Transcripts
1. Why Take This Class?: Hi, my name is Derek and I know you have a lot to do. So let's cut right to the chase. In this class, you're going to discover how to build a productive brain or how to develop a mindset of getting things done. And here are 10 big ideas you're going to learn to help you to do this. Idea number one, focus, I'm going to share with you why long-term success with anything is dependent on your ability to focus. And then I'm going to teach you three simple habits that will help you to improve your focus. Idea number 2. In perfectionism, feel like most people, perfectionism is holding you back from achieving your full potential. In this lesson, I'm going to share with you eight reasons to embrace making mistakes, showing your flaws and being imperfect. Idea number three is expression versus consumption. So there are two main ways that you interact with the world around you. And they're both useful and they're both needed. But one creates a powerful momentum in your life. And in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to create the spark to ignite this momentum in your life. Idea number four, action beliefs. What you believe about taking action drives how you take action. So in this video lesson, we're going to install nine important action beliefs into your brain. Idea number 5 is clarity. And if you don't have clarity in your life and you're not clear about what needs done, then guess what? Your brain is going to resist taking action. So in this lesson, you're going to learn how to clear the clutter in your mind so that your brain sees the path to help you to achieve what matters most to you. Idea number six is deadlines. Now the concept of a deadline as a powerful motivating force for getting things done. So in this lesson, you're going to learn everything you need to know to start using deadlines as a motivation tool in all areas of your life. Idea number seven, consistency. So you probably hear all the time why you need to be consistent in what you practice and what you create and what you do. Are you consistent? If not, then this video lesson is going to show you the mechanics of how consistency works and why it's an essential ingredient to any success. Idea number 8, priorities. So you have a ton of things track, you have a ton of things to manage, and you have a ton of things to work on. The order that you take care of them plays a huge role in whether or not you get them done. It's all about choices. So in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to choose wisely. Idea number 9, convenience. Now you may not realize it, but your physical environment significantly influences your behavior. So in this lesson, I want to show you how it works and how to intentionally design your environment to support taking action. Idea number 10 is weakest link. So right now there's one thing in your life that is standing in your way of reaching your full potential more than anything else is. So in this lesson, you're going to learn how to identify that one thing and how to eliminate it. So if you want to develop your skills and your mindset to be more productive, you're going to love this class. So I'll see you on the other side.
2. How This Class Works - Your Project: To get the most from this class, let me briefly explain the basics of how to navigate and use it. As you review the class content, you're going to see that each video lesson focuses on a single idea, and that idea is broken down into smaller chunks. Each chunk represents a unique aspect of the bigger idea of the lesson. And this is to help make that bigger idea easier to understand and to put into action. And speaking of action. At the end of each video lesson, I'm going to share with you some next actions. And this is where I provide you with some specific suggestions and directions for putting the essence of the idea into action in your own life. Again, you're not simply going to go through this class to fill your head with knowledge. You want to do something with it, and this is where I help you do that. Now consider these suggestions carefully and focus on doing them. Now, while each lesson can stand on its own as far as giving you something of value to use. The overall purpose of all these video lessons is to teach you how to train your brain to be productive and to help you achieve this bigger result. Here's a simple project to work on as you go through the class. I want you to grab a piece of paper or you can start a digital document, can be a Word document or a Google document and Apple note or something similar. And then as you go through the class, identify three key ideas that mean the most to you. It could be a new habit or a behavior that you want to adopt. It could be an exercise that you want to complete or it could be a tool that you want to use and write these down in your document as simple bullet points. You want to capture the basic idea. You want to capture why it's valuable to you. And the basic steps for putting that idea into action. And this is where the next actions that I share with you during each video lesson is going to come in handy. And then at the end of the class, you want to select one of these top three ideas and focus on putting it into action over the next week. Daily, spend one minute to review the idea itself. Think about why it matters and get clear on how to use that idea and then get to work using it, put it into action. And then at the end of the week, select another one of those top three ideas and then repeat this process. This simple project is going to help you to change how you think, what you say and what you do, which is the goal of any learning experience. And of course, I'd love to see what you come up with and what you find valuable. So please share your project results.
3. Focus - Learn To Do The 'Impossible': You have a focus muscle and it works a lot like a real muscle. It's either strong or weak. Now when you look at a real muscle, such as your forearm, its strength determines how long it can hold onto an object. Your focus muscle works the same way. It's strength determines how long you can hold your attention before you let it go due to a distraction or something else. So in this video, you're going to learn why focus is essential to accomplish things of value insignificance, as well as how to improve your focus by making some simple tweaks to your daily habits. First, how do you know if your focus muscle is weak or strong? Well, simply put a week focus muscle can only work for about five minutes or less before getting distracted. A strong focus muscle, on the other hand, has the ability to work for extended periods of time without distraction on talking periods of 30, 60, or 90 minutes or more. So why does knowing this matter? It matters because most significant tasks or goals require chunks of focused attention and effort to achieve them. Way more than just five minutes births just here and there. Things such as starting a business, mastering a valuable skill, becoming a good communicator, or managing your finances. If you have a weak focus muscle, tasks, a value like these will always seem too large for you to begin. So guess why? You rarely will think of it this way. If you only have a five-minute focus muscle, then doing important tasks that require extended focus will seem too overwhelming to you. You'll perceive them as beyond your ability to do so. You simply won't even try to do them. And this belief in mindset can keep you from pursuing goals that can have a huge positive impact in your life. So how do you know if you have a weak focus muscle? You just need to look at your life and especially your results. If you're not achieving goals, or even worse, you don't have any, then you'd likely have a weak focus muscle. If you regularly procrastinate, guess what? You'd likely have a weak focus muscle. If you regularly experience chaos disorder or stress in your life, then you'd likely have a weak focus muscle. If you find that your focus muscle is weak, it's important for you to take the steps to make it stronger if you intend to experience any level of success in your life. And I imagine you would like to do that. That's why you're watching this video. So what determines the strength of your focus muscle? Well, basically it comes down to your daily habits. Let's identify many of the most common habits that destroy your focus and several that strengthen it. And this will help you to have some awareness to do less of those things that weaken your focus muscle and more of those things that make it stronger, makes sense, right? So first up is the most obvious. Distractions. Email notifications, text messages, and even interruptions from people. These break your focus each time they show up, which weakens your focus muscle. Next, their social media. When you look at how most social media platforms are designed, they usually involve a process where you scroll, focus on something for a split second. Decide whether you like it, dislike it, watch it or share it before scrolling to the next post to repeat the process all over again. And this seemingly endless process of focusing on a post, then breaking your focus after a second or two to move on to the next post is a major focus destroyer. When it's done for an extended period of time such as 30, 60, 90 minutes or more, it dramatically weakens your focus muscle. Next up is entertainment. And you might be thinking, how does entertainment weaken your focus muscle? Well, if you look at how most TV shows, movies, and commercials are made, they contain nonstop cuts and edits at force you to focus on something new every one to two seconds, hours of exposing your mind to this will weaken your focus muscle. And finally, there are nervous habits. Practicing these usually involves shifting your focus from what you're doing to either picking, biting, twirling or some other behavior for a brief moment and then trying to refocus on what you were doing before. And doing this dozens, maybe hundreds of times a day weakens your focus muscle. Now this isn't to say that all these things are bad all the time. They can become an issue when they were a part of your life for hours at a time, day after day. Now let's look at three focus strength earners are ways to make your focus muscles stronger. First up is a technique known as timeboxing, which is a simple productivity strategy where you work within a 30 to 60 minute block of time without distraction. And the process goes like this. Work non-stop without any distractions for 30 minutes. And then at the end of those 30 minutes, take a five-minute break, which you can use to respond to any potential distractions if you want to. And then worked for another 30 minutes nonstop, and so on and so on. And this is a very effective way to get significant work done. Now the second way to build your focus muscle is by practicing stillness, which is the daily habit of sitting for at least 10 minutes. Relaxing your mind and your body, visualizing your goals, and thinking deeply about stuff that is important to you, all without any external stimulation, including TV, music, phone, or even people. And this process teaches you to let go of the focus weakening habit of always, always, always needing some sort of mental stimulation throughout the day. And the final way to strengthen your focus muscle is to simply get into the habit of reading books. If you aren't doing that already. That's right. Pickup a good old book and read it for 30 to 60 minutes without interruption. And I'm not talking about ten 3-minute articles that you'll find on the web. I'm talking about a single book where you focus on reading one page, you turn it, then you focus on reading the next page, and so on. Now this may seem like work the first few times you try it, but you'll probably find very quickly that this focus building exercise can become addictive and a good way. So here's some next actions. Start by testing yourself. How long can you sit quietly without inputs, distractions, or stimuli of some kind? And if you find that you're a bit of a focus weakling then examined your habits and determine which ones need minimized or eliminated and which ones need practiced more as we discussed in this video. And remember, there are any shortcuts to improving your focus if you want to accomplish things of value insignificance, your daily habits and behaviors must change, including some that you may even enjoy practicing right now. But the rewards, the rewards are well-worth. Any sacrifices you may have to make in the process.
