Set Yourself UP For Long-Term Success

I have worked with so many people who have incredibly unhealthy habits today because they never realized that they developed short term valuation strategies to protect themselves from judgment that hit them in their youth. So today they keep making short term decisions for themselves and they don't know why. Like, I don't know why, Bren. I just can't seem to, you know, plan for the long term. Because you were hurt so much when you were younger, you started being protective in the short term and stopped thinking long term that you stopped thinking that you were even worth it. So why pursue things that would make you feel really happy? You don't deserve happiness because this person told you you're crap. This stuff is real. How do we get you to feel more vibrant in your life, more connected and confident with yourself and what you're doing in the world and, and just more fulfilled and excellence driven in everything that you do? This month is my popular request. You all have been asking this probably for about two, three months now. How do you balance those short term needs to get things done with also setting yourself up for the long term? And you and I both know most people completely fail at this. And it's hard because every day you're trying to do so many things, but you know that you're sometimes costing your longer term future. That's why this session is super valuable for those who are brand new. You've never been with us. Bust out your journal and get ready because we have a huge curriculum today to help you learn how to think through what things hurt you in the short term or help you and what things are really the things that are setting you up for longer term success. I don't know about you, but there was a big part of my life where I was too sort of impulse driven. You know that part of you when you're in high school or in your 20s or early 30s, that a lot of it's just like, oh, what do I think will feel good? Or I want to try everything. And you kind of, you're driven so much by just in the moment decisions based on your comfort and like what your interests are that sometimes actually costs you from building something that will give you fulfillment, from creating the lifestyle that you really want to have, from building wealth to building the right relationships to just having sanity in your life. I don't know about you, but my 20s, there was no sanity in my 20s. My 20s were just like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. At the cost of health, health, health, health, health. Relationship, relationships, Relationships like Just constant stress, anxiety, fear. And at some point you have to realize that's a choice. It's a choice based on what you're saying yes to and what you're failing to say no to. And often with my highest level coaching clients, and some of you guys know I'm blessed to have multiple seven figure coaching clients who I just spend the year with, almost always the highest level people that I get to work with, they're really struggling with these types of decisions. And I know you are too. And that's why you guys have been asking about this topic for the last couple months. And so if you ever wonder, does Brendan listen? All of my curriculum is built around what you guys are asking. The way I'm going to go about today is I'm going to jump into teaching this curriculum with you. The fact that you are taking this time to work on yourself, I want to a say that's incredible and congratulate you and thank you. But I also want to tell you how frigging rare that is. You know, everybody says they want greater success today, but very few people are studying. Everybody says they want to feel better and enjoy life more, but they're not engaging in personal development on a consistent basis. I'm going to challenge you in your health. I'm going to challenge you in how you're contributing. I'm going to challenge you on are you taking care of yourself and your family. I'm going to challenge you about how you're like managing your day. Are you disciplined or not disciplined? And I just want to let you know, for the people who are new, when I'm challenging you, I'm not doing it because I'm know flippant or disrespectful. I'm doing it because sometimes we get in a rhythm in our life and no one's looking at us in the eye and saying, you got more in you, kid. You know, sometimes we just don't have someone look at us and say, you're doing fine, things are going great. Stop letting your mind screw you up. Engage the day. Be joyful about what you get to have and do and experience. And I know how that can be because you, you work solo or you work with a team or you feel like you're a solo contributor and you're in that place where you're like, sometimes you don't feel like you get enough support or validation from your family, your spouse, the people around you and your mind turns negative. And when your mind turns negative, you stop challenging yourself for growth. When Your mind turns negative. You stop engaging sometimes in personal development as much as. And that's why I always take time, every single live cast, just to thank you guys that you are not just part of my tribe. I really consider some of you guys part of my family. I see you out on the events and I just see you guys in airports and all around the world. I've been traveling so much lately. I feel like I've been seeing everybody and people coming up. I'm in hbx. I'm like, oh my God, that's so awesome. And I get to hear your stories and the stories always sound like, you know what? I just knew there was more potential in me. You know what? I was in a transition and I was like changing, but I didn't know, like I just, I knew I wanted to do it better this time, you know, and maybe that's where you're at. You're in a career that's changing or you're going to go chase a new dream or you're about to scale and you're like, you know what? I want to do it better this time. You know, I think about that every beginning of each month. Many of you know, I sit down at the beginning of each month with monthly goals. It's one reason I'm able to keep towards and gearing towards my long terms as well as we'll talk about today. And when I'm looking at that every single month, I'm like, you know what, I just want to do this month better. You know, I want to do this month better. And so for 17 years, I've set a brand new monthly challenge. Be more positive on the daily. That's like my thing because there's so many things moving around in the world and so much bad negative media. I don't know about how you feel about the energy, but the opposite of the high performance experience is like this negative, dark energy that is out there right now. And this community is a community of people who are positive, happy and vibrant. If you don't know that way, do you come to one of our events one day? I know when you see this community like, whoa, these people are driven, they're optimistic, they're positive. They want to do something with their life and help other people. And getting to coach that and lead that with you means the world to me. So again, it's a long way to say thank you, but I appreciate you guys. Okay, so today's topic, short term versus long term. I want to just share with you some of the mindset tricks and some of the problems we have in our thinking patterns that often really cause problems here and the things we're really after over here. And so just bear with me and maybe bust out your journal and just let's work through it. And if you've never been here with me before as you're doing your journal, don't just write down what I say, write down what you're thinking about your life. If I say something that makes you think about your relationship, write something about your relationship. If I say something that makes you think about your health, write that down. Or your career, write that down. Or your finances, write that down. Whatever comes up for you. This should be a free flow session, not just where you sit there and listen. Unless you have me turn up blasted loud and you're also sweeping or vacuuming or tidying up the house. I understand that. But this is a time for you to do real reflection in your life, prompted by things that we know from research in psychology and the behavioral sciences that will really support you in growing. So some of these will just be prompts for you to go, oh yeah, that really applies to me right here. Because my job in this is to give you the self awareness and the research to start like dialing it in so you can improve. And, and these are really big topics for today. Let's jump in short term versus long term. The first thing that we tend to do in the short term, and many of you guys ask me this question every single month, is we tend to value and prioritize stability. And funny enough, it seems like something we would all want, right? We know from human behavior and human motivation studies that people want, you know, safety, they want belonging, they want sustenance, they want shelter. And all these things are things of like, oh, this is stability. I know what my day is going to be like. Or even if there's uncertainty there, because I don't really believe in people who perpetuate certainty because there's no such thing as having total certainty in ourselves or others if we can remain humble and open to the world. And the more that we want certainty and want to grab it all the time, the more we tend to lose the pop and the vibrancy of life and the more we're disappointed all the time because nothing is ever perfect. But what we do want is stability. Big difference, right? Certainty. I need to know exactly what's going on. Stability. There's a lot going on here, but I feel safe and secure and stable. And so this is a good thing and often make People make choices in the short term for stability. They're like, oh, well, I guess I better get a job. You know, I better, you know, be nice to this person so they don't go crazy on me. You know, these are things that we do in our life. Taking