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Hi, this is Leo for actualised.org. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit. That is one of my favorite quotes of all time from Aristotle, commonly quoted quote, but very, very true. And the more I'm practicing personal development, and the more advanced I get, the more I realize how powerful this message in this idea is, is that you are really only as good as your daily routine. Listen, I've been working on my daily routine lately. And by that what I mean, is trying to get more consistency in what I'm doing throughout my day, actually putting into practice the things that I know I should be doing the know, the things that I know I want to be doing. And what you don't realize about yourself, if you're trying to get more success in your life, you're trying to get more results, that it's the routine, the quality of your daily routine, the things that you're doing on a daily basis, that is really going to determine how good you feel at the end of the day, and how much you accomplish, and really how far you're gonna go in life. Here's the thing, every day you really basically making are making choices, you can make a choice at the beginning of your day, right as you're waking up, to do the thing that you know you need to be doing at that moment, or the choice to fall back and go into comfort. So if you need to wake up at a certain time, let's say 8am. And you sleep in, that's you already breaking your routine, right off the bat. On the other hand, if you do wake up at eight, that's already one step that you've taken towards the routine that you set for yourself. And really successful, powerful people have successful, powerful routines that they're living out, right? The difference is that if you're going through your day, and let's say you set a list for yourself of 20 things that you want to do that day, if you go through and you do each one of them, and you execute on all of them. Maybe you can remember a day like that. How do you feel at the end of that day? You feel awesome, right? Why? Because you lived up to everything that you set for yourself, you lived up to your full potential, you went and you did the hard work, and you're in Integrity with your values, the things that you thought were important, right? The things that you think are important, if you don't take action on them, then you're going to feel dissatisfied. This is just natural mechanism of your body. Abraham Maslow talked about this, in his concept of self actualization is that people that are not living up to who they know they could be to their full potential. In the end, that is a need that they're not meeting. Besides just having the basic need of food, and shelter and security and friendship, there's also the greater need to really actualize yourself and to do what you know you should be doing to do the things that you know you're capable of. And when you don't do those things, for some reason, like fear, or laziness or discomfort, then your body and your mind, let you know about that. You don't feel very good. Do you? Imagine creating a list of 20 things and then slacking off and not doing a single one of them? How are you going to feel at the end of that day, even if you chose not to do the hard tasks? And all you did was you sat around on TV on the couch watching TV and eating ice cream? And that was a good little bit of stimulation. But how are you gonna feel at the end of that day, you're gonna feel terrible, right? Because there's all these things that you could have been doing all these ways that you could have been advanced in your life. And you can follow up on that. So for me what I'm really realizing more and more and more, especially now I process a lot of personal development theory. And now I'm trying to actually get the results that the theory is promising. What I'm really finding is that advanced personal development is about creating a really strong routine and that's something that I've been working on lately. For me a strong routine as I'm executing it, right on putting in the things that I know are going to make me better As a person, better my career better my relationships better in any aspect of my life, right. And these can be simple things. So the way that you start a routine is, you know, just from the moment you wake up, did you wake up on time, by the goal that you set for yourself. And then as soon as you wake up, for example, for me, obviously go into the shower. And right now part of the routine that I have is I listen to some audio programs while I'm in the shower. And so I go, I put on my iPod is hooked up to a little speaker. And so I listen to that for 20 minutes. While I'm showering. If I do that, I come out of the shower, I feel great, because now I'm pumped full of pumped full of information, I'm starting to get ideas about what I can be bringing into these videos, like I bring into an article. And also ways that I could optimize my life. So I've got that going. Then after that, the next routine that I've got is I take some supplements, I do a bit of detox, I get some food in me. And then I go and I do some visualizations and affirmations. And I read my mission statement, you know, did I do that, if I did, then that gives me another boost, another hit of momentum towards my day. And then after I've done that, I also do some meditation, which I just started adding in there, I started to add an hour of meditation every day, which I'm committed to. So now I'm doing that, if I go through and I do an hour meditation, that's another piece to the momentum. And then from that meditation, I feel great, I feel really calm, has a good place to start my work from so then I can go start my work, did I execute on my work, am I executing on that. And if I am, then again, more momentum, build more momentum build. So throughout the day, you're building momentum