Mashup - The 3 Principles You Need to Master if You Want to Develop Discipline (With Jamie Kern Lima)

No discipline happens unless on a real consistent basis, unless you have social connection. All of the research shows the most productive people, the most focused people, the people who are most fulfilled in doing meaningful work have attached a meaning that their focus, intention, their hard work is attached to social connection.

Meaning I'm going to show up for.

This because it's going to make me a better mom or parent. I'm going to get healthy so I have more energy for the kids. I am going to do this project so my team and company grows so we serve more people and we make an impact. It's like the hard work must be attached to impact. But the impact isn't just so self like, oh, I'll get this. It has to have a social connection like you. You have to have a reason to show up over and over and over for others. I'll give you three principles for greater discipline and then I'll tell you the actual three things to do to generate more discipline in such a way that your personal growth grows, that you feel like alive and connected and meaningful and joyous on this journey because that's what really matters. I mean, discipline sucks unless in some ways the outcome is progress, greater engagement and aliveness of life and greater success in whatever way you measure that. So the three principles of all of like discipline comes down to number one, mastering your schedule. I know that sounds so boring, but it is so absolutely fundamental to your focus, to your progress, to your health. It doesn't matter if you say, okay.

I only want to, I only want.

To schedule one thing today. That's fine with me.

I'm not trying to own every hour of your life.

But that one thing better be awesome and it better be a needle mover. So scheduling show up when it's scheduled and then the third thing, which is most important as a principle or all of discipline, no discipline happens unless on a real consistent basis, unless you have social connection. All of the research shows the most productive people, the most focused people, the people who are most fulfilled in doing meaningful work have attached a meaning that their focus, intention, their hard work is attached to social connection.

Meaning I'm going to show up for.

This because it's going to make me a better mom or parent. I'm going to get healthy so I have more energy for the kids. I am going to do this project so my team and company grows so we serve more people and we make an impact. It's like the hard work must be attached to impact. But the impact isn't just self like, oh, I'll get This, it has to have a social connection. Like, you have to have a reason to show up over and over and over for others. That's why we always teach in high performance.

You have to have a little card.

That says, who needs me on my A game today?

I am disciplined because I would be.

Less disciplined doing a morning show.

I'm more disciplined doing a morning show because Jamie's there, she's waiting on the other end. If I don't get there, I feel like a chump.

So that's important. You know, there's three principles, right? Schedule it, show up, attach social connection.

But now here's the things I would do.

If you said, brendan, if you could only be disciplined about three things, what would you do? And it's not what you all think. It's totally not what you all think. And this is very much that makes me happy and progressive in life. So they're not sexy. The number one thing, if I could give anyone a discipline to always do on the first of every single month, you do a whole life review. When that calendar hits one, as in the first of the month, you look.

At every major area of your life.

You score yourself. You ask how you'd like to improve that and what could you do this month?

Because most people never improve their life.

Because they never face their life.

You have to look at it. So.

So every first of the month. That's why that's.

That's for those who are new to us.

Growth Day began with Growth Day actually.

Began because I said, let's do it on.

Let's do our personal development on the first of the month. So I go live for two hours in Growth Day. So if you're not a member, go to growthday.com because I do a full personal development seminar on the first of every single month. Because I feel like if we start.

The month off, we nail that.

We start it with good attitude, energy. But also you're looking into the month and asking, is the way I've scheduled this month going to help me move towards the lifestyle I want or the accomplishment of the major three projects I'm working on in my life?

And also, if we don't do this, I feel like it is so easy and how many people can relate to this where if you don't do this, all of a sudden you blink and you're like, oh, it's halfway through the month, or, oh, three months have gone by. I don't even know what's. How did this even happen? Right? How many times have we done that? Like, wait a minute, it's Thanksgiving. Like, wait a minute, it's spring break. And it's like your life flies by in a blur.

This is for those who have the High Performance Planner. You know this page super well. This is your monthly review section in the High Performance Planner. And what it does is it makes you look at the 10 major areas of your life, from health to mental, emotional partner or love, family, friends, mission, experiences, spirit, finances, learning, growth. It helps you reflect on the things you learned in the last month. Learn about others, learn about yourself, what you're grateful for, the main priorities coming up, the decisions you needed to make or could make. Your monthly review and orienting yourself to your year goals and three year goals. If I don't do that on the first of the month, what happens? Is the middle of the month, what am I doing? I might be showing up, but I'm.

Showing up in a hot mess all the time because I don't have direction.

So if I could give you anything, start the first of the month super clear about that month. If that's all you did, I promise you'd be more engaged with your life. Second thing I do, I believe another review is needed every Sunday. So, Sunday, do your weekly review and your weekly planning. I don't care if it takes 10 minutes, an hour.

I think it's important to go okay on Sunday.

Is this upcoming week.

Am I clear about what I want of that?

Am I clear about how I can serve? Am I clear about these little slots of time? Do they make sense to me?

I mean, just that it can take so fast.

So third thing. Yeah, all right, listen.

If I could give you three things.

To move the needle in your life. Number one is a month through on the 1st of the month, look out. And Lois, please don't think that this or the Sunday review, which is the second point, is just about your schedule. You are reviewing the major parts of your life. You're connecting with them, you're scoring them. You're asking what more you desire there and what's something simple you can do to improve that area of your life each month.

It doesn't have to be huge life.

