I was recently asked to write a chapter for my good friend John Bardos’ ebook Change Your Life.
“Is there something specific that really helped put your life on a better path? Can you talk about a transformation that occurred because of one particular strategy? Is there something you do every day that is critical to your productivity?”
Rather than the typical personal development tips you hear, beyond practicing meditation and establishing a morning routine, my answer is the same one I give to people who ask how they can find more happiness in their lives. It’s incredibly simple advice, but requires great discipline to implement:
Choose Wisely
The secret to life is deceptively simple: choose carefully what you focus your attention on.
Namely, focus on the things you genuinely and deeply want more of. Look for what makes you happy.
Don’t obsess over the things that frustrate you. Don’t let anger, or resentment, become the center of attention.
Because as the saying goes, what you focus on grows. When I started to focus on cultivating an attitude of gratitude, my whole life transformed. And I find that when I consciously acknowledge the experiences, the people, and events I’m grateful and thankful for, somehow I tend to find more and more similar things that inspire gratitude.
Whereas, when I focus on my problems — when I go into emergency mode fighting fires and looking for every little detail of what is wrong with my work and family life — then I’ll find plenty of problems.
Seek, and you shall find. So seek the right things, and discipline your mind to search for opportunities rather than limitations.
I highly recommend any ambitious young person in the world today develop a regular gratitude practice as part of your daily rituals – write your answers in some kind of journal, or keep an ongoing note on your computer — but start the day with 3 things you’re thankful for, and end your day with 3 amazing things that happened for you. (If you have a hard time getting started, I recommend trying The Five Minute Journal: A Happier You in 5 Minutes a Day)
You’ll be surprised how quickly this daily practice can change your outlook, and even your circumstances.
Count your blessings, not your problems.
If you want to read 99 other great chapters from experts sharing their top strategies for reaching your highest potential, download your free copy of the book here.
00Cody McKillinithttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOUNDRY_logo-1.pngCody McKillinit2017-07-25 11:09:222017-07-25 11:09:22My Secret Key to a Happy Life
Over the last few years, I’ve had the great pleasure to work with David DiFrancesco — the Living Warrior — who has become a great mentor to me.
David is the author of The Warrior Way and has spent his career dedicated to releasing the warrior inside every man.
After witnessing the death of a police officer as a child, David understood that a life well-lived is one with purpose. He dedicated himself to seeing that all men have the opportunity to discover and live their own purpose through his work — work that guides men through accepting their fears and inner demons and moving forward with them, rather than being pulled into inaction by them.
Coach, author, speaker and mentor, David leads men through physical and mental training designed to strip away the lies and myths they hide behind; coming through the fire of battle into the strong, powerful, masculine hero all men are called to be.
After over 30 years working with Navy SEALS, as a gym owner and mental toughness trainer, here are the top things David says men need to hear. A succinct mastercourse on the Way of the Living Warrior:
1. You are owed nothing
Life is not fair, you make your life a success through hard work, not because you’ve earned some imagined right to it. Similarly, you are not entitled to be loved, respected, or anything else you’ve convinced yourself is your entitlement simply because you exist and are being a well-behaved, well intentioned, good boy. You and you alone are responsible for making sure your needs are met.
2. Positive thinking will get you nowhere
Determination and perseverance wins the day. Determination takes the place of dreaming. Willpower takes you through the work. Self-discipline takes you through the pain (when you no longer feel like doing the work).
3. We are not all equal or capable
…but we all are flawed and limited.
4. Failure is part of the process of improvement
Expect failure, but don’t accept it. You must be prepared for a lengthy time of poor or mediocre performance before you can become world-class.
5. You need more haters in your life, not supporters
6. Embrace the suck
Life is struggle. Don’t put your effort into living a life without pain, instead choose your struggles and work on raising your pain threshold. Seek pain, not comfort, for pain is the barrier keeping those who haven’t put in the work and time in from the success that lies on the other side.
7. Men do not try
Either decide not to do something, or have the determination and discipline to see it to its conclusion.
8. Actions not words
What you intend to do means shit. What you are doing now means everything. Don’t tell other men what you’ll do, show them the results of what you did. Winners do, losers dream.
9. Success comes from hard work and time
While you can compress the time needed by working with other men, but only you can do the hard work.
10. Seek the battle
Men thrive on hardship. Comfort, pleasure and instant-gratification feminizes men. Men seek struggle, battles and prove themselves through hard work and effort. Always seek the harder thing.
