Mashup: 5 Powerful Ways to Deal With Adversity

Confidence, Real, genuine, authentic confidence. To me simply means a belief in your ability to figure things out. That's all. When the stuff hits the fan, just go, okay, I didn't want that. But I'll figure it out. That's all I want you to say. I'll figure it out. I'll handle it. Things will be okay. This is difficult. I will survive. What do you do when the inevitable adversity enters your life? A difficult situation, some bad news, you lose the job, the medical report comes in bad, something negative happens, something you didn't anticipate that just kind of just craps on your life, and all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, what do I do? You know, when that adversity strikes, you got to see it. Not just as, you know, this terrible moment, but perhaps a called moment, a moment in which you are being asked to rise up. A moment when you are being asked, being challenged, being brought to task, to be able to summon your real strength, to be able to summon more empathy, more love, more caring, more strength, more ambition, more go to itiveness. I don't know what is for you, but when adversity strikes, I always keep a pretty positive head on my shoulders and go, okay, this is hard. I don't pretend it doesn't suck, but I have to be able to move through it if I'm going to survive. And I know you know that as well. So what I thought I'd do is just share five big ideas with you of how, how to manage adversity, what to do when it strikes, how do you deal with it better than maybe you have in the past? Because I know if you're watching this or you listen to this, you know that, you know, you're a striver already, you got some basics, you've got some resilience. It's just, it's harder now because there's so many things going on for so many people. It's harder to bounce back. It really is. When everyone's juggling so many obligations, so many ambitions, so many opportunities, man, when you stumble now, sometimes it feels like a real crash and burn. So what do you do? Number one, have confidence, my friend. Have confidence. I know that might sound silly or like some, you know, self help, motivational crap, but no, here's the deal. You got to have confidence that you're going to deal with this, that it's going to go okay, that you'll turn it around, or that you'll confidently deal with it in a way in which at least you're okay with it. Now let me qualify this. I don't mean confidence meaning like, well, negative situation. You're like, I've got this, I can handle this. Hahaha. It's not like that. What I mean by confidence is confidence. Real, genuine, authentic confidence, to me simply means a belief in your ability to figure things out. That's all. When the stuff hits the fan, just go, okay, I didn't want that, but I'll figure it out. That's all I want you to say. I'll figure it out. I'll handle it. Things will be okay. This is difficult. I will survive. I know that sounds so basic, but if you don't frame everything else that comes after that, it's just too hard. It's just too hard. We will get sucked in negativity. We'll get sucked into dread or into bitterness or into sadness. We just have to immediately go, oh gosh, okay, I'm gonna have confidence. I know I can figure this out. Because you know what the reality is? You figured things out in the past that were equally as difficult or harder. Or if you haven't, if this is the biggest adversity you've ever faced in your life, guess what you're gonna need to survive, my friend? Belief in your ability to figure things out. That's confidence. That's first stage. That's number one. Number two, keep perspective. And this is really important, your adversity, that seems so difficult. Two things to know. Number one, you're not the first person to be challenged with that adversity. Out of 7 billion people and thousands of collected years of recorded human history, none of us are going through anything that unique. I know that sounds mean to say, but, you know, I've always found that people who really believe that their adversity or difficulty is so different than everyone else, that nobody can understand, they become bitter. You don't understand, or they don't ever ask for help because they don't think anyone can understand them. So that they get mad at everybody else, or they push everybody else away or avoid the very thing that could serve them, which is seeking some assistance, as we'll talk about. So I'd like you to do is keep perspective. No one is the first person to ever get cancer anymore. No one's the first person to lose a child anymore. No one's the first person to lose a limb anymore. No one's the first person to be in a car accident anymore. Other people have gone through it. So keep perspective. Realize that, you know, there's Only two stories in humanity's narrative. That's struggle and progress. Lots of people struggled through what you've been through, but a lot of people have also progressed through it. So never feel alone and realize too with keeping perspective. Remember the times in the past that you did have some adversity. You called on some kind of strength. You summoned something. What made you help you get through it before? What helped you, you know, what helped you break through? What helped you deal with it? Can you remember those times? Think about that. What helped you before? What helped you before? Remember those times. It will help you keep perspective. You're not alone. You've been through some stuff before. Believe in your ability. Figure this one out too. Next big number three, Schedule action. I love this one. Schedule action. What it means is when adversity strikes, so many people just go, oh my gosh, that's horrible. And they sit and they wait and they wait and they wait. Or they lay in bed and they're depressed and depressed and depressed. And they keep hoping for something to change. But there's only two things that change your life. Either new, something new comes in, some new opportunity, new person, new luck, new grace. Something new comes externally in, or something new comes from within. Some new power, some new strength, some new ambition, some new belief, some new resolve, some. Some new willingness to fight and make it happen. Those are the only two things that change. Either