What you think, you become
What you feel, you attract
What you imagine, you create.

If you want to have an entirely different life by this time next year, then once you are finished reading this, I will need you to do one thing and one thing only: I will need you to close your eyes and imagine the very best possible version of yourself.

I don’t mean the most productive, or the most physically perfect. I don’t mean someone else’s definition of who you are supposed to be. I mean the one you reach deep into your soul and allow to emerge. I mean your most peaceful self, rested self, aligned self. I mean the self that wakes up each day and likes the person who stares back at them in the mirror.

I don’t mean your best possible elevator speech, I mean your best possible day-to-day, hour-to-hour life.

I need you to imagine the details and contours of this person’s existence.

I need you to feel how their hair sits, the clothes they wear, and how they rest on their shoulders. I need you to taste their cup of coffee in the morning, exactly the way they take it. I need you to imagine your hands moving in the same way theirs do as they complete the work of the day, the tasks they have chosen, the path they are on, the future they claim.

I need you to see life through their eyes, the way it might be.

I need you to imagine the nuances: the people they text and what they say, the food they cook and how it tastes, the space they inhabit, and how it feels.

I need you to imagine what it would be like to watch a movie as them, to kiss someone as them, to get dressed in the morning as them.

It does not suffice to come up with a one-dimensional version of our idealized selves and then to abandon all of our humanness in the process. Our best selves are the ones that make us feel like we are at peace within our own bodies, have made homes within our own hearts, and have finally found our rhythm through the pace of our own lives.

Once you have that clear vision, I need you to open your eyes, and I need you to do the next subversive thing. I need you to be willing to let go of your old self. I need you to understand that you will undergo a death and rebirth, as all of us must do periodically.

You won’t accomplish this by wanting it badly enough, you accomplish it by acting on it in microcosms.

What this is means is that the next time you think to yourself, I should have a glass of water, you actually go get the glass of water and you drink it. It means the next time you realize you’re getting too distracted, you correct your behavior and become productive again.

It means the next time you think, I should go for a walk, you get up and you go for a walk. It means the next time you think, I should pay that bill, you pay that bill. It means the next time you think, I should close all of these tabs and turn off my phone and focus for the next hour, you close all of those tabs and you turn off your phone and you focus for the next hour.

It means the next time you think, I should just relax and enjoy this movie, you relax and enjoy the movie.

It means the next time you think, I am so grateful to have all of this, you actually stop and let yourself feel grateful for having all of it.

This is how you rise to that self you dreamed up.

You do what you know you are supposed to do when you realize you’re supposed to do it.

This is the process of closing the gap between your instincts that are guiding you and the habits that are keeping you anchored to your old life.

This is the process of learning to trust yourself, to hear your instincts, your needs, your hunger cues, that deep inner voice that is always quietly and peacefully trying to guide you.

The honest truth is that you already are the person you desire to be.

It’s just that the habits, patterns, and traits that would make that person fully present are asking to be developed, nourished, and brought to life. It is all there. It is already yours.

It is already you.

It is only through willingness, then vision, then choice, then commitment, then adaptation, then persistence that you will hold that life within your hands, and what was once imagined will be made real.

You are allowed to be the person you know you are inside.

The journey is removing the blocks that prevent you from enacting the cues that would make them fully manifest.

• What are you doing?
• Who are you doing it with?
• Where are you living?
• How much money are you making?
• How much fun are you having?
• What do your senses pick up?
• What is your energy exuding?
• What do you feel in your body?
• What does this version of you value the most?
• What difference are you making in the world?
• What would that version of you tell you about how to show up right now?

“Success demands singleness of purpose.
You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects.
It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.
Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results.
The ONE Thing shows up time and again in the lives of the successful because it’s a fundamental truth.
More than anything else, expertise tracks with hours invested.
The pursuit of mastery bears gifts.
When people look back on their lives, it is the things they have not done that generate the greatest regret…People’s actions may be troublesome initially; it is their inactions that plague them most with long-term feelings of regret.
Make sure every day you do what matters most. When you know what matters most, everything makes sense. When you don’t know what matters most, anything makes sense.”

Reading the One Thing by Gary Keller, made me realize that I can do anything we want, but I cannot do everything at once.

A common misconception and obstacle we create for ourselves in our health and training is not being Clear and HONEST about what our priorities are.

When we cannot identify and determine a a goal, our sense making and critical reasoning for what our actions should be becomes dim and unclear.

If we don’t know what we want, then all choices are equal. We do not want all choices to be equal. We need to be able to filter choices and actions contextual to whether they serve the priority/goal/mission.

