t until after I became a foster parent of 3 children — a substantial load indeed — that I was able to get the traction needed to develop my career as a writer.

Before having that personal load to carry, I was somewhat complacent. I lacked the urgency. I didn’t have the traction to move forward.

A life of ease is not the pathway to growth and happiness. On the contrary, a life of ease is how you get stuck and confused in life.

17. When The “WHY” Is Strong Enough You’ll Find The “HOW”

“I think the ability of the average man could be doubled if it were demanded, if the situation demanded.” — Will Durant

When the why is strong enough, you’ll figure out how. When your why is strong enough, you’ll do whatever it takes.

In the book, The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy gives an example of a scenario where you have to risk your life for 20 bucks. Would you do it? Probably not.

But would you risk your life in the same scenario if instead of 20 bucks, your child was in danger? Of course you would!

What’s the difference? The difference is WHY-power! And why is often based on situational factors. Said historian Will Durant, “I think the ability of the average man could be doubled if it were demanded, if the situation demanded.”

If you want more motivation, you generally need a situation that calls upon you to rise above where you currently are. You also need a compelling vision that really really matters to you. The more clear you get on that vision, the more WHY will be behind it.

18. Truth Is The Relationship “BETWEEN”

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” — John Muir

“Social psychologists argue that who we are at any one time depends mostly on the context in which we find ourselves. But who creates the context? The more mindful we are, the more we can create the contexts we are in. Mindfulness lets us see things in a new light and believe in the possibility of change.” — Ellen Langer

Most Western-thinkers have an atomistic view of the world, assuming that something can be understood regardless of context. For example, who I am as a person is the same from one situation to the next.

In contrast to the atomistic worldview is the relational worldview, which assumes something can only be understood within a particular context. From this perspective, I am not the same person from one situation to the next. Depending on the situation and the current role I’m playing, the meaning of who I am can be greatly different. In one situation, I may be a teacher whereas in another situation I may be the student. I could be a father in one situation and a son in another.

How I view my wife is completely different from how someone who has never met her before would view her. It is the relationship between me and my wife that makes her who she is, to me. Without the context, she doesn’t have the same meaning. Thus, it is the relationship BETWEEN things that is more fundamental and real than the things themselves.

Context is what gives meaning. When you change the context, you change yourself. This is where freedom lies. You aren’t fixed, but incredibly fluid and flexible. You can change and be transformed in incredible ways if you open yourself to new experiences, new situations, and new relationships.

19. If You Have A 20–25 Year Plan, It Will Change Everything

“If you work on something important for 20 years, it will transform everything around you.” — Dan Sullivan

Benjamin Hardy Culture Wall (GapingVoid)

What are you working toward that drives you to wake up every single day?

What is your 20–25 year plan?

According to Dan Sullivan, if you relentlessly pursue something for 20+ years, it will transform everything around you. Your life, your relationships, your environment. Everything will be changed.

If you operate from a place of decision, gratitude, and abundance, you will have such an amazing life in 20 years. You’ll have become all that you wanted to be and more. You’ll look back and be shocked by all you did.

You need to find something that could fascinate you for 20+ years. How that thing is manifested will obviously change forms. But commitment to a vision, a pursuit, a contribution, is key.

What fascinates you enough to build your life around it?

What is your unique ability?

What is your greatest contribution to the world?

What would bring you incredible joy and passion?

What would transform you into the person you want to become?

20. Do What Is Right Let The Consequence Follow

“We control our actions, but the consequences that flow from those actions are controlled by principles.” — Dr. Stephen R. Covey

You control your behavior, but principles control the outcomes. The law of the harvest is always in effect. What you plant, you must harvest. Furthermore, what you plant consistently overtime eventually yields a compounded or exponential harvest.

You often don’t experience the consequences of your actions immediately, which can be deceiving. If you smoked one cigarette, you probably wouldn’t get cancer. If you spent $10 on coffee just one day, it probably wouldn’t affect your financial life. However, overtime, these habits have drastic outcomes. It turns out, $10 daily over 50 years at 5% compounding interest becomes $816,000. Your coffee habit may really be costing you.

Given the choice, which would you rather have: $1,000,000 in your pocket right now or a penny that doubles in value for 31 days? Most people would choose the million. However, the doubling penny actually ends up being $10.7 million dollars. Yet, the majority of the growth happens at the very end, and most people aren’t patient enough for the big return. The live for the moment culture of today stops people from investing.

https://www.populationeducation.org/sites/default/files/calendar_riddle_blog_2.png

Here is where the notion of “over-night” success comes from. Anything on an exponential curve looks small at the beginning. When you first start a habit, the effects are minor. However, overtime, they become major. Thus, out-of-nowhere, someone emerges onto the scene. What you didn’t see were the years of consistent preparation that got them there. Principles govern.

The same holds true of the reverse. Obesity, debt, identity confusion, broken marriages. These things are governed by principles, the compounded effect of daily decisions and misguided premises.

Small things become big things, always.

This final principles ties all of the other 19 together. It brings us right back to where we started.

Everything in your life follows your behavior. You choose your behavior and the universe returns in likeness. The more bold and aligned your behavior, the more abundant the outcome.

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!

These 20 Pictures Will Teach You More Than Reading 100 Books was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I just purchased Grammarly and did the full analysis on this article!

I just purchased Grammarly and did the full analysis on this article!

WOW!

You changed my life. Thank you! That was easy!

2 Experiences You Need For Getting To The Next Level

American Revolutionary WarIf you’re struggling to be motivated, you need to have at least one of these two types of experiences.

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, 1776, David McCullough tells the story of John Greenwood, a sixteen-year-old boy who in May of 1775 heard news of Lexington and Concord. The American Revolutionary War was underway, and Greenwood resolved to walk the 150 miles by himself to Boston with little more than the clothes on his back.

Stopping at wayside taverns, he’d play songs on his fife for soldiers who would ask him where he was going. He responded, “I told them I was going to fight for my country.”

Once he got to Cambridge, he learned of the battle raging at Bunker Hill. Immediately, he was seized-upon by a gruesome scene. While walking down the road leading to the fight, wagons passed him by carrying piles of dead bodies and severely wounded men.

Greenwood was terrified and wished he hadn’t enlisted. “I could positively feel my hair stand on end,” he said. But then something happened that forever changed him. He saw a lone soldier walking down the road. In his own words:

“… a Negro man, wounded in the back of his neck, passed me and, his collar being open and he not having anything on except his shirt and trousers, I saw the wound quite plainly and the blood running down his back. I asked him if it hurt him much, and he did not seem to mind it. He said no that he was only to get a plaster put on it and meant to return. You cannot conceive what encouragement this immediately gave me. I began to feel brave and like a soldier from that moment, and fear never troubled me afterward during the whole war.”

Experience #1: Seeing Someone Else Operate Without Fear

Greenwood was changed in an instant. He saw a man seemingly unaffected by what should have been an excruciatingly painful wound.

He saw a man who had passed a personal point of no return. A “lone soldier” who was so absorbed by a situation and a cause that he didn’t notice his own pain.

Greenwood realized at that moment his extreme self-consciousness, which was holding him back. In seeing someone else operate from a higher mental plane, Greenwood was immediately brought-up to that plane himself.

Courage, commitment, and confidence replaced fear. He stopped worrying about himself. He stopped noticing every sensation in his body. Instead, his mind was captured by the moment and importance of what was happening around him. In his own words, he never was troubled by fear again throughout the remainder of the war.

If you’re having a hard time being focused, or if you’re plagued by fear to do what you believe you should be doing, then you need exposure to “battle.” You need to see someone who has passed their point of no return. You need to look at someone who no longer cares about temporary discomfort.

How do you get such exposure?

You have a few options.

When it comes to Greenwood, he had to walk 150 miles on foot to get to the place of battle. You may need to walk the equivalent of 150 miles on foot to see what’s going on at the frontlines of whatever “battle” you’re attempting to fight.

Who is on the frontlines?

Who are the battle heroes in your field or cause?

How can you get closer exposure to these people?

How can you see them at work?

How can you tap into their mindset and mentality?

