How to Become Your Best Self & Elevate Your Life

The people who are happy with their lives, they tend to be generous and kind. They knew they were generous to others and they knew they were kind to others, and they take solace in that. And the most beautiful thing is at the end of their lives, they tend not to be alone because they were generous and kind with others. I really believe that so many people consume so much information through social media now. They think greatness is the private jet or greatness is the fancy clothes or the award show or some other silly, I shouldn't say silly, some other materialistic type of thing. But when you think about the greats, the great people of your life, that's where I like people to start. When you think of greatness, don't think of the great leaders in history. Don't think of the big fancy people you see on television or social media. Who were the greats in your life? The greats in your life, what was it about them? I think of Linda Belew, my high school journalism teacher, the woman who kept me from dropping out of high school and taught me love for writing and news, or at least at the time, what journalism used to be and photography, and who believed in my leadership ability and gave me a chance. She was somebody who let the kids run the journalism department and she served as a guider, a mentor, a person to ask the questions, but also holding us to super high standards. She was, in my mind, greatness. My dad, in my mind, greatness. Someone who just humbly worked, dedicated, loyal, was there for his family and just really worked with a smile on his face. There's no other way to say it, just humbly and happily, who were those people for you, the greats? And once you've done that, now you can move into that bigger thinking of, okay, what does greatness mean to you if you had to define it? Because, you know, the first thing you should know about greatness is it's always self defined. No one's going to give that moniker to you and you're going to believe it and feel it and take it in. I'm blessed to work with people who pay me over seven figures a year as a high performance coach, who many of them covers of magazines, billionaire tech owners, media moguls and impressive folks. But many of them are still striving. Many of them don't feel like they have, quote, unquote arrived. Many of them suffer still with imposter syndrome, can't believe they made it. And they make the covers of the magazines and they get the awards and the accolades and the money and still they got to go home and think of, am I happy with myself? Am I living a great life by my own definitions, not by externalities. No one on Instagram is ever going to dub you great. And you're going to believe it and feel fulfilled. And if it happens, it's gone in 72 hours. When in 72 hours the bills are due or the kids got to get fed, or you've got to deal with that conflict in your life. What does greatness mean to you? Second idea about greatness I'd love to share with you today is that, you know, I've met people who are extraordinarily happy with their lives. And as many of you know, I spent some time with people in their last days, hours, weeks alive. And in that work with hospice, in that work with even witnessing and working through family members who have passed away, the people who are happy with their lives, they tend to be generous and kind. They knew they were generous to others, and they knew they were kind to others, and they take solace in that. And the most beautiful thing is at the end of their lives, they tend not to be alone because they were generous and kind with others. This might be a year that you flip the switch on what the media has indoctrinated all of us into these last few years, especially where I'm filming this, this nation supposedly of division, where we all, you know, have to argue and hate each other, or on social media, where you see all those tweet storms of just vitriol against the other party or against the other way of thinking. Maybe this is the year you go, you know what? I'm going to refresh my mind. I'm going to refresh my attitude, and I'm going to be generous and kind with other people. I'm not going to spread hate. I'm not going to judge groups of people because there's very, very rarely any a more ignorant step than judging an entire group of people about anything. Because even an entire group of people, there's an incredible diversity of thinking and thought. Even if it seems like they're a monolith, the truth is each person can be persuaded. Each person has a life, a family, thoughts, hopes, dreams. Each person is unique and each person can be, can be generous and kind. And so why don't we give that assumption to people again? Third, greatness tends to have a lot to do with domain expertise. What that means is mastery. You mastered something. You know, the greats in any given sport, they were at a higher level. They mastered something that you know, the greats in business, there's a higher level of mastery or success. The greats, you know, who really, you know, impacted you. If it was a teacher that was a great teacher, they had, they were. There's a domain expertise. And so maybe this year you say, these are the three critical skills I'm going to develop domain expertise in, I'm going to master these three things. So often people don't think about skill development when they really should have that as part of their plan. You know, I always, in my first couple of sessions with a high performance client, I will show up and ask them to open up their calendar. And one of the things I do is I look through their calendar and if I can't spot dedicated times blocked out on their calendar in