Lessons from the W...

W Singapore in Sentosa Island

As I sit here on my balcony at the W Singapore sipping on a cup of fresh brewed coffee, I am reminded of the importance of getting away; of recharging the batteries and spending time with an amazing person, reflecting on the gift of life, and focusing on what I enjoy.  I remember when there was a time in my life when I didn't really do I much for fun.  I saved and penny pinched every opportunity I had.  I viewed free time and holidays as a waste of time because they took me away from being productive and what we in "the biz" like to call "dollar productive behaviors."  I viewed anything that wasn't giving me tangible results as a waste of time.  Weekends away? Forget about it.  It took me away from earning an income and "getting ahead." What about spending money on things and experiences that would bring me happiness? No way.  Money is meant to be saved and accumulated.  Days off to relax? Never. A day doing nothing is a day worth nothing.  These were just some of my beliefs. I know! I was pretty screwed up. And to be honest this is yet a battle in which I have completely won.  I still struggle with down time. I still have a hard time splurging on the fine things that life has to offer.  I still ask myself if I really deserve the level of happiness and success I have been so fortunate to experience.

The reality is that these are the beliefs that I have not fully overcome but I take steps every day to face them.  I always grew up with the belief to be grateful and focus on the necessities and the luxuries were never a necessity.  Why stay at a $500 per night hotel when I could easily find one for $100 per night? Why take a day off when that is more time to be productive and get ahead in life? I made a conscious decision about 8 years ago that I would actively seek out opportunities for growth that scared me.  I would spend money when it made me uncomfortable.  I would take time off when I was feeling overwhelmed.  I would confront people that made me feel smaller than I actually was.

Now as I sit here in my $500+ per night hotel room, I encourage you to find something that makes you really uncomfortable that you have been resisting for a long time and take it on.  Ask the woman or man out that you've had your eye on for a while.  Treat yourself to an expensive dinner.  Take a weekend to get away and do absolutely nothing.

You'll end up thanking me for it and thanking yourself in the process.

Love,
Matt

How to get stuff done and end procrastination - Part 3

Define Your big “WHY” and Goals That Inspire You

Life without a sense of purpose is a life spent toiling in the insignificant and spinning your wheels without actually creating any movement.  Your purpose is your honing mechanism.  It is what allows you to chase and move towards your target no matter what gets in your way.  It is what guides every action and every choice you make.  Choices about what to eat, what to do, what projects to take on and what people to spend time with become easier when you are living a life of purpose.  When you can set powerful goals that inspire you, the results become magical.

I remember when I first decided to move to Singapore.  It was a big, audacious goal.  Nobody in my family had ever lived overseas and most people I know lived a life playing everything very safe.  Most people I know went to a safe school, lived in a safe and comfortable area, and took a safe job.  And here I was deciding to quit everything I knew and leave everyone that meant the world to me and take a job on the other side of the world in a country I was not familiar with, with a company I did not really know, a culture that was completely new to me and I did not even have a place to live.  As crazy as it seemed, that was my goal.  And it was completely in line with my purpose which is “the continual pursuit of personal mastery while creating an extraordinary impact on as many lives as possible.”  My goal was my target and my purpose was my honing mechanism.

I took off from the USA to Singapore about 3.5 years ago in the pursuit of my purpose and my goal. I had a goal to create a mega chiropractic office and transform the lives of thousands of people while experiencing an extraordinary life of adventure, travel, and relationships.  I then created more specific goals around accomplishing each of these things.  This was completely in line with my purpose as well.  The only way I could meet my purpose of transforming as many lives as possible would be by pursuing mastery in all the areas of my life: physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, spiritually, and financially.  Now the road has not always been easy.  I have had relationships that did not work out; days, weeks, or even months that did not go as planned; I have had really stressful periods of time in my life; and I have had things that really knocked me back on my butt.  And you know what?  If it was not for my purpose I would have given up on my goals a long time ago.  I would not be sitting here on a Sunday night writing this message to you.  I would not be waking up at 5:30 in the morning to prepare and plan for my day.  Do you think I love waking up at 5:30? Most days I hate it, but when something serves your purpose, the choices you make become easier and it reshapes every area of your life.  

Create a purpose that inspires you and goals that challenge you to fulfill your purpose.  If there is truly a life worth living, this is it.

Love,

Matt

Getting Stuff Done - Part 2...

