Mashup: How to Improve Your Mental and Physical Energy

The number one challenge to long term health is nutrition and movement. Number one and number two. And people say, no, no, no, it must be sleep. I'm like, number one and number two are the greatest weapons you have for greater sleep, energy, mental and physical and spiritual strength or vibrancy. I just call it energy in high performance training. What is my energy? Do I have the energy to serve? Do I have the energy to focus? Do I have the energy to go to the gym? Do I have the energy to be nice to my spouse and my partners and my friends? Do I have the energy to do the work today? Like for me, when my energy is low or it is dipping, I always, always go, what is causing that? It's almost always two things. If my energy dips low in the day, I always know there's two culprits. One, something happened that bothered my brain. I got annoyed, frustrated or hurt by something. I got annoyed, frustrated or hurt by something. And it happened recently, it happened in the last day or two and it's affecting my energy right now. Your energetic state right now is a hangover. Your mood right now is a hangover effect. Not always negative, can be positive, but it's an effect of something, right? Input, output, cause, effect. That's real. So I'm like, okay, what has hooked me? What has angered me, what has frustrated me? And then I'll do something like Byron, Katie's teaching on the work. And I'll just flip the question or I'll flip the feeling. I was like, okay, what would my life be like without that thought? Is that thought true? What's the opposite of that thought? And I'll just question those things that annoy me, frustrated or hurt me. And then I'll do the physical work again of releasing those things. And if I need help with releasing those, many of you guys know I love and invested in the tapping solution. So I'll just tap. I'll just go into my mind for those who know tapping and I'll just do a tapping routine. For those who want to learn tapping, you can learn it in the Growth Day app. There's a course in there on it already. And so I'll just do something physical to release that tension. But again, I said there's two reasons probably for my low energy is one, something mentally or emotionally, it hooked my brain and it's lowering the quality of energy I feel in life. The second one for me, which is big, is the last 72 hours of physical exercise and nutrition. It's like you feel right now what.

You Consumed and how you moved in.

The last 72 hours. Most people think it's only during the day. No, the food you ate three days ago, that's still in your body. The nutrition from that, the macros from that, whether you burned it off or.

Not, the energy, the energetic effect culminates.

One day, two days, three days. That's why sometimes people, if you've ever done a cleanse or something, you don't feel that much different in the first day or two. But by day three or four, you start getting this amazing clarity why that 72 hour cycle of biology that we humans have. It's why when I know I'm going to teach a seminar to you all, I'm going to go like I've been blessed to. A lot of the industry knows we teach the single two hardest events in the world when it was High Performance Academy and then certified High Performance coaching. These are literally nine hours a day on stage, often by myself. And used to be now I've gotten a little smarter about it, but it was intensely difficult. And if you see me on stage, I'm not sitting like I am now in this little room in quarantine, I'm like bouncing. The whole time we were dancing the.

Whole time I'm running back and forth.

