Meaning it’s the tie I wear when I’m working from home.
You know, like your favorite sweats that you might only wear indoors.
This is my tie version.
Home tie is just one of the “devices” I’ve developed over the years for working from home.
See, as many more people now know, it can be hard to work from home, right?
You have lots of distractions you don’t have in an office, don’t you?
Like this Kat sitting right next to my keyboard.
When I worked on Wall Street I never understood why busy people wasted so much time.
Much of the day in fact gets slaughtered in things that have zero bearing on your success.
Just chopping things out.
And focusing on what truly matters, you can massively amplify your success in far less time.
Thinking is the same.
As I’ve written about lots of times—like here, here, here—the brain is a hellish machine that ruins your life.
Killing your seconds.
Killing any chance you have of living in a positive mindset.
Killing precious moments you could be focused on valuable things.
Killing your life.
Such is the plight of humanity.
I’m pretty good in the mind.
Tens of thousands of hours researching these topics.
Hours a day of mental conditioning does this for you.
But I’m still human, and sometimes still need a bailout of my own thinking.
Some of them are experts in the mind.
Others are my friends and clients who I’ve helped over years on these topics…
Who can then help me back when my mind starts to run on.
Such as yesterday.
When Cuomo announced we were locking down New York.
You’ve certainly seen the Keep Calm and Carry On meme but do you know where the phrase comes from?
In 1939 in preparation for World War II the British government printed Keep Calm and Carry On posters they pasted all over London.
The purpose was to keep up British morale ahead of the imminent Nazi bombings.
And also to ensure when the bombing started, the Brits remained strong.
“In the SEAL teams,” my shooting instructor said to me…
“The first and most important lesson you’re taught is that calm is contagious.”
Calm breeds calm.
“And that’s most crucial in a firefight,” he said.
If as soon as bullets go flying operators start running around like headless chooks of course more die.
There are some things we just shouldn’t say in our modern world.
And more personally, I shouldn’t say.
Since I was a kid I’ve been told to keep my mouth shut.
But often I’m too busy jamming my foot in it saying stuff like…
By just two candidates running terrible campaigns.
One of the smartest investors on the planet, Tom Steyer, invested $253,718,074 to “buy” zero delegates.
Imagine what social impact that money could have had invested in the sad, rampant homelessness in Steyer’s hometown.
For his $600,000,000 Bloomberg at least bought himself double the delegates of mayor Pete and nearly 10% of Bernie’s count.
If only he’d spent another $5,400,000,000 he might have had a chance.
In the pursuit of social justice more money has been “invested” in cheesy advertising by two dozen Dems than any other campaign in history.
Yet we’re still looking at a near certain Trump victory.
Maybe it’s OK to say that, but not so sure about this…
an old buddy said to me the other day—
what’s going on?
it’s like I don’t know how you’re gonna show up anymore.
you started popping up in ties on videos.
then you dropped your email headers and started to get simple.
I just don’t know who you’ll be next time I see you.
I asked—
when you get home tonight and you’re with your family.
who are you going to be?
which version of you shows up there?
how do you speak?
behave, be?
how is that version of you different to who you show up as in business?
with your buddies?
when you’re hanging with one of your oldest and best friends?
Within minutes of Kobe Bryant’s reported death, wikipedia was updated.
People were tweeting about him.
Talking about how tragic it is.
Musing on how precious life is.
While many people talk about it…
Some time ago I wrote about something special that Kobe showed is inside us all—
I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, ‘My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill.’ We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.
What’s so special about folks like Kobe is they have all the same foibles as the rest of us.
It’s just, they never let it hold them back.
They’re maniacally focused on what most matters to them, and go after it HARD every day.
How many people will spend a few days talking about Kobe.
Talking about how life is precious.
How quickly it can all end.
And then get back to wasting many of their precious 86,400 seconds every day?
Kobe would never waste precious seconds on the clock that way.
It’s extreme to ask yourself, how many seconds a day are you wasting your life?
To ask yourself, if this was your last year on the planet, what would you cut out?
150,000 people die every day—roughly 2 every second—so what makes us think this won’t be our unlucky day?
We’ve been wary of putting out this video coz I still try to hide my extreme…
But Kobe made me think fck it, this is how I strive to play the game of life.
And it seems to me that Kobe lived much the same way.
Mamba Mentality.
