Achieving Your Next Level of Success

As you head into any dream, one of the most important things you can do is remind yourself how competent and capable you are. Let me say that again. As you head into any dream, I want you to remind yourself how competent and capable you are. Because it's easy to go, well, this is a new thing. I don't know what to do. I'm new. I suck. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. And you start beating on yourself before you allow your real psyche to enter the possibility that you can achieve that thing. Meaning, don't psych yourself out just because you're new. You've come a long way. You've dealt with a lot of things in life. Don't discount that. Even if you have this bold new dream that seems impossible, you've bitten off pieces of impossible. Plenty of time. 4. So let's enter this conversation, if you will, before I even give you the framework. Could you enter it with a little bit of self trust, a little bit of self confidence? Could you remember that you've done remarkable things in the past? That's going to help. Okay. It's an honor to be here with you and to share some ideas today about how you can start your dream. We'll be talking a lot about that, as usual. Happy to have you here. And I'm really excited to talk about this topic today and this one, it's a big one. We're taking on a big topic and I think it's really important. If you had a big goal in January and you're sucking wind and you haven't got some, you know, wind beneath your sails yet, and you're not flying towards the accomplishment of that dream or momentum towards that dream. We got a lot of talking about to do today on that topic, but we have a big topic. We had three topics I promised I'd cover today based on your questions. Number one, how to start a new dream. Number two, how to plan that dream's achievement. And number three, how to get others to support you along the way. Now, whether you're already extremely successful in the way that you measure that in your life, this is still a relevant topic because we are always in play in achieving the next level. So let's set some assumptions here at the top of this conversation and I'll share a little bit about my philosophy of how I'm going to cover this. I believe this training is going to. This training will be helpful for you whether you're really going for a big new dream that you've never tried before in these next couple months, or you're really just going to the next level of goal achievement like you've already been crushing it in your career, but now you want to go one level more. Or. Or you've already been doing great in your business, but you'd sure love to start thinking about how to double it. This is going to be a relevant conversation. So you can approach this conversation as whether it really is starting a new dream or whether it's just scaling to the next level of performance or outcome. And the reality is, I think we're always in motion towards both. There's always something new we're seeking, but there's always something that we're already doing that maybe is a strength or a success, and we want to get better at that. So I'll be making sure that I take on that topic as well. Here we go. We are going to talk about 1, 2, 3, 4. I have five pieces of this framework today, so get your journals out and get ready to go. Topic of the hour, how to start a new dream. How do you do it? First, I'd love to think about, have you ever started a new dream before and done exceptionally well at moving towards it or achieving it? And if you have, what did you do back then? What was it that allowed your last big breakthrough or that last big moment of momentum that you had? Like, what caused that the last time? What do you think about that? What was the last thing that you did that you thought, wow, I really crushed this. And what were the personal practices you had that made all the difference? I really want you to dial into that at the top of this hour. What have you done in the past where you felt like, I just crushed that man? Because so often we forget our successes. Many of you guys know we have the high performance mastermind. And one of the things I'm asking my mastermind often is what are the five reasons that you've been successful so far? And I think it's really useful for you to maybe as you're journaling along with this, to write down, like, what are the five things that have made you successful so far in your life, then score yourself on those five things and how, whether you are implementing those right now or not. So if you know in the past, you've just been absolutely insanely focused and that is what made you successful. Then on a scale of 1 to 10 today or this week or this month, how focused have you been? 1. Not focused. 10. Very focused. And a big focus towards what I do with my high performance clients is Constantly having them score themselves. Not just because I'm like a data guy, but because rather, it's always a good gauge to find where we're at, you know? And I do a lot of scoring activities on a daily and weekly basis for myself. That helps me continue growing, whether that's in my personal life, my health, my career, my own productivity. I'm scoring myself. So I would like you to score yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. 1. You suck. 10. You're doing a great job in those five areas that have made you successful in the past. Why do I want to start with that? Because I want you to remember as you head into any dream, one of the most important things you can do is remind yourself how competent and capable you are. Let me say that again. As you head into any dream, I want you to remind yourself how competent and capable you are. Because it's easy to go, well, this is a new thing. I don't know what to do. I'm new. I suck. