The No Cry Zone

In this NoCryZone episode, Jim Best tackles one of the most overlooked habits holding people back from their potential - the quiet, polite, socially approved act of shrinking yourself.

We don’t disappear overnight; we disappear in millimeters - every time we downplay a win, silence an idea, or soften our truth so others stay comfortable. Shrinking feels safe, even noble. But it drains confidence, dulls creativity, and erodes authenticity.

Jim exposes why we do it, how the world rewards smallness, and the high cost of living below our own potential. He then reveals practical, powerful ways to stop shrinking — to reclaim confidence, voice, and visibility — and how that shift ignites the Perpetual Momentum Engine that drives lasting growth.

This episode is a direct challenge to play bigger, live truer, and stop apologizing for your full presence.

Because the moment you stop shrinking, you start expanding - not just yourself, but what’s possible for everyone watching.

Key themes: Authenticity • Courage • Confidence • Personal Sovereignty • Momentum • Growth

Listen now - and step into your full size.

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

Where vitality meets purpose - and enthusiasm becomes your most powerful advantage.

Most people treat enthusiasm like weather - something that comes and goes. But what if you could create it on demand? What if enthusiasm wasn’t a mood, but a mastery?

Welcome to Intentional Enthusiasm, the podcast where author and thought leader Jim Best reclaims enthusiasm as a purposeful, powerful force - not the noisy cousin of positivity, but the disciplined art of living with energy, focus, and direction.

Drawing from his upcoming book Intentional Enthusiasm: Purposeful Force for Your Optimal Future™, Jim explores what it means to be “filled from within” - to harness enthusiasm not as a reaction to life, but as a way of animating it. Each episode blends insight, story, and practical strategy to help you:

• Fuel belief, focus, and creativity through self-generated energy.
• Reignite your spark when the world wears you down.
• Use enthusiasm as your professional edge - not a personality trait.
• Turn inspiration into momentum, and momentum into mastery.

Because enthusiasm without intention burns out.

And intention without enthusiasm burns down.

But together - they form the sustaining flame of a meaningful life.

If you’re ready to live from a renewable source of energy and joy, this is your space.

Upwards to Your Life Well-Lived™

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

What if the voice in your head isn’t telling the truth - it’s just telling you what’s familiar?

In this episode of The NoCryZone, Jim Best explores the quiet habit that shapes all others: your self-talk.

You’ll discover how your internal “tape loop” - that constant narration of thoughts, doubts, and predictions - can either reinforce your growth or restrict it. Jim breaks down the invisible architecture of mindset, showing how to recognize your mental loops, interrupt the ones that hold you back, and record over them with language that supports your Perpetual Momentum.

If you’ve ever wondered why progress feels hard to sustain - even when you’re motivated - this episode will change how you think about thinking.

Learn to stop arguing with your old self and start recording over the past. Because momentum multiplies when your self-talk stops rehashing yesterday and starts reinforcing your future.

Tune in, stay aware, keep taking effective action, and stay in The NoCryZone.

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

Welcome back to The No Cry Zone, where happiness, success, and personal growth are not just ideas - they’re commitments.

In this episode, Jim Best asks one deceptively simple question: “What are you working on?”

It’s the question that separates motion from momentum, busy from better, and progress from performance.

Jim introduces the concept of Mega Advancers - the key areas of personal growth that create a ripple effect across every part of your life. From communication and emotional maturity to self-image mastery, focus, resilience, authenticity, and decisive action, these are the upgrades that make everything else work better.

You’ll learn:

• Why vague goals like “getting better” keep you stuck in the fog of self-improvement.
• How to define what you’re working on in clear, momentum-building terms.
• How expanding your comfort zone - not escaping it - leads to sustainable growth.
• Why clarity is confidence, and confidence builds momentum.

Whether you’re working on communication, rebuilding resilience, or reclaiming your focus, this episode will help you turn awareness into advancement -  one clear decision at a time.

Challenge of the Week: When someone asks, “What are you working on?”, answer with clarity, not apology.

Next Episode Preview: How to measure progress in ways that keep you moving — because invisible progress can feel like failure, even when it’s not.

Stay in the Zone. Expand your comfort zone. Build your momentum.

#NoCryZone #PersonalDevelopment #MegaAdvancers #JimBest #Momentum #GrowthMindset

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

Welcome to the No Cry Zone - where you are always welcome, but regret has no place. I’m your host, Jim Best, coming to you from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on a very special day: the First Annual Maximum Momentum Day!

This episode is more than just a conversation - it’s a commencement. Think of Maximum Momentum Day as our annual ignition switch, the rally point where we stop waiting for momentum and start building it intentionally. I’ll introduce you to the Perpetual Momentum Engine - Mindset → Focus → Action → Habits → Momentum - and show you how to get it running in your own life.

