Master Your Emotional Toolkit

And so we must actively train ourselves as if we were going to have 10 times the pressure on us as we seek to achieve our dreams. Because I'm sure many of them. How many of you guys feel like the next mountain you climb is going to demand so much more of you than the last one? Like many of you guys, you got your dreams and your eyes set on huge ambitions, huge aspirations to provide for your family, to change the world, do something significant and important. And when you've got that big dream way up there, trust me, it will demand more of you next time. So you must start training your mind now to deal with stress. How do you gain some more emotional mastery in your life so you can handle those difficult times when you get frustrated, when you get down, we get like beat up and like chewed out and spit out by the world. What are you going to do to be your best self? That is the topic of today's conversation. That emotional masteries part. That emotional intelligence we hear so much about, that ability to handle the difficulties and challenges of life with grace or a plume or being centered in the middle of all this chaos and turmoil. How do you be your best? That's the topic of today. And I'm really excited to talk about four big, big, big topics with you today. Today we're going to be taking on some of insider sort of advanced topics for you. We're talking about motivation at a deeper level, maybe you haven't had with me before. We'll talk about discipline. We're going to talk about resilience, that big ability to overcome those tough things in life. And we will chat about centering because I really believe you can master these four things. You can master an extraordinary quality of life. Sometimes you just need a little more training, a little more insight on how to do that. So make sure you do two things. Number one, get your journals out. This is going to be a fire session for you today with some very practical and strategic things you can do in your own life to improve your life. So you need a journal. I really encourage you each month to keep a journal just for these sessions so that you can really maintain high performance in your life. You and I both know it is not easy climbing this next higher mountain. You and I both know it's easy to get distracted, to get down on yourself, to feel disconnected from other people. You and I both know even as you strive, even if you're doing a good job, sometimes the stress gets to you and it gives you an edge that you don't like, that you know you freak out the kids with. So this is about you living that high performance experience so you can be vibrant, so you can be connected, so that you can be excellence driven every single day. That requires consistency and discipline. And the fact that you are here, this tells me something very simple. You're ready for that journey. So do yourself the gift of recording that journey. Bust out your journal, because you want a place to be able to go to and say, oh, right, these are the reminders of how to be my best self. Here they are. And that will really support you. I appreciate you. I know we're all working on our lives and doing our best. And when you get together in a community of people like we have here, and certainly at our events, you can feel that magic and that fire. And I tell you, I hope that from wherever you're at in the world, you can feel my energy right now. I want to give you a vibrant, joyous boost of good mojo today. Like, if all we did each month is get you back in connection with yourself and your ambition to live a great quality of life, got you back in connection with that vibrancy, that health, that spirit, that internal power that you have. If all we did every single month is help you get back on track to what you're doing, this is worth it. So bust out that journal. Here we go. We're going to talk about four things to gain emotional mastery in your life. And what I should really qualify it is saying these are four areas that can give you emotional mastery in your life. Because people ask me that all the time, like, well, Brendan, how do you stay so positive or. Or driven? You know, when everybody's, you know, out there, you know, hating on you on social media, or, you know, people doubt you, or, you know, somebody doesn't support you, or I lost my way, or I had this huge setback. How do I deal with all that? I think these are the four areas you must learn to master in your life. It takes a lot of focus, a lot of intention, but if you do it, you will have a personal power that nothing can take away from, that nothing can stop. And I'm telling you, I've worked on these things for 23 years in my personal life, in my professional practice. And I think when you learn to match these areas, this will change everything. Now, these four areas are not necessarily in a specific order today, okay? Not necessarily in a specific order today, But I really believe that these four areas, when I think about them, if I do approach them in terms of mastery in each area in the Way I'll present today, it helps me personally. They might not be in your area of priority, but they really help me. Okay? Emotional mastery. Four areas for it. The first area, I really believe the utmost most important area of emotional mastery is mastering motivation. Now, when I say emotional mastery, you're like, wait, isn't motivation is a topic, an area? I'm like, no, Motivation. Motivation is an emotion, right? A motivation is a motion emotion that you feel, that you feel a drive, a sense of hunger, a sense of want, and a sense of desire to make something happen. I believe motivation is one of the most important things we have to master in our total emotional sort of toolkit, right? Because if you can emotionally feel motivated every day, almost everything else can fall in line, right? If you're emotionally motivated to be a better mom, be a better caregiver, be a better parent, be a better lover, be a better entrepreneur, be a better business person, be a better contributor to the greater world, when there's a motivation pulling you forward out of bed each day into the office, into real life to be your best, then everything changes when you lose motivation. You and I both know the loss of motivation is the first gate to suffering. You lose motivation now, you don't feel like doing anything. You don't feel like doing anything. You don't work out. You don't feel like working out. You don't feel like doing anything. You don't feel like doing anything. You don't want to do your goals don't feel like doing your goals. Feel unfulfilled. Feel unfulfilled. Feel unsatisfied. Feel unsatisfied. Feel like life is meaningless. It is a slippery slope when you lose motivation. But the issue is no one has motivation 247 all the time. Motivation is an emotion you learn to cultivate by using your mind, your body, your greater consciousness to ensure that you feel that pull of purpose, that you feel that energy inside that says, I want to create, I want to contribute, I want, I want to be my best self. I