How to Succeed: 5 Steps for Getting Ahead

I'm always asked, so, Brendon, how do I get ahead? You know, I've been struggling. I've been busting my head against the wall trying to figure out how I'm gonna get my breakthrough. I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure how to think about the next steps in my life. And some people, you know, they just been trying. Maybe you've been trying something for so long and it's just not there yet. What are the ideas, the strategies, the elements you need to put into your life to get to that next level? I've studied this for 17 years, and it's. It always seems to come back to one of five things. You know, the first thing it often comes back to is consciousness, becoming more aware of who you are and what you really want in your life. You know, some people would call it clarity, but I don't like clarity as much as I like the word consciousness because, you know, it's hard to be clear about things in your life if you're not present and aware to them. So if you're trying to figure out how you're going to get ahead, what is it specifically you want to get ahead to? And is it what you really want? Because a lot of people just say, well, I want to get ahead. And I say, what does that mean? They say, well, Brennan, I want to make some more money. And I say, great. Make money at what? And they say, well, I got this job, so I'm going to try and get ahead here at this job. And I said, but is the job what you really want to be doing in the first place? Because sometimes the busy work that you have in your life isn't your life's work. It isn't your real passion, your real drive, your real desire that your work feels like a hobby. It feels like you get lost into it because it's so great and so fun. And those, so many people out there are lying to themselves saying, well, I couldn't make money at doing X thing. You know, they have some big dream. They say I couldn't make money doing that. I say, what are you talking about? I know yoga instructors making six figures a year. I know piano teachers making seven figures per year. You can't go online and not find someone crushing it in any given topic area of life today that the business opportunity is there. It's just, will you show up in a disciplined, intelligent way, which we'll talk about, right? So it's becoming conscious. What do you really, deeply, truly desire to do? Because if you get ahead at things that you don't care about. Maybe you're climbing the ladder or you know, you're succeeding at something, but it's not your real thing. You know, it'll eat at you. It'll eat you from the inside out. It'll deaden the soul. Because, yeah, maybe you have some financial or material success at that thing, and maybe you even have some accolades. Maybe people appreciate you for it, maybe even paying people's mortgages and paying employees at it. But if it's not really your thing, then you're in trouble because you'll never feel internally like you're getting ahead because you won't integrate those successes to yourself because you don't find them mean, meaningful. So getting ahead begins with becoming conscious to what is it you truly desire? What would you love to do? Because you can build a business model around anything today. That is the great gift of the online world. That's what we've seen over and over and over worldwide. People in any given area crushing it. So what do you want to do? That's where we begin. What do you truly consciously, desire to do? Not what are you doing because you fell into it. That's not consciousness. Consciousness means consciously designing your life, designing who you are, deciding where you're going to go and what you really want to accomplish. The second thing that we have to have to get ahead is competence. Right? We have to have knowledge, skill, ability in any given area. It's not just one day you wake up with talent. It's that if you're really going to get ahead, you have to study your craft. You have to deeply study it. You know, I decided, what was it now, 18 years ago, that I wanted to help inspire and motivate people, and I wanted to coach people one on one on motivation and high performance, and I wanted to write books on the topics. So 18 years ago, I started reading a book a week on psychology, leadership, communication, marketing, anything I get out of my hand about human behavior and high performance. I was studying everything I could in psychology every single week. Now it's like people are like, wait, you've read a book a week for 17 years? I don't brag about it. I'm not like, oh, yeah, look at me. That was for my passion. I knew if I really wanted to succeed at something, I had to study it, and I had to study it deeply. And I couldn't, you know, spend all this time doing all the other things. So I had to study my craft. The great artists of our past history that's what they did. They did one thing. They had a true level of depth of study in that area. Now, maybe they dabbled in some other areas, too, but they became famous because they studied one area. And so what's your area? What's the thing you need to study on? Develop a deep level of competence into how to do it and how that world works. Because, you know, we have the saying in Montana that the time to have the map is before you enter the woods. But a lot of people have a dream and they run out into the woods and they just start trying stuff, and they take this path and this path and this path and this path. And because they didn't study best practices Sunday, they wake up and they're lost. They're confused about who they are and where they're at. And they're in this dark forest of the unknown with no plan to get out. They had no idea. They just jumped into something they didn't study before taking that leap. And I always say, you know what? Study, pay attention. Learn from the best model, the most intelligent, smart, successful people you can in any given area that you want to succeed in in your life before you get into it. Then develop competency by doing it over and over and over and over