I was on an introductory call with a new connection last week and my experience with it brought to light some of my beliefs. First I dove into my story and why I’m so fired up to do what I do, and he offered to introduce me to someone who could help. Then we got into his story and work, which went 20 minutes beyond the half hour we’d allocated for the conversation. And finally we wrapped up the call and went our separate ways.

I say that all to level set and state the facts of the conversation before getting into the judgments and perception that came from these facts.

Given how the conversation got on my calendar, I went into it thinking that it might be a sales conversation. I was warm and engaged, but needless to say I had my guard up a little. This means that when he offered an introduction, I perceived it as part of his sales funnel where he seeks to add value before getting into his pitch. 

As he got into his story I noticed a name drop here, a humble brag there, and noticed myself questioning his intentions. And when the conversation extended beyond the 30 minutes I planned for I became a little anxious knowing that I wouldn’t be able to do the other things I committed to doing during that time. And as I left the conversation, I noticed that I felt unsettled and wanted to understand why.

This is where we get into our beliefs, which are the unconscious lens and filter that we see everything in life through. It's’ the belief system that creates the meaning from the set of facts.

Trying to be as honest with myself as possible, one belief that surfaced related to being in a sales environment. A belief that things should always be done with good intentions, and that it’s unethical to be manipulative in a sales conversation because that means you have poor intentions. But what is it about me that assumed he had bad intentions and was being manipulative? Perhaps a belief I have about sales overall? Or money?

Another belief that surfaced related to time integrity - that staying on task maximizes your output for the day and allows you to live a fully balanced life. When the conversation started to violate that, the belief fought back and created uneasiness.   

All of this highlights the importance of being as conscious as possible. When you’re conscious, you’re aware of how all these little factors are at play in shaping your perception. Your beliefs deserve to be questioned and your understanding challenged. How? Question your beliefs by asking ‘Why?’ more often.

This is growth, and what I just shared is an example of how my consciousness and reflection helped me to become more aware of some of the forces driving my life behind the scenes.

So much of personal development is built around goal-setting. And necessarily so, goals are absolutely critical because they outline the desired outcome and help you orient your actions around making progress toward it. But it’s the action that really matters. Everything in your personal development, from increasing awareness, to setting up your environment, to building habits, to setting goals, are all in service of helping you do one thing…

Consistently taking high-quality and result-producing action.

James Clear, the author of ‘Atomic Habits’, is known for saying “Winners and losers have the same goals.” It’s true. It’s easy to set a goal but it’s much, much harder to bring yourself to doing the right things that are required to achieve it. Having a goal doesn't separate those who succeed from those who don’t.

Again, it’s all about taking action. If you want to reach your goals, and experience the health, lifestyle, impact, and fulfillment that you think will come with it, you need to do something about it.

When it comes to taking action many people focus on being more disciplined and using their will-power to be consistent. This leads to a secondary hyper-focus on creating habits, and manufacturing those habits through will alone until it ingrains. But I think that’s misguided as well because your will isn’t strong enough to overcome all of the challenges you’ll face on your way to solidifying a habit. 

However, what you can do instead is be intentional about what you use your will on so that you can be better prepared to push through obstacles when they arise.

The best thing to invest your will into is building systems. A system is a reproducible way of doing something. It simplifies the process of what is required as an input to create a certain output, helping you to be more efficient with your time and energy. Systems create leverage and support you in following through on taking action even when it’s harder to. 

This full thought collects into one of James Clear’s most famous quotes - “We do not rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems”. Systems make it easier to be consistent with your actions and build habits. Systems work behind the influence of your daily choices. Systems are the real driving force of high-performance.

I can personally attest to it. I use something I call the Super Habits System to support me in being consistent, accountable, disciplined, and fired up about my life! And if you want to raise your standards and learn more about how to incorporate this high performance system to your life for yourself in just 21 days, check it out!

You know those moments where a friend calls out of the blue, or a loved one has something to share with you, and you feel conflicted about whether to divert your attention or stay focused on what you have going on? Here’s a perspective on it that is the priority in my growth right now.

I’m someone who really likes staying on task and getting things done. I feel proud and fulfilled at the end of the day when I kept momentum and enthusiasm from one thing to the next. This means that I often see disruptions to that rhythm as frustrating or irritating, and because of that irritation I see them as inconveniences rather than opportunities for connection.

But something I learned from Brian Johnson at Heroic is the idea of W.I.N. - What’s Important Now. When I think about the gap between who I’m being and who I’d like to be, I’ve identified that I want to be more present. Particularly, I want to give the important people in my life more of my attention when there’s an opportunity to.

