Motivation Mashup: Powerful HABITS to Improve Your HEALTH!

Today I get to share some ideas.

With you on health that I have learned in my own personal journey, but also as a high performance coach for 16 years. One of the fundamental, most important things that we all want in our life is a sense of vitality. And that vitality is we want to feel mentally engaged, alert, focused, enthusiastic. We want to feel energetically, like physically energized.

Right?

Physically. We want to feel a sense of that health. And it is one of really the only four things that we all deeply desire. We talk a lot about it here in growth day, that you can give anybody anything. But what we all really, truly want is aliveness. That is what I mean by vibrancy, connection with others and with ourselves, meaningful pursuits, things that we're doing that we enjoy or see as important or contributing, and growth, like growing as persons.

So all of that is really important.

But that sense of aliveness, I always put that at the top of that little diagram because it's so important to us when we don't have a sense of aliveness, even if we have amazing relationships, when we are fatigued and wiped out, we can have the greatest marriage or partner or spouse or intimate relationship, but the zest is not there. We can have a great job, we can have incredible opportunities to serve. We can love our passions and our hobbies. But if we are wiped out, it doesn't feel as good. I know you all know this. That is why it is so important that we focus on our health. Now, I want to do full disclaimers with you. I am not a doctor. I am not a psychiatrist. I am not a neuroscientist. I am not a health advisor, coach, or medical professional in any capacity. I am a high performance coach. This means I work with people primarily on their mindset and their habits and their relationships. Today, what I would like to share is a couple ideas. And I will remind you, as a high performance coach, one of my fundamental jobs is to challenge my clients to a higher level. So in doing that, I will of course share my own journey and my own struggles, but I'll mostly focus on what we've learned in the science. I will also share with you the idea that I'll be empathetic about it, but also I want to be that person who challenges you in this area of your life. For 15 years, every audience I've stood in front of in my life, I have said, if this has not been the year that you have made the decision as an adult to get in the best health of your life ever, make that this year, I have said this for 16 years in front of every audience I can get in front of because I believe most of us, we look back, I was healthier when I was a kid, or maybe I was healthier when I was in my 20s or whatever. And we just don't say, you know what, this is going to be that year. But I know some of you have you said, maybe this is the year I am going to eat healthier, I am going to sleep better, I am going to work out more, I am going to pay attention to my nutrition or my supplementation. I am going to run a marathon. I am going to. I mean, what you all do as strivers and achievers always blows my mind and it raises my aspiration. But I want to do the same thing for you today. I want you to raise your aspiration and your vision in your health. Even if you are struggling right now, which you can hear, we all do.

Even if it has been a challenge.

In the past, okay? But at some point we have to take dramatic personal responsibility for our health. If it is true that we all want a sense of aliveness, mental energy, physical vitality that pop and zest in our lives, and if that is true, then accept the challenge today. And please be aware, I am offering this today in that context, knowing as we can have the empathetic conversation, but we also must have the personal accountability and personal vision conversation in personal growth. And that is my job for you today. My job is to raise that level up. That is what I do as a high performance coach. Those are my disclaimers for you today. Because as I jump into my points, some of them will feel like I am pushing. And I know sometimes people say, oh, you know what, he doesn't understand or he thinks everybody. I am like, no, no, no, I understand, but it is still my job. It is my job as a high performance coach to lift that higher level, to be that kind but demanding force in our lives, in my life, in your lives. If I didn't demand more from myself than how I naturally felt all the time, trust me, there would be no growth day. There would be no half billion views of my videos or 100 million downloads or my podcasts. There would be no impact. We would have never met. Because it is very easy for me not to do my daily job or my health routines. Just like you. It is an easy choice not to do the things we know that are good for us. How do we get us there? We have got to set a higher standard. We have got to demand it of ourselves. So forgive me, that will be my framing today. It is not always popular, especially in the health category to say these things, especially in the mental health category to say these things. So please understand my framing. Not a doctor high performance coach going to challenge you. And you will know that with this very first point. So here we go. My first point today is health is luck and self respect. The first time I ever said that was by accident on stage. And I heard myself ooh, and the audience kind of hushed out a little bit, oh, I am in trouble. But here is what I mean by that.