Private villa in Phuket testing out our new toys

We ALL have the same limited resources of time and energy.  How is it that some people get an extraordinary amount of work accomplished whereas others seem to go years without a single check mark on their life goals' list?  The problem is most people never take action.  Now there are 2 big reasons people never take action: they have impotent goals or they become so overwhelmed with the magnitude of their goals that they never begin.  I want to address the second one with you today and we will address the first one next time.  It is amazing what you can accomplish when you implement the second step of "Getting Stuff Done"...

Chunk It All Down

The idea of writing a book is daunting and formidable when you think of having to write 150-200 pages.  The questions and insecurities start to pile in thinking there is no way I will have the shear amount of information to create that much content for people.  But when you chunk it down into really small bites, it makes the impossible seem almost easy.  This is something I have been talking about doing for the last 5 years yet never started it because it seemed like way too big of an undertaking.  I figured there would always be time later.  I realized if I write a minimum of 1 page in my book every morning that in 6 months I would have a 180 page book.  I could half that to 3 months if I just wrote 2 pages per day.  I also wanted to really work on my handstands and flexibility so I also spend at least 15-20 minutes every morning stretching and practicing my handstands.  That comes out to 1.5-2 hrs per week of stretching and handstand practice.  Getting stuff done is not as scary as you might have thought when you just create the discipline to chunk things down. 

The reality is the first 2 steps or not usually the challenge. The real challenge is creating a powerful enough REASON to wake up early and chunk things down.  We must have a big enough WHY or a big and inspiring enough GOAL to want to take the time, as little as it might be, to wake up early and chunk things down into easy, actionable steps which leads me to step number three which really is the first step that must be completed for any of this to work....

Love,

Matt

3 Steps to Getting Extraordinary Results

Champagne dinner in Singapore with great company

Most of us would love to get more stuff done.  We always complain that there is not enough time in the day or we don’t have enough resources to complete what we want to do.  We make excuses for our lives.  We are excuse making machines.  I find if many people took as much time working on solutions as they do on manufacturing excuses for why things can't get done or why they are not getting done, their life would transform in moments and they would begin to accomplish more in a week than they did in the previous few months.   Many of us would look back on the last 6 months or a year of our life and realize that we accomplished very little of our dreams other than work and maybe a little bit of play.  I have talked to so many people that want to get their physical fitness back on track, start writing a book or a blog, strengthen their relationships, grow their business, or just create more time for fun but now it is 6 months or a year or more later and they are not much further along than when they started.  I want to share with three simple steps than can jumpstart your productivity.

#1 Wake Up Early

It is amazing what can be accomplished before the sun rises.  At 5:30 am, the house is peaceful, the roads are quiet, and there is an opportunity for solitude and uninterrupted time.  Let’s say you wake up at whatever time you need to in order to give yourself an uninterrupted 1 hour of time in the morning.  Listen, I know this is not easy for most people, myself included!  I used to hate waking up early.  And who am I kidding?  There are still many mornings now that when my alarm goes off, the last thing I want to do is get out of bed.  I would love an extra 30 minutes or one hour of sleep.  It takes a lot of will power to wake up an hour earlier than the minimum time needed to shower, get dressed, and grab some breakfast.  It takes discipline but the results are extraordinary.  You could literally write a book and achieve extraordinary physical fitness and health in just 6 months.  Believe me because that is exactly what I am doing.  Which leads me to the next step...

See you next week for step 2!

Love,

Matt

Tap into Your Creativity

Singapore

Creativity can be tapped into no matter what your surroundings are.  Your creativity can be accessed in the basement of your home, a local coffee shop, and your local bookstore.  It can be tapped into in the comfort of familiar surroundings or in the exploration of the unknown.  I find that creativity is best accessed through a level of total and complete presence.  I remember when I first started writing.  It was a painful experience.  It took me forever to get started and even longer to create content and near impossible to tie everything together into a message that moved me to a point of where I felt proud about what I created.  I certainly did not enjoy the process and liked even less the eventual outcome.   Then I remember when everything seemed to come together.  It was when I focused less and less on looking good and creating the perfect message and became more present and vulnerable to what I really wanted people to take away from this conversation we were going to have together.  I thought about what was struggling with and what epiphanies have I experienced and how I could share them in a way that would really make a difference in other people’s lives.  Once I became present to the moment and vulnerable to a point where I was not afraid of what people would think about me, my fingers would move and the words would appear on the page as if they didn’t even belong to me.  It was as if the message was coming through me rather than from me. 