want to connect with people. And so motivation is something we're going to have to generate on a consistent basis. You have to learn to bring the joy. Because the power plant doesn't have energy, it generates energy. Motivation is something. Me, the motivation guy, I have the bestselling book of the entire century with motivation in the title. It's called the Motivation Manifesto. If you haven't read it. And the Motivation Manifesto is, is like. If anything is imbued in that book, it is like the sprocity and this fierceness and this tension to living our best lives. But it has to be, like, generated. Because even though I'm the motivation guy, there's plenty of days I wake up and I'm like, I don't feel like it. There's plenty of days, there's plenty of moments where, just like you, I'm just like, I'd rather be lazy and do nothing right now. And that's okay. That's part of homeostasis. That's part of our human body to want to power down, to relax, to chill out. But too much of that can lead to an unfulfilling life. So we must learn to generate the emotions of drive, desire, go get in this. Whatever you want to call motivation. And so it's something that we have to learn to stoke. Motivation is an emotion we feel by either luck or by purposeful conscious design. I just choose to design it into my day every single day. Here's a little quick idea for you, a little quick reminder that motivation is driven by certain things. You have a spark, you have something that sustains it, and something grows it. Okay? The spark of motivation, which is how I anchor into being motivated each day, is ambition. All motivation begins with the desire or hunger and ambition for more. Whether that's more depth or more connection, or more contribution or more abundance or more wealth or more love. Like, we just want more of something. And that says, I want to go get that. Like, we see a fancier car. It's better than our car. I want to go get that. We see, like, a deeper love of relationship between two people. I say, I want that in my own life. So sometimes it's a visual cue. Something we see makes us want something, right? Not too far from here, there's a beach that I strolled on vacation, I don't know, a couple years ago. And I said, I'm going to live here. And it was a motivation. It was a cue. I saw something desired, it, wanted, it went after it. Like, so sometimes it's a visual. It's a cue out in the world that says, I want more of that thing. And ambition can be visually cued for some people. If you just wake up. I mean, think about it. You wake up, you grab your phone, you're like, you know, and all of a sudden, you don't have any motivation. Instead, you look through all this stuff, and all it did is make you feel like you're not enough or it distracted you, or it upsets you or created, you know, anger, anxiousness. You got to be careful how you're Using cues to start your day. I use cues to start my day motivated. And those cues to start my day motivated are things like, I literally wake up and I'll wake up and I'll think of things that I'm grateful for and that I want to give in life. I'll wake up and I'll think about someone I want to do something nice for or surprise today. I'll think of something I can be excited about today. All as soon as possible. In the morning, f revisit my ambitions, list my goals list. I'll look at them. I'll not wander through the day looking at social media and then, oh, I guess it's time to work and look at my goals. It's like my goals. I mean, in the first few minutes of the day, I'm revisiting them. And what I'm doing is when I'm looking at my goals or my agenda or my schedule, I'm looking at it. I'm thinking, okay, why do I want this? What would life be like? Like this? How could I go get it? What should I do today to make that happen? And that motivates me. That's my list of goals, my list of ambitions, the things that can excite me. In other words, it's very intrinsic goals. It's intrinsic rewards that I'm after. I'm like, if I go do that, I will feel better. If I could have this, I'd be happier, right? It's not that I can't be happy with now, but I want to pull, like, if I can have that future pole that's going to motivate me to go do stuff, right? I have to literally generate that in my mind. And so when I have that connection in the morning that my takeaway for you is connect with your ambitions every morning, very first thing in the morning, somehow part of your morning routine. Connect with your ambitions. Look at them. Why do you want them? What would you get from that? How would you feel from that? What would that generate? Why would life be more meaningful? Really? Connect with that ambition every single morning and you'll start to notice. You feel better. You also know this reality that motivation wanes with attention. Meaning if we don't give our ambitions, our goals, a lot of attention, the motivation just goes away. Because motivation is either fueled by our attention or by momentum, right? It either takes reflection or action to generate serious, sustained motivation. Either reflection or action. Because ultimately from the reflection that gives us clarity, and clarity can give us confidence, or action can give us momentum. And when we have Momentum motivation is way easier to cultivate, generate and sustain, obviously. So these are really important concepts. Every morning, get very close to your goals ambitiously. What are those things that you want, desire, need and would enjoy and what do you need to go to get? That's the intrinsic type of things, the things we'll feel good about, the drive, satisfaction, fulfillment, meaning excitement in us. But I also have my extrinsic meaning my external cues or goals or rewards that also I revisit. So for me, example, when I always tell you, wake up each day and at some point say, who needs me on my A game for me, every morning I re anchor down into my relationships. I think about, okay, if I don't show up today and do a good job, then my wife and I have a lower quality of life, then I can't support my mom, then I can't support my team, Then all these people who count on me every day for motivation or count on me for leadership, or count on me for support, they don't get that from me. And I tap into that reality that if I don't show up for somebody today, then you know what, by the end of the night I'll feel worse about myself. But also it will impact other people. Because you cannot have real high powered mental motivation without a connection to other people. We are social animals, so we have to think about, okay, what should I do? How can I contribute in a way that serves other people? So where that internal one is about self and satisfaction and fulfillment and meaning personally, that's stepping into our own passions, desires, wants and hungers. That external one is ultimately about service, about giving or taking care of or being the caretaker of other people. And you cannot just keep starting your day. I guess I'll get some coffee and read the news and see what's on social media, or hop into the car and