Transformation because transformation takes time. You might just like this little thing, this little. This thing. But being aware of it, that's important. So the monthly, then the Sunday, and then you have. I just. I know everyone's already wrote this in their things and they just know it to be true. You've got to win your mornings again and bring intention for, I think two things every day. If we can bring intention for two things. Every day we win that day. To me, the first one is I'm going to bring the joy. To this day, I'm going to choose my attitude. I'm going to. I'm going to develop a mindset that is unshakable, that is joyful. That is I'm going to be in every room. It doesn't matter if I'm the loudest. I'm going to try to be the most generous and grateful person in that room. I'm just going to bring good energy. Be responsible for the energy you are projecting onto others and into this world. So I think for me, that intention of. I have an intention to have joy. Each day I'm going to have some fun. I'm going to make that happen. Because sometimes life doesn't do it for you. Yeah, they just hasn't. So I'm going to bring the joy. So that's my. That's an intention. So what I'm saying is the third discipline is every day you have intentions for feeling life.

Yeah.

For me, feeling life means bring the joy. That's number one, I'm going to bring the joy. And number two, I'm going to make a moment with somebody today. Maybe I send them an audio. Maybe it's the way I look at my wife. Maybe it's the thing I call up my mom or I sense a beautiful appreciation email or text to somebody. But every day I'm going to bring the joy into the day and I'm going to make a moment. Because at the end of your life, I learned this. I faced my death twice in my life. You remember these moments and scenes with other people. It's so important to realize that. And so you have to ask, are you going to have enough of those moments and scenes? Are they going to be at the.

End of your life?

You kind of. It's true. If it's true, you see a movie, what are the scenes of that movie going to be?

You get to direct that.

And I promise the scenes in the movie almost always have these beautiful connections with others. It's like most people don't realize the ending movie of their life is love scenes and connection scenes with other people where like these like meaningful moments, if you will just call them meaningful moments. That's what you see at the end, meaningful moments. So if that is true.

If it's true, then you have to.

Purposely structure and build in meaningful moments. So you love the movie at the end. You know that you love the movie.

That you want to watch.

The movie again that you appreciate that.

You'Re going to bust out the good wine and have that good popcorn with that meaningful movie. And. And so every day that's. Now that's mine. I'm going to bring joy to this.

Day and I'm going to make moments.

Yeah, that's so good.

You might have different intentions. Maybe your intentions, like, I'm going to.

Do this thing as a mom or as a leader or as a whatever.

Doesn't matter to me.

But if you don't have the intention, the days just blaze by.

Nothing. You can be working hard. You can show.

You can get your schedule down. You can have your calendar prioritized with all the tabs and all the different marker colors and everything else.

But if there's no intention for feeling.

You just. You were a good robot today.

Yep.

But you didn't.

And we've all had days like that where we feel like a human doing right, not a human being. That's so good, Brendon. That's so good. And a moment, a meaningful moment can be different for every single person. But how many days do we go through and we forget and a meaningful moment is free? You know what I mean? And it's like, how many days do we forget to do that? That's so powerful. I love that.

I love that you have.

So to me, that's funny that the discipline is to have the intention right. Every day when you have the intention or every moment or every experience, when you have the intention, it turns out better.

This is gonna be a conversation about overall life happiness, not just like in the moment happiness. Cause in the moment of happiness, I mean, we can all kind of get that bottle of wine, bag of chips, maybe just me.

But I think, you know, finding pleasure.

Or joy or in the moment happiness, we can get there. We'll talk about that a little bit. But I want to talk about the big picture. How do we know what will give you enduring happiness? Happiness that you'll self report throughout your lifespan that, yeah, I have a happy life. It's different than sometimes just in the moment happiness. It has to last longer. And so what psychologists have done is basically broken it up and said, you know, people who are happy over the long term, they tend to look at their lives in very specific ways. And here's how they tend to do it. They tend to break up their life. They look at their past, they're happy with their past, they're happy with their present, and they're happy with where they're going. So they kind of Break it up into time zones, right? Past, present, and future. And here's what we found in each of those areas.

If you look at your past in.

This specific way, you'll be more happy. If you look at your present in the specific way, you'll be happier. And if you look at your future in this specific way, you'll be happier over the long term. So let's start with your past. Okay, Most people who are unhappy over the quality of their life over the long term, it's because something in the.

Past, they're really hung up on it.

They consistently battle it, blame it, are angry about it, are bitter against it. And those who are happy, they don't have that negative emotional range about their entire past. It's not to say that there might not be some things in the past that you can't be unhappy about or some things that happened that you were upset about because you know what happened to all of us. But those who make it out and have a joyful life, here's what they tend to do.

When they look to the past, the.

First thing they tend to do is accept it. They're like, the past is the past, it did pass, and here we are today. They don't make everything okay. They don't try to validate it. They don't try to say, well, that was supposed to happen. They just go, I got it. The past happened. I have to accept what happened because I can't change it now. I can change how I perceive it, but things happened. I'm going to accept that the past happened for some type of reason. Or if anything, maybe I don't ascribe a higher reason to it. But I'm going to say in general, I'm good with the past. It happened, today's a new day. And they accept the reality that that time period, that situation, that person, that thing that they didn't like, it's not here anymore. So they can't keep living there. They have to accept that today is today. All of that is gone. Today they can choose a different life, as we'll talk about. So they accept the past. But here's the thing. They go beyond just acceptance. And this is really important because I think people forget this all the time. It's not just about, like, accepting the past. Okay, that's fine. No happy people, they generate memories of. Of fondness on a continual basis. They relive the past. Not the negative things, but the positive memories. They think about it, honey, you remember that one vacation we took, and they talk about it. Today, hey, do you remember when you were a kid and that funny thing happened?

