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01/14/2019

INSPIRATION
JANUARY 6, 2019

Here’s how you can crush all your goals in 2019

TRAVIS BRADBERRY

While working on emotional intelligence will improve a lot of skills, there are five in particular people tend to set goals around when the year changes.


For many of us, 2019 will begin with a promise — a promise that this is the year we will accomplish that which has eluded us. Often it’s the everyday things that prove most difficult — managing your schedule, treating people the way you ought to, and keeping things in perspective when chaos is at hand.
The sad truth is that nearly 80% of us will fall off the resolution bandwagon by Super Bowl Sunday; and by this time next year, a mere 5% of us will have succeeded in reaching our goals.

There are two reasons why we’re so bad at reaching our goals:
The first is that we bite off more than we can chew. It may seem reasonable to pick up three or four new skills to add to your repertoire, but that’s an expectation the mind can’t execute. When we try to develop too many new skills at once, they become competing priorities that leave us distracted, discouraged and overwhelmed.
The second reason most self-improvement efforts are doomed to fail is that our emotions have a nasty habit of hijacking our behavior. Without a strong ability to recognize and manage our emotions as they occur, old habits are sure to die hard.

The good news

The good news is that you can address both problems and make the changes you desire by resolving this year to develop a single skill—emotional intelligence (EQ).
Piles of research over the last two decades has shown that emotional intelligence is likely the single most powerful success factor yet discovered, affecting everything from your performance at work, to your mood and the quality of your personal life.

We’ve tested emotional intelligence alongside 33 other critical skills and found that it subsumes the majority of them. It’s no wonder that 90% of top performers are high in EQ and people with high EQs make $28,000 more annually than their low EQ counterparts.
But how does emotional intelligence play such a large role in so many important skills? Our brains are wired such that emotions are the root of all human behavior. Whether we’re aware of it or not, the motivation behind every action (no matter how small) is inherently emotional.
Here’s how it works:
All of your primary senses enter at the base of your brain (the light blue shaded area below). Before you can think rationally about what you’re experiencing, these signals must travel through the limbic system—the place where emotions are generated. This ensures you have an emotional reaction to events first.


Emotional intelligence ensures effective communication between the rational and emotional centers of your brain. As you improve your emotional intelligence, you improve your ability to understand and control the primary motivations for your behavior, which reaps dividends in everything you do every day. Emotional intelligence is powerful and efficient—it allows you to focus your energy on a single skill with tremendous results.

What does emotional intelligence look like?

Emotional intelligence is the “som**hing” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. Emotional intelligence is made up of four core skills that pair up under two primary competencies: personal competence and social competence.

Personal competence comprises your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavior and tendencies.

Self-Awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen.

Self-Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and positively direct your behavior.

Social competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills; social competence is your ability to understand other people’s moods, behavior, and motives in order to respond effectively and improve the quality of your relationships.

Social Awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on.

Relationship Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and the others’ emotions to manage interactions successfully.

While working on your emotional intelligence will improve a lot of different skills, there are five in particular that people tend to set goals around when the year changes. I’ll explain how you can improve each of these skills solely by focusing on your emotional intelligence.

Managing your time

In this age of abundance, time is the one thing nobody has enough of. Perhaps that’s why Google receives 111 million searches a month for Time Management. Few people recognize how time management depends upon the emotional intelligence skills of self-management and relationship management.
Creating a good schedule is a very rational thing, but sticking to that schedule is decidedly emotional. Many of us start out every day with the best intentions to manage our time wisely. But then we receive a complicated email from a co-worker, a consuming phone call from a friend, or otherwise get sidetracked until our well-laid plans go up in flames. We spend the rest of the day trying to put out somebody else’s fire, or working to resolve issues that weren’t there in the morning. Before you know it, the day is gone and you’re completely off schedule.
When the distractions are your own, sticking to a schedule requires self-management. When the needs of others try to impede upon your plans, it takes effective relationship management to finesse the relationship while ensuring that your priorities are still addressed.

