In this solo motivational podcast, creative coach and filmmaker Tony Suriano shares a practical framework of five daily habits that he believes ignite a productive, positive day. He begins by explaining why neglecting these habits leaves him feeling unsettled and unable to protect his peace. The five habits are: (1) Mind feed and results planning – consuming motivating content, taking notes, and pre‑planning daily outcomes in a journal; (2) Being goofy and playful – using vocal and physical silliness to shift physiology into an energetic state; (3) Positive connection – approaching interactions with loved ones, coworkers, and strangers with good energy and clear intent; (4) Thoughtful transitions – pausing before moving to the next task to set intention and ensure smooth shifts; and (5) Celebration – deliberately acknowledging both small and big wins through physical, verbal, or mental rituals to condition the brain for repeat success. Tony illustrates each habit with personal anecdotes (e.g., Rubik’s Cube practice, skateboard celebrations) and offers concrete tips (grab a pen, write down the five things, condense the rituals into 15‑20 minutes). He ends with a strong call‑to‑action: write down your own five habits, subscribe, review, share, and join his free weekly newsletter for deeper insights. The overall message is that consistently performing these five practices creates a feedback loop that makes days feel better, fuels motivation, and empowers listeners to direct their own lives.
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My wife says this intro sounds like a conspiracy mystery. So I'll stop that voice and tell you this show is for you to get you on the track you want for your life. I'm gonna share encouraging educational content, hopefully entertaining, that will help you direct your life. Okay, when I don't do these 5 things, and I haven't finished these 5 things, Today yet. I do not feel okay. I feel that I cannot protect my peace. I feel that I'll let the negativity, the bad emotions of others affect me if I don't do these 5 things. So let's get into it. I'm Tony Suriano. I'm a creative coach. I am a filmmaker, and I hope this can help. I hope you can adjust and find your 5 things that ignite your day. What is number 1? It is mind feed and results planning. And what the first thing means, and they are one together, mind feed just means for me to read something that is motivating, that gets me in the groove, that shares good positive ideas. That's usually in a form of a book or a great podcast, an episode, a course, whatever I'm into at the time. Now, I also love to write down my takeaways. I suggest you do too. So if you're learning something today or something comes up, it's an aha moment, grab a pen right now, write it down. Did you go get a pen? Get a pen, write it down. I'm serious, that is the way that you gain the knowledge that can serve you. So what I would do is I'll write something down that I learned, I read, or I listened to, and then I'll add some results planning to it. I'll circle the results in advance of what I want for the day. I'll do this the day before sometimes, but sometimes it's the day of. It's in my journal and it says, finish this video podcast episode, circle it. And then I'll write the reason why, I'll write how and what steps I need to take. So that's number one, get some mindset, get some results in advance. Number 2, being goofy. I definitely use my voice, my body, to just be goofy, whether I'm in front of my wife or by myself. I like to be a kid. I like to verbalize and make funny sounds with my mouth. Sometimes I'll look in the mirror and I'll say something to myself funny before I brush my teeth or in between each task that I'm doing. And the reason you do this is because it's all physiology. You need to be in the right state. You need to be Bouncing and moving and grooving. If you are a little too calm and too relaxed all the time, you're not gonna be as likely to take action for the things that matter to you. And that is what this is about. This is about your life. And when I think about my life, I know when I have that low energy, I don't go after the things I want to. And we're more likely to when we get in a good state, get good feelings. So— What do you do in the morning or in the afternoon or at night before the next thing? It's important. I definitely recommend using your arms more, using your expressions more, use your face more. So many people just have one or two facial expressions. And I know that it can derive from some of the hard things in life, some of the people that That put you down, some of the outcomes that don't happen, some of the rejections. I know. But that's why it's your job to generate the good expressions, the good body movement, the kid-like spirit, so that doesn't weigh you down. So you have this wall of peace. And when things that— they don't go the way you want them, it's not going to affect you as much. It might affect you for the initial minutes or an hour, but Then you have the freedom to just let it go. Let it pass through you and go on with your day. Okay, that was number 2, be goofy, be playful, get in a beautiful state. That