Friday forward

Identifying your core values increases your spiritual capacity.

Want to inspire people to be the best version of themselves? Don’t focus on rules; identify values.

To live your best life, you need to build four distinct capacities: spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional.

When building your spiritual capacity, focus on identifying your core values and your authentic purpose.

Try the “one last talk” exercise. Imagine you’re given 20 minutes to give a talk on absolutely any topic. But there’s a catch: this will be the last talk you give before you die. What do you want to pass on to the world before you go?

Plan to succeed at living your core spiritual purpose.

And there were plenty of points where he wanted to give up. Why didn’t he? Because he didn’t have a back-up plan. Sheeran knew what his core purpose was. He gave himself no other option but to succeed in achieving it.

in order to give the best of yourself, you also need to decide what you’re going to be bad at. Being bad at what they don’t care about lets them be the best at what they do care about.

Intellectual capacity lets you follow through on your dreams.

Morgan Housel offered to share his hacks, people were eager to hear them. Here are a few…

Housel’s marketing hack? Make a product that everyone needs.

His writing hack? Write daily until you get good at it.

His learning hack? Read a book. Read another. Repeat as necessary.

Developing your spiritual capacity is all about finding your true purpose. That’s great. But without follow-through, your goals are nothing but empty dreams. That’s where intellectual capacity comes in. You need to build the ability to design intelligent goals and cultivate the discipline to achieve them.

Don’t attend to the urgent and forget the important. Instead of making a to-do list, make a four-square grid. The first square is for tasks that are important and urgent. Do these first. The second is for tasks that are important but not urgent. Do these second. The third square is for tasks that are urgent but not important. Do these last, if you have time. What about the fourth square? Well, that’s for tasks that are neither important nor urgent.

Stop spending time on tasks that don’t serve your objectives, and keep your eyes on the prize!

Form good habits and your goals will take care of themselves.

One habit you should definitely try to cultivate? The habit of excellence. When Ann Miura-Ko took an internship at Yale’s department of engineering, she told her father the position was menial. Her father asked her: How are you going to do a world-class job?

Inspired by her father’s question, Miura-Ko made a habit of excellence in everything she did, from making the crispest photocopies and overhauling the filing system, to choosing the tastiest doughnuts for team breaks. When she toured the Dean’s friend, a man named Lewis, around the department, naturally she did an excellent job.

Develop your physical capacity to achieve ultimate peak performance.

By making just a few small changes, you can kick-start your fitness. Creating an environment that allows you to succeed is key to achieving fitness goals.

Sports benefit the body and the mind.

Elite athletes like Phelps use mental training to take their performance from great to world-beating.

Sport builds more than muscle. It builds character.

Emotional resilience is the x-factor in overcoming challenges.

Spiritual clarity, intellectual rigor, and physical prowess are all necessary to accomplish your goals. But these three elements won’t get you over the line if the voice in your head tells you “I can’t do this” or “it’s too hard.” That’s why it’s crucial to cultivate emotional wellbeing.

All of us will experience bad days, weeks, or even years. Emotional resilience doesn’t mean shutting yourself off from others. Emotional resilience is built by surrounding yourself with trusted mentors and supporters, asking for and accepting their help when it’s needed.

Cultivate emotional well-being through reflection and connection.

A Harvard study, conducted over 75 years, found that there was one factor far more significant than diet, exercise, or material wealth in determining happiness: quality relationships. That’s quality, not quantity: hundreds of superficial social media connections are worth far less than one deeply authentic friendship or partnership.

While not everyone you meet is a friend in the making, try not to see any relationship as purely transactional. Your assistant, the delivery guy, the woman down the hall: they’re all people. And you might have more in common than you think.

We live in a world that’s full of inspiring people and stories. What’s stopping you from leveraging that inspiration to achieve your dreams and get the most out of life? If you cultivate the four capacities — spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional — you may be surprised at just how much you can accomplish.