The flip chart down in the audience, walking around. I do a marathon a day in steps, jumps and movement. It's unbelievable. I got to eat three times the calories to pull off each of those days. And I can tell you when I'm on stage and I'm not feeling it, I don't go, wow, what just happened last hour? I'm like, okay, what was the last three days here? When was I moving? How was I recovering? What was I eating? When was I moving, how was I recovering? What was I eating? And I'll run that through over and over and I'll identify. I'm like, oh, you know what? There was that one hour after that stage, I was all hyped, I didn't eat, or oh, you know what? There was that time, you know what, I should have spent another 20 minutes meditating or sleeping or I just run back. So I want you to do that anytime you don't feel well. I really want to cue you to develop the habit. This is like my advanced habit. If I don't feel well, I'm like, okay, 72 hours. What hooked my brain or my ego, maybe frustrated, angry, upset. Let me release that right now. That's the first thing, a release technique again. Second thing is, okay, have I moved and what did I eat? So it's like, oh, on Friday, I had those three glasses of wine versus that one. Got it. That's a lingering effect. Okay, that's good to know. Or, oh, you know what? I really just wanted to cheat and I did. But now I'm really. I'm paying for it. And listen, I'm not here to judge anybody. Whatever you want to eat, consume the stuff that you do. Not my business. My business is reminding you of wellness, is experience of life. And you have either defined what wellness looks like and feels like to you, or you have not. And because I have, this is so important to me. I hate when I don't have this. Lacking energy to me is so painful that I structure my life to ensure I have it. I don't know about you, but I've laid in hospital beds for days. I don't know about you, but I've served in hospice and saw people who couldn't get out of bed and had their last breaths. I know about you, but I've had those times on stage or service or moments with family or friends when I didn't feel energy. And because I didn't feel energy, I didn't do a good job for them. I hated those moments. I want to do a good job for people, and I think to do a good job for people, I got to care for my energy. And so I always tell people, if you haven't gotten healthy for yourself yet, do it for the people around you who are getting the shrapnel of your bad energy. Bad energy, negative energy. There's shrapnel from that. There's emotional trauma from that. There's stuff from that that we got to make sure we release and not hold onto. And I know you guys know all this, but I hope it helps you. The practice I have is a 72 hour assessment of my energy. Whenever I dip, I'm like, let me do my little 72 hours. Where was my ego? Hooked, annoyed or hurt? Let me let that go. What was my fueling routine, my movement routine? Oh, no wonder. I feel like crap. I've been sitting for three days. Oh, my back is mad. I forgot to stretch. I didn't open up my body and my breath with a workout, a walk, a bike, a run, a hike.

I didn't move. No wonder.

Oh, gosh, let me go. Come on, honey, let's go for a walk and just get that moving back in. Get that movement back in. For those who've studied me with high performance work before, I Recommend Like a 2x2 or 3x3, once a week you do a HIIT training and once a week you do a 60 minute cardio training. That's a 2x2, a 3x3 is. You're just adding more to that. So you're doing a one session hit, one session long cardio, one session some other type of movement that you love to do that just opens up your body and gives you flexibility. Maybe like a yoga or something. But whatever your routine is, did you move? Everyone knows the number one challenge to long term health is nutrition and movement. Number one and number two. And people always say, no, no, no, it must be sleep. I'm like, number one and number two are the greatest weapons you have for greater sleep. It is your nutrition and it is your physical movement that gives you the ability to sleep well. Now guess what? When you have reverence for life and you're releasing that tension throughout the day emotionally letting go of that ego or that hurt, now you sleep like a baby. I've been blessed with sleep for a long time. Not because it came natural, because I sucked at it. And I said, I got to get better at this. So I changed my nutrition, I moved more, I did more emotional releasing of tension and those are part of my days. Remember, wellness is not something you do once in a while. It is the experience of life. You have to do these many times a day. Also for those who have studied for a long time with energy. Every 45 minutes I'm up, I'm bouncing, I'm moving, I'm opening up all the meridians on my body. I'm taking 10 deep breaths and bouncing in place and closing my eyes to rest. That energetic movement every hour, that breath work every hour, that opening meridians every hour. It's how I'm annoying all the time. It's like you're like, you hang out with me, like, wow, that guy goes all day and he's just, he's in it all day. I had to train that. You're training your focus right now. You're training your energy, you're training your ability to serve. It's happening right now and it happened last 72 hours too. How do you gain some more emotional.

