Mashup: How to Get Unstuck and Find Your Purpose in Life

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. Purpose is not a destination. Purpose is a flowering. Purpose is a flowering. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, as we're going through our lives, we're going to have a lot of metamorphosis. Those moments where we grow into something else, where we bloom from a situation, even if it's darkened soil, where we open up to a different style of approach, awareness, consciousness, where we open up our personality, where we open up our beliefs. And these are transformative moments in our lifetime. Right. And what I mean by purposes of flowering is you might be stuck right now and not realize that you being stuck is the gateway to the next level of your life. People who lack resilience bemoan the moment and they get stuck here and frustrated that they're stuck here and they don't understand their life is expanding. Even if right now my finances are stuck, even if right now the kids don't like me. Well, they're two. Give them time. You know, it's like, or they're 18, give them a few years. It's like, listen, we get so narrowly focused now that we lose the connection that life is expanding. You know, this last year I've been telling all my audiences and my high end clients, I said, listen, last year was. And very really like the last two years was a sensation of constriction. We felt shut down, we felt we had to go in protection mode and, and some people are still living there and we forget that the whole universe is expanding, that our life is growing and flowering in front of us. And let's be curious about that blooming, let's be excited to see where it goes even when it's in difficulty. I had a major brain injury in 2011 and I didn't know what my life was going to be like. And I had two or three days after my diagnosis. I knew the next two or three years was going to be really difficult with a traumatic brain injury. And I was scared. I was writing a book, my career was going big, I had all these responsibilities and I was freaked out. I just remember laying in bed and I thought, well, either this is a challenging moment that opens up your next level of being Brandon, or this is a moment you quit. How are you going to look at it? You're going to quit. It's hard. We're going to say maybe this very challenge was placed before me to make me Better one day. Maybe I can't see that now, but maybe I'm supposed to grow into something more. I don't know what it is, but I have faith in that process. It's the same old tired metaphor that I know you know, but it is a beautiful metaphor from nature. When that caterpillar goes in that cocoon, there's that time of isolation, of darkness, of uncertainty of how things are going to turn out, of the difficulty of breaking free to that next level. But when that breaking free happens, it's like another being emerges, right? Another spirit, right. That metamorphosis is transformational. And that caterpillar is this light, dancing, ethereal, gorgeous butterfly. When before it was kind of this slimy little thing inching along, which had its own beauty and challenges. But at some point, nature had the impulse to say, go within, take a minute. Take a minute, meditate, sit in stillness and imagine what's next. Because we don't know when that cocoon will open out of our challenges, our difficulties. But if we are faithfully aware during those times, if we are faithful, this idea that our purpose, our future, it's flowering, that we will emerge lighter, better if we have that trust in nature, in time, in God, in universe, in cosmos, in expansion, whatever your vibe is, when you can reconnect to that, you can get through the difficult moments. Because recognizing that life has challenge, struggle, suffering, difficulty, that's how I began this talk. We have to be aware of that. We have to acknowledge that we have to be okay with that. And once we can say, yeah, sometimes life super sucks, it does. Guess what? That hurt, that pain, that struggle, that's an indicator light of now. That's not the roads ahead. I'm not going to drive my life because of that. It's that idea of like, well, let me look at it, let me talk about it, let me express about it, let me journal about it. Let's shed some light on this difficulty here. Because monsters fade with more light. Light, right. The darkness opens to light as we open up the door again versus closing our heart. Oh, right. You know what? I got to take care of my body and release some of this tension so that when that challenging moment comes up, I feel ready and loosened. I'm not carrying all this hurt, pain and stress. And we have to notice that we are blooming now. Even when it's difficult, even when it's the hardest time, even when we don't feel good. People always ask, how did you pull through that brain injury? I'm like, well, I just decided That I must. And I decided that that challenge was given to me to make me better. I didn't know if I would get better ever. At that moment, I didn't know, would my brain heal? Would my body heal? For those who know the story, I had wrecked a four wheeler, an atv, and I snapped my wrist off, broke a couple ribs, threw out my hip, dislocated my shoulder, rattled my brain with a traumatic brain injury and post concussive syndrome. Tough time, Tough two years. Brutal in many ways. And it was a moment where I could have quit or I could say, all right, I guess this is asking me to get better. This is a big challenge. How will I meet it from my best self? How will I maintain my own energy? How will I reach out to people? How will I trust that even if I feel limited in this moment, that limitation, there's still a gate that is opening to the future. Even if I feel alone right now and it's dark, I'm telling you what, that cocoon is just building around me. If I stay open and trusting in nature and faith or God, and suddenly that cocoon opens up and I emerge as a different being. You know, we're going to have some fun today. 