Level Up Your Life

Welcome to the Level Up Your Life Podcast hosted by the inspiring and down to Earth, Mark Black. During this weekly podcast, Mark will tackle topics that span every area of your life. From personal, relational, and professional, Mark has always got you covered. Mark's messages are always real, honest, and resonate with his audience. Get ready to level up!

During this episode, Mark tackles the difficult topic of failure while sharing his top three fails in his life thus far. He shares these anecdotes and lessons learned with the hope that you can apply them.

Fails:

1. Missouri FFA Speaking Event
2. 1. Monetization
   2. 1. Books not going over well with students
      2. Catch slogan graphic t-shirt
      3. "Maybe you should test the market?"
      4. Sold 43 shirts of 600 (Less than 10% of what was ordered)
      1. Value
      2. Greed
      3. Selfishness
   3. Coming from the right space
      1. Being self aware
      2. Act in accordance with who you want to be
   4. Lessons
   1. Working constantly
   2. 1. Help
      2. Ego blow
      3. Being present
      1. Easy to be selfish
         1. Focusing on business
         2. Supporting family
         3. Providing
      2. Easy to justify selfishness
      3. Cognizant
      4. Pull back ego and hear the truth
   3. Lesson
3. Spousal Conversation - Pulling Your Weight
   1. Confidence
   2. 1. Reviews
      2. Assumptions
      3. Clarity
      1. Make sure your ego is in check
      2. Can't do everything amazingly
   3. Lesson:
4. Moving to Corporate World

"I listened, but didn't hear the advice of my coach."

"Two thousand students left and are not stopping. They don't even look."

"Who were you being when you were speaking? Why were you providing this product?"

"We have to be willing to look in the mirror."

"The more you serve the more you earn."

"I wasn't excited about doing dishes or folding laundry."

"Painful honesty is required!"

"We can't pretend that we  can wear all the hats in this business."

More Mark:

Your Best Year Yet transformation Program

Mark's website

Mark's LinkedIn profile

Mark's Twitter profile

Mark's Facebook profile  

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Welcome to the Level Up Your Life Podcast hosted by the enthusiastic and impassioned Mark Black. Each Week Mark will lift your spirits with great recommendations and inspiration to help you get where you're going. This podcast is for everyone! Mark isn't a one trick pony. In fact, he's got a lot up his sleeves. Get ready to see amazing changes in your life.

In this episode, Mark asks us to change our mindset surrounding problems and challenges in our lives. Instead of seeing these as bad times, Mark recommends turning things around and looking at it from a training perspective. Much in the way a professional athlete does.

Three things you can do today to change your mindset toward adversity:

1. Intentionally challenge yourself more often
2. 1. Intermittent Fasting
   2. Convenience
   3. Exercise (physical/mental)
   1. Helps us endure
   2. Teaching moment
   3. Intentionality
3. Practice gratitude
   1. Preparation
   2. Reminds us what we have accomplished
   3. Capability and capacity to overcome
4. Connect with the times you overcame major challenges

"What you do is not nearly as important as you doing something."

"During recovery your body repairs and gains strength."

"What in my life was very challenging and how did that prepare me or improve my life?"

"You will struggle in life. Will you struggle with meaning or not?"

"We need challenge to push us and to grow."

More Mark:

Your Best Year Yet transformation Program

Mark's website

Mark's LinkedIn profile

Mark's Twitter profile

Mark's Facebook profile  

Welcome to the Level Up Your Life podcast hosted by the indelible Mark Black. This weekly podcast will have you striving to meet your goals and great new ones with a zeal you didn't know you had. During each episode, Mark will bring to life some facet of yourself you have either been ignoring or didn't know existed.

In this episode, Mark brings up the touchy topic of Confidence. Immediately he makes clear that confidence does not mean having all the answers. Mark explains in his opinion confidence is being ready to learn and having a belief in yourself that you can acquire the skills you need.  Mark gives his personal definition of confidence as: know you are enough, just as you are and you have what you need to do what you were called to do. Mark offers a confidence quiz for you to rank yourself to give yourself a baseline to see where or if you need to improve.

