What’s in it for me? Learn simple strategies to get more out of life.
Friday Forward is a global phenomenon among inspiration-seekers. And it began as a simple weekly inter-office email. CEO Robert Glazer wanted to connect with his team by sharing messages around personal growth. So he passed along snippets of text, images, and stories that he found authentically inspiring.
Glazer's weekly note to his 40-person team was continuously "forwarded" on, growing this inspirational email blast to over 200,000 regular readers in over 60 countries. Glazer's now considered an expert in energizing people to achieve their best. In these blinks, you’ll learn about four life-changing principles, which he calls the "four capacities": areas we need to develop so we can stop underperforming and start living meaningful and inspired lives.
In these blinks, you’ll learn
what Harvard researchers view as the secret to a happy life;
why IKEA’s best corporate attribute might be underperformance; and
how one woman weathered the worst week of her life to change the world.
Identifying your core values increases your spiritual capacity.
When sociologists interviewed a group of non-Jewish people living in a European village affected by the Holocaust, they were surprised by what they learned. Some of the them had put their lives on the line to rescue the Jewish people who lived in the village. And some hadn’t. The sociologists wanted to see what differentiated the two groups.
It came down to parental discipline.
The individuals who had rescued Jewish people all had strong memories of their parents not only enforcing rules – such as “don’t cheat” – but also explaining why those rules were important. The rescuers understood the values that underpinned the rules.
Want to inspire people to be the best version of themselves? Don’t focus on rules; identify values.
The key message: Identifying your core values increases your spiritual capacity.
To live your best life, you need to build four distinct capacities: spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional. These blinks will challenge you to build these capacities through thought exercises. You can do these exercises at any time, but they're designed to be built into your morning routine.
Now, let's dig into the spiritual capacity. Successful individuals, organizations, collectives, and families all have one thing in common: they’ve identified their core values. What’s more, they live them out. That includes questioning themselves or others at times when those values are compromised.
When building your spiritual capacity, focus on identifying your core values and your authentic purpose.
Not sure where to start?
Try the “one last talk” exercise. Imagine you’re given 20 minutes to give a talk on absolutely any topic. But there’s a catch: this will be the last talk you give before you die. What do you want to pass on to the world before you go?
Don’t have time for a 20-minute talk? Then try the “legacy” exercise. All you need to do is answer one question. How would you want to be remembered in 100 years? Answering the question honestly requires you to examine your life in detail. Does the life you’re living connect with the legacy you want to achieve? And if it doesn’t, what changes do you need to make?
Plan to succeed at living your core spiritual purpose.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Ed Sheeran, the ordinary boy from Halifax, England who shot to the top of the pop charts. Even if you aren’t familiar with him, you’ve more than likely hummed along to one of his songs at some point.
Well, what does Ed Sheeran have to do with you? He was an overnight success. You couldn’t possibly have that kind of good luck. Actually, luck has little to do with Sheeran’s success. In interviews, he’s revealed that he played over 300 live shows and performed at countless open mic nights before he was “discovered.” And there were plenty of points where he wanted to give up. Why didn’t he?
Because he didn’t have a back-up plan. Sheeran knew what his core purpose was. He gave himself no other option but to succeed in achieving it.
The key message is: Plan to succeed at living your core spiritual purpose.
Don’t plan to fail. Think big! Think like Ed Sheeran. Or, for that matter, US President John F. Kennedy. In 1962, JFK claimed that he was going to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. We all know how that played out, but at the time JFK’s goal seemed absurdly ambitious.
The moonshot is a prime example of what author Jim Collins calls a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG. And in 1962 almost no-one thought JFK’s BHAG would work.
So, why did it?
Well, for one, it was specific and measurable. The goal was to put a man on the moon. Not to improve the space program. Not to make progress towards a lunar landing. To put a man on the moon.
It also had a deadline. JFK budgeted eight years to pull off the moon landing. His team did it with one year to spare, and under budget to boot!
As JFK himself said, it was a goal that served “to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.”
