6 Habits That Will Fix 93% of Your Problems

“The person you become is determined by the habits you choose to cultivate.”

- James Clear

In my last newsletter, I discussed how every path we choose has us paying a price .?

Some paths have us pay a price up front and some have us pay a price later. But either way, we pay a price.?

And if we’re going to pay a price no matter which choice we make, why not be more intentional about it and choose the path that gives us the greatest fulfillment. I call this ‘Choosing Your Hard.’

Several of you reached out to me wanting more detail on how I do this - specifically, how I implement ‘choosing my hard’ in different areas of work and life.?

I gave this some thought and realized there are 6 habits I practice that might seem simple on the surface but probably deserve a closer look.

But before I dive right in, have you ever rolled out of bed in the morning and just felt… bleh.

Tired. Lethargic. Apathetic.

Which is frustrating, because just last week you were feeling really solid and you were absolutely crushing it.

You were focused, energized, and productive.

And then one day you woke up and your mojo seemed to disappear overnight.

Don’t worry, this is completely normal.

We all experience highs and lows because that’s just how life is.

Half the time you’ll feel above average and half the time you’ll feel below average - with moments of pure euphoria and absolute misery sprinkled in.

The trick is to recognize when you’re spending too many days in a row falling below average, so you can quickly take action to reverse the trend.

If you make a habit of this, over time, you’ll increase the baseline for how often you feel “good” on a regular basis.?

And soon, you’ll begin to recognize that what constitutes a “bad” day now, would’ve qualified as a “good” day only a few months ago.

In other words, you’ll increase your baseline for joy, fulfillment, and happiness.

To be clear, I’ve fallen into more ruts over the years than I’d like to admit but I’ve found that getting out of them, and getting my baseline trending back up, doesn’t require me to do anything too crazy.

I just need to recommit myself to dialing in 6 foundational habits, which I’m gonna share with you now.

So here are 6 habits that will solve 93% of your problems:

1) Master your mind. Mindfulness is the key to reigning in your thoughts and living in the present moment.

I cultivated this habit later in life. It started when a friend invited me to a five day meditation retreat near Vancouver B.C. I’d never really meditated so this felt like a huge leap but it got me in the game.?

I’ve never felt as uncomfortable as I did during those five days of being with my repetitive thoughts.?

I couldn’t believe the level of noise in my head and how often my thoughts were running wild. After five days of meditating, I felt a peace that I’d never experienced before.?

During the meditation practice, I felt like hell. But after, pure bliss.

Since then, I’ve cultivated my own meditation practice that starts first thing in the morning, right after I feed the dogs. I spend 10-15 minutes sitting in silent or guided meditation to quiet my busy mind.??

Besides having a meditation practice, I’ve also surrounded myself with people who challenge my mindset. I’ve been part of a mastermind group for six years where five of us meet monthly to challenge each other, support each other, love each other, and push each other.?

I often say that this is one of my highest leverage activities. I’ve had my mindset challenged about coaching, money, client relationships, selling, business models, and trusting my intuition.?

My mindset has evolved exponentially by surrounding myself with people who push me to think in new ways that I probably never would have otherwise.

2) Exercise daily. No matter what!

This one had escaped me lately. Sure, I’ll make it to the Peloton, an exercise class, or to my yoga mat a couple of times per week. But the increase in energy that comes from exercising 5-6 days a week is tangibly different.?

Your body is the vehicle carrying you through this life.

If you don’t take care of it, then it’s just a matter of time until the wheels fall off.

And when they do, you’re gonna relate to this very harsh truth:

“The healthy person wants 1,000 things. The sick person wants just one.”

The problem for most of us is that we’re doing the bare minimum to keep this squishy biological machine running.

Which isn’t just putting us at greater risk of future-catastrophic failure, but it’s also degrading the quality of our energy on a daily basis.

And this is so unfortunate because the quality of your life is ultimately dictated by the quality of your energy.

Low quality energy = lethargy, easily irritated, depressed.

High quality energy = optimism, focused, thriving.?

Now, what exactly does it mean to be in the top percentage of healthy humans?