What Confidence is Not:

• Arrogance
• • Comparing
  • Can not learn anything more
• Superiority
• • "I'm better than xx"
• Having all the answers
• Perfection

What Confidence is/entails:

• Self-worth
• • Your sense of value as a human being.
  • Humility does not mean having a low self-worth
  • I am infinitely valuable and so are you
  • An exercise in self-worth
• Agency
• • Ability to create results
  • A sense that you can do what needs to be done
• Experience
• • Action
  • Accomplishment
  • Challenge
  • • Tips on how to build confidence  
    • Assignment for the week

"Confidence doesn't happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you're ready to face all the questions."

"Anyone who thinks they have all the answers scares me."

"As long as you know how to find the answers, that's what is more important."

"What got you here, won't get you there."

"Thinking you can do everything is delusion or arrogance."

"Be careful not to compare. My journey is not your journey and your journey is not my journey."

More Mark:

Your Best Year Yet transformation Program

Mark's website

Mark's LinkedIn profile

Mark's Twitter profile

Mark's Facebook profile  

Welcome to the Level Up Your Life podcast hosted by the awe-inspiring, motivating, and passionate Mark Black. As a double transplant survivor Mark has a very exclusive and different take on life. Mark is what all motivational speakers aspire to. He is kind, spirited, and animated with a pure and honest heart. When you listen to Mark speak you can't help but become excited. Mark cares about helping you get to the next level in all areas of life, work, home, mental, physical and emotional.

In this episode, Mark discusses intentionality. We are all given just one life to live. We only get 24 hours every day. So doesn't it then make sense that we work hard to be intentional with how you spend that fine resource? In this episode, Mark provides 4 powerful focussing questions to help you live more intentionally in every area of your life.   

• Who are you?
• • When you examine your skills, talents and abilities, what do you find? What are you good? What are you passionate about?
• Who do you want to become?
• • We are always growing. There is no such thing as staying still. You are always "becoming" someone new. The question is, who do you want that person to be?
• Where can you serve?
• • Who needs the skills and abilities you have?
  • Who do you have a passion to help?
  • Where can you make the biggest difference?
• How do you want to be remembered?
• Mark discusses the power of "beginning with the end in mind" when it comes to your life. When you remember that you will die someday it directs your choices and actions. 

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Your Best Year Yet  Program (http://www.yourbestyearyet.ca)

Mark's website (http://www.markblack.ca)

Welcome to the Level Up Your Life podcast hosted by the awe-inspiring, motivating, and passionate Mark Black. As a double transplant survivor Mark has a very exclusive and different take on life. Mark is what all motivational speakers aspire to. He is kind, spirited, and animated with a pure and honest heart. When you listen to Mark speak you can't help but become excited. Mark cares about helping you get to the next level in all areas(personal and professional development), not just one, which is another thing that makes the Level Up Your Life podcast special. Mark will encourage each step toward excellence.

In this episode, Mark discusses a powerful concept he calls Live Today.  Mark shares a personal story regarding being hospitalized due to heart failure while waiting on the transplant list. He explained that he had a plan laid out for his life and ultimately none of that plan has happened. He was pushed to re-evaluate. While in the hospital Mark had severe anxiety, constantly walking to the nurses' station out of fear that he would die in his sleep. In order to cope with this unmanaged anxiety, Mark curated the Live Today strategy. Living this strategy means taking this day or this moment and live in it right now. It means being present and letting go of control. Logistically we understand the concept of not being able to fix yesterday or predict tomorrow, but Mark recognizes that it is difficult to implement. There are amazing results when you implement Live Today. You become more effective. All of the relationships in your life begin to flourish. You also get better results!

