I’m not so wildly successful that I have the authority to comment, but I’ve observed that people view success through the wrong lens. Many people treat success as a destination to achieve or a line in the sand to cross, whereas it more appropriately should be considered as a state to be maintained.

But even beyond that, the people who are the most successful don’t get complacent with sustaining a certain level of performance or results. They’re hungry to grow upon it and push the boundary for themselves.  

They know that their last play is in the past. They can’t rely on past success to drive present results. They understand that we recreate our reputation on a moment by moment basis in the way we continue to show up. Rory Vaden puts it this way: “Success is never owned. It’s rented, and the rent is due every day.”

So what does that mean? Well, if we consider success as a form of result, we know that it requires certain inputs to create certain outputs. Understanding that our daily choices and actions are in our control, and not the outcomes, a commitment to the process is the engine that drives results.

It involves having high-performance habits in your health and work-life. It’s maintaining clarity on what’s most important and cutting out distractions that compromise the quality of your attention. It’s enforcing higher standards for yourself in the way you interact with others and the boundaries you set. It’s executing your routines with consistency. 

This all ensures that you make the right choices, and take the right actions, feeding the right inputs into the machine so that it creates the right outputs. And not just doing it once, but following through on it with quality every single day. 

That’s how we recreate our reputation every day. You can’t let past performance and success give you permission to make excuses or compromises. Life is hectic and people move on quickly. If you don’t keep moving forward with it you’re going to be left behind no matter who you used to be.

So be committed to your growth as a process. Understand that success is more a daily discipline than it is a status or achievement. And what happens when you focus on this internal engine is it carries you to the external recognition you’re more accustomed to using as your metric for success. And when you get there, you’ll be more inspired than ever to bring it back to the basics and earn it all over again, every day.

What you’re about to hear is a fundamental concept to personal development that a lot of people overlook, and it’s causing them to get frustrated that they’re not where they want to be in life. 

I imagine your life looks very different today than it did 10 years ago, 5 years ago, or even one year ago. 

Do you know why? Because things change. Maybe you have a new job, new home, new relationships, new responsibilities, commitments, and interests… Things are not how they used to be and they’ll keep changing, fast. 

This isn’t new to you nor is it new to humanity. Heraclitus, a Greek Philosopher in the 6th century BC said “The only constant in life is change.” 

But here’s the problem. Many people refuse to evolve and match the way things have changed around them, and it sets them up for failure.

I’m a perfect example of this. I am a former collegiate Division 1 Student-Athlete. For my entire life my identity was wrapped up in being among the most athletic people in my peer group - Making All-Star teams, earning awards, being named captain of the team, the list goes on. 

And that served me until life changed…

When I no longer was a collegiate athlete, I struggled. I still saw myself as an elite performer, but I didn’t feel motivated to stay in top shape and wondered what was wrong with me. I was used to excelling in school, but when I started my career I was average or worse at my job. I had grown accustomed to people telling me how great I was, how I’m on the fast-track to success, how I was going to make a difference in the world, but I was starting to doubt if any of that was ever true.

Looking back at it, I know exactly what was happening and it’s the same problem I see people experience both through major life transitions and on a daily basis. The problem was - I had not changed my standards and expectations when my life changed.

What has served me since was to get clear on the role my fitness plays in my life, what level I want to maintain, and how I can proceed with fulfilling that in the current context of my life. It’s not what it used to be but it’s not supposed to be, and it’s still phenomenal.

I had to change my understanding about what success means. For years I was evaluated based on wins and losses, awards and accolades. That wasn’t fair anymore, so I needed to update my mindset and get clear on what success means to me and how I wanted to pursue it in this chapter of my life.

And in all areas, once I evolved my standards and expectations, I stopped feeling the resistance of trying to live up to how things used to be and started meeting the current moment as the person I needed to be now. 

And that has led to me getting the elite results in the game I’m playing today (startup acquisition, 18+ million download podcast, meaningful social impact business), on a new and different playing field.

In summary, I share my story to drive home the key point here - If you’re too hung up on trying to be the person you used to be, that was the best fit and optimized for how things used to be, you’re going to fall short of making the most of how things are now. So stay ambitious, be practical, and design your life so that you’re set up to win!

This positivity quote comes from a man named Jeff Moore, the CEO of Everyday Power. He says “The most important thing you’ll ever wear is your attitude.”

