9 Beliefs to Adopt For a Happier Life

Isn't it true that sometimes you flow through social media and you're like, ah, they have it perfect. They're so good. Everything's so great for them, so why even try? They were born lucky, so why should try to change my life? Because I am the way that I am. High performers believe that everybody, the highest achieving, the wealthiest, the richest, the luckiest, they're also struggling. And it does two things for you. One, when you recognize other people's struggle, that gives you humanity and it gives you more compassion for yourself. Because if they're struggling now, you see them struggling and go, oh, that makes my struggle okay. If that person is so rich and successful and amazing and they're struggling, that makes mine okay, too. But it also does this. High performers recognize the struggle and they want to serve. What do I think the beliefs are that high performing and happy people have, you know, what's their thought patterns that really allow them to succeed over the long term? So I'm gonna be covering that with you. And this is from some psychology, this is from some positive psychology, but a lot of it's also from my certified high performance coaching experience. So coaching people one on one now for over a decade, getting really clear about listening to how they believe and think about themselves, about other people, and about the future and the world in general. So I'll be covering 9 Beliefs today. Looks like beliefs today that will really help you to either adopt or explore. And I think this is going to be a breakthrough session for many of you. I always think that belief is kind of like a foundational baseline, easy, sometimes even cliche topic in personal and professional development. But you and I both know that if your beliefs are off, you're screwed. You know, you and I both know that the days that the way that you view yourself and others or the world, when those turn dark or sad or negative on a recurring basis, it can really throw off your performance. And, you know, as you know, I've been blessed to coach Olympians so many times in my life now where, you know, look at that level, the talent is pretty much even, you know, the hard work they put in, the hours they put in, the nutrition plans, those things are very, very, very similar. So what's going to make the edge for that Olympian out on that track, out on that court, out on in their game, it's almost always going to be about how they believe, how they think. And so this is a very performance relevant conversation, and I hope you're really going to enjoy this. I'm going to be covering this Huge topic today for you on belief. What I want you to do is bust out your journal. I'm going to teach you a new framework that I have not taught ever before on the beliefs that high performers have that really enable them to achieve that long term success. I'll share that with you. There'll be nine separate beliefs in three different categories. I'm pumped for this session. So make sure you bust out your journal. Let's get going. I'm gonna teach you nine dominant frame beliefs. And a dominant frame belief means that this is like your preset way of viewing the world. It's like your dominant lens, right? It's like this is the lens that you see the world through. I'll teach you nine beliefs. They're gonna be in three different categories. So you might go ahead and write in the top of your journal. And then here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna cover three big areas today. We're gonna cover beliefs about yourself. Okay, that's gonna be one bubble. We're gonna cover beliefs about yourself. Then we're gonna cover beliefs about other people. Then we're gonna cover beliefs that high performers have about the world and the future. And these three big bubbles are the way that I did some of our structured interviews when we did the academic interviews for my book High Performance Habits. Awesome having you here. Write it down the session on high performance beliefs. We're going to start with the beliefs that you have to have about yourself. We'll cover three about yourself, three about other people, three about the future and the world. So the first things that will really help you not only achieve, you know, high performance, which again we define as consistently succeeding beyond standard norms. So it's basically long term success where you still maintain your well being and positive relationships in the world. Right? Because listen, success if you have it, but you had to compromise your well being, your happiness and your health or success, and you had to compromise all your relationships in your life. It's not worth it. But high performers have figured out a way to balance just enough or approach their life holistically in such a way that they achieve long term success. And it just keeps gathering steam. And that's what we want for you. And in my interviews with them, I really dug in to ask how they view themselves and what specific beliefs come up for them. Now, I'm going to break these down into some phrases. They might sound cliche, but if you follow me on Instagram, you saw me recently say this. It's like everyone says, personal development is Cliche until they're in crisis, right? Everyone believes personal development is cliche until it's required that they go to the next level. Then they're like, give me all I can, right? Once you're in transition or you're challenged, you're really frustrated. Those are times personal development really matter. So forgive me if some of these phrases might sound cliche. It's just that's how people talk and it is fundamental to you succeeding. So let's talk about the bubble of you, the three beliefs that you have to have to achieve long term success, at least based on my interviews and experience. Number one, belief, I am being or trying to be congruent with the best of who I know I can be. So it's a belief about congruence. I am being congruent or trying to be congruent with the best of who I know I can be. Now, look, I know that can sound cliche. So let's think about your last five days. You know, part of this session, I hope that we do some coaching and some challenging once in a while and we just do some self awareness. So let's think about it. The last five days, were you really trying to be congruent with the best of who you are? Meaning you know the best of who you are, you know your values, you woke up every day and you're like, I'm being congruent with the best of who I am. Or were you just going through the motions of the day? Were you just reacting throughout the day? Were you actually comparing yourself to other people and letting it get you down? Were you aware of what makes you unique and living into that uniqueness, living into your values and attempting consistently and conscientiously to be the best of who you are? Or were you going through the motions this last week? What I found with high performers is they're more consistently testing their congruence against the standard of their best self, against the standard of what we call their highest self. And it's easy not to do that, especially when you're good, especially when you're talented, especially when things are going well. You can just get up and go through the day and do a good job. But what happens over a series of weeks is one day you don't feel like you're really on your path when you're just going through the motions. One day you wake up and you're kind of like, man, I feel like I'm in a funk. And you don't even know why you're in a funk. You don't know why, like, things don't pop for you. You don't feel like there's momentum in your life. You want to talk about real misery in your life, be out of congruence, right? If you're a person whose identity says, I am a healthy, positive, caring, goal oriented person, and you just know that's who you are, but then you're not congruent with that, that's where misery comes in, right? If you identify yourself like the congruence, like the best of who you are, you know that you're a healthy person. But for five nights in a row, you got drunk. Five nights in a row you ate crappy food. Five days in a row you ate too much, you know, at the end of the week, that does affect your psyche. And why does this matter? Because when you don't have that belief that I am being congruent, or I feel like I am trying to be congruent with the best of who I am, then self hate comes in. Then that negative sort of framing of everything, I'm not good, I'm terrible, all that stuff comes in. And it's not because, listen, attempting to be congruent with the best of who you are does not necessarily mean every day you were the absolute best of who you are, and everything was perfect and you were totally congruent. Listen to the phrasing here. I am attempting to live in congruence with the best of who I can be. I'm trying. It is an active, thoughtful, disciplined approach. It's not like I'm, yeah, I had a great week. Brendan, it's not about, did you have a great week? Cause listen, a lot of high performers who I've met, they did have a great week. Their peers are like, oh, my God, she's crushing it. