You're Not Stuck—You Just Haven't Healed Yet

You got hurt one time, you built up the wall, and now you barely barely eke out any affection. And what I've learned is when you understand love is happening all the time, everywhere, and it's beyond you, you decide whether you're going to tap in and contribute or you're going to rebel and go into your teenage room with the door shut. And that decision of bringing more affection back into your day, that's how you start to feel the day again. I think a lot of people have optimism, but they have no optimistic conversation. They're not in a conversation that's optimistic. And because they're not in a conversation that's actually optimistic, the unfortunate reality is the pessimism takes them over. See, we're human beings, and one of the things about us is communication. And communication is so central and so important to us, and if we aren't communicating, it's almost like we don't believe. You know, so many people don't have conversations of faith and optimism. All they do is see the negative news. And here's how we're going to shift this for you. And I think this will be life changing for you. You are having optimistic conversations. If you are having conversations about things happening more than a year out, that's how I know you're having optimistic conversations. Most people are having task conversations, not optimistic conversations. A task is what do we have to do? Okay, this is what's going on, but there's no optimism. A vision for the future. You're not talking about the future, so no wonder you're not inspired. No wonder there's faith. No wonder there's no conviction. No wonder there was inspiration. You're not talking about the future, you're just talking about tasks. Oh, my God, Brendan. See, when people get detached from a compelling future, they lose their conviction, they lose their agency, they lose their ambitions because they're stuck in the mundane. Listen, we all got to do the mundane. No one's complaining about the mundane. We got to bring you in those optimistic conversations about the future. Not just what you have to do this week, not just next month, but about a compelling future for you and your family. We've got to increase your frequency of love and generosity, of your spirit. We have to increase the love with your kids, with your family, with your spouse. We've got to increase the sense of heart in life. It's been very surprising to me over this last decade to learn so much about my, my clients lives. And one of the things that surprised me as something that switched them back on Was to teach them about the extraordinary power of having affection in their life again. They have friends, but they don't love their friends. They have work, but they don't love it. They have a spouse, but they don't love them. There's no active affection there that is really imbued with spirit or pulse. And I think you will wow yourself if just as an intention. If you can teach yourself to bring in love into the conversation, true love, active love into your relationships and into your work. Again, not I have to do it. I love that I get to do this. Not, you know, okay, spouse, we're gonna do. It's like your date nights. You should pour on the love on your date nights like you did on your first dates. See, you didn't get tired of your life. You stopped pouring love onto it because maybe you didn't get the affection where you wanted it. You close off affection, you got hurt one time, you built up the wall, and now you barely, barely eke out any affection. This is very common for people. And what I've learned is if you can give yourself grace and other people grace around you, but you can honestly think about love. It's that old truth in most spiritual teaching that you have those two paths and those two moments and those two decisions. One is of love and another one of hesitation or fear. And love is high agency, love is high character, love is high conviction, love is high community. Love is a spiritual energy and a force that exists beyond you. Because when you understand love is happening all the time, everywhere, and it's beyond you, you decide whether you're going to tap in and contribute or you're going to rebel and go into your teenage room with the door shut. And that decision of bringing more affection back into your day, that's how you start to feel the day again. I work with an extraordinary guy recently, you know, covers of magazines achieve more money than you know, anyone could possibly fathom. Has literally created like game changing things in this world. And I was talking to him and he was so in his head there was no emotion. And we had a conversation about it. And for him, he's very highly intellectual, you know, loves stoic philosophy. But stoicism wasn't in any way a lack of heart. If you read stoicism, it's actually, there's a lot of heart and there's a lot of courage and there's a lot of self discipline by the will of emotion. It means don't let emotions be your master, but still summon them to feel life. It's Hard for people to understand this distinction. And as I started talking with this person, I just said a very simple thing. I said, next Monday, when we talk on Monday, what I need you to do is I want you to come to the conversation with five emotions that you put into this last week, not that you felt that you put into. You've got a family, you've got a team. What emotions did you imbue towards others? Because, see, sometimes when you're in your head, you expect it to happen to you just like people expect. I hope I feel joy. And I'm like, no, no, don't hope you feel joy. Bring the joy. Don't hope you feel love. Put love out there if you wish to receive, generate and give. And so I started this practice with this person. Literally, we did this. I think we're on maybe week five or six of our coaching, and you would not believe the shift in his face. I do this particular call with this particular client on his phone. We do FaceTime. And I mean literally in week three and four, I started his face change. He looked 20 years younger. He got out of his head and he got into the energy and emotion of life again through love. Because when you teach somebody and ask somebody to start generating the energy and the emotions they wish to experience in life as a gift towards others, the funniest thing is on that list of emotions they're going to generate, love always shows up, always does. Seen it every single time. It might take a couple weeks, but then they get addicted to it because they realize generating emotion, energy and love with others is the stuff of being a role model. That is your character, that is your contribution, that is your high competency in life. That is how you build community. That is how you generate more convection. You giving the gift of emotion to others is what creates that incredible renewal in your life, that incredible leadership in your life. I'm telling you, when you think about love not as having it or intellectually anymore, but actually generating it on a weekly basis, that's all I'm going to ask you to do. I just want you to willfully generate the emotion of love towards at least one person every single week. And I mean another level of presence and love that you're going to imbue, impart, give, generate towards another. Now you might say, well, some people will reject that, Brenda. I'm like, so what? Keep doing it. See, what happens is someone rejects us and we shut down love and affection and now we are unfeeling vessels and we just don't feel anymore. Because we shut down. Well, the divine energy gets stuck when you shut down. You have to keep generating love even if everybody around you is not a love bug like you. Now for some of you that's too affectionate and sounds woo woo or sounds like I don't quite get it. Except this guy who I'm telling you I did this with, he doesn't have an active faith in life. He's not a high spirituality guy. I wouldn't say he's a woo woo guy or even really that much of a self improvement guy. Not really that even in the philosophy, outside of intellectual philosophy. And his life has completely changed from this one activity. He's like, Brennan, I need to work with you forever because I need you to keep me accountable for this one thing. And out of all the things I did with him as a high performance coach, that was the thing. Teaching him what you and I would just call affectionate living again. You got to give yourself that gift by giving it to others again. You got to increase your affection this year if you're going to feel the day, feel contribution, feel spirit, unblock yourself. You got to open up that again. Stop protecting yourself so much, realizing that the real openness and expansiveness of life is going to happen through your emotions and affection with other people. And that's what you're going to remember at the end of life. You won't regret lots of achievements in your life. You regret how you lived your life. You regret that you lived shut down more than you'll regret you didn't achieve a certain thing in a bank account. Trust me, I've been with enough people at the end of their lives who reflected on this. You got to open up to affection, love. Hey my friends, it's Brendan Burchard and I'm excited to welcome you to the brand new Growth day. We are happy to roll out three brand new features that will help you on your personal development journey. From first, our brand new growth streaks and rewards. 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Go get your growth streak and Growth Day right now.