The Bonus Section Podcast by Danny Griffin

The Key Point is that highly successful people practice daily self-discipline to live a healthy and virtuous life so that they can stay focused on creating daily goals and plans of action to achieve those goals while leaving a positive footprint as true givers.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE   

While reading Angela Duckworth’s book, GRIT, she refers to the work of her colleague Carol Dweck and her book, MINDSET, where the concept of a fixed vs a growth mindset is discussed. I tought to myself, well what about people that have a fixed mindset…can then change it to a growth mindset or are the permanently stuck. Well, I’ll argue that hard work to change starts with 1. Identifying your limiting beliefs, 2. replacing them with positive thoughts, 3. practicing gratefulness for the chance to change, 4. setting small achievable goals, 5, being positive in pursuit of those goals, 6. surrounding yourself with supportive people and 7. seeking the guidance of a professional and you will have a great change of getting unstuck.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE   

Artificial Intelligence just went mainstream with a major bang! ChatGPT, a chatbot driven by artificial intelligence based on language models, has become one of the fastest and highest downloads in history. You know you are looking at a permanent change in how the world works when the project is backed by some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs of our time. Microsoft is so convinced that it has committed to invest $10B in the company and has already integrated it into It’s search engines. Although this newest disruption has sent chills through the world of academia and beyond, the will be a great acceptance of the new reality and the smartest users will leverage it to take their owns ideas to great new levels vs. that lazy users who will just use it to cheat themselves.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE   

I heard Patrick Bet David talking about “out-improving the competition and it made me think about how to help you do that. First of all, you don’t have to look at out-improving as a competition against someone else, but more importantly, as a competition against whatever is keeping you from achieving your personal goals. If “out-improving” matters to you, then I would suggest that there are several core topics you should study on whatever medium you prefer as long as they are fully articulated books. Although I had a tough time putting these in an exact order, what worked for me was and is studying: Goals And Why Humans Need Them, Mindset Psychology, Money & How Its Works, and Discipline. Lastly, it’s inevitable that you’ll fall off your journey so the secret is to study perseverance so you can get back in the saddle.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE   

I recently started listening to Carl Jung’s book, Man & His Symbols and I’m struck by his discussion about his experience analyzing the dreams of his patients. It’s very easy to live your life only in a conscious way and never considering or worse even dismissing your unconscious mind. However, it’s an extremely compelling idea that you have in your mind the accumulated collective experiences of life that far surpass the limited personal experiences you have. It seems to me that we all should consider our dreams more closely as that great bank of knowledge is trying to teach us something.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE       

The greatest trap in life intellectually is to learn something new and then narrow your understanding of that subject into digestible pieces. This affects your current perspective of the subject and becomes your biased opinion, not necessarily the truth. Therefore, it’s critical to be curious and stay constantly in pursuit of conversation and debate with people of dissenting opinions so that you see more clearly where your blind spots are.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE   

We hear all the time that people around the world are just barely making it through life at whatever level is relevant to their struggle. So the real question is: why would we ever allow ourselves to stay comfortable in such a terribly stressful place? We should consider pushing ourselves harder to break free from such an existence because it’s better to be uncomfortable stretching towards yourself than it is to uncomforabtly hang onto the edge of the abyss or survival.    GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE     

We all have problems and challenges that cause us our own pain and suffering, but we all most certainly have our own dragon who scares us into hiding. It’s time to prepare to fight yours by eating a few frogs first and then you become empowered to seek out your dragon where it sleeps instead of waiting for it to awaken and spit fire onto your dreams!    GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE     

True leaders are well trained in the art of communication. Great communicators understand that when they listen and observe they are able to organize their thoughts before speaking. However, the simple secret to becoming a great communicator is to practice reading and writing a lot so that you develop a strong mental database of words and concepts that will be easily recalled when needed.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE    

