How to Become the Person You Idealize

How come sometimes you really are excited about change, but then you fall off? We have to go a little bit into our mindset and do a little bit harder work. The thing that creates human behavior change is that concept of who we think we are, or more importantly, who we want to become. The question is, what is that ideal vision for yourself? If you're a character in the movie, what does that character look like? How do they behave in certain scenes of difficulty or trial? Showing up isn't just showing up to your obligations. Showing up is showing up for courageous things in life. Your discipline requires you to show up even when you don't feel enthusiastic, energized, hyped about it. So we're going to go deeper into advanced human behavior change, which usually just means, frankly, more work. You know, I told you this morning, I wish I could just be like, hey, here's the quick thing, you know, jump up and down, you'll feel great. Say a few words to yourself, you'll feel great. I mean, you can do all of that, but you can still do all that and be an asshole. You can still do all that and be broke. Who's ever experienced it, right? You can do the tricks, but sometimes the tricks aren't the things that give you the real transformation long term for your generation and your family. So sometimes we have to go a little bit into our mindset and do a little bit harder work. Today's gonna feel like that. This afternoon. It might be a little conceptual for some of you. Some of you, if you like this morning's framework, I think you'll like this framework if you hated this morning. Sorry. Oh God, it's about to get super annoying because I'm just gonna draw out a new framework for you that I haven't taught before that I'm hoping as we fill in together and we work through this advanced human behavior change model, you start to notice some things. So just draw this out with me. Human behavior change. We're gonna start with the top block and we're just gonna do the actual work again. If I draw a triangle up here, it just means the delta sign. Change. Human behavior change. Where do we begin with all this? For each of you here, the thing that creates human behavior change is that concept of who we think we are, or more importantly, who we want to become. So we're going to use a fancy phrase here, like we did this morning, and this phrase is called character idealization. This is a very fancy phrase that I use to charge people more money. And just seeing if you're here, Just testing. You've heard the phrase you need a vision for yourself. So the question is, what is that ideal vision for. For yourself? If you're a character in the movie, what does that character look like? How do they behave in certain scenes of difficulty or triumph? If you're the character in the movie, what's their journey like? Who are they surrounded by? All of those concepts we all know so well in personal development, but when I think about advanced human behavior change, I'm like, okay, I need to understand what's the character that you're trying to build of who you are like, your character? What are the rules your character follows in the game? What are, like, their playbook rules? What are the things that you know that this character, in any given situation, they're gonna do these things. If you've been with me training for a long time in coaching, we often call these your success markers. The things you're going to do that make you successful. You. You just know you're gonna do these things. You're gonna do them over and over and over again. Cause that's the character of who you are. That's your character to behave in those patterns. Right? Your character behaves in patterns, has rules for their behavior in certain situations, and you're trying to grow into the best of that by enacting those behaviors. I know that sounds like a lot, but the clear question to you is, do you. Do you have vision for that and have you sculpted those types of rules for yourself? So this character idealization is so important because many people don't have it. In fact, most of the clients I've ever worked in my life didn't have a very good set of one and didn't have it at all. And that sounds really bad. But the thing is, you have to know who you want to become. Otherwise, you're just in the continual fight of daily reaction. Your impulses are driving you versus intention. I don't want you to be driven by impulse. A lot of people are slave to impulse their entire life. They're just in reaction, reaction, reaction. And they never had that clear intention to grow, to become something that they chose. So they ended up something as an accident. And I think that's fine. In your teenage years, once you get in your 20s and your 30s, you should be like, I want to become a person who is like this. So you might write that down. I want to become a person who what? I want to become a person who what? I think that's where change begins. We could say that change Begins in pain, pleasure, as Ed taught. But I think there's a bigger picture, because sometimes you'll endure pain to become the person you want to become. You'll go through hardship that doesn't have as much pleasure as you want to become the person you want to become. Sometimes it's tiring, it's fatiguing, it's difficult. It doesn't feel good at all. And you're still doing it. Why? Because you're living into a vision, and that's your job. You want to change, you got to live into a better vision. That's where it begins, right? Leadership always teaches the power of vision. The question, though, if we all hung out, is, do you know what yours is yet? We're going to talk about how important this gets in your life, but it can shift everything. I'll give you my list here. Grabbed it from my phone back there. Here's some of mine. You might write down some of yours, those patterns that you want to follow. One for me, vision for excellence. This is a part of my character ideal. I'm like, you know what? I want to be a person. People go, that person's excellent. They're an excellent teacher. Excellent