There are one million and one podcasts out there.

Did the universe really need another? Probably not. But that’s not going to stop me from putting one out.

Here are five reasons why I am launching my podcast on September 23, 2020:

1. The natural progression. I had phone calls with Twitter followers and Tuesday Treasure family members. These people were so cool. So smart. So kind. These phone calls gave me more energy. More life. I realized it would be a disservice to the world to keep these conversations to ourselves. For these calls to be forgotten forever. So why not record them and post them?

2. You might understand the words I’m writing better when I actually say them. I have so much love and joy and appreciation and gratitude for life. Sometimes I resort to two exclamation points. You may be able to hear what I mean through audio.

3. To connect with other high energy people. Selfishly, I want the opportunity to connect with more smart, kind, and awesome people. By putting these podcasts into the world, I’m assuming it will lead to connecting with more people like the ones I’ve already picked out.

4. Build an asset. I like to look at each piece of content as an asset. Each individual workout won’t do much, but over 1 year, 5 years, 10 years? It will have incredible results. I’m not in this game for the short term. There’s no $ play.

5. Another way to spread love. This is what it’s all about for me. Some people prefer to consume content with writing. Others prefer audio. Eventually, I’m sure I’ll make my way to video as well.

Since I’ve had the idea to create this podcast, it’s been on my mind almost every day. So I’m hoping you enjoy it.

Do you have trouble speaking to strangers?

I used to as well.

I recently put out a request to my Tuesday Treasure and Twitter family…

If you want to talk on the phone, my line is open. I’m here to spread joy to the world and if you’re down with that, I’m down with you.

But I only realized it was something special when someone on the other end pointed it out to me: “Dude, how do you get on the phone with anyone?”

Then, I started to think about it. Because I certainly wasn’t always like that. The thought of talking to someone new on the phone or in person would give me nerves.

“What will he or she think of me?”

I was in my head. Always. Wondering what other people thought of me. Judging others. Judging myself. Trying to come up with the perfect thing to say in a conversation. It was an absolute mess.

But that isn’t a problem anymore.

So, how did I make the change, that I could talk to anyone, for any amount of time, without worry, even if it was the first time talking to them?

Let’s dive into it:

1. Doing hard things gave me confidence (namely, doing 75 HARD). 

75 HARD was the game-changer.

It gave me confidence because I was living up to the greatest version of myself every day. Every day, I was responsible for doing some tasks. One day at a time. If I was capable of doing them one day, I was capable of doing them every day. Not getting overwhelmed with the journey. And if I didn’t do them, nobody would know but I would know. And this would come through in everything I did. When I started the challenge, I didn’t believe in myself. Eventually, after doing it long enough, people would be surprised/impressed and I would have no choice but to reaffirm my notion that I was someone who got shit done. 

2. My intent is to show and give love. 

If this is my intent in a conversation, I know that even if I screw up, even if I stutter over my words, even if I am say something wrong or something stupid, I am coming from a place of giving pure love to the other person. This allows me to be honest and open. My honesty and openness lets the other person’s guard down – I’m not here to judge. I’m here to help and give you love, so you can relax. Often they do.

3. 60 minute meditation sessions have allowed me to spend a lot of time in my own head. 

This means I’ve gone through problems that were in the back of my head. This means I’ve diagnosed issues that otherwise would have stayed in the back of my head and dragged me down. But I’ve gone through them. I’ve diagnosed the issues. Almost like a computer rebooting.

Meditation gave me comfort in silence as well.

As a result, I became confident, happy, and loving to all of life.

I am running on two hours of sleep as I type this. I hardly ate all day. But I am in a state of absolute love.

It all started when my plane landed.

My brother said he’d pick me up from the airport. He said he’d bring food too! Damn, I was excited. I hadn’t eaten all day. I was starving. But he was nowhere to be found.

Time passed.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

It started to rain. I waited, looking at the beautiful cloudy sky.

Fifteen minutes.

Twenty minutes.