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe she can manage all those kids so well. I can't believe that they're running the business. So people see you and they're impressed by your achievement, they're impressed by the external reality of your success. And you can have a lot of momentum in your life, but if psychologically, even if it's unconscious that you know, you're not truly living in accordance with the best of who you can be. If psychologically, you know, you're incongruent with the best of who you can be, it starts, like, grating at you. And over a period of time, what this does is like, think about it. It's like when you're not congruent, you're just Kind of grading at your confidence. Unconsciously, you might not even know it. It's just like every day I wasn't my best. Every day I didn't try to do something and show who I am every day I wasn't authentic every day. And suddenly over a period of time, that lack of congruence just bores a hole right in your confidence and you don't even know why. You just wake up one day not feeling yourself and then it becomes like this big challenge because maybe you haven't had training like this on congruence and now it feels like this big, you know, existential dilemma. Oh my God, something's wrong with the universe. Something's wrong with me. And the reality is you just weren't trying often enough to be congruent with the best of who you could be. Doesn't mean you need to be perfect, doesn't mean every day you have to be the best of who you are. It means psychologically you have to know you've been trying to. And you might write that down. Psychologically, comma, I have to know I've been trying to be congruent with my best values. I have to know it. Because you pull that from someone, they're in misery. If you know you haven't been trying to be the best of who you are now you really get down on yourself. And I know that might be true for some of you. So if that's the case, please stay with me, tune in. Because if you're in that situation where you haven't been trying to be congruent with the best of who you are, that usually comes down to some of these other beliefs not firing for you consistently. And it was really impressive. I was so surprised by how many people who I interviewed for this book. I mean, world class people in lots of different industries who ultimately shared with me some level of breakthrough that they had. When they got more congruent with who they really were, they got more congruent with what they wanted in life. They got more congruent with living the day how they know they should live the day. They got more congruent with aligning their life towards things that matter. You probably read that story of the woman in here. She was one of the persons who helped me understand this. Her story of telling me that the issue for her wasn't achievement anymore, it was alignment. And what that meant was she had to align with the best of who she was. She had to get more congruent in her days of what she thought about her best self. What she had envisioned about her best self and how she actually lived her days. So I'm challenging you today to get a little clear. Are you being congruent with how you want to treat people? Are you being congruent with how you imagine yourself being productive each day? Are you being congruent with how you imagine, like the kindest, best, healthiest, giving self that you really know you are or could be? Are you trying to live into that? And I'll share with you if you are. Good job. You're on your path to high performance. If you aren't. This is a wake up call for today. And I know this is a simple one. It's very the beginning. But that statement, I am congruent or I am attempting to be congruent, that's everything. Take it away. People are miserable. Second big one is I am capable or possibly capable of achieving the future I want. Capability, I am capable is everything. Now, here's the thing. You don't have to believe you have all the competencies that are necessary to succeed. You have to believe that you are capable of getting them. There's so many things that I know right now, today, I am incapable of. I am incapable of many things that I don't have the skill set yet, but I am believe that I am capable. You give me enough time, energy, resources, mentorship, hard work, and days at something, I will figure it out. I will develop that skill. I will achieve. This is how high performers think. And it's so clear. Underperformers, they get stuck stewing on what they are not capable at. So they stop. Forward, momentum, they go, I'm not good at that. So they stop. I've never learned to do that. So they stop. I suck at this thing over here. So they stop. And you've seen it before with the research on mindset, where high performers have a growth mindset, Underperformers tend to have a fixed mindset. That fixed mindset means they've fixed on their identity and who they believe they are and what they're capable of. They think their knowledge, skills, talents and abilities are fixed. They're, you know, they were born that way and that they're stuck that way in some ways or that there's a top to their potential. Where high performers have that growth mindset, where they really believe, no, I'm capable of becoming more. I'm capable of figuring it out. I am capable of busting through. I'm capable of getting the knowledge, skills and abilities that are necessary for me to succeed. And that is A motivating driver for them. So here's the test. If you have been lacking confidence or motivation to go for those bigger goals, somewhere in your psychology you do not believe that you are capable. And not believing you're capable is why you stopped. Even if you have all the reasons in the world to be confident people like you, you've achieved things in the past. You know you're a good person. You believe in your worth, even if you have all that. But if you don't believe you're capable of breaking through or getting that next level of skill, that's why you've stopped listening. Write it down. Motivation is directly tied to the belief of capability. Motivation is directly tied to the belief of capability. In psychology we often call that self efficacy. And if you don't have self efficacy, it means you don't believe you can be a change agent. You don't believe you can be an agent in your life who gets things done right. Your sense of self agency or self efficacy says, I don't think I can do this, I don't think I'm capable. And this happens for a lot of people. And the only way to work them through. Listen, the nice thing about capability is to get it. You only need a few things. The first thing you need if you want to feel more capable is you got to make sure you are very clear on the map. You got to know step one, two and three. And you gotta go like the goal doesn't need to be in your mind. I'm gonna achieve step 70. What we really need to do is start working step one, two and three, just working like capability. The belief of capability is directly tied to momentum. Even if you're still inadequate. Let me give you an example. Capability. Let's say I wanna become a world class writer, like be a really good writer. If I read Tolstoy, I'm going to feel very incapable. And if I think of myself and my identity, I'm incapable because I haven't done it before. But if I knock out those first 10 pages at the end of those first 10 pages, even if they suck, my belief in my capability went up because I filled 10 pages. So for often for people, you don't have to get them to change their world to get more confidence and capability. You got to get them to fill out the first 10 pages. You got to take those first couple steps. And if you doubted yourself for too long, then we got to get you some momentum. And I know that some of this can again sound basic, but I also hope you use this as a tool, because isn't it true that someone in your life right now doesn't have the motivation or confidence they need? And you can try to hype them up all day long. You can try to give them, you know, tell them they're great and they're beautiful and they're amazing and they deserve the world. But if they don't believe they're capable of figuring things out, if they lack that kind of confidence, I believe in my ability to figure things out, which is a capability belief. You can't help them. So you got to look at your sons and your daughters. You'll be your team members, the people you're hoping to influence. And remember that if you don't help them get a little momentum, they won't develop the belief and capability because with momentum comes more motivation. With more momentum increases that belief of capability. So for yourself or, my gosh, for many of you, it's about you leveraging that place of influence to help people find their next steps and really cheer them on those next steps. Because you and I both know it doesn't take a lot. Some days when you just get one extra, you know, step towards something that you care about, you feel better about yourself and that's important. So I'd love for you to do a little bit of self awareness here, but also some social diagnostic. Is there somebody in your life right now who you just know they're not being congruent with the best of who they are and you know, they're not being as capable and, or not feeling as capable as they can. What could you do to help them? You know, one of my goals with High Performance Monthly isn't just to use this for ourselves, but for us, each of us to become more capable in becoming good leaders for people, for us to be more capable in coaching others better. For us to do a better job helping people along the way. So please think about this framework today I'm sharing with you for yourself, but also for other people. So we covered if you're really going to achieve long term success. I am congruent with the best of who I am or am attempting and trying to be. Second, I am capable of or could become capable of achieving my dreams and having the future I want. And the third one in your little bubble of you is I am worthy or deserving of having extraordinary success. I'm worthy or deserving of having extraordinary success. Listen, most people who really live a little below their potential, here's their belief. I'm worthy or deserving of survival it literally stops at that. Like their belief and their. Their. Their envisioning for what their life is worth and who they are is so low ball. Their standard is so low. Most people's standard in their worth is survival. I deserve to have food. I. I'm worthy of having a job. I am worthy of making rent. But they don't