which they're developing a skill, I know they tend to be playing at a lower level of their potential. Meaning you have to dedicate time to developing something, whatever skill that is for you, you've got to practice or give it time that's blocked out on a recurrent basis to develop greater mastery at it. And then if you really want to become great at it, getting a lot of feedback and a lot of instruction and mentorship. Number four, greatness. The tens. Those who we look at now, the bigger picture, the cultural level, if you will, what's the thing about them? Well, they're leaders. They tend to be a leader in the construct in which they are an innovator. They've innovated in their time, or they're a movement maker. They started an important movement. They stood for something. They were a symbol of something. Now, can we all be culturally great figures that time and history and generations remember? Maybe not. But, you know, as the founder of Growth Day here, I got to say, most of us really could if we decided to. And that is, you can be an incredible leader in your community, in your family, in your business, in your team, in your network, if you choose to do that, if you choose to ask, how can I change things? How can I make things better? How can I help others rise through these difficulties? How can I help unite people instead of divide people? How can I serve as a positive force? How can I be a leader? And then showing up day after day demonstrating it, being a role model, challenging others to improve, encouraging others. Oh, all that stuff that we know we could do if we decided to do it. These are some of the elements of greatness. But I'll come right back to what does it mean to you? What does greatness in your life or your career look like now? What does it look like in your family now? Describe it. If you don't determine it, then you'll just keep going through the motions. But you have to have that higher ambition, that sense of potential, of destiny, of greatness, that vision for who you can really be. Whatever language you want to use for it. There is a better future for you. What? Where an idealized self, where the best of who you are shows up more consistently and demonstrates greatness. What does that look like? What does that feel like? What roles do you play? What might you achieve or contribute or give? Who might you serve? These are the questions that the greats ask themselves. I appreciate your time today. I appreciate you dedicating yourself to personal development for being on this path. So striving for an improved life, striving to make your difference, striving to live a sense of aliveness and connection and meaning that we all seek. When we show up today and we listen to audios like this, it's true. It's what we say. Every day is a great day to grow. And I'm happy today that we did it together. Today's topic is on a word that very few people use anymore. And I really believe that in philosophy. It was a powerful word and it was something that meant something very important back in the day, and now we don't think about it much anymore. And that word is temperance. Temperance. No, not the temperance movement, which was an abstination of drinking alcohol. No, temperance, as in the philosophers and the Stoics talked about it. It's the idea of moderation, moderation or even restraint in our thoughts or our feelings or actions. It means we don't let our hungers, our passions, our appetites overwhelm us. It means we don't let our emotions become out of control. It means we temper ourselves in positive ways because we realize that restraining from just, you know, flying off the handle, that's willpower, that's character, that's intention. We live in a world where everybody sees something and they immediately feel like they have to comment. They've got to immediately jump on the cancel train of cancel culture. They feel like they immediately have to us versus them start hating on the Internet. We've been trained to immediately respond and to things, Immediately judge things, immediately like or dislike things, immediately share or not share things. These are all judgments that we've been trained by millions of. Swipe ups, swipe down, swipe left, swipe rights, likes, comments. And all of those micro judgments have led us to being insanely impulsive and Quick to indulge in the lower thinking that we are capable of, quick to indulge in the passions of hate, quick to indulge in the passions of tribalism, quick to indulge in the finger pointing, the blaming, the pessimism, the negativity. It's easy to jump into those things unless we temper that. Because, listen, do emotions come up for all of us? Sure. Do we need to act on all of them? That's the subject of temperance. It's the same thing with your mind. When you learn to meditate, you start to realize that all these wild, crazy, random thoughts run through your brain, that most aren't really that relevant to anything. And as you meditate, it's almost like watching words go across the sky at some point and realizing how just the cloud comes in and out of thought and that some of them aren't anchored to any reality or anything useful. And what happens, though, if we don't do that work? We start to believe that every thought is true, that every thought is of equal importance. And worse, sometimes we act on those thoughts that are really not kind, really aren't that thoughtful, really aren't that strategic. And so what ends up happening is we are just at the whim of response and the whimsical of our lower emotions or base feelings or the worst part of ourselves. It's that temperance that allows us to act from the better angels of our nature, as Lincoln said, versus