Your Daily Cup Of Joe: Recent Episodes
Grow With Joe
In life we have to decide how much of life we really want. If you want more in life, that means you have to give up more of your life to get more. There are exceptions to the rule but for the majority of us, we need to decide what is enough. If you always want bigger and better things, there will always be bigger and better things to get but that requires more money and time. Then where are you going to get that money and time from?
Don't let other people's expectations tell you what you need in your life. You have to ask yourself, how much is enough. Remember when you win the rat race, in the end you're still a rat. So beware of your choices and what you're giving up to get those choices. Are you working in a job that you hate or working many hours but the trade off is losing time with your family? Time with you kids and spouse is something you can never get back again when it's over. So choose wise with the things you choose to pursue.
Journal Prompts
- How will you know when you’re going after too many things?
- How can you ensure that enough is sufficient and not too little?
A lot of success comes down to getting the easy stuff right like showing up for a meeting on time, having proper hygiene, being nice, having a great attitude, and having the correct grammar in your emails. This takes effort and time, but if you can't get the easy stuff done in front of someone, what makes you think that the other person will think you will get the hard stuff done right.
People will notice if you get the easy stuff done because not a lot of other people get the easy stuff done right. But you will get the easy stuff done because you have high standards for yourself and take pride in setting the example for others. You're making the world a better place with your action and eventually it will come back to you.
Journal Prompts
- What will happen to your life if you don’t get the easy stuff right?
- What are some of the easy things that you need to do right? How would this set you apart from others?
We live in a competitive society and it shows. Back 30-40 years ago, if you had a college degree there was a high likelihood that you could get a really good job and be fine for the rest of your life. Now, a bachelor's degree is not enough to get you noticed in the economy and forces some people to spend more money and time on masters degrees and PhDs. You have to decide what path you want to take and what are the trade offs. If you don't want to get a higher education, then going in business or sales for yourself is a good way to make money. Both the academic and business path are going to be a lot of work, but it's what is necessary to set you apart from your competition. So don't wish it was easier, just wish you were better and the way you get better is start focusing on your skills.
On the path to greatness, there will be sacrifices. Saying no to going out with friends, a lower standard of living while you work towards your goals, and moments of loneliness because not many people are doing what you're doing, but you're a strong individual that can handle that because you trained for this moment. So keep wishing for harder moments periodically because it's what you need to stay focused and stay strong and when other people come at you, you'll be ready for it because you didn't wish it was easier.
Journal Prompts
- If you constantly did hard things, while the majority of folks did easy things, how would this make you more prepared for life?
- What is an area that you wish was easier? How can training make it easier for you to do?
This is a trick question because you can't be an average person to become a Marine. For many Marines, they have people come up to them and say they thought about being a Marine but then they didn't do it. Us Marines like to roll our eyes because all you really had to do is say yes and show up. That’s all it takes but Marines know they don’t have an easy journey ahead of themselves. You know it’s going to suck but a Marine once transformed is never the same again.
Same thing with any other ambitious task that you have in front of you. If you want to start a family or a business, you just have to say yes and get started. You'll figure it out as you go. Whatever you want to accomplish in life, there is a path, some paths are going to be more difficult than others and that's okay. Average people don't want to go down that path because it's not average but average gets you average results.
Journal Prompts
- What does average give you in this life time?
- How can you not be average with your life?
Life is constantly going to be more and more complicated as we get older as we add responsibilities to our plate. So we need to ensure that we are training our body and mind to handle that increase in responsibilities. So the only easy day should be yesterday. If today was easier than yesterday, then you're not training yourself hard enough. If you want to conquer your dreams and have a great life, you need to challenge yourself to get better every day. Even if the progress is incremental, you still did what was necessary.
If you have to take a day off, take a day off, but make sure you don't rest for too long because then it might be hard to start again. As people we constantly look for problems because we want to be challenged but sometimes we just keep the problem in front of us because then we don't have to address it, it is there as a scapegoat and go back to it when things didn't go our way. If you keep challenging yourself, then you can learn to overcome and go on to the next challenge. Remember, the only easy was yesterday and you're being transformed into a winner that can handle anything.
Journal Prompts
- How can you take pride in knowing that the easy day was yesterday?
- How can you track your days so that you’re doing something challenging every day?
If you want to live the good life, self-mastery over one's self is going to get you there. Once I started working on yourself by becoming physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually stronger, that's when you’ll be able to start seeing real growth in your life. Once you establish this dominion over yourself, then you’re free to live your best life.
Also, when you can't control yourself, how can you have influence on others? They won't take you seriously if you can't take care of yourself. There is nothing worse that having an incompetent person in charge of you and you should be a competent person yourself so you're not being a hypocrite. If you fail but are trying to be better, that's much better than failing because you didn't even try. So get working on yourself and enjoy the benefits of self-mastery.
Journal Prompts
- What is the best way for you to gain dominion over yourself?
- How will you know when you have dominion over yourself?
We have to realize that 2 plus 2 can be greater than four if you bring the right twos to the table. If you substitute your skills with a piece of paper and pencil instead of a computer, you won't be able to go as fast if you had a computer helping you out. With a computer you'll be able to get ten times the amount of work in an hour versus manually doing the calculations yourself. So when you look at your life, look for the 20% that will give you 80% of your results. Not everything holds the same value but the right combination can give you exponential value.
You can grow the pie to be larger and have more to eat if you get the right pieces together but you must understand how things work together in order to see this growth. This is why studying different fields of study is so useful because you can see how if you mix one idea with another, you can create something new that is really useful. So don’t focus on the whole, focus on the parts that make up the whole and see what needs to be improved on.
Journal Prompts
- How is focusing on the parts better than focusing on the whole?
- How can you make the sum of the parts greater than the sum in your life?
The way they train circus elephants is that as babies they put a heavy chain on the elephant's leg and then they pull and pull but can't break the chain. Eventually they just stop trying. Then what happens as an adult, only a rope is on the elephant's leg, which they easily could move but they accepted the victims mindset and will just let rope keep them locked up.
When you play the victim card, you're letting your past determine today. Just because something happened in the past doesn't mean all the new situations will end out the same way. A victim just stays in the invisible cage and says that they can't move. The best thing you can do is just keep taking action until you finally break through. It might take a long time but the day you quit is the day you become a victim and you might never escape it.
Journal Prompts
- Are there any invisible cages that are holding you back? How is your history creating this cage?
- What is the destiny you want to fulfil? How can you use today to help you get where you want to go?
The world is changing and we can't stop it. If we stay the same as a person, then that wave is going to crush us. The wave is likely not coming for a while but what you can do in the meantime is learn how to surf. There are a ton of skills that we can learn to become better people and help us become more resilient to adversity.
You can hope that the wave doesn't come but it will come. You can't stop the world so enjoy what it gives you and learning how to surf can make the ride a lot more enjoyable.
Journal Prompts
- What was a change that happened in your life where you weren’t prepared for it? How did this set you back?
- What are you doing to learn how to surf?
Winning the lottery could be one of the worst things that could happen to someone. Within a few years, 70 percent of them go broke. While losing a job, could be one of the greatest things that happens to someone. Now they are free to do what they really want and can choose a better life for themselves. That bitter trial was the kick in the butt that they needed to get started. For lottery winners, people just want to hang around them because they have money and will try to get them to spend down their money without worrying about their long term success.
We tend to learn more from the downsides than the upsides. So when you go through something bitter, just realize down the road, it could serve as something powerful to help you with your future self.
Journal Prompts
- What is a bitter trial that you have been through that was a blessing in disguise? What lessons were learned?
- Where have you learned your greatest lessons? From down or up moments? Why is it like this?
The next time you go to a river that you've already been to and step in it, realize that the river is not the same. It might look the same but sediment has changed under the water, the water is different, there might be new species in the river, and the temperature might be different. It will always be different. When you enter the river you won't be the same person either. You'll be older, have different thoughts, you might be physically different in some way, and you might be in a different relationship. You have to realize that you might look the same overall, you're never the same person. Every new experience that you have is changing you a tiny bit. The direction you go is dependent on the input that your body goes through.
So we should never expect things to stay the same because they are always changing. They might look the same or very similar but we shouldn’t be clinging onto the past because the past doesn't exist today. So enjoy the process of change and when you step into that river just enjoy the river as it is and don't worry about how it is not the same river as before.
Journal Prompts
- What would happen to your life if you try to keep everything the same?
- How can you ensure that you don't cling onto the past by trying to keep things the same?
The things we buy will eventually break or become obsolete but a memory can bring us a lifetime of happiness. Things will never stay the same but we can be happy that they happened. You don't have to spend a lot of money on things to have a good time, you just need to figure out how to have a good time. That usually means just being present in the moment and bringing energy to it.
If you build the right type of memories, you won’t want to trade them for anything else in the world. They made you into the person you are today and it’s something that can bring a smile to your face. And because that thing ended, now you have a great memory that you can draw on. In life, you should strive to have as many good memories as possible because when you're on your deathbed, those will be the last things you will take with you.
Journal Prompts
- How can you use being present and bring energy to create more great memories for yourself?
- How can you use gratitude to bring more smiles to your face when it comes to your memories?
Small actions can lead to great results. Just going to bed early, brushing your teeth, meal prepping, writing in a journal, and going for walks can lead to big breakthroughs in your life. The great UCLA basketball coach John Wooden would teach his players how to put on their socks because improperly worn socks would lead to blisters, and blisters would cause the player to play hurt or miss the game completely. So that small action can have huge implications if not done.
A lot of breakthroughs come from small actions done over and over again. Don't focus on the big stuff, even though it is more exciting, focus on doing the little things right first. Turn those little actions into big wins for yourself. If you have enough sleep, then you'll be more prepared for your work day and do better work, which will help you land that promotion, which will give you more money to spend on your family and give them financial security. You have the ability to to turn the ripple into waves but you can't make the waves without the ripples.
Journal Prompts
- What are some ripples that can turn into waves for yourself? What are the waves?
- How can you be reminded to do the small actions on a daily basis?
If you look at your life, where are the parts where there are four lanes of traffic merging into one lane? If you ever sat in traffic before, you know lane mergers cause serious traffic. So you need to either expand the lanes or remove the cars from your road so you'll see more progress in your life. One major bottleneck is typing. If you're a slow typer, then it can take double the amount of work to get something done.
When you have bottlenecks in your life, it gives you less time to do other things in life. To prevent this, look at your day and see what is slowing you down from getting your stuff done. This might come from having to do too many things and you can’t concentrate. A great way to give yourself more time is to focus on less stuff and only do what is essential. This takes discipline but it will allow you to be able to live a life with more purpose and passion.
Journal Prompts
- If you were able to get an extra two hours a day from alleviating your bottlenecks, how could you use this time to progress your life?
- What are some bottlenecks in your life that need to be removed? How can you eliminate them?
When you have too many chefs in the kitchen, then that can create problems. They all want to do things their way but there is not enough resources to get everything done their way. So then productivity goes down. So the best solution is for either the chefs to find or create their own kitchen or for a majority of them to accept different roles. This will make things more productive and decisions can be made faster.
If someone wants to go on and do their own thing, then that’s fine. Don’t hold any grudges because it will be the best for everyone involved. You can still do collaborations and bounce ideas off of each other. Just know what type of situation you’re getting in and see if you need to be the leader or the follower. It’s okay to be both at various parts of your life.
Journal Prompts
- What happens when there are too many leaders on a project? What is the best way to delegate tasks in this type of situation?
- When do you know you need to be a leader or follower in a situation?
Complaining is something that is ineffective. It does nothing to move the ball forward. To stop complaining, you can either stop focusing on that issue or complain but then say you're going to do something about it and actually do it. That's what entrepreneurs do, they see problems, they make them their own, and then they go out and build the thing to fix the problem. This is how we see change in the world.
