How to Persevere in Tough Times

Foreign is an occurrence, not a person. You get that. So what if you failed? That's not you. Your identity is not of a failure unless you choose to make that so in your brain. Listen. The only people who think they're failures are people who ran a thought pattern that said that your last failure, that's not a finality, it's the start of your next growth. If it's not going well this week, if this chapter of your life is not going well, if you're in a season of real struggle, if you've had a couple bad months or the last couple years, it wasn't what you wanted, broken relationship, poor finances, difficult medical report, let down by many people. Let me tell you something right now, in your face, in your ears. Busting some goodness and growth day right here. Get this message. You're not done yet. You are not done. You haven't been knocked out. Maybe you got knocked down to the ground. Maybe world, universe, God, something for you feels like has been unfair. Maybe you're in this space where your mindset is just not good. In fact, you know it's stuck on this repetitive woe is me loop. Maybe you're in that place where it's just been so frustrating for so long. You're still in the grind. You thought you'd be at the top of the mile and you thought you would have broken through so long ago, but here you are, still in the fight, still scrounging, still in scarcity and still struggling. If you think you're the only person who's ever been there, let me share with you. You aren't. We've got this whole worldwide community of growth day strivers. We're all striving for a better life. There's a lot of ups and downs. A lot. There's so many days you want to quit. There's so many people, literally by the millions who've interacted with our brand or my brand over the years. And I can share with you this. The story of humanity is the story of struggle and progress. Sometimes it's chaotic, sometimes it's smooth. Sometimes things are going your way. Other times it feels like every single person is against you. But let me tell you something. Don't quit. You're not done. Don't give up on your hopes and dreams. Don't start thinking small. Don't stop blaming and shaming yourself, complaining your way into a dark hole. Don't do it. It's so tempting to disengage, to take a step back, to cage ourselves in our own fears. And frustrations and discouragement. I know it. You can hear it in my voice. I've been there. Sometimes people say, well, Brendan, you challenge us and you push us so much. You know, we appreciate it. But, man, be realistic. And I go, I'm realistic. Tell you what, the more that you have struggled, the more you recognize other people's abilities, including your own, to pull up, to lift up, to. To rise up, to climb out. And if you've been from places of poverty, you've seen people get out. If you've been in bad relationships and new. New friends who are in bad relationships, you saw people get out. If you struggled with something they said was insurmountable, and you saw other people struggle, but you saw them overcome. If you ever doubt any of that, get yourself away from your phone, Go to a bookstore, walk down that biography aisle, walk down that history aisle and get some perspective. People who've attained greatness in their life came from nothing. It doesn't mean they had it easy. It doesn't mean they had it perfect. It doesn't mean they didn't have days just like you might be having, or years just like you, you might be having. Even Churchill was stuck in, quote, unquote, the wilderness years. We can all get in that place where we feel like there is no hope, there is no reason to dream. There's nothing bigger. And then in the back of your head clangs that truth. You are not done. I will not be done. Why? Why? Why do you continue on? Because you have perspective. Because you have hope, because you have divinity, because you have today, you have this breath, you have tomorrow, and the next day after that. There's blank pages in front of you, page after page after page after page. The chance for you to reinvent, redesign, start over, try something completely wild or different, make that bold move. Or even just inch along a little bit more with a little more hope, a little bit more manifestation. And all of a sudden you're like, whoa, okay, I'm catching some momentum here. You're not done because you failed. Listen, failure is an occurrence, not a person. You get that. So what if you failed? That's not you. Your identity is not of a failure unless you choose to make that. So in your brain. Listen, the only people who think they're failures are people who ran a thought pattern that said that. That's it. That's all. That's the only people. They ran a thought pattern, said over and over, I suck. I'm no good. I'm not good enough. I'm unlovable. Here I go again. I keep failing. I keep ruining myself. I keep sabotaging myself. I'm awful, I'm ugly, I'm stupid. Over and over and over and over again, they speak the language of failure about themselves to themselves. That, sadly, but truthfully, is a choice. At some point, it becomes a conscious choice where we recognize we're the one running the failure thought process in our own brains. We keep saying it to ourself over and over. What if I'm not good enough? What if it's true? I suck. And over and over and over, we keep telling ourselves that same story. And we shape our own identity. When the truth is, failure is not us. It's an occurrence. It's an event. It's something that happened. Okay, your