A main reason that people choose to invest time in their self improvement is because they want to accelerate their progress. They have goals and ambitions to grow their business, get into a healthy and active lifestyle, to make an impact, and they realize the clock is ticking.

What I’m about to share are 3 steps any person can take to accelerate their progress so that they achieve the level of success they know they’re capable of, and it comes from personal experience.

For many years I believed in my heart I was capable of great things, that I was going to do something amazing in the world, but I didn’t have the results to justify it. Month after month falling short of my goals, it made me doubt that I had what it takes to succeed. And it stayed that way until I learned and implemented these 3 steps, and it completely shifted the trajectory of my life.

Step 1) Incorporate daily behavior tracking.

Plain and simple: “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” Most people aren't doing anything to track their performance and it's the main reason why they're falling short of their goals. It’s the thing keeping them stuck at a plateau. The reason it’s so game-changing is because without the data to know what's working and what's not, improvement is a guessing game.

For something to 'improve' means that it experienced a positive change over time. This requires that you have clear metrics for how things were at the beginning and how they ended up. It’s the direction of progress between those data points that indicates progress, and it’s with that clarity you can guide the direction of your growth.

Step 2) Implement a reliable system of execution

Once you have your tracking in place, now you need to take action in the ways that most influence your results. I bet you already know what you should be doing… You just need to do more of it, do it more consistently, or do it better to get the results you're after.

High-quality, consistent, disciplined follow through comes when you structure your environment to make taking action automatic. Things like an implementation intention, accountability, and systems all help you funnel your time and energy into real action-taking. Saying you're going to take action is usually just an empty promise without an environment backing it up.

Step 3) Optimize your approach with feedback

Back to the original point, feedback is the only thing that actually accelerates progress. It’s the mechanism of incremental improvement because you can take each insight as a clue to the solving the puzzle of being as effective as possible. Without feedback, you don’t change anything about the way you’re taking action and you continue generating the same results.

And good, high-quality feedback requires that you take action and have tracking in place to measure how you did. It's a cycle that leads to optimization: 

Take action → Measure how you did → Make adjustments to your actions + environment → Repeat with a new and improved action.

That is optimization, that’s how you get better results with less effort and in less time, and that’s how you accelerate your progress. But many people don’t know where to start in actually creating meaningful improvement in their life, or are unwilling to do the basic things that generate fast-improvement. I was one of them until I got fed up with disappointing myself and falling short of my goals. 

And that’s when I began my decade long journey of figuring it out for myself. But you can skip that trial and error and implement it all in just three weeks in a step-by-step process I created. It is a self-growth, goal-achieving, best-life accelerator. Check it out here.

Now more than ever, we are tasked to make so many decisions in any given day. Decisions about different things to do, options to select between, what’s worth our attention and what’s a distraction… And it wears us down leading to fatigue, paralysis, and added difficulty to navigating life.

Last week I heard a perspective on this from my good friend, Kate Manser. She’s an unbelievable speaker, author, coach and leader of the You Might Die Tomorrow movement. I co-hosted a live session with her for my coaching community and she shared a powerful principle: “You need to aim for 60-70% certainty when making a decision.”

This makes perfect sense when you go to the extreme of 100% certainty. What would need to happen in order to be 100% certain about something? Life is notoriously unpredictable making 100% certainty basically impossible. But what about 95%, 90%, 85% certainty… What needs to happen to get to that point?

In short, it requires more thought, more research, and more energy, often to the point where it offers diminishing returns. As you’re trying to think your way into higher levels of certainty, you don’t get anywhere near as much out as you put in. And the reason is, all of that extra effort is theoretical. It’s limited by your understanding of how you think things will transpire when you choose different unknown paths. 

That’s why the fastest way to increase certainty is to get practical feedback. To make a decision and observe what actually happens. There’s no way to predict reality like experiencing reality. The insight you can extract from something that tangibly happens is unquestionably more informative than continuing to think more about what might happen.  

Let’s take the example of making a putt in golf, and let’s say you’re 70% certain that it’s going to break 9 inches to the left. On one hand, you can take an extra 5 minutes to evaluate every factor including the wind, the dampness of the green, etc. Or you could just hit the putt once and see what happens.

