Mashup: Practical Ways to Improve Your Communication Skills

You want the most advanced communication skill in the history of the world. Try to improve another person's day. Listen to what they're saying, and try to ask questions or give advice when it's sought or share an idea to help them improve their situation, their day, their feeling, their mindset. We are going to talk about advanced communication skills so that you can deepen your relationships, survive this very tumultuous time in cultural conversations, and finally have the confidence that you need to show up and live the life that you desire. When you feel like you can communicate well, right? I always say communication is the number one most important skill, and we all know that. But very few people practice it at an advanced level. Most people could just kind of go through the motions and they wreck their relationships. They go through the motions. They don't lead well. They go through the motions. They don't express their deepest truth. They don't express who they are. They're scared to set boundaries, scared to say no, scared to speak up and be vulnerable. And so they watch their life not come to magic, not come to life. This is one of my very favorite topics, communication. Because the way that I grew up, I was not surrounded by a lot of great communicators. I grew up in an old Irish mining town and had been economically depressed for 100 years. So people didn't really communicate and share that much, especially the men in my life, there was not much vulnerability. The only expression of vulnerability was when they got really mad and smacked you and then felt bad about it and apologized later. If you got an apologetic look, it was a good day. So there wasn't a lot of that around then. When I went into high school and college, I recognized I was lacking in the ability to express myself. I recognized I was lacking in confidence. I recognized that I was always in, like, arguments with the girl that I was dating at the time, with my friends. And I was always like, why? Why am I always arguing with people? Why am I always upset? How come they don't understand what I'm saying? And I realized my friendships were superficial. And so I just wonder if any of you ever been in relationships or are in a relationship right now where you feel like the communication sucks? Raise your hand. You know, and now can you also admit that maybe you haven't developed the communication skills you need yet? Raise your hand. You know, I also recognize that when I got into business, I would go into these meetings, and I was nervous, and I couldn't speak up for myself, and I was awkward, and I just. I wasn't able to convey my ideas. I'd have an idea for the business or for the company I was working for, and no one would really listen. And I couldn't figure out how to persuade them. And worse, after the meeting, I'd be upset and I'd go to people. I'm like, well, no one understands me in there. And people would say, well, you know, you're not really arguing for what you want here. And I realized I was just. I was holding back. Can any of you guys raise your hand to this? That you hold back your own thoughts, your own desires, your own dreams, your own goals, that sometimes with a spouse or with a partner or with somebody you are even actually leading or serving, you don't say what you mean. You don't express your truth. And so the communication between the two of you or the group of you falters. And you're not able to put your ideas forward. You don't feel as engaged in that community or with that team. And you just wonder, why is this not getting any better? Some of you have been in relationships or marriages, and year over year over year, you couldn't break that communication pattern. Either they didn't communicate the way that you wanted, or you don't communicate the way they wanted. And it was like night and day. And you kept thinking, well, something will change. So you tried things, well, maybe we need more date nights. Maybe we need a vacation. Maybe we need to go to the spa together. Maybe we should take more walks. But what has to happen on all those things? Better communication. That's it. See, people try all the time to change their environment. They try to change their relationships, and if they don't change their communication skills, nothing really changes. Who's ever experienced this before? You think, oh, I'm going to move to a new city and have a whole new friendship circle. And you showed up in a new city. No new friends. Communication style. What happens? Or communication approach. What happened? Oh, I'm going to change that job and my next team will listen to me. And you went to that team and it was also full of more idiots. It was also full of more people who don't get it. It was also more full of people who didn't support you. Why? Communication. We have to recognize we are the source of our own pain so often because we don't develop our communication. I'm not going to go to the junior varsity route of just saying, well, you should listen more, reflect back to what people say, and just ask them lots of questions. Because I think there's a specificity in doing those things. There's a certain way to approach a relationship or communication situation. There's a certain intention to have. There's a certain process that helps you become better at those things. So I'm going to share the 10 with you and these are going to come from a perspective of both research. Some of you know, that's my master's degree is in organizational communication with an emphasis in leadership, trying to help people communicate better individually and on teams and organizations. So this is part of my academic career, but on the other side of things, I spend every day of my life being compensated for how I communicate. And so I've learned so much about that, so much about doing it through here through live casts and videos. And we're all on video on Zoom. How many of you feel like you work for Zoom now? Who's logged in more hours for Zoom this year than you did in almost any other system last year? It's like we all work for a communication platform now, it feels like. Or you're on social media. You, you're doing that work to reach people and to communicate something, right? But today's emphasis, I'm really going to go and try to make it personal for you and really break it down to that individual one to one relationship for advanced communication skills. Because the principles I'll share with you today, I think they come to life when we're talking about one to one communication. But you'll immediately see how they apply to your team. How do they apply to major groups? How do they apply culturally as well? Number one, you must start with having the ambition for great relationships. Have ambition for great relationships. I know that might sound common sense, but it's not common practice. That's why so many people who could achieve greatness do not. I want you to think about this. Your ambition for the quality of relationships in your life is the umbrella principle. It's the umbrella value ethic that is driving how your relationships are right now. I can't tell you how many people I've coached and worked with in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s who never, ever set a true genuine ambition for. For great relationships. Relationships that were vibrant, relationships that were deep, that had depth to them, relationships that made them feel engaged, happy, joyous, fulfilled. What most people do is they take the relationships that show up in front of them and go, I guess that's the way it is. I guess my parents are like that. Why have any ambition for anything better? They're never going to change.