something new comes in or something new comes within. And I tell you that because you can't just wait and hope that everything gets better. Because if it's real adversity, it's going to require action. And what I tell people is don't kind of like sometimes act to deal with it, schedule it. What are you going to do every single day? Even if it's just three goals every day, to handle that, to deal with that, to cope with that. Just three things. Sometimes those three things are simple as take a shower. You know, sometimes just getting out of bed, taking a shower to start the day is a win. You know, I remember when I had my brain injury, it was a huge struggle. Just basic stuff. I mean, sending an email sometimes was a win. Making a call, you know, making sure I ate lunch to keep glucose coming to my brain. Like simple things were wins. But I had to schedule things because left to my own devices, I wouldn't do anything. I'd be like on the seventh season of some show or something. You know, you got to schedule action each day, especially when it's difficult. Next idea. I kind of preface this one, but it's important to tactically do this, ask for help. And I don't mean ask for help. When you are at rock bottom, all this stuff is gone. Now you're bankrupt, now you're broke. Now awful things are happening. But most people ask for help way late. Soon as adversity strikes, ask for help. The second. If it seems in any way overwhelming, ask for help. Say, you know, ask your spouse or your partner, hey, honey, here's what's going on. I don't know exactly how I'm going to deal with it. You got any ideas? Or if it's a big thing, go to your business partner, go to your team, go to somebody at work and say, hey, here's a situation. Let's brainstorm some ideas of how to deal with this. That's asking for help too. If it's very, very traumatic, ask for help from a professional, a professional person in the medical or therapeutic field, psychological fields. Just get some assistance in how to think through things. Sometimes that's the greatest help we can get is, you know, even just going out with some friends or some girlfriends, sit around the table and say, hey, this thing happened on Monday. I wonder, can I tell you guys about it? And just get your perspective and just listen. Sometimes other people talking how they're dealing with it or how they've dealt with it can truly serve you. Remember, you're not alone. You've been through stuff before, so have other people. And believing in your ability, figure things out, things will start to go okay, and then Last piece. Maybe sometimes the adversity sticks around for a while. Honor the struggle. Honor the struggle. If you've been with me in my High Performance Academy program or any of my seminars before, you know, this is a critical element, a critical mindset to all of success in life is to honor the struggle. As I said at the very beginning of this video, sometimes the struggle is put there for you. Sometimes life is happening for us to get better. And it's a demand and it's challenging. And that hardship can suck. But know, know that that struggle is necessary at this moment. Now you gotta deal with it. You can't avoid it. You've gotta face this thing and say, okay, what can I move? What can I shake? Except the fact that we can't change everything. We can't influence everything, but we can change and influence our attitude, our actions each day. We can figure out something to move forward in our lives and a little bit more that we get of those little things that we can move forward a little bit more. We Feel confident again, again. The struggle is something to be honored because it's going to forge a greater capacity and character later on. So honor it. Don't hate it because anything you throw hate at that quickly amplifies into flames of fury. Instead, have patience with it, see it and recognize it as a necessary thing at this time of your life. That's why it's been put there even if you don't want it. Have that mentality like, okay, I'm meant to deal with this now. I didn't want to, but here it is. So how do I keep my confidence? What can I remind myself about perspective? How can I take some actions today? How can I ask for some help and honor this entire process? If you do that, you'll survive this adversity. You might just thrive through it. But no matter what, it'll put you on that other end where you start to reliving the charge life. This is that time of year. People are thinking about their relationships. And one of the most common questions we get asked is Brendon, how do we set more boundaries in our relationships? You know, someone takes advantage of our time, our energy, our effort, our money, whatever it is, and we get upset about that. So how can we prevent that? Now, I'm going to speak today specifically about setting healthy boundaries in healthy relationships, right? So your lover, your partner, your spouse, that person you're kissing on, how do you set some good relationship boundaries there? Okay, let's get into it. Four big ideas. Number one, Most important, say it early, don't wait to say it. What I mean by that is if you know what your boundaries are, don't let them crash into it and mess up before you say it. And what happens for most people because they don't know their boundaries, they just flip off at somebody, right? Someone does something, they get all mad at them. They're like, what's wrong with you? And they don't realize the other person's clueless. No one will ever know your boundaries until you explicitly say, hey, this is a boundary for me. Let me say that again. No one will ever know it. Here's what happens especially, especially when people are new or young in a relationship, they try to set little hints. You know, someone does their man does something, they're, oh, honey, I wish you wouldn't do that. And they're like, that's all they say. That is not enough. Okay? Men, by the way, are thick in the head. They need explicit, direct communication. If you set little hints or little traps, they're not going to Figure it out ever. Not five years in the marriage, not 10 years. Boundaries need explicit communication. You need to say, hey, you know what? This is a real boundary for me. I'm not able to do that. I don't like that. This thing is really important