You may need to work or sacrifice for a few months or years to get such exposure. This preparation period will soften the soil of your heart and mind, allowing you to be completely open and receptive when the moment comes.

In the book, The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy describes having such an experience. He had invested in a mentorship with Paul J. Meyer, who was the founder of several companies and an innovator in the self-development space. In Hardy’s words:

“Whenever I thought I was really doing things, really playing at a high level, I’d get around Paul — he was my reality check. What he did before lunch was mind-boggling to me… After spending a couple of hours with Paul, hearing about all his plans and ventures and activities, my head would spin. Just trying to make sense of all he had going on exhausted me. After time with Paul, I’d want to go take a nap! But my association with him raised my game. His walking pace was my running pace. It expanded my ideas about how big I could play and how ambitious I could be. You have to get around people like that!”

Once you’ve been adequately exposed to what’s possible, there’s no going back. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. has said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”

You absolutely can create these transformational experiences. But you’ll need to put yourself in the heat of battle proactively. You can’t have such skills on the sidelines. You must make yourself vulnerable, even with doubts and fears streaming through your system.

Experience #2: Have Someone You Love/Respect Tell It To You Straight

It’s nice for the ego to get constant praise and affirmation. However, having people around you who hold you to a continually elevated standard is more powerful for your long-term development.

Hal Eyring, a former business professor at Stanford and also a religious leader, tells the story of getting straight A’s one semester while in college. He was taking several challenging physics classes and was excited to share his success with his mother, yet was humbled by her response. “That’s what we expect of you,” she told him. Reflecting on that experience several decades later, Eyring stated, “Sometimes the greatest kindness we could receive would be to have someone expect more from us than we do because they see more clearly our divine heritage.”

According to loads of research in psychology, it’s critical to be surrounded by people and leaders who hold you to a high standard and expectation — a concept known as “The Pygmalion Effect.” Unquestionably, we as people rise or fall to the expectations of those around us.

Receiving praise and affirmation is indeed essential. But rarely will the affirmation trigger within you a powerful conviction that you can do better. Instead, what you need is someone to hold you to a higher standard than you carry yourself.

You need someone who you know loves you enough to tell you that you could do better. That’s one of the reasons I decided to marry my wife. Other girls would tell me how great I was, and that didn’t inspire me. For some reason, I never felt like I could impress my wife. I always felt like I had to earn her approval and respect. That created a challenge that led me to become more than I thought I was.

Even still, after nearly six years of being married, Lauren will make comments that light a fire under me. Despite being physically fit, she recently told me I was starting to get a “Dad-Bod.” Although I disagree, I now have even more of a reason to get into the best shape of my life. I want to prove to her that I can be more fit than I was when we were in our early 20’s.

Getting critical feedback and being around nay-sayers is two entirely different things. You need to know that the feedback you’re getting is honest. You need to know that the person who is talking to you cares about your best interest. Their feedback is coming from a positive, not a negative place. You need to know that they want you to be successful and expect more of you than you’re currently expecting of yourself.

Recently, I submitted two book proposals to my publisher for the next two books I’m going to write. I was humbled continuously as my agent would send back drafts and tell me, “What are you doing? You’re so much better than this.”

While writing Willpower Doesn’t Work, I had hired Ryan Holiday to help me develop the book. With each draft or conversation, he would continually say things similar. “You can do so much better than this.” Even after the book was published, Ryan told me, “You can write a better book than that.” I respect him enough to know he isn’t merely rude, but honest.

You need people around you who hold you to a higher standard.

You need people to tell you when you’re not performing at the level you could be.

You need hard feedback that will cause you to honestly reflect and dig deeper into yourself than you’ve been willing to dig in a long time.

You then need to go to a quiet place and ask yourself some hard questions. You probably need to meditate and or pray. You need to redevelop a sense of resolve and commitment to play at a higher level.

You then need to do the hard work of pushing past your emotional blocks. You need to rise above your current sense of who you believe you are. You need to exceed even the expectations of those who believe you can do better. You need to show up at a level no one else is willing to go.

This is how you get to the next level and the next.

You get humbled by people who know you could do better.

You then rise to their expectations and exceed them. Because ultimately, you need to hold yourself to higher standards than anyone else is willing to hold you. But to get to that level, you need to be told straight that you could do much better. You need to be humble and willing to receive that feedback. You then need to prove them wrong and show them that you’re so much more than even they think you can be.

I love that my wife recently called me out. I’m more committed than ever to get into the best shape of my life.

I love that my agent recently called me out. It led me to produce the best writing I’ve ever done in my life. I’m on the brink of writing two books that will fundamentally change the trajectory of my career. I couldn’t have done that if I had an agent who had low expectations for me and just wanted a quick-win. She reminded me of the vision I have for myself and told me to get up and play a bigger game.

Conclusion

Who is holding you to a higher standard?

How often are you getting honest and real feedback?

Who are your mentors?

Who are your friends?

How regularly are you have these 2 types of triggering experiences?

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!

2 Experiences You Need For Getting To The Next Level was originally published in The Mission on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tell Me What You Did Today, And I’ll Tell You Who You Are

Morning Run“Each day is a day of decision, and our decisions determine our destiny.” — Russell Nelson

You live your life in 24 hour periods. How you use those 24 hour periods determines who you become and how successful you’ll be.

If you learn to master your day, you’ll learn how to master your weeks, months, years, and life.

All you need to do is become very, very good at living each day.

The problem most people face is that they start their day off wrong, which puts them on a downward spiral throughout their whole day. Momentum is created or destroyed every day with the first few decisions you make.

Additionally, few people spend time planning and imagining the life they want to have and the person they want to become. Very few people live intentionally each day toward a higher vision. Most people are solely living day-to-day, rather than maximizing each day to make enormous progress toward a bigger and better future.

“You are what you repeatedly do.” — Will Durant

How is your day going, today?

Seriously.

Look back on all the things you’ve done so far. Did you act like the person you wish to become?

If you repeated today every day for the next year, realistically, where would you end up?

If you are to really accomplish your goals and dreams, how much differently would your regular day need to be than today was?

Did you interact with people who remind you more of your future, or more of your past?

In order to achieve your dreams, what does a “normal” day look like?

One of the best ways to consciously design your ideal life is to start with your ideal day. What does that actually look like?

What activities must happen daily for you to live exactly how you want to be living?

In this article, I’m going to show you:

How you can consistently live better and better daysHow you can set-up your days the night before in order to make success inevitableHow to consistently make more progress each day than most people make in a month or yearHow to create the life you can only imagine

Let’s start:

4 Things Your Brain Needs Daily To Thrive

Before diving into how to create an optimal day, it’s important to take a look at your brain, and what makes your brain happy. At the most basic level, your brain needs 4 things in order to thrive:

NutritionOxygenInformationLoveNutrition

“When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food.” — James Allen

The quality of food you put into your body matters. You become what you consume, literally.

The best foods for brain health include:Nuts and seeds — particularly almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seedsVegetables — particularly avocados, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, and beetsLeafy greens — particularly spinach, broccoli, celery, and kaleFish — particularly salmon, sardines, and tunaBerries — particularly blueberries, strawberries, and acai berriesSpices — particularly cinnamon, sage, thyme, and turmericHealthy fats — particularly coconut oil and olive oilDark chocolate — one of the only foods shown to acutely boost mood, focus, and alertness, according to a University of Nottingham studyHealthy grains — University of Toronto researchers recently determined that eating carbohydrate-rich foods like oatmeal is equivalent to a shot of glucose, a.k.a. blood sugar, injected into your brainThe worst foods for brain health include:Anything with artificial sugar — particularly fruit juices, soda, candyAnything that has artificial and white flourAlchoholMost dairyOxygen

“Back in the day, the majority of exercise studies focused on the parts of the body from the neck down, like the heart and lungs. But now we are finding that we need to go north, to the brain, to show the true benefits of a physically active lifestyle on an individual.” — Ozioma Okonkwo, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

The amount of oxygen your brain gets determines how well it functions. Just because you breath air doesn’t mean your brain is getting the quantity and quality of oxygen it needs to thrive.

