22 lessons from 2022

22 powerful self-performance lessons 2022 taught me.

Welcome to the Self-Performance-Strategies (S-P-S) Newsletter 

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have spent the last two weeks dealing with Covid; it has hit me hard.

Hopefully, next week I will be back to normal.

As we are in December, I have started reviewing my year and pulled out the top 22 lessons from my journal.

These ideas and lessons have come up often in my journals over the last 12 months.  

Let's dive in:

1) Your Progress speeds up when you do less of the dumb sh*t slowing you down mentally, emotionally, and physically. 

This lesson frames my entire year; it is much easier to progress in life and business by simply avoiding the negative habits slowing you down.

Doing less dumb sh*t has also impacted my 1-to-1 coaching clients, with all of them finding this framing effective for improving results. 

2) With momentum, you constantly expand into more freedom of time, money, relationships, and purpose.

You already have a level of all four of those freedoms; often, you forget how good you have it in the chase to achieve more.

When you focus on momentum, you naturally expand in all areas of life. 

3) 80% of what you are doing today is holding you back from your next leap forward.

Harsh truth? Yes, but one you have to wrap your head around.

The majority of your actions each day, mentally, emotionally, and physically are holding you back.

4) Your level of success is based on how high your internal deserve levels are.

If you don't think you deserve it, you won't create it, no matter how hard you try.

If you feel like you deserve it, it will come to you if you put the effort in. 

5) All progress starts by telling the truth about your current situation.

Being honest with yourself is essential.

This honesty might come from data from past results or good old journaling and getting super clear on what you want and where you are.

6) Your next quantitative leap forward comes from raising the quality of your daily standards mentally, emotionally, and physically.

The quality of your daily habits will predict the speed of achieving and the size of your next quantitive win.

Take a look at your daily schedule, and you can start predicting your future. 

7) You only wish for success if you don't have a clear why or vision.

Simple, I never met or worked with anyone who has had tremendous success without having these two areas dialled in. 

This year has taught me I need to be revisiting and reviewing my whys and vision regularly.

8) Knowing your high-value and high-$$$ activities means you don't need productivity hacks to complete your work.

Why do you need hacks if you know what to work on and what makes you money?

When you put your important activities 1st, life works better.

9) Productivity hacks are for the work and activities you don't love doing; maybe it's time to drop or delegate those tasks.

Don't like doing certain types of work? Hire help or stop doing them.

80% of the work you do shouldn't be a struggle for you to do. 

10) Productivity is about getting work done efficiently. Performance is about achieving high-level results, don't mix the two up.

Without creating results, optimizing your productivity is a waste of time.

11) 10X has little to do with increasing the quantity of your results and is much more about improving the quality of your outputs.

You make huge leaps forward because you improve your standards. 

You make huge leaps forward because you do less dumb sh*t. 

This means less output but at a higher quality.

12) A full calendar is a fool's calendar.

You need slack and room to think, relax, and recharge. 

13) Raising your floor is often more important than hitting new highs.

How far you fall on your bad days matters.

If your worst days look like your old good days. You know you are making progress. 

14) Breakdowns lead to breakthroughs; hitting a wall is good for you if you take the lessons on board.

When you hit a barrier, look at it as an opportunity. The barrier is there for a reason. You have something to learn. Lean into it.

15) High hope people are more likely to overcome barriers in their lives and succeed.

Hope is fuel. If you can see the benefit of overcoming your obstacles, you will find the motivation to keep going. High hope gives everything positive framing. 

16) Those who ignore the compound effect and switch directions every 6 months or less will struggle to create the success they want.

Everything takes longer than you think it will. If you don't commit, you won't win. When you start, expect results to come in a year or more.

17) 99% of the changes you need to make require adapting your behaviour and emotions.

But 99% of the time, you will attempt to make that change with hacks, shortcuts, and half-baked strategies before realizing it was an internal shift that was needed.

18) Having regular conversations with a future version of yourself who has completed all your goals is an essential journal exercise.

If you are not journaling like this weekly or at least a few times a month, you're disadvantaged to those who do.

Clarity comes from processing your own thoughts. 

19) Be - Do - Have

You already have all you need to succeed within you; act from a place of knowing success is inevitable.

Ask yourself regularly: If I was who I wanted to be, how would I react to this situation? 

20) Daily walks are a life-changing habit.

All areas of life improve when you take the time to go for walks.

If there is one habit you should do, it's this one.

21) Never chase anything, expecting it to fill an emotional hole or change your life because it won't.

Hitting targets or goals doesn't change your life; the habits and standards you build to get you to those goals do.

It is the journey, not the destination, that is the reward. 

22) You have to let go to grow.

Letting go isn't just about releasing trapped negative emotions or expectations for results.

The key to letting go is to let go of everything.

The good, the bad, the ugly, and the wonderful.

Let it all go, and you will grow. 

As I dive deeper into my 2022 review, I am sure I will pull out more lessons.

I love this time of year and getting a head start on the new year in December.

When January 1st comes around, you are already primed and ready to rock n roll. 

Looking forward to a huge 2023 for you.

BIG love,

Stephen