listen to trash talk radio, or turn on the TV and hope to find motivation later in the day. Like, you want to kick off the day, kick off the day with motivation. Like, get already in the morning immediately in a good state of mind. When I'm in a great state of mind, it's like, bam, the day goes. And you know what? If you start the morning in the right frame of mind, motivated, driven, because you're connected to what drives you and what will serve other people. Then when you start, like running out of gas at noon, 1, 2 or 3, it's easier to fuel that flame than to start a new fire, right? Because some people just keep waiting. They don't even think About, I guess I should be motivated until they've lost it. I want you to start the morning with it and sustain it throughout the day by revisiting. Remember, the secret to all of motivation is revisiting those whys. It's revisiting that ambition that you have for your life, for more, for others, for contribution. That's everything, right? That's everything. And if you get away from that too many days, too many weeks, too many months, I'm just here to tell you you're really going to struggle. So I hope that helps. Every morning, everybody, every single morning, I really want you to connect with that. Okay, what am I motivated? What am I driven by? And that's going to really, that's. I can't explain how much that's going to help you, but you will feel it and you will know it if you will do it every morning. Okay? Motivation starts in the morning, but it's also sustained by that morning frame of mind. So that's really key. That's the first idea behind motivation. Connect with your ambitions first thing, every single day. Give attention to that every single day. Here's something I don't often talk about, but it's important for me because it's, it's very easy for me to be really effective in the mornings. And then that afternoon, two, three o', clock, and I can just be like, man, I want to go outside, take a walk, come back, turn on some Netflix, eat some carbs. You know, that can be my afternoon if I'm not careful. So here's what I do. I have a checkpoint in the mid afternoon to recognize, reward, appreciate anything that I have done today, anything that I have done today. And that midpoint checkpoint for me on my phone, I just have an alarm. Mine tends to go off around 2:30 or 3:00 clock in the afternoon. It just flashes to me and it says, what's been great today? What's been great today? And so that looked to me, all right, it's time to visit what's been great today. So, so I'll just think about something I've done. It could be like I answered 10 emails today that I have been avoiding. Good job. It could be as simple as I made that one call, I said I was going to call, did it, I shot that content, created that thing, whatever, some type, like, listen, motivation is often driven by recognition. So recognize what you have done so far in the day, early afternoon. Then what I do in order to keep myself motivated even more, because I've set in my mind that I want to be a person who's excellence driven. What I will do is I say, okay, here's what's great so far. And then I ask a simple question. How do I complete this day with excellence? Just a simple touch point in the afternoon. How do I complete this day with excellence? So I will look at the rest of the day, whether that's two hours more, four hours more, five hours more, six hours more, whatever it's going to be for me. And I go, okay, how do I think through the rest of this day with real excellence? And when I can connect with that, I'm telling you, it's just, it's just so part of me and it really makes me want to serve. So please think about having a mid afternoon connection point to keep yourself motivated. You'll feel a whole different quality of life. Come in. I promise. It's a different experience for people because most people, they're just running and gunning through the day. They don't realize or understand or accept how challenging it is to lose motivation. And so they've gone. Many people, they've gone weeks without being motivated. They're going through the motions, but there's no energy, there's no emotional pull towards something better. And because they're lacking that emotional pull, what ends up happening, they dog it. They don't contribute as much, they react and sort of create. And now all of a sudden, a couple weeks later, they're like, I don't know why I'm so unfulfilled. Well, no, duh, you're so unfulfilled because you haven't been tapping into that emotion of motivation. When we lack motivation, it is a slippery slope to suffering. So please recognize that you must cultivate more motivation. What else can you do? Well, I'll tell you, it's like ambition, attention to those ambitions, effort towards those things. I think all of that is really, really, really clear. But I also really believe that a lot of motivation is simply lost because of fatigue. So let's say you're doing all those things but you're wiped out, you're tired. Like a lot of motivation really rests on how you feel physically. If you feel lethargic, you feel tired, you have the flu, it's like it's harder to be more motivated. You can still do it by doing what I've talked about. Re cue yourself, reconnect with those things. But health wise, it's really critical for you to say, okay, if I want to be motivated long term, I need to feel greater levels of mobility and Energy in my body. So if you ever hung around me, I'm constantly bouncing and moving and breathing. And if you've been with me at hpa, you see some of these practices, this breath work that I do, that I'm activating and opening up my body so that my body says, let's go, versus right? So my body's not like, oh, I ate this terrible thing. Instead, my body says, I feel refueled. I feel ready to go. Let's go. So I manage my sleep, my diet, my health in ways that support my mental clarity and energy. And I know that, like, sounds. Sometimes people think motivation is just the mental game. I'm like, yes, but your mind and your body are connected. If your body is lethargic, so is your mind. Right? That brain body connection is real, y'. All. And I know you know that you've been sick, you've been tired. There's other times when you've been out of shape, you feel terrible. So I'm here to encourage you as I always do, if every single month in high performance, I have to cheer you on to get in better health, to prioritize your health, to sleep good, to eat well, to move. If I have to do that every single month, I will do that. I will be your champion. I will cheer you on. I want you in excellent health this year. So please hear me cheer that on every single month. Because I just know I get you in better health. I get you in better mental health. We get you in better mental health. It's easier to sustain that fire and that drive, that purpose, that motivation, that thing will bring you satisfaction, joy, and meaning. I know you guys get this, but I want to fire you up to date. Like, this is something you must fire up on your own. This will be fleeting. Of course