to me. If you don't explicitly say it, they will never understand it or try to respect it. So if you had someone who's disrespecting you or not understanding you, is it because you haven't been explicit with them yet? At least start there. Trust me, start there. So maybe sit down and go, okay, think about the person you're in love with right now and say, okay, what are my real boundaries? What don't I want to talk about? What don't I like that they do? What do I not want to compromise again on where do I not want to feel like I'm too vulnerable or where do I want to open up? Like, you need to know your boundaries. And if you don't, don't ever expect them to. And never get mad at them when they bounce into it. The most important thing, this is number two, never get upset when someone bounces into your boundary. Ever. When someone bounces into it, either A, they don't know it, or B, they're just kind of going through the motions in their own life. Look, they're not thinking about your boundaries. This is really important. No one thinking about your boundaries. And so when they bounce into it, don't get mad. It's a useless emotion to get angry when somebody does that. Because remember, like, would you get mad at oblivious child? Well, most adults are obliviously going through their day automatically. And when you're going through your life automatically without full adult vibrancy and presence, you're going to do some dumb stuff. So don't get mad. Just once. It happens again, turn back to explicit, hey, I'd really like this. Could you pay attention to that? I would also say one reason you should never get mad is do you know theirs? What are their boundaries? Do you know their boundaries that make them too vulnerable? Like, if you go there, do you know their boundaries of what makes them upset? Have you asked the questions to try and figure out what they want, what they desire, what they need? Or you're just thinking about your own space? Now I know. And I'm not trying to judge you because I don't know your story. I'm talking about this happens for a lot of people. They make the mistake of wanting so much for people to respect them without understanding others or giving others respect. Because it's very easy to get selfish in relationships, especially if you've been hurt. I understand that. But sometimes when we've been hurt, we want to set up a boundary to make everybody follow in line for. Fall in line with us without understanding them. And that's trouble. And that's why I want to lead to this next point, which is really important. Set boundaries that help your relationship, not just you. I mean, you have to think of the boundary is no longer you and the boundary is no longer them. The boundary is the two of you together. So it's a different boundary. You need to open up your boundaries to the relationship. That means you need to change your personal preferences and pet peeves and everything else and open it to realize they got theirs too. Your boundaries as a couple should always be expanding between the two of you. Your trust should expand between the two of you. Your love should expand between the two of you. Your faith in each other and confidence in each other, that should expand between the two of you. Meaning boundaries are never set in a relationship. You should be pushing them, pushing them. Be more vulnerable on your fifth date than you were on your first date, than you were on your first year versus your sixth year. Like, continue to grow and open up that boundary. It's so important. But realize if all the boundaries you have are to protect yourself, you're not setting boundaries for the relationship. You're just being a single person in a silo in a relationship. Real relationships have boundaries for themselves. What do I mean by that? You protect your time with your spouse, your lover, your partner. As much as you try to protect your time against them or against others, you protect the respect that the two of you have. When people try to poke holes at your lover and they criticize them, you don't allow that. You don't speak ill of the person that you're in love with. You know, if you're in love with them, that relationship is healthy. Look, if. If they're abusive or they're doing something bad, tell lots of people and get out of that situation. But if you are in love and this is a good relationship, listen, listen. It's important that you respect the relationship boundaries. That you don't speak ill or bad of the other person. That you don't take potshots at them. That you respect the two of you together. As important as your preferences, as important as their preferences. As important as your career. As important as their career. That the relationship itself deserves protection and your boundary around it. To love on it and to protect it. Your job is to protect the relationship more than protecting your ego. Does that make sense? So expand your own definition of boundaries and that will lead you in this last piece, which you actually really like, which is how can you now let go of all these boundaries you've set up? Like, there's a freedom in relationship after a period of time where the boundaries have been knocked down more, where you're allowing people in more. I tell people all the time, I say, you really want to set boundaries in life, be more loving. It'll push the boundaries away, right? You want to set more boundaries in life, be more loving, because the bigger those boundaries get, the more they become useless. Like, why are you trying to protect yourself so much? Think about that. After a period of time in a relationship, why try to protect yourself so much? Open up again. Open up those boundaries now. Again. If you're in a relationship where there's abuse, mental, physical, emotional abuse, then your job needs to be exit, period. Your job isn't. Change the other person, your job. Exit, Set the boundary, exit. That's the answer, period. If you're in an abusive relationship, go right, go get. There's plenty of services in your local communities. Get support, ask for your friends, but get out of that relationship because the abuse will not. They're not going to suddenly remember not to be abusive. That's where they're at and you can't change it. So set that boundary clear and clean. But if you're in