Do you know what’s the hardest part about running a marathon? It’s not hitting mile 5 and realizing you still have over 20 more to go. It’s not mile 18 when you’re exhausted and you still have a 10k to run. And it’s not the last mile when you’re fully spent and you’re trying to get yourself to finish strong.

The hardest part about running a marathon is getting to the starting line.

It’s having the courage to make the commitment. Getting through months of training without injury or life getting in the way. Going to bed the night before afraid of the physical punishment you’re about to put yourself through but getting up and out the door anyway. 

This isn’t unique to running marathons though, the hardest part to anything is just getting started. In fact, Woody Allen has a famous quote “80% of success in life is showing up.”

That means getting yourself into the gym even when you don’t feel like it. Following through on your sales plan even though you’re afraid to. Making it out to that event that you committed to but you have every excuse not to go. Whatever’s going on, just show up.

It will always be easier to not show up - To make an exception, have an excuse, feel bad for yourself, minimize responsibilities, and take the easy path. It’s the mind and body’s preferred and evolutionary state. But it’s that kind of thinking that keeps us alive rather than makes us feel alive. And isn’t that what we want?

But those who refuse the allure of complacency and commit themselves to doing the uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and hard thing have a serious advantage over the rest! The more you put yourself out there, the more pathways you give the universe to self-organize everything you need to make your dreams a reality. And when you don’t show up, you are pinching the flow that creates more abundance, coincidence, and serendipity in your life.

But showing up is more than just being physically present, it also requires that you’re energetically present. It asks you to bring the best version of yourself to the table and not just the shell of who you could be. 

If you need help showing up consistently to the commitments you make, to yourself and others, and feeling on fire so that you make the most of every moment of every day, I encourage you to check out the Super Habits System: In just 5 minutes a day you will supercharge your productivity and focus, and make your previous best days your new every day.

One of our evolutionarily hardwired mindsets is negativity bias.

We are literally optimized to see all of the things that are wrong, generate fear, or aren’t working out because bringing those things to our awareness was a mechanism for keeping us safe. As civilization has advanced, this bias is often out of place and keeps us from enjoying things as fully as we otherwise could. 

That’s why today I want you to be aware of your daily glimmers. You’ve heard the expression about having “a glimmer of hope”, right? Throughout the day we experience little shining moments that remind us how many things in our lives are going right. 

But, because of negativity bias, we aren’t primed to see them…

A glimmer can be something as simple as a sensory experience, like the waft of some cookies from a bakery. It can be a moment of connection where you got a text out of the blue or had a friendly interaction with a stranger. It could be a mention at work acknowledging a job well done. 

If we can try to be extra perceptive of these glimmers in the moment while they’re happening, it will completely shift our mood. The recognition of a small win brings a micro moment of accomplishment, creating a rush of positive neurotransmitters that shift your physiology. This also could induce some momentary gratitude that adds to the experience. 

Now here’s the tough part. Even though these moments are happening all day everyday, we don’t benefit from all of its potential because we don’t naturally perceive it.

The best way to bring something into your awareness is to choose to be more aware of it. Every time you pay attention to your glimmers, you’re training your subconscious mind to look for more. You’re priming yourself for it and slowly but surely, the process will become more natural.

Now with all of this in mind, how would you get started? My recommendation is to intentionally reflect on the “glimmers” of your day every evening before bed. And that daily conscious action will impact the unconscious pattern your mind uses throughout the day.

If you have a hard time being consistent with new routines and habits like this, that you know are best for you but for whatever reason you can’t bring yourself to doing, that’s exactly what I’ve created the Super Habits System for. It’s the single process you can use to build the structure you need to reach elite levels of daily performance and consistency.

My mom got me a new sweatshirt that has an awesome message and mission that I wanted to share about. The brand is called Wear The Peace and it was all started by two guys who are sons of refugees and wanted to contribute to helping people who are less fortunate around the world.

The embroidered words on the sweatshirt that inspire me every time I wear it are “Humankind. Be both.”

What this expression does so eloquently is it reminds us of our shared humanity while also giving a strong call to action. We are so much more similar than we are different, but too often we don’t see that. This message reminds us all to take a step back and separate from the labels and categories we live in every day and instead identify as part of the collective.

That’s the first part, now let’s get into the second. "Be both".

When you layer on this command and split the word humankind into its two elements, we’re told to be human and to be kind.

To be human is to accept that you’re imperfect but also acknowledge that you’re an individual. We all have our own lives, experiences, and stories that make us the beautiful humans we are.

To be kind is to choose to be positive, friendly, considerate, and supportive of others. When we’re kind it means that we’re not only peacefully coexisting but we’re adding to each other’s experience.

To me that’s where this message all powerfully comes to one - when our shared humanity combines with our individual intention to support each other. This is what has the power to change the world. Imagine if more people saw each other as more similar than different, and were motivated to be helpful more often… 

There would be less hate and more love in the world. Less fighting and more cooperation. Less suffering and more thriving. Everything would be better off!