it's fleeting if you never look at it. I tell people all the time, no wonder you're not motivated. You haven't thought about what motivates you in three days. Just think about that. No wonder you're not motivated. You haven't thought about what motivates you in three days. Every morning, I'm a deep dive in what's going to motivate me. I get excited about it. I look at it. Okay, let's go. All right, what's next? Number two, here's something that people ask me a lot about and I really believe so. One, master this emotionally. How do you master it emotionally? You visit it every single day mentally. And you take care of the physical body to allow this to spark and fire Even more. I hope that makes sense. Let's talk about the second area, discipline. Because people ask me about this one all the time. Like Brendan, oh, my gosh, you're so disciplined. Well, one, discipline's easy if you connect with motivation. Like these two. These two. These are. These are spouses right here. Okay? These know each other. These are everything together. But listen, discipline is something that I am not naturally good at. But discipline is not a skill. Like you're just, like you're naturally good at. Discipline is something that by repeated behavior, it's easier to maintain and develop, just like motivation. So a couple ideas for those of you who go, Brandon, I lack discipline. Well, no, usually people don't lack discipline. They lack desire. They're not connected to their desire enough. So discipline falls flat. Connect with this every day. Discipline gets easier. Okay? Very simple. So first, connect with your motivations every day in a deep way. Second, with discipline, there's a couple simple things you can do, no matter what habit, idea, or thing you're trying to do. With discipline, set up your schedule. Like, if you tell somebody, if you're like, I don't work out, I have no discipline. No, you probably don't have a schedule. Those are two different things. Okay? Most people just like, I don't have a discipline. I go, no, you have a schedule. So what do you need to do? You want to start working out, and you usually don't work out. Okay, great. You say 7am Every day in the gym, and you set it up so that something is consistent to get the ball rolling. That's why if someone's lacking in health, the first thing to tell them is, start working out. And everyone says, well, when? First thing in the morning. Get up and go and do it the same time every single day. Right? You're going to try to write a book. Great. Find a block of time the same time every single day to write. It's when we don't schedule things that now we're hoping to fit it in. And now when we're hoping to fit it in, we don't make it often. And we go, ah, I must be undisciplined. I'm like, no, you're unscheduled. The two are very different. They're like, no, it's not the same thing. So schedule yourself consistently, at least until it's just part of your life. So if you haven't worked out, great, I'm going to work out every day, 7am for 30 minutes. Do it every day, 7am for 30 minutes. Well, what An I lack the discipline to do it. No, put it in the calendar. Wake up. Remind yourself why you need to do it. Meet that time and do it. A consistent schedule is critical to forming the bedrock of emotional discipline. Does that make sense? We're habitual animals. If we can set the habit, the discipline locks in. So set the habit first with your schedule. Hey, look, I know many of you are at hpa. I cheered you on. I said, please, please, please take care of your health. And one simple way of doing that is there's scheduled time that you work out. Of course, it can't always be the exact same time. Of course, life comes in, but the more of those you hit, the more your body and brain just goes, this is just who I am and what I do. Because, listen, we form who I am based on how we show up each day and what we do well. How we show up each day and what we do is dictated by who we are, but also what's in the schedule. So it's just reverse engineering who you want to be by setting a schedule of asking, what do you want to do? Like, for example, I wanted to be a writer, but I lacked the discipline of being a writer. So I said, well, I better set a schedule, because if I lack the discipline to write every day, then what I need is a block of time that is protected that every day, that that is what I do during that day. That no matter what I sit down and I write during that day, motivated or not, that time, butt hits chair, start writing. And here's what happened. The funniest thing. After honestly, probably two years of that, it was just who I was. I'm a writer because I wrote every day. I wrote every day because I put it in the schedule every day. And I made sure that time was protected every day for nothing but that activity. And because when that activity was scheduling that time, most often I wrote, it's not that sometimes I still wouldn't show up and go, I don't feel like it. It was just because it was always blocked. I got enough momentum at it that it became part of my identity. Because when it's part of your identity, you don't have to force this. This just happens. Make sense same time every day until you get so much momentum and motivation that it becomes part of your identity. And you don't have to force the identity. You don't have to force the discipline. Now, for those who goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, but Brennan, I've tried that. I still don't do it. That's because Part of your discipline, you have not attached significant amount of necessity and stakes. What does that mean? First, necessity. Why is what you're doing? Why. Why do you need to be disciplined for your sense of identity? Like, you have to tell yourself who you are to stay disciplined. Like I say, I am a person who is driven by excellence. And because I'm a person driven by excellence, I will show up and do that. My identity compels me to do that. That's part of what we've been talking about. The second part of this discipline, though, is making sure that I set stakes, meaning rewards and punishments if I don't do what I'm supposed to do. So, for example, my rewards. I'm very driven. My discipline is very driven by rewards. Very driven. Like, I'm like, if I do that and I do that today with excellence, then I get this. I'll give you an example today. Probably shouldn't share this with you, but I just got back to Puerto Rico after seeing many of hpa. I did hpa. Going to hpa. I'm cleaning, you know, super clean eater. Do hpa. Super clean finish hpa recover super clean today. It's Friday here. Today is my first, like, okay, HPA is over. I delivered my live cast. I was clean as clean can be. So today I'm going to finish my very last live cast today and and talk about very healthy eating practices. I'm going to go have a pina colada today and I've been so good for a week and a half because I'm like, I'm going to have a pina colada when I get back to Puerto Rico and no one's taking that away from me. Just, just telling you how it goes, people. Sometimes discipline is structured on the back of reward and punishment. Discipline is structured on the back of reward and punishment. So you got to have your rewards. Now, mine might sound silly to you, so what are yours? 