August 22, 2019 • 39 mins
This week on the podcast, Dan opens the door and lets you peek into his life! Over the years, he's learned to build ten habits that really helps him life an amplified life.
Not all of these might be your cup of tea! But hopefully, you can steal one or two of them and start implementing these little habits and notice big changes.
Things discussed this week include:- Learning to start small when starting a new habit. Small steps can lead to big results.- The importance of having a coach or mentor to find out what's holding you back from making new habits.
- If you want great morning habits, start with your night habits.
- The power of starting your day with gratitude.
- Dan shares his actual morning routine, step by step.
- Why you should start your day by setting your intentions for it.
- How outsourcing or automating things you don't like to do can free up time and energy to do the things you want to do.- Choosing what you consume and how to control what you take in, including cultivating your social media feeds.
- How Dan ends his night and how it sets him up for the next day.
Find Dan on Instagram @cscdanmason
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Episode seventy six, The ten habits that helped Me amplify
my life. My name is Dan Mason. I was overweight,
getting divorced, battling depression, and feeling trapped in a career
where I was successful but bored and unfulfilled. And it's
actually the greatest gift I've ever been given. I used
my pain as a springboard to discover my life's purpose.
(00:23):
Now I want to share the same tools and strategies
which helped transform my life with you so you can
live life amplify. Thank you from the bottom of my
heart for all the amazing messages over the last week.
Our last episode with Jim Forton was apparently a game changer.
I received so many Instagram comments, d m s, Facebook messages,
(00:47):
private emails, and you've told me how this episode has
absolutely been a game changer for you. And I could
spend fifteen minutes reading feedback, but what I will do
is share the most recent comment that I got from
Ashley Jones a Z. This came in on Instagram just
before we started taping today. She says, if you've never
(01:08):
listened to podcast, make this your first. If you love them, listen, listen, Listen.
Dan Mason and Jim Forton. This episode hits home on
so many amazing topics. Get ready to take a real
look at your subconscious identity, who you are, why you
were that way, and if you want some kind of change,
how to do it? Dan. Many of your episodes are
(01:28):
mind blowing, but this one takes the cake. Thank you gentlemen, well,
thank you Ashley, and thank you to everybody who wrote
in and out. Of all the messages that have seen
and heard over the past seven days or so, there
were two big takeaways that seemed to resonate the most.
Number one, the circumstances of our lives are simply a
(01:49):
reflection of our subconscious identity. Our reality is just our
identity manifested. And number two, that subconscious identity is shaped
by our habits. And my intention for this week is
to give you three simple things that you can do
right now to build better habits that work for you. Plus,
(02:10):
I'll give you the blueprint. I'll give you the ten
habits that have really moved me forward and helped me
amplify my life over the last seven years. Now, if
you've been here with me since the beginning, or you've
listened to the intro of the podcast. You know in
my life was very different than it is today. Overweight, depressed,
suffering from anxiety, borderline suicidal, unfulfilled in my career, getting divorced,
(02:33):
at rock bottom, pretty much in every area of my life.
And when I look at the habits that I had
at that point, they were reflective of a man who
couldn't get momentum going in any area. I would be
the guy who was in bed till one o'clock, screwing
around on the Internet or looking at social media. I
(02:54):
was the guy who would hit the snooze button four
times in the morning and get out of bed at
the last possible moment to get into the office, and
part of that would be in a rush. So I
pulled through McDonald's for breakfast and feed myself in the
egg McMuffin and a hash brown, which, while those are delicious,
they certainly weren't helping me with my health goals. I
was a guy that just dove into my email first
(03:17):
thing in the morning and started putting out fires for
other people at work without even so much of a
thought of how I wanted to feel or how I
wanted to show up in the world. That day. I
was a guy who was chasing toxic people in toxic relationships,
over valuing my own purpose. I wasn't even doing any
of the personal development work to educate and improve my life.
(03:38):
So what changed over the last seven years? How did
I leave behind a career that no longer served me
and build a passion filled business. How did I make
more money in eighteen than I ever did in a
corporate career. How is it that I've moved and created
my dream life on the beach with total freedom over
my time, my finances, and just my life. I had
(04:00):
to develop new habits to get me there. So coming
up this week, I want to clue you in on
some of the things that I use. I will warn
you a few of these habits might seem weird to you.
It might be a little too woo woo uh. And
I'm not advocating that you take all ten of these
habits I'm sharing and implement them into your life. But
I'm hoping that you'll try out one or two, that
you'll take him on and just try him on like
(04:21):
you would some clothes and a fitting room, and that
it inspires you to really figure out the right set
of habits that will get you going, because there is
no universal blueprint for which habits will give you an
amplified life. You know, when I look at other successful people,
Mark Cuban, for instance, says he immediately rolls out of
(04:42):
bed and dived straight into work. He gets into his
work email first thing in the morning. For me, I
can't fathom doing that. There's other people that tell you
you've got to be up by four thirty am and
get a head start in the day. Yet Warren Buffett,
you know, worth seventy seven billion dollars, gets out about
at sixty and he starts the day reading the Wall
Street Journal. That's his morning habit. So there is nothing
(05:04):
here that I'm sharing with you in terms of my
routines that are the gospel. But I want you just
to take this for what it's worth. It's helped me.
If you've been a fan of this podcast and you
admire the stuff that I'm putting out into the world,
maybe you can take some of this and use it
for yourself. Moreover, I want to give you the structure
that's going to help you build the right habits in
(05:24):
your life, starting right now today. So we're gonna get
into that coming up in just a few moments. However,
one of the other things I wanted to do for
some podcast housekeeping is let you know I've been talking
with my team and you know, we do this listener
of the Week and we ask you to share your
comments on Instagram or screenshot the podcast and upload it.
(05:45):
But one of the things that really help get this
podcast in front of more people and get this message
to be heard in a bigger way in the world
is your reviews. And I hate to be the guy
who's on here fishing for reviews. However, I do have
a mission here to inspire one million people globally, to
(06:05):
get them to overcome that conditioning of corporate America so
they can create their own amplified career in life. And
the reviews are would help with the algorithm up on Apples.
So here is the proposal that I have for you today.
I'm starting a contest for the next five weeks. I'm
asking you if you've enjoyed any of the episodes, if
what we're putting out each week is impacting your life,
(06:28):
if it's helping you get closer to your purpose or
helping you live more consciously and mindfully, I would ask
that you please leave a review, an honest one. You
don't have to kiss my butt. If you think this
podcast sucks, you can certainly tell people that too, but
leave an honest review. And then before you click submit,
screenshot your review and email it directly to me Dan
(06:52):
at Creative Soul Coaching dot net. I'm going to do
two things. For every review that I get. I'm going
to make a fifteen dollar donation to Feeding America, and
each fifteen dollar donation is going to help feed one
sixty hungry people, So that in and of itself is awesome.
But I'm also going to take all the people who
(07:13):
submit a review and I'll put you in a grand
prize drawing and you'll get your choice of a new
pair of air pods that you can use to listen
to this podcast on the go anywhere, or I will
give you a Amazon gift card so you can make
the purchase for that thing that you need that's going
to help you amplify your life. So that is what
I would ask. Submit a review before use click send
(07:36):
on it, screenshot it, send it to me Dan at
Creative Soul Coaching dot net. We're going to do this
through the month of September and announce our grand prize
winner on the first episode of October. Super excited for that.
Thank you so much for being part of this community,
and your feedback will help us spread the word and
get the podcast in front of more people. All that
(07:58):
being said, if you love the episode last week and
you are ready to change your identity to create that
amplified life, I'm going to share with you the ten
habits that have helped me create it for myself. It's
all coming up this week on Life Amplified. Let's be honest,
it is difficult to build good habits, and it's especially
(08:20):
true if you're trying to create something that you're going
to stick with in the long term. And that is
why there are a few simple strategies from a book
that Jim Forton mentioned last week on the podcast Atomic
Habits by James Clear. There are three strategies that help
you build good habits and break bad ones. Now these
are not the gospel. These aren't the only way to
(08:41):
do it, but there are three of the easiest and
most effective ways that I can share with you today.
Number One, you want to start with a habit that
is so easy it's impossible for you to say no
to it. You know, we've got to build momentum and consistency,
and it doesn't matter how well you perform on an
individual day, you know, and amplified life is thet of
sustainable effort over the long run. So start with something simple.
