Audiobook Part 8. High Performance Habits: Demonstrate Courage

High Performance Habit number six Demonstrate courage. There are two ways of meeting difficulties. You alter the difficulties or you alter yourself to meet them. Phyllis Batom There are three practices in this Honor the struggle. Share your truth and ambitions. Find someone to fight for the phone wakes me. I croak a barely audible hello and look to the clock. It's it's 2:47am A woman's voice says, I need you to look at something. I'm getting a ton of hate on Social. I think I'm in danger. What? I mumble as I sit up in bed. Sandra, the woman on the phone, is one of my celebrity clients. She can be overly dramatic. What danger? Are you okay? Yes, I'm safe for now. But can you click the link I just texted you? I click the link and see a video of Sandra on YouTube. The title of the video is Confession on All in capital letters. It has over 300,000 views. One sec, I say as I fumble to put on a shirt, then slip out of the bedroom so I don't further disturb my wife. As I head down to the kitchen where I can talk, she continues in a desperate tone, can you watch it? Can you look at the comments, then call me back, okay? The phone goes dead. The video is just Sandra sitting there talking to the camera. She begins by telling the viewer that she hasn't been honest with the world, that she's been fake. She says she's always bright and happy, but that the cameras and press don't cover what's real. That she feels bad for misleading people and she wants them to know she'll be more honest about her struggles. I immediately dislike the video. It feels disingenuous. The title feels like clickbait. She shares her tale with convincing emotion, but with no details whatsoever. The impression is one of oh, poor celebrity. You want us to know it's hard on you, but without specifics, it falls flat. By the look of the comments, most people agree with me. A lot of people are making fun of her. Those who aren't are asking for more details. There's not a lot of sympathy. Not so much because people don't care, but because the video is so vague. There's nothing to connect to. I text Sandra. I've watched it and read the comments. What danger are you in? Seems like people don't love it, but I'm sure you'll be fine. She texts back, all in. No, I don't know. Lunch tomorrow. We agree to meet for lunch and end the conversation. I shake my head and sit down to read more Comments I'm too annoyed to go back to bed. I start imagining the conversation at lunch tomorrow. I thought I was being courageous like you say to be Brendan. Then she'll remind me that I've been telling her to share her real self more often. If the pass is any indication, she'll blame me or scream at me. She's one of the rare volatile clients I've ever continued working with because I know she has a good heart. Still, I'll have to hold back. I already know what I'll want to say. I'll praise her for posting a video, but I'll also want to say, sorry Sandy, posting a video doesn't qualify as courageous. I will have to check myself because I want to go on a rant about how courage has been inflated to a comical degree. These days I tend to get snarky about this. When someone posts their first diary like video on social media like this, we are expected to applaud and say oh what courage. If someone shares an idea during a brainstorm meeting, oh what courage. If a kid finishes a race, even if he comes in dead last, oh what courage. But please, posting a video is an act of self expression. Sure, it's also just an effort to be noticed or share a message. And and just sharing a message isn't courage when everyone is doing it right. A billion people posted something today. Does that make them all courageous? Sharing ideas during a brainstorm meeting at work is your job. So if you don't get a hug for your courage, be satisfied with great idea. Does the child who got 59th place really need double high fives for being so brave and crossing the finish line when he didn't try, whined the whole time and didn't want to be there. I hear myself saying these things in my mind and I know I'm getting snippy. Yet my mind continues. When Washington crossed the ice clogged Delaware river to attack a superior force, that was courage. When astronauts piloted a capsule into the great darkness between Earth and the moon, that was courage. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and sparked the Civil Rights movement, that that was courage. Maybe this is what I need to tell Sandra. Look, you don't need to win a revolution or start a historic social movement to be some kind of hero or martyr. But the kinds of courageous acts that you will be proud of at the end of your life are not these tiny acts of self interested sharing. No, the kinds of courageous acts that you are proud of at the end of your life are those where you face uncertainty and real risk where the stakes mattered. When you did something for a cause or person beyond yourself, without any assurance of safety, reward, or success. Oh yes, that's the kind of courage we're going to talk about tomorrow, I think as I go back to bed. The next day, driving to the cafe to meet Sandra, I think more about her idea of courage. I've worked with Sandra long enough to know that she really needs to view courage in a new way. I'm convinced of it. Sandra is sitting in the back corner booth of the cafe, wearing sunglasses hidden from most of the customer's view. I sit down and take a breath and try to release my expectations about this meeting. Good coaches, I remind myself, show up open. I know I'm not doing great on that one so far, but I try. Okay, Sandy, how are you? The video has 1.3 million views now. Most people hated it, she says in a defeated tone. What do you think of it? I was proud of it. It was scary to post that. I had hoped for a better response. Obviously I want to address the scary comment and launch into my rant about true courage. But a waitress comes by. I order some tea and Sandra gets another coffee. Do you want some food? She asks. We might be here a long while. I really need your help. I'd planned on a shorter meeting, and it's just a dumb video, I think. We sit in silence. I can barely wait to get into it. Okay, Sandy, what was so scary about this? I don't think there's much to do about the video. Just let it play out. Maybe release another one with more details later this week. It'll blow over, these things. Do you know? I see a tear slip below Sandra's sunglasses. Sandy, you okay? It's not just about the video, Brendan. It was scary. I thought I was doing something brave. It was a cry for help. But it was just stupid. She starts crying and I lean forward and take her hand. Hey, I say. Are you okay? What's this really about? What's going on? Sandra takes a sip of coffee, then casually removes her sunglasses. She has a black eye. Oh my God, Sandy. I gasp. What happened? She sobs for a few moments, then tells me, it's my husband. I should have told you a long time ago. I've been. He's been abusive for a long time. I've been so scared for so long. Then yesterday I decided I had enough. I posted that video. I just felt like it was my first step to her words melt into tears. A wave of regret washes over me. I made stupid assumptions. I know better and I