first marriage didn't go well. Okay. Is it okay to say you failed in that marriage? Well, it depends. If you say it from a place of discouragement and disempowerment, where you beat yourself up and shame yourself, probably not the best route. Can we all say that we failed at certain things? Sure. I failed in some conversations today with people. Didn't go the way I thought. But the failure isn't some epic catastrophic thing. I go, oh, that happened. That was an event. That didn't go the way I wanted it or what I would term a success. But I also realized that if failure is an occurrence, I realize it's also not a series and it's not final. I love to tell people, your last failure, that's not a finality. It's the start of your next growth loop. That's what it is. You see, when you failed at something, if you keep the perspective of the learning mindset, you realize, oh, hey, I can learn through this. Right? Yeah. Okay. It didn't go as I wanted. My expectations were broken. I am bummed about it. I can acknowledge it didn't work. I can even acknowledge I didn't show up in the right way with the right skills, capabilities, or preparation. I can acknowledge that in that situation, I did fail my own self. I failed. I can recognize that as an event or an occurrence without saying I am a failure. It's like, yeah, I failed at that. I can acknowledge that. We're in a culture today that says failure is not even a thing. I'm like, no, actually it does happen. Right? People do fail at things. And it's okay to say you failed a test. It's okay to say you failed. In that difficult relationship conversation when you got agitated, frustrated, angry, and, you know, screamed at somebody, that's okay to recognize as something that did not go right. And in fact, you can even bravely say it's wrong. We live in a culture that says there's nothing wrong, there are no facts and there's no failures. I'm like, oh no, there's facts, there's failures, and lots of people do wrong and do harm. We can acknowledge those truths and and at the same time use them as jumping off points to learning, to growth. Your failure is evidence that you weren't yet prepared. Or your failure is evidence that your intentions weren't clear. Or your failure is evidence that you and that other person need to work on boundaries and communications. It's just the beginning of learning. Most failures are. Are not final. Don't end your identity. In fact, most failures should spark curiosity, not shame. Ooh, write that one down. Today, ladies and gentlemen, failure should spark curiosity, not shame. If your failures keep sparking shame, who's to blame there? Well, we have to take control of our conscious thoughts and say, hey, that's funny. I keep running this loop of shame every time I do something that doesn't go right. Huh? I. No wonder I'm not feeling motivated this week. No wonder I'm not pushing for it because I feel like I'm done. Because I fail, I get discouraged. I'm no good. We gotta be careful. You're not done. You're at the start of the next growth phase. I think it's important too that a lot of people say, well, I'm dumb. I'm finished. I can't try anymore because people don't believe me. You know, they made fun of me. They judge me. Hey, listen. Great consciousness enters your life when you realize their opinions do not predict your outcomes. Their opinions do not predict your outcomes. Everyone thought that every great leader was at some point an idiot or a moron. Including Einstein, right? Every single person of great historical note at some point was so down and out and so judged by others as dumb, inarticulate, incapable, unworthy, or even bad. Mean, evil, plotting, greedy, not well intentioned. See, no matter what happens when you start climbing up on a major mountain, there's going to be people who point at you and say you're stupid. Their opinion about your capability, even if it's based on a recent failure, that's a snapshot of an event, of an occurrence, not a good judgment of a human's potentialities. Your past problems are a snapshot of a point in time. They are not you. You are not your problems. You are full of a potential that is Unmoored to your past history. We know this because people can change their lives dramatically. They can make new decisions, start new habits and routines and rituals that are empowering, that are healthy, that help them get progress, build real authenticity, personal freedom, abundance, we wealth impact. That comes from the fact that you realize, hey, no matter how I judge myself or how they judged me, there's a shift here. I can shift my mind to realize there's still potential. There is actually still gas in this tank. There is still years ahead. There are still blank chapters to be written. I was given that gift of a second chance in my life. I know many of you have, too. You had a second chance when you survived something that was very threatening or scary, physically or mentally, and you pulled through. And some of us have recognized that as a true gift. For me, it's a. I feel like it was a divine gift to get a second chance at, you know, breathing and living and loving and making a difference. When you get a second chance, you realize all those old stories you kept telling yourself, you know what those are? Dialogue in some old chapter when you weren't a good author. Now you have learned new perspective. You get to author or architect the next chapters. You get to design and produce the next chapters. Their opinions, well, those could be a snapshot