Mashup: How to Own Your Vision as a Leader

Today's a good day to look at the vision you have for your life and ask, does it match what your reality is today? And if it doesn't? Now the fun part, the hard decisions, leadership, the delegate dance is always about the vision decision. It's about you or the leader or the group of leaders taking the mantle and that authority and accountability to say, okay, we've listened to all interested parties, we've done our best to understand what everybody needs and wants, but ultimately, this is the vision decision. This is where we are going to go together as a group. Someone's got to hold that space, take that mantle, lead that charge, repeat that vision over and over and over. Somebody or some group's got to own that. When you look at great movements that could have been, they didn't have someone or a particular group owning that vision decision. Because, right, you've heard also the phrase, too many cooks in the kitchen, too many voices lacking aim or organization and alignment is ruined. So you've got to decide, okay, I have this movement, I have this idea, are you going to be the vision decision maker or among that group? Like in companies today, right? In the crazy times we're living economically, where there's so much funding of new startup companies, as an example, it's all about, okay, who's on this team, who's the decision maker, what are they capable of and where do they want to go together? And if you believe in them and you want to, if you're investing in a company, you want to believe in that team or that board, and that's going to define so much of how you invest more than their metrics, because it's about that. It's about that dream team who's making the decision. But ultimately, leadership is going to rest on one, two, three people. And that's why you have CEOs of organizations, right? That's why you have, you know, the big leaders of movements from throughout history. It always kind of fell on someone who had to make the tough calls. And that business decision shapes everything, you know, organizationally, economically. You think of, like when a Steve Jobs left or was forced out of Apple and came back in, the approach that he had to take a vision decision was, oh, you know what? We're doing all these things. I think we need to go over here, and it might not be popular, and there's other voices saying, support these things, but this is the track we're going to have to take and have to make those hard decisions. So it's always those things. Have open ears, make the hard decisions, the first principle, open ears, Second principle, vision decision. You have to own the vision decision. You have to be open to it, you have to be adaptable with it. But. But you've gotta be the most committed person on the team in the organization, in the culture, in the family. You've gotta be the person who holds that thing together, who's entrusted with that. I always say leaders are really entrusted with service, they're entrusted with the vision. And as they're entrusted with that vision, they're also relied upon to make the hard decisions. What's some of the hardest decisions you ever made in your life? Like the hardest decisions you ever made in your life could be in any area. Your relationships, your finances, your career were some of the hardest decisions you've ever made. If you think about those hard decisions that you made, those hard decisions ultimately were made because you had a different vision at that moment. You didn't like where things were, you wanted to go in a different direction. And you bought into a vision of how things need to be different. Whether that was from depletion, you were just exhausted, tired, didn't like it. Whether it was from a place of just like, oh, I recognize all the problems here, or I know there's a better solution, or it was highly aspirational for your future, you bought into a different vision and you made a decision from that vision. Well, I share that with you because part of the principle here, a vision decision, is to be aware, oh, your whole team is making hard decisions based on the vision. You're going to have to make hard decisions based on the vision. So here's a tough question. What the heck is the vision? What is it that you are after? What is it that you collectively want to move towards, want to achieve? And it doesn't have to be some pie in the sky forever, 100 year out vision. It might be a three month out vision, it might be a six month out vision. But if you're not crystal clear about that vision with yourself, what will happen is as people support what they create, as you open those ears, as you have those other conversations, you'll be unmoored to the beliefs, the values and the direction that you want to go. You'll lose yourself in the noise. And this is the number one thing I see great leaders do to fail. They lost themselves in the noise. So much noise from the stakeholders, so much noise from the shareholders, so much noise in social media, the bad article written about them, the people trying to cancel culture, them, they lose their foundation of their vision. Of themselves and their future, and they start becoming a ghost, fully adaptable and flexible into everything else everybody else wants. And now what they really are is a vessel carrying everybody else and everything else without that command level internally of, oh, I am in charge of this. If you read the motivation manifesto, you get the ethos of this right every morning, and you got to get up, you got to pick up that spear of purpose. You got to cast as far as you can see it today, throw that spear of purpose as far as you can today, as far as you can. And then your day is to go march towards that spear with so much commitment, so much discipline, so much resilience, that then you get that spear, you get to throw it out as far as you can. Again, that is having the vision, and that is having the discipline to go get it. The interesting thing is you have to take that outside of your head. You probably have a clearer vision for what's important to you than your wife does, than your partner does, than your friends do, than your family does. And so a huge part of the vision principle is you've got to communicate it more. You got to help everybody see what that vision ends up being, where they participated or they didn't, depending on your timing. And now it's like, oh, this is the thing we're rallying around. This is the spear. I'm going to throw it. We're going to go together. Okay, great. Let's go. And that command of the vision is what I mean by the vision decision. It doesn't mean other people didn't participate in it, but you own it. You own it. A big part about it is your life's decisions. Whether you are conscious or unconscious throughout your life, your life's decisions were leading to a vision. And today is a good opportunity to say, is this the vision? Is this what I wanted? Or did I not know what I wanted? Did I just go along the ride with everybody else and do what everyone else told me my whole life? Or did I architect this? Was I thoughtful about what the decision was, what I was after? Today's a good day to look at the vision you have for your life and ask, does it match what your reality is today? And if it doesn't? Now, the fun part, the hard decisions, all of personal development, the good part about it is about the difficult decisions. I really believe that it's about the difficult decisions, and it's about the disciplined habits that keep us growing and extending and reaching new levels of our potential. That's why I love it. That's why I love personal development. That's why I love it so much. Doesn't matter how much I'm working, how tired I am, where I've been in the world, how much travel, how much work. Doesn't matter what's going on with my family, my life, my finances, whatever. I love personal development because it commands so much from you. It says, oh, you want to grow? Look at where you are, young man. Look at where you are, young lady. Decide. Is that the vision you have for your life? No. Then make the hard decisions. Practice those discipline habits to go where you want to go. I love that stuff. Today's a good day to evaluate the vision you have for your life. Overlay that to how your life really is and then make the difficult decisions to start more disciplined, moving towards that vision that you want. It's the stuff of accountability that lies within this principle. So when I talk about the vision decision, it's you own it. You're responsible for it. You've got to communicate it, and you got to be real about whether that vision is mapping to today. And if it's not, you got to initiate the decisions or the discussions with others to make the decisions. And you've got to discipline the habits to move towards that vision. You got to own it. That's the hardest part. Hey, everybody, it's Brendon Burchard, founder of Growth Day. What's up, everybody? I'm excited to share with you today a special broadcast here that we are doing with Mel Robbins on how to finish your year strong. Listen, no doubt this year has been challenging. No doubt this year has been discouraging. There has been a lot of uncertainty and chaos and just negativity. So we're here to serve you up with some great personal development to get your mind right, get your habits in order, get your projects completed, and ensure that you feel that this year ends in a good place for yourself mentally, emotionally, spiritually in your business, in your career, at home. I know that's a hard and a difficult challenge, but we're up for it here in growth day. I'd like to start off today with a very simple idea. And so you might take this note down and. And then Mel will be joining us. And this first simple idea is for this, for you to do this. I call this one more hour on the Core 3. Now, let me explain what the Core 3 is. If you're new to growth day, the Core 3 is could you right now please identify what are three things you've been doing in your life that have really been working, like three ideas or three strategies, three tactics, three routines. Something you have been doing this year that you feel like that's really been moving the needle forward for me. Maybe if you're an entrepreneur or a business owner, you've run the specific marketing strategy. If you're trying to get your health right, you had this kind of diet earlier on in the year or you worked out in this type of routine. If you're a parent, maybe you figured out a good way to set accountability with your kids without screaming at them. I don't know what it is for you, but I bet there's three things that have really, really worked for you this year. Could you identify them right now? I call these the core three. These are things that are absolutely working for us and you can segment them into your personal life and your professional life. I tend to do that. I like to know these three things in my personal life are really working and these three things in my professional life, my career are really working. And so I. I really think about them. I write them down. And once you've captured them, here's the takeaway. One more hour per day from this moment until the end of the year, doing one of those three things or all of them. For those of you who are real high performers, that is the easiest way I can explain it is find out what's already working and give it one more hour a day. Now, I know the first thing people always say is, but, Brendon, I. I don't have any more time. I have no more time today. And it's like, oh, if you don't have any more time today, we're going to talk about dealing with distractions throughout this episode today. Okay. Because most people actually have many more hours a day, but it's being lost in social media, television and other distractions. So we'll get there. But first and foremost, I want to make sure we can bring on Mel Robbins today. Are you out there in the Internet?

