How to Transform Fear into Success for The New Year

Take the next right action of integrity. That's what I call inspired action. It's you're going to take that next action, and you're going to do it in alignment with the best of who you are, with your ideals, with your values, with the beliefs that support something positive in life, with a morality in who you are. Today I'd like to share four of those personal life decisions I told you about. The first personal life decision that was critical to me was simply deciding that intentional living was important to me. I know that sounds kind of basic and almost silly as I say it, but when I was a young man, I was an unhappy person. And after my car accident, I realized I had no idea how to live or love or matter. I had no real direction each day. I mean, I kind of just went through the motions each day. I went to the classes I was supposed to go to. I had a job I had to go to to pay the bills and buy some food and pay for tuition in college. I just. I don't know that I was an intentional person yet. And so I was reactive. I was angry. I was. I was conditioned to believe who I was or what I was capable of. And I didn't really know what to do each day. You know, I didn't have the intention of. Oh, let me develop clarity of who I really am. Let me develop clarity of how I want to treat people. Let me develop clarity about the skills I'm trying to build. Let me develop clarity about how I want to deliver the services that I'm going to provide to the world so that I'm on my calling or in a passion or following a purpose. I just didn't have intention guiding me. And I think that's what the car accident gave me. A big knock in the head and say, hey, kid, life is short, life is precious. So get really intentional about who you are, and that's going to be a lifelong effort. You're always going to have to be examining yourself because, you know, conditions change, times change, you get older, family changes, career changes, health changes. You always have to ask, who am I now? What do I want of life now? And live each day intentionally to bring the energy that you desire into that day. And those were big decisions in my life. Second big life decision for me was the idea that I had to invest in growth education. And what I mean by that is I just put kind of quotation marks around that growth education phrase. It just means that I knew I was going to have to study personal development, psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, behavioral economics, Spirituality if I was ever going to get anywhere. Because I didn't have the education for self mastery in my high school. I didn't have the education for self mastery in my immediate community or friends. I did not have that path to self mastery. You kind of just with anybody I knew. I mean, I had role models in my parents and maybe two teachers at school and one friend's father who actually believed in me. But I knew that I'd have to go read stories of great people, so I'd have to read some biographies. I knew that I didn't know how to control my emotions. I was angry young man. So I had to read books about that. I knew I didn't know how to communicate with people. I was awkward, so I had to read books on communication. I call that growth education. You have to invest in yourself, and you cannot play small in that area. You cannot, like, be a major investor in your life. You should be the primary investor in your life, and your primary investment should always be in your development. I know people who spend more on bed sheets each year than they do on developing their mind into a tapestry of great thoughts, powerful and positive thinking. I know so many people who spend more on the most trivial things, knickknacks that mean nothing two years from now. But if they'd taken a course or gotten a coach or gotten a mentor, it would have shaped their next 20 years of abundance and power and greatness and ability to serve and lead and contribute. I'm very passionate about this topic. You must invest in your personal development, period. That's why I celebrate you. I give you a high five. I'd come through this microphone and give you a big old hug on this day because I realize that it's a very few, a very select few who do this. And you know what? They're the ones who changed the world. You know, you read about the founding fathers of the United States of America as an example. Deeply steeped in what we would call growth education. Most of them had purchased libraries themselves. And those libraries were usually older texts, often in Latin, often from the Greek or the sort of the Roman Empire era. They were learning from stoicism, they were learning from Christianity. They were learning from great works and even eastern cultures, trying to understand how the world of thought, philosophy had developed. They were working on themselves, constantly investing. Their proudest things were their books and their libraries. Today, the proudest thing I got, when I get to be around people, they're like, what's an app? You're like, I open my phone, I Show them growth Day. I'm like, check this out. This is how I'm a happy person. And they're like, wait, what? I mean, yeah, if I'm on my phone, I'm not in social media. I tend to be on growth day or in podcasts. That's about it. Because I really believe we have to have that intentional living and to go to another level, we have to invest in ourselves. I remember the first personal development thing I ever bought was books about a whole bunch of books, like six or seven books. And then the next thing I bought was a bunch of audiobooks. They back then were called tapes and CDs. And then one of the first major things I ever put on a credit card was to go to a seminar, a personal development seminar. And my dad actually had to put the other half of it on his credit card and sent me down just to learn from a conference that was happening with a bunch of motivational speakers. Totally changed my life. Third thing, inspired action. I decided to act each day from a place that was not just intentional, but also, I think, in alignment with the best of who I was, in alignment with my passions, a purpose, a calling. But I adopted this phrase, take the next right action of integrity. Take the next right action of integrity. That's what I call inspired action. It's, you're going to take that next action and you're going to do it in alignment with the best of who you are, with your ideals, with your values, with the beliefs that support something positive in life, with a morality