The ‘Secret Sauce’ is Your M.O. Joy!

Of course, M.O. Joy (modus operandi) is a play on words. But I use the term deliberately because – who said doing your best work and living the life you desire, should be done on someone else’s terms!

Who said you shouldn’t have your own recipes for that bliss, that style of flow, and alignment?

Who said that significant work has to come with hard, thankless, and endless graft at the expense of enjoying your craft!

It doesn’t. And there IS another way that doesn’t ask you to sell your soul. But it’s not the easy route! That’s why most people don’t take that path…

It’s choosing to play consciously, with skin fully into the game. Getting to know yourself. To understand why you do what you do and how. Then leverage what you know to do things YOUR WAY. To enjoy the journey with gusto!

That’s you getting clarity on your most important ‘asset’ – your Mind. Which in turn allows you to cultivate compassion for yourself (because you understand your inner mechanisms at play).

Combined, clarity and compassion will allow you to take full responsibility for how you show up. It puts you in control of the business of YOU.

That’s when time slows down, and you find yourself present enough
to style how you perceive and hence how you experience your life.

But We’re All Practicing Blobology

Our voices are siloed!

We’re all practicing blobology – a fragmented approach that crapshoots a ton-load of info, kinda’ randomly at whoever is seeking change or help and happens to stumble across a source that resonates long enough to pull them into our rabbit hole.

This means that the only people who manage to find the ‘secret sauce‘ to effective self-design fall into one of 4 groups:

• Those who stumble or are shocked into the right solution (which is neither reliably replicable nor particularly pleasant).
• The ones who are desperate and have no other option but to eventually find a solution that happens to work for them (sometimes taking 10-15 years to discover).
• The weirdos – who actually get a kick out of finding the chaos of dots and meticulously laboring to join them into a cohesive and valuable revelation – i.e., a solution (I fall full-heartedly into this bucket :o).
• And finally – the ones who make a profession out of it, but even they eventually have to silo out in order to keep visible in their specialty.

Which shows a big fat middle digit to all the rest of humanity who are interested in excelling at other things and just don’t have the bandwidth to become self-design experts on top of that.

Yet we now have enough insights and tools to create a decent and reliable recipe. A framework for self-discovery that can be taught quickly and used repeatedly and reliably by anyone with the drive or need to intentionally co-author their desirable life path!

We have ways of reliably getting a grip on how we perceive our lives, the emotions those perceptions affect in us, and the resulting actions these emotions may drive.

We even have ways and some agency in re-wiring the repetitive loops that don’t serve us.

You can create & drive change through a simple formula that will win most of your mental battles and, at the same time, will empower you to face each consecutive challenge with more courage. That will simultaneously build your resilience and cultivate your antifragility.

Imagine – each time you face a challenge – you’ll see an opportunity for exponential self-empowerment through the self-optimisation effort – the one improves and drives gains in the other!

Instead of fighting your demons, you can get to know them and even enroll some of them into your heart’s purpose.

Instead of endlessly self-critiquing and arguing with the “monkey” on your shoulder, you can free up precious processing energy and channel it into creating value. You can reliably enjoy flow-driven focus, share priceless moments with the people you love, and live in alignment with what truly fires you up each day.

And in Reality, We’re Withering on the Vine

Focus fully on hustle from dusk till dawn! Seldom truly fulfilled. Never reliably joyful about our path. Always hoping for a shift.

Fighting harder, but not smarter.
stuck in the never-enoughness and always-behindness
that society seems to want us to feel.

It’s like showing up to an F1 race with your BMX bike!

Sure – you’re ready, and you mean business, but the other guys showed up in their McLarens and Ferraris.

Listen – if you’ve ever tried to get your shit together – to be more focused or to have more energy so you can be more productive and more excited about the work you do. Or to feel less anxiety or overwhelm. Feel more motivated for the important things in your life or have more willpower to do what you want.

Or maybe you tried to level up your shit: for sheer health reasons (cause none of us are getting younger). Wanting to feel better mentally and physically because you know you deserve to. Or you want to be more present, to feel more joy, more meaning from the things you do each day.

Perhaps – you want to swap the Inner Jerk Critic for an Inner Coach with high standards.

If you’ve wanted to create new habits and shift old mindsets about any of that and failed to make it happen, then consider that the fault doesn’t sit with you.

Because no amount of hustle, willpower, or motivation will get you the results you crave
if you’re trying to ‘bake a cake‘ with someone else’s recipe.

It’s a ‘Cake’ You’ve Never Baked Before!