Mastery in your life so you can handle those difficult times when you get frustrated, when you get down, we get like beat up and like chewed out and spit out by the world. What are you going to do to be your best self? That is the topic of today's conversation. That emotional masteries part, that emotional intelligence we hear so much about, that Ability to handle the difficulties and challenges of life with grace, or a plume or being centered in the middle of all this chaos and turmoil. How do you be your best? That's the topic of today. We're talking about motivation at a deeper level. Maybe you haven't had with me before. The utmost, most important area of emotional mastery is mastering motivation. Now when I say emotional mastery, you're like, wait, isn't motivation is the topic an area? I'm like, no, motivation. Motivation is an emotion, right? A motivation is an emotion that you feel, that you feel a drive, a sense of hunger, a sense of want, and sense of desire to make something happen. I believe motivation is one of the most important things we have to master in our total emotional sort of toolkit. Because if you can emotionally feel motivated every day, almost everything else can fall in line. If you're emotionally motivated to be a better mom, be a better caregiver, be a better parent, be a better lover, be a better entrepreneur, be a better business person, be a better contributor to the greater world, when there's a motivation pulling you forward out of bed each day into the office, into real life, to be your best, then everything changes when you lose motivation. You and I both know the loss of motivation is the first gate to suffering. You lose motivation now, you don't feel like doing anything. You don't feel like doing anything. You don't work out. You don't feel like working out. You don't feel like doing anything. You don't feel like doing anything. You don't want to do your goals. Don't feel like doing your goals. Feel unfulfilled. Feel unfulfilled. Feel unsatisfied. Feel unsatisfied. Feel like life is meaningless. It is a slippery slope when you lose motivation. But the issue is no one has motivation 247 all the time. Motivation is an emotion you learn to cultivate by using your mind, your body, your greater consciousness to ensure that you feel that pull of purpose, that you feel that energy inside that says, I want to create, I want to contribute, I want, I want to be my best self. I want to connect with people. And so motivation is something we're going to have to generate on a consistent basis. You have to learn to bring the joy. Because the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates energy. Motivation is something. Me, the motivation guy, I have the best selling book of the entire century with motivation in the title. It's called the Motivation Manifesto, if you haven't read it. And the motivation Manifesto is like, if anything is Imbued in that book. It is like the sprocity and this fierceness and this tension to living our best lives. But it has to be, like, generated, because even though I'm the motivation guy, there's plenty of days I wake up and I'm like, I don't feel like it. There's plenty of days, there's plenty of moments where, just like you, I'm just like, I'd rather be lazy and do nothing right now. And that's okay. That's part of homeostasis. That's part of our human body to want to power down, to relax, to chill out. But too much of that can lead to an unfulfilling life. So we must learn to generate the emotions of drive, desire, go get in this. Whatever you want to call motivation. And so it's something that we have to learn to stoke. Motivation is an emotion we feel by either luck or by purposeful conscious design.

I just choose to design it into.

