Mashup: Powerful Strategy to Improve Your Relationship

If you promised your partner something, show up, said you're going to do it, do it, promise to be there at that time, get there on that time. It's not that we don't all struggle with those things, but you being congruent with what you promise is a real big thing. The greatest secret of couples married 40 years or longer still reporting to be happy, the number one thing they said was respect. Number two is communication. Respect is a difficult one because, listen, that last time you were condescending with.

Your spouse, that wasn't respect.

The last time you judged their feelings as stupid, that wasn't respect. The last time you. You interrupted them when they were really trying to share something or explain something, that was not respect. That last time you said you would do something, but you didn't do it, that wasn't respect. We break respect in these subtle little ways so often. So here's a simple scoring mechanism. And again, this might be a punch in the gut for some, but it's so helpful. One to ten. One, you have not been demonstrating respect actively and consciously at all. 10, you actually think about it, how can I demonstrate respect to this person? And you think about it actively and consciously.

That's a 10. That's like, wow, you're amazing.

Okay.

One, you don't even think about it. You're just going through the motions or being disrespectful.

10.

It's like on your agenda to demonstrate respect. I'll give an example. You know, sometimes my wife and I will go out and we'll see other. We'll be with a couple or we'll see other people, and I make it a goal. I literally make demonstrating respect of, to my wife and of my wife a goal. So as we go to sit down.

I'm like, okay, these.

We're all together as friends or we're meeting these same people. I'll say, oh, I want them to know that I respect my wife. So I will say things to her or give a level of appreciation to her verbally that people hear, and they're like, wow, he really loves his wife. But I'll often use the word literally with her respect. Honey, I respect how hard you have worked to make an amazing relationship with us. And I'll say that to her in front of other people. Honey, I respect how hard you work. Honey, I respect how caring you are. Honey, I respect and appreciate all the help you give. Honey, I respect how brave you are. I respect how courageous you are. I respect how giving you are. I respect how thoughtful you are. You're the most thoughtful person. Write down the five most important people in your life, or 10 or 15, however you want. Write down the most important people in your life and score yourself. Have you been demonstrating respect? One is no, 10 is yes. But then what I love you do is just scratch out real fast. Just write what's something you do respect about them that you could communicate and tell them. That's what I mean by that. Like demonstrating respect. I didn't ask you to have respect of them. I said demonstrate it to them. Demonstrate your respect for other people. Demonstrate. I tell myself this before almost every major meeting I have. I say respect the people in this room. Respect the people in this room. Something my dad taught me. Respect other people. So I try to actually verbalize it. I try to communicate it. I try to do things that show it. And if you were one of my friends and you knew me like none of my friends or none of my family questions whether or not I respect them, everyone knows it. If you're in my inner circle and I have respect, you know it. You know it. Now, here's the issue. The funny thing is this new generation. And when I say new generation, I mean people alive today. I don't mean millennials or generation X or Y or whatever. I mean, if you're alive today, respect is not a word that's actually used that often. People prefer other words that are easier. And that's nice. And yet that's why there's no depth in the relationship. You know, there's lots of other things that we could say that we want.

You know, even. Oh, look, look, even Odile said.

She said, I like I appreciate better than I respect. I understand that, and that's a good thing. But respect is something that they need demonstrated and said. All people, appreciation is just one form of respect. And I think that we need to put that word back in front of us again. We need to make it a goal. Make that a goal. Make demonstrating respect a goal. So maybe something. What could you do for your spouse or someone that you love to show your respect for them or to explain to them that you respect their work, their effort, their values, their heart, their commitment. My wife, she knows I respect her, like, more than any other person alive. She. There's no question, there's no lack of respect ever in our relationship, even when we have fights.

And we're going to talk about that.

