I wanted to feature an important life lesson from Albert Einstein where he subtly reframes the foundation that our society is built around.

Something that so many of us value, that we see as the ultimate end goal of everything we do, is to be successful. The tricky thing is, success is different for every person. 

We all have different interests, preferences, and values that are leading us to our own version of living our best lives! But the problem is all of this individuality gets tossed into the same bucket that is labeled as “being successful”. As a result we conform to society’s convention of what success is at the expense of pursuing our own, and wonder why we’re not happy when we get there.

This is what Einstein comments on -"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."

No matter what form it takes, value is the true underlying driver of success.

The business who provides the most value for their clients usually wins in the marketplace by having the most revenue.

Having deep and meaningful relationships are built on the value that you offer one another.

Getting in the best shape of your life helps you feel more confident, which allows you to show up more authentically and deliver the value that only you have to offer.

But as you’d expect, Albert Einstein chose his words closely. "Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." The focus isn’t on what happens as a result, the emphasis is placed on the pursuit, the process. His hypothesis is that we choose to use the lens of being of value to orient our strategies and actions.

The ironic part is, the people who have this value-facing orientation tend to be rewarded the most too.

So how can we be more of value? Let’s use a few other words to make it more concrete.

Helpful. Find ways to be more helpful, and how you can help people overcome the problems they’re facing.

Useful. Be more useful so that the skills that you do have can be applied and contribute to something.

Thoughtful. Being thoughtful about what people might need or want brings to awareness ways to be proactive.

And while I don’t have enough life behind me to state as fact, I am very confident in saying that to the extent that you choose to be of value, you will experience a congruent amount of feelings of success.

If you know me, you know this is what I’m all about. Together we can live an extraordinary life and make an extraordinary impact. And in my opinion, the path to both of those is by being of service and adding value.

If you’ve ever struggled through life more than you would’ve liked, or feel like life has beat you down more times than you’d like to admit, perhaps this perspective shift will inspire you to push forward.

What if life isn’t meant to be easy? As much as our evolutionary nature prefers comfort, what if all of life’s challenges were serving us in maximizing our human experience?

This idea is featured as the second tenet of Brian Johnson and Heroic’s philosophy about antifragility. Essentially, rather than being fragile and susceptible to breaking, or resilient and more resistant to breaking, when something is antifragile it becomes strengthened with strain. Being antifragile means that the only way we become our strongest is by experiencing challenges, and that hardship is an ingredient to becoming all that we can be.

So the perspective shift is - Rather than being avoidant of the hard things that have come and are coming our way, instead we can use them as the fuel that catalyzes us in accessing our greatest potential.

Alex Hormozi says it in a more relatable way. He says “the bigger the dragon, the bigger the hero”. This suggests that our greatness is quantified by the size of the challenge we overcome. A person who overcomes minor hardship is nowhere near as impressive as the person who hit rock bottom and beat all odds to achieve the remarkable.

There’s even a thread of this in Buddhism. A foundational phrase of Buddhism is “life is suffering”, and while the real essence of this thought is more complicated than a 3-word expression, it suggests that it is human nature to experience constant dissatisfaction and discomfort.

If life is hard, good! It’s supposed to be. That doesn’t mean that you’re doing anything wrong… It just means that you’re alive. And if the difficulty of life is something that is outside of your control, then it’s on you to accept that condition and make the most of it however you can.

How? It starts with this perspective. It’s supposed to be challenging. Now step up to the challenge and give it all you’ve got!

One of the expressions many of us learned in class growing up is to “not be a know-it-all”.

A ‘know-it-all’ is someone who has an answer to every question and a comment on every topic. While it’s hard to articulate, there’s a clear difference between being smart and contributing to conversation, and being smart for the sake of sounding smart. ‘Know-it-alls’ are the latter.

A ‘know-it-all’ brings a certain energy to every conversation they’re in. It’s an energy of entitlement and superiority that makes other people feel diminished. The reason I know this is because I am a recovering ‘know-it-all’ myself, and having personal experience with it I know the real forces that drive the behavior.

Being a ‘know-it-all’ is truly an expression of the ego. The ego desperately wants to feel unique, different, and special. It wants to reinforce our sense of worth and value. That’s why I found myself inappropriately inserting my knowledge, and being overly occupied with coming off as smart, as a way of protecting myself from my insecurities.

Interestingly, one of my pet peeves is when people make something about them that is clearly not. I believe that’s because I am projecting from all of the times when I’ve been so focused on coming off as smart rather than really being present in conversation and serving the moment. 

Having said that, it’s still critical that we are abundant with our knowledge and share relevant insights that can be helpful...

So where’s the line? 

