Recognize that who you become—developing moral and ethical character strengths like kindness, integrity, and gratitude—is more important than the specific achievements gained during the pursuit of goals.
Identify your ultimate mission in life—a deep, compelling reason for expending energy and for which failure is not possible—to drive greater effort and sustained success.
Define your purpose and hold yourself accountable to it daily, ensuring that you live what you teach and apply your principles first to yourself, rather than just speaking about them.
Understand that time only gains value when intersected with energy; therefore, focus on investing extraordinary energy, or ‘full engagement,’ into your activities rather than just allocating time.
Recognize that it is the investment of your energy, not merely your time, that gives life and drives results in any endeavor, whether personal or professional.
Understand that health is foundational to performance; the healthier you are, the more energy you will have, which directly translates to better performance in any domain.
To live a ‘big life’ requiring high energy expenditure, prioritize training recovery mechanisms (like interval training) to improve your body’s ability to recover quickly, as fitness directly correlates with recovery speed.
Recognize that chronic stress, not stress itself, is detrimental; in high-stress environments, actively learn and implement recovery techniques to thrive under pressure.
Embrace and pursue challenging ‘stress’ to light up your life, but ensure this is balanced by actively supporting energy production through good food, quality sleep, hydration, and other recovery practices.
Cultivate ‘rituals,’ which are intentionally acquired habits specifically designed to serve your mission or desired outcome, rather than just passively adopting habits.
Implement small, consistent daily habits, such as waking at a set time, setting an alarm, and always having breakfast, to intervene in automatic behaviors and take control of your day.
Craft an empowering story by hand, rewrite it several times from memory, read it, and then use your phone’s voice memo to record yourself telling the story and play it back to listen to your own coaching.
To effectively edit and change your self-stories, use handwriting, as it has the greatest impact on neurological functioning and the formation of new neural networks compared to other methods.
Start journaling daily to program your day and reflect. Even when facing challenges, reframe your mindset by expressing excitement for new opportunities and gratitude for the day, writing this down to solidify the positive outlook.
To understand if your self-story is empowering or limiting, ask if it’s aligned with objective reality, the best part of you, your values, and if it fosters optimism and hope for your future.
Develop an ‘automatic sensor’ to intentionally and purposefully orchestrate your self-stories, ensuring they align with your best self and values before they take form.
Be extremely mindful of your public voice as a parent, as it directly shapes your children’s inner voice and their self-perception as they mature.
Parents should tune into their own inner voice and ask if they would want their children to have that same internal monologue, ensuring it is helpful and empowering rather than critical or demeaning.
When trying to influence children or others, especially on sensitive topics, tell stories or anecdotes rather than preaching, as storytelling avoids defensiveness and allows messages to register over time.
When discussing dangers like excessive screen time or drugs, engage children in a conversation by asking them about potential harms they’ve experienced or observed, rather than imposing rules as a ‘know-it-all’ parent.
Seize opportunities presented by real-world events, such as witnessing an overdose, to have conversations with your children about potential dangers and consequences, preparing them to be careful and avoid unfortunate outcomes.
Parents must be very careful about limiting their children’s social media time, especially in early years, and implement counterbalances to protect them from its potential negative impacts on self-esteem.
To effectively reach and help struggling children, utilize the mentoring of other kids who have successfully navigated similar challenges and found solutions.
As a teacher or parent, focus on teaching people to be excited about what they could become and what they might find great joy in mastering, as this is a lasting gift.
As a parent, enable your children to explore their passions in their own way, fostering a sense of joy in the pursuit rather than forcing them, and encourage them to be surrounded by great coaches or mentors.
Encourage participation in activities like sports by framing them as opportunities to grow and become a better human being, rather than solely focusing on winning or achieving top ranks.
Actively seek to discover your strengths and align them with your interests, as you tend to enjoy and find success in activities where you naturally excel.
Try a wide variety of activities and subjects to discover what you are good at and what genuinely excites you, as life is significantly better when you are in pursuit of something you love to learn.
Cultivate joy in the learning process for others, especially children, by helping them find materials (like books or music) that genuinely excite and engage them, rather than forcing them to learn things they dislike.
Immediately hydrate upon waking, before coffee, and around workouts. Also, ensure one hour of rest before bed to improve sleep quality and overall well-being.
Develop and ritualize short recovery breaks (e.g., 16 seconds) within high-stress activities to achieve complete physical and mental recovery, enhancing sustained performance.
Implement a 4-stage recovery ritual: immediately follow an intense period with a positive physical response, then a relaxation stage, then a ritual stage (e.g., bouncing a ball), before returning to action instinctively.
Utilize the human ability to pause between a stimulus and your response, intentionally creating a novel and desired reaction, which requires conscious effort to rewire habitual circuitry.
To overcome difficult challenges or make significant changes, link your mission to a purpose so powerful and compelling that it drives you through adversity and prevents surrender.
Understand that true ’toughness’ is not just mental, but a fully integrated state encompassing mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual aspects, where everything you do affects everything else.
To control your internal chemistry and foster desired feelings like fearlessness, consciously project that state externally through your physical presence, posture, and movements.
Meticulously train every detail of your physical presence, including how you walk, turn, carry your shoulders, and where you place your eyes, to project confidence and control.
Understand that you can control your internal chemistry and potential from both the inside-out (mindset, emotions) and the outside-in (physical posture, movement), using both approaches to contribute to your potential.
Understand that humans are oscillatory beings; manage your energy by prioritizing the quality and quantity of sleep, the frequency of meals, and actively training recovery mechanisms to avoid linear depletion.
When your energy reserves are low, intentionally investing your remaining energy in interactions with loved ones demonstrates genuine care, as they recognize you are giving a precious, depleted resource.