I actually thought this was going to be a hard question to answer, but it turns out the Mayo Clinic already did the heavy lifting for me in a study called Healthy Lifestyle Characteristics . They looked to see how many adults exhibited four healthy lifestyle characteristics, which they defined as:

• Sufficiently Active
• Eating a Healthy Diet
• Non-Smoker
• Recommended Body Fat Percentage

Here’s the crazy part…

They found only 2.7% of adults had all four characteristics.

I guess the bar is set so low here you could literally trip over it and get ahead of the vast majority of people.

And the reward for doing this?

Well, not only will you probably live longer, but you’ll live better.

I don’t know about you but I’m all for enjoying a high quality of life where I can be active, engaged, and thriving.

When I was in my 20’s, 30’s, and even my early 40’s, I thought I had this whole fitness thing figured out.

But what I didn’t realize at the time is that staying fit is pretty easy when you’re young and have lots of active friends.

Now, in my 50’s and juggling all of life’s competing priorities, I find it easier and easier to skip the occasional workout.

And as a result, last year I did something for the first time in my life:

I hired a personal trainer.

Not because I needed to be told what to do, but because I needed some form of external accountability.

And guess what?

It worked.

A year later I was back down to my ideal weight and I felt incredible.

And you know what? Feeling good always feels good.

So go on, get yourself into that conditioning class, download that fitness app, or better yet …hire that personal trainer.

You’re worth it.

3) Eat healthy foods. What we eat directly impacts how we feel. So eat with intention.

I used to be a human garbage disposal. When I was young, I would literally eat whatever was put in front of me.?

But what I didn’t realize is that our body composition and how we feel is 80% related to what we eat and 20% related to our level of exercise.

Food. Is. Important.?

I would encourage anyone to cut gluten, sugar, and alcohol out of your diet for two weeks and tell me how you feel.

My guess is that you’ll feel a lot like Neo in the Matrix, accomplishing seemingly superhuman feats and making it look easy.

Here’s my recommendation to you based on two factors:

1. If you enjoy cooking (like I do), identify some healthy meals and enjoy the process of making, sharing, and eating them.?
2. If you don’t enjoy cooking, consider a meal prep service to deliver a week’s worth of meals at a time.

If you fall into the first category, select a few healthy options from your favorite foods. Mine happen to be Mexican and Mediterranean.

I generally have about two weeks worth of meal plans that I follow and repeat. I use the local farmers market whenever possible and supplement with trips to Costco and Whole Foods (using my Prime membership to get discounts).

If you hate to cook, the easiest option to eat healthy is to get a meal prep service that cooks and delivers a whole week’s worth of meals.

This tends to be WAY more affordable than most people realize. I’ve seen plans that break down to only $11/meal. So I could get two meals per day for only $700/month.

I’m not gonna pretend like that isn’t a lot of money for most people. And you certainly can save money by doing your own grocery shopping and cooking at home, but is that really the highest and best use of your time?

Let’s assume you spend 1 hour per week grocery shopping and another 1.5 hours per day cooking and cleaning up. That’s around 11 hours/week.

If you value your hourly rate at let’s say $100, then that means the option of doing everything yourself is costing you about $400/month, and that’s just including your time.

Add in groceries at about $300 per week and you’ll realize that doing it yourself will cost you about $1,600 PER MONTH!

Not to mention, these pre-cooked meals are way tastier than anything most of us could prepare.

This one should be a no-brainer.?

And hey, if you love to cook like me, more power to you.

4) Focus. Learning how and where to focus is the ultimate game-changer.

This one took me a long time to figure out. For decades, I bought into the false premise that if I could just get better at being productive, I’d be able to get everything done.?

Finally, after years of struggle and reading ‘Four Thousand Weeks - Time Management for Mortals’ - I realized that I’d been buying into a lie that I could have it all, be it all, and do it all.?

Reading this book was the slap in the face I needed to realize that time is short and that we need to be smarter about how we allocate our time to different tasks and activities.

What is urgent is often at odds with what is truly important. Short-term and long-term goals do not always align. And what’s expected from you and what you actually want to do are not always the same.?