And they relive the positive.

They have. Happy people have a sense of nostalgia about the positive things of the past.

And they remember that and their connection.

To that is more than, than towards the negative things. And so here's a question to see if you're happy with your family, with your friends, those around you, are you often reliving positive memories? They tell positive nostalgic stories about the past without apology.

They're not living there.

They're not trying to go back and.

Relive the glory days.

They're just honoring and appreciating that those days even happened for them. They have a deep sense of fondness and, yes, gratitude to the beautiful moments and memories and people and experiences they got to have. And so I know that might sound almost too easy to say because, you know, maybe in the past you went through some traumatic stuff, some very difficult moments happened, but by and large, if you can finally get to a point where today you go, okay, okay, I don't have to be cool with everything that happened, but I accept the past. I'm cool.

It's over.

I am cool today.

And I like these little moments.

And I'm gonna choose to focus and remember those and bring them up to people, talk about those things.

Then I'll feel better about the past.

And if you feel better about the past, you have a more solid foundation and a much easier time finding happiness. Today.

Today.

If you want to feel happy today, there's two things we know without question will get you to higher levels of happiness. Number one, connection. Connection, that is you deciding to connect to the moment. That means being present and connecting to other people. You know, they've done a lot of those end of life studies to see what makes people happy.

And you see over and over and.

Over again, it's the quality of their relationships. And so if you want to be happy today, put more emotional connection into your relationships. And I say that not philosophically, I mean, like, have that intention. Like, I'm going to put good energy into this relationship today. I'm going to put good energy into my kid today. Even if they were a jerk yesterday, I accept it. Kind of cute. Today I'm going to just put good energy, good vibes into this relationship today. Because if I do that, I, I'll feel better. If you're doing work and you don't even like the work, but at least you'll engage with it, you'll connect to the work. Like, you'll Force yourself to be there, be present, be in it.

You'll feel happier.

The second thing today that you can do so easy is increase your appreciation. Almost in every psychological study ever done, those who had more gratitude reported greater happiness. The way that you get gratitude is you appreciate things. So let's just jump right to that. Start appreciating things better. Appreciate your house today, you know, appreciate that maybe you got a car. Appreciate that you had somebody in the house with you today who loved you. Or appreciate the fact that you have opportunities that all around the world, people would just beg for that billions of people don't have the opportunities that you do. I know we're all in a big rush. I'm guilty sometimes, too, of going through things as fast as I can, because I got one thing, I got to go on another thing, another thing. But you know what I found? I'm most unhappy in life when that's what I'm doing. I'm just going on one thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, to next thing, and the next thing, and not feeling what I'm doing, not really connecting it and not appreciating it. I'm writing a book, and there's days when I'm miserable about the book, and those days I'm miserable with the book are those days that I forget to connect with the material. And worse, I forget to appreciate the fact that I have the blessing to get to work on a book. I forget to appreciate how far I've come as a writer. I forget to appreciate the time that my team has set up to protect my ability to write. I forget to appreciate that God has given me a voice and I get to share that. And so I share with you that the most important thing you can do today, like, stop thinking that stuff will give you happiness. Stop thinking that you'll achieve something today that will give you happiness. The only thing that's gonna give you happiness, connection and appreciation. So connect to the moment. Connect to other people by putting positive energy.

Remember, bring the joy.

And then appreciate the little things, all.

The little goofy things throughout the day.

Appreciate the opportunities that you have. You'll start to feel much happier. I promise you. Those are easy, quick wins in the moment. And then what we know for people who have the highest ranking of happiness, they look to the future in a unique way. And there's two elements there that they're usually looking towards. One, they're enthusiastic about something in the future. They're not optimistic. Optimistic would mean, you know, I believe stuff in general from today will turn out well. I believe that tomorrow is going to be good. Happy people are enthusiastic about something specific tomorrow or in the future. Very specific. They're enthusiastic about getting to do that project or complete that project. They're enthusiastic about that wedding coming up. They're enthusiastic about that thing going to come out. There's something they look for is very specific. And it's not a general optimism, though, that also has been shown very, very high in correlation to happiness, one of the highest rankings. Being optimistic, thinking things will turn out well. But really happy people, when they talk about the future, there's something specific they're excited about. So I ask you, what could you be excited about for tomorrow? What's hanging out there that you haven't allowed yourself to believe in and get stirred up about? Cause we're so scared of being disappointed that we destroy our happiness.

We say, I don't want to get.

Enthusiastic because it might not go well. And so we cage ourselves into an unsatisfying life. If you want to be happy again, you have to open yourself again to.

The idea that things can be great.

You got to open yourself again to that hope, that optimism. You got to open up yourself again to the possibility, yeah, you might be disappointed. But. But here's the thing I always tell people.

What would you rather experience a life.

In which you don't do anything and you never look forward to anything because you're scared of disappointment, which, by the way, means you are continually living in disappointment. Or you say, you know what? I look forward that. I think that could happen.