When you solely focus on complaining, you're draining all the energy from the room. People are going to feel less motivated and then the thing that needs to be fixed is not going to happen. If you stop complaining and start taking action, you'll be surprised how much more work you'll be able to get done in the day. To stop complaining, wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap yourself every time you catch yourself complaining. Eventually you'll get the hint to stop and start getting back to work.
Journal Prompts
- Can you go one day without complaining? Why or why not?
- How can you ensure that you don’t complain and focus more on your energy on action?
If we want to fall down hard in life, a sure fire way is to let hubris, delusion, or your ego get out of control. It makes you think that everything is okay, when it really isn't. It can cause you to be in a relationship that is falling apart or stick with a project that is doomed for failure.
To get a more gentle fall, you need to be real about the situation and have an honest conversation with yourself about what needs to happen. Success can make you think that you're unstoppable and nothing can harm you but that's a dangerous position to be in. It can cause you to get complacent in your acts and then the foundation of your success will slowly get cracks in it, and the longer it goes unnoticed, then your world can collapse.
Journal Prompts
- How can your ego, hubris, and delusion sabotage your life?
- How can you have more realism and self-honesty within your life?
As people, we tend to make things worse in our heads than they actually are. We can give a presentation and we could develop an end of the world scenario if we don't perform well. You can ask someone out and they say no, but guess what, your life will continue onwards. At least you took a shot and the worst outcome was just a no, not a complete failure of your life.
By writing down the things that could go wrong on a piece of paper, it can give you the opportunity to really analyze the situation and see if you're being rational or not. More times than not, you're being irrational with your thoughts. If you need to follow-up with someone, don’t worry about sending out multiple emails to get their attention. Most of them are probably happy that you’re following up. You’re not going to spoil the relationship unless you’re being a jerk in your responses.
So when you think of a catastrophe scenario for things that haven’t happened yet, the only person that you're really hurting is yourself and that's a self-inflicted wound.
Journal Prompts
- What good does suffering do for your life? What is your antidote to suffering?
- How can you ensure that you don’t suffer more in imagination than in reality?
If you want to do something, follow the three second rule. If you see someone you want to talk to, you count to three and then you proceed to go to that person. If you wait any longer than three seconds, you're likely not going to do it. After enough three second rule attempts, you'll be able to walk up to anybody.
You can also use the three second rule when giving a presentation or to have a difficult conversation with someone. The idea is that you need to take action and sometimes we can have a little trouble getting started. So by giving us a rule, it allows us to follow through on what we want to do. The more you use this rule, the more action you will take, and the better life you will build because of that action.
Journal Prompts
- How can you implement the three second rule into your life to do difficult tasks?
- What is a penalty you can give yourself if you fail to do the three second rule?
When it comes to becoming wealthy, there are two ways to become wealthy. To get everything you want or to be satisfied with what you have. Either one is a choice and that's fine but you have to realize that one is going to be easier to obtain. In the pursuit of more stuff, it can be a bottomless pit if you allow it. It's important to be ambitious and want to do more but if you choose to go the minimalist path, that's okay as well. You just have to be aware of your choice.
If you choose the path of getting more, just make sure those things are really going to make you happy, and the thing you're doing to obtain those extra things is not killing you. Pursuing more can cost your relationships and your health. Both are bad to lose and heartbreaking when it happens. The best way to live is to be satisfied with where you are in life and with your progress. So enjoy the moment and make sure you're doing things that make you better.
Journal Prompts
- How is enough for you? How do you know this is the amount?
- What are some reminders that can remind you when you’re pursuing more than you should be going after?
When it comes to doing something new, you're creating new connections in your brain. But the thing is, it's kind of like walking to the mailbox with six feet of snow between your front door and the mailbox that is 30 ft away. So when you make that first trip and back, it's going to be difficult because the path hasn’t been made yet. Then it's going to snow a little the next day but the trip is going to be easier than the first day. The faster you take more trips to the mailbox and back, the faster the path will be clear.
When we try new things, it’s going to be difficult because we haven’t created the clear path yet. So every time you take action, you are going to connect new wires in your brain and the path is going to become more efficient for your brain to do it. So keep taking action and eventually it will feel effortless to do.
Journal Prompts
- What is something that needs to feel more effortless in doing? What actions can you take to help you turn those things into something that is easy to do?
- How can you ensure that you stick to your thing until it becomes effortless?
There is nothing worse than spending tons of time and money on something and then you find out that it was all for nothing. When you're working on something new and you have a timeline, most of the time, it's just best to come out with something that just barely works. Then when you start getting feedback, then that is when you can start removing or adding stuff that people actually want. If you look at the first Iphone, it didn't even have a cut and paste option, but it was sent out anyways.
When you're giving a presentation, you can give too much information on a subject and it will cause people to get lost. So you need to find the balance between too much and too little. Time is something we shouldn't waste, so make sure you do the minimal viable product to get the thing out and take it from there.
Journal Prompts
- Are you putting too much energy into your projects? How do you know what will be the right balance?
- How can you use feedback to help you modify your projects?
One of the keys to overcoming any obstacle in your life is to look at the obstacle as objective as possible. Try to take out the emotion where you start getting all angry or you panic and can't think. When you do this, then you're adding more challenges to the situation and if you make a mountain out of a molehill, what was an easy hike, now turns into a hike that you might not be able to do.
To prevent this, take the fly on the wall approach. Where you're looking at your body acting in the moment from the perspective of a fly. This can help you realize if you’re acting irrational in the situation because you’re able to view the situation from more angles. If you realize that your poor attitude is causing the situation to get worse, then you’re able to get past the obstacle faster.
Making things worse than necessary is not a good strategy to live a good life, so don’t do it.
Journal Prompts
- How can you use the fly on the wall approach to see if you’re acting poorly in a situation?
- How can you maintain the right mindset so you don’t make things more difficult than necessary?
A lot of things can go wrong if you misunderstand someone. It makes for a great comedy but it's not fun in real life most of the time. It can cost you a lot of money or reputation if there is miscommunication. A NASA spaceship exploded in the air because one group did their measurements in inches while the other group did their measurements using the metric system.
To prevent these types of miscommunications, we want to avoid using vague words and do check-in to make sure that things are going in the right direction. No one can read our minds and we can't read the minds of others, so we want to make sure we're not acting so. A miscommunication is an avoidable mistake but it requires us to be aware that a miscommunication can happen. If we are aware that it is a possibility, then we can ask the questions to make sure everything is clear.
Journal Prompts
- How can a misunderstanding affect your life for the worse?
- What questions can you ask so that there are no misunderstandings in your relationships?
It's okay to be wrong since no one is perfect. The wrong thing to do is be wrong and then continue to be wrong after you realize that you're wrong. To be successful in life you have to be willing to be wrong because that's how you can discover new things in life. Being wrong can expose you to new outcomes in life and help show you the right path that you should be on. It isn’t even rational to strive to be perfect because to be perfect is to be inhuman.
If you're wrong, you're wrong, and that's okay. Just admit to yourself that you made a mistake and correct your actions. This will make you a good person, and in life we should strive to be good people.
Journal Prompts
- What is the worst thing about being wrong? Is this the most fatal thing you can do?
- How can you be more okay with being wrong?
You never know when you're going to need to reach out to someone for some help. If you were an asshole to someone and then a couple days or weeks later, you reach out to them and ask for help, they're probably not going to help you. You can leave someone on cordial terms but if you're hostile about it then don't expect to be able to go back to that person.
If someone was a jerk to you, you probably wouldn’t want to help them out in the future either.. People often don't change who they are and if they are a bridge burner, then they are most likely to do it again in the future. Be careful how you interact with other people because you don't know when you will be needing something from them in the future. You can raise the bridge if someone is not acting right, but give the other person an opportunity to lower it.
Journal Prompts
- What would burning a bridge actually do for your life?
- How can you ensure that you don’t burn bridges in your life?
When you look at things that you're not doing, what is holding you back from doing it? Do you think your reputation is going to take a hit because you will be seen as a failure or that things will go extremely wrong like bankruptcy? Even if you went through all these things, these are not fatal outcomes that you can’t come back from. Going from eating steak dinners to beans and rice is still better for a lot of people on this planet and can be temporary if you take the right steps to get your life back on track.
There is not much you can lose that won't make a difference in your life. You can live off of ramen noodles and sleep on an air mattress while you work on your goals. Going through these experiences can give you a perspective on life that will make a harder worker and one that shows more empathy. You only got one shot for living on this planet, so might as well take some chances with your life.
Journal Prompts
- Are you playing it too safe with your life because you’re afraid of losing something? Is this something that you should be really afraid of losing?
- How can you be more comfortable with losing things in your life?
Every time you hear a negative thing or say something negative, you need to say or do ten positive things. There is a lot of negativity out there in the world and that's why we need motivation in our lives to help us out. Listening to motivational YouTube videos and keeping a gratitude journal can give you the motivation you need for your day. Having that playlist can help jumpstart your day and help you focus on the right things.
Affirmations (positive self-talk) can also help keep your spirits high. If you tell yourself something like “I got this” and “I’m going to give it one more try” after each failed attempt, this can make the next attempt easier. The world is a tough place to live and we need to ensure that we have the right type of energy to stay afloat. So go find your motivation and keep making progress on your goals.
Journal Prompts
- How would you rate your motivation levels right now? Is this enough to keep you going or do you need to make a change?
- How can you motivate yourself when times get tough?
A bad decision is usually better than making no decision at all. When you make a bad decision, you can learn what not to do and how to improve next time. When you don't make a decision, then you don't get that opportunity. We should still strive to avoid making bad decisions but sometimes you have to move forward with a decision rather than just sitting on your hands and not doing nothing because that can lead to disastrous results down the road. With France, Great Britain, and the US, they just sat on their hands while Adolf Hitler grew his empire, this turned out really bad for the world. It's hard to say what would've happened if they intervened earlier, but the world could have spared countless lives.
When it comes to your life, sometimes you just have to make a decision to quit your job to focus on something else, or finally quit that bad relationship that you've been holding off on for a couple of months. There is going to be confusion for a little bit but it will force you to think about your next move and how to improve your life. The more decisions you can make to change, the more your life can change. Just make sure you quit the bad decisions as fast as possible and focus on the decisions that are making your life better.
Journal Prompts
- How can you be more decisive in your decisions?
- Are you making enough decisions to get or maintain your good life?
Society has pushed many people into a box that says they can't do something unless they received formal training. That's why you can't become a coach unless you get the right licenses or can’t give certain presentations until you wait your turn in line.
For many things in life, you can skip the line if you do the right things. You don’t need someone to give you permission to do something, you just need to give yourself the permission. You might fail at doing the thing you want to do, but you can always try again until you reach your goal.
This is how the Wright brothers did it. They wanted to fly a plane and they accomplished their goal by focusing on one problem until they solved it before heading off to the next issue. Spending four years going to school to learn how to work is a lot of time and the learning can be done in your spare time as you research your answers. You can do a lot of your stuff on your own and speed up the learning process if you take responsibility for the outcome. Some things you do need to have the right certifications for but for a lot of things there are plenty of ways to fly with having to get a pilots licence.
Journal Prompts
- How can you skip the line for your goals?
- How would saving that time help you with other parts of your life?
In order for a bamboo nut to grow 80 feet in six weeks, it needs to be watered and fertilized for five years. At any time the water and fertilized process is stopped, the bamboo nut will die. Most people will see the 80 feet of bamboo growth but will quickly forget the five years worth of work that went into it.
With your life, you have to do the same thing. You have to constantly be working on yourself, if you work on yourself and do the right things to grow in today's environment, you will see exponential growth in your life eventually.
To work on a project, can take a long time to complete and what separates the success folks from the others, is that they just continued work on their craft and themselves. You can be living in a car like Steve Harvey for three years before you make your big break.
How bad do you want something? Are you willing to move back with your parents and give up a good salary so you can work on your dreams? If you do, you are going to have a lot of work in front of you and you just have to keep watering and fertilizing your talents so that one day you can actually grow.