4. Imperfectionism - Turn Your Flaws And Mistakes Into Personal Power: You want to create inferior work. You want to make tons of mistakes. You want to open yourself to criticism. And overall, you want to do whatever it takes to become awesome. Well, that's those are going to help you to become awesome. Yes, they are. Why? It's because creating things, making things, writing, building, sharing, imperfect things doesn't make you look stupid and it doesn't diminish your self esteem. Just the opposite happens. It transforms how you think and how you behave in a very deep level. And we're going to share with you some ideas on why this is the case and how to put the idea of him perfectionism into action in your own life. Number one, most people won't notice your mistakes. You're like What? Yeah, they will. Here's some proof that they want, for the most part. Do you notice the mistakes in these multimillion dollar movies? Do you notice the mistakes when you go to a live concert and you listen to the music theater or D notice the mistakes in the books that have teams of people that are trying to prevent those mistakes from getting out. You probably don't. You watch those movies, you've listened to the music, you read those books. You're like, wow, these are amazing. And they have $1 million budgets, multi-million dollar budgets, sometimes hundreds of $1 million budgets behind them. But guess what? They have mistakes and you probably don't even notice them. And what's the idea is that if you provide value, which many of these things do? Movies entertaining the music's entertaining, the book teaches you something. When these things provide value, then oftentimes, mistakes aren't even noticed. And that's what that means for you when you provide value in what you do and what you share, then chances are people aren't going to notice your mistakes. So don't let those slow you down. Don't let those getting your way of taking action. The second idea is that most people don't care. What do I mean by this? I mean that when we make a mistake, we oftentimes get consumed by it. We say something stupid, we look bad in front of people, or we do something that's just a huge mistake. And it's on our minds constantly for hours, days, maybe weeks after that. And we think that other people are going through that same experience, that they're thinking about our mistake and reliving and over and over and over again. But the reality is most people don't care. You know, that's our perception of it. And Eleanor Roosevelt put it best, she says You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do. And she said this because most people have their own lives, they have their own problems, they had their own challenges. They're not thinking about the flood that you made last week or even yesterday. They've moved on because they have their own challenges and problems in life that they're dealing with. Number 3, perfection is in the eye of the beholder. And what this means is what you see as imperfect or horrible someone else might love. So go ahead and create it and share it with them. There are a lot of successful mistakes throughout history. Cornflakes is a successful mistake. It wasn't meant to be potato chips. A great story about how a patron went into a restaurant and he wanted thin slice potatoes. And so the shaft sent out a batch of thin slice potatoes for his meal. And the patrons like these aren't thin enough. I don't like them. So the chef did it again and the patrons still don't like it. And finally the chef got so irritated, he cut them really, really thin these potatoes. And he sent them back out and they were crispy and crunching. Guess what? The patron loved it. That was a successful mistake. The chef didn't expect that he thought this is going to really get under his skin. But in reality, it turned out to be a huge success as we know, potato chips are microwave oven. It's another successful mistake. Post-it notes, chocolate chip cookies. Can you believe it? That was a mistake? Thank goodness for that mistake. So the idea you want to understand here is that your perspective about what you create in the mistakes that you make isn't always right. Go ahead and create and share your clubs, your mistakes. It challenges. And you may be amazed at the response you get. Somebody else might look at it and go. That is exactly what I needed. Thank you. Number four is perfect. May be far from perfect. And this is the flip side of the last point. And what this means is that you may spend months creating the perfect something. And I've done this. I've spent many, many months developing ideas and projects. And I just thought this is going to be so amazing. I love it, It's excellent. People are going to be blown away with it. And I release it, I launch it and guess what happens? All along? It flops. And again, I've done this many times. And the idea here is that it's better to share imperfect things, get them out the door, get them out there quickly, and let others tell you how to improve them. Don't just rely on your own knowledge and your own arrogance, if you will, thinking that I have all the answers and I know what's going to make this perfect. Get it out there in an imperfect state. Let people try it, let people test it. Let him tell you how awful it is or where it needs tweaked or where it needs improved and then improve it based on their feedback. Don't wait for something to be perfect before you launch it. Number five is that it gives life to procrastination. So this idea of creating perfect things as really an attainable, you can't do it, nobody can. And so when you think about this and you think, okay, well, I want to create this perfect thing, but it's unattainable. I can't guess what You also think. Well, why even start? Why should I even do this? And when you hold on to that, perfection is a mindset, then you rarely create anything of substance and it can become paralyzing because you just stopped dead in your tracks thinking that there's no point. Why should I even try? There's a real sense of freedom that comes from just creating, again, getting things out there, give up that idea of procrastination by just creating something smallest, something imperfect, something that others might laugh at. It's okay. But you get into this mode and this motion of doing something and moving forward. Number six is life is a rough to refinement process. You have to take action to see what works. And you have to find what works in order to tweak and refine it. And tweaking and refining is the path to success. Practice makes progress, practice doesn't make perfect practice makes progress. And this concept or idea is really highlighted in how the NC double a March Madness basketball tournament is put together. You think about it, 64 teams, at least at this time, that this recording is being put together, 64 teams start out in the tournament with the idea of finding the champion, right? So what happens? You have all these 64 teams, then they play each other and you end up having 32 teams. So 32 teams were kind of imperfect in the process, right? Because they didn't win. Those 32 teams that end up winning, play each other. You get down to 16, you get down to eight, you get down to four, you get down to two that play for the championship. And there you go, you have this exciting tournament. But in order to determine that champion, to find that one winner, guess what has to happen? You have to play all these games. It's a refining process. One step at a time. In life works the same way. Life is a rough to refinement process. Creating, share things, get it out there. And over time you're going to refine the process of what you're doing and what works so that you have some winners in your life. But it can only happen when you just do imperfection like a pro and you just start doing these things in an imperfect way. Number 7 is that imperfection makes you relatable. So a person who is willing to show their flaws, their mistakes, their clubs, they tend to be more relatable. They tend to be more human. We see them as more approachable. Because when you don't hide your flaws, you're seen as more trustworthy. You know, you're not somebody that is trying to hide the bad aspects of the mistakes if your life. But you're saying, Hey, this is who I am. And when you do that, you come across as somebody that you would know in real life. Because our friends are like that, our families like that. That's how you build trust by showing those flaws and weaknesses. People will love you more by showing them that you're just like them. Let me repeat that. People will love you more by showing them how you're just like them. Imperfection makes you relatable. Number eight is that success loves speed. So when you wait to act, when you wait to take action, because you're thinking things through too much, you're overthinking. That's not to say that you're not planning. Planning is important but overthinking. Guess what happens with overthinking. You start thinking about problems, potential problems, they're going to keep coming up. And that list of potential problems grows and grows and grows