Feel GOOD When Things Are BAD

The biggest research studies in the world have shown we can change three things more significantly than most people believe. Many people, they base their belief on what's possible to change in their life based on their family's story, as if their family's story was the future. Your change should be strategic. We're trying to shift you into the character of who you are and who you are meant to be. That takes openness to learning new ways of living and being. And when you know you can purposely change, life is yours. You're not scared of context anymore. I'd like to share with you what we know that you can shift. That might surprise some of you, especially for some of you who had families who didn't change. Because many people, they base their belief on what's possible to change in their life. They based on their family's story, as if their family's story was the future. But that's not true. That's not true at all. The biggest research studies in the world have shown we can change three things more significantly than most people believe. Number one, this one shocks people all the time. Personality. We have this belief that, that we have these fixed personalities in life and that our enduring thoughts, feelings and behaviors tend to stay in a norm for who we are throughout much of our adult lives. Right, throughout much of our adult lives. And we're all taught to believe that, especially those of us who studied basic psychology. It's like, oh, people have enduring personality traits. A trait is your thoughts, feelings, behaviors and reactions normative over a period of time. That's what personality is. Think about it. It's kind of how you think, feel and act over a period of time. That's regulated and can be measured against current circumstances or common psychological measures. That might sound like a lot of garbly gook, but stick with me so far, even this last month, the European Journal of Psychology found that there's significant changes in our personality not just by choice, but just based on common events across the population. This means people tend to change their personality. We're going to come back to that. People change their personality based on very simple things. Personality shifts significantly at graduation, shifts significantly at first job, shifts significantly at marriage. So these are significant correlations in change in personality in people's lives, whether they want it or not. It just happens. When kids graduate college, they shift. When they graduate high school, they shift. When you get your first job, you shift. When you enter a new peer group, you shift that first key relationship in your life, it shifts you. And we don't think that it's like these are major shifts, like very high correlative studies. So what does personality mean and how do they do this? You all familiar with the Ocean framework? Raise your hand if you know what I'm talking about. Oh, very few. Okay, let me give you a framework and I'll come back. When they say personality psychologists, they're often talking about, you heard the big Five. You ever heard the big Five psychological traits? The big Five means this. First, they measure openness. This room. I don't need to preach on openness to you. You're here because you have a high trait of openness. You're here, you are curious, you're open to new ideas, you like to experiment and learn. Like a high level of openness to new life experience and new learning in your life. You all get that. But who knows somebody who ain't like that? Yeah, well, guess what? This thing, when people imagine this, when you get married, openness tends to go down. Yeah, because you're like, oh, I'm good. She's my person. I don't have to keep learning and develop. I already won the lottery with her. She likes me. And then you get divorced and you see this person, they're out doing wild new things. Who's seen this? They get divorced and all of a sudden they're a different human being. Their openness explodes. So go ahead and tell me personality change isn't possible. It happens all the time. It's just the cynics in the room who tried to change their life and failed at it now believe that people can't change. If you ever hear people can't change, you are hearing a cynic. You're hearing somebody who failed and has never worked with people. Because in my life, I get to see amazing human beings change. Those of who actually work with people, not study papers work with humans, we get to see the hope and the inspiration and the significant openness that happens for people in good times and bad times. Sometimes people's openness increases after tragedy, true tragedy. They open to more faith. They open to new beliefs. They open to new networks of people in their grief. Openness is a very high correlation to lots of levels of what we'll call positive outcomes later. But openness just happens for some people, just naturally happens. People, when you go to school, you thought you knew your kid, then they went to college and started trying all these new drugs. You didn't know. Oh, personality radically changes in new peer groups. Oh, you thought you. No, you thought they had a fixed personality. Personality shifts more than most People think, and often not by strategy, just by accident. Our job in Growth Day is to make it strategic. Your change should be strategic. We're trying to shift you into the character of who you are and who you are meant to be. That takes you openness to learning new ways of living and being and thinking. And I get excited about that kind of thing. When you know you can purposely change, life is yours. You're not scared of context anymore because you go, all right, this should change. I'm open to that being a reality. Let me learn here again. Let me experiment. Let me try. Let me shift. Openness is a trait, and that you can shift it. The entire growth mindset rests on the trait of openness. Because if I'm closed, I have a fixed mindset. So your enduring thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, it's got to shift. It's got to shift into being open again. And our world got so cynical and so shut down. I mean, people are snarky little brats on the Internet now. Y' all agree? I'm like, don't you have anything to do but be a smart, snarky brat? Because, see, when people don't feel power, their way of feeling power is insulting others. When you don't feel power, the way you get it is to insult somebody, tear down versus build up. It's like Booker T. Washington taught us all. There's two ways to exert power. One is pushing