Health.

We have to understand there is a evolutionary and a biological reason that you feel the way that you do.

Right?

It is very important to understand in both, I really believe, mental health and physical health.

It is that kind of 50, 50.

Kind of thing when we blend it together, by the way. But there's no question that some people biologically feel more fatigued or more depressed or more anxious. We have to understand that you and me are not the same biologically in how our energy might be. And I hope that that always introduces empathy and compassion, that there's a big luck card that we get. I have friends, literally, who are born without limbs. I have friends who are born with conditions in which their brain functions in very unhealthy ways. I have friends who've died so early of cancer. I have friends who have struggled with mental health. I have friends who have committed suicide. I have friends and family who struggle constantly with all sorts of biological health issues that is not their fault. And it is important to realize that some of you, you feel terrible biologically, even though you're drinking all your water, you're eating all your greens, you do move and you do exercise. And so I'm here to say there is no preaching. We all have to take the cards we've been dealt and figure out how to care for ourselves, how to optimize the best that we can, how to improve, even if it's little bit incremental by incremental. But it starts with a biological understanding of where we are at. And this is why again, as a person who's not a medical professional, I'm like, listen, if you don't understand closely how you feel and why you feel the way that you do, please, please, please, if you've never done it, go get a full workup of every friggin health test you can as an adult, as somebody who's accountable for your health, go get the blood test, go see the nutritionist or the dietitians go work out with a trainer, go literally do all the genetic testing that you can do to understand what is up with you. I always tell the story of a friend of mine who is one of my partners in one of my businesses, one of my best friends in the world who discovered at the age of 40 that, you know, every morning he always had the sniffles and his nose was running and he is clearing his throat and everything and found at the age of 40 that he was allergic to eggs. At the age of 40, didn't know, spent 40 years having these reactions that made him fatigued and blowing his nose because he was allergic to eggs. I think that's a sad thing about our society is that we're not taught or trained or honestly empowered or equipped or served with some simple health support when we were young that says, hey, look, seems like you're allergic to this thing, don't eat it. I mean, how is that not part of our educational process, right? Or healthcare system that of course we would all find out very early on and be tested multiple stages of our life, including every new decade. What are we allergic to? What preconditions might we have? What's our genetic makeup leading us towards? So this is where I say health is luck, right? Health might be luck but it is your job to be aware. Your job, no one else's, no one's going to come and save you here. You've got to do the testing and see the medical professionals and dietitians and people who can help you optimize and care for your body. I believe that has to be something we demand of ourselves. It's not served to us, at least not in the society I live in. So we have to take accountability for that. So health is luck. But here's the thing, it's also self respect and self love.

People ask me, Brendon, how do you deal with stressful situations so you don't freak out or have a ton of anxiety and fear leading up to them because maybe you have a big public speaking engagement coming up or maybe you have that text test at school coming up or maybe you're about to have that difficult conversation with somebody that you.

Wanted to say something to them but.

You'Ve been holding back and you know it's going to freak you out when you go to tell them the truth. Whenever we're in situations that we know are going to bring us stress, it really is on us to prepare our absolute best so that a we deal with them well and we can actually enjoy the experience or Go through the experience without freaking out. But B, we don't freak out the energy of everybody else because in all.

Of the storms of life, it is.

Our job to be the calm amid the storm. But that's hard, and that takes skills and that takes training. So I got four big ideas for you in this Brendon show. Episode number one, Always anticipate and ask others how to deal with stressful situations. I know that's a no duh one, but most people do not do that. Right? You're about to go take your first SAT test ever. What do you do? Well, you study, you study, you study. You go and you take it. But that's gonna be a stressful situation. Why wouldn't you first anticipate? Wow, that is gonna cause a lot of anxiety for me. The days before the day of, I'm gonna be freaking out waiting for my scores. Why would you not ask people who've already taken it, what did you do the day before the test to calm yourself down, to get yourself ready the.