This is what it looks like for me: I’m jamming out some work in the office and I get a call from my brother or a good friend, or my wife comes in with something she’s excited to share. I ask myself “What’s important now” and more often than not, the opportunity to be present with a loved one is more important than continuing to work. So I’ve been choosing to fully transition my attention out of work and invest it in my people.

Rather than labeling them as a distraction and carrying a negative and rushed energy into my interactions, I’ve been viewing it as a momentary reprioritization. This makes me more open and engaged, which adds much more quality to the moment. Not to mention I also have found that since those moments are richer, they don’t need to last as long and I actually return to my work sooner.

I’m calling these Love W.I.Ns. and when I use this new perspective of valuing the people in my life over my personal productivity, I’ve found it’s really added value to my life. But it can’t be at all costs! So the process of optimization right now is improving my awareness for these moments, and becoming more clear on what situations are best for it. 

Work in progress, right? My encouragement to you is that you try to gladly accept a disruption from a loved one as a chance to connect, and not a distraction, the next time the opportunity arises. Then you’ll have some feedback on how it works and feels for you!

Something that is deeply motivating for people, myself included, is the idea of keeping a streak. It urges us to take action when we don’t feel like it, compels us to build our days around specific core activities, and brings out a level of consistency that few other tactics manage to do.

We all know this to be true, but the real question is… Why?

As you’d expect, the answer resides in human psychology. 

First, the reason our minds respond well to gamification is because of our hardwiring for immediate gratification. As James Clear explains brilliantly in “Atomic Habits”, the final step of the Habit Loop is to get a reward. Essentially, experiencing a reward indicates that whatever action you took successfully satisfied the need of the craving you had. This craving is an unmet need that was prompted by some cue in your environment.

Here's the things - We have a constant need for self-actualization, to become all that we can be and maximize our potential. So much so in fact that it’s at the top of Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs and something that is impossible to fully satisfy. Our 'impossible to meet' need for self-actualization operates as an underlying force that is always pulling us to want to achieve and improve. Maslow himself says “If you deliberately plan on being less than you’re capable of being, I warn you, you’ll be unhappy the rest of your life.”

Gamification offers a solution to that. When we earn points, level up, or keep streaks, it helps us perceive progress toward our insatiable need to self-actualize.

The second explanation for a streak’s impact on us is rooted in our identity. When we take consistent action on something to the extent that we build a compelling streak, we reshape our belief system. Aristotle says “We are what we repeatedly do”, suggesting that consistent action literally has the power to redefine our self-image. Unconsciously we do things that are in alignment with our identity and resist doing anything else. So keeping a streak becomes a function of you following through on what your mind expects of you and not an effortful demand to your day.

Because the mind prefers familiarity, you literally talk yourself into keeping your streak (even if you’re tired or it’s inconvenient). To tie it back into the Habit Loop, the idea of not maintaining your streak (cue) creates a need to stay in alignment with your identity (craving). The uneasiness motivates you to take action (behavior) so that your streak is kept intact (reward). 

In understanding the psychology at play, now you’re better prepared to leverage streaks to support you in doing the things that make you feel and perform at your best!

Something I see a lot of people not taking seriously enough, and because of if they feel disempowered and static, is that were are born to create. No matter your religious beliefs, something that we all agree on is that at some point something came from nothing. Some unexplainable miracle happened somehow, somewhere, that has given us the experience we have today.

Even if you think about our personal existence - We as humans were created. Two people provided cells that merged into one and created a new life. We were born as the byproduct of creation, and infused with the intention to create ourselves.

When you think of it that way, “Life itself is an act of creation.”

Everything about the future is undetermined. Nothing is guaranteed. That means that we play an active role in creating what happens. This is true both in our personal lives and the things we experience, as well as the way we contribute to society. Yet many of us neglect to accept this powerful role we have and instead live as the victim of our lives rather than the hero.

Being the victim is on the opposite side of creation. It’s a mindset that things happen to you. But the day you take ownership of your life, and accept that you’re responsible for the good and bad that surrounds you, you become a creator.

You can enjoy a better marriage or friendships by creating more moments for connection. You can live your dream lifestyle by creating a solution to a big problem in the world and being compensated well for it. You can create the body and daily energy that makes you feel unstoppable by being more discipline with your exercise, diet, and sleep.

At one point our planet didn’t exist and the world was empty. Everything around you was created at some point. Nothing has changed except our willingness to participate in it.

Even the thoughts going through your mind right now - It’s the result of me producing a message to share with you, and your choice to nurture your mind and hear it. It’s not an accident, it’s perfectly designed, and the more you tap into your creative potential the more you’ll get exactly what you want from life.

There’s a lot of focus in personal development around doing the new things that create new results. And necessarily so because many people are feeling held back or stuck and need support getting started.

However, the majority of improvement doesn’t happen by going from doing nothing to doing something... It happens when you take doing something to doing something a lot better.

