Articles - Page 21 of 37

Why Bankers Lives Suck. And What To Do About It.

Investment banking is hardly known for its cushy lifestyle, but every now and then we’re reminded of just how bad it can be.

Earlier this week a buddy forwarded me this email message from a staffer at Moelis.

I don’t know whether it’s legit or not (I’m told it is), but irrespective it’s hardly a unique message in investment banking.

Long story short, the staffer (who is responsible for assigning bankers to projects) sent an email to his team after walking the floor at 2am, and noticing how many seats were empty.

As he supposedly wrote—

Given that new staffings continue to flow in and you are all very near capacity, the only way I can think of to differentiate among you is to see who is in the office in the wee hours of the morning.

Ouch!

Can you imagine that?

You’re working your ass off 7 days a week in a grueling job, and now you’re being judged on how busy you are based on whether you’re in the office at 2am?

I can. I lived that life, and I also did a year in the job of staffer.

While it’s easy to beat up on the staffer for his lack of managerial skills (and judgement in sending that email), I can attest that it was perhaps the hardest job I did in banking, where you’re constantly pulled and pushed in every direction.

It’s demand and supply, baby!

As the staffer, you have a limited pool of resources to assign to projects, and unlimited mouths to feed.

In my experience it was the rare senior banker who would step back and really think carefully about the work that needed to be done (blast from the past shout out to George Lee, Mike Wishart and Kevin Quinn), and whether it was worth having someone sit up all night and do it.

Generally, that’s not because senior bankers perceive working like a medical resident as a rite of passage, or they don’t care about their team, but because they also have mouths to feed.

Clients. Bosses. Shareholders. Enormous, enormous pressure to perform.

As Lloyd Blankfein once put it, the culture of insecurity runs all the way to the top in banking, and while senior bankers might want to help their juniors have a more balanced life, most of all they want to deliver their best for their clients.

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Two Ways To Blow Out That Fear

In last week’s newsletter I opened the door on fear, and this week I want to offer some ways to close it!

There I wrote about how fear holds us all back, and those people who get themselves to take action in the face of their fear.

While we all recognize the power in this, the real question is, how do we get ourselves and others beyond our fear?

The Simple Answer

We all already know how to get beyond our fears…

Simple. Do the thing that we feared, and we no longer fear it.

Once we climb those stairs and jump from the proverbial diving board, we’ll no longer be afraid to jump.

Most fears we diminish or extinguish this simple way.

Think about the timid salesperson from last week. By asking for the order over and over again, they get beyond the fear of asking for the order.

We all know this, which is why the simple answer mostly fails.

Our Fears Keep Us Stuck

Because we know that we can easily squash most fears just by taking action…

Rather than just doing it, we tend to avoid those things that we fear 🙂

Think of it this way.

We typically “try” to get ourselves and others beyond fear by saying stuff like You’ve just gotta do it.

If we can just lead with more conviction. Ask for that date. Or start to build momentum on that project, we know that we’ll move beyond our fear…

Yet, we already knew that!

And unless we’re suddenly more capable in taking that action, we’re more likely to avoid that thing we fear. (e.g. pretending we don’t really want it)

Just Get Motivated!

When the fear is high and we find ourselves or others stuck in taking action, we often reach for more motivation.

That’s like massaging a broken leg hoping to heal it. It doesn’t matter how strong your motivation is when fear is walking the talk.

Perhaps the best example is a fear that, despite our strongest biological motivations, has held every single one of us back.

Like a dog humping a leg we hardly need much motivation to pursue love and sex, yet who amongst us hasn’t been held back by fear?

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Timid Salespeople Have Skinny Kids

In all arenas of success there’s a small number of things that make the most difference.

If you get these things right, you massively move the needle in your favor, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Doing these “hard things” often requires overcoming debilitating fears, and training yourself to do things other people won’t do.

Going After It

There’s a young guy in London who I’ve been giving my time to.