My day every single day. Motivation is driven by certain things. You have a spark, you have something that sustains it, and something grows it. Okay? The spark of motivation, which is how I anchor into being motivated each day, is ambition. All motivation begins with the desire or hunger and ambition for more. Whether that's more depth or more connection, or more contribution or more abundance or more wealth or more love. Like, we just want more of something. And that says, I want to go get that. Like, we see a fancier car, it's better than our car. I want to go get that. We see, like, a deeper love of relationship between two people. I say, I want that in my own life. Sometimes it's a visual cue. Something we see makes us want something, right? Not too far from here, there's a beach that I strolled on vacation, I don't know, a couple years ago. And I said, I'm going to live here. And it was a motivation. It was a cue. I saw something desired, it, wanted, it went after it. So sometimes it's a visual. It's a cue out in the world that says, I want more of that thing. And ambition can be visually cued for some people. If you just wake up. I mean, think about it. You wake up, you grab your phone, you're like. And all of a sudden, you don't have any motivation. Instead, you look through all this stuff, and all it did is make you feel like you're not enough or it distracted you, or it upsets you or created anger, anxiousness. You got to be careful how you're using cues to start your Day I use cues to start my day motivated. And those cues to start my day motivated are things like, I literally wake up and I'll wake up and I'll think of things that I'm grateful for and that I want to give in life. I'll wake up and I'll think about someone I want to do something nice for or surprise today. I'll think of something I can be excited about today, or I'll as soon as possible in the morning, revisit my ambitions, list my goals list. I'll look at them. I'll not wander through the day looking at social media and then, oh, I guess it's time to work and look at my goals. It's like my goals. I mean, in the first few minutes of the day, I'm revisiting them. And what I'm doing is when I'm looking at my goals or my agenda or my schedule, I'm looking at it. I'm thinking, okay, why do I want this? What would life be like? Like this? How could I go get it? What should I do today to make that happen? And that motivates me. That's my list of goals, my list of ambitions, the things that can excite me. In other words, it's very intrinsic goals. It's intrinsic rewards that I'm after. I'm like, if I go do that, I will feel better. If I could have this, I'd be happier. It's not that I can't be happy with now, but. But I want to pull. Like, if I can have that future pull, that's going to motivate me to go do stuff, right? I have to literally generate that in my mind. And so when I have that connection in the morning, then my takeaway for you is connect with your ambitions every morning, very first thing in the morning. Somehow part of your morning routine. Connect with your ambitions. Look at them. Why do you want them? What would you get from that? How would you feel from that? What would that generate? Why would that be more meaningful? Really? Connect with that ambition every single morning and you'll start to notice, you feel better. You also know this reality that motivation wanes with attention. Meaning if we don't give our ambitions, our goals, a lot of attention, the motivation just goes away. Because motivation is either fueled by our attention or by momentum. It either takes reflection or action to generate serious, sustained motivation. Either reflection or action, because ultimately from the reflection, that gives us clarity, and clarity can give us confidence, or action can give us momentum. And when we have momentum, motivation is way Easier to cultivate, generate and sustain, obviously. So these are really important concepts. Every morning, get very close to your goals ambitiously. What are those things that you want, desire, need and would enjoy and what do you need to go to get? That's the intrinsic type of things, the things we'll feel good about, the drive, satisfaction, fulfillment, meaning excitement in us. But I also have my extrinsic meaning my external cues or goals or rewards that also I revisit. So for me, example, when I always tell you, wake up each day and at some point say, who needs me on my A game for me, every morning I re anchor down into my relationships. I think about, okay, if I don't show up today and do a good job, then my wife and I have a lower quality of life, then I can't support my mom, then I can't support my team, Then all these people who count on me every day for motivation or count on me for leadership, or count on me for support, they don't get that from me. And I tap into that reality that if I don't show up for somebody today, then you know what, by the end of the night I'll feel worse about myself. But also it will impact other people. Because you cannot have real high powered mental motivation without a connection to other people. We are social animals, so we have to think about, okay, what should I do? How can I contribute in a way that serves other people? So where that internal one is about self and satisfaction and fulfillment and meaning personally, that's tapping into our own passions, desires, wants and hungers. That external one is ultimately about service, about giving or taking care of or being the caretaker of other people. And you cannot just keep starting your day. I guess I'll get some coffee and read the news and see what's on social media, or hop into the car and listen to trash talk radio, or turn on the TV and hope to find motivation later in the day. Like, you want to kick off the day, kick off the day with motivation. Like, get all ready in the morning immediately in a good state of mind. When I'm in a great state of mind, it's like, bam, the day goes. And you know, if you start the morning in the right frame of mind, motivated, driven, because you're connected to what drives you and what will serve other people. Then when you start, like running out of gas at noon, 1, 2 or 3, it's easier to fuel that flame than to start a new fire, right? Because some people just keep waiting. They don't even think about, I guess I should be motivated until they've lost it. I want you to start the morning with it and sustain it throughout the day by revisiting. Remember, the secret to all of motivation is revisiting those whys. It's revisiting that ambition that you have for your life, for more, for others, for contribution. That's everything, right? That's everything. And if you get away from that too many days, too many weeks, too many months, I'm just here to tell you you're really going to struggle. So I hope that helps. Every morning, everybody, every single morning, I really want you to connect with that. Okay, what am I motivated? What am I driven by? And that's going to really, I can't explain how much that's going to help you. You will feel it and you will know it if you will do it every morning. Okay? Motivation starts in the morning, but it's also sustained by that morning frame of mind. So that's really key. That's the first idea behind motivation. Connect with your ambitions first thing every single day. Give attention to that every single day. Here's something I don't often talk about, but it's important for me because it's very easy for me to be really effective in the mornings. And then that afternoon, two, three o' clock and I could just be like, man, I want to go outside, take a walk, come back, turn on some Netflix, eat some carbs. That can be my afternoon if I'm not careful. So here's what I do. I have a checkpoint in the mid afternoon to recognize, reward and appreciate anything that I have done today. Anything that I have done today. And that midpoint checkpoint for me on my phone, I just have an alarm. Mine tends to go off around 2:30 or 3:00 clock in the afternoon. It just flashes to me and it says what's been great today? What's been great today? And so that will to me, all right, it's time to visit what's been great today. So just think about something I've done. It could be like I answered 10 emails today that I have been avoiding.

Good job.