The brain uses about three times as much oxygen as muscles in the body doBrain cells are very sensitive to decreases in oxygen levels and don’t survive or function well very long without it

Daily fitness is essential to brain health and having a body that can provide maximal oxygen to your brain. Specifically:

One study found that daily fitness is good for memory and decreases chances of Alzheimer'sOkonkwo’s research has shown that people who exercise have greater brain volume in areas of the brain associated with reasoning and executive function. In an interview with TIME, he stated, “We’ve done a series of studies showing that increased aerobic capacity boosts brain structure, function and cognition,” he says, “Other people have found exercise can improve mood.”

Aerobic exercise, like running and swimming, appears to be best for brain health since these increase your heart rate, “which means the body pumps more blood to the brain,” says Okonkwo. But strength training, like weight lifting, may also bring benefits to the brain by increasing heart rate.

Information

Your brain needs information to process in order to continually develop new connections. If the brain isn’t firing, it’s not wiring, and this ages it.

If you don’t use your brain, you lose it very quickly. Memory fades and reality becomes less clear and compelling.

The problem with most of the information people consume is that it is repetitive and low quality — like putting junk in your car, it doesn’t help your brain function well, but actually damages it long-term. For example, scanning Facebook or passively scanning articles like this one don’t challenge the brain enough.

In order for your brain to thrive, you need to continually give it higher quality information, which is often above your cognitive level. You also want to learn actively, which means you’re taking notes and linking what you’re learning in your memory through visualization.

Your memory is entirely based on connection and imagination. So when you’re learning something new, you want to be very active and imaginative with that information. You want to link what you’re learning with as many other things as possible. The more visual and exaggerated you are with how you approach new information, the more memorable it will be. As you change your memory, you change yourself. Thus, learning is not about retaining or storing information, but rather, it is about reframing your entire paradigm.

Thus, the purpose of information is not simply to put more information into the existing mental model you currently have. True learning is emotional and imaginative — thus, it is intended to reframe your entire mental model. If you don’t see and operate differently in the world, you didn’t change.

Change is very, very good for the brain. It’s one of the best ways to anti-age your brain and keep it healthy. Doing the same things over and over and not continually pushing and expanding your mindset and mental model is very bad for the brain. It trains your brain to be lazy. It keeps you stuck in a limiting identity and with an aging and decaying brain.

See the world differently every day.

Learn something new that changes how you view the world every day.

This is how you heal your brain, keep it young, and keep it healthy.

Love

“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.” — Ann Landers

Research has shown that babies who don’t receive love can die. Oxygen and nutrition aren’t enough. The brain thrives on physical touch and emotional connection.

For over 75 years, Harvard’s Grant and Glueck study has tracked the physical and emotional health of two groups:

456 poor people in Boston from 1939 to 2014 (the Grant Study)268 graduates from Harvard’s classes of 1939–1944 (the Glueck study)

After following these groups and testing them (e.g., blood samples, brain scans) for several decades, the findings have been compiled.

Here’s the conclusion:

“The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.” — Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development

As Melanie Curtin reported on Inc., “The biggest predictor of your happiness and fulfillment overall in life is, basically, love.”

Although the Harvard study lays the foundation, there is other compelling research on the importance of human relationships.

This meta analysis showed a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. Put simply, if you have healthy relationships, your chances of survival increase by 50%.

The most loving and deep relationships are built on a very simple foundation: giving and gratitude.

When the focus is on what you can give, rather than what you can get, the relationship becomes a gift to both of you.

There’s no holding back.

No keeping score.

Only in such relationships can you be fully present to the moment and fully un-inhibited in the expression of your love.

Every single day, you need:

good nutritionoxygeninformationand love.

Without these, your brain and soul will not thrive, but instead will shrivel and die. These are the basics that you should build your day around.

The rest of this article focuses on prioritization and productivity.

If you are intentional and strategic, you can achieve more in one day than most people achieve in a week.

Even more, if you’re clear about what you want, you can make enormous progress, daily, toward important goals. Making clear and powerful progress daily is more than many people can say they’ve done in years.

Many if not most people are not pointing their life in a desired direction. They are in jobs and relationships they hate. Put simply, they are climbing a ladder that is facing the wrong wall. As bestselling author, Ryan Holiday has said, “This is a fundamental irony of most people’s lives. They don’t quite know what they want to do with their lives. Yet they are very active.”

Thus, if you can make tangible progress in a desired direction every single day, you’ll be living far more powerfully and intentionally than most of the population.

If you can add productivity and courage to your day, you can radically transform your whole life in a matter of a few short years.

For the remainder of this article, I’ll cover:

Setting yourself up for success the evening beforeHaving an optimal morning routineAnd living daily such that you’re continually expanding both inside and outside as a personUse Ernest Hemingway’s Evening Routine For Maximized Creativity And Productivity

“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck … That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.” — Ernest Hemingway

Apparently, Ernest Hemingway would stop his writing sessions mid-sentence. He did this for a few reasons:

So that his subconscious would continue chewing-on the ideaSo that when he started writing again the next day, he didn’t have to start from scratch, but could continue where he left off (already with a sense of momentum…)

Your evening routine doesn’t need to be long. But like Hemingway, it’s good to know exactly what you’re going to do when you wake up. It’s good to have done even just a little bit of work so that you have somewhere to pick-up when you first get started.

Facing a blank slate first thing in the morning can be difficult. If you take just a few minutes to consider what you’re first going to do, and even give a minute or two of thought as to what that will involve, then you don’t have to start from scratch.

Pull out your journal just before bed and write down the first few things you’re going to do the next morning. Then, as it relates to the first task or project, write down a few ideas related to that thing.

Your brain is far more creative in the morning and far more analytical at night. Use your analytical evening strength to provide a simple plan and starting-point so your creative morning brain can run wild when you first wake up.

There’s one more side-benefit to creating a runway for your next morning. As Hemingway stated, your subconscious will then be able to focus on and make important connections while you sleep. Thomas Edison did this himself, which is why he was such a prolific and productive creative person (something rare, indeed). He actually had a process. In his own words, “Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”

This Morning Routine Will Save You 20+ Hours Per Week

“Typically, we have a window of about three hours where we’re really, really focused. We’re able to have some strong contributions in terms of planning, in terms of thinking, in terms of speaking well,” — Dr. Rod Friedman told Harvard Business Review

According to psychologist Ron Friedman, the first three hours of your day are your most precious for maximized productivity.

This makes sense on several levels. Let’s start with sleep. Research confirms the brain, specifically the prefrontal cortex, is most active and readily creative immediately following sleep. Your subconscious mind has been loosely mind-wandering while you slept, making contextual and temporal connections.

So, immediately following sleep, your mind is most readily active to do thoughtful work.

On a different level, the science of willpower and self-control confirm that your willpower — or energy levels — are strongest immediately following sleep. The longer you go throughout your day, the less willpower you have. In other words, you experience decision fatigue throughout your day.

So, your brain is most attuned first thing in the morning, and so are your energy levels. Consequently, the best time to do your best work is during the first three hours of your day.

During your morning time, you want to do a few important things:

Super-hydration — drink 20–40 ounces of water — this will wake you up, making you more alert (your brain needs oxygen to function well)Pull out your journal and begin writingCreate a mind-map of your ideal selfWrite about the top 1–3 things you want to achieve that day

The purpose of this 10–30 minute morning journal session is to reframe yourself as the person you want to become. You want to put yourself into a peak and heightened state where you can live with intention.

Creating a mind-map and also writing down your future goals is very powerful because it reshapes your mindset and memory. Mind-maps when done right work both your right and left brains because they are intended to be visual and emotionally stimulating.

In other words, you don’t want to simply write down your goals. You want images and pictures of your future self and dreams to be in your face. The more imaginative, emotional, and exaggerated, the more they will become real to you; the more they’ll shape your memory and identity.

Every day, you should write down and visualize your future self and dreams. Then, you want to be results-oriented throughout your day in order to achieve those dreams as fast as possible.

When you begin your day right, you start with confidence and momentum. Little wins in the morning lead to big wins throughout your day and throughout your life.

