Self Improvement Tips: How to Thrive as an Entrepreneur

If you want to thrive as an entrepreneur, being intentional about your self-improvement is crucial. In this video I want to share with you five powerful tips for thriving in business and also living a fulfilling personal life. What's good, it's Rob Cressy, and the way I'm going to do this is by breaking these five self-improvement tips down into the following categories. Number one, productivity. Number two, confidence building. Number three, energy management. Number four, stress management. And number five, habit formation. And now let's break each one of these down.

Starting with number one, productivity. And for me, productivity starts from the second that I wake up in the morning, and then that's all by design, by creating a morning routine that you love. Because the way that you build momentum in your day will determine how the rest of your actions and output comes. So if you would like to be more productive in your day, then it really helps to be intentional about how you start it. So for me, this is all about control and design, or as I love, live by design, not by default.

And for me there's a few simple things that I do every single day as part of this. Number one, design what the first thought of yours is every single day. For me it's, today is going to be a great day. Why? Boom. Plants a positive seed of something good happening every single day. There goes my momentum right there. Because you know you're going to have a first thought every single day, so why not design it?

And then from there, number two for me is I've turned my toothbrush into a trigger for gratitude. Because the next thing that I do is I zombie my way over to the sink and I brush my teeth and I say three things that I'm thankful for. Thankful for my wife, I'm thankful for the ability to create content every day, and I'm thankful for me from Pittsburgh. And boom, put my toothbrush down. I do the same thing at night.

And triggers are something it'll weave through this entire video that are going to come up often, because your ability to turn anything into something positive that serves you in your journey and can help you grow is an absolute game changer. So from your toothbrush to your car door to a water bottle, whatever it is, your ability to self create and turn something average or normal or mundane into an opportunity for personal growth.

A bonus here, another productivity self-improvement tip: use ChatGPT and AI. This is absolutely changing the game of productivity right now. So that's my quick little bonus. I've got tons of content and resources on that if you want it, just hit me up at Rob Cressy on social media.

All right, number two is around confidence building. And when I think about confidence building, it's all around earning it, earning your confidence. And the way that I love to do that is by doing something hard. And for a lot of people, you're going to hear, I don't want to do something hard. But guess what? Nothing great ever came from your comfort zone.

And one of the books that changed my life was The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday. And I looked in the average small business owner or entrepreneur, the reason, the reason that they do not create and accomplish their dreams is because they give up or quit. Therefore, I'm going to become somebody who specializes in not quitting. And one of the things you learn in that book is your ability to turn obstacles and adversity into opportunities.

So so often on an entrepreneurial journey that we're always doing something new, we've always, we're always doing something we've never done before. It can feel like a roller coaster of emotions and time and relationship and everything, especially when you're all in or you want to be all in on this. So your ability to, uh, create your confidence by saying, listen, no matters what's going on in my business or in my life, I have this confidence because I've earned it.

And that's why I do hard things like 75 Hard in the LIVE HARD program from Andy Frisella. If you've never done it, I highly, highly recommend you do it. It'll change your life forever and turn you into the best version of yourself. If you're considering it, I've got a great resource for you. Go to robcressy.com/75-hard and it's the best 75 Hard resource on the internet there. In your ability to be in charge of creating your confidence, absolute game changer.

So earlier this year I ran the Clearwater Marathon. It was my Misogi for the year. Why? Because I wanted to start the year by doing something hard, and the benefits of it will last the other 365 days of the year. So earn your confidence. That's how you make it happen.

All right, number three, energy management. And when you think about yourself as an entrepreneur, you're likely living a full life between, uh, your business life, your personal life, and if you have a family there, or and if you have kids as well, there's like, wow, there's a lot of buckets that you're filling up there. And we all know that we can feel overwhelmed or anxious or just the feeling of, man, this is a lot, or this is heavy.

So because of this, there's a phrase that I love and it is emptied the tank. My encouragement for you is at the end of the day, when you've given it your all and you sit there and you're like, oh man, I just feel drained, don't say I am tired. Say I emptied the tank.

And this is a realization that I had. I now have a two-year-old toddler, and at the end of a full day, I was up at 5 a.m., went to the gym, full day of creating and working on my business and my dreams and my vision, and then picking him up from preschool and feeding him, bathing him and then putting him to bed. It's like eight o'clock and I haven't eaten dinner yet, and I was like, man, I am just absolutely drained right now.

And I sat there and I was like, huh, why am I all judgy about myself right now? In my mind it's like as if I didn't do enough. There was a, a scarcity in there. And I don't relate to the term I am tired. Throw that in the trash. You'll never hear that for me, because that's an identity statement. But how do you live I am tired and actually feel it without actually speaking it? And that's when the light bulb went off. It was like, Rob, you're not tired. You emptied the tank. You gave everything on today.

So for you, understand that when it comes to energy management, one is your language and phrasing of it. One, are you saying this? And then number two, your ability to create your energy, which ironically enough goes back to the first thing we talked about with productivity and creating a morning routine. Your ability to design yourself into the burst best version of yourself includes your ability to create your energy.

So an action item or something I would encourage you to think about is if you're a challenge and you struggle with energy or you have very high and low moments, create an energy menu and write down a list of things that fill you up energetically. One of them for me is I love listening to music, Bob Marley specifically. Why? I get good vibes. I'm just sitting there dancing, the sun is shining. I immediately know, hey, if I'm low or I want more good vibes, just throw on some Bob Marley right there.

