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Day 87 and 88 Recap

2008-12-04T20:51:00.000-08:00

Before I recap the home stretch of my 90 day challenge, please take a few moments to watch this inspiring video about former NBA player and cancer survivor, Wayman Tisdale...
http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?categoryId=null&brand=null&videoId=3740128&n8pe6c=2

What an inspiration!

A video like this really puts something like my personal fitness challenge into perspective. It is all well and good to push yourself but how about people like Tisdale who have no choice but to look at a situation like that and face it head on. His mental strength and personal faith are amazing.

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Day 87 was a jam packed day in my calendar. I had a few appointments and a whole bunch of work to do from my home office. I am working on a new internet marketing system for our home based healthy chocolate business. The reason it is so exciting is that I am designing it with my business partner Ted Payne and we are doing it in such a way that we can teach other business people how to do the same. As a speaker, trainer and coach, anytime I figure out how to do something, I just want to share it with anyone who can use it for their benefit. It is my purpose in life without question.

I will continue to update this blog and in fact, justinpopovic.com as a domain will be transfered to this new marketing system once it is complete. Therefore, to continue following this blog, you will have to use the original blogger domain http://justinpopovic.blogspot.com/

Having said all of that, I had a full day of business and then at about 3:30pm, I did something that I rarely ever do...I had a nap!!! I slept during the day for about 1.5 hours. I have been pushing myself so hard and accomplishing so many goals recently that my body just shut down. I woke up from the nap feeling groggy but it was some well needed rest.

I then had an evening out with my dad to catch up. With all of my business activities, I have not had much time for my family (other than wife and son) so it was a great opportunity to catch up and take some down time away from work.

I got home around 10pm and realized that I still had not done my workout for the day. So at about 10:30pm, I put on my workout clothes and went to the basement for a 15 minute power session. I did a long series of situps and pushups to the point of exhaustion. I just had this inner drive to push myself harder than usual. I think the fact that this challenge is almost over is having an impact on my intensity level. It worked well because I had a ton of energy afterwards and I was able to once again work well into the night.

As for today, day 88, it was another long day for business. Probably about14 hours of work when all was said and done. It was also Thursday night pickup basketball and I had a great time. I felt like I had a lot more energy than I had in the past few outings. I played well and I came home not feeling overly sore or exhausted.

The final 2 days of my challenge begin tomorrow. I am looking forward to winding it all down and taking some time to reflect on what I have learned.

Day 85-86 Recap

2008-12-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

As the 90 Challenge winds down, I have become much more disciplined with all aspects of the program. My diet has been amazing and I have really been pushing myself at the gym. Knowing that day 90 is around the corner seems to have ignited a new level of drive.

I am not noticing the fatigue in my body as much as I had last week. It could be adrenaline or it could be just a better mental attitude overall. I have to admit that I was placing a lot of focus on how physically tired I was feeling the past few weeks. Now I am primarily focused on the overall success of this challenge and the feeling of pride that I am almost done.

In the back of my mind I have been thinking about keeping the fitness streak going but deep down I am really excited to get some rest days so I don't think that is going to be in the action plan! I also think I need the rest days to rebuild my strength and come back stronger than ever.

I have also been off coffee for 2 weeks now and I have to say that I'm very happy about that. Other than a couple of early morning cravings, it was an easy thing to drop. Drinking coffee was literally a habit and not something I needed at all. In fact, I had been drinking so much that it wasn't even tasting great anymore. Once the challenge is over, I will have coffee on Saturday and Sunday mornings as a treat. It's all about the balance

As for my workout routine, Day 85 composed of a very tiring and intense chest and back weight routine. It was tougher than normal because I spent over an hour shoveling snow earlier in the day. So it was almost like doing 2 workouts. Then I did 15 minutes high intensity cardio on the stepped which was an activity I had not done in quite some time.

Today, Day 86, was a full arm workout. Biceps and Triceps. Despite having had a few weeks off, I did nto notice any loss in strenth. I did pretty much the same amount of weight as usual. I also capped off the weight lifting session with another high intensity cardio workout on the stepper...15 minutes.

It is now 1:30am and the fatigue is kicking in. I really feel it inmy legs from that workout. But I am working on a few business initiatives that require MANY hours of concentrated work. So I will persist and keep my eye on the target. The anticipation of the excellent results will be enough to keep me going until I reach the finish line successfully.

Days 80-84 Recap

2008-11-30T20:34:00.001-08:00

Another long string of days without blog updates. This will be a catch up post to review all of my activities over the past 5 days. I have just completed a very long weekend at Harv Eker's Millionaire Mind Intensive seminar with my wife Jessica.

Intensive is the key word here. We started the training on Friday morning at 8am. We did 12 hours of training on Friday. Another 12 on Saturday and Sunday was planned for 10 hours but we had to leave early to attend a party for my sister's birthday.

It is an excellent seminar and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in gaining control of their financial future. It promotes personal power and positive financial habits. My wife and I have a bunch of new plans and systems to implement for our family financial situation. Its all about systemizing!

The most difficult part of the entire weekend was fitting in some time for a workout. I will explain that in a second but first I will summarize my fitness for days 80 and 81.

Day 80 was Wednesday. I had a very full day of work from the minute I woke up until about 5:00pm. I then had only 45 minutes to drive to the gym, do a cardio workout and rush home to prepare for a business presentation for our Healthy Chocolate Home Based Business

Day 81 was another fun session of Thursday night basketball. I have never felt so exhausted after exerting such minimal energy. Usually I am running up and down the court all evening without much effort but the longer this challenge has gone on, the worse my long term endurance seems to be.

Then came days 82-84. Because I was at the Millionaire Mind seminar, we would be up at 6am to get ready and drive an hour to the event. As I said earlier, we spent 12 hours at the seminar (for each of days 82 and 83) and then another hour to drive home. So both Friday and Saturday night, I did not even return home until about 11pm feeling TOTALLY exhausted.

In order to keep my committment, I did a short 15-20 minute workout each night. The same workout. I did 6 sets of interchanging pushups and situps. 30 pushups immediately followed by 50 situps (crunches) followed by some leg stretching. It was not an intense workout but it was extremely tiring because my low energy levels after such long and intensive days of training.

As for Day 84, it was yet another very long day. Up at 6am to get ready for the last day of the seminar. An hour drive to the seminar. Training from 8am until 1pm. An hour drive home to get ready for my sister's birthday. Spend the afternoon at my sister's party. Drive home and get my sone ready for bed. Then head to Sunday night men's league basketball.

Our team won tonight!! We moved to a record of 2-3 and again, I felt extremely exhausted from the very beginning of the game. It effected me to the point where I do not think I played as hard as I could. We did not have enough bench players to allow for enough rest, so I had to sacrifice some of my usual intensity. It was an amazing workout nevertheless and I was very happy that we won.

All in all, the past 5 days were very enlightening, very physically tiring but mentally enhancing. I feel like I have moved to a new level of committment and understanding. My wife and I are also very excited to have taken financial education training together. It is going to have a very positive effect on our relationship from a money perspective. I recommend this to all couples...and all people for that matter.

The final working week of my challenge begins tomorrow

Day 78 and 79 Recap

2008-11-25T16:55:00.000-08:00

Today was the kind of day I always look forward to. I had the opportunity to speak to 60 high school students about personal development, goal setting, positivity and life direction. It was my 4th time going to this particular school and it was a really great experience. I had the students working in pairs to discuss some of their passions, wants as well as short and long term goals. As usual, I heard some very interesting ideas that I have not heard before. It seems that every time I conduct a workshop like this, I get some new ideas...it was awesome.

During my presentation, I was talking about the power of habits and I actually ended up sharing this 90 Day challenge with the students. It was an interesting personal experience because it was the first time I talked about this challenge in a public presentation. It is something I would like to share with audiences but it just hadn't come up until now in my talks. It is always easier to earn your credibility when you not only say the message but also "do" the message. Just the fact that I had personal stories like that back up every point in my presentation helped the students relate to the ideas.

The other thing I really enjoyed about today was the fact that many of these students have big dreams for their life. One student wanted to try out for Canadian Idol and he is very serious about it. Another student wants to be a professional guitar player. There were others who want to make a profession as someone who travels the globe. Very refreshing to see people dreaming big and following their passions.

After today, I realized that I would like to add a high school program to my regular speaking schedule. Ideally once every couple of weeks. It helps me stay in touch with the youth and the issues they face today, and it is a whole lot of fun. I also feel that I am able to help them think about their life differently and I think more adults need to do this to inspire the youth.

The days seem to be flying by now. I am moving into the final 11 days of the challenge and it is amazing to me how fast the time has gone by.

For fitness, Day 78 and 79 were both weight lifting workouts. Monday, day 78 was a full chest/back weight workout followed by cardio on the stationary bike and about 20 minutes of pickup basketball with another guy from my gym. Then today, day 79, I actually had very little time in my calendar so I ended up doing a workout from home. I did a full arm workout (biceps and triceps) along with 5 sets of 50 for abs. It was a short workout but high intensity. I had a really good sweat going...so overall it felt great.

Tomorrow it will be back to my regular basketball routine assuming my legs are not too sore. They have been feeling pretty rough since my men's league game on Sunday night.

My workload is also increasing the next 2 days as I have a conference on the weekend and need to squeeze 3 days of work into 2 days. But, I am ready to go and stay focused to get the job done.

Day 76 and 77 Recap

2008-11-24T10:28:00.000-08:00

Weekends are always an interesting time when it comes to maintaining a healthy diet. Between visits with friends/family and the overall feel of a more relaxed mindset, it is definitely easier to come across food that is not the most healthy option.

This weekend was actually the opposite though. We had no plans with family or friends and really just had a dedicated weekend at home to spend family time together. I did have one business appointment on Saturday but it was only for a few hours. The time at home gave me a chance to properly plan out each meal. Other than some nachos on Saturday and Sunday night, I was really good at maintaining a healthy diet.

Another thing I have implemented for the remainder of this challenge is to remove all coffee intake. I have not had any coffee since last Wednesday. I was having as many as 3 cups a day and I did not like the habit I was getting into. I am already noticing a difference after a few days off the coffee. I feel like I digest my food better and I don't get the tired feeling after the caffeine wears off. Once the 90 day challenge is over, I will probably allow myself to drink coffee on the weekends only. Again, it is all about moderation.

For my fitness regimen, it was the same as previous weekends. I did a basketball workout on Saturday where I was able to do about an hour of running, jumping and jump shot practice. Tonight, Sunday (Day 77) it was game 4 of my Sunday Night Men's Basketball League. Unfortunately, our team lost once again to drop to 1-4 on the season. We played probably the best team in the league tonight and despite being up by 2 at halftime, we ended up losing by over 20 when all was said and done. Our team still has lots of work to go to improve our play as a cohesive unit.

Either way, I had a lot of fun and go a great workout for Day 77 of my challenge.

The final 2 weeks of the challenge are starting. I am going to kick it up a notch this week with a very strict diet and increase the intensity of my workouts. I also have my camera back so the daily photo of my upper body phsyique qill proceed starting tomorrow.

2 weeks and counting...

Trading Your Life

2008-11-21T20:32:00.000-08:00

Whether you realize it or not, the way you choose to spend your day is ultimately a trade off. You are literally trading the minutes, hours and days of your life in exchange for your current activities. Most of us spend 40 (and often more) hours per week trading the precious moments of our life for our job. Two questions immediately rise to the surface:

1. Do you consciously recognize and appreciate each day of your life with the awareness that none of us know how much or how little time we have left?
2. If so, are you making a fair trade (i.e. are your activities worthy of your life energy)?

When I first understood this lesson at both an intellectual and emotional level, my honest answer to both of the above questions was NO! I was not necessarily taking my life for granted but I also did not truly appreciate my days. I was devoting my time to a number of things that did not make me happy and I was avoiding facing my fears. My mindset was ‘I will deal with it at a better time.’ Deep down I knew I was simply avoiding the issue altogether.

Specifically, I am talking about my professional career. Although I was quite successful, had a great salary, great security, excellent benefits and room to grow in the organization, I did not enjoy the work. I would start my day and look forward for it to be over. I did not work with any passion. Worst of all, I was trading my life for this career.

Because this was the only profession I knew and spent many years establishing myself, it never actually occurred to me that change was possible. I simply assumed that I would have to stick it out and hopefully do well enough financially so that I could retire early and THEN begin to enjoy my days.

Then I got involved in personal development programs. I started to learn more about life and more about the mind. I quickly realized that I had been operating my life following a set of beliefs and paradigms that were not necessarily ideas that I agreed with. I had always assumed that everyone disliked their job and it was just something we all had to go through to ‘earn our retirement’.

When I found out that there were many people who loved their work and had found a way to make a living based on their passions, I was very intrigued. I was also wary of the idea because it sounded too good to be true.

As I started to study some of these people and learn about the inspiring lives they were living, I realized a very important distinction between them and myself. Unlike me at the time, they DID appreciate the value of each living day and they also structured their life in such a way that they were trading their days for a purpose worthy of them and their true values.

When I compared them to myself, I was trading the days of my life for something that made me unhappy. When I dissected it further, I was choosing this lifestyle because I was too afraid to change. I was afraid to give up the salary and benefits, afraid to give up the position that took so many years to obtain, afraid to admit to others that I was unhappy and afraid to decide what I truly wanted out of life.

The more I thought about it and the more I studied personal development teachings and success stories, the greater my desire for change became. I started to reprogram my mind so that the pain of remaining status quo was actually more intense than the fear of change. I know many personal growth programs advocate positive thinking, but negative motivators inspire action for all of us. It certainly worked in my case.

Not only did this new mindset drive me to find my true passion and true calling in life (speaking and coaching), it helped me establish a sense of personal freedom that can best be described as liberation. There came a point where my self image literally shifted and I saw myself safely and confidently walking away from the career that I had so desperately held onto for many years.
The days of my life were far too important and valuable to be spending them doing something that had no meaning for me. After I resigned from that position, I made a personal commitment to dedicate the rest of my working days doing only that which I love.

I now love my work. I look forward to my days. I look forward to new projects and new opportunities. I never think about retirement because I never plan on retiring. When you do what you love, why would you ever want to stop?

If you are reading this article and can share a similar story, please contact me directly as I would love to put together a special edition of my newsletter to profile all of the inspiring and uplifting stories of people who are living their dream.

Justin Popovicjustin@igniteyouressence.com

Day 74 and 75 Recap

2008-11-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

As I move into the home stretch of this challenge, I am really starting to look forward to a break. While the actual workouts are literally part of my daily routine (without thinking about it really), the fatigue is becoming noticeable during my higher intensity activities.

For example on Thursday, Day 74, I was out to Thursday night pickup basketball and I was feeling it. I can normally run up and down the court all night and usually have more endurance than 90% of the other players. The last couple of games, however, I have really felt the fatigue kicking in. I was still able to play my game and work hard, but that exhausted feeling kicked in much earlier than usual.

I was thinking that this is actually a good thing because it is a perfect reminder to me about the value of rest. Once Day 90 has come and gone, I am going to workout 5 days per week and rest 2 days. That way, I can go harder during my workouts and then completely rest on my off days. It will also be a good balance because every trip to the gym is at least an hour out of my day. This is not always an easy thing to do with my crazy schedule.

