My 3 Words for 2023

My 3 Words for 2023

by | Jan 5, 2023 | Personal Development

What are your New Year resolutions?

Kidding! If you know anything about me, you know that’s a foolish question. I don’t set New Year resolutions. I choose three words for the year, as author Chris Brogan taught me to do.

The best thing about it? It’s fun! Each year, I get to reflect on my three words from the year past and set three entirely new ones. I get to look back on years past and see how they turned out based on the intentions held.

In the sections that follow, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from my reflections for 2022 and new intentions for 2023. But don’t forget – you’re not here to sit on the sidelines and watch. You’re here to get on the court and get in the game. Don’t bounce off this page without setting your three words for the year, promise?

Reflecting on My 3 Words from 2022

Intention – In 2022, I got to discover the importance and power of setting an intention for every conversation or meeting. You could comb through my blog archives from last year, and you’d probably find that this was a recurring theme. Intention serves as the underpinning of every conversation. It steers and guides it. And sometimes it fulfills on itself all on its own, by the mere act of creating it. But if you’re lacking intention, the conversation will tend to idle and derail.

Recognition – I was looking for a breakthrough in recognition, and I think I found it. I can talk about being an award-winning composer or best-selling author, yet all these things are in the past. It’s good to be proud of your accomplishments, and I will hold onto mine, but it’s easy to set up home in your wins instead of staying hungry for more. I discovered that recognition is all about staying hungry for more. You’re as good as the last thing you worked on.

Love – I had to think hard on this one. What breakthrough did I have in love? 2022 was a year of upheaval and adventure, but in a lot of other ways, it was the same as years past. And what I realized was that I had a breakthrough in seeing myself as lovable. I don’t mean that as in “look how amazing I am – I sure am lovable.” I mean that more in the sense of, I now know myself as someone who could be, and can be, loved. My chance meeting with a prospective girlfriend showed me that. It’s crazy how much doubt I’ve had surrounding this simple truth.

My 3 Words for 2022

Ease – I’m starting to feel like my ship has been righted, and I’m pointed towards my North Star. I do have goals, and I am up to something in life, but I’m not looking to force any outcomes this year. I’ve given up on choosing words to force outcomes too. I’m not going to fight an uphill battle with the universe. Last year, I talked about upheaval, and guess what? I ended up going through upheaval! Words really do have power. But I’m not asking for 2023 to be easy, I’m looking to navigate everything that comes my way this year with ease.

Laughter – Life is better with laughter. It’s more fun. It’s more enjoyable. Even heavy burdens can lessen with laughter. I love to laugh, and I have fun making others laugh too. I may not be a comedian, but I have sometimes thought of it as one of my “hidden” callings. Maybe I could incorporate my sense of humor into what I’m already doing more. That would be a novel idea.

Train – I chose this word intuitively, and I don’t know what to expect. It just felt right. Whether it’s moving through challenges as though a freight train, or training others to become the leaders they’re fully capable of becoming, I see a lot of potential with “train.” It’s not a word I would have naturally chosen, but rather something I gravitated towards. Now I get to be in discovery of how the word will set the tone for 2023.

Past Reflections

2015 – Profit, Outreach, Expansion (planted some important seeds)
2016 – Flow, Create, Helpfulness (an unfocused year)
2017 – Adventure, Collaboration, Health (a challenging but awesome year)
2018 – War, Initiative, Connection (a year that started weak and ended strong)
2019 – Confidence, Breakthrough, Fulfillment (a year of intense personal growth)
2020 – Completion, Curation, Synthesize (a year to find my North Star)
2021 – Maximize, Optimize, Experiment (a breakthrough year in production, productivity, validation, team, and communication)
2022 – Intention, Recognition, Love (a year of upheaval and adventure)

Further reading on setting yourself up for success in 2023 and helpful prompts are available in my Start Your Year the Right Way, with convenient notetaking space built right into the resource. Setting yourself up for a powerful year is but a click away. Let the discoveries begin. Start implementing profitable practices into your own life now.

