7 Days to a More Meaningful Life

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Welcome to ‘7 days to a more meaningful life’.

If you’re here, I imagine it’s because your life is not where you want it to be and you need a little help getting back on track. I’m not going to give you an easy fix, but I am going to give you a framework so you can figure out which direction you’re heading and define a structure for yourself, that you can continue to build on and refine, so you can track your progress and improvement. You’re going to need to work at it, but it’s through this work that you get to find out who you really are and what’s important to you. What you stand for. Once you start seeing progress, you’re going to be so excited to find out what you’re actually capable of.

I’m not going to take that away from you because the journey to becoming who you are is the adventure of your whole life. What I will give you is a leg up to regain your footing, and show you how to use a compass that will guide you home. I believe it's the duty of each of us to descend into the depths and return with our own unique wisdom to share, and help lift each other up in any way we can.

If you don’t already know me, my name is James and I’m a coach who helps people find more meaning, purpose and fulfilment in life. I came to this work through my own long-term existential crisis, a painful breakup and feelings of dissatisfaction at the contribution my career was making to society. My disillusionment led me to explore every technique, workshop and healing modality I could get my hands on for the best part of a decade, in an attempt to overcome my own demons and discover who I truly am and what I stand for. In this course I’m going to share with you all the techniques that helped me get clear on what I really wanted for my life, let go of the pain that was keeping me stuck and get back on track.

So let’s get started. Make sure you download the workbook so you can fill in the exercises as you go through the course and I’ll see you in day 1.

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Before we rebuild, we need to take an honest look at all the areas of our life that are not working at the moment.

And what we're going to do is, we're going to make a pact, an agreement to take radical responsibility and ownership for everything that's going on in our life right now. I'm not trying to say you deserved whatever happened to you, and I know from my own experience that, if you're taking this course, you're quite possibly feeling pretty lost or disillusioned with life. I wanna say that I feel you and have nothing but compassion for you. And you have every fucking right to be angry, or sad, and grieve for the life you thought you'd live, that's not meant to be. All emotions are completely valid and welcome here. But at the same time, we're taking control of our lives. We’re taking personal responsibility and we're not allowing any person or situation to continue to hold any power over us.

We're going to face down everything we don't like, everything we’re struggling with, anything we think is a weakness and anything we're ashamed of. We’re going to make peace with it and we're going to make a plan of how to overcome it. We’re also going to get clear on our strengths and our values - what we stand for. Because these are the things that will guide us back to a life we can be proud of. They say that people don’t change until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of taking action. I'm telling you now, one day you will make it to a place where you find meaning and purpose from all the things you suffered, that pushed you to go after a better life for yourself. And when you get there, you are going to be so grateful for everything you went through on your journey, and it will be your turn to reach out and lift up those who are still struggling around you.

So let's get into it.

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This is our first exercise. Before we can begin making changes we need to get an honest look at where we’re currently at. This might be uncomfortable but I promise you we’re going to make a plan to deal with everything that comes up. What I want you to do is make a list of everything you’re not happy with in your life. Everything that’s not working. On the screen are some example areas that you might want to consider, but take your time and write down everything you can think of that’s not where you want it to be. I’ll give you a few examples. For mine I’ve written…

My girlfriend broke up with me.

I feel lonely.

I hate my job, it’s soul destroying.

I’m depressed.

I want to make music but I never have time.

I don’t know what I want to do with my life.

Ok, your turn. Spend 20 minutes and write down everything you can think of. Give it a go and then move onto the next video.

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Well done on taking the first step and getting honest with yourself about what’s not working. Now we know what we’re working with, we can start to do something about it.

Next up, I’d like you to write alongside each of the points you listed, describing how you’d like your life to be instead. If everything was great and you were happy, what would it look like?

Now, I’m sure you’ve imagined this in the past but it’s an important step to get it down on paper, because it’s actually the discomfort that motivates us the most. When we can look at the gap between where we currently are and where we want to be, the tension we feel from the difference will actually drive us to action and pull us towards our goals.

So write a sentence or two alongside each point, describing how you’d like your life to be instead.

Here I’ve written

I want a deep and loving relationship with someone who’s a great fit for me

I want a tight group of ambitious friends who understand and inspire me

I want to find work that excites me to get up every day

I want to feel confident and happy with my life

I want to jam out with friends and write an album

I want to find meaning and purpose so I can spend my days feeling like I’m contributing

Give it your best go for now. We’re going to dive into these a bit deeper in the coming days and start building out a clearer picture of what we want from life.

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If you’ve signed up to this course I get that you’re probably struggling. Maybe your life isn’t where you thought it would be, or things didn’t work out the way you hoped. If this is what you’re going through, know that it’s not your fault. We are all carrying around shame and trauma, and wounds from our past. Much of it subconsciously. I feel for you. We can’t change what happened, so it’s now up to us to decide how we’re going to respond to where we find ourselves and what we’ve experienced.

As Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and holocaust survivor said, “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

One thing that really helped me make peace with my suffering is realising that we only grow in the face of adversity. If everything is fine, there’s no motivation to make a change. So many people end up living a mediocre life because everything was comfortable and there was nothing pushing them to go out and begin their adventure. We only take action when life hits us in one way or another. Most successful people become so as a reaction to something they suffered when they were young. They suffered long enough that, eventually, they decided they wouldn’t stand for it ever again.

If life keeps punching you in the face, you’re eventually going to learn how to block and fight back. Over and over again, life is going to show us the places we still need to grow. We can choose to take those hits as a victim, or be grateful for the guidance of where we need to level up. We can use the tension between where we currently are and where we want to be to literally pull us towards our goals and dreams. What I mean by that is, whatever you think was your weakness has the potential to become your superpower if you pay attention to it long enough.

This is the groundwork we’re laying this week. The notes you’ve already made - clarifying where you currently are and the gap to where you want to be, will create the psychological tension to fuel your growth.

So, for the rest of today, I want you to spend some time thinking about the lists you’ve written. However painful your struggles might be, the more we can accept the reality we currently find ourselves in, the easier it will be to start laying a new foundation on top. And that’s what we’re going to do for the rest of the week.

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That’s it for day 1. Well done on taking the first step towards figuring out what you want and don’t want from your life. Whatever you’ve suffered, try to have faith that we’ll reach a place of meaning and acceptance for the experience. As hard as it feels now, we’re making a plan to overcome it and it will become your strength. Keep thinking about the things you want from your life for the rest of today and we’ll explore those in more detail tomorrow.

See you then.

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Welcome to day 2. Today is all about values. Values are a key part of the work I do with clients because, I truly believe that getting crystal clear on my own values created the biggest shift in my own healing journey. They seem like such an obvious thing that most of us have never sat down and properly considered what we do actually stand for, and whether the way we currently behave is in alignment with the sort of person we want to be. When we understand our values and our ideals at a deep level, they will act like a guiding light that leads us to a life of meaning and purpose, and contentment.