the more you wait to act and so as opposed to just acting. And the thing is that most of these problems are imaginary or they seem bigger than they actually are or will be if you encounter them. And that can keep you from taking action. So a better approach is to take action early. You know, when you act early, you build momentum. And if problems do show up, you have the power to get past them quickly. So go ahead and take action. Success loves speed. And finally, you really want to develop a mindset that done is better than perfect. So here are some simple actions that will train you to embrace imperfection so you can begin your journey of heading down the road of being fearless and unstoppable. So just take a pointless walk, you know, a three minute walk that you complete is better than a three mile run, that you never start. Create a crummy video. Even if you have a bad camera, some blemishes and you make mistakes, that's better than waiting months, maybe even a year, to create that perfect video. Cook a new recipe and do it poorly. You know, sloppy and burnt is beautiful because it creates a result that teaches you something. Believe it or not, expose your genius to others. Share something that you created with the world, even if you get criticized by those who don't have the guts to do the same thing. Just go ahead and do it. Write something boring. A boring page that you complete right now is better than a perfect page that you never start. Take a bad picture. An imperfect result is better than no result. Eat a single piece of fruit. You know, a small change that you make right now to be healthier is going to be better than waiting to start the perfect diet plan weeks down the road. So here's some next actions to put this into use in your own life. In the next 24 hours. Identify one Imperfect action that you're going to take and just use one of the ideas that we've talked about or come up with your own and do it immediately and do it imperfectly, not for the sake of doing a bad job. That's not what we're talking about. Doing the best job that you can. But don't let perfection stand in the way of your progress. You want to experience a sense of freedom and personal power that comes from simply doing and acting be imperfect.
5. Expression vs Consumption - Connect With The Flow Of Success: There are two basic ways that we interact with the world. One is through expression and this is where we share our thoughts or ideas, our creativity, our beliefs were sharing things. We're expressing them. The other is consumption. And this is where we are taken in knowledge. We're taking in ideas and consuming music and TVs and movies and news. That's all consumption. Now these are two different flows of energy. Because consuming pulls things inward. Write, it influences your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, the outside world. That's what this idea of consumption does. Whereas expression, it pushes outward, this is where you influenced the world around you. Now both flows are essential, but an imbalance of these two different flows can really have a negative impact. And that's what we're going to talk about in this video. The first thing that we want to look at is this idea that consumption has essentially become a drug, if you will. Meaning that consuming has become so easy. There are just millions and millions of choices on what to watch and what to buy and what to have and what to follow, and all these things, endless choices everywhere. And as a matter of fact, people are now identified as consumers. That's the identity that they've been given or consumption junkies. So consuming has become this overwhelming problem. And as a result of so much consuming, guess what has happened to expressing its become minimized. People aren't expressing their creativity, their thoughts, their feelings, their emotions. They're not influencing the world around them as they could, because they get stuck in this mode of consuming all the time. Now, the problem with consuming is that you can get to this mode of over consuming. There's nothing wrong with taking in things, knowledge, ideas, even entertainment. But when it becomes nonstop, that flow of energy coming into you can become crushing. It becomes restrictive. And I believe that this flow of consuming constantly overconsumption contributes to depression, which is the opposite of expression. When you think about it, it contributes to stress and pressure. You feel that pressure pulling in, making you feel restricted. It contributes to selfishness. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me because it's all about consuming the world around you. And there's a lack of desire sometimes to produce things of value, which is where you're really going to find joy and happiness and making an impact in the world. Now on the other side, expression is really powerful force and the effects of putting it into action can be pretty profound. This includes creating things, sharing things, doing things that generate feelings of freedom, motivation, personal power. And as a result of expressing this powerful force, you grow, you expand, and your sphere of influence grows. All amazing things. And we talked about this just a moment ago, but I believe that expression is part of the antidote. What do I mean by this? I mean, that expression helps you to cope with many of life's challenges. It's not a cure for getting rid of some of these challenges, but it helps you to cope. What am I talking about? Well, if you're feeling lonely, express kindness towards someone that will help you to cope. If you're feeling depressed, then express your creativity and your generosity. See what happens if you feeling empty. Express gratitude for all that you have. This is the power of expression. That's why I call it the antidote to some of these challenges. Now how do you know if you're over consuming? Are there any signs? Well, there are. Look at your life and you thinkin think, what is getting most of my time and energy. You have a 168 hours a week. What's getting most of it? Are you mostly consuming? Are you mostly spending your time watching things, listening to things, music, playing games, shopping? Are you mostly in this mode of consuming? Or are you more about expressing who you are and your thoughts and your ideas through your creativity in producing things and sharing things in a nutshell, taking action. So obviously, this video is about expressing more, getting more into that mode. How do you do it? Especially if you have maybe an issue with over consuming too much in your life. Well, here are some ways to do it. First of all, you want to express your creativity. You want to create things, you want to design things. You want to build things of value and share them with others. That's part of you that you're sharing with others in influencing the world around you. So express your creativity. You want to express your ideas. Teach, share with others what you know. If you have knowledge, share it with somebody. Teach them, have an impact on their lives. Do it through videos, do it through writing articles or creating a podcast or mentoring, whatever it may be. Get that awesome knowledge, that valuable information that's in your head. And get it out there so that you can start influencing and impacting other people's lives in a positive way. Another way you can express is express your feelings. This is probably the most obvious, right? We're talking about happiness, joy, love, gratitude. How do you express these emotions and these feelings? Well, very simple ways. Show it on your face. If you're happy. Show it on your face. If you love something or you're experiencing joy, show it on your face, speak it out loud, let other people know that you're happy, you're joyful, that you're feeling awesome. Talk to others about these feelings and these positive emotions demonstrate love, happiness, and joy in small ways. Again, this is a way that you can express your feelings. So here's some next actions, how to use this. What you wanna do for the next seven days or so is spent about a minute at the end of your day reflecting on what you did throughout the day and examining whether or not you spent more time consuming or more time expressing. And the way that you do this is to look at your use of your time, your habits. Are they really promoting activities and things that get you into this mode of consuming more or expressing more. Are you spending more time consuming TV shows and movies and music and social media and videos and all these things? Or are you spending more of your time creating, sharing, expressing your ideas, your feelings, and your emotions. And obviously, if you've figured out that you know what you have it a little bit of an over-consumption problem, or perhaps you have a huge overconsumption problem, then make some changes were necessary to your habits and your use of free time. So you can get into this mode of expressing more. And when you do that, when you get into this mode, this flow of expressing more, you're going to see your life change and some really positive and impactful ways.