say, you know what? I'm worthy one day of flying that jet. You know what? I am deserving of having a deep, connecting, magical, sensual marriage. They're just like, you know, I deserve a good husband. And it stops there. I'm worthy of good is sometimes why you only ever got good. Sometimes people's belief matches up with their worth in such a way that they don't get to experience the brighter colors of life. All they ever get to experience is baseline good. Because I'm worthy of survival. I'm worthy of paying the rent. I deserve to have a good husband. I deserve to have, you know, happy kids. But they don't think about depth, they don't think about richness, they don't think about abundance. So their belief is always just trying to be like, well, I deserve good things. And if your belief is just good things, good things is all you get. You need to adopt the belief that you deserve an extraordinary quality of life and whatever it takes to achieve that. If you gotta repeat that mantra to yourself over and over and over and over again, do that. Look, yeah, high performers want more for themselves and their families. You know, a high performer doesn't feel bad about saying, you know what? I want to make a hundred thousand, I want to make a quarter million. I want to make a million. There's no guilt to that because they believe that they're worthy of it. It doesn't mean they always believe I deserve it, because sometimes they're not doing the work. And it's hard to believe you deserve something if you're not doing the work. But you can feel worthy of it because you're a child of God. Because you have been a good person and a trustworthy person and a giving person, because you want good things for other people and you want good things for yourself. But you also know that that makes you worthy because you care. Look, the fact that you are a person right here with us right now, who's interested in personal development, who's working on yourself, who's looking at these concepts not through, you know, criticism or skepticism, but rather saying, wow, is there something here that I could embrace that could help me feel better about the day? Help me be a Better leader. The fact that you're here alone makes you worthy of the next level. The work will make you deserving. The belief will make you feel worthy. You deserve and you are worthy of climbing that next level. And if you don't tell yourself that, it's easy to sit back, take what you get, feel grateful for it. Look, I know a lot of people who are deeply grateful for life, but because they don't feel worthy, they're broke. How's that for a mind screw, right? They're grateful. They're practicing what all these books say. Be grateful. Live a grateful life. Life is precious. Do your gratitude journal. So you're writing your gratitude journal. Everything else. And I know a lot of grateful people who are miserable because they don't believe they're also worthy of more. So they're grateful, but they've settled for a crappy marriage. They're grateful, but they've settled for being in bad shape. They're grateful, but they've settled on a job that's beneath them. And so you have to be in that place where you go, you know what? I'm worthy of being around a players. I'm worthy of being paid well. I am worthy of achieving that next level. I'm worthy of an extraordinary experience in my life. Because if you don't have worth, you could have all the gratitude in the world and you can still be emotionally broke. That's the challenge that most people don't see. That's why a lot of the, you know, the self help that gets criticized, just be happy, be happy, be happy, be happy. You know, be grateful, be grateful, be grateful. Is criticized by practitioners like myself who go, I know a lot of grateful people who can't break through. Because if you're grateful without worthiness, you won't work, you won't excel, you won't challenge yourself. So you have to feel worthy, ready, deserving of the next level. And you got to put in the work to it, which I know, you know, I'm just sharing what high performers shared. It is a distinction between high performers and underperformers. We've covered the dominant beliefs that high performers have. I am congruent or attempting to be. I am capable of forging my life the way I want it for my future. And I am worthy of extraordinary quality of life. Not I'm good. I am worthy of an extraordinary quality of life. And I'm going to aim my actions to be congruent with that. These are things that high performers think about themselves, but they also have beliefs about other people. Listen, I think one of the major differentiations of my work, both academically and as a coach and a trainer in what I do is the understanding that sometimes the psychologist has to walk across the hallway to the sociologists. And what I mean by that is too many people get stuck in paying attention to just individual personal differences of successful people without recognizing the real magic when someone achieves long term success is there was always a social element, there was community support, there was the influence of others around them. And I think that too often in self help people get stuck in saying, oh, what makes a person successful is just their grit. They have passion and they have perseverance. It's like, no. They also have people skills and it's their way of interacting with people. Beyond just the, the emotional range or traits of I'm enthusiastic and passionate or very interested. Beyond just the I persevere and work hard towards my stuff. It's I give a damn about other people. I trust other people. I engage other people for support, for help, for mentorship, for inspiration. Other people play a huge role in this book. Other people play a huge role in your ability to get stuff done. Move the needle, change the world. Listen, it's not, remember the phrase, a small group of committed people can change the world. Never be surprised by that. It wasn't often just like just you. And this whole idea that just you is going to change the world can actually be very harmful for your ability to reach higher performance. And I'll tell you that in my own world, you know, I've had to adopt this bigger belief about my ability to shift the world. And the belief wasn't about Brendan Burchard. The belief was I can build a team. The belief was other people can help me do it and I trust them and that they want to help me. That was a big, those are like hurdles of belief about others I had to get over. And I'm sure you have some of those too. So this is a good one to journal on. So let's get at it. So we're going to talk about your beliefs about other people and the ones that we found out really made the difference. Now listen, I know from what I shared about, you know, you and the beliefs you could have, there's lots of other beliefs we could throw in there. Those three, I rated those ones. I literally have an Excel spreadsheet that I went through in a couple hundred interviews, busting it down which ones were there the most often and made the greatest difference. So we call them the needle moving beliefs. Those were them for yourself. I'm congruent, I'm capable, I'm worthy in the belief about other people. The first one, which was a sticking point for me and I had to learn too, is other people are trustworthy, other people are trustworthy. First foot forward into a group of people, a high performer goes, I can trust these guys. That's hard. That's difficult. And yet high performers were very rarely, rarely that type of person who was like, paranoid about other humans. Listen, if you're paranoid about other humans, you don't build teams. If you're paranoid about other humans, you're not asking for help. If you're paranoid about other humans, you don't open up authentically because you're scared you're going to get stabbed and judged and criticized and beaten down. You better check in if you're not having the success you deserve in your life. A big reason is you don't trust other people. And in that failure to trust other people, you have isolated yourself. And the more you isolate yourself, the more you minimize your contributions to the world. Write it down. The more you isolate yourself, the more you minimize your contributions to the world. And I say that with compassion and empathy because I know many of you. You've been cheated. So have I. You had people stolen from you. So have I. You had people break your trust. So have I. You had people hurt you. So have I. It is very easy to get jaded and to get paranoid about other humans, except when you realize how much that will hurt you. I mean, that was a big thing for me in this research. I was like, wow, these guys, you know, not only do they talk about the mentors they had and the positive people in their life, they talk about how they gathered other people around and they entrusted other people with their vision. They handed their purpose to other people and said, help me. They raised their hand when they were unsure and developed more competency because they were willing to raise their hand. That's a trustworthiness in other people. Like, it's almost like they had the default mode. In psychology, when we talk about the big five, one of the elements that we talk about often, there is openness. They were open to the experience of other people. They were open to the idea that other people can help them and kind of struggle with them. And they almost had this default mode. It actually really surprised me because there are some books written where it said, you know, healthy leaders are a little paranoid, but most people confuse that. They don't read the next chapter or go into the footnotes when you hear that healthy or successful people are paranoid, it's not paranoid of other people. It's paranoid of falling backwards, of going backwards. It's paranoid that their company will be eaten