The latest – I’m currently in San Francisco visiting friends and working remotely with Shereen for the next few weeks. I’m working on several projects at the moment:
- Growing Full Potential Speaking biz
- Growing Global Sky and Outbounders
- Moving forward on an invention that allows you to work from laptop while laying down
- Researching best location for Full Potential Community in Philippines
- Development of Full Potential Club membership area (pretty cool)
- Building up Full Potential Show on Youtube

Over the last month or so I was living in Portland, Oregon with Shereen and her family which is where she’s from originally. Our plans are to stay in San Francisco until mid-October then Vegas for a week or so to see family and then Scottsdale for an event in early November before we head back to Portland for a couple of weeks to wrap-up some family business related things there before we venture off to Hawaii (the big island) as a possible landing spot and future location for the Full Potential Resort. We’ll be there at least through December.

I’ve decided to start sharing more about my personal life than I have in the best. I used to avoid it because I thought it might be considered “fluff” and I wanted to only give you the highest value ideas I have when I write and avoid any Ego spotlight – but I realize that the personal “context” stuff is part of an important connecting and relating process. Feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts on this as your feedback will help me know whether I should continue this course of more personal share on top of the insights.

It doesn’t matter where you are physically – what matters is where you are mentally. That overlays your physical environment and is actually the “dwelling place” of your awareness and consciousness. You respond equally if not more to what’s in your mental space than you do to what’s in your physical space.

A VACATION IS NOT A VACATION IF YOU BRING YOUR BUSINESS WITH YOU

You can fool yourself temporarily by moving to a new environment, but unless you clean and organize and create the optimum mental environment, all your efforts to do this in your physical environment will be in vain.

ZONES OF INTENTION

Setting intention is the starting place of controlling will power. Getting clear on your “zones of intention” as you go about your day will help you to see what you’re actually focusing on. Think through your zones of intention for the day. Resist the temptation to engage in the “Zone of Obligation” .. this is not really a zone you intend, but rather one that arises as a result of your previous action. The seeds you planted earlier in life demand harvesting – and you’ll feel the obligation to water them otherwise they will die.

PERHAPS ITS TIME TO LET SOMETHING DIE

It’s smart to periodically consider the things that you might want to let die. The prospect of something you worked so hard to nurture and grow just die might seem scary. Especially if it’s a job, career or business that is your only source of income. If that’s the case it might be more prudent to plant some seeds that in time will be something that will keep you sustained if and when you decide to let the other “plants” of your past die. The important point here is this: don’t let the majority of your life exist in the Zone of Obligation. The concept is very simple: You should want to spend your time on something. If you don’t – find ways to stop doing it, minimize your time doing it, or find ways to make it more enjoyable. It’s that simple.

EMAIL = ZONE OF OBLIGATION

One major force in the zone of obligation is email – it is always filling up. Always supplying you with the obligation to response. Its easy to get lost in this zone and feel like you’re working hard but not getting anywhere. That’s because the zone of obligation is rarely producing anything of significant value – (unless you’re proactively managing it). If you simply make it a point to empty out your inbox each day you are not consciously thinking about what’s moving you closer to your ideal experiences in the future. What are the seeds you want to plant today that might grow into more desirable experiences in the future? Minimize your time in the zone of obligation to just 2 hours or less a day. Penalize yourself if you engage in more than 2 hours a day.

Just by giving myself a 2 hour time-window for being in the Zone of Obligation, I have noticed a significant change in how quickly I sort through my email. When I first open my inbox, I pick out my priority A emails out of all. I respond to them quickly and file the rest away for future use. Instead of making it a goal to clear out all unread messages.. now I just try to identify and clear out Priority A items. If I get to the other ones great, if not – no harm done. My goal is not to get through all my email – its to spend the least amount of time in my email possible and the only way I can do that is if I’m selective about which email I’m handling.

If I have extra “email handling time” because I didn’t hit my two hour daily maximum.. I can handle other emails on a slow day like Saturday or Sunday if I want.. though I don’t really consider that a recreational activity. Remember the biggest trap with email is that almost everyone responds to them! The less emails you respond to the less responses you get.. the more your email pile goes down. Most email has no real consequence in your life anyway – so what are you doing responding to them!?

FILTERING OUT THINGS YOU WANT TO READ LATER

When you first log into your email the last thing you want to do is read a newsletter, even if you care about what’s in it.