with this positive routine. Whereas if you don't have this, you're really in trouble. Because what you got to understand about yourself, if you understand anything about yourself from personal development is that you and every one of us is a creature of habit. And it's the habits and the routines that I'm talking about that are really determining the quality of your life. You either have shitty habits, or you have good habits. The question is, what do you have, if you have shitty habits, then you're not going to be accomplishing much in your life, you're not going to be performing well, and you're not going to be fulfilled with yourself, because you realize that you could be doing more. Not only that, but the problem with the shitty habits or lack of habits altogether, is that what happens is that you're just like a leaf in the wind, you're being blown around. And what happens after that is that you start to become afraid of really yourself, you become afraid of the laziness, right? Because you know that life is full of challenges. And then in the end, if you just sit around on the couch and do nothing, that problems will creep up for you, you can do that for a short period of time, we can't do that forever, eventually, there's gonna be repercussions. You got to pay the bills, you got to, you're gonna have to talk to your clients at work after a while, and maybe they're gonna be upset at you, because you weren't responding, you're gonna have to talk to your friends, and maybe they're gonna be upset at you, because you weren't responding, you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to go to work. And you have to perform there, you're gonna have to go to the gym at some point, or there's gonna be problems, right? You can't just sit around, there's stuff that needs to be done stuff for you, that you want to be doing. And so when you're not following through on that, what happens is you know that there's going to be these challenges. And when you start to take this defensive attitude about life, where it's like, oh, I'll just do it later. I'll do it tomorrow, I'll push it off. That's not really as important that I thought it was you start coming up with excuses, you start procrastinating. And what ends up happening is that you start to become afraid, there's just this anxiety in the back of your mind. And I think the reason that happens is because you know, that you're slacking off, and that you're being a lazy slug. And that when you're a lazy slug, you're not really powerful, you're comfortable. And you're really afraid that someone's going to come away or something is going to come away and take that comfort away from you. And that can be in the form of your spouse yelling at you to go take out the trash, or the form of an angry client whose email you didn't respond to and in a week, or your body telling you that you need to be going to the gym, right? So any one of these or more and you start to take this, this defensive attitude like well, I just want to preserve my comfort. I want to preserve this comfort zone, I want to preserve it as long as I can, so that nothing interrupts it. So I'm nice and cozy and safe. And everything's going smooth. And I'm just kind of in heaven and, and blissing out, what happens is that you're very weary. And it's a, it's kind of a bittersweet joy. Because even though you have that comfort, you also know that something's gonna come and disrupt that comfort sooner or later, and that it can't last forever. And so you feel weak, you feel afraid, you feel disempowered, and you make stupid decisions. And really, you go down this negative downward spiral of guilt, and shame, and trying to creep your way back out, but then falling back down, succumbing to the temptations of the comfort. That's what happens when you don't have any routines, or you have negative routines. On the other hand, if you have positive routines, and you're following up on them, and you're actually doing things in your life, that are making you higher, conscious, more conscious, that are advancing your values, advancing your goals, advancing your ultimate vision, making you feel the way you want to feel those higher level feelings, and just generally living up to your highest self. When you're doing that. How do you feel that you feel on fire, you feel excited, right? You also feel strong. And you get this sense of fearlessness. After a while when you build up that momentum. And let's say, yeah, you created a positive routine for yourself, and then you've executed on it for like a month. How are you going to feel that if you executed flawlessly, every day for a whole month, you're going to feel unstoppable, you're going to feel like you can, you can bust through walls, you're going to feel like you can move mountains. Because those, those routines are instilling within you a sense of success, and a sense of living up to your highest potential. And you see yourself doing that. And all of a sudden, you start getting new ideas, and you start feeling more energetic, you start feeling more vitality, you start engaging in interactions, more you start, you start having fun, you start joking, you start coming up with more ambitious goals, and just kind of builds and builds and builds. And so now you've got this upward, positive spiral. And then you don't feel lazy at all. And in fact, you feel fearless. And it's like, Bring on the challenge, you want the challenge, you welcome the challenge, because you're not in your comfort zone, you're on your edge. And when you're on your edge, it's like you feel like you can do anything you feel you can go to the gym and lift more you feel like you can take and contribute more to a relationship, you feel like you can go to work and execute and knock out a new project really quickly, you feel like you can maybe work on some idea or sub start a new project that you've been putting