Embracing change

Show me somebody who claims to love change, and I’ll show you a well-intentioned liar. Change is uncomfortable for everyone at times, and for many of us it makes our skin crawl. Those who apply well-honed self-awareness and self-management skills tolerate change much more successfully than others. Self-awareness enables you to adjust comfortably to change because it gives you the perspective needed to realize when change is coming and how it’s affecting you.
Self-management keeps you cool in the moment—often with a reminder that even the most stable, trusted facets of your life are not completely under your control. Those most averse to change, who possess great self-awareness and self-management skills, even set aside a small amount of time each week to list possible changes and what actions they can take in response.

Mastering conflict

Emotional intelligence is commonly mistaken as a synonym for “nice.” In fact, the most emotionally intelligent response is often one where you openly and directly express yourself. To paraphrase Aristotle, getting angry is easy. Getting angry with the right person, at the right time, and to the right degree requires emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence doesn’t allow lashing out, or making yourself into someone else’s doormat. To be assertive, you have to know what you’re feeling, read the other party accurately, and express yourself in a way that garners the best result. People with high EQs do this naturally.

Making great decisions

It has taken the world far too long to wake up to the fact that emotions simply cannot—and should not—be ignored when making decisions. Neuroscience shows us that sometimes the most rational thing you can do is trust your emotions when making a decision. But in order to make this work, you have to be aware of the emotions you’re feeling, know why you’re having them, and see how they factor into the situation at hand. Here, there is no substitute for emotional intelligence.

Giving outstanding presentations

Few things strike primal fear in people like standing under the spotlight in a room full of people. Even the most eloquent among us can be reduced to spewing verbal garbage once the sheer anxiety of public speaking takes hold. That’s why a knock-’em-dead presenter’s most inspiring presentation is often the one he delivers to himself. A bit of positive self-talk—reminding himself of all the times he has succeeded and how qualified he is to speak on the topic—enables the effective speaker to use his performance anxiety to sharpen his focus and make him more articulate. If you think that’s silly, then you probably haven’t tried it. Emotional intelligence doesn’t just make you aware of your emotions; it equips you with strategies for keeping them from holding you back.

Bringing it all together

Give improving your emotional intelligence a real shot in 2019. You’ll be surprised where it takes you.
This article first appeared on LinkedIn.

More:Emotional IntelligenceHow ToInspirationMotivationNew YearSelf-HelpThe Whole Human

01/07/2019

SUCCESSJANUARY 1, 2019
How to radically improve your lifeJOHN P. WEISS
Sometimes, you have to have the courage to change, in order to do the thing that comes easily to you and it will radically improve your life.

There was once an aspiring blogger who created a website about marketing. He did it mostly to teach himself about marketing, and to begin growing an email list. He named the website Passive Panda.

Over time, the website grew in popularity, and soon the blogger had around twenty-five thousand subscribers. He was generating enough income to live off of his website.

Most writers would love to have a money making blog with 25K subscribers. Except, this blogger did som**hing unexpected. He scrapped his Passive Panda website, dropped his list of 25K subscribers, and started over.

Who does that? And why would anyone abandon a sure thing to start over?

Have the courage to change
The blogger in this story decided that Passive Panda wasn’t really him. It wasn’t what he was truly interested in.

He got into blogging to become an entrepreneur and have control over his time. But he realized that his interest in personal development and habits was more satisfying than managing a website about passive income.

So, he sent a final email out to his 25K subscribers and told them he was closing shop. He invited them to check out his new website, JamesClear.com.

It must have been a very hard thing to do. To walk away from a money making blog with 25K subscribers. But sometimes, in order to do the work that comes more easily to us, we must have the courage to change.

James Clear discovered his true passion was researching and writing about habits and personal development. His new website grew to over 200,000 subscribers, which got the attention of publishers and agents.

This year, James Clear published his New York Times best-selling book, “Atomic Habits- An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.” I’m reading the book, and it’s excellent.

I learned all about James Clear’s story from author Jeff Goins’s excellent podcast. It’s worth listening to. James Clear’s advice for others trying to find their way is this:

“Try things until som**hing comes easily.”