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. And you start beating on yourself before you allow your real psyche to enter the possibility that you can achieve that thing. Meaning, don't psych yourself out just because you're new. You've come a long way. You've dealt with a lot of things in life. Don't discount that this next new dream, it's just another new challenge on the pegboard of life that you've already achieved. You've already climbed up that peg, you know, 10 times, 20 times, 30 times. You've already done amazing things. You already somehow survived childhood and adolescence. Congratulations. You probably already got some education. You probably already started something, whether a career or a business. And some somehow you're able to be here with us. You have time right now in the weekday to take and dedicate and commit yourself to personal and professional development. Good for you. You're a lot farther than a lot of other people. You've dedicated yourself to that. So you've done a good job already. You're already a dedicated person. You're already making choices that are good. So I always just like to. Before I think of any new dream and thinking about how to achieve it, I just remind myself, I'm like, I got this. I've done hard things in the past. Matter of fact, I've done probably harder things in the past. Even if you have this bold new dream that seems impossible, you've bitten off pieces of impossible plenty of time before. So let's enter this conversation, if you will, before I even give you the framework. Could you enter it with a little bit of self trust, a little bit of self confidence? Could you remember that you've done remarkable things in the past? That's going to help. Okay, now let's talk about this new dream you got. Can you get centered in that real quick? What is that new dream, new goal for you? Like, what is it? What's the next level of something you would love to achieve or give or serve or contribute to? Like, what is it? And it can be simple. It can be from, you know, simple tactical things, you know, that are very measurable. Brendan, I'd like to go from a thousand fans on Instagram to 100,000 in the next four weeks. Okay. Or you know what, Brendan? For me, the next level of height in my life is honestly the next level of depth. In my marriage, in my health, it's the next level of depth and spirituality. I don't know what it is for you, but you need to know, like, what is that thing we're going to be pursuing today? But if I can implant any idea, it would be to have this big new dream, this high new ambition. And I want you to stretch it like a stretch goal, something that is significant that we can choose whether or not you're going to go after it today, because maybe you already know exactly what that dream is and you came in ready. So what is it for you? What's the big new dream? I honestly believe that a lot of people's dreams, and this is going to sound really bad, a lot of the people's dreams aren't truly necessary for them. So they never move towards them, even though they're a productive person. They're good at focus, they're good at getting things done. They just haven't decided that it's truly necessary. Because in psychology, we often talk about the power of competing interests. Right? Same in economic behavior. We see that, like, if option A is good and option B is good and we don't know which one to choose, either one's going to be good that we choose. And often though, the reality is option A and B might be really good, but we're also got a full plate over here in our real life that's already running. So you've got this whole plate of your daily responsibilities now, and you got this new dream over here, but you've got this new opportunity over there and this new idea over here and this other new thing you could do over there, and all of these opportunities around you or all these dreams around you never come onto your plate because there's just so many of them. And you've already decided that what is more necessary. Listen to this. You've decided what is more necessary is for you to maintain plate number one, what I often call circle one, your immediate circle of concern. That's what's really getting all your focus, your energy, your time and your effort. And what's necessary is really protectionism, right? What's really necessary is the focus on what's on your plate. You say, brendan, I want to start a new dream. But I go, is it necessary for you to start the new dream? Because unless you've made it necessary, you're not going to reach out beyond the comforts of circle one to go for that thing. You're just going to go, I'm fine here, dude. So we've got to find a dream that you identify as necessary, otherwise you won't reach out, grab it and pull it into your current plate, your current circle of concern. You'll just keep saying, I'd like to have that. And lots of people do that. And I've done it too. At the beginning of my career as a writer, I wanted to write for years and I didn't write because I was just working on my job and I was just trying to survive and you know, figure myself out as a 20 year old kid, you know, So I was just paying attention to here. I wasn't looking up and out yet. You follow what I'm talking about? So we need to identify in a dream because I bet you got lots of them. We need to identify the one that you are going to make necessary enough that you will move towards consistent action with. And so what I often tell people is one of the great places to start is looking at your current plate. That feels so full and so stressful and so overwhelming already and looking on your plate and very first action before you look towards a new dream. I often tell people, create the white space in your life, that the universe could even deliver time or resources for you to support that dream. Meaning clear the decks, look at what's on your plate right now and go, what is not necessary that I'm spending a lot of time doing and remove that. Because sometimes as we spring clean our house, we find new space to put new things into, right? And if you just keep thinking of a dream but you're not moving towards it, a lot of it has to do with the, the fact that right now you just have a full plate and you're never going to move towards it until you Clear some of the things off your plate. And I believe in the white space that happens when we clear things out and remove what is unnecessary. We find freedom. And when we find freedom now, we can plug it with a new dream. Does this make sense? So what are you doing? That's just totally not necessary. Now comes the big question and the first part of this framework