Podcast 018: 10-Step Self-Improvement Framework That Changed My Life

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Menprovement Podcast 

Ready to take your life to the next level? Then you’re in the right place. Get all the information you need to improve everything and live life like a pro. This is the Menprove podcast with Sean Russell.

Sean 

Welcome back to the Menprovement podcast, brought to you by Menprovement.com. The number one self-improvement resource strictly for men had them come after the show to get your free self-improvement starter kit, including your free eBook on how to triple your testosterone. Naturally, today’s show is a little bit different. It’s just going to be me, your host, talking about a program that I developed, which is essentially a framework of 10 steps that apply to any area of self-improvement. I opted out of getting a guest for this podcast because I think it’s going to be a lot easier for me to explain this to you in about 45 minutes than if I had someone on here talking back and forth. But first, I want to go into a little bit of background about how I created this framework. So, for the last two years, I have been completely dedicated and obsessed with self-improvement and figuring out how to improve my own life and help others do the same. I’ve listened to over 1000 podcasts and read countless books instead of watching movies, documentaries, and YouTube videos to find out and study the science of how people can be the best versions of themselves. And during this time, I kept noticing things that repeated that people kept talking about over and over, and it was a core set of 10 steps. And then, in the last six months, I found that applying all these steps to my life as a foundation, it had a ridiculous impact on my output. And in the last six months, I have been pretty much a completely different person. I have added so many incredible habits to my life, and they are just oozing success out of me. Like, seriously, these steps are so powerful. And if you can incorporate this foundation that I’m about to go over into whatever you want to do, whether it be losing weight, getting married, or just being successful in general, you are going to be amazed at the results. Seriously, imagine having a formula that could get you anything you wanted in a year. Imagine waking up in your awesome apartment, looking out over the beach, with a beautiful girl on your bed. If that’s your goal, imagine waking up, looking in the mirror, and seeing that chiseled six-pack that you have never been able to reveal. Or just imagine not having to worry about your bills and having as much money as you can want. I truly believe that this formula can do that for you.