And as individuals in this humankind collective, all we can control is what we do ourselves. So let’s be human, let’s be kind, and let’s be the example that inspires other people to do the same.

Want to support Wear The Peace? Check them out here!

Will-power is getting a lot of attention these days and is being talked about from many different angles. Let’s explore all of it so that we can stop being confused and conflicted and decide what we want to think.

On the positive side, will-power is known to be a point of differentiation for successful people. There’s a study that suggests will-power is a better predictor of academic achievement than IQ by a factor of two. Alongside that, in the infamous Marshmallow experiment where kids were closed in a room with a marshmallow and told to delay eating it to get an additional reward, the kids who could hold off on eating the marshmallow for longer were found to achieve significantly more in their career.

Now on the negative side, we’re learning that will-power is like a muscle, with a finite capacity that eventually wears out. This means that will-power is unsustainable and cannot be used as a primary source of motivation. We’ve also heard that will-power isn’t even the most effective thing you can use to change your behavior, and that your environment is the greatest contributing factor to the things you do or don’t do. Dr. Benjamin Hardy wrote a book all about this called “Willpower Doesn’t Work”.

With all of that in mind, what if I told you that all of it was correct? That willpower was the greatest point of differentiation and unsustainable and dwarfed by the influence of environment?

This all can be true when you talk about when and how willpower is meant to be used.

In “The One Thing”, Gary Keller says “When it comes to willpower, timing is everything.” It is not meant to be used in every moment of every day but rather reserved for the high-leverage things when you need it the most. And equally willpower is not best used over and over again to do the same thing, but only initially to get yourself to take action enough times so that it becomes a habit.

This is a strategic approach to using willpower ensuring that you have it when you need it, you’re not relying on it for everything, and you don’t need it forever. And taking a step back, that’s similar to how self-discipline works - first structure your environment to make the right choices easy to make and when appropriate use willpower to enforce the commitments you’ve made when you don’t feel like following through.

If you want to establish this healthy balance of willpower in your life and implement high-level systems that make consistency easier than ever (which is what will-power is meant to help you with), and because of that become more productive and intentional on a daily basis... You should register for the Super Habits System Bootcamp. After just 21 days of dedicated focus to your mindset and life systems you will take your game to the next level!

One thing that I see so many people get caught up in, including myself, is people pleasing. And it’s not entirely wrong, it comes from a place of genuinely wanting to make sure other people are happy and supported. But the challenge is, how can we do it in such a way so that we don’t step over the line where it goes from being helpful to being sacrificial?

Many of us find ourselves on the extreme side of people pleasing and because of that, I want to get more specific about what’s actually happening. 

In a few different ways, seeking to please others at our own expense teaches us to become dependent on external validation. Instead of finding pride in our own actions, we trust someone else’s opinion over our own. Instead of feeling intrinsically rewarded by our effort, we connect fulfillment with perceived achievement.

And every time we put someone else’s needs above our own, we further permit the belief system that makes it more and more acceptable.

What this leads to is that you’re much less likely to enforce your personal boundaries for fear of making someone else feel bad, which ultimately causes you to be pulled further away from what you want and need. It also causes you to be overstretched so that you have less to give others, pouring from a glass that is nearing empty.

Again, this is the extreme side of the equation. So how do we strike a more healthy balance?

It’s all about intentions and communication. If you can tell someone the ways you’d like to be helpful, within the conditions that do not lead to you compromising your own needs, you have more authority to say “no” when your boundary gets tested. This requires that you define where your boundary is and you make sure the people around you know it.

For example, I’m really prioritizing my sleep right now. So what I did was I told my fiance that my intention is to be asleep by 10:30pm and if she wants my attention, I have plenty of it to offer before then. She has received that message and complied with it, helping us to find mutual ways to get our needs met.

To summarize - Don’t completely reject that people-pleasing nature you have inside of you. It’s beautiful and it means that you care. But when you compromise yourself to please others it reinforces a negative loop that makes things worse for everyone involved in the long run.

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If you feel like you’re leaving potential on the table and not achieving the levels of personal health, success, productivity, and contribution you’re capable of… And you know that more focus and structure is your ticket to reaching your goals… Then this is for you! 

In 5 minutes a day for 21 days you can install the Super Habits System to become ridiculously consistent, take your daily output to elite levels, and live a life that other people have a hard time keeping up with!

As many people figure out how they want to proceed with their life - to move to a new city, take on a new job, date a new person, commit to a new health plan - they wait in a holding pattern. During the indecision people feel more comfortable to stay right where they are as they emotionally prepare for the change. It seems like only a short-term thing but it has larger implications than you might realize.

Standing still is falling behind. The pace of life moves forward with or without you. If you stay still for too long you’re going to have more ground to make up, and every day that passes it makes your goal harder and harder to achieve.

When prolonged, that extra separation adds weight to the decision being made, causing more hesitation and making you fall further and further behind.

