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6 Steps to Unlock Your Full Potential

2024-01-09 · Book summary (Book Club) · Ali · recording, 26:19 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Goals, purpose and life design (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Lesson from a book, His own numbers, Sponsor segment present

In a long book summary of his friend Lewis Howes's The Greatness Mindset, Ali shares six takeaways: score your Greatness Performance Assessment, find a meaningful mission with the three Ps, write your own obituary, map your perfect day, move past the fear of judgment by serving others, and use five journaling prompts.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Introduction: Lewis Howes, The School of Greatness and six takeaways from The Greatness Mindset

  • ★ Ali has been a guest on Lewis Howes's podcast The School of Greatness twice, and Lewis has become a friend of his. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ In this video Ali shares six things he took away from Lewis Howes's book The Greatness Mindset, which he read slowly over the last four months. — 00:00:29

00:00:55 — What is this book about? Greatness on your own definition of success

  • ★★ Ali likes The Greatness Mindset because, unlike some personal development books that equate success with money or a certain body, it does not presuppose someone else's definition of success. — 00:00:58

  • ★★ Lewis Howes (quoted): Lewis Howes defines greatness as discovering your unique gifts and talents to pursue your meaningful mission and make the maximum positive impact on the people around you. — 00:01:27

    “greatness is discovering your unique gifts and talents to pursue your meaningful mission”

  • ★★★ The Greatness Mindset has many practical exercises Ali felt compelled to do, and he says you get no real value from a book if you don't do the things it asks. — 00:01:57

  • ★★ Lewis Howes has interviewed over 1,500 successful people on his podcast, has been doing it for 10 years and used to be a professional athlete, Ali says. — 00:01:57

00:02:47 — Figure out your GPA, the Greatness Performance Assessment, and Ali's own scores

  • ★★★ Ali recommends the Greatness Performance Assessment from The Greatness Mindset: it splits life into business and career, relationships and wellness, and you score yourself from 1 to 10 on statements in each. — 00:03:09
  • ★ On the Greatness Performance Assessment scale, 2 to 4.4 is rebuilding, 4.5 to 5.9 accelerating, 6.0 to 7.4 winning, 7.5 to 8.9 playoff bound and 9 to 10 championship level. — 00:04:31
  • ★ Ali scores 7.8 on the business and career Greatness Performance Assessment, which makes him playoff bound. — 00:04:31
  • ★ Ali has a 6.8 relationship score on the Greatness Performance Assessment, which puts him in the winning category. — 00:05:30
  • ★★ Ali's wellness score on the Greatness Performance Assessment is 4.0, in the lowest, rebuilding category. — 00:05:59
  • ★★★ The assessment showed Ali he had no clear goals for the next three years; since reading that part of the book a few months ago he has set clearer goals in each area, now seeing the value of goal setting. — 00:05:59 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★★ His poor wellness score led Ali to make getting into the best shape of his life one of his key personal goals for 2024, and to read Peter Attia's book Outlive. — 00:05:59
  • ★★ Ali also asked health-minded friends for advice, continues sessions with his fitness coach Dan Go, and while travelling as a digital nomad works out more and tries to get 10,000 steps a day. — 00:06:49

00:07:35 — Sponsor read

00:09:20 — Figure out your meaningful mission: passion, power and problem

  • ★★★ Lewis Howes (quoted): The thesis of The Greatness Mindset, from Lewis Howes's interviews with 1,500 successful people, is that the biggest barrier to greatness is not having a meaningful mission to work towards. — 00:09:22
  • ★★★ Ali's lesson of the last several years: he has rarely known what he wanted, but in areas where he has, such as clear goals for his business, amazing things have happened. — 00:09:53
  • ★★ Lewis Howes (quoted): Lewis Howes writes that most people struggle to have a big vision for the future because they focus on how it can be done instead of why they want to do it. — 00:09:53
  • ★ Katie Milkman (quoted): Behavioural scientist Katie Milkman, quoted in The Greatness Mindset, describes the essence of greatness as being clear on your purpose or mission so that it serves as your North Star. — 00:10:43
  • ★★ Ali thinks people put too much weight on a meaningful mission: like any goal or direction it can always be changed, and it is much easier to steer a moving ship than a stationary one. — 00:11:34
  • ★★★ Feeling that you are making progress on something that matters to you makes you feel successful and happy, Ali says: it is not the pursuit of happiness but the happiness of pursuit. — 00:12:04
  • ★★ To find a meaningful mission, ask what you would do if money were no longer an issue, and beware a mission fuelled solely by wanting more money, because it won't last. — 00:12:04
  • ★★★ Ali recommends Lewis Howes's three Ps, passion, power and problem, as a way to get a sense of your meaningful mission. — 00:12:04
  • ★ Power, one of Lewis Howes's three Ps, is also the title of the second chapter of Ali's book Feel-Good Productivity, which is about playing to your strengths. — 00:12:53 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

  • ★★★ Ali's meaningful mission is to help people build a life they love; the problem he is trying to solve is that many people live lives they don't love. — 00:13:49

