The Power of One More | Ed Mylett

It is another personal development or self motivation book that I read and honestly speaking, I liked the content and flow. This is the book I met with Ed Mylett and after completing the reading of this book, I started to follow Ed in twitter which is a sign that I liked him. I have 9 pages of highlights from Ed's book. I have read the last part of the book in a Starbucks with a melancholic mood and the book was a great friend for me at that time and place. So let's see what I highlight:

At its core, The Power of One More is about your willingness to do one more rep, make one more phone call, get up one hour earlier, build one more relationship, or do one more thing for whatever your situation calls for.

You can find your best life by doing “one more” than the world expects from you.

The individual thoughts and actions you take don't need to be profound. However, when you compound these small thoughts and actions and stack them up on top of each other, the resulting changes over time are profound.

“Winning is more fun than fun is fun.”

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

 —Andy Warhol

Deep inside, you know what's true about you.

What we perceive about ourselves is what we believe about ourselves.

Nobody is ever always right. As a child, you accepted much of what you were told, right or wrong. Your identity became the good and the bad parts of how other people influenced you. The unfortunate thing is that you were defenseless. Your critical thinking skills did not exist to give you the tools you needed to survive in the world.

As you grew older, you began to confirm your identity. If someone said you weren't a good student or a lousy athlete, that became a part of your identity. You still didn't have the capacity to disavow what you were being told. You grew into adulthood, and you carried with you these beliefs about yourself. Your identity had taken root. Your limitations became a part of you, and because they were so ingrained, you weren't even sure where they came from.

By the time you were old enough and able to question your identity, you were living with the identity you had adopted at a time when you didn't have a choice.

Your internal thermostat sets the conditions of your life.

Much like a thermostat, your identity regulates your internal self‐worth. It regulates your actions and results. Many people are under the false assumption that external factors are what regulates your thermostat. They believe that getting a promotion, getting married to the love of your life, or getting an advanced degree from college determines their identity.

However, if your thermostat is set the right way, it will transcend conditions and you will find success no matter what the external conditions are.

The truth is that you can acquire all the talents, skills, and abilities you want, but until they align with your identity, you'll fall short of the goals you've set. That applies across the board.

Unconsciously, we always find a way to get back to where our thermostat is set based on what we think we're worth.

Simply put, you can't achieve 100 degrees of fitness or wealth with a thermostat set for 75 degrees of fitness or wealth. Your thermostat boxes you in until you can create a new identity that triggers growth and change.

Once you buy into the concept that changing your identity is the key to changing your life, the question then becomes, “How do I readjust my thermostat to create my new identity?” That process is anchored in a Trilogy of core principles: faith, intentions, and associations.

One of the keys to changing your identity is to let faith move mountains in all parts of your life.

When our actions are based on good intentions, our soul has no regrets.

 —Anthony Douglas Williams

Apply good intentions to all parts of your life, and then watch what happens.

Your intentions will set your mind to work creating your new identity. Your brain works on what it is told. When you tell your brain what you want to attract, it will design internal messages that will feed the good parts of who you are and manifest themselves in a new identity over time. Intentions are the currency that lets you make deposits in your “identity bank” instead of you creating a run on that bank that will eventually drive you into identity bankruptcy.

Consider the words of T. F. Hodge: “What surrounds us is what is within us.”

You can't possibly stay at 75 degrees if you hang out with people operating at 100 degrees.

Until you clear out space in your life for the right associations, you'll be mired in relationships that have outlived their purpose and now hold you back. I'm not saying this part is easy, but at times, it is necessary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”

Like most things in life, when keeping a promise to yourself, the first step is always the hardest. I guarantee that once your train of thought pulls out of that station in your head, you'll find the momentum you need to act. You'll see results as you develop a new identity. Those results will be the fuel that keeps that train moving on down the tracks.

The opposite of self‐confidence is self‐sabotage. It's like a computer virus that lurks inside many people and is only triggered when you try to move forward with an important part of your life. Self‐sabotage triggers discouragement and doubt, the mortal enemies of self‐confidence.

When you strategically slow down your physical and mental being, you create a space that allows your senses and brain to reset. You see things differently, and you start to realize One Mores have been there all along.

You just needed to change the variables in your life to see them.

Remove procrastination from your life. As Victor Kiam, an entrepreneur and former owner of the New England Patriots, said, “Procrastination is opportunity's assassin.” Conversely, change is the instigator of opportunity.