a certain job, staying a certain job, treating people in a certain way so they don't leave us, so that we have a sense of stability. So it's not a negative thing. And I don't want any of these necessarily to feel like I'm saying they're all negative. But what happens is they tend to turn negative if there are consistent thinking pattern or consistent value ethic we have to have. And let me give you an example here, and stability. And this is specifically related to you guys because you ask me about this every month. You say, well, Brendan, I'm thinking about quitting my job, but I haven't done it yet. Can you give me confidence? Or when would you do it? Or how would you recommend I go into that transition? I hear that all the time for you guys in this community. How do I switch careers? When do I switch careers? You know, and the reason that we don't want to do it often is because we're seeking stability. And it's scary, right? Quitting a job, leaving an environment, breaking up with the relationship. How many of you have ever stayed in a relationship too dang long? You were in a relationship too long because you just wanted this or you wanted to please somebody who wanted this, and so they wanted this or you wanted this. So in the short term, you kept compromising, you kept settling for something that was less than you. You kept allowing behavior that was not right. Right. And that was just, you need to know that short term stability seeking things tends to really hurt us. When that short term value ethic I need stability plays out month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year. One day you wake up and you look back at the last five years and you're like, oh, my God, I've been stuck in something I didn't want to be in, but I didn't have the guts to leave. And what I tell people is, you know, it's not always a lack of courage that prevented you from going though. We can talk about that. It's often that you just overvalued stability. Does that make sense? I mean, we're in a world right now where everyone says, you know, if you don't do something while you're a chicken, you're crap. You're, you know, what's wrong with you, you have no courage. I'm like, it's stop just going to people's character like that, right? It's like, well this, this must be wrong. They're just weak willed humans. They lack courage. And it's like, calm down guy, get off the caffeine and let's just have a conversation. Because what happens is most bad decisions you've made isn't because you lack good qualities. It's because you overvalued something for too long and often you overvalued something good for too long. Meaning often people don't leave a relationship or a bad career because all it's not. They're lacking good qualities, they're overvaluing stability. It's a short term thing they're trying to get, but it became a long term strategy. Does this make sense? So they valued stability so long it overcame other values that would have helped them have more freedom. And see, it's almost like the opposite. And that's what I want to point out today. If we keep seeking stability over and over and over and over and over again, eventually we end up in stuff that we don't ask to grow or get better. We, we won't rock the boat. We won't leave things because we need to feel so stable. And then that comes often at the cost of our long term value that we need to be seeking, which is fulfillment. Right. It's almost like there is a polarity here. I don't want to say it's like one and another. It's more like a pendulum. And what's happening sometimes for people is they're so far instability, they're not asking what, what would really fulfill me and what would really bring me alive, what would make me feel connected and happy. So think about it. If you're in a place where you're always seeking stability and you're making compromises for that because you don't want to rock the boat, don't want to upset people, don't want to take risk. Omg, then you never ask the bigger question, the longer term stuff. Well, what would make me feel fulfilled? See, sometimes we need to move away from stability for moments and move towards fulfillment. And this is how I would get to this question. You always ask me about jobs and relationships in this community. And when I think about like, okay, how do you leave a job? I'll tell you exactly what I did when many of you guys know my story is becoming a writer. When I was at Accenture, which is a consulting company I worked for for seven Six, seven years. It was very stable, which is funny. What it meant was it was stable because I got a paycheck all the time, but it was not stable for my mind. It was almost like I valued the wrong thing. I valued that stable paycheck. But for my mind, it was not a healthy job. I was in 16 cities every single quarter. I was all over the place. It was working every single day for six years straight till midnight two in the morning, always being on call 24, seven, seven days a week for six years straight, while traveling Monday through Thursday through different cities into different organizations where there was no, like, clear mission or, or clear boss or clear real goals except for, like, little projects. But there was no values to what I felt like I was doing. But sure, why did I make it there six years when the whole time I want to be a writer? What would bring me heart and joy would be the fulfillment of writing and coaching. Why did I take that long to leave? Because I overvalued this and I undervalued that. So I kept protecting this and not acting towards that, protecting this and failing to act towards that. And so one day I had to get real with it. And I said, okay, I got to make the switch a little bit here. And what I decided to do is I said, I wonder if I can put myself out there as a speaker, as coach, as a writer. And I wonder if I could figure out a way that I would know that that would probably make that career. Now we just call it the influencer career. Used to be just thought leader or expert career, but I was like, I wonder if I could earn 20, 25% as a writer or speaker on the side over here. And if I could get that, just kind of do it on the side, well, then if I, then that would be just enough to meet my need for stability, but really serve my senses of fulfillment. And I could step away from this thing that I think adds stability and. Because if I'm spending full time over here in this career, but I can, I know I can see, I can earn like even 20%, 30, 30% over here. I'd be willing to leave that jump over here because if I gave my full time efforts, full time efforts over here, it would build up. And that was my assumption and my way of thinking. And I'm not making, you know, making that my recommendation to anybody here because 20% was arbitrary. You might want 40% or 50%. You might have family, you might need, you might higher, you know, obligations, debts, challenges, more responsibilities than I did when I made that decision in my, you know, mid-20s or late 20s. But I think that's really important to hear. Often we get stuck in valuing a good thing, stability at the cost of the long term. This is the most important thing today. We're going to go way deep in a lot of other things, but I'm here to tell you almost always your sense of need to feel safe, to secure things are going good, things are predictable. I mean, it's why people won't leave. Even horrible situations, abusive relationships, terrible, unfulfilling jobs. They don't walk away because they're like, well, at least I know this, right? That old thing, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. So they stay with the devil they know. And the sad thing is they assume everything's a devil and they don't realize that sometimes act. After that transition, we can find new areas of opportunity. After that transition, when we go into new things, more positive relationships can open up more opportunities to lead, more opportunities to serve, more opportunities to love and feel. Is there anything you have been putting up with too long? Is there anything you've been putting up with too long? Bad job, bad relationship, even for yourself? Bad habits, just because you know what they are. I have. I have friends in the past who quit smoking, and even for them, there was a stability to that. You know, at least I get to take a break every hour and breathe deeply. I mean, I'm breathing in poison, but at least I get to go breathe a little bit. Because most people hold their breath all day. And now they get to do 20 minutes of meditation, deep breathing. They're just breathing in poison. But at some point they realize, wow, that that's a. That's like a crutch. What. What is it about that that's giving me a sense of stability? And I'm not trying to judge anyone who has any addictions at all here. I'm just trying to say, in our human psychology, stability is a big driver that often keeps us put. But again, as I said earlier, not all these things are bad either, Right? The first time you got a job that you had no idea what it was was because you were trying to seek stability for your family or to pay your credit card bills. So that's not a bad thing. It's just when these things become the dominant frame, the dominant thinking pattern. So if you ever coach with me, I'm like, hey, I'm going to figure out your top five dominant frames about how you view the world and what you're moving towards and what few people move towards is that sense of fulfillment. So a more positive question for you today is what could be more fulfilling for you? Like what would be more fulfilling in your career? What would be more fulfilling in your relationships? And it doesn't mean I'm asking you to leave something per se, it means sometimes to get people towards more long term happiness. Because if you really think about what we're trying to get towards here is we're just trying over here to get to a big sense of long term happiness, satisfaction, joy, and we need to act more towards that. Sometimes that's just a behavioral change. A lot of people