I agree with James Clear’s advice, but will add a qualifier. Sometimes, you have to have the courage to change, in order to do the thing that comes easily to you.
James Clear had the courage to shut down a lucrative, successful blog, in order to create a new blog.

I agree with James Clear’s advice, but will add a qualifier. Sometimes, you have to have the courage to change, in order to do the thing that comes easily to you.
James Clear had the courage to shut down a lucrative, successful blog, in order to create a new blog.

I’ve experienced som**hing similar with my own blogging. Over the years, I experimented with a few, different blogs. One was called Policetoons.com and was all about my law enforcement cartoons. Another blog was titled “The Cartooning Cop.”

For a while, I also had a blog titled “Cop Wisdom.”

Cop Wisdom was all about my law enforcement experiences and life lessons. Unfortunately, before long, I found the scope of the blog limiting. It didn’t allow me to write about the creative arts and personal development.

I had a bit of a following and appreciated the interest of readers, but my heart wasn’t in it. So, despite my nervousness about ending the blog, I shut it down and created JohnPWeiss.com. The new site better reflects who I am as an artist and writer.

I don’t have the volume of subscribers that James Clear has, but my site is growing and the content comes more easily to me.

Sometimes, you have to muster the courage to change. To abandon som**hing you know isn’t working or doesn’t reflect who you are. Even if your past venture was successful. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it can make all the difference.

What are you willing to walk away from to succeed?

Roll with me
Gabriel Cordell wanted to be an actor, but on the way to his first professional audition, he was struck by a car. The impact ejected him from his car into a telephone pole. As a result, he was paralyzed from the waist down.

Cordell still managed to land roles on a few television shows, but he never attained the success he hoped for. An addictive personality by nature, he turned to co***ne and crystal m**h for solace.

His health declined and doctors told him his drug abuse would eventually kill him. Then one day, he woke up and decided to turn his life around. He quit the drugs, joined the YMCA and began swimming. Slowly, he built back his strength.

He read about other paraplegics who had wheeled across great distances in specially designed wheelchairs. But, no one had ever crossed the United States in an everyday wheelchair.

Cordell decided to become the first person to attempt to wheel his everyday wheelchair across the United States, from Santa Monica, California to his hometown in West Hempstead, New York.

Cordell ran a Kickstarter campaign and raised enough funds to cover the gas, food and lodging for his trip. Then he assembled a ragtag road crew of characters, some dealing with their own issues of drug abuse and PTSD.

Cordell’s entire journey was chronicled in an excellent Netflix documentary titled, “Roll With Me.” In it, we watch Cordell as he spends over 100 days rolling over 3,100 miles through thirteen states. He endures 100 degree days, high humidity, several falls and severe shoulder pain.

We see the many forgotten towns of America, and the goodwill of locals who cheer him on. There is a group of kids in a summer camp who encourage him, and many police officers who es**rt him. We watch as a young cerebral palsy boy tightly hugs his hero, Cordell.

Cordell becomes a symbol of inspiration and hope to both disabled and able- bodied people everywhere. At the end of the documentary, his parents and throngs of locals in his hometown come out to greet him as he reaches the finish line.

Since the success of his cross-country journey, Cordell has gone on to become a motivational speaker. From a washed-up actor and drug addict, Cordell turned himself into a beacon of inspiration and hope for the rest of us.

The optimum you
There’s a lot of personal development books, blog posts and podcasts out there. Each has their tidbits, tips and techniques for creating the optimum you. But in the end, if you want to radically improve your life, it often comes down to three words:

Do hard things.

Just about everything worthwhile in life requires hard work. Yes, some people win the lottery or catch lucky breaks. But on balance, it’s hard work that moves the needle.

James Clear might still be a modestly successful blogger, writing about passive income. But he decided to do som**hing hard. He ended a successful blog that didn’t reflect his true interests.

Then he built a better one. He worked hard, writing two or three excellent, well-researched articles every week (for several years.) The hard work paid off. He got the attention of agents and publishers and is now a New York Times best-selling author.