today. I know I've covered a lot already, hopefully a few points of philosophy, as I said, but now let's get into it to determine whether or not we should chase the dream and determine how we should get rid of our plate. Do this. Step one, score necessity. What does this mean? I like you to score necessity in your current life and this future dream that you have to see whether or not either it's possible or you're even gonna be willing to chase it. Here's what necessity mean. Necessity is a high performance concept that is short for performance necessity. It means that you feel not like a preference to do something like, I'd like to do that, maybe good. You feel it's a must. It is something that is demanded of you, and it is something that you are being pushed towards and pulled towards. It is something you will do. It is necessary for you to show up and do well at that, because your psyche or your external obligations say, I must do this thing. This thing is important to me. I must perform well. I must stay consistent. I must serve here at the top levels. That's performance necessity. It's what athletes do before they walk onto the court. They psych themselves up, they get themselves in the zone. They tell themselves over and over why they need to do a good job at this thing. And by telling themselves the why, connecting with why it is necessary for excellent performance, they do better. Now, the flip side of that, some people get freaked out by that because they're like, dude, if I, like, really go all in like that, then I might be disappointed, I might fail. I might not do well. I might look stupid. And I go, well, yeah, but if it's not necessary for you to do something, guess what? You just don't isn't true. I mean, do you remember, did you ever go through high school or college and you had that paper that was due and you knew about it, I don't know, the whole semester. And then the last three days, right before it was due, you were like, oh, crap, let's go. And you got yourself some caffeine or you sat yourself down in the library. You got away from the people and the parties and all the noise and you finished that paper because it was necessary to turn that in for you to do well. Well, that's the same thing and the same approach you should have for your dreams. In some ways, if it's not necessary for you psychologically or practically, you just won't do it. I mean, people often ask me. I was at a writers conference speaking, and they said, well, Brendan, you know, how did you finally get motivated to write? And many of you know what happened for me psychologically. You know that I was trying to take care of my. My wife and my. My then girlfriend, who we were struggling financially, but I also had zero other choices and prospects. It was necessary. It was the only thing I knew how to do and I wanted to do. So how do we do this? What do I mean by score? Necessity. There's four components to necessity, and I'm going to ask you to rate them right now when we think about your new dream. Okay, Four components of necessity. I'm going to ask you to rate each one on a scale of one to five. One not necessary and important. Five. Omg. A must. Okay, so here we go. This only works, my friend, if you are playing along with me and participating here. And so I want you to write down that dream, bust out that piece of paper, put the big dream in a big circle. Okay? What's the dream? Give it a word or two. What's the dream? And I'm going to give you four ways to see if this thing is necessary for you or not. Okay? What we learned psychologically is there is kind of two things happening for high performers. There is the internal forces that are propelling them into a must, and there's the external forces that are propelling them into a must. And when they combine, we have performance necessity right in the middle. Boom. You're going to do this thing, baby. All right. The internal forces are two things, and the external forces are two things. And we're going to rate ourselves again on a scale of one to five. In these two and these two, that's four things total. Okay, so the internal forces that make something necessary and is first your internal identity of expectations or personal standards for excellence. Your identity or personal standards for excellence. It means I am a person who must do this, and I must do it. Well, it's like, that's it. It's like I'm a person who does that. For example, with me as a writer, I had to say, I am a writer before writing ever became a must. Otherwise, it was like this casual thing once in a while. But once you Define your identity as part of that dream. Now we're talking. And psychologists found the reverse works as well. If you say I am not something, the odds are it's easier to break a behavior if you've been smoking for years and then you decide the identity is I am just not a smoker. And you do everything you can to live in truth with that identity and stay congruent with it. It's much more possible for you to do that. If you say that my identity is not this, my identity is that. Well, same thing. In this way is this dream you're thinking of, is that really you? One would be, no, that's not much. That's not really me. I can't see myself doing that. That's not my identity. Five is, that's me. Because you think of things you really succeeded at in your life. Your identity was connected with that and you allowed that to happen. What happens is people age and mature. Specifically, they don't want to put those stakes in the ground anymore. They don't want to go all in with their identity on something because they've been hurt or they've been disappointed and they think, you know, this might not work out and they freak out. Well, I'm here to tell you, my friend, that this is necessary. This is necessary. If you don't attach your identity in some way, like I had to identify as a trainer before I really sought that dream, I'd say I am going to be a phenomenal trainer. I am a phenomenal trainer and my job is training. This is what I do. It's what I do. It's who I am. And. And if you don't start that, if you don't start with a personal association with the dream where it is something that is important to you, you just won't stay the course. Worse, you might never start. So are there some dreams you wanted to start but you didn't know why? I bet your identity had a lot to do with it. You didn't see yourself as part of that, you didn't see yourself as that, and you didn't identify with it. So you just never began. Is it true? So score yourself this new dream you're telling me about on your identity. 