The Black Belt Project - How To Master Your Life One Belt At A Time show

The Black Belt Project - How To Master Your Life One Belt At A Time

Summary: In the Dojo of life, YOU are the student. The success of YOU depends on your ability to master and define your own life instead of life mastering and defining you. The Black Belt Project podcast goal is to teach you how to study your life and be the best YOU that you can be. Be the master of your life and subscribe to the Black Belt Project podcast today!

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  • Artist: The Virtual Sensei
  • Copyright: Copyright 2011 - Present. The Black Belt Project. All Rights Reserved. BlackBeltProject.com

Podcasts:

 Success Starts When No One Is Watching | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 14:46

If you follow me, you will not doubt notice that I will go through stretches of time where it seems like nothing is happening. And on your end, that might seem to be the case. Behind the scenes though, it's a different story. I'm plotting my next move and working towards goals that I have set for myself. What I have noticed throughout the years is that people seem to be more likely to do the things they need to do to make their life more successful if they know that someone is watching and witnessing them make progress. This is productive for a lot of people who need group interaction and the "pat on the back" that you accomplished something is really rewarding. But true success is garnered by those who do the things that need to be done when no one is watching. It took me a long time to develop the ability to motivate myself to take action even though there is no one to tell me to do it. In fact, for the first several years of working on my own, I spent a lot of time wasting time and telling myself I will definitely get started tomorrow. I'll eat better, tomorrow. I'll start working out, tomorrow. I'll make that first phone call to drum up business, tomorrow. Invariably, I would find myself on the next day saying the same thing and tomorrow keeps getting pushed back day after day. Unfortunately, this is a bad habit and it's also one that is very difficult to break. It's tough to break because non action is always easier than taking action. Your ability to take action might be impaired for a variety of reasons but in the end there are two things that you need to remember. One is that those things are just excuses. And the second is that, it just means your mental strength needs work. Building this mental strength is tough if we believe what our mind tells us. And it's a lonely job too. No one is going to build our mental strength for us. We have to own it. And make that task our priority number one. Because building that mental strength to accomplish will lead you to great things and a better life. I'm often inspired by stories of people who spend most of their time practicing their craft. Looking for that edge that will help them when they need it most. For the most part, these stories come from athletes who spend countless hours practicing for a two hour game. One of the ones that always comes to mind is Larry Bird who played in the NBA. He came from a small town in Indiana. From what I've heard, he practiced more than anyone else he played against. He spent countless hours in the gym by himself shooting all the shots he might take in the game from all parts of the floor. So, when it came time for the game, he knew he would hit the shot when it mattered. Why? Because he had taken it hundreds if not thousands of times prior to that moment by himself. This devotion to practice by himself earned him huge pats on the back by the fans who watched him. But during his practice times there was no one there doing that for him. He dug deep within himself and his own mental strength to summon the energy required to take action when no one was watching. It's this attention to detail that separates those who succeed versus those who don't. Who takes the time to study the things they do on a daily basis and makes a checklist and then follows it? Who takes the time to hone that checklist into a finely tuned machine to get it done in the most effective manner? Who does the things that nobody wants to do when no one is there to tell you you did a great job doing that? I can tell you that it's small minority of the people you know. That's why success is so elusive. But that should also bring you encouragement. And that's because there is no one stopping you from doing those things but yourself. Start doing the little steps that lead to success and you'll start seeing the success. You'll become part of that minority of successful people. YOU can do that.

 The Next Step Of Active Visualization | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 22:05

Yesterday I talked about beginning your active visualization. Today, I wanted to start going over step two of your active visualization which is to identify the next actions you can take to make those images you have in your mind come true. In this podcast, I talk about how I suggest you do it and include some tips and ideas that can help you get started. Enjoy today's podcast.