by competition. But it doesn't mean they don't still trust all the people around them with their vision, handing out goals, handing out tasks. It doesn't mean that they. They're blocked up paranoid of other humans like this. They're actually open to other humans, but they're watching their six, right? They're paying attention to the world in such a way. They're aware of where the dangers are, but it doesn't prevent them from being authentic and open. It's a very different mindset. Do you follow it? They're aware of the dangers, but the dangers still doesn't prevent them from being authentic, open and trusting. And that was like, wow, I really got that. That really shaped me. I think that parts of my career, even throughout my life, I didn't trust enough. I didn't give enough, you know, autonomy or control or access or call it whatever it was to team members or people in my industry who could help me grow. Because I was like, no, no, I got either. I thought I got it, or probably parts of me were triggering that unconscious thing that we all have that says, well, if I give it to them, they might hurt me. And you all have it. Everybody has it to a degree. It's just about, are you conscious of it and how severe is it? You really got to revisit it. And here's the easiest excuse in the world. Well, Brendan, you don't understand. People did hurt me. No, I do understand people hurt you, but that doesn't prevent you from being authentic and open with the persons in your life. Now, if it does, that's your gig, not theirs. Most people who you are judging, who are, you know, or groups of people who you think are not trustworthy, that's your lens, not the reality of their actions. Now, look, we can all talk about right now, are there some people in your life you shouldn't trust anymore? Some people in your life you can't give your heart to anymore. Some people in your life you wouldn't give them your bitcoin codes to. I get it. Yes, they're absolutely. Look, if their track record sucks with you, Honor that Maya Angelou said, believe people about who they are the first time. If they're an ass to you, they're an ass to you. You don't need to trust them. However, don't let that taint your Ability to ask people over here for help. Don't let that taint your ability to connect with your wife, the people in your life, your kids, your lack of trust of others because they hurt you. That should not poison the well of your depth of relationship with your kids, your spouse, your friends, your team, the people who have supported and you cheered you on. You really got to revisit this one, y'. All. This is the one I just see over and over. I just had an awesome coaching session two weeks ago with somebody about this issue. They were really stuck on this one. They just said, brennan, you don't understand. From where I'm from, I can't trust people. I said, no, I understand where you're from and I understand what happened then. But I also understand you're limiting yourself and the story you're telling yourself about everyone being untrustworthy. That's not your story of hardship. That's called ignorance. There's a difference. I understand your story of hardship. I understand that people hurt you. But it's ignorant to believe every person walking down the street is going to replicate that. Because most people, in fact, are good. And if you don't believe it, then ask yourself, why have we not blown ourselves up? That's it. When we've got tens of thousands of weapons of mass destruction and they're so rarely used, the mass of humanity is actually extraordinarily good. Look at how many people you walk by in the last 60 days who didn't punch you in the face. And you and I both know you can be a jerk. Oh, snappity snap. Trust me, you've got to realize that most people are good. They don't even care about you. They might not even see you. They don't bother with you. They're trustworthy enough until they prove otherwise. Being open until someone proves otherwise. That's a belief that high performers have. You got to have it. People are trustworthy until they prove otherwise. So you got to stay very, very open, especially to the new people in your life. And if you blocked out a lot of new people in your life, if you haven't had a new friend in years, trust me, you have trust issues. If you haven't asked for help in years, trust me, you have a trust issue. Here's what you need to know. If you're okay with where you're at and plateauing is where you're comfortable and you want to stay plateaued, don't trust people more. You want a bigger breakthrough, raise your hand, ask for help and trust. Second, big Idea for other people is this one. This is a tough one. Other people are inherently good. Other people are good, they just are. And what you have to trust is that they're values driven. Other people are values driven. What this means is you have to acknowledge other people are human. And every person is kind of guiding their life based on values that are important to them, even if the values aren't important to you. And that once you realize that most people actually are trying to align to their own internal values, consciously or unconsciously, you realize most people are pretty good. Even if most people are trying to protect themselves, that's a good value. They're trying to protect their family, that's a good value. They might do it in a way that you don't agree with, right? But you can see that that value orientation is good. Like take someone who wants to protect their family, their value is create safety and protection for my family. That's good. Even if there's someone who owns 4,000 guns and holds themself up in the woods of Montana, that person, you might have an issue with gun control, you might have an issue with crazies in the woods with guns. But inherently you can also go, you know what? They're following a good impulse. Their strategy might not be something you agree with, but once you realize people are genuinely following a good value orientation or a good impulse for themselves in mass, in humanity, their strategy for getting it might be completely bizarre, wrong, and sometimes illegal, but the value orientation is actually there. Then you realize that humans can recuperate, you realize that humans can change, and you have hope for humanity again. It's when you think that everyone is, you know, some nasty, brutish bastard that all of a sudden you lose motivation to engage, you lose motivation to trust. And now you don't think you're capable of influencing people. So you lose that I am capable. And now you're challenged. And worse, if you really believe it, you also start getting a little hoity toity. If you read this book, you realize that last couple chapters, the traps of high performers, one of them superiority. You start thinking you're better than other people. You think, well, they don't want to change, they can't change. But look at how congruent I am. And now you're really in trouble because now you start getting bitter. And there is never a breakthrough when it's doused in bitterness. And so you have to realize if you don't inherently trust other people, but also realize their value is driven, even if they're doing weird shit you're in trouble. Trust me. I had to learn this too. Because sometimes don't you look at people and like, what is wrong with them? Have you ever said that? Like, you're just like, what is wrong with that person? What you have to ask is, say what's right. They're probably following a value they want, but their strategy for getting it is bizarre. Right or ineffective or wrong, like ethically, but the value is there. And like for example, someone who steals food from the grocery store for their, for their family, wrong strategy. But there's a value ethic there I'm trying to get for my family who's struggling and starving. I'm trying to take care of my family. Well, aren't you also trying to take care of your family? Yes. You're not tipping into doing something illegal. But this is also how you learn how to have compassion for criminals. Some of you guys know that I've donated a lot or given a lot of things to prisoners throughout my career. And I've realize over and over and over that we can change their life when we can also understand that often what they were trying to do did make sense to them in their head at the time, but they had the worst strategy ever. And I'm not asking you to be compassionate with the strategy. I'm asking you to recognize a human. This belief that people are values driven allows you to engage the world from a positive standpoint. But also I found with high performers allows them to connect and have influence. It's not just believe people are good so you feel good, but believe people are good so you can influence them. Try to influence people. When you believe they're scumbags, how do they then react to you? They're going to feel that edge from you. They're going to feel that judgment and that condemnation from you. That's why, like, if that's why they always say lead with love, because if you lead with judgment and criticism that they're this horrible person. That is where the worst of humanity ever happened. When some segment, some society judged others as not values driven, as different than less than worse than undeserving, unworthy or inanimate or not human. Look at the atrocities of World War II. Look at the atrocities of slavery. Look at all the atrocities we've had in our human story. It was when we forgot that others were values driven too, that others were good. And now we couldn't even influence them. Because if you don't believe that they're good, you can't influence them. Well, people ask how I deal with some people who inevitably, you know, I've dealt with some people who. Who, you know, what their behaviors weren't good. You know, I've coached people who've cheated on their spouse. I've coached people who