Mashup: The #1 Success Habit That You Need to Practice Daily

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. You know when most people evaluate themselves, when they have a performance review coming up at work, when they've really screwed something up and they're guilty and they're thinking of all the other stupid things they've done that hurt them, when they hit a birthday, when they hit New Year's, when someone holds up a mirror in front of them and says, hey, you're being a jerk, and they have to really re evaluate. Most people are not proactively assessing their performance, and so when it comes time to do that, they're disappointed. And so if this is not a basic habit for you, I need you to start scoring yourself at the end of the day. Now, people really don't like this one, and I'm just 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, 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 the lines of again, what we're talking about here, productivity specifically. You might have other ways you might score. You might your personal values. You might score your energy. You might score how much influence you had with other people. I'm gonna give you some related to what we talked about productivity so we can get some quick wins and gains for you as we jump into more in depth training. Here's what those are. I would like ask yourself at the end of the day these specific statements and then rate yourself. Low one means you suck. Okay. Five means you're awesome. You're doing a good job. Okay, so let's walk through these. Number one, I worked on things that mattered most today. I know that's basic, so I'll go fast here. Number two, I progressed a major dream or goal today. Meaning did you progress today? Number three, I avoided distractions well today. Number four, I set intentions before each major activity today. That's a huge one. Number five, I fully engaged and enjoyed my efforts day because high performers strive satisfied, they're engaged and in that engagement they find joy and they find fulfillment, satisfaction, confidence. It's by engaging. So how did you do today? Did you enjoy your efforts or not? Now remember, low 1111. High 555. Where are you?

Here.

So every day I sit myself down and I started scoring myself. This is probably about seven years ago. And remember, you know, 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.

So let's say your three's all the way down. That'd be 3, 6, 9, 12, 15. Montana, kid doing math. And it was right, okay, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So let's say you're 15. So you add your score up. That'd be 15. Then multiply it by four. 15 times four is 60. That will give you a score of 100%. Okay? Whatever your score is, keep seeking clarity each day and. And you'll get better and better and better. Try to improve this each day. Look, there's gonna be days you're a two, other days you're a five. But the goal is to ask yourself this. Like, I want you to do something. And if this sounds too basic, here's what I want you to do. And add to your routine that maybe you already have. Maybe you end your day with journaling. Congratulations. Not enough. Okay. Instead, what I want you to do is create your own scoring mechanism for the end of the day, whether it's taking a page out of my playbook here or you're scoring yourself.

Right.

If I ask you, how'd you do today? And you go, good, that's one level of self evaluation. But if I say, how did you do today? And I give you a specific context. How did you do today in keeping to your own agenda that you might say good or perfect? 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 goes, well, why were you a 6 versus, say, a 10? Then you can go, oh, well, because I made these decisions or I allowed that, or this person did this okay, great. Okay, well, what would it take to go from a 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'm like seven.

I've gone down seven different, you know, river channels that I didn't anticipate. Right. And so the only way to keep us there is to evaluate. And I think if you can do that, things significantly shift. So I hope that you'll figure out what is your end of day scoring. I'm sure while I've been talking, you've been thinking of other things. You could score your energy. You could score how you treated your wife or your kids or your, 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.

What does congruence mean? Congruence means you are living in alignment with what you know is the best of you. Congruence is living in alignment with what you know is the best of you. Write it down. Congruence equals living in alignment with what you know is the best of you, comma, consistently. Okay. Congruence, living in alignment, meaning it's consistently living into your best self, consistently coming from your best place, consistently showing up as the person you know you are. It means speaking your truth, it means living your values. It means being a person of integrity. That's what congruence means. Living in alignment with the best of who you are, living in alignment with your values, being someone who represents what you really believe. And this one, I mean, imagine if you feel like you're a kind hearted person, but you're consistently a jerk to your neighbor. Your brain knows that and your brain logs it into a perception of self. And that's the problem. Write this down. The brain keeps score. That's the challenge with congruence. Your brain's keeping score. You say you're going to be a healthy person this year and you knock down a couple bottles of wine, hopefully not in the same sitting. You overdid. You know you took four weeks off of working out. Just because you don't follow, you're not congruent with what you said. You said you were going to do this thing, you didn't. And that incongruence creates a greater log of reasons to not be confident. Because guess what? When you are not congruent, your brain logs that and what it says in that log, that log entry. When you're incongruent, you brought your brain makes an entry in your confidence, bank account, a withdrawal. And what it says, not with 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. And so some people are bankrupt in confidence because they're not consistent in congruence. You follow? You got to go, oh, okay.

