Mashup: How to Overcome Your Biggest Fears

Mental resilience is often about the truth of light being shed on things. Sometimes facing it, sometimes finally talking about it, finally sharing about it, finally sitting down with it and looking at what it is. Sometimes it's getting perspective on something. But that mental resilience comes from perspective going, oh, I thought this thing was big and scary and awful and traumatic and going to be forever. And then mental resilience goes, oh, when I turn the light on it, I recognize, yeah, wasn't good, but there it is. It's not as big and scary as I thought it was. Or, hey, let me shed some light on it and have a conversation with people, bring out this hurt and share this thing with people. Because, you know, who becomes really resilient, communicative people? Monsters fade with light. And sometimes, you know, we forget that, and we hold so much from our past in our mind that we're not even free in the moment because we're scared. You know, I always tell the story. If you've ever been to my seminars, I often tell the story of when I was, like, 12 or 13 years old. I had gone and shut out the lights in the house, went to bed and was just getting comfortable in bed and happened to look around my room and in the closet, there was a figure in the closet, and it scared me. It was like someone in my closet was like, terror. I'd pull up the sheet as if the sheet is going to protect me from the axe murderer. Not so good. But I pull up the sheet, and I was mortified. Mortified. And I just sat there, and I was just like. I felt all these fears, all these thoughts went through my head, and it was just terrible. And finally I was, like, just laying there, and I was like. I realized how ridiculous it was, because if it is an axe murderer, here I am just not gonna do anything. And I willed myself to throw off the covers, go turn on the light, and then attack this thing, right? And of course, what did I see? Turn on light, go to the closet. It's my baseball cap, my winter jacket, hanging just at the right angle with the right shadows. There's no monster there. I had made up something bigger in my mind than what was actually there. Mental resilience is often about the truth of light being shed on things. Sometimes facing it, sometimes finally talking about it, finally sharing about it, finally sitting down with it and looking at what it is. Sometimes it's getting perspective on something. But that mental resilience comes from perspective going, oh, I thought this thing was big and scary and awful and traumatic. And going to be forever. And then mental resilience goes, oh, when I turn the light on it, I recognize, yeah, wasn't good, but there it is. It's not as big and scary as I thought it was. Or, hey, let me shed some light on it and have a conversation with people, bring out this hurt and share this thing with people. Because you know who becomes really resilient, communicative people? People who open up their heart, open up their mouth, share with others their experience and their struggles. Because often it's talking through those. Those challenges. Demons, villains, monsters, whatever metaphor you want to use, it's in discussion that other people talk about, like, oh, that thing's. Oh, that thing's not so scary. Oh, and in processing, I'm understanding my feelings more again. This is just why I think it's so important. Most people have never had these tools and they've never summoned the courage to talk about things. But the people I follow on online as an example, the influencers who really inspire me, they're often like, here's what I'm going through. They're sharing their struggles. And not as an act to get more likes or followers, but because we know in expression we discover emotion. We discover that in expression we can find empathy for our own voice and receive it from others. In expression, we can realize that this thing doesn't have control of us. We get to communicate its meaning. We get to communicate what it is and what it is not in expression. And so I say, monsters often fade with light. I tell people, don't forget that the light in a dark room only exists because the dark. But that light grows as you open that door a little bit more and you're not so closed anymore. And people fail to realize and go this deep on resilience. Most people like just mental toughness. And I'm like, yeah, how about we start with. Instead of mental toughness, we start with emotional openness. Because if we start with emotional openness, when we open that door a little bit to our truth, to our real thoughts, our real feelings, our real desires, our real needs, when we open the door just a little bit more, that light comes in a little bit more. And the more open we learn to be emotionally, mentally, spiritually, the more we tend to notice the light of the world. When we close down and shut within and we obsess about and stay static, frozen about the monsters, that's a long, dark night of the soul. So I want to remind you, you can open up again. That might be the first next right step for you. To open, to express, to share. Even if that just means you sit down with your own journal and acknowledge it and write it down. This doesn't mean you need to go do Instagram posts. What it means is sometimes literally just writing about it can help you activate a different part of your mind, can help you gain control over it by giving it voice. These are skills, right? These are skills. And the skill of expression, whether it's self expression in your journal or you talk to your phone and