Sage Solutions
Advice and insight about personal growth, personal development, and becoming your best self.
Sage Solutions
Reconnecting With Foundational Concepts
Ever feel like you're spinning your wheels in your personal growth journey? You're not alone. In this reflective episode, we take a step back to revisit and connect the core concepts that truly move the needle in personal development.
Courage isn't what most people think. It's not the absence of fear, but rather feeling that fear and moving forward anyway. This distinction matters because it means courage is deeply personal – only you know when you're truly being brave. We examine how this connects to taking consistent action, which creates the compound effect that transforms lives over time.
Sleep might be the most underrated superpower in personal development. When you're well-rested, you're more likely to maintain perspective, exercise self-control, and approach life with curiosity. Yet many of us sacrifice sleep while trying to optimize everything else. We explore why this fundamental element affects literally every other aspect of growth.
The most powerful tool at your disposal isn't a fancy technique or app – it's your ability to shift perspective. The hedonic treadmill causes us to adapt to positive circumstances until they no longer bring joy, but conscious perspective management lets us extract more fulfillment from our existing reality. Combined with focusing on your locus of control and meeting your six human needs in healthy ways, these interconnected principles create sustainable change.
Meeting your six human needs (certainty, variety, connection, significance, growth, contribution) prevents destructive behaviors. Growth and contribution are the ultimate fulfillment needs
Whether you're a longtime listener catching up or new to personal development, this episode provides a valuable framework for thinking about growth holistically. Subscribe to continue the journey, and remember – you are enough and deserve to fill your inner cup with happiness, confidence, and self-compassion.
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The Sage Solutions Podcast and content posted by David Sage is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. No coaching client relationship is formed by listening to this podcast. No Legal, Medical or Financial advice is being given. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice, diagnosis, or treatment of a psychotherapist, physician, professional coach, Lawyer or other qualified professional. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. The opinions of guests are their own and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of the podcast.
Welcome to the Sage Solutions Podcast, where we talk about all things personal growth, personal development and becoming your best self. My name is David Sage and I am a self-worth and confidence coach with Sage Coaching Solutions. Today's episode is a little different than most of the previous episodes that we've done. It's a bit of a check-in. We're going to be touching on and talking about some of the different concepts that we've talked about in previous episodes, kind of putting them together, putting extra stress on different things, almost a little bit of a way of rethinking. But really this is also a good way for somebody who feels behind in this podcast to catch up. But before we get into it, our goal with this podcast is to share free, helpful tools with you and anyone you know who's looking to improve their life. So take action, subscribe and share this podcast with them. We've come a long way in this.
Speaker 1:I think we just put out our 36th actual episode, not counting our introduction episode, and I think it's easy for a lot of the concepts that we've talked about to fall through the cracks. We started out talking about things like courage and how courage is not being fearless, but courage is about feeling fear and doing it anyways, and because you have to feel fear to be courageous, nobody else can know whether you're being courageous. I mean, there are things that obviously create fear and we can assume that somebody is being courageous right and 90 plus percent of the time we're probably going to be right there. But what is the purpose of having courage? Well, fear is one of the major things that prevents us from taking action. It's one of the major things that prevents us from doing the things that we need to do. Now, there's many other reasons, but remember that fear is not just fear of death. It's fear of looking dumb, it's fear of failing, it's fear of success. It can be fear of social repercussions.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes, when we aren't taking action because we're feeling a lack of of motivation or the feeling to do something right, or fear is preventing us despite our motivation. Now, motivation is kind of a tricky word to use here, because our motivations drive us to do everything. We don't have to feel motivated to eat delicious ice cream. We are heavily, intrinsically motivated to do that because we know it's going to be something that we're going to enjoy, so it doesn't take a lot of energy to get ourselves to do that. What we're really talking about is this feeling of feeling motivated? For the sake of making it easier to understand, I often refer to it as feeling inspired right? When somebody is feeling inspired, they have that extra motivation to do things, some extra willpower and effort, but at the end of the day, it's really about taking action right. So what we're trying to do is optimize for action Not every action is a good action but optimize for the actions that we are trying to take.
Speaker 1:Taking action using different tricks, like the five-second rule and reframing it as seeing action as the success and the outcomes as just learning by reducing the friction or forming habits so that the actions are automatic these are all ways of just getting ourselves to take action, and courage happens to be one of those. Mustering up courage, which we have to use willpower to actually execute on our courage is another way to get ourselves to do it. Feeling more confident can also help give us that inspiration to feel motivated. You can also utilize priming to put yourself in a good state, which can lead to that feeling of inspiration. Thinking about why it's important to us can do the same. Giving ourselves deadlines so that we feel time pressure there are many different tips and tricks to get yourself to take action and, as we talked about in the three tools episode, there are also ways that you can reduce that friction by keeping things simple so that you take action and so that your action is more efficient. By using the 80-20 principle and focusing on the 20% of things that give you 80% of results in the situations where that applies, which is surprisingly a lot of different situations. You can actually make your actions go further by using Parkinson's law to compress your time frames. Parkinson's law being a task will fill the amount of time you give it. It will expand to fill that time, but if you compress it, it will also contract to fill that time. So by using Parkinson's law and the 80-20 principle, we can become much more efficient in our actions. And by keeping things simple and by paring things down and adding time pressure motivation, you are more likely to both take action, because you've also cut out a lot of the wasted time.
