There is a popular idea in business and personal development that if you want better results, you need to take massive action.

Work harder. Move faster. Make more calls. Build the team. Acquire the property. Launch the offer. Close the deal. Scale the business.

And there is truth in that.

At a certain stage, action is absolutely necessary.

But there is something that often gets left out of the conversation:

Massive action without awareness can be a disaster.

Most coaches, business owners, entrepreneurs, investors, and real estate professionals who have reached a certain level are not actually incapable of taking action.

They may procrastinate occasionally. They may delay decisions. They may struggle with consistency.

But eventually, they usually act.

The more important question becomes:

Where is your action taking you?

Is it the right path?

Is it the right strategy?

Is it the right business model?

Is it the right team?

Are you building the right relationships?

Are you solving the right problem?

And perhaps most importantly:

What if you spend the next five years working incredibly hard—and discover that you climbed the wrong mountain?

The Danger of Climbing the Wrong Mountain

Imagine building a successful company.

Revenue is growing. Your team is expanding. Your clients are increasing. Your reputation is improving.

From the outside, everything looks great.

But internally, something doesn't feel right.

You have built a business that requires you to be constantly available.

You built a team that depends on you for every important decision.

You created a culture that doesn't reflect your values.

You accumulated properties that generate income but have trapped your time.

You built a coaching business that makes money but leaves you exhausted.

Or you achieved the financial success you wanted and realized that you don't particularly like the life that came with it.

That is the danger of action without awareness.

You can become extraordinarily effective at moving in the wrong direction.

And the further you travel, the harder it becomes to turn around.

This is why one of the biggest fears for ambitious people isn't necessarily failure.

It is regret.

What if I take all this action and don't end up with what I'm actually seeking?

What if I make things worse?

What if I build the wrong business?

What if I build the wrong team?

What if I become the wrong version of myself?

What if I spend years creating something I eventually wish I had never created?

These questions matter because there is no such thing as 100% certainty.

Every business decision contains risk.

Every investment contains uncertainty.

Every leadership decision contains variables you cannot completely control.

So the goal isn't to become perfectly certain before acting.

The goal is to become aware enough to make better decisions while moving forward.

Awareness Is the Missing Half of Action

Action gets you moving.

Awareness helps you determine whether you're moving in the right direction.

Think about a real estate investor.

They might be extremely disciplined.

They analyze deals every day. They make offers. They negotiate. They raise capital. They acquire properties.

But what if the investment strategy they are pursuing isn't actually aligned with the life they want?

They could become very successful at a strategy they eventually resent.

The same thing happens with entrepreneurs.

You can become excellent at acquiring customers without asking whether you're acquiring the right customers.

You can become excellent at building a team without asking whether you're building the right culture.

You can become excellent at scaling without asking whether the thing you're scaling is actually worth scaling.

And coaches can fall into the same trap.

You can become extremely good at selling transformation to other people while remaining unaware of the areas in your own life where you are stuck.

The issue isn't a lack of action.

It's a lack of self-awareness around the action.

Your Biggest Blind Spot Might Be You

One of the most difficult things about awareness is that we don't know what we don't know.

We all carry an image of ourselves.

"I'm a good leader."

"I'm logical."

"I'm organized."

"I'm a great communicator."

"I'm an introvert."

"I'm a people person."

"I'm strategic."

"I'm calm under pressure."

"I'm good at reading people."

These descriptions aren't necessarily wrong.

But they can become dangerous when we become too attached to them.

Because eventually, the image we have of ourselves can prevent us from seeing the evidence that contradicts it.

You may believe you're a calm leader while your team experiences you as unpredictable.

You may believe you're an excellent communicator while your employees are afraid to ask questions.

You may believe you're organized while everyone around you is constantly trying to figure out what you want.

You may believe you're decisive while your partners experience you as impulsive.

You may believe you're logical while your emotional reactions repeatedly influence your decisions.

The question isn't simply:

"Who do I think I am?"

The better question is:

"What happens to the people around me when I show up as who I think I am?"