business person, Excellent in their marriage. Excellent. What they do because they care. They care. Guess what? That requires me to develop conscientiousness, as we talked about this morning, right? That requires that turn the person left, right? Grab them, shake them and say, have vision. Shake them good. Shake them good. Look how simple this one is. What's it say? What's it say? Show up. That's what Ed did today. Show up. Some of you know, I celebrated my birthday this week, and I wish I could clap with you, but the truth is, I got the flu this week. So for the last 72 hours, I've been in bed. This morning, I got in bed, I didn't want it. I felt so terrible. Backstage are taking such good care of me, and I'm doing everything I can to get my body going. Those who know my voice, well, you've heard me kind of messed up up here all day. Like, it's just, man, Ed and I are laughing backstage. We're like a bunch of two dizzy old men up on stage up there. Can you imagine the odds of he and I both being sick? But you know what? We're going to show up. So much of it is showing up. Listen, let me tell you what the biggest difference is. Showing up isn't just showing up to your obligations. Showing up is showing up for courageous things in life. Someone's struggling. Show up for them. There's something that needs to be helped. Saved, served, show up. Showing up, as they say, is half the battle. And I never liked that phrase because I think it's so much more than that. I think you being a person who shows up for yourself, for your dreams, for other people, it's a different level of permission and ownership. I give myself permission to show up at the table even though I don't feel like I belong. I give myself permission and ownership of my life to show up even if I question myself worth. I give myself permission and ownership to show up even if I don't feel it. That requirement to show up even if I don't, quote, unquote, feel it. That is the essence of what we actually call in psychology, self discipline, isn't it? Your discipline requires you to show up even when you don't feel enthusiastic, energized, hyped about it. That makes the difference. And some of you seen me on stage. Over the years, I've showed up on stage with literally a snapped wrist, a thrown out shoulder, two broken ribs, a broken foot, a brain injury, a neck injury. I do dumb stuff, I know, just, I maybe show up for too many adventures in life that cause downstream problems. But showing up, I'm going to show up at the negotiation table, I'm going to show up at the. I'm going to show up every single day. I'm gonna show up for my dreams because I own my dream. If I own the dream, it's like if you own the cat, you gotta feed it. You gotta show up to feed it. You own the dream, you have to feed the dream. You gotta be there for the dream. Everyone say, I own my dream. Yeah, you gotta own that dream. So I'm gonna show up for the dream. Third rule I have very simple. Give. What's the word? Give. Maximal. Maximal presence, joy and effort. I know I won't be always the best in the room. I won't always be the smartest, the most capable, the most experienced. But you put me around a table with a bunch of people, I will look people in the eye and be more present with them. And afterwards they're like that kid was, he was right here. Everyone say, I'm here, I'm gonna get more, I'll be more present in a room with people than most people could ever do. Even after a long day on Ultra members, after the long day on stage for another two and a half hours of dinner. Usually on average, I do 90 selfies before I leave. Literally, we count 90, 90 selfies. I don't get to eat. I'm talking with all of you and trying to be there. It's super hard. I've usually been on the road. I'll do that at four day events. And I'm not here to tell you, oh, here's what I do. I'm like, this is hard for me, just like it's hard for you. But that's my question. Did you give your all? You've heard that before, right? Who had a mentor who told you that? Give your all, kid. Give your best. Did you have a mentor? Raise your hand, shout out their name just to honor them real quick. Yeah, that's awesome. Honor that person. Linda Ballou. For me, it's like, man, when somebody taught you that, that's advanced human behavior change when you're like, ooh, give your all. So that night when you put your head on the pillow, you feel fulfilled that you gave maximal presence and joy and effort. These things are part of my Brendan character idealization. What other parts about my character that are important to me? Deliver above promise. I know when people see these things, oh well, that must be hard. That must be demanding. I'm like, you don't always get it right. There's tons of things I fall short on. But having this expectation and having this idealization, you start to live in it, right? How many times in your life did you not have any intention or idealization of your character? So you just went through the motions? Some of you have gone through the motions for too many decades now. And now you start sculpting your character, you start building your becoming. You don't become by accident reaction anymore. You become intentionally now, you become consciously now. That's the breakthrough for people living a conscious life. That's the advanced thing. Cause most people aren't doing that. And that's so key. Another one, which is hard for me, follow up every time. If you ever got a bunch of emails from me following up on something, you know, I'm like a dog on that. It's like, follow it up, follow it up, follow it up, follow it up, follow it up. It's like most of the winning in life is in the follow up. You've probably heard me teach this before. If you've been to my entrepreneurial type events, most of you in this room, you've already met that person who could unlock a million dollar deal. You've already met that millionaire or that multimillionaire. You already met them, you knew them, you probably got their business card, maybe were at an event with them. Maybe somebody connected you online and you were so