immediately start kicking myself. Sometimes a person's first step is courageous, no matter what you think of it. He saw the video and went berserk. I should have thought it through. I just wanted to do something, you know? Sandra and I sit for three hours and plan her escape where she'll stay, her future. She never returns home that day. Her friends go and collect her belongings. She leaves him and never looks back. She crossed her own Delaware. She revolutionized her life. She taught me about courage. High performers are courageous people. The data show that courage is significantly correlated with high performance. In fact, higher courage scores are related to higher scores on all the other HP6. This means that individuals who have developed greater courage in life also tend to have more clarity, energy, necessity, productivity, and influence. Courage can revolutionize your life just as it did for Sandra. In fact, our coaching interventions suggest that demonstrating courage is the cornerstone habit of high performance. Demonstrating courage doesn't mean you have to save the world or do something grandiose. Sometimes it means taking a first step toward real change in an unpredictable world. For Sandra, it was posting a video. Just a small step, but it started the process of sharing that would give her the confidence to take bigger steps and ultimately reclaim her freedom. It was just a video, but it was the first light of courage. To assess courage in our research one we ask participants to indicate how strongly they agree or disagree with statements such as I speak up for myself even when it's hard. I respond quickly to life's challenges and emergencies rather than avoid them. I often take action despite feeling fear. We also have respondents score themselves on less upbeat statements. I don't feel that I have the courage to express who I really am. Even if I knew it was the right thing to do. I wouldn't help someone if it meant I would be judged, ridiculed, or threatened. I rarely act outside my comfort zone. From assessing tens of thousands of people, what has become abundantly clear is that high performers report taking action despite fear much more than others do. This fact shows up in our interviews and coaching sessions as well. It seems all high performers and have a real sense of what courage means to them and can articulate times when they demonstrated it. Of course, almost everyone, if prompted or helped to explore the topic, can remember performing one act of courage in their lives. But not everyone who has courage becomes a high performer unless they also have clarity, energy, necessity, productivity, and influence. As always, the HP6 work together to create long term success. Why do some people have more courage than others? Our research shows that the significant difference is not age or gender. The people who are more likely to self report high levels of courage are those who love mastering challenge, perceive themselves as assertive, perceive themselves as confident, perceive themselves as high performers, perceive themselves as more successful than their peers, and are happy with their overall life. This makes sense if you like to take on a challenge. The odds are you won't shrink when it's time to rise and face a difficulty or obstacle. If you feel that you're confident and a take action kind of person, you'll go into action when you're needed. But why are happy people more courageous? This was a head scratcher for me, so I conducted structured interviews with 20 high performers to find out. They said such things as, when you're happy, you worry less about yourself and can focus on others. Happiness makes you think you can do incredible things, and to have gotten to a point of being happy in your life, you have to have developed some self control. And once you have that, you feel more capable of taking control in uncertain situations. These were good descriptions, but there clearly was not a consensus on how happiness made people more courageous. This reveals a general truth about courage. It's hard to explain no matter what angle you approach it from. In fact, most people struggle to define courage in the first place, let alone consider it a habit. Perhaps more than with any other individual characteristic we research, people think of courage as a human virtue that some have and others don't. But that's incorrect. Courage is more like a skill since anyone can learn it. And once you understand and demonstrate it more consistently, everything changes. Courage Basics Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. Mark Twain Psychologists agree with Twain's quote, courage is not fearlessness, it's taking action and persisting despite that fear. But courage can lead to fearlessness in many domains. For example, psychologists found that most parachuting trainees are fearful when jumping out of the plane the first time their first jump feels courageous. But the more they do it, the more confidence they gain and the more fearless they become. Eventually, even jumping out of a plane can feel routine. Exhilarating, certainly, but no longer fear inducing. Researchers found the same for bomb disposal operators, soldiers and astronauts. The more experience they had in facing their fear, the less fear and stress they felt. This happens to all of us. The more we do something successfully, the more comfortable we become with it. That's why it's so important for you to start living a more courageous life. And now, the more actions you take, facing fear, expressing yourself and helping others, the easier and Less stressful these actions become. But when you face down your fear, something else is also going on. Courage, it turns out, is contagious, like panic or cowardice. If your kids see you fearful of life, they'll feel it and they'll model it. And it's the same for your team and who whomever else you lead or serve. Demonstrating more courage is a gateway for our society to develop greater virtue. Many Kinds of Courage Defining and classifying courage is difficult, and there's little agreement even on what exactly the word means to researchers or the general public. Ultimately, what we can agree on is that for someone to demonstrate courage, these things are likely present risk, fear and a good reason to act. Still, it's useful to have a look at the different kinds of courage so we can think through them. There's physical courage when you put yourself in harm's way to meet a noble goal. For example, jumping into an intersection to save someone from being hit by a car. It might also include fighting for your life when you're sick. Moral courage is speaking up for others or enduring hardship for what you believe is right to serve the greater good. Stopping someone from bullying a stranger, refusing to sit in the back of the bus despite an unfair law, posting a video about your beliefs on a controversial topic. These are all expressions of moral courage. Moral courage shows in selfless acts that protect values or advance principles to benefit the common good. It's about social responsibility, altruism, doing what's right. Psychological courage is the act of facing or overcoming your own anxieties, insecurities and mental fears to a assert your authentic self instead of conforming, showing