Deeply Understand Yourself and Others

Part of the magic of personal development is those little pauses of understanding and empathy for ourselves. You know, you always hear people say, you have to practice self love, you have to care for yourself, honor yourself, respect yourself. And those are such important things. But they all begin with a very simple thing, understanding.

Today's topic is on trust. And before you hit pause here and think, I got this one, hold on. I like to talk about trust in a way that measures back to distraction and to performance and to the future of all of your projects and dreams. You know, so many people today blame the media for their distractions. And I go, no, it's an issue of trust. So many people hop jobs, hop projects, leave this relationship or that opportunity way too soon, blaming all sorts of things, other people, the conditions of the market, the situations of life, when at base.

You talk to them long enough, or.

If you've been in my world as a high performance coach or a life coach or executive coach in any way, you know that sometimes the real issue was trust. Trust in ourselves, trust in other people, trust in the future. And so we have this issue where in a society where fewer and fewer people are conditioned to trust one another because of the vitriol of social media, that people seem so unsteady, unmoored, they leave too soon.

They forget to follow their own path.

Because they see so many other opportunities, so many other examples. They start distrusting their own art, their own voice, the projects they're working on.

The people around them, the world and.

Country they live in. And when this happens at mass levels, you have mass levels of not just distrust, but distraction and frailty in the ability for people to achieve great things. Because you must deeply trust in yourself to stay on the long path. You must trust other people so that you can delegate or grow or achieve great things together. You must trust that the future holds.

Good things for you.

If you're going to wake up with that bright, optimistic eye, you must trust. You must trust. And the more you've been conditioned to distrust because of parenting, because of the people you grew up in school, because of your first jobs, because of that person who broke your heart again and again, suddenly you lose that long term stability that says, I can handle this, I can see this through, I can honor this struggle, I will and can persevere.

No matter what comes in front of.

Me, I will persist. Because as soon as you lose trust, persistence goes out the window.

And so we have to look at.

This in parts of our lives because so many of us commit to a.

Path and then we quickly Leave it.

Literally weeks or months into projects, I see people leave companies, leave ideas, leave their team, leave relationships. Because just as it gets hard or inconvenient or some new shiny object is they leave the very commitment they made, thus dampening their long term prospects. Because everything we know from the study of human achievement always comes back to those things of summoning your self mastery so that you have self control, self regulation, the ability to have grit. We all know about the power of perseverance. In every great story you've ever read, in every great biography, there's only two human stories and human narratives that you'll ever read. A story of struggle, a story of perseverance and progress. And the issue is, if you never have perseverance and progress and you always live in struggle over and over and live in randomness over and over, and live in distraction over and over. It's an issue of trust. And at some point you wake up to a greater maturity that says it's time. At least I trust in myself. You learn as you get further along in your career, you got to trust.

In other people to have that camaraderie.

That harmony, that swift movement that only high trust teams can achieve. You've got to trust in a higher power, a higher vision, a higher purpose, a higher reason beyond just the inconveniences, difficulties and traumas of the day. If we don't, it's hard to carry on. And so maybe you know all these things and you agree with them philosophically.

But maybe you can look back at.

Your last three months, maybe you can look back at your last three weeks, your last seven days and ask, how did I show up in the world? Because if I'm not moving forward in my life, is there a trust issue somewhere? If I haven't persevered over and over, is there a trust issue? Have I left relationships or projects or companies too soon? Is there a trust issue? And it sounds so fundamental and simplistic, but I can tell you after coaching the highest performers in the world now for 20 years, it is inevitable that when their performance slows, trust has been degraded somewhere, usually in the self, in our ability, in our capability, in our path. You know, I've been blessed to not just coach a lot of high performers, but I've invested in some incredibly high growth companies, you know, opportunities to be on unicorn journeys. And I've seen people on teams who just as the company was about to go, I mean, they were like at that 5 yard line, at that 10 yard line, they were just about to go over the goal line. They were just about to get that momentum. They were just about to be that famed rocket ship, Somebody who had, you know, a stake in the business, or somebody who had an opportunity for growth left, and year two, three years later, that company becomes a unicorn. Or that company has its huge opportunity for employees to be bonused, rewarded, profit, share, something amazing. And they always go, oh gosh, I left too soon.

And you go, why?

What was it?

And I've never heard a great excuse.

But I've heard good reasons that sound a lot like trust. I've seen people do that in relationships over and over and over. And I'll tell you, when we have relationship month at growth a day, we always hear it. How fundamental trust, respect, communication becomes.

And what I always tell people is like, hey, it's okay if you learn.

To distrust somebody because their behavior is not so good.

But in our modern world, sometimes we.