stole money. I've coached people who, you know, did irresponsible things in corporate America. And they're like, how can you work with those people? I'm like, because they're just like you. Now, no one likes to hear that, but they are. They're like, all of us. You've all messed up somewhere. You all made a mistake. You all lack congruence at some point. And once you understand that about people, it gives you incredible amounts of power with them because it gives you empathy, it gives you compassion, it gives you understanding. You know, it's why the Dalai Lama can still smile and treat a prisoner, someone. A criminal, someone who did something bad just as much as he can talk to any of us, because he recognizes the humanity in them. This is the difficult stuff, because we want to judge and condemn people. I'm not here to say everyone does, right? And trust me, I'm not someone I'll judge. A bad strategy. A bad strategy that fast. But I also believe people can change. Third, big idea. And this is related. High performers recognize and believe that other people are struggling. And I love this piece of. This is part of what we talk about when I hold this year up or we show you the swag of honor, the struggle. It comes from my research in high performance and all of everybody I work with. You have to believe other people are struggling, because if you don't, your comparison frame will completely ruin your life? What do I mean by that? Isn't it true that sometimes you flow through social media and you're like, ah, they have it perfect. They're so good. Everything's so great for them. So why even try? They were born lucky. So why should try to change my life? Because I am the way that I am. High performers believe that everybody, the highest achieving, the wealthiest, the richest, the luckiest, they're also struggling. And it does two things for you. One, when you recognize other people's struggle, that gives you humanity, and it gives you more compassion for yourself. Because if they're struggling now, you see them struggling, you go, oh, that makes my struggle okay. If that person is so rich and successful and amazing and they're struggling, that makes mine okay, too. But it also does this. High performers recognize the struggle, and they want to serve. If you've never felt that calling to contribute, if you never felt that calling of service in your spirit. It's because you didn't recognize the struggle in others, right? That impulse to want to help, to want to change the world, to want to serve other people. The reason you donate your time, your energy, your effort, sometimes your money, the reason you do that is you recognize how much other people struggle. And here's why it's necessary. You will never feel needed if you don't recognize the struggle in others. If you don't feel needed in your relationship, that doesn't feel good. And that's not the fault of your partner. That's the fault of you not being able to see the struggle your partner has. A lot of people feel like, oh, she doesn't need me. He doesn't need me, they don't need me. That only happens when you're so stuck in your own ego that you can't recognize the subtle struggles that others have. And that doesn't call you to serve. And so all of servant leadership depends upon the leader's ability to see the struggle. All advancement of every segment of our society depends upon our challenge and our recognition of other people's struggle. If we don't do that, we can't change. You know, we just can't. Look on the west coast, you know, Portland, Oregon right now, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, we are having a tremendous explosion of transient and homelessness. And we are challenged with this. And so many people have. They just have nothing. Like, they're like, oh, those homeless people, you know, blocking up the streets, all those transient people, you know, coming through and stealing stuff. And we're never going to improve that situation. If we can't recognize the struggle, if we don't recognize the mental illness that so many homeless have, and we can't recognize the struggle of living with that, we can't help. When we don't recognize the struggle, we don't help and we can't help. And what made high performers unique in this area was they had a tremendous amount of empathy and ability to step into other people's reality and recognize their struggle. And this is not my Brendan's woo woo nature here. In psychology, there's a very proven ability, and it's called mindsight. And mindsight is the ability to step into somebody else's shoes and recognize their emotion, their feeling, their thoughts, their challenges and struggles. And those who lack mindsight tend to be socially maladjusted, tend to be underperformers, and tend to have poorer health outcomes than other people. It is necessary to recognize these Things. Now, I know you all know this, but, man, wouldn't it be great if you gave to your teenager and they could watch me say this to them? Wouldn't it be great if more of our leaders realized these things and remembered these things? So how have you been doing in these areas? Let's do a recap. Have you been in the last seven days, Were you congruent with the best of who you were or trying to be? Do you believe in your capability to go get that dream? Did you feel worthy and remind yourself that you do have worth, that you do deserve it? Did you look at other people and engage them? Did you ask for help? Did you trust what they were saying was true for them? Did you give them power or authority to help you? Did you recognize that people, even if they screwed up this week, they were probably coming from a good place, but they had a bad strategy? Did you recognize that other people around you this week, even if they're helping you, they were struggling too? These things make you human. And the good news is science shows over and over. It also makes you high performing. So I've got another training that I've done in the past on that, how to ingrain a belief so that some of these beliefs that you've written down, if they're not resonating with you, how much you put them into your life, we'll roll that. I'm often asked, Brendan, how can I believe in myself more? You know, sometimes we get knocked down. Sometimes we just struggle for days or weeks or months or decades, you know, and we have that. Like, I just lost faith in myself somewhere. I was so confident in my teens or my 20s or my 30s or whenever. And now I lost my mojo, man. I just don't. I don't have the confidence and the vibe and the pop and I just, I lost faith in myself. What can I do? And I don't have a pat easy answer for that, but I got five ideas here that might just help you. I'm outside here at my writer's villa in Oregon, and I thought, you know what, why don't we just talk about this? Tough topic, but let's take it on. So forgive the sounds of nature if we got them. Forgive the sounds of anything going by, but let's rock and roll. Number one way to start to believe in yourself is momentum. Now, I know off the bat, if you really hate yourself right now, you're like, thanks, Brendon, I got no momentum. That's why I hate myself. So hold on, I'll get To the mindset stuff. I'll get to the emotional stuff. But sometimes believing in yourself is just tactically winning a little bit each day. You know, just a little bit of a win can give you that dopamine that says, oh, good job reward, I feel better. It can be a very simple neurological payoff of just achieving a couple small goals. And as you've heard me say, anytime you're dealing with difficulty, it can be just simple things, but it's got to be momentum. So whatever you're doing in your life, if you got a job, think about, what small things can I do tomorrow to move ahead. If you're dealing with a difficulty in a relationship, what would be a simple win? A simple moment of appreciation, Just something they could say or you could say to put some more pop and energy back into that relationship. Just one smile, one kiss, one good date can change the game for you. Also, if it's just something simple you can do in your own health. Look, sometimes going to the gym and leaving you feel a little better. You know, just a little bit of movement has been proven to change people's states of minds and their emotions, too. So just get in the gym or get a little bit of small goal setting. Get a little bit of momentum forward in any area of your life that's at least the beginning, and then do it again the next day. Don't just go and crush it tomorrow and then be a jerk and do nothing and watch seven seasons of Netflix on the next day. Momentum is daily. Little things every single day adds up to greatness. Second big piece. And this is more to the emotional side. Integration, my friend. Integration. People don't believe in themselves. It's often. It's not that there hasn't been evidence that they shouldn't believe in themselves. They've had some wins. They've had some goals that came true. They made the magic happen, but they never integrated the win. They never had a good thing happen. And they sat there at the end of the night thinking about that good thing that happened and allowing it to come into their heart, allowing whatever they did to. To give themselves credit for it, permission to feel good about it, to say, you know what? I did this today. It went well today. That worked today. And to integrate that win, integrate that success, integrate that moment into their heart, into their identity as a human being. What happens is most of us, we knock off the checklist and did it, did it, did it, did it, did it, did it. And five years later, after all these did it, did it, did it, did it made it happen. Made it happen. Crushed a crush. Crush the crush. Five years later, we feel the same about ourselves, the same level of confidence, the same level of belief in ourselves, because we