I'm going to go for it. You do take action, but at least if you do get disappointed, the whole.

Time you are taking action, you are.

Developing competency, knowledge, skill, ability, talent, mastery. So even if you got disappointed, you.

Know what the disappointment came as? It came at the very end as a sudden surprise. I'd rather have disappointment come at the very end as a sudden surprise than every single day of fear and disappointment and living in that terror that I'm going to be disappointed and doing nothing with myself. Don't know about you, but that's how I feel. So first, enthusiasm for a situation, something specific. It's so important. And then that next part about looking to the future is they have a sense of positive legacy they have made up in their mind, and that's all they've done. They've made it up.

Because you and I, we can't read the future. We have no idea.

But they've made up in their mind this story about their life having Meaning, and specifically a legacy. They see, looking into the future, they can see the legacy of their children. They can see the legacy of their business. They can see the legacy of the love that they created. They can see something. They can see that they are going to leave some type of mark or some type of relationship or some type of situation where the world is better because they tried, because they. They showed up. And maybe you don't know what your legacy is, but you know what? You're never gonna suddenly realize it's not just gonna happen. You have to make it up. So if you're not happy today, start making up stories about what you can be excited about tomorrow and about what mark you might leave. The difference you might leave even if you don't know exactly what it is.

You don't have to have precision about these things.

But in general, when you cast your eyes into the future, you go, mm, that's gonna be good.

Today. I wanna start with what we promise in growth day and what we talk about in growth day. Because we have three big themes that we're always working towards in growth day. It's this framework that I teach that I believe is really the drives that we're all after. This is something that we are going to work on together all year. Everybody wants these three things we all want aliveness, connection, and meaningful pursuits. And these are things that I promise after you make your next 10,000 or $100,000, or you have your next child, or you move to that dream place, or you get that perfect job, or you start that new business, no matter how busy you get or how successful you get, these three things never go away. Our sense of aliveness is our sense of being. Our sense of aliveness is that thing that we all want. Enthusiasm, zest, pop, joy, emotional vitality. Right? Vibrancy, full presence, that sense of aliveness each day, where we feel the day, where we bring the joy, these are themes. So here's what I have to ask you. What could you do this month to feel more alive? What could it be this month? Maybe you get your family together on zoom once a week just to feel, like, a sense of joy if you like your family, if you don't, maybe you go take an adventure. Maybe you do more of your art. Maybe you do that creative endeavor again. You go out in the garage and you build the thing. Maybe you try something new. You challenge yourself. But also, please know what's the other side of aliveness? Well, deadness. So is there anything that's in your life that you're just like, that's just. That shouldn't be in my life. It drains your life. Drains your life. An obligation, a task that you can outsource or help get some assistance with. Is there something that is just draining your energy, your good energy? If it's a person, a place, a thing, what is it? Let's think about it, okay? The last 30 days, the last 60 days here in 2021, is there anything that has stolen your sense of aliveness? What is it and how can you change that thing, alter that thing, outsource that thing, quit that thing? I mean, you want to feel more alive, you got to get rid of things that don't make you feel that way, but you have to do it in a responsible manner. We got to find what makes us feel alive. Maybe comedy makes you feel alive. Maybe you need to d more. Maybe it's time you put on some music around the house. Whatever you got to do to feel more alive. That's got to be a focus of this month. Our theme is focus. What should be our focus? How alive we feel, how present we feel, how vibrant and healthy we feel. These are things that you should plan for. These are things that you should plan for. The second thing you see there is connection. We all want connection with ourselves, the world, other people, specifically, after we've had everything. One, a deeper connection with self and others. What is that relationship that you need to improve with yourself or others or your God or your creator? What is that relationship that you could go deeper on? As an example, somebody who you know, you should set your relationship goals on.

The first of the month, right?

