Okay maybe we are well into January 2016 now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a look back at 2015 one more time…hey until the college football championship is played, it’s still considered bowl season…
And actually, none of what I’m about to say is time-sensitive, it is merely the best and simplest 10 points. For the 140 characters of the world, that’s a good thing–this is for you–but often it detracts from the full richness and essence of the insight. Like being able to get a vial full of Screaming Eagle wine, what you get is amazing, but it’s just not enough to fully appreciate. Luckily each point is expanded upon in prior entries, linked to the originating source or easily google’d.
So here goes:
- Set 3 silent alarms to go off daily that merely vibrate once and title them with things you want to consciously focus on, mine are “something worth fighting/loving for” in the morning, “be present” in the afternoon, and “be grateful” at night. This way, when I go to do something on my phone, the words appear as I go to unlock my phone. I set it so that the timing is right around the time I wake up then around the late morning chaos and finishing during the afternoon hubbub. (Idea courtesy of Brendon Burchard) Bonus: every time it goes off, pause and take a deep, full, diaphragmatic breath. If you want, for maximum effect take a full 10 conscious breaths (lasting about 2 minutes) to soak up the beauty of the moment and reflect on the last few hours (a spin on Robert Cooper’s and Tim Ferriss’ advice)
- Get 20 grams of protein within 20 minutes of waking up with your bulletproof coffee I’m all about doing Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting and Diet because out of all the things I’ve experimented with, it provides the most energy and focus. Those who are with me in the morning know I’m a bulletproof coffee drinker. This tip for protein is an adaptation from Ferriss’ 4 Hour Body (which is 30 g in 30 minutes–I found that was too much). From Dave Asprey’s advice, I played around with adding collagen protein in my coffee for my source of protein, but personally found that eating a hard-boiled egg and drinking a plant protein+collagen protein “shake” (aka just add water to the powder and shake it up) before making the bulletproof coffee was the most optimal approach for supercharging my morning, feeling great, and maintaining muscle mass. On workout days, I add some amino acids to my shake drink. I found that once I had the protein, I could function better, keep my gains from the gym, and lay a strong base in my stomach for the coffee (stomach-ache and “disaster-pants” wise).
- Journal at night and in the morning you can focus on any number of things in your journal so make it uniquely your own. I’ve found that at night detailing a high-level run down of the day, identifying my daily wins, jotting down some areas to improve upon, and reflecting on gratitude moments combined with planning my next day’s big to-dos and morning routine really helped generate a sense of accomplishment, immediate and manageable adjustments, and streamlined my next morning (until I am awake enough on BP coffee to take over from autopilot mode). I’ve also added writing a random question to “ponder while sleeping.” I cap it all off with a daily devotional book as the lights go out, and I’m asleep in seconds. In the morning, I record the dreams I had (when I can recall them), and allow myself flexibility to be creative and/or process-oriented with my journaling, allowing my mind to just decompress before getting going for the day.
- Adjust Your Inputs + Environment for Optimal Outputs focus on the food you put in your body, what it is, where is it from, how is it prepared, and how does it fit into the larger context of your eating (aka your diet). Focus on your senses to become more mindful and present which makes your decisions and actions in life better. What you touch, taste, smell, see, and hear should go through the same consideration as you do your food (this goes doubly for the consumption of “news”) If you need a starting point to get more aligned with your senses, start with diaphragm breathing. And what that, focus first on exhaling fully, the inhale will come. The last component is that environment effects how your inputs are received, your state of mind, and provide the accountability, motivation, and processes to deliver on what you want. If you aren’t excited about the environment you are in, you won’t be as motivated or successful in creating awesome things. Outputs that are intentionally set, visualized, tracked, supported, and accounted for come will come naturally as a by-product of all this, just don’t think “come naturally” means “without setbacks or hard work.”
