I moved to CA and other Birthday Reflections

We moved to California and it's my birthday weekend. So I thought I would share some personal updates in a rare episode here on the Brennan Show. If you've listened to the show for a while or you've ever followed me on social media or been on my newsletters or engaged with any of my other work, you know, I rarely share personal information. And that was a big choice. More than, I don't know, 15 years ago, where I got really clear that my contributions, or what I thought would be my contributions were so much more about helping you find, you know, the mindset, the goals, the habits, the routines for high performance. It was more about my enjoyment of writing and teaching and coaching and sharing the lessons and the research from all that work in looking through, you know, people's lives and working with them to change, in studying psychology and philosophy and neuroscience and behavioral economics and societal change, and just trying to help you specifically, you know, live an extraordinary quality of life through your mindset and your habits, your role model mindset, your ability to show up and serve. And that's been my focus. So I don't share a lot of personal information. I'm a private guy from Montana. My wife likes to keep our life fairly private as well. And most of our work has always been about you. And, you know, I love to teach all these frameworks about personal development because I'm always learning. And I believe that by making self improvement a way of life, we all get to live a more extraordinary life. And so I just like to share the self improvement side of things. Not so much the personal side of things. Not that they're separate, but just, you know, when you're a public figure, you have to decide how much to share. Some of you been with me long enough to know I was, you know, in what was probably the first couple, first hundred. First couple hundred people to reach a million and then 2 million, then 3 million, then 5 million fans on Facebook. And so I had to decide pretty quickly at the early outset of my career how much of my life I wanted to be on display. Now at that time, people were, you know, they were vlogging their entire life. I mean, they were literally following themselves around 247 with cameras and trying to broadcast it on the Internet or they were doing daily YouTube deep dives into their, know, bedrooms. And I just thought, you know what, I enjoyed that and I think that's good entertainment, great for engagement, but I'm on the empowerment train. I want to know that each piece of content I put out empowers people not Just entertains them. I'll leave the entertainment to other people. And I hope that sometimes I'm entertaining, but I'm not that funny. And I take great, you know, I bring great joy, I hope, into the world and it help affect people's emotions that way. But, you know, I don't feel like I'm added anything to the world. When I show you my morning shake, though, I'm asked about that all the time or, you know, talk about my cat. Rarely asked about that. So what I'd like to share today is just personal information. And so if you're not into that, no problem, Bow out, go to the next episode or listen to any of our other free episodes here on the Brenda Show. Today, I thought I'd talk about kind of reinventing your life. It's actually been the theme in Growth Day this month for a reason. I didn't share it at the beginning of the month. And so if you're new to my community, Growth Day is our company. It's the world's number one personal development app and platform at this stage, giving you the best personal growth tools, coaching, challenges, community and conversations to really help you make self improvement a way of life, to help you make every day a great day to learn and progress and grow. And I share all that because, you know, our theme teaching this month has been about reinventing your life. And I chose that probably a couple months ago, knowing that this would be the month that hopefully Denise and I would be relocated into California and that, you know, I could make some announcements around growth Day. And it is something that feels like a reinvention to me personally as well. You know, as I'm recording this tomorrow, I don't know when you happen to be listening to this, but tomorrow will be my 45th birthday. So 45 spins around this, you know, son of ours, and I've learned a lot. And I feel like every day is a new day in so many ways. I've always had that fresh mindset. I wake up, I feel like it's a blank chapter. And as a writer, that metaphor means something to me. I feel like I get to choose and write and craft and architect, you know, the structure of my life and choose my mindset, my habits, what I'll focus on today, how I'll feel today. I love that. So every day feels pretty new to me, and yet it's very special today. You know, I'm looking out at these rolling green hills and vineyards in Northern California, and, you know, it's a very different vibe here than where we've been the previous, you know, three or four years. Many of, you know, spent the last three, four years in Puerto Rico. And that followed a real incredible arc of just achieving a lot of dreams I've had in my lifetime. I'll do a little rewind here for you. For those who are new to my world, when I was 20. I'm sorry. When I was 19 years old, I had a car accident that inspired my journey of personal change. I had been a suicidal kid and depressed, and then I had a car accident, and it knocked some sense into me and made me realize maybe the greatest realization I've had in 45 years. And that is the power of motivation, mortality. You know, knowing and being aware of your mortality makes you feel life is precious and helps you focus and helps. Helps you think about, what do you want from this life? What do you want to give to this life? What do you want to experience in this life? And very few people, you know, when they hear that story, hear the whole description of the story. I used to only tell it on stages because it's a longer story of why I was depressed, which was from a breakup of a woman I loved and where the car accident was, which was in the Dominican Republic, and. And I was down in the Dominican working for an entrepreneur, and I fell in love with the Caribbean. I had the car accident, and it helped me realize that I really didn't want to take my life. I just wanted to live better, but I didn't know how. And