It’s all about the intention for sharing. When you contribute something for the purposes of adding value, then it’s authentic. When that’s the case, what naturally happens is we share things that are appropriate for the context. But when a bit of information doesn’t seem to fit the needs of the circumstances, or seems to be motivated by other reasons, that’s why it gets flagged as misguided.  

To have a clear way to know and practice the difference, let me remind you of Steven Covey’s 5th Habit of Highly Effective People - Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Don’t participate in a conversation simply to have something to say back. Come from a place of service, contributing what feels right and is done for the right reasons.

The one thing that leads to more disagreement than anything else, or when considered leads to more alignment than anything else, is context.

Stated simply, the context is all of the information that relates to an event. It’s an estimate on the likelihood of different results, an understanding of benefits and consequences, and the perception that causes us to draw to certain conclusions.

When people share context with each other it leads to more agreement. When people seek more context for themselves they make better decisions. 

Let me share two examples of how important context is:

Bob needs directions to drive to Washington DC so he calls a friend who goes to DC all the time, and he gets confident instructions to take the 95 Freeway North. After a few hours of driving he ends up in Canada. Bob calls his friend back angry about the poor directions. It turns out you can’t miss DC on 95 North coming from Richmond Virginia, but Bob was driving from Philadelphia. The instructions were technically right, the missing context was where Bob was starting his trip from.

Now take this excerpt from Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” - “A cold January day, a forty-three-year-old man was sworn in as the chief executive of his country. By his side stood his predecessor, a famous general who, fifteen years earlier, had commanded his nation’s armed forces in a war that resulted in the defeat of Germany. The young leader was raised in the Roman Catholic faith. You know who I’m describing, right?” 

Most people would assume American President John F Kennedy, but the same set of facts are true for Adolf Hitler. Certain details were omitted, leading to incomplete context and therefore a very incorrect conclusion.

The problem with context is we don’t know what we don’t know. It’s hard to seek out answers to questions you don’t know to ask. That’s why, if you’re serious about making sure that you are more aware of the context in your life, it’s important to have these two things.

First is a performance tracking tool that helps you to see the unbiased, unfiltered truth of your performance rather than the rational story you tell yourself about it. One of the best ways to bring consciousness to what happens unconsciously is getting in the routine of reflection.

Second is a coach. Someone who can see what you don’t from the outside looking in. You know why? Because they don’t have the same context as you do and therefore they can see the same situation differently than you do (and with more objectivity because they’re less emotionally invested in it). “You can’t see the forest for the trees”. A coach tells you what’s in the blindspots of your life, which allows you to make decisions with more context than you’d otherwise have.

if you’ll have me, consider me your coach! My mission is to help you be at your very best.

I don’t usually make this about me but I wanted to let you into my world a little bit. Today is one of the best days of my life and I want to share with you why!

First, I'm getting married today! I’ve been engaged to the love of my life Irene for over a year, and we have friends and family coming from all over the country to celebrate with us! It’s going to be one of the most special, magical, memorable, love-filled days we’ve ever experienced and ever will. We have so many little surprises and details planned to make the day unmistakably ours and I can’t wait to enjoy every moment of it. It’s the beginning of the rest of our lives together!

Also today, our wedding day is on the 6 year anniversary of the day that we met! We planned it that way, but every year we celebrate the anniversary of the day we met by recreating the scenes that led to us meeting. Every year it has served as a reminder of the commitment that we’ve made to each other, and how a small change of plans led to me being introduced to my life partner. Obviously after today the day takes on a whole new, larger meaning with the same sentiment, but we don’t want to lose sight of that!

And completely by coincidence, it just so happens that the day I met Irene is the same day I launched my first episode of the podcast, making Self Improvement Daily officially 6 years old. Happy Birthday podcast! If you would’ve told me 6 years ago it would grow to earn more than 20 million downloads, have over 1900 episodes, help me meet my heroes and even become my full-time business, I would’ve thought you were crazy. But life had other plans and I am so grateful for every single person who has made this possible, which includes you!

My intention for today is to be present so that I can really experience the love around me, to be patient with all of the things that pop up so that it doesn’t affect my ability to enjoy everything, and be of service to Irene to make sure that she has the most incredible day of her life too.

Let’s learn from an incredibly inspiring historical figure, Amelia Earheart. To understand where this comes from let’s first be clear on how pioneering she was. Amelia Earheart is best known for being the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, but it’s important to understand the context of the time. 

She did this in the 1930s when women weren’t really allowed to be pilots, and only a decade after women earned the right to vote. This pioneering role is further cemented by her involvement as the first president of the Ninety-Nines, an organization dedicated to advancing female aviation. 

And this is what makes Earhart's words so powerful: “The more one does, the more one can do.”

She’s a classic example of “give me an inch and I’ll take a mile”. I’m sure that when she asked to learn how to be a pilot people laughed at her and told her she couldn’t. But she persevered and became a pilot. Then when she shared the idea to cross the Atlantic I’m sure people told her she was crazy. But she did it anyway. And of course when she became a vocal advocate for women’s opportunity in aviation she faced headwind (pun intended). But it didn’t stop her and she shifted an industry.

