How to Integrate Life Lessons Into Your Identity

A lot of people have a gratitude practice and like, yeah, I'm happy about that. I'm grateful about that. It's like gratitude doesn't work unless it hits the heart and absorbs in the identity, right? Your courage only grows if every time you do something where you stepped up to your fears, you acknowledge that you go, yeah, good job, Jamie. Good job, Brendan. I thought today we would take on the all important mindset of what I call integration. And mindset of integration means at the end of each day or the end of each win or the end of each week or the end of each month, I'm going to integrate the lessons that I had about myself, other people, about the world. I'm going to integrate the learnings and the wins that I had and into my identity, into my psychology, meaning allow myself to feel the learning, allow myself to remind myself of the good things that happened. You know, a lot of people have a gratitude practice and like, yeah, I'm happy about that. I'm grateful about that. It's like gratitude doesn't work unless it hits the heart and absorbs in the identity, right? Your courage only grows if every time you do something where you stepped up to your fears, you acknowledge that and you go, good job, Jamie. Good job, Brendon. And a lot of people have strings of successes and they never get more confident. They get strings of successes. They never feel happier or more fulfilled. And it's not because they're not achieving, it's that they're not achieving right in such that they're not integrating the success. You should feel, listen, every year of your life, you should feel more confident every year of your, like, if you go a whole year and you don't feel more confident, it's not because the Lord didn't give you challenges to grow from that year. It's not because you didn't absolutely have to get stronger to survive the other year. It's because you didn't take a moment throughout the year to integrate and go, oh, wow, I did that. Good job. Those little celebrations of wins, those little integrations of the successes is what I'm talking about. That's the mindset to integrate our learnings. Same thing. If you're a jerk to your spouse or your team one day, if you don't integrate that at night that you acted inappropriately, well then guess what, the next day you're more likely to be a jerk again because you didn't integrate the lesson. I hope that helps people.

You know, on the topic of mindset, by the way, just to call out something you just said live, that's so powerful. I don't want, I don't want anyone to miss it. I mean, tiny detail on something you just said. Most people would say, oh, I've had hard times. That would be true. I'm stuck. That would be true. You just said, it's not like the Lord didn't give you hard times to grow from this year. Just the way you said that is such a deep rooted mindset around when we have a struggle, when we have a setback, when we are in the midst of a hard season, when things aren't going our way. Who, how many people? Let's just like, really? Because I need to grow in this area always, right? I'm always trying to grow in this area. To think of it, of it as, oh, wow, I'm having a setback given to me so I can grow stronger through the struggle.

That's it.

It's a whole different way to think about it. But most people don't think about it. They think, oh, you know, I just think that's so powerful. Just that one sentence you said. But then how to integrate it and how to say, wow, I got through that. Wow, good job. Wow. Right? And for you to say too, just how many people even have victories or wins or losses but never feel fulfilled with them, Right. How many people out there, because I have been there, have you, like, kept striving for something, an achievement, an outcome, a goal, and then you get it and you're like, oh, like you thought all of a sudden, right, you'd be fulfilled and you're not. And I think I've done that so many times, and I think that this is so powerful because if you don't have the integration piece, which is what you're talking about, you know, last night, Brendan, on that note, what you shared just reminded me of something. So whenever I'm super, super stressed out, I either randomly surf real estate in random cities I'm never even going to move to on like realtor.com or Zillow. I'll just like, look at homes I don't know, or I'll read stories and quotes. And so last night I was so stressed out, I'm like, all right, I start reading Oprah interviews online. And one thing she said that I want to share about integration that was so powerful that I read last night is she said, you know, like, her life is so full because she practices gratitude, because she is grateful for everything. And she said that people say to her, okay, sure, Oprah, but You have everything to be grateful for. So it's easy for you to be grateful. You have everything to be grateful for. And she says, no, I have everything to be grateful for because I'm grateful. Because I'm grateful every day for everything. Everything has happened to be grateful for. And it's sort of a chicken and the egg kind of thing. Right. And I thought that that was really profound. And I think that it's super important. I bring this up once before. Mel Robbins, who is a growth day coach. One of the things I am so obsessed with that she's doing right now is this whole movement of high fiving yourself every time you see yourself in the mirror. I think it is so brilliant. I can't wait to talk to her about it even more. But it's carving this new grain almost of integration, just being grateful for yourself, of celebrating yourself, of switching the whole neuroplasticity in the way grooves are carved. Most of us are used to looking in the mirror and. And I'll just speak for myself and for the millions of women I've now had the blessing of getting to know in the course of growing at Cosmetics. And here's what they all say. They say when they look in the mirror, the first thing they see is whatever it is they think is wrong. And my whole mission because of that, because of talking to so many women who say the same thing, was like, okay, how can we look in the mirror and see everything that's right? Which is everything right? I am. I am now able to look in the mirror, see my bright red rosacea, and think, that's right. Like, I am able to do that now. But it took a lot of hard work with mindset. And back to the whole integration thing. A win might be. I did not yell at my spouse today. There are so many different types of wins. A win doesn't have to be, oh, I just had a million dollar launch. Right. A win could be like, wow, I did better today.