11. Not everyone is good deep down
There are people who truly want to harm you. Learn to defend yourself and build the confidence necessary to minimize the chance of attacks. Become a strong, virile man capable of determining your own destiny. Show others that you are a man of strength, power and confidence simply by looking at you.
12. Seek a tribe of men
Camaraderie in its support of fellow brothers knowing we are all striving to become the men we were meant to be and Competition in that it drives us to continually improve and not settle.
13. It is good to be a man
BONUS: Men need Rites of Initiation
This one is so true. I spent my teens pulling all kinds of pranks with my close circle of best friends, some of them trending towards dangerous, got into street racing, got arrested twice, then the challenge moved on to women, seeing how much I could drink for years, and far worse.
Instead of leaving my children to figure life out on their own, I aim to provide some kind of rites of passage for my son.
00Cody McKillinithttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOUNDRY_logo-1.pngCody McKillinit2017-07-08 11:11:432018-11-02 17:43:3313 Tenets of the Warrior Mindset
It’s rare that I appreciate major blockbuster comic book films these days.
They’re fun, but rarely do they have deep life lessons for all of us, and they nearly never go on my list of classics to keep in mind for the kids one day.
But, just back from date night last night, I took my queen to see Wonder Woman, and we both loved it.
Admittedly, you can’t go wrong with a fit and powerful lead woman, so when Jam said she wanted to see Wonder Woman, it was easy to persuade me. But there was a tremendous amount of unexpected depth to this story.
Gal Gadot delivered a great performance as Princess Diana of Themyscira, an Amazonian trained to be an incomparable warrior, daughter of Hippolyta and (SPOILER ALERT) of Zeus, the king of the gods. How this immortal ends up walking into World War I — the “war to end all wars” — is a mystery I’ll leave you to discover for yourself if you haven’t seen this flick yet.
An unknowing demigoddess raised naive of her heritage, Diana only gradually discovers her incredible abilities as she develops courage and confidence in herself — a nice metaphorical message I approve of!
A great mix of moving drama, mild romance, action, and humor. Bravo to director Patty Jenkins!
The Heroine’s Journey in Wonder Woman
Beyond your typical movie reviews, it’s even more fun to analyze films from an archetypal perspective, incorporating what’s usually referred to as Jungian psychology.
From Lewis Carrol’s 1865 Alice in Wonderland, to the roaring success of the Harry Potter series, and The Hunger Games trilogy, the “Hero’s Journey” charts the stages and trials that the average Jane must face in order to discover her greatest self and share her exceptional gifts with the world.
It is the recurring story of those who choose to pursue greatness, of those who strive to make the world a better place, the greatest story ever told, a story older than time.
The heroine starts out as an ordinary person in the ordinary world, and receives a call to adventure. If she accepts the call, she must face internal and external trials, sometimes alone and sometimes with help from a guide…
This is what Joseph Campbell identified as the perennial “Hero’s Journey” monomyth — the cyclical hero’s path seen time and again throughout mythical stories passed down over the millennia, in spiritual traditions, in children’s bedtime stories, classic literature, and now in the fantasy and science fiction of today.
The long, difficult road of trials and challenges, as well as the heroine’s frequent brush with death, loss, or confrontation with evil, transform her for the better. In the end, the heroine must return to the “normal world” to share her extraordinary gifts with others, often facing life-threatening obstacles along the way.
“The heroic quest is about saying ‘yes’ to yourself and in so doing, becoming more fully alive and more effective in the world…. The quest is replete with dangers and pitfalls, but it offers great rewards: the capacity to be successful in the world, knowledge of the mysteries of the human soul, and the opportunity to find and express your unique gifts in the world.”
While Wonder Woman isn’t for younger children, the two most important ladies in my life thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I look forward to sharing this film with any daughters I have one day, as a decent example of an empowering heroic female role model.
Fun trivia: at 75, Wonder Woman was recently named a U.N. Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls. Check Wikipedia for more on Wonder Woman’s character origins and history.
What Does It Mean to Be a Real-Life Hero?
“In times of radical uncertainty, it’s necessary that the Hero be born.
Because the Hero is the person who doesn’t deal with something specific, the Hero is the person that deals with Uncertainty itself. And that’s the Great Dragon of Chaos.
…What’s necessary is for the individual to become prepared for anything and everything, and the way that you do that is by developing your character.”
The hero or heroine is the person who is not afraid to confront their own inner demons, to explore the world of the Unknown, discover hidden power and talents, slay dragons, and eventually return to their regular day-to-day life to help lead their community towards a better future.