a positive relationship, love more in that relationship, be more vulnerable. Let that thing come open now. Now, obviously you can tell I'm just answering your questions here and I'm going off the top of my head, but I hope it serves you because the reality is most people, they're trying to protect themselves too much in life because they got hurt. But I had to learn that lesson, too. I had a terrible breakup when I was a young man that caused me and led me into depression and ultimately suicidal thoughts. And I did what we all do. I didn't want to get hurt anymore, so I built up boundaries. I. I put up walls, I put on a mask. Whatever metaphor you want to use, I was trying to keep out the bad people, but at that cost of letting in good people. So I always say sometimes in our own boundaries, in our own efforts to protect ourselves, we block out the very things that we so desperately desire. So it might actually turn out in your life. You didn't need more boundaries. You need to let a few of them go. You've probably seen me online talking about motivation and specifically how to spark it, right? You gotta have that ambition, that dream, that desire, and you have to have that expectancy, that confidence that you can make it happen. But how do you sustain motivation over the long term, not just spark it so you feel good each morning. But I'm talking about a series of years. Have you ever had a period of your life where it just was like years of major progress, major breakthroughs, major kicking butt? What was going on then? And if you've never had it, what's the magical thing that those people have who do have that? Here's what they have. They have the ability to sustain motivation. Now, I've been blessed to spend 20 years studying the science of motivation and high performance. And in that process, I've gotten to work with some of the most well known celebrities, influencers, politicians, people who are moving the needle of the world forward. And in that process, I've also been able to serve over a million online students on this topic. So I know for sure how to help you in this area. To sustain motivation, you have to do two things you probably already know. First, you have to focus. Now, before you turn off the video or go to the next one, listen to this. A lot of people have that initial desire, but they don't look at their goals every single day. They don't revisit every single, let's say Sunday and say, how did I do this week? How did I do in my health, in my relationships, in my career? How did I do with my finances? How did I do with any other goals that I set up? You have to have that daily discipline to look and focus on what you're doing and that weekly review. You also have to have the ability to avoid distractions. One of the reasons people love my book, the motivation Manifesto is this teaches you how to set boundaries, how to say no, how to push away distraction, to own your life again. But here's the deal. When you're focusing on something and you're really dialing in, it also brings your full presence into something. So you perform at higher levels. The second thing you need outside of focus is sane. Motivation is everyday effort. It's the reason you have to set up habits. It's the reason reason you have to have a daily routine, a morning routine. It's the reason you have to make sure you have a checklist of to do's each day. I know that sounds so basic, but here's the funny thing. A lot of people think they'll have motivation one day, then they'll put the effort out. It's like motivation. First they think, then effort comes. The motivation inspires the effort, right? It's actually the opposite. In the science of motivation, it's with daily effort that motivation comes. I like to tell people this, with momentum comes more motivation. Don't wait for the motivation to go out and take action. Actually take action first, because just a little bit of progress, a few quick wins, drops dopamine into the brain, we start feeling good and rewarded for our behavior, and suddenly we find ourselves more motivation. So here's the thing. Set three goals each day. Knock off each of those three goals. If you just did that each and every single day, you'd start feeling more personal power and you start getting ahead. 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 we're going to talk about your confidence and I am really excited to break down a framework for you and I hope in doing this help you realize where some of those dark days come from, where you lose faith in yourself, where those dark days come from, when you know you have a lot to do but you just don't feel like you can figure it out where that you know, when you get to go out in the world again or when you're on a zoom and you got to show yourself to the world, you feel awkward or weird or insecure, that you tap back into that authentic strength, that truth of who you are. And that as you go through your life, you feel confident that no matter what life is going to throw at you, you're going to learn, you're going to figure it out, you're going to develop your capabilities. And many of you are going through really hard times right now. Sometimes it's just hard to even be positive. You can be so consumed and so overwhelmed by the negativity of other things out there. You just go, oh my gosh, this is just hard to feel Good, let alone confident. I'm going to break down a framework that I hope some of you are familiar with. But today we're going to talk about it with a different lens of how to overcome insecurities and what specific daily and monthly habits you might set up for yourself to feel more strong. So this is a piece of paper. It's a framework for confidence that I have on a board in my office. See, we need reminders. We are visual humans. We need to look at something to remind ourselves of something. And so you see, I have this. I'll share this with you in a minute, but I want to get the practice in your mind. The practice in your mind is you should have instructions to yourself on a wall somewhere. So you're like, if you walked into my office and say, brandon, why do you have a framework for confidence on your wall over there? And I go, well, because sometimes I don't feel confident. And what do we do when we don't feel something? Well, when we don't