So good. So good. I really believe that like anything else you want in your life, you don't get it unless you establish habits around it. Yeah, there's nothing you will ever want in your life that you can't have more of if you establish a habit around it. And so if you want to have integration and more courage, more confidence, more joy, more fulfillment in your life, that's a practice, that's a habit. And so for me, everyone knows I use my high performance planner on the daily, on the weekly, and on the monthly. And we built prompts into it. That make you examine your learning about yourself, other people, about the world. Make you examine what decisions could I have made that would have been better? Make you examine what went great, what you're grateful for, what you're thankful for, what you're looking forward to. Like, developing mindset is a practice. It's like work. If you want to finish your PowerPoint presentation, you have to sit in front of it and create it. If you want to be followed on the Internet more, you have to sit in front of the cameras and talk and speak or post. The outcome is dictated by the practice. And the practice here is you need a time. You need that. When do you do it? I do it on Sundays. Sundays, Integration day. Sunday's like planning day. Sunday is reflection day. We call it, in my world, the Sunday review. Review. What did you learn? What can you celebrate? What happened? That was great. What are you looking forward to? And I know a lot of people go like, oh, well, I get there and I got nothing to celebrate because they think integration is just about wins or huge milestones like you were talking about, right? You get the big deal. The most important integrations of all time have nothing to do with your amazing ego. What it has to do with what did you learn? What was provided to you by God or the universe this week to educate you, to give you a new distinction? Because the reason more people aren't more confident, as we talked about in growth day this month, this was confidence month for our members. So if you're not a member yet, go to growthday.com, become a full member. But our members, we've had the best coaches in the world talking about confidence, and many of them echoed the teaching that we have been putting out since 2001, which is the competencies competence loop. When. When you develop more competency, when you learn more, you're more confident. Well, the good news is when you learn more and you practice that, so you have integration and integrity. Well, we have integration, integrity. You feel good about self, your worth. Your self worth goes, hey, you know what I'm learning here? I'm making new distinctions that gives you mastery and maturity. And then you're practicing it, which is integrity, following your word and working hard for the things that matter. And all of a sudden, your body goes, ah, I feel good. Your brain goes, I feel good about myself. And your self worth grows because you did those very things. But it doesn't happen by accident. Most people never even learn the word integration or the concept of integration until they're in therapy, which is Great. That's one great benefit of having a therapist or a great coach is to let you know you should be integrating what you are learning. Have you reflected? Have you thought about it? What's that distinction tell you about you now? What's that distinction tell you about what you want next? What's that new thing that you just did? How can you celebrate that so that you feel it and you're rewarded in your brain to keep going when it's hard? These things are important. Learning is a win. So that's why most people feel so discouraged. They feel like, well, I'm not winning. I'm not winning. I'm like, every new distinction that is a win. Knowing what not to do next time, that's a win. A failure is a win. A new distinction, a new learning. And so when you can reorient your mindset to, oh, these lessons are winning. I'm getting better. I'm getting smarter and wiser and more compassionate, more thoughtful, more ready for next time. Like, I'm getting stronger despite the struggle. But no, because of the struggle, it's good. It's like it's honing you. You are. Being prepared is a mindset I have. I believe we are being prepared. I don't believe any of you have met your calling yet. We don't know what our ultimate destiny is, what hangs in the balance in the future for us, what God intends for us or what universe intends for us. What might happen, we might not even know it, but our whole life and all the challenges and the frustrations were built for this singular moment that happened with Abraham Lincoln. With all his failures. Loss, loss, loss, loss, loss. That prepared him to have the empathy to literally be able to heal a nation, right? That happened with Churchill. Loss, loss, struggle. Weird jobs throughout his entire career until he got in the Admiralty. Weird ass jobs like, what does this guy do? What is he about? And then World War II, all these experiences suddenly aligned for the perfect action leader to emerge. And you see that in history over and over and over and over again, where you don't even know that all these things Oprah talks about, her journey, she. She did not know they would all come together in the way that they came together to make her ultimate difference. Even though she knew what her purpose and her passion was, she could never have imagined the platform that she'd be gifted. And so I just think it's so important for all of us to go. I'm being honed for all of us to go. I am in training. I am beginning. I am being gifted with distinctions that are going to make me ready when the time is right. And you might. You don't know when that time is going to be. So be grateful for the lessons you're learning, even if they're hard right now.

Hi, I'm Lee Smith, coming to you from Reno, Nevada. And what I love about the Growth Day app is that it's fun and easy to use. And because it's synced with my laptop and my phone, I can use it at my home office or I can use it on the go. I can record my thoughts in my journal, I can do my daily assessment and I can look back at where I had a good day and where I had an awesome day. I can look back at what I've accomplished in the week and the month. Because when I do my journal, I do it and then I bless and release it. And it's only when I hit another achievement, I look back and see the little steps along the way. Being able to easily access the trainings that I have as part of my membership, watching the recordings that I missed from the Growth Day events, connecting with the community and discussion, it's just. It's everything in one place. I don't have to think about another link or opening another thing in my browser. I just go to Growth Day and everything I want to do with Growth Day is right there. So thank you, Brendan. It's fun, it's easy to use, and it helps you grow and doesn't get better than that, does it?