Start right, end right.

Start with vision and focus and you’ll be moving in a clear direction, rather than aimlessly moving without direction.

After you’ve put yourself into a peak and intentional state, it’s good to begin working on the project you left undone or created a simple plan for the night before.

If you work on your most important work first thing in the morning and without distraction, you’ll make progress daily. Over enough time, you’ll have made HUGE progress. This is what Darren Hardy calls The Compound Effect. As he stated, “It’s not the big things that add up in the end; it’s the hundreds, thousands, or millions of little things that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary.”

After you’ve emotionally and imaginatively created and experienced your future vision, and after you’ve done your most important and creative work, then it’s time to get the body moving. It’s time to workout and give your brain a little bit of a break! But also, as you exercise, you’re also giving your brain a HUGE boost, which will provide you with tons of energy and cognitive ability for the rest of your day!

If your 3–5 hours before your workout were focused, you could probably be done for the day. You’ll have made more progress in your morning than many people make in weeks or months.

Use “Forcing Functions” To Become Results-Focused

“Wherever you are, make sure you’re there.” — Dan Sullivan

If you’re like most people, your workday is a blend of low-velocity work mixed with continual distraction (e.g., social media and email).

Most people’s “working time” is not done at peak performance levels. When most people are working, they do so in a relaxed fashion. Makes sense, they have plenty of time to get it done.

However, when you are results-oriented, rather than “being busy,” you’re 100 percent on when you’re working and 100 percent off when you’re not. Why do anything half-way? If you’re going to work, you’re going to work.

To get the best results in your fitness, research has found that shorter but more intensive exercise is more effective than longer drawn-out exercise.

The concept is simple: Intensive activity followed by high quality rest and recovery.

Most of the growth actually comes during the recovery process. However, the only way to truly recover is by actually pushing yourself to exhaustion during the workout.

The same concept applies to work. The best work happens in short intensive spurts. By short, I’m talking 1–3 hours. But this must be “Deep Work,” with no distractions, just like an intensive workout is non-stop. Interestingly, your best work — which for most people is thinking — will actually happen while you’re away from your work, “recovering.”

In one study, only 16 percent of respondents reported getting creative insight while at work. Ideas generally came while the person was at home, in transportation, or during recreational activity. “The most creative ideas aren’t going to come while sitting in front of your monitor,” says Scott Birnbaum, a vice president of Samsung Semiconductor.

The reason for this is simple. When you’re working directly on a task, your mind is tightly focused on the problem at hand (i.e., direct reflection). Conversely, when you’re not working, your mind loosely wanders (i.e., indirect reflection).

While driving or doing some other form of recreation, the external stimuli in your environment (like the buildings or other landscapes around you) subconsciously prompt memories and other thoughts. Because your mind is wandering both contextually (on different subjects) and temporally between past, present, and future, your brain will make distant and distinct connections related to the problem you’re trying to solve (eureka!)

Case in point: when you’re working, be at work. When you’re not working, stop working. By taking your mind off work and actually recovering, you’ll get creative breakthroughs related to your work.

You can ensure that you’re fully present in what you’re doing by applying a concept known as “forcing functions.” According to entrepreneur, Dan Martell:

“A forcing function is any task, activity or event that forces you to take action and produce a result. I believe the best way to work is to put ourselves into a position to execute. Essentially, forcing us to complete a task.”

Forcing functions are situational factors you put into place to ensure you succeed. In other words, you want to set up your environment so that your default and subconscious behavior is what you want it to be. You also want to set things up so that self-sabotage is difficult.

Here are a few examples:

When you’re done with work, leave your phone at your office (this will force you to be present when you’re home)Remove all unhealthy food from your house (make one decision that frees your mind from having to consciously control or suppress your behavior)Work at a library and leave your laptop charger at home (so you only have a few hours to work until your computer dies)Set short timelines (“To achieve great things you need 1) a plan, and 2) not enough time” — Meg Jay TED talk)High investment — when you begin investing money into a goal, you immediately become emotionally committedDo At Least One Thing Daily That Terrifies You

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” — Tim Ferriss

But you don’t have to constantly be battling your fears. Actually, Darren Hardy has said that you can be a coward 99.9305556% of the time (to be exact). You only need to be courageous for 20 seconds at a time.

Twenty seconds of fear is all you need. If you courageously confront fear for 20 seconds every single day, before you know it, you’ll be in a different socio-economic and social situation.

According to Wayne Gretzky, the best hockey player of all time, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Make that call.

Ask that question.

Pitch that idea.

Post that video.

Reach out to that potential mentor.

If you do one or even a few things daily that are outside of your comfort zone, eventually you’ll be living a different life. Although most of your courageous attempts may not be successful, some of them will succeed. Sometimes, you’ll catch a “lucky” break. And these breaks are what separate you from the masses.

Even more important though is that you’ll become more confident in yourself. You cannot have confidence without positive and goal-directed behavior. You also cannot get motivation and momentum without being active and moving.

Your network is your net worth. Do whatever you can to get access to the people you want to work with and work for.

Be bold.

Conclusion

How you spend each day matters.

If you optimize for brain health, priority, and productivity, you can live a masterful life.

You can make enormous progress in all that you do.

You can create and achieve enormous visions.

Every day, your brain will change because you’ll be learning new things and becoming a new person.

Enjoy this beautiful life. It’s yours for the taking.

Enjoy THIS day. Don’t waste it. Enjoy it. Build upon it. Remember 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!

Tell Me What You Did Today, And I’ll Tell You Who You Are was originally published in The Mission on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This 2-Step 10-Minute Exercise Creates Immediate Self-Awareness

Rihanna“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”―Albert Einstein

Self-knowledge is important. But self-imagination is far more compelling and powerful. Actually, being highly imaginative is how you become self-aware.

You never actually have an objective perspective of yourself. Instead of trying to be objective, you should seek to be imaginative.

Even your memory is imagined and not objective. Yet, as children, we are trained to not be imaginative, which stops us from developing powerful memories and powerful futures. As Tony Buzan said, “Children are trained to think linearly instead of imaginatively; they are taught to read slowly and carefully, and are discouraged from daydreaming. They are trained to reduce the use and capacity of their brain.”

The more imaginative you can be about yourself, about what you learn, and about your future, the more creative control you have over these things.

Your brain functions best when you use your imagination; when you combine both your left and right brains; when you engage all of your senses; when you exaggerate things and are playful.

In his TED talk, Stuart Brown said, “Play leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity… Nothing fires up the brain like play.” Similarly, Greg McKeown said in Essentialism, “Very successful people see play as essential for creativity.”

The more creative you are, the more successful you can become. The more imaginative you are, the better your brain will operate.

When you allow yourself to be more imaginative about yourself, you will be blown away by how much faster and more effectively you can learn. You’ll be blown away by how flexible your identity and capabilities are. You’ll realize that your brain and memory have seemingly infinite capacity and that you’re living far beneath your potential.

For starters, here’s a quick 10-minute exercise that will begin your process of re-creating your life, surroundings, skills, and world.

Step 1: Mind Map Yourself (5 Minutes)

“Through using our memory to its fullest we can unlock the vast reservoir of human potential that isn’t currently being used.” — Tony Buzan

Mind mapping is a skill used by many of the world’s best learners. Rather than taking notes or jotting down your ideas in a linear fashion using only words, mind mapping taps into all of the senses of both the right and left brains.

Basically, with a mind map, you take out a blank piece of paper and draw a circle in the middle and put your name. Then draw lines going out from the circle and write down whatever categories of your life you want to have, such as health, money, relationships, achievements, spirituality.

When creating a mind map of yourself, write down all of your dreams, ambitions, and characteristics.

Hold nothing back.

Also, rather than simply using words, it’s far more powerful to use images. Your brain stores colorful and even moving images much easier than static words.

The more imaginative you can be, the more powerful and memorable the your mind map will be.

Your identity is imagined. Your future identity is also imagined. So you might as well take creative control over the imagination-process. You might as well become brilliant at the imagination process. This will make your memory far more flexible and powerful, enabling you to more fully embrace new experiences and transform those experiences into growth.

