A Guide To Planning Your Life in 2026 | The HigherUp Podcast Ep. 68

Welcome back to another episode of The Higher Up Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Smoke, and it's been a while. I'm sorry guys, I have taken a little bit of a break from the pod due to a series of things, travel, creative blocks, frankly, a bit of sickness, and I just needing a bit of space from the show for a little while. So it's been a while since I've talked in a communications, public speaking, capacity, one-on-one to the mic like this. So let's hope it is indeed like riding a bike, and I indeed never do forget. So I guess we're going to find out. This is the perfect time after I announce my fear of being able to communicate insufficiently to share with you guys that in January, I will be launching my new coaching offer. I haven't promoted coaching in months because I've been silently with my team rebuilding my coaching and what really lights my spirit on fire and I had a revelation over the last few weeks of travel that I want to teach people to tell their story. And so I will be coaching people on how to be a better communicator. So if you're interested in that, I want you to be on the lookout, first week of January, the first 10 people will be who gets in and then we block. So we're doing a cohort of 10 and then we stop and then we might do 10 more. I don't know. Transparently, I will be building the plane a little bit as I fly it, understanding what the 10 clients and cohort one need from me. But ultimately, I want to teach people to communicate in the way that I communicate because everybody seems to just watch me. Definitely not for production quality, but because of my ability to convey a message in my spoken word. And I believe that this is something everybody can do. You don't need fancy cameras. I've made this podcast on a glorified webcam for the better part of a year and a half. And I record everything on my phone and I've built this platform that is beyond my wildest dreams in terms of impact on my ability to tell a story and convey my thoughts. And I believe you can all do the same. So if you're interested, I'd love for you to drop a comment and let me know that you're going to be on the lookout for it. I will be promoting it on my Instagram and we only have 10 slots to start in January. So be on the lookout for that. I also quickly want to say that this podcast is brought to you by my absolute boys at dream recovery. So if you need any performance sleep products, sleep masks, mouth tape, nasal strips, blue light blocking glasses, go over to dreamrecovery.io and use code H, letter H, letter U for higher up to support your boy and save. I think it's 15% on all of your orders. It means a lot to me would help me out with the brand and the people that run it are incredible. And I sleep like a brick when I use their stuff. So that's all I got in terms of the updates on the promotional side. Let's get into the episode. The episode topic today is how to change your life based on your values and your rules. This exercise is something we did at Tony Robbins. And if you see me looking down, it's because I have something pulled up on my computer that will help me talk through it. I also have this book right here that I got when I'm going to show you the cover. Stand by. Boop. Bop. Boop. The beep. This is from David Destiny. So for those of you who don't know, I was on the road for 12 days. And I had, you know what? Before we get into the exercise, can I just, sometimes this podcast, if you've listened for a while, is a space for me to feel gratitude and feel proud of the things that I've done because that is something that I struggle with, frankly. One of the old, I have a hard time celebrating my achievements because in my mind, it was my obligation to achieve it. Personality. I struggle with that. But I just went on a 12 day trip that was, frankly, fucking insane. Life-changing. And two weeks before that, I had an evening with a guy that was life-changing as well. Basically over the last six weeks, I have spent time with, how many? Four of the biggest titans in business and public speaking literally on the planet. Four of them. And I just got to be in rooms with them in either hyper-intimid settings or semi-intimid settings or just a setting where I could study and watch them be the goats that they are. I spent three hours at his home with my best friend and Jesse Itzler. We saw it and cold-plunge together for three hours, a billionaire, well, a hundred hundred millionaire whose wife is a billionaire, so emerged assets. A guy who's worth oodles of money, whose time is worth piles of cash, gave me and my best friend, Colin, three hours of his time in his home. And it was incredible. He was so down to earth, he cares so much about the connection and I need to make a separate episode about what I learned from these four guys. But I got to hang out with Jesse Itzler, two on one in his home. Then I fly to Manhattan to have an intimate dinner, which I didn't promote or advertise at all, but I got invited to a creator dinner with Gary Vaynerchuk