In today’s fast paced society time is compressed, work is challenging, and life is stressful.

Waking up each day can sometimes make you feel like you’re at the beginning of an endurance race.

Slamming together your day, chewing and swallowing something of sustinance, if you are a parent, managing to get a few extra people organized, and then launching into the day can be filled with challenges.

Some people are still actually commuting to work in time frames longer than an hour!

If you do the math, two hours of commuting 200 plus days a year is a minimum of ten days of our your life waiting to get to work and get home!

And the air we are breathing on those crammed freeways, subway tunnels, and bus rides is not FRESH!

Or maybe you are one of the many who’ve chosen or been relegated to working from home, finding yourself seated behind a screen for what seems like eternity, only to stand up, and then be pulled into the vortex of your phone!

Ironically the increasing demand of your time from the technical innovations that were supposed to save you time has become exponential.

Constantly at the beck and call of your bosses, colleagues, friends, and even acquaintances with e-mails, texts, messages of every kind even the dreaded Emoji is an essential part of your daily conversations!

Eating in general has become a real nutrition experiment.

Mastering the challenge of acquiring, scoffing, and digesting food that is prepared for you in every imaginable way has become a daily competition, and one you are surely losing.

Food is fuel, and the fuel today is often not digestible without serious consequences.

Oh ya, and in order to squeeze more into your day, you are likely shaving time from sleep.

Sleep is becoming an endangered species of sorts.

Most likely, the first thing you do when you have a deadline, or something you need to accomplish is compromise your sleep.

On top of that, even though sleep is THE most important element of daily recovery, it’s not unusual to pay limited attention to what you sleep in each night, and how you can make sure the quality of your sleeping space is more than adequate.

See that, I just used the word adequate! That is surely not the word I should be using to describe the quality of my sleep space, or my sleep in general.

Sleep should be stellar!

On top of that, society at large has begun to use drugs and other depressants to nudge into sleep. So many people today are addicted to sleep drugs, it has become a serious epidemic.

Add that to the new found love of prescription pain medication because people are literally running their bodies on empty, and experiencing a really nice combination of side effects!

Side effects we don’t even understand the consequences of just yet!

So what should you do you say?

Well here are ten things you can start doing today that will at least make a dent in the downward spiral.

1 — Do a Time and Space Audit

Sit down this week, pick three days in a row, and write down in a journal what you do throughout the day with your time.

What time do you get up, what do you do from the time you get up to the time you are about to go to sleep, what do you do on your commute, what do you do with your day, when do you eat, how often are you on your media devices, etc., etc., etc.

Write it all down. Log it!

Now, what are you going to do about it!

You’re going to sit down with yourself and have a frank conversation about where you are wasting time, and where you are doing things that aren’t contributing to your energy bank, but rather sucking the life out of it!

Useless TV watching

Video game playing

E-mailing

Social media doom scrolling

Talking to people you don’t like

Doing work that isn’t fulfilling

List it all and start purging!

Create your personal schedule, don’t just accept that your life HAS to be the way it is today, you have the power to re-craft it, and make it your own.

2 — Establish a Moratorium on Your Sleep Deprivation

One of the first things out of the gate that you need to do is determine a relatively consistent sleep schedule. Start to establish a time that you WILL go to bed and a time that you WILL wake up. Try to make the time in between consistent as well, and get it as close to 6–8 hours as possible.

You don’t want to be sleep depraved! 

Yes, I said depraved.

3 — Practice Good Sleep Hygiene

Make sure you have a good mattress, pillow, and sheets, and keep them clean!

Go to bed in the dark (shut down all the technology that lights up the room overnight).

Keep your room temperature cool.

Un-plug from digital media at least 30 minutes to an hour before bed.

Just try the above and you will be surprised how much better you sleep.

4 — Drink More Water Than You Think You Should

Basically, most of us are walking around each day either dehydrated, or close to it. Dehydration is one of the big reasons we get tired during the day and it’s also a reason we feel hungry. So drinking water frequently throughout the day reduces fatigue and limits binge eating. Carry a bottle with you so you keep filling it up and emptying it into your tummy regularly!

5 — Take a Break Every Day for at Least 15 Minutes and Do Nothing

Well, you don’t need to do nothing, but the something you do should be refreshing. You can nap, go for a walk, journal, meditate, sit in silence, or read a good book. But don’t go to your social media, don’t answer emails, and don’t spend time watching your favourite TV show. Just take some time for you to be disconnected from the wild world out there, and all the stuff that permeates your existence these days.

6 — Have a Good Conversation

The idea of just sitting face to face with someone and talking about a wonderful topic of interest today is dying. We’re sliding very slowly into the abyss of digital media, and we are losing the art of talking and listening, and learning about all the interesting things on this planet we call mother earth.

Rule of thumb: ask good questions, listen to the answers, and enjoy the time shared with someone else.

