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4 Steps To Make Peace With Your Inner Critic And Get Out Of Your Own Way

We’ve all got one — and it can seem like it will never leave us alone. Just when you’re about to launch that new product, or give that important presentation, or interview for that job you really want, it comes knocking at your door.

I’m talking about your inner critic. That voice inside your head that nags at you, tells you you can’t do it, and reminds you of all the times you’ve failed.

Meet Joel Brown, a guy who’s appeared on magazine covers and TV shows, worked with Tony Robbins, and spread the knowledge of self development all over the world. He’s the founder of Addicted2Success, a motivation site with an audience of over 80 million viewers.

He’s just like you — except he’s made peace with his inner critic. He’s a testament to the kind of success that’s possible when you finally get out of your own way.

“We are all designed in a certain way and born into this world for a purpose. A lot of us really just get in our own way all the time,” Brown says.

If you’re looking for all the details, on how Brown got his start just four years ago check out this week’s podcast episode, “Making Peace With Your Inner Critic w/ Addicted2Success Founder Joel Brown”

Brown dropped out of high school in 11th grade, and never attended college. If anyone’s got reasons why they can’t make it big, it’s him.

Yet he hasn’t let any of that stop him. He says the secret to his success has been having the courage to look at his limiting beliefs and heal them.

“My body doesn’t just hold organs and blood, there’s also an emotional body,” Brown says. “Once you understand that you can start clearing away things and your true calling comes through.”

Brown’s true calling has emerged in the form of his blog and podcast and producing the movie RiseUP, which has inspired millions to look inward and overcome their mental blocks.

Below, Brown shares his top 4 steps to create a mental framework that cuts through the excuses and empowers you.

Step #1: Bring curiosity to your negative beliefs. Naturally as human beings we are skeptical. Approach your negative beliefs objectively — get curious about why they are there. Don’t identify with them or make yourself wrong for them, but rather see them as a natural response to your life experiences and allow them to be there. Perhaps you’ve struggled to make the money you want, so you’ve developed the belief that making money is hard and unlikely.

By bringing curiosity instead of resistance or judgement there is space for those beliefs to have a voice and ultimately begin to complete and disappear.

Step #2: Feed your positive beliefs. “Turn the noise down on negativity and turn the noise up on empowering beliefs,” Brown says. Tune into the thoughts that encourage you and give them more attention — what you focus on grows. If you’ve got a belief that you’re charismatic and great at making friends, reinforce that for yourself. Take it a step further by imagining yourself networking with people who uplift you. You’ll open up this avenue for yourself in real life by truly believing it’s possible.

Step #3: Be committed to mastery. Be willing to become a master at whatever is important to you- overcoming a limiting belief, creating a breakthrough in your business, or initiating a daily routine. When you live your life with the framework of mastery you have the opportunity to sit in the student chair and prioritize your own learning and growth over anything else.

Each day focus on a 1% shift- it could be waking up with gratitude, taking a short walk, reading a chapter in a book, making an important phone call, or saying yes to something that feels out of your comfort zone. Before you know it day after day you will begin hacking away at anything that stands in your way.

Step #4: Create a 10-year vision gameplay. Envision what you’d like your ideal life to look like in 10 years. Dream big — don’t underestimate what you can accomplish in a decade! Start with the 10th year, defining every aspect of your life from personal relationships, to business, finances, health, recreation and travel. Then, write down everything you would need to have done in the 9th year to get there, in as much detail as you can. Break it down for yourself month by month if you can. Repeat by going backwards in time each year until you get to the present moment. Commit to this vision and to actually taking the steps you’ve listed to get there — it is possible.

5 years ago, Brown went through this process, and today, he’s already living his 10 year vision and then some.

This article was originally published on Forbes

February 28, 2018
The Single Trait That Leads To Success, According To NBA Champion Ronny Turiaf

Success is unpredictable — there are very few things we can do, if it all, to guarantee it.

Whether you are trying to start your own business, training to run a marathon, or working on your own side hustle, life tends to throw things in our path that challenge us, provoke us, and test our commitment. Hardly anyone who’s reached the top will tell you that the road was easy, but they all have one thing in common: perseverance.

Take it from a former NBA champion, who weathered open heart surgery, financial hardship, and a host of other injuries, for the sake of pursuing his dream.

I’ve never met anyone quite as dedicated as Ronny Turiaf — he’s played basketball for the LA Lakers, Miami Heat, and the NY Knicks, to name a few. He’s also the founder of the Heart to Heart Foundation, which provides medical care for individuals who lack health insurance and can’t afford the care they need.

I spoke with Ronny about his inspiring journey on this week’s podcast episode, “The Single Habit That Leads to Quantum Success, According to NBA Champion Ronny Turiaf.”