Here’s how you can fold time. When you create a mind map of your future self in a highly imaginative and visual way, you create memories of your future self.

The more emotional the memory the better, as emotion creates the context and feeling of the memory.

Zig Ziglar is famous for saying, “You have to “Be” the right kind of person first, then you must “Do” the right things before you can expect to “Have” the things in life that really matter. Dad keeps it pretty simple — Be, Do, Have.”

When you mind map your future self in a highly imaginative way, you fold time and bring your future self into the present. This will allow you into a new role and identity that can immediately act congruently with your goals.

For example, you may put on your mind map that you will be a millionaire. However, the regular behaviors involved in being a millionaire likely conflict with your current identity and behaviors. Therefore, you need to pull your future self into the present and begin being and acting as that person now.

Again, the more imaginative, visual, and emotionally-stimulating this written-process, the more engrained it will be into your memory. And your memory in large part shapes your identity and future.

Step 2: Write Your Own Obituary (5 Minutes)

“While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.” — Leonardo da Vinci

Once you’ve mind mapped your future self, the next step is to write your own obituary. You can take 5 minutes or 50 minutes on this.

Either way, it is powerful to write out your obituary from the vantage point of you already being dead.

What would you like that obituary to say?

Again, be very imaginative.

The shocking part about life is how much it can bend itself to fit your mind, feelings, and imaginings.

A very smart question when considering your own obituary comes from billionaire, Peter Theil, who asked, “How can you achieve your 10 year plan in the next 6 months?”

Why does this question matter? Because it cuts through the noise like a hot knife cuts through butter.

You absolutely can achieve most of your wildest dreams in the next 6–12 months. You simply need to start living to die instead of dying to live. This is what Robin Sharma calls having a “death-bed” mentality. It means you never take another day for granted again. It means you bring extreme and powerful enthusiasm to everything you do.

Enthusiasm is contagious. It gives energy and life. When you wake up and bring enthusiasm to what you’re doing, your mind begins sparking with creative ideas and insights. Your doubts and fears begin to wash away. Productivity becomes automatic.

What will your obituary say?

Write it down and then put it on your wall right next to your visually stimulating mind map. This is how you create a transformational trigger that immediately causes a deep sense of remembering. In your day-to-day life, it’s easy to fall back into cycles. It’s easy to forget what you really want and what you stand for.

However, if you have a transformational trigger which immediately reminds you of the future you, then it can zap you into that role and identity in the here and now. Thus, not only will your emotionally-charged trigger remind you, but it will also transform and reshape you.

A Lifetime State Of Play

According to Strategic Coach founder, Dan Sullivan, life can and should be organized such that you live in a continual state of play.

How do you do this?

You never stop learning. Your brain needs all of the information it can get — however, garbage in, garbage out. Your life is a product of your standards and your brain is the product of the quality of information you put in.You deepen your human relationships. Nothing is more important for the human brain than love. You could get all of the nutrition, oxygen, and information you need — but without love, your brain will hardly be able to process anything. However, when you have love, all inputs are amplified and expanded.You always make your future bigger than your past.You remove everything from your life that is keeping you stuck.You allow yourself to imagine something more compelling and exciting.You focus on “who” instead of “how.”You allow yourself to want what you really want, and never operate from a state of “should” or “have to” again.

When you give yourself permission to seek what you truly want, you immediately have far more energy, excitement, and enthusiasm about what you’re doing.

If something doesn’t excite you, then you’re not being imaginative enough about the game and how it’s being set up. Your future should be extremely juicy and compelling. It should even potentially scare you a little bit because it’s so amazing.

Charles Haanel, considered to be the father of modern self-improvement said,“Remember that no matter what the difficulty is, no matter where it is, no matter who is affected, you have no patient but yourself; you have nothing to do but convince yourself of the truth which you desire to see manifest.”

Conclusion

Where will you be in 6 months from now?

How close can you get to achieving your 10-year plan in the next 6 months?

How imaginative will you be?

Are you willing to be bold?

Are you willing to be direct?

Are you willing to do what will actually work, rather than being emotionally-attached to the outcome and to your ego?

Are you willing to create a life that allows you a continual state of play and awe?

How much bigger is your future going to be than your past?

What will your obituary say?

Will you fold-time and begin living your future today?

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 2-Step 10-Minute Exercise Creates Immediate Self-Awareness was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

4 Things Every Child Needs Before Breakfast

Child“The way you see [a child] is the way you treat them and the way you treat them is [who] they [will] become.” — adapted a quote from Goethe

Most children wake up the same way their parents wake up:

either flustered and in a rush, orwith no plan or strategy for how to succeed at the day

Children shouldn’t be expected to know how to start their day off right. They shouldn’t be expected to know how confidence is built, or how momentum and motivation works.

But their parents should understand these things. And their parents should help their children understand and live in ways that allow them to be confident and successful.

Helping a child develop confidence and momentum daily is not rocket-science.

It’s actually incredibly simple.

At the most basic level, here’s what children need immediately upon waking-up:

hydration for body and brain functioningphysical affectionsmall wins for confidenceappreciation and affirmation

In order for a child to receive these things, they need a parent who is present and caring. They need a parent who has put first things first — and already started winning themselves. A parent who has taken care of themselves so they have the wherewithal to be truly mindful of their child’s needs and emotional state.

If you help your kid’s get these 4 things daily, they will transform. They’ll become healthier, happier, and more confident. They’ll become more successful in all areas of their lives.

How do I know?

Because for the past 3.5 years, my wife and I fostered three incredible children who we recently adopted. When we got these kids, they were an absolute wreck! You’d be too if you came from their background.

We had to deal with an extreme situation, and necessity is the mother of invention.

Our kids are far from perfect. We all have our crazy moments. But they have made amazing progress! And continue to do so daily! When it comes to kids especially, it’s far more powerful to measure the GAINS than the GAPS!

Mostly, my incredible wife is the reason for our kid’s success. She’s amazing. She deserves ALL of the credit.

Here’s how this “Successful Child Morning Routine” works. And by the way, it can all be accomplish in less than 10 minutes.

1. Drink Lots Of Water!

After a long night’s rest, your body (and child’s body) is often dehydrated.

Hydration first thing in the morning is essential because it increases the production of new muscle and blood cells. Additionally, a hydrated body gets and uses more oxygen, which is needed to be alert and energized.

Most people feel groggy the first 3–5 minutes after waking up. You’ll be stunned how quickly you become alert and awake if you drink a huge glass of water first thing in the morning.

Your body and brain need it.

Your children need lots of water first thing in the morning for their developing brains and bodies.

A study done by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey found that over 50% of children in the United States are dehydrated. This is an easy fix.

For adults, it is smart to “super-hydrate” when you first wake-up by drinking over 20 oz. of water. The more the better.

2. Physical Touch And Loving Affection

While your child is drinking their morning water, it would be incredible if you were giving them a hug or a short back massage.

Research shows that warmth and affection expressed by parents to their children results in life-long positive outcomes for those children. Benefits include:

high self-esteemimproved academic performancebetter parent-child communicationfew psychological and behavioral problems

Conversely, children who do not have affectionate parents generally have:

lower self-esteemfeel more alienated, hostile, aggressive, and antisocial

In 2010, researchers at Duke Medical School found that babies with very affectionate and attentive mothers grow up to be happier, more resilient, and less anxious adults. In that study, most of the mothers showed “normal” levels of affection but only 6% shows “high” levels of affection.

Numerous studies on the effects of massage show the positive benefits it offers to reduce anxiety in children. A short and loving massage is an incredible way for parents to connect to their children, both physically and emotionally.

A study among adults showed that those who received physical affection from their parents as children had less depression and anxiety as adults.

Your child needs to feel your love first thing in the morning. Words are extremely powerful. But physical touch is also very important.

This doesn’t need to take long. Even 30–60 seconds of loving physical tough. A short massage or back scratch and some kind words. This will work wonder for your relationships with your child — which is essential for their well-being. It will also work wonders for your child individually in all areas of their lives.