Note that phrase: the best of. And consider this: in order to give the best of yourself, you also need to decide what you’re going to be bad at. Look at IKEA. The Swedish furniture giant is an all-round success story, right? Well, IKEA got successful because they decided what they were going to be bad at: assembling furniture and delivering on customer convenience. That’s fine! IKEA has a $40 billion valuation, because being bad at what they don’t care about lets them be the best at what they do care about.
So what’s your BHAG? What are you going to be good at, and bad at, to make it happen?
Intellectual capacity lets you follow through on your dreams.
Life hacks! There’s a huge appetite for these tips and tricks that seem to offer a shortcut to success. So, when venture capitalist Morgan Housel offered to share his hacks, people were eager to hear them. Here are a few…
Housel’s marketing hack? Make a product that everyone needs.
His writing hack? Write daily until you get good at it.
His learning hack? Read a book. Read another. Repeat as necessary.
What’s the lesson here? There are no shortcuts. Not everyone can put in the hard yards needed to achieve lasting success. But you can, if you build your intellectual capacity.
The key message is: Intellectual capacity lets you follow through on your dreams.
As we learned in the last blink, developing your spiritual capacity is all about finding your true purpose. That’s great. But without follow-through, your goals are nothing but empty dreams. That’s where intellectual capacity comes in. You need to build the ability to design intelligent goals and cultivate the discipline to achieve them. You need to cut through the noise of everyday life and carve out the time to focus on what’s important.
Here are a few exercises that can help trim your to-do list and recenter your energies.
First, try to detangle urgent tasks from important tasks. All too often, a so-called “urgent” task – think answering an email – can distract you from doing an “important” task – like writing a business plan for your side hustle.
Don’t attend to the urgent and forget the important. Instead of making a to-do list, make a four-square grid. The first square is for tasks that are important and urgent. Do these first. The second is for tasks that are important but not urgent. Do these second. The third square is for tasks that are urgent but not important. Do these last, if you have time. What about the fourth square? Well, that’s for tasks that are neither important nor urgent. In other words, you don’t need to do them at all!
Do you often find yourself bogged down in tasks that are neither important nor urgent? You might want to create a stop-doing list. This is just what it sounds like: a list of things that you’re no longer going to spend time or energy on. This opens you up to focus on key goals and gives you permission to say no to tasks that are simply not important.
Here’s a final success hack: stop spending time on tasks that don’t serve your objectives, and keep your eyes on the prize!
Form good habits and your goals will take care of themselves.
Are you a serial snoozer, always swiping the five-minutes-more button on your morning alarm? Sure, you gain an extra five minutes of glorious sleep. But what are you missing out on?
Entrepreneur Hal Elrod surveyed the daily routines of some of the world’s most successful high achievers, from CEOs to artists. He found their morning routines all shared six elements. Silence – which involves meditation or reflection. Affirmation – or employing positive self-talk. Visualization – which helps you build a mental image of what you’ll achieve in your day. Exercise – to wake your senses and get your blood moving. Scribing – also known as writing or journaling. And, finally, Reading – taking time to be inspired by the words of others.
Developing and sticking to a morning routine is simply one of the most effective ways to form the discipline necessary to achieve your maximum potential. Surely that’s reason enough to end your relationship with the snooze button.
The key message here is: Form good habits and your goals will take care of themselves.
So, you’ve identified your core values, and designed an achievable path to accomplishing them. Now, time to follow through. How? If you make a habit of working towards your goals, it will become instinctive.
It takes 21 days to form a new habit. But which new habit? Well, if you’re clever about it, you can form more than one at the same time. Setting a keystone habit can create a domino effect, sparking yet more good habits to form. Exercising, for example, is a keystone habit that can spark the habit of better eating. And people who exercise and eat well tend to be more productive and less stressed. Other keystone habits include journaling, and sitting down to eat dinner every night.
One habit you should definitely try to cultivate? The habit of excellence. When Ann Miura-Ko took an internship at Yale’s department of engineering, she told her father the position was menial. Her father asked her: How are you going to do a world-class job?
Inspired by her father’s question, Miura-Ko made a habit of excellence in everything she did, from making the crispest photocopies and overhauling the filing system, to choosing the tastiest doughnuts for team breaks. When she toured the Dean’s friend, a man named Lewis, around the department, naturally she did an excellent job.