7 — Eat More Real Food

Try to eat at least 5–6 meals a week that you actually make from scratch, or someone you know prepares from scratch. Use fresh ingredients, real food, not processed food. This talent is slowly being lost, we are slowly becoming completely disconnected from what we are putting in our mouths.

And we’re getting really, really fat because of it! Or really sick inside.

8 — Take Time When You Eat

To add to the above, when you eat, eat slowly, taste the food, enjoy the food, and connect with what you are eating. Stop scoffing the food down so you can get to the next thing on the agenda, or eating the food while you do five other things, or eat while you are standing, worse, walking!

Sit down, take your time, and just enjoy the meal! You will be surprised how much more you enjoy it, and how much less you actually eat.

Maybe combine it with #6 and you’ve got an amazing connection point in your day.

9 — Do Some Kind of Exercise

You don’t have to go to the gym. You don’t have to win a competition. You don’t have to beat yourself into the ground. Just start moving, please!

Exercise invigorates you, improves the quality of your daily life, reduces stress, and prevents sickness, so how can you ignore all that and not do something, anything!

Going for a walk is enough (a brisk walk for 20 minutes is good enough). Play a recreational sport. Do a yoga video, or a workout video at home. It doesn’t matter, just get out and do something physical every day.

10 — Count Your Wins

At the end of every day, take the time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished, and no matter how small, celebrate the wins.

Counting your wins re-sets your state of mind, sees you complete your day with positive alignment.

Positive alignment at day’s end allows you to sleep better, and sees you rise with a greater sense of happiness the next day.

Try to make a change today in your life, maybe pick one of the ideas I talked about above and implement it, but start slowly incrementally shifting your life and you will see a difference in how you feel.

1- Space/Time audit

2- Moratorium on sleep deprivation

3- Practice good sleep hygiene

4- Drink more water

5- Take a break from life each day

6- Have a good conversation

7- Eat more real food

8- Take your time eating

9- Do some kind of exercise

10-Count your wins every night

I’ve lived a very charmed life when it comes to working with greatness.

When I was a little boy I wanted to be a professional football player. I dreamed of someday putting on a helmet and walking onto a football field and playing in front of thousands of people.

I loved football.

Alas, I wasn’t born with the genes to make me fast and big and measurably capable of playing professional football. Or at least, that is what I have told myself all these years since leaving the game I loved.

Maybe I could have played professional football, but I hadn’t yet learned the valuable lessons that have since marked my life through the incredible experience of training Olympic champions.

After leaving football behind, I decided a life of fixing and building high-performing athletes would be my connection to the world I loved, the world of competitive sport.

The lessons I have learned from these Gold Medal Olympians will serve me for the rest of my life. Each one has left an indelible mark on me, a simple mark of humility.

Each one is completely different. Their personal journeys all have their own expression born from their own perspective and experiences.

They are all impressive in their own light.

These lessons learned I am now sharing in every way possible. I share them in my mentorship of others, I share them with my friends, I share them with my daughter, and now I share them with you.

Be You

Stop trying to be someone else, to live up to someone else’s vision of who you should be, what the public adulation wants you to be, or perhaps your social circle wants you to be.

Just simply be you.

In every one of these champions, I saw them embrace themselves either through their journey or perhaps before I even met them.

Each of them is unique, and each of them makes no apologies for being who they are, nor should each of us.

Just be you.

Fear Not to Overreach

What does it mean to overreach?

Well, it simply means that you can’t rest on what you have accomplished, or where you are now. You most certainly should celebrate and live in the moment, but even so, while you are on this earth, you are meant to explore it and yourself.

To see how you really can grow. Growth is the key to true fulfillment.

If you want to grow, you must overreach, you must go beyond your current state.

Fear not who you can be.

Stop Taking Yourself So Seriously and Enjoy the Ride!

Each of those champions is intense and focused when they need to be, but one of the common threads of them all is that they also know how to be free. 

Free in the moment, free in expressing themselves, and free in exploring the possibilities.

To be truly free, you need to let go. Let go of your ego, and embrace your spirit.

Dance, sing, laugh, float, fly, fall, jump, cry, hug, and flop, just don’t be so serious all the time.

Experience the Mountain

All mountains can be climbed.

It is not the summit that is the point of the climb (nor the gold medal) it is the experience of the climb. 

What you learn, what you see, how it shapes you, how it contributes to your sculpture, the one you are slowly chipping away at for yourself. 

And it is not the end, but simply a station once attained simply meant to prepare you for your next journey.

Embrace Support

None of these people stood at the top of the podium at the Olympic Games without the assistance of so many.

No one achieves anything without embracing a community of support.

That is the key though, embrace your community, respect your community, return the support of your community, and recognize that it is a part of you.

You cannot do it alone.

I have been changed by every one of these fine souls, Alex Bilodeau taught me about passion, Jennifer Heil taught me about work ethic, Mikael Kingsbury taught me about fun, Tessa Virtue taught me about tenacity, and Scott Moir taught me to free my spirit.