don't need to leave their job. They need to show up at their job and give their all and actually collaborate and create again. Get away from fear, engage. That's hard for people, right? They're there for the stability, but they forget. You can have stability, but if you don't show up and act in a congruent way that makes you feel fulfilled, right, Then you're toast. So sometimes it's behavioral change. Some of you don't need to leave your marriage to find fulfillment. You need to change how you do marriage, right? You need to change how you engage in the relationship. So this is not about Brendan saying quit everything, everything sucks, get out of there. This is about Brendan saying, maybe you need to change your thinking pattern. Maybe you need to change a few actions to move you towards more fulfillment. And maybe it'll take time for me to get to a point in my career where I felt fulfilled. Took years, right? I was doing things over the short term that were getting stability, but not always something that I really enjoyed. And we're going to talk about where that came into play for me and my career as well. So I hope you've enjoyed this first point. I think it's really just vital to understand this one. This is a big deal and please don't gloss over it. Dig deep and really think about this stuff. The value of HPX coaching isn't just in the moment where you can take notes about your health, your relationships, your career, your mission, your finances. And then just like maybe you listen again on the treadmill and you're like, oh, I missed that part. Personal growth is not something that ever tires, let me tell you that. Okay, next big idea is in the short term we often overvalue our individual needs and our individual preferences, right? And so meaning we say, well I want this, so I'm going to do it. But you know, doing that really hurts your spouse or Your partner, right? Or I'm just. It's all about me. And you forget that you're also a leader and what you do, other people see. And so I think this is one of the easier ones. Individual versus team or community. I'll just use two words there, team or community. So individual versus team or community. I think this is one of the great dilemmas in life. A guy named Rushworth Kidder wrote a book I hope you've all read called How Good People Make Tough Decisions. How Good People Make Tough Decisions. And one of the areas he talked about there was individual versus relationship decisions, right? You want to live in, you know, Portland, Oregon, but your spouse wants to live in Puerto Rico. You got to have what's the right choice there. That's a hard decision. That's a dilemma sometimes, right? That's what we all face. We all face that. I would really like this. But your spouse wants that or your kids want that, or the team wants that, and that's a hard dilemma. And what we have to do is recognize in terms of high performance, remember, we're high performance experience here. So I'm going to go to the research a little bit here with you. In terms of high performance, those who more greatly value their will, their desire, their needs, their wants, their short term pleasures at the cost of building community, team and relationships that allow them to go faster tend to be people who can't either make or sustain high performance. What this means, and let me ask you very directly and simply is are you building the team and the relationships you need to go faster? Don't take this conceptually. I mean, right now, if I parachuted into your life in this last five days, can I sit down and could I have listened to some conversations you had where you were actively building team and relationships that allow you to go faster? Is that happening? Is it active right now? Or are you one of those individual slog? No, Brendan, I got it. I'm a workhorse. I got grit, I can power through. I got it, man. You don't understand, Brendan. I'm one of those hard worker Instagram guys. I'm in the grind. I'm like, okay, good job, buddy. And I value the grind just like anybody else. But if all you do is keep working towards individual contributions, you'll never go faster or scale. It's super hard, right, to build the relationships that you need to go faster. But I want you to do this as you are doing your individual contributions. You need to be building that relationship network, that support network that helps you go faster. Right. Seth Godin wrote a lot about this in a book called Linchpin. And when you are somebody who are the linchpin of your community, not only can you make a greater difference in the world, but your individual goals get met faster because you nobody, you know somebody who can do that. And how do you do that? Well, it's a simple thing. How can you bring people together who either work for you or don't work for you, or are in your community or industry more often and have them share what their goals, their needs, their desires are, and then you try to facilitate that, support that, help that, but also share your own. I'll give you an example in multiple ways of how this turns out in your own life. I mean, when's the last time you got the family and the kids around the table and you said, what are you all really trying to do? Not just, how was your day? Try changing language once in a while from how was your day to what would make you more happy? Different question. Right. How was your day, Sally? It was good. My teacher was nice. What would make you more happy? If I could spend more time doing art projects. Whoa, okay. That's a different learning, isn't it? When you find what will make more people happy over the long term versus just what they did today, you know more about them and you might be able to contribute something there, but it also gives you the platform to also share what would make you more happy and what you need to get there. And if you ever hung out with me for like a week, you'd be so annoyed about how much it's big vision, how much it's goals, how much we need to do this, how much we gotta hire here, move here, do that, make this thing happen, move this thing around. You'd be like, oh, my God. You'd be overwhelmed. But by speaking in that language, people mobilize around me. People are like, how does it get so much done and build these teams and move all these things around? It's like, I'm always moving towards the future. I'm always trying to do what I do, this work. But even as I'm doing this with you, before I came in today, I did two calls with potential team leaders to move everything forward, right? So it's like, even on days where the whole day, this is all I'm doing, I started the day with still having those relationships. Moving forward. I want you to be on the phone and in the email. Moving relationships forward or piecing relationships together, they're going to help you in one Two, three years now. Some of you are just like, are you just talking about networking, Brennan? I'm like, yes. If that's what you got to boil this down to, network better be the linchpin in your community. Build team constantly. For all my friends right here who are influencers or individual contributors in your own companies, I'm like, as soon as you can get somebody scaled up, trained so they can take over, the majority of the things that you can do that are systemizable, explainable, predictable, process driven, like, break down what you're doing. Get somebody. At least if you're, especially if you're working by yourself, get somebody who can take some of those procedural, administrative, process driven types of things, get that stuff off your plate and over to them so that you can more focus on either A, your art or A or B, revenue producing things or C, A and B. Right. Like that level of support you need. I'm telling you, here's what people do. Well, I don't want to hire people because I'm faster. I like working alone and I can do it faster than they can. Yes, right now. But guess what? In four years, it's still just you working to the late hours of night. It's still just you wondering when things will break through. It's still just you. Oh, I hope one day I can take a vacation. It's still just you. So for all my solopreneurs out there, I hope you'll listen real close. You got to build team. You just have to. It's not fun, it's not easy, it doesn't always make you feel stable, but in long term, it lets you do more of what you want to do and it gives you more of this right. It gives you more freedom and fulfillment. Even though in the short term it's like unknowns. It's hard, it's difficult, it's frustrating. But I know so many of you and I'm belaboring this point a little bit and forgive me, but I'm out there with you. I can't tell you how many of you I've been. Literally this last year I've been in airports probably more than I've been in like three years. And just I talk. I see you guys in the airports all the time and you're like, oh, Brennan, hey. And immediately it turns to, oh, I'm so overwhelmed. I'm like, why are you overwhelmed? Well, I'm doing all this stuff. I'm like, are you doing it by yourself? Yeah. I can't figure out why I'm Overwhelmed. Because you're doing it all by yourself. That answer of overwhelm. Listen, we all think that overwhelm goes away just because we meditate, right? That's the whole world today. It's like, oh, you're overwhelmed. Just meditate. I'm like, yeah, meditate and get support. Don't think one of them is going to free you. You've got to have the support network. Like, here's the thing. And this I'm going to get. I know you guys might not like it when I say this, but it was my job to challenge you, because I've been there. Your bank account is directly reflective of the team that you have built. Your bank account is directly reflective, directly correlated to. To the team that you have built. And a ton of people, the vast majority, at least here in the United States, the vast majority of family households, can't sustain a $400 plus emergency. Most people can't actually retire. And we want to blame everything in the world for it. But I think