It can be as simple as I made that one call, I said I was going to call, did it, I shot that content, created that thing, whatever, some type like listen, motivation is often driven by recognition. So recognize what you have done so far in the day, early afternoon. Then what I do in order to keep myself motivated even more, because I've set in my mind I want to be a person who's excellence driven. What I will do is I Say, okay, here's what's great so far. And then I ask a simple question. How do I complete this day with excellence? Just a simple touch point in the afternoon. How do I complete this day with excellence? So I will look at the rest of the day, whether that's two hours more, four hours more, five hours more, six hours more, whatever it's going to be for me. And I go, okay, how do I think through the rest of this day with real excellence? And when I can connect with that, I'm telling you, it's just so part of me and it really makes me want to serve. So please think about having a mid afternoon connection point to keep yourself motivated. You'll feel a whole different quality of life. Come in. I promise it's a different experience for people because most people, they're just running and gunning through the day. They don't realize or understand or accept how challenging it is to lose motivation. And so they've gone, many people, they've gone weeks without being motivated. They're going through the motions, but there's no energy, there's no emotional pull towards something better. And because they're lacking that emotional pull, what ends up happening, they dog it, they don't contribute as much, they react and sort of create. And all of a sudden a couple weeks later they're like, I don't know why I'm so unfulfilled. Well, no, duh, you're so unfulfilled because you haven't been tapping into that emotion of motivation. When we lack motivation, it is a slippery slope to suffering. So please recognize that you must cultivate more motivation. What else can you do? Well, I'll tell you in a second. Ambition, attention to those ambitions, effort towards those things. I think all of that is really, really, really clear. But I also really believe that a lot of motivation is simply lost because of fatigue. So let's say you're doing all those things, but you're wiped out, you're tired. Like a lot of motivation really rests on how you feel physically. If you feel lethargic, you feel tired, you have the flu, it's like it's harder to be more motivated. You can still do it by doing what I'm talking about. Re cue yourself, reconnect with those things. But health wise, it's really critical for you to say, okay, if I want to be motivated long term, I need to feel greater levels of mobility and energy in my body. You see some of these practices, this breath work that I do that I'm activating and Opening up my body so that my body says, let's go, versus right? So my body's not like, oh, I ate this terrible thing. Instead, my body says, I feel refueled. I feel ready to go. Let's go. So I manage my sleep, my diet, my health in ways that support my mental clarity and energy. And I know that sometimes people think motivation is just a mental game. I'm like, yes, but your mind and your body are connected. If your body is lethargic, so is your mind. Right? That brain body connection is real, y'. All. And I know you know that you've been sick, you've been tired, there's times when you've been out of shape, you feel terrible. So I'm here to encourage you, as I always do, if every single month in high performance, I have to cheer you on to get in better health, to prioritize your health, to sleep good, to eat well, to move. If I have to do that every single month, I will do that. I will be your champion. I will cheer you on. I want you in excellent health this year. So please hear me cheer that on every single month. Because I just know I get you in better health. I get you in better mental health. We get you in better mental health. It's easier to sustain that fire and that drive, that purpose, that motivation, that thing will bring you satisfaction, joy, and meaning. I know you guys get this, but I want to fire you up today. Like, this is something you must fire up on your own. This will be freeing. Of course, it's fleeting if you never look at it. I tell people all the time, no wonder you're not motivated. You haven't thought about what motivates you in three days. Just think about that. No wonder you're not motivated. You haven't thought about what motivates you in three days. Every morning, I'm a deep dive in what's going to motivate me. I get excited about it. I look at, I'm like, okay, let's go. If I didn't do that, I need cuff.

We're going to talk about your confidence, and I am really excited to break down a framework for you. And I hope in doing this, help you realize where some of those dark days come from, where you lose faith in yourself, where those dark days come from, when you know you have a lot to do, but you just don't feel like you can figure it out where that you know, when you get to go out in the world again or when you're on a zoom and you got to show yourself to the world. You feel awkward or weird or insecure, that you tap back into that authentic strength, that truth of who you are. And that as you go through your life, you feel confident that no matter what life is going to throw at you, you're going to learn, you're going to figure it out, you're going to develop your capabilities. And many of you are going through really hard times right now. Sometimes it's just hard to even be positive. You can be so consumed and so overwhelmed by the negativity of other things out there. You just go, oh, my gosh, this is just hard to feel good, let alone confident. I'm going to break down a framework that I hope some of you are familiar with. But today we're going to talk about it with a different lens of how to overcome insecurities and what specific daily and monthly habits you might set up for yourself to feel more strong. So this is a piece of paper. It's a framework for confidence that I have on a board in my office. See, we need reminders. We are visual humans. We need to look at something to remind ourselves of something. And so you see, I have this. I will share this with you in a minute, but I want to get the practice in your mind. The practice in your mind is you should have instructions to yourself on a wall somewhere. So you're like, if you walked into.

