My LA show! How to Overcome Your Fears

Many of you, your greatest fear is letting something go. You don't know it yet, but maybe you're here today to find it. I would tell people, if you want to fear something, fear living a false and constrained life. Fear that. Fear going through life, not being you and feeling it. Fear that don't fear make believe stuff. Fear that life is short and we should live it and experience it and really feel it. I'd love for you to think about something in your life that you feel like needs a little bit of a reinvention or a reignition. Because right now we have a lot of people who, they've lost their passion for life. They've lost that. That fire, that drive, that hunger, that joy, that intimacy, that love, that energy. And something I think is not just happening philosophically when I say that I think worldwide you see it. A lot of people have lost what I just call that performance edge. You know, that desire to be our best, to really craft extraordinary lives. Because they think that everything has to be perfect and everything has to be laid out and everything has to be permitted and everything has to be where they'll be safe and everything has to be where, you know what? I can't put myself out there because maybe someone will judge me, cancel me, make fun of me. And what I hope this show does today is show that you can try something new and you can do it boldly and bravely, even if you don't know how it's gonna go. Because you just being in motion in life again, that's what's gonna re energize you. Stretching yourself in new ways, that's what's gonna energize you. But. But everybody right now wants to be so cautious that they won't just show up. So we have a whole world of disengaged quitters, disengaged workers, disengaged spouses, disengaged kids on their screens. Everybody's tuning out. They're turning to distractions because they forgot how good it feels when they step into the spontaneity of who they really are. And my hope, as I will sweat it out and work it out up here with you today, is to share some stories in ways I've never gotten to quite share before. Now our ultra members here, you're gonna be like, oh, I've heard that story before. I've never really pieced it together this way. And I'm trying to do something unique here. I don't know how it's gonna go, but I want you to do that. In your life, maybe there's a unique experience you can create for your kids or your family, and it will feel awkward and strange and weird. On the way over here this morning, I was with my team and they were filming me in the car, which makes me, oh, so more stressed. You know, you ever do something and then they got the cameras on you, like anyone have your wedding. And you're even more stressed at your wedding because they're following you around with the camera or the video and everyone's watching you and everyone's on a selfie and you're like, ugh, I thought this would feel differently, but they're all over you. Well, we're in the car, we're flimming on the way over. And I just shared how nervous I was. Incredibly nervous and anxious for the show to do a good job. I knew it was gonna be hot in LA. I don't know, it's 100 degrees in here for me. I don't know how it is down there, but it's so hot up here. And I was like, woo, it's gonna be intense. It's 100 degrees outside. I don't know how it's gonna feel. It's a new thing. And yet at the same time, that energy, those nerves, that anxiousness, some people when they feel that, they shut down. And other people realize that that is the energy that is giving them the fuel to be present, to get engaged, to pay attention, to be focused, to drive. And that energy, if you haven't felt that for a while, it's because many people are just playing safe. And they're playing so safe that life got boring, that their business declined, that their career isn't going up. And so often we'll blame society, we'll blame social media, we'll blame everything that we can to avoid the reality that we're not locked in and showing up. We'll blame the boss, we'll blame the leader, we'll blame the company, we'll blame the market. We'll blame whatever we can to avoid the fact that. No, no, no. If you want to go to the next level, you're gonna have to require more of yourself than ever before. You're gonna have to challenge yourself. You're gonna have to stretch in new ways and. And no one is gonna stretch you for you. Only you. Only you. You're the only person who's ever gonna challenge yourself to do something different and something new and something that's harder. Three weeks ago, I keynoted MGM grand arena, right? And it's like, you know, this arena is like, I don't know, 20, 30,000 people. And then there's an overflow room and they're watching and. And we had another couple thousand people there, I guess. And then There was another 10 or 20 online watching at the same time. It was 20 to 40,000 people live watching my keynote that morning or that night. I went to bed in Vegas and I just felt calm, felt fine. Went to bed, got up, started looking at my slides, started preparing, started stretching out my body, doing my weird vocal warmups and all that chigong. You see me at my events and just getting myself ready. Got in the shower, felt good, had a little breakfast, felt good. Went to the theater or to the arena. Felt good. Went to the green room. All these people came back to say hi. Felt good. Went backstage, felt good. I'm sitting there going, this is crazy. I'm going to speak to all these people. I feel fine. I didn't feel anything. I felt like in flow. And I'll share with you today that speaking and this was one of the things I was terrified of. We're gonna talk a lot about our fears today and those fears that get in the way of us building something great in our lives. Cause I was scared to death to speak. And now I was just in flow and I was like, I'm gonna speak to all these people. And I kept saying, I'm like, what's wrong? Everything feels so right. What's wrong? You ever have that before? Everything feels right. But you know something? All your neighbors say, you have all the reasons in the world to be happy. Why can't you just be happy? Your kids are healthy. Why can't you just be happy? You have a good job. Why can't you just be happy? Everyone always has reasons for you to be more happy. And sometimes you don't feel it, though. And I'm here to tell you today, getting back your performance edge. I don't mean performance up here. I mean that hunger, that drive, that locking in that you get when you're challenging yourself again and you are structuring the challenges. I say that all the time. If the only challenges you are facing in your life currently are the ones that life has just thrown at you and you're just reacting to. You have not yet started living a conscious life. We people who care about personal development, those who care about being role models, leading, building, creating, changing the world, when we have that as an intention, we have to stretch ourselves. We have to do it. No one's going to set your Stretch goal for you at work. It's going to be a BS goal because they're going to make sure you can achieve it by the quarter end. Because God forbid we do anything that takes longer than a quarter. Your boss doesn't have a clue about your potential. Your spouse doesn't have a clue about your potential. With all respect, the only one who knows your true potential is when you really tap deep into it and he who provided it. That's it. And so we have to realize you're gonna have to stretch. So today I actually put a slide together for you to call this something cool. And I thought we would call today's talk the Shocking Blessing of Fear. The Shocking Blessing of Fear. Because you know what? When I felt like everything's going good, I'm in flow back here at this mgm. I've talked to all these people and as many of you know, that wasn't the highlight of my career. I've been blessed now to keynote almost every major North American arena, hotel, conference, convention center, you know, every company I ever wanted to speak in keynote to, I've gotten to do that. My daily life is from a huge audiences. And yet, yet when I didn't feel the edge back there, I thought, Brendan, challenge yourself out there. You can go out and you can do a walk, you can go out and do your thing. Challenge yourself out there. Because when you challenge yourself, it puts you in that place of I don't know how this is going to go, that's where you belong. More often, that's going to bring life back. I don't know how this is going to go. That's where life is. If you always know how it's going to go, boredom lives there. If you always know how it's going to go. The peddling of the, you know, self help gurus who say you need certainty, that's where they're at. That's not how life really works. Those who remain curious, open, those are the ones who succeed. Further, they're learners. If you're always grasping at some adolescent desire for certainty, you're in the wrong group. Because I don't know, I don't play at any levels. In the highest levels of the world of anyone peddling certainty, what they're peddling is the reality. You need to be adaptive, you need to learn. Yes, trust yourself, but be curious. Challenge yourself, be so curious about how it could be different. Do something new. And when you do that, I promise you that's where life really is. Grasping to make it exactly as we want didn't we just fail at that the last three years? Didn't we just find out? That doesn't work so good when you try to, you know, edict how the world has to be and how your relationships have to be and how people have to act, it doesn't always turn out so good. We need to be more adaptive, more flexible, more open, more curious. Not just in our own lives to ignite ourselves, but I think in our relationships, too. Sometimes you forget in your relationship the persons that you love, you kind of forget. You don't pay attention to them anymore. You don't listen to what they want anymore. You don't know their goals anymore. You're not curious about them anymore. You know, I know my wife. I know my husband. He's always this way. And then you put them in your little certainty and expectation box, and all of a sudden, they're not thriving in the relationship anymore because they can tell you're not genuinely interested anymore. So we've got to change. We've got to do things that are new. So back to the story. This morning in the car, I'm about to throw up my eggs. This morning in the car, I was so nervous. They're like, I don't. I've never seen you this nervous. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm nervous. Why? It's your best clients. They like you. I'm like, I like them, too. I love you. I love. Why are you so nervous? It's not 30,000 people. It's not these million people you've had watch on the Internet. It's just. It's like a hometown crowd. Why are you nervous? Well, you've never been in a theater, but you do stages all the time. What's the difference? I said, because I'm a challenge myself, and I don't know how it's going to go. Let's see. I think I put it over here. I'm going to jump off camera. I want to show you guys something. Let me find it for you. Hold on. Okay, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. I got two hours with you. This is the whole show. For you at home. This is the whole show. Now, most people in real life, you know when they're gonna do theater. When people are gonna do theater. They have. Even yesterday, I was with the amazing gentleman who runs this whole show named Miles. Miles. Telling me, oh, yeah, for people doing stuff like this, they, you know, they usually rent the theater out for a couple days. They do load in the day before. They're up rehearsing the lights and the sound and everything else like that. And they've got prompters up here and they've got a script, and they're reading the script. I'm like, yeah, bye. Now. I know some people say at home, well, yeah, you should prepare more, Brendan. How, you know, how irresponsible. It's not that I didn't prepare. It's that I think it's harder to be an extemporaneous speaker than a reader. I think it puts you in a place of stretch and discomfort and authenticity in the moment that. That you can't have if you have all the words written out perfectly. I think the people who have all the words written out perfectly, they will never break through those arena levels. They will never be able to teach authentically. They'll never be able to connect in a different way. It doesn't mean it's not a nice thing to do. It would made my eggs stay down a little bit better this morning. But sometimes the shocking blessing of fear. Sometimes there's things in our lives that we have to do. It's going to be hard. And we have to teach ourself to show up and do hard things with trust, not a script. You know, this is an important conversation today because a lot of people are letting their fear and their doubts stop their progress. They're freaking out. They're freaking out. I think, you know, traveling around the country, I've been talking with all these leaders, and I keep asking, what do you think the emotional energy of the world is right now? Shout it out. What's some words that come to your mind? Worry, anxiety, stress, patronizing, overwhelmed, disengaged, frustrated, unhappy, trying to survive. Let me give you a word that I've noticed and see if it rings a little bit true. I believe what we're seeing out there at a mass cultural almost hypnosis is one emotional dominant reality for a lot of people right now, and that's discouragement. They're discouraged. The world got interrupted. They thought they were strong. They thought they could handle the change. You know, I'm a resilient person. And then it went on for years, and they realized how hard it was. They got discouraged. This isn't turning out the way I thought it was. In all the change, they started something new. They got into a moment of transition, you know, new job, new entrepreneurial opportunity. They got hyped about it. They got their first sales, they got their website up, they got their social media accounts started. And then it got hard and they got discouraged. This is harder than I thought, I don't know if I can handle this. They got excited about a new place. Many people moved, many people moved out. Many people ended a relationship, started a new relationship, had kids. And then it got into it and it's like, whoa, this is not what I thought. This is hard. I don't know if I can handle this. See, sometimes everyone tells you about progress and they sell. Progress is the big dream. But a lot of people get progress and then it's not what they wanted a little bit or it's harder than they thought and now they're discouraged. And then discouragement starts eating their brain a little bit because they're down. They start doubting themselves. And it's a slippery slope from discouragement and doubt into defeat. And so a lot of people, I think around the world feel defeated. They feel like their years were stolen from that. The kids feel like their high school was stolen from them. Some people feel like, you know, their future was stolen from them, their opportunities were stolen from them. People, often we give our power over to everybody else. Oh, it's the government or it's this or it's that. And you know what the beauty about being defeated is? You can just blame everybody once you're that down. And trust me, I'm not going on big self reliance pep talk here. Cause I'll talk you through some of the truths of the biggest fears of my life and how terribly I dealt with them. Just terrible. Who's dealt with a difficult fear or problem or discouragement in your life recently and you dealt with it terribly? Look around the room. And this is an incredibly successful group of people. Okay. At home. I hope you raise your hand too. It's true. Like, listen, we all deal with difficult circumstances in poor ways sometimes. And in others sometimes there's a mental shift, a mindset shift, a breakthrough that happens. That's what this is about. The shocking part about fear is fear will always feel shocking. The blessing is it can stretch you and can make you better. The blessing of fear is it readies you in a different way. It stretches you to adapt, to climb, to deal. And right now, too many people are sitting at home and they're scared. And instead of turning into that and engaging that, they're disengaging. And in all the discomfort, they're finding distraction. They're turning to their phone, they're turning to their TVs. And we'll talk about that today in epic ways. In epic ways. And I'm somebody. I've had so many fears in my life. I Haven't overcome all of them. You'll find out today. Most of them, I was a big, screaming, crying child, terrified. And then I started learning some simple ways to use my mind. Some simple ways to deal with the fear, to turn into it instead of avoiding it. I know you already know that, but sometimes we need the reminder. I had terrifying fears of heights, of public speaking, of starting my own career as a writer and a coach and a teacher. Terrifying fear of being on video and stages. And now I've made that my career for a decade. But I was scared, and I didn't handle it well every time. But you know what? When you're scared and you don't handle it one time, that one time that you didn't do it right, that's supposed to be the teaching point, the training point, the readiness point. That's where you go, wait, I didn't deal with this well. What did I learn? Let me do it better next time. But the problem is, most of the world said I didn't do it right. That's terrible. That's embarrassing. I'm out, sucker. Instead of saying, let me do it right next time, they said, I'm out. And there's probably been moments in your life where you did that, too. I'm out. I quit. And other times you couldn't quit because the job, the career, your back was against the wall. Someone was counting on you. You had that dream. You weren't going to let it go. And. And even though it was hard, instead of saying, I'm out, you said, I guess I'm all in. And those moments changed your life, didn't they? Those moments were everything. I want you to be here for those moments for you today, even through my own stories, I want you to find those moments that are for you. Those moments where you go, oh, that's why I was here. Not just to hear from the sky, but to go. Let me look at my life and think of where do I need to reinvent and when do I need to engage? Where can I engage the difficult things, the scary things, those things that make us vulnerable or threatened or defensive or antagonistic, to turn back in and engage those hard things again. I know it's pop psychology, except it really does work. You know, it really does work when we honor the struggle and the difficulty and we challenge ourselves through it. But that changes everything. It's just not always easy. I'll talk you through some stories of my fears of heights, my fears of speaking, my fears of falling in love, my fears of getting married, my Fears of writing my first book. My fears of doing my first big stage presentation. My fears of doing this one with you guys, because this is new for me too. And so my hope is in some of these stories we can remind ourselves of a few things. Today I'll start with my biggest fear of my life when I was a young man. Some of you guys have heard this story before, but I'll share some pictures. The biggest scare, fear of my life ever. Heights. Heights. I was so scared of heights. I remember in high school, the same group of idiots up here in college, they always wanted to go climb on buildings. You ever had that kid in your town or you ever have your child, you have a son or something, or daughter? They want to climb on top of all the buildings in your small town. For some reason in the small town I grew up on, everyone wanted to climb on the buildings. I don't know why, they weren't Spiderman, but they wanted to climb up on. And I was mortified. And we'd go back beyond the buildings, we'd climb up on the dumpster and you'd find that fire escape and you'd, you know, try to climb up it. And we would go up there and I would be shaking so ever violently. I mean, I could barely hold onto the rungs of those things. Like, I'd stand on the thing and they're like, what's wrong with you? I'm like, you know, I got made fun of so much because I couldn't get on the buildings. I had friends. They'd climb up into trees when we were young kids and I'd watch them scuttle up the tree and I would just look out there and like, no, that's just. I'd be that kid. How's it up there? Like, it's great. All right, I'll see you later. I just would leave. I would just leave. They'd climb the tree, I'd walk away. What's wrong with Bashar? You just walk away scared. Then my friends put me in a position I could not turn away from and they decided to go skydiving on this bachelor party one time. And my friends up there, you can already see from the photo, something's a little off. They're hyped. They're talking and having a good time. I'm looking at them like, what the are we doing? What are we doing? And we're sitting there and we're watching the plane come around. And I remember watching the plane come around. It's one of those one prop planes you know, it's got a propeller on the front and in the back it's got a big hole cut in it. And there's no door. It's just a hole cut in the back of the plane. And they're like, excited. They, like skip in there. They're excited. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And I'm walking. I'm like, this is stupid. What are we doing? And I'm shaking so violently. And the funny thing is, when we showed up to the place, I remember when we showed up, you know, we pulled up in two SUVs and there was a barn. And then there was kind of like the hangar where the plane was. And in the barn there was a bar. A bar? Like a bar. And so we pulled up and I said, I'm not getting out of this SUV till I see which of these buildings a pilot walks out of. I'm freaked out. My friends literally open my door and pull me out. We go into this little place, little room on the side where they're like, okay, watch this five minute safety video. Okay? I'm watching the video and my leg is. It's lost its mind. And I'm watching, I'm shaking so hard. I'm like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. And I can't hear. You have to be so scared. You can't hear a word. Nothing. It's just going right there. And I'm just looking around, everyone. I'm waiting for the joke to be over. And I'm shaking. And so then we, you know, we go out and they get us on this car, they tell us what we're going to do, and then we go into the plane. I love this next picture. This picture is about 5,000ft in the air. So we're going up now. That's the fakest smile. I don't know if you can read authenticity. That is fake. That is my fakest smile. I am terrified. The guy on my right in the picture, he's going to be the guy who straps to my back. And then we jump out of the plane together. It's called going tandem. Okay? So we're going to jump out and he's my guide. He's going to make sure I don't die. The guy on my left, I don't. I think he's high. I don't know who he is. So we get up just a little bit, a couple thousand more, and I start panicking. Full on panic attack. I'm like, I'm just terrified, terrified. The plane's like this. My friends are sitting on, like, a little bench across from me. And next to me, we're on these little tiny benches. The plane goes. And my friend on the other side, Jesse, goes, shh. Falls out of the plane on purpose. Just hold on. But it's terrifying watching your friend just slides down that open door. So the plane. And every time they start, I'm like. I'm like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. And the guy goes. My guy's like, what? I'm like, I don't want to do this. He's like, what? I go, I don't know what to do. I freak. I don't know what to do. I don't want to go. And he's like, you'll be okay. But the way he said it and he looked at me, I thought he was high. And so now I'm more scared. He says, yeah, you'll be okay. Listen. 5,000 pull. 5,000 pull. And he's motioning towards a big wristwatch called an altimeter. It tells you how high you are in the air. In his face, he's saying, when this hits 5,000, that means you're 5,000ft in the air. Reach back, grab this little, you know, tennis ball, and pull it, and it will deploy the chute, and we will land safely to earth. I'm like, oh, 5,000 pull. I can do that. 5,000 pull. He goes, 5,000 pull. 5,000 pull. My friends, my friends, my friends. I'm like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Now it's our turn. I'm like, I can do this. I've studied personal development. I've seen the gurus. I know what to do. So we start sliding down the bench. I'm like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We get to the door. We get to the door. I'm so confident sliding down. We get to the door that's open, and I look at him like, ooh. He goes, 1. I go, no, 2. No, 3. No, 3. 4. He throws me out of this thing. I'm holding on for dear life. Do nothing. I love this picture. Look at Buddha back there. He's. He's high and healthy, baby. He's good to go. Not a Nerf. I'm too. And then I love. Oh, I love this picture. I like the angle. You see me screaming through my legs. Looks like I pooped my pants. None of your business. And then you are falling 150 miles an hour, plus you are falling And I'm screaming, but of course I can't hear anything because the wind. And I'm screaming. I remember screaming so loud, I'm thinking there's dogs on the Earth bleeding out their ears. I'm screaming so loud and you are falling and oh, my God, the energy, the fear, the terror. And then I don't know if you can see in this picture, something goes wrong. Can you see the picture? Let me zoom in for you a little bit. Well, first the hair is being ripped off my body. That's just wrong. But then this little strap on the goggles snapped. You see the little strap? It's not a big deal, but unless you're falling 150 miles an hour, the wind, the thing goes. I'm like, ow, ow. And then a car went. And this thing's drilling a hole through my head. And now Buddha in the back, he points to the ground like, hey, you need to do something or we're going to hit the Earth. But I'm screaming and I'm flopping like Gumby all around, screaming, terrified, out of my mind. This thing's drilling a hole through my head. I don't get it. I don't get it. So now he's serious, like a great coach, like a great teacher. He grabs my hand to show me the time, the altimeter, show me the height, remember, 5,000 pole. So he goes to show it to me, but I'm screaming and my arms are going around. He goes and he goes. And he grabs my hand, he goes. And it catches. Window. You ever been punched by your own hand at 150 miles an hour? Nearly knocked me out. Called, oh, my God, why did you hit me in the face? Down, down. Oh, my God. Hits me again. Oh, all right. Okay, I gotta reach back. So I reach back to grab the thing and to save my life. Now, they never tell you how hard anything is in life. Everything in your life, they told you, let me tell you about it for five minutes and then just go do it. You'll start your business. Let me tell you about it for five minutes and go do it. You're going to have kids. Let me tell you about it for five minutes. Oh, yeah, you can start your own business. Five minutes. No problem. They always give you the little safety briefing. They give you safety. They never tell you what a hot mess you are going to be as you try anything terrifying. You have no idea. It's so scary. I remember everything was about the jump and the 5000 pull. They never told me when you pull that damn Thing. When you rip that thing, I remember, I'm like, oh, grab it. Bam. I remember when I pulled that thing, bam. My leg. I remember watching my leg go above my head and come back down. I remember thinking, I didn't even know I could do that. I didn't even know. And you think about. They didn't tell me about that part. They told me about jumping in. It's always about, oh, you're scared. Jump in at it. They should tell you how scary it's gonna be. They should tell you how terrified you're gonna be. They should tell you do it anyway. But at least let you know. It's gonna be hard. You wanna fix your relationship, it's gonna be hard. You wanna fix your finances. Way hard. You wanna change your life, move to a new city, start a new business. Hard, hard, hard. And if you don't engage that and honor that as a challenge going in, you're gonna be screaming like a baby the whole way down. Cause, I mean, if they had told me that, I don't know what I would have done. Imagine if they'd give me a little commercial about this little thing. Okay, here's what I want you to do, Bryn. Okay? Imagine the safety video looked like this. A little commercial, okay? You're gonna go on the plane. You're gonna get in the plane, you're really served. Okay? You get up there and all of a sudden, your friends, zoo, zoo, zoo, just watching your friends fall to death. Now it's your time. Okay, let's go, let's go. Yes, yes, yes. One, no. 2. No. 3, no. Sure is beautiful up here, man. It's beautiful. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it's beautiful. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Guys like, Are you crying? No, I'm not. He's just beautiful. All right, well, lift your legs. What? Lift your legs. I go, why? He goes, so you don't break them. Good tip. Yeah. Lift my legs. We land, we get my friends. As soon as I hit the ground, my friends call it the hero shot. Yes. I did it. Ladies and gentlemen. It's not like the commercial. It's not like the safety video. Your marriage is harder, and if it's declining, you have to engage with more confidence and boldness and jump right back in, not blame them. You jump back in, you show up different. If that relationship with the kids isn't doing well, you jump back in, you engage. You might not want to be in the ride with that relationship or that career or that job, but you're on the plane. You're on the plane now. You're in the game. Now you're going to jump out, and you're going to choose your experience. I had my other friends. We land, they all come together. We did it. They're celebrating their hug. And wasn't that awesome? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was awesome. There's. So you want to go again? I'm like, I'm good. I'm gonna go to that bar over there. We know when. The one with the alcohol. That's where I'm going. They wanted to go again and again and again. Why? Because they told themselves a completely different reality about what it's going to be. This is going to be so fun. I'm so ready. When I was sitting in the barn, I thought, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. And how many times have you done that recently where you're like, if I do this, they're gonna forget me. They're gonna call me this. I'm gonna go bankrupt. I'm gonna be ruined. That's what we say. I'm gonna be ruined. If I try that, they'll judge me. Or you know what really fancy people do? Wealthy people do. You know what they say instead? They say, I can't do that. No one knows me for that. I'm like, no one knows you for anything. Your neighbors don't know. My neighbors make fun of you. Your neighbors don't even know you. Your kids barely know you. Your parents barely know you. You barely know you. Did you know? Most people can't even predict their own happiness. They don't even know what brings them passion or joy or fulfillment. They haven't been in rooms like this to do the work on ourselves. But you got to reengage it. It doesn't get any better. But if you can change your mind and tell yourself a different thing, this will be fun. It will be hard. But I will have achieved something. I will have made something different. I will have overcome a fear that was my own fear. Most fear is just poor management of your mind. Most fear. Most fear is just poor management of your mind. That was what was true. There I am having the same experience as everyone else. My friend's looking forward to it. My mind is going, this is gonna be terrible. This is terrifying. I can't do this. I'm gonna die. We have to find again that truth, that jumping in to anything, because you're jumping in a little bit more like the person behind me who had my back you might be jumping in to save your company right now. You might be jumping in to save your finances, to save your child's life, to save your marriage. And we need to see you calm, cool, Zen, leading. Well, because many people come to something like this or watch something like this. You want to help people and how you show up and your energy is vital. The best thing about this story, I don't even have a picture for. Right after this picture, guy comes up to me, the guy who's strapped to my back. He walks up, the guy I'm standing there undressing, out of the outfit. He comes up, hands me a CD. Remember CDs? It had all these photos on it. Thank God it had no video. Okay. I said, what's this? He goes, photos? I said, you were taking pictures? I didn't even know. I was so scared. He said, yeah, all the pictures are on here. Oh, my God. Really? And he goes, yeah. Can I tell you something? I said, sure. He says, what do you do for a living. Now? I was thinking, do I lie? I said, well, you know, I'm like. I'm like a motivational speaker. And he goes, oh, Kind of like on my first dates, actually. And I said, oh, oh. He goes, oh? I said, oh? He said, let me tell you something, kid. You see that plane over there? I said, yeah. He says, I've jumped out of that plane 1000, 143 times. 