Gabriel Cordell lost the use of his legs and descended into the dark morass of drug addiction. Then one day, he did a hard thing. He quit. He started swimming at the YMCA and built his body back up. Then he did a harder thing by rolling his wheelchair across America.

Cordell turned his life around and continues to inspire people every day with his message of hope, inspiration, and motivation.

Almost every successful venture requires doing hard things. People who achieve major weight loss must change their diets, exercise regimen and daily habits. This is a hard thing to do.

People who start successful companies must work smarter and harder than others, in order to build a product and brand that stands out. This is hard to do.

“I’m always choosing the hard things, the things that aren’t easy.” — Dee Rees

Choosing to do hard things forces us to grow, take on new challenges, build confidence and become more resilient.

You can improve your life
Now it’s your turn. Are you ready to become the optimum you? Are you prepared to finally do hard things? Whether it’s losing a ton of weight, quitting a bad habit, fixing (or ending) a broken relationship, or changing careers, you can improve your life.

It all begins with three words. Three words that, if you take them to heart, can change everything for you.

So, no more excuses. No more delays. Stop shying away from the challenges and hard things that will help shape your destiny. Say the following three words today, and make them your success mantra!

Do hard things!

Before you go
I’m John P. Weiss. I draw cartoons, paint landscapes and write about life. Thanks for reading!

Originally published at JohnPWeiss.com.

I'm a fine artist, writer and cartoonist. My paintings celebrate the serenity of nature. My cartoons and writing are about personal development, life lessons, and the creative arts. Sign up below to receive my free, weekly newsletter. No spam, privacy respected. 

01/04/2019

CONFIDENCE
DECEMBER 30, 2018

How to use fear to your advantage

CHRISTOPHER D. CONNORS

Our quest is to learn how this lifelong adversary and friend can both spur us on, and tear us apart. Think of what an education in life really means.


PHOTO: MARION DOSS VIA FLICKR
For all the things that we’re taught in school, the most important lesson we learn in life is one that is a product of the school of hard knocks: Fear is our lifelong adversary and friend. Fear is what moves us. Fear is what keeps us in our place. Fear is what pushes us backwards. Fear is what scares us. But boy does fear inspire us. Our quest is to learn how this lifelong adversary and friend can both spur us on, and tear us apart.
Think of what an education in life really means. Ask yourself — what does it mean to you?

Is it about getting good grades to get a good job? Is it about getting to know yourself in a truer, more intimate way? Is it about love? Hope? Faith? Knowledge? What are the things that you truly want to comprise your life — system be damned? And what are you willing to do to get them?
Every step of your journey fear will be their by your side. So you better get used to it. And it’s helpful to realize that no matter your path, you will learn as much from fear as you will learn from anything else. It will shape you, but you are also empowered to use it to shape the world around you.

The Education of Life

We learn how to read, learn arithmetic, analyze compounds, elements and more, and yet the most important lessons of life: overcoming fear and adversity, rebounding from mistakes and failures and developing rock-solid personal and professional relationships come outside of our school system. We’re expected to glean these things from parents, friends, even enemies.

But what about when we don’t?
We’re left to our own faculties, which are often unable or inexperienced enough to help us with the things that really matter. A great education will take you far. There’s no doubt about it. But where you really go for the win is when you learn how to meld emotional intelligence into your thoughts and actions.
This piece from Harvard Business Review, by Matt Brubaker and Foster Mobley, takes into account four great ways to combat fear. It’s an excellent step-by-step process to incorporate emotional intelligence and break down four parts of fear and how this cycle manifests itself in our lives:
“Step 1: Acknowledge the Fear: In the acknowledge phase, we suggest that people take a close look at their history and examine the choices they’ve made and the reasons behind those choices.”