in who you are. And that was important. I said, you know what? I don't want to just have an intention to be great going through the day or going through the, you know, have an intention to make me make money one day. It was like, no, I. I want to be proud of myself. I want to be congruent with the best of who I am and go to bed at night and put my head on the pillow and be like, that was me today that showed up. That was the best of me that showed up. And if it wasn't, let me do the reflection of how could I have been better without the self hatred, without regret, without guilt, without shame, Just to kind of observe how I was going through the day and asking, is that the best Brennan showing up? And if it's not, coach myself. You know, really coach myself. And I think that was important. I suppose the last great big life decision for me at this stage of my life is you guys. It's a different type of investment. It was for me investing in building something that would have a ripple effect beyond myself. And I don't know how to describe that one exactly, but I hope that whatever you're creating in life and whatever you're building or architecting or working hard towards building your family, creating your art, seeking to leave a legacy, I think that all of those things are all about how can we leave things better than we found them? How can we leave a ripple effect of goodness into our family through our teams, through our art or our creations? How can we leave that ripple effect of goodness? That's the things that made the difference for me. I hope you'll enjoy it. I hope you crush it this week. Let's go. You know, and I know it's a great day to grow. 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 progressmode.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 progressmode.com you know, someone was asking basically about a partner who was in denial about where their life is at and how do you know when someone's in denial? How do you, how can you bring that up? And so I'll speak to you on this topic today in hopefully an encouraging way, because telling others they're in denial is usually not a great strategy. But I'm gonna make it here fun for you. My job is to make self improvement a little bit of fun, bring some empathy and encouragement into it for you, and always get you opening up that next gate of awareness. Because all personal development begins with awareness, as you've heard me teach over and over. And first and foremost, please know everybody has something in their life where they're avoiding it, they don't want to do it, they're in denial about where it is, how bad it is, or about who's responsible. That just happens, you know, we all have different stages of life, but we also have each little different season. In a quarter, in a week or a month, we can be on our a Game sometimes or sometimes we're hot messes. So no judgment here. This is a judgment free zone. As you've probably also heard me start some movements over the years. One of the movements I started a couple years back was judge less, feel better. You know, the less you judge yourself, the better you feel. The less you judge other people, the better you feel. So let's keep that in mind as I talk about a tough topic for people today, which is denial. I like to give a framework anytime I teach something, just, you know, three or four areas to think about. And as you take on some of these complex topics in Personal Improvement. And I'm going to give you four ideas today to know whether or not you might be in denial in some area of your life. Now, I'll speak in general terms, but I think you'll totally get this. And it's not meant to say that denial is always a bad thing. And what I mean by that is sometimes we deny what we're facing right now because there's a more optimistic side of us that just believes things can get better and that's a positive intention, right? And sometimes we also deny things because we don't want to take responsibility for them because, you know, they're not ours and we don't accept blame when other people throw, you know, something at us. So sometimes denying a reality is a either a protectionist move or an optimistic move. Right? It can be two sides of a coin for others in general. I'm not a big fan of it because most people pair denial with avoidance. And I always teach that avoidance is a really great short term strategy to achieve comfort. But avoidance is also a great long term strategy to ensure suffering. The more you avoid a difficult reality in your life, the more that reality tends to grow into a big old problem that gets bigger and bigger and more and more difficult to handle. That's why in Personal Improvement where I was talking about be a solution oriented person, when you notice something is up, tackle it head on. Tackle it head on earlier than later so that it doesn't get out of control. Because it's much easier having to move and shift a little rock than a big one that's rolling downhill at your face. Okay, let me give you four ways to think about denial and if it exists in your life. I always tell people, you know, that there's some part of your life you're in denial or avoidance if you just don't have enough joy in your life. That's a weird one, right? I think that almost every quote unquote negative trait or every quote unquote negative affect that we have in our life tends to be a good, like discovery place. And we usually find that place by asking a simple question. Are you happy? And is there ongoing, recurring and voluminous amounts of joy? Are you having a good time? Are you laughing? Are you enjoying life? And usually if not, what's happened is for many people, they've hunkered down into their reality and said, well, this is just how it's going to be and I'm just going to grit and bear it and survive it. And so what they do is they end up just kind of avoiding or denying something is even happening. And they just go about their day. And they go about their day. Go through the motions, go through the motions, go through the motions, go through the motions. And soon going through those motions feels pretty dang bland. And often when you find yourself going through the motions over and over and life isn't getting any better and there's no joy there, you can trace that all the way back to there's something you're just denying, facing something that maybe, you know, maybe, you know, you need to, you know, start a new career. Maybe, you know, you need to move towns, Maybe, you know, you need to have that difficult conversation. Maybe, you know that it's time