They get.

They start dating or they get married and they go, well, I guess it is what it is. I've been with her for five years. She's not going to change. And you get this idea that people don't change. And what you do is your ambition keeps falling. And you allow your dream, your desire, your ambition for great relationships to continually get knocked down. Every time someone doesn't understand you, you've let your ambition for vibrancy and intimacy and sexiness and fun and joy in your partner. Relationships fall down. Every time you get in a fight, it stacks on. Every time there's trouble, it stacks on. And you keep getting more and more frustrated with the person. Your frustration grows into closed down communication. And now there's this distance, there's this block. And what people do is they immediately stop keeping their ambition for great relationships alive. I had the blessing of horrible relationships. Anyone else? I mean, I had terrible relationships. Just awful, just the worst terrible relationships. When I was a young man, right, this came up like I had this terrible relationship. I grew up in a town where everybody beat me up. I grew up in a town where everyone. There's a lot of really, really, really child, just awful adult behavior. Grew up in a place where there wasn't a lot of good communication. My first relationships with people I dated were just horrible judgment, just off, just like negativity and just, you know, huge demonstrations of anger. And it was just like, whoa. And the blessing was, sometimes we need a change. For me, it was, I got a knock in the head with my car accident. Made me realize, actually, I don't like that. I want phenomenal relationships. I want phenomenal relationships with everybody around me. And so how many of you ever had that ambition before? And maybe you picked up a book like how to Win Friends and Influence People, right? Or how to Talk so People Listen or How to Argue and Win Every Time. Or you picked up these books and you're like, oh, I need to learn how to share and communicate. Well, that was me. I was that dork my whole life. When I struggle with something, I go to books and I just start reading on things. And one of the blessings was I read about these people who had great relationships. And I never had that, but I kept my ambition. Here's the hardest thing to ask anyone to do in this particular year. Raise your ambition for your relationships. Especially now. Some of you have been shut in with your family for so long because of the pandemic that you're just like, we're trying to survive and you're trying to blunt out the Difficulty by just turning on the TV all the time or handing over devices all the time. And the ambition to have great relationships with the kids, with the spouse, with everybody else has kind of faded into I'm just going to survive.

But I'm here to warn you as.