brings us to number 3. Once you are in a beautiful state, once you have great things in your mind, number 3 for me is to connect with whoever's around me positively. So if that is my wife and that morning I make a good connection, I don't say something stupid, To trigger her. If that goes like that, I'm in a great happy state. And usually I'll be in that good state before I connect. And then once I connect, I can then shift into the things I want to do for the day in a more enlightened manner. Whether it's the coffee person that you get coffee from, whether it's when you go to work, It is so key to bring a good energy to those places and to those people, because if you don't, then the distractions and all the other negative things really affect you. Also, then you give some negative things and you distract people, and it just isn't a win-win. So this is a perfect example. During the middle of this shooting right here to the camera, I had to pause because I happened to hear my wife in the other room next to this room, and I, I should be more focused. I should allow myself to not be distracted by that. But hey, I'm working on it. So I paused it. I asked her, could you go into the other back office? Because I'm hearing things and I'm just trying to knock out this video and share some of these insights. And the conversation wasn't negative, but it just didn't go that great. I probably sounded a little too like Impatient. The good news is earlier, after my mind feed, after being goofy and silly, we connected and we had a fun walk and we just started the day great. I'm not gonna let that conversation mess with my delivery here, my energy here. I'll have to make it up to her though after. We're gonna do something fun. What is connection? It is truly Sharing what you're gonna do that day, what you care about, how you can help. But also, in essence, it's just giving good positive energy to the person you connect with. And it means you gotta bring that to the table. How do you do that? With some good mindset, good mind feed, and just being playful. Like when kids are kids, you just can't help but be enamored and. And happy with their energy. So I ask that for you. How is your energy when you connect with people? Starting out in the day, it's so important. Okay, number 4. Let's see if I can remember. I'm gonna look. Number 4, transitions. I always have these things written down because the faintest ink is better than the best memory. So number 4, transitions. What does that mean? For me, that means after my mindset, After being playful, after connecting, I usually then shift into the endeavor at hand. For instance, now I'm making this video. And when I sit at the desk, I take a second and I think, all right, what do I want to give? What do I really want to share? What's important to me right now? And how can it serve you? That's what I That's what went through my mind. Okay, so that's a transition. It's not just, all right, turn on the camera. Okay, this is what I wrote yesterday. Let me just go, go, go. That doesn't serve me. And if you think about your days, your best days, I bet you that your transitions were smooth. Whether that's going to pick up the kids from soccer practice, then coming home to make dinner, you have to have a good transition. Because if you just go get the kids, Go make the dinner. Go wait the dinner. Gotta go make the beds with the kids. That's a lot. So how can you transition better? You can think for a minute before you go into it. Close your eyes for a minute before you go into it. Number five, most important celebration. I love to celebrate over my big wins and my small wins. There's a book called Tiny Habits. And it talks deep about this and how we have to condition the mind to celebrate. It's so important to do these things because then your mind gets addicted to having a good day, to trying your best, to making the effort to complete the task. So then you want to do it again and try harder and learn. It's this really cool loop. So when you finish a project, Do you celebrate? And I hope you celebrate with some healthy things, not some negative alcohol and drugs. And I truly mean that. Nothing wrong with a celebrational drink every now and then, but I'm talking about celebration by yourself, giving yourself a clap, even if it seems silly. Be silly, be playful, right? That's my number 2 thing. And this Really, I'm gonna bring this home. This really connects with your mind wanting to have a better day so you could do it again and celebrate, because we're addicted to that. We want pleasure, we want to avoid pain. And if you get this a little more clear and you're productive in this sense, you will have those better days. And I know when I do these 5 things, my days are better. An example of my celebration also is I'm a Rubik's cuber. I've been learning this thing a lot. When I first started to learn this for 2 or 3 months, I was pushing and pushing to get down under a minute. And every time I got closer, I would finish the cube. Yes. And I would stand up and I would be alone. And it's funny now when my wife's there, she looks at me like, what's he going? I'll come and hug my wife and I'll tell her, oh my God, I