So what are your relationship goals for this month? What's your relationship goal for your spouse or your relationship goal with your son or your daughter? What's your relationship goal with your key team members? So what are some goals you could set to deepen connections with your customers, your clients, your friends, your family, your loved ones, your spouse, the kids? Like, really think about that. Last up, but certainly not least is these meaningful pursuits. We all want a sense of meaning, satisfaction and engagement in pursuing something, in progressing towards something, in achieving or contributing or creating something. These are your creation goals or your contribution goals, right? Your meaningful pursuits. It's your artistic endeavor, it's your hobby, it's your passion, it's your purpose, it's your mission. Whatever it is, it's something you draw meaning from just by being in the hunt, just by engaging or doing the thing. So what are you going to do this month that you're going to find meaningful Satisfying, fulfilling. And again, what are the things you got to get rid of? They're just not tasks that you find meaningful, fulfilling, satisfying, engaging. So let's talk about focus now. So if we set our goals each month around aliveness, around connection, around meaningful pursuits, and we think about how we want to grow into those things, let's figure this out. Your focus at any given time is based on what I call three states of mind. And these three states of mind are where your mind is going at any given time, consciously or unconsciously. Very few people are aware of it, but once you become aware of it, you realize how you can regain your focus. For the most part of our unconscious life, especially as we're young and striving to build something and we're not familiar with personal development and we're just kind of going through the motions, our mind, our mental chatter, a lot of our unconscious thoughts are built on protecting ourselves. Our thoughts are protectionist. Right? You all call this survival mode. Your mind has that part of our evolutionary history that is very focused on protecting ourselves. And we protect ourselves not just physically, but we protect ourselves emotionally and mentally. And so what does this have to do with focus? A lot of people's focus without them even being aware of their consciousness, yet a lot of their focus is always on worry, on protecting ego, on fear based thinking. All of these thoughts, this mental chatter is to protect oneself or one's things, or one relationships, or one standing and identity in the world. I need to protect my status, my ego, and my standing in this community. I'm embarrassed to be seen starting small because I need to protect the sense that I have strength and respect. We're protecting ourselves a lot in the way that, you know, you're protecting mindset. It always almost is this internal state of thought that says what if? Followed by a negative statement. What if it doesn't go well? What if I don't know what I'm doing? What if they judge me? What if there's ruin? What if there's regret? What if there's disaster? What if it was better over there and I wasted my time? What if I choose the wrong thing? That's the protecting mind. And sometimes when we don't have the focus we want during the day, it's because we're scared all the time. You know why a lot of people lack discipline? Not because they don't have things they want. It's because it's easier not to do something when you're scared. It's because it's easier not to do something when all your thoughts are saying, what if this doesn't turn out well, let me just disengage. It's not that you as a human lack the character trait of discipline and hard work or commitment. It's that your thoughts are betraying you. Your thoughts are on this merry go round of doubt you follow. And that doubt sounds like protective thinking, protecting the ego, the sense of security, protecting who we feel like we should be or are, protecting our current bank account, protecting our current progress. And I'm not here to say protecting thoughts are bad. I'm here to contextualize our conversation today about focus and discipline and drive. So if you feel like you lack focus, you probably have a lot of fear. If you feel like you lack discipline, you have a lot of doubts. If you feel like you lack drive, you have a lot of discouragement. Because every time you try something, the brain goes, well, I look stupid. I better quit. This ain't working. What if it gets worse? What if it never turns out? What if followed by a negative statement is how our mind can trick us from being focused, disciplined and driven? Now listen. Thank God our mind has that mental chatter of protecting. It's the thing that keeps you out of going down strange places where your intuition is saying, hey, don't go there. It's what helps you protect yourself in times of crises. It activates the part of you that reacts swiftly and carefully to protect your physical being. It's survival mode. Sometimes survival mode is needed when you're in real threat. But I can also share with you. I thought my plane was going to crash and I didn't allow my brain to go into threat. I heard it go there and I said, let me choose a different thought pattern right now. Let me turn my focus to something useful. If I'm and you all. I hope this doesn't sound metaphorical, because this is real. If that plane is going to go down when I'm in it, I don't want my last minute or two to be focused on the terror of it. I grab my thoughts back and I start praying and giving appreciation for this incredibly blessed life. I start asking for my family and my friends to know I lived a happy life, for them to continue living a happy and a great life even.

If I am not here.

I want to be intentional with that last minute or two or three minutes, even though my amygdala is going, holy crap, this plane. The smell that's still there. But what I'm trying to encourage you is with enough time and personal development, you can override the protectionist. Things that take away from the experiences that you want in life. We can teach our brain we can override those things with enough time. I'm not here to say it's easy. I'm here to say it's required for a good life. That's the difference. I don't care if it's easy, I just go crazy. When people say, well Bren, that sounds hard or it's easy for you, I'm like, oh, ease is not the goal, Progress is. Ease is not the goal, Consciousness is. I'm not worried about making it easy on you. I'm here to say these are the requirements of a good life. What else, where else is our brain? Often? Well, often in our day to day we're actually more in what I call a processing mind. A processing mind, what does that mean? Well, a processing mind means it's your thinking mind. It's your thinking mind. So what is that? Well, it's you just ruminating on things, thinking through things. Why did she do that? Why do I feel this way? What's next? What do I need? What am I learning here? Why did that thing happen? It's the questioning, inquisitive, curious mind that's just chugging along. It's just going. And that inquisitive mind is wondering how things are going to turn out. Or it's wondering what's next, or it's wondering. But here's something to know. Here's something to know. This is also where analysis paralysis happens. We got any over thinkers out here? Anyone? Just you're always you just thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, studying and studying and studying. But not always taking action. Just like you're stuck in processing all the time. Or some of you, something happened last week and you're still thinking about it. It's gone. It should be let go, it should be forgiven. It shouldn't be on your mental dashboard Today you got miss to serve people to serve things to do today. But you're still thinking about something that happened. I was in an emergency plane ride on Tuesday. I'm not feeling it or thinking about it today other than to share a lesson with you. It's not like I woke up today thinking about it. No. Instead I said, well that's not going to be useful. Me processing that a million times and running it over and over in my mind. What is that going to achieve? Okay, it happened. Cool. What's the lesson? Great, move on. And this is so important. Some of you are still feeling the same anger and emotion about something that happened a decade ago. And it's stealing from your aliveness, it's stealing from your connection with other people. It's stealing from your sense of meaning and joy, and you got to get a hold of that. If you got divorced 10 years ago and you're still processing it, get a therapist. And I mean that with not judgment, with joy, to recommend professionals to you. If you're still processing something that happened when you were in high school, when she broke up with you or that person and that negative thinking or that negative emotional reality is still here with you decades later, raise your hand and be proud about asking for help and getting a professional person to help you work through that. I'm not here to say that we should all be able to get over things quickly. If you've ever studied my work, you recognize I don't lack empathy or intelligence around how the brain works. I get it right? I spend my life in human behavior change. I understand it takes time. I understand it needs support. I understand sometimes you don't even know what's going on. And that's why you might need a coach or a therapist or. Or to at least even voice it for the very first time to your friends, your family, your community.