(09:05):
If you want to build an exercise habit, can you
start out with just exercising three minutes in the morning,
and that's almost like laughable, I get it. But start
out with something totally small. If you want to write
the next great American novel, can you start with one
hundred words a day to write and then you can
start to build from there. You know, you could even
(09:26):
just start with writing five sentences and doing that and
gradually adding on healthy eating. In my life, you know,
a place where I've struggled is in my diet and nutrition.
And I made some amazing strides in this over the
last five weeks. But for me, I started out with saying,
I'm just gonna cut all sugar out of my diet
one day a week, and you know, building up that
(09:46):
success and then you can start to increasingly, in small
increments add on. You know, a lot of times we
get into these things where like, oh my god, I
need to lose fifty pounds, I want to quit smoking,
I've got to quit drinking, I've got to find the
next career, and all these things pile up and it
can feel so overwhelming that we never get started. So
(10:08):
it's about setting yourself up for a win and knowing
that just doing something once a week isn't going to
change your life. You know, if you go to the
gym one day out of seven, it's gonna be hard
to get the results. So we want to make this
last over the long run. Start easy and building in increments.
The second tip that's going to help you make the
success sustainable is to take some time work with the
(10:30):
coach or mentor to understand exactly what is holding you back.
I've used myself in the past as an example. I
am a person that was really resistant to structure and
building habits. For me, having too much structure equaled this
complete loss of freedom. I was like, Oh, I'll figure
it out. I gotta be at the moment, I gotta
(10:52):
fly by the seat of my pants. And here's the
thing that was underneath this belief is I worked with
my coaches was a sense of define science you know,
one of the things I've learned about myself, and this
was totally true back in my corporate days. One of
the easiest ways to make sure that I didn't do
something was to tell me that I had to do it,
because then it almost became like given a middle finger.
(11:12):
I'd be like, screw you, watch me not do this thing.
But underneath the defiance was fear, quite honestly, because the
people growing up who put the structure into my life,
the people who were responsible for creating structure for me
when I was a child, didn't do a very good
job of helping me to feel safe. So there was
a little part of me that almost equated, you know
(11:35):
it rules with being loss of control. And I see
this with so many of the clients that I coach today,
and it's a blind spot. I was never able to
make this connection on my own, So coaching and mentorship
helps you break through. I just had an amazing breakthrough
with one of my v I P clients this morning,
and this guy is a very high performer, owns his
(11:56):
own business, makes a great living, employees a lot of people,
but the one area where he was struggling to make
a change was in his health. He would always go
to bed with the best intentions to wake up at
six am and work out, But when the time came
and that alarm went off, he's like, oh, what could
be more secure than laying here in my bed with
my dog and with my wife. There was a tremendous
(12:17):
sense of security. And as we got curious and did
the deeper work, what we realized is growing up, he
never had that sense of security. You know, the family
had a lot of kids. He was the only boy,
with several sisters. The sisters got the bedroom. He had
to sleep every night on a pull out couch, sort
of separated and not having a place that was his own.
(12:40):
So as an adult, this idea of getting out of
bed in the morning, it was almost that loss of security,
you know, because laying in bed, being with the wife,
being with the dog gave him. It filled this emotional
need that had been missing. And once we made that connection,
we were really start to able to put some systems
and some goals in place that would help him still
meet the need for security. And what better way to
(13:03):
meet a need for security than taking care of your
health and making sure that you're going to be around
long enough to spend time with the people that you love.
You know, it is a huge breakthrough this morning. And again,
we all have these psychological blind spots, and we don't
see them unless we have the perspective of somebody a
coach on the outside, because so often the stories that
(13:24):
we have just become our identity. Oh you know, I'm
resistant to structure, or I'm an introvert, or I'm big boned,
or i have bad genetics, so I'll never have the
body that I want. We can so live at the story,
but the story becomes the identity, and if we want
to change it, it's gonna be about the action that
we're taking. So get some mentorship to see what the
(13:47):
core reason is, What is the root cause of you
being stuck in the area where things aren't working for you?
And the third step, according to James Clear about making
these habits stick is you've got to develop a plan
for when you fail. How many people listening right now,
You know you grew up with this mindset. You've somehow
taken on a false belief that to get it wrong
(14:09):
makes you less then or that you are wrong if
you fail. And the thing is failure is a completely
made up construct, it doesn't even exist. You know, Failure
is only when you resign yourself to giving up and
not continuing to pursue the thing that you're after. Everything
before that is just a setback that is helping you learn,
(14:30):
that's forcing you to grow and become more so that
you can really grow into the person who's worthy of
achieving the goal that you seek. So you've got to
have a plan to overcome the self judgment, the guilt
that comes up, and focus on getting back on track
as quickly as possible. That's been one of the biggest
things having mentorship in my life is the things that
(14:51):
would have knocked me off track and just made me
give up on a goal forever. You know, I fall
off track for a day or two, but I'm able
to climb back on the horse and contin in you
the journey. I read a great quote from a Harvard
psychologist and this completely landed for me. I wanted to
share it with you. He says, most of us are
waiting to feel a certain way before we take action.
We have to feel competent before we go after our
(15:14):
dream job or launch a new business. We need to
feel worthy before we put ourselves out there. For love
after heartbreak. But he says, we can't feel our way
into action. It's only through taking action that we create
the feeling. Confidence is the byproduct of taking action and
building competency in the thing that you desire and gaining
(15:37):
that new skill. And this is the case with your habits.
Right If you want to get in better shape, and
you start out every day working out, you know, three
minutes a day, then bump it up to five, and
then you bump it up to fifteen twenty minutes, you
start to increase a little more confidence in pride in
yourself that you're showing up, and then it gives you
the juice to push yourself a little further. You know,
(15:58):
that three minute workout become is a thirty minute work
out in no time. Then it might become a full
hour as you start to see the results. Mindset when
it comes to habits, is everything. I think mindset is
everything no matter what it is you're trying to create.
But falling on your face doesn't make you a failure.
That's what makes you normal. The thing that separates the
very top performers from those who are struggling is your
(16:20):
ability to have resilience and get back on track quickly.
It's another place coaching or mentorship makes all the difference
for you. So what are the habits in my life
that have helped me go from the guy who's forty
pounds overweight and a soul sucking job to feeling passionate
and alive and engaged in my dream business and live
in my dream life on the water here in California.
(16:43):
A lot of people in personal development pay lip service
to the idea of having great morning habits. Louise hay
the founder of hay House Publishers. She was the one
who famously said, how you start your day is how
you live your day. How you live your day is
how you live your life. And I am all four
morning habits. And I'm going to share some of the
specific things I implement into my life in the morning
(17:03):
that really make a difference. But I will tell you
the quality of my morning is directly proportional to the
nighttime habits that I implement the night before first and
foremost sleep. For me, I am in bed by ninety
five every night, and a lot of times if I
don't have plans on the weekends, I'm in bed by
(17:25):
ninety five On the weekends because it's important for me
to keep a consistent sleep schedule. That's what helps the
body develop a consistent circadian rhythm, which is just that
natural energy flow in your life. Now, it doesn't mean
I'm asleep by because I'll spend time journaling, I'll spend
time meditating. But for me, it is absolutely lights out
(17:45):
no later than ten fifteen ten thirty is because my
body naturally wakes up on its own. I don't use
an alarm clock anymore. I'm up no later than five
forty five, but usually closer to five in the morning.
Another important point that I'm want to bring up is
when your body is waking up before the alarm, Generally
it means that you are charged and you're ready to
(18:06):
start the day. You don't want to throw things off
by waking up before the alarm and being like, oh god,
you know, I'm sleep another twenty five minutes. Uh. And
unless you're the person who just had a restless night
and you didn't fall to sleep consistently through the night,
when your body wakes up before the alarm, use that
time to your advantage. And there are many people that
(18:27):
I talked to and I've seen this in some Instagram
messages lately where people are like, Dan, you don't have kids,
you don't understand the struggle of parents. And you know,
while I did have the privilege to be a step
parent for a period of time in my life, back
during my marriage and that relationship, you're right, I do
not have kids right now. And here's the thing. If
(18:47):
your kids are up and they're sick, and they're vomiting
through the night the night before and you have to
take care of them, I understand you have got to
be there. You've got to be a parent. That has
to be a priority. But how many nights are you
not getting sleep because your kids are sick, Versus the
nights you're not getting sleep because you're on your phone,
because you're sitting on your laptop, because you're screwing around
(19:09):
on social media. Let's get real about what the actual
barrier is that's getting in the way for you. Because
if your kids are out of bed at sixty five
in the morning and you're waking up at the same
time as them, and you're in the business of you know,
getting them breakfast and getting them dressed and fed and
off to school, you're already in that place of taking
(19:30):
care of everyone else before yourself. I would urge you
for the next seven days, could you get up an
hour before everybody else in the family. Could you force
yourself to get to bed earlier and also wake up
earlier because that one hour a day that is like
the twenty five hour. For those of you are saying
I have no time, generally, what you mean is I
(19:51):
don't have undistracted time, and you wake up refreshed. This
is when your brain is most alert, when you're most
have the highest ability for problem solving. This is a
great time for you to take care of yourself in
the morning, in whichever way makes sense for you. Now,
for me, uh, here are the things that I do
in the morning. I usually wake up and I just
(20:12):
lay in bed, focus on my breathing. I get really
connected to my breath, and I execute a gratitude practice.