We live in a world of more possibility than ever, so it’s to be expected that we will be tempted to chase every new shiny thing that crosses our path. But when we behave in this way, we lose the chance to experience the depth and fulfilment that comes from knowing what’s really important to us and committing to it. When you deeply understand the values you aspire towards, you can use them to check in in each moment, whenever you need to make a decision, and consciously make the choice that will take you closer to the life you want to live.

At the core, values are about where you place your self-worth. At the start of the pandemic I lost my job and my plans of buying a house fell through. I found myself living in a shared house, 100 miles away from my girlfriend and I couldn’t get a job in the industry I worked in. My self-esteem started to crash because I had unconsciously attached my self-worth to what I believed I brought to the table, materially. Having a great, well-paying job, being able to travel and have unique experiences. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with going after these things. But problems can arise if we are fixated on these things external to ourselves without being clear on the reasons why we are doing them. If we believe our value lies in our pay cheque, or our job, we might be at serious risk of depression or self-worth issues if they are taken away.

Without changing anything externally, if we are, instead, grounded in an internal value of always doing the best we can for our family, no matter what, we can always strive to uphold that, irrespective of what external situations the world throws at us. We can always do the best we can to look after our loved ones in any situation. That value is just as relevant whether we’re making millions or if we don’t even have a job right now. And ironically, it’s also what will drive us to create external value in the world.

During the pandemic, I was doing everything I believed to be right, but still my belief in where my self worth laid was focused externally on what I could now no longer provide materially, so I couldn’t even see the part of me that was trying hard to do what was best for the people around me.

You see, externally, nothing necessarily has to change. We can still work hard, chase money and success. The only difference here is understanding what the intrinsic driving force behind our actions is. So many of us have been trapped believing that material wealth is the end goal. But the ability to create what we want in the world, and the underlying knowledge of ‘why’ we are doing what we do, is where true meaning and purpose, and value will be found.

So let’s take a look at our underlying values.

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Now we’re beginning to make a shift from being attached and focused on the things we don’t want, to starting to understand what we do want and what drives those desires. And the thing that will move us the most towards becoming the person we want to be, is understanding what underlying values we need to inhabit in order to live that life. Many of us have an idea of the sorts of values we believe to be important, but if we’re not acutely aware of what they actually look like in real-life situations, our actions can easily give away our lack of alignment. So, we want to identify values that we aspire towards and start to pay attention to our decisions every day, to see if we’re making choices that are in alignment with who we want to be.

One thing that really helped me to get clear on the values I aspire to, was to make a list of role models - people I looked up to, whose behaviour I could look to emulate. These can be people you know personally, people from your broader community, celebrities, even fictional characters. In fact, I think fictional characters are particularly strong here because they often portray exaggerated archetypes of specific values. Like the hero who strides boldly out into the dark to fight the dragon and save his village.

I want you to make a list of 3 role models that you relate to on some level. For at least one of them, choose a favourite film, tv show or story. Which character are you drawn to the most? Make your list and then, for each, I’d like you to spend a few minutes picturing them and thinking about the traits they have that you find admirable. How do they carry themselves? How do they relate to others? What do they stand for? What’s important to them? What do they believe in? Write 3 to 5 values for each role model.

Let me give you an example. Keanu Reeves is on my list. And when I think about Keanu, the traits I admire in him are:

His calm presence - Keanu is certainly no extrovert. He’s thoughtful and considered in his words and actions. He doesn’t need to be centre of attention, instead giving his full attention to whoever he’s talking to.

His generosity - he does an enormous amount for charity, donating millions and setting up a fund for families of children going through cancer. He gives gifts to his stunt teams and assistants on films he works on, among many others. It’s no surprise he’s regarded as one of the kindest men in Hollywood.

His physical capability - he stars in action movies right? He’s in good shape, he trains martial arts. He clearly knows how to handle himself.

His humility - Keanu is one of the biggest names on the planet, yet he has often been seen riding the subway, sitting outside cafes on the street, welcoming and attentive with fans. It’s no secret he’s been through some traumatic life experiences but he’s not let them harden him.

Ok your turn. Give it a go for 3 of your role models and then move onto the next lesson.

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Ok, we’re going to expand on these values a bit. Can you think of any others that are important to you that are not inhabited by your chosen role models?

Think about some of the key areas of your life and try to picture what it would be like if you were showing up as the best version of yourself. Think about your family. What words would you like them to use to describe you? What about at work? Are there any other behaviours or traits that come to mind, that you wish you could inhabit more?

Give it a go on your own to start with, but I’ll put a list of core values on-screen to help you if you get stuck. You can pause the video again while you write them out.

Once you have a good selection, the next step is to identify the 5 values that are the most important to you. We will all have loads that we relate to, but which ones resonate the most? Write them down in a fresh list.

And now, for each, I want you to write a punchy, emotionally loaded statement that you can use to check in on how well you’re living up to them. For example,

If my value is Growth, I might write:

• I am constantly learning, experimenting with new ideas and building habits that make me consistently better.

If my value is Integrity, I could write:

• I stay true to my word, follow through on my commitments and strive to always set a good example for the people around me.

Keep going for each of your 5 values. Write as best you can - we’re aiming for something that fires you up a little when you read it back and helps you paint a picture in your mind of what it looks like when you’re showing up in alignment to these values.

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That’s it for today. Make sure you copy your 5 value statements to your phone, print them out somewhere you can see them regularly, and try to learn them off by heart. I have a list like this that I check in with every morning. I replay recent situations in my life and imagine what it would look like if I was showing up in full alignment with each of my values. So for my example of, I stay true to my word, follow through on my commitments and strive to continuously set a good example for the people around me, I will replay recent events and picture what I might have done differently. 30 seconds for each is plenty to start building the habit. Think about what habits or behaviours someone with the values you aspire to would follow, and keep picturing different aspects of your life and trying out some alternate scenarios and decisions to see what you might have done differently.

It’s inherent in our psychology that we will always be easily distracted by novelty - pulled off course by every shiny thing that crosses our path if we do not have a plan in place to avoid it. Being super clear on our values and striving to stay true to them at all times gives us a framework to help keep us on course towards what’s really important to us.

Great work today. We’re making real progress now. You should be developing a much clearer idea of the sort of person you wish to become. Tomorrow we’re going to continue building that image out into your full dream life.

See you then.

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Welcome to day 3. Now, when our life is not where we want it to be, it can be easy to get stuck focusing on everything that’s wrong, rather than looking where we want to go. I know it’s hard when you’re stuck in a rut, or have taken a big hit. When we’ve lost something that meant the world to us, or when we don’t know what to do with our lives. But the clearer we can get about the life we want to lead, the more chance we have of getting there. If we don’t know where we’re going, how can we ever get there?