That's where awareness becomes uncomfortable—and useful.

Your Intentions Don't Automatically Equal Your Impact

One of the most important distinctions for leaders is the difference between what you intended to do and what actually happened.

You might intend to motivate your team.

They might experience pressure.

You might intend to hold people accountable.

They might experience fear.

You might intend to move quickly.

They might experience chaos.

You might intend to be direct.

They might experience disrespect.

This doesn't automatically mean the other person is right and you are wrong.

But it does mean there is information worth investigating.

If there is a significant discrepancy between your perception of your behavior and the perception of the people around you, that's a signal.

Don't immediately defend yourself.

Get curious.

Ask:

Why is there such a difference between how I see my behavior and how other people experience it?

That question can transform leadership.

The CEO Who Realized His Company Had Outgrown Him

I once worked with a potential client who was the CEO of a large company.

What stood out wasn't that he believed he had everything figured out.

It was the opposite.

He recognized something that many leaders are unwilling to admit:

His company had outgrown his current leadership ability.

His question was essentially:

"Do I need to become the CEO my company now needs, or do I need to step aside and bring in someone who can lead it?"

And then came the more difficult question:

"Can I be that person?"

He didn't know.

And that uncertainty terrified him.

But that uncertainty was also a sign of awareness.

He wasn't pretending.

He wasn't protecting his ego.

He was willing to investigate the possibility that the person required to lead the next stage of the business might need to be different from the person who built the previous stage.

That is a powerful leadership mindset.

Because sometimes the biggest bottleneck in your business isn't the market.

It isn't your employees.

It isn't your competitors.

It is you.

When the Founder Becomes the Bottleneck

As a business grows, the skills that helped you build it may not be the skills required to lead it at the next level.

The founder who was once required to make every decision eventually becomes the person preventing decisions from being made.

The entrepreneur who built the company through hustle eventually creates a culture where everyone is expected to hustle.

The real estate owner who personally managed every property eventually becomes trapped in property management.

The coach who built a practice around their personal presence eventually creates a business that cannot function without them.

This is why growth requires more than action.

It requires identity awareness.

You have to continually ask:

• Who am I becoming?
• What does my business require from me now?
• What worked at the previous stage that no longer works?
• Where am I creating unnecessary dependency?
• What am I unwilling to delegate?
• What feedback am I resisting?
• What part of my identity is making it difficult to evolve?

Growth isn't simply adding more.

Sometimes growth means letting go of who you had to be to get here.

The People Around You Are Part of Your Awareness System

You cannot see yourself completely by yourself.

This is one reason relationships matter so much in leadership.

The people around you often see things about you that you cannot see in yourself.

Your team sees how you respond under pressure.

Your business partners see how you behave when things don't go according to plan.

Your spouse or family may see emotional patterns that your professional network never sees.

Your clients see the difference between what you promise and what you actually deliver.

Your investors see how you behave when money is involved.

The question is:

Do these people feel safe enough to tell you the truth?

Because if they don't, you are operating with incomplete data.

If Nobody Can Challenge You, You're Operating Blind

One of the first things I look for when working with companies is whether people feel safe giving feedback upward.

Can someone report to their manager and say:

"I don't think this is going to work."

Can a team member tell the CEO:

"I think you're making the wrong decision."

Can a business partner say:

"I understand where you're coming from, but I think this could hurt us."

Can someone challenge the founder without worrying about retaliation?

If the answer is no, there's a serious awareness problem.

Because information has to travel upward.

If employees are afraid to tell leadership what is actually happening, leadership eventually starts making decisions based on incomplete information.

And incomplete information produces bad decisions.

This applies far beyond corporations.

It applies to family businesses.

It applies to coaching practices.

It applies to partnerships.

It applies to real estate teams.

It applies to investment groups.

Your leadership can only be as informed as the feedback you're willing to receive.

Stop Looking for Comfort in Your Relationships

One of the most useful ways to think about relationships is this:

Don't make comfort the primary purpose of your relationships.

