One Shift To Turn Pain Into Gratitude

To have a sense of gratitude is very notable in dealing with our experiences. With all things we go through everyday, would it be possible to just have one shift to turn pain into gratitude? Definitely.

Remember when you were a kid and you really wanted a new pair of shoes, a new toy, or a new game?

You could burst with excitement.

And then remember what happened when you got it?

Maybe you skipped around with a huge smile for a bit, but before long you were back to your baseline.

This understanding that we always come back to our baseline gave me some helpful insights I want to share with you.

Because I know you have goals and desires, but I also know you want to feel good in the process and after you receive them.

As you know from years of getting red hearts on social media, dopamine is an excellent motivator.

Dopamine elevates your mood as you make progress towards something you want and when you achieve it.

But it doesn’t last forever. It just leaves you wanting more…

I had recent goals to get over 10k followers on Tik Tok, to bring on 8 long-term clients, and to make over $10k/month.

Every step towards those goals gave me a hit of pleasure. And of course, when I hit them I was super excited.

But after hitting the goals and the initial celebration, I experienced a huge drop in my mood.

And it helped me remember, while it can be valuable and fulfilling to work towards things that align with your curiosity/mission/purpose, the intention behind the action is super important.

So I compiled a list of my big takeaways to help us the sense of gratitude, enjoy the process more and not feel empty after reaching the next milestone.

Here they are:

  1. It’s important to have a sense of gratitude that you get to spend time doing work you care about, regardless of the outcome.
  2. What you desire most is a feeling, not an external award, object, or result.
  • For example, I desire to feel free, worthy, and empowered. Business metrics and money can help me connect with those feelings, but they aren’t the actual feelings.
  • The feelings come from within and are things I can connect to, even without external indicators.
  1. You can’t look to external goals to fill a sense of lack within because they never will. That just leaves you feeling empty after the rush of dopamine.
  2. It’s most valuable to approach external goals from a sense of already being full and with an appreciation for the process, rather than looking to the external thing to fill something that’s lacking inside.

Just like the little kid version of you, once you get the external thing whether it’s money, a job title, your dream car, etc. you’re hyped for a moment and then go back to your baseline as if there was no sense of gratitude.

So if your baseline is a sense of lack, you’ll feel that regardless of what you accomplish on the outside.

Which means, it’s helpful to bring awareness and gratitude to the process, and to be intentional about habits, experiences, and relationships that help your baseline feel its best.

And that’s why I help creators work from the inside out.

Yes, I want to help you let go of limiting beliefs, yes I want to help you grow your income doing work you love.

But most importantly I want you to feel good and take care of yourself in the process.

Because if you still feel shitty after you get something you want, what’s the point?

So if you want to brainstorm a way to grow your income doing work you’re passionate about and FEEL good in the process, apply for a strategy call here and if you’re a good fit we’ll make it happen

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How The 10 Minutes Before Bed Impact Your Wellness and Work

What you do as soon as you wake up and right before bed? Your answer can have a major impact on your wellbeing and work.

It turns out, 2 of the best times to reprogram your subconscious are right when you wake and while you sleep.

And given the research that shows 95% of thoughts and decisions are led by the unconscious mind, it’s valuable to have yours work for you rather than against you.

The first 20 minutes after you wake have been described as the gateway to the subconscious mind. It is during this initial drowsy state that your subconscious soaks up whatever information you feed it.

We’ve spoken a bit about the morning in previous weeks. So today we’ll give attention to how you can use your evening to align your subconscious with the life you want.

Thomas Edison shared, “never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious”

And for good reason because, as you sleep, your subconscious works to process and organize all the information from your day.

I took Edison’s advice. Before bed, I’ve been asking my subconscious for solutions to questions I have and details to different content ideas.

It’s fascinated me that I’d often have a dream where the answer comes to me or wake up the following morning or a few mornings after with the solution.

Along with making a request to your subconscious before bed, you can also positively impact it by:

  1. Setting intentions for your upcoming day
  2. Acknowledging things you’re grateful for
  3. Reciting affirmations
  4. Visualizing an experience you desire
  5. Meditating to bring more awareness to your thoughts and your connection with your body

All of the above strategies helps your subconscious mind auto suggest thoughts and ideas that are supportive to your wellbeing and desires.

If you’re into it, try one of the strategies yourself before bed.

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How To Attract Your People As A Creator

How comfortable are you with sharing your uniqueness, especially as a creator?

I’ve learned this is one of the biggest factors in your growth as a person and with your business.