Even if you don’t know what you want to do, you can start painting a picture of the broader aspects of your life, to help you identify jobs, passions, past times that are in alignment with the way you want to live. We can begin practicing getting clear on the person we want to become, how we want to behave and act. The sorts of relationships we want, where we want to live, how we want to spend our days. We’ll work on some exercises today that will help us get clear on some of these things and, as I say, the more we can continually reinforce those pathways, visualising and imagining ourselves in that reality, the more we will begin to notice opportunities that will take us in that direction. We have to get to a place of believing the life we want is a real possibility for us.

Before we get started, I want to remind you that you’re here because you want to live a life of meaning and purpose - I want you to live a life beyond your wildest dreams and, just for today, I want you to suspend all judgment and allow yourself to indulge your dreams. When we’re struggling and caught in a mindset of lack, we often only want the thing we believe we’re missing. But there’s so much more potential out there for us to move towards. So I want you to recommit to going after your dream life. We’re done playing small. You deserve to be happy, to have everything you ever wanted. I want all of this for you, and I want you to give yourself permission to dream big. Bigger than you think you dare. This is your dream life. I want a moon shot. The higher we aim, the further we will go.

Let’s get to it.

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Welcome to today’s first exercise. Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, has this practice for getting clear on understanding your priorities. There’s a big wide world out there, with so much possibility and potential. It’s natural for us to want to experience as much as possible, and it can be overwhelming to figure out what we truly want and make a commitment. So first off we’re going to recognise all of the possibilities that have ever crossed our mind, that we have shown even a passing interest in.

I want you to write a list of everything you’ve ever thought you might like to achieve in your life. Anything you dreamed of as a kid. Anything you’ve always been interested in but never dared try. Anything new that comes to mind now that you would love to experience, or be able to do. Places to live or visit. Whatever comes up. And just to remind you once again, I want you to dream big. Beyond what you think is realistic. I don’t believe in realistic. You can do whatever you put your mind to, if you can work out a plan of how to get there. And that’s what we’re starting on today.

I want at least 25 answers from you, but it’s very possible you might have a whole lot more than that. Just get it all down. Pause the video now and come back when you’ve finished your list.

Ok step 2. Look down the list you’ve just made and pull out the 5 things that jump out to you as the most important. The things you desperately want. Like, if you achieved or experienced those 5 things in your life, you would die happy. I want you to make a new list with just these 5 things. These are your new priorities. I want you to keep the full list somewhere you can refer back to, but I also want you to forget about everything else until you’ve achieved these 5. You now have something to aim for to get you moving towards your dream life.

Now, it’s totally to be expected that these will evolve over time. Maybe one might evolve into something even better. Perhaps you might get close to another and decide it’s not quite in alignment with your values after all. That’s absolutely fine. The truth is, we can never know whether something is 100% for us until we’ve experienced it. So we’re committing to giving our best shot at going after these things to find out for ourselves.

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Now we have a few things to aim for, we’re going to spend the next 5 minutes visualising our dream life. Keep in mind the 5 things we just identified in the last video, and I also want you to take another look back at your values from yesterday, and keep in mind how they will influence the way you show up as your dream, ideal version of yourself.

All you have to do is imagine what your life will be like when you’ve achieved all you dreamed of. Where do you live? What’s your house like? Who is with you? How do you spend your days? What do you eat? How will you feel? Paint as much detail as you can - really try and put yourself there.

If you struggle to create a strong mental image, don’t worry. My ability here is not as strong as it used to be. For now, just methodically work your way through all the different areas of your life you can think of and describe in your mind what you would love to have in that area. Allow yourself to indulge and have some fun. As adults, so many of us have stopped giving ourselves permission to daydream. Well, we’re bringing it back. And we want to try to build this into a habit. The more we can do this, the more we will strengthen those neural pathways so we can see it as a possible reality and believe we can achieve it.

Ok, 5 minutes, let’s go.

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Great, I hope you managed to let yourself run away with that a bit. It’s your dream, nobody can tell you what you can and can’t do. Now we have started laying the foundations - building out the map in our mind. So now we’re going to write it out even more precisely. Imagine it’s 5 years from now and you’ve made it. You overcame all of your limiting beliefs. Everything you ever wanted has come true. I want you to write out the timeline of a full day in this future of yours. From the moment you wake up until you close your eyes at night. Write in the first person as if you’re in that place right now and, again, go into as much detail as possible about every aspect of your dream life. Set a timer for 15 minutes and I encourage you to write non-stop, as fast as possible and use the entire time to keep fleshing out your vision. No detail is too small, just get it all down on paper.

Off you go.

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Great work for today. We now have a clear and precise vision of our dream life to aim for. We can continue to refine and expand on this image - the clearer we get, the more we can believe it can become our reality. So I encourage you to spend time visualising and imagining you living this life as regularly as you can. 2 minutes a day would be a good start.

It’s totally fine, and to be expected, that your vision will change over time. It will evolve and grow as you do, hopefully expanding and becoming bigger as you begin to see what you’re capable of. Like steering a ship, it’s much easier to change tack and adjust your course when you’re already moving. You can be much more objective about what’s important, what’s working or not, when you can actually see the results of your actions.

To paraphrase the spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, Any action is better than no action. Even it’s a mistake, you will learn from it - and if you’re growing it’s no longer a mistake. Whereas if we remain stuck, we learn nothing.

So check in with this vision first thing in the morning, before you check your phone. Before you even get out of bed if you can. This will begin to prime you to look for the positives and opportunities that will move you closer as you go about your day. You can also check in with your list of everything you’re not happy about in your life first. It might seem counterintuitive, but spending a couple of minutes thinking about your current reality, before you visualise your future, will help to build desire and motivation to go after the life you want. The tension you’ll feel when you see the gap from where you are to where you want to be will actually create the pull that will motivate you to keep taking action.

Tomorrow we’re going to start breaking down these goals into actionable steps, so we know what we can be doing to move us forward every day. So keep focusing on your dream life and get ready to make a plan of how to get there.

See you tomorrow.

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Day 4, and we’re over half way through the course now. You’re making amazing progress. By now you should be developing a detailed image of the kind of life you want to lead. Having a clear vision of our future is essential for us to know which direction we’re heading, but it’s our daily habits that will get us there. The goals set the course, but we still need to take every single step of the walk along the path that will take us home.

So today we’re going to break down our goals into manageable daily habits that can carry us down the road toward our dreams.

Let’s get to it.

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Today we’re going to break down each of our main goals into smaller and smaller steps until we arrive at a daily habit we can consistently implement to move us in the right direction. And to do this, we’re going to use what’s called a goal pyramid. Fundamentally this breaks down each of our targets into smaller and smaller chunks, as best we can with the current information available, until we have a checklist - an action plan that we can start methodically working through. Now, as with all these exercises, it’s very possible that things will change once you start making progress and gaining access to new information. So it’s worth checking back in every month or so to see if there’s anywhere you can refine your process. You may well find you can make bigger leaps a lot sooner than expected.