Mark shares that often when he presents this strategy it is misinterpreted as "Live today like it's your last." or "YOLO" (You Only Live Once). He says it's not healthy to live like you're going to die tomorrow or living on the edge. Because these can be interpreted as reckless ways to live it isn't quite what he means. It's about . . .

1. Not living in the past
2. 1. Believe that our past is our best
   2. Allow our mistakes to determine the future
   1. What could go wrong?
   2. Maintaining stasis
   3. Grow each day
3. Not being afraid of the future
   1. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us
   2. Waiting for someday?
4. Not taking tomorrow for granted

"It's a simple concept, but incredibly powerful."

"It's very easily misunderstood."

"What the heck do you get out of bed every day for?"

"Are you willing to throw away two, three, four decades of time away because of mistakes you made when you were fifteen or twenty?"

"Are we moving forward?"

"I will do the best I can with what I have today."

"Stop waiting."

"Start today. Start right now."

Your Best Year Yet transformation Program

Mark's website

Mark's LinkedIn profile

Mark's Twitter profile

Mark's Facebook profile  

Welcome to the Level up Your Life podcast hosted by the inspiring Mark Black. Level Up Your Life is all about reaching that next level in your life. Mark is a different kind of motivational host because he doesn't solely focus on your business or your health, instead, he gives you incredible advice on how to improve all the areas of your life. You want to live life to the fullest and achieve your goals. Mark is the man to help you get there. Strap it, get a notepad and pen, and . . . like Mark says, 'get ready to level up.' With Mark as your coach, you can accomplish any goal you set in front of yourself. Level up Your Life will quickly become your favorite podcast.

In this episode, Mark discusses how to handle challenges in the correct way and has prepared a four-part strategy to help you tackle difficulties when they arise. He even gives an example of using these steps a difficult situation he encountered in his own life. These steps allow you to be the hero of your own story and quickly maneuver around a difficult task when it arises. Mark doesn't promise it will be easy, but if you continually practice these steps you will see a big change in the long term when achieving your goals.

1. Accept
2. 1. Accept the things we can't change. (Serenity Prayer)
   2. Let go, let it be, don't spend energy on something you can't change
   3. Locus of Control Diagram
   4. The quicker we accept something and recognize if we can or can't change it, the quicker we can move on.
   1. Don't lose sight of the ultimate objective.
   2. What's at stake?
   3. What am I hoping to accomplish?
3. Aim
   1. What got you here will not get you there.
   2. Darwinism
   3. Examples about corded home phones and losing weight
   4. If you're unwilling to learn you can become irrelevant (in business)
   5. Evolution is unstoppable
   6. Humans are a naturally adaptive species
4. Adapt
   1. It is what it is? No.
      1. Going through the motions
   2. Fear of taking the wrong action often prevents us from doing something
   3. Failure to act is where dreams die
5. Act

"We don't live in a Pollyanna world. Things go wrong."

"Every challenge, every problem . . . you have in your life is really a psychological level caused by your expectations and reality not meeting."

"There are pieces of the puzzle we do not have control over and that's difficult to deal with."

"Okay, what can I do? Is when progress happens."

"During The Gap, we're only spinning our wheels."

"There is a temptation to think that if we get off track we can't get back to where we're going. If we're not careful, that may happen."

"If you don't make a change, nothing changes."

Your Best Year Yet transformation Program

Mark's website

Mark's LinkedIn profile

Mark's Twitter profile

Mark's Facebook profile  

Two-time transplant survivor, four-time marathon runner, speaker, and coach Mark Black welcomes you to the Level Up Your Life Podcast. If you're here that means you are ready to take some necessary steps to change your life. One of the wonderful things about this podcast is Mark doesn't focus on just your work or just your relationships. He encompasses your entire life: work, finance, relationships, fitness, emotional & mental wellbeing. He wants you to join him on the next level and with his advice, you surely will. Take a deep cleansing breath, grab a notebook and a pen, and get ready to make the changes you've been thinking about making!