It just takes time and discipline

It just takes time. It takes discipline. And it was very hard to figure out something that was so general and could be applied to anything, but I think I have done it. And before we jump into the show, I just want to give a quick shout-out to our sponsors, ownonly.com. OwnOnly.com is an online custom suit retailer. And I just want to tell you about my experience with them. They contacted me, and they told me they wanted me to check out one of their suits. So, I agreed. And I got one of their suits in the mail three weeks later, and it’s absolutely beautiful. And it’s custom-fitted to my body. All I had to do was go on their website and pick out one of their $300 suits, which is not expensive at all. And follow their easy instructions to take my measurements in my living room and put them into the fields, and then pick whatever trimmings I want on the suit to make it my own. I even got to engrave my name and my company’s name inside the jacket. And then I hit Okay. Three weeks later, I got a custom suit with a brush, a heavy-duty hanger, and a whole bunch of other cool knickknacks that fit amazingly, and it’s built to my body, no one else’s. So go to only.com and get a custom suit fit for your body that’s just as cheap as any suit in department stores. But that’s high quality and has no tailoring fees to turn down and make it your own. And if you use a coupon code and PSU, you’re going to get $30 off your order over $200. So check them out at only.com. Now before we jump into the show, I just want to say that I believe that this stuff is going to work, and I would recommend taking a pen and paper out and writing down these 10 steps. And forgive me for being super mellow while I’m recording the show. I had a long day. I just had a great workout, came back at night, and decided that I wanted to get this out. So, I’m pretty chilled out. I hope it helps you relax and just enjoy it. So, without further ado, I’m going to jump into this life-changing podcast: the 10 steps to improving any area of your life that correlates to any goal you might have. Okay, guys, I hope you’re ready for this. Because here, I’ve laid out the 10 steps to completely change your life. And these could change your life. Just to give a little forward, you know, these steps are, some of them are very easy, and you could start doing them tomorrow, and some of them are going to take time to turn into habits. So don’t get down on yourself if you get discouraged, but I encourage you to take out a pen and paper and write each one of these steps down and put this on your wall after the show, just to be a constant reminder of what you could be doing daily. And you can apply it to anything because it makes it easier. And I guarantee that if you did that and thought about it more than once in six months, the steps would be automated for you, as they offer me now, and would have an incredible impact on your life. So, we’ll jump into it. The first step is deciding to take the wheel. Now, what this means is that your entire life hasn’t brought you to where you are right now, listening to this podcast. And if you haven’t already decided to take the wheel, per se, then you are exactly who you are. Because of the hundreds of external influences that have shaped you into the man that you are today, You’ve been shaped by teachers, parents, society, the media, and your friends. And they’ve all had a huge impact on who you have become. Even before you’re five years old, you’re shaped into the person that you’re becoming. So, part of who you are now is not completely up to you. And your whole life, you’ve been told by society not to be different. Don’t raise your hand in class, don’t speak out of turn, and get a good job with a steady salary and save for retirement. So, the first step is to take responsibility for your life and say, Okay, I accept who I am due to all the external influences on me. And I choose to take responsibility for my life and take the wheel. Once you make this choice, you can become anyone you want and choose to no longer let any external influences shape you. But you are the engineer, and you are building your destiny. This is one of the most important mindsets in self-improvement because if you don’t have it, you’re still continuously being shaped by external influences, and you’re never going to become the person you want to be. So that’s step number one: take the wheel. Step number two is setting your mental GPS. And I didn’t mean to make these all-core references, but the first two seem to be about setting your mental GPS, which means having a clear vision of who you want to be. If you’re living your life without a clear vision of where you want to be, It’s like driving around the USA without a map or GPS. You may have a great time as a lot of people do in college. But at the end of your journey, you can either end up someplace awesome, like Las Vegas, or you can end up somewhere like Milwaukee. And about real life. That’s like people waking up when they’re 35 and having a job that they hate and going, How the fuck did I get here? So, by setting your mental GPS, you’re going to have to sit down and figure out who it is you want to be. So, like I said, this applies to any area of your life. If you want to do something as simple as lose weight, you sit down and write down exactly who you want to be. I want to be a thin guy who can keep up with his kids, go out, play sports, or do whatever.  If you want girls, you write down exactly who you want to be. I want to be the kind of guy who can go to any beautiful girl and make her laugh, have a natural conversation with her, and just have an abundance of sex and joy in his life. And it’s just in general, like your big goal, who you want to be the owner of this company. We travel the world, and you know, we influence millions of people every day. Then that’s what you would write down, but you sit down. And this is an exercise: get a piece of paper and write on one page, or however many pages it takes. Write down the ideal version of yourself that you want to become in your life. What are you doing? Who are you with? How does it feel? This is so, so important because there’s no way you’re going to achieve your goals if you don’t have a clear vision of what they are. So that’s part A of number two. And part B of number two is figuring out why this is so powerful. And there are books written on this subject alone. Some coaches won’t work with their clients unless they have a distinct reason why they want to do it. Why do you want to lose 30 pounds? Why do you want to be successful, own your own business, and travel the world? You know, there’s a quote, which is why you find the reason that makes you cry. And I just heard this on a podcast. And it’s so true. Because if you don’t know why you want to do what you’re trying to do, then there’s no emotion connected to it. And it’s very unlikely that you’ll get there. So why do you want to get all these girls? Why do you want to be a master pickup artist? Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to make $10 million? Why do you want to do this? Sit down and think about it. Get deep and emotional about it. And this is going to have a lasting impact on you. Now, for anyone out there who doesn’t know what they want to do with their life, what I suggest that you do is first think about if you’re just waiting for permission to do what you want to do, because I think deep down a lot of people know what they want to do, but they don’t think they’re allowed. They may be working a normal nine-to-five job, and they might, you know, know what they want to do. They don’t want to do that. But they just don’t think it’s possible. Well, it is possible. And it just may take some time, so you have to start doing it on the side. But if you truly don’t know what you want to do, you’ve got to sit down and write down what you love to do on a piece of paper, what gets you excited, and what you would love to do every morning. And I mean, what would you like to wake up every morning and do, and what would get you excited to go to bed tonight? It’s not your job. Now, if you don’t know what you want to do, then figure out, like, five things that you just love to do that you’re passionate about in life. And then you need to figure out a way that you can provide value to others by doing what you love to do because you can make money doing anything. If you can provide value to others, it could be in the context of information, products, services, consulting, or anything else. But this is what I recommend for people who don’t know what they want to do.