A defined priority is an orientation and filter towards an outcome.

If we want to increase the probability of of success then, prioritize ONE goal at a time.

I’ll give a very simple example of this from my background in training clients.

Imagine you want bigger biceps.

This would seem straightforward; you should do bicep curls. Biceps curls train the biceps. There is a linear, 1:1 relationship between biceps curls and bicep muscle growth.

But people fuck this up.

Some years back in the fitness industry, it became trendy to be “anti-arm training”. Arguments were made that you didn’t need to train arms to get big arms, you could instead do chin-ups, tricep pushups, dips, etc, and that would be sufficient.

Did this approach work? No. For the majority of people, barring the genetically gifted, compound movements alone are not going to maximize arm muscle growth. Compound movements by default are not directly working the biceps or the triceps.

Why did people fall for this trend though?

Its something call the Secondary Effect Delusion – a phenomenon when a person avoids taking direct action on their hypothetical goal, but still hopes for an outcome as if they were.

So you’ll have someone whose goal is fat loss, but they are insistent on running a marathon or half marathon or 10k or 5k as the means to accomplish this.

This may seem conducive to losing fat, but these are in fact two different goals. Training for cardiovascular race versus learning How to train and eat in order to lose fat and be a healthier person…are not the same thing.

“Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results.”

Another Delusion is the “Magic Program”.

This is more fitness specific. This is the belief that there is a magical program which delivers on every single possible goal/desire one has, and that ALL things can be improved at once. Strength muscle power fat loss bringing up x bodypart flexibility mobility endurance, surely there must be some way to improve EVERYTHING together?

NO. There is NOT. You need to choose ONE, and train towards that ONE goal.

This is not about fitness or health, this a lesson for Life.

Life is complex, but it is less complex when you can identify the most fundamental and linear Laws that govern it. 

This requires paying attention and directing FOCUS to ONE THING at a time.

Learning Cause and Fffect relationships is relevant across every domain of skill.

Those relationships, those laws, those principles, these things are only learned in a focused state.

From One Thing you can learn 10,000 things. That is a lesson itself, and is the essence of knowledge and mastery

From learning ONE thing you now have the model of mind to learn ANYTHING, as learning the one thing taught you what is required.

If you are not willing and resistant to Focusing on ONE thing at a time, your probability of success in anything declines considerably

Magical thinking is believing you can solve problems without intentionally solving the problem.

Or accomplish a goal without intentionally working to accomplish the goal.

Beyond fitness, magical thinking predominates in many many many areas of life.

Person A has a problem.

Person A identifies the problem.

Person A does not want to take direction action on solving the problem.

Person A instead wants to WAIT, and HOPE that some kind of non-direct, seemingly magical change takes place that solves the problem for them

and/or/alongside

Person A chooses a non-direct, inefficient, unclear path of action that is more comfortable, familiar, non-confronting, and hopes that THIS line of action will have the secondary effect of solving the problem, without actually being oriented towards solving the problem.

Magical thinking is not doing SHIT FOR YOU other than wasting your time.

How much time do you want to waste?

IF your goal is Clear to you, then everything should be oriented towards supporting that goal.

I have now reached the point of redundancy in stating the lesson over and over again.

So ends the lesson.

“Faking joy around others (or on social media) is a quick path to unrelenting depression (and it doesn’t help others’ mental health either).”

In the first quarter of our life, it is our time to make mistakes. To take risks. The 20s are about figuring out our our inner purpose so that we can attract our outer purpose (doing the work we are meant to do). Continuing to make mistakes can be a great way to move forward because you will soon discover what is not your purpose and get one step closer to what is your purpose. It’s very helpful to make mistakes. Because gradually you’ll find what it is that is right for you.

Life is a journey and for the person that cannot enjoy the uncertainty when an adventure comes will be in a continuous state of negativity, fear the feeling of I’d rather be home then here.

20s are for figuring out where you wanna be. There’s a frustration, restlessness to it. But that’s what the 20s or for. I’ve found it important to know this because I’ve spoke to many older, wiser individuals that are doing exactly what they want to be doing but it took so many mistakes to fully commit to doing what they do now. I’ve also kept a journal since I was 18 writing down my experiences and what I believed was my true calling and let me tell you, I am still lost and continuing to filter out what is not for me before settling with any ordinary career or life path that is convenient to follow.

My displeasure of being in this place of restlessness was actually informing me of what I needed to do. I didn’t like it – my displeasure with being there, what I needed to do and bring out, I do not want to do work in retail pharmacy, fashion, I want to make a measurable impact in people’s lives using my learnings for navigating a balanced life filled with flow and ease. 

