“When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Greetings from LA and Oahu!
This week we’re discussing how all human achievements started out as simple ideas, why we all need someone to believe in us more than we believe in ourselves, and why it’s always a good idea to trade wealth for health.
Enjoy!
And have a wonderful Christmas with friends and family this week! ❤️
Fitness For The New Year
Sponsored by Limitless Coaching
Want to get in better shape in 2022?
Look better? Feel better? Have more energy?
I (Mike) do.
So I recently hired Clint Riggin (the buff guy in the picture above) to help me get my butt into shape. And I’ve been absolutely blown away by his Limitless Coaching Program.
They provide a custom training plan based on your goals, fitness level, available equipment, and lifestyle. They also provide a nutrition plan (calories & macros) based on your height, weight, body type, and dietary restrictions.
Clint (who, by the way, is very responsive via text) checks in with you every week to see how things are going and if any adjustments need to be made (as well as keeps you accountable).
My favorite part about all of this, though, is that they’ve built a custom app to make your food and your workouts super easy to track (I’ve always struggled with the tracking part of fitness/nutrition).
If you want to try it out for yourself, they are currently running a Christmas special with a $1,000 discount and $1,344 worth of bonuses (meal pack, supplements, & hormone replacement therapy).
Check it out – but keep in mind they’ve only got 10 spots open as of right now!
I highly recommend working with Clint if one of your New Year’s goals is to build a healthier lifestyle — for me, it was money well spent.
Just An Idea
A few weeks ago, Andy Frisella published a short article on his website titled, It Was All ‘Just An Idea’, where he muses about how everything that humans have achieved started out as just an idea in someone’s head.
It’s worth reading in full:
Take a moment and grasp this concept…
Every fucking thing around you was once just an idea in someone’s mind.
The screen you are reading this on…
The shirt you are wearing…
The car that you drive…
The plane flying above you in the air…
The house that you live in…
All of it…
…was just a figment of someone’s imagination at one point in time.
It was all “just an idea.”
So, why do you think that whatever you have in your mind isn’t possible?
Whether it’s the amount of money that you want to make…
The kind of life that you desire…
Or the new product you thought of that could change millions of people’s lives…
This concept applies to everything.
Dream big … and develop a solid belief that you can do that shit.
Then go after it every single day…
And keep working on it until you make your ideas a reality.
All of the greatest inventions & advances in society have come from “crazy” ideas that were impossible…
…until they weren’t.
Believing in Others
In a classic study, Harvard Psychologist, Robert Rosenthal teamed up with Lenore Jacobson, an elementary school principal in San Francisco, to test students’ verbal and reasoning skills.
The researchers required kids from eighteen different classrooms — kindergarten through fifth grade — to take their Harvard cognitive ability test.
They then shared the results with the teachers — 20% of the kids showed remarkable potential for blooming intellectually above and beyond their peers.
One year later, the same group of children took the test.
As you might expect, the “bloomers” improved significantly more than their peers did over the same year.
Except…
The chosen 20% weren’t actually “bloomers” with remarkable potential — they were a randomly selected group of kids who’d taken the test.
They performed better the following year because their teachers were told they had more potential… and so the teachers invested more effort into them.
They weren’t smarter or more talented in the beginning. But they were by the end. Because someone believed in them.
Never underestimate the power of believing in someone. And never hesitate to seek out someone who believes in you.
Trading Wealth For Health
How much money would you spend to make yourself healthy?
Put another way, how much money is more valuable than your health?
The answer, of course, is no amount of money is more valuable than your health. In Die With Zero, Bill Perkins writes…
“Nothing has a greater effect on your ability to enjoy experiences — at any age — than your health. In fact, health is actually a lot more valuable than money, because no amount of money can ever make up for very poor health — whereas people in good health but with little money can still have many wonderful experiences.”
It’s easy to let our frugal instincts keep us from making pre-emptive investments in our health — whether it’s buying high-quality groceries, paying for a gym membership, hiring a personal trainer, or purchasing a fitness program.
But there could be no better use of our money.
Because no amount of money is more valuable than your health. The question, then, is: is your health where you want it to be? And if not, how can you spend money to improve your health?
Conversely, is the way you’re making money having a negative impact on your health? If so, how can you change that?
Something to think about for 2022.
This Week’s Photo
“A dog runs through the snow on Moulin Moor, in Perthshire, Scotland, on November 28, 2021.” via The Atlantic
This Week’s Riddle
Here’s this week’s riddle — the answer is at the bottom of the email!
What is always in front of you but can’t be seen?
This Week’s Question
Answer this question — either privately or by replying to this email. If your answer inspires us, then we’ll ask for permission to include it in a future email!
Where do you see yourself in 2 years? How do you plan to get there?
This Week’s Challenge
Christmas time is a great time to practice gratitude. Write three cards to people who’ve had a particularly large impact on you this last year and give them to them during the holidays. Spread the love.
Until next week,
Mike & Alec
Riddle Answer: The future.