6. Action Beliefs - How To THINK Like A Productive Person: In this video, I want to share with you what I call action beliefs. And these are truths, beliefs, principles, ideas that once you accept them as true, then they're going to shape how you take action and your desire and your motivation to take action. So let's get right into them. First of all, go with the flow. This means that the universe rewards action. When you look at the universe, it's a pretty active place right at the sun burns planets move, rivers flow, the oceans, turn, wind blows, atoms are in motion. Your heart beats, time ticks forward. So it's a very active place. And to thrive in this very active place, you have to match its flow. You have to be a massive action taker, just like the universe is. And when you do this, when you match that flow, life becomes easier. Now on the flip side, the more inactive you are, the more you work against that flow. And to help you to understand how this works, imagine you're in a flowing river and that river is just really pushing that water and flowing really strongly. It's got a really nice strong current. So taking action is like swimming with that flow. Just barely have to move really in order to move down the river. But what happens if you are like a rock where you're just standing there, inactive, standing stationary, you're fighting against that flow. You're going to wear out quickly. It's going to beat you up, it's going to tear you down. And that's the difference between activity and inactivity, action or inaction. So inactivity essentially means struggle and exhaustion. Action equals awesome results and balance in your life. So the takeaway you want to have here is that for life to flow better, you need to focus on being a massive action taker and focus less on getting a life of ease and inactivity where you're fighting against that current. The next idea is the pursuit, is the path, and this means that action reveals the path to success. So fear of the unknown is a big hurdle to taking action. When you start something, especially something you've never done before, the path isn't clear ahead of you, right? And it's easy to wait. You say, You know what, I'm just going to wait. And as a result, you step forward very slowly or very cautiously. And you think, Well, if I do this, then the path I need to take is eventually going to get clear. But that's not how a successful life works. That's what keeps you stuck in a rut. When you take this approach, doing anything of significance is like taking a cross-country journey. When you start that journey, you can't see the entire path, right? You can only see the first stretch of your path of your journey. But what do you do? You drive that stretch, you take action, and the next stretch or piece of road becomes visible. And you drive that. And the next piece of road becomes visible. And you repeat that process until you arrive at your destination. And achieving goals works the same exact way. This means that when you are doing anything, especially something that's new, but anything, any goal, any endeavor, any achievement that you want to have in your life. The path to success is only going to be revealed through taking action. This means that you take the first action toward moving forward. And the second action is going to reveal itself. And after you do that, the third action is going to reveal itself and so on until you reach your goal. So this means that action reveals the path to success. The next idea is that taking action is the best teacher. Now you might be thinking about what you're doing in your life and you think, okay, I want to have this, I want to do this. I need to learn more. I need to read more books, need to look at more articles. I need to watch more videos, go to more seminars, and it's easy to believe that you need to take in all this knowledge and information in order for you to accomplish this goal. And we often tell ourselves, you know, I'll start this goal or this project when I learn one more thing, that's all I need. And we think that consuming knowledge more of it equals success. And it's true knowledge is important, but it has its limits. Taking action on that knowledge. Taking action is way more important than just consuming that knowledge. Why is that? Well, because taking action makes you a creator of your eventuality, your goals, you deeply understand how things are working because of that taking of action. Of course, you're gonna make mistakes. And that oftentimes it's seen as something bad, but it forces your brain to adjust, to improve, to see distinctions, to see how things work. And this process equals fast growth. So remember that knowledge without action is worthless. One idea that you use is worth a lot more than a lot of ideas that you know, but you don't use. So stop waiting to learn more before you act. Spent 20 percent of your time learning and a percent of your time doing. The next idea is something I call oil the rust, which means inaction causes deterioration. So when you look at valuable things in life, valuable things require attention, regular attention. Otherwise, what happens? They changed for the worse or they start deteriorating. This could include your relationships, include your health, your business, your money, your emotional well-being. When you don't give these things regular attention, guess what happens by default, they start deteriorating and a lack of regular attention or consistent action. What it eventually does is it breeds disorder. And disorder cause a struggle and poor results. And struggle leads to overwhelm and chaos. And this is where deterioration really begins. So what does it mean to take consistent action? It means to regularly review, maintain, or improve an area of your life where whether that's your relationships, your health, your business, your money, your emotional well-being. You're looking at it regularly, you're maintaining it regularly, you're trying to improve it constantly. So what you want to remember here with this idea is where you have challenges in life. There's probably a lack of consistent action. You want to change that. The next idea is that actions are taken. Action affects your belief system. So what do you believe it's possible for you to do? When you think about that question. What can you do? What do you believe as possible? Well, your level of taking action shapes this belief. If you rarely take action, guess what's going to happen. You're rarely going to see any kind of results. And you're going to rarely see yourself as a creator of your own reality because you're doing nothing to change it, right? And over time, this idea can negatively impact and affect your belief in yourself because you have very few references to convince yourself that you can do amazing things. And as a result of that, you begin to feel like this victim of your circumstances rather than a creator of them. And you want to see yourself as a creator, your circumstances and your eventualities. Now on the other hand, when taking action becomes a consistent habit, then you deepen your belief that you can create your reality because you see it happening right before your eyes. And when you lock into that belief, you become unstoppable. So what you wanna do here and to build and raise your self-esteem, your confidence. Build a record of victory and successes. Consistently take action, creates a result. You're going to see it and it's going to impact your beliefs. The next idea is that effort is more important than outcome. So when you look at your life, you have control over a lot of different things, but you don't have control over everything in your life. For example, you can control what you think. You can control what you desire. You can control what you say, what you pursue, what you do. But you have little to no control over what other people think, what other people desire, what other people say, and what others do. And why is it important to realize this? It's important to realize this because it's easy to waste a lot of your time and energy worrying about things that you have little to no control over. Such as the fact that some people don't like your ideas. You can't control that or the fact that you may not see the results that you expect from a lot of work that you put into something. Again, a lot of times you can't control the results that you get in that way. Or the fact that you may not be able to do what you once were able to do, maybe due to age or health, something out of your control. Robert Louis Stevenson said it best. He said this one time. He said, Don't judge, each day by the harvest that you reap, but by the seeds that you plant. I love that quote. In other words, don't judge the success of your day by the outcomes you may or may not see. But judge the success of your day by the effort, the effort you put in to make things happen. So the takeaway here and what you want to remember is that you want to focus on giving your very best with everything that you do. Theodore Roosevelt once said, do what you can with what you have, where you are. In other words, do great things with what you have in your control and focus less on the outcome, especially when the outcome disappoints you. And when you focus your time, your energy, and your resources on your effort, on what you can control. It's going to keep you sane, happy, and massively successful. The next idea is that small actions matter more than big dreams. So Lao-Tzu once made this wise observation about taking action. He said, an ant on the move. Does more than a dosing ox. In other words, a small expression of action or power creates greater results than the biggest dreams and goals that are never put into action. You know, posting a valuable two-minute video on YouTube right now has a greater impact on your business than spending weeks brainstorming and scripting video ideas that you never record. Or eating a single piece of fruit right now will have a greater impact on your health than spending weeks trying to develop the perfect diet plan that you never implement. And sending a short handwritten I love you note to your spouse today will have a greater impact on your relationship then that perfect weekend that you keep planning but never go on. So don't get caught up in this false assumption that just because you have big dreams, you're going to make it happen. Big dreams are important, but small actions taken consistently are way more important for achieving anything of significance. There are a lot of opportunities for small wins in your life. You just need to look for them and take them. So remember, learn to value the impact of small daily wins. Be happy when you complete one page of something, or creating one video of something, or doing one minute of something, or sharing one idea or taking one step. Anything like that moves you closer to your dreams and then do the same thing tomorrow. The next idea is that moving forward requires both motivation and elimination. And what this means is that accomplishing what you want often requires two basic elements. One is motivation. That means tapping into anything that excites you, inspires you or energizes you to take action. On the flip side, there's