I was heartbroken. I wanted love, but I didn't know how to do that. And I wanted to matter, and I didn't know how to do that. So live, love, matter became my personal mantra. After I recovered from the car accident, I decided, I'm going to live my life so intentionally that each day I feel like I vibrantly lived that. I feel like I connected with other people and I demonstrated heart and I loved others openly and completely, and that I made a difference in some way. Not seeking some big way, just, did I make a difference today? Did I add some value? Did I help others? Was I kind of. And so these things drove me. But often what people don't hear from that story is I fell in love with the Caribbean at 19 years old. And I thought that, you know, one day maybe I'll retire and I'll retire and I'll live on these hills. You know, I think I had visited St Thomas and I thought, oh, yeah, I'll live here in the Virgin Islands. Yes. And I thought you maybe you retire there and you look out on the boats and you go swimming each day. And I just absolutely fell in love with the energy, the culture, the vibrancy. Fast forward to, you know, to my, whatever, I guess 20 years, to my early 40s, I believe it was. And I had been brought down to Puerto Rico to give a presentation. I was writing High Performance Habits. So I flew down to give this keynote. I fell in love with the culture and the vibe and the feel. And I arranged to stay an extra 10 days to go out to the beach and just finish writing High Performance Habits. And I absolutely fell in love with Puerto Rico and the water and the people and, and the vibe and made a big decision that, you know what, maybe this. I don't have to wait until I'm 60, 70, 80 years old and quote, unquote, retired. Maybe I can live here now. And in our personal lives, a lot was going on. And when I say our, I know you don't hear me talk a lot about my wife and my personal life, but that story has some parallels where when we met in our late 20s, yeah, I was living in San Francisco. And so here was this Montana kid, gone to school at University of Montana in Missoula, Montana. Finished undergrad there, then grad school, wrote a book on leadership called the Student Leadership Guide, which got some attention and helped me get a change management and leadership job at Accenture, which is at the time one of the world's largest consulting and technology companies. So got a fancy job in San Francisco, moved down. Wow, what a change from Montana to San Francisco. And long story short, one day working out in a 24 Hour Fitness, I met my wife, Denise, and we promptly fell in love. And she believed in me and I believed in her. And we started thinking about what we wanted for our lives. And you know, during that time, it was a pretty wild time. I started doing my own seminars and writing my own books. Left Accenture quickly went the way of most artists, which means I went broke and had to move in with Denise. And she supported my dreams. And eventually I launched Life's Golden Ticket. And a lot of people at that time when we were dating, and I'm sure her parents and my parents to some degree thought that I would wait to propose to her until my first big book came out. And I didn't want her to think it had to be about success or, you know, the book. And I'd loved her. So I proposed to her before Life's Golden Ticket came out. And I was really struggling to write and release that book and to make it go. So I had to teach myself marketing. And that really got me into what today we call the creator economy, big time. I'd already been in it probably around 2003, before they even called anything. I guess you were a speaker, a motivational teacher. You were. Life coaching was barely a blip. And I'd been doing that and, you know, so, yeah, sorry, I'm doing this with no notes, if you guys don't know. I'm literally just turning on the mic today. So I'm kind of. I decided to do this with no notes whatsoever, just to kind of relive a little bit and give a personal update, because I thought, you know what? I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to create all these frameworks, I'm going to teach them to them, and then they're going to say, you didn't say anything about your personal life. So I thought, no, I'll just sit down and turn the mic on. And so I'm literally just sitting here staring at the rolling hills without a single note. So forgive me if it sounds like I'm going down memory lane and trying to remember things, but very few people know that my wife and I got married in Napa, California, and we just had this beautiful ceremony and wedding, and we fell in love with that area in Northern California. Now, when I met her in San Francisco at 24 Hour Fitness, she was working at a wine company and doing marketing analytics and having a great career, very successful. And she was doing this huge commute between San Francisco and up north in California every day. And she would come home and she wiped out from that commute. One day, she discovers the bar method a couple blocks from where we were living in San Francisco and starts taking a bar method class and absolutely falls in love with it, becomes quickly obsessed with it, going to this class. And I could see the transformation that was happening because she'd come home from the commute and if you've ever commuted for an hour or more every day, you kind of. You know that feeling of kind of turning into a little bit of a zombie at the end of that commute. And she'd come in kind of like that, set her stuff down, get changed, go over to the bar method, come back this vibrant, flowing, energetic woman. And I was like, what happened to you? She said, I'm taking this bar method class. And she just absolutely fell in love with it. Eventually she became a teacher there. So she was kind of like teaching on the weekends while she was working at this other company and she fell in love with it. In the meantime, over that year or so, I think it was my career starts taking off and life school and ticket is doing pretty good. I start doing seminars, they start doing well. I start getting some coaching clients that starts going well. I start a newsletter that's going well. And we kind of quote unquote make it at least for what my ideas and dreams were at that stage. Now at that time, I was blessed to still have my dad in our life. And dad mom lived in Montana and Denise's family lives in California. And at the time we didn't think we wanted to