Happiness is ultimately your responsibility.

Your internal state cannot permanently be outsourced to your spouse, your team, your clients, your business, or your friends.

The people around you can contribute to your life.

But they cannot be responsible for creating your inner world.

Instead, the people closest to you can serve another important function:

They can help you grow.

Sometimes that growth is uncomfortable.

Sometimes it comes through conflict.

Sometimes it comes through someone telling you something you don't want to hear.

Sometimes someone sees a destructive pattern in you that you are completely blind to.

That's valuable.

The person who cares enough about you to challenge you may be more valuable than the person who constantly agrees with you.

Are You Surrounded by People Who Make You Better?

Take a look at your current circle.

Not just your friends.

Look at your:

• Business partners
• Employees
• Advisors
• Coaches
• Mentors
• Clients
• Investors
• Family members
• Professional network

Ask yourself:

Who challenges me?

Who asks me difficult questions?

Who tells me when I'm wrong?

Who sees something in me that I don't see?

Who can disagree with me without being punished?

Who helps me recognize my blind spots?

Who pushes me to become better?

And perhaps just as importantly:

Who am I helping grow?

Because awareness isn't only about receiving feedback.

It's also about creating an environment where the people around you can become more aware of themselves.

That's how stronger teams are built.

Awareness Is Not Binary

You either have awareness.

Or you don't.

That's how many people think about it.

But awareness is better understood as a spectrum.

You have a certain level of awareness today.

Tomorrow, you may recognize something you couldn't see today.

A year from now, you may discover an entirely different blind spot.

That doesn't mean you failed.

It means you're growing.

A CEO can become aware of how they communicate.

Then later become aware of how their identity affects decision-making.

Then become aware of how their emotions influence their hiring decisions.

Then become aware of how their fear of losing control prevents the company from scaling.

There is always another layer.

That's why awareness is a lifelong process.

The Four Areas Every Leader Should Watch

There are several fundamental areas to pay attention to as you move through your personal and professional life.

1. Your Thoughts

What are you thinking?

What assumptions are you making?

What stories are you telling yourself?

Are you reacting to reality—or to your interpretation of reality?

For example:

"My employees don't care."

"They're not committed."

"Nobody understands me."

"The market is against us."

"I have to do everything myself."

These may be true.

But they may also be interpretations.

Awareness gives you enough space to examine the thought before automatically acting on it.

2. Your Emotions

What emotions are showing up?

Where do you feel them?

What situations trigger them?

What are you avoiding?

Many ambitious people respond to uncomfortable emotions by becoming busy.

They work more.

They check their phones.

They attend another meeting.

They scroll social media.

They chase another deal.

They start another project.

They keep moving because slowing down would force them to feel something they don't want to feel.

But if you're constantly running away from discomfort, you may also be running away from information.

Your emotions can tell you something.

Not necessarily that the emotion is correct.

But that something is happening internally that deserves attention.

3. Your Behavior

What are you actually doing?

More importantly:

How is your behavior being experienced by other people?

This is where feedback becomes critical.

You may think you're empowering your team.

They may think you're abandoning them.

You may think you're being decisive.

They may think you're being reckless.

You may think you're being patient.

They may think you're avoiding a difficult decision.

You may think you're being demanding because you have high standards.

They may experience you as impossible to please.

Again, the goal isn't to automatically decide that their perception is correct.

The goal is to become curious about the discrepancy.

Your behavior is data.

So is their response to your behavior.

4. Your Intuition

There is another level of awareness that many people describe differently.

Some call it intuition.

Others call it consciousness.

Some describe it spiritually.

Others describe it as an internal knowing.

Whatever language you use, most people have experienced moments where they knew something before they could fully explain why.

You make a decision that doesn't seem completely logical on paper.

You meet someone and immediately sense something isn't right.

You walk away from an opportunity even though all the numbers look good.

You decide to pursue something before you can clearly explain why.

And later, you discover that your instinct was pointing toward something important.

This doesn't mean intuition should replace analysis.