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, 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, brendan, 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 have done is I have got a board over here and there is 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 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. 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 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 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. And 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, let me 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 going to share about myself. I have clarity on it. I know what I'm going to ask them. I've clarity on it, just those two simple things. The problem with clarity is it's 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 and 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 going to 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 can 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 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, 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, the connection you have with 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 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. By 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 you reply to everyone's DMs inbox, 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, if 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, 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 nonprofit 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. Hey guys, it's Brendan. 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 how do you create remarkable and long lasting friendships? And I'm talking about the Kind of friendships that you love. The friendships that bring you alive to that bring you that connection that help life feel more even meaningful, that help you progress and feel supported, help you be seen, help you feel a true connection with not just others, but with humanity. Because the people around you are awesome. And when the people around you are awesome, you know you feel better about life. But we also went through this crazy last 18 months where so many people were isolated, where we had so much turmoil, so much conflict, so much just uncertainty and fear in the world, where I really believe friendships really elevated. And you could see whether or not you had great friends throughout this pandemic or you didn't. You were able to see whether or not you got the support that you needed, whether or not you were able to maintain your sense of vibrancy in some of those times of aloneness, whether or not you had people who cheered you on when you decided to make a transition, start something new, or the kids left the house, or you got sick, or something was going on that was difficult in your life. We look to our friends and I think that this is a very undervalued conversation in mental health. So much about the mental health conversation is appropriately about self awareness. It's about mindfulness, it's about taking care of our stressors. And a lot of it is that solo work that we all have to do for self mastery. But I can tell you that the great universities of the world, the psychology department is right near the sociology department because they go together. We are social beings. And when you lose that social connection with the world, which usually starts through lack of disciplined habits with your friends, then suddenly life loses its color. And I think this is so important. You're going to hear me talk about friendship today in a way you probably haven't heard before, very much from what we would call a high performance psychology perspective. And I think you're going to love this. So if you've been struggling with friendships in your lifetime, not either having enough friends or not having the quality of friends that you've always wanted, this is a serious conversation today. I can't imagine a time, at least in my life so far, where friendships were so incredibly important. I get to share some of the things that really have worked not just in my life and my friendships, but in studying this work deeply over the years in recognizing how many people are entrepreneurs, high achievers, people who are trying to make great impact in the world. You're here today. And sometimes that journey can feel very lonely, or when you get to the top it can feel lonely, they say. And I'm like, I kind of believe what my friend Brian Tracy and mentor said to me one time. He said, if it's lonely at the top, you did it wrong. I thought, woo, that's good, that's good. Because maybe sometimes we value today progress, we value today getting things done. We value that top mountain of achievement. And then we look around and go, oh, nobody