Journal Prompts
- How can you be patient like the bamboo nut on your major goals?
- How can you be more comfortable with taking a step back so that can focus more on your long term goals?
Something bad is going to happen to all of us. Some might have it worse than others but we are all going to go through something terrible. A tornado wrecked your home or a serious illness took down someone you love. One way to get over the pitfalls of lives is just to love them and accept them. If life gives you a tough thing to handle, it's because you're strong enough to handle it. Otherwise, who else do you want this unfortunate situation to happen to? The answer should be no one else, and just realize that it is your turn.
Someone that wishes that this event happened to someone else is not being a good person and is having a victim’s mindset. Both traits won’t resolve the issue any faster and won’t help the person grow to their full potential because they’re trying to avoid responsibility. Don’t run from responsibility, embrace it.
Journal Prompts
- How can embracing responsibility help you grow to your full potential?
- How can you avoid having the victim’s mindset that runs away from responsibilities?
The brain has two different parts for making decisions. The amygdala, which is responsible for quick decisions, like my hand is on a hot stove and I need to remove it. The Pre-frontal cortex is responsible for logical thinking, like what is 18 times 23124, which thanks to a calculator, is 416,232. To do that math, I can't just come with an answer right away.
We have to be aware that we have two different parts of the brain that make decisions. We can be in a heated argument with someone and our amygdala takes over and we say something that we regret. If we have the time to take a break and think about our words, then the conversation could not be as hostile
Since we like to save energy on making decisions, our brain likes to develop rules of thumbs that we like to follow. If this thing happens, then we do this. This was very helpful back in the day when we were hunter gatherers. If we see a tiger, we run or attack. But in today's society, there are a lot more variables and if we make too quick of a decision, it can be very harmful to us. So slow things down and take time to make a decision but also don't fall into the trap of analysis paralysis either. Just beware of your habits so you can learn to make better choices with your life.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure that you don’t make too quick of a decision?
- How can you ensure that you don’t take too long with your decisions?
Even though we have smartphones, social media, computers, and virtual reality headsets, and things are so much more different today than 25, 50, 100, 200 years ago, a lot of things have remained the same in terms of having curiosity, desire, seeking safety, and wanting acceptance. People are not robots, even though there are some that act like it.
There will always be people who strive for power and there will be people who will be self-conscious about their decisions. During the Roman Empire, they dealt with a lot of the same social issues that we deal with today.
So if you can understand people and why they do stuff, you will see that things don't really change.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure that you don’t lose focus of people and how they behave?
- How can you use the principles of human nature to help you in today’s environment?
There will be more information created over the next five years than the previous 500 years. The world is changing fast and we need to be prepared for it. We need to have more skills to help us think creatively and to be able to bounce back from adversity.
The worst thing we can do to prepare for this fast changing future is to stop trying and learning. Life won't be very forgiving if you follow this path so always focus a portion of your day on your development.
The world is going to change and we have to accept it. Since it's changing so fast, we need to accept it even faster.
Journal Prompts
- What ways are you preparing for the future?
- How can you use information about what is going to change in the future to make yourself more successful?
If you read the book, "Freakanomics" they discuss how a lot of things we experience in the world have a hidden side to them. There are many things where we think we’re doing good, but actually we’re not doing good.
For example, take recycling, how often is it that the trash can with different slots, but slots for trash and recycling go into the same bin? Or if you don't clean out your yogurt cup and still recycle it, this causes damage to the recycling machines. So follow the rabbit hole and see if you're truly being a good person. If you love nature and you're constantly worrying about the environment but you travel all around the world, every week in a private plane. Are you doing everything you need to do to live within your principles.
To see how the sausage is made can be a rude awakening and that might change the way you think but you have to ask yourself, do you want to live a lie and feel important, or do you want to do important things and actually make a difference in the world.
Journal Prompts
- How do you know you're truly doing good with your actions?
- Are you taking any shortcuts in your actions like not cleaning out the yogurt cups? How can you improve in this area?
If you see something that isn't right, say something or even better, do something. If you see someone do something that needs to be corrected, don't go yelling at the person that they are wrong. Just be tactful and let them beware of their mistakes. If you become aggressive at someone, they might change their ways or they might dig deeper into that personality because they want to spite you. It's going to take more effort to go this route but it's going to be the best way to create permanent positive change.
After you do it enough, it will become easier and easier to do. So if you see something, do something.
Journal Prompts
- How can you be more comfortable with calling things out?
- How can you life be better more mistakes were called out with compassion?
When it comes to controlling people, the only person you can truly control is yourself. You can control your standards in life in terms of how clean you keep your environment, the quality of work you turn in, how nice you are to people, and always doing the right thing but that's because you know better so do you better. You know not doing the right thing will lower the standards for yourself and then you won't be able to live with yourself.
Since not everyone came from the same background from you, you should be forgiving of someone and teach them the lessons on how to have high standards and the best way to do that is to set the example by having high standards. People are going to let you down with their low standards but if you don't address the issue and be forgiving, then it's not going to change. Don't be a jerk when people mess up. Just express how you feel and give guidance on how to improve the situation. If they change, then awesome. If they don't change, then you might need to start hanging around other people and until they change their ways but remember to be forgiving and not hold any grudges.
Journal Prompts
- How can you express your standards to those around you?
- How can you ensure that you’re forgiving of others?
When you have a group, it is easy to follow whatever the group is already doing. They are comfortable with how things have been going, but being comfortable with what has always been done doesn’t typically lead to long term success.
This is why you should question things and see if it is really the best way to do something. This can be really uncomfortable because it can be everyone against you. But if you know something to be true and they are all following a lie, it's best for you to go against the group. This will lead to your long term success and they will be left behind.
To change the group, you have to be confident, know you stuff inside and out, and know how to persuade people to change their groupthink. It’s okay to go with the group, but just make sure you know it’s the right path to be on.
Journal Prompts
- What can happen to your life if you get trapped in the snares of group thinking?
- How can you avoid the snares of groupthink?
If you feel like you're not enjoying your life, it is typically because you're lacking these qualities in your life, control, autonomy, and creativity. Having control gives you the ability to know that you can change your situation. Autonomy is the ability to make decisions without having to answer to someone else. Creativity is the ability to come up with new solutions. There won’t be a perfect solution that gives you all three 100% of the time but you can design your life to be pretty satisfied with the balance.
In order to get all three of these things, you just need to be so good they can’t ignore you. Once you reach this level with your life, then you will have more power to dictate your life. Instead of hoping things come your way, things will come to you and you’ll be able to pick and choose what projects you want to work on. It takes time to build up to this level but the outcome is very desirable.
Journal Prompts
- What would having control, autonomy, and creativity mean to your life?
- How can you become so good they can’t ignore you in your niche?
Everything that you worked for or born with can be taken away in a flash. A bad business partner can steal all your money, an accidental can leave your body paralyzed, or mother nature can ruin your home. The only thing that outside sources can take away from you is your attitude of the circumstances. Thomas Edison lost his factory in a fire with all his patents and equipment. Instead of being upset, he woke up his family to watch the factory burn down, and said they would never see a fire that large again. Six months later his company was twice as profitable.
If everything was taken away from you today. The first thing you should do is to let go of what happened and focus on the next step you can take to get back where you want to go. Just get back to work and start picking up the pieces and eventually the thing will be put back together.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure your perceptions are ready for the next setback?
- Is your attitude in the right spot to handle the next set back? How can you ensure that it stays ready or gets where it needs to be?
When people tell you not do something it is either because they don't want to see you get hurt if things don't work out, they are putting their own beliefs and they can't see themselves doing the same, or they are a hater and they don't want you to succeed.
The key thing to know is that those people are not you and only you can determine your own potential in life. If you never took a chance in life, you would sit in front of a television on a couch all day. It's a safe environment but it's not a fulfilling life.
If we fail, which is very likely on the first couple of attempts, we can always get back up, dust ourselves off, learn from our mistakes, and try again. If you let other people get in your head and start doubting yourself, you'll never try again. If you really want to do something, do it and keep trying until you master it, but don’t let others make you afraid of taking chances.
Journal Prompts
- What will happen to your life if you let others make you afraid of taking chances?
- How can you ensure that you don’t let others make you afraid of taking chances?
If you want to make it far in life, a real good strategy is to follow the philosophy, "Always be giving". So when you're interacting with people, figure out a way you can give them value. If you give enough value to the world, the world will pay it back to you. Just make sure you're giving value and not trash.
When you're giving value, do not keep track of score. This will ensure that you become resentful and will stop giving to the world. The value you receive back might not happen right away but it will come back. Plus if everyone's goal was to give value to their environment, the world would be a much better place. So do you're part for giving value and start setting the example for others.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure that you don’t keep track of the amount of value that you receive and give?
- What are ways you can give more value in your interactions with others?
By studying what success people have done, you can see that some of them came from simple backgrounds, but they went on to complete some amazing things, like Jose Hernandez who grew up as migrant produce picker and then went on to become an astronaut. The leap from that background to that career is a huge accomplishment, but the key thing is that he was able to do it and you can make huge leaps in your own life as well.
People have come from much worse backgrounds than you and are super successful. If they can do it then you definitely can do it, you just have to want it as bad as they did. The biggest thing about seeing people and hearing their stories is that they can give you hope to do so. Then after you hope you just need to have the same patience as them.
Journal Prompts
- Who are a few people that you can borrow traits from that are successful?
- How can you use stories of others to motivate you to accomplish your goals?
If you never put stress on your muscles by not working out, what is going to happen is that you're going to start losing muscle mass. You also need stress in order for your muscles to maintain themselves and to grow. So if you removed all the stress from your life, you won't be able to grow as a person.
Acute stress is needed but chronic stress should be avoided. A good ratio is that 20% to 30% of your life should have feelings of stress and the rest of your life should be stress free. If you go to work for 8 hours a day and you're stressed out for the entire period, then a change needs to happen. This type of living won’t be good for you and will cause you to break down.
Find ways that will challenge you and that's the stress you need in your life but there can be a point where you do too much too fast. So find the balance in your life and start growing.
Journal Prompts
- What is the current ratio of stress in your life? What type of stress is it? Is this the right balance to help you grow?
- How can you ensure that you have the right type and balance of stress in your life?
Like Marilyn said, once they start taking time to think about you, you are already better than them. We can't please everyone and all we can do is just be the best person that we can be. People will attack the things for what they lack and are trying to bring us down to their level. You just have to ignore the haters and keep moving on with your life.
If you give them energy, they will get stronger. They are already talking about you and you already won, so don't give them an opportunity to get stronger by focusing your energy on them.
Journal Prompts
- How does giving your energy to an energy vampire help you out?
- What are ways you can stop focusing on what other people think about you?
Once you start taking the easy way out, then begins the slippery slope down to mediocrity. Once you're in mediocrity, nothing significant grows there and opportunities will start to dry up into a desert. Once you're in a desert, there is no water, no food sources and then you'll perish away. So this is why we need to put effort into our work, and make sure we don't lick that lollipop.
When you suck as a person, you'll have weak relationships, bad personal finances, and always be complaining about your low paying job. This lifestyle truly sucks and can only be avoided by challenging yourself and putting your best effort into not being mediocre.
Journal Prompts
- What does a sucky life look like for you? How does mediocrity play into having this life?
- What can you do so you don’t take a like from the lollipop of mediocrity?
When it comes to trusting people in power, you want to make sure they are not abusing their power. This is why we need checks and balances to make sure people don't get taken advantage of. If you have an accountant, make sure you have a second accountant to review the books and do an audit so you don't end up losing all your money. Trust but verify is a quote that we should follow so we can ensure people are doing what they are supposed to do and avoiding the things they shouldn't be doing.
Don't trust people blindly because when you get disappointed by your blind trust, you'll have no one to blame but yourself. So do your check-in and make sure you're working with someone that will take away your livelihood.
Journal Prompts
- How can you set up checks and balances for different parts of your life?