1. No attachment. You don't see yourself, feel yourself, imagine yourself in that way. 5. Dude, that's totally me. Awesome. The second area in internal forces of necessity is what we call obsession with topic. Obsession with topic. This came out of my interviews with you know what it was 2, 3. Just about 300 people in structured academic Interviews for this book of after we codified, measured and assessed and then found some of the world's top performing people, I interviewed them academic style, which means structured interviews. And one thing that was very clear, they were obsessed. They were obsessed with their topic. And that is why a lot of them achieved their dream. It wasn't just passion for this dream, they were obsessed with the topic. And how do you know the difference between passion and obsession? And one of the examples I use in there is if you're really struggling to get something done, it's not because you're not a passionate person. Probably we all think passion solves the day. But you know what? Passion is expected. Passion is normalized. You know, be passionate, work, live with passion. It's expected for you to bring passionate things out. Passion is normal and expected. It's not like when you have a lot of passion, people understand, oh, he's passionate for that, he loves that. And people can understand it. They cheer you on. Hey, but when you're obsessed with something, people think you're a little bit crazy. They're like, whoa, you're kind of, you know, you always talk about it. They're like, wow, you're really obsessed with this. If you're really going to achieve a difficult dream, it has to be an obsession. Let me give you an example. Jfk, we're going to go to the moon by the end of this decade and we're going to do that and these other hard to achieve things because it's there and it's possible and we're going to do it. What? He created a national obsession with space. So much fact that it became known as worldwide. The space race, the country. And NASA and his administration got obsessed with accomplishing this thing. Martin Luther King was obsessed with the civil rights movement. Gandhi himself is free and natural and amazing. Mandela free, natural and amazing. Both obsessed with freedom and nonviolent demonstration. Like you got to be obsessed a little bit. I had to me personally become obsessed with, with the topics I was writing about when I wrote high performance habits, obsession. Three years of research that I'd never done before. It was a dream of mine to write a book, you know, with this much academic underpinning behind it, this much empirical work. It was a huge dream. I had no idea how to do it, but I knew I could get obsessed with the topic. You don't have to know the how, you have to be obsessed with the topic. And if you get obsessed with the topic, the odds of you of achieving that dream will increase. So scale of 1 to 5. Are you really obsessed with the topic of that new dream? You know, you guys hear me use the example of a cupcake shop owner often. And I do that because one of my first coaching clients had opened a cupcake shop and she was struggling. She had been maybe a year three in the cupcake shop and she was a small business owner, successful, and she wanted to write a cookbook and ended up coming to one of our events. And we met and we started working together. I'll never forget, we were talking one day and she was struggling and. And she said, you know what, Brandon, I just don't even like cupcakes that much. I'm like, what? She's like, I don't. She's like, I just wanted to get into business in my local town and I like to bake things. And I thought, well, baking cupcakes will be great. She's like, but I don't really love cupcakes that much. And I'm like, well, maybe we are getting through the problem now. You know, it's like everything else can be set up. You could have the business, you could have everything working, but if you don't love the thing, you know, it's gonna be hard to achieve that dream. I wanted to write at the time, I was like, I wanna write one of the best selling books on motivation that's ever been written. And that was my goal with Motivation Manifesto. And I said, can I really get behind that topic enough that I'll spend the time to seek that dream out? And I really thought about that and I scored myself. Okay, one. I'm obsessed about the topic of motivation when I'm not. I'm sorry. And five. I'm obsessed. Where am I? And I realized I was like, well, my whole life I've been obsessed with. I'm a five, let's go. That's the right dream for me. Because listen, isn't it true that there was probably other things I was obsessed with at levels of 3, 2 or 1? Absolutely. There's lots of opportunities for you. You need to find the ones that force you internally because your identity and your obsession with it are high. Go after those dreams first. You follow. This is an evaluative tool to pick the right dream. If we don't pick the right dream first, what are we doing so far? You have two scores. You've got your identity, connection with it, one to five. And you've got your obsession with the topic, one to five. Okay, how we doing so far? What's your score now? Let's Move into the external forces. I hope you're liking this framework, by the way, because what I'm trying to do is bring some of the high performance tools that we teach at HPA or in the book or with my clients more into your questions so that you see, and maybe if you've heard me teach this framework before, Awesome. I want you to see how each of these frameworks can apply to so many different areas of your life, even when you're starting a new dream. External forces, and I'll go a little faster. External forces are. The first one is you sense a. You feel an obligation or a duty or a deep sense of contribution that you must do this thing that is very important to