I will start giving gratitude for the things in my
life and not just the obvious stuff. I think a
lot of people just make this gratitude practice something else
on that to do list, So it's like, I don't know,
Like I'm just grateful for my family. I'm grateful that
I have a roof over my head. All right, is
(20:34):
this ship over? Can I get among the day? Really
challenging yourself to be grateful for the small things in life.
Maybe the way that your child looked and smiled at
you the night before, that somebody treated you with kindness
when you were in line at the grocery store and
they let you go ahead of them because you had
ten items and they had a cart full. You know,
(20:55):
not that in and of itself that's a game changer,
but it's a thing. You can be grateful for it,
and a remind heard that there is kindness in the world,
because you certainly wouldn't know that. If you watch any
of the news headlines these days, I'll talk about how
I just refused to watch the news. That's actually one
of the habits for me. I've cut that time in
in that rabbit hole out of my life. But a
morning gratitude practice very important. And for me, I just
(21:18):
like to lay there. My dog comes and snuggles with
me in the morning, and that gratitude practices everything. Now,
the next set of things that I institute in the
morning are going to be a little woo woo. And
for some of you, you might I roll at this
and the thing is one of the great pieces of
feedback I got on the podcast recently, and I've heard
this from more than one person, that you're like Dan,
I like the fact that you're kind of into like
(21:40):
the woo woo spiritual stuff, but you also give like
practical rational action steps. So that's me. I don't look
at myself is a woo woo person. I just sort
of joke that I am woo compliant. So these are
some things that I include in my life that might
seem weird to you, and that's cool. You don't have
to use any of them, but I would in courage
(22:00):
you just to give it a try. One of the
things that I do is I burned some Polo Santo
in the morning. You've heard of people who burn sage
a lot is a way to clear bad energy, and
I definitely have a smudge stick and I use it
on occasion. For me personally, I just feel more of
an energetic shift when I burned Polo santo, like I'll
feel like the tingle down my spine. I feel like
(22:20):
there is a shift within me, and I find it
to be a much more pleasant smell than sage. That's
just me personally. But I do like to sort of
clear that energy in the bedroom in the morning because
the next thing that I do is I will get
up and I pull an oracle card from a deck.
You know, you might have seen these angel cards oracle cards.
You know, there are ways that you can sort of
(22:41):
connect to some divine intelligence and you pull a card
that gives you some feedback or a message that you
need to hear for that day. In fact, earlier this morning,
I pulled a card that was really urging me to
explore my options and look for creative solutions to problems
and challenges that I'm facing. It's part of why I
talked with my team and we instituted this plan for
(23:02):
the air pod giveaway for your reviews for the podcast,
and talked about making donations. Defeating America is a way
to inspire more people to take a couple of minutes
out of their day to write the reviews. So it
helps us with the algorithm. Up until now, I had
been doing some separate stuff, you know, to really promote
the podcast viral e and a cost effective way, but
(23:23):
we weren't getting any more results with that. So in
this morning's meditation is when I came up with this
idea and we're implementing it right now. But what I
like to do is take whatever messages on that oracle
card and I will meditate on that in my morning meditation,
you know, So that will be usually a good anywhere
between ten to twenty minutes that I will meditate in
(23:45):
the morning. Again, if you're a person who's pressed for time,
or if meditation is not your jam, you know, for
some people, they're like Dan, calming my mind and closing
my eyes, that's enough just to give me anxiety. So
start with meditating for two minutes and work your way
up from there. Some of the stuff I'm giving you,
it's just spiritual stuff that works for me. There's no
proven science that says Sage or Paulo Santo does anything
(24:07):
right pulling an oracle card. There's no research your science.
It's just something that personally works for me, meditation. This
is why so many corporations are embracing it. That's why
you see so many of those companies in Silicon Valley
instituting meditation and yoga studios on premises, because it just
helps you be more effective throughout the day. From there,
(24:28):
after my meditation, I do some journaling. And this is
a very specific practice that I've cultivated that works for
me because I believe everything is about intention. We have
got to have an intention for not just what we
want to do for the day, but how do we
want to show up who do we want to be?
Each morning in my journal, I write down three words
that I want to be in the world that day.
(24:51):
I know as a matter of fact, this morning, I
wrote that I wanted to be abundant, that I wanted
to be happy, and then I wanted to be surrendered,
meaning at you know, I have intentions with my goals,
but I'm also surrendered to better solutions from a divine
intelligence that sees a better plan for myself even that
I do. So those were my three words that I
(25:12):
wanted to show up as and and they're different every day,
by the way. And the second thing that I write
in my journal in the morning is I said an
intention for how I want to feel at the end
of the day. Because if my intention is to feel
peaceful or relaxed at the end of the day, I
know that that's probably not the day for me to
squeeze seven more things on my to do list. If
(25:34):
I want to feel excited. If I want to feel
proud of myself, that's a day where all push myself
to challenge a little bit more. And what's remarkable is,
in the time that I've really been instituting this practice
is how many times I'll be like talking to a friend,
like later in the evening, and I'll say like something
about how I'm feeling, and then I remember, I'm like,
oh my god, that was the thing that I set
(25:55):
the intention for earlier today. So I'll write down these
three words that I want to show up as, and
then the word that I want to feel at the
end of the day. Also, I will write down my goals.
Every single morning. I will write down the five biggest
goals in front of me, and I write them as
if they've already happened. A lot of times when we're manifesting,
(26:16):
if you're using the words I will or one day
I will create this, the universe doesn't recognize that. It
really recognizes the present tense. So I write these things
as if they've already happened. I say, I declare blank
results you know if I'm sitting an income goal for
the month, or I declare, you know, X amount of
(26:37):
downloads on the podcast, you know, for how I want
to grow our audience moving forward, So use some variations
on that about I accept now, or I call forth now,
or I declare it now. You know, the universe when
we're manifesting, only understands the language of abundance, and you
just have to call that in. So I write my
(26:57):
goals in the positive and present tense, and and the
last thing that I do is I usually write three
to five intentions for the day, so these will be
the action steps that I want to take that are
going to help me achieve those goals faster. So this
is a process. It shouldn't take any longer than five
to ten minutes for you in the morning. But you
gotta lead with intention. You have to decide what are
(27:20):
the biggest things that you're working toward, and then also
what are the action steps, the smallest ones that are
going to move me forward and help me create that
the fastest. Another habit that has really helped me free
up time. You know you've heard me talk about this
is about outsourcing and delegating the things that you hate
to do, you know, whatever those things are that eat
(27:42):
up time out of your schedule. Each week. How can
you outsource it to somebody else for me. I've talked
in the past I hate cleaning, which is why I
will invest in a good housekeeper. I don't mind doing
laundry now that I have in unit wash your dryers,
so I have no longer outsourced that. That's something I'm
doing on my own. But I hate cooking. I hate cooking.
It's not fun for me to cook for one person,
(28:05):
and there's better things that I would rather be doing
with my time to live my purpose and to serve
my clients. So I have taken on and this is
not a paid endorsement. I'm not a brand ambassador. I'm
getting no kickbacks on this. I signed up with Freshly.
I am using that company. You can look them up
online Freshly f R E, s H L Y. But
(28:25):
they do a lot of pre prepared, chef prepared meals
that are generally all under five hundred calories. They are
portion controlled. They show up in my house once a week.