Day of the test?

What did you do when you went in there? Did you have a certain breathing pattern? How did you calm yourself down? What did you tell yourself so that you could deal with the situation?

Right.

Same thing. You're about to go have a difficult conversation with your spouse or your partner.

The person you love.

Why wouldn't you ask other people who you know be like, hey, I'm about to have this difficult conversation.

Have you ever had a conversation like that?

Oh, what did you say? How did you bring it up? Like, the idea that so many people in this world go and do every day bumbling into it.

I feel sad for them.

They're living a highly reactive life and they're setting themselves up for incredible failure. Because if you don't anticipate the emotions that you're going to have in stressful situations, I promise the situation is going to win, not you. So always anticipate. Okay? This is going to be hard. This conversation, this test, this day, this thing. It's going to be hard. Anticipate. It will be hard. Now, who has gone through it before? Who I can ask how they dealt with it. That's the first strategy. Second strategy, I need you to make a pre, during, and post stress management plan.

Huge phrase, Brendan.

I know. But what I think is, okay, if I'm going to go have that difficult experience in my life, I'm going to plan, really plan the day before, the day of, and the day after. I'm really going to think through it. So let's say you're going to have that difficult conversation with somebody you love. Okay. The day before, I'm going to say, okay, well, the night before, I'm going to ask myself these questions. I'm going to rehearse it a little bit. The morning of, I'm going to breathe, I'm going to close my eyes, I'm going to visualize it going just fine. Everything's going to be fine. If they say this, I'll say that, in other words, I'm going to roleplay it in my mind over and over and over again during the day and then afterwards. Oh, how, how would I follow up with them to make them feel good? How would I follow up? Or what would be my next right steps after that? I have a friend right now who's just an unbelievable professional rock climber. And this person was gonna go climb one of the hardest climbs in the world. And I said, man, that would terrify.

Me cause I hate heights.

How did you prepare for that? He says, oh, well, you know, my regular routine is like this. I said, yeah, but what do you do the day before? And he had like five, five or six things he did the day before to get himself mentally and emotionally and physically ready, including doing a lot of mobility training, a lot of breathing and calming activities, a lot of visualization, going over his notes about where each hold was. It was unbelievable. The day of that morning he got up, he went through a very like, basic routine. He'd been running for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. But he added on other little elements too that he knew he was going to do in advance and including like calling his spouse and saying, I love you, honey. Cause he's about to climb up a mountain. And then the day after. Because here's what we often don't think. Stress has a longer shelf life than we think. What I mean by that is let's say you go do something and it's really stressful. That energy carries with you the next day. So what can you do the next day to calm yourself down? For example, many of you guys have been to my seminars before out in the world, right? Maybe you come to High Performance Academy or HPX or Influencer, one of our big programs. And I know that delivering that training, it takes four days of my life. I'm on stage for anywhere between, you know, seven to 14 hours a day, depending on the event. And standing up that whole time, delivering that seminar is one of the hardest things I do in the world. Well, guess what? I gotta plan my stress Management after it. Because after it, my adrenals are all blown out, I'm exhausted, and I'm thinking, okay, I got to recover from this. So I plan my recovery well in advance of that situation. So what can you do before, during, and after to put yourself in a good place so that you can really deal with the stress? Number three, I do need you to visualize and role model over and over and over again. I know I referenced this a little bit When I talked about what to do during the stressful situation or the day of. I think it's incredibly important that if you know you have something stressful coming up, that you visualize it over and over and over again, that you play it in your mind over and over and over again. But here's the difference, okay? Fear mongering or worrying is thinking about it and seeing it go bad every single time. Visualizing is seeing you show up confident, capable, doing a good job. Confident, capable, doing a good job. I want you to every single time. Visualization should be a positive thinking exercise where you're seeing the situation and you're seeing yourself handle it well. But you're also noticing the things that are difficult. What if they say this or what.