 How To Begin To Actively Visualize What You Want | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 49:09

In today's podcast, I talk about how to begin to actively visualize what you want. There are three main components to becoming a white belt master here at the Black Belt Project. They are, creating change with thirty day challenges, building mental strength with checklists and designing your life with active visualization. It's the last one that I start to talk about more today. The concept of having a vision or purpose is a challenging one. It's probably not something you can fit into one concise statement. It's probably a number of different things. I talk about how I am using active visualization here to create the Black Belt Project so you can see exactly how what I recommend works and you can see it at work in my own life. Enjoy today's podcast.

 How To Measure Your Mental Strength And How To Improve It | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 19:36

Tonight I wanted to talk about how to measure your mental strength and how to improve it. Mental toughness is something that a lot of people talk about but few people know how to measure. We know what it looks like when we see it. We know what it feels like when we have it. But really, how strong are you mentally? Do you even know? And once you do, how can you improve it. In the daily review today, I talk about how it's easy to measure your physical strength. You go to the gym and pick up some weight and lift it. Either you can or you can't. To get stronger, you figure out how much you can lift and you slowly increase the weight. For mental work, increasing mental strength also works the same way except for instead of lifting weight, you do tasks. How many tasks you can do determines how mentally strong you are. The first step in defining your mental strength is starting to put together a checklist of your daily activities and see how far you can get each day. Once you figure out how far into your checklist that you can get well, that represents how mentally strong you are. To build mental strength, you want to progressively add more tasks a little at a time. Once your brain adapts to being able to do that, then you add some more. Each time you do that, you want to set the bar there that you will get that far every day. Start the bar low and slowly increase it. Slow, progressive increases whether you are changing habits or trying to improve your productivity over long periods of time, make you mentally tougher. I talk more about this in tonight's podcast which is free to all visitors.

 How To Use Your Areas Of Focus To Start Projects And Identify Next Actions | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 29:08

In this weekly review I talk about how to start creating projects from your areas of focus list and then to identify the next actions for them. I also spend some time talking about some changes I've been making in the member area. This week some of our members decided to start working on becoming a white belt master and I worked a lot on organizing and setting up the forum area of the membership section. Members are starting to visit the forum and get involved so it's pretty exciting. Basically what I did tonight in this week's episode of the weekly review was take a couple of the belts and create some areas of focus. I then expanded on those areas by creating a few projects and finally began identifying next actions to move those projects forward. My goal here is to show you a process behind what I am doing so that you can see how everything moves forward in small steps. Small steps can eventually take you a long way. Every journey starts with one small step and ours is no different here. In my white belt area, I had a couple areas of focus. One was my checklists I am making to get everything out of my head. The other area of focus are the thirty day challenges I am doing. For those, I decided upon two next actions. Those were: Make a list of all of my inboxes and put them on my checklist. Make a list of potential thirty day challenges to do in January. For my red belt, my area of focus was getting the processing of my gtd inboxes mastered completely. My next action there was to: Start working on my physical inbox For my yellow belt, which is my physical health belt, I broke things down into three areas of focus. Diet, cardio and weightlifting. I then identified these next actions. Figure out what to eat for breakfast each day. Get my heart rate monitor out so I can start using it. Re-read the weightlifting book from the master I have identified. I didn't go through each belt and figured that was enough for this session. Next week, we'll expand on this a bit as I move things forward. Start taking action and mastering your life one belt at a time.

 Become The Site’s First White Belt Master And Get A Free One Year Membership | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 6:17

As I pondered what to write about today, I thought I would try and get some community involvement going by seeking a volunteer to become the site's first white belt master. The first white belt founding member who responds in the forum and then also completes the training will then receive a free one year membership to the site. I actually have no idea how many people will respond to this offer but I'm expecting that I will get least one - or I hope too. If there are more of you who respond but you are not first, I would encourage you to do me favor and also respond to the thread so that we can support the first white belt master's progress. You will find the thread in the forum at this link. Be The First White Belt Master

