How to Deal with Disappointment

Part of grief and dealing with disappointment and the dark times. You need to allow your sadness. Don't. Don't. If you start crying, you don't have to. I'm sorry. I'm crying. I'm so sad. Stop apologizing. You don't need to apologize. It's okay that you're crying. It sucks what just happened. Here's what happens. The more you bunch that sadness up, the more you go silent with it. And the more silent you go with it, the less you're able to cope with it. Because, remember, in silence, there's suffering. It's tough to be your best right now. There's a lot of people who are complaining. There's a lot of people who are upset. There's a lot of people who often out in the culture start, like, just. Just thriving on that negativity and chaos. And it makes it hard for really positive, really progressive, really like, people who are excited to change the world and do their good works. It's difficult, and I know that. So you being a high performer and being here right now, dedicating your life and working really hard to being your best and making great contributions in the world, it can be hard, and I know that. And that's what this session is about. We're going to take on. What's it like when you have those dark days, those disappointments, those huge setbacks that happen inevitably to all of us, and how can you use your mind instead of a few habits to overcome those a little faster, to cope with them in a responsible manner, but also, you know, to feel alive again after those really dark days? That's a big topic here. We're going to talk about. It's not always the most inspiring thing when we talk about the difficult days, but I do know that, that we all have to learn to be more resilient if we're going to be high performers. We have to learn how to transform all that negative, chaotic energy into something that we have a sense of control about and that we can create some positive outcomes toward the things that we want in our life. And that's hard when maybe your business is struggling or your spouse isn't supportive or somebody in your family is sick or having really bad health or got a bad medical report. I know all that's hard, so I'm here to cheer you on this week, but also give you some capabilities and maybe new ways to look at a few things and try a few new things that will get you out of those dark days a little faster. You know, the best Thing that you can ever do is when you're having down days, dark days, difficult challenges in your life, is to realize you're not alone. That no matter what you're going through, somebody's gone through it before. No matter what you're going through, there's somebody out there who not only cares but also understands. And there's also always other people who can help you get through things. There's a lot of guidance and support out there, especially in this community. I know it can be cliche sometimes to talk about self help concepts, but I do believe right now that more than ever, personal development and those seeking to make major good contributions in the world. Whoo. We need you. High performers unite. High performers get together. High performers, you know, really consider how can we as a community do good things in the world? Well, it starts with first, learning to master our own selves, master our bad thinking, master our bad habits, master our days where we do allow our negative thinking to impact and influence other people. We gotta each be the change we have, to each be the persons who inspire others. We have to each be those who deal with our difficulties and our challenges of life in ways that other people say, you know what? Good job. I see you going through difficulties, but man, you're keeping, you know, you're keeping your head up. I know it's been hard lately, but you know what? You've kept a positive attitude. Because right now what's being celebrated is when someone's, you know, whining or complaining or speaking with outrageous. And the people who aren't being celebrated are those who are keeping an even head, those who are staying calm amid this storm, those who stay thoughtful in times when everyone else is just reacting. And that's what I want you to be as. I studied high performers from around the world, and we collected data from 190 countries, from some of the most successful people in the world or in their communities or in their organizations. What really became very clear to me was how well high performers did in maintaining their hope, their faith, their positivity, even their ambitions and their dreams when things were falling apart, when, you know, their marriage was falling apart, they still found a way to care for themselves and care for others around them. When their business wasn't meeting its goals. They still managed to lead positively and with empathy. Their team, when everybody in their community was outraged about something and causing violence, they were able to stay cool and ask, what can we do in a supportive way to deal with this issue over and over and over again. We see it in history I see it in the data, and I get to see it from you guys in our high performance community that you stand strong and you stay true and you remain calm. In times when other people lose their heads, when other people get pulled away into the darkness and they just kind of start blaming everybody else, they take that victim mentality, or worse yet, they stop believing in themselves. High performers find a way to stay confident. They find a way to be confident in themselves. They find a way to deliver value. They find a way to be the calm amid the storm. And I share all that as a frame to honor you guys as a community, because there's not a lot of people who are working on themselves right now. You know, what they're doing is they're expressing themselves and they're angry about something, but they're not working on themselves like you guys are. So what I'd like to do with you today is jump in this topic of how do you deal with those dark times, the major setbacks, or just the deep disappointments of life? And what I'd like to do is jump into this conversation knowing that inevitably with a community from around the world, you know, we've got some folks here who probably have lost a family member in the last weeks, months or days. We have some members here who their business is in the toilet. You know, we got some other folks who, you know, they've been doubting themselves for a really long time. And I'm sure we have some people who are dealing with deep sadness, depression, anxiety. And the first piece I want to really talk about is maybe something most people don't think about. And that is often the dark days we have the crushing defeats, the difficulties of life, often they're not preventable. I mean, you can't prevent maybe all the medical reports, when they're bad, you can't prevent maybe every difficulty at the business. But here's what I have found over and over. The people who keep getting knocked off their feet over and over, who can't get back to resilience or back to high performance, often fail to do something very simple. And that it turns out some of the world's greatest leaders do. And that's a very simple thing, that is to learn to anticipate drama. Learn to anticipate drama or turmoil or difficulty or challenge. Now, again, I know we've got people from all walks of life here. We have some people who are, who are dealing with some major issues. So let me give some examples here, from minor issues to bigger issues. Okay? Sometimes, let's say you end up, at the end of the day, you had that big meeting earlier in the day, and it didn't go the way you thought it did, and you're really disappointed about how it turned out. And what happens often is disappointment is often a lack of having not anticipated enough things in advance. And so what ends up happening is you kind of roll in with all these high expectations, but you didn't anticipate the difficulties or the challenges that will come up. Right. It turns out a lot of work done by, like, Jim Collins and other organizational leaders have found out that leaders tend to anticipate drama in the sense that they're a little bit paranoid. They're not paranoid in a negative way or an obsessive way, but they're so thoughtful about what might go wrong that they're less disappointed later on. So, for example, if you're going to go in that big, important meeting of the day and you're really excited about this meeting, you're finally going to be vulnerable and share your ideas and be excited about your new dream, your new idea. And you plan out everything you're going to say, and you plan out how to do the close, and you think through everything, and you practice everything. But then in the middle of that meeting, someone goes, well, I think that's a stupid idea. And you didn't anticipate that drama. You didn't anticipate that someone's gonna doubt you, someone is gonna object, someone's gonna interrupt you. If you don't anticipate those things, they really throw you off and they rattle you so much so that later on you're a hot mess about it. Like, later on, you're like, oh, my God, I didn't think that person was gonna say this. And they didn't. That everything in life, if you're gonna be a high performer, you might take a step back and say, well, what's going to trip me up about this? Many of, you know, I do that every single morning in the shower. So the second question I ask in the shower is always, what might trip me up today or throw me off? And how would my highest self meet that? I ask that every single day. I look at my calendar. When I look at my calendar, I see big events come up. I go, okay, what might go sideways there? What might not work out well? And by anticipating that, we. When it comes up, I'm calm. I already saw it in my mind. I already knew it might happen. I already anticipated what to do. And if you anticipate that things are going to go wrong. Then when they do, you don't get so upset and worked up about it. Does that make sense? But I mean, this also at a more difficult level of life, right? That sometimes there's going to be some major, major turmoil in life. And let's say you're heading into a breakup of a relationship. So many people go into the breakup of relationship and they don't think it through. And so they don't anticipate that. Of course the other person's going to fight for what they want. Of course the other person is going to become selfish at some point. Of course the other person's going to become scared at some point. Of course the other person is going to, you know, argue and blame. But when those things happen, people are so surprised. I can't believe you're blaming me. I go, you're breaking up with someone and you can't believe the person's blaming you. Have you not lived one rotation around the earth yet? You know, it's like they forget human behavior. They didn't anticipate it. And I hope you get this. This also applies to health, right? I'm always surprised how people who are like 50 years old, who often say 50, geez, you know, I'm really surprised my body's stiffening up. You haven't moved in seven years. You didn't anticipate that. If