He’s very good at getting me to help him, and other leaders too.

Coming out of college he earned himself a top job, and already in his business of wealth management he is producing way beyond those years ahead of him.

I suspect that’s because he influences others the way that he influenced me…

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The Time Of Our Lives

We all have those experiences in life that fundamentally change us, and I just had one of them.

In the last few weeks I’ve had the most magical adventure.

Even after being home for a week I’m still getting back into it, and I’m also trying my best not to…

It’s so easy for us to put our heads down and keep ploughing forward, when I’m holding onto where I’ve been.

Playing In Time

I’m very lucky that magical adventures are the norm for me, but this was special.

After a few days skiing in Vail I drove the car I keep out west to Las Vegas to meet up with my brother, which was an adventure in itself, but was only the beginning for us.

Because he lives in Australia, it’s been a decade since we’ve spent real time together, and just hanging out was special.

But what made our time even more special was what he had come here to do…

Leaving Las Vegas we headed to Virginia to train the mind.

Put Away Your Watch

Last time I was in Virginia I was training Remote Viewing. This time we were training altered states of consciousness and the out of body experience.

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Relive Your Best Times

Constantly I am reminded of the power of the mind and the importance of putting your mind in the “best” place.

It’s not just about getting your mind out of a “bad” place, but to make your life better and better.

Much, if not all, of what we think and feel is habitual, so the more we choose to focus on good things, the more habitually our mind elevates.

While we all know this intuitively, it helps to have reminders.

Back To The Future

Last week I was back in Vail, Colorado.

After living in the mountains for a few ski seasons I hadn’t been back for a couple of years, and last week I got to relive some of my best memories from Vail.

Some of them of course relate to skiing, but most of my great memories come back to the joy of living in the mountains. Waking up to the snow. Looking out on the mountain. Wandering through town. Eating at my favorite restaurants. Hanging with the locals. My time with friends who came to stay with me.

Just being in Vail these memories came flooding back to me and I realized that I want to keep reliving them.

A Daily Practice

If you’ve read my Limitless Mind book or these newsletters you’ve seen me talk about running mental movies.

In re-watching mental movies of the greatest times in your life, not only do you get a chance to keep reliving these times, but you can also use these movies to “pull” state.

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Another Mass Shooting. What Can You Do About It?

We’re all deeply impacted each time another person goes on a rampage hurting innocent people.

Although few of us are directly affected, we all feel for the victims and their families, and we want answers on how this could have happened again, and again.

Yet it does. And just like the wars, injustices, and human suffering that have forever plagued our species, awful things will keep happening.

The only choice each of us has is what we do about it.

Protect Yourself From Terror

I received many emails on this article I wrote after the terrorist ran down innocent people in a U-Haul close to my home.

That article is about choosing your thoughts to protect your mind from terror, and last week I got more questions about it.

A client said, “But I can’t just tune out these awful things, this really happened.” He’s right, and that’s not my point.

My point is that our brains are addicted to emotional spikes and we’re naturally drawn into such events, which means that we can find ourselves stuck fixating on the worst of the world.

But just because it happens in the world doesn’t mean that we have to turn it into our world.

There’s a fine line between being informed and caring for others, relative to getting our minds sucked into every detail of these situations and making them our “reality.”

What’s The Reality?

As I write this I’m looking into an apartment across the way seeing two little girls sitting around the kitchen table playing a game with their Dad.

Certainly, Dad knows about it, but his reality is that he’s sitting with his little girls. He could make that killer’s reality his, he could even put it on the TV for his little girls to see, or he can keep his mind on what is real in his life, and what he wants it to be.

Tragedies, natural or otherwise, orient our social consciousness towards one horrible event, stealing our attention away from the totality of our world.

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Feeling Undervalued? Do This

In life and in our work, it can be easy to lose our sense of value.