Your coach that I'm just going to survive in this relationship just trying to get through the days with this family. That ambition is lower than your potential, that ambition is hurting your intentions. That low ambition not to have something great is cheating you from fulfilling the destiny you were probably meant to have, but would require great relationships. And as your coach, I'm here to say be wary of the fact that you are so wary in your relationships. Be attentive to the fact like, oh wow, we are just trying to survive right now. Because that's a slippery slope, isn't it? How many know that? Like when you just try to survive, Imagine you run a business, right? You're a CEO, you're an entrepreneur, you're running your business. If you allow just surviving to last for months or years, that company never survives, right? Someone in that company must have ambition. For what? Growth? For better service, for better relationships with the customers. If you don't have that in the business, the business flat that then dies. That's the same thing in marriage and relationship. The same thing in child parenting. The same thing every time we don't keep an ambition to challenge ourselves to do better, we end up hurting the very thing. And so I'm here to say have ambition for great relationships again. And I know your first impulse can easily be, well, you don't understand my husband. Well, you don't understand these crazy kids. You don't understand this team, you understand my business. You know what? Don't be a you don't understand person because that stops you from learning. People say you don't understand. They cut off the very advice they need to hear because they want to self justify. Does it make sense that it's hard? Does it make sense it's much more difficult with someone who doesn't listen. Does it make more sense when you have an obstinate husband, team or person in your business? Sure, those are roadblocks, those are difficulties, those are struggles. But just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible to improve. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible to improve. You can improve your relationships and I think you're going to find that and we're going to start it right now. Do you want to improve your relationships? Let's do a gut check. How much ambition have you had recently for great relationships?

Have you woken up about it?

Have you journaled about it? Have you thought about it? Is it in your goal sheet? If I paraded in your house, show me the piece of paper that says, improve this relationship. Show me the piece of paper that says create great relationships with everybody I meet. Show me the paper. Show me how often that piece of paper got journaled on. Show me how often you wrote that down, and then we can have a conversation that I don't understand, right? So let's start with have you had the ambition? And if not, let's reignite that today. Let's reignite your desire for deep, compelling, beautiful, awesome, fulfilling, intimate, zesty, fun relationships. Again, you can have them. And if you stopped yourself from believing that, it only means you disengage from the skill set. You just disengage from the development here. And that might sound, like, harsh or judgmental a way for a coach to kick off with it, but I'm a high performance coach. I'm supposed to hold your feet to the fire a little bit and challenge you and say, this should be an area that you love working on. Raise your hands if you love communication. Yeah, you guys, I get it. This is a great and a fun and a fulfilling and a great place to focus. So please, let's up level our ambition together, my friends. Let's start with strong ambition for great relationships. That's number one. Without that one in place, everything else is a principle. But it's unmoored from growth. It's unmoored from greatness, and we want to be connected to those things. All right, number two, as I've learned in my life and many of you have too, everything's about intention. Like, what is the intention of my communication with this person? And I believe there's three intentions we have to set. Okay? So this is what my idea is. You got to set intention for learning, honoring, and improving. This is my modus operandi when I sit down with somebody. My whole thing in sitting down with people. And this is not just my coaching career. This is life. Like, if we go to, like, breakfast together, right? Go to lunch together, hang out. My whole mode is I want to learn about this person. Notice I don't say I want to show I'm awesome. No, I want to learn about this person. Meaning, has learning been your primary mode of operation with your spouse recently? Has learning been your primary mode of operation with that team member? Has learning been your primary mode of operation? In communicating to groups or when you're talking with your partner or the person who you love, is it always just about? You got to tell them what you need, you got to tell them what the to do list is. You got to tell them what the agenda is. And you live in communication land. That is what I call agenda based, not learning based. Some people only talk at their kids. We're doing this, this, this, and this and this. But they never learn from their kids. So it's a different relationship. Right. Agenda based communication, which is usually to do list. What are we doing, where we're going versus the first primary thing is learning. And I think this is so important. If we can just shift everything. Listen, I always tell people listening skills without the very primary intention of learning is just a tactic. Does that make sense? I know in junior varsity levels of conversation about communication, be a great listener. Well, what does that mean? Well, the intention is to learn. Listening is one of the vehicles for that. So set an intention to learn more. We stopped learning from each other as a culture, and that's how you get tribalism and division at the epic levels we face worldwide now. Because the intention to learn from another went out the window and the intention to persuade or argue at or accuse other people went up.