record it, or you share something with your lover or your partner at dinner, or you go to a group, you meet new people. This is powerful stuff. This is really powerful stuff. And I really want to encourage you to think about like, wow, have I been as resilient as I wanted to? Have I been, you know, stuck in a room thinking there's bigger monsters out there? Because another part of resilience is that perspective. To realize that tomorrow that you're so scared about. It's a baseball cap and a jacket. It's a mental projection. We are the ones who build the vision of fear in the future. Because the future doesn't yet exist. Tomorrow is very much a blank page. And even if there are known challenges in the future, we still can't see the chapter after that. All we can do is show up each day, faithfully ready, doing our best. And when we can do that over and over and over again, suddenly things aren't so scary. So what makes you a great communicator? If you and I have lunch and I walk away and I'm like, wow, she was a great communicator. Why am I going to say that? Usually because you helped elicit my feelings, you helped elicit my goals, and you helped elicit my process. How. How's it going? Great listeners aren't just reflecting things back to somebody. Great listeners are also helping others share more. And what do people love to share? They love to share things about their life, their passions, their interests. Okay, you can reflect those things back to people. But if you go one level deeper and you're the person who helps people share their feelings around you, I mean, isn't it funny? The most advanced communication strategy in the world is to elicit emotion more. Elicit emotion more, to ask about their feeling. So when they describe their day, instead of you saying, oh, then what did you do next? That's like procedural. Instead it's like, oh, how did you feel about that? Some of you guys know, I was lucky to work with and know and do business with one of the persons considered One of the great interviewers in history, two different types of people with Larry King is a great friend and mentor and done work with him. And Oprah Winfrey, great friend and mentor and done work with her. Both of them are master, master listeners. Something I learned from Larry that I'll never forget, that I will never forget is I was kind of asking him what makes a great interviewer, and he gave me this example of the question. One of the first questions he asked Mark Zuckerberg, who's the CEO of Facebook, as you guys know, right? So the CEO of Facebook. So think about this. You have the opportunity to interview Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, at a time especially when they interviewed was, you know, pretty much the biggest conversation in the tech con, in the tech world, that fastest growing company in the tech world. It was right, Everything. So you get to sit down, somebody who's building the biggest platform literally in the history of the planet, they're running it. What are you going to ask them? Here's what Larry told me. He asked Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, his first question, or, sorry, his favorite question to him was, so, Mark, what's it feel like to be the CEO of Facebook? What's it like to be the CEO of Facebook? He went right to trying to get to like, what does that feel like? That's a big company, you know, you reach, you know, 2 billion people now. What's that feel like? See, great communicators are listening, observing, asking about feelings. Emotion, right? Oprah's magic on her set was she was able, through her vulnerability and her openness for 25 years on television at the top, to be able to have people feel so comfortable with her presence that they would openly share their feelings where it wouldn't happen on other shows, right? You watch Oprah Winfrey and then you watch like, you know, a news television broadcast is completely different. The engagement she had with other people because she was willing to go into emotion. You've got to be willing to go into emotion. If you're trying to do anything with people, lead them, persuade them, sell, help, serve, emotion has to bubble up. You need to elicit feeling from people way more often. Way more often. It's not just, hey, honey, how did school go today? Well, I went to this class. I had this for lunch. This kid was nice, this kid wasn't. It's like, how did you feel about that? How did you feel about that? What were you feeling when that was happening? These types of questions are so basic and people forget to ask them but that's what's really advanced because that's what elicits more. What's advanced in communication strategies. What does. What elicits more, what elicits more, but not just more information, more feeling. So I said, you're listening for three things. Feelings, goals. This is so important. Great coaches, as an example, I always say, oh, so once they get the feeling, oh, what did you want to feel? What did you want from that? What are you hoping is going to happen? If everything was great, what's next month look like? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to do by the end of this month, the end of this year, right? Just getting people to speak about their goals, their desires, their ambition, their hopes, their dreams. Great communicators do that with people, you know, really great communicators do that. I've been blessed to work with two different presidents, two different US Presidents, one Democratic, one Republican. So don't you freak out. And what I noticed in both of them, in both of them, their ability to have a conversation with people and ask them about their family and what they want for their family. Think about that. The greatest politicians in the world are talking about, this is what you probably want for your family. Or asking, what would you like for your family? What do you hope for in your career? What would you like this nation to be like? What would you like this country to be like that question of what are our goals here? What are we trying to do here? What do you want? What are you after? That's the questions of great communicators. So I said, feelings, goals, and this last place, which is so important. Process. Process. Tell me how you did that. What were you thinking through when you were doing that? What did you want when you were doing that? How did that turn out? If you could do it again, what different. What would you do differently? This is. These are procedure. These are process questions, right? Questions about not just how's it going, but how are they feeling, thinking and experiencing how it is going. Think about this pandemic right now, right? All you gotta do is go, pandemic. How's that going for you? Right? And immediately people start talking at you. Boy, if you've ever wanted to communicate with people, this is the year of talking through how they've managed a pandemic. Economic melee, political disc. Like, it's so easy to engage people in conversation this year, right? Because what do most people usually talk about? How was your commute this morning? How was the weather? But now we have bigger things to talk about. Larger concerns. And because of that, it's easier to get conversation going. But a lot of people forget about process. You know, did you talk with your family about how these last 30 days went for them, how they felt, what they wanted, where they want next month, how they want it to go now? Literally, on this conversation, on a walk this morning with my wife, before I even talked about what I was talking about here today, we're just talking about, oh, okay, well, we survived October, right? Okay. Got through. That is culturally, economically, in the world with the businesses, it's like, great, but what do we want now? Like, we're always kind of recalibrating. How do we want our day to go? We talked about morning routines or we talked about, like, what we want to learn. And. And just in a conversation about what do we want it to be like now? Great communicators and great relationships and couples are always talking about that. How do we want to live? What do you want from this life? What do you want from this life? What do we want together? How should we do this journey together? That's process, right? Communicators are doing that all the time. What should this feel like? What should this be about? How do we want it to go? That's process. All right, I hope you guys like this one. Discipline. I'm gonna share four ideas with you today. How do I stay so disciplined? And I'm not saying that for me, because I'm like, I'm so disciplined and perfect. I get asked this by all of my clients. They're like, gosh, I need more discipline in my life. I'm like, okay, well, let's talk through what that means and how you achieve it. If you want to show up for something, be consistent, be committed to something. How do you discover, develop that discipline for something? I think there's four simple things. Number one, you must know your outcome. How can you possibly be focused or disciplined if you don't know the outcome you're after? Most people don't lack focus or discipline. They lack clarity. That would give them the focus and the discipline. That's why the first high performance habits is seek clarity. We learned it from our research. Right. Well, an outcome. What am I after here? What's the goal? What's the tangible or intangible thing that I know when I get there, when I see that, feel that, experience that, achieve that? That's what I'm after here. That some kind of outcome? You won't stay disciplined unless you can see, feel, sense, acknowledge intellectually what the outcome is. We're after. If you're not disciplined on a consistent basis, it's because you don't know what you want. So don't beat yourself up that you're lazy. You just need to make a decision. You need to make a decision about what it is that you want. And it doesn't have to be what you want for your whole life. Your ultimate grand purpose in the cosmos of the destiny of universe. No, no. What do you want by Friday? What do you want by the end of the month? What do you want this quarter? It's like start there. If you're really confused about the next five years of your life, please start with the next five weeks of your life. Come on. People don't understand. Clarity is built upon. You don't have the epiphany where everything is perfect. Very few people ever have a complete perfect picture epiphany moment of everything coming together in life. Very few people. Very few people. Instead, usually what happens is as we move throughout our lives, we get a little more clarity. What we like and what we don't like. What draws passion and strength and contribution and what doesn't. Know your outcome. You want discipline, know your outcomes. Number two, schedule. There is no discipline without a schedule. It is so easy if your calendar doesn't have anything in it. The next six weeks. Don't be mad at yourself for lacking discipline. No one shows up on day go. It's discipline day and has nothing to do. Discipline requires the schedule. So fill out your schedule. Work the schedule. Fill out the