All too often, as business owners, we fall in love with our own ideas. Now, these can be products, these can be services, these can be things that we’re going after. We can actually grind it out. It’s a gift. It’s a talent. And something that entrepreneurs and business owners have in spades, right?

But oftentimes, what happens is we fall in love with an idea that isn’t the right idea, or at least we’re not looking at it from the right angle. We can be dragging that idea down the road just like it’s something that we’re carrying. A big weight on us that slows us down.

Now, this can also happen in other areas of our life. Remember, we’re not disconnected. If you’re a business owner, your personal life is equally connected to your business. Now, if you’re not a business owner, and you’re somebody that’s on the path to the Author of Your Own Story journey, this applies with anything that you’re doing.

What happens, often, is we have an idea we fall in love with. Now, this could be a relationship. It could be the idea of love, or idea of love with one person in particular. What happens is, is we hold on to that idea, that dream, that fantasy that we’re in love with. What that forces us to do is not look at other angles within that idea. There might be another outcome or path that can get you there quicker.

I don’t know about you, but for me, when I fall in love with an idea, I just absolutely love it. Right? I have pictures on my wall. I have all kinds of things going on. But when I let go of that love, just for a minute, right? And let go of it and detach myself from the idea that I’m working on … Now, again, this can be in all areas of your Five to Thrive. When I detach myself, it allows me to look at different angles, right? Different points of view that then allow me to possibly find a different path to get to my outcome sooner.

What I’m going to encourage you to do today is grab your journal, write out your Five to Thrive: your mind, your body, your soul, your relationships, and, of course, your business. Then what I want you to do is look at areas of each of those categories that you’re in love with something, right? Are you in love with a particular workout program, right? Right now, I’m following the Strong First Protocol. Love it, right? So what I might want to do is detach myself from that, and look at it from different angles, right? Am I getting the outcome that I want from it?

Or maybe it’s in relationships, right? Maybe it’s a friendship that I have that, I love the friendship. I love the idea of the history we’ve had together, but yet every time I hang out with this friend, all he wants to do is get drunk, and that’s not really what I’m about. So maybe I’m just not looking at this from the right angle. What else can I do? Can I cherish this relationship but try something differently?

Or maybe it’s my business. This happens to me more often than not, is I have these business ideas that I think are amazing. I’m currently running six companies, so I’m always having these ideas and different angles to look at. But oftentimes, I could be wrong, and if I fall in love with a business idea, or the project idea, it doesn’t allow me to see the forest from the trees, so to speak. Having that different angle and looking at it differently allows me to upgrade, and actually get to the outcome much sooner.

Again, write out your Five to Thrive. Where in each category are you in love with an idea? Then I would invite you to detach yourself temporarily … detach yourself. You’ll be safe. You can come back to the idea and the love anytime you want to. And then look at it in a different way.

Now, if you like conversations like this, exercises like this, but you want to go deeper, right? We only have a couple of minutes that we do these Daily Growth Hacks, and you want to go deeper. The Author of Your Own Story University is for you. All you have to do is go to AuthorofYourOwnStory.com, click on the University button, and you can see the University. We have deep dives into conversations. Live conversations with some of the world’s top coaches. That gives it to you at a very affordable price, so you can continue on your journey.

But, of course, make sure you’re doing two things. One, you subscribe to the Author of Your Own Story e-mail list, so you can get the latest tips, tricks, and techniques delivered right to your inbox. The second thing is I want you to share this with at least three people. Now, the reason I want you to share this is because it builds your tribe, right? You’re going to have a support network to help you get to that next level. Also, it opens up conversations that matter. Conversations with people that, frankly, today in our society we don’t have enough of.

All right. That’s it from me today. I will see you tomorrow. Remember, go out and inspire someone simply by being the Author of Your Own Story.

If you like these daily growth hacks, it would mean the world to us if you would take a moment to subscribe and review us on iTunes!

Just a few days ago, I was actually invited to take part in a ceremony using plant medicines. Now, if you’re not familiar with what plant medicines are, they were medicines that were used traditionally by indigenous tribes especially, over thousands of years ago, to evoke a type of experience. Usually used by shamans or religious healers.