Right.

So let's remember setting the intention for learning. Think about this. If your umbrella intention is to have ambition, I want great relationships and I want to learn from others. That frames every method, every tactic, and every principle underneath. Okay, learning. Here's the other one.

Honoring.

I love this one. Very few people talk about this, so I think it's important in a relationship, in your communication. Your communication style should be honoring of other people. What does that mean? Honoring means you hear what they say, you reflect it back, you honor that. That's a great idea. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate you. I really value that you shared that. I respect that you're participating right now. I'm thankful that we're having this conversation. Also saying very simple things like, I appreciate you did this. Good job at that. Honoring the other person so they feel heard, valued, respected and appreciated. Honoring the other person so they hear, they feel heard, valued, respected and appreciated. That's like everything, right? How good have you been at honoring your partner, your spouse, persons that you care about, if your parents are around, have been speaking to them and honoring their difficulties this year. The people who you love in your life, your family, have you been honoring their unique and difficult journey through what is a crazy and wild year? I mean, think about your last 10 major conversations, were you honoring of the other? Now, my bet is, in our community here, you do all around the world, we got people communicating and participating right here. And if you think about it, that's a beautiful thing about our community here, right? You're more likely to be people who show up for a session like this. You know who usually isn't here? The bad communicators, because they go, I already know it. You know? No, you're the learner. You're the person who wants to develop in this way. So I'm honoring you as a community for caring enough to develop this skill. But. But this is a very key principle in your communication patterns with other people. Is learning there as your intention, is honoring the other there as intention. Even when I go into a place where I know I'm gonna have a conflict with someone, my whole mindset shifts. Make sure they feel honored and respected in this process. Make sure they feel that. Honor them. Honor them for showing up. Honor them for trying. Honor them for a good job when they do a good job. Honor. Honor them for sharing their voice. Honor them for participating. Honor them for giving you the time of day. Really, like, if we can remember the value of each relationship, everything can change. All right, so our intention is for learning, honoring, and the last thing is improving. You want the most advanced communication skill in the history of the world? Try to improve another person's day. Listen to what they're saying and try to ask questions or give advice when it's sought or share an idea to help them improve their situation, their day, their feeling, their mindset. My mode is whoever is here, I am here to be of service, whoever's in front of me, I'm going to try to really learn about them, to honor them as a person and to help them reach whatever goals that they're after. Hey, everybody, it's Brendan. I want you to make sure you write the date in your journal or in your piece of paper or your napkin, wherever you're writing, okay? I want you to write the date. I want you to write advanced emotional intelligence. Because this is going to be a changing day for how you manage your emotions, the emotions of other people, and how you really sense and feel this life. I'm going to begin with just a few points about why I believe most people don't have more emotional intelligence and why this topic isn't more valued in not only, you know, the greater world or educational system or our political system or. Or in some of our organizations around the world or even some of our teams, some of Our families. But I really believe that comes from just a few ideas here. Number one is the unfortunate reality that a lot of people think emotional intelligence is a touchy feely, over sharing, sense of vulnerable, weakness stuff. And they don't realize emotional intelligence is the secret to better decision making and better influence. It is the secret to overall mental health. It's the secret to mental strength, mental toughness, mental resilience. You want to be awesome in life and feel awesome. You want to care for others and set the tone and the energy of your culture or those that you lead and you serve. You need emotional intelligence. Because emotional intelligence isn't just about how I feel. It's about tapping into a deeper understanding of what's happening in your biological system, what's happening neurobiologically, and what's happening in the social environment so that you have greater mastery of it. Not just to be aware of your feelings, which is absolutely critical, but also to know the difference between emotions and feelings. To also know the difference of when someone is sad versus when they're discouraged, and knowing what to do with all of that. That's the power of emotional intelligence. So this is not just some, like, you know, I think what has happened in pop culture, people think emotional intelligence is just like, you know, touchy feely, cotton candy hype stuff. No, it is literally the foundational principle of having a great life. You have to be more than engaged, aware, and greater in your personal power related to your emotions. Especially now, it's like, these are difficult times. So we're gonna really dive deep into this and we're gonna make it about mental toughness and mental resilience in this year. Not just about, like touchy feely. Second big thing is I really believe the reason why most people aren't more emotionally strong, intelligent, resilient, is because there is this dynamic in our culture that is often avoid difficult feelings, avoid difficult conversations, avoid those times when we don't understand our feelings. So let's drown it out with, you know, addiction, alcohol, distraction, Instagram scrolling, whatever it is, right? It's like, oh, I don't feel good. You know what happens for a lot of people? They don't feel good about themselves or their relationships or their businesses or their teams or their life. So they pick up the phone and they go scrolling for life. Do you know what that is? That's an emotional intelligence thing. What's happening is they don't know how to cope. And so they pick up tools for coping versus understanding. Coping is here. They externalize coping, seeking Coping mechanisms outside without understanding how to navigate the difficult emotions of our lives. And so I think more people, you know, haven't mastered this area of their life better because the easiest answer is to avoid it.