If they say that and you're kind.

Of like scenario planning? If she says this, then I'll say that.

If he does this, then I'll do that.

But keep the momentum going and visualize the thing all the way through. Right. My friend, the rock climber, he doesn't just visualize your know, the start of the climb. He visualizes the entire climb until he's standing on top of the rock and their success. So I want you to visualize the entire scenario. What most people do is they visualize a little bit of the scenario. They feel anxiousness and worry, so they stop visualizing or they catastrophize. They start seeing it going bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And they never walk the entire thing through. Right. I want you to walk the entire thing through, See the entire thing and.

And force yourself to see it going well.

Force yourself to see it going well. Force yourself to see it going well. Then I want you to pair it with role modeling. I want you to call up a friend, Call up somebody else, you know.

Say, hey, I'm about to have this conversation, Or I'm about to go do this thing.

Can I ask you some questions and try this out? Sound it out, act it out, explore it with other people? There's very few things I do in my life that I haven't already talked with somebody through right before my meetings, before my conversations, before a lot of my online courses, all I'll sit down and I'll literally try out the words on people. What do you think of this? What do you think of that? And I'll get feedback from them. And that makes me think more deeply about it. And when I think more deeply about it, suddenly the stress isn't so. Like front of house. Because in my mind, I'm already prepared. Like, preparation can get rid of a lot of stress. But role modeling puts you in that actual environment where you're doing the thing. Then when you show up, you're like, wow, my, my mind has seen this a thousand times.

I've already talked it and acted out. Let's go.

And now it's not so stressful. Fourth, big idea. Enroll your friends. If you got something coming up, like your SATs, your ACTs, a test, create study groups.

Don't go it alone.

Create a study group of some friends where you guys create a regular schedule where you're studying and you're getting ready together, right? That camaraderie of things. Same thing. If you're going to go run a.

Marathon, it's going to be this big scary thing.

It's your first marathon ever. If you've been running with a group of people they know by science that no doubt you will perform better and less anxiously because you've prepared with other people. Almost everything you do in your life, you should think, how do I enroll friends or find peers to do this with them? So I stay on the journey. When you have friends or others involved, we know from social sciences that, that you're more likely to stay committed, stay consistent and succeed.

But guess what?

We're in a society of selfies where.

We only think of ourselves and we only like. Cause we're scared to ask for help or be vulnerable and say, I don't know, we do everything ourselves. And everything I ever do, I literally sit down. Here's my goal list. Anytime I write down goals, I don't just write down, when's it gonna happen? What's my next step? You know, what's the deadline? Instead I also write next to it. I say, who can I enroll with.

Me on this goal?

Get people enrolled with you in your goals. Get people enrolled with you so you can role play with them. Ask, participate, go through it with them.

It's not so scary.

I know you know this. If you've ever been to like the county fair. I'm from Montana, so we always have the county fair and there Would be these big, huge, scary rides. When I was a kid, I never went on a ride by myself as a kid. Never once I'd go grab my buddy, like, hey, you're coming along with me.

And he'd go, what, are you kidding? I'm not gonna.

He didn't want to go. I didn't want to go. But when we said, let's go together, we got on that zipper, we got.

Flipped around and kicked around and we loved it.

And we only did it because we did it together. You will face greater stresses and greater fears when you go at it together.

I call it the three E's. Okay, the three E's of a relationship. This is when I know a relationship is great and can can improve in a conflict situation. So if I'm mediating or counseling or coaching, here's what I do I watch for in those initial interactions, when they're coming in, they're describing the problem. As an example to me, I watch for the three E's. First one, empathy. Empathy. Does it look like the person, the other is listening and is caring what the other person is saying and can.

Understand it even if they don't agree with it?

Can they understand it even if they.

Don'T agree with it?

That's a big one for me. Can they understand it even if they don't agree with it? Ah, that to me is empathy. They care that the other person is hurt or confused or upset about something. Like there's just empathy. Often it's non verbal. I can see that the nonverbal stuff is the easiest. But often what people don't understand is a lot of times empathy looks like listening. Even if you don't agree, it can listen. Like this can be empathy. Literally, this can be empathy.

