Many of us settle every single day. We settle in what job we take. We settle in who we allow ourselves to be friends with. We settle in our relationship with our significant others. We even settle in who we allow ourselves to be. This last one is one I want to focus on for a minute. First, I want to be clear that I do not mean to say that you are not enough or that you are not good enough. None of that. What I'm saying is that you have truly limitless potential and many of us are seriously limiting ourselves by settling in who we allow ourselves to be.

Sometimes we try to be the best version of ourselves for a few days or maybe even a week or two, but when failure inevitably comes along we decide that we don't have what it takes to be better, so we give up and we settle for a lesser version of ourselves. When you allow yourself to sleep in all day, when you allow yourself to be late to work or school several days a week, or when you allow yourself to be rude, short, or angry with your friends and family, then you are settling. You are allowing yourself to be less than you could be. Never stop trying to be who you could be, because you could be so much! You have so much potential that you are letting go when you settle for the lazy or rude version of yourself.

Let me challenge you right here, right now. What if you lived, starting today, not lowering your standards and not settling? What if you tried to stay hyper-aware of every time you settle throughout the day, and instead of settling, you just tried to stop? It probably starts with the alarm clock. It all starts with the snooze bar. What if you made a commitment to yourself to master the alarm clock and stop hitting the snooze bar? What if instead of letting people at work treat you poorly you decide to stand up for yourself and be firm in who you are? What if you decided to drop that friendship or that relationship that has not been serving you, or probably even them as well? What if you stopped settling with your health and you didn't allow yourself to eat things that are going to make your body feel awful? What if you got your exercise routine back on track?

Let's say it took you five years to master all of those simple habits. You could probably do it a little faster, but let's just call it five years. How different would your life look after all of that? How incredibly different would you look? You would probably be almost unrecognizable in just five years. All you have to do is stop settling for the lesser version of yourself. Again, that's not saying that you are lesser, but that you allow yourself to do the things that keep you down. And I know "not settling" sounds much easier than it really is, but the only way you have a fighting chance is to have faith and put it into practice, and most importantly don't quit when you fail.

It all starts with you.