again. Don't do it once in a while, here and there, over and over and over. That's how you get competence. And that leads us to this third thing, commitment. If you really want to get ahead, it's going to take another level of commitment. I always say, people, they say, I want to get ahead, Brendan. I say, okay, well, if you're at this level of commitment, to get ahead means you're going to have to go to this level of. Of commitment. If you want to earn 10 times more, you have to go to 10 times more commitment in that area, aren't you? Right? You have to decide, okay, what is it specifically that I'm willing to give up and move out of the way now to focus on this thing, to make it a success, to truly work harder in this area and smarter in this area. And I mean, I'm really commit to it today. You know what commitment means? Getting rid of distractions. You know, stop believing that we can all multitask, do 50, 70 different things. It's not true. The most successful people in the world aren't doing 50 or 100 different things. They have a very defined area, sort of specialty. They focus. And they said, this is my thing. So getting rid of all the distractions, meaning, you know, if you're reading Celebrity gossip magazines. You're not committed to your craft, to your art, unless you are a celebrity gossip photography or a celebrity gossip writer or your celebrity gossip designer or, you know, a fashion person. I don't know. But most likely those are not contributing to either your life nor your bottom line. And if you're really going to develop competence, real skill, real talent in an area, you got to stop doing a lot of other things. It's why you don't have a lot of really famous NBA stars who are also really famous quarterbacks and also really famous tennis players. No, they're great at one thing. Olympians tend to be Olympic athletes in one area. Why? Because it takes that much commitment in one area to become great. That's how you get ahead. Commitment. You know, I think once you get a little more consciousness and we all grow in our congruence and our own ability to be more committed from there. It's getting coaching because you can do the best that you can do all day long. All day long. But if you're not getting feed feedback from your friends, your customers, your family members, people who you are trying to serve, then there's no way you're gonna go to another level. Because we can only hit, you know, we all have a level of competence, I guess, ceiling, if you will. We hit a top level in which we can take ourselves only so far. And then we need someone from the outside to look at and say, oh, hey, kid, you need to adjust this, man. Try doing that. Oh, have you thought of this? You know, when you're doing this, it's only this level needs to be this level. If you get somebody, somebody, and everyone says, well, Brent, I don't have any coaches. Really? Well, how many have you asked people? I don't have any coaches. Okay, great. How many did you ask? Are we failing in the asking or are we failing in the never approaching? Like, where is it? Most people don't have coaches in their life because they never sought them out. They say, I wish I had that. But they never actually sat down and said, hey, you know, I'm starting something here, and you seem to have competence in this area. Can we make an arrangement? Can I hire you as a coach? Can I pay you as a coach? Could we do something together? I mean, I started getting coaching informally from dozens of people in my industry just by asking. And, you know, now today I coach so many people I can't even count. I can't even, you know, it's like crazy. But I think that's what we have to Start figuring out who's going to coach you. And if you don't have a list of 10 or 12 people who you think could mentor you or advise you or coach you, then you're kind of grasping at hope and fate that maybe someday a coach will land on you. But, you know, I think you're going to have to go out just like every other area of success and work a little harder, a little more focus in the area to have success there. Same with coaching. You got to go get a coach. And then finally, last piece. Congruence. To get ahead, we have to be congruent with the best within ourselves. We have to find that magic, that part about us that's. That's energized and engaged and enthusiastic. We call it the charge, right? Having an internal charge and excitement for it. Being congruent with who we know we truly can be. And if you are currently at one level of success in life, you're probably being congruent with how your mind has been fashioning what you are capable of. Your mind has told you, well, I'm capable of this. So you've settled at that level, or you allowed that level, or it's gotten easy to be distracted away from improving because you're being congruent with what you think you really are. And sometimes the easiest way to shift someone and actually help them get ahead is to say, look, we got to change the way you think about yourself, man. You got to give yourself more credit. You've got to give yourself a bigger vision. Don't limit your vision for yourself based on what you accomplished yesterday. You can dream and you can grow into your best person. You can grow into new competencies, new skills, new talents. You can break through tomorrow. So have that vision for yourself. Set a new congruence in your mind. Say, you know what, I can become world class at what I do. I can become great at what I want to achieve. I can become a magnificent person who is loving and engaged and joyous in life. And you set your mind to it, and you really set your mind to it. And once you have that set in your mind, your body and your unconscious behaviors will start moving towards that. It will desire to be congruent with your very thoughts about yourself. If we can do those things, just decide to be more conscious, decide to go get more. Some competence in an area, decide to be more committed, go get a coach, and you can be congruent with the best within you. Then you can live the charged life. Sa.