Like you're like, you think they're crazy.

But you're giving them the allowance to speak. It's empathizing enough. Like, we all believe that empathy is.

Warm hugs and sunshine.

But a lot of time, empathy is allowing, turn, taking, asking a question, waiting, nodding, not arguing, or it's saying, I heard you say this, I see it this way. Those simple notes of validation, time, openness make all the difference. Second thing I look for of the three E's, the first E is empathy. Second E is enthusiasm. I think enthusiasm is the master of all emotion, right?

Even more than love. You're like, you're crazy.

I'm like, no, no. I know lots of people who have.

Love, but there's no enthusiasm in the relationship anymore. There's no intimacy, no pop, no vibrancy. No variety.

It's just. It's like they care for each other, but there's no energy behind it. I think the energy behind things is enthusiasm. And when we're excited about building our life together, or listen, when we're excited about solving this problem together.

I remember the first, like, I was.

Doing a divorce, referred mediation. I was in, like grad school, and I knew this couple was going to survive. It was like five minutes into this thing because they were just like, we are so excited to solve this thing together. And I was like, you're gonna be great. I immediately knew and it was so easy. It was so. I'm sorry, it was not easy. It was so well resolved because there was enthusiasm even if we don't agree. Enthusiasm for the solution, enthusiasm to move out of this crappy time. I love when people do coaching or counseling. And I've talked to therapists who go, oh, my gosh, they were so happy to finally share their hatred for each other. They were so enthusiastic to get it out and to talk about it and to start working on it. The enthusiasm to work on it, the enthusiasm to improve it, the enthusiasm to build that future together, the enthusiasm to resolve it.

That.

That is such an indicator of things. So how do you feel? Are you enthusiastic? Improve that relationship, to grow it? Are you enthusiastic to go deeper? Enthusiastic to do the things for your other who just loves it, you know? Are you enthusiastic about them and their life so important? Empathy, enthusiasm. And the third one, encouragement. The strongest relationships are built on encouragement, right?

We know this from the social sciences.

I know many of you guys heard me recommend for the last decade the work by John Gottman and his wife in research and relationships. I love that work. And one of the critical things that came out of that was such a simple distinction that happy couples tend to praise each other five times more than they complain or negate. And whether that ratio is true in all relationships across all cultures is not. Is probably not super validated. But what I do believe is the simple way to break that down is encourage your partner a lot. A lot. Encourage them, cheer them.

You know, they got a big day.

Do something. Look, I got this on this laptop over here from Denise.

I don't.

Can I see that? You guys probably can't see us too. No, not gonna show up. It's just. It's a post it note that she gave me like six months ago. I still have it on my computer. It says, I love you. I appreciate you. I know you are doing big things. I love you. I appreciate You, I know you are doing things. It was just a post it note she put on my computer in a really particularly difficult week that I was having. And we're both pretty good about leaving little notes around for each other, especially when we're traveling or we'll be apart or something like that. But also throughout the day. Like she puts something over there that she likes or she does. I'm like, I love that. Good job. That's amazing. And we don't say that flippantly. Like we were like, that's great, that's amazing. Like we cheer each other on a lot and I think that's huge. The ability to encourage one another is so vital. So vital. Okay, so the three things, Empathy, encouragement, empathy, enthusiasm and encouragement. I look for those, I watch for them. But listen, don't just look for them, cultivate them. Cultivate them.

And if you don't know how to.

Do it, ask your partner. Be like, hey, how can I demonstrate empathy for you more? Hey, how can I bring some enthusiasm in this relationship? Hey, do you feel like I encourage you enough? What could I do better? Because ultimately all these things we're talking about, remember, you have to do together. It's about the relationship first. It's you're going to build this life together.

The most important phrase to me if.

I was, I'm advising anyone's like, you're co creating your future together. Co creation.