off for a long time, everything becomes open to you. And that's the kind of kind of life that we're talking about here. This is what it means to be really fulfilled in your life is to be on that edge and to be taking action. And you got to do that by starting to build up a positive routine, right? Because it's gonna make you feel as soon as can make you feel great. The trick is that if you're going down that negative spiral, and you're already down in this pit of despair, and guilt and shame and procrastination, then it's going to take you some effort to work your way back up, you have to start reversing that trend. And I think the biggest thing to realize about that is that you need to deal with patient with it. Because if you've been going down that spiral, and you've been going down and down down, then it's going to be a tough, it's gonna be a tough gearshift to then start to move all the way back up. And you can't expect to jump all the way to the top. And always is tempting, right? Because when you're sitting there, and you've been procrastinating for so long, to reverse that whole process, you wish that you could just skip the pain of reversing and all that you could just be back on top. But of course, that would be too easy. You have to start slow. And I think one of the tricks there is to understand this concept of momentum. And this idea that you've got to be a little bit patient with yourself. And that you got to realize that it's going to take you a matter of days, maybe weeks of slowly ramping back up. You don't want to just all of a sudden, you know, if you haven't been go to the gym for a few months, just jump back in the gym and start lifting like you were two months ago, that's not going to work out you're gonna burn yourself out and just really make it a pain for yourself. Same thing at work, you know, if you haven't checked a bunch of emails that you need to check, committing yourself to going and fixing all of that in one sitting. Probably not a smart idea. You're gonna want to chip away at it and slowly ramp your way up. Because the thing is that your your body and your mind are not trained. That's what routines are good for. So they keep you on track and through a slow and gradual process. They train you up to handle the stress to handle the challenge. And when you haven't taken that, that gradual process And then you literally can't, you can't have the stress by just jumping from not going to gym, let's say and then all sudden going to the gym and running a couple miles or lifting some heavy weights can't do it, you have to build your way back up. And that's why I love positive routines is because they slowly get you towards your goals, they slowly move you towards your vision. And it's really powerful to be on track with that, because you see every day that you're taking baby steps. And those baby steps, even though one missing one baby step is insignificant, not a big deal. But in the end is the baby steps that get you to where you want to go. I think the challenge is that most of us struggle with creating a positive routine, I really want to encourage you to sit down right now and figure out what is going to be a routine that is executing on your values and on your goals. What does that mean for you? Does that mean waking up on time? Does that mean hitting the gym? Right? As soon as you wake up? Does that mean taking a shower brushing your teeth? Does that mean eating a healthy breakfast? Does that mean getting to work on time instead of being 10 minutes late? Like you usually are? Does that mean spending some time with the kids before work? And then what after that, you know, do you need to do some meditation do you need to do some journaling? For me putting these little pieces into place is where it's really at. This is what really changes the quality of your life and gets you much better results when you're putting a habit into place. And it can be something really small, like 510 minutes of journaling in the morning about your goals, or maybe 20 minutes of visualization about what you want to accomplish. Or maybe like I said, eating that healthy breakfast and starting off that way so that you don't get some sugar crash, or feel bad about yourself, and about your weight and about your shape. Because you're continuing to feed that that native cycle. So breaking it in the morning, whatever that might be. Right? building that up. That's, that's it, that's kind of the secret, the secret of success is doing that. And successful people that have routine like that, look at them, look at what they do, they wake up early, and then they're on top of it, they're doing stuff they're not, they're not fall falling short on their daily tasks, they're just not they have a really strong routine built up. And chances are that they've been executing on it very consistently, for weeks, months, maybe even years, to the point where it's just automatic for them. And for most everybody else, it's a struggle, we try to maybe do one thing and other thing, try to get a routine up, but we never kind of crystallize it, we never master it. And so we always struggle. Because when you're trying to build up the first time, there's that hump, right, there's that initial large investment of energy, where there's a lot of emotional effort involved. Later on, it gets really easy, but right now it's gonna be challenging, and you have to, you have to kind of bite the bullet on that. But if you're always just putting in the effort and and dropping it, and then putting in the effort and dropping the routine, putting in the effort and dropping it, then you're always putting in so much effort and becomes really painful, emotionally taxing on you. And you never get that long term benefit of just kind of coasting and using that routine to just run your life and run it really well. So you're always either down in the comfort zone, or you're