They all taught me these lessons and so much more. I have been extremely blessed to have them all pass through my life and contribute to who I am.

But such life lessons are not empowering unless they are shared for the greater good, so I offer them to you the reader as food for thought in your own journey.

Reach for the stars but in so doing, keep your feet firmly connected to the ground as it is the foundation for your every step.

It seems these days, perhaps because there is so much more news, we seem to experience tragedy almost daily. 

In some ways, sadly, we have lost our sensitivity, we have become numb.

Tragedy has unfortunately become the gray noise in the background, things that fill the editorial content calendars of all the 24-hour news desks around the globe; tsunamis, earthquakes, school shootings, wildfires, wars, mass casualty events of every sort.

It’s someone else’s problem.

But it isn’t really, if you are involved.

What does that mean, involved?

Does it mean that you know someone who is experiencing this trauma?

You are related to someone, you knew them once, you’ve met them, or maybe you’ve just heard of them? 

Maybe there’s a kinship, something you’ve done or experienced , just like the person who’s lost everything or been injured.

It makes a difference when you are involved.  It makes you pause.

We are all individuals who seek to differentiate ourselves. Clothes, accessories, material goods, jobs, tattoos, friends, homes, cars, and so much more, these are the symbols of status, but also the symbols of definition and difference.

Who you are, or who you are not.

To be the same as someone else in our minds is to be branded insignificant, so in our quest to be significant, we accumulate and connect with material items and statements of individuality.

But material goods fade, and so in turn require renewed emphasis on the next item of business, a never-ending quest.

However, when we realize that our growth as an individual within a community, and our contribution to that community is the secret sauce of fulfillment, that’s when things get interesting.

This is where many philanthropists get it wrong.

The person who espouses to be giving away so much wealth in order to help the underprivileged is often left empty and filling the void with still more donations.

Ultimately the truth of a philanthropic life is giving back to the community with whom you are connected. Establishing a path of contribution and an alignment with real human connection is the ticket.

The unfettered love of community is the anchor in our lives, at least for those of us fortunate to have a community around us.

Much of this is the centre point of the success of Facebook, where anyone who wants to, can create a community of connection.

Facebook provides the soil for community when used well. But it has also, along with much of social media, created the side effect of isolation.

We are alone in our community instead of truly connected to it. We now live in virtual communities where there is emotional and intellectual connection, but what seems to be missing is the true mutual suffering and success that used to occur in physical communities.

Physical community is the real deal!

When people suffer and succeed together, build and create together, support one another, and take turns doing so, a bond is forged that is empowering. It empowers each individual to reach higher, or to overcome adversities that alone may seem impossible.

That is the power of real community.

As we see these days, when tragedy occurs, the communities where there are deep roots of connection are the ones that somehow find the silver lining of “one for all”.  

It doesn’t replace the lost and injured, but consoles the pain and suffering of the moment, and the moments to come.

We are better when we are part of a community, individual in our character and aspirations, but aligned on our connection and what matters to us all.

They say that not all stress is the same.

The literature provides us with a framework for understanding stress that may serve us, and stress that may deplete us.

Eustress is the positive interpretation of stress; it’s generally associated with being energized, having higher degrees of performance, and motivation to make change, gives us a positive outlook, and helps us overcome challenges and sickness.

Distress is generally associated with a feeling of unpleasantness, hardship, and energy depletion, perceived as beyond our ability to cope, and can lead to physical sickness, disease, and mental/emotional depression.

Sounds like stress is a little out of your control.

On the contrary, although some stress is imposed, and beyond your control, the vast majority of what you interpret as distressful is just that, an interpretation.  

You give it meaning.

And the more you engage in the negative meaning of the stress (effectively defining it as distress), the more it creates further investment in the meaning and the more distressful it becomes.

But, you do have control over its meaning.

Understand that the primary role of your brain and neurological system is to keep you safe.  

Death is not an option your brain wants to consider.

Your brain is being bombarded every moment of every day with literally millions of pieces of information.

Find that hard to believe?  

Just think for a second at all the noises around you at any given moment of the day. Take a second to simply listen.  

Take each sound you hear and for a moment, recognize and connect to each one.

Crazy isn’t it?  

The sound of the fridge running, the wind blowing, the de-humidifier, a dog barking, a car starting.  That’s just a sample of what I heard just during the time I was writing this paragraph!

Your brain has to decide what is worth acknowledging, and what is not.

It manages things so you can cope without you even knowing because if you had to know, you would simply be overwhelmed all the time!

Just think for a minute about the volume of sound at a nightclub.  Your brain recognizes and predicts you are going into a nightclub, and so it begins to manage what you actually acknowledge.  

It might feel loud, but you are soon talking with the person next to you and using other senses to navigate the conversation.  Your brain slowly revises its focus, tunes out the unwanted, and connects with the wanted.