“Step 2: Interrogate the fear to better understand it: assess current reality and look at the costs of fear… spen(d) time considering what it would mean if (you)failed at som**hing.”
“Step 3: Choose a different course of action. This is about deciding what to do next and making commitments — understanding what truly matters to you.”
“Step 4: Act on that choice — in a way that aligns with your values. The last step is to deliver on your commitments.”
Attributes like acknowledging, confronting and choosing action and commitment are essential for dealing with fear. This brings out our self-awareness, empathy, self-care and the courage to combat fear. Absolutely essential for living life on our terms.
And yet, so many of us run away from our dreams. Our problem isn’t that we aren’t bold, mindful or thoughtful enough, it’s that we give-in to fear.

Making Your Move

You can also try this simple exercise:

Think about the thing that you love most in life.
This may be your family or loved ones, but cast that to the side for a second and place that into a separate bucket. Think about the thing, hobby, activity or venture that you are most passionate about, that gets you excited, inspired, enthused and that truly lights the fire inside of you. What are the things that give color and meaning to your life?
The things that you dream about, that deep down your intuition, heart and mind are calling you to do?
Now — try this simple exercise: Look back at the past six months. How many times have you moved in the direction of this thing during that time period? In fact — if you were to attempt in hindsight to measure your progress toward that thing that you love, how far have you actually traveled?
What if I told you that all of the successful people that you admire started out from identical circumstances to you? I’m not talking about financial status or class, race or background. I’m talking about the mental and emotional states in life. The fight or flight response to tackling your biggest dreams and challenges.

We either move in the direction of what we want most, or by not advancing — or perhaps even retreating — we stay stuck. We never find out the answer to one of life’s most important questions: What if we actually become who were are destined to be?
It’s never a question of desire. To want or hope begins in our minds. Then, we have to believe that what we want is possible. That’s called faith. By backing faith with enthusiasm, we have formed a firm, rock-solid foundation of emotional and mental well-being. Without this, it’s doubtful you will ever be able to do som**hing great.
The good news is — it’s very likely you already have this. You certainly have this in you, you need to believe and you need to get excited about it.
From this seminal moment — this epic life decision point — is the crossroads of whether you will live the life of your dreams or settle for mediocrity. I don’t mean to sound dour or pessimistic, in fact, far from it. I’m an external optimist. And I’m also hear to tell you that this next step — this willingness and wherewithal to overcome fear — is what will make or break you.

Counter-Intuitive Fight

If you’re willing to fight — you first must be willing to mentally and emotionally prepare yourself to overcome that terrible enemy who threatens to thwart you before you even begin. You must overcome the voice inside your head telling you all of the following lies:

You’re not talented/good/skilled/able enough

You’re too old OR too young

You don’t have enough experience

You won’t know what to do with success

You won’t be able to grow your business

You’re better off trying som**hing different; this is too tough

And the list goes on. If you’ve ever been there before, please, know that I’ve been and will continue to be right there with you. And so will the greatest success stories in every field and industry all throughout history. No one knows for sure if they’re ever going to make it. Our success and ideas are dependent on whether tens, hundreds, thousands and millions of other people will accept, need or want them!

And no matter how well researched or prepared we are in the market we aim to pe*****te, we will never, ever know until we try. Whether our idea is original or unoriginal, we have to give things a shot.
This is why secondly, it all comes down to action. Are you willing to act? Are you willing to go for what you really want? Because if you are, you must turn back to your foundation of desire, faith, and enthusiasm. You must not care what others think. You must fight on by using fear to your advantage. This is how to achieve the greatest hopes and dreams of your life.

Face Your Fears

Join my newsletter for ways to improve your life and confront your biggest fears. Check out my bestselling book, The Value of You and if you’re interested in working with me try me here.

More:ConfidenceFailurepassionproblem solvingThe Brain

01/03/2019

CREATIVITY
JANUARY 1, 2019

Doing this one simple thing will make you more creative

ALEXANDRA VILLARREAL

If it’s not already part of your daily routine, it’s time to get on that ASAP.