just whatever comes up for us in that immediate moment. I really believe that our society could benefit from more role models who have that self mastery, that moment to find a presence and conscientiousness, that moment to be intentional, that moment to fill that gap between stimulus and response with greater soul and intention. And if we did that, if we just tempered down all the noise and all the crazy thoughts in our heads and we didn't act on our very first impulse, things would be good. And temperance is something that you can do very practically, right? You want to write a negative email back to somebody and accuse them of something, Go ahead, write it and draft it. Come back to tomorrow when you're in a good mood and read it again and ask, is this who I am? Does this demonstrate the best of who I am? If my future self came back and read this email, is this how they would write it? Is this how leaders communicate? This is how role models communicate. If I was trying to make a positive impact in the world, this is how I'd do it. Now I already know you go, but they did this. And they said this and da, da, da. That's stimulus and response, man. Guess what? There's a lot of noise, there's a lot of evil, there's a lot of bad actors out in the world. Don't let them pull you into their game. You gotta find a way to temper your immediate need to jump into a fight and instead realize that in general, you don't need to fight. And in general, when you fight things just because you immediately feel the impulse, you're usually going to get punched in the face. To be thoughtful, to be strategic, to enter a conversation from a higher ground, these things are what we need. Again, it's very practical. You feel yourself getting really upset about something, okay, take a walk, go to the gym, take a breather before responding. There's very few things that need to responded to quickly or immediately. We've trained ourselves to believe that to be true, but it's not. Moderation, restraint. Do you have to act on everything? Moderation, restraint. Do you have to believe every thought? Moderation restraint. Do you have to keep letting the wild, crazy passions and thoughts and feelings overwhelm you? Or can you learn over a period of time that it's a virtue in positive psychology to take a moment and to manage and master our emotions? Isn't that something that can be beautiful? I think that this can also come into the simple acts of our daily reality of life, like eating or drinking. I know you want that seventh cup of coffee because it just tastes good. But you also know that later on you crash and you feel terrible. So temperance is going, I ain't gonna drink seven cups of coffee even though I like it. Temperance is saying, you know what? I'm not gonna finish the whole bag of chips. Temperance is saying, I'm not gonna buy them at the store aisle. Temperance is saying, guess what? I know that alcohol can make me act in a certain way. That's not good. I won't drink too much to let myself do that, or I'll avoid it. Listen, a virtue is a virtue because it's hard to act upon. Now, I actually believe that virtues are naturally who we are, and then we've been conditioned to act otherwise by society, which is, again, a reason that temperance is important. You know, when we allow ourselves each day to not speak evil of somebody, even if we feel it, well, that's biblical. To be gentle with someone when we feel like being angry or harsh towards them, that's biblical. These virtues are the things that keep us from being impulsive or gluttonous or awful to others. And it all comes down to one simple thing. There's stimulus in response, there's lack of consciousness, and there's consciousness. With every stimulus. You can let it fire you up and be pulled into a pool of pessimism, anger, hate, or lower emotions. Or. Or we can insert intention into it, insert space, insert time, and say, hmm, I'm not gonna respond like the worst of myself. I'm gonna take a breather here and respond like the best of myself. We can decide to go through the world sort of as zombies or unconsciously in such a way that we, you know, don't really realize who we're being or becoming, and we just become reactive little brats on the Internet. Or we consciously design who we are. We consciously set intentions for who we desire to become, and that's the work of personal development. And every day that we make those choices of restraint or thoughtfulness, every day that we act from virtue, every day that we do that, we become better in our relationships, better in our own mind, body and spirit. So I urge you today, where in your life might you need some temperance? Maybe you can journal about this and think through that. Where are you getting pulled into things? Where are you being gluttonous? Where are you taking too much? Where are you eating too much? Where are you just needing to moderate a little bit? Maybe it's, you got to moderate your spending a little bit and start a budget. Maybe it's, you know, you need to stop being pulled so quick into impatience with your spouse. Blessed. Believe me, the more you journal, the more you know thyself, the more you know thyself, the more you become intentional, the more your willpower grows, the more your character deepens, the more your gratitude for life heightens, the more your growth expands. Take it up on me. Take it on me. Listen to this again. Maybe this was a message you needed to hear today. Maybe today this is a message you need a teenager to hear. The more that we all make self improvement a way of life and a conscientious intention. I really believe we do change ourselves and we change the world because every day is a great day to grow.