Imagine for a second if a few days later, in the middle of a conversation at breakfast with your friend or family member, sound from your stereo suddenly just started playing at the volume you encountered in the nightclub!

You’d be in shock!  You’d cover your ears, and you’d run to find the volume knob to shut the sound down.  It would be untenable!

Why the difference in reaction?  

Predictive perception.

Your brain is predictive. It needs to operate with a sense of expectation.  What it believes is important now, and what is not important. And the most important stuff is the stuff that might hurt us.

The moment you walk into the bar, your brain has already acknowledged it will be loud, and you will be safe.  It’s expected.

The moment your stereo begins to blare full blast without your permission, that’s not what was predicted, and it’s therefore evaluated as unsafe.

Now, let’s throw a little curve ball at this concept.  

What if you had a really terrible experience at a concert a few years earlier when the sound was just beyond your capacity to adapt, and you were left with tinnitus in your ears for a few months after the concert?

Now, when your friend asks you to go to a nightclub with a live band this Friday night, you begin to feel distressed.  Your brain interprets the potential for loud sounds as threatening, and as such, your neurological system begins to prepare for something in the future that hasn’t happened yet but might cause harm.

You begin to feel anxious as Friday night gets closer, maybe you start to have a headache, or you feel overwhelmed, and fatigued.  As the night comes closer, you feel distressed, and yet you’re not even sure why.  You want to go out for a great evening with a friend, but your brain thinks otherwise.

The interpretation and reaction to sound volume stress has been created by your brain perceiving it as threatening.

Imagine for a second that you add in other life elements that degrade your neurological system’s ability to cope; lack of sleep, dehydration, low blood sugar.  You’re in this state when your friend calls to organize your night out…….and you snap and tell them you aren’t going out, you’re done with partying!

Your friend is perplexed by your reaction, and so are you, but this is what feels right, even though it feels wrong!

Your brain has defined what distress is and it’s fully invested in it.

This is but a simple example of how your neurological system manages information, and how you can and do have the ability to manifest different outcomes.

You can acknowledge that sound makes you nervous, you can prepare yourself for what might lay ahead, redefine your relationship with the information, and create a different outcome.

Once you begin to acknowledge that you give meaning to the information coming into your brain, you can choose to give it meaning that imparts safety, or at least you can choose to be more responsive to the information (considering all the facts like you’re in a nightclub) rather than reactive (it’s loud and unexpected in your house).

I’ve talked about some of these concepts in a different way in earlier blog posts. 

The concept of the story is how we give things meaning. How everything we see and understand is just a form of story, and how once we acknowledge that we’ve created the meaning, and we become aware of that meaning, we can also be accountable for changing the meaning and creating adaptation through new stories that serve.

The more you understand how your stories inform your interpretations, the more you become the owner of your relationship with stress, what is deemed positive, and what is deemed to be negative.

It’s a liberating truth.

You aren’t always aware of the narrative that circulates in your mind.

Even when the words you say to yourself are internally audible, you’re not likely paying real attention, because if you did you’d likely be disappointed about how not-so-nice you are to yourself.

And you are often not aware of the language you might use in conversation and how it sets the table for how you experience the world around you.

Words like:

Challenge

Difficult

Hard

Impossible

Unlikely

Not bad

Fine

When you use these words in sentences to describe how you feel about something that might or might not happen in the future or to describe what is happening now, you make it so.

You create the outcome before the outcome has occurred.

One of my very favorite books, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, is an important read for just about anyone, and I highly recommend you read it if you never have.

The thrust of the book is to help the reader recognize how everything we know and understand has been driven by the social, cultural, and environmental influences of being human.  

As he describes, the domestication of man/woman.

We believe what we believe because we’ve been told to believe it, or we’ve experienced it.  And even when we have experienced it somehow believing it was what we experienced, we don’t recognize that so much of the experience has been defined by what society told us to expect or understand it to mean.

The four agreements are:

• Be impeccable with your word
• Don’t take anything personally
• Don’t assume anything
• Always do your best

When you really get down to living, and you live by these agreements, a lot of the complicated becomes far more simple.

The first agreement is the table set.  Be impeccable with your words.  Say what you mean.  Use the words both in external interaction, and internal narrative that truly align with your intention.

But even more importantly, understand that the choice of words you use to describe something immediately colors your interpretation, and the interpretation of those with whom you speak.

Perhaps even more importantly, the tone and facial affect in external conversation can literally redefine the words and their intention.

When you say something like, “This is so hard”, and you accompany it with an emphatic tone and a facial expression of difficulty,  you impart the weight of the intention to others, and even more important, you place an exclamation point on the essence of your description.

You make it hard.

Live with that for just a few seconds.  

You make it hard.

It doesn’t mean there is no effort, or that you must not overcome, but saying it is so only serves to make it so.

When you realize that the language you use to describe circumstances, situations, or personal states to yourself or others establishes meaning, you begin to realize you can use language and words that set the table in a manner that empowers rather than limits you.