We look around at other people who are seemingly achieving more than us, “worth more,” or otherwise more valued, and we can get down on ourselves.

But when we look at situations differently, take control of our thoughts, and begin taking new actions, we quickly turn around those old ways of being.

This begins with seeing that only you are in control of how you value yourself, and influencing others to value you the same!

Common Problem In Our Careers

A world of hard-charging ambitious people, every year many people find themselves feeling undervalued.

Lots of things in our jobs, whether it be compensation, promotion, recognition, or otherwises can leave you feeling undervalued.

It’s not to say that it’s “never enough,” but that for the amount you put in, you deserve to expect a lot in return!

I had a meeting last week with a Wall Street investor who felt let down on his comp.

And to be honest, he was right, the head of his firm did let him down.

It’s not because he didn’t pay him what he “deserved” but because of the way he had handled the conversation.

Rather than sit with him and explain why the firm’s performance didn’t enable him to pay his team as he would have liked, the boss got angry and defensive.

That left him feeling undervalued, and in the wrong state of mind to drive more value in his career.

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I Was Wrong. This Isn’t Nike

I didn’t like the feeling I left from that newsletter last week.

In being so “right,” I was being so wrong.

I was disappointed that the two readers weren’t getting what they want and I failed to take responsibility.

Instead of pointing to the articles that I have put out to be helpful, I failed to see where my approach was letting them down.

Reflecting on this got me thinking radically different.

Dalio Helped

I read Ray Dalio’s book Principles last week, and it helped me dive deeper into some of these things.

His brutal honesty and good hearted intent, the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove, comes across well in his writing, which got me thinking more about mine.

But most of all what I got from Ray was a continuous drumming of the importance of radical truth.

Through this lens I saw in that newsletter I was putting their lack of action onto them, when I first must put it onto me.

I Failed

If someone I know hasn’t taken the right action, then I have failed to do what I can for them.

If people are reading these newsletters for years and still not doing them, then I’m obviously failing to reach the right people or failing to deliver people what they need.

I don’t write because being a self-help expert is cool… but to share ideas that are actually helpful to people, yet I failed to see where I wasn’t helping.

The same is true with the other emailer I wrote about.

If she’s taking the time to write and tell me that my work sucks, then it does for her…

It was wrong of me to make her wrong, when I should be asking what I can do more right.

I’m Not Nike

Instead of learning the lesson and really thinking about what I must do better to serve people, I responded like a Nike slogan…

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The Difference Between Good and Great Investors and Traders

Public market investors and traders, by and large, fit a certain mold. They are:

Optimistic, but extremely skeptical.
Data-driven, but creative.
Ambitious, but soberingly realistic.

And most of all, they are always looking for an edge.

More often than not, we look for edge via outside resources—better research, information, technology, etc.—but in my experience working with top Wall Streeters, the difference between the good and great is never outside of them.

The difference is inside. The difference is their mind.

More specifically, great investors and traders recognize that they have access to more or less the same outside resources. What separates them is, of course, what they do with it.

While the right outside resources are crucial to making good investment and trading decisions, the fundamental tool we rely upon is the 3 pound organ that sits between our ears. Great investors recognize the crucial importance of getting their mind right in the way that they approach each and every trading day.

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Captain Obvious Speaks Again

Last week’s newsletter was a tale of two heads.

One reader, who I’ll call Angry Amy, sent us a scathing email branding me Captain Obvious and giving me a mouthful for “endlessly repeating wise sounding phrases without actually saying anything useful.”

As she put it, “Everyone over the age of 15 already knows all of the mushy smart sounding ‘insight’ you just unloaded.”

She might be right.

It might be obvious to her how she transforms what she thinks into what she wants, but it wasn’t obvious to me when I found myself stuck in my work. It’s not obvious to my clients. I know from the other emails we receive it’s not obvious to many in our community. And, the same day I saw it wasn’t obvious to one of our long-term readers either.