one big piece is, we got to go. What kind of team did they build to support the things that would be fulfilling for them? What type of team did they build that would support them? And listen, I know some of you are like, I'm not a career person, Brendan. I follow you because I'm into inspiration. Your team might be your family. Your team might be your teenagers. God forbid, God help ya, but your team might be your teenagers. Your team might be your spouse. Your team might be the neighbors. Your team might be the pta. Like, there's people in your community that can be your team that can support you. I'm sitting down talking with a woman. She has six children. And I was just like, six children? I was like, that's very challenging because she also runs a business. And I said, so you're a CEO and you're a mother of six? And she says, yes. And my husband left three years ago. Six kids, single mom, CEO of a significant organization. And I was like, how do you do it all? The first thing she says, team. I said, well, tell me about your team. She's like, well, three of the ladies in the neighborhood, they're my team. I can't do it without the ladies in the neighborhood. So she leans on the ladies in the neighborhood for babysitting, for taking care of the kids when this has to happen or that has to happen. And I said that you must be in a great community. She's not. I don't think so. I said, you're not in a great community. I said, well, how'd you meet these people? She says, walking around. I take walks. I meet people on the block and I talk with them. I said, that's pretty cool. She met one of the other ladies at the pta, became like an after school function she was telling me about who became a person who she ultimately employed to help at home and at work. Most like a personal assistant type of thing. And then she just keeps going on and on, and here I am going, that's amazing. I mean, how did you manage to do it all? She said, oh, I just try to get one new support person every year, right? It sounds so overwhelming when you hear a guy like me say get team, because, you know, I got, you know, team in multiple cities. But at the beginning it's one new person to support you, and then it's another new person. And then it's maybe somebody at work, somebody down the block, Somebody. Somebody who you volunteer with. And one day you look up and you're like, wow, I got six or seven people I can really rely on. I mean, that's a big thing. Do you have enough people you can really rely on to help you if something goes wrong? If you need some help? You really got to think about that. This isn't stuff just that are hype. It's just like this is life skills, right? This is like, get people you can rely on. Eight years, I really had just four. Some people literally like probably six years. I think for six years straight there was four of us. And then it was like, okay, let's add some more, let's add some more, let's add some more. And I don't pretend that process is easy, but it allows you to do more of what's important and it allows you to scale. And so if I've belabored this enough, I could spend another four hours just trying to crack your head on this one a little bit, right? Your bank account today is directly correlated to how much you have built a team over the last decade. Your ability right now to feel stable, that if something happened, you got a lot of people that got your back is based on how you built your relationships. I had two friends this year go through major epic controversies in some way or another, or, you know, a business failure or an epic public controversy, and you could just see the difference. Like, one of them had spent years cultivating good, positive relationships. The other one had to weather the storm alone. No one was speaking up and cheering that person on. And I'm here to tell you that really does matter, because you aren't just building relationships, you are building reputation. And it's your, your reputation really matters. But listen, as you go to scale and change the world, which I know many of you guys are on that same path as me, at some point something's going to happen. People are going to call you into question, they're going to challenge you. The business won't good, the team won't good. I, as many of you guys know, in my career, I went bankrupt one year, I had a brain injury another year. I, I scaled up team, lost team, scaled team, built new offices like it was a hot mess. But because I'm always trying to build team, always trying to put the, you know, the chess pieces in place for this person to have support here or here or there or there. I don't get it, right? My team will tell you, oh, my God, they freak out about stuff, but they know I'm working every day to build that. Every day trying to build, put this person here. Do you need more people? Tell me when, where, why, which city? Like, okay, let me put that in a plate. Let me put this in play. I'm not as fast as they would love to be, but I'm always trying to move those chess pieces around to build that support network. And I think this is what is important to you. Be a leader, build team, build support, build relationships for you and your family. If you and your family are struggling, go out and ask for help. Just go. Because what you're doing is you're protecting yourself. You're valuing your individual sense of pride over the ability to build something that supports you. And I know you've all had parents or grandparents like that who sweated out by themselves without building support. And so they ground themselves into the ground. And you know what I talk about. I know many of you shared that in your relationships in the past where you're like, oh my gosh, you know, my grandparent or my mom, they did it all by themselves and they were just unhappy. They were inspiring because they had the grind, but they didn't set you or the next generation up either. And again, this is not a judgment to anybody because we all fall on multiple sides of these pendulums. But what I'm trying to do is start getting your mindset to swing towards these things so we can protect your future. Okay, next big idea is related to the short term impulse control issues we have. Cheesecake. Here's what happens. I'll share with you. You all know one of the most studied things in all of psychological history in the academic sciences of psychology is this concept of willpower. There's been more studies, more research, more delineations carried from the findings on willpower research than almost anything else. You basically have happiness, life satisfaction and personality style and willpower. Those are like things that are just so in depth studied in the field of psychology. And this idea of impulse control is really important. I know you guys have heard of that old study of the marshmallow test where you know, they put a thing of marshmallows on the table, get a bunch of kids around, adult comes in, says, hey, don't eat those marshmallows, I'll be right back. The adult leaves. Inevitably some kids grab the marshmallow and eat it, others have impulse control, they say. And then they track those kids over a series of years and they could see those who had greater impulse control in general in the famous study, which we'll get to in a minute, had better grades, had better health, had better life outcomes, had higher paying jobs decades later. Like the positive net effect of those who could control their willpower was really powerful. Now if you're up to speed on this, in this last two years, there's been a lot of problem in psychology of how do we replicate these studies over the long term to make sure we're teasing out what the real variables were. And there's question about whether the marshmallow test itself is a good indicator of anything. However, the multiple ways and understandings of willpower is no question. Right? Your ability to manage your impulses, those things you just want to do for quick seeking, like satisfaction, that stuff saves marriages. That stuff is whether or not we have 40 extra pounds on us. That stuff is whether or not we, you know, scream and get angry at people. Your impulse control also is why or why not you are overly stressed or anxious. We don't realize it, but the impulses, whether we immediately honor those, follow those or not is a big, big issue. Because you know what I always say, if you can control your impulses, I'm not saying don't follow them. I'm not saying don't be in the moment or be present. We're going to talk about that. But ultimately we should value health. Once you value health, you know what you say? I got to master my mind. Because remember, health is also mental health. It was the biggest change in my life. I said, you know, I got to get a hold of my mind. I'm fear driven, I'm upset about things, I'm stressed all the time. At some point I got to know I'm manufacturing that in my mind. I need to stop manufacturing that in my mind so I can enjoy life, so I can have mental health. Right? Think about the impulse control of. Okay, it's dinner, yet a long day. They brought out the big bowl of bread. You ate all the bread. They brought out the big salad. You order. You ate all the salad and you asked for the extra sugary toppings. You got the big meal. The meal was great. Your spouse didn't eat theirs, so you ate theirs, too. They came out and you're like, I'm so full. And they bring out the dessert list. You're like, cheesecake. You're already full, but there's cheesecake. You know, in 30 minutes, you're going to want to die. You're going to be on the floor, laying on the ground, rolling over in pain in your stomach. The cats and the dogs are going to be walking over, just checking on your vital statistics. And you still. I guess I'll take the cheesecake. Why do you do this? Because you're lacking impulse control. The thing is, you actually know it's wrong and you do it anyway. Do you know why? Because you've made that same decision 400 times before. Impulse control is not something we gain in the moment because we're Zen