So how do you manage your time and focus in a way that allows you to achieve what matters while tending to your responsibilities?

I follow three simple principles:

1. Make time for the things that matter. I always take a few minutes at the beginning of the week to ensure I have time for the few key goals I’m working towards. At the moment, these are completing a certification program, writing every day, and improving my health and fitness. So I block time for these things in my calendar, making sure to prioritize them and feeling good about doing the things that matter.
2. Become comfortable saying “no” or “let’s do this in a few weeks.” If something is neither important, nor urgent, nor authentically aligned with what currently feels most alive, I either say no or I ask if it’s alright to chat in a few weeks when I might have more headspace for potentially interesting yet low-priority projects. Now, here’s the magic behind why this works: more often than not, people don’t follow up, and that’s an hour I save for things I want to work on.
3. Manage my energy, not my time. This means that instead of trying to fill my calendar with tasks to feel productive, I try to keep my calendar as free as possible to allow a more fluid approach to work. I move things around based on my energy levels. If I feel a surge of energy, I can decide to use the next time block to make progress on a creative project. If I feel low energy, I can reply to some unimportant emails. This is only possible if there’s enough wiggle room in my calendar.

These principles are at the core of how I deal with the very real cognitive and energetic bottlenecks that tend to dictate how much we can achieve.?

5) Learn how to play the money game. It’s hard to enjoy ease until you have independent financial security. And money is one of the tools to leading a more fulfilling life.?

It’s challenging for me to write about this topic. Probably because it’s such a loaded issue in our culture. But when I learned that making money is a skill, just like learning to speak a new language or ride a bike, it became much easier to navigate.

And just like my relationship with time & focus, once I recognized that money represents the meaning we give it, I was a bit more open to exploring my personal relationship to money and how I wanted this to look and feel.

As Professor Scott Galloway (Prof G) of NYU says …

“America is the most wonderful place in the world if you have money. And it’s the hardest place in the world if you don’t.”

I don’t think I’m stretching too far when I say that no matter where you live, it’s really important to learn the skill of making, keeping, and investing money, especially if you like to live in a nice neighborhood, take vacations, eat good food, have good medical care, and get a good education, etc.?

This DOES NOT mean selling your soul in exchange for money. Staying in a dead-end career that drains your life energy is simply not sustainable.

Instead of railing against the system, I’ve personally found it easier to learn about my relationship with money and be around people I admire who happen to be good at creating value and doing something they enjoy while exchanging that value for money.

I’ve also found it useful to follow people who challenge my beliefs about money.

Derek Sivers , one of my favorite writers, challenged my money beliefs years ago with two articles. In the first one, How To Be Useful To Others , he outlines four counterintuitive “directives” and the second one is specifically about making money and creating value …

“Money is neutral proof you’re adding value to people’s lives. So, by getting rich, you’re being useful as a side-effect. Once rich, spend the money in ways that are even more useful to others. Then getting rich is double-useful.”

In Sivers’ second article, How To Get Rich , he goes a bit deeper into 7 more “directives” that have been helpful for me to wrestle with.?

I encourage you to take a look at these and notice what triggers you. I can almost guarantee that you will be triggered by something in these writings and this is your opportunity to clarify your personal perspective and improve your relationship with money.?

Why do I share these examples from Derek?

First, he’s a musician and a writer. He’s managed to close the gap between being a starving artist and someone who knows how to translate his value into financial gain.

Second, he sold his company (CD Baby) for $22 Million and gave all the money away to charity . In other words, he’s not attached to money for the sake of holding on to it.? He’s simply enjoying the process of creating it by generating value and continuing to live simply.?

These two things make Derek Sivers highly unique, especially when it comes to making money in our culture.

Sivers’ has turned his passion for creativity into a game, a game that happens to include creating massive value and getting paid for it, but without the need to accumulate stuff.?

If making money is indeed a game (which is how most wealthy people think about it) then you’ve got to learn the game.