3. Quick Small Wins

There’s a growing body of research showing that confidence and positive habits are the product of small daily wins (see BJ Fogg’s research at Stanford for more info).

Confidence is fickle. It needs to be re-established daily.

Confidence is the byproduct of successful behavior. In the recent hit book, MAKE YOUR BED: Little Things That Can Change Your Life…And Maybe the World, author and famed Navy Seal William McRaven explains how making his bed first thing in the morning changed his life. It got him in the habit of “winning.” It created confidence first thing in the morning, which rippled into other wins throughout the day.

Momentum and confidence are highly connected.

When you wake up and get a few small wins, your confidence increases. If you wake up and don’t start winning, then confidence drops.

When you get even a small win, like making your bed, you feel more confident to keep winning. This leads to momentum.

Your children should get a few small and easy wins right after they wake up. This will create new and daily confidence in their lives.

Confidence and momentum are that simple. As is motivation. Motivation is the byproduct of positive action.

It’s important to note that your confidence as a parent is also based on the fact that you yourself have been winning in the morning before you have interfaced with your child.

If you haven’t put first things first, you won’t have as much confidence when you interact with your kids. If you’re not confident yourself, you shouldn’t expect to raise a confident child.

Regardless of what has happened in the past, confidence is something you can build daily. Just get some small wins. Whatever that means for you. Here are a few solid ways to win in the morning;

make your beddrink a big glass of waterprayer and meditationread or listen to uplifting materialwrite in your journal about your day and the person you intend to bego for a walk or do a workoutmake progress on a personal goal

You don’t need to do all of these. Even one or two will make a big impact on WHO YOU ARE when you interact with your children first thing in the morning.

Your emotional and psychological tone completely influences your children’s. If you’re feeling amazing because you’ve already been winning yourself, then you’ll project that energy onto your children. You’ll love them more. You’ll give them more attention and affection, because you’ll have the capacity to do so.

They’ll feed off that energy and begin winning themselves. They will be more positive toward others, because you’re being more positive and loving toward them.

4. Appreciation And Affirmation

Finally, it’s important that your children are receiving praise and affirmation first thing in the morning. Especially in response to the “wins” they are getting.

If your child makes their bed and drinks a glass of water first thing in the morning, it is powerful if they are acknowledged for that.

Appreciate them for what they’ve done. Affirm their behavior. This will positively condition them to continue doing so.

Research on gratitude shows that when a person expresses gratitude, they change how they see the person. As Dr. Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

When you express gratitude, you love the people you’re grateful for. Words are powerful things. They change emotions and feelings. As Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner has said, “You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling, than feeling yourself into action.”

When you express gratitude, you feel more love.

Love is a byproduct of positive action.

When you express and show love through physical and verbal affection, you’ll feel more love for them.

They’ll be more confident and you’ll be more confident as their parent. They’ll be winning because you’ll be winning.

Conclusion

“You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.” — Meredith Willson

Childhood is short.

I’m stunned how fast the past 3.5 years have gone since we got our kids.

When we got our kids, they were 3, 5, and 7. Now they are almost 7, 9, and 11!

How did that happen?

Don’t waste another day. Your children are worth so much. If you can help your children start winning in the morning, they will get more consistent at winning throughout their life.

Of course, perfection should not be the goal. We all have plenty of off days. Parenthood is nuts! Compassion and love are essential for both yourself and your children when things aren’t going as well as they could.

Keep working at it.

Consistency is the goal. Daily progress is the goal.

Confidence and momentum are built one day at a time. Every single day.

For both your children and you, it all starts with how you wake up in the morning. And then, how you help your kids proactively wake up themselves.

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!

4 Things Every Child Needs Before Breakfast was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To Have What You Want, You Must Give-Up What’s Holding You Back

Photo by Yoann Boyer on UnsplashLessons are repeated until they are learned.

If you pay attention to your life, you’ll begin to see the patterns.

In 2005, the National Science Foundation published an article showing that the average person has between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.

The things running through your head are the same things that were running through your head yesterday.

The conversations you’re having with yourself are the same conversations you’ve been having with yourself.

You know what to do.

You know what you want.

Said Tim Grover in his book, Unstoppable, “Don’t think. You already know what you have to do, and you know how to do it. What’s stopping you?”

Fear Of The Unknown Is The Foundation Of All Fears

According to some scholars, fear of the unknown is likely the foundation of all other fears. In order to avoid the unknown, most people bail on their dreams in exchange for remaining in lives they hate!

In the mega-selling book (over 6 million sold), The Easy Way To Quit Smoking, Allen Carr explains that one of the primary reasons people stay in addiction is because they fear the unknown. Even though people know their addiction is literally killing them, it has become their homeostasis. To not be in the addiction is frightening, because you have no idea what that looks or feels like anymore.

Even though you KNOW life could be fundamentally better, you hold tightly to what you have. You hold-on to what you have while knowing that it is the very thing stopping you from getting what you really want.

And so the thoughts recur, daily. 95% of those thoughts and cycles continue, all the while you intuitively know that you are making a fool’s bargain.

You’re giving up your dreams and your greatest potential for something you know isn’t serving you.

Professional film-maker, Casey Neistat put it this way, “What is the ultimate quantification of success? For me, it’s not how much time you spend doing what you love. It’s how little time you spend doing what you hate.”

Openness To New Experiences

“Think positively about yourself…. ask God who made you to keep on remaking you.” — Norman Vincent Peale, The Power Of Positive Thinking

When you open yourself to new experiences, you open yourself to change. Obviously, being open to new experiences is hard. In order for you to truly be open, you must be humble.

You must be open to being changed. You must be willing to absorb what your new experiences make of you.

The latin root of humility is connected to “earth,” “ground,” and “soil.”

The words humility and humidity are very closely connected.

Humidity is the moisture.

Humility is the soil.

Humble soil ABSORBS the moisture. Non-humble soil is hard and unable to accept all of the nutrients the humidity is trying to give it.

Your life is talking to you.

It’s been talking to you for a long time.

You’ve seen the signals.

You’ve had the conversations over and over in your head.

You could continue having this conversation for the rest of your life and remain in your safety zone. But if you did, you’d always have the regret. You’d always wonder what might have been. You’d always know you could have had something better. And that you chose the lesser path.

Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach once said, “The moment you have arrived is the perfect time to start out again.”

Even success can become a block to future success. It’s easy to hold-on to a particular role or identity that you’ve formulated for yourself. Dan Sullivan also explains happiness comes when your future is bigger than your past.

In order for your future to be bigger than your past, you must move beyond it. You must stop living in your past!

Let it go.

Let it be what it was — the good and the bad.

Take everything you’ve learned from it, but don’t be defined by it. If you want something much bigger and better, you’ll have to do things differently. Said Marshall Goldsmith, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

Similarly, Leonardo DiCaprio said, “Every next level of your life will require a different you.”

You can make this change.

You can give up what you have for what you want.

Create A List Of Everything You Want In Exchange For What You Must Give-Up

There are two main types of motivation: push and pull.

Push motivation is a behavior that an individual forces themselves to complete in order to satisfy a need or achieve a goal.Pull motivation is a behavior that an individual feels drawn towards.

Push motivation is rough. It’s exhausting, depleting, and requires constant willpower, which quickly burns-out.

Pull motivation is much more powerful. It draws you forward, and actually gives you more energy while you’re doing it.

If you want to make permanent change, you can’t do it by pushing. Instead, you need to be pulled. Dr. David Hawkins said there is a potent difference between “power” and “force.” Forcing things to happen complicates and ultimately breaks them down. Power, on the other hand, comes from doing what you know you should. Come what may. In order to have power, you must have courage. You must do what is right and for the right reasons. You must draw upon powers beyond your own.

I recently pulled out my journal and began thinking of the recurring thoughts that have been running through my head.

As someone who constantly seeks change, luckily, many of my thoughts are not recurring.

I’m constantly meeting new people, working on new projects, reading new books, and engaging in new environments.

I seek heavily to create new and transformational experiences constantly.

However, there are still a few recurring thoughts I have yet to address. There are things I know are holding me back from the life I truly want.