hyped, you met that person. You sent them one email and then four years went by because you didn't believe in yourself. Or more importantly, you weren't architecting your future. You were hoping they'd reply to you. You were hoping they'd reach out to you. But you have to doggedly follow up for success in life and for real change. You really have to do it. You want to change your company or your business, your follow through can't be 1x2x, it has to be 10x. You want to close more deals, you got to reply back to their DMs five times more than you think. You want to get that deal online or that launch closed, that's another seven, eight emails that you just don't want to write. That's the thing. Most people, they just don't want to do the work. But the follow through will shift your life more than anything else. You already met the person who can lock your next seven figures, but you haven't pitched them. Or Brendan, I sent the email. I go, how many emails? Well, one. You sent one email? Uh huh. And this person could unlock a dream for you? Yes. How important is that dream? It's huge. How big is a dream? How big life change would that. It's like this. And you sent one. An email. One. Could you imagine? Listen, when I wrote my first popular trade book called Life's Golden Ticket, when I wrote that book. See other authors, when they announced their book title, usually people in the audience scream, but none of you read it. It's okay, it's okay. It's an old book. It came out in 2007. So old. So I write this book. It's my dream to become a writer. It's my dream. At that time, all I wanted to do was become a writer and a coach. That was it. That's all I wanted to do. That was all I wanted for my entire career. Just write, just get paid to coach a few clients, that was it. I knew if I could get maybe two clients a day, that equated on average about a quarter million dollars a year still holds true today. And so I thought, okay, if I can get two clients a day and I can keep them all year, that's a quarter million bucks. Okay, I can do that. And if I could write one book or two books a year, that could be $100,000 from advance and royalties. That's a good living. I was earning less than $40,000. So for me, I was like, oh, this is huge. This is. What did I do? So I wrote the whole book, Life's Golden Ticket, the first version of it. And thank you. See, I know none of you read the first version though. Can't sweet talk me now. So I write this book. I don't know, but if you all, if you're like the dork writers in the room, you're gonna totally recognize what I did. Okay, I went and I got the old book. It was a writer's agents book that you could buy at Barnes and Noble of all the agents. And I went to Barnes and Noble and I looked at all of the agents who were in the acknowledgement sections of all these books and I just wrote them down. I searched them and I found their addresses. And since the book was called Life's Golden Ticket, I went to the store and I bought this gold wrapping paper, like for Christmas paper, you know, wrapping paper like that. And I bought these gold boxes and I bought this gold letterhead with my name on it. And I totally wrote handwritten notes to 2, 300 people, made this, put the printed self published book in there, wrote them and said, my dream is to become a published author. I think you can help me. Blah, blah, blah. Something about them specifically or a book I liked about them specifically. Handwritten notes, 200 plus of them. Ship that out, ship that out. And I'm thinking they're all going to call me. Clearly. I got the gold box. I'm broke and I bought them a gold box. I mean they can use the box for their keys at the house for coins. They'll probably re gift the box to somebody and think of me forever. It's a gold box, that thing, you know these paper source places. These are very expensive, these little gold boxes. I was very proud of my gold box. Total silence for weeks and I'm just broken about it. I'm like, oh my God, nobody. They must have rejected me. I'm like, okay, I guess I gotta follow up by email. Then I found their emails and I emailed everybody. I said, hey, I sent you this gold box. I sent you this book called Life's Golden Ticket. I haven't heard from you. This is my dream. I'd love in the little pitch thing about the book, would love to hear. Like nothing, like just nothing. I go to three conferences, I'm still pitching it 20, I feel like 24, seven. For an entire year I'm pitching this book, pitching this book, everywhere I go, pitching, pitching, pitching, pitching, pitching. I end up at a conference and getting to speak at a conference. And a friend of mine introduced me to a guy who became my agent. I didn't, we didn't know it at the time, and I'm pitching him and it's just not resonating. So I finally said, well, I guess I better upscale and I better self publish this book. So I go to self publish the book and had, I don't know, maybe 300 of them printed really nice and took it around to some writers workshops in San Francisco. And none of them liked it. And it was just like, ah. And they're like, why are you trying to write a fiction book? You've never written fiction. I'm like, well, how do you start writing fiction unless you write a fiction book? Like, how do you start? And I got some really bad advice. People telling me, you're not going to be able to do this or change the book. And it took me on all these different things and I just think what would have happened if I had just followed up more with those few people. But instead what I started doing was I started reaching over here and over here and over here and over here and over here. I started doing 50 other things versus staying in the pitch. You ever heard that phrase, not the soccer pitch, the pitch related to a deal. You stay in it, you follow up, you follow up. You follow up. You follow up, you follow up. It's gonna take so many, it's gonna take so many before someone buys something from online marketing. On average, they've seen two 12 emails with the pitch. 12. So he's seen the offer 12 times by email.