We’ve become accustomed to seeking instant gratification in many areas of life. Because we are so hungry for a positive feeling, we’ve become more vulnerable. We must understand that the achievement of instant gratification is a temporary visitor and we will soon be confronted by real struggle and tragedy. How will we be able to handle true setbacks if we’re programmed to be weak and vulnerable? It’s important to understand that life is mostly a struggle to survive, so we must beware that pursuing too much instant gratification is life-eating thin soup.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE    

One of the greatest fears in life is being taken advantage of by others or perhaps even ourselves. The danger in being taken advantage of, is that you become angry and cynical, and begin to withdraw from opportunity. The key is to be self-aware of your naivete and lean into calculated risks. The best way to practice is to give away your best for free, expect nothing in return, and you’ll become a safe beacon for good people to trust in.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE    

The idea of taking on more responsibilities in your life might sound overwhelming, but at least it’s a wake-up call to be more responsible for your current obligations and commitments. To take that first step you might have to do an honest housekeeping clean out of all the negative commitments you’ve made. Once you are re-oriented, add more responsibilities that push you to find your true capacity and capability to release the greatest version of yourself.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE      

We lie to ourselves all the time and maybe because it’s simply the animal brain that finds life easier that way. However, lying to yourself builds into a persona where lying to everyone becomes easy and natural. The problem is that lying requires enormous energy that depletes us. When we are depleted, we have no energy left to push ourselves into challenges that help us grow into our true potential and live a more fulfilled life. So although lying is a hard habit to break, at least stop lying to yourself regularly and take notice of your newly found energy.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE     

Many people fret over the lack of time to go after what they want. However, the question deeper than that is what are you focusing your attention on. One you become conscious of that, you’ll see that most likely someone, some company, some app or some marketer actually owns a large chunk of your attention, not you. The way out is to become strongly and emotionally attached to what you love the most and consciously attend to that until you’re less vulnerable to the attention master-manipulators.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE      

The greatest awakening we experience in life centers around the realization that the real world might not be what we perceived it to be. We come to realize that we see the world through our own lens also known as our self-image. Therefore, we must look at how our lens was crafted to begin with and challenge what we see to further help us respect the viewpoints of other people who are seeing differently than we are.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE   

In the words of the late great Zig Ziglar why be a wandering generality when you can be a meaningful specific? The critical importance of this challenging question is based on our need as goal-seeking organisms to have a primary chief aim even though oftentimes we might change that goal when we recognize that something else is now more important to us.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE

Fear and anxiety can be debilitating and demoralizing. When you suffer from them you often create an anxiety monster that lives in you head and grows bigger every time you feed it. So the way to eliminate that monster is to starve it. You do that by 1. Identifying the thing you're actually afraid of 2. Creating a simple plan to work on that thing that matters to you and 3. Recognizing how good steady improvement feels and 4. Realizing that the only thing the anxiety monster lives on is when it gets you to stop working.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE  

Judging ourselves seems to be part of the human condition that we won’t ever be able to eliminate so we must harness it as a positive tool. The key is to set a clear vision for an ideal version of your life and pursue that as a game worth playing. The caveat is to beware of cognitive distortions that will cause you to fall into a dangerous state of self-put-down where you might fall very far off course and away from the reality of how good your life actually is. GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE  

I recently started reading a book called One Million Followers by Brendan Kane that I had previously dismissed as click-bait. However, when I heard Bredan speak online something told me to scrap my cynicism and lean in. Although I am certainly a believer in the power of content and social media, I realized that I had become too comfortable and was only looking for the evidence that supported what I was already doing was enough. The effectiveness of the strategies outlined in his book helped me realize that to maintain complete open-mindedness I need to A-B-L: Always Be Learning.  GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE     

If we stop to think about how we put ourselves and our potential down, we become conscious of how we are the real enemy. By falling into the trap of diminutization or severe personal contraction, we are growing a very dangerous inferiority complex that is a hard habit to break free from. Therefore, you must start building a superiority complex to combat your inner weakness and that starts simply by stating on a regular basis, Why not me?” GRAB THE FREE EPISODE NOTES HERE: ➡ Free Thinking Tools - http://freethinkingtools.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST! ➡ Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2JTwoBE