Black Belt Project

Do Or Do Not, There's No Talking About Doing

2013-06-15T09:43:00.000-04:00

One of the basic rules I have here at the Black Belt Project, as part of my Dojo Kun, is to do first, then talk about what you did AFTER it's been successfully completed. Often people take the opposite approach. They decide to do something, talk about what they decided they want to do and then more often than not, don't end up doing it. This leads to a feeling of failure not only within yourself but it also paints a picture of failure in the minds of others if you consistently talk about doing but never actually do it.

I've been guilty of this and maybe you have to. And, I'm sure, like me, you can think of specific people you've come across in your life that are all "talk" and after awhile they lose credibility with you because you know it's just not going to happen. Eventually, you just quietly tune out the next grand idea they have.

I am not sure who started it, but I think the most prevalent advice out there is that you should set a goal and then tell everyone what the goal is that you set. This public announcement of your goal is somehow supposed to make yourself accountable to yourself and put more pressure on you to do it and make you think twice about not following through because of peer pressure.

Then there's also the feeling that when set a goal you want to reach that telling others about it somehow makes them your goal police.

I'd say this approach is more common for activities like weight loss. You set a goal like I'm going to lose so many pounds and then you tell your family that you are going to lose so much weight. Then, put the onus on them to make sure your reach your goal. You might say, if you see me eating this or that, get on me about it and don't let me do it!

Making others your goal police puts them in an uncomfortable position that they don't care to be in and can create animosity between the goal "police" and the goal "law breaker".

The important thing to remember about goals is that they are YOUR goals. It's not my goal. It's not your co-worker's goal. Whether you reach your goals is honestly not important to everyone else most of the time and so we don't really care and the last thing we want to do is make sure you do what you said you needed to reach your goal. We are busy trying to reach our own.

Recently, I went against my own rule by setting a very lofty goal and going public with it. I wrote about it in my post called The 1,000 Blog Posts of 1,000 Words in 1,000 Days To $50,000 A Month Challenge. It was very difficult for me to go "public" with that goal because I know it's going to be very challenging to accomplish. Not only because it's going to take a BIG commitment from but also because it's going to take a significant amount of effort as well. It's also going to take some luck.

When I make this kind of goal public, there are some general reactions you can expect. The first is that if the goal is BIG, there is no belief you will reach it anyway. People ignore goals that seem un-achievable. So until there's action behind the goal, it won't garner much attention. The web is pretty crowded.

There's also the likelihood that if you knew me personally and I had a habit of making lofty goals all of the time and this is 100th time I have revealed my big time goal to you and you knew I hadn't reached the other 99, that you won't put much stock into it either.

There's also another problem.

And as much as I hate to say it, while most people want others to be successful, some don't want you do something that makes you more successful than them. Because of that, there's also the possibility that my reaching my goal might make threaten you in some way. It might either threaten your self esteem, the way you make a living or any number of things that I never dreamed might have had that effect on you and instead of having an ally in my journey to reach my goal, now I might actually have a saboteur involved that might try and prevent me from reaching my goal.

With that being said, let's say that now you know my goal that I revealed in the post above and now, it's out there. Many people will eventually find out about it. And let's say that we are a thousand days into the future and I did indeed do as I predicted and successfully reached my goal.

Psychologically, this is going to bring forth confidence of others in me that if I set another lofty goal, because I have done it once before, there will be a belief that there is a good chance I will probably do it again.

It's that confidence, that faith and belief that we can accomplish what we set out to do, that we want to build here in me, in you and in all of those who take the time to study my work.

Those kind of good feelings that we have about ourselves or have shown towards us are always great. It makes us feel good about ourselves and we all deserve that.

It's my opinion though, that the best way to build that belief in myself, or you in yours, is to do FIRST and then talk about what you or I did after we have done it.

I had lunch with some clients the other day and before the lunch one of the gals got her phone out and showed us a picture of her about a 100 pounds heavier. Having never met her before, I never knew she was overweight. And everyone else I was with never expected that either.

I could tell inside that she was very proud of herself and she should be. Those good feelings that came from accomplishing her weight loss and the praise that we gave her, she deserved in every way. Everyone wanted to know how she did it, how long it took and so on.

Sometimes, I think, it's those feelings that we are often really after when we set a goal even though all we have done is say what we want to others. We want them to cheer us on, reinforce their belief in us and help us get there and share the journey with us. We WANT people to treat us like we have already reached our goal. But in reality, that kind of real positive support is asking a lot of others and people don't live up to the expectation.

When they don't, it's a downer and makes it harder to achieve what we really want.

Compare this already successfully feeling of the woman I met who already reached her goal and lost over a 100 pounds to being overweight, setting a goal to lose a certain amount of weight and then failing to lose it. Now, compound that with others knowing her goal and realizing she might not achieve it. Then compound that with a lack of good feelings that go with being successful and that no one is telling you how great you are like they would be if you had been like her.

There's no comparison. The first feeling leads to more success while the second feeling contributes to a feeling of failure that can easily lead to more and more failure.

This is why I believe it's better to keep goals private and only share successes.

So from here on out, I want you to set goals privately and share completion of goals publicly. The size of the goal is unimportant. It might be that all you did was get out of bed today. Whatever it is, every goal is small enough to keep to yourself until you reach it. And every success is big enough to share with everyone - no matter how small - ALWAYS.

Commit then.

Don't talk about what you are going to do. Do it FIRST, then talk about what you did AFTER you succeeded. It will lead to much more confidence and much more success.

The Mental Strength Bar

2013-06-14T07:07:00.000-04:00

In this lesson, I wanted to talk about the mental strength bar. If you have read any of my past work, you'll be somewhat familiar with the term but might not be sure exactly what I am talking about. In my work, I don't do physically demanding work. I work with paper and computers. Most of it is not hard work, it's just a decision of whether or not I will do it. So when I look at what I have to do, it's a test of mental strength. Will I do it - not can I. When you break it down, it's really easy work and it's a mental decision.

As an example, right now, I need to send an email to someone that includes a letter I've drafted for them to print out on their letterhead and sign. It's not really a physically demanding task but I have to open another computer to do it securely and I just haven't done it yet. Often people look at this delay as procrastination. But really what it is is that the task I am trying to do is tougher than my will power to do it. I call this mental strength.

You'll recognize people who have a lot of mental strength if you work with them. You ask for something you need done, you get it back. Just like you'll recognize people who have a low amount of mental strength. Have you done that yet, oops, I haven't sorry.

Chances are you recognize yourself in both the people above. I know I do. Mental strength comes and goes just like physical strength. If you don't train physically, you get weaker and if you don't condition yourself to get things done, you also get weaker just mentally.

Physical strength is easy to measure. You go to the gym, pick up some weight and see if you can lift it. Mental strength isn't quite as easy to measure. But mental strength is as important in life as physical strength.

I measure mental strength in the number of tasks that you can complete in a day. To gain mental strength, you have to add more tasks to make yourself stronger. Unlike the gym, where it's easy to measure our physical strength, it's a lot tougher to measure our mental strength because we have no idea how many tasks we are doing (and often they are the wrong tasks).

So to deal with this problem, you and I will use two tools. The first is the checklist where we break down exactly the tasks we know we want and need to do ahead of time. The second is by putting the mental strength bar on the list where we encounter a problem getting past the task on that list.

I've started doing this to show you exactly how it is done. Visit My Black Belt Project Checklist to see how I am breaking down my day and you will also see on the list somewhere my mental strength bar which might look like this:

Pick up iPhone

Clear alerts

Update apps

Empty text messages

Empty inbox

---- MENTAL STRENGTH BAR ----

Process email action folder

So step one was that I had to first pre-think out what the tasks were that I wanted to do. I talk about how to do that more in how to visualize the perfect day.

This gives me a list of things that if I did everything perfectly and if I did them all from start to finish would comprise the perfect day.

But the problem as you and I know is that we only get so far down the list before we get side tracked and you just somehow don't manage to get that perfect day complete like you set out to do. Where you get sidetracked is how mentally strong you are.

In my example above, you'll see that I could get all the way through emptying my inbox but I couldn't get my email action folder processed. That's why I put the bar between the two. My goal is to get mentally strong enough to push my mental strength bar all the way down the list.

I call this process getting to Black Belt because it's the truest sign of mastery. Once you have refined your checklist and got it in the best order, the fewest steps and can complete it quickly, then you pre-planned everything you wanted to do AND DID IT then you made it Black Belt.

Again then, just to restate, my mental strength would be all of the tasks I did that were above the bar. To compare it to physical strength, those tasks might be 50 pounds. But if you added one more pound (or one more task) I might not be able to lift it (or do it in terms of mental strength).

When assessing mental strength, I think it's important to start with the bar at the top of your list to make success easy to achieve. I wouldn't put it way down the list, then figure out that you can't do it. So what I want you to do is think like this.

If you went to the gym to work out, you might be able to lift 100 pounds. You might only be able to lift 50 pounds. Whatever that number is might be the max you could lift. But if you haven't worked out in a while, you are going to risk getting hurt or exhaust yourself so that you just wouldn't go to the gym any more.

To prevent that, I want you to think in terms of progressive resistance. What this means is that you start small and as you are strong enough, you add more weight. We start with every light weight and then we increase it when we know we can do so without risking injury or frustration.

In terms of our list, I want you to imagine that each task (if you have broken it down to it's smallest step) on your list is one pound. And if you have to, just start with one pound and put your mental strength bar right there so it's so easy to do that one task that it almost seems stupid to put it there. Once you know you can do that one task without fail, then you raise the bar to two tasks (two pounds).

And you just repeat the process once you know how many tasks you can do, add a little more over time. You always have permission to do more tasks but the day is always successful if you complete all of the tasks up to your mental strength bar.

Before you know it, you'll be completing your whole list.

And that's the concept of the mental strength bar.