didn't allow those things to enter our psyche, enter our spirit as strength. We didn't. We took. We had momentum externally, but we didn't have any momentum internally building our character and our strength. We never achieved that sense of pride or ownership of what we did. We didn't own it that we did it, so we never got stronger. That means you need an integration practice at the end of the day. Just sit down at the end of the day and go, what worked today? What did I do today? What little thing should I allow myself a little bit of credit for? What did I say that was nice or kind? What did I send away that I got done? What did I finish? What goal did I move a little closer to? And just at the end of the day to allow that to come in. This isn't about just pepping ourselves up and saying, I'm awesome. I'm awesome. I'm awesome, with no evidence. I'm saying, you know, you got some momentum. Integrate that now. Own that. You did the work today. You fought the good fight. You finished the day. You're still alive. You know what you need to go do tomorrow? Integrate that success. Give yourself that credit. You'll develop that strength of spirit that's so important. If you don't believe in yourself after all that, hey, bub, get some feedback. You know, most people fear this. When you don't believe in yourself, you don't want any feedback because they might say, you're stupid or you suck or you're ugly. And, you know, if they do that, you're getting feedback from the wrong people. Sometimes it's necessary to get feedback from the people that we love, feedback from people we know like and trust. And just say, hey, can I ask you a question? What am I doing that you're seeing that seems right? Because right now I don't feel like I'm doing anything right. And they'll say, what are you talking about? No, you're smart, you're good. You've been doing this. Sometimes people can give us feedback and help us see that we are doing better than we think. Because maybe you're a perfectionist, or maybe you grew up with somebody who pushed so hard on you you never integrated any successes. And sometimes you need somebody pushing hard at you, saying, good job, kid. You're doing all right. I'm proud of you. I see that you're working hard here. I see that you're trying. So sometimes it's about getting around a new social circle of people who are strivers, who are also struggling, who are fighting hard, who can give you that feedback and say, good job, keep at it. And if you do get negative feedback over and over and over, assess, is it real? Do you need to change and shift and get better? And if you do, don't hate that. Don't get mad at that. Take that as a challenge instead of taking things as a insult and crying over people's comments. Go, huh, you know what? That's kind of. It's got some basis in reality. I'm going to take that as a challenge. I'm going to develop myself. Not to prove them wrong, but to get better. Allow yourself that. Allow that feeling to come from the feedback. Next up. I love this one. It's so simple. It's just priming the emotions that we want to experience in our life. What does that mean? It means doing something in advance so we can feel it. And here's what I mean by that. In the morning, I want to be motivated and driven. I want to feel grateful for life. I want to have a sense of passion about the day. But you know what? Some days I wake up and I feel like crap. So what am I going to do? Go through the day and just allow my impulsive feelings to tell me to feel like crap all day and lose multiple days? No, I'm going to say, okay, I recognize I feel like crap, why I didn't sleep well or why I got this bad attitude right now. I'm going to change it. In the morning, I do an affirmation practice and visualization practice where what I do is I pick up something every single morning. I do this. I grab a little, just a couple paragraphs. Maybe I read from my Bible. Maybe I read from one of my books or another book. It's a passage. I have a bunch of passages in my notes section. My phone too, if I'm on the road. And I'll just read it out loud, pretending that I'm like in my most passionate, happy place in my life. So I'll be reading out loud some Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I'll be reading out loud some Martin Luther King. I'll be reading out loud some Napoleon Hill or reading out loud some Earl Nightingale as loud as I can. And that voice activates a power which activates an emotion, which activates my day. So you just gotta prime emotion. Or sometimes I'll be in the Shower. And I'll say, what can I do today? Or what I'm going to do today? That would bring a laugh. What can I do today that I'm excited for? And I'll just get my energy up. Like, don't wait to have good energy in life. Remember, as I always say, the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates it. You don't have happiness, you generate it. So choose to prime the emotions you want to experience life, cultivate it. Summon your energy versus hoping a good one lands on you and you'll start to feel better about yourself and about life. And the last big one. You knew I was going to go there. Love. You know, you already know the thing about love yourself. And maybe in some ways, you've never allowed that. You've never noticed the beautiful things you've done in your life. So you've never allowed yourself to love yourself. But at some point, you've got to recognize that there's a love that's beyond you and beyond me and beyond your actions. And that love is whatever brought us here alive today. Some would say it's God's will and God's love. Some people it's the randomness of the universe. Some people it's nature. Some people it's whatever. But there is something way beyond us. And there's a way to access that and a way to honor that. And the way to honor that is to recognize that you are unique. About 7 billion people, no one is like you specifically. And at least take that as a moment of saying, okay, I'm meant to live my uniqueness. I'm supposed to love the things that make me odd and weird. I'm supposed to love the things that make me strong. I'm supposed to. I was made this way. So let me honor what's good about that and what's not good about that. Let me work on that. Let me set a schedule to get better at that so that I can not only honor what I've been given, but I can give something back, too, by getting better. And that aspect of doing that that brings in so much joy and so much strength in our life is love. Loving ourselves, loving the process. And of course, the greatest way to believe in ourselves is to love other people, that they become so grateful for us that they give us some of that feedback. Now let's talk about how high performers view the world and the future. This is really informative and really powerful, and it's also vetted in a lot of great organizational behavior and organizational development work. Here we go three beliefs that high performers have about the world in the future. Number one is that the world and the future and now is safe. And this is huge. And let me draw a parallel here for you. If it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, listen to this. The largest workforce study that has ever been done in organizational development was done by Google on their own employees. And then they did a fairly large and extensive literature review for this as well. And now it's been validated over and over and over and over again that people who perform well at work, teams specifically, that perform at high levels. Yep, they got that trust stuff we talked about. But most importantly, they have this thing called psychological safety. They feel psychologically safe to ask questions, to contribute. They feel safe in the environment, physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually in a way that they are. If they're not accepted, they're at least allowed or sought to be understood. And this is really important for you all because that means performance has been directly correlated with huge studies in the real world, at practical levels with the sense of psychological safety. Why does this matter? We live in a world right now where we have a lot of paranoia. We live in a world right now where a lot of people feel constant threat of war, political demise, you know, totalitarianism. We have that. If you look at the news. Crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis. And you wonder why you're not motivated on Wednesday after watching seven hours of news the last three days, it's really important to understand that your own sense of safety in life, psychologically, emotionally, physically, spiritually, is tied to. You said it, your performance, that if you're like an end of the world, coming soon type of person, I appreciate that. I understand that. And I understand for some of you, that might come from a religious or a spiritual background. And if you have that, I get it. But it also, in the real daily life of productivity, performance, and contribution to a team, does lower your performance. And high performers spoke about this a lot about how they sense the world. They feel safe even if their business is under threat, even if they might lose the deal, even if things are going to. There was a safety there that they spoke about that was really intriguing to me. I didn't pick it up at first. It probably took me. I'm not kidding, like, 75th interview, someone said something to me and I said, that's interesting. I started looking back through my notes for themes, and I saw it pop up a ton of times. So then every. I think it was. I think it was in the 70th interview, every interview going forward, I asked them this question. I said, have you heard about Google's psychological safety study? Some people would say, yes. Some people say, no. I'd say, oh, okay, well, do you feel safe to contribute at work? They'd