Buddhas. It's because we made the hard decisions to say no over and over and over. You train willpower. That's it. When you're used to saying no, you get better at it. So you have to teach yourself to start prioritizing health and moving towards that and less to letting your impulses take you over. Okay, Think about all the. Think about all the drama in your personal relationships. At the end of the day, there is an impulse error there, we would call it. Okay, so you got in a big fight with your spouse. Guess what won? Your anger, your impatience, your sometimes insanity. Isn't it true? Like, you let the impulses take you over and you sparked at your spouse and you're like, oh, I'm dead. And you knew it. You absolutely knew it as soon as you said it. And what happened is you let it well up and you unleashed it into the world. And what you do is, you tell yourself, I'm just being authentic. Know you're being a baby. Know you're being rude. Know you're not managing your breath in the moment. Know you're not reminding yourself this is your partner in life. You swore to God that this was going to be your person. You forgot. So let the impulse come up, attack. You didn't remind yourself, who am I attacking? Why am I attacking? You didn't take a breath to calm yourself down. And again, I told you at the top of this conversation I was going to challenge you. And I know some of you are like, geez, Brendan, you're really busting on people here. And I'm not busting on people here. I am describing human behavior from a research background. My research doing, coaching for 20 plus years and all the research we've done in psychology, it just supports the fact that people who lack the ability to grab hold of their impulses over a period of time, they ruin the health of their body, they ruin the health of their relationships, and they ruin the health of their mind. And so what we have to do is learn to get a control of that. And if you want to have long term success, it's going to come from mastering this a little better. This is why what I love about this current culture is this whole conversation right now about mindfulness is so key to learn to listen, to observe and honor your feelings and emotions, but not let them be your master. That's the key. Mastering your mind starts with not letting your impulses be your commander anymore, right? Everyone's like, well, don't you get mad, Brendan? I'm like, oh, I get mad all the time. But mad just doesn't win any days. Aren't you impatient, Brendan? Don't you want to go faster all the time? But I don't push to go too fast. Aren't you too, you know, don't you hate this or hate that? Oh yeah, don't like it at all. But it doesn't make me negative, you follow? It's like I've got the same, we all have the same impulses. You got fear, I got fear. It's that ability to manage that impulse and not let it win. I faced another big fear that I have and I went hang gliding. And I had never ever, ever really wanted to do that. I have a good friend who for years, Ryan, invited me for years to go hang gliding around here. And he's got the whole thing and set up. And I was like, no, running towards the end of a cliff to jump off it and sail. Not even interested. My best friend wanted me to do this for a long time. I was like, yeah, no, I'm totally good. Don't want to do that at all. And I remember I was in Brazil, in Rio. For those of. I'm sure some of you are from Rio or I'm sure some of you gone that epic hang gliding Trip in Rio. I hope you have. But, you know, we march, we drive and then we march to the top of the. A cliff, you know, 1600 foot sheer face down and out above this cliff, they have made this little. It looks like the top of like a shed. And we have to run on the top of the shed with. I'm with the guide. So we run together off the top of this little roof shed thing that overhangs this cliff. And every impulse as we got up to the thing was my hands were sweating, my arms were. I was sweating everywhere. And I was like, everything said, just don't do this. And in fact, my mind, knowing this framework, I was like, this might not be the healthiest choice right here to run off of this cliff. But I was like, I'm not. This is an exercise, Brendan, in whether your fear impulse is going to win or you're going to win. You're here. You've chosen to do this with these people. You said you would. So what's going to win? Your commitment to other people, what you said, or the fear impulse? I'm like, I asked. The guy jumped off this thing 30,000 times, he was still alive. I was like, this is pretty good odds, 30,000 to zero. I said, let's do it. So we did it. It was an awesome experience. But think of how many fears you have right now where instead of knowing what you want to go do or what you've committed to, you just stop. That's impulse control too. And in the short term, it tends to feel like this gives us this and this is always prioritizing this, but at some point we've got to move that needle in conversation over towards the better decisions. I know I'm belaboring this point, but I just can't tell you how important it is to learn to think these ways, to start moving towards those actions where you say, I'm scared, I go anyway, I'm upset. But I manage the upset. The upset doesn't manage me. I know that this is starting to cause anxiety. Let me breathe it out of myself and do what I really need to do to move my life and my day forward. Just, like frozen. The amount of like, there's too many moving pieces, I don't know what to do. So what do you do when there's too many pieces? Your impulse is like, what? Screw it, right? Let's go Netflix and chill. When you have a million things to do, that's impulse, winning the day. Short term comfort. Netflix and chill. And then three weeks later, you're so overwhelmed still. Because you weren't able to overcome that impulse, right? And I know it. I know it. They get you on the Netflix, you know, next episode starts in 5, 4. They don't even. It'd be nice if they said next episode starts in 60 seconds, because you might. In 60 seconds, you might find the willpower. You might go to the bathroom. You might go for the refill and just not come back. But no. Next episode. Five, four, three. Oh, crap. Okay, here we go. How hard it is to press pause in your life. But when you learn to do that, and you do it over and over and over and over again now, nothing rules you. That's what I love about my life. Nothing rules me. Fear does not rule me anymore and hasn't ruled me in over 20 years. Stress and anxiety hasn't touched me in a decade. Like, all the things everyone's like, well, that's just abnormal. Brendan. I'm like, no. For people who care and work on themselves, it's totally normal. So I want you to do that. I want you to find a way to consistently meet your emotions, feelings, or impulses and challenge it. Observe it, or overcome it. It might be as simple as saying no to bread a thousand times, and then it's not an issue. It's just not an issue. For me, alcohol is that way, right? Think about my life. I'm at events all day long. Everybody walks up to me. Brandon, you're so awesome. Here's some champagne. Here's some wine. Here's a beer. Can I get you something? The bar is right there. No, man, I'm good. And people are like, well, you know, it's just. I feel uncomfortable saying no when people offer me alcohol. I'm like, yeah, but if you don't learn to do it now, you're never going to learn to do it. I'm not judging those who drink alcohol at all. Totally loud in my family and my life, I'm just saying that it doesn't rule me and never has. And that's really important. I decided at one point, I said, you know what? I know I want to be here right now. I'm just not going to have one. So I only. If I have any alcohol, it would be, like, socially, and it would be something that I chose to do, not just because someone handed me one. And I think that's really important to get because then you know how a slippery slope that can lead. And many of you have shared really inspiring stories here in the comments in the past or in our courses about overcoming Addiction and how you went about that process, it's super hard. You need support, you need team, you need AA to overcome those types of things. So I'm not making light of it or saying, oh, look at me, I just knew that my life would suck if I did not learn to manage my impulses. I want to really talk about the short term versus long term mindset and jump right back in. We've talked so far about stability versus fulfillment, individual versus team, impulse versus health, and how those choices and your value frame for those, which one you're really holding onto or moving towards, it's just dictating how your life is turning out, right? And so I hope all of this has always been received by you. Not me being challenging or smarty pants or whatever, but instead just like, wow, this might be an area for me to explore. Because listen, it's just these little things in personal development. Learning to realize, oh, I think like that. If I thought like that, or I make too many choices on this side, if I made more choices on this side, things would change. And if we get change for you, welcome to the next level, baby. Okay, this one is going to hit a nerve for many of you. If I haven't hit any nerves yet, this one will probably do it in the short term. We tend to value as humans, judgment. The biggest issue with judgment is this. You make judgments all the time and you can't help it. Our automatic sort of system, one level of thinking is just like immediate bias, immediate judgment, immediate framing, immediate good, bad, right now, later, healthy, not healthy, safe, unsafe. We have these immediate judgments that drive our life, right? Move towards, move away from, approach, avoid. It's literally built within us that we make immediate, spontaneous judgments that was to protect us. That was part of that evolutionary impulse to make sure we survive. The issue is we have a bunch of judgmental brats running around the world causing havoc, spreading