But if you're still processing over and.

Over, replaying things from the past over and over and over again in a way that's limiting your sense of aliveness, connection, or meaningful pursuits, it's time to deal with that thing, right? Sometimes the most powerful thing in processing is to close it down.

What do I mean by that?

Okay, that situation, I didn't like it, period. Didn't like it. Learn from it, period. And not drag all those emotions into today. Not drag all that feeling into today. Right? And I'm not here to offer therapeutic advice to you. I'm a coach. But what I'm here to suggest to you is that be aware of where are you stuck on something? Where are you just in forever processing, thinking, ruminating, because that can also spin your mind into equal deficit as much as protecting. And all of a sudden it's just like, ugh. And what I want to encourage you to do, even in those experiences, at some point, we got to shift the mind into progressing, Progressing. Okay, what's the next right action of integrity for me? What's the next thing I can do to move the ball forward? What's the next thing I can say to myself to release the past and get on with it? Sometimes we have to interrupt the thoughts and say, okay, what's next Let me get this old clunky brain here into motion again. And that's what's going to give you the liveness and the connection and the progress towards those meaningful pursuits. It's like you got to take hold of mine and go, okay, what's the next right action of integrity? Like, let me switch my gears. It's why I have to fill out my high performance planner every morning. Because my mind, I'm a nutty professor. I will be in processing and thinking and analytical all day. I will. I have to go bread it. Okay, action, progress, move it forward. Otherwise, you know what? Without progress, the mind goes a little batty, it gets restless, it gets frustrated. Now you get discouraged and sad and upset. But we need a little bit of that progress to sense that momentum. And that momentum gives us more confidence, that confidence gives us more competence. Those senses give us a little more mastery and engagement of the day. But guess what, some of you, you're in progress mode all the time and your family's like, can you take a minute to just eat your food? Can you just chill out for five minutes to be with your child? Can you just relax one night? Can you just not work till X amount? Or could you please stop putting in the hundred hour workweek? Like, you know, sometimes when you're in just action, progress, progress, progress mode, we're in trouble. So all of these things, I hope you hear me saying, examples of good and bad, right? Protecting can be good, processing can be good, progress can be good. But they can also equally have their negative flip side, right? If you progress, if you're always progress, go, go, go, go, go, go. And you don't take care of yourself, we're in trouble. So I'm hoping to draw this out to say your focus is in one of these three buckets. Sometimes it's all simultaneous, sometimes it's one focus. Some of you live a life in.

One of these buckets.

Does that make sense? Maybe it's like you might go, some of you can identify a year or two or 10 years where you were just in one of these things and you never made that shift. We're going to talk about your confidence and I am really excited to break down a framework for you and I hope in doing this help you realize where some of those dark days come from, where you lose faith in yourself, where those dark days come from when you know you have a lot to do but you just don't feel like you can figure it out where that.

You know, when you get to go.

Out in the world Again. Or when you're on a zoom and you got to show yourself to the world, you feel awkward or weird or insecure, that you tap back into that authentic strength, that truth of who you are. And that as you go through your.

Life, you feel confident that no matter what life is going to throw at.

You, you're going to learn, you're going to figure it out, you're going to develop your capabilities. And many of you are going through.

Really hard times right now.

Sometimes it's just hard to even be positive. You can be so consumed and so overwhelmed by the negativity of other things out there. You just go, oh, my gosh, this is just hard to feel good, let alone confident. I'm going to break down a framework that I hope some of you are familiar with, but today we're going to.

Talk about it with a different lens.

Of how to overcome insecurities and what specific daily and monthly habits you might.

Set up for yourself to feel more strong.

So this is a piece of paper.

It's a framework for confidence that I have on a board in my office. See, we need reminders. We are visual humans. We need to look at something to remind ourselves of something. And so you see, I have this. I'll share this with you in a minute, but I want to get the practice in your mind. The practice in your mind is you should have instructions to yourself on a wall somewhere. So you're like, if you walked into my office and say, brendan, why do you have a framework for confidence on your wall over there? And I go, well, because sometimes I don't feel confident. And what do we do when we don't feel something? Well, when we don't feel something that we want to feel, we tend to feel not good. Because we're like, I don't feel this, so I feel bad about myself. Or we tend to distract ourselves. I don't like this feeling. So I don't know what to do. So let me just scroll through the Internet. So to me, what I've done is, I've got a board over here and there's my framework for happiness. Do you have a framework for happiness on your wall yet? So that when you don't feel happy, you go, I don't feel happy. What's going on with me? And you can just go look at it and go, ah, I've got my checklist for happiness right there. I forgot point number three. No wonder I'm not happy. What I'm trying to suggest to you is maybe you give yourself a checklist a framework, a set of instructions for the feelings that you really want to experience in life. And when you're not feeling it, instead of retreating into the comforts of distraction, you go back to your instructions. You know what makes you feel good, and it's time to write that down and look at it more consistently. Here we go. This is my confidence checklist. This is my framework for confidence. I'm going to break down each of these areas. And even if you've seen this maybe before with me, what I'd love to do is break down where these grow into trouble, where these are developed and strengthened, where these can be applied in your life, financially, in your life, in your marriage, or your relationship with your partner, with the kids. So I'm going to break down each of those things, each of those areas. I'll use a card here for you. We're going to start with that very first card here. Clarity. Human beings are a goal directed species. If we don't have clarity on what we want, if we don't have clarity on who we are, if we don't have clarity on what our intentions are in social relationships, it's unnerving to us. Well, if you ever felt lost in.