say, well, yeah, almost all of them said yes. It doesn't mean, though, that their peers always said yes. And this is what was interesting, that safety is a perception. Underperformers tend to believe that they'll be criticized, judged, shot down, destroyed. At work. They believe that they're under this political regime at work and they can't contribute into it. And they blame the system, they blame the organization chart. They blame the man for their lack of a willingness to give everything they got every day. Because if I give everything I got every day, I'm not safe. I'm getting judged. I'll get fired. And high performers worked in the exact same environment. Isn't it true at your workplace? In the past, we had high performers and underperformers. Truth is, many underperformers felt unsafe, but the high performers who are also in the exact same environment, didn't feel unsafe. Why? Isn't that fascinating? Now, I can't tell you. I know the why. I can only share with you what they shared with me in the research. And that is they made the choice because they recognize what one choice leads to participation and performance, and one choice leads to pulling back and excuses. Think about how powerful that is. We all have to choose how we see this world. I have people come and visit us in Portland all the time. Some people come in same town. We take them the same restaurants, we take them on the same tour, and they're like, oh, well, you know, it's a big city. I don't really feel safe here. Other people are like, TRA la la la la la la. They don't even notice. There's no difference. It's the same place. Safety and psychological safety, the ability to feel okay in an environment and to give into it and to be alive and to know that things are gonna turn out okay is a choice of perception. Now, some people say, no, no, you don't understand, Brennan. People view that way because their past, they were beaten up, they were abused, they were forgotten. Horrible things happen to them. I'm like, that happened to me, too. But I'm not living there anymore, and I'm not choosing to feel that way anymore. I did the work to overcome that because I recognize the difference. If I stayed in the abusive reality of where I grew up, if I stayed in the no abundant town that I grew up in, I wouldn't be here today. You have to make these decisions about your perception and correlate them with your performance. It's so hard for people to do this because all the excuses in the world will come out. You don't understand, Brennan. Here's all these reasons. All I can say is the only thing I understand is this simple thing. Are you showing up as your best self each day, giving in full to each day? Do you sense the momentum, the progress, the joy, the vibrancy, the pop, the awesomeness of life that you want to? And if you don't, you'd better evaluate your beliefs. If you don't, you better evaluate your thinking patterns. Isn't it true that's why we're all here today? We're here to work on ourselves all the time. I still have to ask myself these questions. So do you think about how simply this can be operationalized? You're going to a networking function tonight. You're going to walk into a networking function, and in that networking function are three billionaires, 50 millionaires, and 200 people who can change the course of your career and your life. How do you feel? Some people are going to immediately feel threatened by that situation. They're going to say, I'm not capable, I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough yet. I'm not ready. These people are going to take advantage of me. You know what? They're all just like going to take, take, take, take, take. And none of them ever struggled like me. They don't know my story. Think about those beliefs and how that person is going to operate in that networking function. They're going to immediately say, I'm threatened here. So they're not going to create deep, authentic, real, fun or vibrant connections. You see how this changes people's lives? If one person enters a networking function believing it is unsafe, and another person enters a networking function enthusiastic and thinking that they will draw something amazing from it, that amazing coincidences will manifest themselves, that new opportunities, new doors are immediately going to open for them just because they're there, think about how those two different people interact. That's why this conversation we're having today is relevant to your performance and why I'm hitting it hard for you guys. Cool. The world and the future is safe. Second, big idea. The world in the future is abundant. You all know, as I do, that the scarcity mindset can destroy your life. There's not enough to go around. We're going to run out. We better Hoard. We better, you know, make sure we get our due at the cost of everybody else. You know, there's only enough power to go around. You see it all the time. And the truth is, I still have not yet met a really high performer. I mean, at the top, top levels of high performance. I mean like the top 15% of the top 15%. I have never met one who didn't have an abundant mindset for the future. They don't look the future and see, you know, Terminator. I mean, that's not it. They just don't. That that's for the movies because that sells tickets to the everyday person. That is not how great leaders think. Even when times look troubling, look at all the great highest performing leaders who we celebrate. They saw a better future. They believed in that better future. They weren't just optimistic. They believed abundance was going to happen. You know, if many of you guys listen, if you listen to Joel Osteen, one big part of his prosperity prayer approach is it's like believing abundance is coming to you and your family. Abundance of health, abundance of joy, abundance of good memories, abundance of happiness, abundance of wealth, abundance of good favor. And I think that's one reason that so many people flock to that. Now, whether you like that religious connotation or spiritual thing of prosperity, I'm cool with that. But what we do know about high performers is their optimism towards the future is oriented towards abundance. They do believe life is going to get better. They do believe there's enough to go around. I look at my career all the time. I know a lot of you all saw a ton of this social media from a lot of big names this last week and their relationship to me. I took 10 mega influencers out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and we all got there. It wasn't a mastermind. No one paid for anything. I paid for everything. Just because they were friends, I wanted to get together. We were going to have just in depth conversations and the sharing and the vulnerability there was amazing. And it's because everybody's sitting around those campfires. Everyone's sitting around in those open fields. Everybody, you know, on kayaking with us and on the horses and fishing. Everybody we were with had an abundant mindset. So no one was holding back their secret. Experts, right? It's kind of like me. Everyone who comes to Experts Academy is like, why are you sharing all that? People can't believe it. They say it every time. Like, I can't believe you just shared your entire book launch model. I can't believe you Just shared this thing that you do. I can't believe you shared the behind the scenes of that in your career. I'm like an open book 247 because I don't believe that me sharing it makes the future any less scarce for me. I actually believe that the more I share, the more abundant the future. Even though some people go out, go and, you know, knock it off, or go compete with it, or go try to use it in some ways that I wouldn't like strategically, doesn't matter, because here's the tell. If you believe in an abundant future, you have a high degree of generosity in giving now. If you aren't a generous person now and you're not giving now, you have a scarcity mindset, even if it's unconscious and you didn't know it until I told you, right now, that's just the truth. If your life isn't a life of generosity, you have an unconscious sort of bias towards a less abundant future. A lot of people do it, right? A Scrooge doesn't have an abundant mindset. And so they hoard, they give, they protect, they step on people to get their own. But they're not generous with others because they believe that by giving, away, they're giving away their power. I believe the pie only gets bigger the more you give into it. Some people believe the more you take from the pie, the more smaller it gets for everybody. And I just believe that the pie is infinite, right? The pie is the universe. It just keeps expanding, baby. It's going on and on and on. That's why for me, I developed a generous mindset. Because I would say first, thank God. I think both my mom and my dad had an abundant mindset in many ways, not for everything, but abundance about. They could see, you know, the future is going to be good for their kids. They believed we'd do a good job. They had abundance of joy and happiness for us. They had abundance of hope for our health. And I think that really framed me, but also in a lot of how I grew up, you know, in school, the communities around me, it was the opposite of abundance, man. It was like, take, take, take. Get your thing, get your do, protect yourself. You know, there's only so much to go around. And I had to rewire that. Why? Because the alternative is to be miserable and scared. And I didn't want to be miserable and scared. So I had to start looking to the future and changing how I saw it. I had to see it more abundant, and there's no way I could have Ever gone from literally a place when you guys ask about how to deal with financial stuff? I was bankrupt at one point in my career, literally. I had no idea what I was doing. Went into bankruptcy, had to restructure, start a whole new company, change the brand name. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. And if I'd stayed in that mindset, I would have never achieved six figures, seven figures, let alone eight or nine. It just never would have happened. I'd just been stuck. I had to be able to see beyond it. So how abundant have you seen your future? Have you seen your future? Have you looked for it? Have you started directing it in your mind? Have you walked through your new dream house in your mind before? Have you seen that depth of relationship with the kids as they're 18, 19, 20 out of the nest? Have you imagined your marriage even more vibrant and beautiful than it is? If you're not picturing the future, there might be some fear for the future. So you avoid it because avoidance feels good. Avoidance is a great short term strategy to have comfort. But we also know avoidance is also a great long term strategy for misery. But it's a good way. It's a good tell that I use in coaching. If someone hasn't stepped in their future and looked at it and seen it and played with it for a while in their head, it means they're not dreaming anymore. And the reason they're not dreaming anymore is usually related to one of the beliefs that we've covered, especially to I don't feel safe to go for it. But also I don't believe it can happen because I'm not capable. These are simple things. You see how all these tie together. Last big idea. And that is the belief that the world is improving. The world is improving. One of my favorite sort of characters in the influence world that's come out in the last decade is a guy named Peter Diamandis. Many of you guys know Peter. He's been at my events before. He's the chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation. He's the guy that created the challenge for private sector people to compete to fly a spaceship into suborbit and do it three times for a $10 million prize. So he created the X Prize competitions. And I've never seen a guy who believed the world was so good. And the reason he believes it, just like Bill Gates, is because all of the data shows that the world is improving in almost every single area, minus a few that really matter. Right? If you didn't know climate change is real, and if you have political aspirations or political bent that makes you not believe that, that's okay. Just please actually read something once ever, any research. Because it all says the same thing, climate change is real. If you don't believe that, that's some crazy beliefs and you just need to read that's all data. Okay? So with that, and hopefully not offending too many people, Peter Diamandis wrote a book. And if you have trouble believing in a good future, you don't believe the world's great simple ideas for you. If you'd like, go read Peter's book called Abundance or Bold, because he chronicles with data how good the world is. Bill Gates has done the same thing very recently in calling out hey look, we're across the board, people are living longer. Major diseases used to wipe out hundreds, thousands of people have gone down, some nearly to zero. Like the world's health, the world's ability to thrive, the world's ability to get food, the world's ability to communicate have all gone up. Think about that. The world's ability to survive, kind of important. The world's ability to get food improved. The world's ability to get clean water improved. The world's ability to overcome disease improve. The world's ability to communicate improved. These are huge, huge areas that affect humans, human progress. It doesn't mean that we haven't also screwed up, hurt the environment, destroyed hundreds of species. It doesn't mean that there aren't also criminals and bad people and dirty politicians and effed up governments. That's true too, no question. But on whole man, things are getting better. Things are getting better at such a rapid pace, if you take a beat to think about it, it's profound. You know, this goofy little thing has more power in it than presidents had less than a generation ago. You know, the phone that you carry allows you to talk to people all around the world instantaneously. Like the abundance is incredible. But if you believe the world's getting worse now and not improving, it's easy to get entrenched, it's easy to get bitter, it's easy to say, well, can't do anything about it. You know, everyone wants to get on the improvement train. No one wants to get on the world's getting worse train. They don't. They'll get on it because it's an easy choice. But guess what? After a few weeks of that, that ride feels sickening. And where's your performance going to be good when you feel sickening, when you feel sickened by the world, how likely Are you to perform well? How likely are you to engage most people? Don't you have to have that sense that things are improving? We can improve it more. I can contribute. I am capable of contributing that now, by the way, if any of this sounds like it's my opinion, I'm here to tell you it's not. This is what I learned interviewing 300 of the top performers and getting data on over 2 million data points. It's pretty clear that they sense things are improving. And I can tell you that's been hard worldwide with the political structure that we're all facing. We are bombarded with negativity and, like, destruction day kind of prophecies right now. And that's easy to get brought into. I don't know what your choice is going to be, but every day you've been making a choice. Are things getting better for you and your family or are they going to stay the same? Are things going backwards for you and your family? Are they getting better? Will you make them better? Is the future abundant? Are other people going to help you along that path? Can you learn what is necessary to learn along that way? And can you become a little better, your best self, every single day? These are the fundamental beliefs that can shape your day. And I know, as I bring these things up, anytime I mention politics or you mentioned global climate change, or you mentioned, you know, how you deal with your spouse, everything. There's no doubt that some of the things I have to say in teaching so many people might have generalizations, might have polarizations, some you may like, some you might not like. But I'm here to tell you everything I discussed today. If you agree or you don't agree, one thing you can't argue is all these thoughts and ideas and beliefs are shaping your performance. And you are here because you said, brennan, talk to me about my performance. Get with me every month. Talk about what's going to make me better. Talk about the areas to explore. If you don't like the way I'm exploring them with you, I'm cool with that. I really am. I just want you to explore them. You don't have to agree with me, but these are great categories for you to explore and be aware of so that you can get your optimal performance out of your life, however you define that, even if you define it different than me. Somebody had posted, wrote me afterwards and said, well, Brendan, you really have some opinions about these areas and I might not agree with them. And I wrote back, I'm totally okay if you don't Agree with it. I don't think I know everything. My job is to present what we are learning from cutting edge resource research, what we are learning from the highest performing people that we coach, deal with, assess every single day. And I do have some opinions because you know, if you've done run the data on 300,000 plus organizational employees in your partner studies, if you got over 3 million data points now, if you've researched this topic for 20 years, I'm also open to anything, but I'm also open to like, hey, Brennan, I'm a mom with seven kids and I'm trying to survive here. This is what I've learned works. I'm gonna listen. And so I'm not interested in. Do you agree with everything I say I'm interested in? Are these areas important to your life and could you look at them in a different way? Whatever way that is for you that could improve your performance? The high performance experience means that when you see the world through the lens of high performance, you know you can get better and good things happen. Like when you start thinking about high performance, you eat better, whatever that means for you. It doesn't mean I have to tell you eat, you know, paleo or keto or vegan, you do your thing. But know that if you eat better, for you, you're going to perform better. As soon as you start thinking about eating better, perform better, you start thinking about working out better. And when you think about working better, you start thinking about, maybe I'll treat people nicer and maybe I'll get some more sleep and I'll be less stressed and I'll have more fun at work. I don't know what it is, but that's the high performance experience. It's looking at everything and saying, how does this affect my performance and could I make my life better? And so I honor you and celebrate everybody who's been here, who's learning with us. And it's a good gut check for you. It's a good kind of just check in to where you're at. And so I really hope that you will just remember, you know, that what we're doing here is to give you some categories to explore, evaluate and deepen your work on so you get better performance. So I appreciate you, I honor you. Look, tens of thousands of people could have been here today. You were here. Tens of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people have seen the opportunity. You chose to be here. You chose to work on yourself for you and your family. And I respect that. I appreciate your time and your energy. Because doing this work is what matters. Caring about your performance matters to your family, matters to your business, matters to your dream. So keep doing the work because the world needs you at your best.