Speaker 1:We also talked about the paradox of choice and how cutting down your options or keeping it simple and having one to four options makes you much more likely to make a decision. This all ties into how consistency is so vitally important when it comes to getting results over time. Getting yourself to take action is incredibly important, but getting yourself to take action consistently is much more important. It is what creates the slight edge that gives you a compound effect in your life. If you lift weights once a month, you're not going to get very far, even if you're not doing it super effectively. If you did it five days a week, you're going to get much more results than one blowout hard day that you got yourself to take action. Life is like a muscle, so build it, take action, build discipline, build those super muscles that actually help you take more action, like discipline, like courage, and eventually build habits and routines or strings of habits, so that more of it becomes automatic and you have to use less willpower to take action.
Speaker 1:Another major thing that we talked about was perspectives of reality. I went so hard on it during the two episodes split. That was perspectives of reality, but I honestly feel like throughout this podcast I have under indexed on it compared to the other core fundamentals, because it is probably the most overarching and I think that's why I sort of have been taking it for granted in this podcast, because as long as you remember that, you keep this within reason right and you're not shaming yourself for not being perfect with it or shaming others for not being perfect with it. The ability to reframe or look at situations from a different perspective is so incredibly invaluable. We are often caught up in the feelings, the emotions, the perspective that we are taking in that moment, but because of the way that our brains work, that perspective is inherently subjective. It is based on all of those factors that I just said, and there are many different ways to look at the same thing.
Speaker 1:There are many people who are in a much worse situation than you are, and when we don't do this, when we don't regularly think about our perspective of reality, we get trapped in our only one way of looking at things, thinking about things, and it's an easy way to get caught in the hedonic treadmill. Now, david, what is the hedonic treadmill? Well, it basically means that we adapt to the happiness and the pleasures in our lives and then they become normal, they become just the standard and we're no longer as thankful or happy about them because our happiness set point has been put higher. So that just seems like the normal, so it no longer has that effect. But by taking advantage of our conscious perspective, we can be grateful for things that we take for granted every day, and it's not always about being grateful, it's just about being aware, letting ourselves be happy about them. If you grew up with no air conditioning and then you get a place with air conditioning for a while, you are just over the moon about how much air conditioning has improved your quality of life. But then it becomes normal and you don't really think about it, despite the fact that it's still providing your life objectively, that same measure of value. And we do this in so many areas of our lives that we could get so much fulfillment out of life just by shifting our perspective regularly and, yes, mindfulness being present, gratitude.
Speaker 1:There are very helpful perspectives that we can automatically take, but just taking that step back and taking it in and seeing. Step back and taking it in and seeing my God, there are so many different things in my life that are wonderful that I didn't used to have. It's the biggest problem with stuff. You buy something, you like it, and then it just becomes normal, then it's just stuff. Well, that's why minimalism is so powerful. It removes all of the clutter of having stuff and I think that there's some value to that for sure. But I also think by just appreciating your stuff, just appreciating the things in your life it's not always about gratitude, just appreciation and acknowledgement, conscious awareness we can make fundamental shifts to how much value we get out of life. And this sounds corny, right, but it is possibly the most powerful thing you can do for your life is possibly the most powerful thing you can do for your life.
Speaker 1:Take control of your perspective. Get in the driver's seat. You don't have to view your life the way that you viewed your life. You can work through things. You are changing and shifting and growing, because here in this podcast, we are lifelong learners who are thinking in shades of gray. We're finding the balance, we're finding the nuance, and that's why it's another core fundamental. But it's that growth mindset, that being open, that allows us to do the rethinking of things, that allows us to learn and improve, instead of viewing ourselves as a set point that we can never get better. That's a lie If you're telling yourself that you are creating that, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 1:Another core fundamental that I've actually been talking about a lot, because it comes up in many of the topics that we've been discussing is focusing on your locus of control. Now, I've been talking a lot about how important it is to focus on your locus and how game-changing it is from an efficiency and mental health standpoint. However, most of the times it's come up in recent podcasts, it's been to reiterate how important it is to stop worrying about the things that you have no agency over, that you can't control, and that is fundamentally so important because it frees up so much of your life. But it really is only half of it. It's not just an argument for apathy. The other half arguably the original half of where I got this was not so much about the not worrying part, which is huge, but about putting your efforts towards the things that you can control. It's about taking action, using discipline to take action in the things that you can control. It's about taking action, using discipline, to take action in the things that you can control. It's about using your motivation, your inspiration, your effort, your energy, your willpower on the things where you can make a difference.