For those that are looking to get some clarity on purpose, when you allow yourself to be still with it. And you’re not afraid of the uncertainty. The universe rises up to meet you. Coincidences… both the little things and the big things will happen more often. As long as we continue to be alert because when we’re alert (and not in fear), the universe will send us what we need because it recognizes that we are ready and open for it.

The answer can only come from within, a feeling, not a thought from our heads.

“I was like I have to chase this but if I don’t take this, I’m gonna always be like what the fuck? What did we come here for?”

How did it happen?

In September 13, 1848, the then 25-year-old Gage was working as a supervisor of a crew preparing a railroad bed near Cavendish, Vermont. He was using an iron tamping rod to pack the explosive powder into a hole. Unfortunately, the powder detonated, and BOOM the 43 inches long and 1.25-inch diameter rod went straight through his dome piece. The rod penetrated Gage’s left cheek, tore through his brain, and exited his skull and landed 80 FEET AWAY.

Gage not only survived the initial injury but was able to speak and walk to a nearby cart so he could be taken into town to be seen by a doctor. Dr. Edward H. Williams, the first physician to respond later described what he found: “literally one gore of blood”

Soon after, Dr. John Martyn Harlow took over the case. It is through Harlow’s observations of the injury and his later descriptions of Gage’s mental changes that provide much of the primary information that we now know about the case.

Later in a published description of the case, Harlow wrote that Gage was still conscious later that evening and was able to recount the names of his co-workers. Gage even suggested that he didn’t wish to see his friends since he would be back to work in “a day or two” anyway.

After developing an infection, Gage then spent September 23 to October 3 in a semi-comatose state. On October 7, he took his first steps out of bed and by October 11 his intellectual functioning began to improve. Harlow noted that Gage knew how much time had passed since the accident and remembered clearly how the accident occurred, but had difficulty estimating size and amounts of money. Within a month, Gage was even venturing out of the house and into the street.

“It turns out that if you drive meaning and purpose at work, people feel more eudaemonic happiness—and when they feel more eudaemonic happiness, they perform better and stick around longer.”

The Aftermath

In the months that followed, Gage returned to his parent’s home in New Hampshire to recuperate. When Harlow saw Gage again the following year, the doctor noted that while Gage had lost vision in his eye and was left with obvious scars from the accident, he was in good physical health and appeared recovered.

Unable to return to his railroad job, Gage held a series of jobs including work in a livery stable, a stagecoach driver in Chile, and farm work in California.

Popular reports of Gage often depict him as a hardworking, pleasant man prior to the accident. Post-accident, these reports describe him as a changed man, suggesting that the injury had transformed him into a surly, aggressive drunkard who was unable to hold down a job.

So was Gage’s personality as changed as some of the reports after his death have claimed? Evidence suggests that many of the supposed effects of the accident may have been exaggerated and that he was actually far more functional than previously reported.²

Harlow presented the first account of the changes in Gage’s behavior following the accident:

“Previous to his injury, although untrained in the schools, he possessed a well-balanced mind, and was looked upon by those who knew him as a shrewd, smart businessman, very energetic and persistent in executing all his plans of operation. In this regard, his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said he was ‘no longer Gage.'”

Since there is little direct evidence of the exact extent of Gage’s injuries aside from Harlow’s report, it is difficult to know exactly how severely his brain was damaged. Harlow’s accounts suggest that the injury did lead to a loss of social inhibition, leading Gage to behave in ways that were seen as inappropriate.

How serious was the brain damage?

In a 1994 study, researchers utilized neuroimaging techniques to reconstruct Gage’s skull and determine the exact placement of the injury. Their findings indicate that he suffered injuries to both the left and right prefrontal cortices, which would result in problems with emotional processing and rational decision-making.³

Another study conducted in 2004 that involved using three-dimensional, computer-aided reconstruction to analyze the extent of Gage’s injury found that the effects were limited to the left frontal lobe.⁴

In 2012, new research estimated that the iron rod destroyed approximately 11 percent of the white matter in Gage’s frontal lobe and 4 percent of his cerebral cortex.

Gage’s Influence on Psychology

Gage’s case had a tremendous influence on early neurology. The specific changes observed in his behavior pointed to emerging theories about the localization of brain function, or the idea that certain functions are associated with specific areas of the brain.

Today, scientists better understand the role that the frontal cortex has to play in important higher-order functions such as reasoning, language, and social cognition. In those years, while neurology was in its infancy, Gage’s extraordinary story served as one of the first sources of evidence that the frontal lobe was involved in personality.⁵

What Happened to Phineas Gage?