It shouldn't.

Business decisions still require data.

Investments still require due diligence.

Real estate still requires numbers.

Strategy still requires thinking.

But when you accept that you will never have every variable, another form of intelligence becomes useful.

You Will Never Have All the Information

Most important decisions are risky precisely because you don't have complete information.

You don't know exactly what the market will do.

You don't know exactly how a new hire will perform.

You don't know exactly how your next investment will turn out.

You don't know exactly what your company will look like five years from now.

You don't know exactly how a relationship will evolve.

You don't know all the consequences of your choices.

So waiting for perfect certainty is another form of avoidance.

The goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty.

The goal is to develop enough awareness to move through uncertainty intelligently.

And that starts with paying attention to your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

When you slow down enough to observe those things, you create space for another level of understanding to emerge.

The Real Leadership Advantage

The strongest leaders aren't necessarily the people who believe they are always right.

They are often the people who can recognize when they might be wrong.

They can say:

"I don't know."

"I may be missing something."

"Tell me what I'm not seeing."

"How is this affecting the team?"

"What am I doing that is creating this problem?"

"Is my leadership still appropriate for the stage we're in?"

"Who do I need to become next?"

Those questions require humility.

But they also create something incredibly valuable:

better information.

And better information allows you to make better decisions.

Before You Take More Action, Ask Better Questions

If you're a coach, entrepreneur, business owner, or real estate professional, you probably don't need another reminder to take action.

You're already moving.

The more important challenge may be learning to pause long enough to ask whether your movement is actually taking you where you want to go.

Before your next major decision, ask:

Am I solving the right problem?

Am I building the right thing?

Is this strategy aligned with the life I actually want?

What am I not seeing?

What feedback am I currently ignoring?

Where might I be the bottleneck?

What does my team experience when I show up this way?

What part of my identity am I protecting?

Who around me is willing to challenge me?

What uncomfortable truth might I be avoiding?

These questions won't give you certainty.

Nothing will.

But they can give you something more useful:

awareness.

Don't Just Take Action. Take the Right Action.

Action matters.

Consistency matters.

Discipline matters.

Ambition matters.

But action without awareness can take you further down the wrong road.

You can build the wrong company.

You can build the wrong team.

You can build the wrong portfolio.

You can build the wrong relationships.

You can build the wrong reputation.

You can even build a successful life that you eventually regret.

So don't abandon action.

Add awareness to it.

Pay attention to your thoughts.

Pay attention to your emotions.

Pay attention to your behavior.

Pay attention to the feedback coming from the people around you.

And become quiet enough to notice what your deeper intuition may be telling you.

You don't need a foolproof system.

You don't need 100% certainty.

You don't need to know every variable.

You need enough awareness to recognize when you're moving in the wrong direction—and enough courage to change course.

Because the goal isn't simply to climb faster.

The goal is to make sure you're climbing the mountain you actually want to reach.


TRANSCRIPT

We'll jump into the topic around action without awareness.

I bring this up because pretty much any person in the business world, in the investing world, in the sales world that I've worked with, they've heard it either at a business conference or from the personal development side.

I think the person who made this famous was Tony Robbins. And I love Tony Robbins, but he always talks about massive action.

Now, what he subtly—or not so subtly—doesn't mention in the beginning is that massive action without awareness is a disaster.

Most people who are at this level of achievement or leadership are actually fairly good at action. They will take action. Even if they procrastinate, even if they struggle at times, even if they delay, they will end up taking action.

The bigger problem becomes: where is this action taking you?

Is this the right path?

Is this the right strategy?

Is this the right tool?

Is this the right team?

How do we make those decisions?

And one of the biggest fears I also know for many people at this level is, let's say I take all this action for the next few months, few years, however long. What if I don't end up with what I'm really seeking?

What if I make things worse?

And the worst of it all: what if I regret this whole process?

What if I take all these actions and end up regretting this?

Sometimes that regret is the kind of business I built. Sometimes that regret is the kind of life I built. Sometimes that regret is the kind of team I built or the kind of people that I collaborate with.

