Even though society paints a certain picture of what it looks like to be successful - to be wealthy, have influence, and get the things you want in life - you’ve probably heard that there’s no one definition of success. In order for us to be successful we each need to know what success looks like for ourselves, and measure ourselves up against that.

Easier said than done, especially with all the conditioning you’ve experienced over the course of your lifetime, but it becomes more doable when you realize the part of it we all share and make unique to ourselves. This is where I want to bring in the most successful basketball coach in history, John Wooden, and his definition of success because it’s the best I’ve heard:

"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”

First, “Success is peace of mind”. It’s not something that you achieve externally, it’s a way that you relate with your life internally. When you have peace of mind it means that you have no regrets, that you can accept the results with a state of contentment. 

How do you arrive at that peace of mind? That’s the rest of the definition - “Knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” When you fully apply yourself, and give yourself credit for doing the best with what you have to work with, then you tap into this ultimate contentment. 

Even with this fair and achievable definition of success, many people are falling short of meeting it. Many people recognize that they haven’t done their best, and a lack of discipline, or motivation, or execution is getting in the way. Perfect! Today’s another opportunity to make new choices that get you closer to the fulfilled, inspired, successful path that you know you’re capable of.

If that’s you, then click here to fast-track your self-improvement!

Michael Jordan, who’s known to be one of the most competitive people to have ever played sports, has his own ways of cultivating personal high-performance. Being self-aware of what he responds well to, he uses games and competitions to pull him to be at his best. Because of that, he’s known for playing games within games.

For example, he’s on the basketball court playing against the Utah Jazz. The game is obvious, two teams, 4 quarters, the team who scores more points wins. But with 2 minutes left in the 3rd quarter, Jordan would make up a side game - To extend the lead from 4 points to 10 points. And he’d take over to win that mini-game, which of course puts him in a better position to win the real game.

There are a few things just about everyone responds positively to, among those are urgency and a clearly defined task. That’s the environment playing a game creates. Long-term high-performance is made up of many moments of high-performance done consistently. A way to get yourself to step up in the short-term, so that you can stack instances of high-performance, is by creating short-term games that demand more of you.

Here’s my favorite way of doing that. I find fulfillment and joy in holding myself to a high standard so that I can live an extraordinary life and make an extraordinary impact. To achieve that, I need to show up at my best every day. So I play a game called the Win The Day Game. The criteria for winning involves meeting outlined expectations for myself in my exercise, diet, sleep, work output, time on social media, and other things. Each one of those focus areas is its own game within the game. I’m committed to winning each, and motivated to make good choices in each so that I don’t ‘lose the day’.  It’s by creating a game like this that I stay consistent in doing the fundamentals that support my health and career goals.

It’s easy to do and it really works. Play a game to not press the Snooze button in the morning, and to not check social media until after your workout is done. This will help you to make the most of your mornings. Or a game to see how many days in a row you can hit your #1 goal for the day.

There are mechanics we can use to support us in being the best version of ourselves. These mechanics aren’t crutches, or only needed for people who don’t have discipline, they’re the environmental design pieces that help high-performers achieve at the level they do. And if you incorporate them, you will too!

One of the things that has most improved my diet is simply practicing mindful eating. Mindfulness is having an awareness for what you’re doing and what’s happening around you. This means that mindful eating is an awareness for the details of how much you’re eating, what you’re snacking on, and how healthy the choices you’re making are.

Practicing mindful eating has transformed my health. I used to snack a lot during the day, causing me to feel more bloated and sluggish than I needed to. So I cultivated an awareness about it and now have great control of my snacking.

Even this past Friday I was out at a party and there were bar bites on the table. A past version of me would have kept taking mindless bite after mindless bite, enjoying them socially, only to realize how much I ate when I got home with a stomach ache. But because of the work I’ve done in this area of my life, I was able to be more thoughtful about my choices and try just one bite.

The primary purpose of eating food is to provide our body with the nutrients it needs to function. But many of us have a more complicated relationship with it. That’s why one of the most powerful questions to ask yourself, offered by author and researcher Michael Easter, is “Why are you eating?” 

He says that “80 percent of eating is driven by reasons other than physiological hunger.” Among these reasons are to emotionally soothe stress or sadness, alleviate boredom, acting from a belief system that it’s bad to waste, and to socially enjoy. But often when we eat for these reasons, we disagree with our choice and wish we would have made a better one.

This is exactly what I’ve had to work through myself. Everyday in my personal performance tracking system, I reflect on my eating - The level of overall nutrition of my meals, amount of snacking, and portion control. I have a standard for myself that I need to answer to which holds me accountable. Reflecting on your eating daily is what I call a Super Habit, and if you want to incorporate it in your life to radically improve your diet, among other life-changing Super Habits, then check this out!

You might be, or might know someone, who suffers from all or nothing thinking. They’re the type of person that makes a commitment and dives fully into the deep end. They commit to being healthier and set a goal to workout 5 days a week after missing months in the gym. They have an idea to start a new project and register it as a business and open a bank account, even before having basic conversations to really assess the market. 