I think this is a really interesting articulation of attitude. Just like when you wake up in the morning and decide what clothes you want to wear, you can choose the attitude you bring into the day. I’ve noticed for myself on the days where life is more chaotic, and I’ve chosen to be patient, that I’m not so stressed by the chaos. And on the days where there’s a lot to do, and I’ve chosen to be helpful, I find myself being more supportive in helping out.

Your attitude is your way of thinking or feeling about something, which in turn usually is expressed through your behavior. But this idea that we can choose our attitude on a daily basis, and shape the way we show up for the events and activities in front of us, is a very powerful concept.

Choosing to have a good attitude is a specific form of intention. It’s knowing that there may be challenging, inconvenient, and stressful things that come up and specifically choosing to relate with them in a more positive way. And the crazy part is, simply telling yourself what attitude you want to have about things will change the way you feel in the moment about them.

Ultimately, this is one of the greatest things we can do in our life. One of humanity’s fatal flaws is that we are so incredibly biased by our emotions, and if affects our moment by moment decision making and causes us to do things that we later regret.

But when we set an intention and have clarity on the attitude we want to bring into an emotional situation, we can overcome the emotions of it and make better choices that are in alignment with our highest self.

So as you take time getting ready in the morning - Choosing your outfit, brushing your teeth, doing whatever you need to do to start the day - also decide what attitude you want to wear for the day. Try it on and see how it looks on you, because a good attitude just might be your favorite!

The renowned philosopher Socrates has a quote that goes “The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know”. Ask anyone who’s a leader in their field about their understanding of how things work, and you’ll hear humility in their voice. The more you learn about something, the more you realize how little you know and see how many things there still are to learn.

This is an interesting paradox because these thought-leaders know so much, and that mentality is better fitting for someone who is just beginning to learn about something. But that’s the beauty of perspective - You don’t know what you don’t know, and once you know better than you can be and do better.

So as it pertains to our expansion and growth, it points to one core truth. It’s endless. There is always more to pursue and explore. Again, with this extra perspective, the most successful people in the world are the people who embrace this understanding and do something about it.

That’s why I believe this to be true - You’re never too good for a mentor. There will always be someone who either has been where you want to go, or is at the same level as you but sees it from a different angle. In either case, it serves you to enlist the support of someone else to support you in your progress.

This elaborates into another interesting observation… The most successful people have the most coaches. The people who are in the best position to help others get more help themselves than those that they support. Isn’t that interesting? 

For example, I coach a number of people, yet I have 3 coaches myself. And each of my coaches has more than 3 coaches… This ought to teach you something. You’re never so good that you don’t need help. The trend suggests that the better you get, the more help you need. 

So whether it’s from a coach or a mentor, the pathway to accelerating your growth and progress is by piggybacking on the knowledge and experience of others. So if you’re really serious about improving in any area of your life, enlist the support you need and you’ll get there so much faster, and you’ll gain the awareness that you can go further than you realized was possible.

I want to highlight a profoundly simple concept and paint the explanation around it. My mentor Jim Bunch said in a coaching call the other day “Your thoughts become things”.

What does this mean, for your thoughts to become things? Ultimately it’s about how what you think finds a way to materialize into your life in one way or another. This has massive implications for the quality of our life, the amount of success we have, and the way we operate on a daily basis when we understand that the majority of our thoughts are unconscious.

This is where I want to introduce the concept of the Stick Man, which is also something I learned from Jim Bunch. And it’s in understanding the Stick Man where we can see how our thoughts actually become things.

Even before you have a thought, you need to consider your beliefs. At an unconscious level, your beliefs shape the thoughts you have. It’s the default pattern of relating with things, the quick conclusions you draw about things, and it serves as a filter that everything around you needs to pass through in order to formulate a thought.

Then once you have a thought, it induces a certain feeling and that feeling affects your level of interest or motivation to engage in a certain behavior.  As we know, what we do leads to the results we get in our life.

So the Stick Man is a simple representation of how our internal thoughts and belief systems reliably produce external results. Your thoughts become things. 

This is the unconscious pathway, but fortunately for us we are not forever at the mercy of our unconscious mind. We can choose our thoughts, we can determine how we want to think about how we feel, we can make ourselves take action even when we don't feel like it, and to some extent we can even choose our beliefs.

With this awareness, you can put yourself above the unconscious pattern, bring more consciousness to your life, and have a game plan for how you’d like to respond in different circumstances rather than figure it out in an emotional environment. 

That is living life with intentionality, where you realize you have a choice in everything you do, and you’re committed to making the choices that are representative of the best version of yourself, as often as you can.