You know, think about all those difficult.

Emotions you've had in personal relationships. Somebody, maybe you have a relationship right now, you know, who you really you love somebody. You're, you know, in a relationship in an intimate way, or you're a parent or you're, you know, leading a team. And there's all this difficult emotion to manage right now. You know, people are discouraged. There's a lot of vitriol and outrage out there. There's a lot of just fear of all this unknown. How have you engaged that? Have you had conversations with them? Have you checked in? Did you understand where they were at? Did they feel heard and seen, validated, appreciated by you? Or are you so struggling just to deal with yourself that you even forgot other people? Because that happens too. But we're going to go from this conversation of avoidance to engagement today. And that is the fun, like the foundational tool in all of emotional intelligence is engaging it, right? Engaging those difficult emotions, engaging those difficult conversations, engaging those difficult people instead of hiding. This is that important time to be doing that. You know, I get how easy it is to say, I don't want to deal with that. You need to learn how to deal with it straight up. You need to get at level 9 out of 10 in order to navigate these next few months well and lead others. And you got to give yourself an assessment. I'm going to ask you to do that right now. I know so many people, they don't understand the importance of scoring different skill sets of their lives. So they just kind of go through life hoping to get better. But one thing that we know from high performers is they're willing to score themselves. They're willing to, on a consistent basis. They give themselves grades or scores about how they're doing. How have you handled your emotions this year on a scale of one to ten? One. You just not good. I mean, okay, let's call zero dead. Okay, one. It's been a struggle and it's been terrible. Ten. You feel, like, impressed by yourself. This year has been pretty good. Like, you've handled all of this emotion pretty well. Where have you been? 0 to 10. Sometimes just sharing is the first step here. Okay, now let me ask you about, how have you dealt with the emotions of others on 0 to 10? 0. I totally. They freaked me out. I don't want to deal with them 10. I've been doing pretty good, Brendan, thank you. I've been a great leader, a great parent, a great caregiver, a great manager. I've been doing real good. Where have you been? You know, you got to think about that constantly, like personally, how am I managing my emotions and socially? And the more that we're aware of these things and evaluating these things, the more our brain's gonna go, let's get better. Like, your brain is great at gamifying, right? When you give yourself a score, your brain goes, I wanna get better. I would like a higher number here. Especially if you're on something like this with me here at Growth Day. I mean, it's like, duh, like you want to work on yourself, right? So I know that sometimes it can be discouraging when we talk about measuring yourselves or giving yourself a score here. Some people say, Brennan, I've been a level five with my emotions for a decade. I feel crappy. Thanks for making me score myself. Okay, but listen, that's going to lead to this next point. Many people confuse emotional intelligence with a conversation about who they are versus skill set.

