How to See Yourself as a Good Person

The wins W I n s. When you win, when you have a success that day, a good conversation, good feedback, you finished the thing, you got the deal. What you have to do is learn to integrate that into your identity. And like I did that, I did pretty good. You got to see in your identity and your esteem that you have achieved that. Otherwise you'll never feel like you can achieve anything. You've got to integrate your goodness. You got to integrate your goodness. What does this mean? Well, let me give an example about how we talk about this in success mindset, and then we'll apply it to this particular question of mattering. Well, if you've ever heard me teach high performance, I often tell high performers and achievers, you've got to learn to integrate the wins. The wins W I n s, meaning when you win, when you have a success that day, a good conversation, good feedback, you finished the thing, you got the deal. What you have to do is learn to integrate that into your identity. And like I did that, I did pretty good. You got to see in your identity and your esteem that you have achieved that. Otherwise you'll never feel like you're going to achieve anything. I know people who've achieved so many things, they feel like they've never achieved anything in their life. They have this long laundry list of incredible internal and external accomplishments. They've overcome fears, they've built amazing things, and yet they feel terrible and like they're incapable. Why? Because all those little things they want, they never celebrate it, but they never integrate it. And going, oh, that's. I did that. That's who I am. I am capable of that. Well, in the same way with teaching achievers to feel the sense of contribution and meaning and progress and joy and mental strength that comes from recognizing their own achievements, the same thing applies in did I matter? You have to integrate the goodness of your life, of your life, the good things that you have done in your life. I know some of you, Brady, I ain't done nothing yet. I've done nothing. Yes, you have. You said that kind word to another. Maybe you didn't know they needed it right then, but you did it. You opened some doors for somebody. You did a favor for somebody. You helped on that project. You showed up for a loved one in need. You ran that errand for them. Sometimes it's so simple, but sometimes you've made a choice. In fact, I would argue you've made the choice way more than you even conceive of because you've never integrated your goodness. You can't even conceive of the number of times you made the choice to be kind versus hurtful, to hold your contemptuous criticism against somebody and decide not to be rude or awful or mean. The number of times you didn't lash out in anger when you know you could have. See, we matter just as much on the choices we did not make as the choices we do. All those times you chose not to lie, cheat, steal, be harmful, hurt others, push others down, take the easy road, do something that's illegal. All of those times you chose not to do that, that was demonstrating a morality of goodness. And what's happening is you probably just never integrated those into I'm a good person because I'm a good person. I matter in this world because there's so many people out there who don't make that choice and they're hurtful to others and they've really caused tremendous harm. You chose not to do that. And even if you did do it, you messed up. You did hurt somebody. I mean, I've worked with people in prisons through a lot of my career, and they often get my books for free. And I get these stories or these letters that are profound. They made a huge error in moral judgment. They did something that was wrong, and they know that they did. It was wrong. And we've all done something that we know that was wrong. But we have to choose whether or not we imprison ourselves in that moment that we did something wrong, or we choose to reflect and be open to the reality that we've done a lot that is good. And the choices we made for good, the good things we've done for others, and the good choices we made not to do harm to others, all of that adds up to the goodness. And when we can sense our own goodness. But most importantly, at a practical level, we try to be good to others. We try to make good choices for ourselves, our families, our loved ones, our careers, our mission, our purpose, our impact. When we try, that is mattering. Whether you count it or not is the question. And that comes back down to that first question again, who decides? At some point you just go, you know what? Yeah, I'm trying here. And that matters. It matters that you're trying to. But you'll never feel like you matter unless you integrate the fact that you've tried, that you succeeded, that you made those choices. If you don't integrate your own goodness, I just want to let you know, ain't no hope that you're ever going to feel like you matter. What will happen is you will ping pong from one thing to another to another, another looking for satisfaction, looking to feel good, Hoping something external sparks enough change in you that one day you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great. You will chase the rest of your life and be blind to the choices that have made you good. As soon as you can accept and integrate your goodness, let me tell you what life feels better. So how do you do that? I'm going to tell you the most practical and simple way. How do you integrate your goodness? You learn to start journaling, period. You learn to start discussing it, thinking it, and reflecting on it, period. It is the most important thing that you need to do in your life, is capture some of the goodness of your life, get it out of your head, put it on a piece of paper, use your growth day journal. That's what I use. I just use, like, I literally use the app. I just journal. I'm like, oh, here's some things I did today and some choices I didn't make. Like, if you looked at my journal, there's a lot of like, felt really angry, didn't lash out. That reminds me, like, I made a choice. It was good that day. Okay. I sent this audio to that person today. Haven't heard back, but I feel good that I sent it. When you recognize the good things you do, you start to feel like you matter more.