you don't move in seven years, you're going to feel like crap. And that's what happens is that all of a sudden health goes down. People didn't anticipate. Of course, as you get older, you have to do more to take care of your health. Duh. So you can't wake up one day and go, I feel so sad. I'm sore and old and gross. How did you not know that was going to happen? How did you not know that they were going to interrupt you in the meeting? How did you not know that the first time you made your pitch to that prospect, they were going to say no? You have to anticipate the no's. You have to anticipate the difficulties, the bad health days, the difficulties. I'll give you like tangible examples from my career. When I go do a seminar, like a four day seminar, I have a full anticipation of like, okay, what happens if I get sick? What happens if I eat something I shouldn't eat? What happens if I get hurt? What happens if somebody, you know, attacks the building? What happens if, you know, there's an earthquake? I know that all sounds crazy, but I literally thought through almost all of that, and made contingency plans with myself or with the team, because inevitably, think about the disaster and the major setbacks that happen in life when you don't anticipate those things. So I really want you to think about it. It's like, okay, I need to think through these next couple weeks of my life and where might things go sideways and how could I meet those as my highest self, how could I be prepared for those difficulties? And when you're prepared and you know that those things might happen, you meet them better. What I have found over and over and over again with high performers is they. They allow that and they do it in a healthy way, like they contingency plan. You should be contingency planning. What happens if next month's revenue is not what it was this month? What happens if in five years from now you're not in good health and you can't run your business anymore? What happens if, you know, your industry completely changes and your systems and tools aren't good anymore? What happens if that bad health report does get worse? Like, anticipating and thinking through that is part of being both a mature adult but also a high performer. Because I've learned from them over and over. They think through things. Seven steps where they're very strategic thinkers, high performers are. And their strategic thinking in their personal life, their professional life, in every area that matters, their career, their health, their finances. They're absolutely of that anticipatory mind. And that helps them deal with the crap when it arrives. Like, nothing surprises me that much anymore at all. How can you live in the Caribbean and not anticipate hurricanes? How can you send your kids to school without asking, okay, what happens if something bad happens? How do they communicate with me and how do I get them? I mean, that's just part of living in the real world as it is now. I mean, global warming is a thing. Violence at schools and at work is a thing. That random happenings like that, it's a thing. And it's not to freak anybody out. And I know again, as I said at the very open as, I hope you heard me, I said, I know this is a sensitive topic because it brings on all sorts of scary things for people and it can bring up lots of trauma and it can bring lots of fear. But I'm here to tell you, actually, you can meet that with an even hand and a cool head. When you anticipate it, when you just know that that's going to like. It didn't surprise me at all. It doesn't Surprise me at all that there could be gunfire any moment, anywhere, in any town, anywhere around America. That doesn't. How can that surprise us anymore? That shouldn't surprise. Not. That doesn't mean it's not scary in the moment. But like, knowing that these can happen, these things can happen makes us better, right? I mean, have you ever thought of what happens if you get in a car accident? Have you ever thought, you know, what happens if your house, you know something, you leave the iron on, your house starts on fire? Like, have you ever thought through those things? And again, I know this is like way freaky for people and I was sensitive, I was like, should I really bring this up to this high performance community? I mean, is this going to be like freaking people out? But I just thought, you know what, I don't think it will. I just think that you will say, you know what? Maybe it is good. Contingency planning is a piece of the strategic mindset. Contingency planning is what high performers do. They just think through this stuff. And I can share with you that there's probably going to be a major earthquake in the next 50 years of my life. So you go to, you know, our storage shed or you go to a certain part of our house and there's lots of water and lots of food bars, like, I mean, in a satellite phone. The odds of it happening are so low. But will it probably happen in 50 years? Probably. Right. The odds are much less here than it is in most other parts of the West Coast. But it's not that I'm a prepper for the ends of doomsday. I don't think humanity is going to end. And I'm not too worried about nuclear weapons falling on my head any day soon. But I am a person who goes, well, if the odds are pretty high, how would I think through that? How would I deal with that? You know, if an earthquake did happen, how would I get a hold of my wife? Where would we go? How do we get out of town? And it's not like I obsess about it and make major plans. I'm just aware that negative things can happen. I'm the same way with my own life. Right. The way I've set up my entire business is that my entire business can run if I'm not doing anything. Yeah. You know, I've got online courses that could sell all day long books that could sell all day long funnels that we've built or could build all day long if for a month I want to take off or for A month I'm sick. And it just. I think that's just being part of a responsible adult. And I really believe that the more you anticipate, the less you end up in situations where there's catastrophe, where there's less, where you're like totally surprised and ruined by something. Now, again, those things do happen. Like, we can all get surprised and terrible things can happen. You know, we didn't know. Like my dad, we didn't know he was so limited on time. We didn't know. One day he got a leukemia diagnosis and, you know, he was gone 59 days later. And there just wasn't much you could anticipate or do about that. But once we got the diagnosis, we had to think it through. And those are difficult times. But I'm telling you, allowing your mind to go there is important. See, most people, they can't. They're so scared of death that they won't ever even think about it. But I think we should all think about the end of our lives and say, okay, well, then if my life is going to end someday, which it will for all of us, then how do I want to live my life? And thinking about those negative things or those end of time, those can inspire us to live well and, and to serve well. The only reason I'm doing this work with you at all is because I was put in a place where I had to think through the end of my life. And by anticipating the very end, it's made me live today even better. You follow? So I want you to think of every major thing that you're gonna do. Like, hey, look, if you're gonna go run a marathon, don't just think, oh, I can't wait to cross the finish line. Think about mile 16 when it feels like your feet are falling off. And what are you gonna tell yourself when you. When your body starts breaking down? How are you gonna refill yourself at mile 12 and mile 17 so you can push through? Like all those little, like. You gotta think through what happens when it gets hard, what happens when it's not gonna go right. And when you think through what happens when it's gonna be hard and not go right, you end up less disappointed, less surprised, and less in places, what you would call a major setback because you already visited it. You were already there, you already anticipated, you already lived well, you already gave well, you already thought about their objection and now you can deal with it confidently. That's the stuff that we're really talking about today. It's not to say as you'll see, lots of crap can happen. But, man, the more you anticipate, the better, trust me. And I know this will bring up a lot, so I'm just going to move on, maybe get a few of the questions you might have or maybe some specific circumstances. Second, big idea I want to share with you here is to learn to delay your response. Specifically, what I want you to do is delay your emotional response. Now, this is where, you know, some people say, well, Brennan, that's a pretty stoic thing to say. And I'm like, well, yeah, maybe. I mean, stoicism has a lot to teach people and I think it's important that when something goes on not to freak out about it. So many people, here's what they do. Something negative happens and immediately they believe or think that it's the end of times. And so they anticipate total destruction. In the moment something simple happens. Like they anticipate total failure, total horrible. And they get all worked up and they get super emotional about stuff when it's just like you don't even know it's going to happen yet or even if it did just happen, just delay your response. You get that terrible email and it fires you up. Someone writes you a bad email, right? A customer co worker, and you get pissed and all the fire is coming up and you just feel like you're going to spit acid at the world. You're so angry. What do you do? Well, first I would say, why don't you delay that? Learn to delay the time between stimulus and response. Right before you jump to anger, can you see the email and not get to anger? Delay that. Delay that emotional response a little bit more, right? It's so easy to just go with the emotions, but often the way to cope and be resilient more is to think about the thoughts that you are having and ask, are these thoughts that I'm having? Are these emotions that I'm having actually supporting me in coping with this, moving through it, or, or serving as a role model, are these thoughts and emotions I'm having actually helping me cope with it, move through it well, or be a role model. And so I think that all the time, you know, when there's thousands of people who we care about, who's part of this community that we deeply care about, and all of a sudden our live cast goes dead, we don't freak out, we just don't. We just say, okay, take a breath, let's go through this checklist. Let's check this. Plug that thing in, do this Thing, let's go. That's all you can do. But if you let yourself freak out, if you'd like, go to immediate freak out, then what ends up happening is you're also training your mind and your body to go to immediate freak out. The way that you deal with every little bit of surprise and every little bit of drama and every little bit of disappointment is only setting you up for how you're going to deal with the next one. So if you're freaking out about all the little things