And that's what we're trying to deal with.

Yes, let's take action. Let's take consistent action. But what we need to be aware of is how we build an aligned life, a better path, and a better team around us.

And by team, I mean whether those are people on your home team, people in your personal life, if you're building it or you're in it and you can improve it, or your business team.

For some people, that's mixed up. Many of us have our personal life mixed with our business life because our partners are life partners involved. Sometimes our kids are involved. Sometimes our friends are involved. All kinds of things like that.

So how do we become aware of our actions so that one doesn't lead to regret years later, but also so we feel confident to consistently move forward as we're learning?

Because there is no such thing as 100% certainty for anybody.

Everybody here will deal with all kinds of uncertainties in their personal life, in their business, and in the way they conduct themselves. And there's always risk.

That uncertainty is the thing that holds people back sometimes.

And this is part of the reason why there's a huge push on the business front and personal development front to be like, "Yeah, no, take massive action. Don't worry about the consequences."

That works to a certain degree, at a certain level, when you're not taking any action at all.

But once you start taking action, once you start building a team, once you start working, once things are moving forward, then that idea breaks down completely.

Because what if you take all the action and climb the wrong mountain?

You have your own mountain.

That mountain might be the life that you built.

That mountain might be the business you built.

That mountain might be the person you become.

All of them could end up with regret.

So how do we build enough awareness that we don't go towards there?

Again, I'm not saying this for you to have a foolproof system or to be 100% sure that this is the right direction for me. But how can we make it much more likely that you will end up with an aligned path?

And that's where awareness comes in.

Awareness and Ego

We went through this in the last couple of trainings around ego.

One of the biggest things that I've learned is when you don't have awareness, or when your awareness is not at a higher level, you end up getting blindsided by your ego.

And we define ego—I won't go too deep into it—as the image you have of yourself. That is the image that your mind has given you.

Sometimes that image ends up becoming your role.

"Oh, I have this status, that status. I'm a business owner. I'm a husband. I'm a wife. I'm this and that."

And that becomes sort of the image through which you look at the world.

It's not necessarily negative, but that image can blindside you.

For example, let's say you're the head of a company. If you take that way too seriously, if you get too connected to that, if you get too enamored by that title or that image, you might lose connection with your team. You might not be able to know how to work with other people well.

And I've seen that over and over.

Or you might have a different role or a different internal image for yourself that stops you from connecting with people.

You might say, "Well, I'm an introvert," or "I'm a kind of person who likes to go deep, but I can't connect with other people because they don't tend to go deep."

All these are ideas about who you are.

It's not really who you are.

And usually, those ideas tend to blindside us. Those images are wrapped into all kinds of thoughts, beliefs, emotions, all kinds of stuff that we're not aware of.

And this is the challenge.

What If You Could Be the Person You Don't Want to Be?

I want to give you a clear image of this.

It was a thought problem given by a philosopher who said something to the effect of: can you imagine yourself, within the current historical times, as Hitler's soldier?

Now, most people who are on the Western side will be like, "No. I not only cannot imagine myself as that. Those people are evil. I could not be that."

But the proposal is: what if you could be that?

What if there's a part of you that is exactly like that Hitler soldier, but you're not able to see that?

Which means that you have the potential to be just as evil as anybody else. You have the potential to be just as good as anybody else.

Now, once we start to believe that we're all good, we forget that there's a part of us that might come through the back door and blindside us.

That blindsides us in our day-to-day life.

For example, we might not be aware of being kind to other people, but we think that we're kind. But everybody else around us reacts in a different way for some reason.

Your behavior is perceived differently by others around you.

We might appear to ourselves as all good, but other people are like, "This person is an ass," in your team, in your community, in your family.

There was a joke that I love by George Carlin. Excuse my language: every family has an ass. If you don't know who that is, it's probably you.

So he was pointing to something very profound: that if you're not aware, we might be the problem in our family, in our community, in our business.