Speaker 1:Focus on your locus. That doesn't mean just ignore the things outside of it. It means take action, take agency, take control of your life. You have the ability to control many things in your life and often we lie to ourselves about how much it is. One of the fundamental parts of this core fundamental is being honest with yourself about how much control you really do have, not blaming everything else and taking a victim mindset. It's taking control of your life, realizing that you have a huge amount of agency, and only in the areas where you don't or where you let go or where you give yourself that freedom. But the point of letting go of those things isn't always about those things. It's actually just a fuel where you do have control, and, of course, we link that with perspective, because the number one thing you have control over is your brain, your thinking, your self-talk, your perspective and the way that you look at a situation. You can reframe things with your conscious perspective, and you can get there using your agency, your control over it, with your locus of control. I do want to point out, though, that approaching life with curiosity, curiosity and critical thinking so really thinking through things, not just accepting everything that you hear is still a huge part of this lifelong learning in Shades of Grey, and part of that is rethinking things.
Speaker 1:I also want to double down on a couple topics that I feel I haven't re-brought up enough, despite how powerful they are. Sleep Getting enough sleep affects literally every topic that I've talked about. Anything you want to do, you will do better if you've slept enough. Physically, mentally, socially, health-wise, it is the biggest driver that you could use to do all of the things that we are talking about here. To do all of the things that we are talking about here, you are more likely to take control of your conscious perspective. If you've gotten enough sleep, you are more likely to focus on your locus of control. If you've gotten enough sleep, you are more likely to have curiosity and critical thinking and be a lifelong learner and think in shades of gray if you've gotten enough sleep and think in shades of gray if you've gotten enough sleep. If you are a rechargeable battery, sleep is the ultimate way to fill up your inner cup. Sleep recharges your battery in a way to be able to do all of the things that you want to do, and if you're not getting good sleep or you're not getting enough sleep, I would strongly advise you to re-look at that, because you are sabotaging virtually every area of your life. Take sleep seriously.
Speaker 1:Another way to fill up our inner cup is by meeting our six human needs. Everyone needs some level of certainty, and everyone also needs some level of variety. We need to use shades of gray to find a balance here and make sure that we are getting our need for certainty met in functional ways and that we're getting our need for variety met in functional ways instead of ways that are detrimental to our life. Meeting our needs in productive ways causes us to not pursue unproductive, unhelpful, self-destructive ways of meeting these same needs.
Speaker 1:The second set is love, or connection, and significance, or respect. We need to feel connected to other people, we need to feel loved, and when we get that need met, we are so much more filled up inside. And on the flip side of that exact same coin, we want to feel some form of significance. We don't want to feel like we don't matter. We want to matter. We want people to care, we want people to like us. We want to feel like we are making a difference. We want to feel significant, and one of the best ways to get significance is to be respected. We have to find a balance and helpful ways of meeting these needs as well.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, we have the higher needs growth and contribution. We can find growth by learning and growing and improving ourselves, and by listening to this podcast, you're well on your way to helping yourself meet this need. But don't just stop there. Life is like a muscle, so build it and then last we have contribution. Contribution is possibly the highest need and always gets listed last in the six human needs, because it's not just the self-actualization of growth, but it's like the actualization of others. It is our human, altruistic, moral part. It is our ability to give service, to make a difference in the world, and when you can meet your need for contribution, when you can do something that helps others, you feel so much more fulfilled. Growth and contribution are the ultimate fulfillers as far as the needs go. So if you're looking for more fulfillment in your life, pursue growth and contribution. Meeting our six human needs keeps us in balance so that we can live our most effective life, and we can use many of the other tools that we've discussed to achieve that.
Speaker 1:Now, for the sake of not going too all over the place, I think we're going to wrap it up here. We're going to wrap it up here. I'm not trying to cram 36 episodes of reflection and insights into just one episode, so we'll have another one of these where we go back and reflect on more of the episodes that we've went through and put some extra stress or clarification where things need and just sort of flush it all out and talk about how they all connect like this. I hope the things we talked about today were helpful and I hope you got some value out of re-drilling into some of the topics that we've talked about in this podcast and remember you are enough and you deserve to fill up your inner cup with happiness, confidence and self-compassion.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Sage Solutions Podcast. Your time is valuable and I'm so glad that you choose to learn and grow here with me. If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on more sage advice. One last thing the legal language. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. No coaching client relationship is formed. It is not intended as a substitute for the personalized advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist or other qualified professional.