When someone asks you how it’s going, instead of responding, “Oh, busy!” Take a moment and simply say, “My life is full”.

Said with the right tone and expression and the person across from you experiences your sense of fulfillment.

What’s that you say, then I would be lying…….

If that’s true, that’s an even bigger discussion, one I have covered in previous posts in this blog. But if you are fulfilled and doing many things you love, labeling it “busy” only serves to position it as overwhelming rather than inspiring.

Inspire yourself and others through your language.  Be impeccable with your words.

I hope what I write is valuable, if it is, please take the time to share it.

How many times did you take your car in for an oil change last year?

How many times did you have it cleaned, maybe even detailed?

How many times have you paid extra to have some work done that was needed before the car broke down?

If you’re like most people, you take your car into the shop on a regular basis, you sit in the waiting room waiting to find out what you owe, and you shell out the money, even after you scream “It’s how much?!?!”

But a lot of people seem to have this strange viewpoint around proactive care of their bodies.

They avoid going to the doctor?

They don’t go to see a manual therapist of any kind unless they are in pain?

They cringe at the idea of spending money on a massage, or treatment of some sort.

They don’t invest in the services of a Neuro-Reconditioning professional who can build them a program that will make them more resilient and fit.

They’ll spend hours waiting at an emergency ward when they’re sick as a dog, but won’t spend a quarter of that time waiting at their own doctor’s office for a check up!

Early detection has been proven to cut a lot of pathology off at the pass, and make some things that used to kill us, very treatable!

But the only way to detect early is to get in the habit of being examined.

In my personal Neuro-Reconditioning practice, I have so many people say to me; “I only wish I’d met you ten years ago”.

Because we sort so many movement dysfunctions out, get them moving better, and all of a sudden they are performing better, and they are injured less often and for less time.

I often say to them, “If you met me ten years ago, you probably wouldn’t have done what I told you to do”.

Truth is, people are averse to putting in the work until they reach a point where sickness or injury are getting in the way.

Unfortunate really!

So what should we be doing regularly anyway?

A Yearly Check Up with Your Physician

Every year, get in to see your doctor, discuss how you are feeling, have your BP checked, blood chemistry, and let them send you for any tests they think you should have based on preventative care recommendations.

It’s that easy! Most of this stuff is covered by personal insurance or government healthcare, but even if it isn’t, what did you spend on your car last year please?

See a Good Manual or Massage Therapist Once a Month

Making sure your body is in alignment, keeping things moving pain free, and clearing the limiting factors can make a huge difference in your day-to-day movement. It also keeps the bigger issues at bay.

What’s that? It costs $100 to go see a therapist, maybe more, maybe less?

How much does an oil change cost?

Do 20 Minutes of Exercise Three Times a Week

That’s all you need to do to get the beneficial effects of exercise when it comes to heart disease and stroke.

Just get out and do something three times a week for 20 minutes that raises your heart and breathing rate to a level where you struggle to have a consistent conversation.

More exercise than that, or harder exercise than that is great, but when you’re doing it, it’s all about your fitness goals.

What do you want to accomplish?

If you want to move more efficiently, feel more mobile, and perform at your best, then spend more time with a qualified training professional.

But if your goal is simply to increase longevity and quality of life, just get those three little sessions in a week!

Buy A Scale and Weigh Yourself Regularly

Yes, you read the correct heading.

If you weigh yourself regularly, you are more likely to do something about the occasional rise in the number.

But if you never weigh yourself until that trip to the doctor’s office, well, now you have even more reasons not to go!

Being overweight, especially getting close to obesity (which some 60% of the population is considered to be these days!) is a huge health risk.

So monitoring your weight, and managing your weight are very effective ways of staving off pain and suffering down the line.

Eat Good Quality Food

Some people are filling their gas tanks 2–3 times a week to the tune of $200–300, but won’t spend that on groceries because they’re too expensive.

Instead, we buy processed foods, quick low quality snacks, fast food, and junk food to solve the energy demands.

That’s like filling your car with gas that has sand in it!

Eventually the motor is going to seize and your car is going to be useless, and eventually your body is going to crash and you will be in a very dark place.

Eat more real food. Cook for yourself. Stop buying stuff that’s already made for you.

There is just so much to be gained through good quality food and so much to be lost through eating crap!

Take better care of yourself than you do your car, that’s just the minimum you should be doing.

KISS Principles are key.

There are three forms of currency we use every day in our lives, one of them is limited, one requires constant consideration and monitoring, and the other has no limits.

The one we often think of as being limited is money. We only have so much, we have to earn it, if we don’t have it we get stressed, and if we need it we become desperate.

But when you think about it, it is truly limitless.

There is no effective limitation to the possibilities of how much money we can have or accumulate.

You may not believe this if you don’t have a lot of it, but listen to this and hear it.

Money is not your problem, how you manage time and energy is your real problem.