As for today, Day 75, I actually faced a bit of a predicament. After geting a slow start to my day because I was up most of the night with my son, I lost a good chunk of my afternoon to donate blood. I had totally forgot that I was scheduled to donate until about an hour before my appointment. The problem was, I had not yet done my workout for the day.

After giving blood, I was actually quite light headed. I'm assuming it is because I barely had any sleep last night. The other problem was, it is STRONGLY recommended to not do any exercise until at least the following day. I did not want to ruin my workout streak but I also did not want to negatively impact my blood regeneration (its not necessarily a small issue).

What I decided to do was wait the minimum 6 hours and then do a light at-home workout. So at 11pm after a night at home with my wife, she went to bed and I stayed up to do some work and to do an ab and stretching workout. I took about 20 minutes and actually got a bit of a sweat going. I did about 10 sets of various ab exercises and a whole bunch of leg stretching.

Now that I'm done the workout, I am wide awake so I am going to use my energy to get some overdue work completed. I will probably pay for it in the morning because I am overtired from last night. But I will take some time to do a recharge meditation tomorrow morning and I should be good to go!

Day 72 and 73 Recap

2008-11-20T01:15:00.000-08:00

It is amazing to witness how quickly the time passes by when you are working on major goals and objectives. Here it is the early hours of Thursday morning and literally feels like the week just started.

I remember when I was working in my old career and was not super thrilled about the job, the week would go by SO slowly. Thursday afternoon was sort of a mental target for me. Once Thursday afternoon hit, I would get more excited and know that there was only 1 work day left until the weekend. Often, Fridays would be lighter in terms of workload so it was usually an easy progrssion to the weekend.

Now, I honestly can not differentiate between a Saturday and a Wednesday. The concept of 'weekend' doesn't really apply to me anymore. I work every day of the week. I also have the freedom to not work any day of the week so it is a new mindset altogther. For the record, the new way of living is WAY better :)

I just published my latest article that touches on this topic. I really enjoyed writing this article because it allowed me to reflect on some of the personal development I have done on myself.
Here is the article: http://www.igniteyouressence.com/trading.html

As for my 90 day challenge, I was back to the gym again for days 72 and 73.

Day 72 was the first time in a long time where I focused only on muscle development and weight lifting. I did not do any cardio (my legs needed a break). I did about 40 minutes of medium weight arm exercises followed by a number of sets of abs.

Now that is Day 73 and I have had a chance to recover from that workout, I am surprised that my muscles do not really hurt at all. Having not really worked them out in a few weeks I was anticipating at least some soreness. I guess my recovery rate is much higher now that I am on this 90 day program.

As for fitness on day 73, I did about a 30 minute basketball workout. Shootingm running and jumping drills. I definitely did not push myself as hard as usual but I also noticed I was running out of steam faster than I typically do. I'm guessing it is more a sign of fatigue than anything else. The other factor is that is extremely cold and snowy in Ontario and the cold air sometimes takes a few workouts to adapt to.

Day 74 will be back to my regular Thursday night men's league basketball so I am looking forward to that. But it also looks like I will have at least an hour of snow shovelling to take care of before I do that (it has been coming down for a few days now).

Catch Up Post - Days 66-71

2008-11-17T18:01:00.001-08:00

OK. So that was a much longer delay between blog posts than I had planned. The past few days have been among the busiest in a while. Then, I took a few days away from the computer altogether to recharge my mind and body.

As a summary, here is what I did on each of the days.
Day 66 - Wednesday. I continued my streak of basketball workouts by headning to the gym for an early afternoon run. It was my typical shooting and running drills and I also did a huge number of sets of abs. I rotated between pilates abs crunches and swiss ball crunches. My abs are the strongest they have ever been. It is an awesome feeling!

Day 67 - Thursday. I was so extremely busy planning for a large presentation I was conducting for a University in my area. I had a lot of content to squeeze into a 45 minute talk so I spent most of my time refining the content, the jokes, the delivery and timing. It was a huge job but so incredibly rewarding.
Because I was so busy with the project, I did not have any time to go to the gym. In fact, it was the first session of Thursday night pick-up basketball that I had missed in maybe 3-4 months. Instead, I did a great arm, chest, ab workout in my basement at about 10pm at night. It turned out to be a great decision because it gave me the energy I needed to work into the early hours of Friday morning.

Day 68 - Friday. The day of the big presentation. I love speaking to university audiences and this group was especially positive and energetic. Very friendly people and all had amazing attitudes towards school life and their own success. I was very happy with my presentation and I received a lot of really positive feedback at the end. I know I made an impact on a number of people which is why I got into speaking in the first place. I'm so pumped for my next presentation now!
By the time I drove home (over an hour drive) from the university, it was getting quite late. Jessica had been on her own for much of the week with Thomas without much of a break, so I did not want to go to the gym and leave her on her own again. Instead I helped out with Thomas and stayed home. I did a quick shoulder/ab workout in the basement which was surprisinly exhausting. I think the fact that the week was so busy with my presentation and other projects that I was just short on energy. I slept really well on Friday night!!

Day 69 - Saturday. The first day in recent memory where I did absolutely zero work. I spent the day with my family and enjoyed every minute. Had an afternoon nap which was awesome!! I did get out to the gym in the evening and did my standard basketball workout. I did not have time to do abs because the gym was closing.
Watched the movie Talladega Nights with Will Ferrell. It was on TV. It was actually quite hilarious but all Will Ferrell movies are so I was not surprised. I recommend it if you like his style.

Day 70 - Sunday. Another non-work family day. Jessica had her curling league Sunday morning so it was Father-Son day together with Thomas which was AWESOME! He is at the best stage of his life so far. He is sooo interactive and a real show off. Everything he does makes me laugh out loud. He also copies almost every word I say so I have to be very careful what I say around him (if you know what I mean LOL).
We also had a HUGE snowfall overnight on Saturday so he was looking outside all day in bewilderment. He had a pretty good cold/flu on the go so I did not take him outside. He got to go out later in the day when the temperature was higher so he was really happy about that.
In terms of fitness, it was Sunday night men's league action in the Orangeville Rec league. Our team lost by about 15 to drop to 1 Win, 2 losses on the season. We have a brand new team this year and none of us have played together before. I think it will take a few weeks for us to gel but we actually have a pretty competitive team. I was really happy with my play even though I did not score much. My defence was high intensity and I moved the ball well from the point guard position.

Day 71 - Monday (TODAY). Back to work day. I had an absolutely huge to-do list that I am currently about half way through. I actually enjoy having a big list, especially when it is filled with business building activities. I was pretty motivated to get back to work after a nice break over the weekend. I will be writing more frequently so I am looking forward to seee what I come up with. Articles will be my primary focus for writing so keep an eye out on this blog for new updates.
It was back to the gym today and I had a pretty long workout. I shot hoops for about 30 minutes. Played 1 on 1 with a guy who I know from the gym. I played really well actually. Hit every shot I took! Then it was over to the weight room to do chest/back weights. I also did a pretty decent ab workout at the end. I came home feeling pretty exhausted phsyically so we will see how I feel tomorrow. I anticipate sore muscles since I have been avoiding weight lifting for the past few weeks.

Day 64 and 65 Recap

2008-11-11T20:45:00.000-08:00

The new work week brought on a fresh feeling of motivation for my 90 Day Challenge. My focus this week was to gain tighter control of my diet and eating patterns. I have been relatively healthy throughout this challenge but I wanted to manage my quantity of food more carefully.

Day 64 and 65 were good days. I ate a very well balanced set of meals and was able to eat about 5 small meals each day (rather than 2 or 3 larger meals). I also reduced my coffee intake to 1 cup per day. I had been drinking 2 and 3 cups per day up until that point.

Overall, it is actally quite easy to maintain a more controlled diet, I just had to make the mental decision to be conscious of it. I think that is a big part of all our lives. We literally have to become conscious of an activity in order to control it and make it work in our favour. Because I wasn't observing my food intake, I was not noticing how often I was over eating. A simple shift in awareness seems to have solved the problem.

This has also been a very busy week for business. It is Tuesday night and I have already had 4 big meetings and I am also preparing for a large presentation for Wilfred Laurier University this Friday. This will be of my largest speaking opportunities of my career so I am very excited to see what I can put together for the audience. I have, in my opinion, a really fun and interesting presentation that will get them all thinking about their life in new ways.

In terms of fitness, I have made a decision to just focus on basketball. I am going to work on the various aspects of my game every day. I will track my progress on Thursday and Sunday nights when I play in my men's leagues. I am also using some time after each basketball workout to do some upper body strengthening with the exercise ball. It actually feels great to take a break from weight lifting for a while. The next idea on my fitness list is to get into Pilates. I have heard amazing things and my mother is an instructor so I can get first hand training!

Day 62 and 63 Recap

2008-11-09T21:51:00.000-08:00

One of the tasks I had given my self on my 90 day challenge was to take a picture of my upper body every single day so that I could monitor the progress of my phsyique as I implemented the new super-healthy lifestyle.

Well, on Saturday, my wife and I were conducting a presentation and we ended up leaving the camera at the event. Thankfully, my cousin who was also at the event, happened to pick it up for us and take it home. The unfortunate part is that we will not be able to get the camera back for at least a few days, maybe even longer.

I have a cell phone camera that I will attempt to use but the quality of the photos is mediocre at best. The photo task was lower priority than the fitness and healthy meal component so I am not overly concerned.

From a fitness perspective, I had another back to back set of days of playing basketball. Saturday night I went out to my gym just before closing for a 30 minute run. I did a number of high intensity shooting drills and was really happy with how hard I pushed myself. I felt like I made some good improvements in my game.

Then tonight was week 2 of my Sunday night men's league. I have a new team this year with only 1 player remaining from the team I played with last year. I am actually quite happy with our roster and we work well together as a squad. He had a great 102-50 win over a team that normally plays much better than they did tonight. They just seemed to have an off night and we were fortunate enough to be making most of our shots. Peter, the newest player in the league and one of my new teammates, scored 50 points himself! I am quite happy that I recruited him to be on my team haha!

As for the eating component of the challenge, this is still an area I am working on improving. I did not always make the wisest decision with my food choices this weekend and I know that it is only a small act, but it still has long lasting repercussions in my own self confidence and personal accountability.

I know the solution is to design more of a system around my eating patterns. This will help me monitor my intake and keep on track with my overall goals. Tomorrow, I will examine what I eat nd begin to formulate an actual meal plan that I can follow. One that has some flexibility while still keeping me within a set limit of overall food quantity. I am confident this will be a huge step in the right direction!

Day 60 and 61 Recap

2008-11-07T00:49:00.000-08:00

As I move into the final 30 days of this 90 challenge, I am definitely noticing that I do not have the endurance I thought I would have by now. Before the challenge started, I was already consistent with my workout routine but I would also rest 2-3 days per week. At the same time, it is not surprising that my endurance is being affected because we have all heard how important it is for athletes to get their rest.

I'm actually interested learn how olympic level athletes train. It is my understanding that they practice their craft 7 days a week for years on end. If this is the case, I am guessing that their bodies just adapt to not having off days. As it stands right now, I am probably less effective on the basketball court on day 61 than I would have been on day 1. The reason is, I start feeling exhausted after about 30 minutes of hard running. My legs are still tired from the previous days workout and I am covered in sweat much quicker than normal. I know this means I am burning calories at a higher rate but that isn't necessarily the ideal way to feel to be an effective basketball player!

I am realizing that this challenge has been more about the act of discipline than it has about fitness results. I am now convinced that you cannot force yourself to be in incredible shape but you can create the lifestyle that promotes it. Once the challenge is over, I plan to go to a 5 day per week workout schedule with a much more controlled diet.

The fact that I have refrained from any kind of alcohol consumption is also a big eye opener. I wasn't drinking daily or over drinking by any stretch of the imagination, but as I said in earlier posts, the weekend beer or the beer after a basketball game were probably happening more frequently that I really needed. I still enjoy a nice drink every once in a while but again, this is something I will limit to maybe one evening a week after a nice workout.

So really, it is all about moderation, lifestyle and balance.

Day 60 and 61 fitness recap is simple. I played basketball both days. I was not happy with my level of play but I also did not have the same level of energy I think I would have if I had been resting once or twice a week. I have now effectively taken nearly 2 weeks away from weight lifting and it was a much needed break. I am excited to get back to the weights on Monday.

Day 58 and 59 Recap

2008-11-05T22:43:00.000-08:00

There has been plenty to talk about the past few days. Obviously, the hottest topic of conversation was the US election which finally took place last night. Even though I am Canadian, there was as much coverage, attention and discussion as anywhere else in the world.

While I do not follow American politics to the degree that some people do, I have been very impressed with Obama during this entire campaign. As a professional speaker, it is amazing to see him deliver one powerful speech after another with incredible poise, confidence and brilliance.

I have to admit, I got quite wrapped up in watching the pre and post election coverage that it was actually quite late at night before I made time to do some exercise. I was hoping to make it to the gym but it did not pan out. Instead I did a very brief home workout of pushups and situps. 5 sets of 30 each. Probably the most tame workout of this entire 90 day challenge.

The fact that I got to witness such a historical event was well worth it. I did not break my fitness streak and I am still going strong on the challenge which is the most important part.

AS for today, Day 58, I actually played some outdoor basketball. For those of you from Ontario, Canada, you know how rare of an occasion this is in November. Some years, we are covered with snow at this time of the year. In fact, there have already been a few days with snow on the ground. We just happened to get a spell of warm weather and so I took full advantage. I got a great run in even though it was dark outside. I had enough light to make it enjoyable. I basically just shot hoops and did some running drills for about half an hour.

Tomorrow night is my regular Thursday night basketball so I will get a much more complete workout at that time.

Aside from the fitness schedule, I have been doing a much better job with my overall food intake. The quality of food has been quite good all along but it was only this week that I have really made a concsious effort to monitor the overall quantity of what I was eating. I can already feel like this new awareness is going to have a significant impact on my overall "physique" goals since the changes to-date, during this challenge, have been quite minimal.

I have been working a crazy number of hour this week so this willbe the end of the blog post for tonight. I look forward to my next update when I plan to be well rested, refreshed and ready to go for a big, exciting weekend!

Day 56 and 57 Recap

2008-11-03T20:58:00.001-08:00

I can't believe it has already been 2 days since my last post. Time really tends to whiz by when you are busy but it is even more interesting to notice how quickly the time passes when you are keeping track (i.e. someone doing a 90 day challenge).

Day 56 and 57 were both cardio routines via basketball. On Sunday night, it was the first regular season game of the Sunday night men's league in Orangeville where I live. It was a lot of fun but kind of disorganized. I did not have a team together this year so we ended up picking up some random players and forming a team. I guess one of the items on the to do list for this week is to recruit some players!

As for Day 57, after a long day of work I finally made some time for a workout at around 9pm. Once again I opted for cardio by working on my jump shot and doing some running and jumping drills at the basketball court. I plan to cut out some of the weight lifting for a while. My joints and a few muscles have been feeling the strain due to this 90 day challenge, so I am going to keep active in other ways.

One thing I am going to implement now that I am well over half way through this challenge is a more structured approach to the mental side. What I mean is that I want to apply some of the latest personal development ideas that I have been studying from John Assaraf. Particularly on the idea of food intake. The main idea with this challenge was fitness and healthy eating...and I have stuck to both for the most part. What I have been unsatisfied with is my food quantity. I have been overcompensating for all the exercise by eating more than I believe I need. I therefore feel like I might be hindering some of the physical results that I set out to achieve.