Let me explain…

I looked at some of my old content and it felt informative, but also too nice and a bit boring.

The issue?

I was trying to make things for everybody.

What’s most energizing to me at the moment is helping creators access freedom through transforming limiting beliefs into empowering ones and building online service-based businesses around their interests/skills.

I go deep with both the internal work and business related work with my clients.

But I held back from sharing a lot of the marketing and sales related content publicly.

Part of that was because:

  1. I know my work can help everyone, so I didn’t want to exclude people
  2. I needed to work through feelings of worthiness
  3. I was too attached to my identity as the wellness guy

And a BIG BIG part was because I wanted more people to like me…

So I shared things that could speak to everyone instead of my specific target person.

But I want to tell you why going for everyone isn’t the best approach as a creator.

A misconception people often have in business is that if you go for everyone you’ll attract more customers.

And if you hone in on a specific target person you’ll limit the growth in your business.

But what I’ve found, and what I’ve learned from my mentors is that the opposite is true.

When you highlight more of what makes you unique and focus in on the specific people that feel most energizing to you, you become magnetic to those people.

Because you become a specialist for them and you help them feel seen and understood.

When you direct your energy towards everyone, you’re less magnetic and end up attracting people that aren’t the best fit.

Owning what makes you unique as a creator takes you from being a small fish in a big pond to a big fish in a little pond.

Of course, that also means you have to be okay with turning some people away. But it lets you own curiosities and lets your ideal customer know you’re the right person for them. This small shift is what’s allowing me to build my biz to 6 figures this year and is gonna be a major factor in attracting more of my people. Let me know if this lands. Do you feel called to own more of what makes you unique?

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Enjoy The Process By Avoiding These 10 Things

At some point in life, we enjoy the process. As a kid, creating was fun. Remember how epic finger painting was?

But somewhere along the line we needed to play less and adult more.

Hence, expectations got added in and things that used to be enjoyable started to feel like a chore.

What I’ve come to realize is there isn’t any destination or outcome or thing to win. It’s all just an evolving journey.

If we forget to play and enjoy the process because we’re fixated on a future outcome, we miss the whole thing and are miserable along the way.

So that’s 1 thing to avoid–forgetting to play as you build your dreams and journey through life.

Thus, here are 9 other things that can hold you back:

2. Neglecting your wellbeing—you can’t show up in exhaustion.

3. Waiting for inspiration—action leads to more inspiration, waiting usually leads to more anxiety

4. Having no structure—while we do need time to just flow and make new connections, creativity also needs routine.

If you never take time to act on your creative impules or don’t give yourself space to develop your ideas, you don’t get the chance to really tap into your own magic

5. Focusing more on the outcome than the process—clinging to an outcome is a sure way to be unhappy and slow yourself down. It’s more helpful to practice a shot 100 times than to obsess about whether the first one will go in

6. Not giving attention to self-limiting beliefs and sabotaging tendencies—most of our thoughts and decisions are led by the unconscious mind. Without looking at it, we get it our own way

7. Putting too much weight on what others think—We’re wired for love and belonging, so it makes sense to want to be liked. But you can’t control what others think and they’re usually more focused on themselves than you.

In the words of the late Virgil Abloh, prioritize your ideas over the opinions of others

8. Not embracing your uniqueness—There is no such thing as normal. Your weirdness is your superpower.

9. Wanting to be perfect—Making mistakes is the pathway to creation

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Letting Go of Perfectionism

How to let go of perfectionism? Do you ask this to yourself?

You ever want to do something and then instead of doing it your mind tells you why your idea sucks, and the 1000 things you need to do to make it better?

(or is that just me? 🤔)

Anyways, if you can relate, then you know how much this slows you down. It makes you jump through hoops until the idea is “ready” (read as: took way more time and stress than it needed to)

And that’s not fun or good for the spirit or good for the people that need your impact.

So I’m gonna share 1 thing that’s often at the root of this pattern. With this, you can create things with way more ease and avoid perfectionism. Cool?

This one BIG lesson keeps coming up for me.

I remember when I had my first event for my first company, Innerglow.

We charged $16 per person. I was like, “yo if people are paying me $16 whole dollars then they need a 3 hour, jam packed transformative event.”

Of course, I quickly learned people would much rather we cut the time in half and give them the same impact. Plus they were willing to pay even more for less time.

And my mind was like, “wait— I can DO LESSSSSS and still create something I was proud of that had a huge impact?”

But you know how lessons are—they need some time to integrate.

