Paralysis By Analysis
I found myself in a state of complete paralysis. You see what happened is a couple years ago my wife and I sat down and really created the life of our dreams. We truly became the authors of our own story. Within doing this, it created a subset of problems. Now I say problems because these aren’t even first world problems. They’re pretty laughable, really. What we did is we actually moved to beautiful Bend, Oregon to explore the area and got a beautiful house right in the heart of downtown. Now our lease is coming up and now we’ve got a decision to make. Do we renew the lease? Do we get a house somewhere else? Or do we take our adventure van out and explore the United States?
A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
Now, I got a message on Facebook and I get quite a few messages on Facebook from listeners, and I appreciate them all, so thank you. But, this message I took as very interesting, this message asked, “Doug, I’ve been listening to The Daily Growth Hacks for several weeks now. I went back and binged them all.” Now, I love that and I think that’s a great idea if you’re new to The Daily Growth Hacks, I highly recommend doing the same.
Embrace the Suck
Now what I’m talking about when I say “embrace the suck”, is really that any change, any growth happens on the other end of adversity. You don’t expand and grow unless you’re challenging yourself, pushing yourself, or just doing something different. So, when you think about embrace the suck, what you’re really thinking about is, “How can I be better? How can I take a situation that currently sucks, or are just not enjoying it, or maybe it’s just a little bit difficult. And how do I take that situation and push a little bit further?”
Case of the Mondays
Today I’m going to talk a little bit about your soul, and kind of in an abstract point of view. Now, if you’ve ever seen Office Space, you know when the woman talks about it. She says, “Oh, you’ve got a case of the Mondays.” Or something along those lines. Now I love the movie, and I haven’t seen it in awhile, but it always plays in my head when I heard somebody complain about the work week coming up.
Now a typical work week, Monday through Friday, and I know a lot of you listening are already living the author of your own story lifestyle, and have created a lifestyle outside of that typical work week. But I also see on social media, as well as talking to friends, that they talk about, “Ah man, the weekends over. Yeah.” They’re so bummed, and they’re bummed because they’re going back to work, and they’re actually depressed. To think about it, they actually only get two days of happiness, two days to look forward to out of a seven day week. That means five of those days, the majority of their week is something that they actually aren’t looking forward to. This is science, this is a problem.
Grow Your Business
Jay Abraham has something he talks about, which is your three ways to grow a business. Now, this is something that I use in all of my businesses on a regular basis, but I especially use it for my strategic planning, and when I’m forming my 90-day goals.
So it’s very simple, and it’s going to require you to actually write some things down. So grab a blank piece of paper, and if you have your own business, you’re going to need to do some research with this, but first thing, that … What are the three ways? Well, the three ways are: To increase the number of customers. So, obviously, the number of customers or clients you have, increasing That base is one way. Number two is to increase the average transactional value. So, if somebody’s buying one widget, can you get them to buy another?
Feed Your Mind Daily
Now, today we’re going to talk about the mind and specifically feeding the mind on a daily basis.
I got a message from a daily growth hack listener, Garrett, who was asking me, “Hey Doug, I love the daily growth hacks.” Thank you very much for saying that. I always love to hear whether you like it or not or what we can do to better, of course. But he said, “I love them but I also want to do a little bit more. So, what’s something else I can do on a daily basis to feed my mind? I’m just not finding something.”
You Haven’t Proven Yourself Yet
So, what do I mean by you haven’t proven yourself yet? Well, I’m talking to a specific segment of us, and I include myself in that segment. If you are constantly bettering yourself, you also are constantly changing. This is especially true if personal development or business development or just growth in general is newer to you. That means not just new that you just are first learning about it, but you’re really actually diving in.
If you’ve been listening to these Daily Growth Hacks, we’ve done over 50 of them now, and if you’ve been actually putting into action the Call to Action at the end of each of them, you have changed your life dramatically, I can guarantee that.
I’m talking about you
Hey, I’m talking about you. It’s kind of funny because recently since I’ve been doing these Daily Growth Hacks, we’ve done over 50 of them so far, which is pretty amazing. I’ve gotten several emails and private messages, people asking me, “Hey, is this about me? Are you talking about me on this subject? Are you talking about my story?”
Well, honestly I’m not. I’ve only really talked about clients that I currently train and work with. Chances are it’s not about you. However, yet it is. What do I mean by that? Well, what I mean by that is if something that I’m saying is touching you, is making you feel like I’m speaking about you, that means it’s triggering something inside of you. This can happen in a variety of ways. Oftentimes it happens around relationships or goals.