How To Get Out Of Bed When You Don't Feel Like It

2013-06-13T15:26:00.000-04:00

You have to get out of bed to master your life. I outline how you can to condition yourself to get out of bed and get things done.[/caption]

When you are digging out of a motivational slump, the first task you often have to tackle is how to get out of bed when you don’t really want to. If you are feeling all down and depressed, it’s pretty common to use sleep to avoid life in general. I know this is a habit of mine. When I lack motivation and I’m trying to figure out how to get motivated, I tend to become a sleep-aholic. I tend to stay up way to late and then don’t want to get out of bed at a decent time because of it. Once that happens, and it becomes a habit, it’s a tough one to break. Next thing you know, I’m taking naps during the day to catch up and I’m like a cat laying around the house all day taking naps where ever I can.

Getting into a habit like this is very unproductive. It’s very tough to master your life when you don’t start living it until the afternoon. And, while I don’t have any stats to back it up, my guess is that it’s very unhealthy for the body.

So let’s talk about how to get out of bed and eliminate this bad habit and condition a better one which is to get out of bed because you actually WANT to not because you HAVE to.

STEP #1: Create the day you think you would want to wake up to

The first step is learn how to visualize the perfect day. You can see the visualization of my perfect day here in My Black Belt Project Checklist. Now depending on when you read this, my checklist is going to be dynamic. It's going to change as I work with it. As I write this, it is far from complete.

But the idea is that you need to know exactly what it is you are going to do when you get out of bed. What you don't want to have happen is that you get up and think, well where do I start. You want to KNOW what the first thing is, the second and so on.

You can see here, I've pre-thought out what I am going to do so there's no thinking in the moment about what it is that I want to do when I wake up - I already know.

STEP #2: Use music that pumps you up as your alarm instead of the default alarm tone

I use my iPhone 5 as my alarm. One of the options is that I can use music instead of some sort of tone to wake me up. What I have done is select a song that makes me feel like I can be successful.

Now, there are a LOT of options here. But the song I use is a song called Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky). I've used this song forever to pump me up. I guess it works for me because it gives me a sense that I can accomplish whatever I set out to do.

Certainly, there's a song that works for you. Whatever that song is, load it up and use it to wake you up.

STEP #3: Put your alarm away from the bed so that in order to turn it off, you have to get up to do it

The next thing I do is put my phone out of reach from the bed. Usually I am charging the phone overnight, so I typically have it plugged it on the floor next to the bed. I have to get up to turn it off. The physical act of getting out of bed is the hardest part. Getting the body moving is half the battle.

If you can't just hammer the snooze button easily, then you stand a better chance of maintaining momentum if you are already out of bed.

STEP #4: Have your checklist next to your alarm and do the items on your checklist to at least the point where you have put your mental strength bar

If you look at the checklist above, you'll see there's what I call a mental strength bar. It looks like this.

---- MENTAL STRENGTH BAR ----

I place this bar at the point of how many tasks I can do easily in a day. You can see in the image above, that right now, it's at the end of my waking up routine. What that bar represents is just how mentally strong I am at the moment. When I wrote this, I have committed and can do at least those tasks without any problem on a daily basis. Beyond that, while I could do additional tasks if I wanted, I didn't have to or maybe I couldn't find the mental strength to do them. When I wrote this, I was mentally strong enough just to do that part of my checklist.

Because I am strong enough to do all of the tasks above my mental strength bar, I've also made a deal with myself that no matter what happens during the rest of the day, I can consider the day a success if I at least do those things. If I do, I pat myself on the back for a job well done. If I do more that day, great, if I don't I don't worry about it.

I do this because I know that later I will be moving the bar using a concept of progressive resistance or making my day just a little bit harder (similar to adding weights to a workout bar).

STEP #5: Once you complete the tasks to your mental strength bar, play the same music that you used to wake up to condition yourself that when you hear the music, you feel you can complete things

Once I get up and do the tasks that lead up to my current mental strength, I play the same music that I used to wake up to - in my case, the Rocky Theme.

I do this to condition myself that when I hear the music that wakes me up that it matches up to the feeling I get when I reach my current mental strength.

STEP #6: Give yourself permission to go back to bed once you do all of the items up to your mental strength bar if you want

Once you do all of the tasks to your current mental strength, that day is a success and you can feel free to go back to bed if you want. Eventually, you'll get to the point you will just stay up and work on other stuff because you will be mentally strong enough to do it.

So that's the strategy I use to get out of bed. Start using it and condition yourself to match the feeling of waking up to the feeling of completing things in your day.

How To Visualize The Perfect Day

2013-06-07T08:41:00.000-04:00

In my post about how to get motivated, I explained the seven steps that you can use to kick start your motivation level. Step one is to start thinking about what a perfect day in your life might look like if it went exactly the way you wanted it to go from the moment you woke up until the moment you went to bed.

If you have never thought about doing this before, you might not know exactly how to visualize the perfect day. What I am going to do is walk you through exactly how I do it so you can use what I do to help you visualize what you want your day to look like. This same process will be one of the core processes used here at the Black Belt Project as you and I work our way through the belts to help you visualize not just what you want your day to look like - but your life as well.

Before I do that, I want to take a step back and talk about what visualization is, why it's important and more specifically the secret ingredient you need to make what you visualize something that you realize.

What Is Visualization?

Visualization is creating a mental picture in your head of a something you'd like to see happen in real life. One of the best examples of visualization that I have seen is the pre-flight briefing of the Blue Angels flight demonstration team. You can watch the video of this pre-flight briefing to your right.

Those of you who have seen the Blue Angels at an air show will know that they are an elite squadron of pilots who represent some of the best pilots in the Navy. They set the standard of excellence for pilots for their precision flying. Behind the scenes of this team is a lot of preparation and one of the steps they take is visualizing the show in their heads on the ground before they actually fly.

If you watch the video, you'll notice the flight commander meticulously goes through the routine they have planned for the air show including exactly what each pilot says as if they were actually in the air at that moment. Some of the pilots close their eyes and move their hands as if they are actually controlling the plane during the briefing. This mental exercise is visualization at it's highest level. They are creating an extremely clear and accurate picture of exactly what they are going to do so that when they set out to do it, they have conditioned themselves to be better prepared and carry it out successfully.

Of course, when you visualize the perfect day it won't be as dramatic as the Blue Angels of course, but this is exactly the kind of thing you need to do when you visualize what you want.

Why Is Visualization Important To My Success?

Now that you know what visualization is, why should you do it? Why is this a crucial step not only for motivational purposes but also for life mastery? The reason is that when you create a mental picture of what you want, you gain a better understanding of what you want in the first place. This mental picture that you create works much like a road map. It provides a destination - an end result. And then it's just up to you find the best way to get there.

Life is not unlike a trip. It's a journey. And just like any trip, the first thing you decide when planning a trip is where you want to go. While you could just hop in the car and take off, and that kind of spontaneity has an adventurous quality to it, it's just not as likely you'll enjoy that kind of trip as much as one that you set out to do with a specific destination in mind along with all of the things you might want to do when you get there.

Look at the visualization of your day - and your life - much like a post card taken from your favorite travel destination. The clearer you make it, the more likely you are to wind up there.

The Secret Ingredient That Makes What You Visualize A Reality - Taking Action

Once you start imagining what you want, just picturing it - even if you picture it with great clarity - isn't enough. So what is it exactly that makes what you visualize become a reality?

This is by far the most important part of the visualization process.

In order for your mental images to become a reality, there are actually three steps.

Step one: Clearly picture what it is that you want.

Developing a clear picture of what you want makes realizing it that much easier. Don't worry though if what you want is fuzzy and out of focus at first. Once you think about it more and more, it will sharpen up. But realize you want a clear picture to develop over time. The clearer it is, the better.

Step two: Ask yourself what do I need to do to make it happen?

Once you start creating an image in your mind of something that you want, the second step you should always take is to ask yourself what do I have to do to get it? This powerful question is an important part of why visualization works. That's because once you ask yourself what do I need to do, the brain kicks in and starts thinking of answers. They may not be the right answers at first and that's ok, but possible solutions start being offered.

What you do with those answers is probably more important. You could easily dismiss them all and this tells your brain that while it was indeed asked to picture what you wanted, it's not a serious request. Once your brain realizes that it's not important to you to really figure it out, it decides to move on to other subjects and that clear mental image of what you wanted disappears as quickly as it was formed.

Step three: Take an action step towards realizing it even if it's a small step

So that leads me to the third and most important step of visualization which is the the secret ingredient to making visualization really work in your life. It turns passive visualization into active visualization. That secret ingredient is taking a small action step towards what you are trying to get. Once you create an a clear image of what you want, ask your brain to give you possible action steps and then actually do one, the brain cements that picture in your mind by saying:

BRAIN: "OK. This is a serious request and we need to keep working on it."

And so once you take that action, it's as simple as repeating the question how do I get it? The more you repeat this process, the better answers you get and a clearer image of the end result is formed in your head.

I call this process active visualization because it combines a picture of what you want with action. Those two things combined are a powerful force and once you adopt them, you'll discover just how powerful they are. So I want you to remember the following formula as the key to successful visualization.

VISUALIZATION + ASK HOW + REPEATED ACTION = REALIZATION

This formula pays huge dividends when applied to your life. So the next step is for us to start applying it by developing a clear picture of what we want our perfect day to look like.

Where To Start When You Don't Know What You Want Your Perfect Day To Look Like

Getting what you want out of life would be a lot easier if we knew what we wanted. Obviously, if we had more money or more time, we could get a lot more out of life but those things while visualizations in and of themselves aren't specific enough and they are too far out in the future to get us moving now.

What I recommend then is to just start with one day of your life and ask yourself what do I want out of this one day. But even then, it's a potential road block you might not be able to get over. A day is 24 hours. What do I really want when I don't know what I am really working towards?

So while I want you to think in terms of the "perfect" day as the outcome, it's not important that you have a clear picture of what the whole day looks like completely the first time you sit down and think about it.

But what is important is that you ask yourself the following question:

"If I did have the perfect day, what would it look like?"

Your brain will then get to work and start providing answers.

Here are some things that I thought of for myself:

I'd get up early and get started.

I would work out.

I would eat right.

I would make more sales calls.

I would spend more time with my family.

I would take better care of myself.

The key here is to take note of each idea and write it down in a list. This clears your head and makes it possible for your brain to think of more ideas.

Once you've done this for a few minutes, you need to pick a place to start and for me, it makes the most since to start at the beginning of your day and write down the exact first thing you want to do and then second and so on. If you don't know the second thing or the third thing write down what you do know and then start planning on doing it.