Can You Become the Leader Your Business Needs?

The other day, I was working with a potential client who is CEO of a large company, and I loved his awareness around this.

He knew his company had grown to a level where his leadership ability had been outgrown.

So this is how he put it for me. He said that either I need to become the CEO that my company needs, or I need to step aside and bring somebody who can lead my company.

And he asked me this question:

"Can I be that?"

"I don't know."

And he was terrified of that.

He's like, "It's not about me, but can I be that?"

A lot of people don't have that awareness.

I love that.

I said, "I don't know, but can we explore that? Let's see."

And that is the level of awareness we're seeking.

The other side of it is I'm also going deeper into this topic because I need you to start paying attention to other people around you.

There are lots of people around us that might think that they're good. They have it all figured out. They're competent. They can do this, that, and the other.

But they might not be aware, really.

They might have self-deluded themselves into thinking that they are that.

So how can we create a leadership where we become completely honest?

"Hey, these are the good parts of me that I understand. These are the competent parts of me that I get. These are the parts of me that I need to work on."

And let's create a culture around me where everybody's doing the same thing.

As far as I've seen, those are the teams that grow. Those are the families that grow. Those are the communities that grow.

Everybody Thinks They're the Good Guy

Think about war.

The most obvious thing in the world is we human beings have been at war with each other as far as we can think of in history.

Think of the older battles between little clans. Later on, they became kingdoms. Later on, they became nations, empires.

To this day, it's going on.

And when you talk to any side—whether you talk to, for example, right now, whatever is going on in the Middle East versus the U.S.—if you talk to everybody in the U.S., we're the good guys, or at least the people who are involved think we're the good guys.

And if you actually went down to Iran or any of these regions, you talk to them, they will say the same exact thing: that they're the good guys.

Everybody always believes that they're the good guys.

And that same dynamic shows up in your team.

Somebody will say something or react a certain way, and your conclusion will be that they're the problem and I'm the good person. I'm the good guy in this thing, or I'm the good girl.

So how do we deal with that?

The way we deal with that is what we're going to be covering this whole week.

But the starting point of that is there are certain areas to become aware of as you're moving forward, as we're all moving forward.

The first acknowledgement is: none of us are 100% good.

That is the first thing.

It was Alan Watts who pointed this out. If you could just do two things, and one of those things that he mentioned was that if you just accepted that you're an utter rascal, in his British format, then you will actually begin to realize that you're a human being with all kinds of imperfections and problems.

And that's not really the problem.

The problem is that you're denying that part of you.

As soon as you recognize that, you start to empathize with other people too.

You start to see other people as not having to be a certain way or having to show up like this, but, "Hey, what is going on with somebody? Who do I have around me, and who do I really want to be around?"

Who Is Around You?

This is where your leadership path comes in.

It's like, okay, where am I at?

Because awareness is not binary.

I'm at a certain level of awareness.

And who are the people around me that I need, who need to be at a certain level of awareness that would push me to grow as well?

And this is where things get interesting.

This is why a lot of people, in their life and in their business, become the bottleneck a lot of times because they don't surround themselves with enough people that would push them.

In fact, if you've ever talked to me about relationships, one of the biggest things that I've learned about relationships and that I apply is that I don't look for comfort in my relationships.

I don't look for happiness in my relationship, not even in my personal relationships.

The way I frame it for myself is that happiness is my responsibility.

That's my internal world.

The point of my relationships around me is to push me to grow.

And sometimes that's uncomfortable.

Sometimes that's conflict.

Sometimes that's facing the problems that I'm not facing because another person is able to see me much more clearly than myself.

Not everybody else—another person around me who cares about me but is able to see a part of me that's destructive that I'm not able to see in the moment.

This is where your family members, your team members, your community members come in.

Who are you surrounding yourself with?

Are they calling you out?

Are they challenging you?

Are they asking you the right questions?

Are they saying, "No. You know what? I get where you're coming from, but this is going to harm us no matter what your position is"?

Can Your Team Give You Honest Feedback?

