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Our first lesson is inspired by a book called Psycho-cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. In his book, Dr. Maltz shares what he believes to be the secret to being better, which is simply to develop a healthy internal self-image.

During his time as a plastic surgeon, he had many patients who would have their outward appearances transformed (via surgery), but wouldn’t be happier as a result of their surgeries. In short: their outward appearance changed, but their internal feelings and attitudes towards themselves would remain the same.

Dr Maltz writes…

“To really “live,” that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with.”

“You must find your self acceptable to “you.” You must have a whole-some self-esteem. You must have a self that you can trust and believe in. You must have a self that you are not ashamed to “be,” and one that you can feel free to express creatively, rather than to hide or cover up. You must have a self that corresponds to reality so that you can function effectively in a real world. You must know yourself—both your strengths and your weaknesses and be honest with yourself concerning both. Your self-image must be a reasonable approximation of “you,” being neither more than you are, nor less than you are.”

Changing how you see yourself doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why our action step today is to simply write down how you see yourself. Once you have an idea of what your self-perspective is then we can start working on replacing those negative beliefs.

“If you give up before your goal has been reached, you are a ‘quitter.’ A quitter never wins and winner never quits. Lift this sentence out, write it on a piece of paper in letters an inch high, and place it where you will see it every night before you go to sleep, and every morning before you go to work.”

-Napoleon Hill

The message of this final micro-lesson is a simple one: DON’T BE A QUITTER. By making it to the final lesson of this course you should have all the proof you need that you’re not a quitter.

As we learned in the first part of this course, you can be who you have made up your mind to be and that’s not a quitter.

If you will revisit these micro-lessons on a regular basis, if you embrace failure as a learning experience, and you refuse to quit — I can virtually guarantee you that you will find success in whatever ways you’ve defined it.

In Part 1 you learned how to THINK BETTER… by solidifying your identity with healthy beliefs, clarifying what you want in life, and backing it up with a strong reason why it’s worth the effort.

In Part 2, you learned how to DO BETTER… by choosing good goals, setting daily intentions, fail-proofing your habits, and preventing self-sabotage.

And finally, in Part 3, you learned how to LEAD BETTER… by developing a bias for action, redefining failure, and embracing the pain of progress.

It now all comes down to your ability to stay committed and your refusal to be a quitter.

Ray Dalio, the leader of Bridgewater, the largest hedge fund in the world, says:

“Pain is a signal that you need to find solutions so you can progress.”

To put it even more simply, “Pain + Reflection = Progress.”

Instinctively, we want to withdraw from pain but when we do that we miss the opportunity to reflect and learn from our mistakes. Pain + Reflection = Progress.

Most people get comfortable operating without pain. It’s easier that way. But those who succeed in life embrace the pain, learn from what went wrong, take ownership of it, and eventually see progress.

It’s the final week of the Better You Course and we’re focusing on failing forward. Failing forward is the #1 most important skill when it comes to leading yourself well and leading others.

In life, it’s not a matter of if you will fail. It’s just a matter of when you will fail and how you will respond.

We all will fail at some point in our journey but winners and leaders dust themselves off, learn from their mistakes, and see it as an opportunity to get better. As difficult as it may be, it’s time to redefine failure and start embracing the lessons it can teach.

It took JK Rowling 7 years to write the first Harry Potter book and then all 12 major publishing houses rejected the story.

217 of 242 investors turned down Howard Schultz, the business leader who brought Starbucks to the world.

Walt Disney’s first company went bankrupt.

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first TV job because she was said to be “unfit” for TV.

Before he starred in Rocky, Sylvester Stallone was rejected by talent scouts 1,500 times and at one point sold his dog for $25 in order to turn his lights back on.

This course is about being better every day, but there are going to be days you fail. Let’s finish strong and become experts at failing forward.

“The essence of man is imperfection. Know that you’re going to make mistakes. The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. Wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success.”

-John Maxwell

It’s time to redefine failure. As John Maxwell states, the essence of man is imperfection. The difference between achievers and leaders vs. quitters and losers is that the achievers and leaders embrace the lessons that can be learned from failure. They don’t shy away from it. They don’t hide. They don’t ignore it.

They stare it straight in the face, grab it by the horns, and look at it just long enough to avoid making the mistake again.