Making yourself accountable and setting goals

So that’s step two—setting your mental GPS. Now, step three is very similar, and it’s making yourself accountable. So now that you’ve decided to take the wheel and be in charge of who you become in your life and you’ve set a clear vision of who it is you want to be, I want you to hold yourself accountable and set your goals. Now I’m kind of stealing this from Lewis Howes because I like the way he does it. And I learned about this on the School of Greatness podcast. But what he does is set his goals for the year, and he’ll write them down on a piece of paper and sign them. And then he’ll frame them and put them on his wall. Now what this does is make you accountable for your goals; you’re making them real, you’re setting them, and you’re going to see them every day. And if you don’t achieve them, then you’re going to be held accountable for that. And you’re going to know that it was up to you; you set your goals, and you didn’t want to do what you had to do to get there. But if you know, if you don’t achieve your goals all the way, it’s fine. Like if your goal is to make a million dollars next year and you make 800,000, It’s fine as long as you did everything you could to achieve your goals. So that’s the next step: make yourself accountable. And you can take it even further and make yourself accountable to the public. You can go on Facebook and tell your friends, Hey, guys, you know, I’m quitting my job, and I’m going to become, you know, an entrepreneur and travel the world. I’m telling you guys now. So, if you don’t see me hanging out with you guys every weekend, it’s because I’m hustling my ass off. Now you know you’re making yourself accountable to your friends, and you’re making your goals even more real. You’re sharing your vision with the world. And now you’ve got to go do it. Some other recommendations for goal setting are given because it’s a very powerful thing for you to do. The first is to 10x your goals. Now, I just spoke about, you know, feeling bad if you don’t hit your goals and how, if you work hard, you shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t hit your goals. But Grant Cardone likes to tell his clients and listeners to 10x their goals. So, if your goal is to make $1 million next year, set the goal to make $10 million next year, and you’ll know why you’re going to have to work a lot harder. And you might not hit that goal, but you might make 3 million, and then you blow by your last goal of making 1 million. I think it’s a really powerful technique if you’re into it. And the other recommendation is to have your big goal on the wall of the year—five years, six months, or however long you think it’s going to take to get there—and then have many goals that you set for yourself. That will help keep you motivated along the way because it’s a long road to self-improvement. And if your goal is to lose 100 pounds, you’re going to be burned out after six months if you’ve only lost 30 pounds, which is an incredible thing to do. But if you set a goal like, Hey, I’m going to lose the first 10 pounds in two months, and you do it, it’s like, Bam, you just completed your goal. Now you move forward to another mini-goal. This is very powerful. Step four is to reverse engineer your goals. So, starting from the beginning, we decided to take control of our lives. We’ve got a clear vision of who we want to be. And we’ve set our goals, made them real, and held her accountable. Now, how do we get there? This is what reverse engineering is all about. You need to write down and brainstorm everything that you need to do day in and day out to become this person. What do you have to do, day in and day out, to lose 30 pounds? What do you have to do day in and day out to be great with women? These are just two examples. But this applies to any area. And we’re going to jump back to this or reverse engineering a little bit later. But step five is to create automation and a successful environment based on your goals. So I don’t know if you know this, but 45% of what we do every day is habitually automatic. That ranges from small habits like answering your phone when it rings up to big habits like choosing to meditate or bad habits like watching porn. There are so many things that we do every day that are just completely automatic. And the way I have it work is in three parts: you get an urge to do something that happens, say, you hear your phone, you get a text message, then you react, you look at your phone to read your text message, and then you have a reward for what you do. And the reward, in this case, is that you know, you feel good; you just saw a text from your friends. And it was cool; it wasn’t something negative; you didn’t answer your text, look at it, and get shocked. So, there was some sort of reward involved. And even in bad habits, there are rewards involved. So, your brain forms a habit because, as you know, it gets associated with the reward. And typically, it takes, you know, 18 to 66 days to form a solid habit, depending on what it is. But what I’m getting at here is that imagine if every last percentage of your 45% of daily habits were geared towards your success instead of being filled with bad habits. Now, I’m not talking about answering tests or text messages here. But I’m talking about things like eating junk food, watching porn, and hitting the snooze button. Imagine if you could take all these bad habits out and replace them with incredible habits like making your bed each morning, meditating, taking cold showers, eating healthy, and going out to exercise. You know, if your goals are to lose weight and you have a habit of waking up every morning and exercising, it’s huge. And if your goals are to be great with women and you have a habit of approaching every hot girl you see, no matter what it is or what you say, It’s huge.

