Leading an Inspired Life

The Law of Diminishing Intent.

It’s pretty straight forward. When you’re FIRED UP about an idea, take action.

Close the gap between that inspired intention and your action consistent with it. You can take a tiny step or, as Tony Robbins would say, MASSIVE ACTION. But don’t just sit there.

Remember The Law of Diminishing Intent—the longer you wait to take action after feeling inspired, the less likely you are to actually do something.

And, while we’re talking about hot emotions, let’s bring in a parallel truth. When you’re all fired up to engage in sub-optimal, less-than-inspired, addictive behavior, COOL THAT IMPULSE down by observing your desire and seeing that engaging in that behavior will NOT benefit your future self. We talk about this a lot in Willpower 101. It’s a key aspect of developing self-control.

So, two facets of discipline: When feeling hot in pursuit of a noble ideal, GO FOR IT. When feeling sub-optimal heat, cool it down.

And, repeat. Build the discipline.

Angela Duckworth echoes this wisdom almost precisely in her great book Grit. So does Michelle Gielan in Broadcasting Happiness.

We’ll start with Michelle. She tells us about research done with her husband Shawn Achor in which they discovered the three key factors that account for as much as 75% of work success.

In addition to being realistically optimistic and actively engaged in their work, the people who helped others the most were the most successful. She calls them “work altruists” and reminds us that it’s not about GETTING help, it’s about GIVING help. Powerful stuff.

Then there’s Duckworth’s wisdom on grit.

Recall that the scientific definition of grit is intense passion + intense perseverance. The passion is fueled by two things: 1. Interest and 2. Purpose.

We need to be personally interested in what we’re doing if we want the passion to persevere through inevitable obstacles. But, as Rohn says, that’s simply NOT enough.

We need to combine our personal interest with a purpose bigger than ourselves. Period. Without that, Duckworth says, we will not have the grit required to truly rock it over the long haul.

Back to Rohn. He asks: “Who are you working for besides yourself? Who is depending on you? Who will benefit if you persevere and succeed? Who will suffer if you give up and stop trying? Who can you reach out to and help once you’ve achieved your goals?”

Let’s take that out of the abstract and make it concrete.

I am working for these people besides myself: _________________________________

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Awesome. Use that purpose beyond yourself to fuel your grit!!

Any ONE Big Idea can, quite literally, change our lives.

Which is why I have so much fun reading and creating these Notes and sharing these Ideas.

As I’ve shared before, my intention before I create one of these Notes or record a PNTV or Optimal Living Class is simple: I hope ONE person gets inspired by ONE Idea that can make a significant difference in their lives.

BAM! The lock opens.

And, of course, once we figure out that final number in the lock we’ve been working on, the process doesn’t end there. That’s when it just gets going.

We see how that little Idea opened up a whole new way of being and then get fired up about opening more little locks and finding tiny little 1% marginal gains that we can aggregate and compound and have fun seeing just how far we can go!

Jim Afremow talked about this yesterday in our interview on his great books The Champion’s Mind and The Champion’s Comeback.

He told us that the champion is having fun seeing just how far they can go and he shared this gem from six-time cycling gold medalist Chris Hoy: “For me the most potent motivational fuel was not ambition, I think, but curiosity. I wanted to see how far I could go.”

So: How far can YOU go?

Here’s to unlocking your potential one Big (and little) Idea at a time! :)

That’s from a chapter in which Rohn talks about George Leonard’s Mastery.

One of the key themes of that book is the fact that our society is in an all-out war against mastery and promises one climax after another—with no plateaus.

Leonard tells us that the Master learns to LOVE the plateau.

—> “Goals and contingencies, as I’ve said, are important. But they exist in the future and the past, beyond the pale of the sensory realm. Practice, the path of mastery, exists only in the present. You can see it, hear it, smell it, feel it. To love the plateau is to love the eternal now, to enjoy the inevitable spurts of progress and the fruits of accomplishment, then serenely to accept the new plateau that waits just beyond them. To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life.”

When we find ourselves on a new plateau, Rohn tells us to ask ourselves a few questions.

Question 0: What do you appreciate about yourself and all you have done? What’s AWESOME now that wasn’t quite so awesome a year ago or 10 years ago? Start with that.

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Question 1: What could you have done differently in the past that would have helped you achieve even more success?

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Question 2: What WILL you do differently in the future to help you rock it more consistently and truly step into your fullest potential?

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Let’s love and learn from our plateaus as we enjoy the journey to our next peak!

Character.

It’s not a magic wand. It’s a CHISEL.

We forge our character like a sculptor working on a hard material like granite or marble.

Imagine Michelangelo working on David. Remember that he said that inside every block of stone or marble dwells a beautiful statue. We just need to see it and then remove the excess material to reveal the work of art within.

What’s YOUR ideal vision of yourself? Who are you? How do you live?

Take a chisel to everything that’s getting in the way of that.

And, remember, we’re talking about a chisel, not a sledgehammer. You can’t get rid of all the little “excess” material (aka bad habits) in one swing. You’ve gotta slowly, steadily, patiently, delicately work at it day after day.

So, see the work of art within your rock. And chisel. Choice by choice by choice by choice…

P.S. Remember that Michelangelo also said: “The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

We’ve gotta be willing to dream. And, then back to chiseling: “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”

Rohn tells us success is NOT hard. In fact, it’s easy.

Let’s repeat this: “Here’s the key formula for success: a few disciplines practiced every day.”

The challenge is that there are two easies. It’s easy to do the things we know would most benefit us. AND… It’s equally easy to *not* do those things.

Jeff Olson wrote a whole book on this. It’s calledThe Slight Edge. Darren Hardy’s Compound Effectis basically a treatise on this idea as well.

Here’s how Olson puts it: “The things that take you out of failure and up toward survival and success are simple. So simple, in fact, that it’s easy to overlook them. Extremely easy to overlook them. It’s easy to overlook them because when you look at them, they seem insignificant. They’re not big, sweeping things that take huge effort. They’re not heroic or dramatic. Mostly they’re just little things you do every day and that nobody else even notices. They are things that are so simple to do—yet successful people actually do them, while unsuccessful people only look at them and don’t take action. …

You could call these ‘little virtues’ or ‘success habits.’ I call them simple daily disciplines. Simple productive actions, repeated consistently over time. That, in a nut shell, is the slight edge.”

Tiny things. Aggregated + compounded. Over time. = Awesome.

Back to our formula for success: “a few disciplines practiced every day.”

What are yours?

P.S. “Here’s the formula for failure: errors in judgment repeated every day. All you’ve got to do is have a few errors in your judgment and repeat them every day, and I’m telling you, they’ll spin out of control in ten years.”

Let’s focus on the good stuff. Prune the bad. Fertilize the good. Repeat.

In Living Forward, Daniel Harvaky calls this “Pull Power.”

He tells us: “Keeping your eye on the future is essential for making the most of today. You need to acknowledge where you are, but you also need to see clearly where you are going. … What’s important is that the future be enticing enough to stay focused. We call this pull power.

A goal needs to draw you. … Pull power is essential to reach our goals. You need to see a future with such clarity and desirability that you will go through all the uncomfortable things life throws at you to attain it.”

Does YOUR future have pull power? How can you add a little more clarity + pull to it?

Get on that. :)