So I look at my list and I say where does it make the most sense to get started. I see the one about getting up early and so I decide to start there.

Get up

I then ask myself what would be the second thing I would want to do if I was wanted to have the perfect day and so to me the next logical step is to go to the bathroom. After that I might get a glass of water.

This gives me a list that says:

Get up

Go to the bathroom

Get a glass of water

Now granted these aren't the most productive things I could have put on my list. They don't make me any more money or create more time but that's not what is important at first.

What is important is creating momentum and these easy mundane tasks help you do that when you start doing them on a daily basis and realization of a visualization through action creates a clearer picture of what your ideal day will look like. PLUS, it creates momentum to help you keep moving forward.

Once I wake up, go to the bathroom and then get glass of water. I've got to ask myself, if this was the perfect day, what is the very next thing I would do and then put it on my list and start doing it.

Over time, what's going to happen as I keep going through this process is I'm going to get better answers. I'm going to ask more questions like is that the best order to do those things I have on my list? What else can I add? Did I leave anything out?

But none of those things happen if you don't take action and get them out of your head and onto your checklist for the perfect day.

Putting them down on paper makes them even more clear, gets rid of mental overhead and clears your brain to focus and once the mundane tasks you have to do are on there, the more important things will start showing up.

As they do, you will start adding them and continue to ask the question, what would my perfect day look like. Eventually, the answer will be right in front of you on a neat and tidy checklist that covers the entire day and that will also break down the perfect day that you set out to visualize completely and clearly.

How To Get Motivated - A Case Study

2013-06-04T15:52:00.000-04:00

This is my year long case study about learning how to get motivated. Over the years, I've studied a lot of motivational material. The problem is that most of the stuff, while it's inspirational, doesn't really tell you what specific steps you need to do on a daily basis to continually motivate yourself. Once the inspiration fades, so does the motivation. If you want long lasting motivation that will truly help, this post is dedicated to giving you an inside look into specifically how you can achieve it.

Why This Case Study About How To Get Motivated Will Help You More Than Nearly All The Other Motivational Material Out There

Because this is a case study, I'll be sharing my own personal journey with you through my emails, my blog posts, my podcasts and my iTunes series. For most people, most motivation happens in the form of speeches they hear. These speeches might last anywhere between 15 to 90 minutes.

Mostly, they are a collection of stories to get you to decide to take action. The person giving the speech - I'll call them the motivator - are often successful only at inspiring. The success they've achieved is through speaking and not through giving people specific instructions to follow every day.

In fact, if you want an example of one of the leaders in motivation that illustrates what I am talking about, here's a TED Talk that talks about how to get motivated, but not really. It's called the "Puzzle of Motivation" but when he gets done, it's still a puzzle. If you watch the speech, at the end of it, ask yourself one question. How do I get motivated? You won't have a clue at the end of it. It's basically a story with no actionable content. The only thing I really learned was the answer to the candle problem which doesn't affect my motivation at all. It's more about problem solving. So anyway, I posted the video here so you can see it.

If you choose to follow along and take advantage of all the tools I provide, you will find an actionable system that you can duplicate for yourself. That system will bridge the gap between inspiration and achievement for you personally.

But only if, you take action.

Make The Decision To Take Action

At the heart of getting better individually is the desire to do it. If you don't care to improve, you won't. A desire to get better and also taking action to do so is motivation at work. And motivation, or the lack thereof, is probably the single most important factor in determining how successful you are. If you can tap into your inner self and get motivated to take action, you are more likely to have the life you want. If you can't, you are probably wondering what it takes to get motivated and how to get yourself to do the things you know you need to do to get the things you want out of life.

That's why I put this as the foundation of the Black Belt Project and place every student of their life here first at the white belt level to tackle motivation. Because many people lack motivation and don't know how to generate it, they remain stuck and unable to get things in motion. Personally, I find myself in that boat on occasions, including now as I write this.

It's an ideal time then for me to walk you through exactly the steps you need to take to create motivation that sticks and that you can use whenever you find yourself where you can't seem to muster action towards what you want.

Lack of motivation has many causes and I could spend all day reviewing the roots of mine or your lack of it as well. But that's not really a productive exercise and the solution is the same - a step by step plan to move you out of it.

If You Want To Get Motivated, You Must Build Mental Strength

I look at how to get motivated just like working out. And when you aren't motivated it just means you are out of shape. It's time to go to the gym but a different kind of gym to begin an exercise program. But instead of building physical strength, you and I will be working on our mental strength.

However, just like you wouldn't go to the gym and try and lift three hundred pounds the first day, you won't try and take massive action right away either. The reason is because either you won't have the strength to do it or the endurance to keep it going.

So when we start building mental strength, we are going to start small with light weights and those weights are going to be tasks that you do on a daily basis. We are going to start small by doing a few tasks and as we gain strength, we will add slightly more tasks to slowly increase our strength. The stronger we get the more tasks we will be able to do and we will always want to be adding tasks to get progressively stronger.

The Seven Steps To Building Mental Strength

To get started I'm going to break down the process of how build mental strength and then explain how it works. These are the steps to getting motivated through improving mental strength:

Start thinking about what you would like an ideal day to look like in your life

Put the steps required to do that day in the form of a checklist

Start by committing to do the first item on that list each day

Set your mental strength bar at that level

Raise the bar by adding additional tasks as you gain strength

Break down tasks into the smallest possible steps so they are easier to complete

Keep raising the bar

Step 1. Start Visualizing What You Would Like The Perfect Day To Look Like In Your Life

The first step in this process is to sit down and start thinking about if you were motivated, what an ideal day might look like. It's easy to visualize what action would look like. Picture yourself being productive and get a good snapshot of what that day might look like. Don't worry if at first you can't create a complete image. If it's only getting out of bed so be it. But the point is that you have to start with an end in mind EVEN IF you don't know what that end clearly looks like yet. Clarity will come once your mind starts getting conditioned through action.

It's important to start at the beginning of the day from the moment you get up. While you can certainly start with any part of your day, I've found the most success starting with the beginning because the beginning is always the best starting point.

The first thing I would put on the list? Getting up! Here's how to start learning how to visualize the perfect day.

Step 2. Put The Steps Required To Do That Day In The Form Of A Checklist

Break down the day you pictured into a series of steps. Put it into a checklist. The checklist is the key tool necessary to generate motivation PLUS it's going to be the cornerstone of mastering our lives. We are going to use it for a few purposes.

To gauge mental strength. We'll know exactly how many tasks we can do in a certain day comfortably and figure out just how mentally strong we are.

To get the steps required out of our head to get rid of that mental overhead.

To figure out how to better structure our steps to get them completed in the fastest way possible.

To know what done looks like.

You'll be amazed at the power of this checklist once it starts taking shape and later will see why it will be the primary tool you'll use to improve your life.

Step 3. Commit To Doing The First Item On The List Each Day - And Then Do It Every Day

Once you have started your checklist, it's time to commit to doing the first item on that list each day. This first task on the list is the first weight you'll lift each and every day to build mental strength.

What I want you to think of is that this task is like a 5 pound weight. Start by lifting five pounds each and every day. If you can lift more - do more tasks - that's fine, but you have to do at least the first task each and every day without fail. If you do that and only that, then the day was a success.

Step 4. Set Your Mental Strength Bar At That Level

The idea here is that once you have completed your tasks that you are mentally strong enough to do each day, then you can see exactly how strong you are. Let me give you a visual to illustrate what I mean. Here's a simple list of a few items that might start out my day.

Get up

Go to the bathroom

Drink a glass of water

---- Mental strength bar -----

Go for a walk

So here's a sample of the beginning of my day. I've envisioned what I want it to look like or at least to start out like, put it in a checklist and committed to doing the first three items on the list AND am able to complete them. But when it comes to going for a walk, let's say that I haven't built the mental strength to do that each day. I can tell at a glance exactly how mentally strong I am and also see what it's going to take to get stronger to get my day where I want it. I've got to go for a walk.

Step 5. Raise Your Mental Strength Bar By Adding Additional Tasks As You Gain Strength

Once you know where the mental strength is, your mission is clear - you must raise the bar and be strong enough to complete the tasks above it. As you gain strength, you'll find it easier to raise the bar. But you don't want to go to fast. You don't want to add to many tasks - or too many "weights" - and exhaust your strength. Remember, place your mental strength bar where you know without a doubt your strength is for certain. You can always do more tasks but regardless the day is a success as long as you do those items under the bar without fail. Doing more is fine. Just make sure you do at least the tasks above your mental strength bar and if you do, congratulate yourself.

I suggest that each week, you raise the bar at least one task always remembering that you can do more than the minimum but must always get to the mental strength bar you set.

Step 6. Break Down Tasks Into The Smallest Possible Steps To Make Them Easier To Complete

You will run into situations where the next task on your list seems to heavy and mentally you won't be able to find the strength to them right away. A good example above is the task just below my mental strength bar - go for a walk. I might envision that I want to walk for 45 minutes but given a choice between moving my body to the gym and laying back down, I might choose laying back down. It makes sense then to break "go for a walk" into the next smallest steps similar to this:

Put on work out clothes

Put on shoes

---- Mental Strength Bar ----

Get keys to the car

Drive to the gym

Get on treadmill

Start treadmill

While at first, it might seem daunting to walk on the treadmill for 45 minutes, it seems a lot easier to put on my shorts, t-shirt and shoes. And if all that I can do is get that far, even if don't walk, as long as I complete it up to that point, the day is a success.

Once I get to drive to the gym, I'm probably going to look at the door and do the obvious walk in of course. You can guess then I might not have the strength to walk for 45 minutes. The answer, walk for 5.

Key concept: Whenever possible, break down every task into as small as step as you can. They are easier to complete and when you look at your checklist, the next task won't seem so hard you can't do it.

Step 7. Keep Raising The Bar

At this point, once you have the structure, you just have to keep adding tasks to your checklist moving the bar further down your list to build mental strength. The key is what's called progressive resistance. Small additions make you progressively stronger as you move the bar down the list.