feel something that we want to feel, we tend to feel not good because we're like, I don't feel this, so I feel bad about myself. Or we tend to distract ourselves. I don't like this feeling, so I don't know what to do. So let me just scroll through the Internet. So to me, what I've done is I've got a board over here and. And there's my framework for happiness. Do you have a framework for happiness on your wall yet? So that when you don't feel happy, you go, I don't feel happy. What's going on with me? And you can just go look at it and go, ah, I've got my checklist for happiness right there. I forgot point number three. No wonder I'm not happy. What I'm trying to suggest to you is maybe you give yourself a checklist, a framework, a set of instructions for the feelings that you really want to experience in life. And when you're not feeling it, instead of retreating into the comforts of distraction, you go back to your instructions. You know what makes you feel good, and it's time to write that down and look at it more consistently. Here we go. This is my confidence checklist. This is my framework for confidence. I'm going to break down each of these areas. And even if you've seen this maybe before with me, what I'd love to do is break down where these grow into trouble, where these are developed and strengthened, where these can be applied in your life, financially, in your life, in your Marriage or your relationship with your partner, with the kids. So I'm going to break down each of those things, each of those areas. I'll use a card here for you. We're going to start with that very first card here. Clarity. Human beings are a goal directed species. If we don't have clarity on what we want, if we don't have clarity on who we are, if we don't have clarity on what our intentions are in social relationships, it's unnerving to us. Well, if you ever felt lost in life, you know that feeling. It's coming from a lack of a often of clarity. We'll talk about this. You just don't know who you are, what you're about, what you want anymore. And it's unsettling when you lack clarity. It's really unsettling. You're like, ah, I don't know what I'm about anymore. And this is where midlife crises come in. Clarity is something that, it's like knowledge or a goal or an aim, but it's loosely held. What I mean by that is like, okay, that's important to me, but I can be flexible and adaptive as well. It's not this idea that you have total 100% complete certainty and you're total certain all the time. It's like, that is a adolescent dream. There is no absolute certainty in anything in life. Right. And so we have to go, oh, okay, I can have clear direction or I can be strongly committed to this thing. But lots of people who are absolutely certain about something shifts months later. So here's my question for you. On a scale of 1 to 10 in the last 60 days, how clear have you been about what you wanted in life? Did you start the day with some clarity about how you wanted to live that day, show up that day, treat other people that day, serve that day? So let's think about where sometimes you feel insecure. You're going to go to that party or that networking function, you feel insecure about yourself. Why? Because in your mind, the insecurity in that moment, in that situation of the networking situation or the party is coming from. I don't know who I am in here. I don't know these people and who I'm supposed to be with them. I don't know where to go or where to stand or who to talk to. And so just it's unnerving. The insecurity is I don't know what to do in this situation. Now, that type of confidence or lack thereof is something that psychologists call Self efficacy. Self efficacy is about I don't know what to do in this situation. That's where the insecurity comes from. Positive self efficacy means I believe that I know what to do in this situation. I can handle this. Even if I don't know how yet. I believe I can handle this. I have the competence to take this on as an example. That's positive. But a lot of things in life you don't know how to deal with. You don't have self efficacy because you don't know how to handle it yet. This is a new party. You don't know anybody in it. It's a new networking event. You've never met any of these people. How do you get more confidence in that? Well, one simple thing you can do is start with clarity. Okay, I'm going to go talk to people. What's something I'd love to share about myself with every new person I meet? Oh, okay. Lock that in. Okay, got it. What's one question I could ask every new person I meet? Okay, lock that in. Okay, just those two things have been found to dramatically increase people's sense of confidence in social situations. I know what I'm gonna share about myself. I have clarity on it. I know what I'm gonna ask them. I've clarity on it. Just those two simple things. The problem with clarity is it's a double edged sword. A lot of people, their clarity is, I'm awful, I'm worthless, I'm no good. And they've stacked up all these experiences to strengthen that belief. And their clarity is, well, I'm a jerk, I don't deserve success, I won't have success. They've got clarity, but they got the wrong kind of clarity. See, confidence requires positive clarity, not negative, self defeating clarity. So clarity is a double edged sword. If you believe the wrong thing about yourself, that's going to hurt you too. So what's the opposite of that? Well, I'm going to start viewing myself positively. How can we do that? Well, you know what? Maybe each day for the next 10 days I'm going to write down a strength that I have. Write down 10 positive things about yourself every day for the next 10 days. Watch what happens for you. It starts shifting your perception of yourself. Here, my little framework, we're gonna go from clarity now to congruence. Congruence is living in alignment with what you know is the best of you. Living in alignment with the best of who you are. Living in alignment with your values. When you are not congruent with your brain Logs that and what it says in that log, that log entry. Not living your word, not living your truth, not doing what you said you would do. And too many of those negative withdrawals sucks away your confidence. But here's what you need to be congruent. What do you