Later, because the number one way to quickly make a conflict be worse is do something so that the other person feels like you don't respect Them. When respect is gone, there's almost nothing else you can do. You can placate, you can say nice things, you can write them a gratitude note. But if they don't feel respected, that's trouble. So how do you demonstrate respect to your spouse? First, you speak respectfully of your spouse to other people in a way that you're. When your spouse can see it, like, literally say the words. I really respect my wife's heart, her giving, her thoughtfulness, her care. Like, say the words, I respect this person for these reasons. And say it around other people. So the person's like, wow, that was.

So nice of you. That was so kind of.

You also know how your partner feels disrespected.

It.

I'll give an example here. Like, because it's different, right? The way I feel disrespected is not the same way my wife feels disrespected, right? For me, I feel disrespected.

If I am sharing something, I'm right.

In the middle of, like, passionate sharing, and someone interrupts something and they interrupt, and it's something that's kind of unrelated, and it's not, like, in line with what I'm sharing about passionately. So I feel interrupted and kind of like from a tangent, I feel disrespected. Now, I know many of you gonna say, brendan, take it easy, man. You don't have to feel disrespected about that. But that's my immediate impulse. It doesn't mean I freak out about.

It or go crazy.

I'm just saying that to me, it's.

Not a show of respect.

Show respect is cheering it on or jumping in the conversation or aligning with it and like, like creating something together. Now, for Denise, that's not a big deal to her. She's happy to jump in, in any conversation.

So we have different ways.

Another way of respect, as I said before, is absolutely making sure that if you say you're going to do it, you do it. That is integrity. That is congruence. I'm defining it here as respect to your partner. If you promised your partner something, show up, said you're going to do it, do it, promise to be there at that time, get there on that time. It's not that we don't all struggle with those things, but you being congruent with what you promise is a real big thing, right? Someone asked Tara asked, how do you get respect back if you feel that it's been lost? You start number one by honoring your commitments.

If you say you're Going to like.

The way to get someone's respect back is be kind and thoughtful towards them and do what you say you're going to do. That's how you get it back, how you win respect from another person.

You do what you say you're going to do.

You show up. When you say you're going to show up and you're generous, kind, or thoughtful towards them, they will feel respected. Also, the way that people feel respected is to be heard. So learning to reflect back what they are saying to you accurately, and I really work on this one, it's like.

Learning to like, if.

If Denise says something, I listen to.

The words with precision of what she.

Says and I reflect those words back.

Not my words, not my. Take what she said.

Because when people feel.

That's big.

When people feel like you say, oh, yeah, he heard what I said, they feel respected.

So you got to work on that one, too.

And listening to other people, being thoughtful.

Towards other people, doing what you say.

All those things are so obvious. And that's why I say make demonstrated respect the goal.

How are we going to set our emotional tone in this chaos? How are we going to find our strength and our center and project goodness and compassion at a time when it is desperately needed? How are we going to hold the line in our businesses so that we don't overreact and going one direction when we ought to be in another? How do we manage all of this? Today is my joy to talk with you about. Number one is the decision that I will always be the one to remain centered amid the chaos. And I have worked on myself and I have taught myself that for pretty much, you know, 25 years. I've worked on that at a very steady pace. When everyone's freaking out, I take a bunch of deep breaths, I connect with my breath. I make sure that I'm keeping perspective. But ultimately, that decision to I will be centered amid this means for me that I will choose the emotional tone and my attitude as I am dealing with uncertainty or chaos. You know, I remember years ago, I was doing an event and a person in the back of the room had a seizure. And literally they fell out of the chair and on the ground, they started having a full physical reaction to the seizure as well, where they were shaking. And it was terrifying for the people around them. And I was kind of at the beginning of my career, and I saw it happen. It was almost in slow motion. And could you imagine you're on your stage, I mean, put yourself there, you're in front of you know, hundreds or thousands of people, and all of a sudden, somebody is, you know, falling over and having a full seizure in front of the whole audience. The whole audience literally starts looking back. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. People are standing up. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Total panic sets in the room. And I remember standing up there and I have this on video where at first my first reaction is like, this, kind of, like, shocked just like everybody else, like, whoa. And then I kind of look over and instantaneously in my mind, I go, brendan, you have to be in charge here. I didn't want to be in charge. I had to be in charge. And my mind immediately said two choices here. Join the panic or stay stable and strong and present and connected with what's really happening. And so that decision, I'm going to say, centered amid this, made me immediately also decide I need to center the audience. So I asked the entire audience. I just announced. I said, everyone, sit down. And everyone just kind of looks. I said, sit down. And everybody, they sit down. And I said, please sit down. Because your panic and your chaos right now is not serving the energy of this person who needs healing. Sit down. Be quiet, everyone. Please close your eyes so my team.