If I were to go back in time, here’s the advice I would give to my younger self when it comes to money and learning the game:

• Learn how to play the money game. Since money is a game, here are some of the best playbooks:
• The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
• Die with Zero by Bill Perkins
• The Algebra of Wealth by Scott Galloway
• You are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero
• Get comfortable with creating value and charging for it. Whether it’s negotiating a higher salary or asking for a raise, becoming a freelancer and selling your expertise, or creating and selling your art, learn how to create value and ask for money in return.
• Be an owner. Find a way to obtain ownership in assets, whether it’s stock options in a company you work for, real estate you own, starting a business on the side, or creating your own intellectual property and licensing it. Especially in times of inflation, those who own assets get rich while those who don’t, fall behind.
• Take a sales job. I was a sales executive for 15 years and it forced me to get comfortable with creating value and asking for money in a way that was authentic to me. Ethical selling is one of the greatest skills I’ve ever learned.
• Get into the practice of investing early and often. In the early stages, this is more about developing the habit of investing more than what you’re investing in. Whether it’s a 401k, IRA, putting money in a high interest money market, or investing in yourself as a business owner, get into the habit of investing as a first step to multiply your earnings and start building wealth.

6) Tackle one issue at a time. Small deliberate steps lead to massive achievements.

I used to start a project, get bored (or frustrated), and then switch to another one. The dopamine rush of starting something new was driving my behavior.

I was starting things but never finishing them.?

As exciting as it was to always be starting something new, it wasn’t a good strategy for completion.

I realized I needed to adopt a new behavior. The same behavior that allowed me to run over a dozen half marathons, succeed as a sales executive, start a podcast and keep it going for over 4 years, and do anything else that required me to move past the fun part and grind through the difficult stages until completion.

Here’s what that looks like:

• Break down projects into small chunks. We start anything because of an existing pain or a promising outcome (or both). And for most things, there’s an exciting period of newness followed by a slog of discipline to get to the finish line.?

Whether it’s training for an athletic endeavor or launching a newsletter, there’s a process between the exciting beginning and doing the work that requires us to overcome boredom, fatigue, and chasing shiny objects.?

For any project to succeed, we need to understand the smaller parts.?

For example, when training for a half marathon, you might start with three shorter runs a week followed by a longer run that gets progressively greater every week.?

If you start your “longer” runs at 3 miles and work up to 13 miles, you’ll need 11 weeks. Add in a couple of weeks to do some shorter races (a 5k and a 10k) and you’ve now got a 13 week training program to get you to the starting line for your half marathon.

• Prioritize weekly. Once you understand the ‘chunks’ of the project, now you simply schedule them into your week. Using the half marathon training example, we know that we’ll need to create space for four training runs every week for the next 13 weeks.

The size and scope of the project determines the total amount of projects that you’ll be able to tackle at any given time. I think in terms of quarterly projects. It’s typical for me to have 2-3 projects for my business and one personal project every quarter.?

• Focus on completion over perfection. I can get caught in the perfectionism trap pretty easily. I want everything I do to be exceptional. But that’s not very practical.

I have to force myself to follow what I call the 80% rule. When I feel like something is 80% good enough, then I know it’s ready to go. The incremental effort required to get something to 100% (perfectionism) is wasted effort that could be used to launch the next important project.

Focus on completion over perfection.?

• Reward. This is one that most people leave out. How will you reward yourself for completing an important project?

Seriously!?

You just dedicated yourself to doing something meaningful and poured your energy into completing it.

Now it’s time to celebrate by creating what I call a ‘reward loop.’ For every complex project I take on, I make sure that I’ve got a compelling reward on the other side.?

For example, I’m currently working towards completing a coaching certification and enablement program. My reward for completing it is to purchase my annual ski pass.?

If you know me, you know I love to ski so completing this by the end of September is non-negotiable.?

In Summary

Since my final habit emphasizes tackling one issue at a time, choose one of these six habits and start today.

Hit reply and let me know which one you’ve chosen and why it’s important to you.

The accomplished person knows one thing the amateur doesn’t:??

Growth isn’t accidental.

It’s engineered.

Live bravely,

Michael

Read more of my blogs here.