down, the other is pulling up. And when you become open, the idea you can pull people up and you can pull yourself up purposefully. That's the essence of personal development. That's why I love this work so much. So they found, wow. People make significant changes in their personality. Graduation, first job, marriage, divorce, peer groups, et cetera. Other areas that they change. This is huge. People's conscientiousness goes up in their lives often when they get promoted to another level in a job. Because now, for those who don't know, conscientiousness, it means discipline, it means attention to detail. And follow through, it means dutiful action. Conscientious, it means I pay attention, I do the thing, I follow through on the thing. For example, folks who come out of surgery and are more conscientious about taking the pills the doctor gave them live, on average, four times longer if they have a conscientious trait. If they don't have a conscientious trait, they don't take the pills. They tend to die. True. Your ability to teach yourself to pay attention to detail, do the thing consistently with discipline Follow through on it and to organize. That is conscientiousness. So for those who don't organize, don't have discipline, and don't have follow through, the good news at growth day is you're going to die early. The number one trait, if you're interested, interested in personality research. The number one trait related to longevity. For all the longevity dorks in the world now, conscientiousness is the number one positive personality trait related to longevity. To your actual life span. It's key. Your health degrades when you don't pay attention to it. Paying attention to important things is conscientiousness. Pay paying attention to important things, doing the thing, having discipline in organization and following through this was a trait I did not have. But see, traits aren't things that are unchangeable. When I recognized, I was like, wow, if I don't get organized in my life, I'm going to be trapped by the winds of, of randomness at all times. If I don't get organized in my life, I'm not going to genuinely be able to impact people. If I don't get organized in my life, I'm not going to be able to write a chapter in a book because I can't even organize my thoughts. And this was me. I was not a high conscientious person at all. I was a like hot mess, fly by the seat of my pants, have fun kind of guy for a long time until my car accident. And the car accident made me want to live the day. And you don't live the day unless you organize it. You're never really going to feel the day unless you organize some times to rest or to do things you enjoy, to build in time for life. Your hobbies, your passions, your joys. That's the stuff. That's the stuff. And so I had to learn to become conscientious, including in business. The more people you hire, the more organized. You gotta start thinking. And people go, no, no, just hire that person. I'm like, oh yeah, hire that person. Your integrator, your organizer. But you still have to manage them. So you gotta teach yourself these. I share this again because you can change these. And these have extreme positive outcomes. The number one most tied to wealth is this one and this one. We're going to come to the two. Is this too geeky or you guys like this stuff? Okay. The next trait they measure is called extroversion. To be extroverted means you enjoy both adventure seeking and social seeking. You like new experiences to be out and about to do things in the world that are new but also have a high favorability to social. You like people, you want to be around people. You're willing to come here. I know we got thousands watching on the Internet right now, but the people in this room, the energy in this room, now I know only half the audience clapped because the other audience is like, I'm not an extrovert, I'm an introvert. I'm just high on openness and learning. That's why I'm here. No, no. The fact that you left your house says that's a part of you that is extroverted. And this is a common mistake in life. We believe that people are either introverted or extroverted. The thing about personality traits, they're on scales. Think about like a spectrum, right? As an example. Everyone thinks because what I do all day, every week, so many weeks of my life, I'm out here with you guys. Everyone thinks I must be peak alpha extroverted. I'm right down the line. I take the test every year. I'm right down the line in four different extroverted psychological profiles. I'm right down the line between introverted and extroverted because I might do this, but then I need my recovery time. The ability to be social as a skill and to be conscientious. These two things are very much tied to your income, very much tied to your income. To want to be with people, serve people, and to be organized, disciplined, deliberate, attentive to detail. These two are phenomenal and both of them are important. This one was not authentic for me for a long time. I was way more introverted, especially in my 20s, way more introverted than people thought. I could fake it. Who can fake it? Like, you could go out, you can clap, but sometimes you're like, ah, you're making it happen versus bringing the joy versus connecting to the peace and the fulfillment with seeing other people's souls and delighting in people. I had to learn to delight in people. And most people never learned to delight in people because they were taught not to trust people. Often your trait of extroversion and introversion was based on trust experiences. Your dad stole your trust, your uncle stole your trust, somebody in school stole your trust. You trusted people less. And it created a preference. Not a hard coded trait, not even a heritable trait, a preference of not engaging the world. It wasn't a psychological purposeful choice. It was self safety. And I think that where I grew up, there's a lot of violence. And so I Had to learn to trust people before I could actually serve them. Who knows what I mean? I had to like, oh, people are cool. I like people. People are, for the most part, you know, that they're trustworthy, honorable, caring, trying their best. Otherwise, we'd have blown up ourselves a long time ago, you know? And if we hadn't done it, AI is going to do it for us. So you might as well start to take delight in people because you're going to start interacting with a lot more machines in your lifetime. It's kind of nice to meet real humans who have heart and soul. And when you start seeing people as humans with heart and