How does this work in the world? Think about inflation. If you hold on to your cash without investing it, its buying power decreases over time. Or if you’re waiting on starting kickboxing or trying a new hobby, it’ll take longer for you to become proficient at it. 

So what can you do instead of standing still? Move forward. Move at all! The hardest part is getting started, so even if you’re a little off track you can make adjustments as you go. 

Now this doesn’t mean that you should just go at all costs and figure it out later... It’s important to have enough insight into the process so that you don’t go completely the wrong way. But it’s the overthinking about wanting to know the exact coordinates, and the perfectionism of knowing exactly how to do it, that keeps people from moving at all.

This is why they call it 'imperfect action'. To take imperfect action is to use the information you have, think it through thoroughly, and move forward. What this helps you to do is pick more information on the path that you can use to take your next imperfect action that slowly helps you to calibrate.

So sometimes, when you’ve been stuck in a plateau and at a loss for what to do next, sometimes you just need to do something. You need to break the cycle to refresh your mind and spirit around what’s even possible for you! Because the longer you wait and stand still, the further you’re falling behind from where you could be and who you could be.

If you think you could benefit from a kick start of momentum, a renewed sense of motivation, and reclaim your peak levels of ridiculous productivity and ultimate high performance, the Super Habits System 21 Day Bootcamp will get you moving fast and never looking back!

“The One Thing” by Gary Keller has been a life-changing book for me. Right now I’m in a season of essentialism, pruning my commitments so that I can do less but better. In the book Keller outlines an incredibly powerful process called Goal Set To Now. 

Essentially, it’s reverse-engineering your wildest dreams into a daily focused priority so that your actions can be as potent as possible. The process works as follows:

First, you set your “Someday Goal”. This is representative of what you want to accomplish at some point in your life. Since there’s no time-bound connection to it, you’re meant to dream as wildly as you can imagine.

Then from there, with that ‘Someday Goal’ in mind, you determine a ‘5 Year Goal’ that is on the path to achieving your ‘Someday Goal’. You continue to ladder down over and over again from a 5 Year Goal, to a 1 Year Goal, to your 1 Month Goal, to your 1 Week Goal, to your ‘Goal For Today’ so that you can determine the one thing you need to do first or next to achieve it.

The power in this exercise is it helps you connect your wildest dreams to the present moment. When you see your goals with this perspective it creates a huge wave of purpose, conviction, and motivation to follow through on your daily tasks. 

But this isn’t something you’re meant to do just once and it’s done. It’s an ongoing, moment by moment, day to day process that helps you to make sure that your compass is pointed directly toward your biggest goals. It provides clarity on what’s most important right now so that you don’t get caught up in the distractions and impulses that steer you off course.

I walked members of the Best Life Community, a community group of high-achievers dedicated to being the best version of themselves, through this exercise and the feedback was phenomenal. If you’re interested to go through this 26 minute process yourself, I’d like to make the replay of that session available to you as well. All you have to do is click here, provide your email, and you’ll get access to it right away! Plus, I tell you my ridiculous ‘Someday Goal’ that fires me up!

If you want your life to change, you need to take action! Your next step is ahead of you, so take advantage of that right now before you forget and miss out. This is probably the only time I’m mentioning it.

This is something I really want to call out because so many people, myself included, are missing it. We live in such a results driven, accomplishment based, achievement oriented society. Any time we get somewhere the first question becomes “What’s next?”. And while that’s not the wrong response, many people don’t stop to appreciate where they’re at before continuing to push on.

For that reason, today’s positivity quote is “Savor the taste of satisfaction.”

When you savor a taste, it means that you really take the time to enjoy it and recognize it. You choose to be present with the experience, noticing the different tones, textures, and flavors in the bite. Slowing down to savor and enjoy something means that it’s meaningful and valuable to you.

The definition of satisfaction is “the fulfillment of one's wishes, expectations, or needs, or the pleasure derived from this.” However, oftentimes people mix up ‘satisfaction’ with ‘having enough’. Satisfaction is the more positive expression of ‘having enough’, suggesting that you’re experiencing sufficiency and that your needs are genuinely being met. The other expression of ‘having enough’ is about tolerating minimum requirements, and that you’d really like more but what you have is “good for now”.

So that’s the space to explore here: How do we pause to savor and immerse ourselves in the experience of being genuinely happy with where we’re at right now?

I firmly believe that the best way to do that is to celebrate your wins. Instead of glossing over the great things that are happening and refocusing on what’s next, take a moment to celebrate it. If you wait to celebrate at the very end, you’re never going to get to the very end. It’ll always be pushed further no matter how successful you are. So it’s essential that we enjoy the journey rather than wait to arrive at the destination.

My fiance is great about this. Any time I mention something positive that happened, she puts on one of my favorite songs, “Joy” by Andy Grammer, and dances with me to it. She helps me to slow down in moments I would have zoomed right past to enjoy the wins and savor the moment.

But as for you, what can you do to slow down and add more joy to milestone moments of accomplishment? Decide one thing you want to try now so that you can use it later!