Well, this Lewis was Lewis Platt, CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Miura-Ko impressed him so much that he offered to mentor her. Now, she’s one of the world’s most successful venture capitalists.
See? Good habits can bring even better rewards.
Develop your physical capacity to achieve ultimate peak performance.
How do you train for a marathon? With carb-loading and daily runs? Your body might be prepared, but will you have the mental strength to keep going when every muscle in your body is crying out to stop?
How do you study for a high-pressure exam? With flashcards and late-night study sessions? You might be mentally sharp, but is your body ready to meet the demands of grueling daily study? Will you be sharp and healthy on exam day?
If you’re interested in achieving peak performance, your mind and body need to be in shape, no matter what goal you’re working towards.
The key message is: Develop your physical capacity to achieve ultimate peak performance.
A desk worker who exercises little and eats poorly isn’t performing to his peak, no matter how good his last performance review was. Don’t neglect your physical fitness, even if you’re working towards an intellectual or spiritual goal. A fitness practice can instill the grit, stamina, and determination necessary to perform at maximum capacity.
Here’s the good news: by making just a few small changes, you can kick-start your fitness.
Start at the micro-level. For example, if you’re trying to be more active and watch less TV, hide your remote or remove the batteries. If you want to hit the gym first thing in the morning, lay out your workout gear the night before or put your running shoes beside your bed.
Next, assess your environment at a macro level. What overarching trends and habits are preventing you from reaching your fitness goals? Let’s say you’d like to improve your health by cutting down on drinking alcohol. What environmental factors might inhibit your success? If you and your buddies meet up for a drink most nights a week, you’ll need to limit your social sessions with them, and find new friends or activities with which to fill your remaining evenings.
Willpower is all well and good, but creating an environment that allows you to succeed is key to achieving fitness goals.
Sports benefit the body and the mind.
At the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing, US swimmer Michael Phelps clinched the gold medal in the 200-meter butterfly. Phelps’ performance was an undeniably impressive athletic feat. What makes it even more impressive is the fact that, halfway through the race, his goggles had filled with water. Despite this physical setback, Phelps was able to draw on his mental training to reach the finish line. He had put in hours visualizing himself winning the race, right down to counting out the number of strokes he would need to make it to the end.
Elite athletes like Phelps use mental training to take their performance from great to world-beating. Knowledge workers, too, can boost their mental performance using skills and strategies from the sports world.
The key message is: Sports benefit the body and the mind.
Team sports, in particular, don’t just benefit your physical fitness. They teach resilience, discipline, persistence, and collaboration.
These days, many parents are hesitant to sign their children up for team sports. They want to shield them from harsh competition and protect them from the pain of losing. But competition is a part of life and losing is unavoidable. Only 1 percent of children that participate in high school team sports in the US go on to become professional athletes. But 100 percent of children will need to collaborate on a team in the future. 100 percent of children will need to handle professional disappointment with resilience. And 100 percent of children will need discipline and persistence to overcome challenges. Sport builds more than muscle. It builds character.
Additionally, team sports deploy strategies that are completely transferable to other arenas. Take team cycling. Inspired by the way flocks of birds travel through the sky, team cyclists ride in a peloton formation, in which riders at the front bear the brunt of wind pressure, while riders in the middle have a comparatively easier ride. At intervals, riders change position, taking turns with the grunt work and breaks.
Imagine adopting a peloton mindset at work or in your personal life – taking the lead when it suits your strengths, then letting others shine when you need to rest and recuperate. When you make sports part of your routine, strategies like the peloton formation will become second nature.
Emotional resilience is the x-factor in overcoming challenges.
In 1981, Dr. Mary-Claire King had one of the worst weeks of her life. At the start of the week, her husband told her he was leaving her for one of his graduate students, effective immediately. She was left as the sole caregiver for her then six-year-old daughter. A few days later, her home was burgled. And to top it all off, that Friday she was scheduled to pitch for grant funding at an out of state conference.