really knows me. I don't feel a connection to others. Yeah, I got the thing, the house, the car, the bank account, the accolades, the Instagram page. And all of a sudden, though, something's missing. And friendship is one of the greatest vehicles to the real psychology of well being that we talk about here at Growth Day. I'm going to share with you a secret today, just a simple phrase. You're going to go, oh my gosh, that's why my friendships aren't going right. So you're going to love this session. I say that triangle, right, of well being that we talk about Growth Day aliveness is one of the things we all want after we had everything else, right? Another thing we want is connection. We're not after casual friendships here today. We're at like, how do I create authentic, deep, trusting, vulnerable, fun, real relationships? Because how many of you have ever had friendships that turned out to be fake? You thought you had a good friendship and that thing turned out to be not so good or poisonous, or, you know, somebody, like, they weren't loyal to you as a friend, or they lied to you, or, you know, something went wrong, you thought, how could that happen in that relationship? And I always tell, like, friendships are a science of relationship, right? It's about how you create relationship with others. And I'm gonna give you again a phrase that will really help you with this today. And then if it's true that we want aliveness and connection, this triangle, another thing that we want is meaning. Well, meaning isn't achieved just by living your purpose each day in your own head. Meaning is achieved through a social relationship network. My sense of meaning is, do I feel connected to the world? And the world isn't an abstract thing. It's not like I feel connected to the oak tree. It's like, no, I mean, did I feel, did you make your difference in the world that's going to be served and answered through your social impact, your relationships with others. And I have to tell you, I've been coaching people for 20 years of my life now. And a lot of people have one friend. You know, in the United States, unfortunately, the Number of people with three good friends has declined over the decades. You're like three good friends. Oh, we got to talk about that. Because some people stumble into friendships or hope for friendships, just like some people hope to have a loving relationship, just like some people hope to have a good job, just like some people hope that, you know, they get healthier. And then there's strivers who take life a little bit by the reins and say, no, no, no, let me architect that, Let me build that. And I'll give you my own examples today of where I sucked at friendships and I had to learn. How do you do them and how do you create them? And once you know how to create and craft them, life really opens up for you, and it becomes not just more alive and connected, but more meaningful. Like, a sense of meaning happens when we have a tapestry of social relationships that are real and impactful. And then, of course, in the middle, that triangle, you always see me draw out growth. Your friends should be lifting you up, not pushing you down. Your friends should be inspiring you to get better. Your friends should have your back, but also be willing to challenge your face. You know what I'm saying? Like, your friends are and should be one of your primary growth drivers in life. Most people choose ambitious goals to be their growth driver. Oh, I'm going to do something that's hard, or I'm going to try to achieve this amazing thing. I'm going to try to become a millionaire or make this difference or build this company or, you know, have this type of family. And it's this external climb, this thing they're trying to achieve. And too many people forget. It's like, actually, one of the best drivers of growth isn't your job, isn't your goals, it's your friendship circle. And when your friendship circles make you a more alive, deeper, caring, thoughtful, authentic person in the world, I'm telling you what, guess what? At work, you're better. At home, you're better. Your art gets better, your sense of life lifts. Let me share with you what I really believe to be the two central problems of friendship. Okay, the two central problems of friendship. The first one is a failure of each of our own. I'm just taking this on myself as well. It's like we fail in life to realize most of our friendships were assigned not aligned. Most of our friendships were assigned not aligned. What I mean by that is many of our friendships happen because group assignment. Think about it. Some of your best friends, where did you meet them? School? Your neighborhood? Some other affiliation? Maybe at Work, maybe in a group that you joined. So it was like, oh, we showed up somewhere or we were assigned somewhere and there was that girl who sat next to me in class. We became friends. Or, oh, I worked with this person at work. We were coworkers. We became friends. And these are kind of like assigned friends. And I know that sounds really weird to say, so bear with me a little bit. I don't mean that the manager, like, you're going to be friends here. What I mean is because of your group, your affiliation or where you were, you kind of met people there. And by default, by you being a good person or communicating or doing stuff with them, you kind of became friends versus, that's like an assigned