Not many people are forced to choose between their life or their dream, and choose their dream. That was the position Ronny found himself in when he was about to be drafted for the LA Lakers in 2006, but was suddenly denied contract.

A medical examination revealed he would need to undergo open heart surgery, or never be able to play basketball again. To make matters worse, he didn’t have health insurance and couldn’t pay for the surgery.

Growing up in poverty, Ronny had always been motivated to play basketball with the hope of one day being able to provide for his family. Over the years he sacrificed birthday parties, family gatherings, and quality time in order to practice basketball.

The medical situation was devastating to Ronny — not only could he lose his life, but everything he had hoped for in training over the last eight years. Fortunately, others came to his aid to help Ronny finance the surgery, and he opted to go through with it.

The operation was successful, but it was Ronny’s perseverance and focus that really stood out.

He remembers saying: “You are going to have to kill me because I will make it back to the basketball court. There is no alternative.”

He could have succumbed to fear, and his journey would have ended right there. Instead, he summoned the courage to keep going and proceeded to shine in the NBA, making his childhood basketball dreams a reality and winning the NBA Championship in 2012 with the Miami Heat.

Through Ronny’s story we see that success is defined by the choice to persevere through the moments that test us. When we commit to overcome every obstacle life throws at us, we become unstoppable, and success is inevitable.

Consider applying the following tips to master the art of perseverance:

Listen to your inner voice to help you make crucial decisions.

When you find yourself at a fork in the road, check in with yourself and honor what your intuition or “gut feeling” is telling you. Sometimes, your own voice will say something different than what others say. Remember that you know yourself best and therefore have the best information set to determine what’s right for you. Regardless of what you do you will always make someone unhappy. Ronny says, “the only thing I can control is that it feels right in my belly, and that’s the only thing that can make me at peace and at ease with everything I do.”

Push through the pain by focusing on your goal.

Having a successful mindset involves accepting that it’s not always going to be easy. You will encounter trials that test how bad you want it. In the ten months leading up to winning the NBA championships in 2012 Ronny broke his hand twice. His advice? “Whether the storm.” When you find yourself in pain or challenged, remind yourself why it’s worth pushing through. Reaffirming your goal and the “why” behind your actions is the greatest fuel to empower you to keep going when it gets tough.

Apply the same drive to every aspect of your life.

It’s difficult to feel successful when you are only pursuing success in one aspect of your life. If your job is going great, but your health is another story, you’re bound to feel like a walking contradiction. To truly feel success from the inside out, you’ll need to apply the same drive you currently have in one area… to all areas. Ronny says, “I gave myself too much in one category and the others suffered. I asked myself, Ronny how can you find balance in all areas of your life? And yes, you are asking yourself to do something that is very difficult, but something that is worthy in your eyes, because I want to be great in everything that I do.”

This article was originally published on Forbes

February 28, 2018
Why This 29-Year-Old Left Her Desk Job To Prosecute War Crimes With Technology

Due to ongoing political turmoil and social unrest, the Middle East is not exactly everyone’s dream job destination right now.

Except for one daring woman, that is.

Sweet, polite, and just 29 years old, Raquel Vasquez Llorente doesn’t look like the kind of person you’d expect to see flying into military airports in the midst of war. But don’t let her appearance fool you — she packs a serious punch.

The lawyer and 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honoree is an original team member behind the innovative app eyeWitness to Atrocities, developed by the International Bar Association (IBA), which aims to empower civilians to capture and report evidence of war crimes on their smartphones.

I caught up with Llorente about her taste for pursuing dangerous work on this week’s podcast episode, “Fueling Your Passion: When To Choose Anger Over Love w/ Raquel Vasquez Llorente”

Growing up in a tumultuous northern Spain during the 1990s, Llorente was exposed to the harsh face of reality from an early age. It was then that she developed an interest in civil violence and its implications for human justice and desired to pursue a law degree.

Her path to prosecute war crimes started out relatively peaceful, with a government internship at the National Commission of Energy in Spain checking algorithms for electricity prices. “It wasn’t something that kept me awake at night,” says Llorente.

It wasn’t until she ended up in Libya in 2013, at the start of their civil war, that she could see the impact of these crimes on civilians.

In that process, Llorente found that, “The things that drive me the most are things that make me really upset and angry. Impunity for war crimes really upsets me to my limits so I wanted to go into international justice and feel that upset all the time about the crimes that are being committed and going unpunished.”

Llorente’s anger became her fuel and instead of repressing it, she let that guide her forward. Ultimately, leading her to join as one of the first few team members of eyeWitness to Atrocities, where that fuel is used daily through channeling technology as a means for ending impunity for war crimes.

Since launching last year, eyeWitness users can download the app for free to their phones, to record, store, and send footage that can later be verified for use in media coverage or legal cases.