When we are present and vulnerable, we are able to tap into places of creativity that could never be accessed otherwise.  The solutions to problems we face in our everyday lives seem to magically appear, yet were always there waiting to be tapped into.  I encourage everyone to write on a regular basis about anything that is important to you.  It is an amazing exercise on discipline, presence, vulnerability, and creativity.  You don’t even need to let anyone read it but the focus should be on getting to a place where words just seem to flow onto the page.  It is an amazing exercise that will benefit you in ways you can’t possibly imagine without experiencing it firsthand.  The journey is long.  The path is bumpy.  Be prepared to be frustrated.  But also know the road is going to lead to a place that very few people ever really reach – the heart, soul, and essence of your life. 

Love,
Matt

BIG Announcement...

Phuket, Thailand

I have a big and long overdue announcement to make.  And before anyone jumps to any conclusions, I am not getting married, having a child, buying a house or quitting my job. LOL

I am pursuing a dream of mine that I have been holding back on for a long time.  It is a dream I have been justifying not pursuing because I was afraid of investing a lot time, energy, and money into and it not working out.  I still do not have the details worked out yet but I am not going to let that stop me this time.  I am going to be switching over my writing platform from my old, simple blog site to a professionally designed website that is going to be filled with added resources to help people live extraordinary lives.  When I started this blog over 5 years ago, it was done because at the time I was planning on opening my own practice.  Hence the name “Westheimer Chiropractic.”  Well, I decided to take a different route and just never updated my blog platform.  Those days are going to be behind me.  I have met with a web designer and am working on connecting with a logo designer.  I am in the process of creating new and exciting content for the site and can’t wait for everyone to be able to experience it firsthand. You may be asking yourself why I might be telling you all of this.  The answer is very simple.  One is that I want you to be excited about what is in store for you as we move forward with this project.  The second reason is by me PUBLICLY announcing it, I can’t back out now.  Honestly, I have bold ideas for the site but very little actual content other than my 100+ blog posts.  But by announcing it, it creates an accountability to make sure my level of engagement stays high and motivated.

We all procrastinate at times.  We all hold back on our dreams at times.  We all avoid pursuing our dreams due to fear and uncertainty.  We all refuse to love for fear of loss.  We all let barriers stop us from following our heart and our passion and we settle for a life not nearly as meaningful as it could be.  Life requires bold moves if you want what other people don’t have.  It requires action in spite of the fear the lies in front of us.  It requires putting our ego, our fears, and our insecurities on the line and stepping over them en route to a life that is worth living; a life full of love, connection, abundance, adventure, and deep meaning and fulfillment. 

Find your path or create it. Either way, go out there and make big things happen.

Love,

Matt

Are your standards destroying your life?

Sunset at Uluwatu, Bali

Your life will be in direct proportion to the standards you set for yourself.  If you set low standards, you get little to no rewards. You set high standards, you manifest incredible rewards.  If it is as simple as that, why would anyone set low standards for themselves? The answer is easy. They have associated more pain and fear around the risk of what higher standards would mean to them than the pain they currently have living a mediocre life. Your life will only change when you create more pain with your current circumstances than you do with the risk of changing. Changing has to be a must. You have to get to the point where it has become impossible for you to live your live any other way than with ridiculously high standards. 

In our office, I talk to people all the time who are unhappy about their health.  They are overweight, unhappy, and tired all of the time.  When I give them simple solutions they can do for 10-15 minutes ever day to add much more energy and vitality to their life and really increase their health, the most common answer I get is, “I don’t have time.” I say, “You don’t have 15 minutes per day to change your life?” Now, what is the real issue here? It has NOTHING to do with time. We always find time for the things that are most important to us.  Do you ever not have time to get dressed, take a shower, brush your teeth, or eat on a daily basis? Absolutely not! We will do whatever it takes to get our teeth brushed, shower, get dressed, and eat. We will wake up earlier or go to bed later. We will cut out things like television or Facebook. We will do whatever it takes. The key here is value and making things a “must.”  You don’t leave the house naked no matter how little time you have because you have made it a must to leave the house dressed.  You associate more pain with walking around naked than waking up earlier to get ready. 

What have you not made a “must” in your life that you need to? Now is the time to stop making excuses and be honest with yourself.  Is your life where you want it to be? Are you as fit, as sexy, as intelligent, as spiritually connected, as socially connected, and as successful as you would like to be? If not, where are you sitting on the comforts of the status quo and where do you need to turn some more “shoulds” into “musts?”

Love,

Matt