I call my brother, “Is everything okay?” Yes, he says. He made the wrong turn. He’ll be there in ten minutes but no food. 

“Sounds great,” I tell him.

Thirty minutes pass.

He shows up.

I get in the car. And I smile.

Three years ago, I would have been angry at my brother. “Fuck you for being late!”

Two years ago, I would have been upset with my brother. “How could you let me down?”

Last year, I would have been passive aggressive. “Great job, pal!”

Today, just love. Love that I was going to see my brother. Love that I was loving myself. Love that I made incredible progress. Love that I had control over my mind. Love that Tej believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. Love that I even existed at all when the universe could be made of absolutely nothing. Love for the experience of floating in the clouds on an airplane. Love to be home with my family. Love for life. 

Love for my brother. To be able to give him all the tools he needs to be happy.

Love for my family. To be able to spend time with them.

When you are full of love, you want others to be love too. You want to see everyone win.

You see, most of the time we’re operating with clouds over our thoughts. What clouds our thoughts? Fear of death. Fear of what our boss will say. Fear of rejection. Scrolling too long on social media. Anyone with negative energy. 

Anything can cloud our thoughts, really. It can be as simple as our monkey mind running wild because someone sent us a passive aggressive text or someone looked at us the wrong way. But why?! Life is too short to be unhappy.

You can choose happiness at this moment. You can choose to love yourself.

Simply repeat, “I love myself” ten times in a row. Do this for a month straight. You might think you sound so damn stupid at first. You’ll be like, “Why am I saying this?” Like it can’t actually change your life. It can’t actually make you happy.

But it worked for me.

I have been doing this for approximately three months. Once a day, at least ten times.

And is it part of the reason why I feel absolute love and joy? It has to play at least a small role in my happiness.

I believe I brainwashed myself.

I know this sounds like nonsense. I know you might not believe me. I know it doesn’t even make sense. 

That you can say “I love myself” and you actually feel love? You can actually “be” love? Sounds like a bunch of hokey-pokey nonsense.

But the weird thing is “I love myself” came first. I started doing this practice after reading Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. 

On April 7, I started writing daily. On April 14, I started reading daily. On May 17, I started meditating daily. All the while, I’ve been posting, engaging, and trying to be helpful to anyone I can. Trying to be a light in the world. Spreading love to friends and family. Being the person who others can turn to. Being the person that I can turn to myself.

Messing up from time to time and loving myself for the mess ups, too. But staying consistent. Staying disciplined. Staying on the path.

And loving myself.

Written on May 28, 2020.

Conor McGregor has accomplished some pretty incredible feats in the past decade:

• Become the UFC’s first champion in two weight classes (“double champ”).
• Switched sports at the peak of his career (mixed marital arts to boxing and back).
• Created an international whiskey brand (Proper 12).

So what got Conor McGregor from where he was – an apprentice plumber – to today?

If only there was a way to see Conor’s thoughts before he became one of the world’s most recognizable athletes…

As it turns out?

We do.

McGregor was 25 years old when he tweeted the following:

ISOLATION, VISUALISATION, MOTIVATION, DEDICATION. NO OUTSIDERS.

— Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) November 25, 2013

He outlined the process by which he was improving. And you can follow it too.

Let’s break it one-by-one…

Isolation

Isolation is to be by yourself.

Why does it help to be by yourself? No distractions. This is an important point. Conor makes sure to reiterate by saying “NO OUTSIDERS” at the end of his tweet.

Why is isolation a positive?

“I feel being alone with your thoughts is a good thing. It allows you to figure things out for yourself.”

Visualization

To visualize is to imagine where you want to be.

McGregor is an avid visualizer, who has predicted numerous knockouts.

He even got the moniker “Mystic Mac” for his eerily accurate predictions. For example, before UFC 194, McGregor noted he would knockout Jose Aldo in less than 60 seconds in the first round. It took him just 13 seconds.

How does Conor do it?