Hey.

I am.

How's it going?

Hi.

How are you?

I'm so good. Good seeing you.

It's great seeing you. And I'm so happy that I was listening in because I love that advice you just gave. I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. I think I'm going to pick one thing that's going really well and I'm going to spend another hour doing it because there's a lot of time that you also have working on things that aren't working. So that's another way to find time so maybe I will add to that. We'll ping pong back and forth here. Maybe you should add and eliminate something. So what's actually not working? That you're banging your head against the wall and it's wasting time. And let's eliminate that and let's then double down on the stuff that's actually working. And I'll share with you. What's working for me is I have been wasting my time trying to figure out, we put out a lot of social media content, right, Brendan, And I've been spending so much time banging my head against the wall trying to get this whole calendar filled out and get it all locked and loaded and micromanage everything. And it takes so much time and it's painful. And nobody on my team looks forward to actually having the social media review meetings because we're all like, ugh. And what's really working is going live.

Yes.

Why am I not going live more often? That's really working. And so you just gave me an enormous breakthrough about how to finish strong this year by doubling down on what's going right and eliminating something that is going wrong. And you can tell, here's, here's, here's a piece of advice for me now. Use this high five habit to make decisions about what's going right and what's going wrong. So anything that you want to high five, you know, you know immediately what is the part of your day or the things that you're doing that you would like high five because you love doing it because it's going well, because the momentum is there. And what are the things that, oh my gosh, the last thing you want to do is high five that because you don't want more of that in your life. It's a simple way to make this elimination and this double down happen.