Life, you know that feeling.

It's coming from a lack of a often of clarity. We'll talk about this. You just don't know who you are.

What you're about, what you want anymore.

And it's unsettling when you lack clarity. It's really unsettling. You're like, ah, I don't know what I'm about anymore. And this is where midlife crises come in. Clarity is something that, it's like knowledge or a goal or an aim, but it's loosely held.

What I mean by that is like, okay, that's important to me, but I.

Can be flexible and adaptive as well. It's not this idea that you have total 100% complete certainty and you're total certain all the time. It's like, that is a adolescent dream. There is no absolute certainty in anything in life. And so we have to go, oh, okay, I can have clear direction or I can be strongly committed to this thing. But lots of people who are absolutely certain about something shifts months later. So here's my question for you. On a scale of 1 to 10, in the last 60 days, how clear have you been about what you wanted in life?

Did you start the day with some.

Clarity about how you wanted to live that day, show up that day, treat other people that day, serve that day? So let's think about where sometimes you feel insecure. You're going to go to that party or that networking function, you feel insecure about yourself. Why? Because in your mind the insecurity in that moment, in that situation of the networking situation or the party is coming from. I don't know who I am in here. I don't know these people and who I'm supposed to be with them. I don't know where to go or where to stand or who to talk to. And so it's unnerving. The insecurity is I don't know what to do in this situation. Now that type of confidence or lack thereof is something that psychologists call self efficacy. Self efficacy is about I don't know what to do in this situation. That's where the insecurity comes from. Positive self efficacy means I believe that I know what to do in this situation. I can handle this. Even if I don't know how yet. I believe I can handle this. I have the competence to take this on as an example that's positive. But a lot of things in life you don't know how to deal with. You don't have self efficacy because you don't know how to handle it yet. This is a new party, you don't know anybody in it.

It's a new networking event.

You've never met any of these people. How do you get more confidence in that? Well, one simple thing you can do is start with clarity. Okay, I'm going to go talk to people. What's something I'd love to share about myself with every new person I meet? Oh, okay. Lock that in. Okay, got it. What's one question I could ask every new person I meet? Okay, let me lock that in. Okay, just those two things have been found to dramatically increase people's sense of confidence in social situations. I know what I'm going to share about myself. I have clarity on it. I know what I'm going to ask them. I've cleared up just those two simple things.

The problem with clarity is it's a double edged sword.

A lot of people, their clarity is I'm awful, I'm worthless, I'm no good. And they've stacked up all these experiences to strengthen that belief. And their clarity is, well, I'm a jerk, I don't deserve success, I won't have success. They've got clarity, but they got the wrong kind of clarity. See, confidence requires positive clarity, not negative, self defeating clarity. So clarity is a double edged sword. If you believe the wrong thing about yourself, that's going to hurt you too. So what's the opposite of that? Well, I'm going to start viewing myself positively. How can we do that? Well, you know what? Maybe each day for the next 10 days, I'm going to write down a strength that I have. Write down 10 positive things about yourself every day for the next 10 days. Watch what happens for you. It starts shifting your perception of yourself. Here, my little framework, we're going to go from clarity now to congruence. Congruence is living in alignment with what you know is the best of you. Living in alignment with the best of who you are, living in alignment with your values. When you are not congruent, your brain logs that and what it says in that log, that log entry. Not living your word, not living your truth, not doing what you said you would do. And too many of those negative withdrawals sucks away your confidence. But here's what you need to be congruent. What do you need? Clarity. You say, okay, these are my values. These are my beliefs. This is what I think is important as a human being, as a parent, as a caregiver, as a leader. Congruence measures whether or not you're doing what you said you're going to do. And that's important. So here's the simplest fix. If you're been pulling too many withdrawals out of that bank account, it's time to put some back in. And so today might be the day you go, where have I been incongruent?

Where do I say something and I don't do it?