How can you become mindful of your habits?

And this is kind of hard. So how can you do this? The first step is to become mindful of what you do daily right now. You need to be constantly asking yourself, What am I doing? And why am I doing it? So then, if, once you become mindful, this becomes a habit itself, you’ll start to see that, wow, this doesn’t positively affect me. So, you need to start eliminating bad habits. And then you need to start incorporating good habits. And the way you do this successfully is to start small. If you want to be in the habit of exercising, a lot of guys who are big habit speakers and write books on it talk about making very, very small habits. So, for example, instead of saying, Okay, I’m going to get up and work out every day, you’d say, Okay, I’m going to get up and I’m going to do one pushup every day, or one set up every day. How easy is that? After a month, that’s a habit. You’re going to wake up, and you’ll be like, Walking, and you’ll be like, Oh, I didn’t do my push-up yet. Let me do it, then you feel good, you get your reward, and you’re like, I did my habit for the day. And eventually, you can add to that habit and go out for a run or do 10 or 20 pushups. And that’s how you can form a habit by doing something very small in the beginning, in the first couple of months. So, I want you to think about what kind of habits you can form that will propel you toward success. And there are some one-size-fits-all habits that I recommend that we’ll talk about later, like our meditation and being ruthlessly clean and organized, but we’re going to talk about those later and how they can benefit anyone, no matter what their goal is. The next part of part five, habit creation and shaping your environment, is to shape your environment to fuel success. If you want to lose 100 pounds every day, you shouldn’t have a bowl of M&Ms sitting on your kitchen counter. Because what’s going to happen is that you’re going to go, you’re going to take those moms Every day, and you’re going to get a reward because you’re going to feel good; you just had some m&ms. You might feel guilty after, but you’ll get an instantaneous reward. It’s not smart. A better habit would be to, before you go to bed every night, lay your workout clothes on your table or, you know, get things ready. So as soon as you wake up, you know, everything’s ready for you to go and work out. Imagine that habit instead of a bowl of M&Ms; this is what I’m talking about: you shaping your habits and shaping your environment to make success easy. So, we’ll move on to Step 6. Step six is to self-educate for at least one hour a day on your goal. If your goal is just to be successful in general, this is pretty easy. Because you can listen to podcasts like this, you can listen to the School of Greatness that dictates success. There are so many things, but your self-education never stops. Even Tony Robbins is still self-educated for one hour every day. What this is going to do is, for one, let you learn about your subject and learn new things.