Maxwell also says that you really only have two choices: You can fail backward or you can fail forward.

People who fail backward blame others for their issues, they always repeat the same mistakes, they expect not to fail again, they think that they are failures and they quit easily.

People who fail forward always take responsibility, they learn from their mistakes, they realize that failure is a part of success, they maintain a positive attitude, and they take appropriate risks.

“Taking massive action is the only way to fulfill your true potential.”

-Grant Cardone

In his book, The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone says

#1) You should set targets for yourself that are 10X greater than what you believe you can achieve.

#2) You should take actions that are 10X greater than what you believe are necessary to achieve your goals.

The thinking behind this rule is that as human beings we’re not the best at estimating our abilities and our time.

We often overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate in the long term. With enough time taking consistent, massive action your potential is virtually unlimited.

Most overnight success stories are actually preceded by years of that person taking massive action on a regular basis. Waking up early every day, hitting the gym every day, reading for 30 minutes every day, practicing your craft for an hour every day… it sounds monotonous, but it truly is the unsexy secret of success.

If you simply take consistent action every day, you will get better. But if you want to truly succeed you will often need to take massive action. Once you have clarity of purpose and direction — you shouldn’t shy away from occasionally going “all-in.”

Going “all-in” and taking massive action will look different for everyone. For my writing career, it once meant creating a pitch and spending hours researching the top publications to find the exact person who wouldn’t just send my article to the recycling bin. Another time it meant pulling a true all-nighter writing from 8:00PM, brewing coffee at 2:00AM, and then pressing submit on 10 articles the next morning around 8:00AM.

No one should be doing this on an ongoing basis, but occasionally it is necessary to fulfill your purpose.

“There’s one thing that is guaranteed to increase your feelings of control over your life: a bias toward action.”

-Mel Robbins

In her groundbreaking book The 5 Second Rule, Mel Robbins makes it clear that taking action is crucial to your success in life and to you becoming the type of person who has control of your future. Another thing she does in her book is emphasize the importance of moving quickly before your feelings talk you out of it — hence the 5 second rule.

As she shares in the book,

“The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal you must 5-4-3-2-1 and physically move or your brain will stop you.”

What Mel Robbins is highlighting is how your feelings are stacked against you when it comes to choosing your actions in alignment with your goals. You may not always feel like it, but you always have a choice to move toward your goals.

Taking action is like building muscle. The more action you take, the stronger you become at taking action towards your goals, and the more confident you will become. And remember, even if you don’t hit it 100% — imperfect action is better than no action at all.

In his book, The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy says,

“I want you to know in your bones that your only path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time.”

It may not be sexy, but the only way to achieve your goals is to start treating your list of habits seriously and take consistent action on them every day.

They are the building blocks to your goals.

Darren Hardy also provides a formula:

SMALL, SMART CHOICES + CONSISTENCY + TIME = RADICAL DIFFERENCE

To illustrate this point, over the time of 2 years, let me ask you would you rather be person A, person B, person C in this scenario…

Person A: Watches TV consistently every night along with a sugary soda and snack

Person B: Goes for a walk, reads for 10 minutes every night and drinks only water

Person C: Does nothing

Of course, you probably want to be Person B. Person B may not be a millionaire in 2 years or have a 6-pack, but they’re certainly going to be better off than Person A with unhealthy habits and Person C who does nothing.

This is the unsexy secret to success and why taking action is so important.

This week is about becoming a person of action. That probably sounds simplistic, but taking action is often the last 10% that’s holding you back from success. Think about it. If you believe in yourself, you’re committed to your mission, you know your why, you have clear goals, healthy habits, and a sharp focus and you’re blocking out distractions — what could go wrong?

The only thing that could really go wrong from here is that you don’t take action.

Without action, nothing happens for you… it happens to you. Maybe you get lucky. Maybe you don’t. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to leave my success entirely up to luck.

Beyond a strong belief in yourself, taking action is the single most important thing you can do to become a more successful person. People who take action, make things happen. As this week’s quote says, “It is better to make something happen—good or bad—than to have it happen to you.”

This could not be more true. This course is the perfect opportunity to take action. It’s why every single micro-lesson contains an action item for you to incorporate into your day. You can gather all of the information in the world, but until you do something with that information, things will not change.