stay in the city or could afford to stay in the city in San Francisco. And I wanted to get around seasons again and be closer kind of in between our parents. And we had visited Portland and fell in love with Portland, Oregon. So made the decision to move up to Portland, Oregon and it was just awesome. We lived. I feel like what was the heyday of Portland, Oregon? It was unbelievable. Growth was happening there. This creative vibe and energy before that kind of got wrecked. I mean it was awesome. It was a whole rejuvenation of the entire city was happening at that time. And Denise decided that she wanted to open an exercise studio there, the Bar Method, and that that was going to be her passion. So we moved up there, got our first house and I started working on another book and began teaching more seminars and speaking more and coaching more and just the whole career was taking off. And she opened up the Bar Method in Portland, Oregon and it really took off because she worked tirelessly. I've never seen someone work so hard in a five year period of my life than she did during that time to build an incredible community and incredible team and incredible experience there. And it really took off and it became her total life. And my life became obviously my career and has always been for me, if you didn't know. My take is that my career is my art and it is my passion and it is my service. And I have that lucky overlap where even on, you know, a random day off, I love doing this. Like, I don't consider this work. When you see me on the Internet, that doesn't feel like work to me because at my core I feel like an artist primarily is a writer. And I love to coach and to teach. I'm a teacher and so when I do that, I just feel like I'm in my, in my zone. I love to learn the things and share the things and everything related to this career. So we just had a Great time, built an awesome. Built awesome teams and company and had a wonderful time in Portland. And then as she started a second studio and as my career got, you know, bigger, we had way more freedom of choice and deciding what we wanted to do when she sold her studio. And so she decided to do that and hand it off to the next generation. And that freed up a lot of time that we had not had. And so we thought, well, what do we want? So now we're, you know, nearing or early 40s, I believe it was, and we're kind of thinking, what's the next stage? And then that trip for me to speak in Puerto Rico, I fell in love with it. I said, honey, you got to come down here. This is incredible. We went down, we visited, we had an amazing time, and we thought, why don't. Why don't we do this? I mean, first and foremost, obviously, it was a lifelong dream. Since I was 19 years old, I wanted to live in the Caribbean. If you ever came to my college or to, you know, my house, I had, you know, pictures of the Caribbean everywhere. You know, just that white sandy beach, that turquoise water, that blue sky. Just something about it. So it was a lifelong dream, and we had the freedom to choose to do that. I think the second part, though, was we wanted some adventure. You know, we had been kind of just so focused on building businesses, and because she had an exercise studio, you know, she had a. A place that she had to show up every day and that we wanted to kind of break free and get a little venture. I also was at a huge growth stage of my company, and I wanted to start a new office. And in my business, especially at the scale we were at in the media business, what a lot of people do is they start outsourcing their social media or they outsource their video. You know, they're. They're outsourcing customer service, and they usually do that offshore. And I didn't really want to do that, you know, with, you know, teams and, you know, other countries around the world. I kind of wanted to. Just had an ethos of. I kind of wanted to keep it here in the US and so Puerto Rico becoming a US Territory and having a great culture and infrastructure for a lot of that work, I said, I'll build a new office. And offices were certainly less expensive to build out than they were in Portland, Oregon. So it all kind of lined up. Honestly, it was like a lifelong dream. We can do it now. There was some adventure. We wanted to learn a new culture, new language, explore a Little bit. There was new office opportunity there, had incredible, you know, benefits of tax and know, a welcoming business environment that we was kind of evaporating in Portland, where suddenly the energy in Portland turned towards, you know, business owners are bad and let's just, you know, make it as difficult as possible to have a successful business. And so we, we just thought it was a good time. So we went down and, you know, it was, it was really hard. It was a really difficult move, obviously, new place, new country of its own, new vibe. But, you know, reorganizing the companies to have a different workflow and, you know, having this huge remote experience and building out a new office with different rules and just learning. It was just a lot to learn. And so I felt like our first year and a half was just almost hustle of learning it all and getting up and running. Now. I used to have a studio where I had, you know, employees and team, where I could just show up, shoot a bunch of videos, walk out. It got edited and got moved to its place. When I went down there, I didn't know anybody yet. And so I was doing all my video again by myself, which, if you don't know, takes a lot of time. And it was just, it was, it was a lot to take on, you know, trying to make friends, trying to get to know the environment, trying to figure out my studio situation, trying to build out an office, trying to find an office. Took over a year just to do that. It was a lot of work. But you know what? Not a single complaint. Because it was a dream. The beach, the people, the food. I mean, it was just so awesome. Absolutely loved it. And then, of course, two years ago on this day, I had finished one of my, I'd say one of my best seminars ever. Now at this time of my life, I'm doing, you know, eight seminars per year. And these are four day events. So think about that, you know. Well, most of them are four day events. Eight a year. And we finished an incredible event in San Diego. End of February 2020, bam. Pandemic hits. Lockdowns, events canceled. Whole business model disrupted. The whole world disrupted. So Denise and I spend the next