Immerse yourself in your goals

But secondly, and more importantly, it’s going to immerse you in your goal. And if you see what’s happening here, if you have your goals on your wall, if you’re creating habits that are shaping your goals, if you’re consciously thinking about what you’re doing daily to get to your goals, and if you’re reading about it every day, They’re not just goals anymore. They are who you are; they’re becoming a part of you, and you’re solidifying them in your life. You’re immersed in your goals. And this is so much more powerful than just being an average dude who goes to the offices and says, Hey, yeah, man, what’s up, Frank? I’m trying to lose 10 pounds. Yeah, I’m going to go to the gym after work, and you go to the gym. And then that’s all you think about it; you live your life and go to the gym for one hour a day. Instead, you are immersed in your goals; you’re, you know, watching workout videos; you’re reading books; you’re kind of succeeding over the guy who’s just going to the gym for one hour a day and not thinking about it, trust me. This brings us to Step 7, which is to visualize and trust. Daily visualization is so powerful because, essentially, you’re putting yourself at the finish line every day, so you know what it feels like to be there. And you’re living as that person at this moment for at least a few minutes a day. And then you come back to reality in the present day, and you carry those feelings with you. So, what I want you to do is just try daily visualization, like imagining yourself standing in front of the mirror and seeing a six-pack. Imagine how good it feels to feel people high-fiving you and congratulating you first on your success, and then come back to the present and trust and know that you’re going to get there, be excited, be grateful that you’re going to achieve your goal, and have that giddy anticipation for that, which is so powerful. Step eight is to put in the work. So, as I’ve told you, we’re going to come back to that reverse engineering part. And we’ve reverse-engineered our goal. And now it’s time to put in the work. And we’ve also immersed ourselves in our goal. So I’m telling you, if you’re visualizing daily, if you’ve got your goals on the wall if you’re reading about them daily, and if you’ve created good habits, you’re going to put in the work. You’re setting yourself up for success. There’s no way you’re going to do all those things and then decide not to go out and work out or not to go out and meet women. It’s just not going to happen because it’s not going to be congruent with what you’re doing. When you align your actions with your thoughts and your beliefs, that’s when you’ll start to achieve success. So, you need to take what you wrote down when you reverse-engineered what you’d have to do every day. If it was approaching women or getting good with women, I’d have to, you know, go to the gym and work out. I’ll have to work on my conversation skills. I have to approach women at least three times a week. And a big thing that you need to think about here is having your big goal in mind. Yes, if your big goal again is to lose 100 pounds, have it in mind, but then focus on each day and maximize each day while enjoying the process. So if you can have your big goal in mind of losing 100 pounds, but then you can’t be thinking long term, like, What can I do long term to achieve that? You know, all you can do is do what you can do today and go to bed proud and one step closer to your goal. What can I do today to get one step closer to my goal? Baby steps will take you to the top of Mount Everest, as long as you keep taking them. You should be taking steps towards your goal every single day; there are no off days. And this doesn’t mean there are no rest days, because when I have rest days, I consider them moving towards my goal because I have to have rest days. After all, it makes me stronger the next day, but I’m always thinking about it, and it’s sure to take risks. So those are the first eight steps. And there are two more steps, but they’re not specifically like the others. Number nine is called Mandatory extras; those first eight steps can take you toward your goals alone. But there are some extra things that you can do that don’t fall into the same category that almost every successful person does. These are mandatory, and they can be done along with everything else that you’re doing. The first one is gratitude. Daily gratitude is the secret to success for virtually every success guru out there. Every time I hear a new person speak about success and how to be successful, they talk about daily gratitude. They say I wake up in the morning, and I thank the source, the creator, for being here and giving me the chance to go out and crush it in the world. You don’t have to be religious. You don’t have to be non-religious. Just be grateful to be here and to have the chance to go out and better yourself. And what I recommend doing is writing down, every morning or every night, five things that you’re grateful for. This is a small habit. And eventually, you won’t have to write it down, and you’ll wake up every morning. Your feet will hit the ground, and you’ll be grateful to be alive and to have another day to go out and live. This is so powerful. The second mandatory extra is self-love because there is no success without it.

How to love yourself

If you do not love yourself, what is the point of being skinny, fit, and jacked? Or having all these girls and achieving your goals. If you hate yourself, you’re not happy, and you don’t love yourself, self-love will help you achieve your goals. And when you love yourself, people will see it, and they’ll like you too. So, what I suggest for this is not to seek validation from anyone; you don’t need to be validated from external sources; you need to pull yourself into love from within; you need to realize what an incredible person you are. Celebrate your strengths. If you don’t think you are a great person, write down all the things that make you and that you can do that separate you from everyone else, and celebrate yourself. Be happy to be you. And the third mandatory extra is to take care of your body. So even if your goals have nothing to do with health and fitness, you have to be taking care of your body; it’s a no-brainer. 20 minutes of exercise a day is so essential to being a healthy, happy, and beautiful person and achieving anything. On top of that, eating healthy is incredible. I’m not going to go too deep into what this means. Exercise can be anything you want to do, from walking to running to playing sports and eating healthy. You know, there are so many things to talk about. All I can suggest right now is to stop guzzling sugar down your throat, stop drinking sodas and juices, and start eating good food—good, clean food—lots of vegetables and lots of healthy fats. Don’t be scared of cholesterol because it’s not bad for you. If you don’t believe me, go to Menprovement.com/cholesterol and read all about it. And just be mindful of what you’re putting into your body because you can have the ultimate mind to shape success. But your two parts, your three parts—you know, your mind, your soul, and your body—if your body is not up to par, it’s going to slow you down. So don’t eat too many carbs and grains, because this stuff is bad for you, and stick to healthy fats, proteins, meats, and vegetables. Just keep it simple. It doesn’t have to be crazy. But just, you know, be mindful of what you’re putting in your body.

