How Your Past Is Affecting Your MINDSET | Break Through to the Future You DESERVE

So few people in their lives have ever made the decision to go for an extraordinary quality of life. They're just trying to get by, which is understandable. It's just the problem is it's not really sustainable. They're realizing they have nothing left in the tank to deal with the hard stuff that push into that decision to do whatever you do better, to do it in a way in which you care about that excellence and that drive, not just for you, but the people you're going to serve. I'm not interested here in sharing a philosophy. My wish is that you make self improvement a practice, a genuine daily practice as we talk about how to succeed, especially at the next level of success. I want to talk about today, about the time zone problem. And I know some of you will think that's tied to remote work. Anyone have teams and other time zones that you're working with? Yeah, that's hard too, right? You know how hard that is? It's one of the great challenges of modern work. But that's actually not what I'm talking about. But if you know how hard it is to work with teams on other continents, in other time zones, then you're really going to like this one because many of you are also remotely working psychologically. Many of us, when we're struggling, we're in the wrong time zone and we can't figure it out. I've never seen something like this so predominant as the last maybe three, four years. And what I mean by this is many people, when they approach their day, they're really approaching their day, not from this day, but, but from their past, their old desires, their old way of working. They're trying to build on yesterday and they're bringing just yesterday's tasks into today. And yesterday's tasks tend to dominate most of their day. And if yesterday's tasks didn't do it, then in the present moment, they're serving the immediate needs directly in front of them. They're fighting fires, they're opening up emails, they're going through texts and they're in reaction mode all day. They're consuming, they're taking it in, they're doing whatever is in front of them. And so it's just like, it's just this anxiousness to get through it all. An anxiousness from yesterday, an anxiousness from today and the day. Even if you've got your warming hot green tea, you got your earmuffs on listening to neural beats, you've turned the screen down, you got your blue light blockers and you're Just staring there and you're trying to find a rhythm, but you're working in the wrong time zone, even though you feel calm. And here's what I mean by that. There isn't another level of success unless you learn to reorient yourself to a simple idea. You're not working the past, and you're not responding to the immediate needs. The right time zone in success at work. Remember, this is today's topic, Success at work. And your work might be your mission, your life's purpose, your job, starting a movement or just getting through the day. The actual orientation is, I am building the future. That's what I'm doing today. I'm not answering emails. I'm building the future of this company. I'm not just trying to finish that one thing. I told myself, though, we'll talk about that later today. There needs to be an orientation towards, we're building something. Everyone say it with me. We're building something. You're building your future. If you're starting the day and you're so disconnected from that, we know psychologically you're going to be less motivated throughout the day because you don't have a destination, a purpose, something pulling you forward, a calling that's actually motivating you forward. Now, I know this is where it gets a little bit complicated, because influencers will often want to say things like, well, Brendan, that's not true. People just have stuff to do. And not every job can plan for the future. I'm like, every job can plan for the future. And in fact, the reason we struggle as a country is we don't teach people, every job has to plan for the future. The ghost towns we have in America did not get taught to plan for the future. We weren't living in the right time zone. We were trying to optimize old things, old ways, but we weren't simultaneously building the new ways. Now, of course, any given week, you might look at your week and go, hey, Brendan, 80% is just operations. It's just managing things, man. I'm like, okay, where's the 20% of innovation? The great companies, the great leaders, they're living like 20% into the future. 20%. They're dedicating R and D. They're thinking about the next thing. The people who are struggling and declining are always fighting fires and trying to rebuild some old story. But we have to do this in our own lives, right? Sometimes what ends up happening is you're running the same routine with your wife that you did five years ago. You're Dealing, you're dealing, you're dealing with your 12 year old like you did when they were 8, you know, oh, these kids are changing today. Yeah, and your parents thought you were nuts too. We have to understand, it's like we have to adapt into the new time zone preemptively. I'll give you an example. When I came into what my industry has become known as the influencer or the creator type economy, we used to call it the thought leader industry. Because back then you had to be a thought leader to get press or to get a stage or to get a booking. You kind of had to be an expert in a given topic. Today, just great bikini and a good lighting. I don't know. But back then it was a different industry. And so back then it was, you know, when I came in the industry and my goal in my entire career, success to me at work meant one thing. I can write books and get paid to write books. That was my dream. I just wanted to be a writer. At the very beginning, I just, that was the sole focus. I just wanted to be a writer. But I quickly found out, well, if you want to become a writer and you want to get a publishing contract, well, you better get known a little bit. You better be an expert in what you're doing, you better have some consulting clients, you'd better be out there in the press, you better get some stages. And I was like, okay, I guess I'll start playing that game, you know. So I started learning to do all of those things with the only intent was I just wanted to sit home and write books. That was the goal. And so as I started doing