Can address this situation.

Please close your eyes, and let's put some positive energy and prayer in the room for this person who needs our attention right now. They don't need negativity and fear in the room. Let's put some love and prayer. Let's do a little. Let's send some energy. So please close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and remember, you can choose to contribute good energy to the situation. And so I had everyone close and their eyes take a few deep breaths and meditate or send prayer back to this person. As my team was clearing that row and getting to this person so that when the paramedics would arrive, that person could remove. Be removed. Now, here's the deal. I knew I had, like, 20 minutes at least before we could get a paramedic, probably at that spot in the seminar. And I thought, how am I going to buy 20 minutes? I mean, people are going to start freaking out. And I realized, no. If I set the emotional tenor in this room on purpose, and if I ask of others to find the best within themselves, if I ask of others to take a breath, if I ask of others to be responsible for the energy they are projecting into this space, if I ask of that, and if I demonstrate that we'll make it through this moment, and that might not seem like A big deal. But I really believe the energy in that room either was serving this man as he was having a seizure or was making it worse. You know, imagine here he is having this unbelievable, stressful, life threatening situation and if all around him everybody is screaming in chaos, the body feels that. You know, the body and the mind feels the energy of what is around it. And so if that is true, let us all be responsible for the energy we are projecting right now. I've seen friends hop online and something's happening and what are they doing? They're contributing to the chaos. They're posting snarky comments. There's sarcasm, blame, vitriol, anger. And I'm not here to say that we can't use our social mediums to contribute to an argument or to make a case, but every word has a tone to it. And the tone that we are setting in reply to chaos either furthers the chaos or it levels it. And the more of us who choose to be even tempered, thoughtful, caring, compassionate, you know, the values that we would all hope to have as a global citizenry, the more that we will judiciously take action in a thoughtful way. That's the hope. And whether you believe that or not, I hope that you'll hear this first. Practice. Your family needs to see you centered, calm, strong and assured in chaos. Otherwise we are passing down panic to another generation. It's sad in my view, that we have a world that is so connected, so potentially capable, so well informed, and yet we still have people who overreact. Now, I'm not saying that overreaction isn't something you would anticipate, but there's a difference between overaction, as in taking action to over protect, like doing something useful to shore up things, versus an emotional overreaction of fear. You can deal with really difficult situations without the negative range of blame, vitriol, hate and anger. Now, I know I'm preaching to the.

Choir, but I'm just here today to.

Touch base with you. You can set that emotional tenor. Let's all do a better job at that. Let me give you a couple examples of how I'm doing it right now. To stay centered amid chaos, you also have to stay a little distanced from chaos even as it is happening. I'll give you an example of how I'm doing it. And many of you guys know I have four major companies that I'm either the principal in or one of the principal investors in. And for me, lots of different teams around the world. And obviously you've seen here we have a global community. Well, for me, because I'm constantly being hit up on this phone by people from literally around the world and people count on me to advisor companies.

So what do I do?

I don't engage the chaos all day. Instead, I work my plan. And many of you already know how I do that with my morning routines. My morning routine doesn't change, still stays steady. Wake up, center my mind, plan my day, open up my body. But I also do simple things. Right now, right now, listen, I'm not checking in my phone every 10 minutes because right, guess what you want to do in chaos.

Refresh. Refresh, refresh, refresh.

But every time you hit refresh and every time you scroll, don't forget, it takes emotional and mental energy. And if.

