Building Joy Through Connection & Service

You making personal development a priority is bettering the world because you're getting better. And when you're better, you're a better caregiver, parent, lover, contributor, leader. And as you get better in those roles, you also impact other people in a more positive way. Personal development is the pathway to a more positive, helpful, generous, kind and impactful world. Today, I'd love to share with you a concept called the joy of service. You know, a lot of people drudge into Monday, oh gosh, here we go again. Because all they can think about is their tasks and their obligations and they haven't taken that part yet. I would imagine that happens when they reach higher self awareness or greater gratitude for life and going, wow. This week it's an opportunity to serve. If you've been in my community a long time, you know that I start off a lot of days and weeks with a simple little prayer. I like to say, thank you God for this opportunity to serve this week. Grant me the strength to focus this week to be mindful and present, to serve with excellence, to be a force of love. Now I think I've said that to myself every dang Monday for, I don't know, must be coming on 10 or 15 years. I can't remember when I first came up with that one. Thank you God, for this opportunity to serve this week. Grant me the strength to focus this week, to be mindful and present, to serve with excellence, to be a force of love. Now that can sound a little, you know, high in the clouds, especially if you don't happen to believe in God, that's okay. But you can believe in service, you can believe in contribution, you can believe in giving. And I think you might as well start each Monday with a little statement to yourself, whether that's. You call that a mantra, an affirmation, a prayer, and just have a little statement that puts yourself in a good place. And for me, that's anchoring myself in the morning with a statement or a prayer or an affirmation to make sure that I have the mindset required to serve at the level I want. And I really believe when you have a higher intention to serve, life does become more joyful to you. Kind of get giddy and geeky about having the opportunity to help people this week. That's what I think about the joy of service. It's an expression of the true contribution and giving, generous nature that you have and you get to go be of service to others. There's a lot of people in this world struggling and being challenged. I like to Tell the youth that I get to coach and work with in my career. You know what? Once in a while, make sure you pick your head out of that phone and you look around the world and your community and notice all the challenges and problems. Remember how much you have it better than others and how blessed you are for that. And maybe go volunteer, go serve or go get a job that solves problems that you're passionate about or works with people who you're excited to be creative and collaborative with. Because if you can do those things, you can wake up with the joy of service, even if you don't have much. I discovered the joy of service when I was broke in college. I just discovered. I was like, wow, I really love working with other people, helping them improve their life or figure things out, or figure out how to be a better communicator or leader or better in relationships, just how to help people feel or live or be better. I started finding joy in that service to others. I didn't know it was a thing. It certainly wasn't anywhere on the agenda of my college degree. It was just something I found and I thought, I'm going to cultivate that. I'm going to think about that and every day I'm going to make sure I connect with that idea that what I'm doing in this world, no matter how small, can be a mindful intention, can be a practice, can be a service that is authentic and generous. The joy of service. First, if you didn't pick up on the lesson, anchor yourself every morning into the joy of service, whatever that means to you. Second, I think it would be really powerful if you could remember that you can be generous to your peers. See, so often we believe that we are individual contributors, so we don't say thank you or we don't appreciate or recognize the other people on our teams or those who serve with us. And we're not generous with them. And in terms of our praise, appreciation or acknowledgement, and you know what, they feel that I know you do too. I know a lot of strivers we talk to here. You're an executive or you're a CEO or you run your own business. We have a lot of people who run their own businesses. Tends to be the entrepreneurs. By the way, just as an interesting stat, entrepreneurs study personal development at a level of about 2.7 times the average employee to person. That doesn't mean that that's true for everyone. It just means that most entrepreneurs do that because they realize they have to get better or they do not ever Break through or get paid. So historically, entrepreneurs are much more engaged. But no matter who you are, you probably work with people. And I bring this up about entrepreneurs or if you're a manager or a CEO or you're a senior executive, sometimes it's quote, unquote, lonely at the top. Other people don't, you