Develop yourself into the person that can achieve your goals

The day to day grind is something that gets everyone. You wake up, shower, go to work, do your thing, come home to your family, put the kids to bed and do it all again the same day.

For this reason I try and fill myself with positive messages to get my mindset right and don’t fall into just living for the weekends. While I certainly enjoy the weekends I want to avoid the mindset of

My personal approach is to listen to podcasts and audiobooks of those that I’m trying to emulate. I’ve went through a few stages that helped me become a better person, but, as of late, have had a hard time getting to the next level.

From here on out my mindset is going to be:

develop yourself into the person that can achieve your goals.

Take a look below to learn about my journey and a subtle mindset shift that may be a benefit to you.

My personal development stages

Gary Vee

I was deep into Gary Vee for quite some time. The number of months or years kind of all runs together so I truly don’t know how long. What I do know is that I related to his hustle & entrepreneurial style. I soaked up every minute of it. I freaking love this guy!

I took what I saw him doing and incorporated some of it into my life. All in all, I think it was for the better. There is nothing wrong with hustling and putting in the work. In fact, I believe my work ethic and is a key contributor to the success I’ve had to date.

Jocko

I remember the first time I heard about Jocko. He was being interviewed on the Tim Ferris podcast. Tim introduced him like some superhuman individual that operated more like the terminator than a human. Little did I know I’d be shaking hands with the man just a couple years later.

As it turns out, Tim was more right than wrong. Jocko preaches discipline and leadership. From that first time hearing about him I’ve:

• Listened to probably north of 100 hours of his podcast
• Have purchased his books in a variety of formats (hardcover, audible, kindle)
• Have attended an Echelon Front Muster
• Am a member of his online leadership training tool, EF Online

To say I’m all-in on Jocko is an understatement. My wife would joke about it to prod me a bit. Even though she’d do that, the change in myself was very apparent.

At home, I was all about discipline. I woke up earlier, made sure to get my workout in, and slowly got in the best shape of my life.

At work, I put the emphasis on leadership and developing relationships. My boss even made a comment, without knowing the timing of my introduction to Jocko, regarding how my performance increased.

All in all, it’s tough to find a complaint when all I take away from someone is discipline and building better relationships (a key to strong leadership).

The last few months

I honestly don’t know if it was the pandemic, taking my eye off the ball or what but I stopped following Jocko so closely. There is nothing wrong with that.

What I’ve started doing is filling my brain with some new content on entrepreneurship. Primarily this is in the form of two podcasts, My First Million and the Pomp Podcast.

For the entrepreneur-at-heart both of these podcasts are amazing. They are constantly focused on what a person could start and how to go about it. When I listen to it I feel like Aladdin.

While it’s been great to hear these ideas and learn from amazing entrepreneurs, it had a side effect on me. I went so down the rabbit hole of entrepreneurship I took all the focus off of developing myself.

I was in the pattern of listening to content that refocused my mind and set every day up for success. Now I was listening to things that had me day dreaming about an entrepreneurial filled future.

Reflecting on these past few months

If I look over the past 2-3 years of my life there are two distinct phases. The first was filled with Gary Vee or Jocko. Both of these individuals preached somewhat similar messages that revolved around self-development, hard work, and discipline.

These last few months I’ve taken the focus off of myself and put it on new, exciting business and startup ideas. I didn’t really understand what was going on. All I knew was that I was getting excited about hearing about these new ideas and figuring out how I may be able to do this in the future.

It turns out I spent so much time thinking about ideas and the future, I forgot to focus on the present and myself.

I stopped developing myself. Without the day-to-day wins, I found it harder and harder to get out of bed. Like frustratingly difficult.

It seemed like I was almost just wishing the future would work out rather than putting in the work and self-discipline that was going to fuel that success.

Developing yourself and the opportunities will find you

Given this experience, my mindset on personal development has changed a bit. While I certainly need to focus on setting big goals and dreams, that process shouldn’t take a whole lot of time. Once my goals are established I need to put my focus on turning myself into the person that can achieve those goals.

I think “developing myself into someone that can achieve the goals I’ve set” is a subtle, yet monumental, mindset shift for a lot of people.

My path from here

My focus now has completely shifted. I’m actively staying away from things that will keep my focus on the long term. Being a planner by nature, I probably tend to think about those things too much as it is.

My focus every day is to get better. Its been a strange couple of months. Now, its almost like I’m starting over. I’ve pushed my alarm clock back and am trying with some baby steps in the right direction. 

I’m actually diving back into Jocko’s content with an effort to reorient my mind towards developing myself, discipline and getting every day started on the right foot.

I hope that over the coming months I can get back into my rhythm. I have to say I’ve become a firm believer in the fact that I need to “develop myself into someone that can achieve my goals”.