The quality of what comes out of your mouth is often dictated by the quality of information you stick into your brain.
And goodness knows we're not lacking in sources of information to put into our heads.
In a humble attempt to help you find some good stuff to read, watch and listen to, we're going to share some recent favourite information sources and specific pieces of content with you that we think you'll love.
Ready?
Here, let's roll...
Over the past four years, we've turned ourselves into mini human experiments. We've tested different changes in foods, tried different diets, lifted heavy objects, ingested nootropics, had blood tests, hormone tests, adrenal repair protocols, put butter in our coffee, bone density body scans, measured our ketone levels and other assorted human body fun.
Whenever we're asked about a good source of information around food and lifestyle, we always seem to go back to Mark Sisson (www.MarksDailyApple.com) as an excellent starting point.
His site is filled with great content and each Friday he publishes various case studies and success stories.
His book, The Primal Blueprint, was first recommended to us by a Crossfit trainer (www.RadixPerformance.com) and it may be the single biggest turning point in my personal eating habits ever.
Mark Sisson was interviewed on Joe Rogan's podcast back in January and it's a great summary of health and fitness and blasts through a lot of the misconceptions around what you need to do to achieve an optimal body composition.
Tim Ferriss' podcast is an incredible resource to get into the mind's of elite performers across multiple disciplines.
More than any other podcast, we highly recommend adding this to your podcast app on your iPhone and visiting it regularly. Incredible stuff.
And one of the very best interviews (there are many to choose from by the way) was with Jamie Foxx.
If you have any #bullshit excuses for not accomplishing what you want to in life, then listen to this.
When you hear where Jamie came from to achieve what he has you'll not be able to sell yourself another excuse for not doing what you want ever again.
Jamie has an incredible story, check it out here:
(Note: this one is just audio, so download it or listen to it via your iPhone while driving in your car with a Podcast app - subscribe to Tim Ferriss' podcast to get it)
Derek may be best known for being the founder of CD Baby but to us, he's one of the most interesting "students of life" (his words) that we've ever come across.
His perspective on business, friends, spirituality and our existence on this planet is inspiring.
Derek has the ability to simplify complex subjects incredibly well.
He's an avid reader and has put together the most amazing resource for us all.
Each time he reads a book he makes notes on them and shares them on his website.
He also ranks the books out of ten for us.
The list of good books alone is an incredible filter and time saver for all of us, but the notes on each book just make this site invaluable.
I have not bookmarked a site in my browser in at least a couple of years, but the value on this site makes it an instant "toolbar bookmark" on my browser.
You can check out the books and summaries here: https://sivers.org/book
And take some time to poke around his recently published "directives" here: https://sivers.org/d1
(yes, we said... "shh-marts")
Many journalists, real estate investors, and your neighbours can't make sense of the economy because they cannot see the forest for the trees.
Many Canadians still don't understand just how the threat of the Chinese Yuan devaluation is driving home prices in Toronto.
We shared a blog post on this a few weeks back (Is $860 Million a month landing in Toronto's real estate market right now?)
A lot of arm chair economists also don't quite grasp the fundamentals of quantitative easing, gold, nominal vs. real growth, the future of negative interest rates and more.
James G. Rickards changes that.
There are many other authors in this space we could share with you but he continues to deliver useful insights in a very clear manner.
You'll want to check out his three books, Currency Wars, The Death of Money and the newly released, The New Case for Gold and to get his latest opinion pieces and TV interviews track him on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/jamesgrickards
Lately, we've been thinking about life a lot.
Maybe it's age, I'm 43, Nick is 37. We've been doing this real estate thing for a long time now.
We have sent out a "weekly" email every week (maybe skipping 3-4 weeks a year when we just need a break) every week since 2008.
That's in the neighbourhood of 416 weekly emails.
Each email has had an article or a blog post or some piece of content sent with it. Each written post is often between 900 and 1,200 words.
It also has about 100-250 words at the top of each email that is unique each week.
So we've written roughly 624,000 words ... just for our weekly email.
624,000!
This all coming from two guys who never had any ambition to be "writers" of any sort.
And this is just our weekly email.
We've published a 12-page newsletter for Rock Star Inner Circle members for the same amount of time. There is at least five thousand words in that, at least.
That's another 60,000 words a year.
Or about 480,000 words over the last eight years.
Add them together and we're over 1,000,000 words.
If you include courses created, presentations, reports etc., how many words has it really been?
Anyhoo, there's a website that plays with numbers in a really insightful way.
Our very post is: Your Life in Weeks, you've gotta check it out, click here for it.
And while you're there, poke around some of the other articles, tons and tons of fun and life perspective all wrapped up into one.
Our mom took us to multiple meditation summer camps before it was a cool thing to do (is it cool now??)
So hearing more and more talk of "mindfulness" and "mediation" is encouraging because personally, I've taken away lifelong lessons from those camps in Toronto's Central Library.
The idea that "I am not my emotions" and the ability to be self-aware has had very calming influences in my life.
We hear a lot of people struggle with meditation.
We don't claim to be experts but it seems to us most people make it too difficult and in classic "A-Type-Personality-Fashion" they make unreasonable goals around it.
Using a guided meditation is an easy way to introduce this valuable habit into your life -- Headspace.com has a pretty good 10-day mediation that is totally free.
It's like a meditation starter pack.
Give it a whirl by visiting www.Headspace.com, I've been using it myself lately and enjoy it.
If you're reading this, you likely live a good life.
You have an Internet connection of some sort after all and that alone would be considered a miracle only a little while back. You may be reading this at work, at home, on the toilet, or on a beach (stop that and go swim!) ... who knows.
Most of us take for granted just how amazing our lives are.
If you're reading this and you live in Canada, then that alone makes you a winner. Do you realize exactly how many people around the world would love to live here? If not, take our word for it ... more people want into this country than want out. And for many countries around the world, that ain't the case.
Being grateful for the simplest things in your life can
be a huge source of happiness.
And it can provide a useful context for you when you inevitably hit those "stressful situations" in life.
One of our favourite tools for ensuring we're grateful every day is The 5 Minute Journal. (www.TheFiveMinuteJournal.com)
You obviously don't need this thing to make you grateful, it's just a tool, but a good one.
Each morning and before bed each night, simply write out 3 things (however small) that you're grateful for. We think it'll give you a whole new perspective on how awesome each day truly is.
And there you have it, a little guide to some information resources we thought you may find useful.
Until next time ... Your Life! Your Terms!!