Refresh, refresh, refresh.

Chaos. Bad news, Bad news. Bad news, Bad news, bad news. Oh, my God.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Just think about that for a minute. You're hitting the oh my God button all day when you're refreshing in chaotic news times. And that is creating the panic and the stress inside that is freaking you out. So as an example of simple things that I do, I only check in on the news twice a day. I always say news at noon, right? I'm going to get through my morning. I'm going to make the magic happen. I'm going to move my projects forward in the mornings. If it's news that I need to know about, that affects me dramatically and locally, trust me, I'll hear about it. My friends or my wife or somebody will let me know via text. But I don't check in on the news because nothing's gonna change for me in dealing with the news until around noon. And I know people say, well, what if this is canceled? That's canceled. You'll hear it from your family, you'll get the news. But I don't check into the major media. I don't check into social media multiple times a day. I don't check into. And I'm talking about what people are doing right now. They're hitting refresh by the minute, by the five minutes, by the time. How many of you are guilty about this? How many of you have been addicted to refreshing in the last 72 hours, right? It's easy to do that when there's chaos. But that's also the most important time not to do that for your own psyche, right? That's the most important time to separate yourself from chaos versus what do you do? Reconnect to it every 30 seconds. Think about what that does. You cannot. Doesn't matter how conscious or intelligent or brilliant or meditative you are. If you check into, oh, my God, bad news 24 7, there is no human that. That does not start to shape your emotional reality. No human alive. The Dalai Lama couldn't do it without feeling that emotion if that's what he did 24 7. And right now, that's what we have people doing. And so I think what is necessary is to stay absolutely informed. But realize not a whole lot is going to shift in periods of time throughout the day. Now, I know it depends on what you do and how you respond in your career and where your family is and all these things. No question. No question. So here's what I suggest to you. To stay centered in the mid of the chaos. You choose how much you check in. You choose. And then at a conscious level, I'd say back it up a little bit. So however you're like, I gotta check 20 times this hour. But I'm like, okay, I appreciate that.

Feeling and that concern.

So let's just back. Could we check in just five times in the hour so you can actually get something done? So please don't think I'm saying don't be involved or don't be informed. I'm saying don't let the chaos eat you alive. Because listen to this statement. Chaos inside grows as checking in on the outside grows, right? The more everyone's freaking out and the more you listen to all of it, the more it infects you. Because there is also another contagion going on right now. And if you've studied neuroscience with me for a while or you've been with me in this community for a while, you know how much we talk about emotional contagion. Energy spreads. It's like, listen, we can act without losing our center. We can act without spreading fear. We can act without the anxiety. Like the stuff that I have to take on on a daily basis. If you saw it, you'd be like, oh, my gosh. But I choose not to address it with anxiety. I choose to be in center of my emotional reality. The chooser, the captain of the ship. And. And I just want you to be.

That observer of how you've been dealing.

With this and choose to stay centered amid the chaos. I do things like keep your morning routine. It is so important right now, that is stability in an unstable world. Don't overly engage what is happening. Don't contribute to the negative energy in any way. Even if you want to trust me, when I do check in, I Want to say, yeah, you idiots. Oh my gosh, what's happening over here? Don't be that person. It's not going to help your spirit or your soul. I promise you. Be the person who's centered amid the chaos. People ask me, Brendan, how do you deal with stressful situations so you don't freak out or have a ton of anxiety and fear leading up to them? Because maybe you have a big public speaking engagement coming up or maybe you have that test at school coming up or maybe you're about to have that difficult conversation with somebody that you wanted to say something to them but you've been holding back and you know it's going to freak you out when you go to tell them the truth. Whenever we're in situations that we know are going to bring us stress, it really is on us to prepare our absolute best so that A, we deal with them well and we can actually enjoy the experience or go through the experience without freaking out. But B, we don't freak out the energy of everybody else. Right. Because in all of the storms of life, it is our job to be the calm amid the storm. But that's hard and that takes skills and that takes training. So I got four big ideas for you in this Brendon show. Episode number one, always anticipate and ask others how to deal with stressful situations. I know that's a no duh one, but most people do not do that. Right? You're go about, you're about to go take your first SAT test ever. What do you do? Well, you study, you study, you study, you go and you take it. But that's gonna be a stressful situation. Why wouldn't you first anticipate? Wow, that is gonna cause a lot of anxiety for me the days before, the day of I'm gonna be freaking out waiting for my scores. Why would you not ask people who've already taken it, what did you do today before the test to calm yourself down, to get yourself ready the day of the test? What did you do when you went in there? Did you have a certain breathing pattern? How did you calm yourself down? What did you tell yourself to so that you could deal with the situation?