I pay about a hundred and seven dollars for twelve
meals a week, so that gets me all my lunches
and dinners through the week, and they're reasonably tasty, like
they're pretty good, you know, And there's a few in
(28:47):
particular that I really like. And the other piece that
I've started to do because you know, as much as
I was working out, I'm the person nutritionally who's a
bit of a grazer, you know. I'll eat a handful
of something here, eat like the hundred calorie pack of
something over here, and it's a lot of those hidden
calories that add up throughout the day. I put in
another form of accountability into my life, which is the
(29:08):
my Fitness Pal app. Again, this is just something I'm using.
I am not a paid endorser for this product. Under
Armour created the app and it allows you to keep
track of all the calories that you eat throughout the day.
And the good thing is is a lot of your
favorite meals at the restaurants that you pull through are
already locked in. They have all the nutritional values. So
(29:29):
when I enter my freshly meal, they know how many calories,
how many grams of fat, how many carbs that I've eaten,
and it holds me accountable to hit my target every day.
And in the five weeks that I have been using
this app, account calories and also getting the freshly portion
controlled meals. I've dropped eight pounds in five weeks, which
I've been really really excited about. You know, I'm halfway
(29:53):
to my weight laws goal in five weeks. And this
was after struggling and joining a gym and working out
killing myself to the point where I actually haven't worked
out in a month because I heard the meniscus in
my knee, but not seeing the results. So you know,
you've got to have those forms of feedback and accountability
to hold you accountable. This is again coaching, mentorship, or
(30:15):
you know in fitness and app like my fitness Pal
is a game changer. Now, if you're a person who
genuinely loves cooking, God bless you. I can't relate to
that at all, but you know you can do that
on your own. But really finding what are the other
things that you can outsource or automated. When I lived
in New York City and I didn't want to go
up and down three flights of stairs with my laundry basket,
(30:36):
I would just send my laundry out and have it
professionally done so I could get all my laundry washed, folded, dried,
and nice plastic baggies for about twenty six bucks a week,
and that saved me the time appalling things to a
laundry mat or doing things otherwise. But find those things
that eat up time out of your schedule, outsource it,
and then take that energy and the time you've created
(30:58):
and put it or the thing that you're working towards,
you know, whether it be in your career, your purpose,
or your physical fitness. Here are some other habits that
are working for me in a big way. I do
not use the television. My TV is on less than
hour a week, and I'm still paying for cable only
because NFL seasons coming up, and I will give myself
(31:20):
NFL Sunday just to hang out. And that's a day
for me to recharge. And it's something that I genuinely love.
But I do not watch the news. I do not
waste time on Netflix or network TV shows because there's
other things that I'd rather be doing. I'd rather watch
content that is feeding my mind, that is helping me grow,
that is helping me advance my own personal development. It's
(31:41):
more time that I can dedicate to reading books or
checking out audio books, are taking an online course if
I need to. You know, I've said this before on
the podcast and in I grew my business by a
multiple of six, and one of the biggest reasons I
attribute it to is I completely TV out of my life.
It was the most liberating thing ever. No mindless reality shows.
(32:05):
You know. I used to be the guy back in
my radio career that would sit and watch things like
The Bachelor or remember here Comes Honey Boo Boo back
in the day that was one the Kardashians. I would
watch these things because I told myself, well, I need
to talk about it on the radio. But it was
really just a way to numb out and keep myself
from finding the time to do the things that I wanted.
So cutting all that out of my life totally help
(32:27):
me move forward myself forward. I also do not consume
the news. I do not watch, you know, any of
the mainstream cable channels, because to me, that's not even news.
That's people's opinions masquerading is fact. More often than not.
There are a couple online outlets that I check out
once a day where I get what I believe is
(32:47):
an objective reporting of the events going on so that
I can make my own decisions. I'm not telling you
to not be an informed citizen. But I'm also telling
you there's no benefit in feeding into the negativity machine
because one of the big mantras in the media is
if it bleeds, it leads. So they're giving you all
the negativity that's out there. They're giving you all the
(33:08):
fear because that increases ratings. You know, they know that
people are more motivated by fear than they are by joy,
so they gotta give you something else to keep you scared.
Another habit that has helped me amplify my life is
I curate my news feeds so carefully. You know, the
mute and on followed button on Twitter, Facebook, the unfollowed
(33:29):
button on Instagram is a lifesaver. You know. I'm only
feeding in things into my news feed that are going
to lift me up and inspire me. I have no
time for the people who just want to create endless
arguments and spread hate and argue back and forth with
people thinking that you know, their Facebook opinion is going
(33:49):
to be the one to change somebody's political mind. I
don't want to engage with that. And it's not that
I'm not out here focused on how to make the
world a better place, but I know Facebook isn't the
place that I'm going to do it. So I still
use social media. I use it a lot in my business.
You can follow me on Facebook, by the way, if
you want to see some coaching videos and see some
(34:09):
of the blogs and some of the content that I'm
sharing up there. You can follow me on Instagram. But
I just have no patience for the things that aren't
contributing to me feeling positive and uplifted in the world.
One final habit that I do believe is a game
changer if you want to have an amplified life, making
(34:30):
time for real relationships, and I'm not talking about just
going back and forth on Facebook Messenger with your friends
are commenting on their status or text messaging. My best
friend and I usually have a FaceTime date once a
day where we check in and we're able to support
each other and we're able to share things about our lives.
(34:51):
These statistics on loneliness right now, it's the highest it's
ever been. You know, we're people who crave connection. We
are more connected than ever, and we're also less connected
than ever. So for me, it is so important to
take the most important relationships in my life and truly
make time to see how they're doing, not just assuming
I know how they're doing because I saw their status
(35:12):
update or I looked at their Instagram stories and making
sure that those are people, by the way, who are
creating support and positivity in your life. Don't schedule the
FaceTime date with the friend who's always negative, is always miserable,
and they're looking for you to emotionally regulate them all
the time and they don't get back to you. We've
all got the energy vampire friends, So I would really
(35:36):
urge you that coregulation is everything. It helps us come
out of isolation. It helps us feel more connected, but
you also want to feel connected to the right people.
And we'll wrap it up. Actually, just the nighttime routine
for me again, a lot of journaling. I write my
goals in the morning and evening. I do keep a
gratitude journal in the evening where I focus on five
(35:57):
things from the day that I was great. Will four.
I meditate. Here's another woo woo thing that I use,
Take it or leave it. I meditate using crystals and
I know some people I roll at that. And you know,
there's plenty of memes online these days, like if you
look at some of the political debates about Mary Ann
Williamson and she's gonna put a teriff on healing crystals,
(36:18):
and people think it's weird. Look, I'm not one of
the people who believe that these rocks have like some
sort of mystical healing powers. I don't know that to
be the case. You know, if you've listened to this podcast,
you know, like I like to have a lot of research,
there's none out there on that. However, when I keep
those small crystals in my pocket, you know, for me,
I carry around a lot of pyrite or sit train
(36:39):
because those are stones that are associated with abundance and manifestation.
Occasionally I'll use some rose courts because that's really about
your heart chakra and being open to love. I don't
know if it does anything to change my life, although
when I reach into my pocket and I feel that
crystal in my pocket, it is a mental trigger for
(37:00):
me to think, oh yeah, abundance and to really get
in a place of being grateful for the blessings I
already have in my life. You know. So the crystals,
if nothing else, for me, are just a mental trigger
that helped me remind the intention that's associated with the
stone and if it's something that you're interested in, if
you'd like me to do some more content on that,
I can get some guests who specialize in that. Maybe
(37:21):
it's something that we can do down the road. I
know it's super woo woo. It gets a bit of
a negative rap. And again, like anything else that I'm sharing,
you can take these things and try them on, and
you can try it out for yourself. And my great
hope is that you just take one of the things
that I've shared today and you make that a daily
habit for yourself. You know, an amplified life really starts
(37:44):
with one new empowered habit. Start small, work your way up.
There are times when I completely blow it. There are
times I get caught up in my own bullshit, and
you know, I want to sit there and have the
days where I'm like, wow, there's nothing to be grateful
for today. I do it from time to time too,
But it's all about the consistency and showing up and
(38:05):
you grow where you're planted. Right. Let me know. You
can join our Facebook community, the Life Amplified Power Tribe.
You can leave a comment and share with me what
is the thing that you're going to try out this week.
You can also let me know up on Instagram and
if you're looking for some more information on how you
and I can take some of these concepts and really
help you get clear on what's keeping you stuck, what's
(38:28):
keeping you from building the new habits, what's keeping you
from creating the goals that you want. You'll get absolutely
clear on what's been holding you back. You're gonna get
clear on your purpose and you're gonna make so much
massive progress in your life towards creating your amplified career
in life. I do have some one on one v
I P coaching available for September. Limited spots. You can
(38:51):
apply right now at my website Creative Soul Coaching dot net.