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 progress mode.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 progress mode.com in life. No clarity, no change. Right. Well, please explain to me how you are going to be disciplined in if you are not clear on the rewards for the discipline. Right? So you can get the schedule all clean. You can have the perfect, beautiful, amazing schedule, but you won't stay disciplined if you don't see the reward. What is the reward? Why are you working so hard? What's the reward you're going to give yourself? You got to be very, very clear on that. My reward in different types of my life. One time, I'm not kidding, one time I said, I'm going to be so disciplined for X number of months because I knew that those X number of months was going to provide for the down payment of a new home. And I just literally in my office, like, new home. And every day I was like, okay, new home, let's be. Let's go. Because I knew that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. And so I was like, okay, I know what that is. I'm going to be disciplined. And I worked so frigging crazy hard and I stayed incredibly disciplined. Right? Same thing. A lot of my discipline going into, like many of you were just with us at hpa, so this is important for you to understand. Like going to hpa, my discipline in the weeks, the two or three weeks before HPA is so disciplined. To get everything together for both the team, myself, my life, all of you at the customer, I go, I literally stepped. Just like, I'm like, okay, so disciplined, Brendan. Because then on Sunday, you will leave that stage knowing that you have helped these people. You have served your mission, you have served your purpose. You have earned the second spot at life, Brendan. You will finish that stage and you will get off stage and you will feel so fulfilled. It will all be worth it for that one moment knowing you have earned this chance, Brendan. So don't waste this chance. Earn it. I know you're tired. I know you don't want to work. I know they got that new season on Netflix. Get your butt up. Get the work done. Work for that Sunday feeling, man. Okay, Sunday done. Great. Time to recover. Well, I'd rather just, you know, not do my active approaches, not work out. Just sit around, do nothing. I'm like, no, recover well, Brendan. Okay. Why? Well, I got this live cast on Friday. That's the reward. You've wanted clients and students who committed to that personal development your entire life. That's what you guys are for me, I'm like, I've wanted you in my community my entire life. My whole life, I've wanted to serve people who were committed to personal development. And you're here, so recover well, Brendan. The reward will get to be live with people who your whole life, you wanted students like this. Go earn that, kid, okay? Earn that great pina colada time. All right? It's all coming together here. You got to have your rewards. What if you can't tell me your rewards, you can't fool me into thinking you're disciplined. If you can't tell me your rewards, you can't fool me into thinking you're motivated. You just can't. You can't. You need those ambitions, and you need the rewards to stay disciplined. But you also need the punishments, right? You need the punishments. And the easiest way to set up punishments that are healthy are for you to share your ambitions, your dreams, your deadlines with other people. Social support. Social support will keep you disciplined, right? If. If you got a workout buddy, you know what I'm talking about, it's way easier to be disciplined because your workout buddy is going to show up. So you're going to show up right when other people are waiting on you for that deadline. It's way easier to go, oh, I guess I better get my butt to the desk and finish writing or creating that thing. Someone's waiting on me. Because when they're waiting on you, it's easier to be more disciplined. So what I tell people to do, which is the scariest thing to do for so many people, is to socially communicate your ambitions, your goals, and your dreams, because they will hold you accountable. And we have this part of us. We're all people pleasers in some way, but we all desperately desire other people to respect us. And because we want other people to respect us, once we communicate to them a commitment internally, our unconscious goes, you know what? I better meet that commitment. And now your unconscious is in the game because it doesn't want to let other people down. It doesn't want to go against your integrity, because we deeply desire inside. One of the great human drives is a drive for congruence, to be congruent with who we are, what we said we're going to do, and how we are supposed to do it in the way we communicate it. And so your congruence unconsciously. So I tell people, communicate your deadlines to everybody. Communicate what you're doing to everybody. That will be scary because some people will judge you, make fun of you, Tease you, Cajole like they'll hurt your feelings. Hey, that's fine. It's better to have people hating and hollering and teasing you than to have zero people cheering you on. Look, I'll. I'll take one person going, hey, Brandon, you said you're gonna have that deadline. If that one person will do that, I will allow 50,000 negative haters over here because their noise and this person is an angel, and I'm going to serve that accountability angel. And you have to think about the truth of life. Will people diminish you? Will they make fun of you? Will they hate you? Yeah. But you know when you're never going to have any discipline is when no one's ever held you accountable, yourself or other people. But if people have held you accountable for a while in your life, you tend to not struggle with discipline so much. You're used to showing up for other people, so you're willing to show up for yourself and your goals and your dreams. I know it's not always exactly that way, but I hope you hear what I'm trying to communicate to you all, because I really do feel that so many people say they lack discipline, and what they really lack is a schedule. They say they lack discipline, and what they really lack is the structured support of other people cheering them on. And how are you ever going to get people to cheer you on if you remain silent about the things that matter to you? How are you ever going to get people to cheer you on if you remain silent about the things that are important to you? Many of you guys read it in my book, High Performance Habits, right? The woman who became a gold medalist who said, brendan, what made me a gold medalist is I finally started from shouting from the rooftops. My goal is to become a gold medalist. She started telling everybody, and all of a sudden these people started emerging to support that desire and ambition of hers. And she always made