I think these eating habits were established through repetition many years ago and have become ingrained beyond the point of this 90 day challenge. What I plan to do to neutralize the over-eating situation is to focus on brain conditioning techniques described by John Assaraf. This will include meditations, personal affirmations, visualization techniques and a process called Neural reconditioning (which I will not explain in this post).

I am so thoroughly convinced that this will improve my results that I plan to use it for every area of my life so that I can teach and coach others on it. I think this could be a life transforming concept and I'm sure Mr.Assaraf would love partners out there spreading the word about his great teachings.

With that, I will sign off for the day with eager anticipation for the next leg of the journey

Life Success Coach - Train Your Brain

2008-11-02T10:06:00.000-08:00

As the owner of my own personal Success Coach company, Ignite Your Essence (www.igniteyouressence.com), it is literally part of my lifestyle to practice daily life success coaching techniques. As a speaker and personal coach, I want to make sure I experience every possible angle of every coaching strategy I recommend to my clients.

By no means is this a chore to me. In fact, every bit of it I find both fun and fascinating at the same time. After spending a full day in a seminar/workshop event with Personal Development master John Assaraf this week, I feel like I have elevated my awareness and understanding of the mind and personal success more than ever before.

I am currently re-reading "The Answer" which was released by John and his business partner Murray Smith back in the spring of 2008. This is a book that I will probably read 100 times and still gain value from. What I love about the book is that it gives even the most hard-headed skeptic some insights into the potential of learning how your brain and mind operate. More importantly, it gives some insight into how anyone can leverage an understanding of their brain and translate it into material success (whether is be financial, business, relationship or otherwise).

I will give a high level overview of one of the key concepts in this books. The lesson is about neural connections in our brain. You see, every habit and behaviour that we have are caused by nothing more than a neural pattern that is physically wired in our brain. For habits we have carried for a long time, the neural connection is strong and more ingrained in our personality. For example, you may have a strong neural connection that causes you to react with anger anytime you are stuck in traffic. This was created by years of repetition and eventually the neural connection became so strong that you identify yourself as "someone who can't handle traffic." To the unaware person, they may accept this situation as an unchangeable circumstance in their life. The truth is, however, that they simply need to establish a new nerual connection in their brain that causes them to react differently when the traffic situation arises.

The challenge for most of us, is that establishing a new neural connection takes time. And as you invest time in developing this connection, the old connection related to the old behaviour begins to dissolve. Again, the average person who is not aware of this proces may try making the external change through will power alone. This is an exercise in futility because they are dealing with the effect, as opposed to the cause. The cause of the behaviour

Day 54 and 55 Recap

2008-11-01T21:32:00.000-07:00

A very exciting end to the week with my favourite sports team, The Toronto Raptors, getting back into action. Last night was the home opener and I had tickets to go see the game live.

We had excellent seats centre court and had a perfect view of the entire game. I did not leave my seat once the entire team. It was an excellent game, the crowd was energetic, lots of exciting plays, it went to overtime AND.... the RAPTORS WON!

Thanks to my good friend Mark for inviting me to the game. What an awesome gift!

I live over an hour away from Toronto and we had to meet up early before the game. So I ended up cutting my work day very short. By about 3pm, I had closed my laptop and went into Raptors mode. This meant that I had to get a lot of work done in the morning and early afternoon. I was happy with how much I accomplished.

In terms of my workout, I simply did not have enough time to go to the gym if I wanted to make it to Toronto on time. I did, however, find 20 free minutes in my already busy day to do a great shoulder routine in my basement with free weight dumbbells. It is amazing how much you can accomplish in a short period of time if you have no choice.

It actually reminds me of something I learned when I took Success Coaching with Brian Tracy. He says that "work expands to the amount of time alloted for the task." This is a beautiful truth because I have seen it in action and I have been able to use this idea to increase my productivity in many areas of my life.

So Day 54 was a quick home-gym routine. This meant that I definitely wanted to make sure I got out to the gym today on day 55 (which I did). I went to the gym an hour before closing time. It is my absolute favourite time of the week to workout because I essentially have an entire fitness facility to myself. There were literally 4 people there. 2 staff and 2 other members. I was playing some bball so I had the entire court to myself. I got in a good 45 routine of practice shooting and some running drills. I did not go too hard as I am still letting my knee recover from the tweak I did last week. It is feeling much better now so I am hoping I will be 100% for my Sunday night league tomorrow night.

Aside from fitness, Day 55 was all about spending quality family time with Jessica and Thomas. I played games with Thomas all day and he was his usual hilarious self. Jessica and I were also able to get quite a bit of work done for our healthy chocolate home business. We launched a new version of the website that has much more information. Check it out at www.chocolatylation.com

See you on Day 56

Day 52 and 53 Recap

2008-10-30T21:54:00.000-07:00

Still riding a great mental wave from the John Assaraf full day seminar I attended on Tuesday. I am actually a sponsor of the event so I had a chance to meet John and have my picture taken with him. Check it out.

The past 2 days have been great and very productive. I have been working hard with my coaching clients and getting prepared for some very exciting upcoming speaking exngagements. Some excellent opportunities to grow my business to new levels that I was only dreaming about less than a year ago.

During some days of this challenge, I have actually felt some frustration because I assumed I would get into a flow and really be invigorated by the process. The reality is, its a 90 "Challenge" and it would not be a life changing experience if the entire process was a breeze. The reason I raise this issue is that the past few days since the Assaraf event, I have been in the flow and feeling the vibes that I had hoped for. My goal is to keep these vibes going as long as humanly possible and I am going to do that through the implementation of very specific exercises and instructions that John shared with the audience on Tuesday. In fact, I plan to do a 90 day Mental Challenge based on some of the strategies that he shared. Fascinating stuff that I plan to write on in the near future!

In terms of fitness, Day 52 (Wednesday) was a tough workout. My plan was to do a heavy arm weight lifting session followed by high impact cardio on the stepper. During the weight lifting, I tweaked my forearm which has been hurting me for months. I was able to get through 2 full sets and work the muscle quite well but I had to cut out the remaining exercises. Then, I hopped on the stepper and could not finish that routine as my knee was really hurting me. I have no idea what happened but it was to the point that I had to discontinue.

I came home from the workout and iced the knee thoroughly. I woke up this morning and the majority of the pain was gone. I was careful not to run up the stairs too quickly or run around with my son without first limbering up. By the time Thursday night basketball was on, I was good to go. Unfortunately, I did not play well tonight but I can't blame it on the knee. I chalk it up to an off night. I choose to focus on the positive which is the fact that I played and got an excellent cardio workout, and hada great time, in the process!

cdas

Day 50 and 51 Recap

2008-10-28T21:32:00.001-07:00

Very quick update. In fact, I am overdue for sleep so I am gonna go a little nutty and do point form this time. HAHA... I guess that's not exactly nutty but you know what I mean :)

Day 50
- Packed day with literally no time for breaks. My first break came at 11pm which was actually quite short
- Only had 20 mins to workout between meetings so I did a power session in my home gym. Was still really invigorating though. I enjoyed it
- Spent much of my evening preparing for Tuesday to participate in a full day personal growth workshop with John Assaraf
- that brings me to day 51

Day 51
- Spent an ENTIRE DAY with one of the masters...John Assaraf. Learn WAY TOO MUCH to tell in a blog post. But keep an eye out for my next newsletter for more info
- My wife Jessica ended up winning one of the prizes that was drawn at the end of the event. We put the good vibes out that we would win something and sure enough...we did LOL!!
- Rushed home after a full day to pick up Thomas from grandparents and drop Jess off at Curling
- Spent some awesome quality time playing with Thomas and making him laugh. He says Daddy constantly now...its aweomse
- went to the gym after 10pm for a basketball workout. Some shooting and running drills
- back home to do about 2 hours worth of email

Those were my extremely busy 2 days in a nutshell. Tons of fun though.

Day 48 and 49 Recap

2008-10-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

Another great weekend. Although when you are an entrepreneur and you are in the early phases of a business, a weekend is not all about relaxation. The work never ends really which is why it is so important to be in business doing something you have passion for and that has special meaning to your life. That is what my business is for me.

This weekend, I spent a lot of time studying personal development and business leaders and working on some of my coaching processes. It is hard to explain the details but it is a vital exercise to maintain high quality service for my clients.

What made it challenging was this freakin 90 day challenge LOL! Sometimes I think to myself 'Why did I choose 90 days...wouldn't 40 or even 50 have been enough'. The truth is, I know the importance of committing to this for 90 days. It is an investment in my development and my personal growth. It was the extra fatigue that has kicked in over the past few days that has made me temporarily question my decision to start this challenge.

The cool thing is that even though I am having the energy struggles of late, I have stuck to my challenge and remind myself of my own strength and persistence with regards to my committments. While I still have lots of room to grow in this area of my life, I truly feel like this challenge is helping me understand the real power of personal committment.

What made the fitness component of my weekend go by much easier was the fact that both workouts (day 48 and 49) were on the basketball court. On Saturday, I went to the gym by myself and did a bunch of shooting and running drills for over an hour. I was totally drenched in sweat by the end so I know I pushed myself pretty hard. Then today on day 49, I went back to the gym with my good friend Mark Tavares and we played some 1 on 1 which is always a great battle. My game felt great today. For the first time in a month or so, I was hitting the majority of my shots and genuinely having fun. I think I have been thinking too much in my recent bball outings. Today, I let the subconscious take over and just focused on having fun and feeling confident. Its amazing how it can change your results when you do that.

As I posted last week, I am cutting back on the late night work and giving myself some extra time for sleep. I usually operate totally fine on 5-6 hours sleep but this challenge has made sleep much more important. During the past couple of weeks, if I get less than 6 hours sleep, I feel quite tired for the majority of the next day. For the days when I don't have to put in extra hours, I will be making sure I use that extra time for sleeping...at least until this challenge is over!!

Tomorrow we move to day 50...unbelievable!

Day 46 and 47 Recap

2008-10-24T20:13:00.000-07:00

Another 2 days have blown by! Amazing how time flies. This will only be a short update as I am taking some time to spend an evening with my wife. With our busy lives, it had been difficult to allocate time to spend together.

We had a really nice dinner and watched The Hurricane which was playing on TV. For those of you who have not seen this movie, I recommend you see it. It is about Ruben Carter's fight for freedom after being convicted for a crime he did not commit. An amazing story of persistence, faith, courage, love, teamwork, sadness and triumph. It tells the story of some amazing human beings. I am actually going to research some of the people who were featured in the movie. They all have very inspirational stories! It was a great movie and a great way to wrap up the work week.

As for my fitness challenge, I continue to stay the course. On Day 46 I got out for my Thursday night men's league basketball. I didn't play as long as usual but I was exhausted nevertheless. I usually have much more energy but I am sure it is a symptom of exercising so many days in a row without a break!

On Day 47, I actually stayed home and did a shoulder workout in my basement. It was a quick 25 minute workout but I actually got quite a sweat going. I don't really take breaks when I do my quick workouts...so by the end I was feeling quite tired. Not exhausted, but that satisfying feeling that I gave myself a good workout.

Actually, I just remembered as I was typing that last paragraph that I also raked leaves earlier in the evening before my workout. I probably put in a good 30 minutes of raking which can also count towards a workout. So all in all, it was a good day for fitness.

Tomorrow I am going to go back to the gym and shoot some hoops for my daily fitness. Because my game got cut short on Thursday night, I am looking forward to spending some extra time on the court and working on my jump shot. It is actually kind of a meditative process for me. Yes its a workout but it is also relaxing from a mental perspective. I really enjoy it!

That's it for this update. I wish you a great weekend

Day 45 Recap

2008-10-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

Wow! The half way point is already here. It is amazing how fast time feels to be going by now that I am tracking each day individually. Before this 90 Day Challenge, all of my recent days and weeks would have seemed like a blur. Now I have a clearer picture in my mind of my past 45 days and it is very interesting to observe your own consciousness and how you evolve even over a short period of time.

The number of changes and opportunities that have come up just since the beginning of the challenge is amazing. I have a had some excellent new business opportunities as well as some opportunities to meet and network with some great new people. 45 days ago, I would have never imagined any of these things happening. I won't go into any detail because that is not the purpose of this blog, but I thought it was worthwhile to document how quickly life can change and how life is literally an endless flow of opportunity (IF you are LOOKING for opportunity...its all in the attitude).

I had a productive business day, spent some excellent quality time with the family and had an awesome cardio workout at the gym. What I did NOT do well was eat healthy. Tonight we celebrated my mother in-law's recent retirement. In fact, her last day was today! And boy did we celebrate...with an enormous serving of Chinese takeout. I think every item on my plate was deep friend or pan fried. And I ate well beyond the point of feeling full. It is not something I would have worried about in the past but I was definitely aware of it tonight. I still enjoyed myself and allowed myself to pig out a bit, but I also know that my new mindset with my challenge will move me back into discipline mode tomorrow. I am going to eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables tomorrow. Plus, it is basketball night so I will get my best workout of the week.

I am going to head to bed early tonight but I am still full from dinner. I think one of the worst feelings in the world is going to bed on a full stomach. For that reason, I am going to catch up on some reading and do some additional prep for my next keynote speech before I turn in for the evening. Hopefully by then I'm at least not feeling stuffed!

The second half of the challenge begins tomorrow!

Day 43 and 44 Recap

2008-10-21T20:14:00.000-07:00

I think the 2-day recap format is going to be a bit more common moving forward. It is 11:15pm and I just finished my dinner!! My days have been extremely long so I will only do daily updates if time permits.

Day 43 was the start of a new business week. It is an exciting time for business as I am steadily growing my personal development company and helping my wife grow her home-based business as well. We are both relatively new to entrepreneurship so the learning never stops. Marketing is the biggest thing right now. I am absolutely fascinated by the world of marketing. There are so many great systems, courses, teachers and leaders. Internet marketing is bigger than ever and such a great way to build a business as well. You will start seeing more and more of me on different sites as I expand my brand and grow my name in the industry... It is a LOT of fun for sure.

In terms of fitness, Day 43 was another Monday chest/back weight lifting regimen. I usually add cardio as well but I skipped it this week due to lack of time as well as pain in my feet from basketball the night before. I am noticing significant strength gains for both muscle groups. I am more interested in endurance and muscle tone but it is a nice feeling to be able to lift more weight than before. This 90 Challenge has definitely promoted all around growth!!

That brings me to today, day 44. Today was another jam packed day for business. I started to day with a number of email follow ups to clients and partners and then I spent a few hours preparing for a high school presentation which I delivered in the afternoon. I had an opportunity to speak to a room of Grade 10 Career Studies students about goal setting and personal growth. It was a lot of fun and the students were great. I don't think they get the opportunity to think about goal setting very often so I was able to introduce them to some exciting concepts. They did a good job of thinking about their goals and what they wanted to do with their life. I will be going back into the same school in November to do another workshop for a different class. I always enjoy to opportunity to speak and work with the youth.

When I got home from the high school talk, it was off to more meetings with some business partners. I finally made it home in the evening in time to spend time with my family and feed my son his dinner. I also took care of bath time and spent a few good hours of quality time playing with him and reading him some books. SO much fun!