soul, you shift into being curious about them. And it turns out being curious with people, openness. The more we can increase this, the more this naturally increases. Okay, I'm being a little dorky on this. I'll go a little faster. Is this all right? You doing it? Cool. I just think it's so cool that people, they measure this all the time. You can see such radical shifts in these things. And here's the thing. I will tell you this. You will never think a change in someone's life is radical as much as they will. You know what I mean? You're like, someone starts drinking a morning shake and you're like, whatever, but she's Instagramming it every day for a year. Right? Our changes are significant to us. To hell with what other people think of them. Like, your change is significant to you. You don't have to impress nobody with your change. You feel it when you make it, when you eat healthier. It feels like lifetimes different. And so your changes matter. Your changes and your shifts. And sometimes we don't really see that. You know, sometimes we don't really see that. And that's why this one, I think, is a good point. Agreeableness. Agreeableness. This is another part of the big five. People start laughing as soon as they say agreeable because we think, I'm not agreeable with people. Agreeable tends to mean that you aren't just like, agreeable. When someone says something to you like, you're a yes man or yes woman, that's not what it means. Agreeable means you take care in relationships to hear and be heard. Agreeable doesn't mean you agree with their position. It means you get along with people because you honor that they have a position. Like, I don't feel, even if you're different than me, I don't feel in conflict with you because you don't bring an edge to My beliefs. Right. So it's not. See, most people think agreeableness is about compliance. She agreed with me, so she's good. That's not what they're measuring. They're measuring. Do you get along with people because you have communication, understanding, and skill? That means I like to hang out with her. Like, she's agreeable to this relationship. She's agreeable to how we want to live. It doesn't mean she's permissive or she condones or she's compliant. People mistake this one all the time. It doesn't mean he does everything you say, so he's agreeable. It means they're open to allowance in the relationship of differences. They deal with conflict better. People who are agreeable deal with conflict better even if. Even if they don't always get the same number of positive outcomes. Meaning they value the process of communication and relationship. You know, you ever been in a fight with somebody and they're just. They don't follow any process in a fight. They won't let you have your turn. You ever heard made somebody. They will not let you have your turn. Who's ever been with that type of person? That person would have a low level of agreeableness in psychology. So you can tell them that next time you talk to him, be like, brendan told me you have low agreeableness. They don't. They're bad people who have low agreeableness. They don't take turns. They don't listen. They don't take care to hear the other side. Agreeableness, of course, is huge in negotiation. It's huge in business deals. Like, the greatest negotiators in the world are very agreeable people. When you study negotiation books and sales books, you're like, oh, they're trying to get agreement throughout the sales process. They're not trying to create enemies or create false tribes or us versus them. They're trying to create a sense of belonging. And that's a huge character trait, but also a leadership trait. Creating that sense of belonging, purpose, together. What's the word? What's the word? Together. Together. They create a sense of togetherness in relationships. Why does it matter? Because higher levels of agreeableness in marriages predict divorce. The more agreeableness as traits that people have, the more they tend to stay married. And so these have huge life outcomes. Okay, last one, and I'll explain it, too. Is called neuroticism. Everyone's favorite who thinks you have a neurotic spouse. Neuroticism. Here's a better phrase for those, especially my International fans, right here, neuroticism, Think about it as emotional stability. Emotional stability. Neuroticism is not bad, just like disagreeableness is not bad, just like not being conscientious is not bad. Remember, everything's on a spectrum or a scale, right? Like neurotic. Everybody here has a level of neuroticism about something. Neuroticism is more about emotional control, emotional self regulation, a stability in how you handle things, a centeredness. Why do I share that? Everything you've learned about in mindfulness or resilience training is trying to improve this score. Like, we want you to have low levels of neuroticism, which means low, not too much emotional instability, right? We want you to be emotionally stable, in charge of your own thoughts, feelings, emotions. You own your emotions. That's what this is measuring. Own and take responsibility for their emotions. When they do, that's good. When they don't, that's high neuroticism, right? When they're just like, they won't take control of their emotions, they won't be responsible for their actions. They're very unstable all the time. It's like dealing. Like the peak of that top would be like, you know, schizophrenia. Even though that's a very different thing than what we're talking about today. It's like this person's just all over the place all the time. Highly emotional reaction. Why did the last couple of years last 4 years? Why did stoicism become so huge worldwide, like a resurgence in stoicism? Because everybody was watching all these cynical little brats on the Internet and said, hey, we need to learn to control our emotions a little bit better in times of change. The way that you control yourself is a character trait, and we need to understand that. And so even in schools, rolling out more emotional regulation has been life changing. You can see students who get training on mindfulness, who get training on self regulation, how to control their own emotions and thoughts. They have completely different outcomes in school, in sports, and in their first job's earnings than those who's never had any training. Like, that means you can shift this significantly. And for those who feel like you are like, I always feel so crazy, I'm like, this is why you do personal development work. You train your mind. Who's here to train your mind? That's what we're here to do.