“If you have a clear picture in your head that something is going to happen and a clear belief that it will happen no matter what then nothing can stop it. It is destined to happen. It’s perfect.”

McGregor has spoken in depth about his visualization techniques:

“I keep having vivid dreams of success. Then it’s time to sleep.”

“Everything I’ve been thinking, every vision, even down to every shot I throw, it just ends up here in reality. Whether it was in a fight and how to react or whether it was in a stadium with screaming fans or whether I was in a fancy car or the best clothes ever, I always put myself somewhere.”

Motivation

If you’re by yourself (isolated) and you’re thinking about where you’re going (visualizing), you’ve got to be motivated to take action.

“It’s just about commitment. You put in the work, you’ll reap the rewards. There’s no secret sauce to this. Recognize what you need to do and do it and you will succeed.”

You’ve got to be doing, in this moment, what will take you to where you want to go.

Dedication

You’ve got to be fully committed to the process. All in. No slacking off. No question about if you’re committed or not.

There’s no talent here, this is hard work. This is an obsession. Talent does not exist, we are all human beings. You could be anyone if you put in the time. You will reach the top, and that’s that. I am not talented, I am obsessed.

Elon Musk walks into the room.

You’re going to be aware of it immediately.

Why is that?

“Well, Danny, he’s a famous entrepreneur. People are going to run over and start taking pictures of him. He’s going to be joined by a giant security guard who could double as a WWE wrestler. Obviously, we’re going to notice.”

Yes, yes, that’s all true.

But let’s take it deeper than that.

You’re going to know he walked into the room because of his influence.

Influence is the ability to alter someone’s behavior.

We respect it.

We either admire it (when the influence is used to do something we agree with) or despise it (when the influence is used to do something we disagree with). But either way, we respect it.

The question becomes… why do we respect influence?

Because influence is, in essence, cloning yourself. Cloning yourself means you can affect multiple lives simultaneously.

At the most basic level, influence defies what is possible evolutionarily.

Whenever you speak to someone, you are influencing them. For the far, far, far majority of human history if you were speaking to someone, you could only influence that one person (or group).

Think of kings and queens of generations past.

They could decide, “You know what… I’m going to decide everyone has to pay this tax” …and everyone would listen (or revolt). But when they were making that decision, they were cloning themselves.

That kind of power is rare.

Or at least, it was.

Today, the Internet lets anyone have influence.

You can post a tweet that can be viewed simultaneously in Rome and Sydney. You can record a song that can be played simultaneously in Berlin and London. You can create a product that can be used simultaneously in New York and Budapest.

This doesn’t mean you have to take advantage of the Internet.

It just means that if you intend to influence anybody, it might help to use it.

🙂

Do you remember what you ate for dinner three Wednesdays ago?

I certainly don’t.

But imagine you kept a detail log of everything you eat. Well, you’d be able to pull up what you had for dinner with startling accuracy.

In this simple case, the system (your log) became stronger than the individual parts. And there’s something absolutely amazing about that.

Because when applied to the broader scale of life, we can massively benefit from it.

Here are two ways I’m personally using this principle in my own life.

Publishing On This Website

My website is probably already smarter than me.

It certainly has more information on it than I can recall at any given moment.

And I’ve only been posting information on it for the past five months.

Although that’s hard to believe… when you build something, when you continue to pour yourself into a project over a period of days, weeks, or months… it can easily overtake what you can accomplish in any given moment.

Using Roam

I tried using Roam in April. I didn’t like the way they used bullets. The format kinda pissed me off. Now, I’m writing this article on the platform.

Why?

Because during my retreat, I made the realization that if my website could recall information better than I could… it would make sense to be create an entire system to recall information.

Roam is my personal own Google. For more information, check out Nat Eliason’s article Roam: Why I Love It and How I Use It.

Conclusion

You find this principle everywhere. Whether it’s in a business invention or building the Pyramids.

The individual can’t possibly create what the system can.

So use it to your advantage.

Use yourself today, tomorrow, and the following day to create incredible change.