Right.

Same thing. You're about to go have a difficult conversation with your spouse or your partner, the person you love. Why wouldn't you ask other people who, you know be like, hey, I'm about to have this difficult conversation. Have you ever had a conversation like that? Oh, what did you say? How did you bring it up? Like the idea that so many People in this world go into every day bumbling into it. I feel sad for them. They're living a highly reactive life and, and they're setting themselves up for incredible failure. Because if you don't anticipate the emotions that you're going to have in stressful situations, I promise the situation is going to win, not you. So always anticipate.

Okay.

This is going to be hard. This conversation, this test, this day, this thing. It's going to be hard. Anticipate it will be hard. Now, who has gone through it before? Who I can ask how they dealt with it. That's the first strategy. Second strategy, I need you to make a pre, during and post stress management plan. Huge phrase, Brandon. I know, but what I think is, okay, if I'm going to go have that difficult experience in my life, I'm going to plan, really plan the day before, the day of, and the day after. I'm really going to think through it. So let's say you're going to have that difficult conversation with somebody you love. Okay. The day before, I'm going to say, okay, well, the night before, I'm going to ask myself these questions. I'm going to rehearse it a little bit. The morning of, I'm going to breathe, I'm going to close my eyes, I'm going to visualize it going just fine. Everything's going to be fine. If they say this, I'll say that, in other words, I'm going to role play it in my mind over and over and over again during the day and then afterwards, oh, how would I follow up with them to make them feel good? How would I follow up or what would be my next right steps after that? I have a friend right now who's just an unbelievable professional rock climber. And this person was going to go climb one of the hardest climbs in the world. And I said, man, that would terrify me because I hate heights. How did you prepare for that? He says, oh, well, you know, my regular routine is like this. I said, yeah, but what do you do the day before? And he had like five or six things he did the day before to get himself mentally and emotionally and physically ready, including doing a lot of mobility training, a of lot, a lot of breathing and calming activities, a lot of visualization going over his notes about where each hold was. It was unbelievable. The day of that morning, he got up, he went through a very, like, basic routine. He'd been running for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. But he added on other little elements too. That he knew he was gonna do in advance, including like calling his spouse and saying, I love you, honey, you know? Cause he's about to climb up a mountain. Because here's what we often don't think. Stress has a longer shelf life than we think. What I mean by that is let's say you go do something and it's really stressful. That energy carries with you the next day. So what can you do the next day to calm yourself down? For example, many of you guys have been to my seminars before out in the world, right? Maybe you come to High Performance Academy or HPX or Influencer or one of our big programs. And I know that delivering that training, it takes four days of my life. I'm on stage for anywhere between seven to 14 hours a day, depending on the event.

And standing up that whole time, delivering.

That seminar is one of the hardest things I do in the world. Well, guess what? I got to plan my stress management after it. Because after it, my adrenals are all blown out, I'm exhausted, and I'm thinking, okay, I got to recover from this. So I plan my recovery well in advance of that situation. So what can you do before, during, and after to put yourself in a good place so that you can really deal with the stress? Number three, I do need you to visualize and role model over and over and over again. I know I referenced this a little bit when I talked about what to do during the stressful situation or the day of. I think it's incredibly important that if you know you have something stressful coming up, that you visualize it over and over and over again, that you play it in your mind over and over and over again. But here's the difference, okay? Fear mongering or worrying is thinking about it and seeing it go bad every single time. Visualizing is seeing you show up confident, capable, doing a good job. Confident, capable, doing a good job. I want you to every single time. Visualization should be a positive thinking exercise where you're seeing the situation and you're seeing yourself handle it well. But you're also noticing the things that are difficult. What if they say this or what.