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. And then congruence is living up to that. Congruence is measuring this. 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're 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 have I treated people in a way that that's not who I really am? Where am I doing things because I feel obligated to do them for others, but that's not really me?

Where have you been faking it?

Where have you been showing up as someone that's not authentic to you, you know, share a funny story? I like to keep it hopefully entertaining enough for you guys as we ask some tough questions. Personal development. The best of personal development is tough questions, you know, but some of it's too. Just those. Those epiphanies we get along the way. And I remember I was talking with a person about social media and, you know, they had seen what, you know, we had achieved. Early days of Facebook. I was the first person in personal development to hit a million people on Facebook. Like a personal development teacher. Like a. And so we had a million. Then it was two, then it was three, there's four. And it was just like, it was bananas. It was totally crazy. It was my quotes and my writing that was getting shared so much. Someone said one time, you know, well, all these other influencers are, you know, they're showing their day more than you do, you know, and they're, you know, you live on the beach. We've never seen a picture with you on your beach. Or we've never seen seeing, you know, you do this and we don't see that, and we don't see that, and we don't see that. And I go, I don't feel like I have to show every part of my life. I don't need to take my shirt off for everybody just because other people take their shirt off. That's not congruent with how I feel like I show up in the world. I don't have to show my butt. I just don't feel like it's a thing. That's just not going to be me. No judgment. I just know that that's not me. There's a lot of things also, I wish I was like this or I wish I could do that. But when I really think down, I go, you know what? That's not for me. And I have clarity that's not for me. Think about every major pain you've had in your life. You went in the wrong direction or you went with the wrong person, or you didn't listen to that whisper that said, nah, that's not us. And so you faked it till you made it, but you made it and you're still faking it. And so what ends up happening is we got to know when we're out of congruence. 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. Maybe you've been incongruent with someone who you love and just go, hey, you know what? I'm sorry about my behavior lately. That's not the energy I want to bring to my marriage. Maybe you've been incongruent with some friends. You know, you said you'd be there, and they're going through a hard time and you haven't even called them. You call them up and say, hey, you know what? I'm sorry. I want to let you know I'd like to think of myself as a better friend than that. So I'm going to call you every Monday, 5pm I'm going to bother you, make sure you're okay. I think the fastest path back into congruence is an apology. An apology to yourself, an apology to other persons. Because, you know, apologies are hard. Apologies are integrity. It takes a lot of guts to say you are wrong. It takes a lot of guts to acknowledge you could do better. And I think it's a beautiful place. I think most people are scared of apologies. I think they open a big gate. They open the gate to communication. I think apologies open a gate to your spirit. I think an apology can go, I'm better. I'm better.

And so where could you be more authentically you?

And where could you be more authentically you? More consistently? More consistently. This is a critical one. Again, your brain is keeping the bank account. It's logging your behavior. This one's fundamental. But here's the good news, too. You get to decide today what to be congruent with. You get to decide who you are, and you get to decide to show up and live into that. You get to, like many of you, go to know my story. When I was a depressed young man and suicidal, at some point, I knew that wasn't me. I wanted to live my life. And so I had to go, okay, I need to make sure each day I give reverence to my creator that I'm still here. I need to make sure each day I do something that has a passion. I do eat something today. I bring some joy each day I sense aliveness in my life. I'm going to live into that congruence because I. I'm not there yet, but that's who I really feel. So, in other words, you can grow into your aspirational self. You can learn to be more congruent with a better version of yourself than you are today. That's where personal growth comes from. A better vision of yourself. And you live into that each day. You congruently show up consistently show up for that new image, that new image of yourself. That's what's beautiful about life. You get to recast. A mature adult gets to recast a vision of themselves, right? Unconscious animals don't get to do that. We as a human species have this weird, bizarre ability to set a different vision for ourselves. You know, an alligator's always going to think of itself as an alligator. It's just an alligator. Humans can imagine a different self. How incredible is that? So use that power. Use that power. New vision for yourself. Show up for it each day. New vision for yourself. Show up for it each day. New vision. Show up.