These other two forms of currency are far less abundant, and yet we spend far less consideration on how we manage them.

Time is functionally restricted.

We all have 24 hours in each day, we all get 365 days in a year, and depending on our life span if we’re lucky enough to live to a ripe old age of 90 or 100, we will have roughly 40–45 million minutes on this earth to live out all our dreams and aspirations.

Oh ya, and if you spend 6–8 hours sleeping each night, which we all need to do, you can cut that number down to roughly 30 million minutes of productive time.

Energy, the third currency, is like a gas tank, there is a certain amount available to us each day, and we need to manage it, we need to re-fill it each day with nutrients, sleep, rest, etc. But we generally only have so much.

Ultimately, it is this over-fixation of acquiring the first currency that eats up our available time and energy. So we need to become far more considerate of how we use these more limited commodities in our lives.

So the first thing you need to do is to understand where you are bleeding time and energy so you need to time audit your day.

For at least three to five days, write down in a log either by hand or in an EXCEL file, what you did for the last hour through all your waking hours.

Once you have this data, look for the dead spots (watching TV or spending time surfing social media), the spinning wheels spots (when you appear to be doing things, but are really achieving nothing valuable), the circle back spots (where you keep revisiting the same problems or stuff and you are not being productive) and the energy out elements (when you are doing stuff you hate doing).

I bet you dollars to donuts that you will find that when you do this, you will be spending much more of your time doing a lot of the stuff in that last paragraph rather than being productive, enjoying energy in the elements, and recovering your energy so you can come back and do more when you need to do more.

Once you have a handle on how you are using your time, the second thing you need to do is take a longer look at where you are spending your energy.

There are things you are passionate about doing, they make you feel energized, sometimes you walk away from them (which can be hard to do) feeling like you are on cloud nine. These are energy IN elements of your life.

Take out a sheet of paper, or make an EXCEL document again and create a left column and a right-hand column.

What are your energy in elements? List them in that left-hand column.

Now list your energy OUT elements in the right-hand column.

Look at it for a while.

Digest how much of your life you spend doing things on the right-hand column, and how much of your life you spend doing things on the left-hand column.

Scary isn’t it? Shocking!

We all spend far too much of our precious currencies wastefully or inaccurately.

So the third thing you need to do is reconstruct your day so that you are wasting less time.

Get rid of the time wasters, or position them and understand their role in your day.

For example; if you want to watch TV, try to determine an amount of time for your indulgence, and choose programming that is positively affecting you. If you come away from the show motivated, uplifted, and rested, then keep it in your day, but if it’s only serving to increase your blood pressure (the news of the day!!) or leaves you disturbed or stressed, then get it out of your play list.

The fourth thing you need to do is maximize energy IN elements and begin to remove, allocate, or authorize others to take care of those things for you. If you hate cleaning the house, then see what a house cleaner will cost you. If you don’t like doing business bookkeeping, look for a bookkeeper.

What’s that, you say, you can’t afford them? Is it that you can’t afford them, or you haven’t prioritized these costs so they open up time and energy flows for you?

Craft your day, own the time you spend, and pump it full of energy IN essentials.

Finally, the last thing you need to do is to take stock regularly and review how you are doing with your schedule and your elimination of energy OUT, and injection of energy IN.

• Plan IT
• Execute IT
• Review IT
• Revise IT
• Run IT again
• And be consistent!

These five things, if really considered thoughtfully, and constructed with you in mind, will yield huge results, and you will be amazed how much the first currency will appear to rise in your bank account! Give it a try!

P.S. There might be someone out there who you think this post can help, please consider sharing this with them so we can all reach higher! 

My mom always told me that when my friends were coming over, it was really important that I share my toys. How could I expect people to share with me if I didn’t share with them?

The fine lesson of setting an example from mom, so true!

As I grew older I realized that sharing doesn’t always come naturally to everyone, it is certainly a learned phenomenon. One that our parents all likely tried to instill in us early on, but didn’t always succeed!

There are three things we should be willing to share without compromise with the people in our lives. If we do so, we will live a far more fulfilling and rewarding life.

The first share is love.

We set out on a course in our lives from the beginning that should include a great deal of love. Our parents love us unconditionally, right?

Not always.

A lot of people, for whatever reason, have children for the wrong reasons and start their relationship with their children on the wrong foot. Their unhappiness becomes the focal point of their child’s unhappiness.

Love is withheld. The child suffers.

No child should ever suffer from a lack of love. Love is our emotional fuel, without it, we remain deeply unfulfilled.

But let’s assume for now that we start life at least, with a good dose of love from mom and dad and the rest of our family (hopefully!).

From then on in, love is a crapshoot. We connect with people as we roll along, hopefully falling in love as we roll through a few early relationships.

Unfortunately, every break up causes us to withhold a little bit of ourselves the next time we connect, and after several failed relationships, we lose sight of the intention.

Our love is a reciprocal gift.