Big, bold, fast action is a hallmark characteristic of high-performers. It’s critical to be able to step powerfully into an idea and turn it into action. But this mentality often comes at the cost of taking things on at a level that is unsustainable, leading to burnout or a fast regression when things become overwhelming or they aren’t getting results fast enough.

That’s why I want to propose an alternative called ‘Small Or Nothing Thinking’. It’s the best of both worlds - You’re still taking fast and immediate action when inspiration strikes, but now you’re doing it in a way that is manageable. ‘Small Or Nothing Thinking’ gets you focusing your efforts on things that help you make progress on your goals, but the demand is not so dramatic that it feels overwhelming.

I love the play on words because it outlines the polarity. Either you do it small, or you do nothing. That’s because an ‘All Or Nothing’ approach has two paths that most often lead to nothing. The first path is taking big action that flames out and doesn’t last, and the second path is that you never reach the threshold to take action and end up doing nothing about it. 

Here’s an example in my life of how this mindset has served me. I’m making some big requests and hustling in certain ways in my career right now, and fired up about it. There are some major partners I’m looking to lock down and collaborate with. I could have set a goal to reach out to one every day, which would be a 30 minute commitment… But that’s something that would likely flame out and lead to me no longer reaching out at all. Instead I have a cadence of reaching out to just one of those partners a week! Much more doable and designed for consistency.

Think about the goals and ambitions you have in your life, what efforts you’ve made to achieve them, and ways that oversubscribing in the past might not have been helpful. And instead, arrive at the smaller and slower pace that you can actually maintain for it, and commit to trying that.

A few months ago, my wife Irene got us new electric toothbrushes. Both of us had been using normal brushes for a while. Any time you do something new there’s a learning curve - in this case getting used to the tickle on your gums, figuring out your favorite setting, and perfecting your new form. It didn’t take long.

But one night, something odd happened. I caught myself brushing my teeth with my old toothbrush and for whatever reason I found that fascinating. Nothing happens on accident, there’s an explanation for everything but often you don’t have the awareness to know it. 

So I challenged myself to explore it. What issue might I have with my new toothbrush? Did I find the sound annoying? No, it’s not that…

I have some sensitivity on the top of my molars sometimes, was I unconsciously avoiding the electric toothbrush to avoid pain? No, the sensitivity isn’t any more significant with the electric toothbrush than the old one…  

And then it hit me. There’s one, hardwired, inescapable belief that is deeply embedded in humanity, and it was the reason that I chose to use my old toothbrush instead of my new one.

Familiarity. We are designed to do what is familiar and resist what is not. It’s a defense mechanism to keep us alive. Something that is less familiar is less predictable and therefore could pose a threat to our safety and survival. It’s this underlying belief that unconsciously led to me going back to using my old toothbrush.

Living with more consciousness is a process of treating everything like this. With curiosity you understand the engine that’s working behind the scenes to produce certain results in your life. Your belief system is evidenced in environment. 

For example, right now as I prepare this I see a pile of mail stacked in the corner. Why haven’t I gone through it? It’s easy enough to just do it, isn’t it? A deep and honest reflection reveals that I’m uncomfortable doing things I don’t know how to do, and there might be some of that in the mail so I avoid it. And a part of it relates to how I value my time and choose to do things that I reason to be more important, even thought sometimes it’s misinformed and creates a pattern of getting behind on things.

Every moment of life is a moment to understand more about yourself and what drives you to do certain things. It’s with that awareness that you can make new choices and create new results.

Recently I’ve been immersing myself more in the world of Jesse Itzler, If you don’t know who he is, check him out. He’s one of the most resourceful, clever, entrepreneurial figures in modern business. He also has a liking for endurance sports and pushing himself to the max, which is representative of the way that he chooses to live life.

One of the expressions he lives by, that has really struck me, is “Remember tomorrow”.

What he means by that is, when you’re facing a choice, remember that tomorrow you’re going to have to own up to it. Did you choose the path that builds character and contributes to what matters most to you… Or did you give in to short term inconvenience, fear, and laziness?

Jesse uses this philosophy in every area of his life. Does he want to pull over during a road trip and jump into a frozen lake? Or take 3 days to climb the distance of Mount Everest? Today it’s hard and tiring, but tomorrow it makes you proud.

And less extreme, is he going to stay too late scrolling on his phone and snacking on popcorn? No, because when tomorrow comes and he doesn’t have the same level of energy and enthusiasm, he’ll wish he would have made a different choice.

That’s the spirit of “remember tomorrow” - it holds you accountable to what you choose to do today.

And that’s the beautiful part about it. In reflection, when the emotions and inconveniences of the present moment have gone, that’s when you can be really honest with yourself. That’s when you can see your choices without bias, and think about if that’s what you really want.

The actions you take create the realities you experience. Creating more personal accountability goes a long way in shaping your future how you want it to be.