I got to the gym around 9:15pm and did a full bicep, tricep, cardio routine. It was especially tough because all I really wanted to do at 9pm was go to bed. I have been averaging less than 6 hours sleep per night for the past few weeks and I would like to get that number back into the 6-7 hour range. I am more productive and feel better after 7 hours sleep...its just not always feasible.

The good news is, I ALWAYS come home from my workouts with new energy. My workout tonight will carry me through till about 1am which is about how much time I will need to finish my current task list. Its all great stuff and I make the best of every minute. It is just a great test of persistence which I am always prepared for!!

Tomorrow...is the half way point of the challenge!

Day 41 and 42 Recap

2008-10-19T19:42:00.000-07:00

Another 2-for-1 recap. My ideal goals was to do a daily update but that was a secondary goal. The primary goal was to stick to this 90 day Challenge through thick and thin. So far...so good.

The recap writing in this blog has been a bit of a challenge just because of my incredibly busy schedule. As I likely mentioned in previous posts, I am currently balancing 3 critical areas of my life right now; family, fitness and business.

I recently learned a great lesson from one of my clients. He said that each 15 minute block of time represents just under 1% of your day. So a great way to think of it is that you have 100 segments of time in a day. Each segment is 15 minutes long.

Well, with my current lifestlye, I will say with a great deal of honesty that finding 2 segments to do a blog update is often impossible.

So now that I have made excuses as to why I haven't been doing daily updates...let me provide the actual update-- LOL!

Day 41, Saturday was supposed to be primarily a family day. We had planned a long time ago to spend the day in a nearby city visiting my wife's sister and her family. Becuase I have a lot of business contacts in that area, I ended up scheduling 3 business appointments to maximize my trip. It wasn't my favourite decision to make because I want my family to feel that I am committed to giving my time to them as well.

Thankfully my wife is very understanding and supportive and so I was able to take these appointments which ended up being very beneficial from a business perspective.

By the time I was all done, it was getting close to dinner hour and I met up with my wife, son and her sister's family back at their house. It was at that point that I realized I had not done my fitness for the day. Dinner was 30 minutes away and so I decided to throw on my running shoes and go for a jog.

NEVER would I have done this in the past. I would have just let myself off the hook and said that there was not enough time in my day for fitness. The truth is, there is always time for the things that are important to you. What we all lack is a forcing function to keep us on track. This 90 Day Challenge is proving to be a genious forcing function for me.

After my run, I came home feeling proud of myself and I was able to enjoy my evening visiting with family and having some fun. I did eat some junk food but I kept the quantity relatively low by my standards!

As for today, Day 42, my wife son and myself were all feeling very worn out from a busy weekend. We also all recently got over a cold/flu so it was a good day to be at home and spend some time together. We were also able to do some house work which has become difficult to schedule with our crazy calendars. It is amazing how a clean house can help clear your mind and make you more productive for work....so I am glad we invested the time.

My Day 42 fitness was awesome. It was the startup of my Men's sunday evening basketball league. This is the third year I am playing in this league and I really enjoy it. there is always a great turnout and the level of competition is actually quite decent. There are even referees in the league which make it more competitive...which also means a BETTER WORKOUT because I always play harder when the intensity goes up.

Note to self...time for new basketball shoes. My feet are killing me after playing and they were hurting the past few times I was out for a basketball game.

Day 39 and 40 Recap

2008-10-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

Wow. I honestly cannot believe it has been 40 days already. I guess you don't really understand how time passes until you start documenting your days. At the beginning of this Challenge, it seemed like time was moving slowly. I was anxious to watch the number of BLUE X's (which I am using to cross off each successful day on my calendar) grow and fill up the page.

Now that I have 40 consecutive Blue X's, it is staggering to think that 40 days have passed in what seems to be the "blink of an eye". Part of the reason is that I am so incredibly busy getting my businesses going and the other part of the equation is how much fun I am having with my family.

My son Thomas is one and a half and he is more active than ever. He is also really stepping into his own personality. He is hilarious!! Today we were outside raking leaves and he was diving into the huge piles of maple leaves tryig desperately to hide underneath. When I was worried that he might be feeling too cold (because it was very cold for this time of year), I checked his hands and they were burning hot!! He was just so busy and active that the temperature had no bearing on him.

Today is a double recap for day 39 and 40. Day 39 was basketball night. Another great week of pickup basketball at my local gym. I played for just under 2 hours with only one 10 minute break. I came home very exhausted (as usual after basketball is over) and pretty much shut things down...which is why I did not blog about it until now (the following night).

As for Day 40, I had a good day of mixing between family, business and fitness. We have been working extremely hard on www.igniteyouressence.com. We have increased our Alexa ranking from 10 million to under 3 million in about a month. For the uninformed, Alexa is a website that ranks websites based on the amount of traffic they receive. We have been honing in on certain keywords and appealing to certain audiences. I think our content is much better quality and and we are attracting a larger group of people as a result.

For fitness, I did a great shoulder workout. Every Friday of this challenge, I have used my workout to actually take a break from cardio and focus on pure weight lifting for my shoulders. Shoulders were an area of my fitness that I had neglected for the past number of years. This 90 day program has helped me put that focus back where it needed to be. Its especially important for me since I have had shoulder problems in the past. I want to keep them strong to avoid future injury.

After the gym, I came home and had a less healthy meal. Same as last friday, it was nachos and chicken. But again, the nachos were baked and I substituted sour cream and used plain yogurt instead. Actually tasted awesome! So, even though I was indulging, I felt great about the decision and felt I earned it after another great week of hard work.

This week was especially triumphant because I maintained my fitness regimen despite a cold/flu that I was dealing with. So all in all, day 40 was a positive day and I am eager to get going with the rest of the challenge.

Day 41 will be tough though. We are going to my wife's sisters place for the evening and I know everyone will be sitting down for a few nice drinks before dinner. I love having a cocktail at these events but I will have to stick with Soda or Juice...but its a small price to pay. My success in this challenge is much more important to me!

justin

Day 38 Recap

2008-10-15T20:16:00.000-07:00

All I can say is WOW! It is after 11pm and the end of a very long and busy day... and I feel AWESOME!

I started my morning with a slight sore throat and the feeling of the lingering cold/flu I had the past 24 hours.

By about 9am I was feeling more energetic, lively and overall in better health. Skip ahead 16 hours and I feel back to 100%. In fact I just got home less than an hour ago from a later than usual workout.

That was the fastest and lightest cold/flu I have experienced in recent or long term memory. I am going to chalk my quick recovery up to my improved physical conditioning thanks to my 38 days (and counting) fitness regimen.

I also personally believe that the positive mindset I was able to maintain has helped me incredibly. Not once did I worry about the cold stopping me or slowing me down. I had a general sense of acceptance about the situation and was able to keep my mind focused on getting back to 100%. I am also very proud of myself that I stuck with my workouts despite being under the weather. It was a great test of committment which has literally strengthened my self esteem.

What's really interesting is how much I had to speak today without experiencing and throat soreness. I taught a 3 hour lecture for a course I am conducting at a local college in the morning. Then I spoke for another 2 hours this evening at a presentation for our home based business Xocai. Normally my voice would be hoarse by now but for whatever reason it is not bothering me at all!!

In terms of my workout, I did not have any time during the day with such a busy schedule. So after all of the presentations and meetings were complete it was about 9:30pm. So off I went to the gym for a cardio and leg workout. I did the best cardio routine of my 90 challenge so far (in terms of total calories burned). I was soaked in sweat by the end but it was a great feeling. On that note, I find it interesting that as my fitness level has improved I am actually sweating more than before. This could be because I am burning fat at a higher rate of speed...but I'm not positive. Something to look into for sure. If you know the answer, please drop me an email and share!!

I will keep this update short as I still have some work to do before I call it a night. But it was a great day in terms of productivity and health!

Day 36 and 37 Recap

2008-10-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

Another 2 for 1 blog post. I have been dealing with a lingering cold/flu for the past 24 hours so I skipped my blog update last night in favour of some extra sleep.

Despite the minor illness, I still made the time for my fitness routine and did a great job sticking my healthy eating routine.

On Monday (Day 36), I had a full day of work and was able to accomplish quite a few things. It was a big personal development and training day which are actually some of my favourite days. I always come out of my training sessions with a renewed sense of inspiration and a huge list of notes with ideas that I want to implement. This time was no different.

After working all day, it was off to the gym which was actually open despite it being a holiday Monday in Canada. For the first time in a few years, my wife and I went to the gym together and we had almost the entire facility to ourselves.

I did shoulders and back weight lifting combined with a cardio routine on the stepper. I was able to push myself a little harder because Jessica was there to spot me. I was able to bench press more than my own body weight which is something I have not done in a long time. I would say it is partly due to this 90 day challenge and partly due to the fact that she was in fact there to spot me. I normally would never push my limits because the last thing I want is to get stuck underneath a bench press bar!!!

I had actually noticed my cold/flu coming on all day even leading up to my workout. After the workout, I felt much better but I still noticed traces of the bug. I have heard both recommendations in the past. Some people think a good workout is a great way to beat a cold. Others say rest is best and working out could actually make it worse. In this case, I think it actually slightly helped.

Skip ahead to today, day 37. I woke up with a brutally sore throat and my head quite clogged. I decided to skip a few morning appointments in favour of sleep. I have 3 speaking engagements tomorrow so I want to make sure my throat is available for me to do all that talking!!

I did not eat much today but I doubled up on my daily dose of Xocai Healthy Chocolate. For non regular readers, this is a chocoalte product that my wife and I distribute as a home business. Raw Cocoa is one of the healthiest foods on the planet and this product is the only chocolate in the world where you can eat Cocoa without it ever being heated beforehand. It has extremely high levels of antioxidant which is never bad when you are under the weather.

I was able to muster up enough energy to make some important business calls and do some writing. Then it was off for the afternoon to some sales and marketing for our businesses.

By the time we got home I was feeling really exhausted. My throat was still quite sore and I had that overall tired feeling in my body. I once again decided to go with the philosophy that "a good workout will cure all that ails you". So I went down to my basement and did about a 30 minute weight lifting routine including biceps, triceps and abs. I did supersets which basically means you get no rest between sets. I worked up quite a sweat and by the end of it I was actually feeling really good!

Once I was done I sat down and had a good meal and drank a ton of water as well. At the time of this blog post it is 10pm and I am feeling the best I have felt in about 36 hours. So far, this daily fitness thing seems to be working wonders. In the past, I would most likely have become quite ill and stuck in bed for up to 4 days. This time, at the end of the second day I am already feeling 70% better!

Tomorrow will be the true test for my sore throat. I have to speak for a total of 5 hours so my next blog post will be an interesting update to say the least!

justin

Day 35 Recap

2008-10-13T01:26:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving. Always a great time of year for seeing family, having some fun outside and EATING enormous quantities of food! We had our family get together today and the food situation was in full effect. I actually did a pretty good job avoiding over eating during the dinner component of the meal, but dessert was a different story.

My grandmother made this incredible pumpkin cake that is hard to describe. All I know for sure is that the one rather large piece I ate probably had the same number of calories as my entire meal! It was awesome though and the fact that I did not have any beer or wine made it that much easier on my stomach to digest the rich food.

It was a long day at my parents' place chasing Thomas around their yard. My folks live on a 6 acre property so my 1.5 year old son has plenty of land to keep him busy. I was happy to chase him around to help burn some of those calories off.

After stopping at the inlaws place on the way home, it was after 8pm when we finally got back to our house. I was finally feeling relatively normal after having that extremely full feeling in my stomach all day. So I threw on my outdoor shoes and went for a good 30 minute hoops session at the outdoor hoop near my house. It was a great workout. Normally at this time of year the weather is a bit too cold to be outside at night but we are having unseasonably warm temperatures this long weekend.

What I really like about this challenge is the fact that I stuck to my routine, even on a long weekend holiday. In the past, I would have never exercised after a meal like that even if I had the energy to do so. Now, because I am in this mindset of "inevitability thinking", it was simply not an option. The only question I was asking myself was "what exercise will I be doing tonight?"

Now that I understand how to literally create this mindset for myself, I am excited to think about all of the other areas of my life where I can create this sense of inevitability.

From a business perspective, I am always inspired by the story of John Assaraf who took Remax of Indiana from a struggling real estate company with no hope for the the future, to a 5 Billion Dollar in Sales organization. He did it by introducing one habit of inevitability thinking. That habit was to be in front of prospective client/partner every single day and ask them to buy into his venture. He would do this until he achieved his vision of $5B company...which eventually took him 5 years.

I am starting to realize that anything is truly possible if you hold the image of what you want in your mind and continually do everything in your power to bring that vision into reality. My personal goals for this challenge is a great start...but it is JUST the start of what I am planning. Very exciting stuff!

Day 34 Recap

2008-10-11T21:57:00.001-07:00

OK, so as I mentioned in my previous post, it is Canadian Thanksgiving weekend and a TOUGH time of year (to say the least) to eat a super healthy diet.

Today we had my mother over for a visit and the first thing she hands me as she walks in is a box of mini doughnuts (called Timbits)! It was late morning and I did not have much of a breakfast so I indulged in about 4 of the timbits. Not a huge deal but still...one of the worst possible foods to eat from the perspective of health.

The rest of the day was not so bad in terms of eating. I did have a bowl of frozen yogurt after dinner but again, it IS the long weekend and I felt like splurging.

The good news is that I took an hour to go to the gym and shoot hoops. I actually worked up an amazing sweat while working on different running and shooting drills. My shirt was soaked by the end which is a great sign. I came home feeling like I had a good full body workout.

I am pulling a late night working tonight (even though it is a long weekend) because I have some agressive deadlines to meet for the next week. Among all the work I am doing with my coaching clients at www.igniteyouressence.com I am also spending a lot of time on our home-based HEALTHY CHOCOLATE business www.chocolatylation.com.

My wife and I have been eating this chocolate daily for close to a year and we are extremely happy with the health and income benefits. It also tastes amazing and provides more than the daily requirement of antioxidant we need to keep our systems balanced.

I am incorporating more and more of my personal development programs and presentations with this chocolate business. I see it as a win-win opportunity to help my team in our chocolate business stay motivated while affording me the opportunity to fine tune my skills as a coach and motivator. It is really teamwork at its finest and its a TON of fun!

Tomorrow

Day 32 and 33 Recap

2008-10-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

One smooth day followed by a tough day that I had to grind out.

Thursday (Day 32) was an all around great day. I had lots of energy, had a number of successful business meetings and completed the latest issue of the Ignite Your Essence newsletter (it was issue number 32 which was kind of interesting since it was day 32 of my challenge!).

It was also basketball night so I had the opportunity to place 2 consecutive hours of uptempo bball. I was pretty much exhausted by the end of the game. I am definitely noticing a difference though. Before I started this challenge, I was exercising an average of 3-4 times per week but doing very little cardio. Now that I have been doing cardio almost every day for the past month, I find I will wake up the morning after basketball and have no soreness in my toes, feet or legs. For the past number of years, I would ALWAYS be extremely sore and beat up the morning after a long bball run.... so I am excited to see how my conditioning is paying off!

Hoops ended around 10:30pm and then it was off to do some late night grocery shopping. The fatigue really kicked in at that point and it was a real struggle just to push the cart around the aisles.

I finally got home and got to work on my newsletter. I spent about 2 hours composing the letter and writing my latest article http://www.igniteyouressence.com/brain.html.

It was 2am and I was exhausted so I went straight to bed afterwards.