Together, we’ll explore:

• Why momentum should be fun and celebrated
• How small shifts in what you do or how you view things can unlock big progress
• How to align habits with the expansion of your comfort zone instead of reinforcing its walls
• The importance of sharing your commitment publicly to spark admiration and accountability

Maximum Momentum Day is about choosing motion, growth, and possibility - and it’s only the beginning. October becomes Maximum Momentum Month, giving you time to set meaningful goals, build momentum-building habits, and finish the year strong.

Join me in making today your spark. View something differently. Do something differently. Start the engine - and keep it running.

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

This is the capstone conversation that ties everything together before September 30, 2025 - Max Momentum Day.

Jim revisits the four steps we’ve built this month - Mindset, Focus, Action, and Habits - and shows you how to lock them into a single, self-sustaining flow. You’ll learn:

• Why crisis-free living is essential to keeping momentum alive.
• How habits transform productivity into character-building.
• What it means to become a “net positive” - and why that makes you a bigger, steadier person.
• How to prepare for next week’s Max Momentum Day with one bold commitment that sets October in motion.

This is the episode that launches you forward - from understanding momentum to living it.

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

Welcome back to TheNoCryZone - where all are welcome, but crying, complaining, and excuses stay outside. I’m Jim Best, coming to you from the beautiful French Riviera in Nice, France.

In this episode, we unlock the third element of the Perpetual Momentum Engine: Action.

If you’ve been waiting for momentum to magically appear before you move forward, you’ve got it backward. Momentum doesn’t precede action - it follows it. Today, we’ll talk about why the first step is the hardest (and most important), how to turn a single action into unstoppable forward motion, and why clarity plus consistency is the formula that keeps momentum alive.

You’ll also discover 12 common reasons people fail to create momentum - and how to avoid them - so you can stop starting over and finally build progress you can sustain.

Whether it’s writing a paragraph, signing up for a class, or calling that friend you’ve been meaning to reconnect with, today’s episode will help you take that first step - and keep stepping.

Listen in to learn:

• Why momentum is a result, not a precondition
• How action + direction = momentum
• The single shift that makes action easier and more natural
• How to prepare for next week’s topic - Habits - the secret to living inside momentum

Join me as we build towards Maximum Momentum Day (September 30) and roll straight into Maximum Momentum Month in October. Take an action and watch how quickly momentum joins you.

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

Action is the true measure of commitment. In this episode of TheNoCryZone, Jim Best explains why action is the litmus test that proves whether your mindset and focus are strong enough to hold - and why momentum can’t exist without it.

From procrastination and perfectionism to fear and busyness, Jim explores the common aversions to action that stop progress cold. More importantly, he shows how to replace them with anticipation, courage, and the energizing power of decisive movement.

As we build toward Maximum Momentum Day on September 30, discover how to shift from waiting for motivation to building unstoppable momentum.

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

In this episode of The No Cry Zone, Jim Best unpacks the power of mindset and why it serves as the foundation for all personal momentum.

Building from www.upwardsbest.com, he recaps the week’s focus on mindset - how it shapes perception, influences outcomes, and sets the tone for every action we take. 

From there, he looks ahead to next week’s theme of focus, previewing the key principles that help us direct attention, cut through distraction, and sustain progress. 

Finally, Jim introduces this upcoming October as Maximum Momentum Month, a strategy for finishing each month with strength, clarity, and momentum instead of fading out.

If you’ve ever wondered how to move from scattered energy to sustained progress, this episode will give you clarity and tools to start building momentum right now.

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.

Welcome back to TheNoCryZone — where excuses go to retire, and self-accountability gets its day, day after day.

In this episode, Jim Best takes you inside the superpower of self-accountability and connects it to something everyone struggles with at some point: momentum. Feeling stuck isn’t a permanent flaw or a mystery—it’s simply a loss of momentum. And the good news? Momentum can be rebuilt.

You’ll discover the four non-negotiable pillars of momentum:

    •    Mindset – the ignition switch that starts it all

    •    Focus – the steering wheel that gives direction

    •    Action – the gas pedal that creates movement

    •    Habits – the cruise control that keeps it all alive

Together, these four components transform “being stuck” into unstoppable forward movement.

If you’ve ever felt stalled, plateaued, or frustrated, this episode will give you clarity, tools, and encouragement to reclaim your drive and move toward your goals with purpose.

 Stay tuned all month as we dive deeper into the theme of momentum. And don’t miss the upcoming Momentum eBook with strategies to help you stay in motion every single day.

For more daily insights, visit http://www.upwardsbest.com — where personal development is fun, practical, and powerful. 

Follow Jim Best at UpwardsBest to listen, learn, explore, and stay connected to daily insights for positive change that’s both doable and durable.

Explore MomentumGPS, designed to support your personal growth goals.

The NoCryZone is an UpwardsBest endeavor, produced by BestStoryAlive, LLC.

All rights proactively reserved.