you. It's important to you because in the social world, that's what we mean by the external forces. In the social world, it is desired or needed. It is something you feel that it is your responsibility either by duty like purpose or duty like the military serving, you know, with duty. Or it is something where you just feel like that would be your major contribution or purpose. So where are you at? I'll just call it duty, obligation, or purpose. And obligation is okay too. Like for me, when I started my career in online marketing, it wasn't a huge, huge obsession of topic at all. I was low there, but I needed to make money online. I need to learn how to sell my books and my courses online. It was a obligation for me, for my business to figure out how to do that thing. So that was a 5. The force externally was like, I need to make some money online. I need to figure out this marketing thing everyone's talking about, holy crap, how do I do that? One, no obligation, duty or purpose. Five, high obligation due to your purpose. Okay, then the last measure of the external forces is what we call task urgency. This means that high performers sense that they must do this thing. They must do it now because there's probably a real deadline or an impending disaster or, you know, a deadline that has been set up by other people that they must meet. You know, why do salespeople tend to outperform themselves in the last two or three weeks of a quarter? Because they go, oh, measurement time is coming up. Let's go. Right. Why do Olympic athletes train better, smarter and eat better, smarter, healthier just in the two, three weeks right before the Olympics? Why is that the most healthy period they have? Because they know it's game time, man. So high performers have task urgency. Is there any urgency to achieving that dream? I know a lot of people who have all These pieces in place in their internal and external forces, except task urgency. And they're like, no wonder I've never sought that before. It wasn't necessary for them to do when now I got lots of dreams out there, but I'm not doing them. Why not necessary now? Just not on the plate right now. I got this plate right here that's out there. Later, if you want to achieve that dream, you need to move that onto your plate. It needs to be some task urgency based on some deadlines you'll set up, which we'll talk about. Okay, so this is about you scoring necessity. I want you to score yourself again in each of these areas. Let me go over them real quickly again. Your identity and its association, connection with the new dream. Can you see yourself doing that? That's one to five. Okay. One, no connection. Five. Absolutely part of that, your identity and that new dream. You can see yourself, feel yourself. It's real. Number two, obsession with the topic. One. No obsession. Five. Five. Total obsession. Over here in external we've got the idea of social duty, obligation or purpose. Do you feel pulled to do it like you must do it for other people or to meet an external demand? 1. Nope. 5. Yes sir. And then last task urgency. One, there's no urgency for it. Five, there really is an urgency. I've created it or the world is created. Now you notice you can have a total of 4, 5, 10, 15, 20 points total. So add up your points right now. Okay, once you get those points added up, multiply it by 5. Multiply it by 5. Okay, so if, if you had 5, 10, 15, 20 and you multiplied it by 5, you'd have a score of what, 100. So add up your scores and multiply it by 5. And my suggestion to you is that if you're noticing here that you know you're not in that 60 or above point score, there's no odds of you ever seeking that dream, just none. If, at least not now, until those things fall into line. But if you're up there in higher points, at least the data and the research from this study showed that it's likely you're going to go for it. And matter of fact, it's likely you're going to achieve some long term success there. That's what we found with high performers. They had a higher level of performance necessity and they urged on or they sort of self created that urgency that must more than other people did. And not like, I'm not talking like New Year's. It was consistent for them. They were Constantly checking in. Why is it important for me to excel here? Because this is who I am. I love this thing. I got to do it for them. I got to make this deadline. I and that was a real part of their everyday life and that's why they were moving towards that dream so consistently. Because it was a daily necessity for them to move towards it psychologically, internally and externally in their obligations or a sense of time completion. You follow. So if you've ever not achieved a dream, I just gave you four reasons you probably didn't achieve it. True. How powerful is that now? Think about it. If you ever coaching somebody or supporting somebody and you walk them through something like that, that's the power of, you know, our certified high performance coaches. That's the power of just knowing how people work. You got to have high performance necessity. Now there's more than that, but that's where we start. I know I spent a little time on that one, but it's so important. You got to score yourself. And then what you have to do. If you find like this is something I really want to do, then what you have to do is every single day you need to up that performance necessity, sit and meditate just for two, three minutes. Why is this important to me personally? What is it about me that must be doing this thing? I have to remind myself that with writing every day. Many of you guys know I've written four quotes on Facebook or my social media every day since, I don't know, second year on Facebook. And that helped me achieve what most people see as remarkable. 