and John Hugh, the CEO of Stan Store, and of course, you know who Gary Vee is, an intimate creator's dinner. And I just got to learn from, sit directly across from Gary, like you're looking at me right now and hear him spout knowledge to a degree like, there's a guy that paid a hundred fifty grand for an hour and a half lunch with Gary Vee. He told that story. I got to just be there for free. I got paid to be out there. They paid for my flight in hotel and I just got to learn from Gary and I got to bounce ideas off of him and like, he was loving what I was saying. Like, it was a crazy experience. I learned so much. I'm going to make a separate episode just on what I learned from Gary and maybe an episode on what I learned from these Titans. But overnight dinner and Gary Vee with Gary Vee straight and I'm drinking wine and eating pasta with Gary fucking Vaynerchuk and John Hugh, like what? I then do a three day workshop for entrepreneurs and creators that me and Nick Cometina hosted, sold that bitch out three days of helping people find purpose and clarity. I did that. Like, that's crazy. Me and Nick, we got together, had an idea made a baby and it was beautiful. And then I went straight to David Destiny in West Palm Beach where I got this guy, this book for Tony Robbins, the goat of public speaking and motivational coaching, motivational speaking and coaching. And I got to see why he was the goat. And again, I will break this down in a set other next episode about what I learned and took away from all these people. But getting to be invited on his friends and family list, I don't know how that happened. I don't even know that's what happened. But I walked into the event and everyone was like, oh, you've got a pink lanyard. How do you know Tony? And I said, I don't know Tony. I don't even know why I'm here. And it was so fucking cool. And I learned so much. I learned why he's the goat. He's your favorite coach, his favorite coach. And then while I was there, shout out my boy Graham Williams, Graham Williams invited me to go to John Maxwell's keynote speaking retreat with like 25 people that paid a lot of money to be in the room with John Maxwell. If you don't know who any of these people are, Jesse Isler, Tony Robbins, GaryVee, John Maxwell, look them up. John Maxwell is like a goat of public speaking. And like I got to watch John publicly audit people's keynote speeches and learn from all these great keynote speakers while watching John, the goat of keynote speakers review his stuff and then squeak back to date with destiny and just go back right back to Tony Robbins. Like, what is my life? It was honestly hard for me to receive all those blessings. And it was part of what I learned and reshaped today with destiny about how to be able to receive those blessings to satisfy my mission in life, which is to serve people. And I'll get into that in just a minute, which brings me, let's the perfect sequitur into the exercise, how to change your life through purpose, rules and values. So the goal of this exercise, and I have a document, maybe I'll try to figure out how to put in the description for you all to download. I don't know how I'm going to do that. So no promises. If you look in the description and it's not there, I'm sorry. I tried, but I'm going to go through this document. So Tony believes that we are always consciously or unconsciously defining our values and the rules we need to achieve those values. And there's two types of values. There's towards values and away values. So people view successes. This thing they have to push towards. And in reality, you should want to be pulled towards those values, if that makes sense. And so the purpose of identifying consciously or towards values is to break free of the subconscious way you've been defining them that may be hindering you. Like for example, someone who's, this is Tony's explanation, someone who values anxiety. Excuse me. Someone who has anxiety, values certainty much too highly on their towards values. And they want to feel certain about everything and when they don't, it triggers anxiety. So basically the premise of this exercise is we want to make it really easy to feel good and really hard to feel bad. And we do that through defining our values and our rules. So let's start with towards values. These are the things that you can identify in situations in life that you want to be pulled not pushed, not to push yourself, but to be pulled towards. So I want you to get out of piece of paper whenever you can. And I want you to fill out like just write five lines if you've got a piece of notebook paper, write one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, there's no real number. I think I did eight. You can do 10. You can do 12. 