elimination, which means removing anything that has a negative restrictive effect on what you wanna do. Now, motivation is important because it's like the fuel and the power that drives you forward. But elimination is important because there are hurdles that stand in your way of moving forward. And there are things that weigh you down. And if you don't spend time eliminating these time and energy, trainers, guess what's going to happen. It won't matter how much motivation empower you have to accomplish the goal. Those things are going to stand in your way. Imagine you have this powerful race car and on its own, it may travel as fast as a bullet in order to reach its destination, which is great, that's what you want. But if you attach a heavy load to the back of that race car, it may still move forward. But at only a fraction of its potential, elimination is as important as motivation and that gets lost sometimes. So what kind of things need to be eliminated in your life in order for you to move forward at a very fast-paced take a lot of action. Well, one is people. Unfortunately, there are people who are negative. They're dream killers. Maybe the drain your time, your energy. They don't share your values and your goals. You need to eliminate them from your life as much as possible. What you feed your mind, you need to be careful there because news, TV shows, movies that drain you a positive energy, those are going to slow you down. Think about it. How easily can you achieve a sense of happiness when you feed your mind and emotions, content that is natives, stressful and even hateful. Sometimes those two outcomes aren't compatible, are they? So you've got to be careful of what you feed your mind and eliminate the junk. Of course, you've got to be aware of eliminating what you feed your body that might be slowing it down, including unhealthy foods, sugary drinks, things like that. You've gotta eliminate bad habits that constantly disrupt your flow and your momentum when you get the urge to act on them. And of course, any other distraction that may stand in your way of moving forward quickly. So what you want to remember here is that no matter what you want to accomplish, don't just spend time creating goals and plans. Those are important. But you also want to spend time identifying hurdles and energy trainers and eliminating them. And both approaches are essential for having success. And the last idea is that emotion is essential to act. Have you ever been overcome with emotion, good or bad to the point where you simply couldn't resist taking action of some kind. You know, you just had to hug that person that you just loved or you just had to run out of the house to help your daughter who had fallen off her bike or you just had to pound your fist on the table because you were so angry, even if you, we're tired or calm. These examples demonstrate how powerful of a motivator emotion can be. Now of course, each of these are examples of impulsive emotional reactions, but you can use this power with intention. How, how do you do that? Well, you want to find and develop ways to make a positive emotional connection with your goals. And this can be done in several different ways. You can visualize them. What do they look like? What does it feel to live them right now? Imagine that visualizing your goals, talking about them, that's going to get your emotions ramped up. Looking at photos and videos about them, reading books about your goals, doing anything that you can do in order to get emotionally excited about what you want to achieve in life. And the stronger the emotion that you create, a stronger connection you have with that goal, and the faster you're going to reach it. So keep in mind to achieve your goals and your dreams and record time. You want a daily inconsistently connect them with feelings of strong emotions. And when you do this, your motivation for taking action will come naturally and easily. So here's some next actions. You want to examine your personal activity level, look at what you're doing and make improvements where necessary. You want to identify something that you're afraid to start and identify the first action and do it. What do you want to achieve? What actions can you take to do it? Stop waiting to learn one more idea and take action instead. Where do you have challenges in life? Figure that out. How can you increase your activity in that area of your life so that it doesn't deteriorate, but it starts to grow and improve. And then, of course, do a daily review of your activity and spend one minute reviewing your daily results, creating those winds, changing your beliefs so that you have action beliefs that make you an action taking machine.
7. Clarity - Create An Environment Where Taking Action Thrives!: When it comes to doing things, your brain is kinda lazy, right? Typically likes to take the path of least resistance. And what this means in practice is that it tends to be drawn to doing things that are easy for to think about, to understand and do. And it resists and avoids doing things that it doesn't find easy to understand or it may even require a lot of effort to do. Another words. You tend to move toward things that you're clear about and that you understand. You tend to move away from things that are unclear or that you don't understand. And if you have the desire to do amazing things in your life, which I'm sure you do, then your brain's natural tendency to lean toward doing easy tasks can be a real hurdle in making that happen. As a matter of fact, it can be killing your potential. How? Well, by its nature, significant and valuable work oftentimes requires substantial and I mean substantial mental muscle to do these things. This includes doing things that matter and that contribute to a happy, successful life, such as maybe running a business, writing a book, creating and maintaining a YouTube channel and things like this. Now why is mental muscle required? Because there are numerous steps that need to be understood and organized in order for you to complete that thing, whatever it may be. And there are various resources, maybe documents, tools, people that need to be managed. And there's a need for creative ideas and problem-solving solutions. And altogether, these factors add up to make insignificant work, anything but easy. And as a result, significant valuable work is something that your brain will oftentimes resist doing without a little bit of help. And this is where clarity comes to the rescue. Now, what clarity does is that it gives you the ability to take what is seemingly hard and break it down to where it's relatively easy. And that's the beauty of it. It helps you to give order to disorder may complex items understandable. And it helps you to see a path to accomplishment where one doesn't exist right now. In other words, clarity helps you to take significant complex tasks that your brain would normally resist doing. It processes of them and then turns them into tasks that your brain is drawn to doing. An addition to this, because clarity by its very nature, it helps you to reduce feelings of overwhelm and the stress and the anxiety that goes with it. It has a secondary effect of minimizing those tiny but abundant emotional impulses that oftentimes influence you to want to goof off and procrastinate, you know what those are, you experience those probably on a daily basis. Overall, you can say that clarity is an essential ingredient for boosting your ability to get things done. Now when it comes to thinking and processing life with greater clarity, it's not a skill that you either have or you don't have because you're scatterbrained or not. It's like a muscle. It's like focus and its strength of your ability to have clarity in your life is totally, totally within your control. And your development of that muscle is dependent on your unique personal habits. If your habits in life promote. Constantly given into emotional impulses whenever they pop up along with maybe scattered, unclear thinking and a disorganized environment, then it's going to severely impact your clarity power and thus your ability and your desire to do significant work. On the other hand, if your habits in life promotes structure, order, focus, and clear direction, then your level of clarity is going to enable you to achieve some pretty amazing things. So here are four things you can do to analyze and determine whether or not you need more clarity in your life. First of all, let's look at information. If you can't see ideas and information in your life. This includes lists to do's plans, goals, and things like this. In an instant. If you can't see those things, you need more clarity in your life. And this is because information that you need to use, that you need to review or manage should be in a form that you can instantly review and analyze it. You can't have clarity if you attempt to keep and manage it all in your head, it's just not possible. What about your environment? So if you avoid interacting with something in your environment such as books, folders, papers, things like this because finding them and using them as a hassle due to the clutter disorganization or the messiness than you need clarity in your life. Your environment should be neat and organized so that you know exactly where everything is and so that you can easily access it. You should have a place for everything, and everything should be in its place. If it's not, you need more clarity in your life. What about next actions? Well, if you don't know the next action that you need to take with an item such as your tasks, your projects, your decisions, you don't know what's next, then you need more clarity. And even though you may not work on an item right away, you should maintain a habit of identifying by writing down the next action that you need to take so you understand clearly what needs to be done when you're ready to take that action. And this is where tasks, lists, projects, and plans that are written down, written down, make a huge difference in your level of clarity in your life. Another area is generalities. This means that if you think and if you plan and speak with few to no details and specifics in your lives such as dates, times, places, people, things like this, then you're not thinking clearly enough. You should be as specific and detailed as possible and how you think. See it clearly, how you plan, capture it clearly, and how you speak. Say it clearly. This helps you to strengthen your overall clarity muscle. So here's some next actions using the four ideas that we just discussed about looking at clarity with your information, your environment, your next actions and generalities. Analyze the clarity that exist in your life. What's it look like? And if you identify a weakness in one of these areas, then you want to focus on improving it using some of the suggestions that I've shared here. Now if there are multiple areas of clarity, weakness, choose one area, get clear about it and improve it before you move on to the next area. And so very, very important that you understand and believe that in order for you to be someone who does significant important work, improving and maintaining your clarity is a must.