Where are you out of congruence? And can you do the simple acts? Sometimes when you're out of congruence, first you just apologize to yourself. You say, you know what? Gosh, Brendan, I haven't been honest with myself. Let's make a change. I think the fastest path back into congruence is an apology. An apology to yourself, an apology to other persons. It takes a lot of guts to say you are wrong. It takes a lot of guts to acknowledge you could do better. This one's fundamental. You get to decide today what to be congruent with. You get to decide who you are. And you get to decide to show up and live into that third big idea. Competence. Competence. It's a collection of knowledge, skill, talents and abilities. The good news is you can increase this. So here's what I want you to do every day. Every day I want you to have clarity on what skills you are working on in your life. That's how we're going to get Competence. Competence for too many people comes two years too late. Why? Because they wait too long to start developing a skill every day. I'm very clear about what I'm trying to improve. Every day I'm learning something, but I'm learning not just casually or passively. I'm going, I'm trying to get better at this thing. I want you all to have an ambition, to have one or two or three skill sets that you're literally world class in, that you're world class in. Not because you need the ego that I am world class. No, no, no. Because you need the challenge. You know why a lot of people lack confidence? They never engage challenge. You want more confidence, engage in challenge more often. The more challenge you engage in and you incrementally improve in it, the more your brain goes, yep, there I did. I did it again. And what happens when you don't have confidence, you don't engage in challenge. When you don't engage in challenge, you don't get more competence. So you don't get that competence confidence loop. We were talking about the flywheel you all follow. So for those of you, if you're like, ben, I just lack confidence, like, challenge yourself more. But you're like, but I'm lacking confidence. Like, exactly, exactly. See, you're going, well, I'll get confidence, then I'll do the challenging things. I'm like the other way around. You want more confidence, do challenging things more often. When you do challenging things more often, you learn. When you learn competence, confidence, connection. When you don't have a connection with yourself or others, confidence goes down. So you want to feel more confident in life, reconnect with yourself and others with yourself. That's your morning routine. Lock in that morning routine. The more you feel connected to self, the more confident you are. But you need the time to connect to yourself. Away from the email, the social media, the obligations for the kids, the family, the husbands, the spouses, the team, everything else. You need that moment where you're like out and connecting with yourself, with your thoughts. You need time to think and to feel again. So turn off the tv, go for the walk, put down the phone, do the meditation, get away from the social thing 110 minutes earlier so you can sit in the car and just think before you go home. You need more space to be thinking and connecting with self. So build that in your life. Self connection. Second part, the most important part. We know environment dramatically shapes your confidence, the connection you have with the people around you. This means be around positive people, contribute around positive People learn from positive people. It means create great relationships in your life. I want you all to improve this one. Simple action. Simple daily, weekly, real life action. You must start sharing your real thoughts, feelings, desires and goals with the people around you. You got to do it more often. Here's where you lack confidence in life. When you won't share your truth because you're worried what everyone else thinks. That's what high schoolers do. You don't do that anymore. You're too damn old. Now you share your truth with other people and realize most of them won't get it, won't understand why it's important, won't support you, won't care, or at least won't get in your way and say anything at all. But the less you speak your truth to other people, the more superficial your connections are with them. Number five is capability. Competence is the knowing, the knowledge, skill, talent, ability. Capability is you can do it. You can do it every time. It is like a strength, if you will. It is something that is. You are highly capable at that thing. You are at another level of skill that it shows up every single time. But here's the truth. Capability. Capability is as much as a mindset as a competence. Let me give you an example. A lot of extremely smart people who can handle the problem don't handle the problem because they don't feel capable. It's like, yeah, I know it, but I don't do it. See, there's a difference between knowledge and execution, which is often the difference between competence and capability. See, competence is like the foundation and a stored value, but it's expressed through execution. Capability. You want to develop capability. It means you get in the mix. You do the work, you show up, you try. Capability means I know I will execute. That's what to me, confident, capabilities. I will execute. How do you do that? You have to be more consistent in your execution. You need to be way more consistent in your execution. We talked about decision earlier. Decision is great. Action is required. We've got to get you to execute more of those to do lists. You want more success, you want more joy, you want more confidence, you got to execute more of the plans. Capability is self trust to take the action. It's not just do I know how to take the action, it's I'm an action taker, I'm going to show up, I'm capable to handle this, I will do this. I trust in myself to handle this. To execute, to execute again and again and again and again and again. That's capability. And I really want you to develop that in your heart and in your soul by checking off the simplest of things each day. If you have a list of three to do lists, if you wrote down your three top priorities for the day, do those first. Before you do your social media, before you reply to everyone's DMs, inbox, voice message, texts, it's like, listen, I have so many people who they spend all day just checking their email to reply to everybody else. Now that's fine if that's your job, if that's customer service, do that. That's your job. But if you're an entrepreneur as an example, or you have a whole list of other priorities and you're just checking into other people's agendas all day to meet all their obligations, and you keep missing your key priorities day after day after day after day. Your brain doesn't feel like you're capable anymore. Even though you might be smart, you're competent, but your brain doesn't believe you're capable. Last big idea today. Contribution. You want confidence, Give more. You want confidence. Make your difference. You want confidence, do things that matter. Why? Because a those things are celebrated in the world. Generous giving people tend to have greater, what, connections with other people. Generous, giving, caring, hard working people tend to have what? More clarity about who they are. They're more congruent, these things. They feel more capable. Like generosity. Doing things that matter. Giving strengthens the whole rest of the model. The whole model drives itself. When you've got each of these pieces running right, each of these pieces touches one another. Contributions are key. It really is. Sometimes when you feel so bad about yourself, you're not going to shake yourself out of that, but what can shake yourself out of that is service. Sometimes you got to get out of your own head. And to me, what has created a.

Great confidence and reverence for life in.

My life has been. I've been volunteering most of my life. When you're a volunteer, when you show up for others, when you volunteer to help out, whether it's as simple as helping a friend move, or going down to the local soup kitchen, or volunteering for that nonprofit cause that you like, or running that fundraiser, even though you don't know how those contributions make a difference, maybe your contribution is your art, maybe your contribution is your time, maybe your contribution is financial, maybe your contribution is mentorship, maybe your contribution is your content or your book or your work, whatever that is. If you can do the same thing where you can give generously to it, give to your work be generous to that contribution. Be in the moment. When you're serving someone who is in need, you get a little more spirit inside. And when that spirit of goodness is.

Inside, you can share it more too.