The life of your dreams begins with this...

If you are reading this, you are probably a little crazy just like me.  You live your life outside the box.  You live life with a genuine and intense curiosity for meaning and fulfillment in this relative short period of time you have on this earth to share with others.  You challenge the status quo. You expect more of yourself than anyone can ever possibly expect of you.  You are always searching for ways to better yourself and take your life to the next level as well as deeply admire those that share that same passion. You are enthusiastic about excellence and have love and passion coursing through your veins.  Because of this passion for excellence and growth, you seem to always confront the omnipresent companion of growth, which is challenge.  Growth and challenge are partners in this journey called life. You can't have growth without challenge, and you can't have challenge without an equal opportunity for growth.  How you seize opportunities, handle set backs or challenges, or similarly create realities out of your dreams all come down to one common denominator..... Communication.  How we communicate with ourselves and with others.  

Every moment of every day we are communicating with ourselves and with others.  Even right now you are thinking and communicating with yourself whether or not you agree with what you are reading on this very page.  While you are brushing your teeth, if you really pay attention, you will find thoughts are coursing through your brain. These thoughts with yourself and communications with others are either bringing us toward peace and harmony or chaos and destruction; we are either asking empowering questions and making empowering distinctions, or we are making evaluations causing our self esteem to break down and energy to lessen; either we are opening our awareness to how we can love more, live with more integrity, and share more compassion with others, or we are blinding ourselves to the reality of our lives and living with a pair of blinders on.  We have thousands and thousands of thoughts we think every single day.  We have hundreds of communications every day with the people around us.  How much of it are you conscious to? How many of those thoughts with yourself and communications with others are you even aware of?  How many empowering thoughts have you had today versus how many destructive thoughts have you had? Out of all of your conversations with others today, did they leave empowered and loved after speaking with you or deflated and drained? I know this may seem like an arduous and almost impossible task to complete, but I assure you, it will change your life like nothing else will.  When you begin to take inventory of your communication with yourself and with others, you begin to recognize patterns.  You begin to see trends in how you handle situations and the moment to moment thoughts that eventually create your reality.  As you think so shall you become.  As you communicate and relate to others so aVshall you see the quality of your life improve.  Do you want to know how to truly transform the life of yourself and others? Do you want to know how to create a life others only dream about? Monitor the moment to moment thoughts that are circulating in your mind and begin to make more empowering and powerful distinctions.  Then monitor your conversations with others and ask how you can bring more love, contribution, and compassion to the people you are interacting with.  If you begin with this sense of conscious awareness to living, and take action on the distinctions that surface out of this awareness, you will unlock the potential inside of you to experience the hidden gifts you possess, and more importantly, have the ability to share those gifts with the people around you to dramatically influence their lives in a positive way.  

Love,

Matt

What do you do when life gives you lemons?

Do you remember the age old axiom of life, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?" Well, with all do respect, I completely disagree.  Lemonade is terrible for you.  It's full of sugar.  It takes an electrically charged, alkalizing superfood that is amazing for you, and turns it into a diabetes causing junk food! Does it taste better than a plain lemon? Sure, but it certainly is not good for you.  So where am I going with this? In our culture, we tend to associate things that feel bad as being bad for us.  We create a culture that is all about feeling good and avoiding pain.  We eliminate winning and losing from kids sports so nobody gets their feelings hurt, give our families medication at the first sign of sniffles or a sore throat to avoid any discomfort, take mind altering drugs, prescribed and self administered, to avoid the reality of our lives, and add sugar to lemon water.  My philosophy is when life gives you lemons, you have 2 choices and it is all or nothing: either drink the lemon water or throw the lemon away.  What I mean by this is that by just adding sugar to lemon water, you are taking an uncomfortable, yet great opportunity for growth, and making it toxic for you.  This does not serve you in the long run.  Does it temporarily make you feel good? Yes.  Will it provide the tools and resources for you to evolve into the you that you have always dreamed of? No. Actually, on the contrary, it is sabotaging your growth.  

As I see it, the only 2 options that allow you to be fully alive is to either eat the lemon and deal the with the short term discomfort allowing you for long term growth, or to choose not to eat the lemon. This  choice admits to your vulnerability. It demonstrates you are open and fully conscious yet not ready or willing to accept the terms of the current situation.  Either way is uncomfortable, yet either way is growth.  One choice tests your resolve and courage.  The another tests your humility and vulnerability.  Both are necessary if we want to full experience this journey called life.  

What are you going to do the next time life gives you lemons? 

These 2 habits will change your life

What are you doing every day to feed your passion; to center you; to refocus your attention and create a laser beam lock on your goals and dreams? As human beings, our natural state will tend to drive us toward comfort, stasis, and mediocrity.  It does not take work to live a life of mediocrity.  On the other hand, success, happiness, and fulfillment do not happen by chance or by accident.  They come from an intense work ethic and a constant and never-ending drive to grow and become a little better every single day. After years of voraciously reading and studying successful people and their habits, I have found two traits common in all of them: they become a master of their mornings and they are always looking for ways to grow.  They become almost like an addict to uncomfortable and scary situations because they know that is where they have the opportunity for the biggest growth.

I decided to make a commitment to knock both of those out in one shot.  You see, I never would have considered myself a morning person.  I am the type that liked to wake up as late as humanly possible, rush to get ready, and storm out of the house to arrive to work just in time.  It worked for me for a while.  I convinced myself that it was just the way I was, nothing would change that, and I would need to accept that about myself.  The truth is that I was never going to accept that about myself because I knew I could do better.  I wasn't satisfied because I was a victim to my vices.  For me, that was sleeping in late.  Of course I had control over it, but I was trying to convince myself I didn't so I would feel better about myself.  How many of you do that in some area of your life, whether it is telling yourself you have a sweet tooth you have no control over or exercise is just not your thing? I hated that I didn't have control over that area of my life.  I had this internal battle for a while until my coach, Stephen Franson, called me out and brought to my attention that my excuses were bullshit and I could change if I really wanted to.  That was exactly the push I needed.  I committed to waking up earlier and developing a set routine to master my morning so could become a master of my day.  Was this new commitment scary for me? Hell yea it was.  What if I failed at it? What if I couldn't actually pull myself out of bed? These may seem like small things to you but to me, not sticking to this plan represented failure in my eyes and I do not like to fail at anything.  Instead of using this fear to paralyze me into inaction, I chose to commit to this powerful step in my growth. Have I woken up late on occasion or hit the snooze button more than I would have liked to? Absolutely.  But everyday is a new day that I recommit to myself and I learn from my failed mornings to create successful mornings the next day.  And you know what? Each time I fail and I learn from it, I grow and become better at it the next time. Life is not about perfection.  It is about progress.  It is about taking small steps everyday to live your life better than the day before.  What are you afraid of? What challenge have you been putting off?  Take charge of it and it will change your life.  I guarantee it.

                        Love,
                        Matt

My "Hour of Power"  morning routine for your reference:

1) Read something spiritual/personal development to kick start my morning.
2) 10 minutes of silent meditation.
3) What am I grateful for?
4) What am I committed to for the day? In my life?
5) 30 minutes of yoga while listening to something professional/motivational/inspirational.