In this episode, Mark talks about simplicity. We live in a complicated world of technology and many options on how to do things, but when we make things simpler we de-stress. We live multi-faceted lives and it's very easy for life to get complicated. Why would we want to make things simpler?

• Better execution
• • Mark gives an example of being on a specific diet for 5 years. People don't typically stay on diets because they're complicated: points, counting calories, weighing food . . . etc. He has been able to stay on this diet because it's a black and white - eat this, don't eat this and requires very little effort on his part.
• Allows us to be consistent - easier to automate
• • Doing something once is great (and better than not ever doing it at all), but it won't change your bottom line. Doing something consistently helps us make the changes we want to make in our lives.
• Allows ideas and strategies to expand
• • Mark gives an example of charity walks: sign up, put on shoes, go and walk.
  • Popular best selling toys of all time: yo-yo and silly putty (SIMPLE).
• Reduces stress
• • Expanding on exercise example: get up, go to the gym, come home shower, and go back to work/home. You can get the same amount of exercise at home.
  • Pre-prepared meals
• Allows you to focus at a greater level
• •  is a key element in getting results
  • • Focusing the suns rays can burn a hole in a paper
    • Time, energy, desire
  • Mark discusses the financial structure his family has been using.
  • One thing at a time

Practical ways you can simplify your life:

• You must buy into the idea that simpler is better
• Take all of your bills and set them to autopay
• • Automate everything in your life that you can
• Simplify your wardrobe
• • Narrow it down to the core of what you wear
  • • A row of t-shirts, a row of jeans, a row of skirts, a row of suites
    • Decision fatigue
• Meal prep
• Utilizing your calendar/task manager

Challenge: simplify your thinking

"If you can't explain something at a fifth-grade level, you don't understand it."

"Multitasking is perhaps the greatest lie perpetrated on working people in the last couple of decades."

"When we simplify what we're doing it allows us to have a deeper level of focus."

"If a process is not difficult or complex it allows easy execution and encourages consistency."

"Focused effort creates better results."

"Decision fatigue - make   a non-decision."

"Anything you do more than one time warrants trying to make things simpler"

"We tend to think we get complex and sophisticated."

"It takes true genius to take things down and make it simple."

"Don't live every day like it's your last day. Just be alive every day."

Your Best Year Yet transformation Program

Mark's website

Mark's LinkedIn profile

Mark's Twitter profile

Mark's Facebook profile  

Welcome to the Level Up Your Life Podcast hosted by the inspiring double transplant recipient and coach Mark Black. If you feel stuck this is the podcast for you. Mark has an enthusiastic and motivating attitude. He wants to help take you to, well, the next level! Special to this podcast you will receive tips regarding all areas of your life: career, personal growth, relationships, romance, finance and much more. Mark has accomplished a lot in his life and he wants to help you achieve each goal you set before yourself. Let's do it!

Mark begins this episode with a heartfelt thanks to Level Up Your Life's subscribers and commenters. Afterward, he jumps right into the meat and potatoes of this episode of the show, titled Be Content but Never be Satisfied. These words are not truly synonyms in the universe of Mark Black. What does he mean? Contentment is the ability to be comfortable. If you are content you are experiencing no crisis, fear, anxiety, or stress. You are comfortable in your skin and in your place in the world.  But it is easy to become satisfied. In this instance, he is using the word "satisfied" as a simile to "complacent." What does that feel like? It feels like life is as good as it's gonna get. There is nothing more to strive for. It is easy to feel this way and natural even to work hard and then "coast". If you choose to coast you're missing out on the fundamental need to grow. You want to find a middle ground between content and anxiety-ridden.

Why do we want to find that middle ground?

• Because we always want to be growing
• You have something to contribute to the world only in the way that you can
• • Gifts and talents in your own specific formula unique to you
• No one likes being stuck

There are two ways we can accomplish this. One is from a mentally healthy place and the other from a unhealthy place. What does that look like?