hate, spreading darkness. Because it's also really fun to demonstrate and portray and to publicize our judgments, right? How fun is it to go on and comment? Well, that's a stupid video. Hate your shirt, you suck. You're fat. You don't know anything. Who do you think you are? And we as a society now have become little, you know, thumb warriors, passing our judgment in comment sections all the time. And what's happened is many people, these two things have come together to create an incredibly negative, negative society and a negative, unhealthy life. Right? I know that's not in this community, but I know in this community, how many of you guys know this to be true, that a lot of people judge you. The more you go for it, a lot of people judge you. The more you take a risk that they don't understand, the more people judge you. When you shun this and you move towards that, right. It's difficult to be a front runner. It's hard to be the, the high performer. It's hard to be the person who raised their hand and says, I want more, I'm ready to go for it. I'd like to help more. Because people judge that. They think, well, who do you think you are? And enough people tell you, who do you think you are? Guess what you do, you shut down and you start making short term goals. Many of you grew up in incredibly critical and negative environments. And here I am to tell you that after coaching people for this many years, I have learned and seen that if there was a pattern in your youth where he was always critical, always judgmental and negative over and over and over and over again, you tend to develop an overvalued system for stability and self protection. And so what you end up doing because you think, oh well, something's wrong with me, you don't seek to build teams, oh well, every time I want to do something, I get judged. You stop pursuing things that are fulfilling because you're hurt all the time. You start taking those simple pleasures to make yourself better, feel better and you compromise your health. And I'm not saying this from a person knowing you specifically, I'm speaking to this obviously in a group coaching environment, but I have worked with so many people who have incredibly unhealthy habits today because they never realized that they develop short term valuation strategies to protect themselves from judgment that hit them in their youth. So today they keep making short term decisions for themselves and they don't know why. It's like, I don't know why Brenna. I just, I can't seem to, you know, plan for the long term because you were hurt so much when you were younger, you started being protective in the short term and stop thinking long term that you stop thinking that you are even worth it. So why pursue things that would make you feel really happy? You don't deserve happiness because this person told you you're crap. This stuff is real and it happens for people over and over and over. I grew up in a town where for me like even just at its physical safety level, like I grew up in a very, very anger fueled, aggressive town and city. There was a time of my dad's life when he was very Very, very strong. Because he was a military guy, right? Like he was a marine. And so very short discipline and it just makes you on your edge, right? And guess what? When you're on your edge to protect yourself all the time from your neighbors, the community, people around you, when you're on your edge all the time, what are you doing? You're like this short term and some people don't know, they never taken the blinders off. Like you're safe now, but you're still thinking short term when you're trying to protect yourself. Make sense? A lot of people have that. They have safety now. They really do. They got great spouses, great partners, good paycheck, life is good. But they're still completely unhappy because everything is short term protection. And they don't realize those blinders for short term were put on when they were younger. And so what I have to do is, is bring that to your awareness to say if you've always been a short term thinker, does that stem from you protecting yourself? And that might be a good place to explore, right? A good place to do some personal development, A good place to talk with your coach or with your therapist about to go, like, huh? I've always been a short term thinker. Why is that? And I've just noticed that correlation personally working with really top performers who started making bad decisions, decisions in the short term. I worked with an Olympian who everyone knew was going to win the Olympics four years later and instead they completely self destruct for three years and they couldn't figure it out. Why couldn't they have a four year view? All they had to do is look for four years out and have gold medal instead they destroyed themselves because all they've ever been doing was protecting themselves. And when all you're doing is protecting yourselves, you can't see four years from now you're trying to get through this week. Man, this day, this hour makes sense. Something to explore about your unconscious. I think the other element about it is we've gotten so practiced at passing judgment to other people that we have hurt relationships. You know, I think that's something that we're just, we've lost patience as a society because everything's so quick serve that our relationships have become quickly judged. And if you keep overly judging things in the short term, sometimes to protect yourself or sometimes because you have a bias, but it's that judgment that we have that tends to really hurt key relationships and that compromises our long term growth, fulfillment, happiness. And so all these things obviously have a dynamic that they play together. And I also have to say that some of. Sometimes it's easy to judge somebody on the short term, but what we do is we hold judgment for the long term. And when judgment is held for the long term, it always becomes like that whole relationship, that whole person, that whole thinking becomes spoiled. Like fruit left out for too long. That's what judgment is. Judgment is like that piece of fruit that's been left out so long that now it becomes poisonous. You see what I'm saying? And some of you are holding onto a judgment about somebody that happened three years ago, some people 30 years ago, you're still upset about that. That still causes you to go into impulse control problems. Let me give you an example. Like sometimes people have judgment, like something happened to them 10 years ago, and what happened to them 10 years ago is still controlling the day today, even though that person isn't in their life, that situation is 10 years old. But they held onto the judgment about themselves and about that situation being unfair or unsafe. And so because I feel this way at that time, it's unfair and unsafe, Then guess what? I'm angry or I'm scared, or I'm unworthy. And the judgment of self perpetuated from a situation 10 years ago. And this is why some people never hit high performance. I know that sounds so weird to bring in because it feels like we're in a therapeutic conversation. I'm not a therapist. I've studied psychology for 20 years of my life. I've trained therapists in coaching situations. But I am not a therapist. And what I do understand from the work, though, is that so often our old judgments slow down our speed today slow down our happiness, our joy, our abilities, our capabilities, our freedom. Some people are still caged from something that happened 10 years ago because they have not yet gotten the support they might need to to overcome that judgment. That judgment against that person, that situation and themselves. Because it's always three levels deep, isn't it? It's always three things. We judge a situation, we judge the people in it, and we judge ourselves within it. And what people don't realize is often when all three of those judgments are negative, somewhere in the past, I'm bad, they're bad, that situation was bad. And we don't have a long term mental strategy to overcome that. Then we go into short term thinking again. And now we struggle to make good, healthy decisions for ourselves. And so what's the opposite of that? The opposite is what you guys probably could have guessed. It's forgiveness. It is the stuff of personal development, it is the stuff of psychology and therapy, but it is the stuff of spirituality too. And if we don't learn to let go or forgive ourselves or other people from past circumstances, then we are not free today. And when we are not free today, when we don't feel freedom today, we don't make long term decisions. It's just the way it is. The more caged somebody is naturally in any situation or conversation, the more protectionist and short term thinking they get. The more free you are, the more you're like, I mean, have you ever gone on vacation? Like back at home, you were tied to the computer 24 7, like just constantly you're at the computer 24 7, you go on vacation, there's no computer for a day, and all of a sudden you're like, oh. And you're. And all of a sudden your mind starts flooding with thoughts about the next decade. You haven't thought about next month or the next decade for weeks or years. But you're on vacation and all of a sudden you're like looking for a piece of paper to write that big idea. Or you set new goals, or you talk with your spouse about the future again, why you got a moment for your brain to breathe in freedom. And when you are in freedom, you are connected to the future. When you are trapped by old judgments, you are trapped in the short term. And so I think it's really important that if you haven't ever done the work to forgive the people in your life that need to be forgiven, not because they need to be forgiven, but because you deserve freedom. Do the work. I mean, like, well, how do I do it? Go buy some books on forgiveness. Go listen to some audiobooks on forgiveness. Go talk to your therapist if you have one, if you don't have one. But if you know a major situation or person or event in the past