Life gets messy when you only respect yourself sometimes.

When we respect ourselves, we make choices, decisions, promises, and requests that honor our wholeness, worth, and values. When we disrespect ourselves in the “service” of pleasing someone else or prioritizing their comfort over our personal responsibility, we make choices that lead to confusion, resentment, and inauthenticity.

Our job is to respect ourselves enough to be uncomfortable now and experience more ease later. The skill to develop is staying present to sense when we are moving away from our worth, vision, and values. The skill of noticing when we drift is how we can utilize the courage we already have within us to come back.

What would it feel like to respect yourself 100 percent of the time instead of just sometimes?

This is your loving Monday reminder that your happiness matters. It matters because you matter.

Not only will your physiological state change how you see the world, which will change the opportunities you see, but your experience of being alive is also made up of a string of moments defined by how you feel about yourself and the world.

We are designed simply and powerfully. Maybe instead of thinking your way out of a problem or a dip in mood, you could try doing the things that make you healthy on all levels.

What could you schedule this week to help your well-being, therefore helping everything else in your life?

Getting people to give you attention is different than providing value to them.

The former is for those who are in the short game, and the latter is for those who want to play the long game, both in business and in happiness.

What would it take for you to shift from hustling for attention to sensing how to give something meaningful?

You don’t owe anyone anything except the best version of yourself.

You have likely been holding back on your dreams, expression, and contribution to some degree because you fear shaking up the status quo for other people. This is your reminder that holding back doesn’t serve anyone. The world and everyone in it need you to contribute at your highest level, whether they know it or not.

What would you do if you didn’t feel indebted to others to stay small?

The point of living in this world together is that we each have a unique perspective that is essential to seeing the whole picture.

No one else can know what lights you up like you do, yet other people can offer different ways in which that passion can be expressed and have the maximum impact. 

Before you commit to doing things the way that seems obvious or easiest to you, might you gain the perspective of other people you value to see how else you might approach it? See as many possibilities as you can now so you can be confident that you are using your energy in the way that gives you the greatest return on your contribution. 

In the book Influence, Richard Cialdini shares the power of authority when it comes to how we perceive information. People are way more likely to align with us if what we assert is backed by authority, whether that authority is a celebrity, a doctor, a subject-matter expert, or anyone else they hold in a high regard. Knowing this can help us choose one of three paths:

1. Be the authority and expert. This takes time, knowledge, commitment, and trust-building.

2. Align yourself with an authority and get their validation.

3. Understand that people just might not see and know what you see and know yet because they don’t deem you as the authority, and that’s ok because you can.

We aren’t rational, fact-influenced beings. We are emotional, feelings-influenced beings whether we like it or not. How might understanding this help you free yourself to have the impact you want?

Someone further down the path than you will be able to see things for you that people next to you or behind you cannot. This doesn’t make them more valuable; it just gives them a different value. We still need our friends with whom we can walk shoulder to shoulder.

Not only will people who have more experience and wisdom than you be able to see things for you that you cannot yet see for yourself, but they won’t be threatened by your growth, which the people next to you and behind you might be. It’s okay for the folks in your group to be a little stressed by your transformation, and you can have compassion for that without letting it stop you.

Value the people on your level and in your squad, and seek out and cultivate connections with those who can see from a higher vantage point. We all need both.

To discover what you know, set time aside to create instead of consume.

Instead of listening to a podcast or music in the car or on your walk, you could take the time to bring learning that you received into language.

Instead of reading a book, you could journal about your dreams or what you want to leave in the past.

Instead of scrolling, you could create a meaningful conversation that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Instead of purchasing something new, you could create something with your hands and see what that satisfies within you.

We often think we don’t have the wisdom necessary to create our lives, yet we simply need to stop consuming for a bit to appreciate everything we have inside us inerently. 

If you have noticed yourself feeling unclear, what if you unblocked yourself by creating?

The point of going deep is to see things you haven’t seen before.

Remember, things often only feel hard becuase they are new, so there is nothing you need to avoid seeing just becuase it might feel hard. Eventually, the new becomes familiar and more depth becomes available.

If you want more power (aka love and choice), keep going deeper. The unfamiliar is the only place where possibilities live. Things can’t get better if they stay the same, and we aren’t designed to stay the same.

Would you be willing to let go if you knew that was the only way to get your unexpected blessings?

You don’t get to know what it takes to do something before you decide to do it.

The path toward what you want is full of discomfort, unknowns, failures, and many ups and downs. If you wait until you have figured out a way around these things to decide to go, you will be waiting forever.