schedule. Work the schedule. Fill out the schedule. As you fill out your schedule and you work the schedule, you get more self trust. With that self trust comes confidence. From that confidence comes more competence. With we gain more mastery and we're in the game more. We feel good about ourselves. The progress mind loves and eats it up. Hey, we're doing it. We said we were going to do it. We did it. We moved towards our outcome today with a schedule. What an idea, right? But you and I both know it's easy to get off track with this. So number three, you want to be more disciplined, you're going to have to delegate more. You want to be more disciplined to what really matters for you. You're going to ask for assistance, for help. You're going to. You're gonna have to build the team. You're have to socially engage people to support your focus. It's just real. Like every writer I know who's become a major writer has assistance, meaning they get something. Their spouse, their partner, their Agent, a personal assistant, somebody is helping with a part of their life so they can focus on that thing. It's hard to be a disciplined writer if you're doing everything under the sun. You need time to be able to write, which means there's some things you can't handle by yourself, and you're going to have to delegate that. And if you're like, well, Brennan, I don't have anyone to delegate to, then I'm like, then stop saying yes to everything under the sun. Stop putting more and more on your plate when you can't handle what you already got. Babe, we got to go. No, no, no. If I want to be disciplined, I got to choose a few things, say no to the rest, delegate the rest and do what is here. You don't lack discipline. You're taking on too much. You don't lack discipline, you're taking on too much. Or you don't have a schedule, or you don't know your outcome. Outcome, schedule, delegation. And last thing is, I think this is really a critical thing for us in aliveness and fulfillment and connection in our lives. Often we don't have discipline because we've set up no reward and reflection in our life. And what I'm always trying to tell my highest performers, reflection is a reward. Reflection, it's a reward, like sitting down and allowing your processing mind to think of all that you've been through and how beautiful it was and how great grateful you are for it. We don't lack discipline because discipline feels like always the grind. Unless we stop the grind once in a while and look back and go, wow, look how far I came. Let me celebrate this small win. Let me take myself out to dinner tonight. Let me write down a few of the things I've learned and share them. Let me give thanks or prayer or meditation towards the great things that have been happening for me. I think as soon as we realize that, it's just a whole different experience of life. I'm disciplined because to me, being disciplined doesn't sound like I'm disciplining myself. What it means is I am reflecting and rewarding myself for my progress. It's so important for you to hear me say this. If you're lacking discipline, probably is because you've never rewarded yourself. You've never reflected on how far you've come. You still think you're the same as you were in your 20s and your 30s. It's like you've come so far and you're still thinking like that kid, because you let your protecting mind Your processing mind, your progressing mind, run rampant without the peace practices, without those moments of purpose. If you want to be disciplined this month, know your outcome, put it on the schedule, delegate it, or say no. And fourth, reflect, reward yourself. I do my again with my high performance planner. I do my weekly reflection in every major area of my life. I just look at it and I think I have, oh, what a blessing this is going good, or, oh, I could do better here. And the reward is the reflection. The reward to me is learning. The reward is developing competency. Reward doesn't have to mean I have this much more in my bank account or these many more people following me. The reward is I am growing growth days. To me, discipline requires growth days, having the growth days and rewarding and celebrating, reflecting upon the growth days. I am disciplined because I have gotten so many hits of joy and learning by pushing myself as a growth day. But reflecting on those growth days to do all that, that was a good day. What did I learn about myself? And I am growing every day. So discipline gets easier. Discipline gets way easier. As you engage growth more, discipline gets hard. When you went a season without even thinking about yourself, taking care of yourself, not sleeping, poisoning your body, not engaging in personal development instead of just engaging everybody's dramas, and now you're exhausted. You know when it's hard to be disciplined, when you're exhausted. So you take care of yourself, you recognize it, you reward it. How do you create remarkable and long lasting friendships? And I'm talking about the kind of friendships that you love, the friendships that bring you alive, that, that bring you that connection, that help life feel more even meaningful, that help you progress and feel supported, help you be seen, help you feel a true connection with not just others, but with humanity. Because the people around you are awesome. And when the people around you are awesome, you know, you feel better about life. But we also went through this crazy last 18 months where so many people were isolated, where we had so much turmoil, so much conflict, so much just uncertainty