Gmail has a great filtering system that allows you to move all your non-urgent emails that you want to get to later.. like if you’ve signed up to newsletters etc.. I’ve created about 4 different newsletter filters for newsletter categories like:

Favorite Newsletters (All my favorites)
PD Newsletters (Personal Development & Spiritual Growth)
IM Newslettters (Internet Marketing)
Investor Newsletters

With filters you can just have all the emails that come in from newsletters go there for later reading when I proactively plan to go through and read them. For everything else that I’m subscribed to that I don’t care about.. I unsubscribe. Think about the amount of time you spend deleting or archiving irrelevant emails over the course of a year, five years or even ten years – reduce that number as much as possible by keeping it out in the first place.

GET CLEAR ON YOUR ZONES

Having a high value routine already mapped out will help you keep you on track in the areas that are important to you and out of the sticky Zone of obligation. I suggest create a small list of what I call “zones of intention”. This way you can ask yourself at any time during the day: “Which zone am I in right now?” For example I have created zones like:

• Zone of Planning – I’m in this zone whenever I’m planning how I’ll use my time or money.
• Zone of Personal Growth – I’m in this zone whenever I’m doing my high value routine (see below).
• Zone of Creation – I’m in this zone whenever I’m writing or creating something.
• Zone of Recreation – I’m in this zone whenever I’m doing something FUN.
• Zone of Obligation – I’m in this zone whenever I’m doing something because I feel like I have to do it.

OUT OF OBLIGATION

If you feel obligated to dwell in the Zone of Obligation for any reason – find ways to shortern your time there. Resist going there first thing in the morning. Take charge of your life and proactively decide the things you want to plant today that will lead to a better harvest tomorrow!

To stay out of obligation I create a high value routine or what Anthony Robbins calls “hour of power” or what my friend Yo Pal Hal calls “The Miracle Morning”. I use a program on my Ipad / Iphone called “Touch Goal”, it allows me to add a number of actions that I want to do on a daily basis and assign a positive point value to them. It also allows me to add actions I don’t want to do, or minimize and add a negative point value to them. This simple system turns positive actions and empowering habits into a bit of a daily game with myself. It helps me live in the zones of intention that I most want to be in and empowers my life.

Here are a sample of positive actions I have setup:

Write Dreams: +10 pts (When I wake up I write my dreams from night before for insights)
Visionize: +20 pts (During meditation I will visualize what I am intending for my life and the world.)
Meditate +20 pts (I focus on breathing 100 deep breaths, relaxing and keeping my attention centered on high value thoughts and behaviors like. I will write about this in another post.)
Exercise: +20 pts (I do a five minute exercise of jumping jacks and affirmations to jump start the day.. something simple to start my day off right and get my heart and blood pumping.)
Read: +20 pts (20pts for every half hour I read)
Eat a Salad: +10 pts
Insight write: +10 pts (I plan to write a 10 minute insight per day, sometimes it takes a little longer.)
Life Write: +10 pts (I spend 10 minutes to reflect on how what I’m doing, logging my time and money usage and what changes I’d like to make)
One Kind Deed: +10 pts
Wealth Hour: +20 pts (For every hour I focus on activities that will genuinely drive revenue into my business like marketing and sales, I give myself 20 pts)

Negative action items:

Check Email: -10pts (I give myself a maximum of 2 hours a day to check email, for every hour I go over I deduct 10 pts)

70% SUCCESS RATE

The important thing to point out is that I’m not trying to get 100% success rate every day. That would drive me crazy and demotivate me. Instead I’m aiming for about a 70% success rate. And I double up on some items in a single day while not doing others. For example I might read 1 hour a day

KNOW WHY YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING

Its important to think-through “why” you’re doing something. You can just list a bunch of action items down and hope that you are going to force yourself to do it every day. You might be able to start it easy enough but your subconscious mind will be analyzing the pay-off and determine whether its worth continuing. You need to come up with your own reasons for doing something.

MAKE IT SING FOR YOU

It’s important to name your action items and assign point values that are meaningful to you. If you aren’t excited to do them, it’s likely you won’t continue to do them. For example I used to call Insight write “Free Blog” as in, a free writing for blog. But “free blog” didn’t really make me feel any kind of emotional juice, but calling it an “Insight write” helped me feel more excited to write down my insights. I used to call the “Life write” action item a “Free write” and again it didn’t really juice me. And in the description part of the task I had alotted 20 minutes for Free write and 20 minutes for Life write.. but when it came down to it, this seemed like a lot of writing! And I wasn’t even sure what I would cover in that time period. So subconsciously I was just kind of skipping over these items. That’s a sign that you need to change something – the name of the action item, the timing of it and the points you give to it.. keep changing it until that all sings to you!