The app automatically records the GPS coordinates of where the image was captured and stores the image in a vault maintained by LexisNexis , the world’s largest electronic database for legal information and public records. It’s aiming to increase the number of successful prosecutions by eliminating the need for the person to show up in court especially if they are unwilling or unable to testify.

Through Llorente’s participation at eyeWitness, since joining in 2015 as a war crimes analyst, she is able to combine all of her passions into one form of self-expression- her love of law, love of being in the field, and love of seeing justice served.

Llorente says. “It is very important to love what you do, but almost more important that whatever you do or are trying to solve makes you upset and angry so you keep going. If love works then that’s fine and if it works better being upset then go there instead.”

It’s not every day a woman chooses to tackle the brutal offenses of war criminals through harnessing her anger. Yet, what a different world we might live in if expressing anger were not so uncommon.

How will you step up to create the kind of world you desire living in?

This article was originally published on Forbes

February 28, 2018
One Millennial’s Open Conversation About Body Image As An Actress Turned Health Coach

In today’s world, we face a tremendous amount of pressure to conform to body standards. We are constantly bombarded with messages to ‘lose 10 pounds fast’ or ‘get in shape for bikini season.’ The implication of these messages is that we are not skinny enough, not in shape enough, and not sexy enough, as we are.

It can be challenging to navigate these ideals while honoring yourself and your unique body. No matter what your body looks like, you have probably experienced some form of self-scrutiny or questioned if you have the “right” body. You simply can’t avoid the matter in a body-conscious world.

Unfortunately, the body image conversation is often a silent one, between a woman and herself. It is generally considered taboo to voice the concerns you might have about your body and your relationship to food, especially as a woman entrepreneur or in a highly competitive workplace when you are being evaluated constantly.

Until now, that is.

One millennial is stepping up and giving a voice to the silent struggle billions of women know so well. She had a particularly rough journey with her body as a former TV actress–but now, she’s a women’s health coach and the youngest author at publisher Hay House, with her book, The Goddess Revolution, launching in June.

Meet Mel Wells, creator of The Green Goddess Life, who I spoke with on this week’s podcast episode, “The Anti- Diet: How To End The War On Your Body w/ Hay House’s Youngest Author Mel Wells.”

At age 18, Wells began her acting career and found herself immersed in a competitive environment that led her to make tough decisions. “When you’re in a world where you and your body is the difference between you getting the job and you not getting the job, you put immense amounts of pressure on yourself,” says Wells.

For her, this meant going on crash diets and, ultimately, developing body issues as she tried to stay employable. One time, her producer met with her to discuss her body size. Wells reflects, “I was completely overwhelmed and turned to using food to control elements or numb feelings.”

It took witnessing her dad get cancer to finally wake up to the reality of the damage she was doing to her body. Watching her dad fight for his health, Wells says she was confronted with the potential consequences for abusing her own body and resolved to become a health coach.

Through working with clients, she was able to heal herself and put together a method that works to resolve body issues, encourage healthy eating, and restore body freedom.

The Goddess Revolution seeks to take over as the new ‘anti-diet’ by sparking a new way of thinking that will help women end the war on their own bodies. By attacking modern issues like ‘fitspiration’ and the obsession with perfection caused by celebrity glorification and magazine airbrushing, Wells hopes to break the cycle of negative talk that keeps women from feeling fulfilled and fully self-expressed.

For any woman, it is important to learn to honor yourself by honoring the relationship you have with your body first. When you have that strong foundation established you can more easily stand up for yourself in the workplace and say ‘no’ to objectification and discrimination in your career based on your looks.

Relieving the pressure of body image starts by loving yourself. When you love yourself by loving what you are creating in the world, you can overcome any adversity.

At age 26, Wells has certainly made waves and evolved into her true self despite challenges. Consider these three powerful lessons for navigating your own path.

Lesson #1: Just go for it, even if you don’t feel completely ready yet. Wells says the best advice she ever got was to “start before you’re ready.” That means to summon the confidence to take action even if you don’t have everything figured out. Everyone makes mistakes, but they tend to be the best reflections for improvement.

Lesson #2: Use your personal story to your advantage. The lessons you have learned along your own journey are the best source for credibility and experience. People will connect to your story and want to work with you because they know you’ve been where they are and have overcome it. Don’t be afraid to share any mistakes you’ve made as they can actually testify to how far you’ve come and show people there’s hope no matter where you are.

Lesson #3: Don’t let your age stop you. When you’re young, it’s easy to perceive age to be a limiting factor to your success. Wells can empathize: “when anyone starts business in the coaching world it can be daunting to assume anyone wants your advice,” she says. But the notion that you’re not old enough to achieve what you want is simply false. Don’t apologize for your age; let your experience and results speak for how qualified you are. You never know, your young age may become your biggest asset someday.

This article was originally published on Forbes

February 28, 2018