and fear in the world, where I really believe friendships really elevated. And you could see whether or not you had great friends throughout this pandemic or you didn't. You were able to see whether or not you got the support that you needed, whether or not you were able to maintain your sense of vibrancy in some of those times of aloneness, whether or not you had people who cheered you on when you decided to make a transition, start something new, or the kids left the house or you got sick or something was going on that was Difficult in your life. We look to our friends and I think that this is a very undervalued conversation in mental health. So much about the mental health conversation is appropriately about self awareness, it's about mindfulness, it's about taking care of our stressors. And a lot of it is that solo work that we all have to do for self mastery. But I can tell you that the great universities of the world, the psychology department is right near the sociology department because they go together. We are social beings. And when you lose that social connection with the world, which usually starts through lack of disciplined habits with your friends, then suddenly life loses its color. And I think this is so important. You're going to hear me talk about friendship today in a way you probably haven't heard before, very much from what we would call a high performance psychology perspective. And I think you're going to love this. So if you've been struggling with friendships in your lifetime, not either having enough friends or not having the quality of friends that you've always wanted, this is a serious conversation today. I can't imagine a time, at least in my life so far, where friendships were so incredibly important. I get to share some of the things that really have worked, not just in my life and my friendships, but in studying this work deeply over the years and recognizing how many people are entrepreneurs, high achievers, people who are trying to make great impact in the world. You're here today. And sometimes that journey can feel very lonely, or when you get to the top, it can feel lonely. They say. And I'm like, I kind of believe what my friend Brian, Tracy and mentor said to me one time. He said, if it's lonely at the top, you did it wrong. I thought, woo, that's good, that's good. Because maybe sometimes we value today progress, we value today getting things done. We value that top mountain of achievement. And then we look around and go, oh, nobody really knows me. I don't feel a connection to others. Yeah, I got the thing, the house, the car, the bank account, the accolades, the Instagram page. And all of a sudden, though, something's missing. And friendship is one of the greatest vehicles to the real psychology of well being that we talk about here at Growth Day. I'm going to share with you a secret today, just a simple phrase. You're going to go, oh my gosh, that's why my friendships aren't going right. So you're going to love this session. I say that triangle, right, of well being, that we talk about Growth Day growth aliveness is One of the things we all want after we had everything else, right? Another thing we want is connection. We're not after casual friendships here today. We're at like, how do I create authentic, deep, trusting, vulnerable, fun, real relationships? Because how many of you have ever had friendships that turned out to be fake? You thought you had a good friendship, and that thing turned out to be not so good or poisonous or, you know, somebody, like, they weren't loyal to you as a friend, or they lied to you, or, you know, something went wrong. You thought, how could that happen in that relationship? And I always tell, like, friendships are a science of relationship, right? It's about how you create relationship with others. And I'm gonna give you again a phrase that will really help you with this today. And then if it's true that we want aliveness and connection in this triangle, another thing that we want is meaning. Well, meaning isn't achieved just by living your purpose each day in your own head. Meaning is achieved through a social relationship network. My sense of meaning is, do I feel connected to the world? And the world isn't an abstract thing. It's not like I feel connected to the oak tree. It's like, no, I mean, did I feel. Did you make your difference in the world? That's going to be served and answered through your social impact, your relationships with others. And I have to tell you, I've been coaching people for 20 years of my life now, and a lot of people have one friend. You know, in the United States, unfortunately, the number of people with three good friends has declined over the decades. You're like, three good friends. Oh, we got to talk about that. Because some people stumble into friendships or hope for friendships, just like some people hope to have a loving relationship, just like some people hope to have a good job, just like some people hope that, you know, they get healthier. And then there's strivers who take life a little bit by the reins and say, no, no, no, let me architect that, Let me build that. And I'll give you my own examples today of where I sucked at friendships and I had to learn, how do you do them and how do you create them? And once you know how to create and craft them, life really opens up for you, and it becomes not just more alive and connected, but more meaningful. Like, a sense of meaning happens when we have a tapestry of social relationships that are real and impactful. And then, of course, in the