People support what they create.

You create it together and you support it together and that's everything. So it's never like I'm mad at you for this reason. It's like, ugh, we were in that situation. Didn't seem to go good. What can we do better? It's the we story, not just the me story. It's the understanding that we must communicate together, plan together and work together to build the ideal future together, to build the energy, co create the energy together. These things matter. But they're open dialogues and you don't have to be right and they don't have to be right. You get a turn, they get a turn, you understand? If they're not going to agree with you, you understand it's fluid, it's dynamic and that's what makes a relationship great versus it has to be this way or it has to be that way or we butt heads.

This is that time of year. People are thinking about their relationships and one of the most common questions we get asked is Brendon, how do we set more boundaries in our relationships? You know, someone takes advantage of our time, our energy Our effort, our money, whatever it is, and we get upset about that. So how can we prevent that? Now, I'm going to speak today specifically about setting healthy boundaries in healthy relationships, right? So your lover, your partner, your spouse, that person you're kissing on, how do you set some good relationship boundaries there? Okay, let's get into it. Four big ideas. Number one most important, say it earlier. Early. Don't wait to say it. What I mean by that is if you know what your boundaries are, don't let them crash into it and mess up before you say it. And what happens for most people because they don't know their boundaries, they just flip off at somebody, right? Someone does something, they get all mad at them, like, what's wrong with you? And they don't realize the other person's clueless. No one will ever know your boundaries until you explicitly say, hey, this is a boundary for me. Let me say that again. No one will ever know it. Here's what happens. Especially. Especially when people are new or young in a relationship. They try to set little hints. You know, someone does. Their man does something like, oh, honey, I wish you wouldn't do that. And they're like, that's all they say. That is not enough.

Okay?

Men, by the way, are thick in the head. They need explicit, direct communication. If you set little hints or little.

Traps, they're not going to figure it out ever.

Not five years in the marriage, not 10 years. Boundaries need explicit communication. You need to say, hey, you know what? This is a real boundary for me. I'm not able to do that. I don't like that. This thing is really important to me. It's. If you don't explicitly say it, they will never understand it or try to respect it. So if you had someone who's disrespecting you or not understanding you, is it because you haven't been explicit with them yet? At least start there. Trust me, start there. So maybe sit down and go, okay, think about the person you're in love with right now and say, okay, what are my real boundaries? What don't I want to talk about? What don't I like that they do? What do I not want to compromise again on where do I not want to feel like I'm too vulnerable or where do I want to open up? Like, you need to know your boundaries. And if you don't, don't ever expect them to. And never get mad at them when they bounce into it. The most important thing, this is number two, never get upset when someone bounces into Your boundary ever when someone bounces into it, either A, they don't know it, or B, they're just kind of going through the motions in their own life. Look, they're not thinking about your boundaries.

This is really important.

No one is thinking about your boundaries. And so when they bounce into it, don't get mad. It's a useless emotion to get angry when somebody does that. Because remember, like, would you get mad at oblivious child? Well, most adults obliviously going through their day automatically. And when you're going through life automatically without full adult vibrancy and presence, you're going to do some dumb stuff. So don't get mad. Just once, it happens again. Turn back to explicit, hey, I really like this. Could you pay attention to that? I would also say one reason you should never get mad is do you know theirs? What are their boundaries? Do you know their boundaries that make them too vulnerable? Like, if you go there, do you know their boundaries of what makes them upset? Have you asked the questions to try and figure out what they want, what they desire, what they need? Or are you just thinking about your own space? Now I know, and I'm not trying to judge you because I don't know your story. I'm talking about this happens for a lot of people. They make the mistake of wanting so much for people to respect them without understanding others or giving others respect. Because it's very easy to get selfish in relationships, especially if you've been hurt. I understand that. But sometimes when we've been hurt, we want to set up a boundary to make everybody fall in line with us without understanding them. And that's trouble. And that's why I want to lead to this next point, which is really important. Set boundaries that help your relationship, not just you. I mean, you have to think of the boundary is no longer you and the boundary is no longer them. The boundary is the two of you together. So it's a different boundary. You need to open up your boundaries to the relationship. That means you need to change your personal preferences and pet peeves and everything else and open it to realize they got theirs too. Your boundaries as a couple should always be expanding between the two of you. Your trust should expand between the two of you. Your love should expand between the two of you. Your faith in each other and confidence in each other, that should expand between the two of you. Meaning boundaries are never set in a relationship. You should be pushing them, pushing them. Be more vulnerable on your fifth date than you were on your first date, than you were on your first year versus Your sixth year, like, continue to grow and open up that boundary. It's so important. But realize, if all the boundaries you have are to protect yourself, you're not setting boundaries for the relationship. You're just being a single person in a silo in a relationship. Real relationships have boundaries for themselves.