My office, say, brandon, why do you.

Have a framework for confidence on your wall over there? And I go, well, because sometimes I don't feel confident. And what do we do when we don't feel something? Well, when we don't feel something that we want to feel, we tend to feel not good because I don't feel this. So I feel bad about myself. Or we tend to distract ourselves. I don't like this feeling. So I don't know what to do. So let me just scroll through the Internet. So to me, what I've done is, I've got a board over here and there's my framework for happiness. Do you have a framework for happiness on your wall yet? So that when you don't feel happy, you go, I don't feel happy. What's going on with me? And you can just go look at it and go, ah, I've got my checklist for happiness right there. I forgot point number three. No wonder I'm not happy. What I'm trying to suggest to you is maybe you give yourself a checklist, a framework, a set of instructions for the feelings that you really want to experience in life. And when you're not feeling it, instead of retreating into the comforts of distraction, you go back to your instructions. You know what makes you feel good, and it's time to write that down and look at it more consistently. Here we go. This is my confidence checklist. This is my framework for confidence. I'm going to break down each of these areas. And even if you've seen this maybe before with me, what I'd love to do is break down where these grow into trouble, where these are developed and strengthened, where these can be applied in your life, financially, in your life, in your marriage, or your relationship with your partner, with the kids. So I'm going to break down each of those things, each of those areas. I'll use a card here for you. We're going to start with that very first card here. Clarity. Human beings are a goal directed species. If we don't have clarity on what we want, if we don't have clarity on who we are, if we don't have clarity on what our intentions are in social relationships, it's unnerving to us. Well, if you ever felt lost in life, you know that feeling. It's coming from a lack a often of clarity. We'll talk about this. You just don't know who you are, what you're about, what you want anymore. And it's unsettling when you lack clarity. It's really unsettling. You're like, ah, I don't know what I'm about anymore. And this is where midlife crises come in. Clarity is something that, it's like knowledge or a goal or an aim, but it's loosely held. What I mean by that is like, okay, that's important to me, but I can be flexible and adaptive as well. It's not this idea that you have total 100% complete certainty and you're total certain all the time. Bah. It's like that. That is a adolescent dream. There is no absolute certainty in anything in life.

Right.

And so we have to go, oh, okay, I can have clear direction or I can be strongly committed to this thing, but lots of people who are absolutely certain about something shifts months later. So here's my question for you. On a scale of 1 to 10 in the last 60 days, how clear have you been about what you wanted in life? Did you start the day with some clarity about how you wanted to live that day, show up that day, treat other people that day, serve that day? So let's think about where sometimes you feel insecure, you're going to go to that party or that networking function, you feel insecure about yourself. Why? Because in your mind the insecurity in that moment, in that situation of the networking situation or the party is coming from. I don't know who I am in here. I don't know these people and who I'm supposed to be with them. I don't know where to go or where to stand or who to talk to. And so just it's unnerving. The insecurity is I don't know what to do in the situation. Now that type of confidence or lack thereof is something that psychologists call self efficacy. Self efficacy is about I don't know what to do in this situation. That's where the insecurity comes from. Positive self efficacy means I believe that I know what to do in this situation. I can handle this. Even if I don't know how yet. I believe I can handle this. I have the competence to take this on as an example that's positive. But a lot of things in life you don't know how to deal with. You don't have self efficacy because you don't know how to handle it yet. This is a new party, you don't know anybody in it. It's a new networking event. You've never met any of these people. How do you get more confidence in that? Well, one simple thing you can do is start with clarity. Okay, I'm going to go talk to people. What's something I'd love to share about myself with every new person I meet? Oh, okay. Lock that in. Okay, got it. What's one question I could ask every new person I meet?