So I made a list of EVERYTHING I wanted in my life.

EVERYTHING I could think of.

It was a huge list.

I wrote about my family and the welfare, health, and success of my children. My wife and I recently adopted three kids who we fought for in court for three years.

Now my wife is pregnant with twins! It’s crazy.

I wrote about how I wanted my kids to be happy, healthy, and successful.

I wrote about all of my financial dreams. And my career dreams. And my health dreams. I wrote about the person I wanted to become and the life I wanted to live. I wrote about all the people I wanted to help.

By the end of all of this, I had a huge list.

I loved looking at that list.

Then I thought about the recurring thoughts and patterns.

“Am I willing to give-up what I’ve got in order to have something better?” I asked myself.

Yes.

Yes, I am.

Are 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!

To Have What You Want, You Must Give-Up What’s Holding You Back was originally published in The Mission on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This iPhone Feature Can Radically Improve Your Life And Relationships

IPhone“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” — Dr. Wayne Dyer

Recently, I read a book about a man named Matthew Cowley, who was an incredible missionary and humanitarian to the people in New Zealand over 100 years ago.

The book detailed the man’s life and one thing really stood-out to me. Throughout Cowley’s life, he was regarded by thousands of people to be a truly good friend.

This subject spoke to me because “friendship” is becoming an increasingly complex and confusing topic.

What does it mean to be a good friend?

What does being a good friend look like in a world of constant connection?

Cowley lived long before the internet. But he did a few things that are extremely relevant that I think all of us could do today. Moreover, with new technologies, we can actually make our friendships even more intimate than ever.

The two things Cowley did well were:

Remember people’s names, important aspects of them, and even birthdaysHe would often write heartfelt and humorous letters to people throughout the years

In this article, I’m going to briefly share how to radically enhance your memory, since remembering key details is essential to becoming a good friend.

I’m also going to explain why the iPhone audio-text message feature is potentially one of the most powerful tools for developing deep and meaningful friendships. When you become a good friend, you will change people’s lives. You’ll pull people out of slumps you didn’t even know they were in. You’ll be an answer to their prayers. You’ll give them strength in times of need. You’ll cheer them up and allow them to appreciate the small things in life. You’ll trigger memories they’ve long since forgotten.

By the end of this article, you will understand:

How to improve your memoryHow to become an incredible friendHow to take the most from your experiences in lifeHow to positively transform yourself and also transform othersHow motivation works (and how to have limitless motivation)How identity is formed, and how to reshape your identity and become the best version of yourselfHow to connect deeply with anyoneA Quick Primer On Enhancing Your Memory (Which Is Required For Be A Good Friend)

“When you train your creativity, you automatically train your memory. When you train your memory, you automatically train your creative thinking skills!” — Tony Buzan

I’ve recently written a post about how to enhance your memory. Without question, most people fail to utilize their long-term memory. There is no limit to the storage of memories we can have. Our subconscious has an infinite bandwidth.

Most people’s problem is that they lack powerful strategies for enhancing memory. Here’s a simple breakdown:

Memory is all about imaginationThe more imaginative you are when formulating a memory, the stronger that memory isMemory is about connecting what you already know with what you are trying to knowWhen it comes to remembering a name, you want to link that person’s name with another feature of that person, and connect it to something meaningful to you

I recently met a person named Jacob, which was easy because I have a brother named Jacob. I tried to be mindful about how this new Jacob may remind me of my brother — even if in a seemingly ridiculous way. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the connection is. In fact, the more imaginative the better. And the more connections you make, the deeper the memory will be forged.

Put simply, you can remember nearly every person’s name you meet if you actually give attention and care. Ask a few questions about the person when you meet them and while you’re actively listening, make imaginative connections that trigger a deep memory.

I’m confident I won’t forget that kid, Jacob’s name. I know that my memory is infinite and powerful. I know that your memory is infinite and powerful.

In order to be a good friend, you need to remember people. Firstly, you need to remember their name, but you also need to remember key details about them. Once you get good at memory, you can remember lots and lots of details in a short amount of time.

Which brings me to writing letters. And really, which brings me to the iPhone. This is an article about an iPhone feature after all.

Audio-Texting Is The New Hand-Written Letter For Good Friends

Hand-written letters are indeed important. In a world of digital and surface-level communication, it is very powerful to involve some personal touch.

However, I recently became aware of the audio-text message feature on my iPhone. And after reading about Matthew Cowley, I decided to start sending “audio letters” to my friends and family.

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While writing in my journal one night, several people started popping into my head. When someone would pop into my mind, I’d pull out my phone and send them an audio-text message.

Sometimes, the people who came to my mind were old friends from high school I hadn’t talked to in years. I reached out to mentors. I reached out to a cousin I hadn’t talked to in a long-time, which relationship has become quite strained over the years.

In my audio texts, I expressed genuine love and appreciation. I thanked them for specific experiences we had had together, and told them how meaningful those experiences were to me. I brought humor and fun into the messages when it made sense.

The replies I got to these audio messages were unexpected and sometimes unbelievable.

More than once, I had someone reach back and told me they were in tears. I had one person tell me I had “followed the spirit” and that I reached out at just the right time and said exactly what he needed to hear. Crazy, right?

I rekindled old ties that had long since faded away.

There’s a lot of really cool science behind what I’m currently describing. I’ll start with gratitude:

The Science Of GratitudeGratitude has clearly been found to change people. When you express gratitude to people, it changes how you view and regard them.

You actually see and treat people differently after you’ve expressed gratitude to them. This fits with two really great quotes that I love:

Dr. Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.”Also, the famous philosopher Goethe said, “The way you see [someone] is the way you treat them and the way you treat them is [who] they [will] become.”

Thus, when you see someone or something differently, you treat that thing or person differently. When you treat them differently, they change.

But not only do they change, you change. Which brings me to how motivation and identity work:

The Science Of IdentityThere’s a concept in psychology known as “self-signaling,” which basically means that you judge and evaluate yourself based on your behavior.

When you act kind, you perceive yourself to be kind. When you wake up early and start your day right, you see yourself as someone who is motivated. Put simply, your behavior shapes your identity. Your behavior also shapes your beliefs.

When you change your identity, your personality begins transforming as well. According to Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his powerful book, Psycho-Cybernetics, “The ‘’self-image’’ is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.”

How do you change the identity? You change the behavior. Then, as your behavior changes, your identity changes. Desire comes first, then decision, then action, then identity, then personality. Once your personality changes, you own it. It’s now a part of you.

So how do you become a good friend?

You start acting like a good friend. And a very simple and powerful way to do this is by sending audio-texts to your friends and to anybody really. You could send texts to seriously anyone whose phone number you have and express appreciation. The more specific the appreciation, the more memorable. The more you connect that appreciation to relevant things, the more memorable it will be to the other person. Thus, not only can you rekindle friendships, you can create new ones.

This will of course change the people you are talking to (especially if they really need some love). It will also transform the relationship. And indeed, it will transform you.

Your behavior will change how you see yourself. When you start acting like a better friend, you’ll see yourself as more friendly. Your gratitude will change you. It will increase your self-esteem.

But not only that, your behavior will increase your motivation. Which brings me to another strand of science.

The Science Of MotivationYour behavior shapes your motivation, not the other way around. As Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner has said, “You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling, than feeling yourself into action.”

Here’s what most people have wrong about motivation. They believe motivation leads to action. This is the opposite of truth. Action creates motivation. As famous entrepreneurial coach, Dan Sullivan has said, “Good things only happen when you are in motion.”

Thus, when you start sending greater love to your friends, you’ll feel even more motivated to be a better friend and person. Similar to motivation is inspiration. How do you get inspired? You act. You wake up early and start exercising, even if initially you don’t want to.

How you feel in the moment doesn’t really matter. What does matter are the feelings you’ll have as a result. Again, your behavior shapes your identity, beliefs, and motivation.

You can make doing the right thing become automatic once you become accustomed to the results that come by doing the right thing. As you act powerfully, you’ll develop confidence. When dispels yet another myth people have about success.