Around the same time that Angry Amy was writing to compliment me on my wise and smart-sounding phrases, I was at lunch with a senior Wall Streeter who was showing me the other side of the coin.

Mrs. I Know I Should

Mrs. I Know I Should has been reading my newsletters for years, but she hasn’t been “doing them.”

Like many people who talk a good game on these topics, she’s got extensive knowledge of what it takes to succeed and decades of achievement behind her, yet when it comes to the things that are hard in her career, as I wrote about here, she’s much better at avoiding, than doing.

It’s not because she’s stupid; she’s highly intelligent. Or lazy; even those who’ve spent decades on Wall Street still work around the clock. Or has a lack of focus; she knows what matters.

But she’s been struggling on these hard topics in her career because, quite frankly, she hasn’t been doing the work.

About halfway through our lunch, after having said a lot of thoughtful things, she looked over at me and asked, “So, do you think it’s important to be writing this stuff down?”

Mouth hanging open I looked at her like wtf?

Right then and there I realized that although she’s been reading and thinking about these topics for years, she hadn’t even committed her thoughts to paper, let alone actions.

Nobody builds a house from a plan in their head. A football team writes out their plays. Heck, most of us write up a shopping list so we remember the milk, yet we still “try” (mostly unsuccessfully) to solve the hardest challenges of our lives, in our heads.

That’s just one reason many of us get stuck “shoulding” all over ourselves.

“Shoulding” All Over Herself

Throughout the lunch Mrs. I Know I Should kept telling me what she “should” be doing, and affirming, “I completely agree” with the approach that I laid out.

Yet when I asked her, “OK, so why aren’t you doing it?” she looked at me deer in the headlights.

I wasn’t trying to be a jerk or to shame her. I was doing my “job” (for free, as I do every time I write), trying to help her get beyond where she’s been stuck, literally, for years.

When we’re stuck in life it’s easy to beat up on ourselves, and tell ourselves what we “should” be doing, but all that matters is whether we can actually get ourselves doing those things!

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Why Most People Will Never Get What They Want

I know my work is inspiring to people, but I also know that’s not enough.

Lots of people recognize that there’s more they can be doing to get what they want.

They think that if they get more focused on their goals, organized around what to do, and build a more powerful mind, that they could improve their life.

I know this because all the time people tell me, but talk doesn’t get the job done…

Easier Said Than Done

On a cold New York morning a couple of weeks back, I met a mid-thirties fellow in the elevator of my apartment building.

I was headed to see my body mechanic, who helps me stand and walk, and he was on his way to, “ugh, work.”

At least that was how he said it to me.

He looked like a banker, but I’d bet he’s a securities lawyer. After plenty of time around the two you can distinguish the sadness and fatigue in their eyes.

When he asked me what I do, I paused.

Feeling sorry for the man who had clearly spent the last 30 minutes cheerleading himself to throw on his suit and get in that elevator, I said, “I’m a consultant.”

“So, what type of consulting job enables you to be headed out in your gym gear at 9:00am?” he sarcastically quipped.

“One where I do what I want,” I replied.

With those sad eyes and a mousy depressed voice, he responded, “Easier said than done.”

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The Trick To Focusing On What Matters… Building Momentum

Continuing on our theme for the year of getting done what matters to you, I want to hit the most basic and fundamental idea.

All the time people ask me what is the trick to getting yourself doing those things you’ve been avoiding, and this is, quite literally, what matters most—

You must be skillful at getting yourself moving and building momentum.

That’s it.

It’s very simple, but, of course, as with all things that we talk about here, this doesn’t make it easy to do.

Why Is It Hard To Build New Habits?

As I wrote about last week there are many things that can get in the way of making progress on our goals.

Some times we’re resisting. Other times avoiding. Inner conflicts. Lack of commitment. There are lots of reasons we get stalled.