As you continue this process, a strange thing will happen. Your mind will start to think about what else you need to add to your list and not only that, you'll start to think of ways to improve your list and reorder it into a more optimal sequence.

Before you know it, motivation kicks in and you are doing more than you thought you could do.

The key?

Just keep raising the bar.

What Next?

This is an active case study so this page will evolve and change during the case study. Your first step is to start raising the bar and put your email in the box below and click the red button to get started. I'll begin showing you how I build mental strength and with it, how I get motivated to achieve what I want.

The box is below.

Success Starts When No One Is Watching

2012-03-26T19:10:00.000-04:00

If you follow me, you will not doubt notice that I will go through stretches of time where it seems like nothing is happening. And on your end, that might seem to be the case. Behind the scenes though, it's a different story. I'm plotting my next move and working towards goals that I have set for myself. What I have noticed throughout the years is that people seem to be more likely to do the things they need to do to make their life more successful if they know that someone is watching and witnessing them make progress. This is productive for a lot of people who need group interaction and the "pat on the back" that you accomplished something is really rewarding.

But true success is garnered by those who do the things that need to be done when no one is watching. It took me a long time to develop the ability to motivate myself to take action even though there is no one to tell me to do it.

In fact, for the first several years of working on my own, I spent a lot of time wasting time and telling myself I will definitely get started tomorrow. I'll eat better, tomorrow. I'll start working out, tomorrow. I'll make that first phone call to drum up business, tomorrow. Invariably, I would find myself on the next day saying the same thing and tomorrow keeps getting pushed back day after day.

Unfortunately, this is a bad habit and it's also one that is very difficult to break.

It's tough to break because non action is always easier than taking action.

Your ability to take action might be impaired for a variety of reasons but in the end there are two things that you need to remember. One is that those things are just excuses. And the second is that, it just means your mental strength needs work.

Building this mental strength is tough if we believe what our mind tells us. And it's a lonely job too. No one is going to build our mental strength for us. We have to own it. And make that task our priority number one.

Because building that mental strength to accomplish will lead you to great things and a better life.

I'm often inspired by stories of people who spend most of their time practicing their craft. Looking for that edge that will help them when they need it most. For the most part, these stories come from athletes who spend countless hours practicing for a two hour game.

One of the ones that always comes to mind is Larry Bird who played in the NBA. He came from a small town in Indiana. From what I've heard, he practiced more than anyone else he played against. He spent countless hours in the gym by himself shooting all the shots he might take in the game from all parts of the floor. So, when it came time for the game, he knew he would hit the shot when it mattered. Why? Because he had taken it hundreds if not thousands of times prior to that moment by himself. This devotion to practice by himself earned him huge pats on the back by the fans who watched him. But during his practice times there was no one there doing that for him. He dug deep within himself and his own mental strength to summon the energy required to take action when no one was watching.

It's this attention to detail that separates those who succeed versus those who don't. Who takes the time to study the things they do on a daily basis and makes a checklist and then follows it?

Who takes the time to hone that checklist into a finely tuned machine to get it done in the most effective manner?

Who does the things that nobody wants to do when no one is there to tell you you did a great job doing that?

I can tell you that it's small minority of the people you know. That's why success is so elusive.

But that should also bring you encouragement. And that's because there is no one stopping you from doing those things but yourself.

Start doing the little steps that lead to success and you'll start seeing the success. You'll become part of that minority of successful people.

YOU can do that. It just takes getting started and taking action. Start today.

Why You Need To Start Your Own Business To Become FinanciallyIndependent

2012-03-05T12:17:00.000-05:00

In my last post I talked about how to become financially independent. I talked a little about how to break it down into steps from your smallest bill to your largest. Determine how much money you need to save that would generate enough income to pay those bills. The missing ingredient here is how to get a large enough pool of money to live off so that you don't have to work. Exactly how do you do that?

The first thing that you need to do is to create a mindset that you are going to create a fund to live off of. Once you have done that you will need to set up that account and put money into it. At first I wouldn't worry about what kind of account it is. A regular savings account will do. You have to get in the habit of putting money into it first.

The second thing is to have a goal - a preliminary target to that huge number you need to save up to be able to not work and live off the money you have saved up. In my previous article, I set my first smaller target at $7200. If I can find a way to set aside that much money and earn 5 percent interest somewhere, then I will have become financially independent up to my water bill of $30 per month.

The third thing is to have a way to fund that account up to that target amount. There are a few ways to get your account funded. The first and most obvious is to earn that much money, put it in an account and to not spend it. The second way is to sell some things you own to raise that amount of money. There are more ways but those are the basic two that jump out at me right away.

I'm going to talk about another way to raise the money to fill my account and that's to start my own business.

You see, there are two basic types of people in the world. Those who make stuff and those who buy stuff. The people who make the vast majority of stuff we have is the side you want to be on. You want to be a producer of some sort. You want to make things that you can sell. Most of us are consumers of some sort. We spend all that we make and then some.

This sort of thinking is what traps us into a life of never getting ahead. To get where we want to go, we need a vehicle. That vehicle is your own business.

Your own business can do two things for you. The first is that it can make you money. The second is that it is an asset that you can sell later for a much larger amount than it cost you to buy it. If you can create an income stream that makes you money, you have something you can sell.

The hard part is figuring out exactly what that business should be. I will talk more about that in my next post.

How To Achieve Financial Independence

2012-03-02T20:35:00.000-05:00

Over the years, I've read a lot of how to stuff. I've read a lot of motivational stuff. A common theme among many of these works is that most people want to achieve financial independence. But for most people, this is just a dream they will never realize because they don't have a plan behind it to achieve it. I myself have been suckered into many get rich quick ideas. What I have learned is that it's pretty easy to sell someone a book or course on how to get rich. It is quite another to specifically help people do it.

I'm going to give you my take on how I think you should go about it and then beyond that start to introduce some concepts for both the green belt that relates to money and for the orange belt that relates to your work.

I wanted to start introducing this material now because it is on my mind at the present. I'd like to earn more. I'd like to have more freedom. I would also like to not work more than anything else and just enjoy my time.

But, in order to get there, most of us have to work first and generate enough capital to invest and live off.

So the first thing that I am going to share with you is the basic plan for financial independence and then the beginning road map on how to achieve it will begin tomorrow.

All of us have bills. We have the basics such as the mortgage or rent, utilities, food, etc. Then we have the things we like to do, going to the movies, eating out and going on vacation for example.

Let's say that I only had four bills and I was looking to gain my financial independence:

Mortgage $1000/mo

Food $500

Water $30

Car $400

If I my fantasy world, if these were the only bills I had, then my monthly expenses would be $1930 per month. This means that in order to live to satisfy my NEEDS, I would need to either work and earn $1930 a month, borrow it or use income from investments to pay for it.

If I was financially independent, and I could live off my investments to pay for my needs each month, I would need a certain amount of money earning a certain amount of interest to do that.

To make things easy, let's say that my monthly expenses were $2000 per month. I'm going to assume I could earn 5% annually on my investments.

This means that I would need $480,000 in capital. ($480,000 times 5% equals $24000 divided by 12 equals $2000 per month).

If you have no money now, thinking about how to raise nearly half a million dollars to live off seems like a huge amount and probably also something that might not be obtainable to you.

That's why I say, to look at that list of bills again. I want you to focus on the smallest one which is $30 per month. How much money would I need invested at 5% to pay for that water bill.

The answer is $7200.

A number that seems much more reasonable for people and one that is also more achievable.

I'd make my first goal to raise $7200 and get it invested. Then I'd look at the next smallest bill on my list and repeat the process.

I think you might see a pattern here if you have been following my Black Belt teachings. If you raised $7200 and found a way to earn 5% interest annually, you would be financially independent to the "WATER BILL LEVEL". Much like be a Black Belt at processing for example, but not one at reviewing.

The next step in the process would be figure out how to raise that $7200. I will start that discussion tomorrow.

What To Do When You Don't Complete A Thirty Day Challenge And My Next Challenge

2012-03-01T18:57:00.000-05:00

My thirty day challenge for the month of March is to complete the collection section of my GTD daily review checklist. I've been working on getting my checklist fine tuned and now what I want to start doing is getting each of these sections done on a daily basis. I'm going to start with the collection section of that checklist. Before I get into that though, I want to discuss how my challenge went last month and address some things there that you will probably face as you work to improve your mental strength.

You are going to find that when you try and make progress, you will encounter bumps in the road that prevent you from making progress or delay it for a short period of time. Last month, I was unable to complete my thirty day challenge for the month of February. This comes on the heels of steady progress in the many months prior to that.

I think that it's human nature when you fail to react to that failure with an explanation of why it was that you didn't succeed. I've mentioned in the past here in the stuff I have been teaching, that when you don't succeed in making progress, that you shouldn't explain the reason why.

Instead, what I advocate is that you only talk about what you accomplish - not what you fail to accomplish or why you failed to accomplish it.

Now this doesn't mean that I don't think that you should reflect on the structure of the failure to look for ways to overcome roadblocks. What I'm talking about is those things that take away your momentum that are more along the lines of excuses.

During the month of February, I had several events that derailed my progress, but in the end, those reasons ultimately don't matter. What ultimately matters is what I actually do and I could have if I wished still completed my challenge for the month, but I didn't.

So what I will always encourage you to do, when you stall out, it's time to take a breather because you reached a plateau of sorts and start up again the next month.

When you do that, you want to pick up at the same level you were prior to that month. For example, in my case, I had built up several thirty day challenges. You want to pick up those and just start a new one.

What you will find happen when you do that, is that you will find that these setbacks happen less and less often. Good luck on your challenge this month and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Started Adding Projects And An Agendas List To My Daily Checklist

2012-02-03T21:07:00.000-05:00

I spent more time today updating my daily checklist. Primarily I focused on adding personal projects to it. These were primarily financial and household accounts that I have to keep an eye on each week. I use the projects list during my weekly review. I like to have each account I have on the project list so I can remind myself each week of anything that I might need to do with them.

The other main thing I added was an agenda list of friends and family as well as work associates. I also use this during my weekly review to remind me if I need to do anything for important people in my life.

These are really used as mental triggers to keep them on top of my mind to help me determine any next actions.