We learn by doing, not observing. If you want to be an artist, paint every day. If you want to be a writer, write every day. If you want to be a dancer, dance every day. Take action and keep taking action.

Nelson Mandela once said, “Vision without action is just a dream, action without vision just passes the time, and vision with action can change the world.”

You’ve already created a vision for your life at the beginning of this course. You know how important it is to take action. It’s time to now combine your vision with relentless action and then go change the world.

Once you start making some solid progress and begin implementing new habits, the same problem tends to occur every time: you get in your own way.

More specifically, your poor thinking gets in the way. Slowly and incrementally you begin to lose focus and before you know it, what you once committed to now seems optional.

This typically occurs because of an overwhelm with your inputs and that’s why this micro-lesson is based on Ryan Holiday’s book, Stillness is the Key. In the book, Ryan shares that the true secret to psychological and practical success is stilling your mind.

One of the methods he provides to accomplish this feat is by limiting your inputs. That space between your ears is yours, and yours alone.

If you don’t protect your mind from poor inputs you’ll experience overwhelm which leads to disorientation which leads to a lack of focus which leads to poor decision making.

Eventually, your daily routine will become based on emotions in your moments of weakness rather than your intentions from your moments of strength.

Limiting your inputs can come in a variety of packages but here are a few simple ways to do it: Don’t consume news in real-time, limit your availability, turn off your notifications/phone, remove background noises and distractions, cultivate solitude.

You get to choose what level you turn the noise down to but choose wisely because if you don’t turn it down you’ll eventually not be able to hear what really matters.

“Most people think there’s never enough time to be successful, but there is when you block it. Time blocking is a very results-oriented way of viewing and using time. It’s a way of making sure that what has to be done gets done. Alexander Graham Bell said, “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” Time blocking harnesses your energy and centers it on your most important work. It’s productivity’s greatest power tool.”

The most powerful productivity trick in the world really isn’t a trick at all. It’s simply a method for making the most out of every moment you have. Instead of viewing your time as cheap and expendable, time blocking allows you to value your time appropriately and leverage it for the greatest impact possible.

The way time blocking works is either using a physical calendar or a digital one, you lay out the waking hours of your day and block out specific tasks, activities, and meetings for each block of time. The idea is to be intentional with every single block of time you have every day.

Here’s an example of how a morning of time-blocking could look:

7:00AM – Make coffee and read

7:30AM-8:00AM – Go for 1-mile run

8:00-8:30AM – Commute

8:30-10:00AM – Deep work on most important projects

10:00-10:15AM – Check email and respond to messages

10:15-11:00AM – Team meeting

11:00AM-12:00PM – Lunch

When you plan for it, you tend to use that time more wisely, and time-blocking is one of the best ways to plan your time.

This week is titled “Increasing your focus and limiting distraction.” It could just as easily be called “Productivity” but productivity is a word that’s been thrown around so much over the years it’s almost lost its meaning.

This week isn’t about a bunch of hacks, tools, or shortcuts to somehow give you more time back in your day. There’s nothing wrong with those things — at Learn Stash, we’re obviously a big fan of tools and resources. But those things are just that: “things.”

Whatever you want to “be better” at in life, whatever you’ve clarified as your goal, those things are not going to help you truly be better. What’s going to help you be better is by increasing your focus on the habits and practices that will help you be better, and limiting the distractions that could potentially sabotage your progress. It’s really that simple.

True productivity is achieved by increasing your focus (AKA “time spent on desired goal”) and limiting the destructive behaviors/habits/practices that get in the way of your newly chosen behaviors/habits/practices.

One way to look at this week is that we are now safeguarding the habits you took your time choosing last week. Those habits are now one of the most valuable resources in your life.

Don’t believe me? You should. It’s literally the ONE thing that will get you to what you’ve said you want in life. What’s more valuable than that?

I really want you to think about this week’s quote: “You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.”

We are going to work on ensuring that our daily habits have a positive effect on our life. Most people have half-hazard habits with negative side effects that make them feel like they have no control over their future. This isn’t you anymore. You have a desired destination now (we chose this already), you have desired daily habits, and know what to do (we chose these already), so now the only thing getting in the way of what you want is YOU. Do you want to make this easier or harder on yourself? That choice is also yours.

The difference between traction and distraction is intent. Any action can be either a distraction or traction depending on what we intend to do with our time.