1000, 143 times. And when we went up, and as we were going up and from the barn and up into things, he goes, I just have to tell you something. You didn't ask me a single question. You faced your fear on your own, and I had your back. You didn't ask how it was gonna go. You didn't ask. Only when you got terrified to the extreme and you had a panic attack up there, did you finally go, what am I supposed to do? Again, you didn't prepare at all. You had no preparation. You just showed up to life and you thought you could handle it. But you know what? Most life isn't like that. Most life, you have to show up prepared. You have to have done the training. You have to have done the learning and the curious part to actually be able to engage and do something if your marriage sucks. How many books have you read recently from the world's top experts to make it better? If you've never built wealth or invested, how many books on that have you read? How many seminars have you gone? How many conferences? Now, I know I'm preaching The choir here, you guys do the work. We do the work in Ultra. Yes, we do it. But at that stage in my life, I really didn't. I didn't know. I was used to facing fears in my life by myself. Even though there were people to ask help for. Many of you are right on that precipice of trying something new and becoming discouraged and that slippery slope and defeat. It almost always only happens alone when you feel discouraged. If you don't talk it with people, a coach, a therapist, your friends, somebody. If you don't engage that conversation, the truth is, it gets worse. And now you build up this thing in your mind that makes it even worse. And defeat is closer nearby. If we can interrupt that discouragement by engaging in discussion with other people who've been there and done that, it changes everything. Some of you know, in my career as a coach who. I've been able to coach the most extraordinary people in the world through some of the most difficult situations and transitions from presidents to Olympians to fortune 50 CEOs to the best entrepreneurs and celebrities in the world. They all have stuff. And even them, I've had to tell them because they forget. Even though they're successful, they forget. Sometimes I have to say the hardest things. I have to tell people sometimes. You're not the only one who's lost a child. You're not the only one with a sick parent. You're not the only one scared out of mind about your business not working. You're not the only one on the block who's having troubles. But when you are in your house and in your room and in your world by yourself, blocking out that reality that we are all one, we all go through the struggles of life in some way or another. And you don't reach out for help. You're caged in your own loneliness when there's a lot of people who have your back, who've already jumped in, who've already done it. The greatest thing we have lost as a society is not civility. It's lack of respect for those who are older and wiser than us, who've already been through the game. We don't honor our seniors anymore. We don't honor wisdom anymore. We throw our parents and our grandparents into homes, and we don't talk to them and engage and learn their wisdom. And so you have all these young kids running around thinking they're inventing the world, and they're going through the same problems we already figured out the answers to 100 years ago. So we're Reinventing democracy from scratch. These issues we're facing, we've already fought and died for over and over and over. But we're not learning the lessons of history, and so we're doomed to repeat it. But some of you have that same thing in your own life. You're dealing with an addiction right now. Someone in your life already beat it, but you haven't talked to them. You're dealing with a financial struggle, but you haven't raised your hand and been honest. You haven't even told your spouse about the reality of your checking account yet. You got a kid that you are terrified is going to commit suicide. And you haven't even asked other parents about what to do about it because you think all their kids are perfect and they never had any issues. And so we don't ask, we don't engage. And we sit in our silence. And in our silence is suffering. And in our silence is that lonely journey that makes life feel like we are screaming at the top of our lungs. And we think everyone should say, don't they see me struggling? Don't they know that I'm terrified? You're screaming like, ah. But you're not even asking for help. I want you to think about it. Anything you are struggling with right now in life, you need to remember you're not the only one. You've got to realize, you got to ask for help. You've got to reach out to people. Otherwise, every single struggle we have in our life, there's no way. You need the mentors, you need the help, you need the assistance. And I don't care who it is in your life, you just gotta find them. You gotta find. They're in your backyard, they're in your neighborhood, they're at your church, they're in your company, they're there. You have to go. Look, this guy was tied to my back and I didn't even know it. I mean, sometimes we don't know it, so we suffer from for so long. I know this. Some of you know my story that even brought me on this stage isn't that one. I just like to tell that one. It's a pretty fun one, you know, But I think that as we go to change. Thank you. Oh, you guys are nice. Thank you. You guys are so nice. I appreciate. Sometimes when you think you are alone, it gets real bad. That's what actually brought me here today and why I talk so much about personal development, psychology, mental health, why I spent my entire life doing what I do as a coach and a teacher. Is because the story that I began with was equally terrifying and screaming at the top of my lungs, but I screamed it inside by myself. Some of you know, my story began before I was ever on stages or wrote anything. It began in high school. I was a brokenhearted kid. You know, I had fallen in love with my high school sweetheart. We thought we were gonna get married. And we were. I mean, we were really in love. Have you ever been in love with someone so much when you were younger that their whole world was your whole world, and there was nothing outside that world at all? We were that annoying couple in high school, like, all your friends aren't even your friends anymore. You're just there and you're making out of the locker, and that's all you do, you know, there's nothing else in the world but this person. And I became like that. And this person who I thought I was in love with. We decided to go to college together. I wasn't even sure if I was going to go to college, but we go to college together, we sign up for classes together, we basically start folks on the same majors together, we live in the same dorm room together. We have the same friends together, similar classes and style. It's like we're trying to match up our lives. And I am that, like, totally. When I'm in a relationship, I'm that I'm like so into the relationship. And then halfway through that first semester in college, it found out that she wasn't that way. And one night she discovered beer and other boys and cheated. And when she cheated and that relationship fell apart in that very second, the relationship fell apart and I fell apart. Who's ever been broken hearted, bad? Yeah. At first you're so angry you hate the person you can't believe, how could this happen to me? How could you do this to me? You're so angry, like you're screaming. You're rattling the cage of life. You're like, I can't believe this. So angry, so hurt, so frustrated. But if you endure that alone, that can go a bad place. That's what happened to me. I literally could not get out of bed. I was so broken about it. Couldn't get out of bed. Friends who were in classes would come over like, hey, come on, let's go to class, man. Get out of bed. I was like, yeah, I don't want to go. You know, she's there. I didn't want to see her. Let's go out. She's going to be there. Come on, man, get over it. Let's Go party. I can't. And only two things saved my life. One was, I've always been a dorky kid. I'm a bookish kid. So I was always reading. And my friends would come in and they'd throw the school newspaper in. And so I'd pick up the school newspaper and I'd read it. And that was my lifeline to the world. School newspaper. So I would read the school newspaper to get inspired. And then one day, the second thing that changed my life was an ad some of you heard about before. I turned that school newspaper, and there I was, laying in my filth, not going to classes, just so brokenhearted. The truth was, I'd already been planning to take my life. Not thinking about it. I had planned it. I knew how I was going to do it. I was going to put a backpack together, and I was going to go up to the hill near my school. There was a big hill. Everyone hiked, and I was going to go back into the saddleback of the pine trees, and I was going to go there. I was going to set up my tent and I was going to let the sun go down. And then I was going to cut myself with my knife. And I went up there. I went up there. I went that night, hiked up there, had the knife, had a little nala gene of water, went up, set up the tent, got in the tent, and I cried and I cried and I cried and I cried. I thought life was so unfair. How could this person do this to me? My future was ruined. Some of the biggest fears we have is, will anyone love me? I didn't think love was in my future. And sometimes when you don't think love is in your future, especially when you're young, you don't realize that you are love yet. It's out there, and one day you'll get it. And you don't think you're gonna get it. You haven't tuned into the divine yet. You haven't learned that you are love. You are capable of loving you. You are worthy of love. You are beautiful. You deserve it. And you can exude it, and you can create it any moment that you want. That these relationships that we have in our life are important, but what we bring into them is that love or not, it's how we show up and we tap in and we bring it in. I didn't know any of that stuff. So I sat there and I cried. And I was too scared to do it. I fell asleep at some point, crying. And then when I woke Up. The tent was shaking. Rattling tent rattling. I was like scared. It was still dark. I was like, what is going on? And I opened up the thing and there was a deer looking in at me. And it looked at me like, like, what the are you doing up here? Almost like, why are you here in the woods in this stupid tent? And it was, the eyes literally looked like. I mean, it was like a. It was like a New Jersey deer. But it was. I'm telling you, this was not out in the fields. This is. I unzipped the thing and it's like in there. I'm like, oh. And it just looked at me like. And I was like, it's like. And it turned and walked away. And I was like, what am I doing in this field? Why am I up here in these trees? What is going on? So I packed up, went back down, unpacked everything, sat there and I thought, I'll go again tonight. I'll have more guts. And that's when the door opened. My friend threw the newspaper in, got the newspaper up and I opened it and there was that ad I've talked about