4 Investments to make to get AHEAD of 99% of people in 2024

IN THIS ISSUE 

14 min read

• 🏃‍♂️ How to get ahead of the 99%

• ⭕ 4 Spheres of Influence (master these for a meaningful life)

You are being lied to.

Have you ever heard:

We all know it. We should all be just a little more focused, a little more disciplined, so that we can achieve the meaningful things in our lives.

Here's the brutal truth: plenty of people out there are doing this every single day and they're not getting ahead.

They have discipline, they have focus, and they have hard work, but it's not enough.

However, it’s often that the problem isn't that you lack discipline, focus, or work ethic.

It's that you're directing them towards the wrong things.

So where are these treasure troves we should be directing our focus and energy to?

Well, most people go looking for the fancy, complicated solution, but the truth is fundamentals applied with excellence wins championships.

And when it comes to the fundamentals of you, there's really four categories you got to master.

I call them the four spheres of influence: you have your mindset, health, wealth, and skills.

So here are the investments you need to make in the next year to put yourself ahead of 99% of people.

THE CENTRE OF YOU: MINDSET

The first sphere of influence is your mindset. Your mindset is the lens through which you see the world.

If it's cracked or broken, then it's going to impair the speed at which you move forward in life.

In my experience, so many of modern life's issues stem from a simple lack of clarity.

Clarity about which problems in life are even worth solving and which ones you should probably walk away from.

Clarity about how to go about solving these problems.

Clarity is something that is developed over time, with a strong vision.

So the first investment to make is into your clarity.

Travelling around the world can help this. But if not, educate yourself and learn everyday.

The second investment into your mindset is to keep a decision journal.

All of us make on average 30,000 decisions every single day.

Despite this, your power of judgment probably isn't significantly better than it was last year.

So to exercise this power of judgement, we need to understand that learning comes in practice.

All learning and therefore mastery requires three things: feedback, reflection, and iteration.

That means we need feedback about the result so we can reflect on what did and didn't work and then make tweaks through iteration that then leads to getting more feedback.

This is called the learning loop, and it's really easy to see how this plays out in something like shooting a basketball.

It's not so obvious when it comes to making decisions, because despite all the tens of thousands of decisions we make in a single day, we rarely stop to consider the following:

• what we think is going to happen,

• why we think it's going to happen,

• what else might happen,

• why we think this happening would be better than that happening,

• and, what's the probability that this and not that will happen.

So, using a decision journal, run about 1-2 large ideas in there every single day, and watch how your judgement improves.

HEALTH

Let's move on to our second sphere of influence, which is our health.

Your body is the vehicle carrying you through this life.

If you don't take care of it, then it's just a matter of time till the wheels fall off, and when they do, you're going to learn a very harsh truth: if you don't have your health, you don't really have anything worth having.

I mean, what's the point of having all the money in the world if you can't get out of bed to use it?

What's the point of being famous if you're in constant agony?

What's the point of being surrounded by loved ones if you're in a coma?

Remember this:

The problem for most of us is that we're doing the bare minimum to keep this biological machine running, which is degrading the quality of our energy on a daily basis.

If you got no energy, you're effectively dead. If you got tons of high-quality energy, then you're alive, you're thriving.

But what exactly does it mean to be in like the top 1% of health?

Mayo Clinic conducted a study called "Healthy Lifestyle Characteristics."

In it, they look to see how many adults exhibited four healthy lifestyle characteristics, which they defined as sufficiently active, eating a healthy diet, non-smoker, in recommended body fat percentage.

Here's the crazy part: they found that only 2.7% of adults had all four characteristics.

Listen, the bar is set so low here you could literally trip over it and still be ahead of the vast majority of people.

If you just act on these principles, well, not only will you most likely live longer, but you'll live better.

So let's break this down as simple as possible into what I call the three levers of energy: you have your sleep, exercise, and nutrition.

Here's some of my favorite investments that you can make in each one.

For sleep, good investments include a good mattress and some time before bed without screens for a better quality sleep.

The second investment to make in your health is exercise, like the gym or a personal trainer.

Now, I know this is going to sound stupid, but feeling good feels good. So go on, get yourself that gym membership, hire that personal trainer; you are most definitely worth it.

Alright, the third investment to make in your health is in nutrition, specifically doing meal prep.

Now, here's the thing about nutrition: you probably already know it's important, and you probably would like to eat better, but it's also a lot of work and very time-consuming, and it can be very expensive.

Well, the easiest solution that I found is just to get a meal prep service that cooks and delivers a whole week's worth of meals and then delivers it to your front door.

And the crazy thing is that this is way more affordable than most people even realize. The plan that we use breaks down to $11 per meal, so I can get two meals every day for only $700 a month.

Now, I'm not going to pretend like that isn't a lot of money for most people, and you certainly can save money by doing your own grocery shopping and cooking at home.

For me, this is just about as easy as decisions ever get for me these days. But hey, for you, if you love cooking, you can save money and exercise your passion.

WEALTH

Let's move on to our third sphere of influence: your wealth.

Over the years, this sphere of influence has caused me more stress and anxiety than all the others combined, and I'm not alone on that.

According to the APA, which is just the governing body of psychologists, money is the leading cause of stress in the United States.

Now, my strategy back in the day when money, or rather my lack of money, was the biggest problem in my life, was just to pretend like it didn't matter.

This ultimately led me to accumulating over $80,000 of debt. So, not really a great strategy.

So, listen, this might be the most trite, cliché thing, and I say it all the time, but it's true: money won't solve all your problems, but it will solve all your money problems.