But don’t be mistaken, it’s not like Jesse is superhuman. He’s not fearless, but he can get himself to act despite fear. It’s not like he never feels like being lazy, he’s just intentional about what that looks like and doesn't let it slow him down. He has the habit of being discipline and doing what most serves him and the life he feels most proud to lead. 

His example in inspiring, but it’s also achievable. We each have within us the same opportunity to live and extraordinary life and make an extraordinary impact.

A great quality to have in life is an ability to be flexible. While it is generally healthy to be physically flexible, what I’m talking about is to be flexible within your day. High performers are really good at making the most of whatever they’ve got to work with. They find a way to win within unfamiliar, uncertain, and unpredicted circumstances.

Ultimately, flexibility is the perfect combination of structure and freedom. If things are too structured, then either it’s resistant to variation or breaks under stress. If things are too free, then they don’t take shape in such a way that can hold anything significant. Flexibility maintains the best of both - it’s not too rigid and not too loose.

One of the hallmark characteristics of flexibility is that it has a baseline structure to it. When under normal, non-straining conditions, it rests in a comfortable state. When it is under strain, it temporarily compromises its shape to accommodate the demand but then returns it’s preferred state when normal conditions are reestablished.

That’s exactly what happens when you have flexibility in a day. You have your schedule that you follow with discipline, but then as things come up you can effectively move things around to prioritize what’s urgent without deprioritizing other major commitments. Flexibility in your spending finds that perfect contrast between having sound principles and making reasonable exceptions to the rules when the setting calls for it. Flexibility in your diet helps you to find the healthy option when eating out with friends without being overbearing about your dietary restrictions.

Maximizing your flexibility requires two things: That you implement solid structure in your life to create meaningful restriction, and that you keep an open-mind so that you’re not attached to things being exactly a certain way, and you can creatively navigate what life throws at you.

And over time, as you get feedback, understand your tolerance, and become clearer on what you want, your flexibility forms into the amount that is right for you.

One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it goes “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” After all, actions speak louder than words.

But I don’t think that tells the full story. I’m someone who cares a lot about intentions. There’s a full context behind what you do that says a lot about you. That’s why perhaps the greatest testament of character is the way you act, and not the things that you do.

The way you act is the way you show up on a moment to moment basis. It’s the energy that you bring to what you do. While it’s largely imperceptible to others, doing somethin for one reason has a different meaning than if you do it for another. And sometimes you’re the only one that knows the difference.

This mirrors a stoic concept called ‘arete’, which loosely translates to ‘being the best version of yourself moment to moment’. Arete is about living a virtuous life that you’re proud to lead, with integrity and authenticity.  The things you do are a byproduct of what really matters, which is the way you act.

When you encounter a challenge or setback, you step up courageously to the task. When you have a disagreement with someone else, you reject being defensive and take the position of being patient as you seek to understand. When someone makes a mistake that negatively affects you, you respond with encouragement and calmness. Life’s adversities put your character to the test, and It’s how you show up to these events that puts your true self on display.

Speaking from personal experience, I’m certainly not perfect. Every day I experience moments where I could have done better, lost control, or wasn’t as thoughtful as I could have been. And often this leads to choices and actions that aren’t optimal. But equally, every day I reinforce my commitment to acting as the best, most virtuous version of myself.

Yes, observe what someone does because it’s often a reflection of their motivations and intentions. Believe what someone does more than what they say. But also, consider the engine behind what they do as you decide what to think about it. Public speaking might be scary to one person and commonplace to the next, so it’s impossible to judge the action itself. It’s the virtues the person embodies in taking the action that represents a fuller version of the truth.

In our pursuit to become the best versions of ourselves, and be an inspiring example for others, there are two different sources of transformation: Inside out and outside in.

First, inside out - This is when you energize your own positive change. You take the initiative to read a new book, listen to a podcast, and implement an idea into your life. We can only make choices from our current level of awareness, and by investing in acquiring more wisdom you can elevate your awareness and improve the way you navigate the world. The inside out direction of growth represents how your own internal shifts change the shape of your external world.

Outside in growth is the opposite and in my opinion, way more powerful. This is the influence that your environment has on you. It’s how your habits and lifestyle resembles the 5 people you spend the most time with (without you even intending to do so). Your walking pace speeds up and slows down based on who you’re walking with. Humans have survived many years because we are adaptable, but this also means that we are susceptible to external forces. It’s the design of the environment around us that plays a large role in determining what happens.

That’s why the fastest way to improve your life is to plant yourself in a community of people who are taking action at the level you want to. They have the health habits, business success, and thriving personal life you aspire to. They enjoy the world through a lens of gratitude, possibility, and curiosity like you hope to. Their influence disrupts your current pattern and holds you to a new and higher standard.

Or, perhaps your current community is having a negative influence on you. Perhaps your health, business, and relationships are held back by their underachieving standards. Their norms create resistance to any improvements you want to make to your life, forcing you to put a lot of effort in to make an inch of progress.

My encouragement to you today is to capitalize on these two sources of growth - What idea can you implement to change your life inside out, and what adjustments to your environment can you make to change your life from the outside in?