GROWING IN ALL THE BIG 6

By having the above actions as part my daily routine – I feel like I’m growing physicaly, mentally, spiritually, socially, emotionally and financially each day.

ACTION ITEMS:

1) If you have an Iphone or Ipad get Touch Goal or setup a program like it on your computer even if its just a simple excel spread sheet.
2) Add in all the key actions you want to perform on a daily basis. Be realistic and think through how much time you’re going to spend doing each item every day. You can use my list or create your own – remember to make it sing for you.
3) Aim for about a 70% success rate over the next few days but give yourself room in the beginning to do less than that. Celebrate small improvements on a daily basis.
4) Keep a daily “life write” to record your success with this system and feel free to share your results with Zones of Intention in this post.
5) Minimize the time you spend in the Zone of Obligation. Try reducing the time you spend on email to less than 2 hours a day and penalize yourself for every hour you go over.

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James Rick is founder of Full Potential Academy and host of the Full Potential Show. James helps people young and old people become powerful entrepreneurs and world leaders. Get a free chapter from his book “Unleash Your Full Potential” at FullPotential.com

You …

A: Keep climbing and hope you find food and water along the way.
B: Jump and hope the fall doesn’t kill you (there’s a good chance it will)
C: Stay in one place and hope its all a bad dream.

The point is – there’s no easy way to stop once you’ve already started a journey.

I have / had what my partner refers to as “Entrepreneurial Attention Deficit Disorder” I began businesses I didn’t care that much about because I thought I’d make a quick buck or two and get out in a year. I learned that any kind of good results in a business you aren’t that passionate about is a bad thing because it lures you into doing something you don’t care that much about. In one business it took six years before I felt married to the business and divorce was not an option. For various reasons (from legal cases that needed resolution to people and projects that needed to be cut to return the company to profitability in ready for a sale to investors) I felt I had started climbing a mountain I didn’t care that much about because I thought it would be an easy summit. Six years later realizing the summit would take more time than I wanted to commit and simultaneously realizing there was no easy way to get down I found myself wondering how many people make the same mistake (doing something they aren’t passionate about because it seems like an easy way to make money in the beginning and then getting “stuck” in some way).

The Lesson: Never underestimate a summit – mountains usually look small on the horizon until you actually begin climbing them. You can only climb one mountain at a time. Pick a mountain you truly care about – ones that are worth your life if that’s what it would take. Not only will that give you the motivation you need to summit, but you’ll find greater fulfillment on your climb to the top.

The Ego Captain

The Ego captain is very selfish, power hungry and prideful. He likes to steer the ship towards destinations of lust, riches, excitement and hours of idle entertainment. He’ll gladly blast other ships out of the water if it means he can collect their bounty and grow more powerful in the process. The Ego captain uses the map they have created since they first started sailing, rarely asks for directions and the crew blindly follows his instructions even if it leads to their own destruction.

The Soul Captain

The Soul captain on the other hand is a wise and loving captain. He likes to steer the ship towards places of peace, love and joy. He still likes to have a good time but not at the expense of his crew or that of the other ships.

The Soul captain has the power to take control of the ship at any time. Some Soul captains choose not to – and they suffer the consequences at the hand of the Ego captain. A Soul captain that chooses to take control will have to fight many battles with the Ego captain – but each time he does he will develop more strength, (self mastery and discipline) and soon the Ego will not be able to compete with the Soul captain for control of the ship. That doesn’t mean the Ego captain won’t stop trying. And boy does it try. In this book we’ll talk about the how to recognize the Ego and its many disguises, how to strengthen will power and how to maintain control of your Life Vessel.

The Ego Captain vs. Soul the Soul Captain

The Ego captain looks at the Soul captain as a menace to his plans. He seeks to lock up or put the Soul captain to sleep at any chance he can get. And most of the time he succeeds. In this book we’ll talk about how to awaken the Soul and maintain a high level of awareness / consciousness.

The Soul captain delegates all tasks to the Ego captain. The Ego captain doesn’t like being controlled – ever. The Ego captain knows that the one person he must listen to is the Soul captain but the Ego captain is always restless for control. He wants to steer the ship to the places he most enjoys. He doesn’t want to take orders from the Soul captain and is always rebelling or plotting ways in which he can take back control.

A Sleeping Soul Captain

The Soul captain is usually sleeping or awakens briefly when the Ego is in a state of panic. This is usually the time of great loss or suffering.

An awakened Soul is always helping and loving the Ego, but never gives it back full control. A wise Soul captain stays alert and is ready for the Ego to take on many disguises in attempt to take back control; it laughs at its childishness and turns it away.

