Category Archives: Personal Excellence

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4 Lessons To Kindle Relationships That Thrive

People matter. If we intend to go far in life, we can’t go it alone. Are you able to take risks, pursue opportunities and achieve more because of the people in your life? That has absolutely been true for me. Without my family, friends, colleagues and especially my wife…well, you wouldn’t be reading this. I am able to accomplish my goals and pursue my potential thanks to the relationships I have. Hopefully the same is true for you. But, one thing I’ve learned is that thriving relationships don’t come easy.

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Let Go Of What You Can’t Control And Reap Massive Rewards

News flash: you don’t control everything. However, you can find control in every situation. In the book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychologist who was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp, realized this timeless truth. Even in those unimaginable circumstances, he said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Frankl relays to us that we have the ability to choose our thoughts, our emotions and our actions.

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One Word You Never Want to Leave Off Items On Your To-Do List

Spring is almost here for those of us in the four-season-belt of the U.S. Flowers bloom, birds sing and life returns as the chill of winter subsides. Despite the budding all around us, many people find this to be a grueling time of the year. The holidays seem ages ago and summer vacation seems eons away. Oh, and those New Year’s resolutions, how are those coming along? I’d say it’s time for a booster shot to get us refocused, energized and taking actionable steps toward our goals again. 

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3 Tactics to Corral Nervousness and ACE Your Next Performance

If you are trying to be great at something, pursue excellence and fulfill your potential, chances are you’ve experienced the feeling of being nervous. Leading up to your big sales pitch, before briefing the board on last quarter’s numbers, before the first game of the season, preparing to give that speech – many of us have been there. The interesting thing about nervousness is that we only experience it when we want to be awesome.
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Should You Keep Your Goals A Secret?

In 2006, I announced to my friends and family that I was going to attend graduate school. Indeed, in 2007 my dad and I drove my overstuffed car of belongings nearly 2,000 miles from Virginia to Arizona where I started my graduate program. In 2010 I announced to my wife and family that I was going to start my own business. That’s exactly what I did in 2011. However, some say we shouldn’t tell a soul the things we wish to achieve.
 
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Retrain Your Resistance: 3 Steps to More Productive Thinking

Listen. Do you hear that? Do you hear that voice inside your head holding you back, telling you why you will fail and why you don’t have what it takes? Steven Pressfield calls this Resistance. You aren’t in this alone. As it turns out, we all hear voices. Most of the time our inner thoughts simmer in and out of our awareness throughout the day like a spotty radio station.
 
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3 Myths That May Be Suffocating Your Potential

As a kid, I was never the smartest in the class, the most athletic, the most…anything, really. I went with the flow, but if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t truly happy. Something just didn’t feel right. I wanted to be great and achieve more. Looking back I now realize what was going on. I was being misled and sabotaged by my own thinking. I felt unsatisfied, disappointed and unfulfilled.
 
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Strengths: No Longer a Secret Sauce

In setting goals or targeting our own personal development, we typically focus on our shortcomings and weaknesses. However, refining the things we struggle with doesn’t exactly reveal our best or our greatest potential. Instead, I along with many others, propose you focus more on your strengths. When we are working, playing, and living in our strengths, we not only perform better, but we’re happier too.
 
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5:00 AM: Up And At ‘Em (How Incremental Change Made It Happen)

In 2011, I came face to face with a reality that all hard charging achievers encounter: there are only 24 hours in each day. Like many of you, I struggled to find an answer to the question, “How can I fit my ambitious expectations into those 24 hours?” The task seemed impossible. It was then that I decided the only solution was to get up earlier and rethink my morning routine in order to focus on key priority areas (thanks to Michael Hyatt and others). The next step was to figure out how to make that possible.
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What I Learned About Change From A Walk On The Moon

To begin our adventures in 2013, my wife, Laura, and I took a walk on the moon. Okay, well, not quite. Actually, we visited White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. Prior to our exploration of what seemed like another world, we surveyed the exhibits and learned about what makes White Sands so special. We learned that these beautiful gypsum dunes are constantly moving and changing. While some dunes move only a few feet per year, others are making strides of up to 30 feet per year. That just blew me away. The dunes that move the furthest are changing the most and do so as they gain and lose tiny particles of the gypsum every day. It happens little by little.