Yet, no matter what the reason, we get held back for more or less the same cause…

We are creatures of habit. And anything new that we “try” to get ourselves to do is, by definition, in conflict with our “muscle memory,” our habits, our old ways of being.

So, while just getting ourselves to take new actions can be hard in its own right, it’s also the elastic pull, or gravity, of our old habits that we must escape.

Think of someone with a goal to change their job. Just imagining all the things they must do to hunt and claim that new job might be resistance-inducing enough, but first reaching escape velocity from their old job can be even harder.

They might be fired up about making a job change, but waking up every day and heading to that old job tends to have a way of starving that new job of oxygen.

To make progress you must be able to get beyond those old ways of being, get yourself moving in a new direction, and build momentum in your goals and days.

Momentum In Your Goals

Progress begets progress. We of course know this. A rolling stone gathers no moss and all that…

But when it comes to our goals, crucially, progress also acts as a “convincer” that we’re on the right track.

Results validate our belief and effort, which begets more belief and effort. And this shot in the arm is often all we need to keep taking action.

In most goals this happens naturally with progress, but we also want to engineer our goals in such a way that we can build momentum with small victories.

Any small victory will do. One more day in a row you ate right. Or went to the gym. Or didn’t drink. Just a couple of great meetings might be all it takes to feel like you’re building momentum in a job search.

You also want to find ways to remind yourself of your momentum. You might do this in your Daily Exercises. A calendar on the wall that you mark with progress. An app that does the same thing.

However you do it keep finding ways to prove to yourself that you’re building momentum, and you’ll find it easier to get yourself focused and taking action.

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Ways We Avoid Focusing on What Matters

In the last few weeks one article on my website keeps getting hit over and over again.

The headline, How to Focus on What Really Matters and Stop Wasting Time, tells you exactly what many of us are searching for.

If we had to label in one word what’s driving this search, we might choose “regret.”

Looking back on those things that we didn’t get done last year, we’re seeking strategies to get them done this year.

Correctly, we identify that our problem might come back to focus.

Incorrectly, we often think the solution is getting better at time management…

NOT About Time

Some of the most “successful” people I’ve known are hardly experts at time management, nor are they even efficient.

In fact, many of them are downright inefficient.

They aren’t particularly clear on what matters most to success, nor are they particularly exceptional at getting focused on those things…

But for what they lack in focus, they make up for in brute force by throwing a lot of hours at their goals.

Unlike a surgeon whose every cut could be the difference between life and death, in many arenas of success, precise focus can be less relevant than simply working at it.

My old world of investment banking is a perfect example—

You don’t need to be the best banker on the planet if you’re willing to work 100 hours a week for the rest of your life.

This Is Focus

You decide.

See, it’s not about solving questions like, “How do I stop wasting time and focus on what matters?” It’s about committing to what matters!

Whether you want to get the house painted, your mind right, or step back and get focused on landing the job you truly want, it’s your decision that gets you moving.

A decision is simple. It says, This matters. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

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New Year’s Resolutions Are Stupid. Set Goals.

What Do I Want

People keep baiting me on the topic of New Year’s resolutions.

Perhaps because I’ve called them stupid in the past, they think I have a negative view of such resolutions…

But that’s not true—I’m fired up about any catalyst that gets people to change.

It’s not New Year’s resolutions that are stupid, only how people pretend to use them!

Phony Goals

Like a political speech, people so proudly announce their New Year’s resolutions—

I hereby proclaim that starting on January 1 (but no sooner), I will stop watching cat videos on Fakebook and go to the gym at least 6 times a day.

And just like a parent applauding their 7-year-old’s school play, we‘re expected to celebrate their “achievement” in making such a resolution.

Good on you, Timmy!

Let’s hope you’re not in the 80% of people who give up on their resolutions by the second week in February…

New Year’s “Aspirations”

Nearly all resolutions fail because they were only aspirations to begin with.

Every day of the year you can make a new resolution, but repeating it to yourself and others doesn’t make it a goal.