Unhealthy:

• "I will be happy when _______ happens or is achieved
• • What's the next thing? (keeping up with the Joneses)
• Making your contentment contingent upon external events
• Don't wait until everything is perfect to be okay
• • It's never perfect
• Impure motives

Mark tells a story about his heart failing at twenty-three years old. He needed a heart and double lung transplant if he had any chance of survival. He was forced to move in order to be put on the transplant waiting list and eventually was an inpatient admit still waiting for six more months. During that time he was frustrated and out of control. Those feelings lead us to feel completely powerless. It was during this time that Mark says that he realized that he could be content in this situation and hope for a better tomorrow. Tried making a normal life out of an abnormal situation while wanting something more.

Six strategies for achieving contentment but not being satisfied:

1. Start with practicing gratitude on a regular/daily basis.
2. 1. Take ten to fifteen minutes per day to go over the last 24 hours and find something you are grateful for
   2. A gratitude journal is a powerful too
   1. How far you have come
   2. Progress is motivating
3. Acknowledge yourself and growth you've already had
   1. Not about a mysterious level of perfection
   2. 1. Just be one percent better at something
      1. False satisfaction
      2. Want to improve so quickly you end up biting off more than you can chew
      3. Inevitable mistakes follow
      4. Self-deprecation
      5. End of the journey to self-improvement
   3. There are two mistakes people make trying to look for improvements
   4. Take your time and make it count with slow and steady progress
4. Look for improvement opportunities
   1. Comparison kills contentment - there will always be someone better than you
   2. 1. Looking to others for inspiration is not a comparison
5. Stop comparing

• Social media shows the highlight real in someone's life (Social media most often used tool in comparison.)

• Comparison leads to anger and other negative feelings

• Stay in your own lane, don't fall into the trap

• Feedback from others

• Surround yourself with honest people who will give you both positive and negative feedback about

• Patterns

• Reactions

• Areas of improvement

• Celebrate small wins

• Don't wait until you've achieved the huge milestone

• Doing this provides you with momentum

"If we're not growing then we're dying."

"Ask yourself if you are unsatisfied for my sake or for the sake of the people around me?"

"I've not arrived because there is no arriving."

"If you only want people to tell you good things you're not going to grow."

"My experience standing on the stage was very different from what the audience member was seeing."

"I got better and that's worth celebrating."

"Don't live every day like it's your last day just live every day."

Mark's website

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Welcome to the podcast that's going to inspire you to get up on your feet and help your ideas start flowing. You've found the Level Up Your Life podcast hosted by the inspirational motivational transplant recipient, coach, and speaker Mark Black. Mark lived on the precipice of life or death in his youth and since then has been dedicated to motivating others to live their best lives. Though there is no guest on this show you can feel Mark's smile and the conversational tone of voice makes it feel as though the listener is having a one on one talk with him.

In this episode, Mark tackles the topic of how to get results in each area of our lives, not just business. We all want a return on investment. We want to avoid making the following six mistakes that will impede or prevent us from attaining the results we desire if we fail to utilize them:

• Intentionality - being deliberate/purposive
• • Begin with the end in mind - know where you're going
  • People often take off running with an idea, but we don't see beyond what it is we're doing right now
  • • Where will the job take me in two, three, five years?
    • Is this partnership going to be equally beneficial later?
  • Less intentionality can guarantee a loss of our effort, energy, love, work etc
  • What is the end game? Where do you want to go? Break your life down by categories - health, relationships, mental wellness, and so on.
• Purpose - What is the why behind doing what you do
• • What's your why?
  • Why do you do what you do for a career besides money?
  • • Is a paycheck a big enough purpose?
  • The purpose gives us fuel to move forward
  • Mark shares a personal story about questioning his motivation when running a marathon. The 'why' becomes critically important in order to finish. "I don't have what it takes to finish this race." The only thing that prevented him from quitting was seeing his whys listed on his hand.
• Intense Focus - like an Olympic athlete
• • We live in a culture of distractions
  • • Cell phone
    • Computers
    • tablets/iPads
    • Social media
    • Television
    • Busier generation of people/lack of downtime
    • What are the one to three things we're working toward?
• Plan
• • Can't hope to create a wonderful life, career, or relationship by accident
  • Human beings like consistency/creatures of habit
  • Think about how much time it takes to plan a vacation - plan your life with that diligence
  • Recalculating GPS
  • Massive Action Plan
  • • Break a six month/year goal into smaller milestones
• Daily Execution
• • Builds up every day, weeks, months, years
  • 80% on target at the very least
• Accountability
• • Forces you to do what you said you would do
  • • A friend/support group
    • Coach
    • Reward/punishment system