I love you so much for listening, thank you for
being part of this community, and I look forward to
talking to you next week. In the meantime, turn down
the volume on your negativity, turn up the volume on
your purpose so you can live life amplified
Episode seventy six, The ten habits that helped Me amplify
my life. My name is Dan Mason. I was overweight,
getting divorced, battling depression, and feeling trapped in a career
where I was successful but bored and unfulfilled. And it's
actually the greatest gift I've ever been given. I used
my pain as a springboard to discover my life's purpose.
(00:23):
Now I want to share the same tools and strategies
which helped transform my life with you so you can
live life amplify. Thank you from the bottom of my
heart for all the amazing messages over the last week.
Our last episode with Jim Forton was apparently a game changer.
I received so many Instagram comments, d m s, Facebook messages,
(00:47):
private emails, and you've told me how this episode has
absolutely been a game changer for you. And I could
spend fifteen minutes reading feedback, but what I will do
is share the most recent comment that I got from
Ashley Jones a Z. This came in on Instagram just
before we started taping today. She says, if you've never
(01:08):
listened to podcast, make this your first. If you love them, listen, listen, Listen.
Dan Mason and Jim Forton. This episode hits home on
so many amazing topics. Get ready to take a real
look at your subconscious identity, who you are, why you
were that way, and if you want some kind of change,
how to do it? Dan. Many of your episodes are
(01:28):
mind blowing, but this one takes the cake. Thank you gentlemen, well,
thank you Ashley, and thank you to everybody who wrote
in and out. Of all the messages that have seen
and heard over the past seven days or so, there
were two big takeaways that seemed to resonate the most.
Number one, the circumstances of our lives are simply a
(01:49):
reflection of our subconscious identity. Our reality is just our
identity manifested. And number two, that subconscious identity is shaped
by our habits. And my intention for this week is
to give you three simple things that you can do
right now to build better habits that work for you. Plus,
(02:10):
I'll give you the blueprint. I'll give you the ten
habits that have really moved me forward and helped me
amplify my life over the last seven years. Now, if
you've been here with me since the beginning, or you've
listened to the intro of the podcast. You know in
my life was very different than it is today. Overweight, depressed,
suffering from anxiety, borderline suicidal, unfulfilled in my career, getting divorced,
(02:33):
at rock bottom, pretty much in every area of my life.
And when I look at the habits that I had
at that point, they were reflective of a man who
couldn't get momentum going in any area. I would be
the guy who was in bed till one o'clock, screwing
around on the Internet or looking at social media. I
(02:54):
was the guy who would hit the snooze button four
times in the morning and get out of bed at
the last possible moment to get into the office, and
part of that would be in a rush. So I
pulled through McDonald's for breakfast and feed myself in the
egg McMuffin and a hash brown, which, while those are delicious,
they certainly weren't helping me with my health goals. I
was a guy that just dove into my email first
(03:17):
thing in the morning and started putting out fires for
other people at work without even so much of a
thought of how I wanted to feel or how I
wanted to show up in the world. That day. I
was a guy who was chasing toxic people in toxic relationships,
over valuing my own purpose. I wasn't even doing any
of the personal development work to educate and improve my life.
(03:38):
So what changed over the last seven years? How did
I leave behind a career that no longer served me
and build a passion filled business. How did I make
more money in eighteen than I ever did in a
corporate career. How is it that I've moved and created
my dream life on the beach with total freedom over
my time, my finances, and just my life. I had
(04:00):
to develop new habits to get me there. So coming
up this week, I want to clue you in on
some of the things that I use. I will warn
you a few of these habits might seem weird to you.
It might be a little too woo woo uh. And
I'm not advocating that you take all ten of these
habits I'm sharing and implement them into your life. But
I'm hoping that you'll try out one or two, that
you'll take him on and just try him on like
(04:21):
you would some clothes and a fitting room, and that
it inspires you to really figure out the right set
of habits that will get you going, because there is
no universal blueprint for which habits will give you an
amplified life. You know, when I look at other successful people,
Mark Cuban, for instance, says he immediately rolls out of
(04:42):
bed and dived straight into work. He gets into his
work email first thing in the morning. For me, I
can't fathom doing that. There's other people that tell you
you've got to be up by four thirty am and
get a head start in the day. Yet Warren Buffett,
you know, worth seventy seven billion dollars, gets out about
at sixty and he starts the day reading the Wall
Street Journal. That's his morning habit. So there is nothing
(05:04):
here that I'm sharing with you in terms of my
routines that are the gospel. But I want you just
to take this for what it's worth. It's helped me.
If you've been a fan of this podcast and you
admire the stuff that I'm putting out into the world,
maybe you can take some of this and use it
for yourself. Moreover, I want to give you the structure
that's going to help you build the right habits in
(05:24):
your life, starting right now today. So we're gonna get
into that coming up in just a few moments. However,
one of the other things I wanted to do for
some podcast housekeeping is let you know I've been talking
with my team and you know, we do this listener
of the Week and we ask you to share your
comments on Instagram or screenshot the podcast and upload it.
(05:45):
But one of the things that really help get this
podcast in front of more people and get this message
to be heard in a bigger way in the world
is your reviews. And I hate to be the guy
who's on here fishing for reviews. However, I do have
a mission here to inspire one million people globally, to
(06:05):
get them to overcome that conditioning of corporate America so
they can create their own amplified career in life. And
the reviews are would help with the algorithm up on Apples.
So here is the proposal that I have for you today.
I'm starting a contest for the next five weeks. I'm
asking you if you've enjoyed any of the episodes, if
what we're putting out each week is impacting your life,
(06:28):
if it's helping you get closer to your purpose or
helping you live more consciously and mindfully, I would ask
that you please leave a review, an honest one. You
don't have to kiss my butt. If you think this
podcast sucks, you can certainly tell people that too, but
leave an honest review. And then before you click submit,
screenshot your review and email it directly to me Dan
(06:52):
at Creative Soul Coaching dot net. I'm going to do
two things. For every review that I get. I'm going
to make a fifteen dollar donation to Feeding America, and
each fifteen dollar donation is going to help feed one
sixty hungry people, So that in and of itself is awesome.
But I'm also going to take all the people who
(07:13):
submit a review and I'll put you in a grand
prize drawing and you'll get your choice of a new
pair of air pods that you can use to listen
to this podcast on the go anywhere, or I will
give you a Amazon gift card so you can make
the purchase for that thing that you need that's going
to help you amplify your life. So that is what
I would ask. Submit a review before use click send
(07:36):
on it, screenshot it, send it to me Dan at
Creative Soul Coaching dot net. We're going to do this
through the month of September and announce our grand prize
winner on the first episode of October. Super excited for that.
Thank you so much for being part of this community,
and your feedback will help us spread the word and
get the podcast in front of more people. All that
(07:58):
being said, if you love the episode last week and
you are ready to change your identity to create that
amplified life, I'm going to share with you the ten
habits that have helped me create it for myself. It's
all coming up this week on Life Amplified. Let's be honest,
it is difficult to build good habits, and it's especially
(08:20):
true if you're trying to create something that you're going
to stick with in the long term. And that is
why there are a few simple strategies from a book
that Jim Forton mentioned last week on the podcast Atomic
Habits by James Clear. There are three strategies that help
you build good habits and break bad ones. Now these
are not the gospel. These aren't the only way to
(08:41):
do it, but there are three of the easiest and
most effective ways that I can share with you today.
Number One, you want to start with a habit that
is so easy it's impossible for you to say no
to it. You know, we've got to build momentum and consistency,
and it doesn't matter how well you perform on an
individual day, you know, and amplified life is thet of
sustainable effort over the long run. So start with something simple.
(09:05):
If you want to build an exercise habit, can you
start out with just exercising three minutes in the morning,
and that's almost like laughable, I get it. But start
out with something totally small. If you want to write
the next great American novel, can you start with one
hundred words a day to write and then you can
start to build from there. You know, you could even
(09:26):
just start with writing five sentences and doing that and
gradually adding on healthy eating. In my life, you know,
a place where I've struggled is in my diet and nutrition.
