Meghan Markle Book Recommendations. The list. (And how I deal with rejection!)

Hey, all, it's Brendan, and I'm home for a quick 48 hours after having done a Mastermind in Phoenix and then having been out at the University of Pennsylvania interviewing some of the world's leading psychologists on the topic of positive psychology. But something pretty cool happened on the way out there. I thought I'd share with you. If you haven't seen it already. It's kind of been all of social media, and it's kind of the story kind of happens like this. I got this. This tweet from somebody about something of Meghan Markle says everyone should read these five books in their lifetime. And I didn't know what it was, so I clicked over on it, and now I have it on my desktop, so I'll show you here. But basically it was, hey, you know, Meghan Markle says everyone should read these five books in their lifetime. I had no idea what it was about. And then I scroll down, I'm reading the article, and then, boom, there it is. It's like her top five, I guess, recommendation was my book the Motivation Manifesto, which was hugely crazy, humbling. A lot of you all asked on social media. I don't know, Megan, but I'm appreciative of the recommendation. She also recommends some other of my favorite books, like the Four Agreements and the Dao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, about how Winnie the Pooh is a great demonstration of Daoism. So that's pretty awesome. And so big shout out to Travel and Leisure for letting me know that I didn't know, and also for Meghan Markle for recommending the book. I appreciate it, but I thought I'd shoot the video to inspire those of you who want to follow your own dreams or, you know, create your own art to really do that. Because maybe you don't know the story of the Motivation Manifesto, but here's why this whole thing is really cool. You know, I stepped away from my business and my career at the time to write the Motivation Manifesto at a kind of great risk. You know, my business was really growing really fast and required a lot of me. But I said, you know what? I need to step away and do this project that I felt like an artistic calling to do. So I went away and I spent basically three years studying. How did revolutionist leaders and revolutionist writers inspire people to pursue freedom? You know, how did our Founding Fathers inspire the continent to want to chase after this freedom that we now call the United States of America? I mean, how do you inspire people to want to leave? What they see as oppression or tyranny, and finally chase what's important to them, become who they truly are, and set sort of a standard, who they want to be and how they want to live their lives free from other people's opinions. And that's basically what the motivation manifesto is about. And that's what apparently Meghan Markle really connected with when she wrote about it on her blog. But I shared that story because when I wrote the book and I turned it into my publisher, they hated it. And I mean, they hated it. I mean, the editor wrote back and was crossing out all these things and literally saying, brendan, what are you on drugs? Because this was such a departure of how I usually wrote. And I really worked hard to find the voice of this book. And it didn't sound like me, and it was. None of my personal stories are in this book. This book is just pure fire, right? And so he was like, no, no. Add stories about you and why are you writing it? Like you're a founding father of the United States or something, like, use modern language. Eventually said, listen, if you don't change this book and do what I want or what we want as a publishing house, then we're not going to publish your book, and we want our money back. Because, you know, in the publishing world, what happens is you submit a proposal and then they write you in advance. So they give you money in advance to write the book, and. And then you get paid as you turn the book in. Well, they hated the book, and they said, either change it or give us our money back. And it came to this difficult point where I just had to really. Where I had to look within and decide, am I going to fight for my art or am I going to sort of acquiesce and do what they want and write the book in the style that they wanted. And fortunately, I stuck with it. And I ended up having to say, no, I'm not going to change it. So they said, well, then we want our money back, and you're out of here. And basically, I had to go find a new publisher for the motivation manifesto. And luckily, I found Hay House, and they were willing to design it in this cool way that I wanted designed. And we released it without really knowing exactly what was going to happen, because obviously the book was different. Would my audience like it? Would they not? I know some of you were along with me on this journey where the book absolutely ended up crushing it. You know, I spent over 30 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It was, you know, just this Mega success where now it's the best selling book of the century so far with the title motivation in it for a motivation title. And, you know, later on, Oprah ended up interviewing me about the book for the COVID feature article of her magazine. And I share all that because it just went crazy. And that happened because of you, the support of the readers. But I also share it because, listen, look, what happened here was this publisher saying, this thing sucks.

It's terrible.

What are you crazy? Why are you thinking this way? This is too big of a risk. We don't like it, you know, give us our money back. You know, they really just insulted me and turned it down. And a lot of people are going to do that. They're not going to like your dream. They're not going to support you, they're not going to get you. They're not going to understand your voice. But I say, my friends, believe. Believe in yourself. Believe in your art and fight for it. I mean, a lot of people are going to turn you down and judge you and not understand, but follow your own truth. It's still in the headlines four years later after my publisher rejected it. So my friends, believe, honor the struggle that comes with trying to put great art in the world. Know that that struggle is going to come. Count it as part of the process and count it as a character building activity for you to react well to all the doubters in the world. Stay on your path. Believe in the power of your voice. You don't have to win over the world. You have to win over some great fans who appreciate your voice and your work. So keep putting yourself out there. Thanks to everybody for supporting me. I can't wait to see you out on the road someday.

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