Workout: Motivate

How do you motivate other people? I am asked this all the time. Most of you guys know I wrote the book, the Motivation Manifesto, but that was about how do you motivate you? Like, how do you motivate yourself? But I'm always asked by other people. Well, I got a team or I got a teenager or I got my dud of a husband or wife who aren't excited and positive and optimistic. And Brendan, they're not into personal development. They got no motivation to do their job. They got no motivation to live their best life. How do I change them? So first, let me begin with this. Your job is not to change them. Your job is not to fix everybody else's problems in life. Your job is not to handle everyone else's train wrecks in their lives either. And I just say that with all due respect, because often we get so frustrated with people because we feel like we should be able to change them. But often what I tell people is, be careful with that. You don't have to fix everybody. And not everybody has to be as ambitious, as driven, as optimistic as into personal development and professional growth as you are. It's okay that other people have different ambitions for their life. I think that's critical to understand. But listen, just as much as you so desperately desire for other people to let you be you, for other people to let you do your own thing and take your journey the way that you want to take it and the way that you need it to, you also must allow that of others. You are not responsible for other people's energy. You are not responsible for their ambition. You are not responsible for them changing. Let life be their guide. So your job is to share more often and more consistently with this person. You're trying to motivate your whys and your distinctions along the way. What I mean by that is you gotta share in a continual conversation, hey, you know, I'm working towards this, and I just learned that if I did it this way, it would get this outcome. And I thought, why didn't I know that before? So now I'm more excited to do it. You gotta share that a lot. Like, very consistently. You must share your journey and your lessons on that journey more with them if you want them to be motivated. But often you're embarrassed to do that because you don't want to feel like you're bragging or you're worried about sharing those things because you think it will disempower them. They see you having so much and succeeding and moving ahead, and you don't want to bring it up to them because you think, oh, well, you know, they'll feel awkward or weird or insufficient around me first. Let go of your ego about that. That's nonsense. Like, it's a beautiful thing that you get to share your journey with another person. If they ever say, I don't want you to share your journey and your feelings and your less lessons learned in life with me ever again, then be like, okay, cool. But until they say that, you share it. And I want you to hear this because I know a lot of you, you have this assumption in your mind that you can't share your successes with other people because the way you were raised, you thought, well, that's bragging. No, that is empowering the next generation. We have entire generations that never passed on their great standards, their great learnings, their great drives, their great. Their great purposes. So we have a whole new generation reinventing the wheel. Reinventing the wheel is demotivating because we all want to start at speed. And the way to start at speed is having people around us share it. I am only here doing this for you because other people would. I would go to a conference, other people would stand on stage and go, I started just like you. But here's what I learned, and here's what I did. And I'd get motivated, saying, oh, they did it too. You need to be that role model for other people. And I really think that's important that you are always sharing your journey. Stop hiding your journey. Stop hiding your love for personal development. Stop hiding your motivations. Stop hiding all those distinctions that you can pass on to somebody. 50 people in my life, I thought, they don't want to hear about my journey and my successes and my struggles and what keeps me going and what I'm learning. And I used to say that to a lot of friends. I thought, they don't want to hear this. And then you know what? Years would go by and they go, brandon, I don't feel like I know you anymore. You never share what's going on. And I thought, oh, maybe if I shared what was going on, they'd have a different spark in their life. Your sharing can be their spark.