On Key Habits

There are several key habits that successful people portray in their daily lives:

1) Write daily. Keep a journal, a blog, a whatever. Slowly write a book by writing a page per day. Write poetry as a hobby. Writing is extremely powerful. It allows you to organize your thoughts which prepares you for your day.

2) Read daily. If you are not reading, you are not growing. All it takes is ten minutes per day to read a few pages. Read with the intent to grow yourself!

3) Eat healthy and exercise. I have to admit that I falter here. I eat poorly and hardly exercise but it is a point of focus for me. Energy is not coffee, energy drinks, or soda. Energy comes from being healthy. Sustained energy that is.

4) Visualize your future. Picture where you will be in the future and it will help you realize it.

These are just a few basic things successful people practice. That, and waking up instead of pressing "snooze."

On Creativity

Creativity is essential in creating the life of your dreams. If you go through life following instructions, conforming to the status quo, and stifling your creative instincts in favor of safety, then you will lead a mediocre life, at best. If you really want to accomplish your dreams, then you must be creative in your pursuit of them.

Don't tell me, "Tim, I am not creative at all." That is because you don't PRACTICE it! Creativity is a skill! You must practice creativity to become creative. Robert Frost did not write "The Road Not Taken" the first time he ever decided to write a poem. He likely has hundreds of poems that he created which he finds terrible -and are terrible.

I am not saying you must write poetry, paint canvasses, or create ice sculptures. There are plenty of opportunities in your daily life to express creativity! What is your work place like? How can you make it different? What can you do creatively in your room? Your garden? Your voicemail?

Times have changed. It is no longer better to be safe than sorry. Allow your creativity to flow. Every person is naturally creative. I cannot tell you one kid who doesn't enjoy drawing. Let it flow. When you are creative, you are yourself.

On The Journey

It is proven by positive psychology that achieving a goal provides life satisfaction for an individual. However, it is not the actual success providing the satisfaction. It is the journey of getting there. We are happiest when we are pushing for a goal and stretching our comfort zone to get there. Many people lose sight of this. They settle for mediocrity because they write off a goal before they even start. Yes, a goal creates a struggle to get there (if it doesn't, you're goal is not big enough)... and with any struggle comes frustration and disappointment but overcoming these obstacles and not giving up on something we dream of really makes us feel special. It makes us feel like we have a purpose (other than filing papers).

I encourage you to go for it. What have you been dreaming of?

My friend, Conor Spellane, has been dreaming of becoming a guitarist all his life and he is a phenomenal one at that. He wants to do it for a living. He started a band called Panic In Eden and they are just great. The best part is they are beginning to make some headway in LA! I am not saying they are big yet. They are not close yet. But I am sure Conor is truly feeling a wellbeing in his life despite the struggles and frustrations that come with being a rising musician.

Shoot for your dreams. A college degree is nice but do not just follow the rules of society. Do not just get a job that you hate so you can continue hating your job. Break the status quo. Do what you were designed to do! Do what you dream to do! Do it with passion! You can truly become remarkable. Just be yourself. Shoot for your own goals to find true wellbeing. It is about the journey of getting there.

Do you want a journey to a cubicle or a journey to your life's ambitions?

On A Powerful Sentence

I recently lost some motivation and struggled to get up in the morning for a job that I know I love to do. However, everybody has days where they feel like quitting. Everybody has days where they feel like they are not making progress. Finding an office was one of the most frustrating times in my life.

However, I have since turned it around this week. The way I turned it around was really rooted from my demotivation and asking "why?" Why wasn't everything working properly? Why aren't people coming into training? Why have a couple of my reps gone missing? It came down to the question, "Am I helping others?" My answer was no. I thought I was not truly helping anybody. I even felt like I lost the respect of my friends and family. And I spent hours searching for the answers at night with no ability to fall asleep.

Finally, it came down to this: "If I were to die tonight, what would people remember me for tomorrow?" This is pretty powerful. It induced me into extremely deep feelings as far as who I truly felt I could become and how I should get there, and get there as soon as possible. I started reading again after this question, writing, and continuing this blog now.

I began to tell people my thoughts about life again and what I feel motivates people. I am giving speeches to nobody as I walk around alone at times just envisioning myself preaching to a full arena. Now I realize the sentence that truly motivates me when I feel down.

"Live life as if every day is your last day and influencing people is your purpose."

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I laid out my thought process behind this sentence in the hopes that maybe one of you can utilize that process and find your purpose and incite action today.

Make a sentence:

"Live life as if every day is your last day and __________________________ is your purpose."
Read it out loud WITH PASSION every morning.

On Shortcuts

It is rare that shortcuts are a good idea. Shortcuts are usually taken with the mentality of, this will get me to my end destination quicker. However, nobody ever picked up a guitar and started playing Stairway To Heaven. Usually they start with something like Smoke On The Water. You need to learn each step as you go along. Even if you tried to learn Stairway To Heaven and that is all you did until you mastered it, you still have not learned the fundamentals like chords, proper finger technique, or scales. After learning Stairway, you will fall because you do not yet know how to create songs. You do not know how to learn songs. And you probably do not even play Stairway To Heaven correctly.