need? Clarity. You say, okay, these are my values. These are my beliefs. This is what I think is important as a human being, as a parent, as a caregiver, as a leader. Congruence measures whether or not you're doing what you said you're going to do. And that's important. So here's the simplest fix. If you been pulling too many withdrawals out of that bank account, it's time to put some back in. And so today might be the day you go, where have I been incongruent? Where do I say something and I don't do it? Where are you out of congruence? And can you do the simple acts? Sometimes when you're out of congruence, first you just apologize to yourself. You say, you know what? Gosh, Brendan, I haven't been honest with myself. Let's make a change. I think the fastest path back into congruence is an apology. An apology to yourself, an apology to other persons. It takes a lot of guts to say you are wrong. It takes a lot of guts to acknowledge you could do better. This one's fundamental. You get to decide today what to be congruent with. You get to decide who you are. And you get to decide to show up and live into that third big idea. Competence. Competence. It's a collection of knowledge, skill, talents and abilities. The good news is you can increase this. So here's what I want you to do every day. Every day I want you to have clarity on what skills you are working on in your life. That's how we're going to get competence. Competence for too many people comes two years too late. Why? Because they wait too long to start developing a skill. Every day I'm very clear about what I'm trying to improve. Every day I'm learning something, but I'm learning not just casually or passively. I'm going. I'm trying to get better at this thing. I want you all to have an ambition, to have one or two or three skill sets that you're literally world class in, that you're world class in. Not because you need the ego that I am world class? No, no, no. Because you need the challenge. You know why a lot of people lack confidence? They never engage challenge. You want more confidence, engage in Challenge more often. The more challenge you engage in and you incrementally improve in it, the more, the more your brain goes, Yep, there I did. I did it again. And what happens when you don't have confidence? You don't engage in challenge. When you don't engage in challenge, you don't get more competence. So you don't get that competence confidence loop. We were talking about the flywheel you all follow. So for those of you, if you're like, Brennan, I just lack confidence. Like, challenge yourself more. But you're like, but I'm lacking confidence. I'm like, exactly, exactly. See, you're going, well, I'll get confidence, then I'll do the challenging things. I'm like the other way around. You want more confidence, do challenging things more often. When you do challenging things more often, you learn. When you learn competence, confidence, connection. When you don't have a connection with yourself or others, confidence goes down. So you want to feel more confident in life, reconnect with yourself and others with yourself. That's your morning routine. Lock in that morning routine. The more you feel connected to self, the more confident you are. But you need the time to connect to yourself away from the email, the social media, the obligations for the kids, the family, the husbands, the spouses, the team, everything else. You need that moment where you're like out and connecting with yourself, with your thoughts. You need time to think and to feel again. So turn off the tv, go for the walk, put down the phone, do the meditation, get away from the social thing 110 minutes earlier so you can sit in the car and just think before you go home. You need more space to be thinking and connecting with self. So build that in your life. Self connection. Second part, the most important part. We know environment dramatically shapes your confidence because the connection you have with the people around you. This means be around positive people, contribute around positive people. Learn from positive people. It means create great relationships in your life. I want you all to improve this one. Simple action. Simple daily, weekly, real life action. You must start sharing your real thoughts, feelings, desires and goals with the people around you. You got to do it more often. Here's where you lack confidence in life. When you won't share your truth because you're worried what everyone else thinks. That's what high schoolers do. You don't do that anymore. You're too damn old. Now you share your truth with other people and realize most of them won't get it, won't understand why it's important, won't support you, won't care or at least won't get in your way and say anything at all. But the less you speak your truth to other people, the more superficial your connections are with them. Number five is capability. Competence is the knowing, the knowledge, skill, talent, ability. Capability is you can do it, you can do it every time. It is like a strength, if you will. It is something that is, you are highly capable at that thing. You are at another level of skill that it shows up every single time. But here's the truth. Capability. Capability is as much as a mindset as a competence. Let me give you an example. A lot of extremely smart people who can handle the problem don't handle the problem because they don't feel capable. It's like, yeah, I know it, but I don't do it. See, there's a difference between knowledge and execution, which is often the difference between competence and capability. See, competence is like the foundation and a stored value, but it's expressed through execution. Capability, you want to develop capability, it means you get in the mix, you do the work, you show up, you try. Capability means I know I will execute. That's what to me, confident capabilities, I will execute. How do you do that? You have to be more consistent in your execution. You need to be way more consistent in your execution. We talked about decision earlier. Decision is great. Action is required. We've got to get you to execute more of those to do lists. You want more success, you want more joy, you want more confidence, you got to execute more of the plans. Capability is self trust to take the action. It's