I also added some frequently referred to information on the checklist like my phone numbers and addresses. I think tomorrow I will add an additional section for rewards programs along with phone numbers as well.

The other thing I have been thinking about is the format of my checklist. It's a little better but not sure it's a keeper yet. I will keep working on it. If you are a member, be sure and check out my checklist. If you aren't a member, join now to get access to it as I update it.

How I'm Expanding My GTD Daily Review Checklist To Get EVERYTHING Out Of My Head

2012-02-02T08:08:00.000-05:00

In my last article, I showed a snapshot of my daily review checklist and mentioned the first five sections of my checklist were for the five phases of GTD workflow. Those were, collecting, processing, organizing, doing and reviewing. I have started building out the steps I take in those areas and have expanded my checklist to include a few more areas for me to build out.

The first three sections I added were for a morning routine, afternoon routine and evening routine. In each of these sections, I am going to outline the steps I take to do the routine items like getting ready in the morning, walking and things like that. To complement those sections, I've added additional sections for meals and snacks. Those are breakfast, lunch, dinner and three snacks. I will use these sections to put in healthy meal plans I would like to follow each day with a few different options as well.

The next sections I added were ones for a daily review, weekly review, monthly review, quarterly review and yearly review. In these sections, I will record the steps that I want to take for reviewing at each of those time. From the way I like to set up my day, I will set up slots for two daily reviews. Once in the morning and once in the evening.

I considered adding sections for each day of the week but at this time opted not to do that. Instead I will use my calendar for weekly related actions that need to be completed. I may change my position on that but that is what has always worked for me in the past. One additional step that I do take when I record steps is if it something I want to do on certain days I will put the initial of the day of the week in front of it. For example: M:Walk at 65% of maximum heart rate. The "M" in this situation is for Monday. If I want to do this for specific multiple days, I will put SWF for example. in front of the task.

The final sections I added to my daily review checklist are GTD related sections. These are projects for personal and professional, areas of focus, reference, goals and visions.

I also added a slot for my thirty day challenges.

Some things I have learned so far are to leave enough room to add and subtract items from your list and to also move items around. I have also numbered each step.

The final part of my checklist that I expanded is to keep track of time it takes to complete sections. I haven't started timing these yet but will here soon. My goal here is to get these items done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

One additional point. Once I fine tune each of these sections, the steps involved along with the most efficient and fastest way to complete these tasks, I will assign these routines to times on my calendar to follow at specific times. I will do that so I can control my day and what happens during each section of it.

If you are a member, you can watch my checklist evolve by clicking the link in my signature to my Daily Review Checklist. If you are not a member, I encourage you to join today.

My Thirty Day Challenge For The Month Of February: Work On My Daily Review Checklist Each Day

2012-02-01T19:45:00.000-05:00

It's the first of the month and time to start another thirty day challenge. If you read my post from yesterday, you know that I completed my last thirty day challenge which was to walk for three miles each day. I continued walking three miles again today and started my new thirty day challenge which is to work on the second component of the white belt master - building mental strength with my checklist. I've decided to work on my checklist each and every day for the month of February for at least 30 minutes.

If you will recall from my previous articles and podcasts, I am a big advocate of getting everything out of your head and putting it into a checklist that you can refer to daily. I often described the football coach on the sideline with his football game plan on a big laminated card. This card tells him how to handle any game situation.

Likewise, the daily checklist I am putting together will also help me handle any situation I encounter during my day. I've been adding to my daily review checklist a little bit at a time and have started organizing it a bit better as well.

Here's a picture of my daily review checklist in it's current form today. Keep in mind, it's in progress at this point.

[caption id="attachment_1405" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="My GTD Daily Review Checklist starts to take shape."][/caption]

The core I have started with are the five phases of GTD workflow. Those are collecting, processing, organizing, doing and reviewing. I've started breaking down the exact steps I have to take to complete each phase.

The reason I feel this is important is twofold. First, if you break down everything you have to do into specific steps and write them down on paper, you get more stuff out of your head. Second, you define precisely what done looks like.

While both have their rewards, the second is extremely valuable to managing your stress. Once you define what done looks like - exactly - and you do it daily, you will know when work is finished.

If you know when work is finished, you can get on to the more important things in life like having fun!

Each day this month, I'll update you on the development of my daily review checklist. If you are a member, you can actually see my checklist template in google docs. If not, be sure and join today.

I Completed My Thirty Day Challenge, Now What?

2012-01-30T19:56:00.000-05:00

It's the last day of January and it marks the completion of my thirty day challenge which was to walk three miles each day. I've been doing these for nearly a year now and so I know what the next step is. But if you just completed your first thirty day challenge, you might be asking yourself, what do I do now?

The idea behind the thirty day challenge is to teach you how to change your habits. But if you only do it for thirty days, have you really changed anything if you don't continue doing it after thirty days?

The trick here is that when you initially tell yourself mentally that you only have to change for thirty days it's a little easier than telling yourself it's a permanent change. It's mentally tougher to tell yourself to change for a lifetime. But once, you make it through a whole month, that is exactly what you want to do - continue your thirty day challenge after the initial thirty days.

The key to doing this is to immediately change your focus to the next challenge and to build on your success.

I call this setting the bar. Let's review some of my past challenges.

I gave up diet coke

I gave up fried food

I started walking every day

I gave up snacks wrapped in plastic

I walked for three miles every day

<----- The Bar of Mental Strength ----->

My next thirty day challenge

So you can see above where my bar of mental strength is. The goal is to continue lifting the mental weight I have been lifting and to progressively add a little bit more each and every month.

This is how you create change. Do a challenge. Complete it. Continue it. Add another challenge. Repeat.

I've actually forgotten some of my challenges that I know I am still doing. But those above are the biggies I remember.

So now that you have completed your thirty day challenge. Start your next one and continue the last one. Build on that success. You can join our discussion in the forums as we track our challenges if you are a member. If not, you can join now.

The Next Step Of Active Visualization

2012-01-29T20:48:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I talked about beginning your active visualization. Today, I wanted to start going over step two of your active visualization which is to identify the next actions you can take to make those images you have in your mind come true. In this podcast, I talk about how I suggest you do it and include some tips and ideas that can help you get started.

Enjoy today's podcast.

How To Begin To Actively Visualize What You Want

2012-01-28T21:34:00.000-05:00

In today's podcast, I talk about how to begin to actively visualize what you want. There are three main components to becoming a white belt master here at the Black Belt Project. They are, creating change with thirty day challenges, building mental strength with checklists and designing your life with active visualization. It's the last one that I start to talk about more today.

The concept of having a vision or purpose is a challenging one. It's probably not something you can fit into one concise statement. It's probably a number of different things. I talk about how I am using active visualization here to create the Black Belt Project so you can see exactly how what I recommend works and you can see it at work in my own life.

Enjoy today's podcast.

Start Planning Your Next Thirty Day Challenge

2012-01-25T19:42:00.000-05:00

As I approach the end of the month, I have a few things on my mind. The first is that I am excited that I'm about to complete a thirty day challenge. This month, I've been walking three miles every day. The next thing I start thinking about is maintaining what I start this month as a habit. It's important to make change take hold in my life. So, when I start a thirty day challenge, I tell myself mentally that I only have to do it for thirty days. Once I make it through a whole month, I switch gears and set the bar there. The goal is to continue what I started and continue to walk three miles every day from this point forward. The final thing that's important to me is that I need to start thinking about the next thing I want to work on.

So, if you have been doing your thirty day challenge, over the next few days you need to start deciding on what you can do next month.

If you haven't added my Black Belt Project Calendar, I've added this as a reminder on the 25th of every month as a recurring event to remind you it's time to start this process.

As you begin to think about that, you'll want to make your challenge something that is progressively harder than last month. It doesn't have to be that much harder. Small increments actually work better.

Let your mental strength be your guide and set yourself up for success.

How Many Thirty Day Challenges Do You Need To Do?

2012-01-24T20:38:00.000-05:00

This is the first month, I've "officially" had members doing thirty day challenges along with me. As we near the successful completion of a month of creating change in our lives, does doing a thirty day challenge for one month mean that you have mastered change in your life. And if it doesn't, then how many successful thirty day challenges do you have to do to achieve mastery?

I think that there are actually two levels to this question. The first level is mastering the concept itself. The second level is actually mastering it in your life.

Let's talk about the first level. Mastering concepts are the exciting part. It's new knowledge. There's the optimism of new techniques and ideas that challenge your self in ways you didn't know that you could.

I've often fallen into this trap. I get interested in a subject, I find the best information I can on the subject and I start applying it. Eventually, I start to see some success and feel that I know what I need to know. Just the knowledge that I know how to do it is enough and it's a powerful feeling. It's almost an addiction. It's an addiction to knowledge. Once it wears off, I move on to satisfy the craving once again.

Here, the concept of a my thirty day challenge is easy. You decide on something you will do or not do for thirty days. You make it through the thirty days. You continue it beyond the thirty days and you start another one. Rinse and repeat.

In reviewing the requirements of a white belt master, I have to decide when you have mastered the concept of a thirty day challenge. Because there are actually two parts to a thirty day challenge, one is making it through a whole month. The second part is continuing that habit beyond the first month while you start a new challenge.

It's hard for me to say that one month is mastery when it's really only one component of the challenge. Without making the change "stick", you haven't really mastered permanent change. If you want to change your life, permanent change is essential to your success.

For purposes of becoming a white belt master, I think it's important to recognize that you understand the concept plus actually that you have actually completed it. So in looking at my own personal experience, I know it takes a few "successes" to actually get it and to get those successes to stick and to give you the momentum you need to create a mindset of constant improvement.

I think that for you to really start the see the power of this concept, it's important to set a goal of doing three consecutive thirty day challenges while making the first two stick.

If you do that, I think that you have mastered the concept.

You should make that your first objective. You should master the concept.

But after that, after the newness of the concept has worn off, you have to make a decision. Am I satisfied that I understand and truly know the concept. Or, do I want to really master it.

Once you think about that question, I think a true black belt knows the answer to how many successful thirty day challenges they need to do to be considered a master.

The answer is twelve a year.