Traction = Actions that move us toward what we really want
Distraction = Actions that move us away from what we really want

The definition of “distraction” above is worded very intentionally. You need to realize right now that you are not a victim to distraction, you are an accomplice. You will only be distracted by what you allow yourself to be distracted by.

You always have a choice of where you invest your time, energy, and focus. Your time is the most important asset you have so you need to invest it wisely and to invest it wisely you must plan ahead.

Nir Eyal writes that,

“Relying upon our feelings in the moment is too risky. The only way to truly know what we want is to plan ahead. In my research and consulting work, I’ve heard countless people tell me how difficult it is to manage their time. But when I ask them what they got distracted from, they have trouble answering the question. They don’t recall what they planned to do. When I ask them to show me their schedule planner so I can see what they intended to do, they show me a calendar full of white space. If there is only one takeaway, it’s this: you can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it is distracting you from. If you don’t schedule your day, you can’t possibly know the difference between what you intended to do and what was a distraction.”

I hope you feel the weight and responsibility of that. You, and you alone, are responsible for how you spend your time. Distractions (ACTIONS that move you away from what you want) are plentiful — Netflix, social media, email, gossip, etc. — but, remember, the only way you can truly call these a distraction is by knowing what they’re distracting you from.

In his book Elastic Habits, Stephen Guise writes,

“Self-discipline is a skill, but it’s only possible to sustain it through freedom of choice.”

The reason we’re starting with this quote is that before we craft your daily habits, I want you to know that with these new habits you still have a choice. Freedom of choice is essential. Up until now, you may have viewed habits as a jail sentence.

BUT… with today’s micro-lesson I want you to know that the choice is no longer between doing the new habit or not doing the habit. We’re going to move away from this polarizing relationship with habits. We’re no longer doing our habits from our feelings, we’re doing them because it’s who we are.

You are a healthy person now. You are fit. You are smart. You are a writer. You are a leader. You are a ________. And because that’s who you are, you no longer view your habits as optional.

Instead of win/lose options, we’re going to switch to win/win with our habits. Today, we will set two levels for each habit in each of our categories.

The reason we’re doing this is because if you’ve ever failed at consistently sticking with your habits, my guess is that life got in the way. That’s why 99% of goals are never reached. In a perfect world, with all the time and money in the world, healthy habits would be much easier to achieve.

But that’s not the world most of us are living in. The world most of us are living in includes difficult days at work. Not getting enough sleep. Being in a bad mood. I could go on and on. Life isn’t perfect, so we need to set our goals with flexibility and margin in mind.

That’s what “Elastic Habits” are all about. It’s about bullet-proofing your intentions and setting at least 2 win/win levels for your daily habits.

For example, for your exercising habit, it could mean setting a normal daily goal of a 1-Mile Run (that should be achievable on a normal day) but also having a backup goal of a Walk Around the Block. The reason this is important is 1) It keeps your mental game in the right place by not breaking the habit muscle 2) When you do your backup goal you’ll often go farther than you thought you could (“…an object in motion stays in motion”)

Here are my intention/habit categories and the elastic levels I’ve created:

🔹 Spiritual/Soul
Bible Reading 1 chapter or 1 verse

🔹 Exercise
30-min Weightlifting or 25 Pushups

🔹 Learning
30-min Reading a Book or Listening to a Podcast

🔹 Relationships
Call a friend or send an encouraging text

🔹 Create
Write for 30-min or come up with 10 article ideas

In 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself, Steve Chandler writes

“Once we get the picture of who we want to be, “definitely planned work” is the next step on the path. Definitely planned work inspires the energy of purpose. Without it, we suffer from a weird kind of intention deficit disorder. We’re short on intention. We don’t know where we’re going or what we’re up to.”

Today’s micro-lesson is a simple one. We’re going to set our daily intentions for each aspect of growth we want to experience. You can use any categories you like but here some of the most common…

🔹 Spiritual/Soul Health

🔹 Exercise/Physical Health

🔹 Learning/Mental Growth

🔹 Relationships

🔹 Business/Entrepreneurship

🔹 Leadership

🔹 Financial

By choosing our daily intentions you’ll always know what to do every day that you wake up. On Friday, we’ll put clear, achievable daily actions alongside these as we craft your daily habits.