that joke, which I love. She says, listen, when you start shouting from the rooftop what you want, don't forget, when you shouting from that rooftop, the village idiots will come and scream and point and make fun of you. But the elders will also come out and say, how can we help this young woman? How can we help this young man? Look at them ambitiously calling forth the future. Look at them willing to manifest great greatness. Look at that person asking for help on a path that we have been down and we know we can serve. Let us see what this person needs. You will get the support, but you won't get support in Silence. You will not get support in science. That is why I love each and every one of you guys. It's easier to be disciplined when you're around people who are working on themselves. And, and that's my third point of discipline, right? The first one is have a schedule. Second one is share. Shout out from the rooftops to get support. But the third one, stay part of a community. Stay here in our mentoring program. Stay at our events. Join our masterminds. Be in another group in your local community when you are around other strivers and high performers. Discipline is part of the culture. It's part of the language. Like many of you, join this because you never got that right. I mean, I, I know that experience. I know that experience. When, when, when you don't have anybody around you striving, it's easy to be a lazy ass. When you got other people who are striving, you're like, woo, I better pull the best out of myself today. These people are kicking my butt. It's the expectations of that peer group that keeps you going. You see everyone else driving and thriving. It gets you out of bed in the morning a little bit. And that's hard if you're home alone with just a bunch of children by yourself. Sometimes it's hard alone when you're at work with a bunch of people you don't connect with by yourself sometimes. I know how it is. Even if you have people around you, but they're not strivers, they're not high performers. It can be a downer. And that downer can hurt your discipline if you're not doing all the things we're talking about. I don't practice the things I'm talking about today because I'm so smart. I, I practice them because it's very clear in the literature, in positive psychology, neuroscience, high performance studies. It's just so clear how often humans need those cues. We need the cues of what's important. We need the cues of who we want to be. We need the cues of the community want to develop. Otherwise, left to our own devices, it's Doritos, Netflix and Diet Coke, people. So how do you stay resilient with what you are doing? All right, today I just spent a whole day with my coaches talking about how do you maintain and inspire resilience? And I think the most important topics I can share briefly what I shared with them is first, when you have a setback or failure, the first important thing that you start managing monitoring is yourself. Talk to yourself about how you are processing that failure. That setback. And you've got immediately when you have a failure, a setback, a challenge point, something horrible, you immediately, instead of being discouraged, disappointed, angry, hatred, immediately flip into your learning mind and say, okay, what did I learn about this? What did I learn about myself? What I learned about other people? What did I learn about the world? And what might I do next time to improve the situation, prevent the situation or do better? Because by projecting yourself into the next time based on the lessons you learned, you will move through that setback earlier. Because what does everyone else do? Usually they revisit the setback and they ruminate on it, right? They keep thinking about it over and over. They think about all the reasons that went wrong, all the problems. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And they watch their motivation wind back instead. Be a student. Every time there's a failure, I'm like, what did we learn? And I very closely manage my self talk. I'm asking what am I saying to myself about myself after that failure? Because one part of me wants to go, brandon, you big dummy, how could you let this happen again? You always fail. You suck. You knew this was going to happen. Look at you, still being stupid, still being a loser. Omg. And of course I could do that. But if I hear that, I'm like, that is completely not productive. Instead, I tap into the Brennan says, hey, Brendan, you're a student, right? You're in this personal development stuff because you're curious about yourself. You're curious about living your life. So what'd you learn? Go ahead, Brennan, explain it to me, buddy. What did you learn about yourself during this? Aha. And what'd you learn about other people in this? And would you learn about the opportunity of the context of the world? Aha. Now, Brennan, what are you going to do next time? And that simple self talk starts moving me into the future. And that makes me buoyant and excited and yeah, you heard it first. Motivated. Because when I think about how to do it better next time, that motivates me versus being discouraged by thinking about how it happened last time. Think about next time. Motivated. Last time, discouraged. So approach it from the learning mindset. Manage self talk. The key to resilience is what you are saying to yourself and how you are labeling yourself other people. And the context. If the context you're like, well, that real estate thing or that investment or that promotion or that marketing don't work, never does, ain't gonna work for me because I'm stupid and other people are better than me. Well, no wonder the Doritos, Diet Coke and Netflixing keeps happening, right? You're talking yourself into doing nothing. I want you to talk yourself into the learning and the motivation for next time. That is the absolute key to resilience. The second aspect of resilience is very similar to discipline, which is all I want you to do is connect with somebody else and process it with them. When you suffer in silence, the suffering lasts longer. When you express and share your suffering with other people, you tend to get comfort. You tend to get understanding, compassion, and you're able to forgive yourself and move through it more quickly. That is why you need to be in a good community of people. And I know not all of you are in my mastermind. Not all of you are at our events, not all of you are in the social community here, because maybe this is your first time with us, but I'm cheering you on from afar. I'm here for you. I love you. You have support in this world. Never forget it. Never forget it. And if you're like, oh, but I, you know, I don't have anybody. I'm like, listen, easy answer. All I want you to do, please go volunteer for some organizations in your local community. And as you get a volunteer community around you when you're struggling now, you can call up your fellow, volunteer another person or tell them out while you're volunteering, like, yeah, you know, I've been having a bad