- How often should you verify those checks and balances? How is this sufficient?
Power can cause the ego to get out of hand. When people see folks who abuse their power, it causes them to lose faith in that organization and not to trust it any more. When an organization loses trust, it’s going to create a very unstable situation. This then can cause a lot of damage down the road and things won’t be able to grow to their full potential.
It is very tempting to abuse your power because you're the one in charge and who really is going to challenge you. Not many. But the idea is that you don’t want to be a hypocrite and lower the standard for others to follow. If people see that you can abuse your power, then others will think that is what it will take to progress with their own lives. So don’t lower the standard and don’t take advantage of your power.
Journal Prompts
- Have you seen an example of someone abusing their power? How does this make you feel about the person and organization?
- How can you ensure that you don’t let power go to your head?
You indeed miss 100% of the shots you don't take, but you should also know what you are capable of so you don't take a bad shot that could hurt your reputation. Of course, you can ask someone for 100 million dollars to start up your food cart business that has no plan, but that request will just make the other person upset.
A great way to know the range of your shot is through the briefcase technique. In a negotiation, you don't want the other person to feel unccertain and feel like they will be better off going with your request. So you being all the solutions to all the possible problems that could happen, where the person can't think of anything that could fail. The person knows your range because you properly presented it.
There will be times when you test your range, and it won't work out. If it is done with precision and thought-fulness, then it's okay. If it's done with laziness and feeling entitled, then it's probably a shot you shouldn't take.
Journal Prompts
- What are some things you can do to increase the range and accuracy of your shots?
- What can happen to your reputation if you take thw wrong shot out of your range?
If the only tool in your tool box is a hammer, then every problem will look like a nail. If you have to cut a piece of wood but all you have is a hammer, you're not going to be able cut a clean piece of wood and will just create more of a mess than if you did nothing. To prevent making things a mess in your life when you try to get a job done, you need to get skills or delegate that task to someone who has that skill. Delegating is also a skill so you need to add to your toolbox if you want to solve your problems cleanly.
When you're able to have a toolbox full of tools, you can complete any project and create a lot of great looking things. Having only one tool will make you less effective so don’t over value one tool over another, because different jobs will require different tools.
Journal Prompts
- Are you only using one tool to solve most of your problems? How do you know this is the case or not?
- What happens when you solve your problems only using one tool?
In this life you're not going to go through it without interacting with other people. So that's why we need to be an apprentice of human nature. We should understand why people act the way they act. From there we can break down walls and start building bridges. Some walls might be tougher to take down than others but that's why you need to study the other side's thinking even more and how you can come up with a plan to build that bridge.
We spend so much time trying to become better at our jobs but if we spent that same amount of time on human engineering where we learn how to communicate better, become better negotiators, and lead folks more efficiently, then that would get us a lot farther in life since only 15% of our success at work is due to our technical competence. So read all the books by Robert Greene and learn how to be an apprentice of human nature.
Journal Prompts
- How would your life be if you knew how to effectively take down walls and build bridges with other people?
- What are some resources that you can learn so that you can be a better apprentice of human nature?
Not every rule that is in place is a good rule. Some rules that were placed in effect 200 years ago have no right to be enforced in today's society. Just look at slavery and laws that banned interracial marriage. There might be other rules in your household or work that just don't need to happen anymore.
Take a look at how meetings are run. It's a rule that we need to go to them, but if we understand the rule and why it is in place, then we can break them and free ourselves from that bureaucracy. Don't just accept a rule as valid, if there is a better way to do something. If there is a better way then we should strive to do it. There is no sense in wasting our time or potential because we want to play it safe and not break a rule.
Journal Prompts
- How much more progress can you make in your life if you break a rule that is holding you back?
- What are some rules in your life that should be broken? How can you know the rules better so it is easier to break them?
You don't need to workout for an hour and seven days a week to be considered a winner when it comes to your workouts. A workout can be as long as 15 minutes or 5 minutes, the key thing is that you raised your heart rate and your muscles were tested.
If you can workout all you did was wall push ups, squats, and lunges in two minutes, then it was a good workout. The key thing to focus on is consistency and maintaining the habit. You don’t want to lose the habit because it can be a lot of hard work to get it back.
Journal Prompts
- What is the quickout that you can do in case there is not enough time to do your full workout?
- What happens when you let go of the habit of working out?
If you want to ensure that you have a mediocre life, then be realistic with your life. Do what you think you can do and not what is possible. But living a mediocre life is not okay. Life has a lot of amazing things to offer, but you have to be unrealistic with your life in order to enjoy them.
If you do enough of the unrealistic and work on improving your craft, then you will eventually get your best life. There are times when you might need to modify the goal, but at least you’re still living a great life. If you’re a musician but haven’t got your hit album yet, you can still work with other musicians and producers to create a hit album. This is still an unrealistic life to live and can still have many amazing moments that fill up your soul.
Plus when you’re unrealistic with your life, then you can create something that can benefit society. It can be a lonely road to take but it’s one that will fill you up the most.
Journal Prompts
- How would you feel at the end of your life if you lived a realistic life?
- What are you doing to not be realistic with your life?
In finance, there is a concept called the rule of 72. You take the number 72 and divide it by your average rate of return and that number will tell you how often something will double. So if your rate of return is 8, then something will double every 9 years.
This is how $10k at the age of 25 can grow into $320k by the time you're 70. Same thing can happen with your life. If you put enough energy into developing yourself as a person in all areas (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), you can start seeing aspects of your life start to grow exponentially. It can take a while initially to see some growth, but with enough persistence the compounding effect will come in full force.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure you get the right rate of return on your growth financially and personally?
- How can you ensure that you have a strong foundation so that you can higher a multiplying factor on your growth?
It takes courage to go to someone and admit your mistakes but this will be the fastest way to remedy this situation. When you make a mistake, you can start to fix the situation by saying that you messed up and that these are the steps you will do to ensure that you don't make the same mistake again. Do this and your mistakes will be forgivable.
To be perfect is to be inhuman and it’s okay to make a mistake, but make sure you do the right things to resolve them and not to make the same mistake again. Do this and life is going to be a lot more joyful because you won’t have to hold on to your secrets anymore.
Journal Prompts
- What happens to your life when you don’t admit your mistakes?
- How can you get the courage to admit your mistakes and formulate a plan to resolve them?
If you want to become happier as a person, one of the first steps you should consider is to care less. Once you stop caring so much, you can take that energy and apply it to some useful action that will actually make a difference. Once you stop caring how your co-worker are acting, it can give you more energy to focus on projects that will make you stand out.
There are some things that you should care about but that list should be less than the list of the things that you don't care about. You're only one person and your energy can't be directed everywhere, so decide what you really want to care about, choose that and start caring less about the other things in your life.
If you're afraid of doing stuff because you're worried what somebody else will think, just stop caring and starting doing more. Your actions are going to have a lot more impact on your life than caring about things.
Journal Prompts
- How would caring less about the right things change your life?
- How would your actions change your life more than other caring?
When you don't get a good night's sleep, you become 14% less effective as a person. This might not seem like a big difference but you have to understand that A players are 32 times more effective than B players.
If you get a full night's sleep every day for a month and go against someone who misses an hour of sleep every night for a month, you'll be over 500% more effective than that person of a month and over 6000% more effective over a year.
If you say that you don't need that amount of sleep, it's probably because you got used to being mediocre and can't remember how much more effective you were with a full night's sleep. You'll be able to think clearer and will get less frustrated when things don't work out. It might take a while to get back to normal but if you want to be the best version of yourself possible, go get a full night sleep.
Journal Prompts
- How would you feel if you could outperform all your competitors and could give your projects 100% of your energy? What difference would this make in your life?
- When was the last time you got a full night’s sleep, drank your water, had no alcohol, and ate nothing but nutritious meals? How can you make sure 80% of your days look like this?
The way you act today has a lot to do with what people thought was normal in the previous generation. You have to realize that the job is something that is really only 120 years old. Most people worked on farms and now less than 2% of folks work on farms. But what keeps the world changing is the technological advances that disrupt different sectors of the economy.
There is always going to be some type of friction between the older generations and the newer ones. People don't really like change and there will be resistance or conflict with such change.
So when you're doing something, ask yourself if this is the most appropriate thing for me to do. People used to put leeches on their body to get rid of illnesses and doctors used to cut people's wrists to get rid of the bad blood. There are things that we shouldn't be doing anymore because they don't fit with the times. Don't get caught up in doing something that is not effective anymore. It might seem normal now but it will harm you down the road.
Journal Prompts
- Are the things that you’re doing today, going to be normal or helpful in the future? How do you know?
- What is something that you thought was normal in the past, but was something that you shouldn’t have believed or done? How did you know to stop doing that thing?
A great tip from The 4-hour Body by Tim Ferriss is to do 50 wall pushups and 50 squats before you eat. This will deplete your muscle of glucose so when you eat, more of the food will be absorbed by your muscle and less by your liver. If your liver grabs it, then it will turn it into fat.
If you're in a restaurant or at work, go to the bathroom to do them if you feel uncomfortable exercising in public. This only takes 2 minutes to do but it could save you from buying larger clothes.
Journal Prompts
- Can you remind yourself to do 50 squats and 50 wall push ups before every meal?
- How can you use the same method to help you stay disciplined in other parts of your life?
Knowing something in the past but not taking action doesn't get you anything in life. Even if you recorded your knowledge of the event, it still wouldn't get you that far if you didn't share it and only did it once.
If you look at sports shows, no one is perfect in predicting outcomes, but they bring their analysis every day by getting in front of the camera. So what pays is taking actin on the knowlegde you have and doing it often.
Suppose you are at work and say that something would be a disaster but didn't take any action. Your co-workers are not going to give you praise. instead, they will problaby spite you for your comment since there was no accountable for what you say and know.
Journal Prompts
- How can you make sure you don't make ineffective comments or opinions?
- How can you be more helpful with your opinions and comments?
If you want to be forever miserable, then try to please everyone. You're not going to find the magic solution that is going to please everyone, but you should focus on serving the greatest good that fits within your values as a person. You're going to make someone upset and eventually they will get over it if they are a good person. If they don't get over it, then they don't deserve to be in your life.
Don't live your day stressed out trying to make everyone in your life happy. That is too much burden on anyone’s shoulders. You’re not a bunny, you can’t make everyone happy so don’t try it and just try to bring as much joy into your life as you can while being a good person.
Journal Prompts
- Are you trying to please too many people in your life? What is causing this desire?
- How can you use your values and principles to see how you should please the people in your life?
In order to make wheat edible, you need to remove the dry, scaly protective casing from the cereal grain. The same thing needs to happen with certain parts of your life, since we get dragged down by the chaff in our life. Toxic relationships, dead end jobs with no hope of promotion or change, and a self-limiting mindset that tells us not to go for it.
It takes work to remove the chaff from the wheat but that's how you're going to be able to eat and survive. Take a look at your life and identify all the chaff that is holding you back and from there ask how you remove it from your life. Most of the time, removing that chaff is the simplest but might not be the easiest especially if it's a toxic relationship but if you want to grow you need to remove the weeds so you can have a more abundant harvest.
Journal Prompts
- What areas of your life are causing you more trouble than you want? How can you remove this chaff from your life?
- How can you ensure that you’re not letting your wheat go to waste because there is chaff on it?
Alexander the Great is buried right next to a farmer and his donkey. Both lived very different lives but they ended up at the same spot. Ask an average person on the street to see how much they know about Alexander The Great and they probably won't be able to give you that much information.
Instead of worrying about your legacy, just worry about being a good person and helping out the next generation to be stronger than the previous. That's going to leave a much bigger impact than going for fame. Fame is only temporary and it follows the next hot thing. So just focus on what is really important and don't let your ego cloud your judgement on what's important like chasing a legacy that will be remembered.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure that you’re not chasing a legacy that won’t be remembered?
- How can you ensure that you spend more of your time on what’s important?