 014 Use Your GTD Weekly Review To Get Your System In Shape | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 14:18

When I first started doing GTD, I didn't really do a weekly review. I just worked on getting my inboxes to zero. Over time, I ended up reaching that goal. Later, I made my first project list and then finally I started doing a weekly review. The clarity I had at that point was amazing and to be honest, it was a feeling that I never had before. It was a great feeling. But I cheated a little in that I worked on the front end of my system first and worked to improve my GTD workflow one piece at a time. I got really good at collecting and then I focused on processing and organizing. I got really good at reviewing and then I focused more on doing. I think that it's important that no matter how you do it, that you make continued progress each week on some phase of your system and think it's also important to give yourself permission to use your weekly review time to get that done. While in an ideal world, you want to review your projects every week, when you first start and are overwhelmed at everything you have collected, use that hour or so that you would spend reviewing to work on it. It's time well spent. As you improve, you will find that you don't need that time anymore and will find the ability to actually review. In this podcast I talk a little bit about that and also touch on some membership information that you might also find interesting. For members, I have updated the white belt beginning student page with some information on how to start becoming a white belt master. The list on that page is for now a list of ideas that I will clarify over the next few week. I hope if you are not doing a weekly review that you set aside time to start. I set aside time every Sunday evening. Do it consistently and over a long period of time you will find the improvement in your productivity. I know I did. Well, it's late tonight, so until next time, keep working on your life one belt at a time. Good luck!

 014 The GTD Monthly Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 29:31

In this episode of the Black Belt Project Podcast, I discuss the GTD monthly review and also spend some time talking about the GTD altitudes. I recommend that in addition to the weekly reviews, each month you do a monthly review. During this monthly review you will move up to the 20,000 foot level which is the areas of focus. I define areas of focus as broader projects that require more than one project to complete whereas projects are things that require more than one next action. In the case of the Black Belt Project, I consider my areas of focus to be the belts as I have defined them. As I move on, those areas of focus will become more clarified. For example, when it comes to belt called work, I am responsible for sales which requires a number of projects to complete it. For now though, I haven't taken it down that deep yet here on the site. I also spend some time talking about identifying projects for your areas of focus as well as talk about how to get down to the hard part which is the actually doing of your tasks. As always, I am a big believer in progressive resistance to slowly add tasks to challenge your mental toughness and make it stronger. I do that in two ways. The first is to study and break down your day into a series of checklist that define what done looks like for you. Then, work through those checklist until you find where you get stuck most of the time. Next, make it your goal to improve by at least one task and then repeat. You'll find that you will get to the point where it is easier to get further down your list as you get stronger. The other thing I suggest is to work on thirty day challenges for adding things. Previously, I had accomplished several other thirty day challenges like giving up diet coke, giving up fried food and continuing them after the thirty days and then adding another one. I failed to complete my last thirty challenge which was get up a 6am every day so for this month, I added a different thirty day challenge which was to walk every day. I hope you enjoy this podcast. Let me know if you have any questions. If you are not a member of the black belt project, I encourage you to join now.