It’s not confidence that creates success — it’s successful behavior that creates confidence. So, when you do what you tell yourself you’re going to do and start getting small wins, you’ll develop more confidence.

Here’s a powerful principle to live by: Do what is right let the consequence follow.

This is how confidence forms.

And why do amazing things, like wake up early, exercise, practice personal development, and become a better friend?

Because you deserve it. And because you love yourself. You are worth investing in.

You are worth waking up early for.

You’re worth becoming a successful person.

You’re worth becoming incredibly happy and healthy.

You’re worth living a life your proud of.

You should make powerful decisions because you love yourself. That’s why I wake up at 5AM, because I love myself. I’m worth having a good day. I’m worth being motivated, inspired and powerful.

So are you.

And you demonstrate that self-worth through powerful choices. You can make those choices today. In fact, you must start making them now. As Meredith Willson said, “You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.”

The Secret To Developing Powerful Connections With Anyone

“Life gives to the giver and takes from the taker.” — Joe Polish

Joe Polish is one of the most connected people in business. He has a strategy for enhancing connections. He calls it his “Magic Rapport Formula.” The principles of his formula are:

Focus on how you will help others reduce their sufferingInvest time, money, and energy on relationshipsBe the type of person they would always answer the phone forBe useful, grateful, and valuableTreat others how you would love to be treatedAvoid formalities, be fun and memorable, not boringAppreciate peopleGive value on the spotGet as close to in-person as you can

So many of these principles are life-changing. If you apply these concepts, you will become an incredible friend. You’ll build a world-class network. You’ll become extremely successful in life and business. To quote Zig Ziglar, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

Here’s why iPhone audio-texting is so powerful. It allows you to be “as close to in-person” as you can. Of course, you can send a video text if you’d like. However, audio is powerful because a person can listen to your words, in your voice, and be able to reflect. Sometimes a video can look a little strange (not that you shouldn’t do it).

How To Be Continually Transformed By Life

Continual learning is essential for lifetime growth. You can have a great deal of experience and be no smarter for all the things you’ve done, seen, and heard. Experience alone is no guarantee of lifetime growth. But if you regularly transform your experiences into new lessons, you will make each day of your life a source of growth. The smartest people are those who can transform even the smallest events or situations into breakthroughs in thinking and action. Look at all of life as a school and every experience as a lesson, and your learning will always be greater than your experience.” — Dan Sullivan and Catherine Nomura

There is a key concept in psychology known as “openness to experience.” In fact, it is one of the “BIG 5” factors of personality. Sadly, as most people age, they become increasingly less open to having new experiences. Most people progressively stop seeking friendships with new types of people and avoid taking on new challenges and risks. They stop seeking new information that conflicts with their current perspectives and way of life. Hence, it is common for people to becoming increasingly “set in their ways” as they age.

Experiences can and should change you. Yet, many people go through life experiences completely shut-off to what their experiences could teach them.

If you learn from the experiences life is giving you, you will change. You’ll be able to produce better outcomes. You’ll be able to stop doing the things that are keeping you in unhealthy patterns. Your personality will change, and it should. Personality is largely based on memory, which should be continuously changing and expanding with new connections and associations.

I recently had a conversation with a friend who had a very transformational experience serving a 2-year humanitarian and service mission for his church. A self-proclaimed introvert, he said that every day of his mission was hard because he had to be an extrovert during those 2 years. Once he got home, he went right back to being an introvert.

He said that he actually believed he could have made permanent changes in his personality based on his experiences. However, he said that he preferred being an introvert. As such, he didn’t really want to let his experiences sink-in. He didn’t want to change who he was. There’s too much “unknown” in that. And as research shows, the fear of the unknown is the foundation of all fears.

“Why go against my preference?” he asked me.

“I guess you don’t need to if you’re FULLY satisfied with the results you’re currently getting and the trajectory you’re on,” I replied.

Without question, a person can upgrade their preferences. They can learn to love something they didn’t love before which actually builds on core strengths.

Identity is like memory — it’s infinite. You don’t have to be just an introvert OR an extrovert. You can be a completely well-rounded person who absorbs and allows all of life experiences to transform and expand them. There’s no need to put yourself into such a limiting box as a personality type.

So how do you become more open to new experiences?

Firstly, you need to be humble, which means that you are open to the fact that your current way of seeing and doing things isn’t the best way to do them. In other words, you need to be open to the fact that your current preferences aren’t optimal, and can and should be upgraded.

The term “humility” comes from the Latin word humilitas, a noun related to the adjective humilis, which may be translated as “humble”, but also as “grounded”, or “from the earth.”

Humility and humidity are linguistically very connected, and for good reason.

The word humidity is all about moisture and wetness. Humility, represents the soil. If the soil is humble, it absorbs the humidity. If the soil is not humble but hard, then it doesn’t absorb the humidity.

Humble soil accepts the nutrients that humidity brings it.

Similarly, humble people absorb new information and new experiences. They are changed by their experiences. They don’t close themselves off to them. They don’t revert back to old ways after life-changing experiences. Their learning becomes permanent and a part of them. Not temporary and forgotten.

Are you humble?

Do you absorb all that life is giving you?

Or, like most people, are you closed-off to new experiences?

Does your learning become permanent, or is most of it forgotten and lost?

Do you believe your preferences are the best approach? Or, are you willing to expand your vision for yourself and what you can be?

Are you stuck in a personality type? Or do you realize that you as a person are infinite?

Memory is infinite. So is a person’s potential to change, if they’re humble and open. If they begin behaving in powerful ways, their whole life will change.

The Power Of Prayer And Journal Writing

“I have so much to do today that I’m going to need to spend three hours in prayer in order to be able to get it all done.” — Martin Luther

One of the most powerful ways to get insights is by writing in your journal. If you’re uncomfortable with the notion of prayer, you can obviously meditate instead.

Meditation is without question, a very powerful tool.

Meditation allows you to transform curiosity and action into reflection, which then can lead to better outcomes.

However, as for myself, prayer takes meditation to a whole new level. If you believe in a higher power or “source,” then what could possibly be more powerful than proactively seeking connection with that source?

Most of my best insights come while writing in my journal after I’ve specifically prayed to get inspiration during my journaling session. This is a skill I’ve developed over a decade and it’s taught me how to receive continuous inspiration, clarity, and direction in my life.

I’ve learned how to journal in a stream-of-consciousness manner, wherein many unexpected ideas come to my mind while I’m writing.

While writing, people often come to my mind. After having read about Matthew Cowley, and seeking to become a better friend myself, I now send audio text messages to the people who come to my mind. I’m grateful for incredible technologies that allow me to develop deeper connections with friends and family.

When someone pops into my mind, I step away from my journal for 1–2 minutes, send a powerful and genuine audio-text, and then continue on with my journaling.

As I’ve done this:

It’s changed my relationshipsIt’s changed the people who have received my inspired messagesIt’s changed me — allowing me to become a better friendIt’s changed how I view myselfIt’s inspired me in so many other ways

Your life can change when you start making your life more about other people. As Dan Sullivan has said, “In the end, we are only whom we have empowered.”

Here’s the thing, when your life becomes about other people, that doesn’t mean it’s not also about your goals. Instead, your goals just have a higher purpose. You show up differently to help more people, and also to be a better example to your loved ones.

You can absolutely balance a life of achievement and contribution. You can be wildly successful while at the same time being a good friend.

Conclusion

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Sending audio-text messages over the past few weeks has changed my life. It’s changed my relationships. And I believe my small notes have also had a very positive impact on the people I’ve sent them to.

Here are some questions for you to consider as you meditate and reflect upon this article:

Are you humble?Do you absorb the experiences life is giving you?Are you open to new experiences?Are you continually learning new and better ways to live?Are you putting those into practice?Are you a good friend?Do you want to be a good friend?Do you want to have deeper relationships?Do you want to be more motivated and inspired?Do you want to become a better version of yourself?

Hopefully this article has provided some insight into how you can begin answering these questions for yourself.

Also, hopefully this article has inspired you to use your iPhone in a new way :)

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This iPhone Feature Can Radically Improve Your Life And Relationships was originally published in Thrive Global on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.