When you say things like Money comes to me effortlessly, what you're doing is opening up perception to new ways to make money. You stop saying, “I can't do it,” and start saying, “If I do this then I can”.
So then you start looking for ways to have money come to you effortlessly. You start focusing on the process that will get you the money like starting a business or getting that next job promotion instead of not trying. Plus if you enjoy the process of making money, then it will come to you effortlessly. If you don't, then it won't come effortlessly.
A positive mindset will take you far and can help you get through the tough times. If you say it's bad, then it's bad. If you say it's good, then it's good. One choice tends to be better than doing the other.
Journal Prompts
- What happens to your life when you say you can’t do things or that they will never happen? Is this outcome helpful to you?
- How can you say the right things so that you increase your perception of available chances?
We only have a finite amount of time on this planet, so we should spend our time on the things that will make us the most satisfied in life. So gulp on the things that will make you satisfied in life and sip on the things that don't.
The idea is that you don’t want to go to the grave with unfilled intentions still in your soul. You only get one shot at life and might as well give it your all to have all your intentions realized. Life is not going to be perfect and you don’t have to do everything, so focusing on the right things to gulp will help you from drowning.
Sipping on life is saying that you will get to that thing eventually and you never do or just not giving your full effort. So don’t let this happen either with your life.
Journal Prompts
- What are the things that you should be gulping on in life? How can you ensure that you’re gulping on these items?
- What are the things that you should be sipping on in life? How can you ensure that you sip on these items?
There are going to be a lot of things that make you want to keep your head down. You might be starting a business and friends and family are not being supportive. You might want to go on a solo vacation to explore the world and get a different perspective for yourself and your family is telling you not to go. You might feel left out at a social event.
The worst thing you can do in situations like these is to back down and compromise who you are as a person. So continue to hold your head up and high and look the world right in the eye like Helen Keller says. If you act more confident, you will be more confident.
Journal Prompts
- What are the things you can tell yourself to keep your head up when you have a down moment?
- What are the actions you can take to keep your head up when you have a down moment?
The more you learn how to become better at your life, the more you will earn. That money that you get is based on the size of the problem that you solve. This is why doctors get paid a lot because when your health is in danger, people are willing to pay a lot of money to stay alive. If somebody sues you for a million dollars, a great lawyer will charge a premium for you to access their expertise for the case. They spent the years of learning how to become a professional and now they can earn more.
There is a balance on what you learn. After college, you should spend at least three percent of your income on books, courses, and conferences that will teach you how to be a better communicator, leader, and negotiator. These skills will really separate you from the pack because not a lot of folks practice them.
If you want more out of this life, the best place to start is by learning more.
Journal Prompts
- How much effort did you put into your education over the past six months? Are you satisfied with the results that you got?
- What are some investments that you should make for your education over the next six months?
If you want to be a leader in your field, you have to read everything you can on the subject and once you're done reading everything in that subject, go find a supplement field to go study in. Warren Buffet reads over 500 pages a day and the average self-made millionaire reads two books a month. We don't start off by having all the lessons to make us successful and that's why we need to go out and find them in books and podcasts.
Reading a book can give you that strategy or hope you need to be successful in your next adventure. There is so much that you can learn about negotiation, how to communicate, how to lead, and how to live life by taking the initiative to learn outside the classroom. Your life can change tremendously from what you read in a book.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure that you read at least 24 books a year?
- Where is a place you can write down your thoughts and ideas from a book?
When it comes to reaching something like financial security, some people might put their effort into winning the lotto. This is possible but not very probable. So when you're trying something and want to do the shortcut to bypass all the years of trying, it's possible but not very probable.
To increase the odds of reaching something like financial success, it takes a bunch of small disciplined acts over a long period of time, like decades of disciplined action. This requires time and if you wasted your time and did not do the actions then you have to pray on a home run like winning the lottery.
It's possible to find the love of your life on the first date but it's not very probable. You probably have to date many different people to find the one. So don't get discouraged after the first attempt, keep going and you will increase your likelihood of success.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure that you don’t fall for low possibility events or thinking?
- How can you increase the probability of success for your goals that are more probable?
The gambler's fallacy is when someone keeps betting when they should have quit a long time ago because they wonder how many bad hands in row can they possibly get. There is a story of a man who spent over $2000 trying to win an xbox at a fair when an xbox can be bought for about $400 dollars. It doesn't become about the money anymore, it's about winning the game and sometimes the game isn't worth it to win. Are you trying to get into the best school and spend way more on tuition than necessary because you have the education or do you value the status it will bring so you can brag to all your friends where you went.
If you go down the path of status, you can spend a lot of money and time. You have to ask yourself if the prize is worth it. The choice is yours if you decide to fold and hold and keep playing the game. Just realize what you're giving up and what you're gaining by continuing to play the game.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure that staying in the game is worth it in various parts of your life?
- How can you ensure you know when to leave the game when it’s not worth it?
Most people won't switch from what they are already doing for an incremental improvement, but they will switch to something else if it is 10 times better. This is why people left their flip phones for smartphones because they were 10 times better. The same thing for you and your competition, you need to be ten times better in your niche.
If you look at smartphones, they combine a palm pilot, a phone, and a touch screen to create a smartphone. So if you're a plumber, then you specialize in a certain type of work so you can be ten times better than someone else. This is what is going to set you apart and not make you a commodity. Once you're a commodity, then it's whoever has the lowest price, wins. This is a game you don't want to play.
So look at your life and see how you can be ten times better in your field. That can come from combining different talents on top of each other or from specializing in a very specific niche. Once you figure it out, then it can provide you a lot more freedom to do other things in your life.
Journal Prompts
- What is an area that you can be ten times better than 90% of other folks?
- What happens in areas where you are only marginally better than others?
Two different people can have the same circumstances but totally different outcomes. One probably can have a growth mindset where obstacles were seen as puzzles that needed to be solved and the other can see them as dead ends. So be positive with your mindset so you can scan the environment for solutions and not stop signs.
A negative mindset tends not to be very helpful, because life is not perfect and will hardly go as planned and this mindset causes people not to try as hard as they need to. A positive mindset gives you hope and makes you go out and try one more time. Then when that attempt doesn't work out, your positive mindset will tell you go try again. Life is all about attempts, the more attempts you have, the more luck you will have. So don't limit your attempts and that will only be done if you have a negative mindset.
Journal Prompts
- How does a negative mindset prevent you from achieving your goals?
- What can you do to maintain a positive mindset?
When you're taking on a huge challenge it can be overwhelming like trying to eat an elephant, but the best way to finish that huge task is just to take it one step at a time and be patient with the process. To lose 50 lbs, just focus on losing the first pound, and then once that pound is gone, go for the second one until you get to 50 pounds. If you try to lose 50 pounds in a week, you can cause some serious damage. So take things slowly but be consistent with your actions.
If you're going to school and have a huge paper in front of you. Just do it in chunks so you avoid having to pull an all-nighter to finish your paper. This will help you get your tasks done without losing all your hair. Don't quit now because it feels overwhelming, just start on the smallest step first, then take the next one, and keep stepping until you reach your destination. You will be amazed at how much you will get done in life if you just take enough steps and don't worry about the distance.
Journal Prompts
- How can you focus on taking one small step at a time to accomplish your goals?
- How can you reward or motivate yourself to keep going until you eat your elephant?
A lot of what you get in life is what you let in. If you tolerate distractions and bad relationships in your life, then your life will reflect those choices. So if you want to have a better life, you need to have to do a better job at setting up boundaries in your life that don't allow low value stuff to creep in and take over your life. It will take a while for your body and mind to purge the low value material with your life but it will get done if you don't tolerate those things in your life.
Once you purge the negativity out of your life, that's when you can start living your best life but this can only be done if you set up boundaries and tolerate the right stuff. So if you don't like where your life is going, look at what you're letting into your life like a poor attitude, poor work ethic, negativity, or toxic people; and see what you need to remove from your life.
Journal Prompts
- What happens to your life when you don’t tolerate the right things?
- Are you tolerating the right things to help you give you your best life?
No one likes a hypocrite and your actions will be more valuable to change the world than actually telling people to change. If you want your kids to read more, then you should read more in front of your kids. If you want your kids to be more active, be active with them. Take them on a bike ride or hike. People don't want to be lectured on what to do. It has to be their idea. Once you find out that you can't change people, you can only set an example, a lot of stress will fall off your shoulders because you just have one less thing to worry about.
Just set the example and do things that make a good person. If you do this, then other folks will follow.
Journal Prompts
- What can you do to set the example for people in your life?
- How often do your words actually change a person’s behavior?
The ones that are actually talked about are the ones who take action, create and do stuff. Don't be the one that watches things happen or wonders what happened. The world is an evolving place and requires us to take action to keep up.
If you watch things happen, you won't get to enjoy the benefits of action. If you're the type to wonder what happened, this is even worse because you're being left behind and you only find out when it's too late. Either way, you need to start learning more and take actions on the things that you want to have happen in your life.
Journal Prompts
- What actions are you going to take today and this week to keep up with the changes happening in the world?
- What actions can you take to help make the things that you want to become true?
If you don't know who the sucker in the room is, you're the sucker. The reason you're the sucker in the room is because you don't have the knowledge to understand what is happening in the room. If this is the case, you need to learn human psychology, business principles, and a bunch of mental models. The more mental models you’re able to obtain and know how to use, the less likely you'll end up being the sucker.
No more going to the dealership and paying more for something than you have to or getting bypassed for a promotion if you learn how not to be a sucker in a situation. If you are the sucker in the room and lose some money, just take it as a learning opportunity. We all lose money by being the sucker in the room at some point, the key thing is that you don't stay the sucker and that will come from learning and avoiding the mistake the next time around.
Journal Prompts
- How can you prevent yourself from being the sucker in the room for an upcoming situation?
- When was the last time you were a sucker? What information was required to prevent that situation?
We can easily let our ego take over and cause us to have excessive pride which will then cloud our judgement. Pride can be a good thing if it’s rooted in doing important things but is bad if is rooted in trying to be an important person. This type of pride doesn’t create anything long lasting or help create a better future. Not taking help because you’re too prideful in looking weak also makes the environment harder than it has to be.
Humility is having a modest view of your own importance. If you’re showing the world your importance with your actions versus words, then you’re doing things that will create a more authentic experience for yourself and those around you that can handle more shocks to the system. It’s okay to say you’re great at something, just make sure your actions can prove and don’t worry about asking for help when needed.
Journal Prompts
- Is your pride making things harder or worse off than they should be? How can you know if your pride is doing so?
- How can you use humility to create more authentic experiences and ensure you’re growing in the right areas?
We are going to be wrong in life and that's okay. We all make mistakes and the best thing is to focus on what to do next. Instead of putting your energy into the past where you can't change anything, put that energy into your next move so you can make the present and future a brighter place.
We must also know how to deal with being wrong and that starts by admitting to the mistake and asking for help on how to take action on a solution. If you dwell, you won't be able to move forward with your life and will be stuck in the past and society will slowly drift farther and farther from you. Don't let it drift too far to the point where you can't catch up.
Journal Prompts
- How does dwelling on something that went wrong in the past help you out? What is more productive to do?
- When something goes wrong, how can you focus on the solution and taking action on that solution?
If somebody left you or if someone treated you wrong, the best form of revenge is massive success. This is probably going to be a long game because you have to take time to figure out your weaknesses and build up your strengths but it doesn't matter if the massive success is this week or five years from now. You're just doing everything within your power to improve yourself.
You can't control other people but you can control your success and how you respond to folks. Plus when you go into hiding for a couple of years and then you come out massive success, you'll catch everyone off guard and it will be too late for them to catch up to your success.
This can turn into a form of insanity if you focus on someone else. So just focus on your happiness and success and that's all you can hope for in life. Self-satisfaction.
Journal Prompts
- How does focusing on your own success help you get past those who treated you wrong?
- What would massive success look like to you?