5 million fans on my main Facebook page, 10 million fans on our other own Facebook pages. And it's not like every morning I'm like, hey, it's quote time. Sometimes I'm like, but I sit there and I do this. I say, okay, it is a must for me to share my message. It's part of my identity to be a writer. So write dude. And I'll sit there and I'll be like, okay, what's the topic I can get obsessed with today to write about? Some days it'll be fear, some days it'll be self doubt, some days it'll help. But the obsession is usually serve and inspire my audience. Then I'll obsess a little bit in my mind about who needs this today, who's counting on me. And I'll think about how many points of feedback and comments do we get? And then I'll say, okay, why do I need to get this done? Well, because the first frigging post is due at 7am dude, get on it. So it's real for me. Cause My deadlines are 7, 11, 3 and 7 every single day. You follow? I'm absolutely psyching myself up to do it every single day. One of the reasons people don't achieve their dreams is they're just going through the motions doing what they're usually doing. They're not psyching themselves up to step to the next level. Now you know the mental triggers to psych yourself up now that you know your necessity of choosing that dream. Now we can go a little faster. Hey guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter because I have a resource for you related to this episode and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way, just go to progressmo.com, click on Private group to apply to see you can get into Ultra and we can take it to the next level by getting in person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progress mode.com number two. You need to share that necessity. I promise to talk about how do you get people to support you? You get people to support you by walking them through your necessity forces, by telling them, honey, the reason this is so important, because I've always wanted to be a writer. This is. It's just who I am. I feel like it's important for me to do this. I just. It's a must. Honey, this is a topic I love so much. You see me researching and talking about and reading and going to seminars on it for months and years. Honey, there are people who need this help because there's a hole in the market right now. And I feel like it's my duty because I was given the second chance in life to change my life. And I want to. I feel like it's a duty. I feel like it's a calling, a mission, a purpose for me to give that back in some way or another. And the only way I can do it is through teaching. Because I love that I'm obsessed with teaching and then this urgency, well, if I don't do this, we're going to go broke. So I shared my necessity. And by the way, I didn't just share it with my lady. Everybody around me Knew it. One of my secret high performance strategies is to make sure my entire circle of influence knows about what I'm seeking and why. If they don't, then A, they can't understand me or B, they can't support me. I mean, if you've got this dream, but you've been toiling alone at it and you're like, I don't know why I'm not more focused or disciplined. It's because you got no social stakes yet. You haven't shared why it is necessary for you to perform with others. Because when others know it's necessary for you to perform, they bug you. They keep you accountable. They say, how's it going? You're like, oh, not going good. Then they cheer you on or someone knows what you need now and they open up a gate over here and introduce you to that neighbor who can help you. You just never know until you start sharing it. You've probably heard me say it on stage that if the universe isn't giving you what you want, perhaps it's because amid all the distractions and all your incisiveness, it's simply unclear what you're asking for. We need to share with the world what is necessary for us to do. If that dream is real, you better friggin be talking about it. If you're not talking about it, if you're holding it back because you think other people will judge you, then you're still probably in high school. Hopefully you've graduated high school or passed that part of your life because who gives a darn what other people think? Your job is what is necessary for you and to march towards it regardless of what other people think. But to share, because some people might follow it. There's a story in here about an Olympic athlete I was working with. I asked her when her career really took off and she told me that it was the time when she finally started sharing what she really wanted. She started sharing her ambitions with people around her and finally things started falling into place. It was like she got a new coach, she learned these new routines, she got a new community around her because she started shouting from the rooftops what she really wanted and that was necessary. Okay, so share number three. I'll go a little faster. This is important so you know it's necessary. You shared it. Now let's get down to how do we achieve it. Number one, I want you to schedule 60 day study period. That's it. I'm going to give you a 60 day study period. And you know what you do at the end of the 60 days, you start, you work, you hustle, you go. Here's what too many people do. They have a dream and they get stuck in analysis paralysis. They spend a year or two going to conferences, reading books, taking courses. Trust me, I've been there too. But they don't implement. And that's because they always are thinking, I need to learn that one new thing and then I'll be ready to implement. I went through this with online marketing. I mean, I can't tell you how many courses and programs and audios and teleseminars and teleseminants and webinars I took. And finally it was like, I'm not moving forward. So here's the thing. Remember that high school paper or that college paper you wrote in three nights before it was due? Or the night before? Why did that happen? Because you had a deadline and you set it and you hustled for it. So I'm only going to give you any new thing you want to learn at all. I don't care what this new dream is. I'm only going to give you, if you're a client of mine, you get 60 days. I say, look, you got 60 days to study up, study up. You got 60 days. And then on day 61, you begin with 60% of your effort every week towards that thing. Here we go. Stop screwing around. Stop, stop studying. Stop being stuck. I don't mean stop studying for life. I mean stop being only in study period and move into work really, really, really hard and study period, but work really, really, really hard. At that point, after 