How To Improve Your GTD System To A Black Belt Level

2012-01-19T21:33:00.000-05:00

Over the last few days I've started building a daily review checklist. To get it started, I've been taking a close look at exactly all the steps that I take to do that and getting them down on paper. I've also streamlined my email a bit by setting up a bunch of filters to get things that I don't need to look at right away out of my inbox and into my Read/Review folder. My email inbox is empty. The first step in mastering my email is complete.

Let's take a closer look at my folders in my email. I refer to them as folders but in gmail and google apps they are called labels. I will use those interchangeably. Here are my labels.

Inbox (0)

Sent Mail

Drafts

Spam

Trash

3775 (0)

5151 (0)

5726 (0)

7636 (0)

Action (202)

Calendar (21)

Faxes

Read/Review (9)

Someday/Maybe (3)

To Print (0)

Waiting For (43)

I want to point out that I added a label called "Reference". I was using the Starred feature in gmail to do that but I decided that I don't like to use the stars. I use this for emails that have information in them that I frequently referred to. Once I moved the starred emails into the Reference label, I then hid the Starred label from view in my settings since I won't be referring to it anymore.

In addition, the number in parentheses is the number of items that need to be dealt with at some point. You'll notice the inbox is at empty.

If you remember from yesterday, I mentioned that I look at each of the files above as just another inbox. Once I get the main email inbox to empty, then I start working on the next one.

What I try and do is to do them in order from easiest to hardest. The idea here is to get momentum and push everything down into my system.

What I mean by that is that I start at the very beginning of my GTD system. I call it the front end. I get everything working at the front end of my GTD system and slowly move improvement down to the end.

I take the very easiest things to do. Do them first. Since they are easy they create momentum. And then use that momentum to help give me additional mental strength to get more of my system in shape.

Let's take these folder as an example. If you look above you'll see that there are 202 emails in that folder that need some sort of action. These are things that I already know will take more than a couple of minutes because of the two minute rule I applied in when I was processing my inbox. That means that folder will take a lot more effort to empty than say the "3775" folder because that is just a voice mail box. That is one that is extremely easy compared to the action folder.

What I do then is put them in order from easiest to hardest to process. Now before I move on, I know that if you have several thousand email in your inbox, that it will seem like a pretty hard folder to get to zero. But once you realize the inbox is just a place to make a decision on where to put it, that inbox becomes a lot easier to empty. Why? Well if it needs extended action, it immediately gets put in the action folder. The engine starts with the inbox as well so we have to put it first on the list to do for that reason anyway.

So here are my folders arranged by difficulty:

Spam - always easy to scan to see if anything was misfiled that should go into inbox

To Print - if at printer, easy to print

3775 - voice mail messages

5151 - voice mail messages

5726 - voice mail messages

7636 - voice mail messages

Inbox

--- The Bar of My Mental Strength --- (also my Black Belt level)

Calendar

Waiting For

Read/Review

Someday/Maybe

Action <-------Hardest folder to empty

Faxes - Reference only, no action

Reference - Reference only no action

What I want you to picture here is that everything above my mental strength bar is at a black belt level. It's running perfectly. Everything below the bar is not yet. Imagine if you will pushing that bar down the list smoothing perfection down one level at a time.

Another way that I like to look at this is you can tell exactly what level of Black Belt GTD'er you are. Right now, I'm a Black Belt to the Calendar folder in my email system.

This is easier to do if you put all of the easier stuff at the top and the hardest stuff at the end.

Get in the habit of pushing improvement down through your GTD system like this and before you know it, you will be doing weekly reviews consistently because you will finally have clarity to understand how it all works together..

The reason this is important is because the next step for me is to start organizing my daily review checklist. The way I want to organize it is an easiest to hardest order.

All the things I've been putting getting out of my head and into my checklist have to be organized in a logical fashion. Thinking along these lines will help you organize your checklist in a way that creates momentum, helps you see exactly where you get stuck and provide you with a method to break through that wall.

My checklist is available to members as I build it. If you are not a member, you can join now.

An Example On How To Use The Tasks On Your Daily Review Checklist To Raise The Bar And Increase Your Mental Strength

2012-01-18T11:29:00.000-05:00

OK. Yesterday, I finally got to the main concept of building mental strength. That was figuring out where to set the bar. The bar is placed at the place on your checklist that you didn't get to on the previous day. Your goal each day is to get to the bar and to strive for some improvement each day by doing at least one additional task or more.

Building your checklist into a complete and accurate measurement of your mental strength means that you have to spend some time each day working through the exact steps you take to do all of your tasks. I've started with email here since it's a core component of just about everybody's day.

I want to delve a little deeper into that subject today and show you how to raise the bar to increase your mental strength using your daily review checklist.

When I worked through my checklist yesterday, you might recall that I got my inbox empty but couldn't get any further. My goal today is to at least get to my Calendar folder and open it. Based on the fact that I feel my mental strength is strong enough, I don't think getting to that point will be a problem today.

First, though, I need to get out my checklist. I'm not where I can print it out today, but I strongly suggest printing out your checklist so you can see the tasks at hand. As you do the tasks on it, you'll want to check them off. This "checking off" action gives you a mental boost that your brain loves because it can actively see action and it starts feeding the brain. As you work through your checklist you will want to ask yourself the following questions:

Is the next step on my checklist really the very next thing I do or is there a step left out that I need to add?

Is there an item on my checklist that's out of order that would be better moved to another place in my checklist?

Is there a better way I can word the items on my checklist?

Have I really cleared my head of all the steps?

Is there anything I can do to get rid of that step or automate it?

The reason I'm doing this is because I am looking to achieve the following things:

Get absolutely everything out of my head.

Optimize the order of the list for maximum efficiency.

Get the list to a point where I could if I want hand the task to someone else and they could complete it with my checklist.

Let's pick up where I left off by using my email account as the basis for the checklist I've been working on.

Here's the checklist so far:

Turn on computer

Log into email account

Open email inbox

Open the first email

Since my inbox was emptied last night, twenty seven emails have landed in my inbox. I do the above steps and open the first email. I notice that the very next thing on my list from yesterday was "process each email in the inbox until it is empty". I notice though that step is pretty open. It doesn't summarize the very next thing I do which is:

Determine if I need to continue to get this email.

I review the email. It's an email alert from a penny stock investing site that I followed while I was working on a project a while back. It's not something I need to continue to get. Getting rid of this email I never look at is one less thing I would have to process. The very next actions are to:

If not, can I unsubscribe to it?

If yes, is the unsubscribe link one I can trust?

If yes, unsubscribe from email.

If no, set up a filter to filter it out of my inbox.

Archive or delete email.

In this case, I trusted the email's sender, unsubscribed and archived the email.

The next email was from a company I bought my printer from. I usually don't read these but don't mind getting offers from companies I buy things from. But I notice that the next action on my checklist doesn't account for this. Here are the next steps that actually came to my mind after I decided it was an email I wanted to continue to get along with the actual steps I took once I did that. Notice I wrote them down as well.

Is this an email I will read or review right when I get it or can I read or review it at a later point.

If it's an email I will read right away, read it.

If it's actionable, do it right away if it can be done quickly.

If it's actionable but requires more time, put in action folder.

If it requires no action, archive or delete it.

If it's an email that I can read at a later time, set up a filter to send it to my Read/Review folder.

To set up a filter, copy sender's email address.

Open mail settings

Click filters

Click create a new filter.

Put sender's email in the from field.

Click next step button.

Check skip the inbox

Check apply the label.

Check the drop down box and select Read/Review

Decide whether to filter the conversations on the bottom of that page

If so click that box to filter all emails in the list below

If not click the create filter button

Go back to inbox

Open the email I just set up the filter for

If it requires action, move to action folder

If not, archive or delete it.

Now, the next time I get an email from that company, since it's not urgent it will go right into my read/review folder for later review and completely bypass my inbox since it's not urgent. Then when I am in read/review mode, I can do those things all at one time.

The next email was spam. I added that item onto my checklist:

Is it spam?

If so, click the spam button.

The next few emails were ones that I set up filters for to read/review later. The next email was from a social networking site that I never use. I considered that a subscription and unsubscribed. The next was a comment from this site. And another was from a client. This added a few more steps.

Is it actionable?

Can I do it in under two minutes? If so do it.

If not move to action folder.

The next email was a utility bill. I have all my utility bills in my calendar set up as recurring events. When they come in, I update the amount due and put it on my calendar. So I added a couple of other steps to my checklist:

Review utility bill amount

Open calendar

Edit calendar event by adding the amount due and the date it is due.

Archive or delete email.

The next email was a fax I received.

Review fax for action

If it requires action, do it or put in the action folder

Otherwise, file in the Fax folder

The next email was an email alert from my bank.

Review alert from bank

If it requires action and can be done quickly, do it now, then archive or delete it

If it requires action that can't be done quickly, then move it to the action folder

You'll notice that there is some overlap in some of the actions above. For now, my goal was to get all the steps out of my head. As I put them in my checklist and start to work through the checklist, I'll start to refine the order and duplicate any overlap.

After going through the steps of processing, I got to the point that my email inbox was empty. Once you get into the habit of recognizing that you can indeed get your email inbox to zero, you will start to see how it's really the easiest place to start in your email. The real problem for a lot of us is that we spend so much time in the inbox trying to do or just scanning instead of moving the emails into our action folder for when we get into "ACTION" mode. The first step in your email is just organizing it into the rest of the system.

Now, I've reached goal number one which was to get my inbox to empty. That's where the bar was the previous day. So now, my second objective was to open my calendar folder, which already has email reminders from my calendar filtered into it. These are items that are specific to a certain day and therefore go on my calendar. When the day arrives, I get an email letting me know. Then it's up to me to review the items on the list and see if I need to do anything.

Many of these emails are informational. For example, some are birthdays and anniversaries. Some are for bills that are automatically drafted out of my checking account. Some are for things that I need to complete. But the very next action is for me to:

Open first email in the calendar folder

I've been a little behind in my calendar reminders. I've got around 134 calendar reminders in that folder. To clean that up, my first very next step is to:

Delete reminders that are taken care of

That left me with 21 email reminders in my calendar folder. And that's where I will set the bar for today. As you can see below, I've now raised the bar and effectively increased my mental strength a little bit more. I set the bar now and try and do a little bit more the next time I hit the gym (office).

