This year I started a new journal titled “What I Learned”. I am creating a habit of keeping track of the key insights and lessons I learn each day through reading, podcasts, documentaries, and time spent with others. My primary goal is to learn daily, grow daily, and build a treasure chest of life lessons throughout the year I could reflect on at any time. As I pursue this journey of personal and professional growth, I’ll share some of the top lessons and reminders with you.

Here are the TOP 10 (ok 13 this month…I just couldn’t get it down to 10 from about 50+!):

1. My decisions need to be a “HELL YEAH” or a “NO”.   Saying “YES” to things I’m not fully confident in or excited about do me no good and leave no time for the truly “HELL YEAH!” opportunities.
2. If I feel like I’m too “busy” or never have enough time, it simply means I don’t have my priorities in order. Hit the pause button and reassess what’s most important. What can I say ‘NO’ to? Then focus on those fewer, but more important things.
3. Treat life as a series of experiments. This makes failure easier to accept and removes mental hurdles to trying new things.
4. 90% of the benefit of a trip or vacation is the anticipation of it. Book them far in advance, and book your next one as soon as you’re back from your current one. (I’m headed to Costa Rica in March, and we booked it 5 months ago!)
5. We have an activity addiction. We have become afraid of being still, so we seek out constant strife and action to fill our days/weeks/months. How can I just “be” more often, rather than “do”?
6. “We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.” Great reminder and quote from Archilochus.
7. Give with no expectations. Simply trust in the law of reciprocity.
8. You don’t HAVE to have an opinion. Practice the ability to have absolutely no thoughts about something. It removes the power a negative “thing” can have over you.
9. Watch how you allow your beliefs to impact your behaviors. Whenever you say the belief out loud, you re-affirm it. Instead of justifying your lack of business by saying, “the market is slow right now,” ask yourself, “What’s working right now? Where am I seeing activity right now?”
10. I can always make more money. I can never make more time.
11. Information is in abundance. It’s everywhere. Attention is what is scarce.
12. We can never be content or happy at the same time that we yearn for something we don’t have.
13. “We are over lit, over fed and over stimulated. And in terms of how long we’ve been on Earth, this is all new.” – Ray Cronise, from the book, “What Doesn’t Kill Us” (GREAT book so far…I’m half way through.)

Note from me: It’s interesting to look back over the month and see the lessons and think back to where they came from. You’ll find a heavy influence from Tim Ferriss’ book, Tools of Titans; The Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday; and What Doesn’t Kill Us, by Scott Carney. These books are really kicking off my year with a bang!