Okay, let me lock that in.

Okay, just those two things have been found to dramatically increase people's sense of confidence in social situations. I know what I'm going to share about myself. I have clarity on it. I know what I'm going to ask them. I've clarity, just those two simple things. The problem with clarity is it's double edged sword. A lot of people, their clarity is I'm awful, I'm worthless, I'm no good. And they've stacked up all these experiences to strengthen that belief. And their clarity is, well, I'm a jerk, I don't deserve success, I won't have success. They've got clarity, but they got the wrong kind of clarity. See, confidence requires positive clarity, not negative, self defeating clarity. So clarity is a double edged sword. If you believe the wrong thing about yourself, that's going to hurt you too. So what's the opposite of that? Well, I'M going to start viewing myself positively. How can we do that? Well, you know what? Maybe each day for the next 10 days, I'm going to write down a strength that I have. Write down 10 positive things about yourself every day for the next 10 days. Watch. What happens for you is start shifting your perception of yourself. Here, my little framework, we're going to go from clarity now to congruence. Congruence is living in alignment with what you know is the best of you. Living in alignment with the best of who you are, living in alignment with your values. When you are not congruent, your brain logs that and what it says in that log, that log entry. Not living your word, not living your truth, not doing what you said you would do. And too many of those negative withdrawals sucks away your confidence. But here's what you need to be congruent. What do you need? Clarity. You say, okay, these are my values. These are my beliefs. This is what I think is important as a human being, as a parent, as a caregiver, as a leader. Congruence measures whether or not you're doing what you said you're going to do. And that's important. So here's the simplest fix. If you're been pulling too many withdrawals out of that bank account, it's time to put some back in. And so today might be the day you go, where have I been incongruent? Where do I say something and I don't do it? Where are you out of congruence? And can you do the simple acts? Sometimes when you're out of congruence, first you just apologize to yourself. You say, you know what? Gosh, Brendan, I haven't been honest with myself. Let's make a change. I think the fastest path back into congruence is an apology. An apology to yourself, an apology to other persons. It takes a lot of guts to say you are wrong. It takes a lot of guts to acknowledge you could do better. This one's fundamental. You get to decide today what to be congruent with. You get to decide who you are. And you can decide to show up and live into that third big idea. Competence. Competence. It's a collection of knowledge, skill, talents and abilities. The good news is you can increase this. So here's what I want you to do. Every day. Every day, I want you to have clarity on what skills you are working on in your life. That's how we're going to get competence. Competence for too many people comes two years too late. Why? Because they wait too long. To start developing a skill every day. I'm very clear about what I'm trying to improve. Every day I'm learning something, but I'm learning not just casually or passively. I'm going, I'm trying to get better at this thing. I want you all to have an ambition to. To have one or two or three skill sets that you're literally world class in. That you're world class in. Not because you need the ego that I am world class. No, no, no. Because you need the challenge. You know why a lot of people lack confidence? They never engage challenge. You want more confidence, engage in challenge more often. The more challenge you engage in and you incrementally improve in it, the more your brain goes, yep, there I did. I did it again. And what happens when you don't have confidence, you don't engage in challenge. When you don't engage in challenge, you don't get more competence. So you don't get that competence confidence loop.

We were talking about the flywheel you all follow.