What do I mean by that?

You protect your time with your spouse, your lover, your partner. As much as you try to protect your time against them or against others. You protect the respect that the two of you have. When people try to poke holes at your lover and they criticize them, you don't allow that. You don't speak ill of the person.

That you're in love with.

You know, if you're in love with them, that relationship is healthy. Look, if they're abusive or they're doing something bad, tell lots of people and get the heck out of that reason. Get. Get out of that situation. But if you are in love and this is a good relationship, listen, listen, listen. It's important that you respect the relationship boundaries. That you don't speak ill or bad of the other person, that you don't take potshots at them, that you respect the two of you together. As important as your preferences, as important as their preferences, as important as your career, as important as their career. That the relationship itself deserves protection and your boundary around it to love on it and to protect it. Your job is to protect the relationship more than protecting your ego. Does that make sense? So expand your own definition of boundaries and that will lead you in this.

Last piece, which you actually really like.

Which is how can you now let go of all these boundaries you've set up? Like, there's a freedom in relationship. After a period of time where the boundaries have been knocked down more, where you're allowing people in more. I tell people all the time, I say, you really want to set boundaries in life, be more loving. It'll push the boundaries away, right? You want to set more boundaries in life, be more loving. Because the bigger those boundaries get, the more they become useless. Like, why are you trying to protect yourself so much? Think about that. After a period of time in a relationship, why try to protect yourself so much? Open up again. Open up those boundaries now. Again. If you're in a relationship where there's abuse, mental, physical, emotional, abuse, then your job needs to be exit, period. Your job isn't. Change the other person your job. Exit. Set the boundary. Exit. That's the answer, period. If you're in an abusive relationship, exit.

Go right.

Go get served. There's plenty of services in your local communities. Get support, ask for your friends, but get out of that relationship because the abuse will not. They're not going to suddenly remember not to be abusive. That's where they're at and you can't change it. So set that boundary clear and clean. But if you're in a positive relationship, love more in that relationship. Be more vulnerable. Let that thing come open. Now obviously you can tell I'm just answering your question questions here and I'm going off the top of my head, but I hope it serves you because the reality is most people, they're trying to protect themselves too much in life because they got hurt. But I had to learn that lesson too. I had a terrible breakup when I was a young man that caused me and led me into depression and ultimately suicidal thoughts. And I did what we all do. I didn't want to get hurt anymore. So I built up boundaries, I put up walls, I put on a mask. What metaphor you want to use? I was trying to keep out the bad people, but at that cost of letting in good people. So I always say sometimes in our own boundaries, in our own efforts to protect ourselves, we block out the very things that we so desperately desire. So it might actually turn out in your life you didn't need more boundaries. You need to let a few of them go. Be vulnerable, be open, be open to the universe. Be open to your spouse, your lover, your partner again. And you'll feel a different kind of energy enter that relationship that you will sense is a big part of the charge life.

The number one issue with being productive isn't that people usually don't know what.

To do with the day.