And I made some amazing strides in this over the
last five weeks. But for me, I started out with saying,
I'm just gonna cut all sugar out of my diet
one day a week, and you know, building up that
(09:46):
success and then you can start to increasingly, in small
increments add on. You know, a lot of times we
get into these things where like, oh my god, I
need to lose fifty pounds, I want to quit smoking,
I've got to quit drinking, I've got to find the
next career, and all these things pile up and it
can feel so overwhelming that we never get started. So
(10:08):
it's about setting yourself up for a win and knowing
that just doing something once a week isn't going to
change your life. You know, if you go to the
gym one day out of seven, it's gonna be hard
to get the results. So we want to make this
last over the long run. Start easy and building in increments.
The second tip that's going to help you make the
success sustainable is to take some time work with the
(10:30):
coach or mentor to understand exactly what is holding you back.
I've used myself in the past as an example. I
am a person that was really resistant to structure and
building habits. For me, having too much structure equaled this
complete loss of freedom. I was like, Oh, I'll figure
it out. I gotta be at the moment, I gotta
(10:52):
fly by the seat of my pants. And here's the
thing that was underneath this belief is I worked with
my coaches was a sense of define science you know,
one of the things I've learned about myself, and this
was totally true back in my corporate days. One of
the easiest ways to make sure that I didn't do
something was to tell me that I had to do it,
because then it almost became like given a middle finger.
(11:12):
I'd be like, screw you, watch me not do this thing.
But underneath the defiance was fear, quite honestly, because the
people growing up who put the structure into my life,
the people who were responsible for creating structure for me
when I was a child, didn't do a very good
job of helping me to feel safe. So there was
a little part of me that almost equated, you know
(11:35):
it rules with being loss of control. And I see
this with so many of the clients that I coach today,
and it's a blind spot. I was never able to
make this connection on my own, So coaching and mentorship
helps you break through. I just had an amazing breakthrough
with one of my v I P clients this morning,
and this guy is a very high performer, owns his
(11:56):
own business, makes a great living, employees a lot of people,
but the one area where he was struggling to make
a change was in his health. He would always go
to bed with the best intentions to wake up at
six am and work out, But when the time came
and that alarm went off, he's like, oh, what could
be more secure than laying here in my bed with
my dog and with my wife. There was a tremendous
(12:17):
sense of security. And as we got curious and did
the deeper work, what we realized is growing up, he
never had that sense of security. You know, the family
had a lot of kids. He was the only boy,
with several sisters. The sisters got the bedroom. He had
to sleep every night on a pull out couch, sort
of separated and not having a place that was his own.
(12:40):
So as an adult, this idea of getting out of
bed in the morning, it was almost that loss of security,
you know, because laying in bed, being with the wife,
being with the dog gave him. It filled this emotional
need that had been missing. And once we made that connection,
we were really start to able to put some systems
and some goals in place that would help him still
meet the need for security. And what better way to
(13:03):
meet a need for security than taking care of your
health and making sure that you're going to be around
long enough to spend time with the people that you love.
You know, it is a huge breakthrough this morning. And again,
we all have these psychological blind spots, and we don't
see them unless we have the perspective of somebody a
coach on the outside, because so often the stories that
(13:24):
we have just become our identity. Oh you know, I'm
resistant to structure, or I'm an introvert, or I'm big boned,
or i have bad genetics, so I'll never have the
body that I want. We can so live at the story,
but the story becomes the identity, and if we want
to change it, it's gonna be about the action that
we're taking. So get some mentorship to see what the
(13:47):
core reason is, What is the root cause of you
being stuck in the area where things aren't working for you?
And the third step, according to James Clear about making
these habits stick is you've got to develop a plan
for when you fail. How many people listening right now,
You know you grew up with this mindset. You've somehow
taken on a false belief that to get it wrong
(14:09):
makes you less then or that you are wrong if
you fail. And the thing is failure is a completely
made up construct, it doesn't even exist. You know, Failure
is only when you resign yourself to giving up and
not continuing to pursue the thing that you're after. Everything
before that is just a setback that is helping you learn,
(14:30):
that's forcing you to grow and become more so that
you can really grow into the person who's worthy of
achieving the goal that you seek. So you've got to
have a plan to overcome the self judgment, the guilt
that comes up, and focus on getting back on track
as quickly as possible. That's been one of the biggest
things having mentorship in my life is the things that
(14:51):
would have knocked me off track and just made me
give up on a goal forever. You know, I fall
off track for a day or two, but I'm able
to climb back on the horse and contin in you
the journey. I read a great quote from a Harvard
psychologist and this completely landed for me. I wanted to
share it with you. He says, most of us are
waiting to feel a certain way before we take action.
We have to feel competent before we go after our
(15:14):
dream job or launch a new business. We need to
feel worthy before we put ourselves out there. For love
after heartbreak. But he says, we can't feel our way
into action. It's only through taking action that we create
the feeling. Confidence is the byproduct of taking action and
building competency in the thing that you desire and gaining
(15:37):
that new skill. And this is the case with your habits.
Right If you want to get in better shape, and
you start out every day working out, you know, three
minutes a day, then bump it up to five, and
then you bump it up to fifteen twenty minutes, you
start to increase a little more confidence in pride in
yourself that you're showing up, and then it gives you
the juice to push yourself a little further. You know,
(15:58):
that three minute workout become is a thirty minute work
out in no time. Then it might become a full
hour as you start to see the results. Mindset when
it comes to habits, is everything. I think mindset is
everything no matter what it is you're trying to create.
But falling on your face doesn't make you a failure.
That's what makes you normal. The thing that separates the
very top performers from those who are struggling is your
(16:20):
ability to have resilience and get back on track quickly.
It's another place coaching or mentorship makes all the difference
for you. So what are the habits in my life
that have helped me go from the guy who's forty
pounds overweight and a soul sucking job to feeling passionate
and alive and engaged in my dream business and live
in my dream life on the water here in California.
(16:43):
A lot of people in personal development pay lip service
to the idea of having great morning habits. Louise hay
the founder of hay House Publishers. She was the one
who famously said, how you start your day is how
you live your day. How you live your day is
how you live your life. And I am all four
morning habits. And I'm going to share some of the
specific things I implement into my life in the morning
(17:03):
that really make a difference. But I will tell you
the quality of my morning is directly proportional to the
nighttime habits that I implement the night before first and
foremost sleep. For me, I am in bed by ninety
five every night, and a lot of times if I
don't have plans on the weekends, I'm in bed by
(17:25):
ninety five On the weekends because it's important for me
to keep a consistent sleep schedule. That's what helps the
body develop a consistent circadian rhythm, which is just that
natural energy flow in your life. Now, it doesn't mean
I'm asleep by because I'll spend time journaling, I'll spend
time meditating. But for me, it is absolutely lights out
(17:45):
no later than ten fifteen ten thirty is because my
body naturally wakes up on its own. I don't use
an alarm clock anymore. I'm up no later than five
forty five, but usually closer to five in the morning.
Another important point that I'm want to bring up is
when your body is waking up before the alarm, Generally
it means that you are charged and you're ready to
(18:06):
start the day. You don't want to throw things off
by waking up before the alarm and being like, oh god,
you know, I'm sleep another twenty five minutes. Uh. And
unless you're the person who just had a restless night
and you didn't fall to sleep consistently through the night,
when your body wakes up before the alarm, use that
time to your advantage. And there are many people that
(18:27):
I talked to and I've seen this in some Instagram
messages lately where people are like, Dan, you don't have kids,
you don't understand the struggle of parents. And you know,
while I did have the privilege to be a step
parent for a period of time in my life, back
during my marriage and that relationship, you're right, I do
not have kids right now. And here's the thing. If
(18:47):
your kids are up and they're sick, and they're vomiting
through the night the night before and you have to
take care of them, I understand you have got to
be there. You've got to be a parent. That has
to be a priority. But how many nights are you
not getting sleep because your kids are sick, Versus the
nights you're not getting sleep because you're on your phone,
because you're sitting on your laptop, because you're screwing around
(19:09):
on social media. Let's get real about what the actual
barrier is that's getting in the way for you. Because
if your kids are out of bed at sixty five
in the morning and you're waking up at the same
time as them, and you're in the business of you know,
getting them breakfast and getting them dressed and fed and
off to school, you're already in that place of taking
(19:30):
care of everyone else before yourself. I would urge you
for the next seven days, could you get up an
hour before everybody else in the family. Could you force
yourself to get to bed earlier and also wake up
earlier because that one hour a day that is like
the twenty five hour. For those of you are saying
I have no time, generally, what you mean is I
(19:51):
don't have undistracted time, and you wake up refreshed. This
is when your brain is most alert, when you're most
have the highest ability for problem solving. This is a
great time for you to take care of yourself in
the morning, in whichever way makes sense for you. Now,
for me, uh, here are the things that I do
in the morning. I usually wake up and I just
(20:12):
lay in bed, focus on my breathing. I get really
connected to my breath, and I execute a gratitude practice.