If they say that and you're kind.

Of like scenario planning. If she says this, then I'll say that. If he does this, then I'll do that. But keep the momentum going and visualize the thing all the way through. Right? My friend, the rock climber, he doesn't just visualize the start of the climb. He visualizes the entire climb until he's standing on top of the rock, and there's success. So I want you to visualize the entire scenario. What most people do is they visualize a little bit of the scenario. They feel anxiousness and worry, so they stop visualizing or they catastrophize. They start seeing it going bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And they never walk the entire thing through right? I want you to walk the entire thing through, see the entire thing, and force yourself to see it going well. Force yourself to see it going well. Force yourself to see it going well. Then I want you to pair it with role modeling. I want you to call up a friend, Call up somebody else, you know, say, hey, hey, I'm about to have this conversation. I'm about to go do this thing. Can I ask you some questions and try this out? Sound it out, act it out, explore it with other people? There's very few things I do in my life that I haven't already talked with somebody through. Right before my meetings or my conversations, before a lot of my online courses, I'll sit down and I'll literally try out the words on people. What do you think of this? What do you think of that? And I'll get feedback from them, and that makes me think more deeply about it. And when I think more deeply about it, suddenly the stress isn't so. Like, front of house, because in my mind, I'm already prepared. Like, preparation can get rid of a lot of stress, but role modeling puts you in that actual environment where you're doing the thing. Then when you show up, you're like, wow, my mind has seen in this a thousand times. I've already talked it and acted out. Let's go. And now it's not so stressful. Fourth, big idea. Enroll your friends. If you got something coming up, like your SATs, your ACTs, a test, create study groups. Don't go it alone. Create a study group of some friends where you guys create a regular schedule where you're studying and you're getting ready together. Right? That camaraderie of things. Same thing. If you're gonna go run a marathon, it's gonna be this big, scary thing. It's your first marathon ever. If you've been running with a group of people they know by science, that no doubt you will perform better and less anxiously because you've prepared with other people. Almost everything you do in your life, you should think, how do I enroll friends or find peers to do this with them so I stay on the journey. When you have friends or others involved, we know from social sciences that you're more likely to stay committed, stay consistent, and succeed. But guess what? We're in a society of selfies where we only think of ourselves and we only, like, because we're scared to ask for help or be vulnerable and say, I don't know. We do everything ourselves. And everything I ever do, I literally sit down. Here's my goal list. Anytime I write down goals, I don't just write down, when's it going to happen? What's my next step? You know, what's the deadline? Instead, I also write next to it and I say, who can I enroll with me on this goal? Get people enrolled with you in your goals. Get people enrolled with you so you can role play with them, ask, participate, go through it with them.

It's not so scary.

I know you know this if you've ever been to, like, the county fair. I'm from Montana, so we always have the county fair. And there would be these big, huge, scary rides. When I was a kid, I never went on a ride by myself as a kid. Never once. I'd go, grab my buddy. I'd like, hey, you're coming on with me. He'd go, what, are you kidding? I'm not going to.

He didn't want to go.

I didn't want to go. But when we said, let's go together, we got on that zipper, we got flipped around and kicked around and we loved it. And we only did it because we did it together. You will face greater stresses and greater fears when you go at it together.

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 ambition. Ambition.

But too many of us back away from it because it got made bad, right? I was scared to have ambition because you know what? If you have ambition too big for your britches, people start insulting you. Who do you think you are? Oh, you think you can do that? You don't even have any skill at that.

You think you can do that? You haven't even had their training.