An aspiration is to Get In Great Shape This Year. A goal is to specifically define how you are eating better and exercising consistently.

Resolutions become goals when they are backed by action, and that’s where, by definition, most resolutions are destined to fail.

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Happy Holidays

I hope you’ve had a great year.

Next week may be a good time to step back and reflect on your year, but now is likely a better time to just kick back, relax…

And really immerse yourself in what’s going on around you for the holidays.

The years tick by, but we can stretch each moment by being more present.

This may be the greatest gift you can give your family and friends!

Enjoy 🙂

By The Time You Read This I Might Be On The Moon…

Do you have interests that might be a little strange to some people but are just so fascinating to you?

Many people I meet have some hobby or captivation that to other people might seem odd, but not to them.

I have a lifetime of such fascinations and one reason I do what I do is so that I can spend all of my time exploring them.

Perhaps my most intriguing area of research is going deep and deeper into the mind and exploring the nature of reality, which can lead me to far out places…

StarGate Project

The StarGate Project was a secret U.S. Army Intelligence program established in the 1970s to evaluate things one might call psychic phenomenon.

As the story goes, at the height of the Cold War our government caught wind that the Russian’s were using psychic spys to steal our secrets…

StarGate was the response, to train intelligence officers in “Remote Viewing” and do the same thing—essentially, sit in a room in the U.S, travel their consciousness to wherever they were guided, and report back on what they had “seen.”

I know this might seem pretty nuts to some people, but…

Do a little digging, and you won’t be surprised why the program lasted for nearly 20 years. THEY GOT SERIOUS RESULTS. (Don’t read the public [dis]-information, check out a book such as this one by physicist Russell Targ.)

While I admit this is a little out there, spend a bunch of years researching reality and the mind, meditating and trancing, learning some about quantum physics, and like me I think you would too conclude…

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Pathways To Success

Often people say to me something like—

“I know plenty of people who’ve achieved great success without doing what you say. They lacked clear goals. Had no path to success. Gave little thought to their process. Didn’t develop top skills. Have never trained their mind…”

It’s true. I know tons of those people. I used to be one of them.

Lacking A Path To Success

I elevated myself from my blue-collar background to Goldman Sachs, and succeeded on Wall Street with nothing more than the goal to do my best and working all the time.

I’d never read a self-help book. Never visualized a goal. Hadn’t laid out a path to success. Never focused on my process. Nor time management, mindset or other “crucial” skills…

That path to success was ultimately unfulfilling to me but it is by far the most basic and common in our society—study hard, get a good job, and work hard for the rest of your life.

If you look at two of the wealthiest people on the planet, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, you see a different path to success.

And some might even conclude that we should all be dropping out of college and starting a tech company…

Dig deeper and you learn most successful people aren’t top executives or famous billionaires. The vast majority of millionaires next door are “small” business people, who found their niche and just kept working it.

Does this mean everyone should start their own business? Or skip college? Or get a top job and work hard?

Of course not…

Engineering A Path To Success

Knowing how other people have succeeded tells you little about creating your own path to success.

A novice gold miner can randomly drill a hole, strike gold, and become an overnight “success.” But what could you actually learn from them in creating your own path to success? Should you just go drill some holes?

Many Internet millionaires were spawned during the first dot.com bubble in the late 1990s. Yet few of them held onto their money into this century.

Even fewer founders could replicate their “success.” Such “Returns on Luck” account for most out-sized success in our society—

You didn’t need to be the best engineer on the planet to get rich working for Facebook; you only had to join early enough.

The difference between making partner at Goldman Sachs pre-IPO in 1998 versus 2000 was some $50 million. And just about anyone buying real estate with zero money down in 2006 looked like a genius, until 2008.

While there’s a lot to be learned from taking advantage of rich opportunities, herein lies the distinction between achieving successful results, and engineering your path to success.