The more you do that, the more.

The brain logs puts that cash money into that confidence. Bank account says, huh? She's walking the talk, people. Get out the way. Here she comes. She's in charge. She's back. There she is.

Got it.

It's important, y'.

All.

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 progressmo.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 energy, mental and physical and spiritual strength or vibrancy. I just call it energy in high performance training. What is my energy? Do I have the energy to serve? Do I have the energy to Focus. Do I have the energy to go to the gym? Do I have the energy to be nice to my spouse and my partners and my friends? Do I have the energy to do the work today, for me, when my energy is low or it is dipping, I always, always go, what is causing that? It's almost always two things. If my energy dips low in the day, I always know there's two culprits. One, something happened that bothered my brain. I got annoyed, frustrated, or hurt by something. I got annoyed, frustrated, or hurt by something. And it happened recently, it happened in the last day or two, and it's affecting my energy right now. Your energetic state right now is a hangover. Your mood right now is a hangover effect. Not always negative, can be positive, but it's an effect of something, right? Input, output, cause, effect. That's real. So I'm like, okay, what has hooked me? What has angered me? What has frustrated me? And then I'll do something like Byron, Katie's teaching on the work. And I'll just flip the question or I'll flip the feeling. I'll say, okay, what would my life be like without that thought? Is that thought true? What's the opposite of that thought? And I'll just question those things that annoy me, frustrated or hurt me, and then I'll do the physical work again of releasing those things. And if I need help with releasing those, many of you guys know I love and invested in the tapping solution. So I'll just tap. I'll just go into my mind for those who know tapping, and I'll just do a tapping routine. For those who want to learn tapping, you can learn it in the Growth Day app. There's a course in there on it already. And so I'll just do something physical to release that tension. But again, I said there's two reasons probably for my low energy is one, something mentally or emotionally, it hooked my brain and it's lowering the quality of energy I feel in life. The second one for me, which is big, is the last 72 hours of physical exercise and nutrition. It's like you feel right now what you consumed and how you moved in the last 72 hours. Most people think it's only during the day. No, the food you ate three days ago, that's still in your body, the nutrition from that, the macros from that, whether you burned it off or not, the energy, the energetic effect culminates one day, two days, three days. That's why sometimes people, if you've ever done a cleanse or Something you don't feel that much different in the first day or two, but by day three or four, you start getting this amazing clarity. Why that 72 hour cycle of biology that we humans have. It's why when I know I'm going to teach a seminar to y', all, like, I'm going to go, you know, like, I've been blessed to. A lot of the industry knows we teach the single two hardest events in the world when it was High Performance Academy and then certified High Performance coaching. These are literally nine hours a day on stage, often by myself. And used to be now got a little smarter about it, but it was intensely difficult. And if you see me on stage, I'm not sitting like I am now in this little room in quarantine. I'm like bouncing the whole time we were dancing the whole time I'm running back and forth, the flip chart down in the audience, walking around. I do a marathon a day in steps, just jumps and movement. It's unbelievable. I got to eat three times the calories to pull off each of those days. And I can tell you when I'm on stage and I'm not feeling it, I don't go, wow, what just happened last hour? I'm like, okay, what was the last three days here? When was I moving? How was I recovering? What was I eating? When was I moving? How was I recovering? What was I eating? And I'll run that through over and over and I'll identify. I'm like, oh, you know what? There was that one hour after that stage, I was all hyped, I didn't eat.