You don't have the degree. You don't have the experience. You don't have the background. You don't have the social following. You don't have the environment. You don't have the money. You don't have the bank account, you don't have the credit you don't have. And people start puking on you when you share your big dream with them. You, hey, look, no, listen, I'm trying to go up here. This is where I want to be, right here. I got this dream.

It's huge.

I got this ambition, this dream, this hunger for more. And immediately people seek to see whether or not you are qualified. And they judge you based on your past of qualification versus your present of.

How you show up.

I don't judge anybody on their past. Let me see how you show up right now. Cause everybody in this room, how many of you all screwed up a bunch in your life? I mean, oh man, I'm such a screw up. It's so great. We're all screw ups in some ways or another. But how are you showing up now is the question. How hard are you willing to work now? What's the discipline you're willing to put in now? Yes, gain that knowledge, skill and ability. But your ambition, everything I do, everything you see me do at a public level, I had the ambition for a mission, but I didn't have the skills to do any of this. Everybody thought I was crazy. I'm going to leave a safe job out of grad school. I got a safe corporate job. I wouldn't say a safe corporate job, but it was a good job and I liked it and it was a good job and it had a clear path to rising. And I just didn't. I had something else I wanted to do.

So I quit that job.

And everyone else said I was crazy. I wanted to go write books. I had never written books before. I didn't know how to do that. And then I decided my first major book was going to be a work of fiction. A book called Life's Golden Ticket. And I'd never written a parable before, but I remember reading the Alchemist and being so inspired by Paulo Coelho's Ichimus.

You all read that book.

I hope you all read that. It's now the seventh most read book in the history of the world. It's unbelievable, right? So I. And the longest running book on the New York Times in history is now the alchemist. And I remember reading that book, and I thought I related with the storytelling in it. And I wanted to write life's golden ticket, but not tell my story, my accident, but rather tell the story of a character going through change. And I got this blessed meeting with a big famous author in San Francisco, and I was so excited. I mean. Cause I'd been wanting to write. So I went and had this big meeting with this big fancy author. I wore a suit, and I got all dressed up, and I was so nervous. And I sat and I talked with this person. And he's hearing me describe very passionately why I want to write this book and what my life's message is about. Second chances. Because life's golden ticket is really a story about second chances. And so I want to tell a story about second chances.

And I was so excited.

And I'm telling him. He goes, so wait, this is your life's message? I go, yeah.

And he says, you're really passionate.

I go, yeah. And he goes, but you've never written fiction. I go, no. And he goes, brendan, I'll never forget. He goes, brendan, do not risk your life's message on your freshman effort at fiction. Fiction's hard. I admire that you want to write this book, and that's your dream, and that's your ambition, and that's your goal, but you don't know how to do that. Ambition's really hard. People go to writers conferences for their lives. They get creative writing degrees. Like he said, Everyone in this building. I mean, we spent decades trying to figure out how to do fiction. And you're just going to come and write this fiction book? I don't think that's a good idea. I think you need to write a nonfiction book. And what happens is, we have this big aspiration, but because we don't know the how, sometimes someone tells us, you.

Don'T know the how.

So what do you do if you.

Don'T know the how?

Yeah.

You minimize it. You drop it back down to here, maybe you drop it back down to here.

Maybe it's like here.

It started up there, but you didn't know the how, and you let other people drop that down. So I listened to the guy. I said, okay, I guess you're right. It's true. It sounds logical to me. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, so maybe I shouldn't risk my life's effort. So then I spent two and a half years struggling in San Francisco trying to write life's golden Ticket as a nonfiction book. And it just. It was like pulling teeth. I couldn't get it. You know, it wasn't working. And then it was so frustrating. And I was like, I need to figure this out. Because it was the time I was about to leave my job and everything, and I was putting everything at risk. I said, okay. The timing all turned out. Went back to my childhood home where I grew up. Tiny little home, tiny little bedroom, writing on my mom's sewing room table at the time to complete the book. And in 18 days, I said, you know what? I gotta stop trying to write the book. They told me to write and write this book that I feel like I should write. And I started all over from scratch. Complete scratch.