The only problem was, for the first time in maybe 2 years, my mind was racing and I was not able to sleep. After maybe 45 minutes I started to drift and then my son woke up crying. This was around 3am. He was sick with some kind of flu which kept him up until about 5am...which means, I was up until that time as well.

So the only sleep I got was from 5am-7am when he woke up and then an extra hour a little later in the morning.

Needless to say I have been feeling pretty tired all day.

Having said that, I was able to spend about 3 hours of solid focus on my work and I ended up accomplishing quite a bit of work all things considered. I was also able to give my wife a hand babysitting our niece off and on throughout the day.

I then mustered up enough energy to get to the gym for my Friday night shoulder workout. Suprisingly, I felt very strong tonight and was able to shoulder press 120 pounds which is really good by my standards.

HOWEVER, I did not do my cardio workout tonight. Normally I would have done a high intensity cardio routine on the 'stepper' but I opted out tonight. Instead I did about 10 minutes of abs and stretching and called it a night. I felt more than happy with my decision as I wanted to give my body a bit of a break.

Then, I came home and had somewhat of an unhealthy night. I did not break the routine on alcohol drinking but I had a big plate of nachos with chicken. The chips were baked as opposed to fried which was a wiser choice...but I washed it down with a pretty good helping of frozed yogurt. Again, this challenge is not about depriving myself, it is about longevity and consistency. I would not want to eat like this every night but it was actually a nice treat to kind of pig out tonight after a hard working and successful week.

The next challenge in discipline will be this weekend as it is Thanksgiving in Cananda. There will be plenty of rich food and drink to tempt me and the gym will be closed for at least one day. I will have to get creative for my workout routine!

See you on Day 34

Day 31 Recap

2008-10-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

Day 31 was officially the start of "leg 2" of what I am calling a 3 part challenge. The first 30 days were "leg 1" and it was a great experience.

Some interesting things to reflect on:
- At the beginning, I was often wondering how or if I would be able to maintain my fitness regimen EVERY single day. It was a limiting belief in the past. Now that 30 days have passed, it just feels natural that, at some point during my day, fitness will be incorporated and I always look forward to it!
- My habit of dipping into the fridge for a cold beer and a bag of sunflower seeds on weekends or non-busy weeknights has literally disappeared. There are 2 bottles of Corona in the bottom of the fridge that would have been long gone in the past. Sure they still look tasty but the urge to open them is almost non-existent!!!
- The fact that I have successfully reached the 1/3rd mark of the challenge has helped me mentally. I feel a renewed sense of committment to the challenge and to my goal of having a toned figure and a new lifestyle. It also reinforces so many of the great ideas I have learned from the Personal Development masters like Bob Proctor and John Assaraf. The underlying message is, 'we can use will power and determination to try to break bad habits but it literally requires REPROGRAMMING of your mind for a period of at least 30 days to officially change your behaviour.'

This is literally fascinating stuff for me!

On a side note, I am about to release my latest newsletter for my clients at http://www.igniteyouressence.com/. The entire newsletter is dedicated to the work of John Assaraf. I am a sponsor at an upcoming event where he will be speaking. I am looking forward to finally getting to meet him in person, shake his hand and thank him for the amazing mentor he has been in my life!

I found it interesting that "leg 2" of this challenge started with a meeting with a friend and associate of mine, Brock Picken. Brock is a phenomenal fitness trainer and incredibly inspiring person. He recently biked across Canada with a 40 pound weight vest to raise money for Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto and to raise awareness about the ill effects of childhood obesity.
Check out his site at http://www.brocksultimatefitness.ca/. He is the perfect role model to emulate if you want to make a committment to health, fitness and general care of your body (which can be easily overlooked in our busy society today!)

I had another great workout tonight as well. High intensity cardio followed by leg weights and a TON of ab exercises! Gotta keep focusing on that abdominal area. I feel more sure than ever that I will get to my goal.

Day 32, here I come

Day 30 Recap

2008-10-08T00:33:00.000-07:00

Today was fun. It reminded me of the first few days of this challenge where I was excited and intrigued about my new program. The reason it had this feeling was because I was making a full conscious effort to monitor all of my food intake and only eat until I was full.

I'm sure there are people who read this blog who have had to deal with the issue of eating past the point of feeling full. I'm not sure why but it has been an issue for me for much of my life. For whatever reason, I would just do it, sometimes without thinking.

For the first 29 days of this challenge, it was almost like I was letting myself off the hook in this category. Because I was eating healthy food (most of the time, I do allow occasional non-health foods) and exercising every single day, I guess I felt that it was okay to indulge more than I really needed to.

In hindsight, I know that I could probably have had quicker results in my body toning goals had I put my eating controls in place earlier.

But as I talked about yesterday, this challenge is introducing a process. It is a long term plan to help me create a system of habits that will support a very healthy lifestyle. Now that the fitness and healthy eating/drinking habits are ingrained (literally they are, it's an awesome feeling), I will spend the next 30 days working on this new habit of monitoring my quantity of food.

The rest of this week is incredibly busy from a business perspective. When my calendar has been this crazy in the past, I actually found myself skipping meals. It will be interesting to see how I react when I actually have to remind myself to eat !!

The good news is I have lots of fruit and my Healthy Chocolate to take with me on the road in case a meal happens to elude me!

In terms of a Day 30 fitness recap, I had another fantastic workout. Full of energy and I was able to workout at a high intensity again. I did a full arm routine transitioning from biceps to triceps for a total of 7 exercises, followed by a high intensity stairmaster routine.

I came home, had a good meal and had lots of energy to put in another 2 hours of work before bed. Very productive day for sure!

Day 29 Recap

2008-10-06T20:19:00.001-07:00

Back at it!

After a number of days away from routine and not spending much time on business, it was back to work today...sort of. I actually had some visitors stop by for part of the day but it worked out well.

The one challenge with home based business (my speaking business is operated out of my home but obviously I go different places to do presentations) is being able to separate the "at home mind" and the "work mind". It is very easy to get caught up with non-work tasks and before you know it... you lose your day.

That's another topic (probably for a future article) so on to the recap.

Today was an awesome workout. I did a heavy chest and back routine followed by intense cardio on the stairmaster. The last few minutes on the stairmaster were BRUTAL. I pushed myself through the fatigue and pain with some personal affirmations. In times when I really need to dig deep to finish my workout, I will link up success in business or in life in general with my ability to finish my workout strong. I will tell myself "the way you finish one thing is the way you finish everything". So as I'm pushing for the final few minutes of calorie burning fun, I am really just proving to myself that I have what it takes to reach all of the goals I set!

I think I might have pushed a bit too hard though because once I got home, I actually fely a little ill for the next hour or so. I don't drink water while I exercise because I always seem to get cramps. So I might have been just a little dehydrated.

Once I had a good meal and put my son to bed, I was starting to feel better. I had a new surge of energy that helped me get through a few more hours of work. It is about 11:30pm now and I am heading to bed to read for about an hour.

I am going through a few specific parts of a book called The Answer by John Assaraf. I will be seeing John speak live in a few weeks so I want to be prepared to learn. When he speaks, he SPEWS a goldmine of information!!!

As of tomorrow it is day 30 and I am formally recommitting to this program. I have done a great job with the fitness component and the refraining from alcohol component but I would like to really focus on my diet. I have been eating relatively well but my quantity of food intake has been too high. I eat even after I'm full which is more of an old habit than anything else.

This is why I call it the 90 Day challenge because I still have 60 days left to correct my habit patterns and introduce new ways of thinking and behaving that will help me reach my ultimate goal!

See ya tomorrow
jp

Day 27 and 28 Recaps

2008-10-05T20:47:00.000-07:00

Another double-up in terms of my daily recaps. It has been a busy weekend and I have not been online, so I'm hoping to recap everything in one post accurately:)

Day 27 was really busy with lots of running around but I had a fantastic workout. I went to the gym before closing time again and decided to skip the leg weights and just shoot some solo hoops. I was actually curious how my feet would hold out after the long run on Thursday night. The good news is that I felt great and had no lingering effects.

Today, Day 28 was actually the closest I came so far to missing a workout. From the time I woke up this morning until quite late at night, I was completely booked. I literally had no time to workout. Jessica and I then took the evening to ourselves to catch up and go for dinner/movie. By the time we got home it was after 11pm and I was full from all the popcorn (I KNOW this is a healthy regimen I'm on but I am allowing snacks and junk food in moderation. This is more about long term lifestyle than a fad diet and I WILL allow myself to eat some not-so-healthy stuff when I feel like it). So, in order to keep the fitness streak going, I did a 10 minute ab blast....and I actually broke a sweat!!!

I've heard of "7 minute abs" and I beat it by an extra 3 minutes!! It also qualifies as fitness so the streak is alive at 28 days!

Its actually pretty interesting to observe my recovery rates now that I am exercising every single day. When I first started this challenge, that was one of the big mental blocks I had to overcome. The belief that I 'should not' workout every day. The truth is, thousands (if not millions) of people around the world workout every day. Some VERY seriously if they are olympians or pro athletes. And if they can do it, so can I. So I have already changed that belief at a core level. Which is REALLY cool to me.

I have absolutely no sore muscles or fatigue heading to bed tonight. I'm pumped to get back to the gym tomorrow for a heavy chest/back/cardio routine!

C-U-L8R!!

My Newest Release

2008-10-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

I am really excited to announce the release of my latest project. A 7 part eCourse called The Secrets of Success.

Being part of the personal development industry has been an amazing journey. I have learned so much about myself, my own potential, and most importantly, how I can help others realize their own potential and reach new levels of happiness and success.

If you go to my website (just click on the ebook image or go to www.igniteyouressence.com) then you can subscribe to my newsletter and gain immediate access to this course. It has 7 downloadable lessons with streaming audio or mp3 download if you prefer.

It is a great introduction to personal development and will prepare you to take some big steps in your life.

If you are looking to work with a success coach like myself, this course is an excellent way to get prepared and to use as a tool to work towards your goals.

I encourage you to check out the eCourse today and send me any feedback that you have to justin@igniteyouressence.com!

Thanks for checking out my blog and I hope to hear from you
Justin

Day 26 Recap

2008-10-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

Just a short update today as I am going to be taking some down time with my wife to watch a movie and just chill out. Some well deserved rest!

Today was a difficult day in terms of fatigue. After running for over 2 hours at basketball last night, I only got about 5 hours sleep before I was up with Thomas for his morning routine. I think 7 hours would have been ideal for physical recovery time.

Because my wife Jessica and I are both home based entrepreneurs, we have been taking turns getting up with Thomas in the morning while the other one gets an extra hour or so of sleep. And today, Jess was overdue!

It was a back and forth day of working and playing with Thomas as Jessica was busy with some of her business stuff that was quite high priority. Now that Thomas is over 1.5 years old, he will play on his own for stretches of time and I usually try to get a little bit of work done while he's doing that.

By about 3pm, I was still feeling groggy and tired and I decided I really wanted to shift my energy. I focused on feeling alert and ready. I had an appointment with a local college where I will be teaching some extra credit courses and the meeting really helped me get my second wind. By the time I got home, the thought of going to the gym was actually energizing. I had a great shoulder and cardio workout! There were maybe 4 other people in the gym (Friday nights are not busy as you might guess) so it was really easy to focus and all of the machines I wanted were available!

The rest of the night was scheduled down time and we watched a movie called Stop-Loss. This is not a movie review blog so I won't go into detail. But I give the movie a 7.5/10

Day 25 Recap

2008-10-03T00:13:00.000-07:00

Here we are. 25 straight days of healthy diet and exercise. I just came home from my weekly Thursday night pickup basketball session and it was awesome. I have never had this much endurance in my life (as far as I can remember). I actually ran for over 2 hours and did not really feel tired until the last 20 minutes of the night!
For those of you who do not play basketball, that is a LONG time to play without a break. The main issue I was dealing with was sore feet and ankles from the constant running... I think it was worse than usual because of this fitness streak I'm on.

The one potential problem I am noticing with this routine is the timing of when I eat. I did not have time to eat dinner before basketball so I ended up eating a relatively big mean at 11pm at night. Going to bed at 1am is a good 2 hours after the fact but I am going to study some ways I can improve the timing of my meals to maximize this experience.

I know some people make a rule of "no eating after 7pm or 8pm" type of deal. For me, its almost not feasible since I go to bed normally around 12-1am. With an agressive fitness routine like mine, I would be starving if I went 5-6 hours without eating.

I'm thinking I might experiment with having a big meal in the mid afternoon and then have time to digest before my evening workout. Then, at night, just have small snacks spread out every couple of hours. Again, the point of this challenge is to introduce SUSTAINABLE habits. I know, from years of personal development, that unless it feels natural and somewhat comfortable, I will likely not hold onto the habit. For example, if I forced myself to be hungry at night, I will eventually hate the challenge and it will be almost impossible to maintain over the long run.

In terms of energy levels, I felt pretty good today. After spending the morning in business meetings, I spent the rest of the day with Thomas helping him recover from his virus. The good news is he is almost back to normal! Plus he is a pretty tough kid and he always seems to have fun even when he is not feeling well.

For me, it has actually been a positive experience helping him recover the virus. It forced me to spend more time with him and also recognize and appreciate him more than ever before. Sometimes, I can get so focused on my business and reaching my goals that I forget to be 100% happy and grateful for my family. This has been an excellent reminder and a great way to get back into a state of gratitude!

Day 24 Recap

2008-10-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

I always like to focus on the positive in every situation so I will start by celebrating the successful launch of www.IgniteYourEssence.com... the NEW version.

It was a huge job but well worth it. Much more information to attract people to the site and much more value for our visitors. The perfect win-win situation. We also got an exciting newsletter out to our subscribers which was about 2 weeks overdue.

So, from a business perspective, it was a good day.

At the same time, to be completely honest, today was also very challenging. I was up much of the night again working and then with Thomas as he was still not feeling well. In fact, we found out today that he has hand,foot and mouth virus! Sounds worse than it is actually - apparently its quite common for kids. Still, it has been tough on him and when he is not feeling well, its emotionally stressful for us parents. I ended up delaying many of my business committments today so I could just spend time with Thomas and keep his mind off how crappy he felt.
According to the doctor his mouth will be in a lot of pain along with some headaches. I'm pretty sure that is what he was experiencing because he barely ate and eating is usually NOOOO problem for him, haha!

I also missed our chocolate presentation that my wife and I were conducting tonight because I wanted to be home with Thomas and make sure he got to sleep okay.

(We are distributors for a healthy chocolate called XOCAI. Our site is www.Chocolatylation.com The good news is we had our biggest turnout yet and a number of new partners enrolled in the business to work with us tonight!)

I acquired some kind of strange sinus pain after my late night jog last night. The air was cold but not cold enough to have caused sinus damage. I'm not sure what the issue is, all I know is ... IT HURTS!!

At any rate, after a long day I finally got Thomas to bed and went down to the basement for a 20 minute power workout. I was able to do a full arm and ab workout. It was scaled down from my normal routine and probably the least strenuous workout since I started this 90 day program...BUT nevertheless, I stuck to my goal and it felt great to do so.

The fatigue has definitely caught up with me so I am calling it a night early tonight. All in all, I am very happy with my day and although it was challenging, I still 'feel' very positive and have lots of things to be grateful for.