I love that. I love that. Because listen, there's other things going on in your life that you want to high five yourself for or high five others or you want to pull your hair out on. And this is a time, listen, there's so little time left in this year, people think. But I'm like, oh, you can do a ton in three months if you really focus. Listen, I've written a book in three months. I've launched software program three months. You know, I've, I've done 20 city tours in three months. I mean, many of you guys have had children and you've done, I mean, if you think about the how much can happen in a three month period, you'd wow yourself. But you Got to narrow, you got to zoom in. And I love that. Eliminate the things that just aren't working and aren't giving you momentum. And it doesn't mean you need to kick them out of your life for the rest. Kick them out of your life forever. But maybe you say, you know what, for this next three months, these next 90 days, I'm in a parking lot. Those things aren't working. We'll revisit them in January. For now, I'm going to double down on what's working. I love that. I love that. So let's talk about what we've covered today so far in finishing the year strong. I started with my first strategy, I'll share with you here, which is my core 3. Identify the three things that have worked for you this year. And I don't mean just maybe are working now. The three best things that work for you this year that really move the needle in your personal development or your career, business, family, health. I like to break it down into these three things worked really great in my personal life. These three things worked really great in my career, my business. And I'm asking you to spend one more hour per day on those needle moving activities from here to the end of this year. Now, I promise I'd address something that always comes up. People go, brendan, I don't have another hour a day. And I'm like, most people do. Did you know the average American spends four hours watching television a day? Did you know the average American puts over two hours on social media scrolling or engaging in social media per day? Now, I'm not saying that there's not great television. I'm not saying that there's, you know, not great social media. But I'm saying if you are going to engage those things, you have a choice. Number one, what's the quality? Is it something I'm going to engage, that's empowering, going to inspire me, going to lift me up or just distract me or numb me out? And second, how many hours am I really spending doing that? So I always love to tell people, did you know if you spend four hours a day either on television or on social media or just generally distracted, let's just call it that, okay? General distraction, whatever way you want to qualify. Let me ask you this. Did you know that four hours distracted a day, that ends up being, you know, basically a full work week per month gone? That's crazy. You know, over the course of a year, because of the collateral damage from that, it tends to be, listen to this. It tends to Cause over three months of lost time. That's three months either in front of the television, social media, or what they call the collateral distraction damage. Collateral distraction damage. This is done from the world's largest studies on productivity. What they found is when you get distracted from a major needle moving activity, you know you're doing something during the day. It matters. You get distracted by somebody, by social media, or you engage in something else that wasn't not that specific task that you had blocked time for. The average time to get back into that task or the average additional time to complete the task is two more hours. Think about that. I mean, I'm sure you've done it before. You were writing something and it was really important to you, and the kids came in because you haven't set the boundaries yet. Or maybe you were writing something and something happened. You answered this random email and you went down this wormhole of YouTube videos, and all of a sudden you kind of like, just like you went down this, you were doing this one thing, these things happen. And you looked up two hours later and you're like, oh, my God. You look at the time, you realize, oh, my God, I've lost all this time. You see that you're naked and you're like, what happened to me? It's like this wormhole of time and distraction that goes away. That's what happens. You lose that much time, four hours a day, that's a week, a month. It ends up being on average about three months a year that people lose. So I don't want you to lose these next three months. I want you to get them back. And I'm not asking for much. I'm asking for one more hour. Just doing the things that work. That's not adding to you, that is amplifying you. It is saying what is already working this year. Let me double down on that. So if you're an entrepreneur or marketer and you did this one type of campaign, but now you're all these distracted. No. What worked this year, what moved the needle, what got the income? Do that again. If you find yourself in your personal life, what's really working in your relationship is that, you know, the best times you had this year were your date nights, but you're not frequent about them, you're inconsistent about them. Put them back in one hour. You know, if it's not asking a lot. But every day, find that hour to do needle moving activities. I promise you'll change the game. Try to be present. Try to be present. I really believe, as Denise does It's like when couples have learned mindfulness, when both of them have learned how to be self aware in the moment, to be non judgmental in the moment, to be able to come openly into the moment and be there with the other person in full presence, not stuck five years ago, present. Everything changes. I would say what our partners, our spouses, our relationships, our families want from us isn't more presence, like material presence, like Christmas gifts is presents. They want more sense that we are grounded right here with them, attentive to them, accepting of them in the moment with them, not trapped in old stories, not angry about the stress or the, the. The, you know, freaking out about the worries of next week or next month's bills, but rather at dinner with them in the moment with them, on the walk with them, living in the present with them. And this one, I would guess Denise probably brought up because it's so important in times of conflict to be present with them and to be. I would