friend. It's like, oh, because we were here, we became friends versus an aligned friend, which is, oh, I'm an adult now. What are the types of friends that I want to create that align with my passion, my dreams, my lifestyle, my values, my beliefs, the things that I want of life and let me go get them, not let them fall into my lap, which brings up the second designation. And this is hard to say to people. And if you're in a place where you feel lonely in your life or you feel like you don't have great friendships, I promise this will be so helpful for you today to even know how your own brain thinks. And many of us. And I was this way probably all the way throughout high school, even I never. And this is the second problem of friendships. I never made the deliberate choice to have remarkable friendships. I kind of ended up with friends. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Who's like, ended up with friends if you kind of just ended up with like, this person? It was kind of my friend. One of my buddies goes. He goes, I don't want no rando friends. And it was like, random. Now I love random. I love the universe. I love God, I love coincidence. Listen, I read the Celestine Prophecy. People are glowing out there for me. I believe in that coincidence stuff. But I can also share with you, like, if you just allow randomness in your life all the time, you'll always feel a sense of mediocrity too. We have to stretch. We have to choose our life. And to choose our life, we have to be deliberate and go, what kind of life do I want? I would like you to learn to architect your ideal friendships. And can you get all of them? And will all your friendships be perfect? I'm not that guy. I'm not here to promise everything's going to be Sweet and perfect and peaches in life. I am here to suggest though that if you haven't deliberately chosen the types of friendships that you want, that's a problem, especially if you're an adult. Right? And that's the thing is we're just, we're not encouraged to do that. Think about how much time people were feeding your ears with the idea you had to be really thoughtful about the career you choose. How many of you ever had more people tell you more times about be so thoughtful about the school you choose, the career you choose, but no one ever said as much because be very thoughtful about the friends and the friendships that you build. And that's why we have a lot of high achieving people who are lonely their whole life. Think about your career. What are you going to be one day? Very rarely. What's the type of social network you're going to build around you? What's the type of friendships you're going to architect? What are you going to be proud of in terms of your friends in the future? What do you want your friends to achieve? What do you want your friends to experience in life? Not just what they give you, but what are you going to give out too? What kind of friendship do you want to create and experience? How do you want your friends to actually interact with one another? Have you ever thought about that? We spend so much time. If you're a parent and you have two kids, you're so worried about how they interact, right? I know people who've never even thought, how do I want my friends to interact? I mean, they might think, you know what, we shouldn't put them in a room at a party because they have this history of that background. But very few people are like, I'm going to actually teach my friends how to be friends with one another. Now I know some of you might be like, this guy sounds like a control freak. I'm like, I am, but I'm a happy one. You know what I'm saying? I think this is such an important area to architecture. Most friends have never talked about how to be friends. They just go, you want to go to lunch, they go to lunch. They talk about the weather, the waiter, the food, what's going on. They leave. And there's no architecting. There's no, I think of like social systems are things that can be shaped. We all think like at work, right? How much we talk about at work, building a culture. More books and more people have spent time on this conversation of building culture at work and never the culture of a Friendship isn't that weird? I don't know where along the line we lost the conversation and the desire to choose to build awesome friendships and a culture of friendship, meaning not just friends. Most people think of, I want a friend, right? When you're in high school, you just want a friend, right? You're just like, at least I was. Can I get one? You know, it's like you worry about having friendships when you grow up, and usually that means you think. And we're all trained this way. Especially in Western cultures. We're taught to have a friend, and we think in a very individualistic mode. I and this person are in relationship, and then you have another friend. I and this person are in relationship, and maybe you go out and you try to get them together and we have a party. But even at the party, it's individual nodes. Me, that friend, and this friend. And I don't get trained, as I'm getting older, to think as a systems social architect. Oh, wow, look at all these nodes, if you will, these friends. If I like each of these people and have relationship with each people, why don't in some way I weave them together and create a tapestry of friendship where I'm actually connecting the dots and creating a