the world who you really are even if someone might not like it, or B experience personal growth even if it's only a private victory. Everyday courage could mean keeping a positive attitude or taking action despite great uncertainty, such as moving to a new city, bad health or hardship, such as sharing unpopular ideas or showing up every day for work even when things are tough at the office. While none of these types of courage are definitive or mutually exclusive, the terms are useful in conceptualizing courage. The important thing is that you define what being more courageous means to you and start living that way. I think of courage as taking determined action to serve an authentic, noble or life enhancing goal in the face of risk, fear, adversity or opposition. The noble and life enhancing part is important to me because surely not all fear facing acts are courageous. Suicide bombers, for example, might seem to meet some criteria. They take determined action even though they must surely feel scared and they they have what they believe are noble goals. So too do burglars running the risk of jail or worse. Are their acts courageous? Most would say no. That's because even if they meet some criteria for courage, their actions are, at least according to most of society, harmful or destructive. Do no harm is an important concept in courage. Taking action despite fear of rejection isn't always courageous either. For example, a teenager taking a dangerous dare to jump off a high balcony to gain acceptance into a peer group seems courageous. The teenager is afraid, but jumps to be accepted. Courageous to some, others might simply call it conformity or stupidity. Courage isn't always about taking a bold action either. Doing nothing when you're expected to can be courageous. That's a truth revealed in nonviolent demonstrations. Not accepting an invitation to fight and walking away to protect your body is courage. Refusing to jump into an argument even though you might look weak is a courageous act if it preserves your integrity. While this may sound like mincing words, definitions are important. Courage is more than merely overcoming fear, though many people confuse the two. The outcome is what you're after, and the outcome that happens matters a great deal. If your well intended actions hurt someone, that's not likely to be viewed as courageous. In fact, researchers have found that many people consider an action courageous only if it gets completed or ends in a good result. For example, if you start to speak up for yourself, but immediately stop at the first interruption and will you later feel that you are courageous? If someone jumps into a river to help another person but ends up only drowning them or requiring rescue themselves, are they courageous or merely foolhardy? Probably the latter. Still, at the heart of our courage research is the clear pattern that high performers have a bias toward action, even when that action's outcome is scary, risky, or uncertain. After listening to so many high performers stories over the past decade, I know this to be true. You are capable of remarkable things that you could never foretell and will never discover without taking action. Almost all the stories of courage I hear about are stories of surprise. A high performer faced doubt or fear or suddenly rose in service to help someone they didn't have, have courage, or find it through contemplation. Action woke their heart and their path was revealed. They didn't hope for an opportunity to do something one day. They didn't hem and haw. They acted. They knew that hoping to achieve good things without taking action is like hoping for help without asking for it. I also heard a lot of stories of people changing course in life. People talked about quitting a job, leaving an abusive relationship or moving to a new town as an act of courage. Though we often think of courageous actions as stepping forward, I also heard a lot of people talk about going backward, in a sense, back to an old dream that they had given up on. If you've quit on your dream and your heart still longs for its achievement, only action will remedy the suffering. It's never too late to change course. What high performers didn't talk about is how they delayed and complained for long stretches of time. Continual whining leads to diminishment. The human will shrinks when we don't quickly pair the complaint with real work toward progress. Don't complain, dozens of high performers told me. Act. While many of my interviewees described acts of courage as spontaneous, their stories that inspired me the most and perhaps best show the replicable nature of courage as a habit were those where courage had been planned for. People knew what they were afraid of, and so they prepared themselves. They studied, they got mentors, then they faced their fears. Only when our fears become our growth plan have we stepped onto the path of mastery. I could share more personal observations here, but ultimately you must decide which what living courageously means to you. Courage is most often judged from the eye of the actor. So the important thing is that you determine whether you're living courageously enough at this stage in your life. To help people think through this, I like to ask this question. If your future best self, a version of you, 10 years older, who is even stronger, more capable, and more successful than you imagined yourself to be, showed up on your doorstep today and looked at your current circumstances, what courageous action would that future self advise you to take right away to change your life? How would your future self tell you to live? Listen to that question again and spend a few minutes pondering it. If your future best self, a version of you, 10 years older, who is even stronger, more capable, and more successful than you imagined yourself to be, showed up on your doorstep today and looked at your current circumstances, what courageous action would that future self advise you to take right away to change your life? How would your future self tell you to live? I've asked a lot of people this, and while I don't know your response, my guess is that the future you wouldn't tell you that to play small. Your best self would tell you to go for it in life. To do that, you have to go beyond the basics. You'll need a new way of looking at your fears and obstacles. You'll need these three high performance practices. Practice 1. Honor the struggle Success is giving 100% of your effort, body, mind and soul to the struggle? John Wooden why is it that so many people are clearly not living courageous lives? They know they should speak up for themselves, but they don't. They want to face their fears and take some risks, but they don't. They tell you they're going to be bolder, strive for greater dreams, help people in significant and noble ways, but they don't. Why? This was one of the most frustrating questions in my early coaching career. Many clients would talk about vision and big dreams, about wanting to live an exemplary life and make a difference, but they wouldn't do anything about it. They'd say they wanted a great life, but when we discussed new habits to get them there, they would often deflect, saying they were too busy or fearful. They would show me