What I mean by that?

Well, emotional intelligence is a skill. It's not about yourself or even just your overall personality or identity. It's a skill, right? It's an area of your life to be managed, improved upon, navigated, and it doesn't represent you. So many people think when they're know they have or experience sadness that, oh, I'm a terrible person. I have all these reasons to be happy. Why can't I just be happy? But I'm feeling sad right now. What a piece of crap I am. And they literally start speaking negatively of themselves because they have or experience or feel an emotion. But an emotion is not you. An emotion is not you. And what most people do in this category of emotional intelligence in their life, they say things like this. They say, oh, well, you don't understand. That's just how I am. I'm just not one of those joyous people like you, Brendan. I'm not like your students who are so heavy and what they do is. I'm not like that. Thinking that managing your emotions, navigating your emotions and activating a full suite of positive emotions in your life is related to their identity and who they are. No, we're talking about a specific topic in personal development. There's lots of things we can talk about that isn't you, right? Your car is not you. And your emotions are not you. Your dog is not you. The things you Own or control or have are not you. It's okay when you have an emotion that you don't like not to hate yourself for the emotions you're experiencing. Some of you had a really tough year, right? I hear all day long from this community. It's like, this has not been an easy year. And so many people get down on themselves. Down on self versus recognizing. Oh, I don't have a real strong skill set here to navigate this difficult emotion. You follow? You don't need to get mad at yourself or down on yourself. If you score yourself in a way you don't like, you say, oh, I need to develop more skill here to be able to do that better, right? If I go out and you and.

I go out and we hang out.

To play tennis and I'm not good at it at first. I don't say, oh, I suck at all sports. I say, I'm not good at this tennis thing. I need to figure out how to hold this racket and make sure this ball gets over that net. And when it comes back to me, you don't hit me in the eye. You know, it's like you have to realize your emotional life and navigating it. It's a skill set. And when it's a skill set, you can get better at it. Obviously, that is why you're here, but I want to remind you that, because I'm going to hear, I can tell you right off the bat how good you are with emotional intelligence. Are you ready? Okay, some of you ain't going to like this. Your emotional intelligence is directly correlated with how hard you have been on yourself this year, Right? If you've been so hard on yourself this year, then this is a great session for you because you need to develop greater emotional acuity, greater emotional strength, greater emotional resilience, greater emotional intelligence, right? And if you've always been hard in your life, but you're like, no, no, no, but I understand my emotions. No, because if you're constantly hard on yourself, that's coming up because of emotions. You feel an emotion you don't like, you take the emotion and you describe it to self. This is why you keep getting it wrong. I'm here. I wanted to help you do this. Separate yourself from the skill set of managing emotions and just go, you know what? I'm kind of not managing that well today. I can understand that. I don't manage things great every day and every time without saying I suck. Okay? Parents out there, you know this, right? You can be a great parent, a good Parent, a loving parent, a caring parent. But sometimes when little Johnny or Sally or whoever comes in and you lose it that moment in dealing with that child right there, it might not be your best, but it doesn't take away from the fact that you're a caring, giving parent.

Right.

You don't take individual interactions with that child when it doesn't go right and globalize it into, you're terrible. That's globalization and catastrophizing.

You follow?

