11 Simple Ways You Can Live A Great Life, Personally & Professionally
My top rules for living
Life gets in the way they say. There’s never enough time.
And to that, I say bullshit.
I’ve been there. When I started taking over my company, I was forced to figure out what business really was.
16 hours a day clawing and scratching.
It left me no time for the things that mattered. It left me with no time for my inputs, as Nicolas Cole would say.
I gained weight. I sat at the computer, the phone, hammering out results.
At the time, it felt needed, but that’s not the way to live life.
I had it ass backwards.
All my attention was on the outputs of business.
But my outputs, my ideas, my focus, wasn’t always right. I stumbled. I failed.
I had to do more work to seek the results I was after.
It was until I wrote down my rules for living that I became really clear on what life meant. What it meant to me, personally and professionally.
Business is my life, but life is life.
Life cannot get in the way, only you can. Only I can.
Once I determined what life truly meant, each day I executed on living with work/life integration. It’s all one big joyous pot.
These are my top eleven of my over twenty-five rules for living, I hope they work for you as much as they have for me.
Each day I ask myself am I ROTTING away today? What’s my Return On Time (ROT)?
Are you rotting away? Is your life blah? Bland?
No passion. No play. No purpose.
Today is the only day of your life. This second. Right now. You’re not guaranteed a tomorrow, and your past has already gone.
If you’re living each day, rotting away, then your life return on time is dismal. Seize your day. Seize your life.
According to Michael Hyatt, your life has many seasons and so does your day.
Everyone is different, but my day typically goes like this.
My morning is about preparation. About me. My family.
It’s about smiling and starting the day slowly. With purpose. It’s about getting the blood flowing. Fueling my mind and body.
I head into the day, doing my most important and creative things. This is a non-negotiable time.
The middle of my day is about management. This typically happens after 1pm and doesn’t require a ton of creative brain power.
Ending my day is about my mind, body and emotional inputs.
This is when I reflect on my day and plan tomorrow, it’s when I get an intense workout in, and it’s when I have hours of play with my family.
When you neglect your mind, body, soul, and emotions, your life quickly becomes out of sync.
When these are out of sync your life is weak, you slowly begin to ROT away.
A goal without a plan is just a dream. Know what’s the most important, and execute on it.
I have no more than 10 goals at a time. Mostly business, but I also have health, wealth, and mastery goals.
If you can’t clearly tell me what your current life goals are, then you’re not shooting for anything.
You have no purpose.
No passion.
I structure my goals using my VSPRE system, and this allows me to execute them starting from vision all the way down to the hourly grind.
Each day I execute on my goals.
You’ll often be pulled into the whirlwind of the day, but if you follow my rule of 3, your day will be far better than most:
Three daily tasks are my most important. My A-level activities.
Three daily tasks are my other areas of focus. My B-level activities.
Three daily tasks are my administration tasks. My C-level activities.
Three daily tasks are my whirlwind. My D-level activities.
I allow some room for shitty tasks. They’re bound to happen, so I allow time for it.
Set your goal and execute on them daily.
Punch people in the face with value.
Life isn’t about what you can do for yourself, instead, it’s how can you be of service to others.
In business, you must deliver a superior product and solution. Giving your clients the results they desire.
As a company, it’s about giving my team members a purpose of shooting towards. A place where they feel respected, encouraged, and safe.
As a father, it’s about showing immense love, playing, and teaching my children life lessons and setting their future for success.
When it matters the most, everyone you interact with must have a valuable blue lip. Make them bleed baby.
They should walk away from you saying wow, that was a punch.
Do more with less.
Life throws you things you think you want, but don’t need.
The more you have, the more complicated life gets.
With an expensive home, comes a bigger mortgage, upkeep, taxes, and the thought of always needing more.
Better clothes.
More extravagant trips.
More. More. More.
Instead of more “things” have more experiences.
Have more family dinners, laughing and loving.
Spend more time in the park, breathing the fresh air.
I’m incredibly inspired by James Altucher who threw away all his belongings and lived in an Airbnb for over a year.
Less is more.
Do more with less physical things and watch the complexity of your life shrink.
We’ve even applied this as a core value in our company.