is still troubling you significantly today in a way that affects your joy, your happiness, your ability to produce, get things done and move forward. Time to get a therapist. It's not intimidating, it's not scary. Type in your town, type in therapist. Schedule appointments with three of them. It's free. Usually they'll do a free first session. Go sit down with three of them. Pick the one you like the best, Go back to them the next week, go back to them the week after that, and stay with them for a couple weeks or months. That's all you got to do. It's just like shopping. And people like shopping. So go shop for a therapist. Go Visit three. Choose the one you like. I put literally thousands of people in my life or our network into therapy because they thought, I don't need therapy. I'm like, are you moving as fast as you want to move? Is there things that upset you from the past that you still aren't over does. Sometimes you're going through the day and you get all pissed or angry or sad about something that happened years ago that you know, you need to let go, then go get professional services to overcome that. You know, it's just like people. If you really want to get extremely fit, you'd go get a personal trainer. Well, if you want to get extremely mentally fit, you would go get a therapist or a coach, right? And that's why many of you guys are here. So that you just every, every single month, they're like, oh, I'm digging in my brain a little bit here. I'm doing the work, I'm checking it out. I don't make it easy, but I do really believe it's so worthwhile. It's so fun, right? Are you guys having fun at this? Even though we're in the deep stuff? This is fun. I remember the day I finally forgave the woman who caused all of the turmoil and issues in my young life that led me to suicide, that led me to attempting it, that led me to planning it, that led me to writing the letters to my family and thinking about that part of my life in the worst of ways. And it was triggered by a terrible relationship I had and. And a terrible action someone in a relationship with that I had took by cheating on me. And it broke my heart. And it led down this really dark road. And it was, you know, I held onto that just in a poisonous way. And it was ruining my insides. And I knew it. It was just, like churning on me. And I was like, I don't want to feel that anymore. I don't want to live my life. Here's what happens when you're short term thinking you. You'll hold onto poison for too long. When you think about long term fulfillment, joy, happiness, your health, you go, I'd better let that go. And thank God. I thought that. I thought, I gotta let this go. I cannot keep. Like, I'll never have a healthy relationship. I'll never be. I gotta figure out a way to let that go. And I literally picked up the phone and I called that person and I let her know that I was forgiving that situation. And we had a conversation that became very emotional and ended up being a Very beautiful experience where we both forgave each other. And I never. I didn't call to get forgiveness from her. I didn't call for any other reason, to just make sure I had a process to let go of something that I knew. Because sometimes intellectually you need to know you made the attempt. It doesn't matter whether or not it turns out to be a beautiful experience because sometimes you try to forgive people and have a forgiving conversation and what do they do? They get mad at you or they blame, right? Or they. Who do you think? They think you're holding something above them or some neg. We've all met people like that. I know you know what I'm talking about. But sometimes you just gotta go. I need to know in my heart, my mind needs to know. I've attempted to let this go. It's not about sometimes repairing. I wasn't trying to repair my relationship with that person. Instead, I just called them and said, I wish nothing but joy and abundance and love for you and your future. I want that for my life. I'm really sorry for anything I ever did in our relationship that was out of congruence or was not kind to you because everybody deserves kindness and love. And we were together at a special part of our life and I appreciated that. I'm sorry it didn't go well, but I just want to let you know I got no anger. And I want you to continue on in your life with happiness, never wondering or anything. Just know there's somebody out here wishing nothing but joy, love and abundance for you. Wish you the best. Something just very simple, you know, it wasn't this thing. And then. And then she started crying. This huge relationship came in and it was a beautiful thing for me. And even if that. You're so lucky, Brennan. Oh, no, I've had that same conversation with some bastards. I mean, some real, just knockout, awful conversations that did not go good. But I did make the attempt. And so I'm free today because I said, well, I forgave. I moved through. I'm not trying to be holier than them. But your brain wants to know you made the attempt. And once you made the attempt to let go, forgive, move on. Your brain says, good job. Let me give you some of this payoff called freedom, baby. That's what I want for you. There's some situations or people that you've been holding on to way too long. Just. You gotta let it go. Some of you are still dragging your ex spouse or your ex girlfriend or, you know, the ex Something through the mud. You hate them. You're holding onto it. You're. You're just making them feel it for everything wrong they did. Or maybe you're not doing that, or maybe they're doing that to you. I understand that to be true. Either way, you have to understand there's poison there and you don't have to keep holding onto it. And the faster we remove judgment, and I mean not good judgment, I mean the judgment against others and ourselves, we, when we let that go, it's just like that vacation where all of a sudden this vision comes into mind about what you really want. It's really a remarkable, freeing, spiritually beautiful thing I hope for you in your life. And I know some of you are like in this coaching thing and you're like, man, I thought we were just going to talk about day planners and stuff. Brandon, and maybe this is a little heavy, but I hope that you're enjoying this point. Would you let me know number one, two, three or four, which point is your favorite? Next up, the two big drivers of all this. Short term versus long term. Two major, major issue points and drivers. And these, I've separated them out because these have made the most difference in my career of avoiding these and moving towards these. Because I know many of you guys are asking about my career all the time and this is like really critical to the decisions that I've made in my life. And I hope it supports you. This year marks my 16th year doing this work, depending on how you define it. My first book came out in 2001. So if we start with the first book I ever released, that was 2001, that makes this my 18th year in the career. It's really been about 16 getting paid and only about 13 full time. So I've always had the long term view in what I'm doing, even if in the short term it's super painful. But these two choices were the most important in my personal career, in the influencer space. But they're same choices you would make that you've had to face in your career, your life, and what you're doing. Number one choice I avoided in the short term, always, always avoided in the short term this ugly guy greed. Many of you know how a lot of my industry operated, especially in, you know, in the early 2000s with the dot com era, people were just teaching get rich quick stuff 24 7. And they were doing that because it was easy to collect money. And there was a whole part of the early part of my industry that was really sad because it was all about money, money, money, money, money, money, and attracting that and taking that. And the whole thing was I just met a lot of the influencers who were just like, how do I get money? And I know that is necessary for people in terms of needing something because stability, right? Greed usually starts with a desire for stability and then added over it a poor moral choice. That's what it usually is. The desire is they want stability, but then they start making poor moral choices and it turns into greed. Because these two things, a high drive for absolute stability and a high drive for absolute individualistic, materialistic ownership tends to lead to greed. And then when you are greedy, you start getting really short term, right? It's just like, I need all of this from everybody while I can. You ruin your contributions and value, you ruin ultimately your long term successes because you ruin your short term reputation. There's so many people who were big names when I came up in 2001-2009. That little segment of there's people who are huge on the Internet. They're not here anymore because they were doing inappropriate things on the Internet. Collecting credit cards in ways you're not supposed to collect credit cards, calling old ladies and asking for 15 credit cards. Asking people to take loans for education, they were doing credit financing for people's education. There was all this stuff going on in industry that gave it that bad name that none of it I ever participated in because I was like, oh, I love this stuff. I want to do it forever. I want to be right, you all, I hope that, you know, we're all so high performing together as a group that, you know, one, one day, you know, I'm still doing this at 95 years old, happily, like, this is what I want to do for my life. And when you know, you want to do something for your life, greed leaves the scene. When you know what you want to do for your life, greed leaves. Because you really are more about the fulfillment, the energetic output and experience of life than you are just about the money. And I'm not here to say that money is important. You guys hear me say it all the time in my influencer brand and experts Academy brand that if you don't make the money, you