two years in Puerto Rico, and it's mostly under the pandemic. And Puerto Rico handled it, you know, really well compared to a lot of other places, certainly a lot of US States. And it was a challenging time, though, as you all know, everybody, I don't know anybody who, quote, unquote, enjoyed the pandemic. Maybe there were points of time where it was nice to be alone or isolated or they got to work from home. But it was just the length of it all became wearing. And most importantly, I think for a lot of people, certainly for Denise and I, put in focus the fact that we had aging parents, you know, both of our parents in their upper 70s. And the pandemic was a huge, huge concern for us. And being that far away and that locked down really made us start reevaluating some things. Of course, my whole company, of course, at that point, too, was fortunately remote. And, you know, while the whole world was learning about, you know, zoom and working remotely. I've been doing it for 20 years while the whole world learned about live broadcasts and being live on the Internet to make business. Our first live broadcast was in 2009. You know, I was the first person in my entire industry to do a live broadcast that earned serious revenue and to do it every single month. I've been live every single month since 2009. So we were way early on that. But the fortunate reality with the pandemic is we knew how to do it. We quickly pivoted, no problem, into, you know, more of our digital and online work. We were all working remotely. It wasn't, though, obviously, what I came down there. I came down there to build a big office for social media, for production, for customer service, video. Dead stop. No one's in the offices. I was, you know, we were hoping for a little bit more adventure down there. Dead stop. And most importantly, the dream that I had as we went down there was uniquely my life dream since I was 19. Denise was super game for it, and we had a, you know, I would say great discussions and great time about it, but it was hard because it moved her away from friends, too. And, you know, we were there for a short time, really, before the pandemic. And most of that time we were looking for office and we were moving houses. We moved probably four or five times, just trying to find out where we wanted to live. And so it was bouncing around a lot, and then the lockdown, so she didn't get to create the community and friendships that she loves to have. And we just knew it was time. But also when we decided to go down there, we both said, hey, let's try three, five years, see how it feels. And we might do that in other countries in the future. So who knows? But we knew that we were going to move even before we moved to Puerto Rico. We knew that one day we'd come back to California. Her family is here. And we fell in love with the Bay Area when we lived here, and especially Northern California. And so it was part of the plan. I think it got certainly accelerated with the pandemic. And being close to family is awesome. So it's like, here we are now. It took another monumental effort to move again. So if you haven't heard a lot from me personally, like where I share personal things, even on my broadcast over the last three months, because it's just been hard, it's been incredibly hard to wind down all the things we're doing in Puerto Rico to spin them back up to be growing Growth Day. You know, I don't know if how much you keep up with me or if you're in Growth Day or not, but, you know, we're at 50 plus, I think, employees and contractors with Growth Day. And that's just one of my businesses. Then of course, I've got my own personal brand and all the efforts and processes there. But I also have, you know, our growth coaching side of the business, which is, you know, 80, 90 people there. Then I've got all these, you know, major investments that I advise and guide, like a Kajabi or Circle or Community or vid app or these other companies. I'm very passionate about helping and serving and spend a lot of time with, of course, the people in my industry. I try to mentor and lead and bring together, you know, some 30 plus of the best people in our industry. You know, half of them are involved with Growth Day. The other half are just dear, dear to our friends and, and have their own. All of them have their own huge businesses and are major influences. And I'm always mentoring and talking with them. And a lot of them and a lot of the industries need a lot of help over these last, you know, years of the pandemic. It's just been a lot. Last three months, it was, let's wind down multiple things, build up other things. Let's, you know, oh, yeah, find and build a house in Northern California. Let's relocate everything in our lives from multiple places and let's figure out how to do all that without missing a beat in what is, you know, well over a hundred employees across the businesses. And whew, it was a lot. It was a lot. And so I kind of sit here today sharing all that because I'm also relieved about it. People inevitably I already know will say, well, how did you, how do you deal with all that? And I always think that personal change, you know, it is a process of just discovering what your values are and knowing what your great guiding philosophy or lessons of life are and focusing on those. You know, I know I said I wouldn't drop too many frameworks, but I love if you ever see me teach the A framework of change and progress. You know, I always believe that just begins with great clarity. Clarity about who you are, clarity about the relationships in your life and what those most important to you desire or dream of. Clarity about how you serve and the way you want to serve. Clarity about what you want your life to feel like. Because even in all of that craziness, for us in reorganizing everything in our lives to, to go from a live event company and digital company to a software company, to moving to multiple places, to trying to maintain the, you know, the influence or mentorship that I am blessed to have across so many companies and organizations, maintain my coaching clients, maintain growth day, maintain this podcast, doing all of that. You know, I was just clear about what the lifestyle was and I didn't compromise on that a lot. Even though I feel like I worked harder the last two years than ever, I feel like most people did because of the pandemic. And at the same time I practiced my morning routines, my health never