Going the extra mile

All right. This brings us to Step 10, which is called going the extra mile. Now you don’t have to do these things that I’m about to list. But I’m telling you, they are amazing. And I attribute them to how great I feel every day and the success that I have achieved. The first one is cold showers. Cold showers are amazing. And they have over 15 health and self-improvement benefits. Seriously, you can go to Menprovement.com/benefits of cold showers and learn all about that. It’s cool stuff. They relieve depression, they help you lose weight, and, you know, they make you more alert. They do so many things, which is awesome. But I can tell you from experience that, above all, they’ll build strong willpower. There’s nothing more powerful than waking up in the morning. You know, having some good habits like making your bed, having a good breakfast, or having a cold shower before your breakfast is a win because it sets you up for an awesome day. It’s a winning day; you’ve already done something that 99% of people are too chickenshit to do. So, you’re just going to be head and shoulders above everyone, and it’s going to make you feel awesome. It’s going to wake you up; you’re going to be alert. It’s just a cool thing to do, and to add on to it, a lot of people don’t do this, but it’s something that I do. It’s towards the end of my cold shower now, and by the way, I start with hot because I don’t know if it’s that bad. If you can go straight to sleep after waking up, then you’re quite the man. But I start with hot water for 10 minutes. And then I do cold for like three minutes, but I let the cold water blast me on the forehead for the last 30 or 15 seconds while closing my eyes and just meditating, almost. And just until I can’t feel it. And I find that it’s like stepping up my cold showers from, like, just superhuman to, like, ridiculously superhuman. But try it for 30 days and tell me I’m wrong. If I’m wrong, you know, comment and let me know. The second extra is not mandatory, but it should be. But it’s not clean and organized. This is amazing. Being clean and organized is one of my biggest self-improvement tips. When you aren’t clean and organized, whether you run a business and you have a lot of things going on and you don’t use to-do lists or you just have a room that is a mess, You’re overwhelmed with tasks, and you’re just overwhelmed in general. And when you’re in this state, your nervous system is in a state of fight or flight. And you produce different brainwaves than you would if you were relaxed. So, what happens here is that you also start pumping out stress hormones. And you’re, you’re just you become clouded, you get clouded thinking, you start to fatigue because of the stress hormones and the different brain waves, you can’t think clearly, and you’re less capable of producing greatness, you’re less capable of feeling like going to the gym, you’re less capable of holding good conversations with girls, you’re just less capable of doing anything. So, what I suggest is just being super clean and organized. Whether it’s in business or not, I want you to like having to-do lists. I want you to make a new to-do list every day. And do one task at a time, not crossing, not moving on to the next task until you cross the first one off, and just have a system. Even your computer should be organized. And then, in general, you should wake up in a clean room. I mean, I know you’ve all probably seen the movie Limitless if you’re into improving yourself. It’s awesome. If you haven’t checked it out, what’s the first thing that Bradley Cooper does after he ingests NZT? The pill? Yeah, I know he fucks his landlord’s wife, which is pretty funny. But next, he walks into his apartment, and as he looks around, he’s like, This is not my place. I do not live like this. And he spends the next four hours cleaning his apartment—every dish, every little area. Why would a guy who just unlocked 100% of his brain go around and waste four hours cleaning his apartment when he could be doing anything? Even he cannot perform in that mess. So if you’re living at home with pizza boxes everywhere and you’re just in this haze, you’re not conscious, you’re in this haze, you get up for work, you’ve got 20 minutes to get ready, you’re tripping over things, you go to work, you come home, you’re too tired to clean, you’re in a mess, you’re not creating success, you’re not using success, I want you to get in the habit of being clean.

Start making your bed every morning

The way you start doing it is to wake up every morning and make your bed. That’s it. That’s all I want you to start doing for now: wake up every morning and make your bed. Tell me how good that feels. I would encourage emails that helps you show improvement. Because I know this is amazing stuff and helps me, after a month of that, you’re going to feel great. And the next step is that you can start it whenever I want you to start cleaning your dishes immediately after you eat. I don’t want you to ever put a dish in the sink again and walk away. I don’t, and I don’t even want you to use a dishwasher. It is such a good habit to clean your dishes immediately after putting everything away. And then I want you to progress to never having a dirty room in your house. I want you to go to bed every night with your room completely clean. Don’t go to bed until it’s clean. And then what’s this going to do? You’re waking up every day with a clean slate; every day you get out of bed, you make your bed, and you feel great. You do your habits; you have a cold shower, you make breakfast, you clean your dishes, and everything’s clean, and you can move forward to produce and produce greatly. And it’s amazing. So I highly recommend being clean and organized.