We’ve been taught throughout our life that fighting is bad. We see the atrocities of war, we know how unhealthy a relationship can be when it’s filled with petty arguments, we understand that violence is not the best way to resolve things, yet it happens anyway...

There has to be a reason why, right?

At its core, fighting is a behavior and just like all behaviors, we do it to meet a need. War satisfies the need for safety and dominance. An argument with a partner is an expression of how something about the relationship isn’t how you want it to be. Physical fighting and violence helps people to feel tough and significant.

But with that in mind, not all fighting is bad. If fighting is the path to getting one of your needs met, and it’s a need that is genuinely important to you and your highest self, then it’s entirely acceptable.

Think about how every day we’re fighting viruses, trying to maintain our health. Think about how we fight for our colleagues and customers, making sure that they get what they need and what they came for. Think about fighting for a relationship that isn’t going well, but you believe in it and you want to resolve it.

In my opinion, the line of discernment is - What’s worth fighting for? 

I’m certainly not condoning war here, but I’m empathizing with it. Take the Crusades, a religious war in medieval times. In their minds, the warriors were doing what they thought was right. Ransacking towns and pillaging communities was worth fighting for because of how it fit into their worldview. And crazy to say, it was within their integrity to kill for it.

It’s important to understand that there’s motivation behind fighting, just like any behavior, and that motivation can be flawed or biased. People are imperfect. We are imperfect. So if you can step away from the fact that fighting is happening, understand the underlying need and motivation that’s causing it, and find a different way to resolve it, you’ll find that our problems often can be solved in much healthier ways.

Featuring a concept from Darren Hardy’s book “The Compound Effect”, it’s only now (on my maybe 20th read of it) that something really stood out to me.

Darren says “If you want change the world, to rid it of all disease, stop all war, etc - hit the off button” meaning turn off the TV, news, and headlines that talk about it.

Of course he understands that this does nothing to change the world, but it does everything to change your world. And while some people might give push back to being naive to the happenings of the world, maybe there’s a version of this that could serve you.

Our perspective, mood, and well-being is constantly being influenced by the world around us. We’re not in control of the headline we catch waiting for a coffee, or the topic on the News on the TV at the gym. It’s nearly impossible to be in full control of what you’re exposed to while still living an active life. But what is within your control at home and on your phone is a great opportunity for improvement.

I respect everyone’s political beliefs, but does it serve you to get hooked by a new claim that defames the other party? Does hearing about how the homeless problem in the city is increasing add value to your daily life?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a purpose-driven person fueled by a desire to make a difference in the world. But I try to choose when I let myself learn about the problems in the world so that I’m in the right space to process it and do the quality research the adds value to my worldview.

News sources leverage fear to keep people’s attention, which they get paid for. This is a reminder that you largely get to choose what you let influence you.

So the punchline here is - If you don’t have as positive or an optimistic life as you’d like to, it might be worth looking into your consumption habits and go on a media diet. 

Something that is central to my life is living with purpose, so for today’s positivity quote I want to elaborate on a famous Dolly Parton quote - “Find out who you are and do it on purpose”.

When we think of purpose we usually see it through the lens of our life’s mission, the difference you want to make in the world, and what you want to be remembered for. It’s really powerful to have that overarching ‘why’ that you angle toward throughout your life, but this quote comments more on the second form of purpose.

Purpose isn’t just a directional north-star, it’s also a moment by moment intention. It causes you to really reflect on your daily choices and the quality you bring to what you do. Everything has a reason and connects to a goal, strategy, or tactic that you’ve decided is on your path. That’s what it means to infuse more purpose in your life -it’s to live with more intentionality. 

Now as it relates to Dolly Parton’s suggestion, “find out who you are and do it on purpose”... The north-star that you get to orient your actions around, and keep in mind as you make daily choices, is your most authentic self. It’s the fully expressed, self-aware version of ourselves. 

When we’re aware of our strengths and weaknesses, limitations and roadblocks, needs, wants, and interests (which is essentially who we are), and we live in alignment wit that, a whole world unlocks for us.

And trust me I know, it’s easier said than done. It takes courage to be yourself. But I’ve found that even if it’s a little uncomfortable, or inconvenient, or scary to lean into who you are and to stand up for that person through your daily actions, it fills you with self-confidence and self-belief. 

So if there were to be a takeaway, let it be this - Keep an open mind to explore who you are and don’t rule anything out. Try not to let judgment and conditioning keep you in a box that you don’t fit in. When you’re being your most authentic you, you’re at your very best, and that’s what the world needs and you deserve.