not just do I know how to take the action, it's I'm an action taker, I'm going to show up, I'm capable to handle this, I will do this. I trust in myself to, to handle this, to execute, to execute again and again and again and again and again. That's capability. And I really want you to develop that in your heart and in your soul by checking off the simplest of things each day. If you have a list of three to do lists, if you wrote down your three top priorities for the day, do those first. Before you do your social media, before, before you reply to everyone's DMs inbox, you know, voice message, texts, it's like, listen, I have so many people who, they spend all day just checking their email to reply to everybody else. Now that's fine if that's your job, that's customer service, do that, that's your job. But if you're an entrepreneur as an example or you have A whole list of other priorities. And you're just checking into other people's agendas all day to meet all their obligations. And you keep missing your key priorities day after day after day after day. Your brain doesn't feel like you're capable anymore. Even though you might be smart, you're competent, but your brain doesn't believe you're capable. Last big idea today. Contribution. You want confidence. Give more. You want confidence? Make your difference. You want confidence? Do things that matter. Why? Because a those things are celebrated in the world. Generous, giving people tend to have greater what connections with other people. Generous, giving, caring, hardworking people tend to have what? More clarity about who they are. They're more congruent these things. They feel more capable. Like generosity. Doing things that matter. Giving strengthens the whole rest of the model. The whole model drives itself. When you've got each of these pieces running right, each of these pieces touches one another. Contributions are key. It really is. Sometimes when you feel so bad about yourself, you're not going to shake yourself out of that, but what can shake yourself out of that is service. Sometimes you got to get out of your own head. And to me, what has created a great confidence and reverence for life in my life has been. I've been volunteering most of my life. When you're a volunteer, when you show up for others, when you volunteer to help out, whether it's as simple as helping a friend move or going down to the local soup kitchen, or volunteering for that non profit cause that you like, or running that fundraiser even though you don't know how those contributions make a difference. Maybe your contribution is your art, maybe your contribution is your time. Maybe your contribution is financial. Maybe your contribution is mentorship. Maybe your contribution is your content or your book or your work, whatever that is. If you can do the same thing where you can give generously to it, give to your work, be generous to that contribution, be in the moment when you're serving someone who is in need. You get a little more spirit inside. And when that spirit of goodness is inside, you can share it more too. You know when most people evaluate themselves, when they have a performance review coming up at work, when they've really screwed something up and they're guilty and they're thinking of all the other stupid things they've done that hurt them, when they hit a birthday, when they hit New Year's, when someone holds up a mirror in front of them and says, hey, you're being a jerk and they have to really re evaluate. Most people are not proactively assessing their performance. And so when it comes time to do that, they're disappointed. And so if this is not a basic habit for you, I need you to start scoring yourself at the end of the day. Now, people really don't like this one and I'm just going to be upfront about that. You probably won't want to do this, and a lot of people don't. But if there's something inside of you that is restless for that next level, we're going to have to start measuring. If you don't measure it, you can't improve it. And the same way that most people, you know, if you ever try to lose weight or gain, you've noticed, apparently this is weightlifting talk. But if you've ever tried to like get stronger, you gotta write it down. Like, how many reps did you do? How did you, you know, what routines did you do today? How much weight did you use? Like, if you do that in the gym, well, you gotta do that in the playground of life too. But most don't. And they're really struggling. I can't tell you. It's just like painful to watch. I'll show up and I'll like, tell me about your life. And first, they don't even know where to start because they've never measured themselves. And then second, in the dialogue with me as a high performance coach, I find them disappointed, upset, struggling, unsure of themselves. And a lot of that could have been handled if on a more consistent basis they were self aware and personally accountable to their own behavior and growth. Isn't it true? Don't you know somebody you wish? Oh my gosh, I wish that person would like stop at the end of the day and say, am I being a good person? Isn't there someone you're so frustrated with right now in life who you would just love to sit them down and say, hey, you need to be more self. Aware. You aren't paying attention to who you're being and it's hurting everybody around you. Jerk. We all have that person. We wish they were more self. Aware. But how do you get self awareness? You just go to a meditative retreat once a year? Do you luck out into being a self aware person? Self awareness is gained by self evaluation. If you want to be better aware of who you are, where you can grow, how you can uniquely give or serve, we need to evaluate yourself. Does this make sense? So what are your habits right now for evaluating yourself? What do they look like? How are you measuring yourself and your progress in Life. What are those? If you got some man virtual high five, I could be there with you. Celebrate that. That's awesome. Right? That's incredible because most people don't do that. So I hope that you are are doing that. But it's a struggle for a lot of people too. So here's a simple way that you can end your day scoring yourself along the lines of again, what we're talking about here, productivity