.....Previous stuff on checklist

Open email calendar folder

Delete all email calendar reminders that are taken care of

---------- THE BAR ---------------

Decide the steps to take for the rest of the calendar reminders.

...the rest of my of the stuff on my checklist

So now, as far as my checklist is concerned, I'll put the above items I went through into my daily review checklist. And then print it out and review it.

Start making your checklist and start figuring out where your mental strength is. If you want to see my actual checklist and are a member, then click the link to my checklist in my forum signature. If you are not a member, you can join here.

Figuring Out How Many Tasks You Can Do Each Day So You Know Exactly How Mentally Strong You Are

2012-01-17T21:53:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I started to break down the email checklist I am building to illustrate how you build mental strength. I wanted to pick up where I left off in the last post and talk more about that today. Before I get into it, just a reminder, I'm of the view that before you can increase your mental strength, you have to know how strong you are. Now, when I say "know" how strong you are, I don't mean have a general idea, I want to know exactly. You should as well.

When you build physical strength, you know exactly how much you weight you use when you do an exercise. You look at the weights and see how much they weigh and then you use them. You don't grab a weight and guess how much it is. YOU LOOK.

It's the same with mental strength, but instead of weight, you use tasks instead. And for me to know exactly how mentally strong I am, I have to actually see the tasks in front of me in the form of a checklist. This tells me how much I can lift "mentally". How far I can get into my checklist tells me that.

Once, I know how far I can get, that's where I set the bar. I make it my priority to get that far from that point forward. To gain mental strength, I would then push myself to add a few more tasks each time I go to the office (our mental gym).

I've spent the last few days working on determining the exact amount of mental strength that I have when it comes to my email account. I can tell you that, because I know exactly how far I get into my checklist.

To keep it simple, here's a basic email checklist:

Turn on computer

Log into email account

Open email inbox folder

Process each email in the inbox until it is empty

---------- THE BAR ------------------

Open email calendar folder

Process each email reminder

Open action folder

With this sample checklist, you can see that right after I get my inbox to empty, I've put "THE BAR". That's because that's how mentally strong I was today. I was able to get through all of my email and get my inbox to zero. I couldn't however move onto the next item on my checklist which was to open my calendar folder.

So what I do, is tomorrow, when I work through my checklist, is to make sure that I again get my email inbox to empty. That no matter what I do, I get at least that far. That's my first objective.

Secondly, the next most important thing I will do is at the very least go one more task down on my checklist. In this case, that would be to open my calendar folder and look at my reminders.

Now, even if I don't do anything else but OPEN that folder, I can see that once I do that, I actually lifted more tasks than the previous day. And I can move the bar down and set my bar there.

Depending on where you are and your mental state, you might only have the bar at turn on computer. Or, you might be at your Action folder. Or, even farther down your checklist. The point is that all of us reach a wall somewhere and that's where we get stuck. And where we get stuck is our mental strength.

Small increases in the number of tasks is how you get through that wall.

A basic checklist above will do the job, but if you have been following me, you will probably notice that I am going into greater detail with my checklist.

Like today, I spent a great deal of time analyzing the types of emails I get and exactly what I do with them when I receive them. I've discovered that up to this point, I get about 20 -25 different types of emails. To find that out, I analyzed the last 1500 emails I received. And for the most part, many were repeats. I receive them over and over again.

Here are some basic types I received:

Email from friends and family

Email from bloggers I like to read

Email from bloggers I like to read but can wait until I have time

Discount offers from companies I use

Email from coworkers

Alerts on financial accounts

Email from social networking accounts

Spam or other unsolicited email

Quickbooks alerts

Calendar reminders

Comments and pingbacks from blogs I manage

Payment confirmations

Renewal notices

Unsubscription notices

New member registrations

Paypal notices

Faxes

Notices that statements are ready

School notices

Bills

Appointment confirmations

Other reminders

Domain renewals

So in addition to finding where I need to set the bar, I am also looking at how to make the process quicker and more efficient. To do that, I am breaking down the steps I take for each type of email as well and also putting that in my checklist.

The plan is to then set up filters to handle the things I can see that I can automate. That's the beauty of email. I can batch things together and process the same thing at the same time - like calendar reminders.

I've been building the rough skeleton of a daily review checklist and putting it online for others to see it. If you are a member of the Black Belt Project, you can find a link to my checklist in my forum signature. If you are not a member yet, you can join here.

Starting My Email Checklist So I Can Begin To Assess My Mental Strength

2012-01-16T20:21:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I talked about my folder structure inside my email account. I then made a list of those folders and put that list into my daily review checklist. While a lot of people look at their email account as an inbox, I look at each folder in my email account as an inbox. I list these folders in an order that is conducive to my workflow and then set out to master the procedures necessary to get each folder working at peak efficiency.

Today, I wanted to start taking the first steps towards getting all of these procedures out of my head and start putting them into my daily review checklist. This in turn will help me build more mental strength by reducing the amount of mental overhead required to process things so that I will have more of it to help me get my email inbox to empty.

To review the purpose of my checklist:

Decrease the amount of stuff in my head that I have to remember

To define what done looks like on paper

To fine tune the order and items on the list for maximum efficiency

To determine exactly what my mental strength is (how many tasks I do)

To figure out how much weight (tasks) I need to progressively add to increase my mental strength

To reduce the time it takes to do the steps on the checklist

The first items on my checklist are easy items. Those are:

Turn on computer

Log into email account

Open inbox folder

Open the first email

Now, I have to start to ask myself some questions. I've opened the first email. It's a note from my wife that includes something I need to update on my webpage. It's something I can do quickly (the two minute rule) so I take care of it. I can the archive or delete it. This adds two additional items to my checklist. Those are:

Do any tasks I can do in under two minutes

Archive or delete email

It's at this point, that I'm also going to start making another checklist. That is to track the kinds of emails I get. The first category of these email "types" is:

Email from friends and family

The purpose of recording the type of emails I receive is to batch them together so I can process like things at the same time. I'll discuss this more later when I get into how to filter my email.

For now, let's move onto the next email.

This email is from a blogger I like to read. For this particular blogger I usually read his stuff when it hits my inbox - as opposed to some I get that I kind of pay attention to but don't necessarily feel like I have to read it. This leads to another set of steps.

Quickly scan email from bloggers I follow

Decide to read it now or read later

If I want to read it now, read it

Make a note of any actions I might want to take

If I want to read it later, file in my read/review file

If I read it now, archive or delete it

And also puts another email type on my list which is:

Email from bloggers I like to read now

Email from bloggers I like to read but can wait til I have time

I read it and filed it in my read/review file.

Next up is an email from a company I work with. It's a special discount offer from the company I host my website with. When I get these offers, I usually archive them so if I need them at a later date, I can pull them out of my email just by searching for the name of the company.

Archive offers from companies I work with if not needed now

File offers from companies I work with in "Action" folder if I need it now

And add another type of email to my email "type" list:

Offers from companies I work with

So basically, I do this with each email I receive until I have exhausted the types and started to put the steps in to handle each type.

Once I have done this for a few sessions, I'll have a pretty detailed checklist as well as a fairly good idea of most of the types of emails I receive. The next step for me is to start to fine tune the checklist by optimizing the order of the items on the checklist and add or subtract things from the list as well as start to automate some of the things such as filtering emails like offers from companies I use into a read review file for later sorting.

Also keep in mind that as I build this checklist, it's a rough draft that will be refined as I go along.

If you are a member, you can see my full checklist by clicking the link in the signature of my forum posts as I work on it by becoming a member of the Black Belt Project today.

Getting Started On Building My Mental Strength Using My Email AccountAs The Starting Point

2012-01-15T21:12:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago, I started talking about the two types of mental strength. The first was the mental strength we use to remember everything and the second form of mental strength was what we use to get our tasks done. I suggested that the first way to get your mental strength up was to reduce your usage of trying to remember everything and that alone would free up some additional mental capacity to help you get your tasks done. After that, then you would have to work on building up the second form of mental strength by using progressive resistance - slowly adding more tasks over time to increase what you can do.

I also feel that while a lot of you can buy into the usage of thirty day challenges to change your habits and build mental strength, I might have a tougher time getting you to buy into the strategies I am going to outline in the lessons over the next few weeks. Why? Well, the main reason is because it's going to take a little more effort on your part to do and you might not necessarily feel like doing it.

As a Black Belt though, I think it's a critical lesson in improving your life. The reason is that the more time you spend on figuring out what done looks like, the easier it's going to be to get it done, and more importantly to know when you are done.

But, I look at my task here as not so much trying to convince you that this is the path that you should follow as much as it is to show you how to follow the path I recommend.

So, what I'm going to do, is spend time breaking down a task that I'd guess is central to all our days and that task is handling email and getting it down to zero.

I'm going to break this task down in a step-by-step series of articles so you can follow the steps I take to show you how I tackle getting all of the steps I do in checking my email out of my head and organized into an efficient checklist that I can then use to follow on a daily basis to start to measure my mental strength and then also build it.

Once you see how I do this process for email, then you can then use the same series of steps for just about every other thing you do each day.

As I've gone through most of the stuff on my site, I've let you see it from the beginning as it evolves. Some of you who have been following me for a while might notice the subtle changes I have made to this site every day. I let this process play out so that you can see how something starts from the beginning and ends up as a final product. What this means is that the first run through, the second run through and following run throughs bring consistent improvement.

[caption id="attachment_1310" align="alignright" width="123" caption="My initial folder setup inside my email account."][/caption]

My series on taking on email will follow a similar process. I will break down what I do each step of the way. As I look at it each day, I will then refine it as I go along as this is the way most people do stuff. Breaking down your day is something that will take you a number of hours to fully complete. This is what it will look like. Imperfect at first but eventually refined into a polished system.

It will also be taken in small steps at a time each day.

The first step for me, will be in getting my initial setup of folders inside my email account out of my head and onto my checklist. I have put a picture of my folder structure today over to the right so you can have a look.