When it's time to dance with a pretty girl, you can't sit on the sidelines, otherwise, another guy will be two‐steppin' with her in no time. And you'll just be left at the bar, grumpy and drunk.

Few things are more expensive than opportunities you miss.

English philosopher Francis Bacon once said, “A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”

It ain't over ’til it's over.

 —Yogi Berra

Confucius understood the battles that go on in a person's mind when he wrote, “The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can't are both right.”

Confucius knew that an individual executes to the level of what he or she believes in themselves. Confidence fuels your belief that you're worthy of making One More Try.

Simply stated, more tries equal more successes.

My advice to you is to keep hitting the pin˜atas of your life. Whether you can see it or not, you’re making more progress than you might think.

Your greatest gains and successes happen when you push yourself to new places and new limits. You create an extreme condition compared to what you're used to, and when you do that, you expand your capacity for success. Your new level of capacity becomes your new norm.

As you become more comfortable pushing yourself to extremes, you become more confident because you know what waits for you on the other side.

Much like batteries, if you don't use your energy, you tend to lose it over time.

You need to be the type of person who goes out and creates opportunities for yourself. Don't wait! Be aggressive and understand that One More Try does not have to be perfect. It simply needs to be attempted. When you hide from One More Try, all you're doing is disguising your insecurities.

As Mary Anne Radmacher once said, “Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is a quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’ 

Every day is a new life to a wise man.

 —Dale Carnegie

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “The common man is not concerned about the passage of time, the man of talent is driven by it.” Do you want to be common, or do you want to be a person of talent?

Urgency is the key. From my experience, there is a direct correlation between how fast you'll run versus how close you are to the finish line.

Think about the “timely” words of British statesman Lord Chesterfield: “Take care of the minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves.”

How you approach the first 30 minutes of your day will set the tone for the balance of the hours to follow. That means staying away from your phone, computer, television, or any other forms of input that can distract you from what's important in your life. Instead, use that 30 minutes to plan out your day; review your meetings, phone calls, and projects; create priorities, meditate, pray, stretch, practice equanimity, reaffirm your standards, and update yourself on your goals.

Before your brain becomes cluttered with people, events, and information of the day, it has a chance to focus.

Let me leave you with this one final thought about time from Charles Darwin. “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”

Stop wasting time and start bending time to your advantage to get on with the important things in your life.

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

 —Sigmund Freud

Think of emotions as neither negative or positive.

Once you learn to identify your emotions, they begin to loosen their grip on you. Your awareness means you're gaining control.

Your peer group is the most potent force and influencing agent in your world. You must place the utmost care as to who you let into this group. To succeed in life, your peer group's standards must align with your own. Their standards must become yours and vice versa.

People enter your life for “a reason, a season, or a lifetime.” Eventually, each person's association with you is revealed. When that purpose has been realized, your relationship changes, and other new associations move in to fill the void.

The people in each of these circles influence your life. The closer they get to the center of the circle, the more potential for ongoing, meaningful dialog and impacts on you. The boundaries between these circles are fluid and dynamic. Relationships constantly change, and people will move from one ring in the circle to the next depending on how your life or theirs changes.

Just like cars need regular maintenance, so too do your associations. Evaluate whether the proximity of the people in your inner circle is still appropriate or not. Don't be flippant about this. Be honest about what you need out of the people you need the most. As Benjamin Franklin cautioned, “Be careful when choosing a friend. Be more careful when changing a friend.”

The people you allow into your inner circle are among the most important choices of your life. Choose wisely, and your life is propelled to new levels of bliss and productivity. Choose poorly, and you'll suffer the slings and arrows of a life poorly lived.

The happiest people in life operate out of their imaginations and dreams, and not their histories.

Reframing your entire mindset is not a subtle action. It requires concentrated effort for an extended period to break pre‐existing ingrained thought habits.

There is no way you will experience your best life if you try to operate out of your history or memories of your past. It can't be done. Pause for a moment and let that sink in a bit more.

Even though one of the best parts about dreaming is how much it costs.

Dreaming is free.

More than that, dreaming is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves.

The first step of moving from your past to your future is acceptance. Deepak Chopra teaches us, “I use memories, but I will not allow memories to use me.” You know what gets swept aside when you hold on to your past? Your entire future.

More than 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy also understood the importance of looking to the future when he said, “History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.” Those words still ring true today.