Sometimes, it can be hard to get the creative juices flowing. Americans all seem to lean on the same helpful trick to get their minds activated and come up with new ideas — and if it’s not already part of your daily routine, it’s time to get on that ASAP.
53% of Americans “fantasize” while they work out, according to a new survey commissioned by Nautilus and executed by GMA Research. They use time on the treadmill to think about the books they want to write, the devices they plan to invent, and even the behavior they hope to model.
The survey included an open-ended question about “the best breakthrough idea” that respondents had while exercising. Some of the answers were very specific.
“Coming up with a robotic arm brace for my sister (who) had a stroke,” reads one.
Some people thought about home improvements they wanted to make. Others thought of breakups they needed to set in motion, whether with their significant others, or their jobs. Still, others came up with the plot of a novel or wrote music.

Am I dreaming?

In movies, it always seems to be the quirky female protagonist who has her head in the clouds. But in actuality, men are more prone to fantasizing, at least while they work out.
57% of male respondents said they daydreamed during their exercise routine, versus only half of women. So next time, maybe Hollywood should make the man more of a manic pixie dream boy while the woman stays solidly on the ground.

Where dreams go to die

Apparently, as we get closer to our graves, so do our fantasies. Almost two-thirds of survey respondents ages 18-34 said they give into their daydreams while they work out. But that number plummets as gym rats get older — only 44% of people ages 35-44 and 42% of those ages 45-54 said they let their minds drift as they exercise.

West Coast = dreamiest coast?

They say California is a place for dreamers, and this survey seems to confirm that. 56% of West Coasters said they fantasize during their workouts, compared to only 50% of those in the Midwest.

More:CreativityHealthLifeProductivityTimeWellness

12/28/2018

SUCCESS
DECEMBER 28, 2018

8 things every person should do before 8 am

BENJAMIN P. HARDY

In order to move forward in your life, you’ll need to embrace difficulty and uncertainty — or what you might typically consider “anxiety.”



We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.” — W. H. Auden

Most people’s lives are a reflection of their past, rather than their future.
For most people, today will look quite similar to tomorrow. 2019 will look similar to 2018.

Most people’s lives are highly predictable. And there’s a very good reason. Your brain is quite literally a “prediction machine”designed to keep you from situations and scenarios filled with uncertainty and possibility of failure.
According to several psychologists, the foundation of all fears is the “unknown.” We want our lives to be predictable. We don’t want to deal with the intense emotions involved in doing som**hing new and different.
Trying som**hing new and attempting to change your life will, without a doubt, cause anxiety. But according to the philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
In order to move forward in your life, you’ll need to embrace difficulty and uncertainty — or what you might typically consider “anxiety” which Kierkegaard called the “dizziness” of freedom.

Embracing a bigger future is how you change. And according to Albert Einstein, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
The only way to change is to stop explaining your life by your past and to start explaining your life based on your future.
You get to design your life and your future. But in order to do so, you must stop living from your past.
Today can’t be the same as what happened yesterday.
The food you ate today, if you really want to get healthy, probably can’t be what you ate yesterday.
Stop repeating the past.
Rather than repeating the behavior of your past, you need to act today based on the life you want to have tomorrow.
If you wait for tomorrow to start acting how you should today, then you really are just repeating yesterday. As Professor Harold Hill has said — “You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.”

Developing Confidence And Changing Your Life

You cannot have confidence in your life without positively moving forward toward a bigger and better future.
If you’re days, weeks, and years are a repeating of the past, then you’re not confident.
Living a comfortable and predictable life is actually a clear reflection of your lack of confidence.
You can only have confidence after you’ve begun living a better life — and then, that confidence allows you to think bigger about what is possible.
Confidence is the byproduct of prior success. This is one of the reasons it is completely essential that you begin your morning with a routine.
The purpose of a morning routine is to get yourself moving toward your grand and exciting future. If you don’t have an exciting future that you’re working toward, then you are literally stuck in the past. And when stuck in the past, you cannot change your life, but only repeat the patterns that got you here.