culture of friendship? See, we don't think like that, do we? I was a very, kind of, solitary child. I was kind of in my own little world. I don't know about you all, but I was definitely, you know, much. I would be like an introverted kind of child. I kind of kept to myself. I like to play with my toys kind of by myself. In elementary school, from what I can remember, I was kind of solo. Brendan. I didn't see social systems right. I was in a class with kids and a teacher, and. And I had a relationship with the teacher, and I had a relationship with this person or that person or not. But I couldn't see the class. I couldn't say, oh, you know, like, this group is kind of like this. Instead, it was just like, she likes me or she doesn't. Teachers like that. I didn't see the system. Today, I'd like you to try to see the system a little bit. See the system of the friendships you've built in your life. See the system at play, at work. See the system of your culture or your nonprofit or your company. When you can start seeing a bigger picture and get out of your head a little bit now, something happens. There's connection, there's community. See, everyone says, I want community. I'm like, well, you can't be an individualistic person in the community forever, you have to elevate to seeing the system. If you'll never be a community member or an effective one or a helpful one, if you can't get out of your head. Well, I'm saying that not as judgment to you. That was me. So there's no judgment here if you don't have friends. I'm like, I'm telling you my story, too. I was a solo person. I was in my own head. I couldn't see the class. I couldn't see the system. And so I felt apart. And because I felt apart and I couldn't see what was happening, and I didn't know how to engage. I was lonely. And then when I finally made a connection with a friend, that friend became my life. Later on, that perpetuated into, you know, some of you guys know my story of my first breakup with the. My. My high school sweetheart. I was destroyed because that was my one person, right? That was my one node in the world. And then when that relationship fell apart, I fell apart and became depressed and suicidal. And so how we relate with one or multiple people can completely shape our mental health. I know you already know that. And so I had to learn, like, wow, one. I don't want to ever be dependent on one friend. I want to build a support system. You ever heard that language before? No one says, go build a supporter. I want you to listen to the language of successful people. When successful people are speaking, they never tell you, go build a supporter. They say, go build what? A support system. A support network. Oh, I got to get out of single node thinking. A node is one individual unit. And I got to get into the system. I got to stop thinking, does Sally at the class next, does she like me? And if she likes me, my whole life is good or bad or ruined. And I got to go. There's a class here. There's an energy, a vibe, a spirit. There's rules and norms. There's a culture here that is happening. How do I want to participate in this? And how do I want this culture to happen, too? In. In ways that I can affect? What do they want? And we all have to start thinking about that more in a society in which we're supposedly connected, but we've actually become individual nodes in the network. So what makes you a great communicator? If you and I have lunch and I walk away and I'm like, wow, she was a great communicator. Why am I going to say that? Usually because you helped Elicit my feelings. You helped elicit my goals, and you helped elicit my process. How's it going? Great listeners aren't just reflecting things back to somebody. Great listeners are also helping others share more. And what do people love to share? They love to share things about their life, their passions, their interests. Okay, you can reflect those things back to people. But if you go one level deeper and you're the person who helps people share their feelings around you, I mean, isn't that funny? The most advanced communication strategy in the world is to elicit emotion more. Elicit emotion more, to ask about their feeling. So when they describe their day, instead of you saying, oh, then what did you do next? That's like procedural. And say it's like, oh, how did you feel about that? I, some of you guys know I was lucky to work with and know and do business with one of the persons considered one of the great interviewers in history. Two different types of people with. Larry King is a great friend and mentor and done work with him. And Oprah Winfrey, great friend and mentor and done work with her. Both of them are master, master listeners. Something I learned from Larry that I'll never forget, that I will never forget is I was kind of asking him what makes a great interviewer. And he gave me this example of the question, one of the first questions he asked Mark Zuckerberg, who's the CEO of Facebook, as you guys know, right? So the CEO of Facebook. So think about this. You have the opportunity to interview Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, at a time especially when they interviewed was, you know, the. Pretty much the biggest conversation in the tech con, in the tech world, the fastest growing company in the tech world. It was, right? Everything. So you get to sit down, somebody who's building the biggest