Fewer clients, fewer team members, fewer “things.”
The result?
Better clients, better team members, better focus.
Seek progress, not perfection.
I’m a perfectionist, especially as it pertains to marketing and branding.
It has a lot to do with my type A, ADD, OCD, introverted personality
Yes, I know, I have problems, thanks for pointing that out.
The house must be organized. The company processes executed perfectly.
The biggest problems in my life was when I was seeking perfection.
With perfection comes time.
You stale.
You wait.
You stumble.
No one executes “perfectly.”
Seek incremental progress over time. And over time you’ll get perfection.
Breathe in breathe out and tame the fire.
As I mentioned earlier, my type A, ADD, OCD, introverted personality has been my super power in many ways.
It’s also been my Achilles’ heel.
If I didn’t send that nasty email, I wouldn’t have got on that nasty call and ruin my day.
If I didn’t make that nasty call, I wouldn’t have lost that close partnership.
When life throws you a difficult situation, just breathe.
Breathe in, breathe out.
It’s amazing what it does for your mind and your soul.
I’ve even taught my son to breath. Any time he get’s upset or becomes impatient, I tell him to breathe.
He breathes in and out, then stops crying, all on his own.
It’s powerful.
Just breathe.
Health is your number one, family is your number two, and the rest of life follows.
Just remember, without you, you have nothing!
A dead you is useless, to you, your family, and your goals.
To help reduce your risk of death, health must be your number one priority.
Physical health. Mental health. Emotional health.
Your health cannot be discounted. It’s what gives you energy. What motivates you. It’s what keeps you going.
And at the end of the day, your health keeps you alive!
Read an hour a day, no excuses.
My life changed when I started to read books. Sure, you may not be @Charles Chu, and that’s okay.
My simplest tip is to read a book that helps you achieve your goals.
This has helped me immensely.
You have motivation tied to it.
You’ll instantly read more.
Let’s say you want to sell $1,000,000 worth of products or services this year, but you’ve never sold anything before.
Ding, ding, you have a problem. Your goal and your skills are not aligned.
You better start reading.
Pick the top 3 sales books and start implementing.
Side note: My top 3 sales books are from @Anthony Iannarino and the @RAIN Group.
Read to fuel your goals.
Smile as soon as you wake up and feel like you’re the queen/king of your world.
Everyone seems to wake up cranky. Grouchy. In a bad mood.
Is that you?
Well, you were just given another day. Another day to live. To breathe.
Start it with a smile.
When you wake up and smile, you start your day the right way.
Eric Savitz wrote an excellent line in his Forbes article, “The Untapped Power Of Smiling,”
British researchers found that one smile can provide the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 chocolate bars; they also found that smiling can be as stimulating as receiving up to 16,000 Pounds Sterling in cash. That’s 25 grand a smile… it’s not bad…at 400 daily smiles quite a few children out there feel like Mark Zuckerberg every day!
Now go smile.
Challenge: smile at every person you make eye contact with and watch more people be drawn to you.
Playing today keeps the doctor away. Don’t take life so serious, for all you know, it’s the only one you’ve got.
Why is everyone so serious? We can’t we joke? Why can’t we play?
It’s total and utter bullshit (this article started with shit, and I’m going to end it with it).
This is your life.
Have fun in everything you do. Bring joy and laughter to other peoples lives. Bring joy and laughter to your life.
Play with your children. Roll around in the grass. Tease (nicely!) a coworker about their goofy habits and then tell her that’s what you love about her.
Have fun.
Live life. Fully! Completely!
Shit in equals shit out. The small big things matter.
This is a mantra I tell myself often. I recite it to my team every chance I can get.
Shit in equals shit out equates to everything in your life.
If you eat shitty food, you’ll have shitty energy.
If you produce a shitty product, you’ll have shitty results.
If you’re shitty to others, they’ll be shitty to you.
Be less shitty.
There you have it. These are some of my top rules for living. My life’s guiding principles.
They help me make the right decisions, personally and professionally.
If there’s something that goes against these, I’ll just say no.
It’s that simple.
As Derek Sivers says, if there’s something that aligns with my goals, and I can fulfill my rules for living, it’ll be an unquestionable, HELL YES.