Now, I’ve done some work like this before. In fact, I went down to Colombia, and to the Amazon, into the jungles there, it’s the Northern part, and worked with a female shaman for over a week. It was an amazing experience and I’d be happy to tell you about that at some point. But here I was, going for a similar experience. Now, if you’ve ever done this before, you know how difficult this work is. It really rips you apart inside, right?

People don’t get hurt, at least not that I’m aware of, but it really makes you an introspective. Usually introspective type work, healing yourself, and opening you up to new realms of possibility. Now typically when you look at this, when I showed up, I was getting ready to go, and I’m dressed in all white, because reflective color, just being respectful to this particular practice, and making sure that I paid my respects as I invited to come through this, and I was very, very fortunate to be able to do this exercise and going through these plant medicines.

So I showed up, and all of a sudden, everything in my body was like, “Get out of here. Don’t do this.” Again, it’s one of the hardest experiences I’ve ever been through personally. It literally stops time and prevents you from lying to yourself, and really makes you look at your life in a whole new perspective. Almost like if you can imagine having a map. Now, if you remembered the maps from back in the day for sailors, map makers would literally draw a dragon on different parts of a map, usually towards the edges to say, “Hey, don’t go here. There’s danger here,” right? “This is unknown territory. Don’t go.”

So most people would avoid it. Now, there are a few sailors, there are a few sailors who saw these dragons as opportunities, opportunities that most people wouldn’t venture into, and therefore that’s where the gold would lie, right? That’s where people wouldn’t be going and that’s where all the riches would find. Well, I found the same thing to be true for me and for personal development.

Now, I’ve been lucky enough to coach some of the most successful people in the world, and I still do today, and I absolutely love it. As well as coaching people through our Author of Your Own Story University. If you haven’t checked it out, go over there. But for me, I was sitting outside, in my car, and nervous as heck. Then I remembered the map makers and I remembered the dragons. I remembered what I got from my last experience.

Now, it was again, the hardest work I’ve done. I’ve traveled the world, I’ve done meditation retreats, I’ve swam with sharks without a cage. I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life. I’ve been to Mount Everest, just crazy stuff. But the plant medicines were definitely the hardest journey I’ve ever been on.

So knowing that I was going back into it, I saw dragons all over my personal map of how I was viewing this experience, this world that I was stepping myself into. That’s why I remembered to always slay a dragon. Now, obviously you want to make sure that this is an educated choice, but what’s happening for me is fear was coming up, right? I was afraid, I was timid. “What’s going to happen? I don’t know.”

Last time I did this, you get sick and then you break to the other side, and when you break to the other side, it really forces you to look at some very hard aspects of your life. It’s really tough. It was at that moment that I realized that it was a dragon before me, a dragon on my mental map that I had to slay. I got out of the car, shut the door, and went right into the ceremony, and I’m so glad that I did.

Such amazing breakthroughs and really reminders of the path that I want to be on, which is a path of sharing my gifts and really helping people live their ideal world. That’s why we came up with the Author of Your Own Story concept, is I want to help you. I’m able to coach high-end clients, and frankly, they can afford it, to have one on one laser-like coaching, and not everybody can. That’s why we have these daily growth hacks and also the Author of Your Own Story University.

More importantly, what I want you to do is grab your journal. Write out your Five to Thrive, and where in your Five to Thrive do you have a dragon that needs to be slayed? For some of us, it’s in our body. We say, “You know what? It’s too dangerous. Swinging a mace and doing kettlebells? I’m in my 40s and 50s, I can’t do that.” I heard that just the other day, yet here I am, I’m actually training with somebody to use a mace, an exercise mace, and kettlebell training. I did kettlebell training today.

These are dragons that can be slayed, so what one person’s version of impossible or a dragon, is another person’s opportunity. The key here is finding out what your dragons are, right? We’re each on our own journey, that’s why it’s Author of Your Own Story, not mine or ours. It’s your story. Where are your dragons? Where’s your map in your Five to Thrive? Is it in your mind? I’ve shared previously that I had a client of mine, I was working one on one with, who’s an extremely intelligent man, businessman, very successful, but his story was that he was stupid.