Final Thoughts

Do you want 2023 to be a breakthrough year? Of course, you do! Are you ready to embrace change in your life? Having come this far into this post, I have no doubt you’re sharp and ambitious. Do you need help navigating the path ahead? I don’t know a single successful person who would have said “no” to such a question on their way to finding their path in the world. Which is exactly why you should get in touch for personal coaching. Now. Let’s see if we’re a good fit to work together.

The Mirror Principle

The Mirror Principle

by | Dec 5, 2020 | Spirituality

What is the mirror principle? How does it work? How does it affect our lives?

In any given moment, our external world reflects our internal world. But we can easily lose sight of this and assume bad things happen because of “bad luck” or “karma.”

So, how can we keep our heads in challenging situations? And how can we become more aware of our internal world?

Transcription:

The mirror principle is simply this, that whatever is happening in your internal world is reflected in your external world.

It’s kind of like this. If you were wearing a pair of glasses with red lenses, then the whole world would seem red to you. You wouldn’t be able to see it any other way. But if you took the glasses off, then you would see that it’s not a red world at all. There are all kinds of colors.

What’s true about being human is that we will always want things.

You will never not want something in your life. And when you want something, you launch a rocket of desire. When you launch a rocket of desire, the universe seeks to bring that thing to you in the quickest manner possible.

Have you ever been in your car and you had the GPS on, and it told you that “this is the quickest route possible even though traffic is heavier than normal?” Well, it’s kind of like that.

The path you take to get to what you want may contain traffic. It might contain obstacles. There might be construction. Maybe there’s a police stop.

But just because those obstacles are there doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not the quickest way to get to what you want.

But when it comes to matters off desire – things we want – which is fundamental to being human, we often look at those obstacles and say:

“Oh well. I tried. Things didn’t work out.”

So, we add resistance to it. We don’t want those obstacles to be there. Even though it’s the quickest route. The GPS just told you it’s the quickest route!

Yet when those obstacles show up, we give up. We add resistances to it. We say, “forget it.”

So, then our journey starts all over again at square one.

Which is to say the outcome of what you want doesn’t matter, because the journey is going to look much the same.

If you can gently acknowledge those obstacles, be with those obstacles, even love those obstacles, that moment will pass, and the traffic will start moving again.

So, when people say, “I was on my way to getting something, but something went wrong.” That’s not quite true. Something didn’t go wrong. There just happened to be obstacles on that journey, which is perfectly normal.

But instead of acknowledging it, and being with it, people instead post to Facebook and say:

“Well, I had my keys stolen this week.”

And then they say:

“Now I had my passport and money stolen. And now I have to replace my phone, because that broke. And because it broke, it cost me more to replace the phone, even though I have insurance on it.”

Then they post to Facebook again. And then they repeat that cycle.

So, their internal world is all about:

“Things are going bad. Things are going bad. Things are going bad.”

And then their external world reflects it to them, showing them that things are going bad.

But in any moment, you can turn that around and have your internal world be:

“Things are great. I love being here. I’m enjoying this experience. This is a fun roller-coaster ride.”

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Making it to the Next Level

Making it to the Next Level

by | Oct 16, 2020 | Personal Development

So, how do you make it to the next level?

Many of us tend to over-complicate the process.

Because the moment we see something isn’t going well, we tend to think everything is going awry.

If you were to assume, just for a moment, that the universe is taking you on the shortest, most direct path to your desire…

And if you were to assume that path wasn’t free of complication…

Wouldn’t you begin to embrace the roller-coaster ride you’re on?

You wanted this experience. Desired it.

Somewhere along the line, you forgot that a journey, an adventure, is exactly what you wanted.

So, when we embrace the path, regardless of how it looks, we stop adding resistance to it.

Letting go of that resistance helps us rise to the next level. It takes us to the next step in our journey.

When we focus on the problem, we can end up back at square one.

It’s more enjoyable to stay on the ride than to have to start the process all over again.

You don’t need more secrets. You just need to follow your bliss!

Transcription:

The bottom line is you follow your bliss, you follow what you’re excited about, you keep at it. You enjoy the process. You allow things to unfold. You don’t resist the “bad things” that come up. You rise to the challenge and then you make it to the next level.

The Music Entrepreneur Code paperback

Shh… Don’t tell anyone. Only the cool kids are talking about it.

Get your copy of The Music Entrepreneur Code.