middle that triangle, you always see me draw out growth. Your friends should be lifting you up, not pushing you down. Your Friends should be inspiring you to get better. Your friends should have your back, but also be willing to challenge your face. You know what I'm saying? Like, your friends are and should be one of your primary growth drivers in life. Most people choose ambitious goals to be their growth driver. Oh, I'm going to do something that's hard, or I'm going to try to achieve this amazing thing. I'm going to try to become a millionaire or make this difference or build this company, or, you know, have this type of family and it's this external climb, this thing they're trying to achieve, and too many people forget. It's like, actually, one of the best drivers of growth isn't your job, isn't your goals, it's your friendship circle. And when your friendship circles make you a more alive, deeper, caring, thoughtful, authentic person in the world, I'm telling you what, guess what? At work, you're better. At home you're better. Your art gets better, Your sense of life lifts. Let me share with you what I really believe to be the two central problems of friendship. Okay, the two central problems of friendship. The first one is a failure of each of our own. I'm just taking this on myself as well. It's like we fail in life to realize most of our friendships were assigned not aligned. Most of our friendships were assigned, not aligned. What I mean by that is many of our friendships happen because group assignment. Think about it. Some of your best friends, where'd you meet them? School, Your neighborhood, some other affiliation, Maybe at work, maybe in a group that you joined. So it was like, oh, we showed up somewhere, or we were assigned somewhere, and there was that girl who sat next to me in class. We became friends, or, oh, I worked with this person at work. We were co workers. We became friends. And these are kind of like assigned friends. And I know that sounds really weird to say, so bear with me a little bit. I don't mean that the manager, like, you're going to be friends here. What I mean is, because of your group, your affiliation, or where you were, you kind of met people there. And by default, by you being a good person or communicating or doing stuff with them, you kind of became friends versus that's like an assigned friend. It's like, oh, because we were here, we became friends versus an aligned friend, which is, oh, I'm an adult now. What are the types of friends that I want to create that align with my passion, my dreams, my lifestyle, my values, my beliefs, the things that I want of life and let me go get Them, not let them fall into my lap, which brings up the second designation. And this is hard to say to people. And if you're in a place where you feel lonely in your life or you feel like you don't have great friendships, I promise this will be so helpful for you today to even know how your own brain thinks. And many of us, and I was this way probably all the way throughout high school, even I never, and this is the second problem of friendships. I never made the deliberate choice to have remarkable friendships. I kind of ended up with friends. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Who's like ended up with friends if you kind of just ended up with like this person? It was kind of my friend. One of my buddies goes, he goes, I don't want no rando friends. And it was like random. Now I love random. I love the universe, I love God, I love coincidence. Let's listen. I read the Celestine Prophecy. People are glowing out there for me. I believe in that coincidence stuff. But I can also share with you, like if you just allow randomness in your life all the time, you'll always feel a sense of mediocrity too. We have to stretch. We have to choose our life. And to choose our life we have to be deliberate and go, what kind of life do I want? I would like you to learn to architect your ideal friendships. And can you get all of them? And will all your friendships be perfect? I'm not that guy. I'm not here to promise everything's going to be sweet and perfect and peaches in life. I am here to suggest though that if you haven't deliberately chosen the types of friendships that you want, that's a problem, especially if you're an adult. Right? And that's the thing is we're just, we're not encouraged to do that. Think about how much time people were feeding your ears with the idea you had to be really thoughtful about the career you choose. How many of you ever had more people tell you more times about be so thoughtful about the school you choose, the career you choose, but no one ever said as much. Be very thoughtful about the friends and the friendships that you build. And that's why we have a lot of high achieving people who are lonely their whole life. Think about your career. What are you going to be one day? Very rarely. What's the type of social network you're going to build around you? What's the type of friendships you're going to architect? What are you going to be proud of in terms of Your friends in the future, what do you want your friends to achieve? What do you want your friends to experience in life? Not just what they give you, but what are you going to give out, too. What kind of friendship do you want to create and experience? How do you want your friends to actually interact with one another? Have you ever thought about that? We spend so much time. If you're a parent and you have two kids, you're so worried about how they interact, right? I know people who've never even