specifically, you might have other ways you might score your personal values, you might score your energy, you might score how much influence you had with other people. I'm going to give you some related to what we talked about productivity so we can get some quick wins and gains for you as we jump into more in depth training. Here's what those are. I would like ask yourself at the end of the day these specific statements and then rate yourself. Low one means you suck. Five means you're awesome, you're doing a good job. Okay, so let's walk through these. Number one, I worked on things that mattered most today. I know that's basic so I'll go fast here. Number two, I progressed a major dream or goal today. Meaning did you progress today? Number three, I avoided distractions well today. Number four, I set intentions before each major activity today. That's a huge one. Number five, I fully engaged and enjoyed my efforts day. Because high performers strive satisfied. They're engaged and in that engagement they find joy and they find fulfillment, satisfaction, confidence. It's by engaging. So how did you do today? Did you enjoy your efforts or not? Now remember, low 1111. High 555. Where are you here? So every day I sit myself down and I started scoring myself. This is probably about seven years ago. And remember seven years ago I was still then a certified high performance coach. Seven years ago I was like my career was just taking off. And what we want to believe is that people just kind of bumble into progress. People bumble into momentum. I'm telling you, high performers are more strategic and they're more self evaluative. Now many of them, this was a unconscious competence for them. They really didn't know that their self talk was so oriented towards self evaluation until I did some coaching and interviewing with them to discern that. But it turns out high performers, they're measuring stuff. Now I just want to make it easier for you. So here's a simple tool. Just write those things down, then score yourself. Now when you score yourself at the end of the day, add your score up. So let's say your three's all the way down, that'd be 3, 6, 9, 12, 15. Montana. Kid doing math. And it was right. Okay. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So let's say you're 15. So you add your score up. That'd be 15. Then multiply it by four. 15 times four is 60. That will give you a score of 100%. Okay. Whatever your score is, keep seeking clarity each day, and you'll get better and better and better. Try to improve this each day. Look, there's gonna be days you're a two, Other days you're a five. But the goal is to ask yourself this. Like, I want you to do something. And if this sounds too basic, here's what I want you to do. And. And add to your routine that maybe you already have. Maybe you end your day with journaling. Congratulations. Not enough. Okay. Instead, what I want you to do is create your own scoring mechanism for the end of the day, whether it's taking a page out of my playbook here or you're scoring yourself. Right. If I ask you, how'd you do today? And you go, good, that's one level of self evaluation. But if I say, how did you do today? And I give you a specific context. How did you do today in keeping to your own agenda, that you might say good or pretty well. But if I say, how did you do today in keeping to your own agenda, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1, you sucked and got pulled into everybody else's agenda. You got totally distracted. You didn't get anything done. You wanted to. Ten, you were superbly excellent today. You stayed on point. It's a different quality, isn't it, when you got to rate yourself and you're like, I was a six. And then my next question to you goes, well, why were you a 6 versus, say, a 10? Then you can go, oh, well, because I made these decisions or I allowed that, or this person did this. Okay, great. Okay, well, what would it take to go from a six to. To attend? Well, I would had to have done this or next time, I would do this. Right? Soon as you score yourself, you have an anchor or a benchmark from which to move yourself and a different level of self evaluation. So what could you. I know I'm talking along about this. There's one reason I'm trying to get you in your own unconscious mind right now to be generating a lot of ways you could score yourself, because for me, there's 50 different things I score myself on at the end of the day. 50. Now, here's the thing. I Don't let my low numbers bum me out. Because the truth is, you know what? Measuring myself across 50 things every day, it's not like I'm a robot. You know, it's not like I'm perfect in every one of those areas. But here's what happens. Let me tell you this. This is a huge insight. So please write this down. If you're not scoring yourself consistently, that's why you feel so out of balance. If you're not scoring yourself consistently, that's why you feel yourself so out of balance. It's why, you know, one day you realize you've been working so hard, but you neglected the kids. Why did you neglect the kids? Because you're a bad person or a bad parent? No, it's because you didn't have the quality of your experience with them or on a radar, on a dashboard, on a sheet at the end of each day or maybe each week. And so what happens is, you know, life takes hold of us, that we get kind of the stream of life and we're just kind of getting carried along. And then one day we wake up and we realize, wait, I'm like seven. I'm like seven. I've gone down seven different, you know, river channels that I didn't anticipate. Right. And so the only way to keep us there is to evaluate. And I think if you can do that, things significantly shift. So I hope that you'll figure out what is your end of day scoring. I'm sure while I've been talking, you've been thinking of other things. You could score your energy. You could score how you treated your wife or your kids or your team. You could score how much you stayed focused. You could score how well you actually made sales, or how well you dealt with clients, or how well you built your business. I don't know what it is for you, but if you don't know what it is for you and if you aren't scoring, I know the next level, it's right there for you. It's right there. So put this in play.