So let’s get down to the exercise. You can do a separate goal pyramid for each of your 5 goals. To start, write out the first dream life goal at the top. In my example, I’ve written “I want to perform on a main stage at Glastonbury”.

Next row down from that, we’re going to write any long term goals that we think we might need to complete in order to get to our big dream goal. Just your best guess here, we can refine our goals as we progress. So here, I’m going to write, I need to play at 5 smaller festivals, and I need to get to 25,000 followers. Keep going for as many long term goals as you need. Next row down, we’re adding in any short to medium term goals that we need in order to reach each of our long-term goals. So under 25,000 followers I’m going to write, I need to release an album and 15 singles. and I need to play 30 gigs.

Now, keep going with these lower tier goals until you get to a point where you have a clearly actionable habit or step that you can take immediately. Underneath releasing an album and 15 singles, I’m going to write, commit to releasing one track a month, and below that I’m going to write commit to working on music every day. It’s very possible that many of your goals and steps will have multiple items feeding into them, so take your time to flesh this out in as much detail as you can. Here’s an example of my completed goal pyramid.

Now remember in yesterday’s session we said we were aiming to achieve our goals in the next 5 years. The next step is to go through all of the different steps on your goal pyramid and define a timeline to reach each stage. So the step below the top might be in 3 to 4 years, the next step down might be 1-2 years, the next one within 12 months, and so on. As you do so, have a think about the work you will need to put in to reach each of these milestones and realise that you have a defined action plan to do so.

Repeat the whole process now for each of your 5 dream goals. And the last thing I want you to do is to make a list of each of your actionable habits or immediate steps from the bottom row of each pyramid and make a check list of the immediate actions that will give you that first step towards your dreams.

Mine looks like this - so we’ve broken down that one massive goal into smaller and smaller chunks, so we know exactly what we need to focus on next.

Now, as you start ticking off these steps and learning as you go, you may need to come back and adjust your list with the new information you’ve gained. But this is going to form the basis of your action plan to get started on the path.

Finish writing yours out and then move onto the next session.

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Great work on creating your action plan. By now, you should be realising that achieving your goals is not as unrealistic as you might have first thought. We want to get started and hit the ground running with our habits as soon as possible, but I also don’t want you to feel overwhelmed with too much to do. If there are any items that are one-off actions, I’d like you to schedule them in your calendar and tick them off as soon as you can. For anything that requires an ongoing habit or lifestyle change, we’re going to use a different approach.

When we’re trying to build new habits, it can be easy to set too big expectations that are unrealistic for us to maintain. Deciding to go to the gym for an hour every day when you’ve not been in years just isn’t going to stick. We’re playing the long game now - we’re building habits that we want to keep for the rest of our lives, so it’s absolutely fine, and preferable, to start small - much smaller than you think you need. Studies suggest it can take anywhere from 2 months to 8 months to build a habit and, until it’s firmly cemented, your only priority should be to show up every day. It’s really not important how much you do, only that you show up.

Being consistent and getting it done, even when you don’t want to, is going to build resilience and self-respect - you’re proving that you can keep your word to yourself. And that’s what confidence is when you boil it down. It’s self-respect - and the knowledge that you will always do what you say you will. So I’ll give you an example. One of my habits is to work out every day. Usually I lift weights or throw a kettlebell around, but I have a minimum viable win of doing 1 push up. That means that, so long as I do one push up, I’ve completed my task for the day.

This works because there’s never a situation where I couldn’t realistically do 1 push up. But, once I’m on the floor and have finished that one rep, I probably may as well bosh out a few more. And once I cranked them out and have got some momentum, maybe I’ll add some squats in too. And before you know it, I’ve had a great workout.

If you wake up from a poor night’s sleep, exhausted, and you’re really too tired to do anything, you can force out 1 push up, which might creep up to 20, and then you call it a day. That’s absolutely fine. Maybe you repeat that pattern for a week or more, it doesn’t matter. All the time, you’re training your nervous system to understand that, first thing when you get out of bed, we work out. And sooner or later you won’t even have to think about it anymore. The other amazing thing that contributes to this, and this is a great reason for working out at the same time every day, particularly first thing in the morning, is that your body will learn your routine and start to prime your system for exercise. So you will start to develop an increase in energy and the hormones needed for exercise that will naturally wake you up before your morning workout.

This is the power of habits and routines - the more consistent you are, daily, the more your system will optimise to ensure you are functioning optimally for any given situation.

So, for each of your identified daily habits, I want you to write out a minimum viable win that you know you can absolutely achieve every single day. As I say, go way smaller than you think you need. And if you ever find yourself breaking the habit, simply half your minimum viable commitment, over and over again, until you find the amount you can consistently hit.

Transcript

Well done on completing day 4, you’re doing great. By now you should have some clear steps you can take to move you towards some tangible goals that feel in alignment with your values and the person you want to become. As with all habits, the more consistent we are, the easier they become to stick to. Our brains and bodies begin to adapt to our routines to optimise our performance and the way our cognition processes information means that the compound effect of consistent, regular practice grows exponentially. I’m going to keep reiterating it because it’s so important, but the consistency of the habit itself is way more important than what you actually achieve in any given session. The habits are what will take us all the way to our dreams so we need to protect them like our life depends on it, because it actually does!

The goal pyramid provided an action plan to achieve each of our specific goals but, if you want to take this a bit further, I’m also going to suggest you check in daily at a broader level to think about what other actions you could take that would improve your life in each of three main areas. Some days they might be the same as your main goals, sometimes they might be different. And, for each, the question to ask yourself is, “What could I definitely do in this area, that would improve my life today?”

The three areas are,

Your health - so maybe you commit to work out, train martial arts, go for a run, track your diet, do 1 push up, don’t drink alcohol. What one commitment can you make just for today?

The second area is contribution - and by that I mean your work, or your art, or whatever way you feel called to contribute to the world

Can you spend an hour working on your art? Can you volunteer? Can you read a book, and learn something? Can you work on my side project for 20 mins?

And the final area is your relationships - What could you do to positively improve your relationships today? Can you go above and beyond to help your partner? Express how much someone means to you? Could you call your parents? Reach out to an old friend?

All this can be done in less than a minute. Before you’re even out of bed, you can have 3 positive steps you know you can definitely take today, that will improve the quality of your life. This practice also has gratitude built into it because we’re looking for the positive contribution we can make for ourselves and those around us. And if you’re consistent, the compound interest of these small actions grows exponentially. In fact, if there’s nothing else you take away from this course, I believe that this 1 minute exercise has the power to create the most change in your life.

That’s it for today. Thanks for all your hard work. Tomorrow we’re going to dive into some of those limiting beliefs, and explore some techniques to help us let go of the pain, hurt or regret that can stop us from being able to move forward.

See you then.