You’re either focused on what truly matters or wasting your precious 86,400 seconds on the clock.
Monster headline, right?
That’s coz it’s a monster topic.
Perhaps this is the biggest monster that eats away at achieving our biggest goals.
The faces all around me they don’t smile they just crack
Waiting for our ship to come but our ship’s not coming back
We do our time like pennies in a jar
What are we saving for? What are we saving for?
So give me something to believe
‘Cause I am living just to breathe
And I need something more
To keep on breathing for
So give me something to believe
A founder said to me last week he still doesn’t believe he’ll get his business to work.
“If I believe it more,” he said, “I know I can find a way.”
“That makes sense to a brain waiting to see pigs fly doesn’t it?” I responded.
Puzzled, he murmured, “What do you mean?”
I told him that for years I tried to convince myself that my outrageous goals were possible.
“And you know what I learned from tens of thousands of hours invested in mental conditioning? “I asked him.
It’s very difficult to get that brain of yours to believe what’s possible.
No matter how much you do, it’s mostly a see-believe faculty, isn’t it?
I’ll believe it when I see it, we say.
But believing gets easier when you see it the other way.
Because it can be hard to convince your brain that your goals are possible…
Many of us never take the actions that make our goals possible.
It makes sense to think, If only you can get yourself to believe it is possible, then you will do those things.
But if instead you can just kick the belief can down the road a little bit…
And take your best action anyways…
The more you believe your goals are possible!
“Shoot for the moon and if you miss,” Norman Vincent Peale said, “You will still land among the stars.”
Powerful idea, right?
But, to shoot for the moon we of course need more than nice sounding ideas.
“There’s nothing easy about going for that moonshot,” someone said to me this week.
She’s right.
Which means, if you’re gonna really go for it, you want powerful methods to propel you all the way.
Stands for 80/20 Mind and Actions.
It’s just one of the many acronyms I use for unleashing your top performance.
See, there’s lots and lots and lots of noise on top performance.
Yet, in the end, there’s only two things that matter to deliver your absolute top performance:
And beyond knowing the crucial importance of getting your mind and actions on target…
Is, actually, well, being able to do it every day.
It’s how you show up and do it that drives you all the way.
Hence, this notion of 80/20 M&A is built into my System For Ultimate Days.
For, if you’re shooting for the moon…
You want a way of showing up your absolute best every day.
That’s what I rant about in this video.
Shooting for the moon by unleashing your 80/20 M&A.
What do you think about Harry’s choice?
It’s a big one, isn’t it?
Of course many kids leave home way before their mid-thirties.
Plenty also move overseas and it’s no big deal.
But giving up your royal title and effectively getting a divorce from your family…
Whoa, that’s a pretty big deal, right?
Harry politely says he had no other option, but of course he chose.
What does it say that he would choose to separate from his family to be with the woman he loves?
I don’t know.
I pay so little attention to all this that I may be completely wrong but it seems to me he’s giving up a lot for his woman.
That’s pretty special to me.
In some ways I romanticize the idea of meeting a woman who could get me to walk away from all I know.
But in other ways I’m much more like Meghan.
The woman who got everything a little girl dreams.
Her prince.
The castle.
Royal title and all that stuff.
But she was like, screw that.
Hardly getting the Cinderella life one might dream, she opted for doing what she wants.
Keeping her man formerly known as Prince but divorcing his family and the responsibilities of the title.
That’s a woman who does what she wants.
I may have it all wrong.
I’m no royal watcher, and I rarely read more news than a headline.
Yet, from a vantage point of doing what you want, it’s an interesting case study, right?
Coz, see, here’s the thing.
Doing what you want isn’t about those things that other people want.
Or want for you.
Sometimes it’s not even about knowing what you want.
You can go for what you want, realize it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and then set your sights on another want.
Who says you can’t keep choosing what you want?
Living a life of doing what you want?
Why would you settle for so-called living any other way?
Especially when you have a powerful method like this for doing what you want?
We’re off to the races.
Time flies whether you’re having fun or not, doesn’t it?
How many of us feel shocked looking at the calendar seeing we’re already half way through the month.
Then you’ve got MLK.
Before you know the month is done.
Of course many people lack goals anyways.
And others will soon be tapping out of their New Year’s Resolutions 🙂
But those of us with our dominant intent, clear on what we’re achieving this year…
Are focused on what does it take to keep driving forward?