those things, I started noticing something. That way of thinking and that way of working sucked. I would go to these speaking conferences and I would watch all the politics happening at a speaking conference. I was like, oh, you're a double gold designated hoop dee hoop on the stage. And there was like all these rules about who could be there and were you an official speaker? And then I'd go to these writing conferences and if you didn't work with this publisher, you were this and that. And I'm watching and the first thing I notice, I'm like, wow. The conversations that everyone is having here are status conversations, not future conversations. And soon as you pick up on that, you start understanding high performance in real life, because high performers build the future. So I started, wow, they're all talking about status. And am I right? Am I that? It's like status is not the right conversation when we're talking about contribution Innovation, changing the world. You know, even some of the disciples for Jesus weren't the most likely picks. Their families didn't necessarily come from status. And some of them really didn't operate well in life yet. So it's not always about status. There's a higher service and a future that we're all going to try to build. And so I saw this happening and at the same time, what I saw happening, the 20% of my focus outside of writing was, you know what, this online thing is becoming a big thing because, you know, some, all these authors, they don't have any control of their career like any. They sell a million books, but they never got one customer contact. And I thought, that's crazy. You could sell a million books at Barnes and Noble, but Barnes and Noble doesn't give you their name or email. I was like, that's crazy. That's not a business. I was like, oh, I don't like that. I don't like that at all. I want to be able to talk to my people. I don't want to hope that I can get on today's show to talk to my people. I want to talk to my people. And so I started thinking, okay, what's the better way? And blogging was becoming a big thing. You know, YouTube was about kicking off at the time. Social media really wasn't here yet. But there was a group of people online and they were doing online marketing and they were starting to create courses. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. So I studied that while I was writing, I was living in one time zone. Today, what works today? What can I do today? But 20% of my time I was really studying the future. Where is this going? What does this look like? How are they getting these videos on the Internet to play without the, you know, no one really remembers. Some of you remember, do you remember you tried to play a two hour course video and it would take you 20 hours to watch? You know, a two minute video would actually take you like 30 minutes to watch. You remember all the rendering and the time, you just sit there going, oh my God, when is this going to go? And then the modem would crash and then you'd get, you know, all this. So this was all happening, it was way early, but I was like, that's the future. I'm going to figure out how to do that. So as I was figuring out the book, I ended up launching one online through these tools using video and websites and online marketing. Then I did a big course and that really took off. That Was crazy how much that took off. And then it was like, oh, okay, here's this thing. So I went back to those same speakers conferences and those same events, and this time I came and I said, I want to tell this room about the future and how hard we've all been working to get on those stages, to get on the media, to hopefully get enough business. I'd like to tell you about that. And I honor all of you, and you all have been doing it a lot longer than I have. But I also think there's a new way that will maybe keep you home with your families more. Because back then you had this situation where a lot of these speakers, they were traveling. I mean, constant. They were doing 100, 150, 200 gigs a year to pay the bills. And I was like, you can take a week to film a course and three weeks to prepare its launch and in a month make seven times more. Let me show you what we just did. And they hated me for it. Who's this kid? Think he's telling us how to do it a better way? He's not. He doesn't even have, you know, we have the name tags. He doesn't even have the four flags underneath it. How'd he get on stage? He's not in part of the club. He's not. He doesn't have any status here. Why'd they let him up? I've been in this room for seven years. I'm a professional speaker. They let him up, but not me. I was living in a different time zone. This is a different time zone. Someone in your industry or your job or at work, someone who's going to come up and take your job, someone's going to replace you, someone's going to push right past you, get paid more, get promoted. It's hard to tell people this today sounds awful, but they might be living in a different time zone. And we live in a time right now with this big conversation. Everyone's terrified of AI and oh my gosh, AI is going to take all these jobs and all that. I'm like, yeah, it is. And there's like, no, don't say that. That's terrible. It's going to take a lot of jobs and it's going to create a ton of jobs and it's going to make a ton of jobs easier so that we can do better things. And the fear mongering about it, I have never seen anything like it. But we are living in a culture that is dominated by trying to go back to a past that never existed, by the way, because we have this nostalgic bent. We all believe that nostalgia. Every generation has this nostalgia fight. Right? Your grandparents had a nostalgia fight. You can read books and texts from, like, the late 1800s, where they're bemoaning the lazy kids who do nothing but play games. You can read books and texts and articles about every generation, complaining about every generation and complaining about the new thing. Oh, all these kids, they just sit around all day listening to the radio. Oh, all these kids, all they do is sit around watching television. All these kids, all they do is sit around playing games. All they do is. And you know what? That all did happen. And innovation happened and happened and happened. And everyone who bemoans every rollout of every new technology, every new innovation, they always get left behind.