8. Deadlines - Tap Into The Motivating Force Of A Time Limit: There's a big difference in the level of motivation in these three scenarios. One, I should file my taxes or I need to file my taxes by tomorrow, or I'll pay a huge penalty. Second scenario, I want to write a book, or my editor needs three chapters by Monday, or my book gets canceled. Or scenario number 3, I'd like to put together that proposal or I promised my best customer that I'd have this proposal to them by the end of today. If you've ever been in any of these situations or something similar, do you understand the motivating power of a deadline? Especially when there are consequences for not meeting it. Deadlines give us superpowers to get things done. So what's the connection between deadlines and our motivation? What are the mechanics involved? Well, deadlines get their power in several different ways. And the biggest involves emotion. So when you know that a project has a deadline and there are consequences for missing it, that increases your emotional energy in relation to that task or project. If you've ever felt a tingle in your gut when you're given a project with a specific deadline, then you've experienced the beginning spark of that emotional energy building inside of you. Now as time goes by and the deadline moves closer, what happens? Your emotional energy increases. And some call this stress and anxiety button reality. It's motivation. And with increased emotional energy or motivation, what happens? Well, it, your physical energy level increases and so do your mental abilities, your ability to focus, your ability to be creative, your ability to solve problems. And oftentimes the energy increase is so small and subtle. But it's enough, It's enough to move you from procrastination to taking action. And this is what makes it a powerful strategy for getting things done. And the process is largely an automatic response other than setting a deadline, nature takes care of the rest. To be effective though, a deadline should include one or more of the following characteristics. First of all, when creating a deadline, it should be as specific and realistic as possible. So tomorrow isn't a deadline. Tomorrow by 4 PM is the deadline next week. That's not a deadline. By the end of next Wednesday. That is a deadline. Or July isn't a deadline by any stretch of the imagination. But July 27th, that is a deadline. Next up, let's talk about consequences. So oftentimes deadlines have their own set of consequences. An unhappy customer, maybe a lost opportunity or something similar to these. But you may work on a task or project where there may not be an apparent consequences for missing a deadline, such as a personal project of some sort or a project or task that you want to accomplish. But there's no set time for getting it done. For example, I create video courses for living. They don't need to be done at a specific time, but I want them to be. So this is where you need to be creative to create a motivating consequence. And here's some ideas. First of all, go public, you know, put yourself, your image, your reputation on the line by announcing your deadline to the world. Use social media, maybe email your friends or coworkers or put it on the office bulletin board and include your project, its deadline, date, and what you expect to complete my than. And this works because you want to be seen as a winner. The next idea is make a monetary deal. So be willing to give something up if you don't follow through with your deadline, Give a friend a chunk of cash just enough that it will cause a sting of some sort and then tell him it's theirs. If you don't meet your deadline and you'll work to make that deadline. And finally, make it a competition. If you have friends or family or other close associates who are attempting a goal that's real similar to yours, then invite them to a healthy competition of who can finish first and then have the loser. And I use that in a good way, have the loser by the winner or winners are reward. Now let's talk about delegating tasks. So when a task or project has been assigned to someone else, include a specific deadline and make it clear the consequences of not hitting that deadline on time. And this will increase the chance that it's going to get done. So say something like this. I need to have that by next Friday at ten AM. And if it's not done by then will likely lose the Jones account. So we have a specific time and date and we have a consequence. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that. So here are some next actions, how to use this. Moving forward. Don't start a task or project without a specific deadline. If you're creating a presentation, give it a deadline. If you're updating a website. Give it a deadline. If you create a video course, give it a deadline. And of course, if you're planning a party, give it a deadline. And to make it easier to remember your deadline, just add it next to the name of the task or project that you're currently working on. And then next to the date and time, include a short sentence describing the consequences that come from missing that deadline. And as you begin using deadlines more, pay close attention to the way that they affect how you feel and your level of motivation and your clarity and your focus. This is going to help you to appreciate the awesome value of using deadlines.
9. Consistency - Discover How To Unlock Success: So as a student of success, you've likely heard about the importance and the mindset of consistency. You know, you've gotta write down your goals and consistently look at them. Or you've got to consistently create things that deliver value. Or you've got to consistently practice habits in order for them to stick so you hear it. But do you personally believe it? And do you understand why consistency is such a powerful force for change enough to use it consistently in your life? Well, instead of just telling you to be consistent, let's dig beneath the surface and examined the mechanics of how it works using an illustration. So to begin, let's define the elements of how consistency works, especially in relation to achieving a goal. So the elements are the goal. And you can think of this as like a ball sitting on top of water. It has buoyancy, which means it floats. The next element is time. And in this illustration, time is like a body of water, as you're going to see. And finally, at the bottom of the water is something that we're going to call the activator of awesome. Now let's look at how success is achieved in this illustration. To achieve a goal or to adopt or change a habit, it has to come in contact with that activator of awesome at the bottom of the water. When it does that thing, whatever it is, starts becoming a reality very, very fast. And this is because the activator of awesome represents the moment in time when things begin to click along your journey to achieving that goal, you begin to think differently. You start becoming more creative or your skill level takes a leap, whatever it may be. Now as mentioned earlier, goals float in this illustration. So to get goals in contact with that activator of awesome requires some effort, consistently pushing that goal down toward the activator of awesome. So let's say you have this desire to achieve something such as a goal. And initially, you push your goal toward the activator of awesome by reviewing and connecting with it emotionally every day. But something happens. Let's say after two or three days or even a week, you stop pushing, you stop reviewing and connecting with that goal or practicing that habit. You know, you're tired or you're out of time today, but you'll pick it back up tomorrow. And then tomorrow comes and guess what? You miss another day. So you'll pick up doing it next week on Monday. That's the best day to start it, and so on. And this seems innocent enough, right? Life gets in the way sometimes. But each day you're inconsistent about reviewing your goal or practicing your new habit. It starts to float back up to the top of the water, moving at farther away from the activator of awesome. And if you miss several days, that goal will eventually float back to the top of the water. And at this point, it's no closer to be an achieved than when you started. Any time and effort that you put into achieving it up to that point is essentially wasted time. So to achieve anything, a daily consistent push is a must. Push the goal down on one day and it floats up a little. The next eight, push it down some more. It will float up a little bit more and so on. Eventually though, with enough consistent days of pushing, you're going to experience success. That's how consistency works. Now one of the biggest barriers to consistency is complexity. Trying to practice or change things that are too big of a scale in too short of a time. Examples might be trying to change your diet drastically. A lot of people try that. Trying to change an ingrained behavior too quickly. Trying to do professional work when you're still an amateur. And it's better to take small actions consistently than it is to make big pushes occasionally. Let me repeat that very important, It's better to take small actions consistently than it is to make big pushes occasionally. In other words, when it comes to your health, It's better to exercise for ten minutes consistently every day for a month. Then it is to do a big push and work out for an hour only once a week. Or how about journaling? It's better to write for one minute a day consistently than it is to try to write for ten minutes a day and only do it every three or four days. Or finally, another example, when it comes to producing and creating, gets better to consistently create smaller results, smaller products, smaller creative works consistently than it is to try to tackle huge projects that overwhelm you and cause you to procrastinate regularly. So here's some next actions, how to use this. Appreciate consistent reviews of your written goals. The creation of things, or the practicing of new habits is the only way to be truly successful with them. And hit and miss approach doesn't work. It's a waste of your time, so don't do it. Examine areas of your life where you want to grow and where you want to achieve something specific. And then identify small habits that you can adopt and small actions that you can consistently take to make those things a reality over time.