12. And I want you to identify your towards values and here's the way that I want you to think about this. First, I want you to answer each question, each question honestly and without overthinking, understand that your first answer is the most truthful. I'm reading off my document here to give me a reminder so I don't miss anything and write as much or as little as needed. So the towards values, these are the things what you move toward, what gives you pleasure, fulfillment and motivation. And this is where you write your five or six lines down. Remember, these are emotions. So I'll give you mine. Mine were my top four right now are passion slash conviction, service, honesty and integrity and love. Those are the things that I look for in situations is pulling me closer to integrity. Great. I'm going towards it. Is this pulling me towards passion and conviction? Great. Is this pulling me towards love? Great. I think I have eight, but I have my top four written on this sheet of paper right here. So I want you to think about the emotions that you want to be pulled towards. What is it? Is it love? Is it a bunch? And not even a bunch. Is it love? Is it gratitude? Is it passion? Think about those emotions that you want to feel the things that make you feel pleasure and fulfillment and write them out on this piece of paper. Don't type them. I know some of y'all type it on your phones. Write it on a piece of paper. Okay. We're doing this boomer style. There's real commitment to memory that happens and it activates your reticular activating system when you write shit down like this. So the things that you want to be pulled towards, oh wait, actually do I have all of mine written? Hold on. Oh no, never mind. And do that. So just pause the podcast. I'll read you some deepening prompts. What must be present in my life for me to feel fulfilled? What do I consistently chase, seek, or want more of? What emotions or experiences do I value most? If I can guarantee three feelings for the rest of my life or however many, what would they be? Those are the prompts you can use to write the emotions you want in your towards value. So pause the show here if you're writing. As long as you need and write down your towards values, I'll be waiting here, freeze on your screen until you're ready. I didn't have to actually freeze there. All right. Now that you paused and you've written your towards values, let's do your away from values. These are the things you want to move away from. Pain you were trying to avoid. The deepening prompts sound like this. Where are they? What emotions do I work hardest to avoid? What if I promise myself I will never feel again? What pain has shaped my decisions the most when we make decisions from a place of pain, we make them from a place of fear and we are either operating as Nick Cometina says in fear or love. There's only two operating systems. So you're strongest away values. I'll give you examples of mine. Yes, you can steal them if they resonate. My top four are insecurity. I literally wrote this will kill you insecurity fear shame anger and blame those five things. If I identify situations bringing insecurity out of me, of course, I need to be self-aware enough to know like, is my triggered because someone said something true or is like something making me doubt myself that's not of me or of God. Is this making me afraid? Is this making me angry? Am I blaming when I'm in this situation? These are the situations I want to be pushed away from. I want to go, I need to exit that. For some of you, you have people in your life triggering tons of your away values right now. So if you don't want to feel shame, you don't want to feel guilt, you don't want to feel self-pity, you don't want to have rumination, identify what your away values are and write them out just like you did your towards values right now on a piece of paper. So you can know this situation is triggering my away values, I need to back the fuck off. That's how we're going to do this. Are you tracking with me so far? All we're doing is bringing what we do subconsciously to the conscious mind. That's the goal here. So pause the video and write your away values, I'll wait. Okay, quickly, we're going to take a brief break from the values before we transition to the rules and we're going to write primary question. Our primary question is the question that your brain is constantly trying to answer. The thing that always comes up when you're in a life situation, so the prompts here, when life gets difficult, what question do I automatically ask myself? What questions do I ask when I feel stuck, stressed or uncertain? If this question were answered every day, how would my life improve? That is your primary question for life. Whatever it is, pause the video, write it down, don't think too much about it. For a minute, I was stuck in, why am I having such a hard time receiving the fruits of the things that I work so hard for, which really boils down to like, why am I not enough? So write it down, whatever it is. For a lot of people, the first time you write this primary question for life, it's going to be something like, why am I always afraid? What's wrong with me? Why am I craving connections? Typically, you realize you have a negative primary question guiding your life and a goal for this exercise is to rewrite that primary question as something that serves you. My primary question went from, why