Transcript

Welcome to day 5 and today we’re exploring some techniques to help us let go of the limiting beliefs, pain or regret that can keep us stuck. A big part of why we struggle to move forward is because we hold onto our suffering, anger, resentment of things that happened to us in the past. It’s hard to let go. Whether it’s regret at something we did or didn’t do, our pain because of something someone did to us, or something else that was completely out of anyone’s control, until we’ve been able to grieve and accept the past, until we can let go, we will struggle to look clearly at what we still have in front of us, and decide how to make the best of where we are right now.

Today we’re going to look into grief and shame, and try some exercises that can help us process these experiences so we can free ourselves from the ruminating thoughts and self-judgment that often keeps us stuck. This can be heavy work so take it slowly. It’s natural for us to avoid wanting to look closely at the things that hurt us, but we need to move through and fully process our emotions so that we can be free of them and move forward with our lives.

If this feels like too much to do on your own, you can ask a trusted friend or loved one to talk through these with you. One of the most powerful ways of releasing shame is to be able to speak it out into the world, to someone we care about, so long as we can feel safe that we won’t be judged. If it still feels too much then please, reach out to a qualified councillor or therapist who can provide any additional support you need.

This is a big, heavy topic and there’s a lot to cover today. I want to give you as many tools as possible to help you let go of this stuff, but feel free to come back to the exercises over the coming days and weeks to work through it all as and when you feel ready.

Let’s get to it.

Transcript

When we go through a traumatic experience, major changes occur in our brains. I heard trauma described as a response to the realisation that our map of reality is incomplete. Whether that’s physical or psychological. Imagine one of our ancient ancestors, a small primate, climbing about in the trees. If one of them went out onto another tree and got bitten by a snake, suddenly it realises that the areas it thought were safe are, in fact, dangerous. It returns to its home tree and stays put for a time, while also being on high alert looking for any further threat.

Following trauma, the hippocampus region of the brain shrinks and the amygdala increases. Your amygdala is responsible for processing fearful and threatening stimuli, and that includes emotional awareness, and the hippocampus is for long term memories, learning and spatial navigation. So you basically go into a survival mode where you de-prioritise moving and exploring, and trying new things, and become overly sensitive to potential threats and emotions.

As a modern example, if our partner breaks up with us without warning and leaves us heartbroken, our minds interpret this pain as a sign that our map of reality was incomplete - either we were naive in some way, or there’s something more to the situation that we were unaware of. We are likely to shut ourselves away, disengage with the world and people around us, and experience a heightened sensitivity to emotions.

The reason for these responses is to give our minds opportunity to work over the situation and repair our map of reality. We will psychologically continue to struggle with our moments of suffering until we find a narrative that somehow makes sense of the situation - a story that gives us some hope that it will never happen again, or in some way allows us to find meaning from it. But we can also get stuck ruminating for months, or even years, because our mind isn’t able to figure out why it happened.

When it becomes chronic like this, people can remain in a heightened amygdala state of seeing everything as a threat, or becoming desensitised and numb, or turning to addictions as a way to escape the pain.

*Exercise

Whether the situation was your own fault, someone else’s or out of anyone’s control, we’re going to break it down and analyse it in detail to understand what happened as far as possible, and look for anything we could have done differently.

This exercise may well be painful so take your time. Our nervous systems respond slowly and it’s possible to do too much and overload them. We want to find our edge and release what emotions we can, but don’t put pressure on yourself to rush. You can come back to this exercise a few times if need be.

Remember we made a pact to take radical responsibility and ownership for everything that's happened in our life. I’m not saying you deserved what happened to you. I’m sad that you have found yourself in a place where you need to do this work, but we need to accept our current reality as it is so we can begin to move forward.

Choose a situation from your past that still plays on your mind. I want you to spend 20 minutes writing out everything that happened that led up to that situation in as much detail as you can manage. Set a timer and I encourage you to use the full 20 minutes, keep going and fleshing out the detail until the end. You can pause the video now.

Next, I want you to make a list of things you think you could have done differently to help you avoid getting into a similar situation in the future. Maybe it’s being clearer and asserting your boundaries, standing up for yourself. Maybe it’s being more appreciative of your partner. Perhaps you could’ve acted more professionally, or could it be that you need to prioritise your own peace of mind. A few broad examples there but explore whatever comes up for you. Break down every moment in the lead up to the situation and identify how you would have liked to act differently. Pause the video and do this now.

And then the final part, I want you to list out all the positive things you learned from the situation, or discovered about yourself. If you got your heart broken, maybe you learned you have the capacity for deep love. If you are working a job you hate, perhaps you’re showing resilience and grit to take care of your responsibilities. At the very least, your experiences have led you here - to a place where you’ve made a commitment and are taking action to go after the life you want. I want you to celebrate yourself and know that you’ve done the best you can with the tools you had. Life is not about perfection, it’s a never-ending journey of peaks and troughs as we grow, fall and get up, over and over again. Fail and recommit. Fail and recommit. Pause and make your list now.

Take some time to reflect on your lists. These are essential learnings that we want to absorb so that we can avoid getting into similar situations again in the future, and integrate our strengths so that we can continue to build on them. If you have more than one situation that’s still playing on your mind, feel free to repeat this exercise.

Transcript

All the heavy work today. There is a lot here, so feel free to take a break and come back to this later if you need to. We’re talking about shame.

Shame is the stickiest emotion. Fundamentally it is the fear that someone will find out about a mistake we made, or a character flaw we have. If you’ve ever shut down in an argument and not been able to say things you know would help the situation, or have massively over-reacted to something someone’s done, or left a relationship and cut someone out suddenly without explanation, or have not been able to ask directly for your needs, these are all examples of old wounds at play, and most likely shame. In fact, these old wounds dictate so much of our actions. Many highly successful people are driven by the insatiable need to prove themselves worthy, in a way that correlates with a specific shame wound they suffered as a child.

These wounds often stem from an experience of being punished in some form, for something that we believed to be a positive. For example if our parents got angry and dismissed us when we came to them for affection. This can create a shame bind in our psyche, where we know a behaviour to be positive but the shame we feel in relation to that action completely stops us from being able to act it out. It’s like one of those Chinese finger traps where, the more you pull, the harder you’re stuck.

We also become over-protective of the shamed part of us - a part that we feel it’s unsafe to share for fear of being hurt again in the same way. When a person or situation gets too close to our shame, we react like a wounded animal - we react for survival. This is when fight, flight, freeze, fawn trauma responses kick in. From our own point of view we’re purely acting for self-preservation, protecting ourselves from being hurt. In fact, most of the people who have ever hurt you have done so from this place. When we have heavy emotion from trauma, our psyches look to offload the uncomfortable energy wherever it can and we can’t even see we’re doing it.