thought, how do I want my friends to interact? I mean, they might think, you know what, we shouldn't put them in a room at a party because they have this history of that background. But very few people are like, I'm going to actually teach my friends how to be friends with one another. Now, I know some of you might be like, this guy sounds like a control freak. I'm like, I am, but I'm a happy one. You know what I'm saying? I think this is such an important area to architecture. Most friends have never talked about how to be friends. They just go, you want to go to lunch, they go to lunch. They talk about the weather, the waiter, the food, what's going on? They leave. And there's no architecting. There's no. I think of, like, social systems are things that can be shaped. You all think, like, at work, right? How much we talk about at work, building a culture. More books and more people have spent time on this conversation of building culture at work, and never the culture of a friendship. Isn't that weird? I don't know where along the line we lost the conversation and the desire to choose to build awesome friendships and a culture of friendship, meaning not just friends. Most people think of, I want a friend, right? When you're in high school, you just want a friend, right? You're just like, at least I was. Can I get one? You know, it's like you worry about having friendships when you grow up. And usually that means you think. And we're all trained this way. Especially in Western cultures, we're taught to have a friend and we think in a very individualistic mode. I and this person are in relationship, and then you have another friend. I and this person are in relationship, and maybe you go out and you try to get them together and we have a party. But even at the party, it's individual nodes. Me, that friend and this friend. And I don't get trained, as I'm getting older, to think as a systems social architect. Oh, wow, look at all these nodes. If you will these friends. If I like each of these people and have relationship with each people, why don't in some way I weave them together and create a tapestry of friendship where I'm actually connecting the dots and creating a culture of friendship? See, we don't think like that, do we? I was a very, kind of, solitary child. I was kind of in my own little world. I don't know about you all, but I was definitely, you know, much. I would be like an introverted kind of child. I kind of kept to myself. I like to play with my toys kind of by myself. In elementary school, from what I can remember, I was kind of solo, Brendan. I didn't see social systems right. I was in a class with kids and a teacher, and. And I had a relationship with the teacher, and I had a relationship with this person or that person or not, but I couldn't see the class. I couldn't say, oh, you know, like, this group is kind of like this. Instead, it was just like, she likes me or she doesn't. Teachers like that. I didn't see the system. Today, I'd like you to try to see the system a little bit. See the system of the friendships you've built in your life. See the system at play, at work. See the system of your culture or your nonprofit or your company. When you can start seeing a bigger picture and get out of your head a little bit now, something happens. There's connection, there's community. See, everyone says, I want community. I'm like, well, you can't be an individualistic person in the community forever. You have to elevate to seeing the system. If you never be a community member or an effective one or a helpful one, if you can't get out of your head, well, I'm saying that not as judgment to you. That was me. So there's no judgment here. If you don't have friends, I'm like, I'm telling you my story, too. I was a solo person. I was in my own head. I couldn't see the class. I couldn't see the system. And so I felt apart. And because I felt apart, and I couldn't see what was happening, and I didn't know how to engage. I was lonely. And then when I finally made a connection with a friend, that friend became my life. Later on, that perpetuated into, you know, some of you guys know my story of my first breakup with the. My. My high school sweetheart. I was destroyed because that was my one person, right? That was my one node in the world. And Then when that relationship fell apart, I fell apart and became depressed and suicidal. And so how we relate with one or multiple people can completely shape our mental health. I know you already know that. And so I had to learn, like, wow, one, I don't want to ever be dependent on one friend. I want to build a support system. You ever heard that language before? No one says, go build a supporter. I want you to listen to the language of successful people. When successful people are speaking, they never tell you, go build a supporter. They say, go build what? A support system. A support network. Oh, I got to get out of single node thinking. A node is one individual unit. And I got to get into the system. I got to stop thinking, does Sally at the class next, does she like me? And if she likes me, my whole life is good or bad or ruined. And I got to go. There's a class here. There's an energy, a vibe, a spirit. There's rules and norms. There's a culture here that is happening. How do I want to participate in this? And how do I want this culture to happen, too? In ways that I can affect? What do they want? And we all have to start thinking about that more in a society in which we're supposedly connected, but we've actually become individual nodes in the network.