10. Priorities - How To Find Time For Everything: Are you giving priority to doing the right things? Does the quality and flow of your life show that you are? If you are good for you. If not, it's important to learn the value of priorities and how they can affect virtually everything you do or set out to accomplish. Now instead of simply telling you what priorities are and why they matter, I want to demonstrate the mechanics of how they work by walking through a short story. So once upon a time there was a philosophy professor and he had an empty jar on his desk and a room full of students. So we went about taking a bunch of golf balls and filling the jar with those golf balls. And he asked his students, is that full yet? And of course as students looking at the jar said, Well, yeah, sure it is. But the professor, he picked up a bag of pebbles, poured it into the jar, filled the spaces between the golf balls. And again, he asked the students, is it full yet? And the students said, well now it's really full, yes. But the professor, he wasn't finished. So he goes about and pours a bag of sand and fills the spaces in between the golf balls and the pebbles. And he asked his students one more time, is it full yet? And they look at him and say, yes, finally now it's full. But there was one more thing. The professor, he took a sip of coffee and poured the rest of his coffee into the jar and fill the space that no one thought was there. Now what does this mean? Well, in this illustration, the jar represents life. The golf balls represent priorities such as your family, your healthy contribution, what you contribute to society. These are things that matter on your deathbed. Now the pebbles, they're necessary but less important. They could be things including your job, your house, your car, the sand. Well, that's the small stuff in life that's usually insignificant. And then the coffee, there's always time for coffee in life. So what's the lesson? The lesson is that there's room for everything, virtually everything, but only if you put priorities first. If you try to put other things first, less important stuff, then the priorities won't fit in to the jar or your life. You can try to cram it all in. And most people do, but that's where stress and overwhelm sets in. We tell ourselves, you know, I'll do the easy stuff, but Sandy stuff, the pebble E stuff, and then I'll get to the bigger stuff later, the golf balls. And you usually doesn't work. We often get focused on the amount of things that we have to do and we don't spend a lot of time focusing on the order, but you have to be intentional about the order in order to get control of your priorities. So how are you doing in your life? Is there anything that's a wreck? Well, let's check. Does your life feel like it's on the verge of falling apart or individual elements of it. Your relationships, how are they doing? Your health? If you're having challenges with any of these, it's assigned to examine what you're putting first. Are you making those things a priority? Because if you do, then all the other things are usually going to fit in place and you're going to minimize the stress, the overwhelm, and the chaos that you have in your life, especially in those particular areas. So here's some next actions, how to use this examined what should be a priority in your life, your health, your family, your goals. And then ask yourself, is that thing, whatever it is, your health, your family, your goals or something else? Is it flourishing? Has it improved from the way it was a year ago? Has it improved from the way it was three years ago or five years ago? Does it get more time than playing games or checking social media or even watching entertainment of some sort. If you say, well, yeah, it does, then prove it to yourself. Give yourself specific examples of where those things are having priority in your life, that you're spending the majority of your time, energy and resources on them as opposed to minor things in my prove it to yourself. Now you might say, well, no, I'm not making those things a priority. If that's the case. Well, it's time to change those habits, your actions, your behaviors, so that important things are a priority. So you can get rid of or minimize that stress, overwhelm in chaos in your life. If you do this, then you're going to watch how everything in your life begins to fall in place better. Just like those golf balls, pebbles, sand, and coffee.
11. Convenience - Use Space And Time To Be More Productive: Look around you right now because your environment affects your choices and your habits on a significant level, especially the level of convenience to things that enable you to take certain actions, both good actions and bad actions. So to give you an example, what I mean here, Let's consider there's a food war. You have a choice between eating an apple or a candy bar. Now if your goal is to eat healthier than the obvious and logical choice is that you're going to eat the apple. But obvious and logical choices aren't always the ones that you make. And here's one reason why. Let's assume that that candy bar is on your desk. It's easy to unwrap, it's easier to eat. You can look at it right there. It's convenient. But the app, on the other hand, it's downstairs, it's hidden in the fridge. It's needs washed, and it's very inconvenient to get to that apple. So chances are despite the fact that you want to eat healthier, that the candy bar, because it's convenient, is the one thing that you're going to eat. Convenience to that thing has influenced your behavior despite a logical choice in your head. So what this means is that when a choice either good or bad is easy to access, increases the likelihood that you're going to do that thing or use that thing. Our brains like the path of least resistance. They like convenience. On the other hand, if it's a hassle to act, if it's a hassle to use, then you're less likely to use that thing or do that thing. Our brains tend to avoid things that require too many steps are that are a hassle to do. Now when you take a moment and examine your environment, it's pretty much likely that most of the elements in your environment are where they are, mostly by chance. You've probably never given much thought as to where you place things in your environment. And as a result, this principle of convenience and inconvenience is driving your behavior in ways that you don't even realize. But it's time to begin using it with intention to alter your habits, to improve your decisions and to produce some positive results. So here are some factors that make convenience and inconvenience influence your behavior. Number 1 is distance. So if you move something closer to you, it's going to have a greater influence on your behavior. If you move it farther away, it's going to have less of an influence is going to be more inconvenient. Visibility is the second thing, out of sight, out of mind. So when you can't see something, it's going to have less of an influence on something that is visible to you that you can see with your own eyes immediately right now. And the last thing is hassle. And this means that if you make it easy to begin using something or doing a behavior and habit. And you eliminate the steps to do that, it's going to be more convenient and you're more likely to do it. On the other hand, if you increase the steps, make something inconvenient to do, then it's going to be less of a factor in driving your behavior. So here's some examples. Again, Let's talk about eating healthier. If you want to eat healthier food, then you want to make it convenient by putting it on your desk or putting it in a bowl on the table, not at the bottom of the refrigerator. If you want to eat less junk food, then make that junk food a hassle to get to put it in the basement if you want to, or even better, keep it at the store. Don't even bring it into your house. That way. If you have a craving, it's going to be very inconvenient for you to leave your house to go get that junk food in order to satisfy that craving. Or let's say that there's an app on your device, your phone, or your tablet that you want to use daily, perhaps a food diary. Then put that app on your home screen. Put distracting apps on the second screen of your device so that, that is front and center. You have easy access to it. Or what are you gonna do before bed? How do you want to influence what you do before you go to bed? If you want to read a book, then put it on your nightstand so that it's right there. It's convenient, you can access it quickly. How about habits? For good habits, you want to alter your environment to make practicing a good habit easy to do, eliminate the steps. On the other hand, bad habits. If you want to eliminate them, then make those inconvenient to practice, increase the steps that it requires in order to fulfill that habit or practice that habit. And finally, how about productivity? Figure out what you want to do or what you need to do during the day. And then make the tools, the resources, the records, make those convenient. And then think about potential distractions and remove those from your environment. Make those as inconvenient as you possibly can. In a nutshell, you want to use the power of what has been called 20 seconds. And this means you want to design your environment so that what you want to do can be started in less than 20 seconds. And what you want to avoid requires more than 20 seconds for you to do that. So here's some next actions how you can use this. First of all, identify a habit you want to practice or a task that you want to complete. And then analyze your environment, your physical environment, your digital environment. Take a good look at it and then tweak it so that that habit or that task is easy to start. It's easy to practice and it's easy to do. And then make related temptations or distractions that are going to prevent you from doing that thing. Make those inconvenient. And finally, be aware of how your environment affects your choices, your habits, everything you do. Because convenience and inconvenience influence your behavior significantly.