Shame is an example of this and sits in the realm of our shadow, which is all the parts of ourselves that we can’t bear to look at - we don’t want to accept. And it means that the consequences of our reactions from this place can also reside outside of our conscious awareness. We can’t see how our responses can hurt people. Screaming or attacking our partners and then blaming them for making us feel like that. Stonewalling and shutting people who love us out completely, hitting the eject button and leaving the situation, or even the whole relationship.

We think we’re protecting ourselves but we can inadvertently cause so much hurt for the people around us, punishing them in turn for a wound we suffered decades ago.

Our partner who shuts down when we bring up a difficult conversation, that friend who belittles our success, or the family member who loses it when we beat them at a board game.. many of these kinds of reactions can be caused by unhealed shame.

When we say hurt people hurt people, this is exactly what we are talking about. And the sad thing is, the people who have hurt us the most quite possibly aren’t even aware of what they did and the pain it caused us. That’s why this is such important work - committing to heal our own buried wounds so that we don’t inadvertently pass our pain onto those who love us.

When our minds kick into a trauma response, we’re psychologically returned to the childhood stage of development of when we were first traumatised in this manner. If we went through a traumatic experience and survived, our mind saves the actions we took almost like a pre-programmed script that it can recall whenever we get into a similar situation. This is literally a survival response so it’s a way for our minds to make us react on autopilot with a proven behaviour that has worked in the past - in so far as we survived the situation. But it stops us from being able to respond objectively with our full awareness.

It’s not easy to confront ourselves and take an honest look at the ways shame might be working under the surface in our own lives. None of us want to hear that our actions might have inadvertently caused significant pain to people we loved. But it’s not our fault if we’re carrying these wounds. The bind they create in our psyche is difficult to release. Back to that Chinese finger trap analogy, we release shame by not fighting it, but by finding ways to express and open up about it in environments where we feel safe that we won’t be judged. Talking to our loved ones, friends, therapists, in moments that aren’t emotionally loaded and expressing the things we feel embarrassed about or find hard to say is how we can begin to learn that it’s safe to share these difficult feelings.

I carried a lot of shame around needing help from people and feeling negative emotions. I thought it made me weak so I bottled them up and tried to put on a brave face. I thought that’s what it meant to be strong for my partner and loved ones. But when we can’t express what we need, our subconscious starts to try to get them met in more subversive ways. I got passive aggressive and distant, trying to get my girlfriend to reach out. And I felt rejected when she didn’t respond the way I wanted. But having needs and emotions are a natural part of being human.

It is perfectly possible for us to own our needs and emotions and express them honestly, without making other people responsible for them. When we’re ashamed of them and act needy or passive aggressive to try and get what we want, that’s when people respond negatively - because if we can’t be honest and open with ourselves about the things we are feeling, how can we expect them to trust us with theirs?

Either we can continue to hide our real selves from the people around us and hope we don’t get ‘found out’, or we can use those moments as insight into the places we still need to heal and grow. And it takes work to cultivate and organise our relationships to feel safe enough to work through this stuff.

It’s not easy and it really needs some effort to lay the groundwork in times that are not emotionally loaded so that you can effectively navigate situations when they arise. There’s also lots we can be doing to work through and express our stuck emotion individually, so our partners don’t always have to bear the brunt of it.

*Exercise

So I want you to spend 10 minutes thinking about any areas of your life where you might feel shame. Do you struggle to express your emotions? Ask for help? Maybe you worry that you’re not strong enough, or you feel shame towards your body. Write out everything you can think of. Pause and return to this video when you’re finished.

Next, for each item you’ve listed, I want you to write out what the shame you feel is protecting - what are you afraid will happen if people ‘find out’ or you share this part of yourself? Be really specific - what’s your worst nightmare?

After that, what actions could you take to allow you to share this part of yourself and still prevent the worst from happening?

Next step, If the worst happened, what could you do to repair the situation or get over it?

Then, What might be the benefits of sharing this part of yourself?

And finally, What are the emotional, physical, financial costs of continuing to hide this part of yourself?

The worst part of shame is what we fear will happen as a result of sharing that part of ourselves. Through this practice I hope you will begin to cultivate awareness that it’s rarely going to be as bad as we think it is. So much of our concern is because of the unknown and, as we start to identify the potential consequences, things become much easier to face.

You can also use this practice to work through any blocks or resistance you feel towards tackling any of the goals on your action plan. When we are finding it hard to move forward, often there is a part of us that is afraid of some part of the outcome - even if it’s an apparent positive. Maybe part of us is afraid of the extra attention we might get from realising our dreams. We can use this exercise to remove some of the uncertainty and have a plan in place to deal with the worst case scenario every step of the way.

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Another amazing practice, and this I learned working with my own coach, is to spend deliberate time with someone close to you who you deeply trust, where you voluntarily share as much honest detail as you can about your own moments of shame.

The more intimately you know this person, the better, because the risk and discomfort you will feel in sharing your shame is the exact defence mechanism we want to release. But please remember, this is vulnerable so please make sure this is someone you completely trust and feel safe with.

The core of this practice, which is so powerful in any moment of interaction, even beyond this exercise, is for the other person to remain completely present and attentive, listen to every word you say and remain with you. No judgment or fixing, simply to be there while you express your deepest pain and still accept you. It is so incredibly healing to be fully heard, understood and accepted by another human while we are at our most vulnerable.

So you can take it in turns to share and listen, and this vulnerability and presence will bring you even closer together. Shame and other negative emotions are stored as tension in our bodies, and I have experienced massive physical release when I’ve expressed my shame like this. It’s like the relief of no longer having to hold onto this buried secret we’ve hidden from the world releases huge amounts of blocked energy back into our system. A weight is lifted and we can finally move freely again.

As I said at the start, this is heavy work so take your time and stop if you don’t feel safe or it feels too much.

Transcript

Grief is a big topic, all of its own. I’ve included grief here because it plays such a big part in the process of letting go and moving on - whatever has happened in your life. My advice is to listen to the exercise, but then schedule some time in the next week or two, when you can give yourself a proper window to feel into your grief, as well as some time to rest and look after yourself afterwards.

Whether you lost a loved one, a job, a relationship, something didn’t go your way, you’re not where you want to be, or you did something you regret, all these situations need to be grieved so that we can move forward. We need to grieve for our alternate life paths that we hoped for, but that will never make it.

It’s common for people to avoid feeling their grief. We can be afraid of feeling our feelings because we’re frightened of being overwhelmed by them, or because we think if we move on it will take away the meaning we felt from the relationship or situation.

In Western Culture, we have become so separated from tools and processes that help us to fully express and work through our grief. Many traditional cultures still hold regular, even weekly, grief rituals, where the whole community come together to purge and move through their accumulated emotions.

But in our society, we largely shun and suppress our grief. So often we hide our pain from the world and feel shame for even feeling such heavy emotion. But when we don’t express these emotions they get stuck in our body and create blocks in our system, which stops the free flow of energy.

It’s now widely accepted that the lingering residue of unprocessed shame, grief and trauma remains in the body and can lead to depression, persistent pain and even death. What is often diagnosed as depression is actually low-level, chronic grief, shame and despair.