platform literally in the history of the planet, they're running it. What are you going to ask them? Here's what Larry told me. He asked Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. His first question or his favorite question to him was, so, Mark, what's it feel like to be the CEO of Facebook? What's it like to be the CEO of Facebook? He went right to trying to get to like, what does that feel like? That's a big company. You reach 2 billion people. Now, what's that feel like? See, great communicators are listening, observing, asking about feelings, emotion, right? Oprah's magic on her set was she was able, through her vulnerability and her openness for 25 years on television at the top, to be able to have people Feel so comfortable with her presence that they would openly share their feelings where it wouldn't happen on other shows. Right? You watch Oprah Winfrey and then you watch, like, you know, a news television broadcast, it's completely different. The engagement she had with other people because she was willing to go into emotion. You've got to be willing to go into emotion. If you're trying to do anything with people, lead them, persuade them, sell, help, serve, emotion has to bubble up. You need to elicit feeling from people way more often. Way more often. It's. It's not just, hey, honey, how did school go today? Well, I went to this class. I had this for lunch. This kid was nice. This kid wasn't. It's like, how did you feel about that? How did you feel about that? What were you feeling when that was happening? These types of questions are so basic and people forget to ask them, but that's what's really advanced because that's what elicits more. What's advanced in communication strategies. What elicits more, what elicits more. But not just more information, more feeling. So I said, you're listening for three things. Feelings, goals. This is so important. Great coaches, as an example, I always say, oh, once I get the feeling, oh, what did you want to feel? What did you want from that? What are you hoping is going to happen? If everything was great, what's next month look like? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to do by the end of this month, the end of this year? Right? Just getting people to speak about their goals, their desires, their ambition, their hopes, their dreams. Great communicators do that with people, you know, really great communicators do that. I've been blessed to work with two different presidents, two different US Presidents, one Democratic, one Republican, so don't you freak out. And what I noticed in both of them, in both of them, their ability to have a conversation with people and ask them about their family and what they want for their family. Think about that. The greatest politicians in the world are talking about, this is what you probably want for your family. Or asking, what would you like for your family? What do you hope for in your career? What would you like this nation to be like? What would you like this country to be like? That question of, what are our goals here? What are we trying to do here? What do you want? What are you after? That's the questions of great communicators. So I said, feelings, goals, and this last place, which is so important. Process, Process. Tell me how you did that? What were you thinking through when you were doing that? What did you want when you were doing that? How did that turn out? If you could do it again, what would you do differently? These are procedure. These are process questions, right? Questions about not just how's it going, but how are they feeling, thinking and experiencing how it is going. Think about this pandemic right now, right? All you gotta do is go, pandemic, how's that going for you? Right? And immediately people start talking at you. Boy, if you've ever wanted to communicate with people, this is the year of talking through how they've managed a pandemic. Economic melee, political disc. Like, it's so easy to engage people in conversation this year, right? Because what do most people usually talk about? How was your commute this morning? How is the weather? But now we have bigger things to talk about, larger concerns, and because of that, it's easier to get conversation going. But a lot of people forget about process. You know, did you talk with your family about how these last 30 days went for them, how they felt, what they wanted, where they want next month, how they want it to go now? Literally, on this conversation, on a walk this morning with my wife, before I even talked about what I was talking about here today, we're just talking about, oh, okay, well, we survived October, right? Okay. Got through that is culturally, economically, in the world with the businesses, it's like, great, but what do we want now? Like, we're always kind of recalibrating, how do we want our day to go? We talked about morning routines, or we talked about, like, what we want to learn. And just in a conversation about, what do we want it to be like now, Great communicators and great relationships and couples are always talking about that. How do we want to live? What do you want from this life? What do you want from this life? What do we want together? How should we do this journey together? That's process, right? Communicators are doing that all the time. What should this feel like? What should this be about? How do we want it to go? That's process.