60 days of studying the basics, go. I don't care what it is. I did the same thing. If you think this, this is, this is not me just sharing this philosophically. This is what made the difference in my life and my client's life. I remember at the beginning, for me, I do that with HTML. That means coding. For those of you who have never done any coding, I studied coding HTML for 60 days and then I built my first operating website and had it up in that 60 days. I was testing, trial and error, learning something. Try, learn, try, learn, try, learn, try. But launch came 60 days later and the first of my websites went up. I was, what, all of 21 years old? And this was back when you had to do hard coding and I taught myself to do it. It was a janky page. It was two columns and seven rows. It was basically a table, a glorified table. It didn't really look that fancy, didn't really do that Much. But it was up. And then I was working it and working it and working it and working it. I had never known anything about coding and in 60 days I was proficiently coding enough to have a website up, even if it kind of sucked. Meaning get in the game sooner. Stop thinking, overthinking and studying. Set a date. I would only give any major thing, I don't care what it is, 60 days. I mean, look at, you know, look at right now, Elon Musk at the time that we were filming this, you know, the guy has this idea to do a hyperloop, writes a paper about hyperloop. That's where he's putting an above ground tube so that you can put a passenger car in a vacuumless tube and it can go voom a couple hundred miles an hour and deliver people faster than being stuck in LA traffic. He had the idea to his first operating prototypes this fast. Look, you got to get in the game, you got to create those prototypes, right? It's going to get better and better and better no matter what. I mean, everything is that way. Like, here's another big dream of mine recently. I wanted to start creating things and resources that people could buy with some of my most popular phrases or things that mean something deeply to me. Let me, this is an example. It's stamped with live love matter on it, right? And I wear it. This is a nice little, what do you call this bracelet? So it's this little bracelet, the first version of that was so ugly you would laugh. And it was from China and it was just horrible and crappy. But I got it and I wore it even though it sucked and it was ugly because I said, I'm gonna make the next prototype better. And prototype, prototype. We've got shirts and hoodies and water bottles and bracelets and necklaces and watches and, you know, cats and dogs and more. I don't know. We got a lot of things with my stuff branded on it now. And I didn't know, look, I don't know anything about retailing, I don't know anything about fashion, I didn't know anything about T shirts, production, any of that. So I just studied what I liked, gave it a 60 day period and then one day just said to the team, hey, we're going to start doing this. And we just started doing it and I came up with a bunch of stuff, the team came up with some stuff, we rallied and you'll see like a whole store at our next event. You know, it's like fancy stuff. Look, yesterday I was Working on. I had this dream, I was like, well, I want to get some stuff for women. And we created a. What the heck do you call that bag? Totes. You know what a tote is, dudes? Sorry, It's a tote. The tote is a, it's a bag with two handles and it's fancy, made out of leather. I don't know, but I didn't know what a tote is. I've never, I've never held a tote, never bought a tote, never really even seen a tote in a store because I just don't do totes. You know, if you don't do them, you don't see them. It's not part of my identity. I just right by it. And so yet we designed a world class tote that stamped with live love matter. It's gorgeous. So how did we do it? I just said, okay, I'm going to figure out this fashion, retail, e commerce swag area of the world and then we're going to do it. 60 days, let's go. That's kind of how you have to approach every dream. Remember I always say it and people think it's cliche now because it's so shared worldwide. But no matter how small you start, start something that matters. So 60 day period, my friend. What's that big dream 60. Study for the next 60 days, then execute hard. Next, chart your five moves. It's a big topic in the chapter on productivity of the new book. And it is a necessary, simple thing to do. All big dreams can be chunked down into five major activities to achieve it. If you don't know those five major activities or you think there has to be 50 or 100, you're psyching yourself out. Everything can be broken down into five things, right? I would argue most things could probably be broken down into three. But five seems to be the optimal reality. I would say for significant accomplishments. Five major phases or five major rollout plans or five major steps. And all you gotta do is figure out what are the five things that matter the most to move the needle forward in that area. And I'm telling you, you will change the game. You only need to know the five major moves and what you need. Please listen. You need to know the five major moves. You don't need to know every move. Stop thinking you have a perfect plan with every step and every date figured out. Tell me what are the five major moves for achieving your thing? And then what I want you to do is turn 60% of your week Again, towards achieving and moving towards each of these moves. If you have a dream, and it's a big dream, it's real, it's necessary for you. I need 60% of your week dedicated towards that thing and dedicated specifically to working the five major moves or the first major move. We got to get you there. When I was doing the website, it was like, okay, first major move is get website up with information on it. Cool. Second major move is to figure out how to monetize that thing. Third major move, get traffic to that thing. Fourth major move, systemize it so it just runs. Okay, that's what I'm doing. And that's all I did. It doesn't mean I shouldn't say it's all I did, because I'm not one of those all in grind hustle, you know, dedicate your