When we avoid feeling and fully expressing our pain, we resign ourselves to a life lived in this dimmed existence. And we don’t even realise that we’re doing it.

At the same time, grieving should not be rushed. If it’s new and raw, I suggest you take your time. There’s also a lot of wisdom we can gain through our grief if we allow it to teach us. Two years on after everything fell apart for me, I was still experiencing grief and it continued to teach me about myself and the way I saw the world. But at some point we need to release our grip and rejoin the flow of life - we need to grieve for the lives we will never live. Let go of the dreams we won’t realise, the relationships that didn’t live up to what we needed. Whether it was our own fault, or out of our control, there is nothing to be gained from holding onto these regrets. Expressing our grief for the things we wish were different is how we can finally let go, and look with fresh eyes at the possibilities we still have, to move forward from the present moment.

When we go through a painful experience, we can either shrink from it, let it reduce our willingness to open ourselves up to life, or, we have to find a way to transmute our suffering - at which point we come back larger than we were before. When we’re holding onto the past, it’s literally weighing us down and keeping us small. We can’t grow because of the weight of the burden. But when we can find the lessons in our suffering and make peace with what happened, we return to life a more integrated, expanded person. When we talk about integrating our experiences, what that really means is, “How did this experience change your life?” So, let’s look at our experiences and see what lessons we can find within them.

Practice

Grief is hard to process. It’s natural for us to avoid wanting to feel our pain because we’re frightened of being overwhelmed by them, or because we think if we move on it will take away the meaning we felt from the relationship or situation. We so often keep ourselves busy to avoid the space and quiet needed for us to properly feel those emotions.

If, like me, you’re used to burying your emotions, your mind is going to fight and try to take you away from going there. I want you to think about making this a bit of a ritual, make an occasion out of it because it will help you to take it seriously and separate it from everyday life. Schedule an afternoon. Creating symbolic actions that represent the release we want to complete, can go a long way towards helping us release those stuck emotions. Tearing up a photo or a letter, throwing something into a river or a fire. Drive out in the country, stay in an airbnb, or even just go in the spare room. Put on some emotional music, dim the lights or light a candle, and allow yourself to surrender to all the painful thoughts you’ve been avoiding. Let all the feelings wash over you, and when emotions start to come up, let them flow. There’s so much catharsis of letting our emotion out and you will feel so much better on the other side.

This might be a challenge for you and it could need a few attempts to get things moving. If you are feeling emotion near the surface, this practice can really help to let it flow. There is so much healing to be found in expressing our painful emotions, but please take it slow. And if it feels too much I ask you to reach out to a qualified therapist or councillor who can support you further in moving through this.

Transcript

From these exercises I hope you’ve found that the uncertainty and lack of clarity are the scariest parts of letting go. The more we can identify our problems and make a plan of how to deal with possible situations that may arise, the more we are able to move forward with confidence. Refer back to these exercises whenever you need to.

If, like me, you’re used to burying your emotions, your mind is going to fight and try to take you away from going there. I want you to think about making this a bit of a ritual, make an occasion out of it because it will help you to take it seriously and separate it from everyday life.

If you’re worried that this might be too overwhelming, I ask that you please tell someone that you trust what you’re doing and arrange to check in with them once you’re finished.

I used to be that guy who didn’t cry. I hadn’t cried in 15 years and I thought that was something to be proud of. When I finally went in there, a lot came up. It’s not surprising when I’d suppressed what I’d been feeling for so long. At the time I felt a lot of shame for suddenly being emotional, but that shame only served to make it worse. But I started to understand that emotions are a completely normal part of being human, and realised how good I felt when I fully expressed them. I’m fucking excited to go there now to be honest! Let that shit out and finally feel human again.

Another thing that can really help is being able to express what’s going on for you to a group who can listen and accept your suffering without judgment. I’ve found a lot of benefit from mens groups in the past. You can find a mens circle, womens circle, maybe a 12-step program if you’re working with a specific struggle, I’ve found these useful too. In person or online. Just having a space where you can speak your pain can relieve so much of the weight we’re carrying.

If you are chronically depressed or suicidal, please reach out to a qualified councillor or therapist who can be there for you more closely and provide any additional support you need.

We’re all going to go through horrible things in our lives. And it’s scary. None of us want to go there. But at the same time, it’s only because of that pain that we are able to fully appreciate the amazing moments of our lives. If you are grieving the loss of a loved one, a relationship, it means you have known love. Grief is love with nowhere to go.

It was C.S. Lewis who said, The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.

Whatever we’re struggling with, I find it comforting to know that there are always people who have been through similar experiences. And when we finally manage to make peace with our moments of suffering, the wisdom we’ll have gained will be an inspiration for others who follow on behind us. That moment, when we come to understand that our own experiences of suffering can help to soften the burden of others, is the moment when we find meaning and acceptance of our pain. We realise that it wasn’t for nothing.

Transcript

Welcome to day 6 and, today, we’re working on shifting the unhelpful stories we tell ourselves, to find more functional and empowering perspectives to move forward with.

There are an unlimited number of perspectives for any given event. But very often, we confuse the objective facts of a situation with a narrative of our own subconscious creation. As compelling as the facts may be, there are always more empowering angles for us to find.

I’m going to teach you a bunch of techniques we can use to reframe different situations in our lives to help us let go and move forward.

Let’s get into it.

Transcript

We’ve already spoken about the importance of building new, consistent habits to take the steps towards our goals. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says that we need to “live the personality of the habit” - e.g. if we want to get and stay in shape, we need to adopt the personality of someone who works out every day. If we want to write a book, we need to be someone who sits down to write every day. It’s a subtle mindset shift but, if we want our habits to stick, we need to integrate these behaviours into our personality. If you’re running every day, you’re a runner. If you’re starting your own business, you’re an entrepreneur. And the more we identify with our behaviours as part of who we are, the more likely we are to live up to the label.

So, for each of the habits you identified on day 4, I want you to reframe the identity you will inhabit as a result. What sort of person does these behaviours? Who do you need to be? You are not just doing these things because you’re unhappy with where you are. You’re doing them because you’re moving towards your fully realised self. So who are you becoming? Make a list and I’ll see you in the next lesson.

Transcript

One of the most powerful ways we can move beyond the experiences that keep us stuck is to get upstream and find a higher level problem to give our attention to. If we can find something that’s even more important to us, or that will allow us to use our pain towards a positive goal, we will move on far more easily. It’s no coincidence that people who have made it through trauma, addiction or severe illness, often turn to acts of service - it’s a way of using the wisdom they gained through their times of suffering to help ease the struggle of others following along a similar path.

There is always a higher perspective we can find when looking at our problems. If our partner leaves us, maybe our higher level is using the pain to drive us to confront our healing and become the version of ourselves. If we get made redundant, maybe it’s the kick in the ass to write the novel, or start the business we’ve always fantasised about. Focusing on our new possibilities instead of what we’ve lost.

