Diversify your self-worth portfolio.
Putting all your eggs in one basket can be a financial disaster. If all your money is in one investment that fails, you lose everything.
Similarly, don’t put all your “self-worth” investment into one basket.
If the bathroom scale or mirror is the one quality that determines how you feel about yourself, that can lead to disaster. One injury, setback, or change in life circumstance can drastically affect your self-worth.
In what other areas can you draw your self-worth? What other qualities, activities, hobbies, and career or other goals make you who you are?
Diversify.
Routine and spontaneity aren’t mutually exclusive.
For many, routine spells the death of excitement and novelty. But in the absence of all routine, most of us feel out of control. Nobody likes to feel out of control.
Routine > Helplessness
Whether you choose to believe it or not, you default to some sort of routine even if it isn’t planned.
The difference between fighting routine, and embracing it, is having a say in the design process.
Wouldn’t you prefer to design your routine rather than have it dictated by your circumstances or environment?
Stop fighting routine and start designing it.
Do things, don’t buy things.
Research backs up this wisdom. When you buy material things they are exciting for a while, but the novelty wears off.
Researchers call this hedonistic adaptation. After a time, material objects become another part of your normal life.
The first few rides in your new car were exciting, but now you don’t even think about it. Or even worse, that once new car now brings anxiety at the thought of costly repairs.
Can you still recall those precious moments that got your heart pumping full of life? I sure can.
Do things, don’t buy things.
You have every right to change your mind and do things differently.
When you step out of your comfort zone you often don’t feel like yourself. Choosing to do something different can challenge your concept of who you are.
In his book, Influence, Robert Cialdini shares how humans have a desire to be consistent in their behavior. Every action carves itself into your identity.
So you might feel like a fraud for doing something different. (Choosing the gym instead of happy hour, for example.)
Here’s the good news: your identity is what you choose it to be.
Everyone has willpower until 6pm.
That’s because willpower is a limited resource. It runs out.
A good rule of thumb: You’ve got enough willpower to sway one tough decision per day.
This is why you need a plan.
Planning allows you to make decisions free of the emotions that influence your choices.
Planning reduces the chances that you’ll need to exert your willpower.
Planning makes you more successful.
Mindset is important because it can influence every decision you make, every emotion you feel.
Our lives today are the result of a series of compounding decisions. Some based in emotion, some not.
Our lives five, ten, twenty years into the future will be the same—the decisions we continue to make from this day forward.
Don’t you think it’s probably a good idea to have some control over the variable that influences all of that?
You want to transform the way you live your life.
That starts with being honest with yourself. That’s when you can identify where you need to improve.
But it’s hard to be honest about our pitfalls. Modern society designed a way for us to avoid feeling crummy. We have endless distractions at our fingertips.
People join us because our community is all about self-improvement. We provide a judgement-free place for you to explore yourself.
And as your coach I’m here to facilitate this transformation.
Vulnerability is important in connecting with others. It allows us to create shared experiences.
Creating shared experiences allows us to empathize with others—the ability to feel the emotions they feel.
This means we can feel the positive emotions expressed by others, but it also means we can experience the negative emotions too.
Empathetic balance is the idea that the positive and negative need balance.
Too much negativity and people will avoid you. Too much positivity and people will struggle to connect with you.
This balance is the key lasting relationships.
“The list of mistakes you can never recover from is very short.
But you likely realize your life will not be destroyed if your book doesn’t sell or if a potential date turns you down or if your startup goes bust.
It’s not the failed outcome that paralyzes us. It’s the possibility of looking stupid, feeling humiliated, or dealing with embarrassment that prevents us from getting started at all.
The first step to being courageous is being willing to look foolish.”
– James Clear, Author of “Atomic Habits“
Many people overlook how to have the tough conversations with themselves.
The ones where you acknowledge the bad habits that led to where you are right now. The conversations exploring why those habits exist in the first place.
These are often not easy conversations to have. They require you to be open, honest, and vulnerable.
These conversations are so important to get to the root of the problems that you’ll face. They are necessary for your long-term success.
~ Coach Alex
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