really wavered. I kept my health routines up. I feel like my mindset was vastly, vastly better than I would expect it to be if you described what was coming. I feel incredibly good about my mindset, my attitude at this stage of my life, more so than I probably would have imagined. And so how do I maintain it all? Well, read a book. It's called High Performance Habits. You know, I don't just research that stuff and coach that stuff and teach that stuff. I practice it. And so despite all of those demands and what was a challenging, hard time of life, I. I'm pumped because I had clarity about what I wanted, what we wanted, how we wanted to experience life. Didn't get it right all the time because, hey, external circumstances of a pandemic, but a commitment to that, a daily commitment to recentering and refocusing and honing and setting boundaries, to experience life in the emotional realm, especially the way that you want to, is vital. I don't do a lot of, you know, stress or hustle culture. I work a lot. But if you followed me around, you're thinking, I'm kind of tinkering and I'm that, that. I love that the artistry and the creativity and the joy of doing what I'm doing is still there. It doesn't feel like quote, unquote work. I love doing it. I was pumped to come talk to you guys today in this different format. And so I would say that having clarity and commitment to what you desire and the type of life you want to desire can really pull you through difficult times. But then you also have to challenge yourself. Sorry to turn a teaching mode here for a second, but you got to challenge yourself. Each of those things were challenges that we set up for ourselves. Challenge. Move from Portland to Puerto Rico for some adventure, to build a new office, to try a different thing at our stage, that's a personal challenge we set and we go for. Move from Puerto Rico to Northern California as a challenge. Start the software company, do all these things. It's a challenge. And I know you hear me say this a lot, but I truly believe it. If the only challenges you are facing in your life are the ones that life threw at you, you're not yet living a fully conscious life because you're just reacting. And I love setting up challenges for myself. Oh, okay. The next stage of this life, I'm going to be like this. Work like that, work out like this. Treat people like this, Focus on family or friends like this. Do this with my finances or invest in that or have this daily schedule. I'm always trying to architect our experience. And I mean our as in not just, you know, myself or my wife or our immediate family, but everyone who is around with me trying to encourage and empower them to rise to the level of excellence in their own life, whatever that means for them. I'm always challenging people. Matter of fact, if you're. If you become a certified high performance coach or you'd like to. One of the things I always share, that is the fundamental basis of coaching others is challenging them. Challenging them and being willing and having the guts to do that. To challenge people about how they think or the assumptions they make or to overcome their limiting behaviors or beliefs, to challenge them on who they are and how they show up in the world, about how they treat other people, about what their contributions are. I really believe that sometimes the reason the world is in so much trouble is because no one, or I should say not enough people are challenging the other people around them to increase their intention, to have better habits, to treat people with respect, to raise their standards, to be a person who seeks to be a role model and kind to others, to be a person of service and leadership. I think we've lost a lot of that messaging. And so, so very few people challenge themselves. In fact, today, so many people are overwhelmed and exhausted, understandably. But they're also discouraged and disempowered. And unless they seek self improvement or personal development, nothing changes until one challenges oneself. There is no major shift. We've got to set up challenges in our own life daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, three, five, 10 years. And these don't have to be challenges of knowing your ultimate purpose or vision, but on a consistent basis at least writing down one's goals and being aware of those goals and setting deadlines for those goals and working towards those. That's the stuff of self reliance and self empowerment. That's the stuff of personal growth. Without challenge, we always settle to a mediocre, disengaged and unhealthy life. We fall in the traps of ease and comfort. Sorry to go on my little framework. I also think, though, that for change and progress, we have to have a lot of competence and coaching. You know, I'm skilling up. I'm learning a lot right now, learning a lot of new business models because I'm in software now. You know, Growth Day is a software company at the end of the day. And it's a big transition from having companies that were related to more and more to my brand, where lots of people have Growth Day and they know me from the daily fire. But there's so many tools for personal development in the Growth Day app and so many other teachers. You know, I have nine other coaches in there who teach, frankly, as much or more than I do, and many of them better than I do. So the reality is Growth Day is a platform for personal development and it's growing beyond me. And so I'm learning a lot about running a software company. How do you hire people into that? How do you get investors into that? How do you think about, you know, the long arc of a company like that versus a personal brand? It's a lot of new learning. So I've got new people coaching and mentoring me. I'm trying to level up every area of my life, so I've got people coaching or mentoring me in every area from, you know, my health to my marriage to my friendships, to our finances. Like, I just love it still, I could sit there and say, I know it all, or I can engage in the work to keep learning, because I don't think I've even touched the rim of my potential. I love what I do. I'm honored by the impact that I get to have, the people we get to serve, the level in which we get to play. But all of that was a result of a lot of grace and blessings and luck and consistent clarity and commitment and challenge and skilling up, but also a lot of great people along the way to give me some advice to steer me in this