"Things are supposed to be hard sometimes and that's actually really good for us."

"We need to not strive to make things easier, but to make things worth it."

"He who has a big enough why can endure any how." - Nietzsche

"The person who chases two rabbits catches none." - Confucius

"We will continue to do what we have always done until something shakes it up."

"We're not perfect."

"There are no shortcuts. You just have to execute."

"People are not lucky. They didn't stumble into results."

"Recalculate immediately before you get way off track."

"It is a false assumption to assume that people who are motivated are naturally motivated. They had to work at it."

Mark's website

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Welcome to the Level up Your Life Podcast hosted by Keynote and motivational speaker Mark Black. Mark has a contagious zeal for life and lucky for you he wants to share it with his listeners. Mark underwent a heart and double lung transplant at the tender age of 23 and it is this experience that has lead him to motivate others. Over the course of his show's season, Mark wants to give us strategies and tactics to improve our businesses, fitness, and relationships. Really, he just wants your life to be awesome!

In this episode, Mark gives us an intense and comprehensive list of tips and strategies to make 2019 the best year it can be! He challenges all of his listeners, and that means you, to take one to five and implement them in your daily life. Don't go over five, Mark warns because that could set you up for failure! Without any further   see Mark's list below!

• Be Intentional
• 1. To create something amazing you have to set out to create something amazing
  2. Spend time really focusing on what you're trying to achieve
  3. No more than 3 goals - don't overwhelm yourself
• Move your body for at least 30 mins a day
• 1. Helps you live longer
  2. Think clearer
  3. Be more productive
  4. Mood improvement
  5. Make it a non-negotiable
• STOP comparing
• 1. Social media causes us to unconsciously compare ourselves to everyone on our newsfeed
  2. Nothing good comes from comparisons
  3. People only share their highlight reel on SM
• Make time for the people who matter most to you
• 1. All that matters is the lives you touch
• Spend less than you make
• 1. Easy concept but hard to do
  2. Bombarded by consumerism everywhere
  3. You don't "need" much
  4. Don't spend to the point of stress
  5. Intention
• Remember that being happy is better than being right
• Drink at least a liter of water a day
• Spend ten minutes a day being grateful/write it down
• 1. Benefits to your health
  2. Doesn't mean everything is perfect
• Read for fifteen minutes a day (Audible Free Trial )
• 1. If we're not learning and growing - we're dying
• Be one percent better this week than you were last week in any area in your life
• 1. Incremental change is simple
• Forgive everyone
• 1. Having a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting to hurt the other person
• Forgive yourself
• Remember to look how far you have come
• 1. Appreciate the journey
  2. Confidence
  3. Motivation
• Make one person smile every day
• Stop Hiding Your Light
• 1. Humility is NOT hiding your gifts
  2. Responsibility to use our gifts/talents
• Take action
• 1. Imperfect action is more important than a perfect intention
  2. Follow through
  3. Don't hesitate out of fear

• Be true to your values

1. You have to look at yourself in the mirror

• Stop waiting

1. Life is short - just do it
2. Take action - do it now!

"Don't live every day like it's your last day. Just be alive every day"

"Not about quantity but quality and consistency."

"Our lives are the sum of the difference we have made in the world"

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