I’ve heard comedian Dave Chappelle say that when he’s performing, that whether the he lands the joke perfectly or not, “The Beauty is in the attempt.” I believe he’s referring to the attempt of trying to do something difficult, challenging, audacious.

I think there is a lot of wisdom behind that mentality. It’s only by attempting to tackle challenges and to take big risks that we might actually accomplish something special. To me, finding beauty in the attempt means that we should continuously focus on the process of the work that we are doing and remain emotionally indifferent to the result that follows. So many people are afraid of “failure” that it paralyzes them from ever attempting something that is meaningful to them. How many dreams and ideas die before they are even given the chance to succeed?

I’ve also heard Dave Coggins say that failure is just his first attempt, then his 2nd attempt, then 3rd attempt. You only fail if you quit or you never try. These are very powerful mental models that I believe can offer the person the courage to attempt difficult challenges as they strive for their own best life.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

― Theodore Roosevelt

Dr. Robert Cooper, Monica Kerber, and Dr. William Anton explore 1 or 2 practical adjustments that they are making in today’s noisy and chaotic world.

The goal of this conversation is to briefly explore and share some inspiring practical glimpses into ways they are each making adjustments in their own best lives evolving in this crazy, complex, and ever changing world.

For example: What are small changes are we noticing or applying that can make the biggest positive difference? As the world changes what are one or two practical cutting-edge ideas and practices are potentially valuable and deeply meaningful in a human way?

The hard-wired brain craves coasting. Chrono-performance research shows how today’s top performers reject this tendency and act to reflectively reengineer their performance. Glance ahead and sense the clear difference.

Faith Shapes Our Destiny
Faith matters to highest human performance, yet it is uniquely and deeply personal. It can be religious or spiritual faith. It can be connected to specific holidays on the calendar, and it can also transcend that. Faith can evolve, deepen, and grow, transforming us along the way. It aligns with, and often encompasses, our deepest values and highest purpose.

Martin Luther King reminded us:
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Reflectively Reengineer Ways You Can Become an Ever-Greater Asset to Your Mission and Team
The greatest aspirations, responsibility, and honor come from being part of a team devoted to accomplishing the highest possible missions and goals. This fuels a deep intrinsic drive for each team member to be ever more indispensable to the team—rather than just centering on their own performance.

Here is one description of what a Tier One team values. Take a few minutes to ponder how you measure up to this—and what you could improve right away:

We are looking for a combination of toughness, heart, resourcefulness, ingenuity, adaptability, integrity, and relentless drive to be an ever-greater asset, never a liability, to the team. We must gauge a person’s selflessness, depth, drive, and true being.

Now, Elevate Your Reach Toward What is Possible
Top-performing teams embrace the commitment to plan and execute No-Fail Missions—On their top priorities and biggest goals, there is no Plan B.

The simple, neuroscience-based rationale is this: Having a smaller goal available enables the brain to hope for the best but increasingly be satisfied with performing small. Today’s top teams are always stretching forward and upward in their faith, commitment, learning, selflessness, and application, beyond “good” and “great” to the highest level of what is possible.

This is a perfect time of year for you to transcend the norm and go a little farther, carrying more than your share. What small, specific changes or adjustments will you make? And for your team? How can you ignite and incorporate more of this spirit into your life and work?

In The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Abraham Maslow wrote:

“To be ultimately at peace,
a person must keep becoming
all that he can potentially become.”

Commit again now.
Deeper and higher.
Earn it every day.
Never stop.

Key Takeaway: We believe that everyone needs a set of guiding principles to use as their decision-making framework.

In November of 2022 there was very large crypto currency exchange that went bankrupt. When something like this happens, it is always surprising to the public to see the number of highly intelligent, well respected, and “sophisticated” investors who were exposed to the losses. It’s not the first time something like this happened: Enron, Theranos, 2008 Real Estate and Banking crashes, ect. We do not want to discuss that actual investments themselves, but to dive a little deeper into the rationale, thinking, and decision-making processes that can help people avoid these scenarios across multiple aspects of their lives.

One of the harsh realities that we all face is that excessive amount of information and distraction in our world. It makes it difficult to make clear, rational decisions and can lead us astray from the path that we’d like to follow. Whether we admit it or not, the information we consume and people we interact can have a significant directional pull on us. It effects the way we think, behave, respond emotionally, and a number of items sometimes for the positive or negative.