 013 GTD Weekly Review | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 25:07

Are you doing a GTD weekly review? If not, you are missing out on getting the clarity that you need on all the commitments you have made. Today, I wanted to talk about the evolution of my weekly review and share with you some ideas on how to get started doing your weekly review and some other ideas I have at mastering the process. As usual, you can probably guess that I suggest you get a checklist going. At first, I wouldn't make your own. Instead use the one that David Allen provides and later start getting your own spin on it by putting your own specific actions on your checklist. The first problem I encountered is that I didn't actually do a weekly review. I think that this is a natural progression. At first, I was busy working on getting everything collected and processed. I always suggest when you are first starting out to get all of the buckets set up. Then, make sure you are getting everything collected into the system. Once you feel comfortable getting all of that down, then move onto mastering processing your inboxes to zero. Eventually, you'll create the momentum you need to start making a project list to determine what all your next actions should be. And finally you'll move onto consistently doing them. I noticed, as I think several others have, that when you first start doing your weekly review, that it takes a long time. This is because you are busy collecting, processing, doing your two minute actions and organizing. By the time you get to the actual reviewing you are well over an hour easy and often you run out of time. If this is you, then I think that you'll find some good tips in what I recommend here. Step One: Commit to doing the review at the same time once a week The first step is to commit to doing the review. Get it on your calendar and make sure that you keep the appointment. I like to do my weekly review late on Sunday nights. This is because I am pretty relaxed from the weekend, it's quiet in my house and I have some private time to do it. Since I work for myself, I find this an easy time and place to do it. The other thing that I like about it, is that it provides me a running start to Monday as I have already thought out what I want to do for the week. This might not work for you. You might instead like to do it on a Friday afternoon. What's important is not so much when you fit it in your schedule, but that you do it consistently each week and I suggest at the same time to get your mind condition to getting in the habit of doing it. Step Two: Work on your review for at least one hour a week As I mentioned above, your reviews will probably go over an hour when you first start. You will probably feel overwhelmed. You might not even finish. Whatever you do, work on your system for at least an hour even if you only work on collection or processing. Just keep moving the system forward. What you are striving for is getting the system under control. This hour a week will help you do that. If you want to spend more time on it, do so, but at least spend an hour working on it. Step Three: Use your review time to get your system in shape before you worry about reviewing If you are new to GTD, you'll find that you have a lot of collecting to do. Focus first on getting everything collected until you feel like you have stuff fairly well collected. I know at first, I was buried in paper. I had paper everywhere. I didn't have a system set up. I didn't have an inbox. Spend your review time getting collection under control. Once you do, spend your review time getting your email to zero. Once you do that, spend time getting your paper inbox to zero. You'll find that slowly moving this improvement through your system will create a snowball effect and give you the mental strength to move onto and through the review. Don't be afraid to use the review time for this purpose. Step Four: Break the review over a three day time period When I first started doing my reviews,

 008 Member Coaching Session Brad Gutteridge | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 65:50

I had my first Black Belt Project coaching session today with member Brad Gutteridge. Brad heard me mention in a previous podcast that I wanted to interview my members and see where they needed help and how we can start moving them toward mastering their life. Brad has made a lot of progress clearing out his GTD runway actions and is well on his way to mastering his time. I had a great conference call with him today and we spent about an hour discussing his process. I recorded that meeting and am making it available for free to all visitors. We spent the first part of the interview getting familiar with where he is and what he is working to improve on. In the latter part of the interview, I felt that we really starting putting together a really good working plan to move forward. Because the first part of mastering our life is mastering our time, we spent our session talking about how to improve our GTD system. On top of that, we're overlaying the black belt mentality which I discussed in detail with Brad. As a result of our call, I figured out a little more about the direction to take the Black Belt Project. I decided that the best approach to take would be to take the concepts he and I talked about and start showing you specifically how I would roll out the strategies I recommend to him. Over the next few weeks, I will start to talk specifically about how to do the steps I recommended to him during our call. I hope that you enjoy this podcast. I'm still extending an invitation to talk to as many members as possible and help in any way I can. If you'd like to take me up on my offer, the first step is to join the Black Belt Project. And then let me know either in the comments or in the forums you would like to take me up on my offer. Also, if there is anything in the podcast you need clarification on, let me know in the comments section or in the forum as well.  

 007 How To Master Your Life With The Black Belt Project Dojo | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 28:07