After the accident, Gage was unable to return to his previous job. According to Harlow, Gage spent some time traveling through New England and Europe with his tamping iron in order to earn money, supposedly even appearing in the Barnum American Museum in New York.

He worked briefly at a livery stable in New Hampshire and then spent seven years as a stagecoach driver in Chile. He eventually moved to San Francisco to live with his mother as his health deteriorated. After suffering a series of epileptic seizures, Gage died on May 21, 1860, almost 12 years after his accident.²

Seven years later, Gage’s body was exhumed and his skull and the tamping rod were taken to Dr. Harlow. Today, both can be seen at the Harvard University School of Medicine

EQ is an absolutely critical skill because we have more than 400 emotional experiences every day. Whether you are aware of these experiences.

EQ is your ability to understand your emotions and be able to produce the behavior that you want. To help you understand how EQ orates in the brain. I will introduce you to Phones, he was considered to be one of the best leaders of all time. Was a hands-on manager for

What phones would do is

Phineas blew off his

One thing that was missing is how he responds to emotions. Any emotion he had – angry, impulsive, unreliable

Everything you experience in the world around you starts from the base of your brain.

“I was like I have to chase this but if I don’t take this, I’m gonna always be like what the fuck? What did we come here for?”

These emotions happen in a split second before we are able to rationalize it.

IQ and EQ and Personality – stable set of preferences – can be low in one and not the other

Emotional intelligence is absolutely distinct from your IQ, can be high in one and not the other or both,

Personality is a stable set of preferences and tendencies for which you approach the world, it’s fixed at an early age just like your IQ so

If you’re a hopeless extrovert at age 18 you cant expect to change at age 40

Crystallized is fixed, not responsive to change just like iq

EQ on the other hand And emotional intelligence is highly plastic, flexible, and responsive to change, increase the flow of information between

4 EQ Skills

“It turns out that if you drive meaning and purpose at work, people feel more eudaemonic happiness—and when they feel more eudaemonic happiness, they perform better and stick around longer.”

Conductor – spreading happiness that does not come from his own story and joy of music. It’s about enabling other people’s stories to be heard at the same time. Story of the community in the audience, individuals in the audience, story of people who made the beautiful instrument, you become the storyteller for the community

Have to have process and content to bring meaning

Have to listen to ourselves, when you are attached to the piece vs. let go and allow your hand and arm be more of a support system suddenly by holding the drum stick loose and have more dynamic with less effort and you feel at last one with the stick and one with the drum and doing far less

You need time with people to interpret people just like a drum and a stick

As Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope explained, “myself, my leadership team, and hundreds of other Five9 employees are in a Slack channel called Virtual Coffee, and what Donut does is, it will introduce you every two weeks to a random person in that Slack channel, and you have a meeting, a 15 minute, 20 minutes, let’s grab a cup of coffee, virtually.”

GO to market strategy

Helping people learn to lead – methods of anthropology

Hire people who argue with you, sometimes its best to be deliberately fuzzy and vague

Social architect – creating a space where people are willing and able to share their talents and passions

Stopped giving answers and provide solutions

They began to see the people at the bottom of the pyramid, began to look at the bottom of the pyramid, and began to transfer the organization’s growth

Invert the pyramid so that you can unleash the power of money by releasing the string hold of the few, people who are closes to the customers for the source of innovation

innovation is anything that is new or useful, can be incremental or breakthrough, can be a process, product or system

Our role as a leader is to set the stage, not perform on it, reimagine our task, to create the space where everyone’s slices of genius can be unleashed, unharnessed to unleash the works of collective genius

Abrasion – create a marketplace of ideas through debate and discourse, in organizations amplify differences not minimize them. It’s not about brainstorming where people suspend their judgment. Individuals in innovative organizations learn how to inquire and actively listen and also know how to advocate for their point of view. Innovation rarely happens unless you have diversity and conflict.

Agility – is to test and refine the portfolio of ideas – it’s about design thinking where there is a combination of the scientific method and the artistic process. Running a series of experiments and not pilots. Experiments is usually about learning when you get a negative outcome you are still learning something we need to know. Pilots are often about being right, when they don’t work someone or something is to blame.

Doing decision making in a way where you are able to combine to reconfigure them in new combinations to provide a solution that is new and useful, they don’t let one group or individual dominate, create and developed a more patient and more inclusive decision-making process that allows for Both end solutions to arise and not simply either-or solutions (choosing by Virgil Abloh)