The first law of thermodynamics, also known as Law of Conservation of Energy, states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; energy can only be transferred or changed from one form to another.

Our love is a form of energy.

So it is within us to share it, to give it to someone else so that it can be converted by another person into something that feeds their soul.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The simplified version of this phenomenon has been expressed as, “You cannot touch without being touched.”

What we give to someone else will be reciprocated in equal measure, but it is in this phenomenon that we lose trust. We hold back the depth of our love, protecting what we believe is our core energy, concerned that it will not be reciprocated, or worse, it may be taken advantage of by the other person.

This only results in a lesser expression of love on their part, a “hedging of bets” so to speak.

The result is an unfulfilled life.

We must love whole-heartedly, unconcerned by the “what if they don’t love me back?” Or “what if they take advantage of me?” questions. These questions only cause us to withhold further, and the cycle of less energy in, less energy back is perpetuated.

Share your love, for when you share it unconditionally, the love that you will feel will be positively overwhelming.

The second share is your knowledge.

Too many people learn how to do things or create success, but decide not to share it with the community at large. The assumption being that if they share, then they won’t stand out, and their success will somehow be diminished.

In reality, when you share your knowledge the return equation becomes exponential!

If you share your knowledge, those around you will in turn share their knowledge or contribute to your further understanding. 

One of the most powerful ways of better understanding subject matter is to actually teach it and entertain questions afterwards. You gotta know it!

The simple act of sharing forces you to clarify, be clear and concise, and be ready to receive feedback.  Not always easy, but the ROI is immense.

Share your knowledge and you will be a brighter mind.

Finally, share your wisdom.

There is nothing more valuable for a younger person than the perspective of an older more seasoned veteran.

Perspective is a hard thing to have if you haven’t experienced something, and though we should all experience many things in life, sometimes it is a good thing to have the advise of a wise person on which to base our decisions.

As we age, it is our duty to guide, to provide direction, and to save some others a little time, energy, and stress by simply opening our vault of experience.

When we share with others, we grow deeply.

When we share we experience a true sense of legacy, and we leave our imprint on the world. 

We leave the world a better place.

I encourage you to share and to leave your world in a better place.

P.S. If you enjoyed it, please share it 😉

The expectation of what lies at the end of the rainbow is always what trips you up.

Expectation and all the baggage that is attached to expectation is a big driver of unhappiness and disenchantment in the world today.

Expectation drives impatience, supports an undercurrent of “what if”, and quite often leaves you empty.

I asked a friend of mine who is a mother of four how she handles all the comings and goings of every day, the chaos that is likely her life.

Her answer: “I have no expectations”

If you have no expectations, you suffer no disappointment, and in some ways no over the top elation either. You remain neutral to the high-high’s and the low-low’s.

Neutral? 

What does that mean, you don’t feel anything and so therefore you will be happy?

Neutral doesn’t mean you don’t feel things, it just means you don’t get attached to those feelings.

The immediate sensation of elation when something good happens to you, or that sense of immediate disappointment because something went wrong is normal.

But if you have a deep sense of expectation for a result and when that result doesn’t occur, your whole demeanour changes and you find yourself in a funk, then you’ve attached too much to the outcome, and not enough on the process.

This is called object reference. Being attached to the outcome or object of your desire.

It’s the same even if it’s a positive result.

Yes, be happy you won the game, or finished the project, or had a great date, but attaching future expectations to these results doesn’t serve you. Neither do over the top celebrations that leave you feeling empty the next day.

Instead of being attached to the outcome and having specific expectations of that outcome, good or bad, simply connect more with the process of reaching the intended outcome or objective.

If you just focus on the beauty of the rainbow, and not on the “treasure” at the end of the rainbow, you will in turn enjoy the rainbow for what it is, a beautiful separation of light.

This post is not just for men!

In fact I would say that both men and women should read it as the perspective might give worthy pause for consideration.

All men grow up with a chip on their shoulder, put there by their father’s and their father’s father, and put there by society at large.

You don’t feel, you do.

Your job is to work and to provide, not to connect with your feelings, or to be vulnerable.
Suck it up son, you’re not injured!

Get up, get up!

Don’t cry, why are you crying?!

What are you going to do for a living, how are you going to provide for your family?

Stop being lazy and get after it!

We watched our dad’s work their tails off, and they watched their dad’s work their tails off, and we never saw them show their soft underbelly.

The real soft underbelly.

Ya, they might have laughed and joked, roared with laughter over a good story.

They might even have been the life of the party, back-slapping, high fiving, and making everyone in the room smile.

But you never really saw them wounded or sad.

You saw them angry and frustrated, maybe for some even more than the expression of the mood, the outward punishment from those moods.

Maybe you or someone in your family suffered the wrath.

Be a manly man, no time for a woos in this world!

As men we live our lives with an understanding that to embrace our emotional center is somehow a weakness, never to be seen by anyone, not even those we love. For if we do, we risk being taken advantage of, our value lessened, our ability to succeed somehow tarnished.