When you repeat the patterns that got you here, you’ll have a lot of empty yesterdays.
When you start the day in a higher and more powerful way, you’ll immediately begin turning your future a different direction from your past.
With this short morning routine, your life will quickly change.
It may seem like a long list. But in short, it’s really quite simple:

Wake up

Get confidence and motivation

Get inspired and connected

Get perspective

Get moving

Act courageously

Move powerfully toward your dreams

Put the right food in your body


Let’s begin:

1. Get A Healthy 7+ Hours of Sleep

The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) conducted surveys revealing that at least 40 million Americans suffer from over 70 different sleep disorders. Not only that, 60 percent of adults, and 69 percent of children, experience one or more sleep problems a few nights or more during a week.

In addition, more than 40 percent of adults experience daytime sleepiness severe enough to interfere with their daily activities at least a few days each month — with 20 percent reporting problem sleepiness a few days a week or more.
On the flip side, getting a healthy amount of sleep is linked to:

Increased memory

Longer life

Decreased inflammation

Increased creativity

Increased attention and focus

Decreased fat and increased muscle mass with exercise

Lower stress

Decreased dependence on stimulants like caffeine

Decreased risk of getting into accidents

Decreased risk of depression

And tons more… google it.

The very act of waking up earlier will create an enormous sense of motivation in your life.
Like confidence, motivation is the byproduct of action. You can’t be motivated without taking positive steps forward toward a desired future.
As Harvard psychologist, Jerome Bruner said, “You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling than feeling yourself into action.”

Waking up early has the power of making you “psychologically bulletproof.”
If you wake up early and — rather than getting sucked into the distraction of your smartphone or the addiction to stimulants — you start vividly imagining your desired future and boldly acting toward that future.
Motivation is som**hing you must create every day. You can only be motivated if you’re moving forward.

2. Prayer and Meditation to Facilitate Clarity and Abundance

“When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.” — Dr. Wayne Dyer
After waking from a healthy and restful sleep session, prayer and meditation are crucial for orienting yourself toward the positive. What you focus on expands.
Prayer and meditation facilitate intense gratitude for all that you have. Gratitude is having an abundance mindset. When you think abundantly, the world is your oyster. There is limitless opportunity and a possibility for you.

People are magnets. When you’re grateful for what you have, you will attract more of the positive and good. Gratitude is contagious.
Gratitude may be the most important key to success. It has been called the mother of all virtues.
If you start every morning putting yourself in a space of gratitude and clarity, you will attract the best the world has to offer, and not get distracted.

3. Write In Your Journal For 5–15 Minutes

When you write down your dreams in vivid detail, you begin to engage both your conscious and subconscious minds. Drawing out your dreams in the form of a mind-map is also very powerful for engaging both sides of your brain.
Writing down your dreams and deeply visualizing them will make them more emotional for you. Until your dreams become emotional, they won’t be powerful enough. You need to reconstruct your identity and memory by developing a new and emotionally-driven vision of your future.

As you write your dreams down every single day, write down the ways in which you will actually achieve those dreams.
As you write down your dreams and goals, the right people will start popping into your mind. A key part of your success will be learning how to position yourself such that you can connect and collaborate with the right WHO’s.
You’ll need to first develop lots of personal capability yourself in order to be someone worth connecting and collaborating with. You need to:

Make a firm and committed decision about what you want to become a master of

Embrace fully the “process” of development

Only care about what certain people think and ignore everyone else

Become so good you cannot be ignoredHelp the right people further their goals

Invest in the right mentorships

Make it about your mentor’s goals

Be a giver

Never lose track of your WHY

Never become complacent about the success you experience

Make huge requests

Ask to collaborate with your heroes once you’ve established credibility and helped them in incredible ways

All of this stuff can and should happen in your journal long before it occurs in reality. You then act and continue acting in powerful ways and watch as your journal entries become more vivid and clear. Watch as your goals become realities quicker and quicker and quicker.

4. Hard Physical Activity

Despite endless evidence of the need for exercise, only one-third of American men and women between the ages of 25 to 64 years engage in regular physical activity according to the Center for Disease Control’s National Health Interview Survey.
If you want to be among the healthy, happy, and productive people in the world, get in the habit of regular exercise. Many people go immediately to the gym to get their body moving. I have lately found that doing yard work in the wee hours of the morning generates an intense inflow of inspiration and clarity.
Whatever your preference, get your body moving.