But in the case of playing a round of golf, you don’t have the luxury of a second try. The first one is the only one that counts. But even so, what often happens beyond seeking 70% certainty is you stop using the most impactful details and get biased by minor details, which could skew your overall understanding of the shot. This creates a higher likelihood that you get a bad result.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink” he talks about the sharpness of our intuition through a process called “thin slicing”, and how we can think our way out of the right decision if we take too many unimportant factors into consideration.

And ultimately, many of us hesitate to make big decisions in our life because we fear that we’re going to make the wrong one.  It’s embarrassing to look back and realize we made a mistake… And as we make decisions on the direction of our businesses, what events to attend, travel plans to book, people to invest more time in, we want to be thoughtful about our choices.

But the truth is, most decisions are reversible. It’s not that you only have one chance to hit a putt, you get many. So the fastest way to know how things work, and to be set up for success, is to make decisions sooner so that you can get practical feedback faster. So don’t put too much pressure on yourself... And give yourself the space for trial and error.

I don’t normally do this, but if you want to watch this hour-long, very powerful session I hosted for my Coaching Community featuring Kate and her take on Decision Making With Urgency And Meaning, particularly through the lens of our own mortality, you can watch it here!

There are some things that we procrastinate on, delay doing, and avoid unlike anything else. The longer we wait, the more anticipation builds making whatever it is feel insurmountable. This is true for things like doing a cold plunge or taking a cold shower, getting around to doing your taxes, or beginning a difficult conversation.

But the truth of it is, we overestimate how much these things are going to hurt, or how frustrating they’re going to be, or how uncomfortable it might make us. Our minds create a perception that what we’re about to do is a bigger deal than it is, and it keeps us stuck in inaction.

In my experience, I’ve found that it’s not as bad once you start. A cold plunge was colder and more painful in your head than it is when you’re actually in it. Taxes are way more confusing when you’re thinking about them rather than in the thick of doing them. A difficult conversation is way more constructive and natural than you expected it to be.

The reason it's not as bad once you start is because there’s a shift in intention. No longer are you negotiating with yourself about if or when you’re going to do the thing, and instead you start investing yourself in how you’re going to do the thing. ‘If’ creates an uncertainty where your mind gets to fill in the blank with a worst case scenario, but ‘how’ means you’re in the experience of it and there’s less up to interpretation.

Metaphorically it’s like hiking up a mountain. At the bottom as you’re about to start, you look up and see how daunting it is. But once you’re actually hiking, you just have to take it one step at a time. There’s an exaggerated expectation of how hard it’s going to be at the beginning that gets put in its place once you get started.

And rightfully so, that’s why the hardest part of anything is to start. I do a lot of Spartan Races, which are like Tough Mudders with obstacles and barriers, and they say “The hardest part about running a Spartan Race is getting to the starting line.” More dreams die from the fear people experience before getting started than from being incapable of doing it.

So for that thing that feels too big for you, that you don’t feel prepared for, you’ll never feel fully ready for it. And, the fastest way to feel more confident is to begin and you’ll realize, it’s not as hard as you made it out to be in your mind.

It’s not as bad once you start, so get to it! Otherwise you’re choosing to sit in the pain.

Back in 2019, I set the intention to connect with a person who has now become one of my foremost mentors, David Meltzer. I had heard him on a friend’s podcast and instantly felt attracted to his message of abundance, spirituality, and business influence. I started following him on Instagram and as the Algorithm Gods would have it, only a few weeks later I heard him announce that he was hosting a meet up in my city in just a few days. Seeing this as an opportunity, I changed my travel plans so that I could be at the meet up and connect with him in person.

I’m the type of person where if you give me an inch, I take a mile. So after meeting him in a group setting I hustled to walk with him to his next commitment and got to speak with him 1 on 1, quickly share a bit more about myself, and coordinated more time with him later that day. When we linked up then, and not so rushed, we had an exchange in our conversation that I’ll never forget.

I said “I really admire you, what you’ve built, and how you show up in the world.” And to that he responded “Don’t admire me, be inspired by me.”