We were all born Kings and Queens, but we must reclaim the power and authority that is rightfully ours to take charge of this magical life and sculpt it into something beautiful.
But what does it truly mean to be a real-life, modern hero? As the Buddha observed, the REAL enemy who every great hero must defeat is oneself, and all of humanity’s greatest myths are really metaphors for this (often painful) process of self-overcoming.
“In many indigenous traditions, a person seeking answers to questions would approach a medicine man or woman sitting by the fire and ask what they should do to resolve their dilemma. He or she classically would respond to this request by saying, “Let me tell you a story.” Moms, dads, mentors, and friends can do this, too…. In new situations, often what is needed is a new story that can help supply a map for the new journey and a toehold when that journey feels like climbing up a steep and dangerous mountain.”
–Carol S. Pearson
A New Map: Come Sit By the Fire and Let Me Tell You a Story
I’m bringing together a community to help me fine-tune my upcoming book, Chasing the Sun, and to help develop a new theoretical framework for personal growth based around the Hero’s Journey!
It’s a story about finding purpose, about building a life, a business, and a family, illustrated through travel memoirs and wild, never-before-told stories of some of my more questionable travel adventures around the world over the last 8+ years, business trials, failures, successes, and more.
It’s finally time to share a few of the most important lessons I’ve learned along the way.
Sign up to get updates about the HERO Project below!
Ever since I lost two of my best friends at age 20, Chris and Kareem, I’ve spent the last 14 years looking — around the god forsaken globe mind you, in every dark corner I could find — for hope.
This man helped set off a chain of events that helped me find my misplaced faith again, and take important responsibility for certain things in my life.
The process was not easy. It cost me everything I had. But I am rebuilding myself stronger than ever and with a much clearer understanding of why I’m here than ever before.
Jordan B. Peterson is a controversial professor at the center of the sociopolitical culture war erupting in the West right now who has been vilified in outrageous ways by his critics.
But I believe Peterson — of all the wildly different people I’ve encountered across four continents — I believe this man may be the most important living intellectual of our time, akin to a modern-day Joseph Campbell.
You may disagree with his views, but what the professor of psychology at the University of Toronto is doing just may tip the scales in humanity’s favor and help warring tribes and hostile brothers come to understand each other.
Right when we most need a miracle.
0:30 Introduction/Rise to Fame & Gender Pronouns
3:28 “Radical in a Conservative way”
5:54 Jung/Archetypes/Collective Unconscious
10:30 Integrating of the Logos
15:45 Bringing yourself into Alignment
19:06 Nature of Responsibility & Rights / Message for Men
22:00 Masculinity in the West
25:50 Post-Modernism
29:40 Integrating your Shadow, “You are the Locus of Evil”, Mind and Body alignment
34:50 Relation to the Raising of Children
37:50 Piaget’s developmental model and continual integration vs Freud
39:00 Speaking the Truth
41:02 On Atheism, Rationalism, Morality, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins etc.
44:10 Intellectualism, embodiment
45:20 Motivation for true understanding
Following along with his Maps of Meaning and Personality & Its Transformations courses at the University of Toronto was a transformational process that helped me understand a lot of the deeper wisdom in the value system I was raised within. Not only that, but working through the Self Authoring program he and his academic colleagues created is also helping me create a much more accurate mental map to navigate the trials and challenges of life.
Along with the work of many others, including Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, Peterson’s work has helped me through the most challenging times of my life, and helped me learn to navigate incredible failure, suffering, pain, and face immense terror with a newfound zen-like faith in the process.
Life is suffering.
Love is the desire to see unnecessary suffering ameliorated.
Truth is the handmaiden of love.
Dialogue is the pathway to truth.
Humility is recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn.
To learn is to die voluntarily and to be born again, in great ways and small.
So, speech must be untrammeled, so that dialogue can take place; so that we can all humbly learn, so that truth can serve love, so that suffering can be ameliorated, so that we can all stumble forward, so to speak, towards the kingdom of God.”
00Cody McKillinithttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOUNDRY_logo-1.pngCody McKillinit2017-05-07 03:52:312017-05-07 03:52:31Jordan Peterson and the Rules to Win the Game of Life
“We’re in a freefall into the future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a VOLUNTARY act. It’s a very interesting shift in perspective, and that’s all it is. Joyful participation in the sorrows, and everything changes.”