can't I do this? The thing I said earlier, why can't I live in the fruits of the blessings I work so hard for to, how can I take the blessings that I'm being given to turn around and fulfill my life's mission statement, my life's purpose, which we'll get to in just a minute. So write your primary question now and you have the liberty and the permission to rewrite this after you do the towards values, away values, towards rules and mission statement for life. So you can have a primary question that serves you much more fruitfully. Pause the video and do that now. Okay, now we have towards rules, let me scroll down the page a little bit, towards rules. So we want to create rules that elicit the experience for towards values to take place. So let me go back here in my notebook again, we don't edit this freaking podcast. So you're going to have to just deal with me. You need to identify things that trigger your towards values. So like the example the book has is if three of your top values are love, your top towards values are love, health and success, love, anytime I'm more, anytime I'm warm towards others, I feel love or anytime I remember the love I always have in my heart, I feel love, health. Anytime I treat my body with love and respect, I feel that I'm honoring my towards values, success. Anytime I'm grateful for being alive, I feel success. Anytime I achieve an outcome, I feel success. So I feel blank when I blank. So if your top towards values like mine is passion or conviction, I feel passionate and convicted when I am creating content to serve others. You see what I'm doing there? I feel blank towards value here, I feel towards value, when I action or behavior associated positively with towards value, I feel, what was my, what was my three like towards values? I feel honest and integrity when I am telling the truth even when it's uncomfortable. So if I'm in a situation like that, I know I'm honoring my towards values, changing my story, changing my life, that's Tony's whole belief. So take a moment, pause, I feel towards value, when I action or behavior as many as you need can be eight sentences, it can be three for each one for each, it doesn't matter. There's no rules. Don't think too much. There's not a right way to do this. Just send it, baby, you got this, pause the screen. Wait, wait, wait, hopefully you didn't pause it yet. Understand that rules determine when you get to fill your values. Rigid rules create suffering, flexible rules create freedom. These do not have to be rigid, okay? So ask yourself, are these rules empowering or are they limiting? They need to be empowering. Do these rules depend on me or other people? They need to depend on you. What would happen if I made these rules easier to meet? That's an important question. Make them hard to achieve. Remember, we want to make it really easy to feel good and really hard to feel bad. Next up, away from rules, I avoid pain or discomfort when, so the way that Tony's book describes this, how to write your rules, keyword consistent, because we all feel our way of values sometimes. We all feel insecurity, we all feel shame, we all feel guilt every once in a while. The keyword is not doing it consistently. So he uses the example here in the book showing you the book, anger, frustration, self-pity, as his top three away values. I would only feel consistent, debilitating anger if I were to consistently react in the moment with harshness or intensity instead of remembering that I alone have the power to decide what things mean. I would feel frustration only if I were to consistently believe the false illusion that I can't do anything to resolve or improve the situation. I would feel consistent, debilitating self-pity only if I were to consistently lie to myself that I am a victim instead of remembering how fortunate I really am and that my life is blessed the moment I decide to notice it, bars. Your life is blessed the moment you decide to notice it. It's a choice. That's all. All right. Continuing with the exercise. So there's two ways you can do that. Only if I were to consistently do ex-behavior, I would then feel my, my away value. I would only feel frustration if I were to consistently engage in, that, that, that, that behavior that identifies with core values. The way chat GPT organized Tony's sentences, I used chat to make a PDF of all the things I wrote down. I avoid and then you write your away value by, so you could say I avoid insecurity by identifying situations where I doubt myself and not listening to the narrative. I avoid self-doubt when I remember all of the evidence or when I for choose to forget all of the evidence that I am who I say I am that I have worked so hard to build. So I avoid feeling the away value by triggering a certain behavior. So two ways you can do it. You can do both. You can do the thing I just described to you in Tony's book or you can do the chat GPT away. Both work. Here are some deepening prompts. How have these rules protected me? How have they limited my growth? What new rule could allow me to grow? So that's how the away rules