Every Sunday is going to be weekly podcast time. This podcast will be available to all members and non members. It will also be available on itunes for download as well. In each episode, I'll try and spend about 20 to 30 minutes talking about some higher level concepts that relate to all the belts that I have identified as areas you want to master. Today, I wanted to talk about how to master your life with the Black Belt Project Dojo. If you have had an interest in this subject and have been around for a while, you've no doubt run across the gurus of the world promising life mastery. Their story usually begins with them down on their luck, deep in debt and future prospects dim. You see them when they have already achieved success. What's missing? The journey in between. To me, this is where the real heart of life mastery is. It's not walking on hot coals or jumping off of a telephone pole or god forbid frying yourself in a sauna. That isn't to say that what they have to say is worthless. Something can be gleaned from everyone's story. But wouldn't you like to see what really happened every step of the way BEFORE they were successful? I know that I would. Seeing that process take shape would be extremely valuable - at least to me. The problem is that life mastery is different for everyone. And the reason this is a problem is because books need to be put together with the masses in mind. Books that apply to everyone. But, when that's the case, it waters down the story and you and I get shortchanged in the process. The process is repeated with the next appointed guru and the same material is rehashed again and we are shortchanged yet again. I'm personally tired of the generic self help books that just cheer lead you on. Those books won't help you master life. And this is why I created the Black Belt Project - to fill in the gaps between failure and success with specifics. To reach this lofty goal, I have developed the idea of the online training center - or dojo - to help facilitate this process. This is the membership area that you can register for. Inside you'll find a beta version of the dojo. It's a floorplan of what I think it might look like in the future. Right now, it's a sketch. You'll have to bear with me while I build it and expect that it will be revised as my vision and process come together to develop the best way to help each and every member have what they need to succeed. I hope that you enjoy this week's podcast. Let me know how I can help you.  

 002 How To Become A Black Belt At GTD And Master Your Time | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 10:35

In today's weekly review podcast, I wanted to talk about how to become a black belt at GTD and master your time. I've been working with my GTD system since about 2006 and I have to tell you that no other system has had such a profound impact on my life than David Allen's Getting Things Done. It is a great system. I do have to tell you though that getting your GTD system to black belt is just the beginning of mastering your life and that is what this site is all about. GTD will provide the framework you need but reaching your potential and mastering your life requires a deeper commitment to consistency and sense of purpose that can't be reached unless you get a hold of all of the loose ends in your head. So, that is why I think your journey should start with a solid GTD setup. What I've decided to do here is to start constructing a living GTD setup that you can tap into and see exactly how I've set my system up and how I work it on a daily basis. Behind the scenes here on the site, I've put in place a membership site that will represent your training facility to work on your "game" so to speak. I will call this training area the Dojo. While I have the structure of the site in place, you'll notice that is has a while to go with regard to being the kind of resource you need to master all aspects of your life. Because of that, what I have done is establish what I call a "beta" version of the site. During this beta period, I encourage you to join the site by clicking the link above called "Become A Black Belt" and registering for membership. Currently, membership is free. If you join now, you'll be considered a founding member and when the day comes that the "Dojo" officially opens, you'll receive a 50% discount on the monthly membership fees charged for new members. In the meantime, you'll have free use of all of the content that I put up until then. During this founding member period, I would also like to extend an offer to each member that joins a free Skype consultation on exactly where you need help and exactly how the Black Belt Project can help you. Once you join, please email me that you want to take me up on this offer. My goal is to help you reach your potential. What's going to happen from here is that each week, I will do a weekly review podcast. This podcast will be free to all visitors to help give them a taste of how the site actually works and what they can expect. On a daily basis, I will also provide updates that complement the weekly review. These daily reviews will give you the complete picture of how the system is developed. Initially, I will start setting up my GTD system from scratch just like a beginner. I will do the best I can to walk you through each part as I set it up in complete detail - from collection, through processing, organizing, doing and finally reviewing. Once this setup is complete, I'll look to improve it's performance and move it to a black belt level. Once I reach that stage, that will mean that I have obtained my red belt. At that point, I'll look to move onto my next belt and so on. I hope you enjoy this week's review. Let me know how I can help.

 BBP001: Introduction To Black Belt GTD | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 18:45

In my first podcast episode, I spend some time talking about the strategy I would use to become a Black Belt GTD if I was just starting out. There's no fancy music and my voice has been known to put people to sleep but I thought that a podcast might be beneficial to some of my readers. I'm still learning the logistics of putting these together so if you have any feedback on the quality of the recording or things you'd like to hear about let me know.

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