Exercise has been found to decrease your chance of depression, anxiety, and stress. It is also related to higher success in your career.
If you don’t care about your body, every other aspect of your life will suffer. Humans are holistic beings.

5. Act Courageously

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” — Tim Ferriss
But you don’t have to constantly be battling your fears. Actually, Darren Hardy has said that you can be a coward 99.9305556% of the time (to be exact). You only need to be courageous for 20 seconds at a time.
Twenty seconds of fear is all you need. If you courageously confront fear for 20 seconds every single day, before you know it, you’ll be in a different socio-economic and social situation.

Make that call.
Ask that question.
Pitch that idea.
Post that video.
Whatever it is you feel you want to do–do it. The anticipation of the event is far more painful than the event itself. So just do it and end the inner-conflict.
In most cases, your fears are unfounded. As Seth Godin has explained, our comfort zone and our safety zone are not the same things. It is completely safe to make an uncomfortable phone call. You are not going to die. Don’t equate the two. Recognize that most things outside your comfort zone are completely safe.
You can’t change your life without courage.
If you start every morning by doing som**hing courageous, then your life will quickly change.

6. Listen to/Read Uplifting Content

Ordinary people seek entertainment. Extraordinary people seek education and learning. It is common for the world’s most successful people to read at least one book per week. They are constantly learning.

I can easily get through one audiobook per week by just listening during my commute to school and while walking on campus.
Taking even 15–30 minutes every morning to read uplifting and instructive information changes you. It puts you in the zone to perform at your highest.
Over a long enough period of time, you will have read hundreds of books. You’ll be knowledgeable on several topics. You’ll think and see the world differently. You’ll be able to make more connections between different topics.

7. Do At Least One Thing Towards Long-Term Goals

Willpower is like a muscle that depletes when it is exercised. Similarly, our ability to make high-quality decisions becomes fatigued over time. The more decisions you make, the lower quality they become — the weaker your willpower.
Consequently, you need to do the hard stuff first thing in the morning. The important stuff.
If you don’t, it simply will not get done. By the end of your day, you’ll be exhausted. You’ll be fried. There will be a million reasons to just start tomorrow. And you will start tomorrow — which is never.

So your mantra becomes: The worst comes first. Do that thing you’ve been needing to do. Then do it again tomorrow.
If you take just one step toward your big goals every day, you’ll realize those goals weren’t really far away.

8. Invest In Your Key Relationships

In addition to moving your own life forward, you’ll want to deepen the connections with those you love.
Your relationships are a very clear indicator of your quality of life and character.
Relationships should be viewed as an investment rather than a cost. When they are viewed as an investment, then you start putting more into them. You start seeing their potential for growth and development.
When you invest in key relationships — both personal and professional — your life starts to change. According to Joe Polish, “Life gives to the giver and takes from the taker.”
If during your mornings, you proactively do som**hing kind, thoughtful, and useful to someone important in your life, you’ll feel far more joy. You’ll also likely make huge progress toward your goals, because the more successful you become, the more your success depends on your relationships.

Conclusion

After you’ve done this, no matter what you have for the rest of your day, you’ll have done the important stuff first. You’ll have put yourself in a place to succeed. You’ll have inched toward your dreams.
Because you’ll have done all these things, you’ll show up better in life. You’ll be better at your job. You’ll be better in your relationships. You’ll be happier. You’ll be more confident. You’ll be more bold and daring. You’ll have more clarity and vision.
Your life will shortly change.
You can’t have mornings like this consistently without waking up to all that is incongruent in your life. Those things you despise will meet their demise. They’ll disappear and never return.
You’ll quickly find you’re doing the work you’re passionate about.
Your relationships will be passionate, meaningful, deep, and fun!
You will have freedom and abundance.
The world, and the universe will respond to you in beautiful ways.

Ready to Upgrade?

I’ve created a cheat sheet for putting yourself into a PEAK-STATE, immediately. You follow this daily, your life will change very quickly.