Embrace your pain, go to the places that scare you, take joy in life’s terrible challenges as they burn away your weaknesses in a baptism of fire, nail your old Self to the cross and die through your own terrible crucifixion to be reborn as something more, turn your suffering into something beautiful, share your Truth, and live on PURPOSE.
Join a group of living heroes courageous enough to walk the path:
00Cody McKillinithttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOUNDRY_logo-1.pngCody McKillinit2017-05-04 11:11:092017-05-04 11:11:09Transform Your Hell Into Paradise
We recently returned from celebrating my birthday on the beach with a wonderful group of friends.
March 20th (my birthday) is the vernal equinox, and the first day of spring (or the first day of autumn in the southern hemisphere).
On the equinoxes, the sun passes directly over the equator. The northern and southern hemispheres of the planet are equally illuminated on about March 20th and September 22nd, and as a result, the length of day and night is nearly equal — all around the globe.
The March equinox marks the time when the sun crosses from south to north over the celestial equator – the imaginary plane that divides the sky above the Earth’s equator. The light overtakes the darkness, the sun’s warm rays finally dispel the winter and we welcome in the Springtime.
I never knew this growing up, but March 20th is a highly symbolic day in many ancient traditions, marking the end of one astrological year and the beginning of another.
This is the Solar New Year, and there are ancient monoliths and sacred sites around the world that were built thousands of years ago to align with our sun on March 20/21.
The light from our sun is what governs the natural cycle of life and death on this planet, so it is for good reason that humans have celebrated the coming of the spring for as long as we can remember — as the seasons were especially important for more agrarian civilizations, and even for hunter-gatherer tribes.
The Earth grows greener, more animals come out of the woodwork, as the sun grows brighter and the daylight hours grow longer.
So it is a natural time for us to focus on themes of growth and rebirth as the season changes. You can argue with it if you like, but just observe around you as many people become more active with longer daylight hours, shake off the winter blues, or begin to make significant changes in their lives, their careers, and relationships.
It is a time for “spring cleaning”, vacations, and the call of adventure. Time to dust off and let go of old things.
We are a species with amnesia, who have forgotten our past, but we are inextricably connected to the sun — the original energy source of all life on planet Earth, and everything across our solar system.
Is it any wonder why we celebrate Easter, and the resurrection of the Son, as the spring starts to heat up?
The spring equinox represents the rebirth of the natural world, with its archetypal symbols including things like flowers, eggs, and rabbits. (Those wascally wabbits!)
So why am I droning on and on about such esoteric stuff? Well in the words of the late great Joseph Campbell:
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”
If there is a natural time of year to try to rejuvenate the soul, to “reset” and reconnect — both with the Self and with the natural world — it’s the advent of spring.
As I’ve spent the last few months diving deep into mythology, philosophy, and cross-cultural spiritual studies — the mystical world I first began to explore 15 years ago with my college degree — I’ve set an annual challenge for myself: to utilize my birthday as an opportunity to untether from electronics and social media, to reconnect with my body and with nature — in the sand, in the ocean, in the jungle — and to surround myself with good friends and loved ones for a special shared experience where we focus on our own individual “Hero’s Journey”.
As an unofficial launch celebration for my new business, I even sponsored Krabi’s first free springtime beach party.
“That’s what a birthday is for,” Joseph Campbell would say, as he spent his birthday (March 26th, coincidentally enough rounding out our week together) every year for more than two decades surrounded by friends at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, along California’s breathtaking coastline.
Campbell would often tell the story of how Carl Jung had realized the importance of “what it means to live with a myth, and what it means to live without one.” When Jung realized he didn’t know what personal myth he was living, he wrote:
I took it upon myself to get to know *my* myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks.”
So what myth are you living by? What is YOUR journey? What call to adventure have you rejected? Who do you truly aspire to be?
If you’re ready to take a fantastic journey through the Unknown, to reconnect with your Higher Self and your guiding purpose, to explore psychology and philosophy and face your own inner demons, to discover what treasures and superpowers lie buried deep within, then I hope you will join me and over 400 of the most legendary heroes I know.
Today only, you can join our HERO Society premium membership for a one-time low payment, and help us to uncover timeless truths and develop a transformative new framework for personal growth.
And mark your calendars for March 2018, to join us in my absolute favorite paradise on Earth for the next Hero Spring Break!
00Cody McKillinithttps://herofoundry.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/FOUNDRY_logo-1.pngCody McKillinit2017-04-04 04:44:572017-04-04 04:44:57The Season of Transformation