    “my meaningful mission is to help people build a life they love”

  • ★★ Ali pursues his mission of helping people build a life they love by surfacing insights from books, academics, research and his own experience. — 00:13:49

  • ★★ Lewis Howes (quoted): Lewis Howes advises grasping your mission securely but holding the mechanism loosely: do not let the how stop you from pursuing your why. — 00:14:47

    “grasp your mission securely, but hold the mechanism loosely”

  • ★★ Ali says he is not attached to the mechanism of his mission, whether making YouTube videos, writing books or doing podcasts. — 00:14:47

00:15:29 — Write your own obituary, and Ali's own

  • ★★ Lewis Howes (quoted): The Greatness Mindset's prompts for writing your own obituary ask how long you want to live, what meaningful mission you accomplished, what people call your legacy and what loved ones say at your funeral. — 00:15:51
  • ★★★ In the obituary he wrote for himself, Ali describes himself as one of the world's greatest teachers, who inspired and educated millions around the world to build a life they truly love. — 00:15:51
  • ★★ Ali's self-written obituary says his priority was always his family and that he stayed closely connected to his wife, children and grandchildren until his death. — 00:17:04
  • ★★★ Ali encourages writing your own obituary as a rough first draft of where you would like to be by the end of your life: it does not take long and you can redo it later. — 00:17:26
  • ★★ Ali calls the perfect day inventory from The Greatness Mindset, crafting your perfect day, a good idea. — 00:17:26

00:17:54 — The perfect day inventory and the ideal week

  • ★★ Ali does the perfect day exercise often but extends it to an ideal week, because he does not really know what his ideal day looks like. — 00:18:13
  • ★★★ A huge part of success, Ali says, is figuring out what you actually want: if you don't consciously decide, society and other people will decide for you and you will drift. — 00:18:59

00:19:39 — The fear of judgment

  • ★★★ One way to move past the fear of what other people will think of you, Ali says, is to focus not on yourself but on how you can serve other people. — 00:19:51
  • ★★ When he first started making videos Ali was scared to write blog posts and put himself out there on YouTube, until he read Austin Kleon's Show Your Work in 2016. — 00:19:51 · Show Your Work!, Austin Kleon
  • ★★★ Ali makes his blog posts, videos and newsletter to help someone else, not himself: if what he is about to share could help at least one person, it is worth sharing. — 00:20:28
  • ★★ Dan Gilbert (quoted): Dan Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor cited in the book, contrasts bumblers, who keep trying on the field though they often fail, with pointers, who sit in the stands ridiculing them. — 00:20:28 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★★ Ali recently realised he often asks himself how to get people to like him more, a question that leads him to please others, set no boundaries and lose touch with his own feelings. — 00:22:14
  • ★★ Ali advises recognising unhelpful questions you ask yourself when they pop up, asking whether each is useful and what a better question would be. — 00:22:14
  • ★ Seth Godin (quoted): Seth Godin, quoted in The Greatness Mindset, says he has written 7,500 blog posts in a row. — 00:22:14 · Seth Godin

  • ★★ Seth Godin (quoted): Seth Godin says he never debates with himself whether to write a blog post, because he posts every day: you chop the wood and carry the water by getting rid of the debate. — 00:23:01 · Seth Godin

    “You chop the wood and carry the water by getting rid of the debate.”

  • ★★★ Showing up, focusing on the process, making the work non-negotiable for yourself and just doing it removes all the fear, Ali says. — 00:23:23

  • ★★ Ali, who collects journaling prompts, recommends five from Lewis Howes's game plan for greatness in The Greatness Mindset. — 00:23:51
  • ★★ Lewis Howes (quoted): Lewis Howes's purity question: if you were 100% authentic to who you are, what would you do differently? — 00:23:51

00:24:00 — The game plan for greatness: five journaling prompts

  • ★★ Lewis Howes (quoted): Lewis Howes's priority question: if you absolutely had to double your goal in the next 30 days, what would be your first three moves? — 00:24:21
  • ★ Ali loves Lewis Howes's prosperity question: if you won the lottery today, what would you do next? — 00:24:21
  • ★ On average, Ali says, maybe 10% of people who click one of his videos get to the end of it. (hedged) — 00:24:21

00:24:50 — Feedback on the longer format, the life update video and sign-off

  • ★★ This book summary is an experiment: Ali normally keeps his book summaries tight and concise but is more verbose here, and asks viewers what they think. — 00:25:05

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Greatness Performance Assessment · Lewis Howes · meaningful mission · The Greatness Mindset

Also: People: Austin Kleon · Dan Gilbert · Dan Go · Earl Nightingale · Katie Milkman · Peter Attia · Robin Sharma · Seth Godin

Works: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Outlive · School of Greatness · Show Your Work!

Organizations: Harvard University

Concepts: 10,000 steps a day · digital nomad · ideal ordinary week · passion, power, problem · perfect day inventory · writing your own obituary

Also centred on Lewis Howes: Everything's Changing - Life Update · Why I Left Medicine... Forever

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