Picture this: You have only part of the toolkit and some scant instructions. You’ve likely seen or heard at least ten other versions of this cake baked by a handful of ‘chefs,’ each with a different opinion, perhaps questionable rep, and shady motives.

You’ve yet to see what this thing’s supposed to look like – so you’ve no idea how good it can be. AND – you have no idea what the end product tastes like – so you’d be working for something you may downright detest when it’s finished!!

But – wait! The worst part is that you have no clue how to work your ‘equipment’ and barely an inkling of the ‘ingredients‘ you’ve been given!

Sure – you’ve baked before (meaning you’ve lived). And yes – there’ve been some mild or excruciating misses (i.e., you’ve failed a few times). But also, you’ve had some mouthwatering hits – proof that you already know how to do some stuff well and you have the desire to make things work…

Now – what if there was a way for you to discover and understand more of your ‘ingredients‘ (your unique personality traits)?

And what if you could learn once and for all how to use ‘your equipment‘ (your mind and your senses) efficiently and effectively? And then if someone could show you how to create, use, and master your unique recipes for the ‘food‘ YOU love and enjoy and look forward to making (meaning – how you want to show up in the world)?

It would mean that no matter what ingredients life throws at you – you could put together something edible. Then, when those ingredients are good (things are working for you) – OMG, you’re a master!

But even when the ingredients suck (some drama hits the metaphorical fan of your existence) – you’re still up for the challenge!

Every situation becomes an opportunity to grow.
You don’t just stay strong – you get stronger.

The challenges don’t disappear – they just seem to affect you differently. You find yourself voluntarily facing your dragons. You develop a water-like fluidity – an antifragility.

You don’t wait for Life to serve up Rainbows and Unicorns; you make your own. You learn how to deal AND thrive. You decide how to show up for the stuff that matters to you at the time.

It’s common sense: we do things better when we do them in alignment
with our natural M.O. — our M.O. Joy.

But we seldom think about what makes us ‘tick.’ Instead, we see it and have been conditioned to feel it as indulgent – a weakness that takes our eye off the ‘real‘ – the important stuff of success.

Yet understanding your natural traits informs you about what moves and motivates you. What incidents, people, and places trigger you. How you respond to pressure (or the lack of). How you deal with others and where, how, or why you’re likely to trigger them.

Basically, the ingredients you need to rig your internal, external, and interpersonal environments to make things easier (and in some cases easy) for yourself, more fulfilling and meaningful.

THESE Are the Important Things

You weren’t born just so you can race toward the finish line. Life is meant to be experienced, not to be endured. And if you can experience joy and fulfillment and flow, presence and beauty, and love – that’s a life well lived! A life that leaves a mark.

Still, most of us have no idea how to experience those things consistently and reliably.

We don’t have our own recipes!

We put in the hard work. We make a deliberate effort to optimize how we show up for others as leaders or friends. But we don’t know how or why we do what we do. What drives us to live in full engagement?

Sure, we get a glimpse on occasion. We’ve known flow. We’ve felt an epiphany. We’ve seen beauty… and been in awe!

We looove the notion of living integrally, but we mostly don’t know what integral means for ourselves!

What are your core value drivers?

We talk about being true to ourselves and saying ‘no‘ more often to protect our attention and time… “… to thine own self be true.” says William Shakespeare.

But who are you?

We’re often given the well-meaning advice to “start with a clear plan.” “Visualise the desired outcomes.” “Waive a magic wand” to magic up how you want things to be – the changes you aspire to create…

But since we mostly construct our visions, predictions, and expectations about the future based on instances experienced in the past. And since, presumably, you’ve never had a scaled-up business, a self-optimized lifestyle, or an antifragile mindset…

How could you construct a future landscape different from what you keep getting yourself into?

Each new thing (you magic-up) is a reconstructed old set
you’re remembering on an as-needed basis.

It’s the stuff groundhog days are made of…

Einstein said it more directly: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.“

So – Are You Ready to Go a Different Route?

Is your hero finally fed up with the merry-go-round?

Those are the questions you should seek to clarify if you want to affect changes in your life for as long as you need them.

I invite you on a week-long email journey in the privacy and convenience of your Inbox, where I’ll unpack what you need to uncover and understand.

You will come out with a different worldview of your power and agency over making the behavior and mindstate changes you’ve desired.

At the very least – you will have a set of filters to help you start to integrate what you say, feel, think, and do inter and intra-personally. You’re self-constructed reality may never be the same again :o)