Therefore, he just didn’t read. Then, after clearing up that dragon, after slaying it like an opportunity, he actually fell in love with reading and books. I’ve had clients all over the board that have different dragons. We all have our own. Our own stories, our own maps of the world. The very, very important thing, the thing that you want to do now is to identify where your dragons are on your personal map, by starting to list out your Five to Thrive and write them down. What’s holding you back? What are you seeing as a perceived threat or danger, that probably isn’t?

The next step is to take action, right? Immediately go after that dragon and slay it, right away. The first thing you can do is once you’ve done your Five to Thrive, identify your dragon, and then what’s the next step you can do on your journey to get closer to slaying that dragon? Immediate action. You never want to leave a decision without taking immediate action, massive action if you can. That’s what I want you to do. In fact, I would love to hear what you think your dragons are over in the Author of Your Own Story community.

Of course, if you’re on the newsletter, just hit reply, I get all those emails, and just let me know if you don’t feel comfortable sharing that. I would love to hear what your dragons are, and I’ll share some of mine, and I’ll share my experience with plant medicines that I’ve had all over the world. I’m happy to.

Also, before you go, share this with at least three people. You can have conversations that matter around you. Build your tribe. This is how you get to the next level on your journey to being the author of your own story. That’s it for me today. I will see you tomorrow. Remember, go out and slay those dragons and be the author of your own story.

If you like these daily growth hacks, it would mean the world to us if you would take a moment to subscribe and review us on iTunes!

This question comes from Victor, and Victor says, “Doug I’ve got a question that might be a great highlight for the Daily Growth Hacks. What problems or questions deserve our attention? I mean, how do we distinguish which aspects of our life we should be paying attention to, and which ones are a waste of time, money and energy?”

Victor, this is a great question and thank you for submitting it. Now there’s a lot of follow-up questions I’d want to know, like how do you define the problem? Is this a problem that you’re having internally or something that you feel someone’s bringing on to you? And what kinds of problems are these? So there’s a variety of questions.

Whenever a problem occurs, you’ve got to remember to couple things. One, there’s always three solutions to a problem. There’s not just one, two, or you know, there’s always at least three to come to through it. Now how do you determine which ones deserve your attention? Well, obviously some problems are immediate, right, so some problems that come to you right away that could affect your health. Those are things that you want to address right away. But the filter that I would use when an issue comes up, is I would put it into one of four categories. This is something that’s urgent and important. This is something that’s urgent and not important. This is something that’s not urgent and important. This is something that’s not urgent and not important.

Now this four-segment quadrant I got from Stephen Covey and I still use it today. He wrote it in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Oftentimes what we do as humans are we work in the urgent and not important category. This is often answering emails, these are problems that come up with friends that might come up, the drama in their lives. What we want to be focusing on Victor, with these problems are, those things that are important but not urgent, so if we can stay in that category there’s a sense of calmness that comes through you, and a sense of being able to achieve your goals at a higher level and really working towards those bigger goals that you’ve set for yourself.

With that said, and you may be talking about problems and questions that come up in your life. Like what are those problems or questions that really deserve addressing? That’s a great question, that’s going to be very individualistic, so in other words, what I would like that for the filter is do these problems or solutions, one is are they immediate? In other words, are these fires that I have to put out right now? And what happens if I don’t do anything with it? Now if I don’t do anything with a problem and it still stays there, it doesn’t really affect me or my loved ones, I’m almost likely not deal with it. Not in the sense that I’m avoiding it, but in the sense that it’s not really a problem, right? It’s just something that I’m creating within inside myself.

Now if something comes up and it’s a problem that comes up into my life and it’s something that, it’s more of a philosophical question, kind of like a career question or what do I want to do, or things of this issue, or maybe it’s a relationship issue. What I’ll do is I’ll actually set aside, set time to think about this. So what I’ll do is I’ll grab a journal, I love journals because the act of writing it out, that physical act of writing something out, there’s a brain connection. A kinesthetic connection that helps you release some of this creative energy. It really just works. So writing out the question. What is the question? And then write out what’s really going on, like what really is happening here? Now relationship issues and problems with relationships, very rarely are actually the issue at hand. It’s something else, and often times it triggers something from the past. So that’s what I want to figure out. Get to the root of the problem. What’s really happening here? And what needs to be addressed?