In fact, that's one of the first things that I look for when I go into companies and organizations.

I look for: are the people who are reporting to their supervisor, to the next level, afraid to give feedback?

If they're afraid to give feedback, there's a problem in that company.

That means that the people at the higher level don't actually have clear feedback to run the company because they're not getting the data from the bottom up.

And that is a very hard place to operate.

Thinking through this, I want you to think about, in your own day-to-day life, what is happening.

First of all, are you seeing yourself clearly?

Do you have areas of blind spots that you're actively working on?

And are you actually actively asking other people to look for those and say:

"Hey, here are my strengths. Here are the things that I feel like I'm fairly okay at. Here are the areas I need you to fill in and challenge me and support me and ask me questions."

Is that actually happening?

Or are you kind of operating in your own silo and hoping that everything you do goes in a positive direction?

Because it usually doesn't.

Awareness Is a Spectrum

Having said that, I want everybody to start thinking about this week because it boils down to your awareness around a few simple things.

There are not too many areas. There are only about three or four areas we need to be very actively aware of.

If you're not aware of it, the signs are actually very obvious.

And again, I want to define awareness.

Awareness is not something binary, like you either have awareness or you don't.

It's more like it's a spectrum.

You have a certain amount of awareness, and you need to gain the next level of awareness for you to show up as a better human, as a better leader, as a better whatever in your life.

So where are you at?

And what is your frame of reference?

This is why they also say that awareness and growth is a lifelong process sometimes, because you'll always be growing.

Now the question is: are the people around you helping you grow, and are you helping the people around you grow as well?

It doesn't matter if there are team members in your business or people in your personal life.

The Three Basic Areas of Awareness

There are a few things for you guys to think about in your day-to-day life.

The basic level of awareness is your own thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

1. Thoughts

Are you just going around every day starting the day with doing, doing?

Or is there a pause and space between your actions before you move forward?

Are you analyzing your thoughts before you move forward?

2. Emotions

Are you noticing how your body reacts to things?

Which emotions are contained within your body?

They show up as sensations, as all kinds of emotions.

Do you pay attention to it, or do you run away from it?

Do you make yourself busy so you don't deal with the discomfort?

And if you don't deal with it and you move on to the next action, more than likely you have huge blind spots there.

3. Behavior

When you do something, is there a big discrepancy between what you think you did versus what other people think you did?

For example, if you did something and you think, "I did a great job," and all of a sudden you look at the reaction of the people around you and they're like, "Huh, that doesn't sound too good."

There's a big difference between your perception of your behavior and other people's perception.

You might think that you're a great leader, but other people around you are struggling with you.

You might think that you're an organized person, but other people can't make sense of where you are.

You might think that you are a calm person, but other people are struggling with you.

There was a time—I often share this—one of the first people that pointed this out to me was my wife.

I used to think I was a very logical person until my wife told me, "No, you're a very emotional person."

It's like, every time you lose your crap every now and then, how is that logical?

But in my mind, I believed I was a very rational, logical person.

But then, well, where is the outburst coming from if you're rational?

"Well, that's because you don't understand what I'm saying."

"Uh-huh. So you're reacting to what I'm saying. What does that make you like?"

Okay. That's breaking down my own logic system.

And then the same thing happens in the business world.

I will sit down with leaders. They'll be like:

"This person doesn't understand me. That person doesn't understand me. They don't follow instructions."

And then I'll ask them:

"Do you actually understand where they're coming from? Do you understand why they're acting the way they do—your team members, your partners?"

And they'll be like, "No."

Like, so you expect them to understand you.

You're expecting them to be like— but you're not willing to move forward as a leader and do the same.

And all of a sudden, it hits them, as if I'm saying it because they haven't thought about it that way.

So your thoughts, emotions, and behavior are basic areas, which means they're not a one-time thing.

It's a day-to-day practice.

In fact, it's a moment-by-moment practice.

This is why it's hard, because it actually takes energy to ask, "Is this serving my team, my family, or not?"