their vision boards from some seminar, and I would ask, so what are the top three big leaps you're going to make starting on Monday? Now that you have these new vision boards, they usually lacked any sort of response or plan, never understanding that one act of courage is better than a hundred vision boards. I'm sure you've been frustrated with others, or even yourself, about the inability to take bolder action. So what was the real problem and what was the solution? I've learned that the issue is really one of mindset. We are less courageous as a society today because we avoid struggle, and that decision leaves us with underdeveloped character and strength, two key ingredients for courage. Here's what I mean. We're at a unique time in history when more countries and communities have greater abundance than ever before. But in such blessings there can be a curse. People can become resistant to struggle today, making any recommendations that would require real effort, trial, difficulty or patient persistence is out of fashion. Ease and convenience reign. People often quit marriages and school and jobs and friendships at the first sign of difficulty. If you quit at the first sign of difficulty in your everyday life, what are the odds you'll persist in the face of real fear or threat? If we're ever going to develop the strength that comes courage requires, we'll have to get better at dealing with life's basic challenges. We'll have to stop getting so annoyed and start seeing the struggle as part of growing our character. We must learn to honor the struggle. Unfortunately, struggle is a hard sell. In my industry, for example, I'm constantly told to make my advice and curriculum less complex and rigorous and and more appealing. Don't make them work, they say. Don't give them too many steps that are Hard, Brendan, because they won't implement them. Dumb it down, make it easy, make sure it's digestible for a sixth grader. People don't want to try, so just give them easy things to do. I was told each of these things while writing this book. The presupposition in these statements is that people are lazy, hate, challenge and and will trade growth for comfort and certainty. Consider how often we're sold this assumption in the general media world especially every tip and hack is framed so that it's making life super easy, pulling us away from any pain or strain. Focus only on your strengths because you'll feel better and serve better. No need to suffer through facing your shortcomings that would be uncomfortable and not worth the effort. Outsource everything because there's no value in learning real skills. Hack your diet with a magical pill so you don't have to change your horrible eating patterns. We're surrounded by memes and media and influencers telling us we're not supposed to struggle, that life should be an easy flow, or we're working on the wrong track. Imagine what that's doing to our abilities. Imagine what that is doing to our odds of ever taking courageous action. If we keep telling people to do what's easy, why would they ever think to do what's hard? The good news is, I think people worldwide are discovering that all these quick fixes, hacks and silver bullets aren't enough. People are beginning to remember something they knew already. To achieve excellence requires hard work, discipline, routines that can become boring, the continual frustrations that accompany learning adversities that test every measure of our heart and and soul, and above all, courage. I hope the research in this book has helped you discover a bigger picture, that high performance requires real intention and the mastering of complex habits. The practices here are doable, but they will still require focus, struggle and faithful diligence over the long haul. I'm sure older generations could tell us about a time when struggle wasn't something to be avoided. They knew that living a comfortable life free of all difficulty and all passion was never the goal. They didn't expect to have a smooth ride. They would tell us that toil and struggle are the fire in which we forge character. They championed the ideals of getting dirt under your fingernails, working harder than anyone else would expect, striving for a dream with a fierce tenacity, even in the face of hardship, because those efforts made you a better, more capable human. Meeting struggle with poise and dignity got you respect. It made you a leader. Forgive me if this Sounds nostalgic, but it's nonetheless true. No one who achieved greatness avoided struggle. They met it, engaged with it. They knew that it was necessary because they knew that real challenge and hardship pushed them, extended their capabilities, made them rise. They learned to honor the struggle. They developed a mindset that anticipated the struggle, welcomed the struggle, leveraged the struggle into reasons to give more. By meeting the conflicts and difficulties and outright messes of life straight on, willingly, we dismantled the walls of fear brick by brick. This mindset, more than any other, is at the heart of my work. Read the motivation manifesto, the Charge, or life's golden ticket, and you will see a deep respect, almost reverence for struggle. When we learn to see struggle as a necessary, important, and positive part of our journey, then we can find true peace and personal power. The alternative, of course, is crippling. Those who hate the struggle or fear it end up complaining, losing motivation, and quitting. Our most recent research also backs up this idea of honoring the struggle. One of the strongest predictors we found is that courageous people agree with the statements, I love trying to master new challenges, and I'm confident I can achieve my goals despite challenge or resistance. High performers simply do not dread challenge failure or or the inevitable difficulties that learning and growing entail. Instead, they love trying to master new things, and they feel confident they can achieve their goals despite potential hardships. Talk to them about difficult times in their past, when circumstances forced them out of their comfort zones to perform, grow, or win, and they'll speak of those times with reverence, not dread. Our findings align with decades of psychological research on people with a growth mindset. People with such a mindset believe they can improve, love a challenge, and engage with difficulty rather than run from it. They don't fear failure as much as others do because they know they can learn and through hard work and training, become better. This makes them more motivated, more dogged in their pursuits, more resilient, and more successful over the long term. In practically every area of their lives, those with fixed mindsets believe and behave the opposite. They believe that their abilities, intelligence, and traits are set, fixed, limited. They don't think they can change and win, and that creates fear. Any time they are faced with something that lies beyond their natural strengths and capabilities, they dread failure because failure would be a commentary on them. They feel that a mistake or error makes them look incompetent, and if something isn't easy, they give up. To illustrate how destructive this can be, research has shown that those with a fixed mindset are five times