Everyone owns something. Some people own commodities, real estate, stocks, bonds, businesses, intellectual property, etc. But everyone owns their skills and experience. Taking ownership of one’s skills means knowing the value you have to offer. Even an “employee” can see themselves as an “owner” when they know what they have to bring to the table and how much it’s worth to other companies. Employees also own the decision of how they will develop their skills, how they will add to their experience, and where they will apply them. Will they offer their abilities to Company A? Company B? Or will they start their own company and use their skills to build that? When we take ownership (i.e. “responsibility”) over what we have, suddenly we become aware of the vast opportunity in front of us.

Procrastination is personal. We each have our own reasons for why we might choose to put things off. Sometimes we’d rather do something else, so we put off the task we should be doing. Sometimes we’re unsure how to proceed, so we pause and wait for inspiration to strike. Some of us are perfectionists, so we delay completing projects to avoid facing the fact that we’re not as talented as we want to be. Whatever our reasons for procrastinating, if we want to quit this bad habit we need to take a good, hard look in the mirror. For me, I realized that I had to get brutally honest with myself, identify my fear, and face it. It doesn’t feel good at first. But once you accept an unpleasant reality, it frees you up to take the necessary steps to change.

My old tagline had been “Everything is Service.” And I still believe that sentiment to be true. But I’ve come to see the phrase “Put Yourself Out There” as a better reflection of what The Output Habit is really about. So in this episode, I break down what this new slogan means to me and my brand, and what kind of guidelines I use as I put myself out there through my content.

When I teach my fitness class at the juvenile detention center, I’m continually reminding the teens that discipline is freedom. And discipline is simply the ability to choose something better than my immediate, reactionary desire. So whether we develop discipline through physical fitness, reading good books, spiritual practices, or any other good habit, it will serve us well in just about every other aspect of life. If we can get ourselves to do hard things in one area, that’s a skill that can carry over to other areas as well. Once we develop the capacity to choose the long-term good over the short-term comfort, we now have options. Thus, we have more freedom because we’re no longer confined by our knee-jerk reactions.

I’ve found that I (and others) have a tendency to get caught up fixing the “wrong” thing. When we face an issue that’s out of our comfort zone or difficult for us to wrap our heads around, we sometimes respond by re-doubling our efforts in a different, unrelated area. We will, perhaps, focus on some project that’s more in our wheelhouse, but doesn’t address the main challenge we’re facing.

It can be easy to just spend our energy on the things that already make sense to us rather than take the time to work through things that make us uncomfortable. We can feel like we’re making progress, but really we’re just ignoring the issue.

In this episode, I share an example of how I’ve been guilty of this and how I’m working to develop better self-awareness.

What gets you up in the morning? What gets you fired up for the day? Why are some people excited to get going every morning while others can barely drag themselves out of bed? The difference is drive. People with purpose feel driven to do what it takes to accomplish something that’s bigger than themselves. Living a purposeful life is much more challenging, but also more meaningful and fulfilling. In this episode, I share a few of the things that get me out of bed each morning.

When working on creative projects, it’s sometimes a challenge to say when they’re really done. It’s always possible to add one more thing or make one more edit; you can almost always make it “better” somehow. At what point do you take your hands off and say, “OK, that’s enough”? In this episode, I share a few thoughts I’ve had on this topic recently.

Some people don’t like to set goals because they’re afraid of falling short. “What if I set a goal and don’t hit it? I’ll feel like a failure.” If we take an all-or-nothing approach to goal-setting, then we’re misunderstanding what goals are for. They are tools meant to help us make progress in a direction we already want to go. Your goals should serve you, not the other way around. You are not a slave to your goals. If you set a goal to lose 10 lbs in a month and you only lose 7 lbs are you a failure? Or are you better off than the person who set no goal and lost 0 lbs? Furthermore, did you learn anything from that experience? Are you now in a position to set a better goal? Do you perhaps have a better chance of hitting your goal the next time around? Learn from your failures and you will be successful. Let your failures define you, and they will.

It’s been almost a month since my disappointing performance at the Abominable Snow Race. In this episode of the Output Habit Podcast, I talk about what I’ve been doing to move on from that setback so that I can focus on the positives going forward.

Sometimes life doesn’t go the way you hoped it would. Sometimes those setbacks are minor…other times they’re quite significant. My race last weekend didn’t turn out the way I thought or hoped it would. And while it wasn’t on the same level as losing a job or losing a loved one, it still stung and it has still been a challenge to process. Furthermore, the principles for dealing with disappointments are, in principle, the same whether we would consider them “big” or “small”. This means I have both the opportunity to practice those principles in a moment like this, as well as an opportunity to share those principles with you as I apply them in real time by recording this post-race episode. I hope you find it helpful.