So for those of you, if you're like, ben, I just lack confidence, like, challenge yourself more. But you're like, but I'm lacking confidence. Exactly, exactly. See, you're going, well, I'll get confidence, then I'll do the challenging things. I'm like the other way around. You want more confidence, do challenging things more often. When you do challenging things more often, you learn. When you learn competence, confidence, connection. When you don't have a connection with yourself or others, confidence goes down. So you want to feel more confident in life, reconnect with yourself and others with yourself. That's your morning routine. Lock in that morning routine. The more you feel connected to self, the more confident you are. But you need the time to connect to yourself. Away from the email, the social media, the obligations for the kids, the family, the husbands, the spouses, the team, everything else. You need that moment where you're like out and connecting with yourself, with your thoughts. You need time to think and, and to feel again. So turn off the tv, go for the walk, put down the phone, do the meditation, get away from the social thing. One, you know 10 minutes earlier so you can sit in the car and just think before you go home. You need more space to be thinking and connecting with self. So build that in your life. Self, connection. Second part, the most important part. We know environment dramatically shapes your confidence, the connection you have with people around you. This means be around positive people, contribute around positive people, learn from positive people. It means create great relationships in your life. I want you all to improve this one. Simple action. Simple daily, weekly, real life action. You must start sharing your real thoughts, feelings, desires and goals with the people around you. You got to do it more often. Here's where you lack confidence in life. When you won't share your truth because you're worried what everyone else thinks. That's what high schoolers do. You don't do that anymore. You're too damn old. Now you share your truth with other people and realize most of them won't get it, won't understand why it's important, won't support you, won't care, or at least won't get in your way and say anything at all. But the less you speak your truth to other people, the more superficial your connections are with them. Number five is capability. Competence is the knowing, the knowledge, skill, talentability. Capability is you can do it. You can do it every time. It is like a strength, if you will. It is something that is. You are highly capable at that thing. You are at another level of skill that it shows up every single time. But here's the truth. Capability. Capability is as much as a mindset as a competence. Let me give you an example. A lot of extremely smart people who can handle the problem don't handle the problem because they don't feel capable. It's like, yeah, I know it, but I don't do it. See, there's a difference between knowledge and execution, which is often the difference between competence and capability. See, competence is like the foundation and a stored value, but it's expressed through execution. Capability. You want to develop capability. It means you get in the mix, you do the work, you show up, you try. Capability means I know I will execute. That's what to me, confident capabilities. I will execute. How do you do that? You have to be more consistent in your execution. You need to be way more consistent in your execution. We talked about decision earlier. Decision is great. Action is required. We've got to get you to execute more of those to do lists. You want more success, you want more joy, you want more confidence, you got to execute more of the plans. Capability is self trust to take the action. It's not just do I know how to take the action, it's I'm an action taker, I'm going to show up, I'm capable to handle this. I will do this. I trust in myself to handle this, to execute, to execute again and again and again and again and again. That's capability. And I really want you to develop that in your heart and in your soul by Checking off the simplest of things each day by if you have a list of three to do lists, if you wrote down your three top priorities for the day, do those first. Before you do your social media, before you reply to everyone's DMs inbox, you know, voice message, texts, it's like, listen, I have so many people who they spend all day just checking their email to reply to everybody else. Now that's fine if that's your job, if that's customer service, do that. That's your job. But if you're an entrepreneur as an example, or you have a whole list of other priorities and you're just checking into other people's agendas all day to meet all their obligations, and you keep missing your key priorities day after day after day after day. Your brain doesn't feel like you're capable anymore. Even though you might be smart, you're competent, but your brain doesn't believe you're capable. Last big idea today. Contribution. You want confidence? Give more. You want confidence? Make your difference. You want confidence? Do things that matter. Why? Because a those things are celebrated in the world. Generous giving people tend to have greater, what connections with other people. Generous giving, caring, hard working people tend to have what more clarity about who they are. They're more congruent, these things. They feel more capable, like generosity. Doing things that matter. Giving strengthens the whole rest of the model. The whole model drives itself. When you've got each of these pieces running right, each of these pieces touches one another. Contributions are key. It really is. Sometimes when you feel so bad about yourself, you're not going to shake yourself out of that. But what can shake yourself out of that is service. Sometimes you got to get out of your own head. And to me, what has created a great confidence and reverence for life in my life has been. I've been volunteering most of my life. When you're a volunteer, when you show up for others, when you volunteer to help out, whether it's as simple as helping a friend move, or going down to the local soup kitchen, or volunteering for that nonprofit cause that you like, or running that fundraiser even though you don't know how those contributions make a difference, maybe your contribution is your art, maybe your contribution is your time, maybe your contribution is financial, maybe your contribution is mentorship, maybe your contribution is your content or your book or your work, whatever that is. If you can do the same thing where you can give generously to it, give to your work, be generous to that contribution, be in the moment when you're serving someone who is in need, you get a little more spirit inside. And when that spirit of goodness is inside, you can share it more too.