This is the process of optimization. Optimization uses feedback to implement adjustments that improve the results produced. It’s an iterative process where, one attempt after the next, you learn a bit more about what works and what doesn’t. To fully embrace optimization, you need a growth mindset. Those who see ‘failure’ and falling short as a lesson and not criticism can take the insights of falling short to be better prepared for the next attempt.

Optimization is the far better route to getting high-quality results, especially when compared to the alternative of starting and stopping. Fits and starts stalls progress and causes you to not acquire the lessons, awareness, skill development, or experience you need to actually improve. You start from square one over and over again instead of building off of the traction you already have.

For just about anything in life, it’s not a matter of if something works or not. It’s about how well something works. And through optimization you can fine-tune your approach to make it work better.

If anything, this is another reason why it’s important to get started before you’re ready. It’s the trial and error of the process of doing it that makes you more ready. Those learnings compound over time, but they don’t even get the chance to start growing if you don’t get started with them.

So this is the overall recommendation to create improvement in your life: Get started before you’re ready and stick it out for longer than you think, because you’re picking up incremental improvements along the way that are positioning you to succeed very soon.

This is what it takes to become world class! No secrets, just doing more of the right things more often.

As a powerful, purpose-driven person in this world, I’m sure you have some big ambitions. You have visions to complete that incredible athletic feat, elevate to the top in your career, lead a world-changing movement, go on the trip of your life… The list goes on.

But from the context of the here and now that day might feel many days away. It’s something that you’ll put effort into someday, one day, when the time is right.

That far off ‘someday’ goal doesn’t need to wait. In fact the only way you get there is by taking steps toward it every day until you’re there. Just like taking action tomorrow will always be a day away, achieving your ‘someday goal’ will always elude you if you don’t pursue it now.

One of my favorite goal-setting practices is Gary Keller’s “Goal Set To Now” process that he features in his book “The One Thing”. Essentially You first  get clear on what that macro ‘someday’ ambition is and orient your entire life around it. You do so by determining what needs to happen in the next 5 years to be on path for your ‘someday’ goal…

What needs to happen in one year to be on track for your 5 year goal…

What you need to do this month to reach that goal you set for the next year…

The goal for the week to achieve the goal for the month…

And finally the goal for the day to meet the goal for the week.

That is “Someday, One Day Goal Setting”. Not ‘one day’ as in a day way off in the future, but setting a series of one day goals every day of the week as you work your way forward. This gives you a clear action to take and plan to execute, so that every day you take one step toward your ‘someday’ goal.

This is what my “Goal Set To Now” process looks like today: My ‘someday’ goal is to be Time Magazine Person Of The Year. My ‘one day’ goal is to finish following up with the impact organizations I want to partner with.

There’s no secret to living an extraordinary life and making an extraordinary difference. It happens as the byproduct of consistent, highly-aligned, hard-work. And the best way to orient what you need to focus on today is to make sure your actions connect to the overall goal in a way that you believe in.

In the graduation commencement speech at the University of Texas, Austin in 2014, Admiral William McRaven shared 10 points to changing the world. One of those points was to make your bed in the morning. 

McRaven commented on how you can set the pace for the day by knocking out the first task with discipline, and no matter how poorly the day goes you return to the promise of a new day and a fresh start. It’s a life-changing insight in what has become one of the most renowned speeches of the century.

But let’s take it one step further. Last week I was talking to my friend Arozo and we got into the extra implications of making your bed. Yes, making your bed is a positive signal at the end of the day, but equally important to consider is how not making your bed can be a negative signal.

As Jack Canfield says, our unconscious mind operates off of a simple formula: E + R = O. Event + Response = Outcome. What happens throughout the day (without us realizing it) is that we are exposed to different stimuli, experience different events, and unconsciously respond to them to produce an outcome.

The example of an unmade bed demonstrates that potential harm in this: 

Event - You get home after a long day, you’re tired and a co-worker is upset with you, and you see that your bed isn’t made.

Response - Based on the emotional context and your prior belief systems, you attribute an unmade bed to your own character flaws of lacking discipline and not being able to do anything well.

Outcome - You take an additional hit to your self-confidence, you have less hope for yourself, and you show up the next day to work more defensive and on guard, which makes you more likely to respond poorly to the events you encounter.

It’s a self-defeating cycle that gets amplified and reinforced over time. That is, unless you do what James Clear of “Atomic Habits” recommends and “make the cue invisible”. If you make your bed, the event doesn’t happen, the thought spiral doesn’t occur, and you don’t receive that negative outcome.

Not only should this bring awareness to the importance of making your bed, but encourage you to be more proactive and disciplined. You never know how your environment might trigger an event that you unconsciously process.

Every day is an opportunity to become more aware of how things work. It all serves you in being better moment to moment.