Have to elongate that trust evaluation window. You got to give leaders a few more months time to establish a vision. You've got to give your team a few more months time to figure out the project together. You got to give your lovers a few more months time after the fight or after the argument, to repair, to find the rhythm. It's that what's happened in our modern world where we swipe through hundreds and thousands of things every single day, that we lose that trust window. We become impatient, and impatience is the razor that cuts all trust.

So today I invite you to be.

Open, open to the idea that you can trust yourself, trust your strengths, trust your capabilities, trust your passions, trust yourself. I invite you to maybe can you look at the people around you and realize where you've not been vulnerable and realize that's a trust issue? Can you realize that the relationships that you've left or been harmed by impacted how you trust other people and how you work with other people? Can you realize that the future holds such great things for you? If you will just trust in your path, trust in the days to unfold in a way that leads you to the destiny, not that you have to barge in like a bull in a porcelain shop. You have to realize that things are unfolding, that the universe or God has a bigger plan, and that even in your dark days or difficult days when things seem down, that things are opening for you as they are meant to, that things are opening up for you in a brighter future than you could possibly ever imagine. In those dark days where you lack trust in yourself, others in the universe, I'm here cheering you on. Growth day I'm here seeing you striver. I know the dark nights. I know that story of struggle and I know that trust will pull you through. You have to believe. You have to wake up and say, ah, I must have that attitude of openness once more. I closed down too much. I must believe again. Every day. You can adopt that belief every day. You can trust more every day. It's a good day to grow.

If you woke up driven, optimistic, excited, grateful, ready to win the day, good for you. If you're struggling already or you're like in that place of like, gosh, I just don't really want to go about my day. I've got all these projects and obligations or I don't feel well. Either way, you're halfway through, baby. You're halfway through. You get to make that choice today to give yourself a little bit of understanding, to understand that you got time to understand that the conditions and the circumstances you're facing aren't always easy, aren't always fair, aren't always compensated, aren't always recognized, aren't always perfect. But you can understand that your intention is good, your heart is good. You're here making self improvement a way of life in this growth day community and I honor you for that. It's so easy to just blaze three days and not work on ourselves. But part of the magic of personal development is the those little pauses of understanding and empathy for ourselves. You know, you always hear people say you have to practice self love, you have to care for yourself, honor yourself, respect yourself. And those are such important things. But they all begin with a very simple thing, understanding. To understand where you are in your emotions today, to understand how your brain is thinking, to understand how your self talk is, is impacting you. To understand the struggles your partner or your spouse or your team are going through that when we can seek to understand, as Stephen Covey all taught us in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, we become better people. You know, I love that in our modern era empathy has become such a big thing. But just like self love or self respect, those are rooted in understanding. The willingness to try to understand is the precondition to empathy. You don't just have empathy, you gotta kind of furl your brow a little bit, look within or look at other people and just kind of like try like grind your brain a little bit to understand. You know, you've probably been a little bit impatient with somebody this week. Did you try to understand them? You've probably been a little bit hard on yourself this week. Did you try to understand the context, the struggles that you're in. You probably have somebody who's waiting on you, counting on you, and you have to ask, are they trying to understand me? And have I given them the intel, the candid feedback, the honest discussion so that they can understand me? Because we also live in a world where everyone's like, no one understands me. I'm all alone. Everyone thinks they live in silos. And it's not just because of the pandemic. People truly believe that they're so different than everybody else and no one can understand. And the ultimate end of that road tends to be isolation, loneliness, and for many people, depressive or suicidal thoughts because they separated themselves from other humans. They believe they're on such a unique path that nobody can understand. And when no one else can understand, then eff it. Why try? And a lot of people have gotten there and that is a terrible mindset to have. It's an inaccurate one and it's a harmful one. Other people can understand you and you can't understand other people. The challenge is today is that understanding takes both intention and time. Very few things that people practice anymore. In a distracted world, intention goes out the door. In a world in which everybody is trying to compete and show off, they forget to see the other. And so today there's some way, there's some opportunity, there's some moment that's going to come up, you can try to understand, not get so quickly upset with the team or the kids or your spouse or your partner or your lover or, yeah, yourself. Understanding, basic principle and personal development. We got to work on that together here in Growth Day. And I hope that you'll take that challenge with me in thinking today, who could use a little bit of your understanding and could you try to communicate a little bit more so that others can understand you and you don't feel so lonely. We're all in this together, this personal development journey. We're trying to make self help stick here at Growth Day. We're trying to help you every single day, strivers. So I honor you for listening to this audio. There's two stories we're all working on that we always have that story of struggle and we always have that story of progress and growth. I hope we're leaning you towards growth because every day is a good day to grow.