on my videos before. A big beautiful blue full page ad. White sandy beach, turquoise, perfect water palm tree, big green sprout, perfect blue sky, a little wisp of a cloud. And across the top, the best headline in the history of marketing for a kid like me at that moment. Escape. Yeah. Summertime jobs for students needed in the Dominican Republic. And I was like, dominican Republic? I didn't even know where that was, but I knew she probably wasn't there. So I take this job, I go down with my friend and you know, we basically glorified tour guides for an entrepreneur we know who also went down there. And we're going around the island and we're showing people around and taking this entrepreneur around. And one night we hop in the car and my friend jumps in and he's driving. I'm the driver, the passenger side. And we start flying down this road that here in the United States would have, you know, been a nicer road. This was brand newly developed road. And we start going down this road, 85 miles an hour. And I'm telling you what, I never will forget the feeling of this car because have you ever gone down the road really fast, a new road and all the windows are down. And on the radio was that song Tom Cochran, Life is a highway. Life is a highway I want to ride it. Yeah, that thing is playing. We are singing it at the top of our lungs. We're having. And I'M feeling life kind of come back in. And then we came upon a corner that in the US or developing country would have had one of those big yellow shaped sign with a big U turn arrow. Watch out. Slow down. Sharp corner ahead. No sign. We round the corner, 85. Kevin grabs the wheel. Brendan, hold on. Cranks it. And those next moments in that corner became the turning point that brought me to the stage to talk about some of the things we'll talk about today. Brendan, hold on. Cranks the wheel. I grab the door and I brace. The car starts sliding and I know we're done, we're going too fast. I just know it. This pulse, this fear shoots through your body. Cause you know what the primary fear in life is? That you don't get to have it anymore. That brace you feel at the end, you immediately wonder something later on. I knew what the questions were and what the vibe was. I didn't know at the time. But that first question that pulls through as I thought about what I was going through in that experience is if this is it, if I'm crashing the death's doorway, did I live? Did I live my life? You might not always have, you know, a long time to think about that. It might be just like that. You know, some people gone like that. That's why we have to in our conscious hours, ask before we go into those turning points, before we face death story, did I live? This is what we've forgotten. This is what we've forgotten these last couple years. It's blame, it's complain, it's. Everyone's wrong. It's. They're like this and I'm like that. And they're on this side of the aisle and I'm on that side of the aisle. And look what they did to this. And this is happening. And blame, blame. No one's living anymore. Living your life, that part of you that is just vibrant and present and joyous, it is still there. Don't fool yourself. Don't think that the years or the gray hairs or the pounds or the kids or the job. No, no, no. You live life. Life is your gift. You've been given that and you have that. It's time to express it again and bring it to life. Now I know people can watch me on the Internet and make fun of me right now. Yeah, yeah. Sure enough. Because they're right. I wasn't living my life at that moment. I had been thinking about taking my life, not living it. The car did that weird slow motion thing. If you ever been in an accident. A weird slow motion thing happened, slow motion as we slid off the road and we hit this little retainer wall of bricks and boulders they built for sugarcane field irrigation nearby. We hit it 85 miles an hour, popped up in the car, bam. I hit my head on the door. And I started seeing all these images in life and not like on all the movies where it was this omniscient viewpoint and there was little Brendan, you know, getting moment by moment bigger and more handsome, hopefully. And, you know, none of that was happening at all. Instead I just saw these little episodes of life, these little moments when I was surrounded by people that I cared for, that loved. I looked over and it was like I didn't see Brendan. It was from my own first view. I could see out my eyes. There was my sixth grade birthday party, my friends around the kitchen table, my mom singing a birthday song. I looked over and there was my sister and I on the backyard swing set just swinging. And I saw her face just smiling, just feeling the rhythm of the swing set. That kind of kachung, kachung, kachung. You know, that kind of happens all the time because those backyard swing set, one pole is always out of the ground, just smiling. I saw times with friends and family and friends, just all these beautiful moments. And I really believe at the end what we do is we see a little reel, a little highlight reel, a little movie of our life. And I just say, if that's true, know that the question of that movie is did I love? Did I love openly and honestly and completely. That's why you see images of them. Because you're going to think about who you're going to miss and who's going to miss you. And in that reality you think, did I honestly love? Now I don't preach either because at that moment in my life, I was so broken hearted. I didn't even like the images I saw because I didn't think I'd told people I loved them. I didn't want to die. I didn't say anything to anybody. I was a young man who didn't know how to use his emotions and talk with people. I was shut down in my own brain. Anyone know what I'm talking about? I didn't know how to express emotion to people and tell them I loved them and why I love them. And so the truth is I didn't like that question. Did I love Because I had shut off my heart. I had built up these big walls to keep out the bad guys. But in doing that, I also Kept out the good guys from hugging or expressing or talking or friendships. I just shut down. The car hit the ground, rolled several times. I got knocked out completely. When I came to, Kevin was screaming at the top of his lungs, brendan, get out of the car, get out of the. I looked over and his whole head was open. There's blood everywhere, all over him. And his eyes were wild like an animal. Get out, get out, get out. He crawls outside the driver's side window. I go to get outside mine, but I can't. The car is smashed down on top of me. The only thing I have is like what used to be the windshield here. And I push through the windshield to escape. And I stand up onto the crumpled hood of the car. He's screaming and that shock thing happens where you just go, thud. You don't hear anything, you don't see anything. Everything's in slow motion. You feel heavy, you feel like you're dying. And I remember looking down and then I saw all the blood on me. Blood dripping off my face, blood dripping off my shoes, blood dripping all over the hood of the car. And I remember looking down at this in this almost trance of shock. And Kevin now is screaming at the car, but I can't hear him anymore. And I see all the blood and I just remember thinking, if this is it, did I even matter? If this is the last moment? Did I even do something with myself? Did I matter? Was there a reason I was here? We all wonder that. What's the purpose? I didn't like the answer to that question either, because I hadn't done anything with my life. I was a 19 year old lost kid. I never knew about service, servant leadership. I wasn't connected with my church or spirituality. I didn't know. I about passed out. And then I looked. As the blood was going off the hood of the car, I saw a glimmer. It was like a reflection in the blood, a sparkle. And it made me look up and there was this bright, big, beautiful moon that night that I had never even seen. And as I looked up to this, I felt the connection I'd never felt in my life before. And I felt in that very moment that I was gonna be okay. You ever have that moment, that epiphany, you're gonna be okay. You take a breath in, you're like, you're gonna be okay. I felt this connection. I felt like in that moment, I later called it life, school and ticket. I felt like God had reached down to me and handed me life's golden ticket. Second Chance on the hood of that car. Here you go, son. You can still live. You can still love. You can still matter. But now you know the clock is ticking. And I remember getting that feeling, that ticket, that second chance, and just this gratitude and this connection and just this gratitude and feeling this blessing, and I just thought, I will earn this. I will earn this. I wanted to earn life. I wanted to earn the blessing of the breath. I wanted to earn the second chance. I wanted to live and love and matter. I did want it. So many people in this room and so many people watching at home. You want to live again and you want to love again, and you want to matter again. And you have to jump in, and you have to go for it now because life is really short. I call it mortality motivation. When you realize how brief it is, how short it is, how fast it is, you're like, I got to get in. I got to get back in the game. I got to jump in. I've got to go. I've got to ask questions. I got to be there. Because it goes so fast. It's so fast. I knew I wanted to earn it. I don't want to ruin the story, but I lived. I'm all right. I'm still here. My friend Kevin, he survived. We both survived. Lots of blood, broken bones, terrified. Two young kids in another country. We survived. We got back to the U.S. we got back into school. And I remember when I got back into school, I was a different human being, because when you get a second chance in life, you choose to show up differently. If it's real for you. If it's real. I met a lot of people, had accidents, but it didn't change them. When it changes you is when you recognize the real gift of life, but the shortness of it at the same time. Can you recognize you've been given the gift? And it's short? And when you do, you show up different. You're like, I'm here. Different. Everyone say, I'm here. I'm here. Say, I'm here. I'm here. Shout out, I'm here. Like it's a blessing. I'm here. Thank you. I'm here. Thank you. I'm here. Thank you for being here today. Ladies and gentlemen, One of my great mentors in life is a guy named Wayne Dyer. And Wayne talked about every time he woke up in the morning, first thing he did is put his feet on the ground next to his bed. He said, thank you, thank you, thank you. So many people have lost gratitude for life. It's shocking. They complain about everything. They complain about the Wi Fi 17 times a day for the last 10 years. They complain about the commute 20 times a day for the last 20 years. They complain about the soap in the dispenser. They complain about everything. And you're like, you're alive, sucker. You are so lucky. Can you tap into that each day? Most people don't tap into anything but frustration, stress, anxiety each day. They forgot the blessing of life and they wonder why they don't get ahead. You know, I think I believe whether you