He didn’t explain the difference, but he didn’t have to. When you admire someone, you see them as separate from you. That you couldn’t dream of achieving the same level of notoriety, success, or whatever it is you admire about them. It’s fawning over them that makes them feel untouchable, and it creates more distance between you and your dream. It keeps you from even trying because you feel like you’re so far from what you see in them.

But when you’re inspired by someone, you see their success as a model for your own. You take encouragement from their example and see that your dreams are possible because they made their dreams come true. Inspiration is uplifting and works as a much more actionable energy that drives you closer to what you want rather than pull you away.

This is exactly what David Meltzer wants. His personal mission is to inspire 1000 people to inspire 1000 people to inspire 1000 people to be happy. That way he plays a part in 1 billion people being happy. And every time I see him I tell him “I’m 1 of your 1000” because I feel the way he invests in me, and offers me advantages that I can use to further my mission and in turn his.

Admiration works kind of like jealousy - it gives you insight into what you care about and what you want. Otherwise you wouldn’t feel a certain way about it. But don’t let it end there and feel empty in your efforts to make your dreams come true, alchemize it into inspiration that drives you forward as you realize your mission in the world.

One of the things that makes life harder than it needs to be is stress. Finances, difficult situations, and our day to day demands pulling us beyond our capacity all add stress to our lives.

Originally, our body’s evolved to have a stress response so that we can escape from imminent danger. Stress is meant to be adaptive and advantageous. But in today’s world our stress response is activated in new ways that don’t actually threaten our safety. Our minds are misinterpreting the events of modern life and creating reasons to be stressed that don’t align with stress’ intended purpose. 

And it’s doing more harm than good. Not only does stress erode our health but it clouds our judgment and causes us to take action in ways that add on more to be stressed about rather than relieve us of it. That’s why I want to share 3 steps to move through feeling stressed and overwhelmed. 

1. Take 6 slow deep breaths.
   
   Physiologically, our stress response activates the sympathetic nervous system. This sends a rush of cortisol (also known as adrenaline) through our body preparing us for fight or flight. It’s in this state that the human mind goes into survival mode, making choices that are helpful in the moment but have long-term unintended consequences. But 6 slow deep breaths turns the sympathetic nervous system off, immediately makes us feel less stressed, and helps us move forward with a clear mind that isn’t being hijacked by panic and overwhelm.
   
   
2. Identify the sources of your stress.
   
   It’s within this more thoughtful, controlled headspace that you can start to examine what’s causing you stress. The road to feeling less emotional starts with knowing exactly what is causing the stress. Is it fear, uncertainty, sadness, strain, or something else? It doesn’t need to be this underlying chronic feeling… It can be something that’s understood as a response to something specific. Listen to how you feel and figure out what the source of it is.
   
   
3. Determine what’s within your control and what’s not.
   
   Once you’ve identified the source, now it’s time to figure out what you can do about it. The reality is your stress response was triggered by an event in your life. The way through that response is by changing the way you relate with that event, and the way you respond to it. There are some elements of the situation that are out of your control, and there are elements that you can do something about. By separating the two you can determine what’s worth your energy. It’s the Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference"”

Part of what makes things so stressful is they’re uncertain. You don’t know how things are going to resolve, and what that means for the well-being of yourself and your loved ones. It carries an energy of fear that the worst could happen. But when you know what you can do to impact the situation, you sprinkle in some hope.

That’s not to say that the stress goes away, but it starts to feel more manageable. You aren’t at the mercy of everything around you but you can influence what happens. And it’s with this sense of agency that you take productive actions that actually begin to make progress on the problem that’s causing you stress.

Be patient with yourself, know that it’s normal and it’s not the end of the world. Life might deal you difficult hand but you get to choose how you play it. All you can do your best - You got this!

When you think about someone who has really good habits, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s someone who does their morning routine every single day, which includes meditation, journaling, and some stretching. Or maybe it’s someone who completes their checklist, gets their email inbox to zero, and updates their to do list at the end of a work day. 