A good analogy of this: If the speed limit is 65 mph but all the cars around us are driving 90 mph, does this make it right for us to also drive 90 mph? It’s a fact that driving 90 mph significantly increases the risk of dangerous situation; yet, when the people and noise around us indicate something different our judgement and decision making becomes clouded. Our perception changes and we justify things we ordinarily would not. I would imagine this is what happened to those “sophisticated” investors mentioned earlier.

Comparisons also contribute and affect our emotions. We hear about our neighbor who isn’t as smart as us, talk about how much money he or she made in a risky investment. “If they can do it, anyone can do it.” Jealousy, envy, fear of missing out, hope, being overly optimistic, and a number of other emotions spring into action. We behave in ways that don’t make sense to our rational minds, but that’s the point. We’re no longer rational. We’ve allowed our perception to shift due to external circumstances.

This happens across every aspect of our lives: Our family, faith, spouse, business, finance, health, ect. We are all constantly at the risk of being influenced and subject to cloudy judgement from the external. So, in a world of unlimited information and noise, it’s our firm belief that we all need a set of guiding principles to use as decision making framework.

Guiding principles will serve as a compass to navigate the decisions that you’re faced with on a regular basis. By keeping your principles front and center, they serve as a baseline for you to come back to in your decision making.

The 10 Commandments are essentially 10 principles for living. Perhaps we should have commandments for investment decision making, parenting, business, ect. Each individual must decide what principles they will use for their own situations and lives.
“Does the decision that I’m about to make align with my principles for ___________?”

There are no guarantees that everything will work out perfectly but following clearly defined principles will help cut through the noise, make the decision making process more clear, and keep us moving in the direction we wish to go.

Wellness is not just one thing, but rather is influenced by your “wellness level” across multiple areas.

So, if we want to improve our overall wellness, it is a good idea to evaluate where we stand in each one of these areas.
If you are happy with your level of wellness in a particular area, then continue doing just that. As a rule, it’s a good ideal not to mess with success… too much!

On the other hand, if there are areas where you think your “wellness level” could be improved, I would recommend coming up with one action (yes, just one!) that you could consistently do to improve your “wellness level” in each of these areas.

So, identify, improve, repeat! And enjoy the increased levels of wellness this simple but powerful action plan creates.

I’ve found that focusing on one change at a time has been key to making sustainable changes in my life, and I hope that you experience similar benefits.

You may have heard the expression, you are what you repeatedly do. I think there is much truth to this and it’s worth exploring this statement as it relates to our habits.

Whenever we get in the habit of engaging in any behavior repeatedly, at some point the habit takes over and you start becoming the habit. In other words, if you get in the habit of watching TV late at night and sleeping in, this is what starts to feel comfortable or normal to you. And if you do this often enough, it will feel odd to do something different.

The same goes for engaging in a healthier habit, such as exercising at a particular time of day. If you consistently exercise at the same time every day for a period of at least 30 days, you will be amazed at how your mind and body expect to exercise and are physiologically prepared to do so at this time.
At some point, it will feel odd to not engage in this behavior pattern, as it has become a part of who you are. In my own journey, I’ve found this to be the case, as it would now feel odd for me to not meditate, write in cursive, and exercise in the fasted state in the morning.

For this reason, it’s really important to develop habits that serve you and are aligned with your goals. Remember, first, you create the habits, then they create you!

C.S. Lewis wrote in one of his teachings, “Christ did not come here to preach a brand new form of morality… really great moral teachers never introduce new moralities…. People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed. The real job of every moral teacher is to keep bringing us back time after time to the old, simple principles.”
I found this to be an incredibly powerful thought that is applicable across a broad spectrum of life. Innovation and change can be powerful, but in our lives we need to be reminded more often of what is important than we need to be instructed of brand-new ideas. Some examples:

Society
Love thy neighbor as thyself.
Don’t kill
Don’t steal, Don’t lie

Health
Exercise
Sleep
Eat healthy fruits and vegetables
Don’t smoke or drink alcohol

Professional
Work hard to serve your customers and employees
Be honest and consistent with integrity

Family
Prioritize time for your spouse and kids
Love each other and treat each other with respect

There is nothing on this list that every reader didn’t already know, but yet we fall short. We get distracted and seek shiny objects. This is why CS Lewis’s quote is so important and powerful. Great teachers and leaders, consistently highlight and give reminders of what is most important.