of a certain period of time. Because it's true. Because their opinions could be true. There are people say, brennan, when you were a kid, you sure were dumb. And I say, I was, yeah, hey, Brennan, when you were in that one relationship, you know what? You weren't as nice as you should have been. Huh? You're right. I can acknowledge my past weaknesses or even my own inadequacies or where I failed without determining that's who I am forever. I go, yeah, I was pretty unskilled and unconscious at that point in my life. That was a long time ago. Today I've learned a lot. I'm engaged in self improvement and in personal development. I'm reading books and listening to podcasts and getting healthy, hanging out with good people. Listen to this stuff in growth day. I'm feeling pretty good now. This, today, this moment says I'm not done. Because this moment is better than where I've been. And even if this moment today, like I said at the beginning, it's a struggle. It's frustrating, it's hard, it's difficult. You are not done because you're going to experience a breakthrough. And that breakthrough is so predictable, it will stun you when I tell you what it is in a second, because listen if you've been feeling like you're done, I'm going to tell you why you've been feeling like you're done. You've been feeling like you're done because everything I've shared so far, your thought patterns, your worries about what other people think, but also because you've been in survival mode for too long, too long just trying to survive, just trying to get by, just trying to, you know, make that dollar handle the kids, get the things done. You've been in survival mode where you been breaking your own boundaries to care for everybody else and you haven't taken care of your own self. You've been in survival mode burning yourself out, been in survival mode worrying about your own ego and protecting yourself. You've been in survival mode. And listen, if it sounds judgmental at all, been there too. You know, after coaching people full time for 16 years, I think I've seen it all. You know, coach people in over 90 countries, I have a pretty good perspective about the human endeavor. And what I've noticed is there's always a breakthrough when people decide to get out of survival mode again and get back into service and expansion mode again. Serving other people, adding value again, expanding our own sense of expression, authenticity, that we realize we've been constricted. In survival mode, we're protecting. In survival mode, we're shutting down. In survival mode. Our circle of concern is just this moment, just a second, just this day. And then one day, all of a sudden, we remember tomorrow, one day remember we can help somebody. We remember we had dreams. We remember we have choice. We remember we can alter that thought, alter that story, alter how we show up, change jobs, change town, change relationships, change routines. We all of a sudden realize, whoa, this free will thing is pretty dang big right now. Let me go from this tiny myopic concern about myself and my circumstances and this day and say, what's the bigger future? Again, that's a choice. Some people don't do it, but you're doing it. That's why you're here. It's why you're in growth day. It's why you believe because there is a bigger future for you. That the divine or the universe, luck, God, cosmos, whatever you call it. I just believe there's higher potentials within each of us. Why? Because I've seen people manifest that decade after decade, people who you would never anticipate. You know, some kid coming out of some Irish mining town in the Rockies, not being able to talk, communicate, articulate, express himself, fearful, beaten up to Discouraged, moved around, shoved around, made fun of that little kid. He's in a dark room right now talking to you and millions of people every day. He's out there on the road. He's working with some of the most extraordinary people in the world. He's a lucky kid. I feel that way. I feel like I'm also not done because I know some of you listen, you've achieved a mountaintop. You made something happen. You're here and grow because you're a striver. You're an achiever. You're making it happen. And yet you got comfortable and you feel like you're done and you're wondering, is this all there is? Yeah, I can achieve a lot of things, but jeez, is this it? I'm here to tell you there is another level of aliveness in life, another level of connection, another level of growth and meaningful pursuits. And you'll learn more about that in Growth day. Trust the process. Realize transformation takes time, even when you're already at the top of some mountain. Because as you know, it's not about achieving the top of one mountain. It's about realizing there's another horizon after that, another vista after that. Beautiful. It is a long. It is a big up and down journey. The main thing is, don't stop. Don't get stuck. Don't believe you're done. Don't believe those thoughts that want you to shut down this week. Don't believe those worries that make you feel inadequate and small because something happened so long ago or even recently because that's an occurrence. It's not you. You. Your heart, your potential, your ability, your ability to serve and grow and build and become something more that's real. That's here. That's what Growth Day is all about. That's why we do this work. You're stronger than you think. And the future holds good things for you. Never forget that. Because every day is a great day to grow.