18 days.

All I did, I got up, my mom made an amazing big breakfast. I'd eat a big old breakfast, and I'd write, and I'd write and I'd write. My dad would come home from work, we'd go play racquetball. I'd come home and I write and write until it was so dark and my eyes hurt, it was so late. And I'd get up from my desk, and I'd walk around my childhood neighborhood where I grew up and my school and my elementary school and the playgrounds we'd play in. And then I'd go back, go to bed. I'd get up, and I did the same thing for 18 days. That's it. 18 days. And at the end of the 18 days, life, school, and Ticket was done. So it was a huge surprise to me. And I knew it was magic. I knew it was magic. We put it out there. 21 publishers turned it down. 21. My agent still jokes to this day. He only told me about 19 of them. Turning it down because he didn't think I could take the other few more that came in. Turned it down, turn it down, turn it down. Finally, boom. HarperCollins gets it. An editor who happened to edit and publish another book called the Alchemist.

Fell.

In love with life's golden ticket and gave it a shot. We put it out there, and I got this dream to be this big author. I'm gonna go. We launched Life, School and Ticket. I have no idea.

None.

What I'm doing. Put the book out there, we get a bunch of quick early hits. Because I had all these promotional partners in these nonprofits we were donating money to, who supported the book. Got out there. Boom. Charts on Amazon.

Really great. Next week.

No one's buying it. Totally. I mean, this ambition just keeps getting stomped Down. No one likes your book.

Big author says it's stupid.

They're all turning it down and it doesn't sell. Think about what that can do to your psychology. Think about me now. Saying I'm a writer after the book doesn't do well, after everyone turns it down, after they say, don't do it. Think about where that could have directed me. But your ambition is your own. And your ambition has to be free from all of that negativity. If that's a real ambition, you gotta own that ambition psychologically. I was a writer. I said I was a writer. I said I was a writer. On days I didn't write, I said I was a writer. On the days they all turned me down, I said I was a writer. When that guy who was a big name fancy writer, who'd been on all the big shows, including Oprah, told me I was kind of crazy. And I walked out of his office all dejected, I was still a writer. Sometimes what really gives us the greatest amount of motivation is when we got the guts to actually allow ourselves to tie some of our identity to what we're doing. And we're told not to do that because it can bring discouragement and heartache. But the counterintuitive things is high. Performers to a t. The top 15% who I interviewed, they said, oh, no, they were comfortable tying up their identity in what they were doing. They were comfortable. It didn't mean it always turned out great. It didn't mean they always felt great. But they were comfortable owning it, right? They were comfortable owning what they were doing. They owned that. And because they owned it, the motivation was there. Because you know when the motivation isn't there is when your ambitions are half ass. When you kind of want it, you kind of don't. And that's why you kind of work for it sometimes. And sometimes you kind of don't. Because psychologically you haven't allowed yourself to own the ambition. To feel it inside and say, that's part of me. I'm gonna make that happen. But come hell or high water, I didn't care. The first book, I said, name me the next book. Name the next book. Name the next book. Didn't matter to me. I was gonna keep on that ambition. Cause it was important to me. You've got ambitions important to you and your family and the people you're serving. And it doesn't matter what I say or the person to your left or right says, if you own that ambition, you pursue it. And you pursue it with full heart. And when you pursue it with more heart, that ambition that keeps sparking over and over and over, you don't have to rev yourself up because it is you.

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.

You know, 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 reevaluate. 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 notice 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 got to 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. I mean, 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 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. 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 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 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.

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, 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 11. 11.

High five. Five, five. Where are you? Here.

So every day I sit myself down and I started scoring myself. This is probably about seven years ago and 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 is all the way down.

That'd be 3, 6, 9, 12, 15. Montana kid doing math and 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 going to 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 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 gave 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. 10, 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 is, well, why? You were. 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.

Great.

Okay, well, what would it take to go from a 6 to a 10. 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 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. We get caught in 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've gone down seven different 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.