Dreams are the product of your imagination at work. Imagining is therapy. It's healthy. So, one of the best ways to be good to yourself is to put your imagination to work.

So, if you want to change the quality of your thoughts, you need to change the quality of the questions you ask. It's the quality of the questions you ask that controls the quality of the thoughts you think. You'd be amazed at how finely tuned your brain is at finding you the answers you're looking for.

Better questions lead to better answers. Better answers lead to a better life. Most people don't do this. But One More thinkers do.

The Navy Seals are taught to ask the question, “What in this situation can I control immediately?” By contrast, most people ask themselves, “What could go wrong? What can't I control in this situation? What should I fear and worry about?” because most of us are hard‐wired to think that way.

Enlightenment travels a lot of different paths. Learn to live with the great unanswered questions in your life. Seek the answers daily. Some will come to you like a lightning bolt. Others will come to you over time.

The pursuit of your goals, when properly executed, is the transference of energy into action, creating one of the purest forms of One More in your life.

Too often, though, goals aren't designed as a conscious decision to improve your life. Often, you set goals as a reaction or a response to something that is happening in your life. Instead of playing defense, the key is to proactively fill your mind with the right kind of thoughts about your goals. When you do, your entire being is invigorated to accomplish those goals.

What you think leads to what you need. When you consciously access what you need, your mind sets about the business of making your goals a reality.

You can only create your best goals when you're at your peak state. This state occurs when your mind and body are functioning optimally together. Breaking it down further, think of your thoughts as your conscious mind and your body as your subconscious mind. When your conscious and your subconscious minds work in congruency, you have a powerful force that multiplies and heightens your peak state.

Compelling reasons translate into goals you're passionate about.

Goals are all about change. That's why your goals need to challenge you. If they aren't challenging, then they won't change you.

The more emotional you make your compelling reasons, the more energy and resiliency you will attach to it.

You can't lose 100 pounds if you don't first lose 2 pounds. Right?

Goethe understood this relationship when he said, “It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.”

Better goals create better outcomes. And better goals are created when you shed the negatives in your life while deciding what you want to accomplish. Again, there's no fancy formula here. I want you to keep it simple. Remember to create goals in your peak state.

To find your peak state, physically get your body moving. Go for a walk or a run. Hit the gym. Ride a bike. Take a swim or do some jumping jacks. When you do this, you're creating the energy I talked about at the beginning of this chapter. That energy generates endorphins that are released when you put your body in motion. The endorphins unleash your peak state, and your peak state plugs into your best creative state.

In your best creative state, you're able to see things differently. You imagine possibilities, and the adrenaline drives the confidence you need to develop your absolute best goals. When you generate this energy, it's transferred into your goals.

After you've created your best goals, one of the keys to realizing them is by repeating them often. When you repeat your goals, you fill your mind with thoughts your mind needs to help you accomplish your goals.

Elite performers create and review goals several times a day.

A brain works best when frontloaded with detailed and precise pieces of information.

Being specific means being accountable. There's no wiggle room. In business, it's not enough to say I want to make more money. I need to come up with an exact amount. This is why I decided I wanted to make $1 million before I turned 30. Part of the specificity of goals must include a date or a deadline. Otherwise, it is little more than an open‐ended wish.

If you don't establish what your standards are and clearly define them, other people will act to undermine them simply because they aren't clear about what is acceptable to you and what is not.

Sometimes, this downward push can unintentionally come from well‐meaning people in your life who may not even be aware they're doing this to you. For example, if high standards and boundaries don't exist between two people, the relationship will be troubled, and often fail.

The greatest companies and the dynastic sports teams always set the highest standards.

Goals without standards are just a bunch of rudderless thoughts and words. They're only unattached desires that will never materialize unless you pair them with the right standards. If you've created goals and fallen short, it's because your standards are not congruent with your goals.

Understand your “why.” Unless you're clear on your motivation, you won't develop optimal standards for your goal.

Break down a higher standard into detailed and achievable steps.

Be honest with yourself.

Don't let your ego run your mind when it comes to setting realistic goals and standards. Start at a place that makes sense for you. You can always upgrade your goals and standards once you start making progress.

Get help in areas where you're weak.

Surround yourself with like‐minded people on like‐minded journeys.

Use technology to set and maintain your new standards.