So after a few years of being consistent with a weekly newsletter.

It started to feel like a lot. Even though I love sharing my ideas with people, and receive lovely replies when I send it. (thanks your messages mean a lot)

But I realized, what slowed me down was thinking it needed to be such a big thing.

Like honestly, I looked back at some of my old emails and laughed cause they could’ve been like 4 separate emails haha.

But what is underneath it all in wanting perfectionism?

From my experience and working with clients going through the same stuff, I realized it often comes down to self worth.

A part of you doesn’t feel worthy, so you feel you need to do more and more and more…ugh exhausting.

Truth is—no one wants a long ass email or a marathon of a course or cares that you spent 3 months on Canva perfecting your logo.

They just want you and your energy. In its most imperfect way. Because it’s valuable.

It’s life changing. More importantly, it’s more than enough.

So my friend, can you give yourself permission to do less and not think of perfectionism? (read as: own your worthiness and show up as your amazing self)

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Why 99% of People Are Scared of Success

Are you scared of success?

This was a question that came to me 2 months ago, and surprisingly my answer was yes.

It kinda shook me because I was like, “Why would I deny myself of the life I want?”

But I realized the hard part about being successful…

And when I say successful, I mean aligned with your values. Be a vessel for the messages you need to deliver and own your full power.

Share the energy that is pouring out of you, even with fear. I mean honoring the curiosity that’s begging you to tap into it.

The hard part about allowing this shift to happen is that then you have to TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LIFE and ownership of your uniqueness and success.

And you wanna know the pain that comes with that?

You have to sit with and move through identities of being a victim and defined by a path someone else laid out, being small and being powerless.

Which requires several ego deaths, lots of letting go and lots of self-acceptance to hold space for that level of power.

So it makes sense why the majority of people avoid this and why my nervous system was resistant to making space for this newer version of me.

Since my initial question, what’s felt most empowering is to unlearn the shame that made me feel like I was bad, a burden, weird or too much because of my desires, my mistakes, my curiosity or the experiences that influenced me.

And when I sat with my inner child and asked him, “How can I acknowledge you?”

He responded back, “affirm the parts of me that are different, honor my intensities, let me play. Appreciate my imperfections.”

Woooooooo. What a message.

So if you too are feeling called to lean more into your power and success, I invite you to sit with the following 2 questions.

(And I encourage you to approach these questions without shame and without invalidating your trauma. But to lovingly acknowledge your power.)

  1. How have I participated in creating my current reality?
  2. What good fortune do I ignore or deflect as a way to maintain my identity of not-enoughness?

In service to your liberation 🙏🏾

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How To Stand Out As An Online Creator

What’s your personal philosophy?

That’s a question I help my clients clarify.

And it’s a big deal because your personal philosophy is your secret sauce as an online creator. And once you’re clear on it you’re able to focus your time on what energizes you, your people are drawn to you, and you make yourself a luxury.

So I’m gonna share brief insights on how you can get clear on your own personal philosopy so you can create more harmony with your business, create content that feels fresh and easier, and create offers that convert better.

I helped my client Jackie clarify her’s. It helped her fill her client roster and generate $30k in less than 3 months. More importantly, it helped her make content that felt good to her.

Watch her 1 min and 30 sec case study here where she shares about our experience working together.

Back to your secret sauce…

You have a unique set of skills, experiences, curiosities, natural talents and character traits.

But what most people do and what I did for most of my life was treat the different parts of me like they were all separate.

But when you find the through line, the way the dots connect, you’re able to create your personal philosophy.

And with that you escape all competition and start operating from your zone of genius + you know the best way to be of service to others.

My interests and experiences led me to develop competence. This helps in transforming my internal world, understanding human psychology and simplifying information so it’s useful, marketable and inspires action.

When I combine it all together I’m able to create my personal philosophy:

Create freedom from the inside out.

And when I apply this philosophy it looks like—helping others turn limiting beliefs into empowering ones, share and market their curiosity, and build online income around their knowledge/skills.

That’s the basis of my main program: Clarity, Courage & Creation

And if their is any part of you that feels energized by what I shared, I’d love to help you clarify your personal philosophy, so you can use your secret sauce to feel more free on the inside and grow your online service-based business. Reply with “secret sauce” to this email and we’ll jam on yours together. Love,

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Use The Compound Effect To Make Small Daily Actions Easier

The concept of compounding applies to many areas of life, and can help you make the small frequent investments that lead to larger gains.