when that big thing happens, you're gonna be a disaster. So what I tell people all the time is, go through the day and start training yourself to delay response time. Like, just start training yourself. Like, if you feel a negative emotion coming on or you want to immediately fight back or you want to immediately say something negative, just breathe it out a little bit. Take two or three deep breaths and kind of wait and see a little bit. You know, the great spiritual teachers read any great spiritual text and you will see that every single great spiritual guru, every single great spiritual leader of any times in any faith, they had a calmness when the drama was around. They didn't jump to anger. Often they asked questions, often they delayed their response. Some would ask a big question and they'd say, ah, good question. They'd close their eyes and they meditate for 20 minutes and come back with something like, we're in such a culture of like, speed, speed, speed, speed. Answer, answer, answer, answer, respond, respond, respond, retaliate, retaliate, retaliate. I'm kind of like, take a breather. Don't let anybody fool you into thinking you need to reply immediately to anything. Like, life is on your clock, it's on your timeline, and you need to start with that as a presupposition. So when a negative event happens, as an example, and everyone's like, brendan, what do we do? Often I just take a breather and I think about it for a minute, and then I'm decisive and we move. But I don't get caught into the drama. And I tell you, that's helped me in a lot of sort of spaces in my high performance life. You know, I've been at a seminar before. Some of you guys know this story. I was at one of my own seminars, and somebody had a seizure in my audience. And I mean, talk about drama. And a major setback for a seminar leader. You're doing your seminar and all of a sudden someone has a seizure and everybody in the room freaks out. I mean, people like, people completely freak out. They're jumping up, they're trying to run back. They're like, oh, my God, Help. Help. I mean, it was just like. It was like a bunch of. It was really, really a crazy moment, but I saw it happening. And soon as you see lots of drama, choose to be the calm amid the storm, right? You, like, let's say you're a mom and two, your kids come in and they're screaming at each other, right? You immediately, you want to fix it, and you want to scream at them to stop screaming at each other. And now you're all screaming at each other, right? That immediate impulse is usually not the one to go with. Delay that response a little bit. Notice the drama and choose to be the calm amid the storm. Recognize it and deal with it from your highest self. I saw the drama in the audience with literally hundreds of people completely freaking out. It was just unbelievable. And the person, because the person was having a very physical seizure, was, like, literally on the ground, like, bounced around on the ground type of seizure. It was very dramatic, and people were really scared. And people are scared, or when they're angry, they tend to act very impulsively. And sometimes acting impulsively in those situations aren't actually serving you. And so you see it, and I see it from the stage. And so everyone's freaking out and everything. So I just grabbed my mic, and now I don't know what's going on. I've never been in this situation before. I've thought about it, though, and so I just grabbed my mic and I said, please, everybody, if you are not a doctor, sit down. Because everyone's standing up and they're all gawking around like this. What's going on? I'm like, sit down. If you're not a doctor, sit down. And it was like, holy crap. Everyone sat down. I said, now listen, a member of our audience is having a health issue, and a lot of you are throwing off negative, chaotic energy when this person actually needs calm right now. If you want to help this person, take a few deep breaths, get calm. And it just completely changed the energy of the room. Because think about the person having a seizure. Do they need all this frantic, chaotic, crazy energy all around? But it was a positive intent. People did want to help and stuff, but they're freaking out and they're screaming. It's like this person needed calm. This person needed to be supported with calming, healthful energy in the room, not the. That type of energy. And so I got the audience to calm down. I eventually got the audience to Close their eyes and start sending this person back, positive energy. Just as my team was assisting the person and getting more professional support to come into the room to help the person. But it took almost 40 some minutes to get this person onto a stretcher and out of the room, during which time I had the whole audience, their eyes closed, taking them through guided meditations, sending positive energy, getting sort of checks from my team to let me know what was happening. And I shared that story because my immediate impulsive desire when that happened was I was just like other ones. I wanted to freak out, oh, my God. And I wanted to jump into the audience. I want to run over and help this person. But that wasn't going to serve the situation. Sometimes you learn to delay the response, to ask, what would serve the situation? Not make me feel immediately involved. You know, it's almost taking a little bit of step back from your highest self and observing what is happening in times of drama, difficulty, or challenge, even when, you know, I share with you. I worked with an ER surgeon one time, really amazing, amazing medical professional who I deeply admired. And he had dealt with just the most terrifying situations imaginable. And he was really literally in charge, not just of himself, but his team, in saving all these people's lives who came in every single day. And just a really inspiring guy. And I said, how, how do you get used to all that, that trauma and that, you know, chaos that comes through that door every day? He goes, of course it's going to happen. We're in an er, Brendon. I just love that answer. Of course it's going to happen. We're in an er, Brendon, and I'm in charge, so I can't freak out. So I got to kind of take it in, delay the immediate response that I feel, and go, okay, what would actually serve here? And I love that so much because it's easy when things go bad to flip into either the reactionary or. Or the victim isn't true. I mean, weren't there some things last year that you overreacted to that maybe you could have dealt with better? Aren't there some things in your life right now where you're kind of like, it's easy to, you know, blame the team, or it's easy to blame the neighbor, or it's easy to blame the politician, or it's easy to blame something else? And because, you know what, blame gives you the opportunity to sit on the couch and point versus saying, okay, what would be a helpful response here? What would actually serve the situation? Not just serve my immediate need to respond with outrage or anger or quip. You know, one reason I don't like sarcasm very much is because sarcasm is the easiest answer, right? So someone does something wrong, be sarcastic, cut them down, you know, use your words to be really smart and make a joke at their expense. And we all have that right. You and I see things. That's why it's like, you know, you watch America's Home Videos, Funniest Home Videos, and somebody gets hurt, and you kind of laugh like you're going, oh. You know, it's like. It's an immediate impulse. But that's. Our immediate impulses are not always our best humanity. And so the best humanity tends to come from a delayed response. It's the Dalai Lama calming himself. It's Nelson Mandela thinking through his release of prison and knowing when he got out of prison and apartheid was, you know, hanging on, he knew that people were going to want to revolt and literally kill, murder, or remove the current leadership. And he decided in advance, I'm going to not follow that impulse because of course I want retribution. Of course I would love to be vindicated. But instead, I'm going to make this a peaceful process, a peaceful transition. And I promise you that most of the drama of life, if you can just take one step back for a minute, observe it, and delay your immediate impulses of drama and more, tune into a higher, thoughtful plane to ask, how would my higher self deal with this? You'll do a better job. Now, of course, I know as I'm doing this, you can make all the jokes at me that you want. You know, you can say, oh, yeah, Brendan, try that. When, you know, five children come in the room screaming and beating each other up. And, you know, like, I know it. I know there's plenty of circumstances you could say, well, Brendan, that doesn't apply to me. And I would still challenge you to step out of the drama a little bit. Delay that impulse that you have and ask how you can serve the situation. Because, listen, remember I shared earlier, you're training yourself how to deal in those little circumstances when you get cut off in traffic. How you deal with that is probably going to come out when you get cut off in the meeting. You know what I'm saying? People who, like, if every time you get cut off, you get angry, ah, and you freak out, you step in that immediate reactionary response, you're going to do it at an inopportune time when you should have done it. So every little thing you're training when you're at the line at Starbucks. Be patient. Don't be an impatient person. Because if you're impatient at the line at Starbucks, how are you going to treat your kids when you're tired and they really need mommy's attention? That impatience, every little thing that we're doing, often that little microcosm becomes the macrocosm. And so always remember, train yourself to step back, delay that response, deal with it well, and I promise you'll have so fewer disappointments, so fewer major setbacks. Because when those things come up, they're not major anymore. You've run that route so many times, you know how to deal with it. Okay, next up, you've got to allow and to socialize sadness. Look, I promised. Talk about the dark days and the disappointment. You know, you have to allow sadness to happen, and you can't apologize for it. You can't try to hide it. Like, sadness is one of those things that does happen, and it's not always easy to delay. You know, my wife right now, she's really sad because we just lost, you know, our cat. And this cat was there for her when I was gone on the road. This was a very loving, awesome, super little buddy. Like, just an awesome. I mean, if you could have a great cat and a great pet. We had one. And she's sad, and she's going to be crying over the next couple of weeks and random times, she'll probably be, you know, picking up the mail and cry one time totally randomly. You know, she'll have all these moments where she'll just get sad and she has to allow that part of grief and dealing with disappointment and the dark times. You need to allow your sadness. Don't, don't. If you start crying, you don't have to. I'm sorry. I'm crying. I'm so sorry. Stop apologizing. You don't