more likely to Avoid challenges than those with a growth mindset. This jives with what we see in high performers versus low performers. If you are unwilling to anticipate or endure the inevitable struggles, mistakes, messes and difficulties of life, then it's a rough road. Without courage, you'll feel less confident, happy and successful. The data confirms it. The two human stories. You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it's important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages. Michelle Obama There are only two narratives in the human struggle and progress. And you can't have the latter without the former. All those ups and downs are what make us most human. There are supposed to be lows and there are supposed to be highs so that we may experience the full range of what it is to be human, knowing both joy and despair, loss and triumph. We know that, but we we often forget it when things get tough. It's easy to hate the struggle, but we mustn't, because over time, hate only magnifies its object into a phantom far greater and more ominous than the actual thing. We must accept that struggle will either destroy us or develop us. And the hardest of human truths is that ultimately it's our choice. No matter how difficult it gets, the next step is still your choice. For that, let's be thankful we can go beyond gratitude to true reverence for life's challenges. In talking with high performers, it's clear that to excel you must teach yourself to view struggle as a stepping stone to strength and higher performance. That's part of the high performing mindset. Struggle must be seen as part of the process and a vitally important part of any worthwhile endeavor. And the very decision to accept struggle draws courage from deep within us. The struggle I'm now facing is necessary, and it's summoning me to show up, be strong, and use it to forge a better future for myself and my loved ones. Honoring the journey doesn't mean you just take the adversity and roll with the punches, doing nothing to improve. This isn't about just being Zen and accepting life as it comes without trying to exert your will. When you're unhappy, it just means that you adopt the mindset that facing hardship and trying to learn can bring the best from you. Accepting that difficult times will come allows you to wake with a sense of realism and readiness to anticipate problems and be prepared for them, to maintain calm when the winds of change might topple lesser leaders. Having that affinity for engagement and action defines part of the high performance mindset. The difficulties in life that you can't avoid. Engage them wholeheartedly even when you feel overwhelmed. Choose to go for a walk, Focus on your breath and consider the problem rather than avoid it. Look the problem in the eye and ask, what is the next right action for me to take right now? If you aren't yet ready to take that action, plan. Study. Prepare yourself for when the fog lifts and and you are called to lead. I'll end this section with two related sayings that my students find helpful. The first I learned from working with members of the US Army Special Forces. They told me about a common maxim they use to help people realize they must deal with the hardships of service. Embrace the suck. Sometimes doing your duty sucks. Training sucks. Patrol succeed sucks. The weather sucks. Circumstances suck. But you can't just avoid them or be bitter. You have to deal with it, face it, and will yourself to persevere and rise. You have to embrace the suck. If there's one thing I respect most about the military, it's how little complaining there is. Complaining isn't respected or perpetuated that inspires me. In any area of your life, if you have the opportunity and blessing to serve you, you don't complain about the effort involved. The second saying that might serve you in embracing and honoring the struggle you will make it through. Just because they can't see your potential or don't share your vision just because you're uncertain or afraid, that doesn't disqualify you. Just because the sky is cloudy doesn't mean there's no sun. Trust that things don't turn out. People often say to count your blessings in times of hardship, but I'm reminding you to count on the blessings too. The universe is abundant and giving, so you can trust that good things are coming your way. I suppose that's the ultimate message in times of difficulty to have faith in yourself and the future. It's something I wrote on an index card and camera carried in my wallet when I was struggling through my brain injury. Remember, you are stronger than you think, and the future holds good things for you. Practice 1 Performance prompts is listed on page 274 of High Performance Habits. Performance prompt number 1 A struggle I've been facing in my life is 2. The way I could change my view of this struggle. Number 3 If something great could come from this struggle, it would. 4. The way I choose to greet life's inevitable hardships from today forward. Practice 2 Share your truth and ambitions. As far as I can judge, not Much good can be done without disturbing something or something, somebody. Edward Blake in the Motivation Manifesto, I argued that it is the main motivation of humankind to be free to express our true selves and pursue our dreams without restriction to experience what may be called personal freedom. Our spirits soar when we feel unencumbered by fear or the weight of conformity. When we live our truth, expressing who we really are, how we really feel, what we really desire and dream of, then we are authentic. We are free. This requires courage. Surely no one wants to live a constrained, conforming life. But since Manifesto's release, I've received thousands of letters and comments about just how hard personal freedom is to achieve. Showing the world who you are authentically and unapologetically brings a great deal of risk. People often talk about that, how they want to be real. But doing so invites so much judgment or rejection. They're worried that if people could see who they really are, the show would be over. They wouldn't measure up to others expectations. But I say the only time you should try to measure up to someone else's idea of who you are or what you're capable of is when that person is a role model cheering you on. If someone believes in you and sees greatness in you, sure try to live up to that. But for anyone who doubts or diminishes you, forget about it. Don't bother trying to please them. Live a life that is yours. Don't seek the approval of the doubters. You'll find no lasting joy in seeking acknowledgment from others. If it comes, it'll never be enough. So the only path left is to express your own truth and pursue your own dreams. When you do this, you'll meet with inevitable criticism. Anticipate that as just one more part of the struggle. Judgment will always be there, just as there will always be cloudy days. Don't let their criticisms sway you from your convictions. If you believe in your dream that stay on your path, you need no permission beyond that tingling hope in your soul. After talking with so many high performers, I have to confess that I hope you meet with judgment and friction. It's a sign you're on your own path and aiming for great things. Indeed, if