Well, don't do that with your emotions either. Right? Don't do that with your emotions. There's days don't tell nobody but Brendan Burchard, the motivation manifesto guy, which is currently the best selling motivation text so far of this century. With motivation in the title. There's days I'm not motivated. That doesn't mean I'm like, oh, I'm a terrible person. Look how incongruent and awful I am. Oh my God. It's like, you know, I didn't manage my focus and my energy well today. I wasn't clear with my intentions. I didn't energize my mind and my body to get excited about my purpose. I didn't do the things that are necessary to summon and sustain the emotion I wanted. Instead, I just accepted what landed on me. Feel crappy. And now what do you do when you feel crappy? These are the things we're going to talk about today. So I hope this is helpful. And I'm kind of going over why people really struggle with this. And I know it might feel really negative up front, but I'm trying to tell you this is why more of our culture doesn't talk about it. This is difficult. When I'm asking people to score themselves, they're like, what? How can you do that? Well, I'll share with you one last big idea about why I think people really struggle with this topic is because they think the conversation about emotional intelligence is some way that like emotions are irrational or not as important. You know, it's some of those people who quote, unquote, feel way left brained or. No, I'm more of an engineering mind, Brendan. Emotions don't get into my thinking process, you know, and they're more like they feel like emotions are irrational or not important or not a priority or are weak. When the reality is your wellness and your decision making and your interactions with others is predicated upon your ability, your ability to have holistic contemplation.

What do you mean by that?

You can't make a decision if you X out Emotion, there's the logical and the emotional and these things are always talking to each other. You can't separate them. And the more you try to separate them, the more life becomes miserable. Because what happens is you become an incredibly analytical person who doesn't feel anything or you become an incredibly feeling oriented person who's not taking the time to think through things and so consequences on either side aren't good. We want you to be incredibly holistic in your contemplation, your decision making. And that means your whole body, mind, life comes into how you live and experience life. We want you fully activated heart, mind, body, soul to enjoy a great life. That's part of emotional intelligence, right? But we don't say that often. So people go, ah, emotions. And it's like, oh no, no, no. If you've been a person like ah, emotions, I bet your happiness meter is lower than you think it is. I bet if you took a life satisfaction score or you're really contemplating about where you're at, you'd realize life should feel better. Do you know how many people I know and coach who they're so successful. I mean, they have it all and they're so smart and they're completely unfulfilled. They're unfulfilled, they're disengaged and they can't quite explain why. It's because they haven't been managing their emotions well. They haven't brought emotion into life. It's like they have relationships, but the relationships don't have pop and vibe and spirit and joy.

Right?

It's like they do tasks every day but they don't feel the day. And that's what I'm always sharing with you guys. It's about feeling the day. After you have everything you wanted in life, what do you want more of? You want to feel the day more? A sense of connection and meaning and fulfillment and satisfaction and intimacy and joy and vibe and pop. Right? That's what we want. So emotions aren't something to crowd out. Emotions are something to navigate. Emotions are something to summon. Emotions are something to spark with others. And emotions are something to utilize to sense the wholeness and the beauty of life.

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 just a 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, right? Because if you can emotionally feel motivated every day, almost everything else can fall in line, right? If you're emotionally motivated to. 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 to be my best self. I want to connect with people. And so motivation is. Is something we're gonna have to generate on a consistent basis. You have to learn to bring the joy. Cause the power plant doesn't have energy. It generates energy. Motivation is something. Me, the motivation guy, I have the bestselling book of the entire century with motivation. 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 this ferocity and this fierceness and this attention 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. That's part of homeostasis.

That's part of our. 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. 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. 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 gonna live here. And it was a motivation. It was a cue. I saw something desired, it, wanted it went after it, like. 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, you know, and all of a sudden, you. 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 upset 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. 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. 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, right? It's not that I can't be happy with now, 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, right? It either takes reflection or action to generate serious, sustained motivation, either reflection or action. Because ultimately from the reflection, that gives.

Us clarity.

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, 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, hope to find motivation later in the day.

Like you want to kick off the.

Day, kick off the day with motivation. Like get already 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 what? 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, 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 gonna 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, 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 cue me, all right, it's time to visit what's been great today.

So.

So I'll 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 gonna 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 is 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 just 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, 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 doubt 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, it's like 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've talked 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. So if you ever hung around me, I'm constantly bouncing and moving and breathing. And if you've been with me at hpa, 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, like, sounds. 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, 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 fleeting. Of course it's fleeting if you never look at it. I tell you 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 it, I'm like, okay, let's go. If I didn't do that, I need cough.