need to apologize. It's okay that you're crying. It sucks what just happened. It's okay. Cry it out, man. I tell people all the time, like, cry it out. Like, let it. Like, don't. Don't try to choke it down. Or, you know, you see these people all trying to hide their sadness. I'm like, oh, no, just, you know, get the big clown cry out. Go ahead. Let that sucker rip a little bit. You know, because people are so like, you bunch all of that sadness up. Here's what happens. The more you bunch that sadness up, the more you go silent with it. And the more silent you go with it, the less you're able to cope with it. Because remember, in silence, there's suffering. In emotional silence, in not sharing, there's where the suffering comes in. It's where we're seeing right now. So, you know, we've experienced the last couple months, you know, lots of sort of celebrities who had committed suicide or industry leaders who have committed suicide. And everyone's so surprised about it often. And it's so unfortunate that a lot of the people who are closest to them didn't know sometimes how deeply sad or depressed they were because they didn't express it. Because they, they thought, well, I can't express it because of my brand, or I can't express it because who I am. And some in not expressing it, they're not coping with it without coping with it, they can't move through it and grow stronger and better. And, you know, often it's only when someone is in that real deep, dark place, when they express their sadness, that someone say, oh my gosh, I didn't know you were. You might need some help. I mean, that person might be truly in a depressive state. I don't mean like down, like bummed out. I mean like really a mental illness level of depression that they need assistance. And if they don't voice it, no one's going to give them the assistance or suggest the assistance. And so I'll say this just as a disclaimer for anyone. If you're dealing with real deep dark thoughts or depression or suicidal thoughts, please, God, get some help. You know, go seek out a therapist, go see your doctor, go see a professional and just share where you're at. There's so many people can help you. I mean, we have a national suicide hotline that barely anybody uses. And you can call and Talk to professionals 247 and just be like, here's what I'm feeling, here's what I'm going through. And there's always professional assistance available and we need to take advantage of that. But what happens is when you get sad, it's easy to get silent because you feel like it's not allowed. And that's what I'm saying. You have to allow first is allow it. If you're sad, allow it. Stop fighting it so much. Just be like, damn, I am sad that I lost that business deal. I am sad that I lost that family member. I am sad. And this negative thing happened. I didn't want it. One of the ways that I moved through sadness so quickly and terrible things happen in my business or my life. Losing family and friends and clients, having Business deals go in the tank. Watching, you know, people I care for really be mistreated was the ability to go, God, that really does bum me out. And allow it. Not rejecting the sadness, allowing it and going, ah, I'm really sad about that. Let myself have my cry, let myself have my pity day. You, you know, I'll let myself. I always say, like, if you're sad, I'm fine. To lose a day to sadness, I don't want to lose a week to sadness. I don't want to lose a month to sadness, that's unhealthy. But to lose a day to call in sick and say, you know what? Can't work today, can't shoot today, don't feel good today. There's nothing wrong with that. And if you can have that mindset that there's nothing wrong with you being sad, you'll be healthier. Isn't that an irony? If you finally realize there's nothing wrong with being sad, you'll actually be healthier. And then maybe you'll be able to move on to this next part. And that is to socialize your sadness. To share with someone, I'm really sad about this. And allow for the fact that they're going to go, oh, well, all you have to do is A, B and C and they're going to try to solve it. Doesn't matter what they do. The goal isn't for them to solve it. The goal is for you to share it. That's all. Stop worrying about what they're going to say about it or judge about it, but share it anyway. And some people say, well, that sounds crazy. That's pretty vulnerable. You know, I lead a team. Are you telling me I should tell my team that I'm upset or I'm sad or I don't feel good about this or I'm disappointed? I'm like, yeah, tell them, well, what if they don't understand? They'll understand. They've been sad too, once. That's like, why do you think you're so different than everybody else? That's what gets leaders in trouble is they don't communicate because they think they gotta be bum bum da bum and so different than everybody else. I'm like, no, you know what? Sometimes your life sucks too. High performer. And you sharing with other people who are maybe high performers or even underperformers isn't going to take away from you. Sharing emotion does not diminish you. Sharing emotion makes you stronger. Sharing emotion makes you a member of the community. Sharing emotion bonds you with people, sharing emotion opens the gate to conversation and to change. And so whether it's sadness or even joy, like, stop not sharing it. Part of the reason people feel so cut off from who they truly are is they don't express their true emotions. That's it. I feel like I don't feel like myself. I don't feel like I know myself. Well, of course you don't know yourself, because you've never actually shared yourself because you're sharing yourself. It's not just the Instagram world we have to share, where everything is white and pretty and perfectly set up. Right? We all have darker sides. We all have difficult days, and it's like, if we don't talk about those, how can we possibly lead? How can you possibly inspire your kids to deal with conflict? How can you possibly set up the generation, the next generation, to know that, oh, the difficult times are going to be here? Even though right now we got a booming economy and everybody seems so happy. Like, if we don't share the sadness from what we experienced from World War I or 2 or the Holocaust or the school shooting, or if we just. If those negative things happen, we all just carry on faking it like they didn't happen, and we're bummed out. Why would we change? We change because we're upset and hurt and saddened and disappointed that these negative things happen. So now we can say, you know what? In the future, I don't want that to happen. Here's how we can deal with it even better. And that's it. That's what we have to learn to do. So I want to share with all the. If you've been sad about something, you haven't shared it with your spouse, go ahead and go home tonight and share it with them. If you've been disappointed with your team's results, go ahead and walk in on Monday and say, hey, guys, I got to be honest. I think we can do better. If you're frustrated with your partner and how much they're contributing or not contributing to the business or your life, go take a moment to breathe through it and then go say, you know what? I have to share. I feel frustrated, and I feel like I have to let that be known now. Now, in my email, I said that, you know, sometimes there is a difference between being. Sometimes vulnerability doesn't help. And I think that's true. I think sometimes vulnerability at the immediate point of sharing isn't always good without that delayed response. Sometimes, you know, we've gotten to a culture where everyone's Supposed to share their feelings at everybody. I'm angry. I'm like, ooh, take a beat back, man. Think how that's going to impact other people. Same thing with your sadness. Because you know what? If you're sad about something and someone else is sad about something, you might share your sadness. But first meet them and serve them and care, and then have the appropriate time to be vulnerable and share yours, too. Because sometimes you are in that place where you're the leader, the role model, the servant. Like, I'm sad that we lost our cat. Like, that was my little buddy, too. We have two cats, if you didn't know, the other one's more of my friend. But for me, it's like I'm used to that cat being there. And I'm sure you've lost a dog or a cat or it's like losing. Feels like losing a part of the family sometimes. But for me, right, in those moments, for the first day or two, I just had to be there for my wife. I acknowledge and allow myself to be sad about it, but I'm not going to talk about my sadness with her. Right away. I let her know I was sad, too. But for now, I'm being there with her and we're having good conversations because it's a really big issue. And I share this with you because I really feel that too many people, in the guise of being vulnerable, also overshare too quickly without thinking how that impacts other people. Remember, that favorite thing I'm talking always about in High Performance Academy is Oprah's big lesson of learning from one of her interviewees who said that they saw the sign in the green room, in a green room that said, please be responsible for the energy you bring into this space. You also, at the same time as I'm encouraging you to share, I'm encouraging you to share at appropriate times in which you're serving the situations at hand. Because many of you, if you're here with me right now, you are the high performer. You are the role model. You are the stronger persons in certain situations sometimes. And sometimes, yeah, you got to, like, take a breather and help other people and then share where you're at, too. And I can't tell you when that timing is, and it's never right. And so please don't think I'm saying, you know, don't share it or, you know, always share it in. In, you know, the proper ways. I don't know what it is for you or what your situation is, but I do know that it's okay if you're down and it's okay if you take a morning off because you don't feel good. You know, all this power through everything. You know that old type a masculine BS that we had from the, you know, 50s and 60s, well, more 50s than the 60s, that it was just like power through it. I'm like, you don't have to power through everything. You can share a lot and it will help you cope with things too. So I'm just here to say for those who feel disappointed, it's okay. For those who feel sad, it's okay. For those who had a down week or a down day or a down month or down quarter, it's okay too. You got to allow that feeling and then start moving on as we'll talk about soon. Okay? So I hope that's helpful. Next up, big topic area in this one is I always tell people a healthy response is health. People ask me often, well, how do I deal with this? Well, I go be healthy. And what I mean by that is specifically when you know you're disappointed, when you know you're sad, when you know you've got major setbacks, you have to delay the response to order 10 gallons of pad Thai. Okay? You just have to. You cannot be like, you know what? I feel terrible. So, so bust out the three bottles