What needs to be addressed right now in this moment? What, this actually is just drama you just need to get away from. That’s the first step I would take, is journaling that out. And then thinking, “Hey, does this problem, or issue or question, does this affect my life? Does this affect my life currently? Or does this affect my future life as being the author of my own story?” For example, I don’t have enough money to pay bills. That’s a problem. That’s an immediate problem only if, you know, your family’s going to get evicted, things are going to happen, just adverse effects to you. Now if you can’t pay your bills, there are also other solutions. You can reduce your expenses. You can negotiate with creditors. You can find alternatives to paying bills. You can work more, you can get another job. There’s all kinds of solutions that turn that problem into a situation or just something that you’re dealing with on your day to day basis.

Now again, Victor, without knowing exactly what problems and questions, because this is pretty vague, to answer for you, I’m trying to give you the best solution of how I would address that. Now we’ll do the same thing with questions. Now questions come up all the time, and I love thought-provoking questions. That’s why at the end of these Daily Growth Hacks I always recommend you sharing them with at least three people because then you’re having conversations that matter. In fact, I actually seek out questions in my life and question my own belief systems on a regular basis. And again, I do this through journaling. So what I would do is write out the question, and I would write out what it would mean to me. So if the question is, “Should I stay here in Bend, Oregon where I am and use this as my jump off spot for all the adventures my family and I go on?” Now, this is something I can write out and I want to look at a pros and cons list. I like traditional pros and cons. What are the pros of me staying here and using Bend, Oregon as my home base? And then what are the cons?

You know, with the Author of Your Own Story lifestyle, I can live anywhere in the world. I can travel anywhere in the world. I have the financial means, and I have the means to do it just with the lifestyle, so I’m very lucky and very grateful for that. However, it creates a weird set of problems, right? Where do I actually choose to live? And so what I do is a pros/cons list. What does that mean? What are the pros of living in Bend, Oregon? What are the cons? What are my other opportunities, right? Third choice. What are my other opportunities that are out there? Sure, we have this really nice adventure band and I’m actually, you know, between these Daily Growth Hacks I’m actually working on to go on our next trip. You know, we can just live in there. We could travel the United States. There are all kinds of options. What are the pros and cons with that? And I’ll start weighing those questions out.

I don’t think there are questions that aren’t worth having. I don’t think there are questions that you shouldn’t actually think about, or waste your time on. Obviously everything’s relative, you know, you don’t have to spend six solid days trying to figure out where you should live, or things of that nature. Decisions get to get made, and I like to make decisions very quickly. I like to be decisive. I think there’s, the first thing that comes to mind tends to be the best answer for me. And so I recommend you look at that for yourself as well. But there’s no area that I don’t think should be questioned personally.

Now, with that again, I like the journaling, because the journaling you can also go back to and let it sit with you. So ask the question before you go to bed, right? So you ask the question like, “Jesus, should I use Bend, Oregon as my jump off spot as my home base? For all these epic adventures my family and I do?” And then the next morning, subconsciously during the night, things are working, things are going on in my brain, and the next morning that’s when I will start to journal about it again, and actually re-visit that question.

So Victor, I don’t know if this exactly answers your question, again it’s a little vague. If not, clear it up, just shoot me an email. I’m happy to go over for you, but also I’d encourage you to throw it in the Author of Your Own Story group to get other people’s insights as well.

That’s it for me today. So, remember, share this out with three people you know, have conversations that matter. And like Victor, make sure you’re actually putting this out into the world and actually doing the work. So grab your journal, do the work, just like Victor did. How do you solve problems? How do you solve things that come to you? Questions? I’d love to hear from you in the Author of Your Own Story group, so I’ll see you there. That’s it for me today, go out and be the author of your own story.

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