No matter the case, it’s likely that you see someone who has good habits as being really consistent on a daily basis. But why do habits need to be done daily? When we open our minds to seeing habits existing on different intervals, we realize how much more doable it is to stay consistent, and how many more opportunities there are to get into good habits.

What this suggests is that a habit doesn’t need to be done daily… It just needs to be done with reliable consistency. And consistency can exist on any interval of time. Yes you can do things daily, but you can also do them weekly, monthly, yearly, every other day, every other week, every 10 days, every 6 weeks, only on Mondays and Fridays, every 3 hours… The options are truly endless.

I have many good daily habits. I do some version of my morning routine, fill out my Self Improvement Scorecard every day, email my grandma, and do at least one session of Duolingo (among many other things) every day.

But I also have habits done consistently on different time intervals. I call my Dad on Fridays, have time on Tuesdays and Thursdays dedicated to follow ups for my business, I do a weekly relationship review with my wife, I do monthly strategic business planning and accounting, I go to the grocery store once a week to get fresh produce after a workout, and I use my standing desk when I take meetings throughout the day. All are good habits that contribute to my goals, and I do them all consistently but with different frequencies.

And while we're at it, here's another perspective - Consistency can even be situational and contextual. For example, I don’t really watch TV but can get caught up in it when I’m visiting my Mom, so I’m in the habit of leaving the room by 9 pm. Habits aren’t something you do all the time, but something you can count on doing when they need to get done.

At the end of the day, we want good habits for one reason - To get consistent doing the things that most generate the results we want in our lives. And those critical actions can be taken however much that you feel is most doable or most serves you.

It might be more natural for you to think about this through the lens of building good routines. Routines don’t need to be done daily, but they’re most useful when done with a reliable consistency. There’s a level of intentionality that goes into what the routine is for, what the action steps are, and how often you want to complete it. Habits benefit from the same level of thoughtfulness.

So try throwing away this bias that habits need to be done daily, that it can only be considered ‘consistent’ if it happens every day. Embrace the full spectrum that our actions take and cultivate the right habits, on the right intervals, that fuel your life. That’s not to say you can’t have daily habits, but know there’s a lot more to it, and oftentimes cultivating habits that exist on a different time interval is a good place to start.

It’s human nature to follow the crowd. We trust restaurants more people are sitting at, go down roads we see other people turn on, and make choices that don’t draw attention to ourselves. We have an unconscious bias toward it and in many ways, it steers our life.

But here’s something to consider: Just because something is common doesn’t mean it’s normal. And the difference is subtle…

If something is common, it means that it happens a lot. It’s the exposure to the many instances of this thing happening that makes it common. It’s common to get divorced, be overweight, get less than 7 hours of sleep, and not like what you do for work.

But that doesn’t mean it’s normal. When something is normal it means that it’s the way it’s intended to be. Normal doesn’t deviate too far from how things are supposed to go. Normal isn’t an outlier or noteworthy. 

And the problem is normal has become uncommon. A long and healthy marriage is now considered to be an exception to the rule. Many people are overweight but that’s not how the human body is intended to work. We’re not supposed to be unhappy and stressed in our work, it’s meant to be something we find meaning and purpose in.

These days, following the crowd gets us doing common things that lead to not normal results. And many people have no awareness to question it because they’ve chosen to accept the abnormal, unhealthy, poor lifestyle that comes with it. This thought is captured well in what Jiddu Krishnamurti says “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

To set yourself on the right path, be uncommon. Do things your way, the way you know they need to be done and not the way everyone else is doing it. Challenge the assumptions you have about the world to broaden your understanding.

When you live an uncommon life, not everyone is going to understand. They don’t see the harm in having a few bites of greasy appetizers or indulging in dessert, but you prioritizing your nutrition will help you keep your body fueled instead of fat. They might give you a hard time when you decline an invitation to something fun, but they aren’t thinking through the added pressure it puts on a relationship to be out of the house so often.

Question the common path because if you look around, you’ll see where it’s headed. And for many it’s a level of financial strain, unhealthiness, lack of deep relationships and lack of purpose that make many people less happy than they could be.

But not you, not us! Keep doing the work and you’ll be one of the few who feels inspired by how they’re maximizing their potential every day.