of wine. Here we go. You have to delay the response. That is unhealthy. Does that make sense? It's super easy. I mean, it's crazy easy to when you are having a down day or you're feeling disappointed to go, oh my gosh and go wreck yourself and get exhausted. So what happens? You're disappointed or you have a major setback, you know what you want to do. Sometimes your response, high performers, is overwork. You're sad, so what do you do? You overwork or there's a major setback. So you know, I'm going to work 247 for nine months and you basically kind of kill yourself working. And so in that way you say, but I'm getting ahead. No, actually all of productivity science and all wellbeing science proves over and over and over again you compromising your sleep. And overworking yourself is actually making your decisions be poorer. It's making your reactions to other people be less sensitive, less helpful. You're worse at negotiating. You're worse at closing sales. You're worse at effectiveness in your own time of doing basic tasks. You're worse. Everything that has to do with leadership and progress and, and human relationships, you're worse at when you cope by overworking. But that's what we do. I'm disappointed, so I'm going to work harder. I'm mad, so I'm going to work harder. The business isn't doing well, so I'm going to work harder. But if you overwork yourself, that is not a healthy response. In the same way, we have to anticipate where stress or fatigue or certain stressful situations that might run us down and prepare our health. Great example. Many of you guys know when I go to do my four day seminars or my five day seminars currently in the world, I teach the longest number of hours at a four and five day seminar than anybody else. Lots of people do four day seminars but they really only teach like a day. Cause they've got their other trainers, they've got video of themselves or they've got, you know, guest speakers on. They're not really on stage teaching. The number of hours I'm doing and not saying that to brag, I'm doing that because to do that and pull that off, I got to anticipate that. And in every way the stress that's created from that, I have to cope and deal with that. And so I've got to eat a certain way in my big events, I've got to meditate a certain way, I've got to rest and recuperate certain times, I've got to do certain things backstage. I also have to, in high stress situations, change up my supplementation game changer. Like I supplement differently at my seminars. I eat or supplement very differently on days like this than like if I was just sitting at my computer all day. So a healthy response is anticipating the stress and the demands of the situation and then asking, well, what would I have to eat? How would I have to sleep? What would I have to consume to deal with that? Like I'm amazed how many people deal with incredibly stressful weeks of their life and they won't like get take adrenal support supplementation. Like what's that about? Your adrenal glands are completely whacked out by the stress and you're just hoping you're gonna make it through on coffee. So let's make our body even more acidic and not support ourselves and hope that caffeine gets us through. It's like this is not even intelligent in the times in which we live. And so do you have something big coming up? How should you manage your health leading up to that? I'll give you another example. Heading into my seminars, for me, it's basically A marathon a day in terms of caloric burn and output of energy. Like, literally, I basically cover about a marathon a day, like 26 miles worth of effort and energy. Right. I only actually cover on my feet about 8 to 12 miles, depending on the seminar or depending on the day. So I'm actually about. It's about 8 to 12 miles of movement for me, like, physically around the day. But remember, I'm speaking to thousands of people. The wattage and the output and the sweat and the water that I have to go through to pull that off is amazing. So what do I do? I change my routine going into the event. I switch away from as much heavy weightlifting as I typically do, or HIIT training, and I go into longer cardio training because it helps me deal more with the stress, allows my body to learn to have that lung capacity. And it's just. It's healthy planning for the situations I'm going into. And you got to do the same thing, like, one way. I admire a lot of many of you when you come to my seminars. I know many. You guys are like traveling pharmacies. You're like. Like, you got a suitcase of supplements. Get another suitcase of food over here, and that's how you show up tomorrow. I love that you're like, oh, it's a week that we're going to go hard, and then you take care of yourself. I think it's really important. So here's the deal. You got to delay the response of the negative health routines you're usually running, and you need to identify those and be very clear with them. I know what mine are. Mine. My negative healthy responses, like, if I have a very stressful week, I'm. I know midweek, I want bad food. I love comfort food. Like, the way that I grew up. Oh, my God. Like, I just want some comfort food right away. Meaning bad food. Like, just terrible, awful, super high calorie, no nutrients, just awesome flavor. Oh, my God. Good food. It's not really good, but it tastes. You know what I'm talking about. It's like, of course I want to do that, but I don't, because I know I got three days left in the week. So you got to manage your health to deal with the challenges coming up. And also, and most importantly, when you do have those dark days, when there is disappointment, when there is setback, because remember, you're training yourself how to deal with that. And so if you're in a major setback right now, and you just did a whole week of having three glasses of wine, Every night you need to look at that coping strategy because it's not helping you keep a clear head. It's not. You think it's helping calm you down, it's actually hurting your sleep. You think it's helping you and you tell yourself a story that it's helping you, but in truth is it's just a bad coping mechanism that's not healthy for you or your brain or your body. And so I'm here to suggest to you that if you, if you are dealing with difficulties, that's the best time to get healthy, right? If, like, don't wait until you have tons of energy and you feel amazing to go work out. Like, if you had a shitty day yesterday and you feel terrible, wake up the next morning and go work out. Matter of fact, before you even went to bed that night on that bad day, go for a long walk for 45 minutes and just listen to positive music or a positive podcast or, or go through your gratitude list or your goal list as we'll talk about. But my God, use your physical body to enable you to cope better. It's very important when you are disappointed that you don't go ahead and compromise your brain and your body with bad food, drugs, narcotics, you know, alcohol and major levels. Because those things are not helping you. They're actually compromising your brain and you. And do you think when you're sad you should compromise your brain's function more? Think about that. When you're sad or depressed, hurt, upset, down on yourself, down on your business, down on your life, do you really think you should take away from your cognitive powers at that moment? Those are the times that you really need your brain operating at its best, which means your best nutrition, which means your best health, which means working out. Those are the times when I'm down on myself or my life or business. That's when I'm like, okay, health response equals health. Let's get that health routine in. So my brain's optimized and it can see the connections, it can see the next move and is primed to be more positive versus negative and run down. Next up is your daily G3 journal and review. If you've heard me teach a lot about down times before, especially in the last couple years, a couple Years ago, the G3 was the three GS. And what it means is every single day, I want you to journal on these three things. And I do mean journal, meaning you write it down in the morning and you review it at night. So that's why it says journal and review. So you write in the morning and review it all at night. And so here's what the G3 is. The first thing that you know is your gratitude. And that is just, what are you grateful for? Why does that make you feel good? Why are you thankful for it? And just write it down in your journal, just a whole. Like, you should have a gratitude journal already. But when you're disappointed or having setbacks, I want you to do the gratitude in the morning. A lot of gratitude journal stuff is at the night. I want you to move it right up the morning. Like, just. You got to prime your morning for some goodness. So right off the bat, you got to do that. Okay, so gratitude. Second major thing I want you to focus on is your goals. What are the specific daily and weekly goals you're working on? You got to get really narrow focused, right? When you're disappointed or sad or setback, you know, the idea of creating a vision board and seeing out 10 years from now, that's too much. What you need to do is get really close in near term, this day's goals, this week's goals, because you can check those suckers off and get a little progress in. You'll feel differently as we talk about. So goals is important. And the third G is goodness. And the goodness is noticing what is good from the previous day. So when you start the day, you're like, okay, what am I grateful for in general, for life. What are my goals specifically? Daily and weekly. And in each of these different areas of my life, you might have goals in your career, in your health, in your finances, and your relationships. And then the goodness is what actually good did happen yesterday. And that will just get you in a place where you're like, oh, this day is going to be good too. It's making you more mindful to all the good things. And the reason I do that one last. And the difference between gratitude. Gratitude's general things you're grateful for, the goodness thing is to think about what good happened yesterday. And the reason we do that, because in neuroscience, we know that thinking about the goodness from yesterday is triggering your hippocampus to kind of turn on and fire up. And if we get more memory activation off the bat in the morning, we actually have more creativity in the day, too. It's weird. Sparking memory is good for creativity. Creativity is very good for coping. And so that's why I'm trying to get you to reflect a little bit on something that happened yesterday. Just to think through, find that mindful moment. And it's also teaching you to be more mindful of the moments each day. Not just grateful in general, but actually being mindful for the good moments each day. So I want you to do that journal every morning and then every night. I want you to look back at it and think about it and maybe repeat it if you want to. I just want you to review the day and review those things. What was I grateful for? Oh, yeah, that's