Everyone has a different way for how they prefer to receive and give love. They come in five different languages:
- Receiving gifts
- Quality time
- Words of affirmation
- Acts of service
- Physical touch
I would recommend that you read the Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman to understand these languages better so you can have better relationships in your life. Once you figure out how to love and give it, it will make your life so much better and fulfilling. You can start by taking the five love language quiz.
Journal Prompts
- What is the rank of your five love languages? Did anything surprise you?
- How can you use this information to help build stronger relationships with others and yourself?
It's easier than ever today to fool people to think that the grass is green. On instagram, people borrow money and cars to show a luxury lifestyle or rack up credit cards trying to be one an influencer. Plus everyone is dealing with some type of problem and they don't have a drama free life. So don't get caught up in having "green" grass when the grass is fake. Everyone has an issue that they were trying to overcome.
You can start doing things to make your own grass greener by practicing gratitude, improving your inner circle, and doing uncomfortable things that result in personal growth. Just focus on your progress as a person and you can make your own grass greener.
Journal Prompts
- How can you use someone else’s green grass as motivation to make your grass greener?
- How can you ensure that you stop comparing yourself to others?
When you give an opinion on something, is it based on how you felt in the past or on research and experience from the past? If it is from how you felt in the past, most likely the other person won't share any empathy with you and you're not going to change how the other person is feeling. Plus it's lazy thinking and you just went into a past experience that you had and it might not be valid. Yes, there are always going to be exceptions and it might have happened to you, but that could have been a one in a million occurrence. It doesn't show that you have any understanding of the situation.
So seek to understand first by asking clarifying questions and doing some research yourself. It's okay to say you don't know anything about the situation and then start to get some information in your life so you can make a better opinion. When you say stuff, make sure there is substance behind the words to make the world a much better place.
Journal Prompts
- How can you show more understanding of a situation by saying “I don’t know”, asking questions, and doing your research?
- How can you ask questions to ensure others are held accountable for their opinions in an effective manner?
When you express your anger, you're not opening the door for a possible solution to come through. That door is sealed and won't open until you learn to explain your anger. This is going to require you to be vulnerable and use I statements. Don't use a you statement because it's accusatory and will just cause the other person to dig deeper into their trench and most likely won't fix anything.
So when you feel angry, try to explain why you're angry and how certain actions make you feel. If the other person can't handle a peaceful interaction, then do you really need that person in your life? The idea overall is that we want to find solutions to the argument and going at it through an explanation, will be more beneficial to everyone.
Journal Prompts
- How does expressing anger help out a situation? Do things typically get better through expression anger?
- What can you do to explain your anger more effectively?
When things aren't adding up in your life, the next step you should probably do is to start subtracting things from your life. Like with a fruit tree, to avoid having a 100 mediocre pieces of fruit, you start cutting off some of the branches so more energy is being delivered to fewer pieces of fruit which results in larger and sweeter pieces to eat.
If things feel mediocre in your life, look at your schedule and see which items need to be removed from your life. Do you need to cut out certain meetings in your life so you can focus more on the projects that will build up your skills? Or do you need to cut out certain social events so you can spend more time studying and creating?
We feel like we can do it all but we can't do it all. Energy causes things to grow and if you don't give things the proper amount of energy, then you just end up in mediocrity. A good way to figure out if you need to subtract things from your life is to act like you're starting from zero and that you need to add things to your life. Which one of the activities are you going to add and which ones are going to be left on the shelf. Your goals determine which items need to be left on the shelf. So analyze where you want to be in the future and start subtracting something from your life and fill them up with the things you should be doing.
Journal Prompts
- What would deliver a better life for yourself? Getting a few things that are great or having many things that are mediocre? How is the case for you?
- Are the top three things in your life getting the attention and energy they need to grow?
If you want to make it far in life, you have to rely on other people to help you. If you tried to do everything on your own, you would fail, but if you do move up the ladder and don’t forget who helped you along the way, If you do forget, then there will be feelings of resentment and those people will stop helping you. So give credit where it's due and keep your ego in check. You're successful already and don't need the validation of everyone else except yourself to know you did a good job.
Also if the person gets an opportunity somewhere else, don't be afraid of letting them go. You will be known as a good boss and people will want to come work for you and you'll have the pick of your next protege who can help you take it to another level.
Journal Prompts
- What happens to people who want to grab all the attention? Are they likely to reach the pinnacle of success?
- How can you ensure that your giving credit to people in your life?
For many generations, people had to deal with the scarcity of resources. Back in the day, if you used up to many resources, you might run out and end up with nothing and pass away. Since this happened for many generations in the past, we still have those voices that tell us we need certain things. That's why we tell ourselves that we shouldn't do something to conserve energy or we will get upset when something is taken away from us because we don't know if we'll get that item back in our life. Biological creatures normally prefer effort minimization in routine activities and don't like the removal of long-enjoyed benefits.
The world is so much different today than at any point in the past terms of our access to things. We can pretty much get anything we want and we have to have a growth mindset that tells us that we need to overcome effort minimization and accept the loss of a long-enjoyed benefit in order to reach our goals.
A lot of the things that we enjoy and fear are what happened to our ancestors a long time ago and we just need to have the self-awareness to know what is valid still and what is not. You wouldn't use a beeper to contact your friends, so why are you going to keep your fears and habits and keep you in the past as well? You shouldn't.
Journal Prompts
- What are some of the traditionals or thoughts that you have? How did you get these things? Are they still rational to use in today’s situation?
- How can you prevent old traditions from sabotaging your success today?
In life you want to minimize the amount of mistakes you make in life and the easiest way to do that is don't make the same mistake twice. The first mistake is a learning opportunity to do better the next time, after that, then it's a choice to continue to make bad decisions. When you make a mistake, you set yourself back in terms of your progress towards your goals, money, and time.
It's okay to make a mistake but don't make it again. If you do, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Journal Prompts
- What happens to your life when a mistake becomes a choice?
- How can you ensure that you don’t make the same mistake twice?
You want to strive for F U money so you can escape a situation you don't want to be. Don’t get stuck in a situation that you don’t want to be in because you need the salary. A weekly salary can be one of the most addictive things out and so we deal with miserable stuff so we can keep the comfort of having a paycheck coming in.
The amount of F U money needed is dependent on your lifestyle. If you want to live a simple life, then the amount of FU money you need is much lower than you have a yacht, a garage full of foreign cars, and a huge house.
It is also important to have an emergency fund and a network that allows you to pivot into another job or business opportunity. A rule of thumb is 6 months of your living expenses saved up, but the more the better.
Life is short and why would you want to compromise the person you are because of your lack of resources? You won't have to if you have F U money in the bank.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure that you don’t get addicted to your salary?
- How much F U money do you need to acquire? How do you know this amount is the right amount?
When one bad thing happens, we can use it to fuel the rest of our day to continue to be a bad day. If traffic was awful and you were late to work, don't let that bad experience creep into other parts of your day. It can be easy to hold a grudge and let it weigh you down and then complain that things feel heavier.
The best way to stop feeling the weight is to change your perspective. Instead of complaining that you were stuck in traffic, say it gives you more time to listen to the podcast and learn something useful. Changing the perspective of the world conspiring against you to one that is helping you grow as a person is going to be much more helpful. Watch any movie, and there is some type of conflict that prevents the person from reaching their goals. So when something bad happens, you can use it as part of a story overcoming something, which would make you more relatable as a person.
If you hold on the bad five minutes and milk it all day, you're just going to isolate yourself. There is a stat out there that says 80% of folks don't care about your problems and 20% are glad it happened to you. It brings no solution to the table and changes nothing so if something bad happens only hold on to it for five minutes at most. After that, move on with your life so you can start living your life.
Journal Prompts
- What happens to your life when you hold on to problems for longer than five minutes?
- How can you ensure that you don’t hold on to your problems for longer than five minutes?
When it comes to staying healthy, it is really simple to do and it would be easy to do if there were no distractions, no junk food, no television to keep us up all night, and nothing to stress you out, but this is not how the world is. It's not easy to get the results you want but it is simple for the most part.
For a budget, it's simple, just save money and don't spend more than you make but there are things that could prevent you from maintaining a budget like an unexpected trip to the hospital. If you had been actively putting money into an emergency fund on a monthly basis, then it would be an easy burden to get through but then we have friends that want to go on vacations and there are shiny objects that we want to buy. So we have to overcome these temptations and most of the time we fail if we are not prepared to handle them. So get better at overcoming the obstacles to success and just follow the simple process to get the success that you want.
Journal Prompts
- What can happen to your life if you fail to follow the simple tasks that give you success and freedom?
- How can you ensure that you do the things that are simple but not easy to do?
This book is filled with simple and cliche quotes and we tend to ignore this guidance because it seems too easy to follow. But why do we want to make our lives more challenging then they have to be? Most of the time a simple approach is the best approach. It might not be easy or comfortable like getting on the phone calling 50 people a day to set up appointments, but most of the time, that is required to make progress in your life. Maybe a good ratio is to spend 80% of your time doing the simple or cliche and 20% of your time focused on the next big thing. This will ensure that you're doing enough to stay in business or get that promotion but also give you an opportunity to get slingshot into a very prestigious position.
We have to do many things as a person and if we work on the few right things then we can live an easy life. To find out what are the right things to work on, just look at simple or cliche solutions and just do them.
Journal Prompts
- What are the simple or cliche things that you should be doing more of?
- How do you know what is the right balance between creating new things and doing things that are simple or cliche?
We don't start off as professionals and there are going to be moments of impostor syndrome. The best thing that you can do, is to keep ignoring that voice in your head that says you can't do something and keep moving forward.
The day you become a professional is the day you start calling yourself a professional. Then you just do what professionals do. If you don't know how to do something, try experimenting with different techniques and receive feedback until you can do it. Eventually, after enough faking what you think you know, you will start to see patterns on how to create better products and services. And then you'll start making the amount that a professional makes.
There is always room to grow into a position and you have time to learn strategies and tactics to become a professional while you fake the funk for a while. The only day you become an amateur is the day you stop working on your craft. If you work on it every day and get incrementally better, you will become the person you were meant to be.
Journal Prompts
- How can you act like a professional in the areas that you feel inadequate in?
- How does acting like an amateur not help you achieve your goals? Explain.
When you do something, it can be against your best interest for your future self but it feels really good in the moment. When it comes to diets and exercise, it feels good to lay on the couch all day and eat pizza but done over a long period of time can lead to an unhealthier future version of yourself.
So we need to be reminded that our future depends on the actions that we take today. When it comes to saying no to the temptations, just to remember your why you need to be healthy. It will mean that you have more energy to spend with your family and have less joint pain in your golden year. Or that you won't have to buy larger clothes for your larger frame and have more confidence in yourself.
When it comes to avoiding desserts, say something, "I don't need sweets because I am sweet enough." We need to be reminded why we are maintaining our healthy behaviors and whatever system you use that works, keep on doing it. And keep doing it for your future self because their survival is dependent on what you do today.
Journal Prompts
- What are some affirmations that you can tell yourself to help you protect your future self?
- How can you think about your future self and how your actions today will affect this person?
We have to realize that the world doesn't revolve around us, we revolve around the world. The stage is already set up by the time you are born but you are the director, the producer, and the actor of that stage. How you do all three will determine the life you will have. Are you going to be a good actor or a bad actor?
The choice is yours and we just need to realize that it will be easy if you know how to act. So take some acting lessons, learn how to be a better director and producer, and you can live the life of an A-list celebrity.
Journal Prompts
- How can you prevent your mind from thinking that the world revolves around you?
- What are somethings that you can do to become a better actor/actress in this world?
If you're still holding onto feelings in the past, it's going to prevent you from moving forward with your life. You can either let go of it or address it. If you address it and the other person is not going to reconcile the issue, the best thing is just to move on and be the best person you can be. With enough time and you doing things to progress your life, you will outshine the person that doesn’t want to resolve things with you. People are not going to change and you just need to move on from the situation and just make it a learning opportunity to do better in a similar situation in the future.