We all know momentum is everything, right?
And building momentum is my answer to how you’re getting your year started right.
In this video I talk about two powerful ways:
Building momentum these ways, how aren’t you crushing your year!
How many of us wake up fired up for our day?
How many people do you think woke up fired up for the first Monday of the year?
Did you?
It’s understandable if you didn’t.
Coming out of the holidays.
Many people we know dislike their job anyways.
Even many who like their work would prefer to be doing something else.
Yet, they’re not…
And even those who absolutely love their job can find themselves dragging out of bed some days.
How would you be different?
How much more effective would you be every day?
How much more would you enjoy your days?
Would others enjoy being with you?
Some people I know woke up on Monday like a kid on Christmas excited to bounce into their year.
They had great holidays.
Loved their time with their families, but their work is their stadium and they’re fired up to play their game.
Not saying that’s for everyone.
Many people are comfortable in their ugh.
But for those of us who want a simple, powerful exercise for waking up fired up every day…
In this video I walk through it.
A common theme in the year-end survey was that some people lacked 2020 goals.
Others had them, but it wasn’t clear they were focused enough on crushing them.
In this video I talk about what was missing—
Dominant Intent.
Get your year off to a CRUSHING start!
By getting any Masterclass 80% Off.
Why? Coz I want you to absolutely CRUSH 2020.
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This article I wrote last new year—New Year’s Resolutions Are Stupid. Set Goals
Has been getting a lot of play.
It makes sense.
Many people are seeking a new temporary goal that will be long forgotten by Feb 15 🙂
I jest.
There’s some real good things that come from New Year’s Resolutions.
But only if they are done right.
Which is to say…
Instead of making up resolutions that will soon be forgotten.
Set real goals instead.
In this video I talk through 5 ways for turning stupid New Year’s Resolutions into powerful goals.
Yes, you get to see me in person on this one!
It’s part of how I’m reflecting on 2019 and focused on crushing 2020.
How about you?
How was your 2019?
REALLY, how was your year?
How much thought have you given to it?
Have you written up some notes?
Reflected on what you did well?
Not so well?
How you plan to propel yourself into your 2020 campaign?
Well, if you’re looking for a way to easily do this, here’s a simple way.
On Thanksgiving we went around the table and talked about what each of us are most thankful for.
Everyone had lots of good stuff to say.
I shared some things that were on my mind, but afterwards I realized I was missing something big.
Actually, it was more like I was missing many small things.
I hope you too had a happy Thanksgiving.
Or if you’re in another part of the world, just a happy Thursday!
Thanksgiving here in America is a special holiday.
Not just an American tradition.
But there’s something special about giving thanks, isn’t there?
Whether it was Thanksgiving or just Thursday where you are, what is thanks-worthy for you?
What do you most give thanks for?
A girl can’t dream anymore.
How many young girls dream to be a princess?
To be swept off her feet by a ginger prince charming?
Only to discover as Meghan Markle has…
I’d say she’s looked pretty unhappy since she woke from the first kiss.
No surprise; his Mum was too.
Like Cinderella, there’s lots of baggage that comes with putting on that slipper.
Today not even a princess can fly private without the social justice warriors slaying you.
Your royal family out-PC’ing you flying discount coach.
No princess dreams of flying in the back of the bus, do they?
Sadly it seems, not even reaching the peak of human society is all it’s cracked up to be.
Our lives are full of ups and downs, aren’t they?
Sometimes things feel as good as they can be.
Other times, well, life can feel real hard, can’t it?
As the Buddha put it, life is suffering.
These bodies and minds we’re born into, deteriorate.
Respond to every drop, curve our roller coaster world goes into.
Yet tossed around on the surface of the ocean, we can still remember the calm deep that lays beneath.
Twirling round with this familiar parable
Spinning, weaving round each new experience
Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing
The chance to be alive and breathing
Point being…
No matter what life tosses at us, we have this one chance to experience each moment.
And depending on your beliefs, something far deeper beyond.
We often talk about living our greatest life.
But what does this even mean?
When I get here. When I get there. When I get it done.
Looking forward. Looking back.
It’s all too far in the future.
Your greatest life is right here.
Minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Months. Years.
Are too long.
Living your most amazing life you live inside the seconds.
Every second is your life.
Why wouldn’t you want to make every second count?
This life of ours can never be lived then.
The only moment you can be living your most amazing life is now.