right. Because maybe at the end of the day, the truth is you haven't moved a lot forward. Maybe you know, your. Your spouse or yourself, you're still sick or maybe there's still conflict or maybe the business still. Because I'm not going to be Pollyannish and say everything changes in one day and everything's great just because you did your gratitude journal, you might get at the end of the day, it still sucks. So reviewing it is going to put you back in that positive mindset that's going to help you then take the next day as well. Okay, last big idea in this particular section is all about these two magical words. When you have disappointment dark days, progress and perspective are everything. Matter of fact, I remind myself of this all the time. And that is if I'm having some dark days and sad times, I'm like, I got to get progress. So what I'll do is I'll identify my five major moves. And if you read this book, High performance Habits, you know about the five major moves. So I identify my five major moves and I'm like, I'll swiftly move towards one because momentum can shift mindset. And so if I'm in dark disappointment, down momentum. Like, achieve some goals. But here's what's important. Notice I said the five major moves. That's what I mean with progress. Because what a lot of people mistakenly do is they just start doing lots of tasks and activities that aren't correlated in any way to the meaningful pursuits of life. So here's what happened. I'm bummed, I'm downed. So I'm doing a bunch of work. The next day, they still feel bummed and down because what was their work? It was a bunch of activities that actually didn't matter, that didn't give them any meaning. So if you're down, the most important work you need to be doing is the ones that you do feel. Connection, enthusiasm, meaning fulfillment, satisfaction from those ones that do intrinsically bring you joy. Those are the ones that I want you to progress towards. Matter of fact, I really want you, when you're feeling down, disappointed, major Setbacks, dark days. What I really desperately want you to do is stop multitasking and doing all the little like busy work things that don't matter. Put off the, like, if it's Wednesday and you know you got a stack of bills and they're not due for another 30 days, don't pay the bills that day. Cause that's not fun. And you got plenty of time to do it later when you, like when you get over this piece, this funk, like just say, okay, write the date on those bills, pay them on the. But don't do it today, cause that's busy work. Instead today, find an activity that you find to be creative, compelling, engaging, fulfilling, and do that progress towards the things that have meaning. That's huge when you're down. But most people don't do that because what's comforting, just like eating comfort food, is doing low hanging fruit activity. I'll pay the bills and answer a bunch of emails, you know. But those small little tasks, those don't give you enough bang for the buck to really move through it. And there's a big misconception about that in the culture, including the science that often says, oh no, no, just, you know, if people can complete small steps, small tasks, they'll feel better. And it's like, well, yeah, I mean we all have this reward system in our brain and little dopamine will fall out. But do we, do we want a little drip, drip of dopamine or do we want the floodgates to come open and feel alive? So I want you to do the activities that are more meaningful, not just like tasks, you know, it's really important. Let me give you an example and I hope this doesn't offend anybody. This is a very common thing. I learned from a very, very famous female executive leadership coach. She was sharing with me that a lot of her clients, when they were down or disappointed, would. They'd be at home. And she said that what they would do is they decide to reorganize their closet. And I said, they what? She said, they reorganized their closet. And I said, did that, did that help them? She goes, of course not. I said, did that make them feel better? She's like, a little bit. And I said, well, did you then tell them to later on when they feel bad to organize the closet again? And she's just like laughing, we're having this conversation. And she goes, no, the truth is organizing the closet, it makes them feel good and gives them something to do. But it's actually a delay tactic from facing what is real and needed. And so it's just as bad as comfort food. And I was like, wow. And so she asked me, she said, so, Brennan, what's your closet? I was like, oh, that's good. She said, what's your closet, Brenda? How do you, like, what do you do to delay taking on the things that are necessary when you are down or frustrated or hurt? And I had to really think about that. I was like, wow, what do I do? That's not helping. But it's like a little busy work. It's kind of shuffling papers around. And I was like, oh, you know what I do? I go to my journals and my notes and I. I kind of review them or organize them. And she says, not helping. And I said, dang it. Okay, good. I said, what should I do? She goes, find the needle movers and get a little progress towards that. That major activity or major project that actually matters. One little, like, just don't give time to all the other busy work because that's just comfort food. I was like, dang, that is a really huge insight. Progress towards those things that matter, because that will also then help with this. But I think this is a very separate idea. I always say progress plus perspective. Perspective you get from time away from something or from other angles into something. And so the most important thing that I can encourage you to do, just like I asked you to socialize sadness, is to share how you're viewing the problems that you're having in your life or the challenges. And what I mean by that is literally share how you're thinking about it. So if you're struggling with something with your team, your business, then go to your team and say, hey, can I just walk you through how I'm thinking about this? And seeing this perspective is not trying to solve anything, right? This doesn't say problem solving, it says perspective. It means you share specifically with other people how you are thinking about something and. And ask how would they would think about it. Follow me. So it's like, you know, I'm dealing with this loss in the business right now, and it's really bumming me out. I don't know really how to think. Can I just share you how I'm thinking about it? And you need either a coach who can hear that, a comrade, a collaborator, a colleague, someone who you know like and trust, who you can just share how you're thinking through more often. Because most disappointments happen because we get myopic, meaning we narrow our focus solely to the problem. And in not describing how we're viewing it, we can't broaden it. And so no matter what we have found in almost all social psychology research, in almost everything that I know to be true, having coached high performers for so long, is that if we can get you sharing how you're thinking about things and feeling about things with others and not trying to problem solve, but just asking how they would look at it, it actually makes you look at it a different way. Like, here's what's been going on, here's how I'm looking at it. How would you look at it? And they might go, oh, well, I look at that. That's like really great for you. You go, what? And like, well, it gives you time now to kind of restart. You know, it's like when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he had a very different perspective going back to Apple than he had when he was already running it before, but got fired. And that perspective allowed him to do better. He had to go to another organization and start another company and have a whole new set of team members to help him look at things differently. That allowed him, when he came back to the same problem, if you will, same opportunity, if you will, Apple, he saw it in a completely different way because he'd been with a different group of people considering a different problem. And he learned new ways to think. And that's what we always have to do. Keep expanding your ways of thinking about things. Now, I know none of this sounds easy. When you have a dark day, who wants to work out? When you have a bad day, when you feel sad, who really wants to share anything? When you're pissed off, who really wants to gulp that down and be the better person? But these things are what you have to start training yourself to do if you want to cope better in the future. And sometimes in the immediate, it doesn't feel like, oh, I really want to talk this through. But I'm like, if I talk it through, I'll cope it through better. And next time it won't be such a big deal. Here we go. And yes. Do you have to force yourself to do these? Yeah. Well, good thing. When we talk about high performance, we always say the journey to greatness begins not at comfort and certainty, but when we're allowing ourselves to step into discomfort and try new things. And if you're going to reach another level of performance in your life, I'm here to suggest you that when you're disappointed, do the things that bring discomfort but make you better. We'll play a video related to this topic that I've shot and trained on before, which is kind of, how do you develop that emotional mastery when times are difficult? So it's just five kind of secrets or strategies for you to kind of master your overall emotional life. How do you develop emotional mastery? You know, a lot of folks go through their life and they feel bad about themselves. They go through their lives, and they're not resilient when the crap hits the fan. They go through their lives and they don't feel like they understand other people or worse, they don't understand themselves. So emotionally, throughout the day, they're just up and down. It's doubts and fears and hurt and anger and reaction. And they never get that point where they feel like they really. They really connect, that they really have any solid feelings about themselves that endure despite the situation. You know, everything is so situational for them emotionally that it's just a constant battle to feel good. And I hope that isn't the case for you, but for a lot of people it is. So let's talk about five ideas to develop emotional mastery in your life so that you can have more of a continuing feeling and sense of self and strength. Number one, we got to begin with empathy. Before we even talk about your emotional world, let's make you more informed about the emotional world of others. You know, a lot of folks, they've never really observed the feelings that other people are experiencing. They're always in their own thing. You know, I wouldn't call them narcissistic per se, but they're in that. They're in that sort of tragic place where everything's about me, me, me, me, me. How do I feel? What do I think? What do I think? What do I think? What's happening to me? And sometimes the real understanding about ourselves comes in our connection to humanity, the feelings