See you on day 25

Day 22 and 23 Recap

2008-09-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

OK So the past 2 days have been among the busiest since I became an entrepreneur. Because of this, I have once again decided to merge 2 days worth of "recap" into 1 post. Considering it is after 1:00am, I will let myself off the hook :)

Monday (day 22) was a great day in terms of productivity. I took my daily photo, ate a healthy breakfast, spent time with my wife and son and got a great start to my day bright and early. After a full day of development on the new version of IGNITE YOUR ESSENCE and putting the final touches on a goal setting workshop for a local university, I had all kinds of energy left for the "dreaded" monday workout.

I call it "dreaded" because it is my most challenging workout of the week. I do 6-8 heavy sets of chest and back weight lifting followed by high intensity cardio. I usually finish the session with a completely soaked T shirt!!

I want to jump ahead to TODAY which was Day 23. Instead of going forwards let me go backwards. About 2 hours ago, I went for a jog. That's right...a jog at almost 11:30pm. I was officially the latest workout of my life. But it was literally the first opportunity I had to workout and the thought of breaking my streak after 22 consecutive days was MORE PAINFUL than the fatigue I had to overcome to get my shoes and jogging pants on and go for it!!

It was actually an amazing experience to kind of "observe" my mind, and be able to ignore the voice trying to rationalize why I should take a day off and get back tomorrow. I did NOT WANT to give in to this voice because my goal has become so strong and the excitement of being almost 1/3 of the way through is awesome!

For my own purposes and for the readers of this blog, I want to document the activities of my day:
7am - Rise and Shine after a long night getting up with my son (I think he is teething
7am-8am - Family time, breakfast, morning prep
8am-9am - Email responding and some research
9am-10am - Work on the website
10am-11am - Final touches on my Workshop for the university students
11am-12:30 - Drive to university
12:30pm-2pm - Pre-workshop classroom prep and meet with coordinator
2pm-630pm - Delivered back 2 back 2 hour workshops (a TON of fun. great people in the course. very positive people too)
630pm-830pm - Drive home
830pm-1030pm - Work on website
1030pm-1130pm - Up with Thomas. he is still having problems with his teething :(
11:30pm-12am - Late night jog (23 straight days baby, woo hoo!!)
12am-2am - FINISHED WEBSITE...IT is up and running. check out igniteyouressence.com

So, the point is, it was a LOOOOOOOONG day but I had no problem sticking to my fitness committment EVEN though it was after 11pm, EVEN though I was exhausted from delivering 2 workshops and driving 3 hours. This is a great system of staying committed. Just by virtue of having this blog, it is keeping me committed because I don't want to have to admit to my readers that I was unable to stick with my plan!

SUGGESTED ACTIVITY - Get an ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER as soon as humanly possible. Work with this partner to hold you accountable for one of more of your goals. Why? Well, as you can tell from my 90 day program so far....IT WORKS. You will LOVE the results, I promise

Day 21 Recap

2008-09-28T21:33:00.001-07:00

After staying up extremely late last night in an attempt to make extra progress on my website, I got a very late start to my day and missed out on some fun outdoor time with Thomas.

Year 1 as an entrepreneur has called for constant persistence and some personal sacrifice in terms of free time. While my wife and I are both entrepreneurs working primarily out of our home, you would be surprised how difficult it is to schedule some time together to just hang out as a couple. We are both working through it to make sure we remember to balance but I think the key lies in personal productivity which has been a big topic for me lately.

When we were both employees, we never had the workload demand that we have now. It was good from the perspective of planning your day and having evenings off to relax...but not so good from the perspective of making the most out of life and going for our big dreams and aspirations.

With a never ending workload, I am constantly looking for opportunities to prioritize and cut non-critical tasks. I am trying my best to apply the 80/20 rule but our businesses are still so new that we often don't know which task fits in the 80 category and which one fits in the 20. We will keep plugging away and every little win we get in our business is another reminder of the happiness and freedom of following our dreams.

In terms of my challenge, I'm feeling great. Today being day 21, I find it interesting that this was the first day I did not even think about the challenge until it was time to go for a workout at 8pm. I have read in certain books that anew habit can form in as little as 21 days so that could be the reason why I didn't even think of it.

I might experiment with adding new, supportive habits after day 30 just to enhance the experience and accelerate my goal achieving process. Tomorrow I will do a weigh in and see where my personal bodyweight stands.

Day 20 Recap

2008-09-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

Got off to a great start today. Its amazing what a full night of sleep can do after a couple of really long and physically punishing days.

Jessica was off again first thing this morning for another Chocolate meeting with someone from our downline. This business is awesome and it is really taking off. Its also a ton of fun working together on such a great project with my wife. She is so determined and dedicated and really believes in the product.

Jess was gone until 12:30 then we all headed to her parents' new home which they will be moving into on Monday. They got the keys early so it was a busy day of cleaning and preparing. My main job was to take care of Thomas which was awesome as always,...but again, very demanding. He is honestly the most active 1.5 year old ever... I love it!

I was once again able to produce great quality work during Thomas' 2 naps today but it was not enough time to complete everything I needed to work on...more on that in a minute.

Jessica helped her parents for the rest of the day and got home around 8pm to help put Thomas down. Again, it was already 8pm and I had once again not had a workout. I did not want to settle for a short basement routine. I looked outside and it was raining pretty hard...but I decided OUT OF THE BLUE..to go for a run. I had not been out for a jog in about a year. I mostly do cardio at the gym or on the bball court. \

The run was AMAZING. Something about running in the rain with my hat and hood on seemed really cool. I felt like I was this prime time dedicated athlete. Which is cool because the 90 Day challenge pretty much mimics the schedule of a pro athlete. I ran for 45 minutes without stopping and I covered what I'm guessing was 5 kilometers...but I honestly can't say for sure. Maybe I will drive the route tomorrow and check for future reference.

After my run, I was PUMPED to get my night going. It is now 3:20am and I'm done for the night but that run really gave me the boost I needed. I have hardly felt any fatigue (until this minute lol) which usually kicks in around 1:30am on the nights when I work late. My legs and knees are pretty sore so I'll have to do a spot check in the morning and see how I feel. Either way, one thing is for sure... I WILL keep going and Day 21 is as good as "in the books".

YEAH BABY, I just put an X through day 20 :=)

Day 18 and 19 Recap

2008-09-26T23:53:00.000-07:00

The past couple of days have been very busy and my computer time has been drastically cut down, so I decided to double up this recap.

Yesterday was a good day in terms of balance. I spent the first half of the day doing some very focused work on the next release of my website www.igniteyouressence.com (should be ready by monday). Jessica took Thomas to the pumpkin farm...which I was disappointed to miss but it gave me lots of quiet time at the home office. When they got back I had an opportunity for some family time, I cooked dinner for Thomas and helped with his bathtime and other night time fun stuff.

After that it was workout time. Thursday nights is pickup basketball at my gym so I have no trouble getting ready to go for that. I love playing bball and it was a great run. The tough part happened when I came home. My wife was super busy getting ready for a conference for our network marketing business www.chocolatylation.com. Usually after bball, I like to come home, have a shower and relax or maybe write an article if I'm up to it. On this night, I had to dig deep for the endurance to stay up until almost 3am helping her finish up order forms and other administrative stuff.

That is what made today my TOUGHEST DAY YET since starting the 90 day program. Jessica was gone all day which meant it was the boys day at home. Now, for readers without childred, let me clarify something. No matter how hard you work or how demanding you business is, PARENTING is the hardest job you will ever have. Thomas is the busiest kid in the world and he stayed true to that title today.

The good news is that I love every minute of it but every single stay at home mom or dad needs to be applauded for their efforts. Its a HUGE..but very rewarding job. The problem today was the fact that I played a very high intensity game of bball on Thursday night and then only slept 4 hours. I usually get about 7 hours after bball which gives me the energy I need. So needless to say, today was indeed tiring and another test of persistence and endurance.

During Thomas' naps I was actually able to get quite a bit of work done which is surprising. Its amazing how you can perform when you have deadlines to hit.

I have to be completely honest though. If every day of this challenge felt like today, I do not think I would be able to finish.... WAY too tiring.

When Jessica finally got home from the conference she was naturally very tired as well. We both teamed up to get Thomas everything he needed for his evening (dinner, bottle, bath, brush teeth, read story, etc...). I had still not had a workout at that point and I was in ZERO mood for one. After getting ready to go to the gym, I decided against it and went to my basement for a quick shoulder and ab routine. Normally this would not be enough but with my level of fatigue, I still stuck to my goal which is "some form of physical activity every day".

It's a great feeling now that the day is over to know that I stuck with my goal and stuck with this 90 day program even in the face of today's challenge. I have a feeling the next few days are going to feel much easier!

Day 17 Recap

2008-09-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

WOW...First thing I want to comment on about today was the degree of difficulty of my workout. I did my standard weight lifting/cardio split. I do the stairmaster at high intensity for 15 minutes. I did the exact same speed as many other workouts but for some reason, I could barely finish today. I was completely exhausted at the end.

Also, I usually leave the gym with a renewed feeling of energy. Tonight, it was not the case. I think it is a very obvious signal from my body that I need more rest tonight. And I am listening. I am actually going to bed for 11pm which is the earliest bed time in recent memory. I think a good 8 hour night sleep will help me have a much more productive day tomorrow.

On that note, I completed a 5000+ word document in record time this week as a result of my renewed focus on staying concentrated. In the past, the same document would have taken me over a week to write. It also helps that I am getting much more comfortable in my profession and I am more confident than ever in my capabilities as a coach and motivator.

My colleague and good friend Ted has also been putting in crazy hours to get our latest version of igniteyouressence.com released. We are planning to have the entire thing completed by Friday of this week. The latest version is the result of months of study, research, planning and implementation. We are very excited and we are confident that our subscribers AND new visitors will love it.

We both honestly believe in our hearts that Ignite Your Essence can help anyone and everyone looking to improve the results in their life through personal development. The latest release of the website will make it very clear that we are here to stay!

As for the 90 Day Challenge, I am still as committed as I was on Day 1 and I am definitely noticing the ease at which I am adapting to this new lifestyle. I'm looking forward to documenting more of my progress as the days go by.

This is justin popovic signing off!

Day 16 Recap

2008-09-23T21:17:00.000-07:00

I've decided the change up the format of my 90-Day Challenge recaps. The intention is still the same - I want to track my mental and physical state of being as I work to instill this new habit into my life. What I've decided is that I don't necessarily want to grade myself every day on different aspects, but rather, provide a more descriptive personal account of how I am feeling as the days go by.

Something that struck me today was that it is only day 16 of this challenge and I'm already doing most of my activities without thinking. I wake up in the morning and grab my camera for my daily shirtless photo (for new readers, I am tracking my physique as I work towards my goal of toned abs and peak cardio conditioning). I have been eating very well... no depriving myself whatsoever but just making sure I am eating responsibly and not over eating.

Another personal development lesson I have been ingraining in parallel is the ability to focus on staying concentrated on a single task, for prolonged periods of time. Well, as of about Day 12 of this challenge, I have noticed that my focus has become much stronger.

I wrote over 3500 words yesterday which is probably a personal record. It didn't even feel like a chore because I was so focused on the task that the creative ideas flowed fast and easy (amazing feeling).

From a workout perspective, today was a test of my committment. My wife ended up having to go to an unplanned meeting and so I was left home alone with Thomas for the majority of the afternoon and evening. The only way I was going to get a workout was to do one at home. I have no equipment so I formulated a 15 minute high impact cardio and ab routine that worked AMAZING. I was soaked with sweat and felt like a got a proper workout. Its amazing how innovative one can be when there's no other choice!

One last comment of note... I found myself battling a slight feeling of negativity when I looked in the mirror and realized that I don't notice any difference in my body shape. After 16 days I thought I would have...but I did not dwell on this thankfully. I used my focusing power to direct my mind back to the fact that I still have 74 days to go. I am working with the UNDERSTANDING that I am creating a lifelong habit. INSTANT GRATIFICATION is not part of the equation. COMMITTMENT to this new lifestyle will ultimately produce the results I desire. I KNOW this is true for my fitness goals and I intend to prove it is true for all of my LOFTY life goals.

HERE WE GO!! I'm pumped and re-motivated to keep the journey going!

See you on day 17
Justin

Day 15 Recap

2008-09-23T00:55:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER very productive day! I have been especially focussed on balancing between work, family, fitness. Today I spent quality time on all 3 areas.

What was especially interesting was the fact that I started my day focusing on family and helping my wife with some overdue chores around the house. In the past, I would have wanted to skip those chores so that I could focus on my business. What happened today was, I gave some time/energy to something non-work related but something that gave me the feeling of success and productivity. Even though it cut into my work hours, I was 10 times more productive with my business tasks because my mind was in a state of 'productivity'.

So, its not necessarily the quantity of time we put into a task that produces results, but rather, the quality. So the new question I am asking myself is "how can I get into a head space of high quality productivity?"

A summary of my day:
7:00-12:00pm Family time and overdue house chores
12:00pm-1:00pm Email and phone calls
1:00pm-7:30pm Content creation for coaching and speaking
7:30pm-9:00pm Weights and cardio workout
9:00pm-10:00pm Dinner and Family time
10:00pm-12:00pm More email, study and research

As of Sept.22 (Day 15 of 90):

Mental Toughness - 10
Physical Energy - 6 (operated all day on 4 hours sleep)
Self Confidence - 9
Persistence Threshold - 10
Faith That I Will Complete This Successfully - 10

Day 14 Recap

2008-09-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

It has officially been 2 weeks and I am still motoring along with persistence and energy towards my goal!

My wife got up early with Thomas so I was able to have a bit of a Sunday morning sleep-in which was great!

It was another very productive day but it was also an important family day. Sept.21 marks the anniversary of my grandfather's death. He was killed in Yugoslavia when my father was young (12 years old I believe). We got together with my dad, stepmom and sisters to remember him today. This is an important tradition for our family.

It was also a great opportunity to catch up with everyone. I got to spend a lot of time with family this weekend and for that, I am very grateful!

A summary of my day:
8:30am-11:00am Family time and some studying/reading
11:00am-12:30pm Get together to remember my grandfather
12:30pm-3:30pm Met up with a good friend to catch up. Played hoops to take care of my fitness requirement for the day. I won the game!! (sorry Mark lol)
3:30pm-4:30pm Email and Business talk with Jessica
5:30pm-7:30pm Alone time with Thomas
7:30pm-2:00am Working on Ignite Your Essence (writing and content development)

As of Sept.21 (Day 14 of 90):

Mental Toughness - 10
Physical Energy - 9
Self Confidence - 9
Persistence Threshold - 10
Faith That I Will Complete This Successfully - 10

Day 13 Recap

2008-09-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

Today was a day that I would classify as a balancing day. I devoted the majority of my time and energy on my family, and it was great!

An interesting challenge I faced today was fatigue. After sleeping 5 hours last night, I had to dig deep to find the immediate energy required to keep up with my son Thomas bright and early in the morning.

The cool thing about getting up in the morning is that even though I may feel quite tired and groggy when I first open my eyes, I can move forward with enthusiasm knowing that I will feel alive and energetic in a few short minutes of playing with my son!

I had a nap this afternoon, which is very rare, but it has given me the extra boost of energy required to get through the rest of my evening with pep in my step!