Running Your Life Like a Project
Now, when I talk about running your life like a project, what I’m really talking about is a conversation I had with a friend of mine. Now, he’s a business owner, and he manages several projects on the given day. He’s really efficient at it, but when it comes to his life when he leaves work, his life seems to fall apart. He looked at me and said, “Doug, what do I do? Like, you know, I go home, my relationships are in shambles. I can’t seem to get fit, my health, my energy is just down. I just can’t manage all of this.” And as soon as he said, “I can’t manage all of this,” a light bulb picked off in my head. He’s a project manager, so why isn’t he managing his life like another project?
Public Commitments
Today’s topic, public commitments. Hi, I’m Doug Holt with Author of Your Own Story, and this is your Daily Growth Hack, where each day we give you a tip, trick or insight to help you uplevel what we call the Five to Thrive that is your mind, your body, your soul, your relationships, and your business.
Now when I’m talking about public commitments, what I’m talking about is putting yourself out there. Taking a goal, a dream, or even a small task and making it known publicly. Now, the restaurant industry figured this out many years ago. They used to have a real big problem with cancellations of reservations. They used to typically say you’d call up a restaurant and you’d say, “Yes, I’d like a reservation for six please,” and they would simply say, “Hey, call us back if you change your mind.”
Floating Down The River
Today I’m going to share a little insight into something that happened to me. I’m going to share this with you in the idea that hopefully you can see it happening in your life and pull yourself out, even a little quicker than I did.
See, about a month ago I started my fifth business. All my businesses are actually been created around my life and my lifestyle. This fifth business, we’re actually coming out to solve a solution that we saw a need for in the fitness industry. You see, in the fitness industry, there’s a lot of people that’ll help out business owners with their marketing, but only pick out one vertical. So, maybe that’s just social media or PPC or actually organic traffic. We wanted to create a complete solution that automated that process for fitness professionals at a price that they could afford. This has never been done.
Being Right Vs. Being Happy
I was at the gym this morning working out and there were two guys talking. One guy turned to his friend and started correcting his form. Now, I had just met these guys a few days earlier and the instinct to jump in and tell him that his advice was wrong, was really high in me. I mean, I really had to fight it.
You see, I’ve spent over two decades in the fitness field and acquired over 18 degrees and certifications and have been teaching fitness to people, as well as, to fitness professionals for a very long time.
Making Excuses Vs. Being Resourceful
I just got off a call with a friend of mine who coaches men to be their absolute best. He’s amazing at it. He’s built a very successful business and a lifestyle that most of us could only dream of. He’s extremely talented.
He asked me a question about one of my goals. Now, one of my goals is to be able to speak conversational Spanish within 90 days. Now, I just want to be able to have a basic conversation in Spanish and I’m far from that goal.
Talent Always Wins
Throughout my life, I’ve played soccer, and I’ve played soccer at a very competitive level. Although I only played one year in college, I played after that as well. I can tell you, I have never been the best guy on the field. Just haven’t. I’m not the most talented soccer player. I certainly don’t have the build, and I certainly don’t have the skills the other guys have had. Yet, I’ve been able to maintain being able to play at a competitive level because I will outwork the other guy.
Psychology and Tiger Woods
Imagine that you are approached by Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods in his prime. Now you’ve never golfed before but he puts a bet on the line. He says, “Hey look, I will bet you $5,000,000, we are going to golf one year from today, winner takes all.” Now, are you going to go and do what most people seem to be talking about these days? Are you going to go dive into the psychology behind playing golf? Are you going to go work on getting your master’s degree in psychology? Are you going to pick up every book that you can find at the library or the bookstore on the subject matter of psychology?
Are you going to read every self-help personal development book? I sure hope not, because game day comes, your mind might be right, but your golf swing certainly won’t be.
My Back Hurts
Today I’m going to talk about the body and I’ll relate it back to other areas of your life in a little bit. Now, I had a fitness professional reach out to me that needed help with a client. What they were talking about is their client’s back was hurting while working their abs. What they were looking for are ways of strengthening the back so they could advance. Now, I get this topic a lot or I get this question a lot because of my background. I also hear this from clients, from friends, from just people in general. Especially when getting ready for the summer, everybody wants to look good when the weather gets warmer.
Using Your Voice to Be Your Own Coach
Today I’m going to talk to you about using your voice and literally your voice to be your coach. What I mean by that is actually recording yourself to coach yourself. Now probably seven or 10 years ago, I don’t know the exact time, I started setting aside an hour in the morning to focus on my day. This time was a time I carved out for myself to better myself in my Five to Thrive. I would set aside sections. In each of these sections, I’d have questions that I would ask myself and exercises that I would do. This was extremely beneficial.
The Power of Intention
The Power of Intention is a book that was written by Dr. Wayne Dyer. This book was recommended to me back in 2005, 2006, by my then business coach, who I would meet with every morning. This man was in his 70s and had built several extremely successful businesses. In fact, if you’ve ever written a check, ever written a letter, or actually if you’ve ever used a piece of software that records notes, which I won’t name the name, you’ve used and touched one of his businesses.