If you are still feeling stuck with negative feelings towards your situation or experiences from your past, I want you to think about whether you can find a higher level problem that will be even more important to you. What would you love even more than the thing you lost? And how can we use that to motivate us to make a change?

We can use this approach any time we hit a road block in our progress. As an example, I used to feel really uncomfortable speaking on camera and filming myself. I hated it. But once I could see that the information I had to share would make a difference to people’s lives, that motivation became more important to me than my aversion to getting filmed. I’ve found this, over and over again. Situations that previously bothered me are no longer on my radar.

One of the greatest angles on this, which is not always easy but undoubtedly true, is realising that it is only through pain and suffering that we grow. The moments of my life caused me the most pain have always been the catalyst for my biggest leaps forward. Of course, things will still hurt. And you have every right to grieve the things that didn’t go your way. But the only way to find peace is to get to a place where you find meaning from your suffering, where you can be grateful for its lessons. Viktor Frankl made it after surviving concentration camps in the holocaust, so I think there’s hope for us all.

If nothing else, the painful moments of your life have led you here - where you’re fully taking action to go after the life of your dreams. Most people end up living a life of mediocrity because they are comfortable - there’s no drive to do anything different. I hope one day you’ll be able to reach a perspective where you can look back and be grateful for these moments which became the catalyst for you going after your best life.

Look back at your list from day 1. Now, considering everything we’ve worked through this week, are there any perspectives you can find that empower you and give more functional meaning to the experiences you went through?

Transcript

We’ve done a lot of work on the negative and painful aspects of our lives this week. So now I’d like you to spend a little time thinking about all the positives. Make a list of everything you’re good at. All of your best qualities.

If you’re here, you must be conscious and caring enough to want to make a change. You want to show up better for yourself and your loved ones. What else have you got?

Write down all the skills you’ve learned from the jobs you’ve done, your hobbies and interests. Also consider how you have positively impacted the lives of people around you?

Who means the most to you in your life? How have they positively impacted you?

What have you learned from your painful experiences?

What else are you grateful for?

When our life is not where we want it to be, it can be easy to get stuck focusing on everything we want to change. But let’s not forget the good things. The people who’ve been there for us, and those we want to show up better for. It sounds like a cliche but, in my experience, the more I have been able to express my authentic love and gratitude for others - without needing anything in return, the better I have also felt about myself.

After the work we’ve done on our values earlier this week, are there any actions you could take today that would make a meaningful difference to someone else in your life?

Transcript

That’s it for day 6. You have finished all the big work. You have confronted so much of your life this week. You’ve taken stock of the things that haven’t been working, gained a deeper understanding of what’s truly important to you, clarified your goals and built an action plan to get after them, and taken brave steps towards letting go of the things that are holding you back. Please just take a moment to acknowledge the effort you’ve put into this. The clarity you’ve gained is going to help you, with every decision you take from now on, to move towards a life you’re proud of.

This is a journey of a lifetime, and our growth is not linear. We move in an upwards spiral, so I want you to remember that you’re likely to encounter similar situations in the future. Don’t be disheartened. Each time they come back around, you’ll be that bit stronger and more equipped to deal with them. Remember you can refer back to everything you’ve learned, and reuse the tools in these videos to help you gain extra clarity, or help you get back on track if you fall off for a bit.

Tomorrow is the last day and we’re going to dive into some tools and techniques to help you stay focused and accountable going forward.

Great work today. See you tomorrow.

Transcript

Congratulations on making it to day 7! You have taken serious action towards getting your life back on track. By now you should have a lot more clarity on where you want to go and how you will get there. Hopefully you’ve begun to make peace with some of your suffering too.

We spoke on day 1 about this not being an easy fix, but you’ve done a lot of work to reorient yourself and begin tracking your progress. I can’t wait to see what you’re capable of. Finding out who you truly are is a journey of a lifetime. There will be times when you slip or stumble. Life gets in the way. We can have relapses into grief or depression, or feel like we’re not making enough progress. This is all to be expected, so go easy on yourself. The path to mastery of any skill involves long periods of apparent plateau where nothing seems to be changing, followed by sudden bursts of growth. Just keep showing up as best you can and protect those habits at all costs. But if you do fall off the wagon for a while, just get back on as soon as you can. My own motto for life is now fail and recommit, fail and recommit. None of us are perfect, but so long as we get back up again every time we fall, nothing can stop us.

Today, all we need to do is clarify our action plan and habits, and organise our work so we always know what next step to take. Let’s get to it.

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You’ve done a lot of work this week to get this far, but this is where the rubber meets the road. It’s time to put all your new learnings into practice and build the habits that will take you each step of the way home. So let’s organise our work from this week into an easily accessible place where we can refer back to it.

First up, I want you to set a reminder in your phone to review your dream life plan at least once a month. Save it somewhere easy to access and just re-read it when you can, and spend 5-10 minutes visualising and imagining that being your reality. As I said before, the more we can picture and believe that life is possible, the quicker we will achieve it.

Next, I want you to make a commitment to taking action every day. Schedule your habits in your calendar with a reminder and check them off. Remember to make your minimum viable effort smaller than you think you need and protect the habit at all costs.

I also recommend you break out your goal pyramids into fully actionable lists so that you can literally tick each item off as you go. You can do this by hand, or in any productivity app you use. I use Notion for mine.

Next, I want you to make sure you have your list of value statements saved somewhere accessible so that you can check in with them every morning. You only need 30 seconds or so for each, just to imagine how you might show up differently in your life if you were living in alignment with each value. At the same time as doing this practice, I also recommend you ask yourself what one thing can you definitely do today that would improve your life in relation to your health, your contribution - which is your work, your art or your acts of service, and finally your relationships. This is such a quick and easy way to guarantee you’re making real improvement every single day.

Can you also find an accountability buddy? Try and find a friend or family member who has your back, who you can check in with every month and give them an update on your progress towards each milestone goal. Anything we can do for a little bit more accountability can help us stay on the path when things get tough.

There’s a page in the back of your workbook for you to collate all of these learnings in one place. Fill that in now, add it to your calendar or productivity planner too.

And you’re ready to go. Lastly I want you to close your eyes, put your hand on your heart, and I want you to make a commitment to yourself that you will go after this dream life we’ve identified this week. You deserve every bit of it, and the work you’ve done this week has laid some rock solid foundations for you to continue to build on. You’ve already proved to me that you can show up for yourself. Great work.

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That’s it. Congratulations on making it to the end of the course. You have shown up for yourself, stuck with it and set a powerful precedent - you’re well on the way to living the life of your dreams. Keep up the great work! I now know you can achieve whatever you set your mind to, and I wish you a life full of wonder and happiness as you continue your journey.

Thanks for watching and I’ll see you soon.