Apply this to other aspects of life. Creating a business: if you try to grow too fast, you will fall since you do not have the people in the organization capable of holding up your company. Being a student: If you do not study throughout the year, your grades will hurt at the end.

Always remember, if a path feels like it will be hard, but it is the correct way of doing it, then do it every time. It is easier in the long run.

On Reading

Reading is one of the most important foundations of personal growth. I read books frequently myself, not only self-help, but also things like autobiographies of influential leaders, books about top companies, positive psychology, philosophy, leadership, etc.

While reading, take notes on the books. This creates a learning environment to allow yourself to truly make strides in your personal growth. As you read further, you begin to see patterns between books that show what habits you need to establish to master yourself. 

I further suggest to pick your favorite books and read them with a highlighter and a notebook and go through rereading it several times. Rereading will allow you to hone in on your knowledge and truly refine your skills, while making it easier to establish habits under the constant knowledge that you should.

Reading allows us to realize how REMARKABLE we can truly become and force us to pursue better habits at all times.

On Writing

Apologies to Stephen King for stealing the title of his awesome book "On Writing." If you like to write, read that book!

I write frequently (obviously per this blog). I honestly believe writing down your thoughts is extremely helpful when trying to think through a decision. Whenever I decide on something, I tend to write about it until all my thoughts are on paper. Furthermore, I go back and edit what I wrote. This refines the thoughts I previously wrote down and clearly translates them into something I can effectively explain and communicate. There are not many ways to effectively organize your thoughts and writing is the easiest, most effective method of doing so.

I highly recommend you write on a daily basis, every morning. It can help you sort through your life and whatever important decisions which currently engulf your mind. Write your way into being REMARKABLE.

Also, a good recommendation is to write down 5 things you want to accomplish during the day (Focus Five) and 3 things you are grateful for that happened to you in the past 24 hours (Tetris Effect). These two methods will likely get their own blog posts sometime in the future as well since they are heavy parts of my life.

Writing is good. Writing is powerful. Writing is efficiency. Writing is thinking. Writing is wellbeing. Writing is REMARKABLE.

On Motivation

There are many differences between highly productive people and not so productive people and motivation is one of the key differences. Most people believe to do something, you need to be motivated to do it. "I will go to the gym when I feel like it." I don't care who you are, if you are sitting on the couch watching tv, nothing about that will motivate you to go to the gym. They key to motivation is to start doing it and THEN motivation comes to you. If you get your gym bag go to your car and start driving, are you likely to go to the gym? Yes!

You need to act your way into feeling! (This comes from John C. Maxwell somewhere). Think about what you need to do to make your business go, to get good grades, to work, get in shape, etc. Most likely you can envision where you want to be, but to get there, you need to do "annoying" daily tasks. Do not wait for motivation to make you do these acts. Just do it (Nike). 

"Being a professional is doing the things you love on the days you don't feel like doing them."

-Julius Erving

The key to being REMARKABLE is doing the little things. They always add up.

On Life Balance

Balance in life is dependent on your own happiness levels. If you love work and life then balancing it is not a trick of time, it is a trick of optimal life satisfaction. For self-employed people, entrepreneurs, and students, it is extremely important to learn balance. Much of balance comes from energy management. You need to put the same amount of energy into your family life, your social life, and your work life. If you keep your energy levels up high, people will not blame you for spending time at work. You need to show your family and friends that you love them by giving them your full attention whenever you are with them. Make sure you schedule important things for all circles in your life and attend them.

Time is a factor as well. You need to spend time with each circle to optimize your satisfaction levels. Maybe some weeks, you spend more time working than others. That is natural for anything other than a 9-5 job. I suggest each week you sit down and work out your schedule. You start by plugging in all of the most important things. Then you list how many hours you want to spend with each circle. Then you fill out your schedule accordingly. However, the amount of time you spend in each circle will not mean much if you do not bring your full attention during that time! ENERGY IS KEY!

Without energy, how can you be REMARKABLE?

On Boundaries

"We predefine our boundaries."
-Christian Gouse

I personally believe every person on Earth was born to do great things. However, we set our limits as we grow based on what society tells us to set our limits to. The vast majority of people live an unremarkable life so they can have a safe job with a home. However, a person should constantly challenge themselves to improve so they truly have no boundaries at all.

The only boundaries you have are the ones you create. Nothing is impossible: I'm possible.

On Energy

I just went to Dunkin Donuts this morning to grab a quick bite to eat since I did not eat the most important meal of the day, breakfast, and knew I should eat something. So I picked donut (unhealthy decision). Anyways, I noticed about 15 people who already ordered waiting for coffee and the line to order was extremely long. I could not help but wonder if it was sad that so many people rely on coffee to really have energy throughout the day.

I remember asking a fellow District Manager, Ben Skowronek, while I was training, "how do you keep up your energy throughout the entire day?" Being a DM at Vector is exactly like running your own start-up company. And for those who are entrepreneurs out there, you know owning a company requires you to work much more during the day. So this was an important question to me. He told me while pointing to his head, "it is all up here."

Coffee, energy drinks, large doses of caffeine in whatever form may give your body the short term energy it needs, but if you really want long sustained energy, you need to love what you do.

Passion is the healthy fuel for energy, and it is more effective and more efficient than coffee.