direction or suggest a book or, or make an introduction. And I think the last part of how I think about this process of personal growth or change is community. You know, being around people who talk optimistically about the future. Being around people who have the guts to face, you know, the difficulties and the negativity and work through it and be empathetic and compassionate through it. Being around people who can see struggles and not try to discount it or turn it off, but rather honor the struggle, which is one of the key, you know, greatest lessons in my life is when, you know, struggle, difficulty, negativity, bad days, discouragement. Those are things to be honored as part of life and to feel them, address them, see them, be honest about them, get better and grow through them. The easiest way to do that is to be around other people who have that same mindset. I call them strivers. So if you listen to my growth day, I don't know if you know this, but every single day in growth Day, I'm your coach. I literally leave a daily motivational life coaching audio in Growth Day every day. It's the only place I do that anywhere in the world. As you know, most of the Brendon show, this podcast is it's selections of my teaching. Maybe it's a teaching from a live broadcast or a teaching from my YouTube, a teaching from another podcast I've been on. But mostly it's just, you know, it's pulling from the vault, something I'm doing or teaching somewhere where in, you know, the, the daily fire that I do on growth days literally every day. And it's the only place I do unique audio coachings. And the community knows that. I always start it with, you know, whatever day of the week it is, like it's Happy Monday, striver. Because we're all striving for a more remarkable life. We're all striving for greater depth in our relationships. We're all striving to have a greater sense of aliveness or connection with the moment. We're all striving for more meaningful pursuits or at least to feel more meaning in it. You know, even the Dalai Lama is a striver. As calm and cool and collected and peaceful as a person can be, he would still like to deepen his meditation practice, deepen his relationship with his beliefs. Isn't it true that we're all striving now? Some people can strive to satisfied meaning you can seek and hope for great things in the future, but also be insanely content and happy and fulfilled with where you're at. That's how I feel this day. As I'm recording this for you now, I think of all of the struggles and the challenges and the difficulties of my life. And I feel like as I went through them, because I studied so much personal development, I. But frankly, because I've always been around and built a community of optimistic strivers, people who wanted to achieve great things, but also in the moment, wanted to be present and happy and fulfilled and joyous having them as examples. Friends, family, teammates, co workers, clients has made this journey, especially these last couple years, where lost people who are important in life changed, moved, built new businesses, had extraordinary opportunities, succeeded in some, failed in some, challenged myself. Every day I can say that I was happy. I think that's important, right? Are you happy? Are you happy with where you live? Are you happy with what you do each day? Are you happy about the arc of your life and where you're headed? Are you happy with who you are? Are you happy with the relationships in your life and the community that you built? Are you happy with your competence, your skill sets, your knowledge, your abilities, your talents? Are you happy with how you show up each day? Are you happy with how you treat other people? Now, I don't think anyone can say yes to all those things 24 7, but if you have the intention to be happy and to architect the future that you desire and to treat others the way that you love and would like to be treated, I think you can have a pretty extraordinary life. If you know me or you've ever been around me, you've met someone who rarely ever complains, Rarely ever. Now, it doesn't mean that maybe Denise and I, as we go out for a walk, I might be like, oh, my gosh, I had so many calls today. Or, oh, my gosh, this person did that, or, you know, I feel behind in this, or I haven't gotten that out. It doesn't mean I don't vent, or it doesn't mean we haven't had problems. Many of you know, I've had the challenges of brain injuries. Two in my life. I've broken a lot of bones. I've had physical challenges, health challenges. I've had people take advantage of us. I've had a lot of loss. But along that way, I feel like I remember one of the great lessons of life. When I was going through the moments of my car accident, these series of questions pinged my mind and I thought about them. So much. And it took a while to realize what had happened in that car accident for me, you know, the outcome of my mantra of live, love, matter. But through the car accident, I felt, and I felt those questions, maybe not as verbal or logical questions, but when you're at the end of your life, you wonder if you lived. When you're at your life, you wonder if you loved. And when you're at the end of life, you wonder if you mattered. I've been with a lot of people in their last days, weeks, months, even hours and minutes of their life. As a coach, as someone who volunteered a hospice, as someone who has spent his life talking with people about their lives. But the greatest lesson I learned, and I didn't realize it for a long time, was the gift I'd been granted in that car accident was beyond just a second chance. It was the lesson that towards the end of our lives, we're all going to ask questions of whether or not we were happy with how we lived our life. I found out my questions sound like, did I live, Did I love, and did I matter? Other people have different questions. They might ask, was I an exceptional mother? Was I a fully present father? Was I a strong contributor to the teams I worked on? Was I creative in my expressions of who I was? Was I honest? Was I helpful? There's thousands of questions you could ask yourself. I don't know what yours are, but you should know what yours are. You should know what the great lessons of our your life are. You know, when I think about mine, the number one is to live with intention. Because if you know how you want to feel at the end of your life, how you like, what questions you're going to answer