Here is a summary of my day:
7:00am-9:30am Alone time with Thomas, feeding him breakfast and playing
9:30am-11:00am Sorting email, working on our Xocai chocolate business
11:00am-1:30pm Family time with Jess and Thomas and watching our niece Olivia
1:30pm-5:00pm Golf with Jess and her brother and his wife (great rec time!)
5:00pm-6:00pm NAP!!!!
6:00pm-7:00pm More family time, Thomas dinner time
7:00pm-8:00pm Shooting hoops as my daily cardio workout
8:00pm-10:00pm Dinner with Jess, watched part of a movie on TV
10:00pm-12:00am Working on Xocai and writing content for my business

Today was the first day where I really felt exhausted in terms of the sleepy feeling.

My mind was SCREAMING to allow myself to use my round of golf as my exercise activity for the day. But the agreement I made with myself was that I would do some form of cardio workout every day...hence the hoops session (which was awesome after my nap).

As of Sept.20 (Day 13 of 90):

Mental Toughness - 8
Physical Energy - 6
Self Confidence - 9
Persistence Threshold - 9
Faith That I Will Complete This Successfully - 10

Day 12 Recap

2008-09-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

Now that I am wrapping up week 2 of my 90 Day Challenge, I am going to make a point of documenting my days more frequently.

Today was an extremely productive day but it was also a true test of persistence. I began my day at 9am Friday morning and I am finally wrapping things up at 1:15am Saturday morning. I probably had a total of 30 minutes break today! While I would not recommend this type of workload for a long stretches, it was mentally satisfying to successfully accomplish what I was able to do today.

In summary, here was my day:
9am-12pm Website development and content development
12pm-1pm Family time and Lunch
1pm-2:30pm More content development and business research
2:30pm-4:00pm Meeting with Coaching Client
4:00pm-5:30pm Grass Cutting (it was WAY overdue!)
5:30pm-9:00pm Booth Assistance for out Xocai business
(Listened to Robin Sharma Personal Development coaching en route to and from this event...got some GREAT ideas to implement)
9:00pm-10:00pm Workout at gym
10:00pm-11:00pm Time with my wife Jessica
11:00pm-1:00am Content development

The reason I am logging these activities is to have a journal of my tasks. It would have been VERY easy in the past to decide to SKIP my workout after such a long day. I would have made the excuse that "cutting the grass" was enough of a workout to qualify for physical activity.

Now that I'm doing this challenge, I *knew* at a core level that I didn't even have the option to skip the gym. If i did...the challenge was over and I would have to start again!! I was not prepared to go there.

So, the great aspect of this challenge is that I do not allow myself off the hook as easily as I might have in the past. Personally, I REALLY like using this as a forcing function. By the way, once midnight hit, I HAPPILY put another big blue 'X' through another day on my calendar.

That is now 12 days complete on my 90 Day challenge and I am looking forward to continuing the journey.

For the purpose of this challenge I have also created the following scale to measure my state of mind and state of physiology (1 being low and 10 being high). Check it out....

As of Sept.19 (Day 12 of 90):

Mental Toughness - 10
Physical Energy - 7
Self Confidence - 8
Persistence Threshold - 10
Faith That I Will Complete This Successfully - 10

90 Day Reprogramming

2008-09-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

This is my first post on this topic...so allow me to introduce the concept.

I am currently engaged on a personal challenge that I'm calling the "90 Day Reprogramming". I am going to spend 90 consecutive days INSTALLING a new habit pattern into my life.

The challenge can be summed up as follows -
90 consecutive days of the following:
- Take a shirtless photo of myself in the mirror every day
- Take part in physical exercise EVERY day
- Maintain a healthy, balanced diet
- Drink ONLY healthy drinks (I'm not a heavy drinker but I'm eliminating the weekend beer entirely)

But there's a twist. You see, I'm not just doing this to promote a healthy lifestyle. In fact, I already feel I live quite healthy.

What's the twist you ask?

I have a theory/philosophy that I would like to develop into a coaching program. I believe that the biggest challenge we ALL face when it comes to achieving any goal in life is:

THE ABILITY TO GIVE YOURSELF AND INSTRUCTION AND FOLLOW IT.

While I have done a good job with my health and fitness since becoming a professional in the personal development industry, I have yet to reach my peak fitness objective in terms of body shape and tone.

For the past year, I have been going in cycles where I am committed to healthy eating and fitness for a few weeks, then I "let" my workload prevent me from going to the gym for as long as a week at a time. What I have been lacking is CONSISTENCY.

With this "90 Day Reprogramming", I am using my fitness goal as a tool to really do something much more important (and profound if you want to call it that ;)) ...

I'm giving myself a command and using this challenge as a forcing function to follow it through to completion.

Once I have PROVEN to myself that this is possible, I will have gained self esteem, confidence and personal power to KNOW that I can accomplish ANYTHING I truly commit to.

Please check back here at my BLOG regularly as I will be documenting my mindset and my physiology as I go through this challenge!

To All Of Our Success!
Justin Popovic

Systemize Your Success

2008-08-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

When it comes to personal behaviour and getting your daily activities in harmony with your life goals, it is absolutely critical to have a system in place. Brain researchers claim that between 90-95% of all human behaviour is habitual which means we literally perform these activities without really thinking about them. Without a system to govern your critical activities, you will very likely fall victim to your habits and never truly accomplish the goals you set out to achieve.

As a person who is working on a number of major goals for my lifetime, I am always examining my results and looking for ways to improve the quality of my work and manage the time I choose to allocate to all of my activities. There have been periods of incredible productivity and other times where it seemed that everything was at a stand-still (even though I felt extremely busy). Upon reflection, it is easy to see that the main reason I experienced success during those productive times was due to the presence of a well defined system.

The word system can be defined as “a coordinated body of methods or a scheme or plan of procedure; organizational scheme.” When I think of a system, I think of a list of activities performed in a certain order with a specific result in mind. Ultimately, a properly defined and implemented system is the key to success in any area of life.

Just take a quick look around you and you can begin to appreciate the value of a well defined system. In many cases, the entire system has been automated for optimum performance. If you have any doubts, just think about what happens when you place a phone call, start your computer, turn on your lights, flush your toilet, start your car or even when you eat dinner. Each process is handled by a system that is responsible for producing a certain result. In the same light, I believe it is critically important for every person to have an activity management system for their life; a system that has been designed to help a person reach all of their desired goals and aspirations.

For me, having a system brings clarity to my mind and removes the potential of procrastination. It forces me to focus on what I really want to accomplish and take action accordingly. For example, when I was going through the mental transition from corporate employee to self-employed entrepreneur, there were a number of activities I knew I had to ingrain as part of my behaviour. Before I really understood the concept of systemizing my calendar, I instinctively knew that I had to build a system that would help me create my new habits. For a period of probably 100 days (maybe more), I woke up every morning and opened my activity journal. I would divide the page in half. The right side of the page was a list of six success habits that I had decided to implement in my life; family time, fitness, good deed, personal development studying, business activities and mental fitness (which would include something like meditation, visualization exercises, vision boarding, etc...). The left side of the page would be a growing list of all activities that would pop up throughout the day (for example, returning an important phone call, doing my online banking, filing mail, etc...). I would write every single activity down and check it off upon completion.

As basic as it sounds, that particular system actually changed my life. First and foremost, I would not allow myself to go to bed at night without first crossing off all critical daily activities from the right side of the page. I was literally obligating myself to create new habits. Secondly, I would see the left side of each page completely full of checked-off items. I felt great every time I looked at all of the important activities I had completed and it gave me energy to do it again the next day.

I believe that a good portion of our own self esteem comes from our ability to give ourselves an assignment and complete it. If there was a time I was feeling overwhelmed by my to-do list, I could quickly glance through my journal and remind myself how productive I could be when I put my mind to it. The accumulation of pages in my activity journal ultimately acted as a “success log” and always provided that extra boost of confidence when I needed it most.

After a certain period of time, I’m not sure why but I decided to stop using that system. I went back to a more informal task management system and basically relied on my calendar appointments to keep me on track. The really interesting thing I noticed was that the habits I formed have remained with me for the most part. I have replaced some of those original “success habits” with new habits that fit my current business structure and lifestyle. At the same time, I recently came to the realization that due to my ever-growing list of work demands, my schedule was once again out of control and rather chaotic. I had been spending far too much time on low priority work tasks, my fitness regimen was suffering some setbacks and my overall level of enthusiasm was being affected. After some introspection, it became quite evident that it was time to systemize!

The most difficult part of the entire process was forcing myself to stop, take a breath and examine my results. Once I was able to do this, I could easily see the areas that needed improvement and it was simply a matter of designing a new system that matched my current demands and lifestyle. I’m now back on track, more organized and best of all I’m feeling enthusiastic about my days.

Are you aware of how you spend the time in your day? Could you stand to be more efficient and productive? Perhaps you have broken some of the good habits that used to be part of your daily routine? If so, there has never been a better time to systemize. For a free download of the Ignite Your Essence “Activity Journal Systemizer”, please visit www.igniteyouressence.com !

Justin Popovic
justin@igniteyouressence.com
www.igniteyouressence.com

20 Months to One Million

2008-08-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

Being the owner of multiple businesses, I am always conscious of my money from both a personal and professional perspective. Our lives are very much intertwined and often controlled by our ability to manage, save and spend our money. I was recently reminded of a great concept that I learned about when I was a teenager.

If a person were to take one dollar, invest the dollar in an asset and then sell the asset for two dollars, they will have taken the first step in a 20 month process of accumulating a million dollars. The only habit that would need to be created is the habit of doubling the amount in hand every month for 20 months. The final amount at the end of each month would be:

Start - $1
Month 1 - $2
Month 2 - $4
Month 3 - $8
Month 4 - $16
Month 5 - $32
Month 6 - $64
Month 7 - $128
Month 8 - $256
Month 9 - $512
Month 10 - $1024
Month 11 - $2048
Month 12 - $4096
Month 13 - $8192
Month 14 - $16384
Month 15 - $32768
Month 16 - $65536
Month 17 - $131072
Month 18 - $262144
Month 19 - $524288
Month 20 - $1048576

Obviously the model is very simple and the idea is basic enough for anyone to grasp, however, I would like to expand on the underlying psychology of this concept. Let’s imagine that we were going to make a committed decision to implement this model in our own personal financial lives and we could not skip any steps or take any shortcuts. By the end of the first year, we will have accumulated only $2048. This means that in the next 8 months, we will have to amass $997,952 more than we currently have to reach the one million dollar level.

At this point, this imaginary experiment becomes more of a fairy tale or daydream to the average person. But let’s think about our minds and the power of focus. For the first 12 months of the experiment, we were making a monthly habit of acquiring assets (likely devalued assets) and selling them at a higher price point. As each month went by, we were forced to become more creative and innovative with our investments as the challenge of each amount grew larger. Assuming we were successful for the first 12 months, the challenge on month 13 would be to double $2048 to $4096. After an entire year of practicing with small amounts and getting into this habit, the only real change required would be to adjust our perception of the size of the investment. There are plenty of people in the world who have had success doubling large sums of money in short periods of time (business acquisitions, real estate and currency trading to name just a few). The average person may not understand how to do it but they most certainly could learn if they were to focus their mind and their attention on the task and do whatever it takes to learn the required skill.

I once heard T. Harv Eker use the extreme example that if there was a life or death situation and your life depended on you making a million dollars in one year, you could figure out a way to do it. I completely agree. The point I am trying to make is that I truly believe we are all capable of achieving a goal like this if the stakes are high enough. Why then, do so few people ever try to achieve such a major goal? Why do so many people reject the idea before giving any serious thought to it? There are probably a number of reasons, but from my perspective, the primary reason a person would never even attempt a goal like this is because in their heart, they don’t believe they can do it. If they did believe they could achieve the goal, would they not be actively working on it? Of course they would.

With that in mind we can begin to understand the powerful role that beliefs play in our lives. From the standpoint of our minds, a psychologist would say that a belief is nothing more than an idea that we have consciously accepted as true and ingrained as part of our subconscious conditioning. So if we are holding on to beliefs that limit us and keep us from taking action on a life changing idea, with the proper awareness, we can make the conscious decision to formulate a new belief that supports us in our big life goals.

I think it is both healthy and wise for every person to take time out regularly to examine their habits of thought. Since this article is centred around the idea of financial goals and money, I would encourage you to step back and review your personal thought processes when you were introduced to the idea of ’20 Months to One Million’. If you rejected the idea as something that was unrealistic or out of your level of capability, take some time to examine the belief you are holding that is causing you to reject the idea. What other limiting beliefs have crept into your mind that are no longer serving you? Can you replace those beliefs with a more empowering and gratifying thought pattern?

This concept always fascinates and excites me. If you would like to comment or share your thoughts, I would love to hear from you: justin@igniteyouressence.com or call me at 1-866-983-MIND.

Justin Popovic
justin@igniteyouressence.com
www.igniteyouressence.com

Step Into The Fear

2008-08-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

There’s no feeling like it. It is real and it is powerful. It creates intense physical sensations that cause our brains to scream “RETREAT”! It is also useful because it keeps us alert and keeps us safe. It is the emotion of fear and it has been one of my greatest adversaries.

Growing up, I was never once accused of being a major risk taker. I was not interested in being adventurous or exploratory. I remember being afraid to try the big toboggan hill, terrified of going on roller coasters and the thought of doing a student exchange program simply didn’t enter my realm of possibility. For whatever reason, I was very much controlled by my fears.

I’ll never forget a specific incident that occurred over 17 years ago. I was in grade 7 and my teacher recognized me as one of the top spellers in the school. He invited me to participate in the spelling bee which would take place in the auditorium in front of the entire school. I can still vividly remember the crippling sensations of fear as I visualized myself spelling a word incorrectly in front of the entire school. Without hesitation, I declined his invite and told him “it’s really not something I’m interested in.” Yeah right! This was exactly something I was interested in...but the fear once again kept me in the bleachers. What made the whole event so tough to swallow was that I actually would have won had I participated. I knew how to spell every word in the competition including the word that eliminated the final participant. Fear took me out of the game before it started. Fear cost me a huge win, personal success and school fame.

My sister, on the other hand, seemed to have been born with a higher threshold for fear. I remember her bombing down that same toboggan hill that I was scared to try...and she is 4 years younger than me. As for travel, at age 15 she took the first opportunity to travel across the world alone and live with a family in Germany for a few months. To this day, she continues to live an adventure-filled life including moving 5000 kilometres away from home to do her master’s degree, snowboarding down a mountain and even skydiving! Does she experience fear? Of course, but she does not permit fear to be a deciding factor in her goals and aspirations.

When I finally adopted the same mindset and made a commitment to take action in spite of fear, I was able to take full control of my life and implement lasting change. As I began to work on myself and learned what my fears were and why they existed, I started to truly understand the limitations that fear had created in my life. Once I placed my focus on what my fears had been costing me, the motivation to overcome the fears seemed to blossom. I actually felt angry because I was now associating the pain of missing out on life’s adventures with my inability to transcend my fears.

I now see fear, doubt and worry for what they truly are; imagined catastrophes. I once heard an author say that fear stands for “Fantasized Expectations Appearing Real” and I could not agree more. When I am feeling fearful, I can effectively deal with the emotion because I now understand that I am literally using my imagination to contemplate a disastrous outcome to a situation. Having this awareness allows me to move forward, experience the physical sensations being caused by the fear and ultimately overcome the feeling.