believe in God or the universe or not, I don't think another level opens for you until you open to another level of appreciation and gratitude for life. You know, and some of you parents know this. You favor the grateful kid. Be honest. Oh, yeah, I see it. Yeah. What do you think God's doing? God's favor and the grateful kids. You got that little brat. Who wants more macaroni and cheese? You're like sliding to the good kid once in a while. You know what I'm saying? Listen, the universe favors the open heart, the grateful child, the grateful spirit. And I think a lot of what we've got into is a complainathon with our thumbs. And our heart has been disengaged from the world. We've lost that gratitude. And I'm here to say if you really want to change your life, you have to grab on to the gratitude of life and recognize its shortness. However, I also want to share this with you. I went back to school and everyone's like, you're so different. You're happy. They still didn't know, though. I was terrified. I couldn't talk to girls. I was scared to be in a relationship. Scared. So I was that person who would go on dates and not call them back, even though we had a good date. Sorry. I just. I couldn't make a connection. And the blessing was being a dorky kid. I realized, you know what? I didn't know how to live. I didn't know how to love. I didn't know how to matter. So I turned to books. I studied spirituality. I studied psychology and sociology and neuroscience and behavioral economics. Everything I could get my hand on in personal development. Everything in self improvement. Everything I could in any area that taught me, why do I think so poorly? Why is my brain set up in a way that I dislike myself? Because that's not natural. Your dislike for yourself is not natural. It's common, but not natural. We have to understand most of how bad we feel has been trained. We trained it or they trained it or today it trained it. You know, did you know that the average American does this about 1500 times a day? Swipe. Do you know that? Did you know every single thing that you swipe by is causing you to do two psychological things that are both damaging to you. One of those things that it's causing you to do is to immediately judge when you swipe by something. Instant judgment is trained in your body neurologically. Judgment. Should I pay attention? Is this relevant? Do I like it? Do I like him or her do? Is it worthy of a like, of a heart, of a comment? That simple decision, should I stop scrolling or not? Is judgment. And we're being trained a thousand plus times a day. The second thing is it's conditioning us to compare ourselves. Well, look at her house. Look at his thing. Look at what they're doing. And then we compare ourselves. And everyone's so mystified about why they feel bad. They feel bad because they're disengaged from the grace and the blessing and the gratitude of life. And they feel bad because every day they're training themselves like automatons to judge and to compare ourselves. And we're mystified why the new generation is miserable. Because you in this audience, maybe you do it a thousand times. Maybe they do it 5. That training of judgment is decimating our culture. Why do people fight so much online? Because they're trained to judge all day long. We have to learn that. For me, what happened was studying all these books and everything. It started changing my mind. But nothing changed for me until I realized something. I was suffering again in silence. Just like when I was depressed. I didn't know how to have relationships, so I went years without one. And until I realized, I was like, oh, I'm still angry. 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 Progress mode. Some of you your fear and Your discouragement is you're still holding on to an old anger, something that was years ago, and you're scared to genuinely let it go because it justifies something about you today. Well, I'm this way because he broke my heart. I'm this way because they fired me. I'm this way because something. And we blame somebody else. I'm stuck here because my family. I'm stuck here because of this. I'm stuck. I'm angry. I'm this way. And you have to learn to let it go. The story about my accident I rarely tell is it took a while for me to realize how hurt I was and how I'd been driven into suicide, not because of her, but because of this. And one day I picked up the phone. My greatest fear at that time in my life, as I'm changing my life, I'm becoming happy. I'm learning about happiness from books and psychology and everything. I picked up the phone to call the girl that broke my heart. And I called. Somebody picked up, went and got her. She came on. She says, hello? I said, it's Brendan. And a long pause. I said, I know you don't have to say anything. Just please don't hang up. I just wanted to tell you something. When we were breaking up, I'm sorry. I was mean and rude, and I own that. And I just want you to know, no matter what has happened, what we went through, I wish you nothing but love and health and joy and fulfillment in your life. And I just wanted to let you to know that because I said some terrible things when we broke up. And I know we didn't do it right, but I don't want to go through life not just resolving that and telling you that I hope you will someday forgive me. And I forgive you. And I just want us to have amazing lives. Dead silence. Then I heard this muffled sound. Then I realized she was sobbing. This happened for a while. And I said, are you okay? And she says, I've looked at those notes you sent me and thought about what I did every day. And I've hated myself. This was a long time later. It's like over a year later. Sometimes we don't realize the people who did us wrong, they feel bad about it. And also, it's not our job to make them feel terrible forever. And if you still feel terrible about your life or your relationships, because someone who did something to you years ago, maybe that's you now, not them. That's you now, not them. You're in control of your mind. I Didn't know that. Now maybe everybody knows that and I just learned it late in life, you know. But listen, many of you, your greatest fear is letting something go. You don't know it yet, but maybe you're here today to find it. What's something in your life? It's just time to let go. It's just. It's been. You've had it. You've been holding onto it for so long, that old relationship, that old career, that old situation that you would just feel free and alive again if you just let it go. What is that for you? I don't know what it is, but you should know it. Everyone has it. It's something for everybody. Something that just. This might be stupid and it might not be so obvious where you're like, well, Brennan, and it's not me and no one ever did me. Maybe it's something you did. You're so mad at yourself for going broke, treating that person bad, making that mistake. You're so embarrassed and shamed personally that you can't even feel this moment and this day because you're mad at yourself. And I want you to let you know you're the only one mad at yourself. No, no, no, Brendon, they are mad at me. I'm like, they're not thinking about you. They're. They're mad at their own self. They got the little brat who also wants more macaroni and cheese, and they're focused on their kids. You think in your mind that everyone's thinking about you. They're not. This story that you tell yourself, this thing that you get trapped on. Stop being mad at yourself. You have a gift of life. You can start over again. You can be here fresh again. You don't have to live in your fears and your old stories. You can be here. Everyone say, I'm here. Everyone say, thank you, I'm here. Thank you, I'm here. You get a day of rejuvenation, but only you give yourself that. No one on stage, no one in church, no one at school, you. At some point you go, you know what? I deserve a fresh start. I deserve a fresh start. Everyone say it with me. I deserve a fresh start. And what's empowering about life is some of you will walk out of here and you'll believe it for yourself. And some of you will go back to your next day just like you've barreled through every other day and you're like, I went to Brendan's growth day, L.A. i don't feel nothing. And if that's true. That's okay. I don't take that personally. Everyone finds their own rejuvenation, their own restart line. I just think the world needs a big restart. Can I get an amen on a weekday, ladies and gentlemen? I'm like, woo, we need a restart. We need a restart, a refresh. I call it reigniting your life. You call it whatever you want, but it's gotta be something. In our culture, in our world, our company, we call it growth day. Every day is a growth day. Every day, sun comes up, new things to do. Let's go. Cause once you forgive and you let it go, it's a fresh start. It was a fresh start for me. I want. I hung up the phone with that. I let it go. I said, wow, she was suffering too. She said she felt lighter by the end. I felt lighter by then. We wished each other well and beautiful things. Hung up. I. I went for a walk that night. I felt like a new person. I'd let go of my anger. You want to know what? When you let go of your anger, your whole life changes. That's the thing. Your whole life. I've never felt that moment changed forever. That one moment. I was free. I was free. I went on. I wrote a book in college, I got a job teaching and training at a consulting company. I was in a good spirit because I knew a little bit about life. I knew that I could show up and instead of hating myself, I could show up and actually enjoy an experience. Who's having a good time today in la, ladies and gentlemen? I knew no matter what, I could learn through the difficulties of life. I could read books, I could ask other people. I got so much mentorship from the people around me by going, hey, how do you deal with things when you feel bad? How do you deal with this when you had a bad relationship? How do you deal with. And learning that develops your skill sets about dealing with life? Things got better. I, the sad, broken, suicidal kid, enjoyed life again. I learned the secret that everybody wants. You know what everybody really wants? They want to feel the day again. That's what everybody really wants. They want to feel life again. Feel the enthusiasm, the vibrancy, the love, the joy. They want to feel it. We've barreled through so many years. You ever have those moments where you go, I don't even remember the last six months. I don't remember the last three years. That's not your memory. It's that you didn't live the day, you didn't feel the day when you actually Feel the days, they elongate. When you actually feel life, it's not barreling through because you're going through the motions. It's like a vibrant tapestry. It's different. There's an energy to it. Everyone always says it. When they get on our world, they're like, I don't know, you guys, you're all weird. Did you. What's it with your audience and Brendan? They jump, they clap, they're happy. Because I'm here, I'm here. Presence. You know what? If you have. I would tell people, if you want to fear something. Fear living a false and constrained life. Fear that. Fear going through life not being