just did this on the cube. And she's like, oh, okay, that's good. She supports it. But it's, you know, to me it's so important and magical that I could solve this in the time that I do. Every time it gets closer and closer and closer to the official goal, under 20 seconds, then I get excited. And I was on my balcony and I did that. I know my neighbors must see me because every morning for months on end, I'm out there for 15, 20 minutes practicing, and I'll stand up completely. I will stand up completely and I will verbally say yes because it conditions my mind and it's fun and it conditions my mind. Now, I think I naturally did that as a skateboarder growing up. You land a trick with your friends and you, you know, they celebrate you. You're just saying yes. And that's why I kept skateboarding. But once I started reading books about this and the psychology behind this and The idea that we need these affirmations towards ourselves, we need physiological movements that represent the emotion. So we're addicted to expanding. That's when I purposefully went a little overboard and went a little crazier. So then that became its own conditioning. And now whenever I celebrate for the last couple years, I'm just way overzealous. And if people are watching me from the distance, they probably think I'm a little strange. But it's okay. Be strange, be weird, be playful, and just have fun. So what are your 5 things? I want you to think about your perfect day. And if you can carve out 2 or 3 days in a row with your perfect day, 5 things you do that set you up for success, I want you to carve out those days and do them and do them and condition them. And then, because we don't all have the luxury of every day spending 3 hours doing everything we want to do, right? So you start condensing it. And for me, if it's 20 minutes reading, 20 minutes listening to good mindset and planning, and then 20 minutes of Rubik's Cube, okay, that's a full hour. And then I gotta connect with the people around me, right? And I gotta celebrate. So that's an hour, let's say an hour and 15 minutes. But I don't always have that. Sometimes I wake up late. So what I've done is just make sure I go through the list. Hey, today I'm just reading for 5 minutes. Okay, I'm gonna bust out this Rubik's Cube. I only get to do 3 or 4 minutes because if I get into 10, then I'll lose time and I'm gonna be late. Okay, so you get the idea. Condense these things, but first you have to do them a little on the longer side. That's the tool— doing the 5 things that really ignite your day a little on the longer side so you really embrace it, so you really feel what these things do for you. And then you condense it. And then guess what? You only have 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Everyone has 15 or 20 minutes before they go and start their task, their, their job, their project. So you carve out these 15 minutes and you do those 5 things. And your brain doesn't really know the difference that you're not doing it for 5 hours. You've conditioned it. And now in 15 minutes, you benefit from all those things that serve you and ignite your day. That is it. That is the 5 things as a recap that I love to do every day. And when I don't do them, I feel off. So comment, what are your 5 things? What do you want your 5 things to be? If you don't really have any, how can you improve them to improve your day? Mine, again, mindset and results planning, being goofy and being silly, being like a kid, and connection. Just positively with those around me. Transitions into my next task. Celebrations physically, verbally, with your whole being. And that sets up my day. So get out there and set up your day right now so you can direct your life. I want to drive this hard as possible. Get a pencil now, a pen, a paper. Write down the 5 things. Do not wait. Really? I'm gonna just keep blabbing on until you grab a pen. If you're driving, maybe you can pull over, jot down the 5 things that ignite your day, because don't you want your days to be better? Don't you want your days to give you the juice to take action towards the things that serve you, serve others, empower you, make you feel happier? All those things are important for you, so get out there and direct your life. Get the pen, write the 5 things down, do it now. I will see you in the next one, and that is it. Thank you. Hey again, it's me, Tony. I hope you enjoyed the free show and I hope it served you. And if it did, please do me a little favor and give it a review, a like, and most importantly, share it with that someone that needs to hear the message today, because being the director of your own life involves contribution. So Give it back and help others create their vision, break through their barriers, and find their magic too. And lastly, don't forget to check out my free weekly newsletter at tony suriano dot com. That's S U R I A N O. This is where I share exclusive tips, behind the scenes insights, and the kind of content I don't post anywhere else. If you're serious about leveling up and staying inspired, connecting with me. That's the place to be. Thank you once again. Now get out there and direct your life. Or I'mma get ya.