no one has looked at you sideways lately, or better yet said, who do you think you are? What are you crazy? Are you sure that's a good idea? Then maybe you're not living boldly enough. I've shared this sort of coaching before. Once I got a message from a fan who countered, but Brendan I'm not proud of who I am and so I don't want to put myself out there. I'm embarrassed at who I am. My truth isn't something I want to share. I could only reply, my friend, if you're ashamed of the truth, then you've yet to find the truth. Minimizing Ourselves Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one will go. T.S. eliot One thing I didn't expect from readers of the Motivation Manifesto was a different kind of fear in sharing their truth. Many people wrote in and said they weren't worried that others would judge them as insufficient. They were worried that by being their best, they would make others feel insufficient. They were fearful of expressing their true ambitions, joy and powers because the people around them could feel bad about themselves. They felt they had to minimize their dreams, keep their big ideas bottled up, dumb themselves down, tone it down, look down all so others could feel good about themselves. When I receive concerns like this, I'll often send my readers a video I shot from my phone where I say, do not dare play small, my friend. Do not feel guilt because you have high aims. Those dreams were seeded in your soul for a reason, and it is your duty to honor them. Do not hold back in life just to comfort or placate those around you. Holding back is not humility, it's lying. If the people in your life do not know your true thoughts, feelings, needs, and dreams, do not blame them. It is your lack of voice or vulnerability or power, not their lack of understanding or ambition that is building the barricade to your potential. Share more and you'll have real relationships that can support you, energize you, lift you, even if they don't support you or believe in you. At least you lived you your life. At least you put it all on the table. At least you honored the hopes of your heart and the calling of your soul. In your full expression lies your freedom, my friend. Your next level of performance begins at your next level of truth. I know you're getting a lot of coaching in this chapter, but this is crucial. Readers still write me years later saying my message helped them. I want you to keep this audiobook handy so you can listen to it again the next time. Concern for someone else's feelings tempts you to hold back your own dreams. So please stay with me. I have no doubt that accessing the next level of courage in your life requires a new degree of openness and honesty about who you are, what you want, and what you're really capable of and ready to do. All that stands in your way is that fearful part of you that feels like minimizing yourself so that you don't make others feel bad. But don't for one minute think that's humility, that's lying about your real ambitions, that's apologizing for the gifts that God, the universe, fortune or hard work, take your pick. Blessed you with and it's insidious unless you choose to let it go. That fear will forever prevent you from feeling truly authentic and fulfilled and living out your real potential. It will drive you to lower your sights and miss out on excellence. And for what exactly? You may think people will be threatened by my drive and desire. They might not like my ambitions, they might make fun of me. So I'd best keep quiet. Better to downgrade my ambition or work ethic anyway. I've heard every version and permutation of that misbegotten idea, but I want to say it again and etch it on your mind. This kind of thinking is not humility, my friend. It's fear. It's lying. It's suppressing it's adolescent concern and it will destroy any real aliveness and authenticity in in your relationships. I know it may feel better in the short term to minimize yourself so someone else can feel good about themselves. But consider this. No one wants to be in connection with a fake person. How would you feel if you were in a relationship with someone for five years and out of nowhere they said to you, you don't know the real me. I haven't been honest with you. All this time I've been holding back my real dreams from you because I was scared of you or I thought you were too small minded to handle it. Would that bring you close to them? Or would it upset you? How would you respond to that person? You'd probably be astounded and hurt. So why would you do that to someone else? By holding back? Look, if you're gulping back your real thoughts and dreams just to fit in or make others feel better, then you can't blame them or anyone else because it's you choking yourself. And while you're at it, you're squeezing the life out of your relationships. I've seen a lot of people from all over the world martyr themselves under the guise of poorly conceived humility. But there's nothing humble in saying I'd better not shine because the timid souls around me couldn't handle it. Please. I've worked with enough people to know your likely gut reaction to this you'll think, well, Brendan, you don't understand my husband, my community, my culture, my mom, my coach, my fans, my brand, my insert excuse here and right now. It's my job to call you out on this. No one can quiet you without your permission. No one can minimize your self image but you. And no one can open you up and release your full power but you. You can always blame them for your failure to be real and vulnerable. Or you can choose this very day to start speaking up and living in full, even though some may not like it. Will some people make fun of you? Might a person you love doubt you or leave you? Could your teammates call you crazy and marginalize you? Can your neighbors or fans turn on you for wanting more than you deserve to? Each of these questions, yes. But which is nobler? Falling dutifully in line with what everyone wants or speaking up for what's right for you? Ultimately, you must ask which your life is about, fear or freedom. One choice is the cage, the other that's courage. My passion on this topic is boundless because I've been in the trenches with enough people to know that at some point someone I or one of your mentors or a whisper from deep inside you will get through and get you to share yourself with the world. You don't have to listen to all this from some author you've probably never even met. But if I've somehow held your attention this far, then you may as well bear with me a little longer. You must beware. Holding back will weigh on your mind and your life with stresses you may not see for a long time. It will cheat the people around you from ever discovering your true beauty or abilities. Worse, it will prevent the right people from coming into your life. I see this all the time. A successful person fails to achieve the next level of success because they chose to strive in silence. They don't want to share or speak up. They're trying to be appropriate, realistic, level headed. They're trying to make others happy or comfortable. And so they have these brilliant ideas and not only do they not share them, they make the most lethal mistake of all. They don't ask for help. If you don't ask for