**Beeple’s daily art posts for 14 years are a great example of the compound effect outside of monetary investments.**He made headlines for selling an NFT of his work for $69 million, but I find the story behind his journey the most fascinating.

Beeple has a section on his website called Everydays, where he’s shared his work for the last 5000+ days. A description of the page reads, “These pictures are all done from start to finish every day. The purpose of the project is to help me get better at different things.”

Here’s the first post he shared on May 1, 2007:

Here’s a more recent post he shared on September 1, 2020:

Creating and sharing each day allowed his skills, audience and leverage to compound. And with the internet we’re able to get a glimpse into Beeple’s journey through the archives of his work.

Beeple’s story and the concept of compounding pushed me to ask myself: What is something I want to commit to investing in each day? I had a few things come to mind that all fall under either health, learning or creating. I know these small daily acts will lead to larger benefits.

And now I want to extend the question to you. What do you want to commit to investing in each day? The results will surely compound.

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How To Like Yourself More (And Grow At The Same Time)

As ambitious people, we often think about ways we want to grow.

But can only focusing on things you want to change, do more harm than good?

That’s been a BIG question for me of late.

And here’s what I realized:

  1. Much of my self-judgement is not my own voice. It’s a learned habit from ways I was criticized as a kid.
  2. The foundation of transformation is self-compassion and acceptance

You may think you need to beat yourself up to be effective and grow as a person, but consider how you’d talk to a friend or a young child you wanted to help.

(Hopefully) you wouldn’t tell them all the ways they suck; you’d acknowledge their efforts and meet them with kindness.

So why can we be so harsh to ourselves?

Research shows, a lot of the way we parent ourself is influenced by how our caretakers treated us.

If you were often criticized, blamed, ignored, or physically punished as a kid, you’ll likely treat yourself in the same manner as an adult.

And even if your parents were encouraging, you still may have received disapproval from siblings, peers, teachers and other adults in your life.

So when you beat yourself up, it’s generally a learned behavior and not always the most helpful response to the situation.

What’s a more effective way to change behavior than making yourself feel like shit?

SELF-ACCEPTANCE

And the path to self-acceptance is led by self-compassion.

When we meet ourselves with compassion, we can acknowledge we’ve done the best we could with our past circumstance and better understand our behavior.

For example, I noticed there were situations when I’d say yes, but didn’t want to.

In these situations, I shifted from getting upset with myself to investigating why the pattern existed.

I noticed my need to people please stemmed from childhood experiences where I wasn’t safe to express my needs or emotions.

So as an adult, I continued this pattern to feel safe and loved.

Once I understood the pattern, it was easier to give myself love and change it.

As you give yourself compassion, it’s easier to forgive yourself, change, let go of exaggerated guilt/shame and like yourself.

Because much of liking ourselves comes down to acceptance and judging ourself less. You can’t hate yourself into a version you like.

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Creative Genius Is A Myth—4 Ways To Develop Your Creativity

Traditional views on creativity lead you to believe only a small percentage of people are born creative geniuses. 

Accordingly, we look at Kanye West, Virgil Abloh and Rihanna and assume they all must have a special gene that allows them to create brilliant work across multiple disciplines. “The Creative Curve” by Allen Gannett debunks the myth of the creative genius. Moreover, Gannett declares creativity is developed with specific actions and there’s a science to the work that goes viral. Certainly, innovative people are led by their curiosity and follow four frameworks to develop their artistry. 

4 Ways To Develop Your Creativity: 

1. Consume: Dive deep into the content that piques your curiosity and inspires you. Kanye West is well known for the soulful samples he uses in his production 

2. Imitate: Make things similar to the stuff you like. Some examples are the following:

a. Learn lessons behind your favorite creators;

b. Take the thought you resonate with most from the different resources and combine them to make something fresh; or

c. Find your own unique voice Virgil has a three percent approach, where he creates a new design by changing an original by three percent. 

3. Community: Build relationships with other creators. Once, Rihanna described her “establishment at the Fenty house as a hub”. She added, “I’m welcoming everyone’s vision here, because that’s what it’s gonna take. I can’t just think I know everything.” 

4. Iterate: Finally, make bad things until they become good. When Kanye received a question about taking the leap from production to rapping he retorted, “My beats was wack at one point, dog…I wasn’t always having hot beats. I learned how to make hot beats.” 

Overall, no idea is original and people aren’t born as creative geniuses. Rather, they leverage consumption, imitation, community and iteration to find their unique style. Innovation is a natural byproduct of them connecting the dots.