trying to get up, but then you never quite make it. It's kind of like a rocket trying to escape Earth's gravity, right? You want to make sure that when you do that you're fully committed, and you make a full burst, like you really have enough fuel to get yourself out of Earth's orbit, otherwise, you're gonna fall back down. That's kind of what it's like when you're building a positive routine. So I find that one of the reasons that this is happening is because we don't have a lot of structure in our lives. And I mean, like when we're in school, or when we're part of a family, when we're growing up, there tends to be more of this structure, because you're not fully independent, you're not fully autonomous. And you're you got your school, you got X number of hours of schooling that you do, then you go to maybe to sports, and then you go and you do other activities. And then you spend time with a family. And so what ends up happening is that you can build some routines up with that. In fact, I remember when I was in school, I really did a lot of studying. And I because I valued academics. And for me, that was a really solid structure. I built a lot of a lot of my happiest moments were from that because I was falling through and I had a really positive routine. And I built that up over the years and didn't really even consciously understand what I was doing. I can only see that now in retrospect with kind of the wisdom that I've accumulated recently. But then I lost that, you know, after you graduate college, what do you do? You stop studying, you stop reading. You start slacking off more, and maybe your job has some structure to it. But I tend to find that once we become independent once we become autonomous We kind of separate a little bit from our family, we're off on our own doing our own thing, unless you're consciously thinking about this stuff, and you're doing this personal development, and you're journaling, and you're thinking and you're planning out what your routine should be, then I tend to think I tend to find that people don't have a routine really, or they have really negative habits. And they're down in that comfort zone, because they've been procrastinating for so long. And so they're afraid they're not on their edge, they're living really half the life, they're not living a full life. And I want that to be totally different. So what you got to start doing is you got to sit down, and craft out what you want routine to be. And it's really exciting, because what you do is you create kind of a skeleton structure, something basic, you know, maybe waking up on time, hitting the gym, going to work on time, do all the meditation at lunchtime, whatever, you know, set up a basic, something basic, something you can follow through on pretty easily. And then over time, what you're gonna do is you're going to add in pieces, it's going to be like, like a, like a module that you're building, right. So you got the backbone of your routine, and then you're adding these modules on. So you might find, you know, a technique like visualizations, and then you might add that in somewhere in your schedule, try to fit it in, and then see how that works for you. Maybe it'll work really well, maybe it's not going to work so well for you. Maybe instead you'd like to add in something else, instead of visualization. Maybe you want to do some journaling. Or maybe you want to go and spend some time with the kids, or whatever is important to you. And you try these things you add them on, until eventually you create something that's really solid, and you keep executing on it, of course, every single day, every single week, so that you build up a lot of momentum. And then you've got something that is making you really fulfilled and then also making you successful because you're taking baby steps. And this routine should be designed in such a way where of course you are working towards that career vision that you have, or your business or your family, whatever it is that you want to be productive in. But it's also going to make you feel good, because you're executing on it, and is putting you if you design it right into higher consciousness state, right, because one of the things for example, in my routine that I want to put in more consistently is reading, reading more, doing it more consistently that I've been doing it so far. That's a really good one, right. And maybe you have to also consider some of the stuff you might want to cut out. If you've got some negative habits that you've got, like maybe you're watching too much television, maybe you're checking your email too much. Maybe you're on the internet too much, whatever that might be, you know, maybe you're texting too much throughout the day. And that's causing you to lose focus. So this is where it's at. This is where you do personal development. This is kind of where the rubber meets the road. Because we can talk about all the theory, and you can understand all these advanced concepts. But in the end, it's the habits that you build. It's the practice, right? It's one thing to know something intellectually, it's another thing to actually implement it in your life. So that's what I want for you is I want you to sit down right now and think about how you can create a more powerful routine for yourself. And then go ahead and start in the next day, commit to doing it, and commit to doing it for at least a few weeks. Because that initial hump you have to get through you have to escape that. That gravity, get that escape velocity so that you're out of orbit and then see how you feel and see if that is not worth the effort that you put into it. Alright, this is Lea, I'm gonna sign off. Go ahead and comment, tell me what you think about this of this concept. And then go ahead and also share it like this if you like it. And check out actualize that org for more videos just like this one.