I will start giving gratitude for the things in my
life and not just the obvious stuff. I think a
lot of people just make this gratitude practice something else
on that to do list, So it's like, I don't know,
Like I'm just grateful for my family. I'm grateful that
I have a roof over my head. All right, is
(20:34):
this ship over? Can I get among the day? Really
challenging yourself to be grateful for the small things in life.
Maybe the way that your child looked and smiled at
you the night before, that somebody treated you with kindness
when you were in line at the grocery store and
they let you go ahead of them because you had
ten items and they had a cart full. You know,
(20:55):
not that in and of itself that's a game changer,
but it's a thing. You can be grateful for it,
and a remind heard that there is kindness in the world,
because you certainly wouldn't know that. If you watch any
of the news headlines these days, I'll talk about how
I just refused to watch the news. That's actually one
of the habits for me. I've cut that time in
in that rabbit hole out of my life. But a
morning gratitude practice very important. And for me, I just
(21:18):
like to lay there. My dog comes and snuggles with
me in the morning, and that gratitude practices everything. Now,
the next set of things that I institute in the
morning are going to be a little woo woo. And
for some of you, you might I roll at this
and the thing is one of the great pieces of
feedback I got on the podcast recently, and I've heard
this from more than one person, that you're like Dan,
I like the fact that you're kind of into like
(21:40):
the woo woo spiritual stuff, but you also give like
practical rational action steps. So that's me. I don't look
at myself is a woo woo person. I just sort
of joke that I am woo compliant. So these are
some things that I include in my life that might
seem weird to you, and that's cool. You don't have
to use any of them, but I would in courage
(22:00):
you just to give it a try. One of the
things that I do is I burned some Polo Santo
in the morning. You've heard of people who burn sage
a lot is a way to clear bad energy, and
I definitely have a smudge stick and I use it
on occasion. For me personally, I just feel more of
an energetic shift when I burned Polo santo, like I'll
feel like the tingle down my spine. I feel like
(22:20):
there is a shift within me, and I find it
to be a much more pleasant smell than sage. That's
just me personally. But I do like to sort of
clear that energy in the bedroom in the morning because
the next thing that I do is I will get
up and I pull an oracle card from a deck.
You know, you might have seen these angel cards oracle cards.
You know, there are ways that you can sort of
(22:41):
connect to some divine intelligence and you pull a card
that gives you some feedback or a message that you
need to hear for that day. In fact, earlier this morning,
I pulled a card that was really urging me to
explore my options and look for creative solutions to problems
and challenges that I'm facing. It's part of why I
talked with my team and we instituted this plan for
(23:02):
the air pod giveaway for your reviews for the podcast,
and talked about making donations. Defeating America is a way
to inspire more people to take a couple of minutes
out of their day to write the reviews. So it
helps us with the algorithm. Up until now, I had
been doing some separate stuff, you know, to really promote
the podcast viral e and a cost effective way, but
(23:23):
we weren't getting any more results with that. So in
this morning's meditation is when I came up with this
idea and we're implementing it right now. But what I
like to do is take whatever messages on that oracle
card and I will meditate on that in my morning meditation,
you know, So that will be usually a good anywhere
between ten to twenty minutes that I will meditate in
(23:45):
the morning. Again, if you're a person who's pressed for time,
or if meditation is not your jam, you know, for
some people, they're like Dan, calming my mind and closing
my eyes, that's enough just to give me anxiety. So
start with meditating for two minutes and work your way
up from there. Some of the stuff I'm giving you,
it's just spiritual stuff that works for me. There's no
proven science that says Sage or Paulo Santo does anything
(24:07):
right pulling an oracle card. There's no research your science.
It's just something that personally works for me, meditation. This
is why so many corporations are embracing it. That's why
you see so many of those companies in Silicon Valley
instituting meditation and yoga studios on premises, because it just
helps you be more effective throughout the day. From there,
(24:28):
after my meditation, I do some journaling. And this is
a very specific practice that I've cultivated that works for
me because I believe everything is about intention. We have
got to have an intention for not just what we
want to do for the day, but how do we
want to show up who do we want to be?
Each morning in my journal, I write down three words
that I want to be in the world that day.
(24:51):
I know as a matter of fact, this morning, I
wrote that I wanted to be abundant, that I wanted
to be happy, and then I wanted to be surrendered,
meaning at you know, I have intentions with my goals,
but I'm also surrendered to better solutions from a divine
intelligence that sees a better plan for myself even that
I do. So those were my three words that I
(25:12):
wanted to show up as and and they're different every day,
by the way. And the second thing that I write
in my journal in the morning is I said an
intention for how I want to feel at the end
of the day. Because if my intention is to feel
peaceful or relaxed at the end of the day, I
know that that's probably not the day for me to
squeeze seven more things on my to do list. If
(25:34):
I want to feel excited. If I want to feel
proud of myself, that's a day where all push myself
to challenge a little bit more. And what's remarkable is,
in the time that I've really been instituting this practice
is how many times I'll be like talking to a friend,
like later in the evening, and I'll say like something
about how I'm feeling, and then I remember, I'm like,
oh my god, that was the thing that I set
(25:55):
the intention for earlier today. So I'll write down these
three words that I want to show up as, and
then the word that I want to feel at the
end of the day. Also, I will write down my goals.
Every single morning. I will write down the five biggest
goals in front of me, and I write them as
if they've already happened. A lot of times when we're manifesting,
(26:16):
if you're using the words I will or one day
I will create this, the universe doesn't recognize that. It
really recognizes the present tense. So I write these things
as if they've already happened. I say, I declare blank
results you know if I'm sitting an income goal for
the month, or I declare, you know, X amount of
(26:37):
downloads on the podcast, you know, for how I want
to grow our audience moving forward, So use some variations
on that about I accept now, or I call forth now,
or I declare it now. You know, the universe when
we're manifesting, only understands the language of abundance, and you
just have to call that in. So I write my
(26:57):
goals in the positive and present tense, and and the
last thing that I do is I usually write three
to five intentions for the day, so these will be
the action steps that I want to take that are
going to help me achieve those goals faster. So this
is a process. It shouldn't take any longer than five
to ten minutes for you in the morning. But you
gotta lead with intention. You have to decide what are
(27:20):
the biggest things that you're working toward, and then also
what are the action steps, the smallest ones that are
going to move me forward and help me create that
the fastest. Another habit that has really helped me free
up time. You know you've heard me talk about this
is about outsourcing and delegating the things that you hate
to do, you know, whatever those things are that eat
(27:42):
up time out of your schedule. Each week. How can
you outsource it to somebody else for me. I've talked
in the past I hate cleaning, which is why I
will invest in a good housekeeper. I don't mind doing
laundry now that I have in unit wash your dryers,
so I have no longer outsourced that. That's something I'm
doing on my own. But I hate cooking. I hate cooking.
It's not fun for me to cook for one person,
(28:05):
and there's better things that I would rather be doing
with my time to live my purpose and to serve
my clients. So I have taken on and this is
not a paid endorsement. I'm not a brand ambassador. I'm
getting no kickbacks on this. I signed up with Freshly.
I am using that company. You can look them up
online Freshly f R E, s H L Y. But
(28:25):
they do a lot of pre prepared, chef prepared meals
that are generally all under five hundred calories. They are
portion controlled. They show up in my house once a week.
I pay about a hundred and seven dollars for twelve
meals a week, so that gets me all my lunches
and dinners through the week, and they're reasonably tasty, like
they're pretty good, you know, And there's a few in
(28:47):
particular that I really like. And the other piece that
I've started to do because you know, as much as
I was working out, I'm the person nutritionally who's a
bit of a grazer, you know. I'll eat a handful
of something here, eat like the hundred calorie pack of
something over here, and it's a lot of those hidden
calories that add up throughout the day. I put in
another form of accountability into my life, which is the
(29:08):
my Fitness Pal app. Again, this is just something I'm using.