or. I'm sorry, what questions you'll be forced to answer at the end of your life, you live with more intention. I'm such an. If you ever met me, I'm like, I'm such an intentional person. Not because I'm so smart, but because when I was 19, I got whacked in the head in a huge car accident and learned that life is dang short and I want to live, love, and matter. So every night I still go to bed and I ask those questions. All These years later, 25, 26 years later, I'm still asking that question at night. Did I live today? Did I love today? Did I matter today? And that self evaluation leads to self awareness, which leads to self mastery. We learn a lot in our lives. What are some of the major lessons you've had? Maybe you'll Open up your growth day app today. Just go to the journal section and write out. In the journal section, just write what age you are and what are the greatest lessons you've learned in your life. Mine would be, number one, live with intention. Number two, bring the joy. I just know that when we take responsibility for our energy and emotions in life and we're truly responsible for them, we suddenly find that what we really want to experience is more joy. And the energy we want to create around other people is positive. And we don't hope that that happens. We learn to make that happen. We learn to have relationships and conversations and energetic spaces in which we bring joy. We don't just show up at someone's house and go through the motions. We show up in the house and bring the joy like you bring a plate of lasagna. Let's go. Second, or I guess third would be, is honor the struggle. I just learned that all over. There were so many struggles throughout the pandemic. Imagine shutting down eight events that people are looking forward to. Maybe it doesn't sound like a lot, but it was for us. Honor the struggle of moving. Honor the struggle of reinventing yourself. Honor the struggle of business challenges. Honor the struggle of career changes. Honor the struggle of, you know, having family. Honor the struggle of dealing with the kids. Honor the struggle of your finances. All these things are to be honored and to honor it, you must see it, recognize it, call it as it is, and choose to handle it or improve yourself to deal with it. Better to grow through it, into the person you'd like to become, to grow through it. And architect intentionally the next stage of your life, even if you already know this season or the next five months are really dang hard. Something about that. I would say the fourth big lesson I learned, it's the entire book of high performance habits. Those six habits, after what, five years of continually measuring it and continually running that assessment, I still have never, ever found six habits that lead to greater long term success, personal well being and positive relationships. Those are the six I'm open to someday. You know, research revealing there's a seventh or an eighth or a ninth that has as high correlations, but I've not found one at all. Those lessons in that book, I'm telling you what that is a book for the ages. It architects out. I really believe the habits that we can all practice that will forever, forever change our lives. But most importantly, help us build and architect the persons who we want to become. Not because the habits say what the end game is in high Performance habits. I'm not telling you what your life should be like. I'm just like whatever you do in your life, if you want longer term success or if you want to have personal well being, which means high life satisfaction, happiness, a feeling of positive emotions on more consistent basis and of course positive relationships and influence high performance habits. And I forced myself to read that multiple times since I've written it. And my dedication on my 45th is to read it again to revisit the research to make sure I'm walking and practicing those habits because I just know where they lead. And so it's constant reevaluation sometimes, but revisitation of what we already know to be true. Because many of the things you already know to be true and are helpful, you just gotta revisit them. I always say common sense is not always common practice. And that's why so many people have great potential, fail to realize that potential. They're not even doing what they know they should do. And why? Because they're so distracted doing everything else that they don't revisit the fundamentals. Revisiting the fundamentals in personal development, no matter what they are for you, I really believe is a must. That's why we built Growth Day. Because I wanted people to have the best personal growth journal in the world. I wanted people to have the best goal setting plan in the world. I wanted people to have the best and most research backed life assessments, what we call life scores. So that on a daily, weekly or monthly basis you can score your whole life or specific habits that we all know from research leads to positive wellbeing and advancement. It's like, you know, when you're f, when you're scoring yourself and getting targeted recommendations of teaching, which is what Growth Day gives you. It's just a game changer. And then of course, that coaching, having people teach you about, you know, I would say teach you, remind you and help you reflect on your mindset, your habits, your goals, your plans, your intentions, how you're dealing with things. It's just so vital. I would share two last things. One is a little sticker I have right here on my desk. You can see it says who needs me on my A game today? Show up strong. Just a little thing, a little on my desktop monitor says who needs me on my A game today? It reminds us to get outside of ourselves. We live in a world that's become quite selfish and what I call a selfie culture. All about me, me, me. Look at all my stuff. Look at what I do. Look at Mike's process. Look at, look at, look at me. Look at me, look at me. And we forget that we live in a social world and we are social animals. And showing up for others is one way, probably the shortest shortcut of ways. To feel better, to treat others kindly, to be thoughtful, to add value, to take care of one another, to be compassionate, to be strong for others when they need some strength, to be vulnerable with others when they need vulnerability, to be compassionate, empathetic, understanding. That's the way. And finally, I'd be amiss if I didn't mention on this birthday weekend of mine that