of others. Because you know what? The feelings of others can give us perspective into the feelings of ourselves. You know, you go volunteer at a soup kitchen or a domestic abuse center or somewhere where people are really struggling. It helps you develop a greater level of gratitude and appreciation. It helps you develop concern for others. Because if we don't have concern for others, it's hard to have real concern for self. And if we don't learn more concern for self, we won't even pay attention to our emotions. We'll just keep choking it down, pushing it away. And so first I just say, before you develop any emotional mastery in life, it's about time to connect with other people's emotions again. See how they feel, pay attention to what they're saying. Try to read into body language a little bit, not to make assumptions, but to seek understanding in other people. Again, like turn the worldview lens. Like you operate your life like a camera and zoom into people's emotions. Again, when you're watching a movie, when you're having lunch with your wife, when you're talking with the kids, try to start asking yourself what are they feeling? What do I feel like they're thinking? And then ask, is this what you're feeling? Is this what you're thinking? Because the more you're able to identify other people's, the more you might learn something about yourself. So I say to develop a greater connection strength with yourself, develop a greater connection and strength with other people too. And that's a big leaping point, big breakthrough for a lot of people. Number two, emotional mastery, self reliance. Self reliance means this. How do you develop emotional mastery? You say, you know what, I'm in charge of my emotional world. I don't have to react to other people if they're angry, I don't have to become angry. I'm autonomous, I am separate from, even though we're all one, I'm in separate from, I can control my thoughts. I don't have to have emotional contagion all the time where I just react to other people's emotions and I become like them. You don't have to let your mirror neurons win in your brain where you just mimic other people. Because if you're running through life constantly, like adjusting your emotions to everybody else, just modeling them or mirroring them or mimicking them, then it's a disaster. You're on this emotional rollercoaster all the time. You need to define how do I want to feel, how do I want to interpret this situation. Self reliance means I am in charge of my life. I am the one who's going to change things. I am the one who controls my focus, my attention, my time, my actions. You know, if you've studied my work before, you've heard this statement I say all the time, there's only two things that change your life. Either something new comes into your life and that shifts it. You know, you get a new relationship, a new idea, a new strategy, you win the lottery. Something happens that changes the course of your life or something new comes from within. And if you're going to get emotional mastery in life, you need to say, okay, I, I'm going to generate the emotions of my life that I want to experience here. I'm going to manage my emotions and not let Others manage mine. Third, got to develop self confidence. Self confidence is not something that's going to come tomorrow or the next day or the next day after another million achievements or after you get certified or after you get the degree or after you have sex, you know, well, maybe that'll happen. But what you have to do is say, I'm going to develop self confidence now. I'm going to develop it because self confidence really means I'm going to choose to express who I am. I'm going to choose to believe that no matter the situation or the struggle that I'm in, I'm going to believe that. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to approach a situation like Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is always confident. He's going to figure it out. He's curious, he's inquisitive. He has no idea what the heck's going on, but. But he's not terrified. You need to start addressing uncertainty that way. Emotional mastery comes from finding a place that's stable within that says, I don't know what this uncertainty is. I have plenty of reason to doubt, but I'm not going to doubt myself. I'm going to trust that with enough time, attention, energy, resources, action, discipline, that I will figure out the lay of the land. That's people say, brendan, how is it you just walk in any social situation you're so confident? I say, because one, I realize fear and doubt aren't going to serve me in that situation. I know who my masters are. My mind is going to master the situation. Fear and doubt aren't going to run me. And I choose to say, okay, I don't know these people, but I'm confident if I talk with them a little bit of time, things will go fine. Things will go fine. I might put my foot in my mouth and say stupid things, but if they give me another three minutes, I'll turn it around. Things will be fine. I just trust in my ability to figure things out. That's self confidence. That gives me emotional mastery. Next, social sharing. Emotional mastery comes from vulnerability. And vulnerability has gotten this weird rap in the world because a lot of people have been teaching it, I think, in a poor way. Vulnerability. At its heart, real vulnerability means the vulnerability to believe in and accept my truths. But more importantly than anything, it's the strength to share my real thoughts, my real feelings, my real desires, my real needs with people. Real vulnerability is voice. Not just like, I'm going to allow my feeling in this moment. I mean, that's cool too. And no Misjudgment. But that's only half the coin. The coin on the other side of the coin that makes all the difference in the world is when you take that vulnerability now and you voice it, does the world know what you really think? Do your friends and family know who you really are and what you really feel and what you're really after? Because if you're not voicing those things in some way, that silence will lead to suffering. It's time to tell people what you think, even if they might not like it. It's time to tell people how you feel, even if they might not like it. It's time to tell people what you desire, even if they don't believe in you, because that's real vulnerability. That's social sharing. And when you socially share that, and, hey, look, you do it with responsiveness, responsibility. You do that with an empathy that maybe people don't like you, that maybe people won't accept it, that maybe people will be hurt by it. So you do it with any sensitivity required in the moment. But you can be sensitive, but still truthful. You can, you know, walk around eggshells, but still be walking right. The thing is to voice what you really think, feel, and want in the world more consistently. And if you will do that, it develops confidence and it helps your brain go, you know what? I trust myself to say what is true. And a lot of emotional mastery comes from that self honesty. And then I think, this is so important. The last thing is self talk. Self talk means you tell yourself how to feel. You tell yourself how to respond. You literally say things in your mind or out loud to yourself. You know, I talk to myself all the time, and I'm not crazy. I have emotional mastery because I do those things. Like, I'll get upset about something. I'll take a beat, I'll take a walk away, and I'll say, okay, Brendan, how would your best self respond to this situation right now? I'll literally say that out loud, and I'll let myself answer it. Well, you know what? I would apologize. Well, you know what? I'd tell the truth. Well, you know what? I'd sit down and do the work, and it's okay. Emotional mastery, you have to give yourself cues. You have to give yourself affirmations. You. You have to tell yourself how to think and feel and act, not hope. The perfect you comes out. Emotional mastery comes from you telling yourself what to do. And you're doing it enough over a period of time that your brain and your emotions fall into a State of sort of integrity between your mind and your heart. And your heart goes, I trust you mind. Your mind says, I trust you heart. And that only happens after practice. After long enough times, you just take tell yourself, right, Same things in the morning. Look, you might wake up on the wrong side of bed and you could go through all day grumpy. Let your emotions just take you over. Or you can talk to yourself. Okay, what's going to happen if I'm grumpy today? Nothing. Good. What's going to happen if I'm grumpy today? I'm going to be mean to people. What's going to happen if I'm grumpy today? I'll be less creative. So don't do that. Come on. Generate the emotions in which I want to experience today. Change my focus. Talk to yourself, talk yourself out of the grump and you will find that you start to feel better. These are the keys, the fundamentals of developing greater emotional control, greater emotional mastery. And you deserve those things, but they won't come naturally. You have to try some of this I'm sharing with you. Might not hit right now from where you're at the struggle you're in. But on a long walk outside, magical things happen. I really believe that. And things come into our mind. That's very different. It's why the great creatives of all time always took long walks and thought about their problems or challenges. And now if you can take a long walk and have training like this playing, not a podcast or just an interview or it's lifestyle or it's entertainment, it's this type of training on these points, I promise it will really trigger you in a different way, in a much more powerful way way. If you'll go do that later too. Okay, let me share my three mindset tricks. These are my personal mindset tricks. I've named them. They're weird for me, they might not make any sense on the card, so I'll explain them, but they're huge, huge in helping me deal with the bad days, turn my positive mindset back on, get my motivation, my drive back, and I hope that will support you all. Number one is my friend hat which is so important. This is where when I'm having a bad day, I always say, okay, if I was coaching my absolute dearest best friend in the world who just went through the same day, what would I suggest that they do next? Not how would I change their life? Not some big high flu and stuff like, what would I suggest that person they do? Like literally next in that situation they're in, would it be, you know what, you really need to call your mom, you know what, you need to call that person, apologize, you know what you need to send that email, you know what you need to do is take this. But what would I tell my absolute best, most adored friend to do as their very next step? Not the whole plan, just what's one thing I would tell my absolute best dearest friend? I asked myself this question probably two, three times a week, right? Because I'll get frustrated by something, something will piss me off, or I'll be bummed that something crashed and burned. I'll be okay. If my best friend just went