And the thing is, a lot of problems in life are nothing more than money problems.

Now, a lot of people like to say money can't buy happiness, but I'll tell you what: I'm way happier, way less stressed out, because I never really have to worry about money anymore.

If that sounds like something you'd like to achieve for yourself, then here's the single best investment you can make: it's into a daily financial audit.

If money is a game, which is how most wealthy people think about it, then how much you've got in the bank is the score. And I can't think of a single game where you don't always know the score at any given moment.

It's the single most important piece of information in any game because it's immediate feedback as to how you're doing.

Without this, you can't really know if your game plan or budget is actually working or not.

Now, there was a time in my life where the idea of looking at my bank account caused me extreme anxiety because I didn't know what I'd find there: would it be positive, would it be negative, who knows?

But if I never looked, then it wasn't really a problem, right? Wrong, obviously wrong.

So, regardless of what your accounts currently show, you need to start a daily financial audit. Use an aggregating software like monarch, and then spend 10 minutes every morning just reviewing the previous day's transactions.

It's not going to change much most days, and this is going to start to feel like a waste of time, but trust me, money goes to the person who pays it the most attention.

SKILLS

Let's get to the last of the four spheres of influence: skills.

Skills are my favorite investment because they can't be taken from you, they can't be taxed, and best of all, they pay compounding dividends regardless of economic conditions, every single day until you die.

And the beauty of skills is that once acquired, you can use them over and over again to duplicate whatever result you want.

For instance, if you want to make another million dollars and you have the skills of a millionaire, then it's simply a matter of going out and reapplying those skills you already have.

But if you don't have those skills, then you just have to do what 99% of people do and hope you get lucky.

Hope is a terrible investment strategy. Better is to view yourself as an investment vehicle, and then every single day, make deposits into the bank of you by continually refining the skills that will help you achieve your goals.

Here are three skills that have personally helped me a ton on my journey.

Number one is storytelling.

Victor Hugo said:

This is only partially true because an idea is only ever as powerful as our ability to effectively communicate it.

Most of the time, humans communicate ideas is through story. This is why Steve Jobs said the most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.

Why? Because story is the source code of the human experience. It's how we interpret the past, it's how we the present, and it's how we create the future.

Those who understand how to use this tool can use it to transform the world.

Truly, learning to tell compelling stories is a cheat code not only in business but in life and everything in between.

Now, the next skill worth investing in is writing.

Listen, I get it, writing sucks, though I've countless newsletters and media pieces.

I always say that I hate writing, but I love having written…

Because writing is indeed hard, not to mention that most of us suck at it.

If anything, the process of writing traditionally just reinforces how hard writing actually is without actually making anybody a better writer.

Think of it like this: if you've ever meditated, you've probably been frustrated by how frequently your mind just leaps from thought to thought.

Now, the beauty of writing is that it is the process by which we take your mind by the hand and walk it from point A to point Z.

However, our brain hates sitting still for any length of time, especially the length of time required to force out a thought through the choke point of your pen or keyboard.

But if you persist, if you keep hold of it and you keep moving forward, you will arrive at the end of this process with something incredible: Clarity of thought.

Now, clarity of thought is powerful because it leads to improved judgment, which leads to better decisions, which ultimately leads to better results.

Writing is simultaneously the process by which we cage and free our chaotic minds.

I don't think it's any coincidence that all the most influential people and clearest thinkers in the world are also still great writers.

So, I encourage you to take this to heart and start writing daily.

Alright, so here's our third and final skill: Vision casting.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am a really big fan of goal setting, especially as we enter into a brand new year.

Goals, if used correctly, are the means by which we direct our efforts. But here's the thing: most people are setting goals all wrong, and there's two statistics I want to share with you that prove this.

First, you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you actually write them down. That's a massive increase in your likelihood of success.

So then, why is it that only 3% of people actually take the time to write out their goals?

Yeah, you heard that right, only 3% of people actually write out their goals.

So, if you want to immediately put yourself ahead of 97% of people when it comes to your New Year's resolutions, all you got to do is actually write down your goals.

Now, if you want to catapult yourself even further, like into that top 1% of successful people, I've actually got something better than goal setting for you.

Because goals are simply the destination, and in my experience, just doing a thing isn't what really matters.

It's how you do the thing. For instance, it's not about making money, it's about how you make money.

It's not about losing the weight, it's about how you lose the weight.

You could easily make money and lose weight by cutting all sorts of corners that aren't in alignment with the type of person you want to be in life; this type of action leads to achievement without fulfillment, which is the ultimate form of failure because it comes at the expense of the most important thing: your values.

So, here's a better way to vision cast your future.

Don't set goals without first setting your values.

Goals are the what, values are the how, and they are the most important part of the equation because your values are the fundamental beliefs about who you are and the type of person you want to be in this world.

They guide everything you do. For instance, three of my values are creativity, curiosity, and discipline.

So, at the end of each day, I can look back, I can ask myself, did I create something new today, did I learn something new today, did I show up and do the work today?

When I can answer those questions in the affirmative, it means I was living in alignment with my values.

And here's like the biggest reason I love value setting more than goal setting: you have an infinite number of opportunities every single day to live in alignment with your values, whereas you can only ever achieve your goals once.

Your values are the compass guiding your actions.

Do not set off on your journey to find your greatness without them.

I guarantee you, if you bring your compass along with you, and do all of the things mentioned above, you'll easily get ahead of 99% of people.

THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S ISSUE?