to face your finances, maybe it's time to deal with your health. You know that these are going on. So in the back of your mind, your psyche says, well, she ain't facing it. So I'm just going to start taking away from this joy bucket over here until she gets the fact that this is intolerable. And that's what usually happens when people realize they're in denial or they've been avoiding something way too long, their life hits threshold. Suddenly it's intolerable. Like, I can't not be joyous anymore. I need to make a change. So I always say, well, if that's true, let's reverse engineer that. Are we having joy? If not, let's back it up and find what is causing that. What do we need to face and change or improve in order to move towards more joy? Usually there's a gate, a door, something we got to kick down to get to that other side where there's more joy. And that very obstacle is that thing we were probably avoiding or denying. The second one, real quick tell, are you progressing in life? You know, do you feel like you're progressing in your career or your art or your business? Do you feel like you're progressing in terms of Building up your knowledge, your skill, your ability to serve, your competency, your. Are you progressing in the relationships that you have? The depth of those relationships, they're becoming better. Are you progressing in terms of getting fitter, healthier, happier? That whatever that progress bar is for you that you're trying to measure? Whatever category of life you're trying to measure, just are you progressing there? And it kind of forces you to evaluate whether or not your scores are staying the same or they're improving. And of course, life is a little bit of a roller coaster. I promise you, you'll start gauging your progress. And same thing with joy. When we start with the end in mind of, I want to progress in my life so I can reach my full potential, we start asking whether or not we're progressing and being honest about it. If we work backwards from there and say, okay, what's preventing me from progressing? There's probably an answer that you already knew. You're like, yeah, I already know. I need to face this. I've just been avoiding or denying it. Another big area I encourage people to do is always just ask a simple question. Am I getting consistent external feedback from other people? I think that is so critical to high performers, so critical to lifelong satisfaction and growth. Is somebody giving you some encouraging or thoughtful feedback? If you don't have any feedback coming into your life, I promise you have higher levels of denial than you think. And I don't say that just to be flippant. I say that as a student of psychology, and I can share with you that it's just reality. People who receive less feedback from external sources tend to have higher degrees of neuroses. They have higher levels of disorder. You know, they typically lack that worldview or that perspective that other people would validate. They tend to score higher on narcissism. All these things happen because they're not actively and consistently seeking out feedback. It's so vital. This is why I highly encourage everybody. Always, always, always at some stage of your life, your career, get a coach without a coach, a mentor, an advisor, a sponsor, whatever you want to call a person who would work with you to share with you about your life. I think it's so important. It's why I believe in therapy is so powerful. For those who are feeling really stuck. I think that it's. Or who are dealing with trauma and haven't figured out how to deal with the emotions of all of life, I think it's really important to have that, you know, whether your therapy or your coaching or your mentoring or your sponsor gives you some feedback. It's really hard to navigate life and to truly achieve joy and progress if we don't get others helping us learn, helping us see a different path. And I think that's usually what happens is people who lack feedback, you can kind of ensure, yeah, there's probably stuff they're not facing because they're just not even seeing it. And that's what I've enjoyed in my entire career as a coach, always to help people in a non judgmental way identify new things about their life. New ways of thinking, new ways of behaving, new ways of relating, new ways of earning, new ways of building, new ways of achieving their potential. It's so frigging fulfilling. I love it. You guys will hear me talk a lot about my career as a high performance coach and we'll even share how you can get certified as a high performance coach because we tend to do two certifications per year and it's just, it's a game changer. And whether you want to become a coach or you're going to get a coach one day, I just recommend it. Someone's got to give you some perspective and help you on your journey to progress anyway. So if you're like, ah, I can't afford a coach, I can't afford a therapist, I can't afford somebody to talk to, it's like, well, you better create that friendship circle and actively talk to them. Ask your friends questions like, hey, where do you see me stuck in my life? Hey, can I ask your honest opinion? Is there anything you think I struggle with in my life that I'm not doing a good job with? Hey, can I ask your honest opinion? Is there any feedback you have for me about being a better friend, better teammate, better caregiver, better lover, better spouse, better partner? Whatever it is, asking for that feedback is going to help you identify obstacles that maybe you knew were there and it's time to deal with them. Or maybe you never seen saw last. Big thing is, do you find yourself to be an active learner with high levels of curiosity? In psychology we call this trait openness. And the idea that if you are closed down to new ideas, you tend to be stuck somewhere. You tend to be stuck in a fixed mindset and, and higher levels of fixed mindset means higher levels typically of denial or avoidance because you don't believe you can change. So why even learn, why even try, why even absorb, why even have the conversations? And that's why I wanna celebrate you for being here. Like the mere fact if you're still listening to me. You're a curious person about your own consciousness. You're curious about your own growth. You're trying to get new ideas, new insights that can make you see your life in different ways so you can become happier, healthier, wealthier, more capable of growing into your full potential. Man, I love that. I appreciate that about you. You know, baby, every day is a great day to grow.