help, the right people can't come into your life. So if the universe isn't giving you what you want, perhaps it's because amid all your distractions and silence, the universe just doesn't know what you're asking for. Recently I worked with an Olympic gold medalist. I asked when did the biggest gains come in your career? She said When I finally started voicing my dreams to do this, suddenly people started pointing me in the right direction. They told me what to do, what skills I would need, who I should talk to, what equipment the pros used, who the best coaches were. I learned that if you open your mouth and shout from the rooftops what you want to do with your life, sure, some village idiots will show up and shout back all the reasons why you can't, but. But all the village leaders come over and want to help. Life's great that way. The people who are in your life for the right reasons will listen to your truth. They'll applaud your ambition. They'll be happy to meet the person behind the face. They'll thank you for sharing, for being real, for trusting them. Trust others with your truth and the golden values of real friendship and love reveal themselves like lost treasures. To find even more courage, remind yourself that you owe it to those who have supported you in the past. Stay strong in recognition of the strength they have given you as a gift to all those who have been good to you. Don't complain, act, don't criticize, cheerlead. Don't conform. Live your truth. Don't be selfish. Serve. Don't take the easy path. Strive for growth and an extraordinary life. And when things are falling apart, stay true to the best of who you are. For those are the moments when you're forging who you will become. The Simple Conversations the most important thing in connecting authentically with others is to share your true desires with them. They don't have to approve or help or even brainstorm with you. This isn't about them. This is about you having the courage to open to others, just as the universe remains open to you. Try it. Each day, reveal to others a little bit more of what you're thinking, feeling, dreaming of. Even if you don't get the immediate support of the humans in front of you, who knows? Perhaps a distant force is unlocked and the necessary ripples in time and luck and destiny converge and deliver to your door a hint about the next step. A treasure map of sorts, unearthed by your own courage. This habit doesn't take shape by a single momentous conversation with everyone you know. You don't have to sit everyone you love down and tell them all the reasons you've been holding back from them and from life. You don't have to shoot a video explaining your entire life and philosophy. Instead, just make it a daily practice to be sharing your thoughts and goals and feelings with others. Every day, share something with someone about what you really think and want in life. You could say, you know, honey, today I was thinking about starting X because I'd love to Y. For example, I was thinking about researching how to write a book because I think I have a story worth telling. I was thinking about starting to hit the gym every morning because I love to feel more vital and alive. I was thinking about starting to look for another job because I'd love to feel more passionate and appreciated. I was thinking about starting to cold call some new coaches because I'm ready to compete at a higher level. These are simple statements. It's a simple formula. What do you want to share? Whatever it is, share it. Then take bold action each day to bring it to reality. Performance Prompts for practice number two of the Habit of Courage is on page 281 of High Performance the book. Or you can Download it at highperformancehabits.com Tools Performance prompts number one Something I really want to do that I haven't shared with enough people is if I were going to be more me in my everyday life, I would start to Number three. When I put myself out there and someone makes fun of me, I'm just going to Number four. A major dream I'm going to start telling people about and asking for some help with is Practice three. Find Someone to fight For I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to Serve Albert Schweitzer In 2006, I was broke. I had done what I have been trying to inspire you to do. I took action. I had quit my job to be a writer and trainer. I told everyone about my dream. Plenty of people thought I was crazy, including at times, me. I didn't know how to to write or publish a book. No one knew me and I had no supportive connections. Facebook, YouTube and iTunes were still in their infancy. Getting your voice out there was hard. I just wanted to share with people what I had learned from my car accident. That at the end of our lives, we will ask ourselves questions to evaluate whether we were happy with our lives. If you can figure out the questions you'll ask, then you can wake up each day and live intentionally so you'll be happy with the answers. At the end, I learned that those questions for me were Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? I stayed up late each night teaching myself to build websites and do online marketing because I wanted to reach a lot of people with that simple message. I was living in my girlfriend's apartment because I was so broke. I wrote on a fold out desk borrowed from my mother's old sewing room. The apartment was so small that I used the bed as a credenza where I stacked all my bills and notes and fears. It was a tough time for me personally. The guy who would become the guy on motivation and high performance habits had very little of either. I knew what I wanted to write to train. I had that quote from Horace on my fridge. In times of stress, be bold and valiant. And yet many days passed while I did nothing to move forward on either desire. I remember days sitting in a cafe watching other people type on computers and thinking what a phony I am. Look at them work. I'm barely doing anything. I would get up and walk around the park telling myself I needed to get in more inspired settings, telling myself that a walk would clear my head and make me write better. I circled that park for weeks and months and my head was as muddled as ever. My motivation hadn't risen to the level of my dreams, nor had my habits. I was going to set all these alarms and mental triggers to wake up at precise hours each day and begin writing. After, of course, boiling the perfect cup of green tea, cooking the best omelette, activating the perfect state to write in. I followed the habits sometimes, and they led to more dirty plates than written pages. Not all good habits lead to impressive results, especially when a key ingredient is missing. And then a very simple moment changed everything. One night I watched my girlfriend walk into the bedroom and trying not to disturb me or the bills or notes I had strewn all over the bed, slipped quietly beneath the covers. I saw the love of my life sleeping under the weight of my bills. It broke my heart. I gazed around the tiny apartment that I was contributing no money for because I had none. A space that had nothing but the love between us. An apartment where I sat useless, sad, unable to finish pages and chapters, and the mission I dreamt of. And I thought, this