Even the worst football team in the league will win a game every now and then. But the best teams, like Vince Lombardi’s Packers, build a systematic method to winning that they know will work time and time again.

Ultimately, the most successful people are less focused on results, and more focused on engineering a path to success.

What Is Success To You?

Much of what we consider success in our society is results-focused.

Sure, little Johnny now gets a Final Winner Trophy for running last in a race at school.

But in the real world, it’s the winners we celebrate.

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Easier Not To Do List

My friend talks about leaving her job and starting her own firm, but she doesn’t have the time.

By the time she gets home at night, after a long day, she only wants to pour a glass of wine, kick back and relax.

She has big dreams, but she has a busy life…

And it’s easier not to focus on that business.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

My friend tells me that having her own business isn’t important enough to her…

But, after a couple of glasses of wine, she confesses that it’s just too hard.

When she sits down to work on it, she doesn’t know where to begin. Once she gets moving, her fears get racing, and she wants to stop in her tracks.

She knows she could prioritize the time to work on it, but it feels too hard and she doesn’t believe that she can get it done.

That’s the hard thing about doing hard things… They can feel hard!

And she’s content with putting her business and “freedom” on her Easier Not To Do List.

The Good Life Isn’t Great

Many people I meet are in a similar position.

They know that their job, relationship, finances, happiness, health, or otherwise isn’t what they want it to be, but it’s good enough.

So, why change it?

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Mind Champ

Muhammad Ali was a mind champ.

Way before he stepped into the ring, Ali had already beaten down his opponent countless times in his own head.

He’d seen himself dancing out of the dressing room and stepping into the ring. Imagined himself floating like a butterfly circling himself and his opponent. And felt himself standing over his downed rival as the ref counted him out.

Long before any punch was thrown, in his own mind, Ali had already won. More powerfully, Ali was masterful at getting his opponent to believe he’d already lost.

Aussie cricketer, Steve Waugh, known as the Ice Man for his mental toughness, called this form of psychological warfare, mental disintegration.

But being a mind champ isn’t just for top athletes striving to win more. It’s about using your powerful mind to get what you want in every aspect of your life.

What Is The Mind?

Inside our thick skulls we each have a brain, and somewhere not necessarily inside our heads (in our “awareness”) we have a mind that we can use to direct the brain.

Think of the brain as an organ, and the mind as pushing the pedals, akin to a car and a driver.

Just like a car, the brain mostly drives itself. We don’t need to bother thinking about how the body breaths, walks, and pumps blood. The role of the mind is to oversee the operations, steer in the right direction, and keep us on the road.

Unfortunately for most of us, nobody ever taught us how to drive.

Brains Out of Control

Because nobody ever teaches us how to use our brains—“Education” is stuffing them with information—most of our brains are out of control.

From moment to moment, like those people whose foot is always tapping while they sit, many of us have just accepted our noisy brains and their wild swings in thinking and focus.

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Take Care of Yourself

A key lesson I’ve learned over the years is the crucial importance of self-care.

Even the phrase “self-care” sounds a bit touchy-feely and weak to me, but I’ve come to see the power in it.

Particularly when you are chasing massive goals, there is nothing more powerful than taking care of yourself along the way.

Just like cramming for exams, we often think, When I get to that next phase, then I’ll take a breather.

But twenty years later we’re still “cranking it out,” still that one step away from taking our foot off the gas.

Until The First Heart Attack, Divorce, Death…

Us humans are incredibly resilient hard charging animals, and often it takes a brick wall to slow us down.

The first friend who dies “young.” The first major health scare. Cheating spouse. Divorce. Massive disappointment.

These things tend to get us to step back and think differently about ourselves and our lives, but it’s often too late by then.

Even Atlas shrugged, and if we want to keep crushing hard goals, we must be taking care of ourselves.

Self-Care Ain’t “Balance”

I detest the pithy notion of “work / life balance.”

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