Unlike only writing down your goals and standards, you'll get the added boost of auditory and visual stimulation sent to your brain. Your brain's synaptic

Give dedicated thought to the relationship between your goal and your standard.

When your standard does not match what's required to meet your goal, you won't be properly motivated. If you set your standards beneath your capabilities, you won't feel challenged, and you'll lose interest.

Low standards produce low results.

Don't overthink it. Be diligent and thorough. Thinking is good. Overthinking is bad!

Set standards to please yourself.

I love Rick Pitino's take on this: “Set higher standards for your own performance than anyone around you, and it won't matter whether you have a tough boss or an easy one. It won't matter whether the competition is pushing you hard because you'll be competing with yourself.”

It's unhealthy to compare yourself or your standards to others. This is your journey and yours alone. Keep it that way!

To fully realize your best life, it's not enough to think about what you want to do. Your thinking can be pristine and spot on. Unless you put actions to those thoughts, you're not going anywhere in life. One More thinkers must also be One More doers. To frame the marriage of these two elements the right way, I want you to become an impossibility thinker and a possibility achiever.

You get rich by doing. More specifically, you get rich, highly productive, or happier when your thoughts and your actions are congruent.

Your thoughts are the starting point of your dreams, and you owe it to yourself to aim high with your dreams. The sad part is many people never get beyond dreaming. Their dreams end in their thoughts. That unrealized potential to do something great and be happy can be maddening.

Dreams are the essence of impossibility thinking. You must be able to dream to plant the seeds of what you think you can do in life.

It's when you combine that impossibility thinking with intentional actions aimed squarely at achieving your dreams that you become a possibility achiever.

Measuring your progress by measuring your actions makes you a possibility achiever.

In life, winning is all about how well you interact with others. Trying to understand what's on someone's mind is a critical element for a positive outcome.

Getting fired up about living your life well each day is important but nowhere near as important as having good habits.

Motivation and inspiration come and go. But rituals and habits are constant. Creating new habits involves three steps: The trigger, the action, and the prize.

Convenience and greatness cannot co‐exist. They are diametrically opposed forces. If you can accept that many of the great things you want in life will be inconvenient from start to finish, you're well on your way to becoming a One More thinker.

Paying the price of inconvenience is no guarantee you'll succeed. But if you don't inconvenience yourself and confront the difficult things in front of you, you'll have no chance at ending up where you want to be in life.

Satisfaction and self‐esteem come from accomplishing inconvenient tasks.

If you want to be wealthy, the path to a bigger bank account will be incredibly challenging and by no means convenient. When you live a life of convenience, you are at odds with living a life of greatness. If anything has come to you in a particularly easy way, you may like the result, but you will not savor it as much as something else you had to struggle and fight to achieve.

Best‐selling author Haruki Murakami put it best when he said, “Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.” If you're only interested in reaching a level of convenience, you'll achieve a lot less than doing whatever it takes when you're committed to a higher level of greatness.

Understand there is a significant difference between inconvenience and problems.

Treat truth like gold, even when you are stung by it.

Most things in life are caught, not taught.

Many of you probably don't feel qualified right now to be a leader. When you feel this way, draw upon this thought I often reference, “God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called.”

Show me any great organization, and I'll show you one that is cause‐ and mission‐driven. These places are single‐minded and ferociously focused on their end game.

Because I believe fully in the power of faith and prayer, I am never alone.

I believe, if practiced correctly, faith and prayers should be used as a time to search for inner peace, to reflect on the nature of your life, and to practice gratitude for the gifts you have been given.

One of the immutable laws of the universe is that everything comes with an expiration date. Sooner or later, everything ends.

If you're reading this and you're thinking about quitting on your dream, a business you've started, or anything important to you, don't put the pressure on yourself to meet that goal for five or ten years, or the rest of your life. Instead, think about not quitting for One More day.

In your darkest and most challenging times, I know many of you think about quitting and giving up. When those thoughts occur to you, just hold on for One More day.

There are three things I want you to know about One Last One More:

1. Live a One Last One More life as often as you can.
2. One Last One More works best when you treat every day as a new life.
3. Understand that it's never too late for One Last One More.

Cherish every moment you spend together and live your life in ways that will make them proud and make you happy.

If you have someone in your life who means a lot to you, start living your life with a One Last One More mentality toward them. Cherish every moment you spend together and live your life in ways that will make them proud and make you happy.

You can't control the end, but you can control the story in between.