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How to Be Great | Alex Toussaint

Oct 4, 2023 57m 18s 18 insights
<p><em>New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.</em></p> <p><em>---</em></p> <p>This ain't daycare... Tough love and actionable insights on validation, gratitude, and self-alignment from the Peloton star. Plus, he shares the most important words he's ever heard.</p> <p>Alex Toussaint, Peloton Instructor and Puma Athlete, is a titan of the fitness community sitting at the intersection of fitness, tech, music, sports, and entertainment. A hybrid of high-performance athlete and motivational coach, Alex is widely respected for his authenticity and positivity. His new book is called <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250852038/activateyourgreatness" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Activate Your Greatness</em></a>.</p> <p>In this episode we talk about:</p> <ul> <li>Alex's remarkable life story</li> <li>His thoughts on internal versus external validation</li> <li>What he means by "activate your greatness"</li> <li>The habits and practices he employs in service of his own greatness, including gratitude, self-alignment, and his "starting five"</li> </ul> <p><br /></p> <p>Full Shownotes: <a href="https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/alex-toussaint" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/alex-toussaint</a></p>
Actionable Insights

1. Cultivate Internal Peace

Prioritize cultivating internal peace as a high-value ‘currency’ that enables harmonious relationships with yourself and others. Consistently engage in practices like daily grind, gratitude, prayer, and self-alignment to find and protect this peace.

2. Activate Your Inherent Greatness

Identify your inherent, God-given abilities, actively tap into them, and then work to amplify their full potential. Conduct deep self-reflection to discover your passions and intrinsic motivators that will sustain you through both success and failure.

3. Hustle with Unknown Outcomes

Cultivate a mindset of consistent effort and ‘hustle’ daily, even when the ultimate outcome is uncertain or unknown. Focus on falling in love with the journey and process of your endeavors rather than just the end destination.

4. Build a Supportive Inner Circle

Carefully choose your support system and accountability partners, ensuring they amplify your goals and dreams rather than diminishing them. Protect your dreams by sharing them only with this trusted, tight-knit group until they are accomplished.

5. Practice Forgiveness and Grace

Provide grace to yourself and others, and actively practice forgiveness towards others to achieve internal peace, release negative tension, and foster understanding in relationships. Avoid dwelling on past grievances to prevent passing negative mindsets to the next generation.

6. Embrace Daily Gratitude

Regularly practice gratitude to counteract negativity and fear, starting your day by being thankful for opening your eyes and the ability to move your body before your feet even touch the ground. Let your day be filled with gratitude.

7. Conquer Small Tasks Consistently

Focus on consistently accomplishing small, foundational tasks, like making your bed, as they accumulate to create significant progress and set a standard for how you approach everything. Embody the principle ‘how you do anything is how you do everything’ by approaching all actions with purpose and intention.

8. Live Authentically, Not Just Exist

Live authentically and unapologetically, rather than merely existing to conform to others’ expectations or circumstances, especially when faced with pressures that restrict your true self. Don’t let external circumstances dictate your internal state.

9. Leverage Your Platform for Others

If you have a platform, advantage, or privilege, you have a responsibility to use it to advocate for others, foster understanding, and create opportunities for those who may be overlooked. Use your advantages to other people’s advantage.

10. Seek Diverse Perspectives

Actively seek out and surround yourself with diverse individuals, read, and continuously learn to foster personal growth, broaden your perspective (‘open your aperture’), and gain a clearer understanding of life’s direction. Stop repeating the same patterns and evolve.

11. Adopt a Daily ‘Starting Five’

Adopt a ‘starting five’ protocol by identifying your top 5 priorities or values for each day, treating each day as a unique ‘opponent’ that requires a strategic game plan to navigate effectively. Be flexible to rotate these priorities based on daily needs, sometimes prioritizing personal peace to protect other important values.

12. Practice Self-Alignment Regularly

Regularly check for self-alignment, ensuring your mental, emotional, and physical states are in harmony, and take time to bring them back into balance when they diverge. Be open to trusted colleagues or friends pulling you out of self-imposed ‘cocoons’ to encourage you to slow down and enjoy life.

13. See Potential in Others

Strive to see and acknowledge the potential and ’light’ in others, especially when they may not see it in themselves or are overlooked. Actively work to uplift those who are not seen, helping them recognize their own capabilities.

14. Maintain Readiness for Opportunity

Maintain a state of readiness and high performance in all you do, treating every task as an ‘audition,’ because you never know when opportunities will arise, who is watching, or who you might inspire. Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready.

15. Understand Your Origins

Understand and respect where you come from and your family’s history, as this knowledge is crucial for informing your future direction and personal identity. Knowing your last name and where you come from provides power.

16. Reframe Past Negatives

Don’t let past negative experiences hold you back; instead, reframe them to propel you forward. Understand that sometimes taking a couple of steps back can provide clarity and a clearer perspective for future progress.

17. Embrace Pushback as Motivation

When facing criticism or pushback, accept it and use it as a source of motivation to keep pushing forward. If you have a pure heart and intent, you know where you come from and where you’re trying to go, so continue to push.

18. Parent with Love and Grace

For parents, provide both unwavering support and necessary tough love, and teach your children grace by modeling it. Acknowledge that both parents and children are imperfect humans deserving of understanding and forgiveness.