12. Weakest Link - Identify And Eliminate Your Biggest Challenge In Life: Your life consists of various elements that impact your ability to be successful. And you can think of these elements as links in the chain that will call your success chain. Now the links that are part of your individual success chain include things such as your habits, what you eat regularly, when you go to bed, your nervous habits that you might practice, such as biting your nails or something like that. It includes your processes. How do you plan your day? How do you manage your money? How do you organize your business? And how well do you maintain your relationships? Those are your processes. It also includes your sources of influence such as your friends, their attitudes, what they believe, what they talk about, what you feed your mind regularly and its tone and its content, or even simply, your beliefs. Ideas such as change is hard or failure is bad, or things like that. These are all links in your individual success chain. Now when you take a close look at your overall success chain, you realize that some links on it are very strong and others are weak. In other words, this means that some habits, some processes, some influences and beliefs that you have right now are right where they need to be in order for you to become successful. At the same time, you have a number of weak links that are hindering your ability to be successful. And what do we know about the strength of a chain? Well, we know that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And this is true for your success chain as well. And in practice, this means that you have one link, perhaps a specific habit, process and influence or a belief that is a bigger hurdle to your success than any other one that you may have. And ideally you want to fix as many of your weak links as possible. But when you focus your efforts on fixing your biggest hurdle or your weakest link, it can also have the biggest impact on improving your ability to get better results. So how do you identify and fix your weakest link? Well, the simple answer is to begin taking a thoughtful and honest look at where you are getting poor results in your life. Because those poor results are usually caused by a weak link in your success chain. Now to help you to better understand how to do this, let's look at four common weak links to consider. First one is entertainment. So if you rarely have time for important things in your lives, such as achieving real goals, is your weak link that you're watching too much TV or playing video games. Those things are fine. But are they interfering with your ability to achieve real goals? Fixing this type of link would involve creating a simple schedule for doing these things such as playing video games or watching TV within a limited timeframe each week, and then sticking to that schedule, that would help you to fix that weak link. Another weak link, common one is junk food. So if you always feel fatigued or sick, is it because you're consuming too much sugar or you're sitting too much, is that you're weak link. Well, if so, then fixing this weak link would involve perhaps committing to getting up every hour and walking for at least a minute and then increasing to five minutes after a week. Or putting one less teaspoon of sugar in your coffee in the morning for one week and then two teaspoons less the week after that. And then continuing to build on those changes in the following week. That would help you to eliminate that weak link or make it stronger when it comes to good health, is your weak link, maybe debt. If your debt is keeping you up at night, is it because you never take the time to learn how to manage your money properly, is that it? Is this lack of learning the weak link in your success chain. If this is the case, then to fix this weak link, you can set aside maybe ten minutes every day to learn more about how to manage your money and your finances properly, that will help strengthen that link and your success chain. Or finally, maybe your weak link is a lack of planning, not getting things done. So if you regularly feel overwhelmed with everything that you have to do, is it because you don't take the time each day to plan your next day in advance. Is the lack of daily planning, the weak link in your success chain. If so, then you want to commit to spending at least five minutes at the end of every day to plan your day tomorrow, and then tomorrow comes work your plan. Now some additional weak links to consider might include your smartphone usage. Or maybe a family member who is a dream killer. Eating late at night, a bad habits, a messy or disorganized environment. And I'm not shown your current weakest link generally has something to do with where you are experiencing the most pain and frustration in your life right now, where is that? And after you've identified your weakest link and it's specific root cause, maybe a habit, maybe a process that you do. Maybe somebody that influences you or belief that you have that's causing it. You put yourself in a power position to fix it and to eliminate it. And as a result, you strengthen your overall success chain, which is what you want to do. So here's some next actions. Spent about five or ten minutes right now, identifying your weakest link in your life. Examine where you are experiencing the biggest challenge in your life. And write down what the challenge is, as well as the potential causes for that challenge. What is the root cause? And then review these potential causes and select one that seems most likely. That is your weakest link. And once you've identified the cause of that weak link, then develop a simple and progressive plan for fixing it. That's all it takes. And to help you with this, do a search on Google, watch some videos about how to fix that weak link. Ask a mentor or an expert and then put your plan into action. And then at some point, what you wanna do is evaluate your progress and decide whether or not you want to continue working on fixing your current weakest link. Or you want to move on to identifying and fixing another one using the steps that we just talked about. Now a couple of things to keep in mind when it comes to fixing your weakest link is that there will always, always be another weak link to fix. Now the key to making this all work though, is to focus as much effort as you can on eliminating your biggest challenge in life. Don't get caught up on trying to fix all your weak links, but focus on one at a time, one at a time. And you will see results.
13. Conclusion - Thank You! What To Do Next: So believe it or not, this is the last video of the class. And the fact that you're watching this tells me that there's a pretty good chance that you watch the entire class. And I think it's awesome that you stuck with it long enough to get here. And for that, I'd like to say, thank you very much. Now a lot of time and effort went into creating this class. And I hope that the end result was that it was valuable to you and enjoyable, memorable, unique, and that it was more than you expected. And if it was any or all of those things, I'd appreciate it if you did two things. One, if you leave an honest review for others who are considering taking this class. And two, if you would share a link to this class with anyone that you think would benefit from it or would like to watch it. And if you have any questions ever, or if you have some suggestions about the class and how to improve it, then please leave me a comment in the discussion area for this class. Or you can email me, or you can visit my website at derek franklin.com. I love, love, love hearing from my students. Thanks again. And I hope you have an amazing day.
Derek Franklin, Teaches Crazy Good Courses You Will Love!