know, recognize or see the sacrifice or recognize the obligations that you have as a leader. Sometimes they don't realize how much more pressure or weight you have. Sometimes they take you for granted. Sometimes they forget to say thank you. And sometimes that's when you're not just the head of a business or the head of a company. That can be when you're the head of the household as well, right? When you are the leader or the caregiver or the parent or the mentor or the role model that people look up to, sometimes they don't say thank you. They don't remember those things. It doesn't make them bad. It just means that they haven't learned this idea of joy of service. They haven't learned to be generous to those who they lead and serve alongside with. They learn because real leaders recognize that we're all just collaborators together, but that also means we need to be generous with one another. I know this personally. I've been running a business a really long time. This is my 16th or 17th year in business as a writer, a coach, and an online teacher. And you know what? Most Christmases throughout my career, maybe 5 or 10% of the people that I pay actually even say Merry Christmas to me or send, you know, send me well wishes on the first of the year or, you know, give me a shout out even once a month in. You know, it's just like that's part of being an entrepreneur. I don't expect it of those that I lead or I serve. And I've had the blessing of employing thousands of people. But I'd say it's, you know, 5% on average think to do that because for them, as a leader, they see me serving them right. They're working hard for our company or our team. They see it sometimes transactional. Well, gosh, I. I provide the paycheck that it provides, the mortgage or the car bills or the student bills and, and gee, thanks, Brendan, for that. But not a lot of, like, generosity of appreciation or recognition happens for senior leaders. And that's in every company around the world. There's a lot of organizational psychology research about how lonely it can feel at the top. But how do you break through on that? What's the difference maker. Well, if you read my book High Performance Habits, you'll see that I broke down and kind of broke that myth that it's lonely at the top. Kind of inspired by one of my teachers and mentors in life, Brian Tracy, who said, if you are lonely at the top, you did it wrong. I found that you shouldn't expect everybody to appreciate or give you the accolades or the appreciation, the rewards that you give them as a leader, because that's your job as a leader, to help incentivize and reward performance. It's usually not those who are in, you know, other levels of the organization to do that up or do that up to you. So you don't expect it. But what I've said is if you feel lonely, then you're not really connected to the team. Don't expect the team to reward you. Expect the team to collaborate with you. And when they're doing that on your vision, that is reward enough. I wonder how this week you could be generous with your peers. Is there somebody you could give a shout out of appreciation to? Is there somebody who's gotten through something difficult? You could send a little note, a little card, a voice message, a video text. Be generous with the people around you. And the more that you do that, the more you start taking joy in that experience. They say thank you, they get more bought in. You start feeling deeper connection. And yes, even if you're the head of the household, even learning to be generous while, yes, setting boundaries and asking for the generosity of others to support you, you find that in that spirit of generosity, the more you find joy of service, even to your family. I also like to tell people, with joy of service, one of the best ways to do it is, is to make sure you're getting feedback. You know, if you're just giving, giving, giving, giving, and you're never improving your giving, or you're giving, giving, giving, and you never ask, hey, is this what you need? Does this support you? Is there anything I could do better? Then what you're doing is you're slowly edging yourself into martyrdom. You're serving often from a place of ego, not true empathy, not listening, not asking what people need. This was me when I was in my 20s, in a lot of my relationships. When I was dating, I thought I knew what it meant to be a good man in the relationships. But a lot of the relationships I had end up being fairly superficial because I didn't know enough to ask enough questions to make sure I was a good boyfriend. I was just going through the motions of what I thought one was without actually assigning understanding it because I asked for feedback. Last idea this morning. Reflect on your days to capture meaning. Now, you know, here at Growth Day, we talk a lot about meaning. We talk a lot about fulfillment. We talk about living a joyful, abundant, connected, meaningful life. And to do that requires that you do a lot of self reflection. The number one way in all of research found over the last 50 years to do that is to journal, to finish your day and to journal just even if just two to five minutes to capture moments that you found meaningful. Otherwise, when people did compliment you, you forgot