When you hold onto things from your past, it will weigh you down and slow you down. It's like carrying bricks in your pack for no other reason than to make your hike more difficult. And the longer you hold on, the heavier and heavier the pack will become and eventually won't be able to move. So in order to move on and grow, you gotta let go of those things in the past and start living your life in the present. You can be a lot of happier because you're being the person you need to be.
Journal Prompts
- What is something that you need to let go of? What is causing you to hold on?
- What is the process that you need to take to help you let go of the thing holding you back?
When you only have one of something and that thing goes missing or it breaks, now you have none. This is why if something is really important for your success, you should have two of those things. If you have important documents, make sure to have a copy somewhere. This is why you have a spare tire for your car, in case one of your four tires gets a flat.
You can either look like a fool or a hero in a situation where the main thing doesn't work. The backup doesn't need to be good as the primary thing but it needs to get the job done. If you have to give a presentation and your powerpoint isn't working, you should have handouts and be able to do the presentation without your powerpoint. This is why two is one and you'll be the one to stand out when everyone else is trying to figure things out.
Journal Prompts
- What happens to your life with a situation turns out that one thing turns into none?
- What are the areas of your life where you need two of something?
If you have the discipline to workout in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond, you'll be more likely to not have any physical ailments that hold you back from having an active lifestyle. It is easy to not go workout and watch tv or do something else instead but it will restrict your freedom in the future.
The same method of thinking could be applied to your personal finances, career, health, and relationships. The more discipline you have to do the things that will give you a healthier future, the more freedom you will have in the future.
You will have to give up some freedoms today in terms of your leisure but it is a sacrifice that has a lot of long term benefits. Taking time to improve your inner circle today, will benefit your future self and give you the freedom to do whatever you want.
Journal Prompts
- Are your actions today giving you the freedom that you desire in the future?
- How can you be more disciplined with your time and actions today?
In this new economy, you have to find things that you can combine to make something different but familiar. These are where real opportunities are. My company, Grow With Joe is a financial planning company that also uses development coaching. Because you can't have money to invest unless you have a good job, and you can't have a job unless you're a competent person with your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual self.
Financial planning is becoming very commoditized with it's investment choices and people have access to more specialized information with the internet, so adding another offer like development coaching is something that few other financial advisors are doing.
So when you're thinking about your career, try to figure out how you can combine different areas into one thing that you can be the best at. We constantly need to think about new ideas because if we don't, we will become stuck with less. This is why writing down 10 ideas a day is important so you can constantly work your mind to think more creatively and see new opportunities. So start combining ideas and see what you get.
Journal Prompts
- How can you mix new ideas together in your job?
- What can you do to give yourself more ideas?
Every new idea out there is not a truly original idea. They come from the combinations of old ideas to be made into something new but familiar. If you look at Star Wars, it's a western, set in space that follows the hero's journey. So when you're thinking of new ideas, don't be afraid of combining different things into one thing like Star Wars. This combination of ideas was hugely successful for George Lucas and others have adopted this same mentality when it comes to creating new ideas.
If you worry about trying to be truly original, it's only going to slow you down and you need to think of a lot of different ideas to help you in your life. To create this book, I took the idea for my love of quotes to do a daily reflection book in the style of The Daily Stoic. This style of a daily reflection book can be applied to other things but the key thing is that ideas of a dime a dozen and it's the execution that really matters.
It took me over 150 hours to create this book over 18 months, but I was able to create something new from old ideas. All those ideas I was exposed to help create this book that you’re reading now, and pretty much everything else you’re consuming has followed a similar path.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ensure that being original doesn’t slow you down?
- How can you take old ideas and source them up to fit today’s environment?
The mind needs to be trained like a muscle, so you have to challenge it or else you will lose it. One great way to train the mind is to right down 10 new ideas every day. This will open you up to new opportunities but it will also give your brain the workout it needs to stay strong. Don't worry about how silly or bad the idea is, just think of ten new ideas. If you never take time to challenge your thoughts, what is going to happen to you in the future when you need to think?
This is a great exercise by James Altucher and just write your ideas in a journal, on your note app, or on a white board, just make sure you do it.
Journal Prompts
- How can you incorporate writing down ten new ideas a day into your schedule?
- What are the benefits of writing down new ideas every day? What are the downsides?
The world is a very complex place and since everything is connected to something else, you might only be seeing the tip of the iceberg when you make snap judgement. Sympathy is seeing somebody in a hole and saying sorry in the hole. Empathy is actually knowing what it feels like to be in the hole with the other person. There could be a lot of different reasons why a person got into that hole. First seek to understand why the person got in the hole before you judge a person and ask yourself would you have gotten into the same hole if you lived under the same circumstances.
Everybody has their own problems and has a unique experience on how they got those problems, it's not helpful to judge without knowing the entire situation. So if you are going to judge, do you research first and if it's valid to give judgement, then go ahead, but it’s probably better to ask questions so that you understand first.
Journal Prompts
- How can you ask questions so that you better understand a situation?
- What happens when you judge a situation without fully understanding the situation?
Temptation bundling is when you pair an activity that you don't want to do but need to with something that you already enjoy. A good example of this is going to the gym and watching netflix while you do cardio. So if you're struggling to do something, find a reward that you can give yourself for doing that activity like your favorite drink or some music.
It doesn't matter what the reward is, it is just something that is going to help you do that thing you don't want to do. If you have a hard time doing something, temptation bundling is the first thing you should do to help you get going.
Journal Prompts
- What are you struggling to do right now? Is there a reward that you can give yourself for completing that hard task?
- What would happen to your life if you did all those things that you want to do but have been pushing off?
You have to realize that willpower is a diminishing resource. Every time you use it, you're depleting the tank. This is why when we say we're going to do something after work, we end up not doing it because we used up all our willpower for the day.
So when this happens, set up your environment, where the hardest choice you have to do, is the easiest. This could mean selling your tv or hiding your phone so you can focus on your work. Or you do the hardest thing in the morning first and then you don't have to worry about it for the rest of the day.
Realize that you only have a finite amount of energy for the day or week, and you should use it wisely.
Journal Prompts
- How can your your energy for the day more efficiently so that you can get the most value?
- Does pushing things off towards the end of the day usually work out for you? Why is this the case?
Everything can go well in life then all of sudden your world can be turned upside down. Your business could be in the dumps, your partner leaves you, and then you have a $4000 car repair bill all in a three month period. The key thing is that you need to be ready for moments like this by working on your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual self. If you don’t prepare for moments like these, then you might have a major mental breakdown. If you did prepare yourself for this situation, you will probably have a little breakdown, but you’ll be able to keep going.
Enjoy the day but work on yourself and gather resources to weather any storm that comes your way. When life does come at you, you’ll get past the storm and can start rebuilding. If you have the right skills and resources when you rebuild, you’ll come back even stronger.
Journal Prompts
- Are you prepared for when life comes you fast? How can you be more prepared?
- How can you rebuild back faster and stronger when you receive your next setback?
If you always do what is easy, it's like putting gasoline on a fire, you'll get a quick burst of energy but it will quickly fade away and you'll be cold again. If you do what is hard, it's kind of like lighting coals, it can take awhile to get heated up but once it's going, you can have heat for a long time.
By doing the hard stuff in life, you're going to give yourself more coal to burn and will be able to keep warm in winter and cook your food. You can't do this with gasoline. Tell yourself that you have to do the hard stuff first because it will give you the future that you want instead of one that will be more difficult.
Journal Prompts
- How can you focus on doing one hard thing a day? What will the reward be for doing it?
- How can you avoid spending the majority of your day on the easy stuff? What will be the reward for doing them?
Whatever situation you're in, you're probably going to have to change who you are a little bit to fit into the situation. One of the best things you can understand is how to be a social chameleon that is able to change its color based on its surroundings. This will allow you to create better rapport with those who you're interacting with and make a more enjoyable environment. You're not being stiff with your personality and you’re giving others the opportunity to interact with you to pass you by.
When it comes to your goals, sometimes you need to change who you are so you can step up to the challenge and become the person you need to become. The situation dictates who you need to become and you become more successful because it. This doesn't mean changing who you are, you still have your core values and principles and you won't sabotage those but you can change your message and actions based on the situation. So be like water and take the shape of the container you are in. Trying to force things is rarely a strategy that works in creating change and being successful.
Journal Prompts
- How can you change your message and actions in a new environment so that they are more successfully executed?
- How can you ensure that you don’t let your stubbornness from letting you be formless like water?
If you’re feeling stuck at work or some other thing, go for a walk to get yourself out of that funk. By going for a walk it gives you an opportunity to think things out. This then allows you to come up with possible solutions to your obstacles and then give you a new insight on which direction you should go in. Most of the time you just need to step away from things and just think. Don't worry about things not getting done because they'll be there and not much is going to change if you continue to work on them.
Also when you go for a walk, you’ll be able to calm down and feel less stressed out. Then when you return to my work, you will be re-energized and ready to get back to work and give that task 100% effort instead of 50%. Make sure you go on at least one walk today and continue to keep this habit up. Taking breaks can lead you to your greatest breakthrough.
Journal Prompts
- How can you incorporate at least one 15 minute walking break a day into your schedule?
- What good is pounding your head against the wall? Does this really change anything for the better?
Everything we do is connected to everything else in the world. Your breath is being somebody else's air and it was somebody else's before it got to you at one point. We have to realize that things don't live in a vacuum and our actions have an effect on others, (people, animals, plants, and our earth). So don't be too selfish with your actions or we could create a tragedy of commons situations where a billion small actions leaves the world depleted of its resources.
Think how your negative act towards a barista at the coffee shop could have a chain effect where the barista takes out their frustration on their family or their personal health. So when you act, try to think how your actions are affecting others and would you want to be treated the same way.
Journal Prompts
- How can you be more aware of your action towards others?
- How can you ensure that you give more value than you take from this world?
In public health, they teach you to look up stream to find the source of a problem and they use this story:
A man was fishing in the river when he noticed someone was drowning. He pulled them out and attempted to resuscitate them. Shortly afterwards, he noticed another person in the river and saved them too. He then noticed another, and another and another. Soon he was exhausted and realized he would not be able save all of the drowning people.
He went further upstream to find out why all these people were falling into the river.
On arriving further upstream, he discovered a broken bridge was causing people to fall into the river and end up drowning where he had been fishing. He decided he would fix the bridge to stop them falling in, instead of fishing them out after they were already drowning.
So whatever problem you're facing, there probably is something else that is causing the pain so look at different causes to see what is the source of the problem so you don't keep having the same problem over and over again.
Journal Prompts
- What is the source of the problem that you’re having now? What would looking upstream look like for this problem?
- What is the thing you can do to fix that source problem?
People can't read your mind and people tend to be so focused on their own stuff so they typically don't ask you what you want. So the best way to get what you want is to ask for it. And if that person says no, then keep asking people until you get what you want out of life. Most people will quit after the first no but you have to realize that you probably are going to hear many NOs before you hear your first yes.
Just put what you want out to the world and there is someone out there that can help you get what you’re asking for. Keeping it in won’t do anything for you
Journal Prompts
- What happens to the things that you want that you keep inside your soul? Is this desirable?
- How can you be more comfortable with asking for what you want in the world?
When you have flexibility and control over your future, this means that you can pivot out of a situation that you don’t want to be in anymore. You can take control of the situation and you’re able to steer the ship in another direction and not hit that glacier.
To have flexibility and control, it requires having assets in three areas:
- Financial
- Social
- Human Capital
If you have a strong reserve in all three areas, then you’re going to be able to avoid a lot of miserable situations. It takes discipline to build up these areas and they will rarely come passively to someone, but it’s something that you’ll be glad that you had instead of wishing for it in the moment. It’s also important to take on too much risk where you end up depleting these resources. If you tap into them, make sure that you build them back up because you don’t know when the next moment of need will happen.