And two quick bonuses for you on this one. Number one, prioritize sleep. You want better energy, have better sleep. And for this I design sleep like it's a meeting. Seven or eight hours every single day, non-negotiable. Just adjust the time depending on when I go to bed. And then number two, and this is a recent revelation, has been a game changer: buy an Oura Ring. It'll teach you so much more about your health and your well-being by just giving you the data. It'll show you, uh, where your sleep is at, where your activity level is at, where your stress is at. So much good data, and with that you can better energy, enter, you can better manage your energy.

All right, number four here, and it's a yes and of the energy management, is stress management. And I encourage you to ask yourself, what is your plan for when things get crazy in your business or your life? Because that's not an if, it's a when, and how often things are going to get bananas. And as entrepreneurs, this is pretty much what we specialize in, because life is a non-stop, uh, fear, judgment, self-limiting beliefs, adversity, challenges, obstacles. Some we've created, some that we've not created, that just come into our life, in our ability to create with it and not have it limit us or set us back.

So the first thing is just, what is your plan? And if you don't have a plan or something in your creator toolbox, okay, now we have the opportunity to plug that hole in your boat and build a better boat. Because if you know that there's certain things that will trigger you and turn it into something bad, well, guess what? Now we want to know what your solution is to that.

And here's a simple example on my end. Anytime I know that I'm highly stressed, my process is, number one, change my environment. I'll leave my house or wherever I am and I'll go for a walk. Number two, audit my inputs. I'll throw in my headphones and listen to music. I'll put on some Bob Marley. Number three, I'm going to move my body. So now I'm going to walk around my neighborhood while listening to the music to change my physical state. And typically within five, ten or fifteen minutes I come back and I just feel different about it. It's a very way, it's a way that I get myself out of that negative loop that keeps going over and over and over again.

And of course that's on something short term, but your ability to shrink your dispersion, aka how long or short something stays with you, where you are, how far off of, because stress should not be your default. Good vibes and peace and joy and love and happiness and harmony, that's the default that we would love to be in. So with this understanding, what are those tools in your menu that can help bring you back to that?

And once again, as a bonus here, well, if we know that there's bad triggers, then we also know what the positive triggers can be. So start designing more positive triggers into your life that counterbalance the stress. Because if you know there's gonna be hard times, well, let's make sure to feed our vision and imagination. One of my favorite ones is every time I fill up my water bottle or a cup of water, I'm filling up my cup of beliefs, and I just sit there and I live in my vision and I live in my imagination. So as I go about my life, it is literally like a game of things that are just feeding all of the abundance and the improvement in the positivity that I would love in my life.

And number five here is all around habit formation, and this is a superpower when you learn how to create positive habits for yourself that serve you and your business. Because once you've got this, boom, you're going to thrive in business and life forever. And for me, this is what I went all in on and specialized, is self-improvement in personal growth and development, how to make myself better and be the best version of myself. Because it's, nobody can ever take from you what you learn in your mindset. So it's like, well, why in the world would I not build better habits to be a better version of myself to create the best life possible? It seems oh so simple because it actually is.

So how in the world can we build better habits easier? Well, number one, focus on the micro, small. Instead of changing everything in your life, let's just change one thing at a time or take your first step to it. So instead of being like, oh, I've never meditated before because I see everybody who look like gurus of yoga wearing beads and Lululemon gear, it's like, no, just download Headspace and do the first thing for five minutes of a meditation session. One baby step. Get off of zero and go to one.

So my encouragement for you is if you've never created a morning routine, cool. Just start with what's one thing you would love to do or design into your life every single day. So if you want more fitness, cool, go work out for five minutes. If you want more mindfulness, uh, go in journal for five minutes or read the book The Artist's Way or go meditate. If you want, uh, let's see, what are some other things? You want to visualize more? Cool. Set a timer for five minutes, go visualize, or open up or create a vision board for yourself.

Because what you're going to learn is that self-improvement is like building a house or stacking Lego blocks, that you do one thing, you add another, you add another, and you add another. And this is what I call effortless effort, where you start stacking things positively in your life that help create yourself into the best version of yourself, and you can do so unconsciously because you're like, of course, this just makes complete sense. It's easy, it's fun, and it makes me the best version of myself.

And what I love to do is turn habit formation into growth games. Meaning, all right, instead of making this rigid and hard and have to, let's make this more like play and exploring and adventure. All right, so I love to play growth games. Right now I'm doing a 21 day master of time challenge. Last month I did a seven day letting go challenge about creating content through my intuition and not being so rigid in everything that I do. When you can frame habit formation as growth games, man, it's a lot more playful and it's a lot easier to learn.

The key for this, of course, being your ability to be self-accountable. Nobody has to tell me to create a growth game, because I'm the one who's creating them for myself. And the same can be true for you. Because if you're challenged with this, maybe accountability is something that you want to focus on or highlight. All right, I want to play a seven day growth game, but I'm just not being consistent with it. Cool. What am I going to do or create around me to be more consistent? And the simple thing: write it down and put it somewhere you're going to see it. If you don't see it there, keep putting in a lot of different places, because awareness really helps with consistency, consistency helps with growth, growth helps with habit formation positively.

So for me, self-improvement is a mindset, it's a lifestyle, and it's a way of being. When you're about this life, man, you want more and more of it because of what it creates for you in your life. Every day is an opportunity for you to grow and get better and show up as the best version of yourself and all that you do. And everything that you want is completely possible in your business and in your life. If you follow these five self-improvement tips, I promise you, man, it will change your life quickly and forever.

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