A critical thinking cheatsheet

Plus: Putting yourself first, life in 24-hour blocks and catching belief.

Hey — Dean here.

Welcome to the 207th edition of this newsletter.

It’s the labor day long weekend here in Sudbury.

Hard to believe a new school year starts on Tuesday.

Tomorrow is also the start of a new week.

It’s a chance to turn the page on the week that was, especially if it didn’t go as planned.

Here’s a few ideas from today’s 3-2-1 to help skew success in your favour.

1/ Put yourself first.

Conventional wisdom suggests you put others first at the expense of yourself. While that sounds noble, it’s terrible advice — especially if you have kids.

When you don’t take care of yourself your eventual, and often, unnecessary suffering becomes the burden and responsibility to all those that are closest to you.

There’s nothing noble about that.

What I am proposing is a new way of thinking.

I call it The Selflessness of Selfishness.

The idea is to put yourself first.

When you take care of yourself, when you attend to all your needs, you have more to give to everyone else in your life.

And you can do that giving longer and better.

2/ Live your life in 24-hour blocks.

It has been 2.5 weeks since I moved in with my dad.

Everyone I meet asks me how it’s going.

Everyone gets the same answer.

I’m now living my life in 24-hour blocks.

Each morning I wake up with the intent to make it the best day possible for myself and for him.

Some days are great, some days aren’t.

On the not-so-great days, we find ways to get through them and pull out any lessons that will help us going forward.

But the mindset remains the same each morning.

Lets do everything I can to make today a great day.

3/ Invest in belief.

Belief is not something you have.

It’s something you acquire over time.

And one way to acquire it is to invest in people who believe in you, even when you might not believe in yourself.

Because belief is contagious.

You can catch it from others.

It might be a partner, a parent, a teacher, a mentor or even a weight loss coach such as myself.

The key is to find those people whose belief in you is so contagious that it will inspire you do great things.

1/ The dark side of belief.

Tua Tagovailoa is the starting quarterback for the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. As a result of having a career year last year, he just signed a 4-year $212.4 contract extension.

But 3 years ago, his career was in jeopardy.

His head coach at the time, Brain Flores (pictured above), had no belief in Tagovaliloa and let him know it every chance he had.

Here’s how Tua described it.

"To put it in simplest terms, if you woke up every morning and I told you [that] you suck at what you did, that you don't belong doing what you do, that you shouldn't be here, that this guy should be here, that you haven't earned this right.

I don't care who you are. You could be the president of the United States, you have a terrible person telling you things that you don't want to hear or probably shouldn't be hearing, you're going to start believing that about yourself. And so that's what sort of ended up happening.”

Belief — good or bad — is contagious.

But Tua’s career transformed after Flores was fired in 2021 and the Dolphins brought in Mike McDaniel as head coach in 2022.

One of the first things McDaniel did when he was hired was to show Tagovailoa a 700-play highlight reel of what he believed the quarterback did well.

And that belief has begun to pay dividends.

Tua is now considered one of the top quarterbacks in the league and the Dolphins have been to the playoffs the past 2 years.

And all that happened because McDaniel believed in Tua when Tua did not believe in himself.

Click here to read the entire story.

2/ Critical Thinking Cheatsheet.

Here are some really great questions you can use on your health and weight loss journey.

These were my 3 favourites.

• What can I do to make a positive change?

• Where can I go for help with this?

• When will I know I have succeeded?

Find 3 or 5 that you can use on your journey to personal transformation.

1/ Book to get.

This is next in my queue to read. It’s currently ranked #1 on Amazon. Click here to download a free sample.

🙏 Thanks for reading my friend.

👀See you again next week.

PS → 🥳Enjoy the newsletter? Please forward to pal. It only takes 30 seconds. Writing this took me 3 hours.

Did you know?

I do premium one-on-one coaching for those looking to lose at least 10% of unwanted body weight.

I have lost 23% of unwanted Dean and it has transformed my entire life.

Imagine how your life would change if you could lose 5%, 10% or more of unwanted you.

Let’s book a time to chat.

To learn more start here.