- Online Media has dropped overusing incessant lists and is now primarily straight opinionated high school gossip forget “top 10 things mid-twenty year old’s in NYC must do on Saturdays in the fall” it has now become “why we totally love this and you will too” or my favorite “This person totally owned that person with these comments.” Luckily I’m focused more on CB Insights, Term Sheet, and musings of some venture capital partners, but I hope they adopt the click-bait approach…oh wait, their content doesn’t need to play psychological games to get read…
- New Years Resolutions force you to come up with things that you think you should do, but don’t do, but then you say you’ll do them because the clock struck midnight. And then peer pressure and timely advertisements make you think you’ll accomplish it “this year…it’s different than all the other years.” Well, there is only the present moment and that is the only time to do anything, regardless of if it’s new or old. A date on a calendar isn’t going to accelerate your pursuit of new behaviors, especially if it means stopping old behaviors, just like waiting to start a business until you get this part “figured out.” It will only delay, deter, and decrease the chances of success. Start and then adapt. No amount of planning is going to perfectly solve the problem, only doing makes any solution a reality, and oftentimes you’re no more than 10% correct on what that solution will be. But what New Year’s Resolution time does provide is a nice check-in to review your progress of goals and behaviors you have already begun. It’s a nice reminder to rededicate your reasons “why” you’re doing something, see where you’ve come from, and visualize where you will go. A nice example of this is Ironmen founder Dave Marr’s letter.
- History is crucial, especially with business, constantly be learning it. Humans and societies have predictable, repeated behaviors throughout time–but this doesn’t mean you can put yourself in the perspective of someone 100, or 1000 years before you and think you can make judgements on their thoughts. You can’t because to that degree of thinking, you two lived in a completely different reality that created completely different neural networks of brains. But predictability doesn’t mean go leverage your assets 100 to 1 because you think you’ve got it all figured out and “mitigated the risk”…ooops, a black swan just appeared…that had a probability of 0.000001% happening–well guess what, it just happened so it’s actually 100%. Well, go ahead and lever up because you’ve reduced your downside risk and are okay deluding society into thinking you’re not gambling with other people’s money.
- Ask great questions because it is easy to influence what people think about but how they think about that topic is more complicated. Control the topic, influence the outcome. We are far too emotional to consider ourselves immune to this influence. But how you approach the topic will set the quality level of the response–of the recipient’s level of thought. Be curious, genuine, and thoughtful from a high state of being and what comes of it in response will also be of that level of consciousness. There are a thousand ways to ask the same question and even more so in how to answer it. Get skilled at asking questions, something which Tim Ferriss does a wonderful job of.
- You will be continuously overstimulated in 2016 with caffeine, music, videos, “media”, opinions, perspectives, purchasing options, and anything else that can be thrown at you from your phone, laptop, tv, and environment. The amount of content is increasing exponentially and the way to deliver that content to you is only getting easier and easier to take advantage of. With more screens, access anywhere at any time, and specific targeting approaches, you will find more stuff going through your brain. Take time to meditate and defrag your hard drive (aka brain). Taking time away from screens, from data inputs, from other people will become increasingly more and more important for optimal performance. You can do that by running away and living in the forest or boarding a ship and setting sail to wherever the wind will take you. A much more practical approach is turning your phone on airplane mode when getting ready for bed and during the night, taking a few minutes during the day to meditate (10-21 minutes), practicing yoga, getting a massage, or taking a relaxing bath.
- Get to the heart of you. So many people (myself included) will provide something between advice and commands for you to do, to think, to be. Before considering those, get to the root of why, how, and who you are. We are easily deceived in many ways, none more efficient and effective than through self-deception. When you can authentically recognize why, how, and who you are, everything else will flow from there. It’s not easy, and often we do a good job distracting ourselves and providing logical reasons to avoid getting to the root issue. Just remember, you aren’t your thoughts or emotions, you are that which reacts to those thoughts and emotions. It’s up to you how you act. To put it in many different ways all saying the same thing: May you act to your fullest potential, at the highest vibrational frequency, and in line with what God (the universe) intends for you to do.
I hope you enjoy this brief reflection on what I learned in the past year. If you’re curious about where I got certain points or have a question about something, please reach out (as always, I’m eternally grateful for you reading this).
On to 2016.