about it. And weeks on weeks on, weeks on end, you're not capturing all those little moments where people say something of appreciation or give a kind compliment, support you, get your back, help you with the dishes, you know, whatever it is, if you're not capturing those little moments of things in which other people are serving you, or you felt served by your creator, or you felt like you showed up and served well, then it all blends together. Think about these last two or three years. It all kind of can just blend together in a big blur for a lot of people. But that doesn't happen as much for people who journal. In fact, psychologists have found that people who journal not only have all the benefits of feeling less stressed, more self aware, more confident, not only do journalers earn more money, not only do they get promoted faster, not only are all those external things a reality, but one of the most beautiful things is they have a higher sense of life satisfaction, decade after decade after decade. Why? Because they've journaled. They've captured all of those meaningful moments. They've captured all those little beautiful things that they noticed along the way. And by doing it on a consistent basis, it builds that muscle to notice it even more. One of the reasons positive psychologists, especially recommendations journaling about gratitude on a consistent basis isn't just because we all have a million things to be grateful for, but because rather by capturing one or two items every day, you start noticing five or six. By simply capturing and writing it down or typing it in your growth day journal, capturing those simple moments of gratitude, those simple times in which you had joy serving others or others taking care of you, how haven't given you support or camaraderie or collaboration or even leadership. Guess what? Over a period of time, that happens more and more and more. And now joy. Joy, you just feel abundant and happy. Like I wake up on Mondays. The joy of service is in me because A I have that mantra, B I make sure I'm generous with others. C I'm doing a lot of feedback, but also just last night I was capturing all the reasons that that I have this joy in my heart because I get to see the service in the world. From the testimonials you all give, to the recommendations you all give in the app stores when you rate our app. Which by the way, I would love and appreciate if you did that for us, if you haven't already. To the emails that we get every day, to all the DMs you guys drop me on Instagram, all these things that I see, I don't need a million of them. It's like one or two nice things every day from somebody who I'm trying to serve. Makes me feel pretty good. Capture that in the journal. Tend to notice more of it as it happens. You making personal development a priority is bettering the world because you are getting better. And when you're better, you're a better caregiver, parent, lover, contributor, leader. And as you get better in those roles, you also impact other people in a more positive way. Personal development is the pathway to a more positive, helpful, generous, kind and impactful world. So thank you for doing the work today. We always say it, but I mean it deeply. Every day is a great day to grow and it's incredible that we did it today together. I'd like to talk about today, a concept that I just find so valuable and rare in this world today and that is social sharing and learning. Now if you've ever been in to any of my seminars in the past, you know, 15 years or in my high end mastermind groups, we do the most, I would say, simple and elegant networking and sharing. What I tend to do is I get people in groups of five and I do this on Zoom as well. With our mastermind, I'm giving them groups of five and I just give them four things to talk about. I give that group 20 to 30 minutes, depending on what we're trying to achieve, to talk about those four things. And each person share and it's just always awesome. Now, I had a mastermind session as example yesterday. My mastermind is people who I'm mentoring in their marketing as they're trying to build their personal brand or their online sales, they join a mastermind group. You know, it's expensive obviously because it's just me and them and we focus on helping them really build. But part of the magic is just the community. You know, what I do is I ask them to share four things in 25 to 30 minutes often. What's some of the best results you receive you got last year in your business, and why did they happen? Or what are the big three goals you have this year? Or what's an upcoming launch that you have coming up that you'd like to share? Or what's something you need help with this month? And these are very basic questions, right? It could be, you know, what's the greatest marketing lesson you learned from last year? It can be as simple as what's the mission or the movement message you're trying to share with your audience? And they just share and they talk and they hone and they improve and they learn from one another. And I remember when I first started doing seminars, what would happen would be, you know, I'd get everybody up and I'd just say, hey, you know, meet some new people, groups of three and talk. And I'd give them one