It’s easy to get lost in the struggles of life. We miss the forest through the trees as we metaphorically stumble around in the dark feeling our way through the busyness of daily life. We can be scared, uncertain, stressed, or any number of unpleasant feelings when we don’t know the path that will be laid out before us.

One useful idea to calm these negative feelings and think clearly is taking a Bird’s Eye View of life.

When we are able to step back and see the larger picture of where we were, where we are, and where we want to go, it clears the mind. Reflecting on the past there were many times where we felt uncertainty and fear; however, in hindsight the path unfolded before us. Think of some of the most life changing, unexpected things in our lives. Great triumphs, miracles, and even disasters have shaped and guided us toward the people are and lives we live. Reflecting with this bird’s eye, helps calm the present mind because even with all the past struggles, life unfolded how it was supposed to. Maybe not how we thought it should at the time, but the way it was supposed to.

This bird’s eye view also applies to the future. When we glance ahead intentionally toward the future, it’s helps us to see the big picture. It calms us. It also helps us to re-engineer the daily actions that we need to take in the present to make that future a reality.

Taking a Bird’s Eye View doesn’t mean living in the past or daydreaming about an imaginative future. It’s about calming the mind in the present so we can make the decisions and take the actions to intentionally build our best lives.

I’ve heard two investors, Guy Spier and Nick Sleep, use the term destination analysis in regard to their evaluation process for making an investment. In this context, these investors look at the current company and are trying to envision where the company is going into the future. In summary, is it clear that the company be a larger, stronger, and be serving more customers than it is today? Nothing is certain but if they feel that they have very clear idea of the company’s future destination it helps make their decision-making process significantly easier. On the flipside, if the future of the company’s destination is cloudy or there are too many unknowns affecting the destination, they most likely will not proceed.

Investing is a bit different than life, because in investing if you don’t like the destination of the investment, you can simply walk away and find something else to invest in, whereas you cannot walk away from your life. However, this idea of destination analysis is something that can extrapolated across all areas of our best lives.

Dr. Robert Cooper frequently uses the term “glance ahead, then look back.” The future destination is made by intentionally looking at where we want to be, then reverse engineering that process to do the action steps required to get there.

Have we done a destination analysis of your family’s happiness? Our health? Business? If so what does the future destination look like with the road we are currently on? Does it align with where we want to be?

There are many unknowns in life and many things that will unfold that are outside of our control. It is very easy to get lost in the noise and chaos of the present, but if we are not careful our lives will unfold almost by accident, and we can miss our best lives. Life is not something that just happens to us, we must be active participants.

We have found this exercise of destination analysis incredibly helpful with our team at Exclusivia in building the company as well as helping each other intentionally pursue our own most amazing futures.

A small mind shift can change a pattern of drooping and fading to one of rising and surpassing.

What Do You Expect?

Muhammad Ali called himself “The Best Ever” before he became that. He told an interviewer, “Once belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen, and more opportunities appear.”

Noble laureate Daniel Kahneman showed that from a neuroscience perspective, the wholehearted embrace of higher expectations does indeed ignite the senses, heart, and nervous system to subconsciously elevate performance in pursuit of these potential outcomes.

In essence, the rising story we tell ourselves about the pursuit of what is possible in our lives and work will raise the odds that it will become the story of our lives and work.

Just as powerfully, the brain develops an aversion to failing to achieve such higher outcomes, and that desire not to fall short is even stronger inside the brain and nervous system for igniting more of the necessary elevations in curiosity, learning, ingenuity, and growth.

What new multisensory visualizations and related brief stories about such expectations this month would strike the deepest chord in you?

The language we choose to use, and the feelings and images associated with it, grow us in unexpectedly powerful new ways.

Few of the “best” ever keep getting better. Their hard-wired brains settle in and repeat what got them here. That rut is never going to be enough to fend off the rising stars who are inspired to reach for what is possible—far beyond today’s norm or best.

On the intense journey to one of their many rugby world championships, the New Zealand All Blacks set themselves an internal challenge to embrace higher expectations: “To set higher records than we ever have before or that anyone else believes we can achieve.”

They posted their own ancient quote on the locker room wall:

Aim for the highest clouds, so that if you miss them, you will hit the peak of a higher mountain than ever before.

If you expect more from yourself and you let that expectation sink in and guide you, you can set records. How can you use opportunities today and tomorrow to personally elevate, visualize, feel, and embrace higher expectations in your life and work than you ever have before?