is not the life I want for us. She deserves better. At that moment, something inside me snapped or opened up or fell into place. Maybe my level of performance up to that point was okay for my preferences or needs in life. But I wasn't going to let my weak motivation or bad habits diminish the life of this woman who believed in me when everyone else thought I was crazy. The woman who bought me groceries. The woman who, too early in our relationship, admitted shyly, I love you. You know, when it's courage because somehow there is an all in decision. Often it doesn't come from you. It comes from wanting to serve another, to love another, to fight for another. Either I was going to become a successful writer and trainer, staying focused on helping people whatever the obstacles, fighting for this woman until I ended up successful or. Or what? There was no other choice. From that moment I decided to follow my dreams with more focus and intensity. I was not going to waste my days meandering about lost in distractions. I decided to think bigger, to stop letting my small business make me small minded. I decided to fight for my art and amplify my voice so that I might make a greater difference. I decided not to worry about the critics and instead give my whole heart and and effort to those who wanted positivity and progress in life. And I decided to marry that girl. Fighting for the life I wanted for us has kept me driven and contributing at the highest levels ever since. My story isn't all that unusual. While writing this chapter, I went back through my interviews with the highest level of high performers, those with the highest average scores across the HP6. I found that a common theme was similar to the story I just shared. We will do more for others than for ourselves. And in doing something for others, we find our reason for courage and our cause for focus and excellence. Each of the highest performing people I interviewed told me about someone who inspired them to excel. They all had a reason, and that reason was often a person. Not always a purpose or a group of people. Most often just one person. Sometimes it was more than one. Their kids, their employees, their extended family, their community's need. But more often than not, it was just one. I share this because our culture today often emphasizes finding your life's purpose, and it's always this great monumental cause that is destined to change the world and benefit millions. A lot of people search and some find that high purpose in life. And surely that's a wonderful thing to have. The historical research on courage in general suggests that people do things for noble causes beyond themselves. For high performers, that noble cause usually happens to be just one person or a few people. And so if you are a young person being told to find your purpose right now, don't feel that you have to look too far. Perhaps someone around you needs you to show up for them, and in doing that, you'll bring to light some of your own powers. And if you are an older adult, remember those around you, even as you seek that next mountain to climb. What I found in my research was something so obvious that it's beautiful. No matter what pulled courage from these high performers, it was something noble. You would admire their reason for doing it. There was human goodness there. Some answers from their interviews make this clear. She needed me. There was no other choice I could live with than to help her. I didn't want them to suffer. No one seemed to care. And there I was. I wanted to do it for him. He would have wanted that. Everyone else seemed to look the other way. So I stepped up. I wanted to leave a legacy. So I decided to get out of my own way and go for it. This action was a way to leave things better than I found them. Love had to win. So I went back in. Sometimes courage appears to be a spontaneous act. But what I have found is that it's usually an expression or action built up from years of caring deeply about about something or someone. So begin seeking things and people you care about. Give care deeply about something now. Stand up for something now, and then you'll be more likely to find courage when it matters. Performance Prompts Number one. A courageous action I will take this week because someone I love needs me to take it is two. Another courageous action I will take this week because a cause I believe in needs me to take it is three. Another courageous action I will take this week because my dream requires it of me is these performance prompts are found on page 286 of High Performance Habits. Courage through complexity. Courage and perseverance. Have a magical talisman before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. John Quincy Adams Just as the universe doesn't become less complex, life doesn't tend to get easier, but you get stronger. You learn how to show up more, cope better, and be truer and more conscious amid the judgment and hardship. Soon the obstacles do begin to seem smaller and the path seems more your own. So no matter what happens, trust in yourself and lean forward. The next level opens after your next courageous step. After more and more of those steps, you will look back with self respect. Allow me to return to something I shared in the opening story of this chapter. The kinds of courageous acts that you are proud of at the end of your life are those in which you faced uncertainty and real risk, with real stakes, with real when doing something for a cause or person beyond yourself, without any assurance of safety, reward or success. I know this to be true because I've faced the end of my life before. Twice. I know this because I've sat with people dying in hospice and I know what they talk about, how they reminisce, what they wish they had done what mattered to them, where their self respect and pride and legacy and came from. And here's what I've learned. For most people, courageous acts are indeed rare events. But we remember those acts and they shape our sense of ourselves and our lives as much as the small stuff. And so I ask you to consider these questions I'm about to ask you often to ready your mind for even more courage. Only by conditioning ourselves now will we truly serve with grace and courage when called. What in my personal life have I avoided doing which might involve hardship but just might improve my family's lives forever? What could I do at work that would require stepping out on a limb, but would also truly change things for the better and help people? What decision could I make that would demonstrate a moral commitment to something higher than than myself? How could I bring myself to face a situation that usually makes me nervous or anxious? What change could I make that scares me but will help someone I love? What good thing could I walk away from to advance my life? What have I wanted to say to those close to me and when and how will I courageously declare that truth? Who needs me and who will I fight for for the rest of this year? These questions might spur some brave thinking and action today. Ask them enough and practice the habits in this chapter and you'll come to this truth. Deep down, away from all the noise where love blankets your heart and your dreams lie in wait, you are not afraid.