thing to talk about. But when I gave them three or four things to talk about, and I set a timer so that each person could go around, it changed the entire dynamic. I'd see dramatic transformations in people, and it wasn't just from what I was sharing on stage. It was from the interactions with others. Great friendships were born from those conversations. Support, healing, deep relationships, new peers groups. And believe it or not, a whole lot of relationships developed in other ways that I never imagined at my seminars, including a whole lot of seminar babies, it turns out. And so I share all this. Why? Because I think in this world we live in now, too many people are striving alone. They're not sharing with groups. You know, they're in groups, they're in Facebook groups, they're in circle groups, they're in, you know, neighborhood groups. And you know, they go, they show up, they look, they browse, they scroll, but they're not actually in conversation. They're not actually taking time to connect with three to five people in that group in one off conversations in which all four or five of the people share something specific so that there's a theme to the conversation, outcomes to the conversation, and growth and connection from the conversation. Now, I remember I'm a simple guy from Montana, and I remember there was this local breakfast place, kind of one of the places they call a Silver Spoon, kind of like a diner. And I would go in there once in a while in the mornings, and there was always this table. It was about seven older gentlemen and two of their wives. So it was a big table, right? And of people, on every given day, There might be six to nine people there, they met there every weekday for 25 years. I found out now obviously not every member of the group for all days for 25 years, but in general, some members of them been forever. They met, they talked, they shared about life, but they did have these little mini agendas they talk about and they created some structure to it. And I got to sit in a few of those sessions and I don't remember laughing harder. I think it's important that if you're hearing this and you feel like the world is a lonely place, what you need to understand is the world's not a lonely place. What you need to understand is the concept of self reliance and personal responsibility coming together for you to go architect the groups and the network and the peers so that the world isn't a lonely place. There's 7 billion people in this world. This world is not lonely by any means. We must teach ourselves to, to reach out and connect with others, to share with others what we're going through, what we're learning, what we think, feel, need, desire, and to have the guts and the patience and the empathy to ask them to do the same thing. I ask everybody who is in my life to make sure they have a peer group of people who they meet with regularly, who they set up a little agenda. It can be the same time every single day, same time, same meeting, same agenda every single time. But everyone gets to share. It's like passing the stick around the circle. Everyone gets to share. And there's a time we all get to share. We're going to do it in 30 minutes. Let's go. We know that in organizations that leaders who hold those types of huddles tend to be more effective or liked. We know that, that we should be doing those things. But so often in our personal lives, we don't do it. I can't imagine my life if I didn't share what I'm going through and what I'm learning with my friends on a continual basis. And I don't mean like once a month, every four months, I mean weekly. And I know how easy to say, oh, Brendan, that's good for you. You have friends. I don't have friends. It's a lonely world. I'm like, well, the world is not a lonely place. And we grow by reaching out and sharing and learning from others. And the best part about it is as we take that initiative, we give the gift of two more sets of ears for others. See, most people don't reach out to others because they think, well, I'm embarrassed to share or I'm introverted or I don't want to burden people. And the truth is they're so blind to the fact that by them doing that to others and with others, it allows others to also share. And when you share with the intention that you're going to ensure the other person shares, now that's a conversation that becomes deeper and more meaningful. And over time, something magic happens. Make this year the year that you socially connect with other people. I know for so many people that was hard the last two years. This year you choose it. You take the initiative, you take the attitude and the mindset says, I am personally responsible for my network and my peer group. Even if I have to reach out people on the Internets, even if I have to create groups, even if I have to FaceTime or Skype or talk people over zoom, I'm going to create that structure. I'm going to talk to people on a consistent basis. I'm going to share my real thoughts, feelings, needs, desires, dreams, learnings, lessons and gratitude. And I'm going to do that on recurrent basis with some people. And that's going to create a network and a friendship circles that you will have for the rest of your life. It just takes a little effort up front.