It's that they look at it with dread and they expect, accept that feeling and they stop. They, I don't wanna. So they stop. Even though, even though if they looked past the immediate dreadful activity and looked into the future about the benefits it would give them, if they could reconnect with that, they could push through. It's it when we get in the short term, just automatic feelings automatically, emotions that come up, those things when they're not monitored consciously and sometimes they're not overridden by a higher calling, a higher ambition, a higher ambition to serve a higher mission. Then what ends up happening is we go, ah, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll skip this one. And you know, I'll get the workout in tomorrow and then workout comes tomorrow, I'll get it in next Friday and then it doesn't come in next Friday and then I'll get the work in, the work doesn't happen. And we keep telling ourselves these stories. I'll do it when I feel like it. But I hope if one thing you've learned here is the power plant doesn't have energy. It you need to generate the energy in which you need to excel and serve in this world. That's what I had to do last night. I had to generate the energy that I need to excel and serve on the stage. I had to make sure that today I felt my best. This is my marathon that I get to do eight times a year. This is what I train for. This is what keeps me sharp. We all have to have those things in our business or our brands or the things that we're being productive towards that push us, that challenge us. If you don't have three or four of those each year that are your form of business or productivity marathons, build them back in. Build in challenging expressions for yourself each year. Build them in. We all need our own marathon each year. Whether that's a true running marathon or for me, this is it for me. And I got eight of these a year that I build in that make me sharp. I don't need to do them. The better use of my time would be doing more videos on the Internets, more social media. But this, this pushes me. This demands excellence from me. When we talk about productivity today, I'm going to say, what is the things that are scheduled for you that demand you be great. Because if you don't have any of those, you'll never be great. You'll just do what's comfortable and easy. You got to have those milestone moments throughout the year in your business. Sometimes that means, okay, that's three weeks. I'm going to write my book in that three weeks, and you're just going to gear up for it and you're going to crush it. Sometimes that means that's when you're going to launch your thing. Okay, we're going to gear up and launch that thing. Sometimes that means that's when you do your executive retreat. You pull away all the executives, you meet with them, and that week is.

Just like fire week for you.

You.

That's not. I don't mean fire. I mean fire, you know, but you got to have those scheduled. Otherwise you just go into homeostasis. You just kind of go through the days and go through the motions and nothing is compelling you to reach and stretch and push. And if you don't have that, I'm telling you, it is hard to live a Fully charged life. So you gotta approach productivity now in a completely different way. First rule, don't think of productivity as something that you're doing just in a block of time. Think of your life as being a productively fulfilling life. That productivity is not a time management thing. It's a purpose thing. I don't think of time management when I think of productivity. I think of purpose. I think of who do I want to be, what do I want to contribute, what will be fulfilling for me? Because if you don't have something bigger than just blocks of time, which are important, but there's not something that we together are going towards where it's this set of dreams where there's personal meaning and there is social contribution, we won't go. And you might write that down. You need both things as a mindset for productivity. Personal meaning, meaning you care about it, you like it, it's intrinsically valuable to you. You feel like me doing this is important because I like it, I enjoy it, it's important. That's personal meaning. The other aspect of productivity is social contribution. I have to see what I'm doing is going to matter to somebody. It's going to make a difference. And if we don't look at productivity that way, we'll just be like. It feels like a task. But if we can assign some meaning and social contribution to our task, ask everything to change. But ultimately those things have to come together in something to be productive for.

Like I'm always.

I'm like, what am I productive for? Took me a long time to figure that out for myself. Based on what I do, what am I productive for? Well, at the personal meaning was I'm productive because I want that vibrancy of being a creative human being. I want to be productive because I want to feel like I'm creating and expressing myself. That's the personal meaning for me. I also want to be a productive person because the social contribution, I want to feel that energy and that creativity. But I also want to feel like, you know what? My life mattered.

Did I live? Did I love?

Did I matter? Did I create some outputs? Did I create something or do something that helps somebody or move the needle or made a difference or contribution.

This can be your day for personal growth. This can be that day you committed to. You remember, you go, that was the day I got myself a community. I got better coaches. I committed to making my life the absolute best that I could. This is that day. Make today your growth day.

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