Journal Prompts
- What will happen to your life if you get stuck in a miserable situation? Are you currently dealing with this?
- What can you do to improve your flexibility and control over the future?
We all are going to have problems in our lives but the idea is to have five minute problems instead of long term problems. To have a five problem, you need to do three things:
- Resources to deal with that problem
- Strength to deal with the problem
- The ability to figure out a solution right away
It's important to have resources like friends and money, because you can tap into those resources to help you out. This is why having an emergency fund and close circle of friends is important.
Sometimes a problem is with someone else and you need to address it with them or your life will continue to be miserable. Knowing how to resolve conflict with others is going to be crucial with having five minute problems.
One way to have a long term problem is just keep thinking about it. Most of the time, the best answer is to just let it go and move on to something else and realize that you can't control the outcome of something in life and you can’t control other people.
Figure out to leave your problems as fast as possible and life will be a lot better.
Journal Prompts
- What happens to your life when you have long term problems? Is this desirable?
- What can you do so that you have more five minute problems?
One thing that you've probably noticed in life, is that things for the most part take longer than expected. When it comes to running a business, most people think they will reach six figures in the first year but for most people,it will take a while. If it is a home remodel, don’t believe the price or the timeline because something will go wrong like finding mold behind the walls that need to be resolved.
When you’re trying something new or creating something new, there is no structure yet and most likely it’s going to require tinkering with the process until you get the outcome. So don’t be too frustrated that things are taking longer than you expected. If you really want this outcome, then this waiting period is the price that most people pay.
This “It will take longer than you expect” phenomenon is known as Hofstadter’s Law. So now that you know about the law, it can hopefully readjust your expectations so that when you get that setback that will take longer and cost more money, it will only slow you down for a bit, but it won’t defeat you. You will have the hope and faith that if you keep going, you’ll reach the outcome that you desire.
Journal Prompts
- How can you mentally prepare yourself for Hofstadter’s Law?
- How can you take advantage of Hofstadter’s Law in your life?
When you have goals or a to do list, give yourself a deadline. If you don't give yourself a deadline, then the goal will take forever to do. This is also known as Parkinson's law. If you say you're going to do a half marathon one day, and still haven't done it yet, it's probably because you have set a deadline yet. So if this is your goal, or if you have some other type of goal, make sure you have a date that you will complete the task by.
Without a deadline, it’s just a wish and wishes don’t come true. A deadline also adds pressure to the situation and helps us visualize the outcome that we want to have. We then start to create a plan that will help us reach our goal, and then we don’t want to disappoint ourselves by failing. We want to feel good about our future self, so let’s not disappoint them.
Journal Prompts
- How can you implement effective deadlines on your goals?
- What can you do to put more pressure on yourself to complete your goals?
When you get into a business relationship or go into any other type of relationship, it's important to establish expectations and consequences for when those expectations are not met. This is the main cause for partnerships to sink and things can get really messy if the ship goes down. If properly communication can be delivered and met, with a deep understanding of the under person, then you don’t have a partnership, now you have a relationship.
Partnerships are loose agreements that you will go together now, but there is no future guarantee that the agreement to be together will last. So don’t focus on creating partnerships, focus on creating a relationship and together you can create a ship that never sinks during storms.
Journal Prompts
- How can you create stronger relationships with those that you interact with?
- What would happen to your relationships if a crisis struck? Would it sink or continue on?
Tim Fargo
When we get feedback on something, we shouldn't dwell on it. The idea is that if you made a mistake in the past, you should learn from it and once you get the lesson down, discard it as fast possible so it doesn't weigh you down as a person. If we store and keep it as a part of ourselves, then that mistake is going to hold us back. If you had one bad mistake with one person, don't assume everyone is a bad person.
If that happens, examine how things didn't work out and learn how to do better the next time around. Holding on to your mistakes will keep you from pursuing your goals because you will second guess yourself and not go forward with the plan. It wastes time and time is something we can never get back again. So if you want to take it to the next level with your life, just follow today's quote and you'll start moving the ball in the right direction and will start to see some great things in your life.
Journal Prompts
- How will not storing your mistakes help you live a better life?
- How can you let go of your mistakes by examining them and learning from them?
Some of my greatest points in life come from reflecting on what happened in the past. You get to think about what happened to you and how you reacted in that moment. From there you are able to think about how you want to move forward with your life.
Thinking back on past relationships that didn't workout, you can think of things that you should have done better but it also tells you how you can make the next one better. When I work on a project and finish it, take time to reflect on how you can make it better the next time around.
When things happen in our lives, it's important to reflect and think about how to be better in the situation next time it happens. This is how we grow and develop as a person. If you miss this, you'll just stay the same and things will either stay the same or you will start to go backwards in your development.
Journal Prompts
- How can you spend more time reflecting on what happened with your experiences?
- What is a past experience that you had that you should reflect on? What can you learn?
In this episode, we discuss how we should constantly educate ourselves so that we don't get taken advantage of.
In this episode, we discuss how we should avoid getting addicted to these three things in life.
In this episode, we discuss how if we want freedom, control, and flexibility in our lives, we need to master ourselves first.
In this episode, we discuss how we should be in situations where our talents are being used, and we're not being taken advantage of.
In this episode, we discuss how going through the fire of our challenges is what's going to make us shine.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to understand when we do things. They create secondary and tertiary events and how that can affect us and the world.
In this episode, we discuss how the illusion of communicating is the biggest problem with communication.
In this episode, we discuss how we should avoid giving certain people our attention because it will take us nowhere.
In this episode, we discuss how we should look to fix small problems today to prevent bigger and more expensive problems down the road.
In this episode, we discuss how we should do the hard but good for us stuff first before we reward ourselves with the bad stuff for us in overabundance.
In this episode, we discuss how our need to be perfect can be causing us a lot of harm.
In this episode, we discuss the need to work on ourselves if we want to stand up straight in life.
In this episode, we discuss how okay it is not okay, and shouldn't accept crappy things in our life even if it's a little sweet.
In this episode, we discuss how it takes time to build up our skills and how we shouldn't be frustrated by taking things slowly.
In this episode, we discuss how we shouldn't put limits on ourselves because it will just make us mediocre. And who wants that?
In this episode, we discuss how we should approach change and make it the least disruptive.
In this episode, we discuss how we should accept whatever comes our way and figure out how to make the best of those events.
In this episode, we discuss the Dale Carnegie book, "How To Win Friends and Influence People."
In this episode, we discuss the many ways we can be creative, which can help us out in all areas of our lives.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to make sure we are not totally reliant on one income source.
In this episode, we discuss how we shouldn't judge families but look for ways to make our own family happy.
In this episode, we discuss how we shouldn't keep score for our acts of kindness because there might come a day where we won't be able to give them anymore.
In this episode, we discuss how we tend to take it easy when we think that we already made it and how this can be our downfall.
In this episode, we discuss how we should strive for maximum enjoyment instead of accumulating the most stuff.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to have other people on our team to achieve great things.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to learn how to turn crap into sugar when things go wrong.
In this episode, we discuss how we shouldn't run away from feeling bad but actually embrace it.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to avoid being distracted by the noise and focus our time on the signal to help us live our best lives.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to get back up and try again when we get knocked down.
In this episode, we discuss how getting the easy stuff right is necessary for any success.
In this episode, we discuss asking for things to be easier is not a good strategy to live life.
In this episode, we discuss how life is going to be a constant challenge, but this is what we should want in life.
In this episode, we discuss that to gain control over one's life, one must gain control over one's mind.
In this episode, we discuss how the solution to one thing is not one thing and how it takes many things.
In this episode, we discuss how today is a new day, and we can't let yesterday hold us back.
In this episode, we discuss how we can't stop things from changing, but we can gain new skills to deal with them.
In this episode, we discuss how bitter events that happen can lead us towards our greatest blessings.
In this episode, we discuss how, when we step into a situation, it might look the same, but things have changed internally.
In this episode, we discuss the benefit of looking at past events as learning opportunities to become better.
In this episode, we discuss the law of diminishing returns and how it applies to our lives.
In this episode, we discuss how complaining doesn't really do anything and how to overcome it.
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In this episode, we discuss how the things we are afraid of doing, aren't really that bad most of the time.
In this episode, we discuss how we can either get everything we want or be satisfied with what we have, to be wealthy. And which is one is probably the best path to take.
In this episode, we discuss how, when we take action, were are rewiring our brain to adopt a new identity.
In this episode, we discuss how we should bring new ideas to the market and how to make them more successful.
In this episode, we discuss how we should make problems or inconveniences bigger than they are.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to learn how to communicate appropriately and how to do so.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to know that making mistakes and learning from them is one of the greatest lessons to see growth in our lives.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to know how we shouldn't hold grudges and learn to forgive.
In this episode, we discuss how losing things is not that bad and how they can be some of your most valuable moments.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to be decisive with our lives if we want to get past many of the obstacles that we face.
In this episode, we discuss how we don't need the approval to do a lot of things in life.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to be patient with our goals because they typically require a while to reach.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to accept the fate that is given to us and learn to love it. And if we can do this, then we can create a great life.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to know how the brain thinks about solving problems and how we can use this information to help us take advantage of life and not be the sucker in life.
In this episode, we discuss how some things are better just to be left alone instead of trying to change them.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to start getting prepared for what's about to happen in the future.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to have the ability to look behind the current so that we know what's going on and can take advantage of the situation.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to be comfortable with calling things out so that the standard isn't lowered.
In this episode, we discuss how we can't control other people, but we can't control ourselves, and that is the best we can do to make the world a better place.
In this episode, we discuss how can't be comfortable with going with the group because it can lead us to a place that we don't want to be at.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to build up our skills so that will can have more control over our lives.
In this episode, we discuss how if we shouldn't get used to the things in our life because they can be taken away at any moment and how you should cherish those moments to the best of your ability.
In this episode, we discuss how we should follow our dreams and passions, and not let other people hold us back from pursuing them.
In this episode, we discuss how if we give enough people value, we can get what we want out of this world.
In this episode, we discuss how to overcome impostor syndrome so we can pursue the life that we want.
In this episode, we discuss how we allow acute stress in our lives and not chronic stress to you want to progress in life.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to focus on our stuff and not delegate our happiness to someone else.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to look at our activities to make sure they align towards getting the life that you want to live and not an okay one.
In this episode, we discuss how it's of no use trying to convince people to be a good person. It's better to act like a good person to show people what excellence looks like.
In this episode, we discuss how we should not focus on having the best skill, but having multiple skills to help us be successful in life.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to understand people and their desires if we want to navigate this world successfully.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to know how the system works for the system to work for us, instead us working for the system.
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In this episode, we discuss how to we need to be persistent with our development so we can benefit from compound interest.
In this episode, we discuss how to overcome your mistakes through extreme ownership and realizing that you can start over.
In this episode, we discuss how we should not focus on the noise that will get us nowhere, need to focus our energies on the tasks that matter, and then do the work.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to watch over those who have power and how to do so.
In this episode, we discuss how we should challenge social norms in our environment because those norms might not be valid anymore.
In this episode, we discuss the body hack techniques I use to help me stay slim that I learned from Tim Ferriss.
In this episode, we discuss how we need to let people down from time to time to live our best lives.
In this episode, we discuss how need to be disciplined with our day by focusing on the important stuff and removing the unimportant stuff.
In this episode, we discuss how you shouldn't focus on building a legacy or trying to get other people's approval because, in the future, not many people remember anyway. And how it's more important to focus on being a virtuous person and doing extraordinary things.
In this episode, we discuss the confidence needed to allow money to come to you effortlessly.
In this episode, we discuss that we should probably be doing more in life to get the most out of it, and how not to drown in the process.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of giving yourself momentum to help you accomplish your goals and how that can start with making your bed.
In this episode, we talk about the need to be able to stand up for your rights and beliefs because it will be for your soul.
In this episode, we discuss how increasing your human capital is the most significant way to improve your finances if you learn the right things.