Figuring out who you want to be

The third extra that’s not mandatory is another amazing one, and it’s meditation. Meditation is so powerful, and it’s another great habit to start because it will keep you conscious of what you’re doing in your life. If you are getting the general gist of a lot of this, it’s about becoming conscious of your daily activities and changing them and shaping them to feel successful because when you’re on the perpetual treadmill of just, you know, living your life and not being conscious about it, you’re not achieving your success. You don’t have a GPS, and you can end up anywhere in life. You’re going to wake up when you’re 35. I mean, maybe you are already 35 or older and you’re like, How did I get here? You can, you know, maybe you can change. You can take responsibility now, and that’s step one. But start meditating. Because this, for one, will help you incorporate other great habits into your life. It’s like the ultimate starter habit because it makes you more conscious of just everything in general and will keep you relaxed in a state of alpha and delta brainwaves where you can think clearer and produce more. 20 minutes a day in the morning is all you need. I can’t recommend it enough.

Commit to the long game

And the last extra, which is not mandatory because I know it’s not from my experience, is to get live mentors and coaching. A lot of people, like Lewis Howes and other guys, recommend coaches so highly that they say it’s one of their top tips to success. And I’ve coached a few people myself, but I’ve never had any coaches other than coaches for sports. And I never had any live mentors, but the way I saw it, I had hundreds of mentors in all the great people that I was listening to every day in podcasts and the books that I was reading, and I considered them my mentors. But you know, if you can afford live coaching or get coaches, everyone who does it says it’s a game changer. You know, even relationship coaches, work coaches, anything—it’s something that can take your success to the next level. Alright, so those are the core 10 steps. But before we end this podcast, I want to leave you with one philosophy that will let you apply it correctly and achieve success. I want you to commit to the long game. Now. I know you’ve heard of a man named Leonardo da Vinci. And I’m sure you would agree that he is a genius. But what you don’t know is that he wasn’t born a genius. He had over 10 years of failure after failure after failure, and he didn’t get his break and paint the Last Supper until he was in his 40s. Nikola Tesla was broke and living on his parent’s couch at the age of 30. Jim Carrey was homeless and couldn’t get a job for years, as he was busting his ass and working hard to become a great actor. My point is that success and improvement take time. And there are no shortcuts. So I don’t want you to try to take any. If you try to lose weight with some crazy pill or cleanse, I promise you that it’s not going to stay off. And then, in six months, you’ll have the same weight that you have now and maybe more. But if you commit to taking your time, doing it correctly, and losing one pound a week, your body will acclimate to the weight loss. And you’re not going to gain it back if you have a week-long vacation. Because when something takes time and you do it correctly, it is permanent. But when you do something and try to take shortcuts and do it fast, it’s short-lived. Think about get-rich-quick schemes; they may make you $3,000, but they’re not going to be a permanent career. And they’re over in a few months. But if you work hard and build a big business that takes years to come up, it’s going to be something that lasts forever. And the same goes for getting girls. You can learn a couple of gimmicks that will get you some girls, but they’re not going to be the caliber of girls that you could get if you put in years of hard work and went through the actual process of becoming a beautiful person and totally in touch with yourself. And the kind of guy who can get any woman he wants. So commit right now to not take any shortcuts and to commit to the long game. And with that, I’ll conclude it, because that’s it. These are the steps to improving your life in anything you do. And if you have some goal that you think this doesn’t apply to, I encourage you to hit me up at Shawn Men from a.com. And let me know because I don’t think that there’s one thing that this can apply to. And if you just have a goal that it does apply to and you find this inspiring and it helps you, I’d love to hear about it, connect with you, and talk with you. You can hit me up at Shawn at Menprovement.com Because I love to connect with like-minded people. And if you have any of your tips that weren’t covered here, have some men permit.com/mop 018 And leave a comment on the show notes and tell people what you do to achieve success. And I encourage you to share this podcast with other people to help them better their lives as well. And if you do CC me on the email, I would love to see it. It is great to have you guys here, and I enjoyed doing the show. I hope that this can make a big impact on your life. So go out there and crush it and do whatever it is you want to do. And remember, never stop.

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