When the Ego Captain Takes Control

Unless the Soul captain remains awake and alert, the Ego will almost always succeeds in regaining control of the ship (which can happen several times over the course of a day, or even an hour).

And when the Ego does regain control of the ship, he’ll pretend that all the instructions that had come from the Soul captain or the Spirit beyond the ship were his idea. He likes to pretend like he is wise and the crew has no need for a Soul captain or the Spirit.

And sometimes if the Ego captain has not seen the Soul captain for a while… he’ll convince himself that there is only one captain on the ship and that he is in fact the Soul and the Spirit!

For example, many ancient rulers, emperors and Egyptian kings truly believed they were immortal gods.

Old Map (Closed Mind) Versus New Map (Open Mind)

After childhood the Ego captain is usually reluctant to update his map. This might make the Ego captain seem wrong or make the Ego feel bad for wasting time headed in the wrong direction. The Ego would rather fake that he is right rather than actually be right.

A Soul captain is always seeking ways to improve the map so it can follow the instructions of the Spirit beyond the ship. He’s not afraid to ask for help or listen to instructions.

The Ego captain hates how this makes them look – but the Soul captain knows that in the long run this will make them even more effective at getting where they want to go. The Soul captain is always willing to be wrong if it means they can travel more effectively.

The Ocean of Egos

Most of the ships sailing on the high seas are run by Ego captains and they look upon other Soul captains as ‘nice guys’ but easy targets. But a wise Soul captain knows the intentions of the Ego before he has a chance to do any harm and guards against it. A wise Soul captain is prepared for the worst while sailing for the better.

The Role of the Soul Captain

The Soul captain must avoid all Ego distractions listen to the Spirit beyond the ship. The Soul captain must use the lighthouse in the foggy distance (Spirit), to guide the ship moment by moment away from dangerous rocks and sharp reef.

The Soul captain may not even know the destination, but he stays the course – like a Columbus that discovered new lands out of faith that by sailing west he’d find a new trade route to the Indies. Staying the course also means illuminating false monsters (erroneous beliefs or unjustified fear) instead of wasting resources avoiding what doesn’t exist.

Not having a map of the destination seems absurdly illogical to the Ego captain. The Soul captain maps out the waters already crossed (gathers as much information as possible about the environment) to save himself time, but he’s always willing to sail into uncharted waters if that’s what he feels guided to do.

(An excerpt from the book Full Potential)

Developing the power of momentum is simple; take action today that adds to your power tomorrow.

If you seek money – do something that will add to your ability to make money tomorrow. Read books about how to make money, how to market, how to become an expert in your field. Just one book a month for a year would cause you to know more than 95% of the people in your field.

If you seek to be more enlightened, read books on spirituality, learn how to meditation, invest time in silent contemplation.

Determine what’s most important to you and think about the little actions you could perform on a daily basis that would add up to something significant in the long run.

Imagine your life as though you are building a great castle. At first the task might seem so overwhelming you never even begin. But every day you perform at least one action; placing one brick on top of the other, until one day you step back and realize your dream is a reality.

In case you’ve already come across these tips – now it’s time to make them a reality.

TOP 10 REMINDERS ON HOW TO LIVE YOUR FULL POTENTIAL

1 – Get plenty of sleep (8 hours or so per day)
2 – Drink plenty of water- One 8 oz glass per every 1- 2 hours
3 – Eat green leafy vegetables – They are high in nutrients and are the best fuel for high energy.
4 – Exercise Daily- Get your heart pumping
5 – Read Daily- Develop an accurate model of reality so you can decide what you want and how to get it more effectively.
6 – Meditate Daily – Slow your mind down and learn to detach from the world at regular intervals. Learn the art of engaging and detaching.
7 – Get 15 min. of sunlight daily – Sunlight is one of the best ways for Vitamin D to get absorbed by your body. Notice how you feel after you get a little sun.
8 – Listen to uplifting music – Use uplifting music to positively influence the way you feel.
9 – Connect with people in positive ways – Energy comes from socializing. If you interact with people in caring, loving, compassionate, honest, affectionate and authentic ways you create more energy for yourself and the person you are interacting with than what existed before. 1 + 1 = 3
10 – Clean Focus + Short Breaks – In daily cycles the most productive way for a knowledge worker to work is two hours focused on one task (that’s clean focus) followed by a fifteen minute break. And in weekly cycles to totally withdraw from work and focus on a hobby or recreational activities that leave you feeling RE-Created.