entire life to one specific thing. Because the reality is you got kids, they got to get to school or you got a business. The reality is we all have stuff to do. So I'm not asking to do 100% of time towards a new dream. So don't think I'm being irresponsible, Brendan, here. I'm saying I need 60% of the time. The other 40%, that's towards, you know, managing life, managing team, managing finances, managing day to day activities, working out everything else. But I need 60% of the week moving towards one of those five major moves. And when I say again, I really want you to make sure you underline this one. Five major moves, get rid of a lot of the other things. The example I share in one of our new courses is how I learned to publish a bestseller. And for me, writing a bestseller, I had all these moves that I thought were necessary. You know, go to writers conferences, have someone famous write the foreword of my book, get fancy testimonials. All these things I thought would move the needle and they weren't. And how did I know what the major moves were from that study? Remember the 60 days of study, you're looking for the needle movers in that 60 days of study. You're not looking for total understanding. You're looking for what are the major components that have to be, you know, acted upon? You know, Pareto's principle 80, 20 rule, what are the most effective moves? And get rid of everything else, because that's just flowering. What's the core meat here? What has to be done. And I interviewed during that 60 days all these bestselling authors and none of them said, well, Brendan, you have to get a, you know, I Got a forward by this famous person that helped me hit bestseller. None of them said that. None of them said, brennan, I went on a book tour, and that book tour is what made me a bestseller. No one said that. And I was like, I thought those things were necessary, by the way, but they weren't. I had to identify what was necessary. The major moves. Major moves were write good book, get agent or self publish, collect massive numbers of emails, set up a great campaign that sells the book and makes money, and get people to promote the heck out of that. There was nothing else. Everything else was me in a coffee shop, you know, just faking it. So we got to figure out what's necessary. The five major moves. Last big piece. And I kind of referenced this. But this is important. Whatever that big dream is for you, it's very important to. As fast as possible. Please write that down as fast as possible to achieve or systemize the linchpin action that makes the rest of the dream possible. Okay, just write it down. I'll explain it. Achieve or systemize the linchpin action that makes the rest of the dream possible. Achieve or systemize the linchpin action that makes the rest of the dream possible. You with me so far, achiever? Systemize the linchpin action that makes the rest of the dream possible. Let me give an example. Writer, okay, Online trainer, once. What is the linchpin action there that makes the dream possible? Well, in my case, because it was a career and it was a business, it was, I need to get paid. I need to have cash flow. I need money to be able to do all of this. Like, otherwise, I'm gonna have to go get a job. So I struggled and struggled and struggled and struggled, and what did I come up with? I was like, well, the linchpin action for me is going to be collecting sales on the Internet. So that was the first thing that I worked towards to set up as fast as possible. You follow? I was like, I don't need a million. I need one cell. I need to set this thing up so I get one cell off of one of my websites or pages. One cell. And then if I get one cell, great. Now systemize it so that one cell is automatically coming in, you know, once a week or once a month or once a day. But I was like, I need to systemize it. So just it's happening. That one action, right? That one simple action that is happening. Because if you don't know what that one action is, that is the linchpin that holds the whole business or the whole dream or the whole idea together. You have not yet done your study. You have not yet identified the core thing, right? For businesses. Sometimes it's that first customer and automating a sales process so that you get more customers, right? For dream. Like I want to become a great, you know, I want to became a world class piano composer. What is the first linchpin absolute necessary to make that happen? Well, get that first composition done. Everything else revolves around that, right? Everything else. Get that first composition done. That's the linchpin. Because we're never going to world class at something until you've done it once. Like everything must rally around that thing. Stop taking all the programs and all the courses. Work that composition, go. That's what you got to do, right? You want to become a world class, you know, anything, it's get that first one and then know how to systemize it, right? If you want to become a world class swimmer and you're already pretty good, it's like great. You need to systemize maybe that maybe your linchpin activity is your practices, that you get world class in your practices and then you get systemize that linchpin activity, which is what competing. You need to join those competitions. You need to get in the pool and swim against other people so you can time out and know where you stand in your rankings and whether or not you're going to climb or how to climb, right? Whatever. I don't know what it is for you and maybe I don't even name those right, because I'm making them up trying to give you some examples. But you better know your linchpin activity. What needs to be the main thing that you set up, that you then automate that, get that done, systemize that scale, that all the other things will start to fall in place. Make sense. So those are my ways to think through. How do you start and achieve a dream? My friends, I hope you enjoy this framework. I look forward to seeing you with all of that. Thank you again for your support. Until next month, my friend. Go out there every single day, live fully, love only make your difference. And remember to keep striving for your next level of high performance.