With the exception of a couple of these, like starred, sent mail and trash, I look at each of these folders as it's own separate inbox. What I will do, is start by getting the Inbox folder in shape and then move down the folder list until I've studied what I do with each and every email that flows through these folders until I can say I've completed downloaded all the steps required to process it all PLUS actually do it each and every day. In my case, I plan on getting it to zero twice a day. Once at the beginning of the day and once at the end.

In case you are wondering, the four digit coded folders are the last four numbers of the Google voice numbers I use.

If you are a Black Belt Project member, you'll notice that I put a list of my folders in my checklist you have access to. The link to my checklist is in any of my forum posts in the forum. If you are not a member, join now to gain access to it.

So that's it for today. I broke down a little of what is involved in getting my email to zero and will pick up where I left off tomorrow.

The Two Components of Mental Strength

2012-01-13T21:23:00.000-05:00

As we are near the half way point of this month's thirty day challenge, I wanted to start working on the next phase of the white belt master training. With several members progressing through their first official challenges, I have to stay one step ahead of everyone. The nice thing about seeing other people do these thirty day challenges is that I can get some good feedback on the effect it has on people when they work through them. How they succeed, how they struggle. This feedback is invaluable to me as I fine tune the training that lies ahead.

The thing I have learned thus far is that people work at different paces. Some work fast and other work more methodically and at a slower pace. I sometimes forget that I have done a number of these challenges and they are a habit with me now. And I felt that for some I might have been moving at too fast a pace before the first lesson sinks in. So I decided to wait a few days before I started our work on the next phase which is building mental strength with checklists.

The great news is that I think phase 1 of the white belt master training - which is the thirty day challenge habit - is a concept that everyone can pick up quickly, this next phase of building mental strength with checklists might pose a bit more of a challenge.

Because that's the case, I will probably devote most of the rest of this month talking about it in detail.

For those of you that haven't been following me so far, mental strength is the amount of effort you can expend to get your daily tasks done. Those that are highly productive have much more mental strength than those who don't accomplish much every day.

I compare it to physical strength but instead of lifting weights, the weights you can lift when it comes mental strength are the tasks you can complete. If you find it difficult to get something done, it's probably a function of just not being mentally strong enough to do it.

Mental strength varies from person to person and even day to day for each person. All of us possess mental strength. Some not very much because they are out of shape. Others a lot because they work on it every day.

Whichever camp you are in, you want to improve your mental strength so you can get more done. Just like physical strength can be increased by lifting more weights, mental strength can be improved by doing more tasks.

Here, I advocate using a concept of progressive resistance. To improve your mental strength, the first step is to assess what your mental strength is and then add a progressively small number of tasks over time to increase it. These small increases in the number of tasks you complete don't shock the system as much but over time add a significant increase in mental strength if you keep doing it over a long period of time.

Once you understand that concept, the next thing I would like to go over is what I believe to be the two basic components of mental strength.

The first component is the mental strength we use to remember all of the things we do without the help of some reminder system outside of our head. The sheer volume of what we remember without outside assistance is incredible.

The second component of mental strength is the effort and energy we muster up to complete the tasks we do.

With that in mind, the first concept I would like to throw out to you is that if you reduce the amount of mental strength required to remember everything, you increase the amount of mental strength you have to complete the tasks you face.

This increases your capacity to get things done without much effort.

The way you do that is by getting everything that you do out of your head and into some sort of system you can refer to. The tool you use to do that is the checklist.

So when we tackle building your mental strength, the first thing that we are going to do, is to start recording everything we do into the form of a checklist.

As we start to do that, you will start to feel a little more mental strength as the overhead you carry around diminishes. Then the next step will be to start to work on improving the second component which is your ability to do the tasks you need to do.

The Complete Step-By-Step Guide On How To Do Successful Thirty Day Challenges And Make Them A Habit

2012-01-09T20:49:00.000-05:00

One of the first things that I suggest you master as a student is the ability to change your habits. I put this first because if you want to really accomplish things you have never achieved, you are going to have to change what you are doing. If you can't do that, then those goals will remain out of reach. It's for that reason that I wanted to put to together this complete step-by-step guide on how to do successful thirty day challenges and make them stick. It's the cornerstone of the program.

Here are the steps I would take to master the thirty day challenge.

Step 1: A few days before the beginning of a month, decide on your first thirty day challenge

Five days before the beginning of a month, start thinking about something you could change in your life. Brainstorm a list of possible things you'd like to do differently. Take the time to list a bunch of things. Most of us have lots of things we know we should or shouldn't do but we never really act to fix that. For example, I should brush my teeth three times a day but I usually don't. These are most likely going to be routine habits you'd like to establish in your daily schedule.

Step 2. Only do one challenge at a time

It's easy to get wrapped up in the idea that one change is good that more would be better. This approach usually shocks the system. Pick one thing to focus on at one time.

Step 3: Make your first thirty day challenge something easy that you know that you can complete

Don't make your first several challenges very hard. In fact, make them so easy that others might laugh at your challenge. This is about creating a mindset of success. Success breeds success. Every success you make creates confidence. Confidence builds mental strength. Mental strength makes change easier. As you get mentally stronger, make your challenges a little more difficult. I suggest starting with things you can subtract out of your day instead of add as well. It's easier to give up a certain food than to walk ten miles every day.

Step 4: It has to be something that is a daily activity and that you can easily measure

Your thirty day challenge should be something that is a daily activity. Things that you don't face every day shouldn't be thirty day challenges. Make them things that you routinely have to do (or not do when it comes to eating for example) every day. Also, make it something easy to measure on a daily basis. For example, I will walk for 10 minutes each day. Be specific on what has to happen each day.

Step 5: At first use challenges that substitute better things you should do or subtract rather than add to your day

I found it's easier to substitute drinking water for diet coke. It was easier to substitute chocolate for fried food. It was harder to get up and walk every day. Things that don't require much effort make great first thirty day challenges. Again start with the easy stuff.

Step 6: Start your thirty day challenge on the first of the month

Just like a new year, each month provides a fresh start. Start all of your thirty day challenges on the first of the month.

Step 7: Complete the first day of your challenge

Get that first completion out of the way on your first day as quickly as possible. But get one done and then allow yourself to do whatever else you want the rest of the day.

Step 8: Create a thirty day challenge forum thread

After you complete your first day, go to the forum and create your own forum thread with a subject line of:

Thirty Day Challenges - Your Name Here

Step 9: Announce your challenge and that you completed the first day

In your forum thread, announce what your thirty day challenge is and that you completed your first day.

Step 10: Complete your challenge each day

Each and every day of the month, complete your thirty day challenge. If a month has more or less than 30 days. It still counts as thirty. Just do it every day of the month. So you should always save your hardest challenge for February..lol.

Step 11: Report that you completed your challenge in the forum each day in the forum thread you created

Every day that you complete your challenge go to your forum thread dedicated to your thirty day challenges and report that you completed it. It's enough to say: "I completed day X of my thirty day challenge. Did whatever it was you set out to do"

Step 12: Five days before the beginning of the next month start thinking about what you want your next thirty day challenge to be. Make it progressively harder than the first one.

The ideas here is that once you know that you can complete a thirty day challenge, you know you can do another one and then another one. But don't make it so hard you won't be able to complete it. Make it just a little harder than the previous month.

Step 13: Continue to complete your challenge each day until the end of the month you started

Make sure that you make it the whole month. Complete every day.

Step 14: Once you complete your challenge, continue completing it each day after the month is over.

The key to these thirty day challenges is telling yourself that you only have to do it for thirty days. But once the thirty days is over, you will continue doing it after the end of that month. Continued and sustained change is the goal.

Step 15: Start your next thirty day challenge on the first of the next month

At the first of every month, start a new thirty day challenge.

Step 16: Repeat the process each month, again making it progressively harder

Start out with easy changes. After three or four months of easy changes, begin starting challenges that require effort on your part but not a whole lot. Again, progressive resistance builds mental strength. The stronger you get the more you strength you will have to tackle harder challenges. Once that happens, motivation starts to kick in a little more. Even when you never had any to start with.

Step 17: If you fail to complete a challenge, don’t talk about why you failed, just start again on the first of the next month

It's important to build on success and ignore failure. If you don't complete your challenge, don't explain why and don't post in your forum thread. Just start another challenge the first of the next month. Remember as black belts we only talk about what we accomplish not what we don't. If you didn't complete a challenge, it just means that you weren't mentally strong enough that month. Start with something easier and go back to step 1.

So there you have it. My guide to how to complete your thirty day challenges and make them stick. Now go for it.

White Belt Master Training Day 7 Begin Visualizing What You Want Out Of Life

2012-01-07T20:35:00.000-05:00

On day 7 of your White Belt Master Training, I'd like you to start thinking about what you want your life to be like because what we are going to do is start our work on actively visualizing your future. The first step is to start to picture how you might want things to be. For many people, getting a clear picture of what they want doesn't come easy. So, when you start out here, I don't want you to worry about it being crystal clear to you. Just to get started thinking about it.

I want to give you an example here of how we are going to go about this so you can see why complete clarity at the outset isn't the most important thing - just getting started is.

Let's take my White Belt Master Training. When I started the Black Belt Project, I didn't know what the completed product would be. I didn't even know what the colors of the belts would be or what they would represent. And even today, I I'm not sure exactly what it will look like when it's completely done. I did, however, have a general idea that in my own life, I wanted to get to a point where I felt I had gotten it to a black belt - or a mastered state.

I figured that other people might be like that too.

So, I just started thinking about it. And, I would start taking some sort of action on the site to get me moving in that direction.

And what's happened is that every day that goes by that I take some sort of action to keep moving towards the vague concept of mastery - both for myself and for you my reader - a clearer and clearer idea starts to take shape.

While it's not there completely, I've invited you along for the ride so you can see it take shape. To see all it's imperfection along the way. In that way, you can see a vision take shape, you can see actions moving towards it and you can see the refinements in the process as we go along.

I do that so that you can see the master, I suppose that's me, practice what he preaches. But more importantly that you can see that the process works.

After you read this, start thinking about things you might really want. Where would you want to live? What kind of work do you want to do? Who do you want to surround yourself with? What do you think would have to happen for you to feel that your life was mastered?

Just get something in your head. Tomorrow, we'll start working on it further.