say, like, if I had to think about, like, my presence with Denise when we're struggling or when we're in an argument, I would say if I could give my, like, I. Knowing. Knowing what she needs in that moment more than what I'm kind of built or I was conditioned to as I grew up is that presence with tenderness, that presence with tenderness, I think that's what lacks in a conflict or a fight. It's like one person's so worked up and the tenderness isn't there, and I raise my hand. I got to work on that. That is one of those things. I grew up in a. I don't know about some of you. I grew up in a super fast twitch, like very speed up to argue, very vocal, not, you know, no, I didn't grow up around any passive aggressiveness or quiet silence and conflict and judgment. It was all verbal and very physical. I grew up in a place where there was a lot of physicality, a lot from the neighbors, the friends, the teachers. I mean, I grew up in a place where the principal could swat you with a wooden paddle. Like, literally, you got in trouble, you got beat by wooden paddle, by the principal. Like, I grew up so, like crazy like that. And so my mind, until I was probably about 25, was conditioned for that. And I recognized in a relationship when I was 25 how quickly I got angered and wanted to storm out or scream or holler or. I just, I. My ego, it trapped up. But I was also just angry. I was an angry young man. I worked a decade really hard in personal development to Let go of my anger. That came from just how I grew up. I had to let go of that and let go of that. Not be perfect, just get a little better every day at it. But that means I was also conditioned that way. And I have to go, whoo. Okay, that's a weakness of mine. And where does that come out? Usually for me, that will come out in an argument, right? If we're just not seeing something, I just feel it. I feel it literally come up. I feel the emotion of it. It just can be triggered. And what do I have to do? I've got to try to be present. That's why I love her language. This morning I was like, oh, that's so good. I underlined try, like seven times. Just try. Put the effort back into being present with your partner or spouse, even in conflict, but also in the beautiful times, put your dang phone down, Be at dinner with them, right? When you're intimate together, don't be staring off at the wall thinking about something else. Like, try to be passionate, intimate again. Like, bring your awareness, your physical body, your mindset to the moment with the other person. I tell people all the time, I go, imagine you just found out your beloved partner or spouse is going to be gone in three days. They got a terrible diagnosis. I promise you would be so tender with them and so present. Well, none of us know when those days are going to come. None of us know we're going to lose the person. And as I've been with people towards the end couples, all they want is to hold each other and to be tender with each other. And so being present is about living in this time zone with them right now, in the here now. Not the past, not the future here, but as being attentive, tender, thoughtful, and energetically co creating together. Because some people say presence is boring. You know, it sounds like presence is just tenderness and boring. I'm like, no, presence is pop and vibe and like the thrill of it all, too, right? That when you went on those first couple dates with that person, you were locked in. You were interested in trying to learn about them. You cared about what your clothes looked like. You know, you tried to smile, you tried to show some physical reaction to what they were doing. There was interest there, there was intrigue there. And you're both there, right? You're attentive. And if that relationship lasted, let's bring some of that back, that energy and the magic from that time, you fell really in love. When you went crazy for each other, what was there? What was there? Intention. What was there? Mindfulness to one another. What was there? Acceptance. And also not just accepting them, but pulling them in with your presence. Like you were drawn in, right? You were drawn together. They say, what was that? That's that energy, that's that presence that's bringing us together. We must rekindle that over and over and over in a relationship. It begins with both of us finding presence. I'm really excited to talk about this month's topic, which is 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 bring you that connection, that help life feel more even meaningful. And 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 in 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, is it's about, you know, 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, you know, the great universities of the world, the psychology department is right near the sociology department because they go together like 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 in 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, oh, 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 aliveness is one of the things we all want after you 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, weren't. They weren't loyal to you as a friend or they lied to you or, you know, something went wrong, you thought, what? 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 going to 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, this triangle, nothing 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 of that triangle, you always see me draw out growth. Your friend should be lifting you up, not pushing you down. Your friend 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 gonna do something that's hard, or I'm gonna try to achieve this amazing thing. I'm gonna 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 and 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. 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, 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 architect. 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. 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 like, 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. I. Oh, wow, look at all these nodes, if you will, these friends. If I like each of these people and have relationship with these 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 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. 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 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 is 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.