The best part about learning how to overcome fear is the true sense of liberation. To set the record straight, yes I was a fearful kid but I still had some amazing experiences and many came when I mustered up enough courage to do something that scared me. When Canada’s Youth Television Network YTV was at our school doing auditions for a kids game show, not only did I step up to the plate, but I actually made it on the show! Despite feeling extremely nervous and fearful of looking foolish on television, I went ahead and gained a life experience that my family still talks about today. I let them off the hook for making fun of my 1980’s mullet hairdo :)

From a professional perspective, I have had to work extremely hard at dealing with fear when it comes to public speaking. Despite the fact that I quit my software career to pursue a business in personal development speaking and coaching, I had a significant amount of anxiety when it came to standing up in front of an audience. You see, my ultimate goal is to be a top ranked platform speaker like so many of my mentors. But I set this goal with the awareness that I had a fear of speaking and that I would have to transform and reinvent myself completely to fulfill this desire. I would consider this particular task to be a work in progress. I continue to get up and speak in front of audiences. The size of the audience is progressively growing larger and the size of my fear is progressively getting smaller. Instead of worrying about my next presentation, I am eagerly practicing and preparing to deliver a performance to the best of my ability. The audience feedback is indicating that I am on the right track.

It is the culmination of these positive indicators that continue to chip away at my fear and move me towards liberation. While I accept and embrace fear as a part of the equation that keeps me sharp, I am able to continually move forward and develop myself to new levels and plateaus. Life is much more exciting now that I have learned to step into the fear!

Justin Popovic
justin@igniteyouressence.com
www.igniteyouressence.com

A Book That Changed My Life

2008-07-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

Joining the personal development industry was one of the best moves I have ever made in my life. I have had (and continue to have) the pleasure of studying and learning from a wide variety of inspirational and motivating authors and entrepreneurs. There are so many great mentors out there but if I had to pick one person to recommend to anyone, it would have to be Bob Proctor. He has been involved in the personal development industry for over 40 years and there are countless stories of people who have made phenomenal improvements in their life as a result of his work.

One of his most well known works is his international, best-selling book entitled, “You Were Born Rich”. This is always one of the first books I recommend to anyone who is looking to get started and learn more about personal growth and self help.

This article is not a book review but a personal account of how the message contained in “You Were Born Rich” has influenced my thinking, and ultimately, my life.

For the majority of my life, if someone asked me if I was more of an optimist or a pessimist, I would smile and say, “I’m more of a realist”. What I meant by this was that I required concrete proof to form an opinion about a particular situation or event. I didn’t necessarily think the world was plotting to do me wrong but I certainly didn’t embrace challenges like a so-called ‘optimist’ would. So, when it came time to learn about personal growth, self responsibility and how our thoughts determine our results in life, I was naturally sceptical of most authors and teachers. That was, of course, until I was introduced to Bob Proctor’s work.

The best thing about this book was that it opened my eyes and spoke not only to my head, but to my heart. If you are reading this article, you are likely the kind of person who can relate. When someone speaks a truth that resonates with your authentic self, it is impossible to ignore the message. So many times in the past I had heard messages about positive thinking, having a good attitude, goal setting and so on. “You Were Born Rich” explains why these ideas are so important and it communicates the message in such a way that it changed my beliefs on the spot.

Above all things, this book helped me understand myself and how I was literally shaping all aspects of my life. Not only that but I was 100% capable of achieving anything in life that I was truly committed to achieving. The book is such an effective tool for personal development because it illustrates exactly how the mind works and how we as humans can use the power of our thoughts to create our results. We can do this with absolute certainty when we truly understand the laws of the universe and work in harmony with them.

A Powerful Analogy:
In the book, Proctor discusses the “Acorn Analogy”. Like humans (or anything else in the universe for that matter), an acorn is nothing more than a mass of energy in a high speed of vibration. If the acorn is left out of the earth, it is slowly disintegrating and dying off. The moment it is planted, it begins to attract particles of energy that aid in the growth of an oak tree. Similarly, a person is also a large mass of energy in a certain rate of vibration. This vibration is controlled by that person’s thoughts and they will attract energy that is in harmony with their predominant thoughts.

For me, this analogy really hit home because I was beginning to understand the correlation between my thought patterns and the types of results I had been producing in my life. For example, I had always assumed that because I was a Math major in university and had career experience in the software industry, this was a field I would have to stay involved in until the end of my career. I also assumed that a good salary and benefits was far more important than job satisfaction and fulfillment. After reading “You Were Born Rich” I realized that these assumptions were nothing more than habitual ways of thinking that were producing certain results in my life. After months of repeatedly reading, listening and watching Bob Proctor programs, I was able to reprogram my thinking and see my world in an entirely new light.

I am now operating my dream business, Ignite Your Essence and I have just launched a sister company called Winning The Formula where we will be sharing these powerful life lessons with the youth!

I carry my copy of “You Were Born Rich” with me almost everywhere I go. It is an amazing book that can literally transform your life regardless of who you are or what your aspirations may be. If you have read this book and would be willing to share your experiences with me, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me through my website.

Justin Popovic
justin@igniteyouressence.com
www.igniteyouressence.com

Making a Habit of Personal Development

2008-06-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

It can be a rather amusing task to sit back and analyze some of the daily rituals we perform, often without giving any conscious thought. I believe this is a good thing because we would accomplish very little if we had to stop and think about every task we perform.

Just today, I was making the short drive from my home to the library where I do most of my writing, when I noticed I had been completely engrossed in thoughts about the book I am writing. I had to look in the back seat to check if I even brought my laptop and writing materials. I then became aware of all of the other things that had to take place just to make this short trip. Among other things, I had to put on my shoes, put on my jacket, walk from the house to the car, unlock the car with the keyless entry, place my bag in the back seat, sit in the driver’s seat, fasten my seatbelt, start the car, and so on. The entire time this was happening, my thoughts were directed towards my task for the day.

This got me thinking about some of the other habit patterns in our life that we consciously decide to do without really asking ourselves if the task is really the most important thing on our list. For example, many people choose to watch a number of hours of television each day. I personally know people who spend an unusual amount of time daily cleaning their home or randomly browsing the internet. The point I am trying to make is that most of us can probably uncover at least one hour of time each day that we give to meaningless tasks.

The interesting thing is, if you ask most people if they are happy with all of the results in their life, the truthful answer is often no.

My goal is to encourage people to dedicate some time every single day to personal reflection and self development. If you are unhappy with a certain situation, you have the ability to change your thinking, and ultimately your behaviour, so that you can improve that particular circumstance. Instead of watching a daytime drama or indulging in excessive dusting and mopping, you might want to consider picking up a book or audio program that forces you to examine your results.

From my personal experience, this simple action produces an internal reaction. Because you are examining your own personal results, you quickly realize that you are the only one who can change them. Unfortunately, in our society today, people are fixated on producing immediate results and having tangible evidence in their hands the minute they ask for something. With personal development, the true benefits can only be realized when we incorporate the ideas into a habit.

Think about it this way. If you were to make a firm commitment to read or listen to personal development educational programs for even 30 minutes a day for the next two weeks, what kind of positive impact could this have on your life? What if you did it for two months? Similar to unconscious activities such as getting dressed or brushing your teeth, you would start to create a new habit and become the kind of person who automatically takes action on ideas that move you in the direction of improved results.

From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that this kind of self study works. It really is a never ending process because it is part of our nature to grow, expand and develop and ultimately, it provides an excellent opportunity to make positive life changes. As you become more involved in personal development, you will start to notice areas of your life that are working well and other areas that require improvement. This kind of education will help you harness ideas that will improve your results while at the same time, overcome all of the inhibitors standing in the way of you achieving your aim!

A common question I hear is, “Where do I start?” There are so many good authors, philosophies and ideas on this topic that you can never really say which style will work. The best advice I have ever received from this perspective is to study and learn from those who are producing results that you would like in your life. It’s a pretty basic lesson but a very important one. Seek out the people who have already achieved what you would like to achieve and learn from them. Success often leaves clues and it is up to you to find those clues and act on them. With a daily commitment to personal improvement, you will quickly become a master detective you will transform each clue into a tangible action that will lead to a more fulfilled life.

Justin Popovic
justin@igniteyouressence.com
www.igniteyouressence.com

Cherish the Tough Times

2008-06-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

We’ve all been there at some point in our life. Everything seems to be moving along smoothly when something suddenly happens; a challenge, a barrier, a crisis. These events can range anywhere from being mildly inconvenient to downright terrible and sometimes devastating. When situations like this arise, we all have ultimately one choice to make – how we will choose to respond.

When you boil it down, that is really how our entire life unfolds. We are making a never ending series of choices about how we will interact with the events and circumstances surrounding us. Many of these choices occur unconsciously as part of our conditioned behaviour patterns. Understanding that we always retain the power and the right to make a conscious choice about our reactions is where we can transform challenges into opportunities.

Consider the idea of personal perception. Every person observes and interprets the world around them from a unique vantage point. I remember very clearly an incident about 5 years ago when I was having lunch on a restaurant patio with a few of my colleagues. The patio was next to a very busy street. About 20 minutes into our meal, we were all startled by a large crash followed by an excitable YELP sound. As I turned in my seat to examine the incident, we saw a new sports car t-boned by an older sedan. Fortunately, the collision had taken place at a relatively slow speed so there were no injuries, just two very upset drivers. The YELP sound had come from a tow truck driver who had been parked literally across the street. He was so excited that an accident had occurred right in front of his truck meaning he would be the first tow provider on the scene. Talk about drastically opposing perspectives! These two unfortunate drivers were caught up in a very unpleasant experience while the tow truck entrepreneur had his latest gig essentially fall into his lap.

What’s most interesting about this example is that it illustrates to me that the world around us simply exists, nothing more, nothing less. It is not until we apply our personal perception along with all of our expectations and beliefs, that events become positive or negative. Since we are creative by nature and always have 100% control over our thoughts, we can then choose to seek out the positives in life. When something happens to us that initially appears to be negative, we have an opportunity to reject our habitual reaction and create a new, more empowering belief about that event.

I have personally made a habit of this type of mentality and I continue to develop this capability with every passing day. I am becoming someone who can cherish the tough times. When adversity strikes, I am often able to control my attitude and remain focused on the positive rather than being consumed by the apparent misfortune. I then remind myself of Robert Collier’s quote, “In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage.”

Dustin Carter is no stranger to adversity. We recently featured his YouTube video on the Ignite Your Essence website. Dustin was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder at age 5. The doctors were forced to amputate the majority of all of his limbs. Despite his obvious challenges, Dustin is now a top student wrestler working towards a full wrestling scholarship. He is a tremendous inspiration to everyone who meets him and he gives hope to others who may be facing physical challenges.

Many successful entrepreneurs have been able to transform challenging life situations into business building opportunities. One of the best examples of this is Robert Allen. His book, Nothing Down: How to Buy Real Estate with Little or No Money Down, went to the top of the New York Times Best-Seller list after a controversial ad he ran to promote it. In the ad, Allen claimed that you could take him to any city, take his wallet away, give him $100 and he could buy a piece of real estate. After Allen’s book had achieved great success, a reporter from the LA Times challenged his claim in the ad and called him a fraud. In order to prove himself, Allen was forced to take the challenge and prove he could actually achieve the feat. Not knowing if he would actually be able to pull it off, Robert Allen began to worry and realized that he would be professionally ruined if he was not able to deliver. In a formally arranged meeting, the reporter met Allen in San Francisco, took his wallet and gave him $100. With his name and credibility on the line, Allen took the $100 and purchased 7 properties worth $700,000 in a 57 hour window. Needless to say, he went on to achieve enormous success in his career.

How would your life change if you were able to transform a negative event into a positive experience? What kind of results could you produce if you learned to embrace adversity and treat it as an opportunity for growth? Regardless of the nature of the challenge you are facing, decide to become the kind of person who embodies this philosophy and you will most assuredly begin to produce incredible things in your life while providing inspiration to those around you!

Justin Popovic
justin@igniteyouressence.com
www.igniteyouressence.com

The Secret to Instant and Lasting Motivation

2008-05-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

Do you have a list of goals and desires that have yet to be fulfilled? Do you find yourself generating exciting new ideas only to find that you lose the motivation to complete them shortly after you get started? Perhaps you talk yourself out of that great new idea even before you even begin to pursue it.

The good news is that there is a very simple yet powerful technique that you can adopt immediately to help you commit to completion. The technique is called decision. Proper decision making ability is a vital life skill that many people fail to develop at all. At first glance, this idea may seem trivial and possibly not useful but consider the context of this discussion. When I talk about decision, I refer to someone’s personal commitment to the completion of a set objective. For some people, the simple act of making a binding agreement with themselves is enough to get the job done. For the majority of people, however, a more bold approach to decision making can be applied for maximum effectiveness.

Consider the following personal example. Before I started my personal development company, Ignite Your Essence, I had been interested in becoming a speaker and I was always studying and testing various ideas and techniques that I was learning about the personal development industry. I knew that I had an inner calling to follow this passion and teach people what I knew about these ideas and philosophies.

I attended an inspirational seminar where the speakers were talking about this very topic. The main message I received that day was that we are all 100% responsible for our results and we are capable of setting any goal we want for our life. I really took this to heart and started to contemplate the idea of becoming a platform speaker - teaching, inspiring and motivating audiences much like the people who I was watching that day. Because I was in a state of mind that allowed me to get emotionally involved with the idea, it grew beyond a daydream and I started thinking about how I could make this happen. I started studying personal development principles for many hours a day and taking note of which techniques I was already using in my current career while learning and applying new ideas in various areas of my life (family, fitness, financial as well as career). Eventually, the idea of starting a business as a speaker grew so heated that I knew I had to do something. For about a week, I played a mental chess match with myself thinking about all the reasons why I should pursue this dream while simultaneously thinking about all of the reasons why I couldn’t do it. As soon as I learned this lesson about decision, everything changed and my life has never been the same.

I woke up one morning and made a committed decision to book my first public workshop. I picked a date about one month out, found a hall to host it and booked the hall with a down payment. I was locked in and committed to doing this! It was both a mental and physical move that made a world of difference. The ambivalence instantly disappeared and my mind moved into a much more creative mode. Instead of worrying about whether or not I could even accomplish this goal, I started asking myself a new set of questions. What topic do I run the workshop on? How do I advertise? Who do I market to? Needless to say I completed that workshop a month later and so began the inception of my own personal development education company which I now run as a full time business (my dream realized).

The key point to be emphasized is that I made a committed decision and backed that decision with a tangible forcing function. Like the stories of the Renaissance explorers, I had arrived at a destination, “burned my ships”, and had no choice but to move forward and deliver the goods.

Can you think about a committed decision you could make today, RIGHT NOW, that could ultimately alter the entire direction of your life? Perhaps there is a trip you have been meaning to take that could open a new window of opportunity – call the travel agent now! If you have been struggling with your health and fitness, maybe you can find a competition to enter and pay the entry fee? Whatever it is, make the decision and lock yourself into the decision to ensure you have a solid forcing function. For me, if I did not put a down payment on the hall rental for my first workshop, I may very well have let the doubt and fear push me to cancel the entire event and ultimately abandoned my dream. If the idea moves you in the direction of your dream or purpose, make the committed decision today!

Justin Popovic
justin@igniteyouressence.com
www.igniteyouressence.com