And it can become tiresome.

In fact, it can become draining at times if a lot of your thoughts don't produce the outcomes you're looking for.

Your emotions are constantly in reaction to your environment, whether it's your external or internal environment.

And the only thing you can do is run away from them by getting busy, by being around people, or being on social media, or whatever else your addiction might be.

Your version of addiction might be.

We all have it.

Then there's something that you're running away from.

If your behavior has a big discrepancy between what you think your actions are producing versus what the people around you are thinking completely differently, I'm not saying they're right and you're wrong.

It's like, why?

The question is: why is there a big discrepancy between what I think my behavior is and what other people think?

The Fourth Level: Intuition

And then finally, the fourth.

This is where you hear all kinds of language that doesn't make sense to people.

You will hear it as spiritual awareness or God awareness.

The easiest one to digest is intuition.

A lot of people know that they have a version of awareness.

And the easiest way to describe that is: you know something. You know to do something without being able to explain that.

Think about a time where you took action on something but you couldn't logically explain it, but you knew there was a part of you that knew that this was the right path.

And you only figured out in retrospect that this was the right path.

In the spiritual world or in the personal development world, we call that transcendental awareness or consciousness.

But you don't get that without being aware of your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

They're heavily dependent on each other.

And why is that important?

Because without a deeper level of intuition, it's actually hard to make a lot of decisions because most decisions in life are actually very risky.

You will never have all the variables figured out.

In fact, if you have 70% figured out, that's awesome. Most people don't even have that figured out.

So how do you make decisions that could affect you, your family, your team, your business, and they're risky?

That's where the intuition part comes in.

And how do you practice that?

Actually, it's a combination of those three.

It's the effect of you being aware of your thoughts, emotions, and behavior, and then being quiet enough to notice that there's another level of intelligence that's happening internally.

You don't need to believe in a religion.

You don't need to believe in something.

You don't even need to believe anything.

You just need to notice it.

As soon as you start to notice that there is an intelligence that's speaking—or not speaking, sounds very esoteric—but that's acting internally, you might not be aware of it because you haven't slowed down long enough to notice it.

And this is where a lot of spiritual or religious people might say, "Oh, I'm connected to God," or "I'm connected to my soul," or something, some language like that.

And to most other people who might be secular, they're like, "Well, what are they talking about? They might be delusional or lying to themselves."

They might be, because most of the surface levels of religions, they're just copying whatever they're told.

But there are deeper levels of that same tradition.

I'm not saying it's limited to religions.

There are scientists who are completely secular. You would talk to them; they have a deeper level of intuition about things.

There are people who are leaders who are completely secular, but they appear very spiritual to people.

At least they appear like they know more than what is obvious.

So what does that do?

That level of awareness starts to build more of a trust in yourself and in things around you because you start to see things as more interconnected.

Not because somebody tells you to.

You start to see it with your own observation.

We'll explore that further.

We All Have Blind Spots

But just as a summary, the main reason why I wanted to do this training is to understand that we all have blind spots.

We all have blind spots in our awareness, including me and every person in here.

How can we get better at, one, acknowledging that we do have those and we're struggling with those every day in our business, in our life, without even noticing a lot of them?

And two, how can we notice that we need to grow in those areas and we need to surround ourselves with the right people who can see those?

And then finally, just noticing that there are only three or four areas you need to work on in terms of awareness.

It's your own thoughts, your own emotions, your own behavior, and a deeper level, which I'll call transcendental awareness, or you can call it intuition.

Then I need to become aware of that level of awareness.

Few people access it.

Everybody has access to it, but few people go deeper in it because, one, they don't even know it exists.

Two, they don't slow down enough to notice it.

And once you start to navigate there, decisions become easier.

Things flow much better.

You get surrounded with the right people.

Things start to work out a lot better without you having to know every variable to make that decision.

And I'm not saying that as, "Take my word for it."

Experiment with it.

Once you notice these three areas—thoughts, emotions, behavior—you'll start to naturally start to go towards intuition more and more and more.