works, trying to make it hard to feel bad. Okay. We're going to close here, I think, yes. This is the big one, the mission statement for life and I'm going to find mine in the book and I'm going to write it or read it to you guys. This is the thing. This is the your north star, write it as if it were already true. This is very important. It's probably the most important part of the exercise. So lock in, it's when, about to get after it. I literally wrote 12, 10, 25, 1, 21 a.m. This is it. That's how powerful this was. Only one in the morning, we were in the seminar. Tony Robbins is a fucking nutcase in the best way. Your mission statement must, number one, be stated in the positive, number two, have B and do statements, number three, include yourself and others, number four, be able to be experienced every day, number five, be brief, number six, eliminate universals, number seven, use emotionally charged words and number eight, make you happy. Really happy. It says that. Things your mission statement must include. Your mission statement for life is going to sound like this. You ready? You ready? You ready? Okay. You want to go inside? Just talking to you like a dog. I, blank, see here, feel and know that my purpose in life is to blank, enjoy blank and do blank for myself and others. So mine sounds like this. I, Michael Thomas Smoke, see here, feel and know that my purpose in this life is to be of complete service to others, be fully present each and every day in my life and do good in the world every day for myself and others. Simple, short, profound and it defines every decision that I make. When I wrote that down clearly, I literally felt a shift in my spirit and then he makes you say it repeatedly. So I want you out loud if you had the capacity to do what I'm doing right now. Say it with your fucking chest. I, Michael Thomas Smoke, see here, feel and know that my purpose in this life is to be of complete service to others, be fully present in my life each and every day and do some form of good for the world for myself and for others. He'll make you say it loud, he'll make you say it louder and then he'll make you say it like Mickey Mouse and then he'll make you say it really fast. It's the pole point is to drop down out of your head and into your body to really feel what you're saying. So say it one more time, say it louder, say I, your name, go. I'll wait. Say it loud. That's it. I feel like I'm doing an episode of Blues Clues like waiting for you to interact with me. So I want you to write this down clearly and concisely. It can be simple. It doesn't actually need to be complex. In fact, I encourage it not to be and I want you to say it multiple times and I want you to say it with your chest multiple times louder and louder each time. The goal is to solidify it into your nervous system by getting out of your mind and into your body and invoking some emotion with what you say. So that is your mission statement for life. That's your guiding North Star. And now you're going to go back to the top and that thing that was your primary question. If you're not happy with it, if it was, why am I not enough, if it was, why am I so worried all the time, if it was, why am I this way, what's wrong with me, I want you to rewrite it. And based on what you just defined as your towards a wave, towards and away values, your towards rules, your easy to feel good, hard to feel bad, your away rules, and your mission statement for life, write down a primary question that can guide your life in a fashion that you're proud of. Just like I said, mine was, oh hold on, mine was, why do I have such a hard time receiving the fruits of the things that work so hard for? Mine is now, how can I take all of the blessings that I'm being given to turn around and use what I've learned from those blessings to serve others? A lot better than why am I having such a hard time with us, you see what we're doing here? So without further ado, that's the episode. I appreciate your patience. I'm glad to be back. I missed you guys. I will be consistent in 2026, my goal is to take this podcast back to the top of the charts. I'm coming for you, Andrew Heberman, I was two slots under you, I'm going to beat you this year. And I want to, I want to blow this podcast up, I love it, I love what it does for people, I love what it does for me, and it feels like what I'm called to do. So I love you guys, I'm grateful that you have chosen to tune in with me for this long. Thank you for another incredible year, I love each and every one of you more than you know. I can't wait to make 2026 the biggest freaking year yet, we're going to blow the roof off this joint. So, drop your step check in the comments, let me know what you thought about the episode. It is 410 pm, I'm at 5273 steps, let me hear yours in the comments on Spotify or YouTube. If you're on Spotify, rate the show, it really does help follow the show as well. If you're on YouTube, drop a subscribe and a comment and like the video so we can get these messages to more people. Love you guys, we'll see you in the next episode.