The point of making a decision is not that everything falls into place easily after you make it. The point is to reclaim your focus, your most important resource, which is being scattered more and more each moment you stay in indecision.

What if being on the path toward success is success?

If you care more about how kind, courageous, or committed someone is than the way their outfit, car, job, or body looks, talk to them about the former rather than the latter.

What we give attention to grows, and we are all responsible for what we give our attention to.

Letting go of what makes you feel in control can feel scary. The question is, what are you trying to impact? Your happiness or your perceived level of certainty?

If we optimize for certainty, we will stick with what we know. If we optimize for fulfillment, we will learn to let go of what is heavy and draining and move towards what we truly love doing and contributes to others. We are designed to optimize for contentment, not certainty. We can know this because contentment feels better.

If you notice the fear of uncertainty has been holding you back, can you practice prioritizing something that you know fulfills you even a little bit more?

It is ok to give the squeaky wheel oil because it needs the oil. There are two things to be mindful of as you take care of your squeaky wheel:

1. Are you giving the wheel so much oil that the cost of the oil is higher than the cost of replacing the wheel?

2. Is there something else even better than oil that you can give to the other wheels that are rolling along and doing their job well?

3. How many wheels do you actually need?

Are you in a season where something that used to feel easy now feels hard?

It’s ok. We are supposed to feel challenged so we can learn to be more compassionate with ourselves and others in the long term. The way out of the hard season is not to make it harder by beating yourself up or thinking it shouldn’t be happening. The way out is to work with it and learn from it from a place of ease so you can receive all there is for you to gain from it. And you may find that when you stop resisting, it moves on more quickly.

Your least favorite season never lasts forever. While you patiently wait for the next season to arrive, is there anything you can appreciate about what you are in so you can invest it in your future?

People likely won’t perceive you the way you hope to get them to because we cannot control how we are perceived. Trying to look good is an un-winnable game, so it is best to use our energy for something we can succeed in.

If we want to feel fulfilled, we can shift from controlling to listening. Not only does listening to folks help us learn and contribute, but listening to ourselves and the wisdom available to us in the present moment helps our bodies know what to say and offer in a way our strategizing minds cannot.

Where might it serve you to stop trying so hard and to start allowing yourself to be present instead?

Knowing what is important and true is easier than expressing what is important and true.

Suppose you want to learn to speak and act from the truth with greater skill; first, practice knowing the truth. Knowing what is real for you requires reflection and introspection. As you discover what you sense to be true, your job is to learn to express it with your words and actions. As you practice expressing what you know, it will be imperfect, and you will be misunderstood and even do a poor job sometimes. This is the nature of practice and growth. Just because you are still learning to express it doesn’t mean you don’t know it. As you practice, you will get better and better.

How could you spend more time with what resonates so you can express it more easily?

Fixing is different than transforming.

When I find myself in a challenging situation that I don’t like, I often blame myself and try to figure out what I need to fix about myself to avoid discomfort in the future or what I could have fixed about myself retroactively to avoid the hardship. This reaction makes me feel guilty, stuck, fearful of the future, and other unpleasant things. These feelings block me from evolving into who I need to be to grow through the circumstances and thrive.

When I notice this happening, it is an opportunity to remember that there is nothing to fix about myself. In fact, I can even find a hint of joy and excitement amid the frustration, knowing I am in a transformational process and that there is no way I can’t expand through what I am learning if I do choose to learn. If I allow myself to transform rather than beat myself up for not being perfect as a way to “protect” myself, I can trust that life will always become more rewarding.

We are designed to evolve for the better, and we can only do that by loving ourselves enough to see the opportunities available to us in life as they are, not as they should be.

Where do you need to stop fixing so you can transform?

There is not one action you can take that can fix everything forever.

However, there is always one action you can take right now that can change everything.

The little actions that don’t fix everything at once but move you forward one step at a time are the choices that lead to significant changes. Please don’t give up before you start because it feels overwhelming. Give up looking for a fix-it, and you’ll see the next step on the path.

Just like you spend time reading a book or watching a video to learn new information, you are meant to spend that same type of focused quality time listening to your Self.

Whether it is meditating, writing, creating art, or talking out loud with a powerful listener, you will be the most powerful version of yourself when you take the time to discover what you know.

You have an indescribable abundance of information about you, your life, and your contribution within you that no one else has. It will only become available to you when you take the space to discover what you know.

The need to know the “right” way when creating in the unknown blocks you from seeing and doing what you actually know to do. And we are always creating in the unknown.

Your mind thinks there is a right way, and your body knows what is blocking you now. Trust where your senses are taking you and create your path by unblocking yourself, step by step.

What if you stopped believing you don’t know and started trusting what you do know?