I am not a paid endorser for this product. Under
Armour created the app and it allows you to keep
track of all the calories that you eat throughout the day.
And the good thing is is a lot of your
favorite meals at the restaurants that you pull through are
already locked in. They have all the nutritional values. So
(29:29):
when I enter my freshly meal, they know how many calories,
how many grams of fat, how many carbs that I've eaten,
and it holds me accountable to hit my target every day.
And in the five weeks that I have been using
this app, account calories and also getting the freshly portion
controlled meals. I've dropped eight pounds in five weeks, which
I've been really really excited about. You know, I'm halfway
(29:53):
to my weight laws goal in five weeks. And this
was after struggling and joining a gym and working out
killing myself to the point where I actually haven't worked
out in a month because I heard the meniscus in
my knee, but not seeing the results. So you know,
you've got to have those forms of feedback and accountability
to hold you accountable. This is again coaching, mentorship, or
(30:15):
you know in fitness and app like my fitness Pal
is a game changer. Now, if you're a person who
genuinely loves cooking, God bless you. I can't relate to
that at all, but you know you can do that
on your own. But really finding what are the other
things that you can outsource or automated. When I lived
in New York City and I didn't want to go
up and down three flights of stairs with my laundry basket,
(30:36):
I would just send my laundry out and have it
professionally done so I could get all my laundry washed, folded, dried,
and nice plastic baggies for about twenty six bucks a week,
and that saved me the time appalling things to a
laundry mat or doing things otherwise. But find those things
that eat up time out of your schedule, outsource it,
and then take that energy and the time you've created
(30:58):
and put it or the thing that you're working towards,
you know, whether it be in your career, your purpose,
or your physical fitness. Here are some other habits that
are working for me in a big way. I do
not use the television. My TV is on less than
hour a week, and I'm still paying for cable only
because NFL seasons coming up, and I will give myself
(31:20):
NFL Sunday just to hang out. And that's a day
for me to recharge. And it's something that I genuinely love.
But I do not watch the news. I do not
waste time on Netflix or network TV shows because there's
other things that I'd rather be doing. I'd rather watch
content that is feeding my mind, that is helping me grow,
that is helping me advance my own personal development. It's
(31:41):
more time that I can dedicate to reading books or
checking out audio books, are taking an online course if
I need to. You know, I've said this before on
the podcast and in I grew my business by a
multiple of six, and one of the biggest reasons I
attribute it to is I completely TV out of my life.
It was the most liberating thing ever. No mindless reality shows.
(32:05):
You know. I used to be the guy back in
my radio career that would sit and watch things like
The Bachelor or remember here Comes Honey Boo Boo back
in the day that was one the Kardashians. I would
watch these things because I told myself, well, I need
to talk about it on the radio. But it was
really just a way to numb out and keep myself
from finding the time to do the things that I wanted.
So cutting all that out of my life totally help
(32:27):
me move forward myself forward. I also do not consume
the news. I do not watch, you know, any of
the mainstream cable channels, because to me, that's not even news.
That's people's opinions masquerading is fact. More often than not.
There are a couple online outlets that I check out
once a day where I get what I believe is
(32:47):
an objective reporting of the events going on so that
I can make my own decisions. I'm not telling you
to not be an informed citizen. But I'm also telling
you there's no benefit in feeding into the negativity machine
because one of the big mantras in the media is
if it bleeds, it leads. So they're giving you all
the negativity that's out there. They're giving you all the
(33:08):
fear because that increases ratings. You know, they know that
people are more motivated by fear than they are by joy,
so they gotta give you something else to keep you scared.
Another habit that has helped me amplify my life is
I curate my news feeds so carefully. You know, the
mute and on followed button on Twitter, Facebook, the unfollowed
(33:29):
button on Instagram is a lifesaver. You know. I'm only
feeding in things into my news feed that are going
to lift me up and inspire me. I have no
time for the people who just want to create endless
arguments and spread hate and argue back and forth with
people thinking that you know, their Facebook opinion is going
(33:49):
to be the one to change somebody's political mind. I
don't want to engage with that. And it's not that
I'm not out here focused on how to make the
world a better place, but I know Facebook isn't the
place that I'm going to do it. So I still
use social media. I use it a lot in my business.
You can follow me on Facebook, by the way, if
you want to see some coaching videos and see some
(34:09):
of the blogs and some of the content that I'm
sharing up there. You can follow me on Instagram. But
I just have no patience for the things that aren't
contributing to me feeling positive and uplifted in the world.
One final habit that I do believe is a game
changer if you want to have an amplified life, making
(34:30):
time for real relationships, and I'm not talking about just
going back and forth on Facebook Messenger with your friends
are commenting on their status or text messaging. My best
friend and I usually have a FaceTime date once a
day where we check in and we're able to support
each other and we're able to share things about our lives.
(34:51):
These statistics on loneliness right now, it's the highest it's
ever been. You know, we're people who crave connection. We
are more connected than ever, and we're also less connected
than ever. So for me, it is so important to
take the most important relationships in my life and truly
make time to see how they're doing, not just assuming
I know how they're doing because I saw their status
(35:12):
update or I looked at their Instagram stories and making
sure that those are people, by the way, who are
creating support and positivity in your life. Don't schedule the
FaceTime date with the friend who's always negative, is always miserable,
and they're looking for you to emotionally regulate them all
the time and they don't get back to you. We've
all got the energy vampire friends, So I would really
(35:36):
urge you that coregulation is everything. It helps us come
out of isolation. It helps us feel more connected, but
you also want to feel connected to the right people.
And we'll wrap it up. Actually, just the nighttime routine
for me again, a lot of journaling. I write my
goals in the morning and evening. I do keep a
gratitude journal in the evening where I focus on five
(35:57):
things from the day that I was great. Will four.
I meditate. Here's another woo woo thing that I use,
Take it or leave it. I meditate using crystals and
I know some people I roll at that. And you know,
there's plenty of memes online these days, like if you
look at some of the political debates about Mary Ann
Williamson and she's gonna put a teriff on healing crystals,
(36:18):
and people think it's weird. Look, I'm not one of
the people who believe that these rocks have like some
sort of mystical healing powers. I don't know that to
be the case. You know, if you've listened to this podcast,
you know, like I like to have a lot of research,
there's none out there on that. However, when I keep
those small crystals in my pocket, you know, for me,
I carry around a lot of pyrite or sit train
(36:39):
because those are stones that are associated with abundance and manifestation.
Occasionally I'll use some rose courts because that's really about
your heart chakra and being open to love. I don't
know if it does anything to change my life, although
when I reach into my pocket and I feel that
crystal in my pocket, it is a mental trigger for
(37:00):
me to think, oh yeah, abundance and to really get
in a place of being grateful for the blessings I
already have in my life. You know. So the crystals,
if nothing else, for me, are just a mental trigger
that helped me remind the intention that's associated with the
stone and if it's something that you're interested in, if
you'd like me to do some more content on that,
I can get some guests who specialize in that. Maybe
(37:21):
it's something that we can do down the road. I
know it's super woo woo. It gets a bit of
a negative rap. And again, like anything else that I'm sharing,
you can take these things and try them on, and
you can try it out for yourself. And my great
hope is that you just take one of the things
that I've shared today and you make that a daily
habit for yourself. You know, an amplified life really starts
(37:44):
with one new empowered habit. Start small, work your way up.
There are times when I completely blow it. There are
times I get caught up in my own bullshit, and
you know, I want to sit there and have the
days where I'm like, wow, there's nothing to be grateful
for today. I do it from time to time too,
But it's all about the consistency and showing up and
(38:05):
you grow where you're planted. Right. Let me know. You
can join our Facebook community, the Life Amplified Power Tribe.
You can leave a comment and share with me what
is the thing that you're going to try out this week.
You can also let me know up on Instagram and
if you're looking for some more information on how you
and I can take some of these concepts and really
help you get clear on what's keeping you stuck, what's
(38:28):
keeping you from building the new habits, what's keeping you
from creating the goals that you want. You'll get absolutely
clear on what's been holding you back. You're gonna get
clear on your purpose and you're gonna make so much
massive progress in your life towards creating your amplified career
in life. I do have some one on one v
I P coaching available for September. Limited spots. You can
(38:51):
apply right now at my website Creative Soul Coaching dot net.
I love you so much for listening, thank you for
being part of this community, and I look forward to
talking to you next week. In the meantime, turn down
the volume on your negativity, turn up the volume on
your purpose so you can live life amplified
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