“The more one does, the more one can do.”

Our ultimate potential is undefined. It is impossible to ever reach our fullest potential. Self actualization is a process and not an endpoint. And the more that we breakthrough what we used to think was impossible, the more we find ourselves in new spaces to break through. 

So if I can encourage you - If you’re serious about living an extraordinary life and making an extraordinary impact, you’re not going to do it on the sidelines. And you’re certainly not going to arrive anywhere new if you keep doing the same things you’ve been doing.

Having the confidence to dream bigger and see more for yourself requires that you stand on a strong infrastructure. There are universal fundamentals that everyone needs to put themselves in a position to be at their very best. 

If you want to do an audit on where you’re at with them, and learn about the 9 Super Habits that will help you easily reach your next level of daily performance, then this is for you!

I’m going to tell you a story, let me know if this makes sense…

A young boy who takes an interest in nature wants to start a garden. He’s looking forward to the daily care and maintenance. One of the plants he wants to grow is a tomato plant. He digs out a hole in the soil and drops some tomato seeds in. A few months later, after watering it every day, the tomato plant stalk has grown but it’s not growing any tomatoes.

The boy asks his mother - “I’ve been taking care of my tomato plant, watering it every day, but it’s not growing tomatoes, what’s wrong?

She answers “The leaves and branches on the plant are brown, it’ll start producing tomatoes when it’s healthy and green.”

The boy, now understanding the problem, goes to the store, buys some green spray paint, and paints the plant’s leaves and branches green.

In this story it’s obvious to us why that doesn’t work… But where else in our lives are we just “spray painting leaves” rather than addressing the core issue? 

This idea is one of the biggest concerns people have with western medicine and how we’re prescribed pills and treatments to manage symptoms. If we want something to actually change, we need to address the root cause. Related to another plant-inspired metaphor - “You can’t change the fruits without changing the roots.”

If we’re feeling overworked at our job, taking time off temporarily takes the pressure off, but setting better boundaries and expectations with your manager will lead to more sustainable relief. Starting a new exercise routine might work for a while but it will ultimately fail if you don’t redesign your schedule. Telling yourself you’ll be on your phone less is different than setting app restrictions and having accountability.

The easy thing to do is just spray paint the leaves of our life and make things better in the moment. But those of us who desire true, sustainable improvement need to realize that the plant isn’t getting enough water, and we need to change something more significant about our approach.

So the next time you see something that you want to change, ask yourself “What is the easy spray paint solution for this, and what does watering it look like?

Something that underlies everything about our lives is our choices. 

Darren Hardy says “You make your choices and your choices make you.” Robert Bennet says “Our life is the sum result of all the choices you make.” ‘Atomic Habits’ author James Clear says “Success is the product of daily choices.”

Needless to say, our daily choices are something we need to pay attention to.

At the end of the day, what is a choice? It’s a decision that sets a path for action. When you make a choice it influences you to take action in a way that is in alignment with the choice. And this is why choices are the very bedrock of success: Choices lead to actions, and actions lead to results.

But if it’s easy enough for us to just make the right choices to get the results that we want, why don’t we? It's because while this is a very simple framework, it’s not easy. There are many factors that get in the way like biases, belief systems, emotions, needs, and competing commitments that influence our choices.

As I see it, there are two criteria that when addressed, lead to you making good choices: Awareness and discipline.

Starting with awareness - Many of the poor choices we make are done unconsciously. This means that we didn’t have any say in the matter, the choice was made without us even realizing it, and it led to the corresponding actions and results that we would not choose.

We can either change this unconscious influence so that we make better choices when on autopilot (which involves upgrading our identity and belief system) or we can create more awareness in our lives so that we can make a positive conscious choice rather than be at the mercy of whatever comes from our unconscious negative choices.

The second criteria is discipline. Let’s say that we know what choice we want to make but we don’t feel like it. Fries sound tasty compared to a side salad. We’re aware that we want to stop answering emails and get a workout in instead...

This is where other forms of unconscious influence come in to make things difficult. If your physical state of being is tired or malnourished, or your emotional state is dejected, sad, or frustrated, it impacts your conscious reasoning. This is why it’s so easy for us to talk ourselves out of doing something - because it can sound rational. But with discipline and following through on making the right choices for yourself, and taking the corresponding actions, you can overcome the mind’s biases.

To make better choices in your health and work, and start experiencing the incredible lift in daily energy and productivity, you need to improve your awareness and discipline. Fortunately, there are 9 Super Habits that when done consistently can completely transform your lifestyle, focus, and self-confidence in just minutes a day. If you want to learn what they are... This is for you!