we also haven't witnessed, you know, great atrocities around the world throughout my 45 years and certainly right now, as Russia has invaded Ukraine. It's a reminder to enjoy the freedoms that you have. It's always been important to me. I hope you've read another one of my books, the Motivation Manifesto. It argues that the main motivation of humankind is the pursuit of one's own personal freedom. And what that means is that specifically in the book, we talk about personal freedom and meaning. Two things. Personal freedom, meaning the ability to be oneself fully without the constraints of fear or doubt or discouragement or faking it, or conformity. It means to be oneself without putting false internal pressure on oneself or also accepting fake or external pressure from others. It means living freely, authentically as who you are. If there's something that I enjoy the most about my life is I'm uniquely me. I don't try to do what everyone else does on social media. I don't try to be like other people. I'm this annoying all the time. This is. Personal freedom is having the ability to be oneself fully without the constraints of internal fears or external pressures that push you or conform you into something you are not. We all want to be more fully expressed as who we truly are. That's part of personal freedom. Another part of personal freedom is the ability to pursue one's own goals and dreams without the constraints of others pushing us down, without, you know, authoritarian regimes telling us how to live our life metaphorically as well as literally. And if anything, at this stage of my life, I'm deeply grateful for the freedoms that I've been granted by previous generations, specifically and blessedly, by being a United States citizen. Many of you know my father fought for that. My dad was in the Marines for 20 plus years and fought three tours in Vietnam and saw a lot of difficulties in life as well as shared with me that value ethic of great gratitude for the freedoms that we have every day. If you had the time to listen to this episode today, you have remarkable freedom in your life, and I hope you enjoy it. I hope you're thankful for it. I hope you try to protect it for yourself and for other people. The freedom of time that you just had, the freedom of attention that you just had. That's a gift. That's a gift. This year I'll be talking a lot about the motivation manifesto because I really believe people need a manifesto for change right now. And that book helped a lot of people around the world reclaim their personal power when it was needed the most in the face of fear. The motivation manifesto helped a lot of people internally. I'm not calling a. It's not a, it's not a book of, you know, politics or revolution here. Don't mind, don't, don't worry. I'm not high minded about the book and I'm not saying it's a solve to any political dramas in the world, believe me. What I'm sharing is a lot of us have felt very pressured, have felt boxed in, have felt shut down. We've had an epic time of true uncertainty with political vitriol, with the pandemic, with the problems that we all face in our own lives as we seek to change during this important time of our lives. And so sometimes we need to be reminded of our own personal power in these moments to shape the next chapter of our life and of our society. So go pick up the motivation manifesto. It might be a great read right now. Or listen to this again because there was a framework in there about clarity and commitment, of challenge and competence, of coaching and community. But whatever you do today, I'd love for you to finish knowing this. There's a Montana kid out here staring at the Northern California hills, grateful for you. I'm grateful for you. You gave me this opportunity. It's you all, it's my readers, it's those who listen to the podcast, it's those who use Growth Day every day that continually remind me to show up each day. It's by hearing your stories of transformation that I remind myself I'm not done. Every year that I get older, I just feel, like, weird. I don't feel like I'm done. Why? Because I'm surrounded by strivers. I get to hear your stories. I get to get your DMs, I get to know what's going on in your life. And it's by hearing that it inspires me to change and to keep going. If you'd like I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to text me anytime. If you don't know my my phone number is on my Instagram. It's just 503-212-6125 and so I'm sorry, that's for us only. That's my texting community. I text a ton with them and we'll do more of that throughout this year. I'm dedicated to being here for you this year, as I have been for the last 20 years of this career. It's been what, since the last time I had a job was 2005 or 6? Every day since then has felt like a day of creative freedom, of joy to get to be here with you. Of I've never posted something without thinking about your real life, you and your family, your goals, your dreams, the difficulties we face as humans to improve our lives. So keep in touch. You can text me if you're in the US at 5032-1261-2550-3212-6125 or go say hi with a DM on Instagram. If you know someone who maybe needs some motivation, send the motivation manifesto to them. You can get on Amazon or just bring them over to the Brennan Show. Go listen to any of these past episodes. You can see they're not so much about me, they're frameworks for personal improvement. And every day we have that opportunity to keep improving. I will keep doing that. I'm going to make Growth Day better and better and better. I'm making this podcast better and better and better. This year I'll be dropping two other podcasts. I'll be bringing so much new value to the world. I'm excited to reinvigorate many of my own personal brands now that I've got, you know, Growth Day off the ground and excited to bring even more features and tools and conversations into Growth Day to help you make every day a great day to grow. We all have so much freedom. We all have so much personal power. Let's use that. Let's. Let's live with intention. Let's make sure that we know what our questions will be at the end of our lives. Let's bring the joy. Let's honor the struggle. Let's practice our high performance habits and keep striving together to realize that the world needs us right now on our A game to be our best. So let's make sure we show up each day with that intention to live, to love, and to matter. Thanks for listening.