can't sustain the message, right? It's important that I earn a high level of income for me and the team and for everything because my office that allows me to come and do this where we could put up sound walls all over the place so the sound is better. Like all these things I got to care about the Finances because I pay hundreds of people's mortgages every single month. Like it's, it matters that I do good, but it matters more to me that I'm doing good than getting. And I think that's a really important shift. If you're in a scarcity place financially and a lot of people are, it's making sure that you don't let that overwhelm your values, that scarcity does not win the day, that the opportunity to take money or get money is not more important than who you are and how you treat other people. And that's what happens in the short term. What happens is money becomes more important than other people. And when again that pattern continues for a long amount of time, you just don't get to long term success. And I know a lot of people, I mean a lot in both my industry and those that our industry serves at the top level of success, who they got a lot of money and they are miserable because so many of their choices and their day is ruled over here versus advanced over here. And then the beautiful thing is often that's when we get start working with them is they're in this transition point and they need to move over there and they know it, but they just haven't given themselves that gift. And so the way instead of thinking about short term greed is to always be thinking about long term wealth. Two different things, right? Greed is now take it, get it wealth. Here's two different things. Greed is take. Wealth is build. Two different things, right? Greed is take short term wealth is build. So I was always like, oh, I'm just going to build. Just like I told you. Maybe it's 1, 2, 3 people and then it build more and more people, then more and more value out in the marketplace. Like if I want to do greed in my industry, what I've done is I would have launched one online course and I would have launched it over and over and over to see how much money I could get out of it. Instead of doing that, yes, I automated it, but I also said, well, let's build another thing over here, another next piece of the business and another next piece. So not trying to extract everything out of everything. That's greed. Extract everything out of everything, everything out of everything. Instead, instead of focusing my time which is extracting everything out of everything, can I actually build pieces that will build in value over time? Now I'm also just giving this example in my career as I promised, but I also think of wealth way beyond finances. I think of your physical wealth, your emotional wealth, your relationship wealth. Like when you're playing the long term game, you're thinking about the wealth of health, the wealth of your relationships, the wealth of what you do on a daily basis. You think about your lifestyle and saying, I want to feel my life has a richness to it. Make sense. When you're greedy, you just want, I want to be rich. When you have long term, you're thinking, I want a richness to my life. Like, I love my life, I love my friends, I love the time I have, I love the places I live, I love the people I work with. And it just building out that richness, it takes time. None of it has felt easy and none of it is perfect. Anyone in any of my teams, in any of our offices will tell you it's not perfect. But there's a richness and a quality to what I'm trying to build. There's a richness and a quality to how I've tried to structure my life and my day because I don't want to wait till I'm 90 to enjoy life. I mean, doesn't it get you down that some people live a fake life or life that is not theirs for 65 years just to retire and try to live who they really are, that they never had any richness. What they had was compromise. They had compromise of their values and who they are for decades so that they can one day cash out and now hopefully live rich, live wealthy, live happily. And the challenge with that is, as you know, especially in North America, most men die within three years of retiring. So if you spend decades compromising your life, cash out or retire or hope to make it and you die three years later doesn't sound like a good long term balance to me. So I think it's about, do you have the richness you want to experience in your life emotionally, physically, socially, financially? Like that concept of living a rich, full life, I was attracted to that. So I made decisions that were longer term, that often cost a lot of pain in the short term. You know, that's why you hear me always say I had to honor the struggle because there was a lot of building this stuff that sucked along the way that's uncomfortable, that's challenging, but ultimately led to something and has been building unbelievable outcomes. And it was just that mindset, right, that live richly mindset, not, not about finances, but to have true wealth in every area of your life. Right. I don't think I'm the person who's got it all figured out, but I do believe we need to be marching towards that. And that's the whole emphasis today. Move towards these things. Last big piece for you. I did this. In my career, most short term thinking is variety, right? I love writing. I want this, I want this, I want this. How many entrepreneurs have hopped from one opportunity to another opportunity, to another side gig, to another hustle, to another biz op, another thing. And you've dabbled in 50 different things for five years and you have nothing to show for it but a lot of stress and anxiety. And I'm not judging. I have been there, right? I'm very much, look, a bird like that. I'm totally that guy, right? But I have to fight that short term impulse because I also learned that mastery is the thing that ends up giving you wealth, fulfillment, team health, forgiveness. Everything that we want comes down to mastering things in our life. Mastering your emotional mind, mastering your emotional being, I should say mastering your craft. Mastering your ability to lead, influence, communicate, shape, help, serve all of that mindset. I've never done things like, oh, look at the 50 things I can do. Instead I write out, here's the 50 things I can do. And I see those 50 things and I go, which ones are moving me towards mastery for the long term in my career and industry, which ones would move me toward not which ones would make me money now? Because here's what happened. Most people think they're doing this, but they're really doing this. The reason they're trying to gobble up and do everything is because they're actually driven by this and they didn't see it. The reason you go from 50 different opportunities, but you never really mine them is because you're doing a land grab. You're just trying to strike goal, right? So you're compromising family time, you're compromising joy, you're compromising your health to try 50 different things. And what you say is, well, I'm just, I'm a multi passionate Brendan. I go, no, you're greedy. Because if you got really clear about your passions, the truth is you realize you might be able to have three, maybe five. That's the research anyway in psychology and long term success. Maybe three, maybe five major passions that you're working and developing. I want you all to be masters of your craft, masters of your motion, masters of your relationships. Be so good at what you do that other people can't avoid it. Be so good in your relationships that people are attracted. Be so thoughtful about how you communicate in your mastery of influence that people are attracted to your cause and your mission and you get to serve even more people. That's the stuff of influencer, that's the stuff of mastery. This is what I want for you desperately is to say, you know what, I'm going to stop doing a hundred things and I'm going to narrow down to three to five and I'm going to be working on myself to get world class at those. Because that's the way Steve Jobs took Apple. From doing everything and trying to maximize shareholder value to doing just a few things and building the wealthiest company in the history of the world. It's that narrowing down that is actually for the long term. Most people think, in the future I'll be able to handle more things and do more things. And what I usually say is actually in the future you should be doing less because long term, less is more. You follow what most people try to do is they're trying to build complexity in their life so they can have more. And what they don't realize is that's these two. You don't want to build more so you can have more. You want to build to make things more efficient, but you're actually doing less things so you have more. I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, make sure you read your high performance habits, your book, and also just look at everything you're doing and recognizing that if you do too many things, it doesn't lead to any fulfillment. If you do too many things, you never develop that deep bench of other people who could do some of those tasks and allow you to move towards the things that make the greatest difference for you. And you can be with us just working on yourself. And if you didn't like something I said today, my apologies. But I hope that made you look at yourself or look at others in your life. Because listen, if you went through all of today and you're like, it didn't apply to me, I bet it applies to somebody and can help somebody in your life. And now that you're aware of how they're operating, you might be able to help your family or your team start moving towards the long term. Because maybe your team or your family is driven by short term impulses or needs or fears and you can start pushing them towards longer term that will make your life more sane. Even if none of this applied to you, if you can apply it to your family and those that you lead, think about the difference you can make.