Or oh, you know what?

There was that time. You know what? I should have spent another 20 minutes meditating or sleeping or I just run back. So I want you to do that anytime you don't feel well. I really want to cue you to develop the habit. This is like my advanced habit. If I don't feel well, I'm like, okay, 72 hours. What hooked my brain or my ego maybe frustrated, angry, upset. Let me release that right now. That's the first thing a release technique again. Second thing is, okay, have I moved and what did I eat? So it's like, oh, on Friday I had those three glasses of wine versus that one. Got it. That's a lingering effect. Okay, that's good to know. Or oh, you know what? I really just wanted to cheat and I did, but now I'm paying for it. And listen, I'm not here to judge anybody. Whatever you want to eat, consume the stuff that you do not. My business. My business is reminding you of wellness, is experience of life. And you have either defined what wellness looks like and feels like to you or you have not. And because I have, this is so important to me. I hate when I don't have this. Lacking energy to me is so painful that I structure my life to ensure I have it. I don't know about you, but I've laid in hospital beds for days. I don't know about you, but I've served in hospice and saw people who couldn't get out of bed and had their last breaths. I don't know about you, but I've had those times on stage or service or moments with family or friends when I didn't feel energy. And because I didn't feel energy, I didn't do a good job for them. And I hated those moments. I want to do a good job for people and I think to do a good job for people, I got to care for my energy. And so I always tell people, if you haven't gotten healthy for yourself yet, do it for the people around you who are getting the shrapnel of your bad energy. Bad energy, negative energy. There's shrapnel from that, there's emotional trauma from that. There's stuff from that that we got to make sure we release and not hold on to. And I know you guys know all this, but I hope it helps you. The practice I have is a 72 hour assessment of my energy. Whenever I dip, I'm like, let me do my little 72 hours. Where was my ego? Hooked, annoyed or hurt? Let me let that go. What was my fueling routine? My movement routine? Oh, no wonder. I feel like crap. I've been sitting for three days. Oh, my back is mad. I forgot to stretch. I didn't open up my body and my breath with a workout, a walk, a bike, a run, a hike. I didn't move. No wonder. Oh gosh, let me go. Come on, honey, let's go for a walk and just get that movement back in. Get that movement back in. For those who've studied me with high performance work before, I Recommend Like a 2 by 2 or a 3 by 3. All that means is like a 2 x 2 is once a week you do a HIIT training and once a week you do a 60 minute cardio training. That's a 2 by 2. A 3 by 3 is you're just adding more to that. So you're doing a one session hit, one session long cardio, one session, some other type of Movement that you love to do that just opens up your body and gives you flexibility, maybe like a yoga, but whatever your routine is, did you move? Everyone knows the number one challenge to long term health is nutrition and movement. Number one and number two. And people always say, no, no, no, it must be sleep. I'm like, number one and number two are the greatest weapons you have for greater sleep. It is your nutrition and, and it is your physical movement that gives you the ability to sleep well. Now guess what? When you have reverence for life and you're releasing that tension throughout the day, emotionally letting go of that ego or that hurt, now you sleep like a baby. I've been blessed with sleep for a long time. Not because it came natural, because I sucked at it. And I said, I got to get better at this. So I changed my nutrition, I moved more, I did more emotional releasing of tension and those were part of my days. Remember, wellness is not something you do once in a while. It is the experience of life. You have to do these many times a day. Also, for those who've studied for a long time, with energy. Every 45 minutes I'm up, I'm bouncing, I'm moving, I'm opening up all the meridians on my body. I'm taking 10 deep breaths and bouncing in place and closing my eyes to rest. That energetic movement every hour, that breath work every hour, that opening meridians every hour. It's how I'm annoying all the time. It's like you're, like, you just hang out with me, like, wow, that guy goes all day and he's just, he's in it all day. I had to train that.

You're training your focus right now.

You're training your energy, you're training your ability to serve. It's happening right now. And it happened last 72 hours too.