week, or, yeah, this happened in my marriage, or, yeah, I got the medical report. And you know, if you have no one to share anything with, no wonder you suffer. But don't forget, you need to go build that active community where that's, again, come and do our events or it's for you joining a local group, whether it's for you volunteering, whether it's for you reaching out online, there are always options for you. But it's really like, we can all be warriors, right? But I always tell people, you don't understand that warriors have other comrades. Like, if none of the great battles on earth were fought without an army, you need to develop your army and stop thinking of yourself as an army by yourself, right? That's not how it works. You need comrades, partners, friends, family, friends. So you got to develop deep connections and relationships, be around great people. And if you ever struggle with that, I always tell people, the greatest support network you can ever get for free is joining local volunteer organizations. And because the people who volunteer in your community tend to be the Most compassionate, thoughtful, progressive, intelligent people who also have realized life is about service to others. So they're dedicating their time and energy to that. Who happens to be on the boards of the most successful nonprofits in town. The most successful people in town. So automatically you're leveling up your peer group by volunteering, because the people who run the local nonprofits or the people who donate the most and contribute the most tend to be the most successful. And you're leveling up your peer group. And when you level up, the people who you are around, they've dealt with challenges just like you. And it's easier for them to support you, cheer you on, guide you through that setback, because they've been through it. And when you have social support, the resilience is so much easier. Okay? The other aspect about resilience I'd like to share with you today, to develop a lot of resilience is remember, you're going to think about what you learned. Think about how you're labeling yourself and talking to yourself, and orient yourself to the future. You're also going to surround yourself with good people. The other aspect about resilience is this. Make sure you maintain your discipline for previous commitments to self. Maintain your discipline to maintain your resilience. What does that mean? Have you ever had a setback where something failed and something goes wrong and you just throw out everything? You, like, throw out the baby with the bathwater, right? You had a setback in, you know, in your career. And like, you had a horrible day at work, and the next day when you're supposed to work out, you throw that out, right? You're supposed to go volunteer. You throw that out. You're supposed to meet your friend. You throw that. Like, you let one setback throw out and, like, destroy everything else. It's like one domino falls, you let it fall into everything else. So all your other habits you fall off of, and now you're in a deeper pit of despair. So I always tell people, listen. For me, as an example, when I have a bad work day, I make damn sure I get that workout the next morning. If somebody in a relationship lies, cheats, steals terrible in partner or business or whatever, I'm like, okay, well, then I better make sure I said, Tomorrow at 3, I'm going to write. I'm going to write. Meaning when one thing falls, that's the time to stick with diligence and discipline to the other things that are certain. Because what people do is they have a bad day and then they knock down all the dominoes of goodness in their life, and now they're in despair. So I'm here to tell you it's really important when you do struggle and fail at something to make sure you keep your other commitments. Yes, you had a bad day, but don't cancel all the other meetings you had set up to move your life forward the next three days, because that's what people do. I don't feel like it now. I'm mad. And they cancel all the good that they were going to do. And now they're like, by themselves, having no momentum. They have no momentum, so lack motivation to get back up these things. The reason I chose these things for you as part of this emotional mastery conversation is because they all tie together so tightly, right? You want resilience. You want to spring back more from your failures. Maintain those practices and motivation and discipline. I know you all know this, but it's so absolutely critical that if something falls, maintain your other commitments. It's so important, so important to resilience. And the fourth one, centering. What does that mean? We must learn to center ourselves amid the chaos, the stress, the struggle, the challenge, the bad day. We must, in the moment, be able to flip from anger to peace. In the moment, be able to flip from stress to clarity, to ease, to freedom. We must teach ourselves to center ourselves both when we don't need it and when we do need it. And I think that's what's really important. I think one of the greatest disciplines we can ever give ourselves is this topic of centering. And so we must actively train ourselves as if we were going to have 10 times the pressure on us as we seek to achieve our dreams. Because I'm sure many. How many of you guys feel like the next mountain you climb is going to demand so much more of you than the last one? Like many of you guys, you got your dreams and your eyes set on huge ambitions, huge aspirations to provide for your family, to change the world, to do something significant and important. And when you've got that big dream way up there, trust me, it will demand more of you next time. So you must start training your mind now to deal with stress. Many of you, that means it is finally time to start learning meditation. It's like you've been thinking about it. You kind of meditate once in a while and you thought about it or you did that one retreat one time. I'm like, make it a daily part of your life to center yourself every single day. For some of you, centering yourself, that just means closing Your eyes, thinking about who you want to be, think about what's important, just calming your mind down. Other people centering is like, like that can be just like if you're super stressed, lay down, take a quick nap. For some of you that can mean like the important self talk. Some of you that means meditation. Like for me, if I don't center myself every day, twice a day, actively the next day, I know I'm going to get short with somebody. I'm going to let anxiousness get to me, I'll get my nerves, I'll get frustrated, I'll bow out, I'll quit. It's so clear, it's like super obvious to me that the days that I don't center end up in tomorrows that are chaotic. And so I just gotta make sure I take that time every day. That might mean you go take a 45 minute walk. Many of you guys know every single day I walk outside every day. Rain, water, snow, sleet, I don't care. I will walk 30 to 45 minutes outside every day. I don't miss because that just being out in nature