So when we become fathers, we struggle with the opportunity to emotionally connect with our child.

We love them, of course we do. But showing it is not a naturally understood reality.

Having little girls perhaps softens us up, forces us to connect with a side we’ve never understood, which in some ways can be even more confusing.

Having little boys, well here we go, a chance to perpetuate the story. The story of manliness!

Grow up, get a job, make a living, take care of your people, they are your responsibility.

The truth is, you can still be a man, and be a great dad.

It’s true!

How you say?

Here are ten things you need to do every day that will help you be the best man and the best father possible.

1 — Understand that unless YOU are good to you, you can’t be good for anyone else.

Being a martyr, sucking it up, dealing with your pain only ends up making you sick. Sickness manifests in many ways.

• We carry more weight

• We sleep poorly

• We eat poorly

• We get tired easily

• We are exhausted each day

• We can’t get out of bed

• We become less active

• We feel like shit!

• We kick our dog!

Then real disease starts to appear, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, all sorts of lovely stuff.

If you are sick, you can’t be your best for others, you might try, you might get the job done, but it will be nothing like what you can really bring to the table day in and day out.

Treat yourself with care and consideration first and foremost. It’s the number one rule!

2 — Let your partner know what scares you.

When you let your partner know you are human, they begin to see you as human, not indestructible. In turn, they will begin to consider how their behaviour or energy supports you.

If they don’t know, they won’t likely read your mind.

If they know, they can help you move through your fear, they can help you get to the other side. No matter what you believe, they won’t see it as weakness, they’ll see it as vulnerability, and they’ll cherish it.

If they don’t, well they shouldn’t be your partner in the first place. Really!

3 — Being vulnerable doesn’t mean you can’t be tough when necessary.

I worked for eleven seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) and it was a funny irony that the nicest, sweetest, most vulnerable people were often the tough guys.

Yep, the tough guys had soft centers!

Perhaps because they knew they could handle themselves, they were more comfortable with not having to be tough all the time.

I’ve seen the same thing in meeting many MMA fighters, and boxers. They are often very good-natured people, and often the most connected father’s that I’ve seen.

4 — The shield you carry to manage the war of each day in business and life must be placed on the floor upon your arrival home.

When you walk in the front door to your home, understand that your home is your sanctuary. Your family is your safe place, not a place to shut down, but a place to share your life. Let your family in on what’s been going on in your world, good and bad.

Yes, we don’t have to give all the gory details and scare our kids when things are maybe not going so well, but we also don’t have to slog it out day after day, coming home with a frown on our face, and hoping no one is noticing.

Even though they are all scared shitless of asking!

The more honest and up front you are about the good and bad of life, the more they will be prepared for the life they will one day live, and the more human they will know you are, leading to greater empathy and kindness on their part for you.

5 — Treat your family better than you treat your best client!

A lot of men think (and this is true of women as well) that their family should just put up with their shit. 

They should just understand. They treat their family way worse than they would treat their worst client.

Instead, we should all be treating our family better than anyone else in our lives.

Yes, they should and will be there for you, but that means you need to honor that unconditional love, not expect it!

6 — Always treat your partner with the greatest level of respect, especially in front of your children.

You are a beacon.

You are an example for your children.

How they see you treat your partner will be how they treat their partner. They will seek out partners that emulate the behaviours of their parents, and if you have set an amazing example, they will in turn expect to be treated in the same way.

When you set a poor example, your children’s choices are going to be a crap-shoot you will in turn be required to watch!

7 — Set an example in front of your friends!

Too many guys like to pull out the machismo badge when their friends are around. They want to appear to be large and in charge, as though their partners and children are servants to their cause.

We all know its bullshit, so drop the façade and be a good partner and father in front of your friends, set an example. By setting an example, you in turn move the tone and character of the moment towards kindness and honesty.

8 — Know who your good friends really are, and don’t be afraid to tell them you love them!

Men seldom confide in one another that they love each other. The weight of life each day requires the support of our peers. We can’t get through life without the love of our parents, our family, our partners, AND our friends.

Why is it ok to share your love with your family, but not ok to do it with your friends?

Let them know how much they matter, you’ll be surprised how often it is reciprocated in kind.

9 — Tell your kids you love them all the time!

This would seem to be the easiest rule to follow, but for some reason lots of fathers rarely say the words “I love you” to their kids.

Say it, because you know you feel it. Say what you feel, it really isn’t that difficult, we just need to make it so!

10 — Give your kids hugs, hugs and more hugs!

Along with the last rule, tell them you love them, this one is just as important.

You can tell them, but if you don’t embrace them and make them feel your deepest connection, they might not believe you!

Hugs are the essence of love!

Manliness and fatherhood are one, be good in both.

P.S. If you loved this post please take the time to share it with someone who will be moved to do better. Thank you 😉