Happy new year.
How was it for you?
I hope you finished the year with a bang and are already rocketing into this year.
Is this how you’re feeling?
Of course none of us know what will happen in our world, and perhaps it won’t be that good.
Still, you can have your best year ever.
Best year ever?
What do you say?
How are you currently seeing this year playing out?
If you went deep into this “High Light Real,” I’m curious what it led you to see for last year and this year.
We’ve heard from many people how valuable it was.
And I hope it was valuable for you because I’m REALLY trying to convey that even in these bizarro times, you choose.
Every day of every year miserable media will program the worst of the world and focus attention on what’s wrong.
It’s all good, misery is their business and many people love the madness.
If you allow them to infiltrate and infect your brain, however, you’re likely focused on a worse year.
Or, just as easily as changing the channel, you can focus on your best year ever.
Best year ever
Last year was our best year ever in business, again, on top of the previous year.
Now, to be totally open, it’s nowhere near where I want it to be.
I want to live in a better world, we’re on mission serving as many people as we can, and I grade us an F.
But, still, as we did in the High Light Real last week you want to celebrate what’s going right.
Especially in times like now it’s easy to get focused on what’s going wrong.
Or how hard things can be.
Especially in our brains that are built with a negativity bias that helps keep you alive, but has the average brain swimming in some 56,000 negative automatic thoughts a day, it can be hard to stay positive.
Yet it’s so crucial to keep seeing that harder times can also be your best times.
This is what we keep seeing with clients too.
Best year ever.
A client says, “The future is owned by people who stay out of the noise and keep driving forward.”
In the last three years that’s what I’ve seen from him, to the extreme.
And it’s ENORMOUSLY paid off in his business, and quality of mind and life.
While many people were stuck and lost focus, he’s was eating their business.
Driving forward like Bezos obsessively focused on his customer, last year he grew his business north of 22%, on top of massively growing the year before.
For sure it is a harder time in lots of ways, yet this is what we keep seeing with clients across the board.
I rarely talk about clients; to me it’s intimately private.
But I feel it’s important to highlight that even in these loser times, you can still be winning big:
- Venture capital firm we advise more than doubled their assets
- Another secured a huge round of financing for their venture studio
- A startup private equity firm kept flying higher, raising another $1bn and doing some monster deals
- High net worth asset manager grew another 22%+
- Head of sales at a tech company tripled his comp
- A Wall Street leader made another quantum leap
- As did another
- And a client who runs a big business in Hollywood
- Also a CEO who runs an amazing tech company
Best results ever?
I’d never say that they’re getting the absolute best results ever.
That’s the point of our work.
We’re constantly iterating on every aspect of their winning method to keep driving the absolute best results.
And of course we all must accept that in a world bludgeoned by blunders that you may not get your absolute best results.
Yet, still, you can ALWAYS set your sights here.
Commit to your absolute best process.
Develop your absolute best skills.
Stay in your absolute best brain.
The best results you can achieve will come.
Your best possible may still not be good enough, and you still may face tough challenges this year.
But, still, again, what you see, over and over, even in these treacherous times, is people driving forward achieving their best results.
It ALL comes back to what you focus on.
Best focus ever
Life is focus, which is why I still have this “MORFOCUS” banner at my feet.
How you think, feel, behave ENTIRELY comes back to what you focus that brain on.
Focused on the worst of the world, how would you expect to feel?
It’s like drinking a gallon of booze binging on junk food wondering why you wake up feeling worse.
It’s a reason why many people will keep losing, and people like my focused client win.
During covid when many people were hiding from fear, he was driving his business.
Two clients even raised investment funds during this time.
When you couldn’t meet in person it was much harder, but with will there’s always way.
I’ve seen in the last few years some people have TOTALLY lost their ability to focus and sadly this will only get worse for most relatives of our human family.
It’s never their fault.
If only you can keep your best focus on your best methods, well, again, your best is possible.
Best brain ever
This is a reason why I’ll keep coming back to topics of The Simulation and building your best brain.
Yes, of course I totally get that I’m a fanatic, and I take things to the extreme.
Yet when it comes to living your best life, especially in this predatory world that you’re born into, I see the path is extreme.
Consider that conscious brain of yours is ONLY capable of thinking about 5-9 things at any one time.
In psychology and neuroscience this is known as The Magical Number Seven.
It’s a dorky concept but accentuates the tiny capacity that we have for focused thinking.
Fill that brain with politics and Ukraine and China and inflation and where the world is headed, add some celebrity junk, throw some sports in there, and you’re just about at capacity.
There’s basically zero space left for focusing on what matters most, what you actually control that makes your life better, or worse.
Let alone for thinking your best.
Feeling your best.
Taking your best actions.
Fueling your brain with all that, how would one expect to think and feel?
Hardly the breakfast of champions, is it, unlike the best programming Mike Tyson was putting in his head on his road to champ.
It’s like Thomas Jefferson put it—
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”
Best brain ever, best goals ever.
Best goals ever
See, part of what I’m saying here is go for it.
Yes, of course the background noise isn’t the greatest, but when will it be?
If you’re REALLY thinking about the future—and I don’t mean what media has people distracted on—then you know this game is entirely changing for our species.
None of us can know what will happen, but I would suggest that it reinforces the preciousness of your time.
It’s like a new client said to me a few weeks ago—
“If the last few years have taught me anything, it’s how quickly things change and how precious your time is.”
For years, well, really more like a decade he’s been dreaming of quitting his “dumb job” and starting his own company.
As most of Elon Musk’s “friends” did trying to talk him out of starting a rocket company that’s now valued at some $150 billion, of course most of his friends have been talking him out of it.
“Now’s not the time they say,” a line which has kept them safely scared in their jobs for decades.
It’s true, this isn’t the best of times, which is often when opportunity is found.
Besides, when you’re focused on living the life you truly want, now is always the best time.
Best year ever?
Believe me, I’m no optimist.
Watching the destructive decisions I’ve wondered if they’re deliberately destroying the world.
Yet as I’ve written about over the years I do my best to stay color blind, avoiding polluting your brain with outcomes that you never control.
Who knows what will happen in this world that is out of your control?
All you know is that your world is all you control.
In the goals you set.
Where you focus.
How impeccably you drive your best methods.
Let alone, just staying in your best thoughts, feelings, actions.
If you’re doing this, no matter what happens in our world, how can’t this be your best year ever?