No one could have blamed Dr. King for putting off her conference pitch and calling it a week. But somehow, she found the emotional resilience to make her presentation as planned. She successfully secured funding for her project – a project which ultimately identified the BRCA1 gene. Women who carry the BRCA1 gene are more susceptible to breast cancer. Thanks to Dr. King’s research, not to mention her emotional fortitude, these women can now access life-saving preventative cancer care.
The key message is: Emotional resilience is the x-factor in overcoming challenges.
Spiritual clarity, intellectual rigor, and physical prowess are all necessary to accomplish your goals. But these three elements won’t get you over the line if the voice in your head tells you “I can’t do this” or “it’s too hard.” That’s why it’s crucial to cultivate emotional well-being.
So, what does someone operating at full emotional capacity look like? Let’s turn back to Dr. Mary-Claire King and her terrible week to find out. Despite all of the setbacks, King kept focused on her goal.
When she found herself suddenly separated from her husband and vulnerable after a burglary, she found the strength to persevere. Dr. King's emotional resilience looks a lot like self-reliance. But there's another key detail to Dr. King's story. Before the conference, she called her mentor for advice. He pushed her to attend the conference and encouraged her to bring her daughter with. He even sat with her daughter while King gave her presentation.
All of us will experience bad days, weeks, or even years. Emotional resilience doesn’t mean shutting yourself off from others. Emotional resilience is built by surrounding yourself with trusted mentors and supporters, asking for and accepting their help when it's needed.
Cultivate emotional well-being through reflection and connection.
“How was your day?”
“Fine. How was yours?”
“Fine.”
Sound familiar? Monotonous dinner table conversations like these are squandered opportunities: a missed chance to connect with loved ones, and also to reflect on our own experiences. Are you ready to push past this tired script? Try the rose, thorn, bud exercise. Share the best part of your day – that’s the rose; the worst part of your day, or the thorn; and lastly the bud – something in your day that gave you hope.
Your dinnertime talk is bound to be less boring. Even better, through reflection you cultivate that critical emotional capacity.
The key message: Cultivate emotional well-being through reflection and connection.
When you reflect, you force yourself to tune into your experiences and be honest about your emotions. Get in the habit of examining your emotions and expressing them in a healthy way instead of bottling them up.
But don’t just stop at reflection. The other key to emotional well-being? Connection. A Harvard study, conducted over 75 years, found that there was one factor far more significant than diet, exercise, or material wealth in determining happiness: quality relationships. That’s quality, not quantity: hundreds of superficial social media connections are worth far less than one deeply authentic friendship or partnership.
Forming deep bonds takes work. But you’re up for the challenge, aren’t you?
It’s easy to like posts on Facebook and Instagram. But if you really want to engage, take the interaction offline. A phone call or dinner both offer the chance to emotionally connect in a way that’s not possible through social media.
It’s easy to compartmentalize your relationships, keeping your friends separate from those you share more functional relationships with, like colleagues and neighbors. While not everyone you meet is a friend in the making, try not to see any relationship as purely transactional. Your assistant, the delivery guy, the woman down the hall: they’re all people. And you might have more in common than you think.
It’s easy to ask, What’s in this for me? when you’re connecting with others. But try embracing your altruistic side. You may not get any reward for helping a stranger or performing a random act of kindness. But your inspirational generosity will ripple outward into the world.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks:
We live in a world that’s full of inspiring people and stories. What’s stopping you from leveraging that inspiration to achieve your dreams and get the most out of life? If you cultivate the four capacities – spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional – you may be surprised at just how much you can accomplish.
Actionable advice:
Say no successfully.
Focusing on a goal can sometimes mean saying no to tasks that distract from that goal. When you say no, include all the elements of a good rejection. Acknowledge the request. Admit that your priorities lie elsewhere at the moment. Clearly refuse the request. And make it clear that you’re consistently rejecting all such requests.
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What to read next: Elevate, by Robert Glazer
So, you’ve finished the blinks to Friday Forward and you’re feeling inspired to dive into that new project, scheme to reach that dream, or redesign your life around the things that matter most. Don’t let us hold you back! But if you ever find yourself needing another dose of inspiration, why not check out Elevate, another title by Glazer. The blinks are packed with tips and strategies to encourage you to push beyond your limits. Think bigger, push farther, and work harder than you ever thought possible.