and breathing and feeling the wind on my face and the sun just calms me down, gets me grounded back into the earth and in nature it's like oh, okay every day. So for what, 20 plus years I meditate at least once a day. I think for the last maybe 11 years I've meditated twice per day. Sometimes it's only five minutes both sessions, sometimes it's 10 minutes both sessions. And when I don't get that, I might, I might take like a 30 minute nap in the afternoon. At some point I'll sneak away. Even when I used to have a corporate job and work for somebody else, I'd go close the door in one of the rooms, one of the meeting conference rooms, I close my eyes for 20 minutes, I meditate, take a nap, lay on the floor, do whatever I have to do to recenter my mind. Your ability to deal with stress at this stage is dictating your ability to reach the next level. And so if you're somebody who's always dealing with that negative emotional range, nervousness, anxiousness, stress, depression, some of the big issues that came up today, make sure you seek support. Go see a professional, go see a therapist, go see a psychiatrist, go see whoever your doctor recommends you to to get support in that mental health department. For those of you who aren't dealing with clinical issues, after those conversations, maybe it's time for you to finally do the things you know you need to do to calm yourself down, right? Don't look at so much social media every day because going into here is not centering you. This is reaction of mode. That's all this is reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction. And every one of these swipes is firing more chaos in your brain. Like literally it's hitting more dopamine and it feels reward, reward, reward, reward, reward. But your eyes are burning, your attention is burning. You're exhausted after not reinvigorated. We need reinvigorating activities for you each day. So what are some reinvigorating activities? Reinvigorating activities for me might always start with sleep. Always include meditation, always include a walk outside. For me, always include a cold shower. I know none of you, you're going to hate the idea of a cold shower. For me, I take adaptogens. These are stress support supplements that help me just like, okay, more able to deal with the stress because my mind is a squirrel and it's crazy. So it centers me again, that's same products hpex optimized for me. Some of you might take supplements that you, maybe you take some like calming chamomile tea, right? That costs super cheap. Like whatever you need to do, you need a centering practice every day. Because the more you center yourself every day as a discipline, then in the moments that matter, the more you're able to lock it in. So a couple things you can do in moments that matter, right? When all of a sudden you feel yourself get angry, you feel yourself get freaked out, and that's about to win. The very first move you must do when you feel that coming on, when you're like getting whacked around into chaos, the very first thing I want you to always remember do is center in on your breath. I want you soon you feel like angry. Start taking deep breaths from the belly and I want you to count those breaths 20 times. Just, just start like immediately start counting your breathing. If someone's hollering and screaming before you holler and scream back and react. Breathe. The best way to center the mind and the body is through deep breathing. There's literally thousands of years research behind this in terms of both the, the, the, the, the more anecdotal to what we now know in neuroscience that deep breathing can deeply calm the mind and help you make better decisions. So just breathe. Just breathe. The first thing is breath awareness. Second thing is body awareness. Be attentive to when you feel like, where, like how are you holding your body? A lot of people get really tense in their shoulders and Their neck, which is cuing their brain to go emergency, emergency, emergency. Get out, scream, holler, fight. And what I want you to do is first, breathe. That's breath awareness. Second, body awareness. Drop those shoulders, pull that chest out, elongate that neck, put your feet shoulder width, just stand up. Like just be tall and stand and breathe. That's huge. If you're alone and you're feeling these things or if it's proper. I mean, sometimes I do this with my wife and she's around, all of a sudden I start feeling anxious, upset or something. I will literally drop down in a down downward dog. I will breathe, I will roll around on the floor like a. I mean I would just go, I'm telling you what, I will just start stretching myself out right as we're in a conflict. I know I'm a child. No, she. And she knows it's appreciate because I'm calming myself down. Because for me, centering is a very physical thing. It really is. It's like it's a physical thing and that's so important for me. So breath awareness number one. And I really encourage you to set an intention to count. Don't just focus on your breath count. Breathe count, breathe count, breathe count. Second, make sure you use your body, get body awareness. I really encourage you. Drop those shoulders, straighten your neck out, open up your body will give you more energy. And then third, what I really encourage you to do in centering, and this is really important as you're breathing out. When you're breathing in, a lot of people think of just breathe out in. I want you to breathe out and imagine yourself breathing out. And it's just dropping the energy and grounding the earth and pulling it up and grounding it there. Like you're breathing out is just as important as an intention is breathing in. And if you can get in that mode, you just start noticing you feel better. And then that third piece though if outside of the centering into the ground, the third thing is intention. Intention, intention. For me, I train myself on three words. I want to be. And I'll remind myself, just remind myself those three words. Remind myself those three words. Remiss myself those three words. Because it's easy for me to reactive and be responsive. Instead, I want to be intentional. So know those three words that really defined you and repeat those. Like oftentimes when I'm. If you ever see me around and I'm like this, all I'm doing is I'm kind of rocking. I'm breathing in and out deeply. I'm getting attentive to my body and my posture. And I'm repeating my three words just to reconnect. Because I do that every day in the moment of crisis. Because, see, moments of crisis, it feels like everything's out of control. But what can I control? Breath, body, awareness. What I say to myself, Breath, body, and nerves. What I say to myself. I do that over and over and over again and it really helps me lock back in. I hope this supports some of you, because emotionally learning to be centered emotionally will so support you as you go to change your life. Just a few of these ideas put into play more consistently with the energetic combo of what we all create here today. I know it can change everything.