through that exact same thing, what would I say they should do first? And of course, once I think of what they should do first, then the next step comes. And the next step. And the next step meaning kind of coach and advise yourself from a third party standpoint. I know you probably know you should do that. But here's the way that I make it stick. I write the letter. This means I sit down with a blank piece of paper and I write the letter to myself from the best friend's perspective. Dear Brendon, you're really ugly and stupid, but you're my best friend. So, buddy, here's what I recommend you do about the situation that you're in. Here's how I think you should think about it. Here's what I recommend that you should do. And I literally write the letter to myself from the perspective of my best friend. Does that make sense? That's what I call putting on my friend hat. And I write the letter dear Brendan. And sometimes it's just I write it, it's super short. It's on a little note card. I write like 10 sentences. Other times, man, I gotta dig deep. And that thing becomes like a four page letter to myself, you know, and we know from psychology specifically dealing with therapy and trauma that if you will write yourself a letter, it does significantly change your emotional well being. And writing it from this perspective, as a friend has, I have found, made my letters much more compassionate, much more thoughtful, much more positive. So I just put my friend hat on, put, I write myself a little letter. That's number one. Number two, my mind trick. Number two is the new chapter. And this is another writing technique because writing techniques tend to be the most profound in helping people deal with trauma or difficult days or challenges. And the new chapter is I literally write on a piece of paper. I write new chapter. And here's how I start. I say If I started all over again, and then I write, and this helps me separate the current conditions I'm in towards the future. I don't always do these two together, but sometimes, maybe like twice a year, I find myself doing both together. But the new chapter things, it's like if I just had a terrible day and I know how to handle it. I know what to do. I don't really need the friendship hat on. I kind of got the plan, but I'm just like, it's a big setback or. Or it's a new way to begin. I'm just like, new chapter. If I was beginning all over again, what I would do right now is right. It's kind of like the way I think about it is, you know when you turn 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 and you got that zero on the year and you feel like it's a brand new beginning, or like New Year's for you. Start from. Like, if you were going to start all over. And I'll just write that out and I'll just write four or five pages, like, okay, if I was starting all over, I would think this way. If I was starting over, my relationships would be like this. If I was starting all over, I'd take care of my health this way. If I was starting all over, and I just write over and over, I write that phrase, if I was starting all over, if I was starting all over, and it's like that new chapter. If life was a new chapter. So if I'm starting all over, and I'll tell you, I get so fired up doing that, I'm like, oh, I'd be healthier. I'd do this. And we have a form of that when we do our New Year's resolutions. But it's kind of weak when you say if I start, if I. It helps you by writing. If I started all over, here's what this is doing. It's helping me think, plan, and consider my future. And guess what I'm not doing. Ruminating about the shitty day I just had. I'm not on the old situation anymore. It just takes my mind off the old situation. And it reminds me about the personal control I have because I'm like, oh, I could actually do these things. Does that make sense? Because here's what gets you in trouble. The dark days and the disappointments, you know when those get bad and turn into depression. When you ruminate on it over and over. When you run it in your head 1 million times over and over, and each time it gets A little darker and a little darker and a little over 50 shades of grave and is worse and worse and worse and worse. And all of a sudden it's just this terrible disaster. You need to be careful of that. So that, that's how I trick my mind. I don't let my mind even do it. If I start over. These things last big ideas for you guys today. This is my favorite one mind trick number three, Buy tickets. This is something I say to myself because a old mentor of mine said this to me one time. I was a maybe 24, 25 year old man and I was a member of Kiwanis. And. And if you guys didn't know, Kiwanis is a. It's kind of like Rotary or Lions Club. It's a nonprofit organization that's dedicated towards service in the community. And I was in Kiwanis and I was the youngest one, hands down, like in the room. We'd get together every single month on a Tuesday and we'd have lunch and we'd have a speaker in and then we'd talk about a volunteer project we were going to do that month. And that was kind of how it went in Kiwanis for me. And so. But in my room, I was 24, 25 in the room, everybody, every Tuesday when we got together, everyone else was older. I mean, they were like 50s and 60s and 70s older. When I was 20, I was the youngest person in the room every single time. And I remember I was having a particularly challenging time because I was thinking about quitting my job. But I was scared because I didn't, I hadn't saved any money. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I just knew that I. I knew that the job wasn't the thing at the time, but I didn't know what it was. And so I was scared to make the leap. And I was just. I was kind of struggling with some existential stuff because, you know, it'd been four or five years, I hadn't had a girlfriend. And it was just frustrating. I was like dating, but I wasn't able. I just wasn't making real connections on when I was dating. And I was just unhappy in that part of my life. I didn't know what I was doing with my career. I didn't have a significant relationship. I was like, oh man, I'm just kind of. I didn't feel good. And so I was having a really down day on that particular Tuesday. And I went in and I was sitting next to this guy and he was One of the. Just one of the awesome Kiwanians that. Who was there. And he was. I think he was probably 59, 60 years old. He was in banking. Very successful, wealthy guy. Happy. Just. He was like a happy, go, lucky grandpa type, you know, Just a good dude. And I'm just kind of listing off to him all these things that suck, you know? And he says, what are you doing about it? And I said, well, you know, I. You know. And he says, well, I bet. And he said, I bet I know what's going on. He says, you're going home. You're probably watching too much tv, drinking too much beer and sitting alone too often, or you're going out and not having any fun. And da, da, da. And we're just talking. My mode was, yeah, I kind of. I go inside. So I kind of pull away from people when I'm unhappy. And so I was like, yeah, I kind of pull away, and I'm in my house. And he says, why? I know how to solve your problem. I said, oh, what is it? He goes, buy tickets. Buy tickets. What do you mean, buy tickets? He goes, I want you to open up the paper. Remember the papers? So he said, I want you to open up the paper. And he goes, I want you to see what's going on in your town, and I want you to buy tickets to whatever's coming up the next seven weekends. Is it. Is there a symphony coming to town? Buy tickets. Is there a ballet? Buy tickets. Is there an art museum? Buy tickets. Is there? He said, is there a concert? Buy tickets. And I said, what do you mean by tickets? I want you to buy 1, 2, 3, 4 tickets. And I want you to take your friends, and I just want you to go. I want you to buy tickets, and I want you to go. And I'm like, what the hell does this have to do with anything I'm even talking about? He goes, just buy the tickets and come back next month. Tell me about the tickets. And I'm like, no. And he literally pulls out his wallet, and I'll never forget, he sets down three 100 bills, and he goes, buy the tickets. Here's the money. And I'm like, what are you even. And I'm. I was literally so frustrated. It's a long story short. I'll try to keep it shorter. But. So I bought tickets. I got, like, a symphony ticket. I got a. There was like, a date. Dance troupe in town or something weird. There's a Dave Matthews Concert. And what else is. There's one other thing I Can't remember what it was. Shoot. There's something about the tickets. I went with one or two or three friends and went to them. And the second I remember even I remember the opening act for the Dave Matthews Band started and I was like, got it. Got it. Because sometimes when you're down and out, you got to get out and about. And so I was down and out, and he got me out and about. And then with your friends and you're socializing and it's in a new environment and things are happening, and my mind just started turning on again. I started getting all these ideas and these dreams that I don't know where they were. They weren't in my room, they weren't in my bed. These ideas and dreams, they weren't happening in my journal. The ideas and dreams, they weren't happening in my. My daily planner. It was like I was stuck there. So he moved me over here. Have you ever been, like, at a ballet or a symphony, an orchestra, and you're just sitting there and all of a sudden you feel amazing? Like, the music hits you, this idea comes in and you walk out and you feel amazing. Have you ever gone to a Broadway show? You went in and you were frustrated and freaked out. Cause all the horrible New York traffic, and all of a sudden you laugh your ass off and you leave the Broadway show and you feel like a million dollars. And now no problem is going to slow you down. That's buy tickets. Buy tickets to the seminar, Buy tickets to the event. Buy tickets to the art museum, the ballet. Buy tickets. And I mean, if you're down and out and your life sucks right now, go buy tickets for the next four weeks and I promise you're gonna be like, damn, buy tickets. That changed my life. Changed my life too. And I've learned ever since then, like, if I'm down and out, it's like, buy tickets. I hope you're having a better day. Now that we hung out a little bit and you worked on yourself. Do me one last favor. Listen to it again. If you're having a really tough time in your life, just take a long walk. Listen to the whole thing on the whole walk, walk the entire time, come home, start again. You're doing just great. I know you have a whole set of ambitions and goals and dreams in your life. I know that you are the high performer probably in your family or the group or the team that you lead. And so keep challenging yourself. Take that role model mindset. And remember, it's always okay to feel sadness. But there's so many coping mechanisms that help you work through it in this session right here. So revisit it. Okay with that? Until then, go out there as always, and live fully, love openly, and make a difference today.