you and feeling it. Fear that. Don't fear make believe stuff. Fear that life is short and we should live it and experience it and really feel it. I learned those lessons. I started telling everybody about it. People say, oh, I like that. You should teach, you should talk, you should start this thing. And I thought, maybe I'll write a book one day about, you know, some of the lessons that I learned. And so I went into the next huge, fearful thing of my life, which was, you know, went through school to, you know, get my degree, got my degree, got a good, safe job working for somebody, teaching and training in the consulting company. But I wanted to write a book. So for all the years I was there, I was like, I want to write a book. I want to write a book. I want a book. But I was terrified. It wasn't like it is now, you know, it was scary to be a book author back then. And I remember that decision. Who's ever made a decision to leave a job and to do your own thing? That's terrifying, right? You lay up at night thinking about that. Sometimes you're fired up and sometimes you're like, what am I doing? I quit the job. I was like, what am I doing? This is crazy. And I did what every great writer does. I quickly went broke. You know, I just went so broke, I didn't know what I was doing. And I was so scared, I quit the job. I didn't know how to write a book. I'd never written a book about, like, a real book. I didn't know what to do. I was terrified. I was dating a girl at the time, and she was the girl. She was the girl. She was the girl. I just knew it. I met her at the gym. Me, scrawny, Brendan Lee, you know, I went to this gym where everyone was huge, and then there was me. And this beautiful girl walked in, and I was on this machine, whatever this one is where you're doing with the back thing, your legs are up over there and you're doing the back thing, you know, so I'm doing this and I'm like sweating on this mat and she's sitting there and she's doing some sit ups. I'm like, hi. No game whatsoever. How are you? Okay. And we start talking and just. I was excited to meet her and we had this amazing conversation and, you know, I felt good because at that time I had a job and I was new in San Francisco, and this was a new person. I was excited and we started talking and then I'd see her a few times, and then I didn't see her. And then I dated somebody, and she dated somebody, and then we saw each other again. And when I saw her the next time, I was ready because I had left this one relationship because I knew she was the girl. And I saw her in the gym and she came in, and my dad had always taught me, hey, you know, if you ever meet a nice girl, you should know everything going on in the city so you can ask her to do something nice versus just go to a movie. And so I'd read the newspaper. I always knew what was going on. So I ran into her that day and I knew that weekend they were doing a show that was opening at an art museum. And so I met her and I said, hi, how are you? And I was so excited when I saw her, and I hadn't seen her in several months. And her name is Denise. And she walked up and I go, hi, Diane, how are you? She's like, it's Denise. I'm like, oh, I know we haven't seen each other. You probably forgot my name. She's like, hi, Brendan. I was like, oh, God. But she let me recover. She let me recover. I said, oh, well, do you like art? And she's like, do I like art? I said, yeah, art. She's like, yes. I said, well, there's an art museum. It's opening on Sunday. If you want to take like a Sunday stroll and. And go to this art museum, I'd love to go there. I have two tickets. And she's like, oh, well, I'm gonna go work out. Come ask me later. I said, I'm leaving right now. What's your number? And she's 415. Da, da, da da. She tells me the number. I repeat it back to her. She goes, okay. And I repeat it back to her. She goes, okay, okay, I'll call you. And I go out of there because I don't have a good numbers memory. So I run downstairs to the front desk and go, do you have a piece of paper? Do you have a piece of paper? They're like, what? I said, piece of paper, piece of paper. And the lady starts fishing for a piece of paper. I'm like, good Lord. So I run. I run six blocks back to my house, repeating her number, 415, screaming at the top of my lungs, getting this number in my head. I run up into my apartment, I write it down like, oh, oh, okay. Then I call, and I get her voicemail, and it's her. I'm like, yes. Oh, okay. So I called her. We set the date. We go to the museum. We have this great time. Because I'm like this all the time. So in a very stuffy museum, I'm your best friend. We're gonna have the best time, right? We had the best time. Everything's great. And I can feel. I remember at the museum, we go up on this little hill. We go to this little coffee shop. She asked me if I want. You know, do you want to hang out? You want to have a coffee? I'm like, no. She's like, what? And could you imagine me on coffee? I didn't drink caffeine at that time in my life. I was like, no. She's like, well, do you want to go with me while I have coffee? I said, oh, yeah, that'd be great. So we go. She gets coffee. We're sitting on this, looking at this fountain, looking at this church over this hill next to the MoMA, and we're just talking. And I just remember there's this moment where we just locked in and our hearts connected. And she always says that that was the moment she knew that something important was going to happen between us. And I always say, I just thought we were going to make out right then. That was. That's what. That's what I thought was happening. Anyway, We start dating, and I tell her my crazy dream. I want to leave and start my own thing. I want to teach, and I want to coach people. But as an entrepreneur, I want to start by writing this book. She's like, oh, you want to write a book? I said, yeah. She's like, okay, well, how are you going to do it with work and everything? I said, I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to write my book. And she's like, well, how will you pay for things? I said, well, I'm. You ever not think that part through yet? Well, I just. Okay, well, so I quit the job and as I said, I quickly went broke and now I'm with the girl. But I have no money and I can't afford my rent anymore. So I go live on my friends. I give up my apartment and I'm living on the floor of my friends. And this goes on for months. And at some point now I either have to go back to Montana and live with my parents or we have to move in together. And we didn't want to move in together until maybe one day we got married or something. But she says I can move in. She believes in me. And it was the hardest thing to have someone believe in you when you know you don't deserve it. A lot of us have that fear that we don't deserve it, that we are unworthy of their belief, we are unworthy of their time, their energy, their resources, their love. Because I still had that inside from that breakup, which had been, you know, over a decade prior. I still just didn't think that could she really love me? Why would she believe in me? No. I don't know. I still had all that in my head. And I didn't know how to do anything. I didn't know how to write a book. And so I was, after spending time at my friend's house, I have to move into hers. And I remember I went home that summer and I picked up a little desk that I could move into her apartment. Her apartment is small, so I was gonna have to write in the bedroom next to the bed. I think I have that picture. That's my writing desk. I know you think it's fancy, right? This is the dream of all the writers. Of course, now of course I recognize how ridiculous it was. I had my mom's three legged table and I was writing on this desk. And the truth is, every day we would wake up, Denise would go to her real job. She would commute into a real job that was paying for all the groceries, was paying for us to live together. I had zero money. I'm broke, broke, broke. And she believes in me. When she goes to work, I fold out that thing and I'm like, I'm going to go to work too. She leaves. And then usually I kind of fart around the house. And then I go down to the fancy places where the fancy people in San Francisco writes. Because, you know, there's all these famous cafes in San Francisco where famous writers went. And I go and I'd sit there and I'd be so excited to Write where? This famous writer, I'd sit down, I'm like, yes, this is gonna be so awesome. And I would sit down and then I'd stare at the blank page. And I didn't know what to write. I didn't know how to write. I'd get discouraged. I'd go get a green tea. I'd get a croissant. I'd sit back down because that's what everyone else is doing. Green teas and croissants. I was like, okay, that's what people do here. So. And I fake it. And nothing would happen. And then I'd need to go. Inspiration. I'd say, so I'd go in and write. I'd walk around for some inspiration. And then I would come back and at night she'd show up and I'd be doing this. How's it going? I've been riding here all day, babe. I'm awesome. Who's ever lied about your progress? Yeah, so I lied about my progress for months. And months. And whenever you lie about working hard, your brain hears it. You lose self respect. You lose real progress in life because you know you're faking it. You know you're not showing up and doing the hard work. You know you're telling yourself stories about when you'll be ready and when it will be perfect. Your brain knows. Your brain knows you're not jumping in and you're disengaging. Your brain knows that you're choosing a cowardly life. It's not nice to say, but the brain knows it. That's why we don't like ourselves sometimes. We haven't earned the self respect of showing up. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Be consistent. Do the work. Be like. We lose self discipline and we don't like ourselves as much anymore. People don't like when you say that self worth is tied to self discipline. It's just that it is. And so I didn't like myself. And the truth is, now I was going into bankruptcy. So every morning I'd fold out the thing. I'd get everything ready, my little writing tools. And on the bed next to me, I'd set up all the vision boards, all the research, all the books, all the papers. Denise would go off to work a real job. And then I started getting the credit card bills. And they're going on the bed, the bankruptcy papers, they're going on the bed and they're just stacking up. Now there's. You ever have envelopes that you know the bills are in and you just don't open it. Who's ever just stacked it but not opened it? Look around the room. Yeah, a lot of us, right? I just stacked them up. And they get big. They're big. You're just avoiding. You won't even open it. You won't even. You're so scared of the thing. You know what's in it. You won't even open it. Broke. That's where I was one night. Faked all day. She comes home and I'm typing. We have a nice dinner. I go back in. I'm pretending to type. She goes, showers, gets ready for bed. She comes in. She comes in. She sees me working diligently. Kiss on the cheek. Good night, honey. I love you. She goes to go to sleep, crawls under the covers of the bed, but on the section where all of my bills and unopened credit cards and bankruptcy papers were. So I'm pretending to type. I look over. And I see the love of my life sleeping under the weight of my bills. And it was just like. I don't know if you've ever been there, but none of us want our own inaction to and lack of consistency to be the cause of pain or financial pain for those that we love. And I see her and I'm like, this is not the life I wanted. Come on, Brandon. You know what I really fear? And I didn't know until then? I feared not being able to take care of my family. I feared not being able to manifest my dream, my book. I feared not doing the work. I feared being a person who didn't do the work. So everyone had to suffer. And I don't know why that hit me that day, but it hit me. And I just hit those keys. She's sleeping that night, all night. The whole night. Right next morning, as soon as I got up, next night, next morning, next day, next day, next day. 18 days. Book is done. 18 days, Go home, finalize it. This book hits. It's called Life's Golden Ticket. Becomes number one on Amazon, becomes my first book, my first big book with HarperCollins. It comes out, it goes straight up. And I was like, yes, I've made it. I start writing another one. And then a few weeks later, it goes straight down. You're like, oh, I didn't know that was gonna happen. And I didn't know what to do. And I got discouraged. The first book, I thought it did great, and then it went away. Oh, my God. Discouraged. Doubt, defeat, or discipline? Now I know I have the choice. Defeat or Discipline, Discipline. Keep going, kid. Come on, just show up again. Don't go back where you're faking it. Don't go back to faking it. Do the work. Okay? Some of you know the letters. Six best selling books later. New York Times best selling in a row. It was just like, wow. And I tell you, I didn't go back to the fake life. I did the work. And I don't brag about it. It took a long time to figure that out. And in every area of my life, the scariest things. The scariest things. Starting my own business, doing coaching, speaking on stage. I was terrified. I remember when I was writing that book, one of the most scary things that ever happened to me was self inflicted. When the book didn't do what I wanted it to do, I realized I didn't know marketing, so I had to learn how to do video. And so I went down the block. I got a $300 flip video camera. Anyone remember what this. No one knows what these are anymore. Everyone has their phones. It was like this size. It was like a camera a little bit taller than this. It had one red button on it and a screen, and that was it. And so you'd press it. So I went and I got it. I'm still broke and all I have is my book. So in the house, I set up all of these books and I tape, duct tape this flip video camera around the thing because everyone said you needed video. And I press start. And I would get over there, I look at the camera. Hi, I'm Brendan Burchard. Hi, I'm Brendan. No, hey, I'm Brendan. Hi. Have you ever done video and you can't even explain yourself? You can't even introduce yourself? You go through 17 different tones and you're like, none of those sound like me. The camera turns you into an awkward weirdo. Oh, terrible. I think I have a picture of. Oh, I have to find it here in a minute. I'll find it in here in a minute. And I remember doing that video and feeling stupid. We had nothing. So Denise had three IKEA lamps in the house. You know, those big IKEA lamps? And so we'd set up the IKEA lamps. I would set up the IKEA lamps when she went to work. And they would be right off the thing to light me up. And then I'd shoot the video, shoot the video, shoot the video, shoot the video, shoot the video. At night, I'd start editing it. She would come home, she's like, how'd the video shooting go today? I was like, terrible. So bad. She's like, really bad. I'm like, it looks awful. She's like, really? I'm like, it's so funny. It's so bad. And we would laugh. She'd watch it. She's like, oh, that's bad. I'm like, isn't it bad? And we'd laugh at how bad I was at this. But you know what? I discovered something. I almost stopped. I remember one night watching the videos, feeling so bad about it, and I was like, this is embarrassing. This is. Who's ever done something you thought, this is embarrassing? See, most of us, you don't have any fear to start. Everyone says I'm scared to start. No, you're scared to be seen starting small. You don't have fear. You're embarrassed to be seen starting small. My problem was I was one of those kids that grew up with nothing. I didn't have a lot. I love my mom, my dad loved me. That was my unfair advantage. But we didn't have a lot. This is the house that I grew up in. And I just. I love this house, by the way. I didn't know until I went back. This is when I went after my car accident. I went on a journey to understand my thinking and where I came from. And I came from an old Irish mining town that had been economically depressed for a long time. That was my formative years in the house. I loved that house. It was always falling apart. The roof was always sagging. There was always a leak somewhere. Electricity always went out, something. But. But we were happy. We were happy. My mom made us happy. My dad worked really hard. Everyone was working really hard. I don't know how they survived or provided for us four kids. But I realized something when I went back there that had been halting my progress in life. And what it was, was I had learned to survive. So I did these videos and I look at them like, these are terrible. So I thought, I don't think I should put them out. They're terrible. I'll be fine. I don't need to do that. You know what, Denise? She's making enough money. We'll be fine. I don't need to. You know what? I could just go to get a job doing something stupid. I. I'll make some money. I'll be fine. And in that moment, I heard myself, I'll be fine. You know what fine is? It's a four letter word. I'm fine. No, you're not. We'll just be fine. You better engage and I realized sometimes if you've been raised in such a way that you could survive and it was just about survival, you have no ambitions beyond it. They would push you. Do you know why most people don't have performance, edge or hunger? Because they're good at surviving. Because when you're good at surviving, why, hey man, I got by. I paid the bills. It's just enough mentality. I'll do just enough to get by. Just enough not to get fired. Just enough for him to stay with me. Just enough. And people who are just enough people, they never break through that level of ambition and potential that they were given in life. They never reach their calling. They're just surviving. They're just scraping by. And they've learned to just scrape by. And they settled on scraping by. And that's how I felt shooting those videos. I won't do it. People think I'm stupid, I look dumb, I can't even introduce myself. I don't even know how to do this. Even when I got all the cameras right and everything on me and I started talking, I looked like that. That is the best lighting I achieved. That's the best shirt I owned. That is about seven IKEA lamps burning my face off. And I'm gonna sell something on the Internet. I'm going to teach you and I'm going to inspire you. And I looked like that. Survival says don't release this, Brendan. Ambition says do it anyway. Survival says don't. Ambition says go. And you've been listening to one of those loud shouts. Don't embarrass yourself and stop or go. You'll figure it out. That was the best one I had. Then when I got really good and you know how in sales confidence is everything. Well, this is how my first year went. That's my most confident look. That's my best shot video right there. I sucked. I couldn't talk on video. I was awful. And then I just said, well, I have no skill at this. I guess the only way to get skill is keep going. Some of you, you fear you're not good at something. I'm here to tell you you're not. Why is that so threatening? Oh, well, it must be a self worth issue. No, just, it's a consistency issue. How do you think you're supposed to have done it if you haven't done it? Most of the world hasn't developed skills because they just haven't tried it enough. They, they want to do something, but they try it. One weekend they set up the video camera, they shot it they knew they looked like that and they stopped. Well, I looked like that, too, for a year or two. It was bad videos. A year or two. But you know what? By the end of 24 months from that video, I had made $4.8 million on the Internet. $4.8 million. I think the first couple hundred videos really sucked. And then I learned to just like, why am I trying to be somebody else? Hi, I'm Brendan Burchard. Yeah, no, it's like I let my dorky, weird, authentic self happen, and I just kept talking it through and talking it through. Just like this stage. I don't know where everything has to go. I'm just here with you and what you need to do. Be back in your body and be back in the moment and be back in the grace to recognize you're gifted. To be here and work it through. Everyone say work it through. You just have to work it through. It's okay that you suck at this new dream. Don't complain and blame anybody else. Of course you suck at it. I suck at everything in my life. I got better at some things, but most things. If you went golfing with me, you'd think I'm terrible. If we went bowling, you think I'm terrible. If we went swimming, you think pretty much everything I do in my life is really bad. And it's so fun. Why do you think when you suck at something, you ever go golfing with somebody who thinks they're supposed to be great, and every swing they're swearing and they're mad? You're like, dude, you're no fun to play with. I equally suck. But I'm having a party over here. Can I get an amen? On a weekday? You gotta teach yourself to have fun. I remember that. That sales video led to my first stage. This is my first event, my first event ever. Now I speak to, you know, Bridgestone arena and the Superdome and MGM and all these big arenas with 15, 20, 30,000 people all around. Well, that was the first one. And no one ever believes me when I show that. That's the first room. That was my first seminar. This leads to eight seminars a year for four days each with thousands of people over the year. But that was it. This is the other Ang. That's. That's the whole thing. That's. That's the whole thing. That was the whole room. That's all I had. And I remember I came out that first run. I had rented the screen. You ever go to a hotel and you rent the screen? They want $5,000 for the screen and the projector. I'm like, it's a screen and a projector. How could it be $5,000? I'm broke, I'm crying about it. And I have to go get these little speakers because I want to sing and dance with people. And so I'd have my laptop on this little like, like a little table. Like this table right here. I'd have my little laptop and I have speakers right underneath. So I'd come out and go, welcome everyday seminar. And I'd press the play and I'd go. And we'd clap and I'd go, okay, great, great. And I'd have to run back over and press pause. It was so ridiculous. My first events were so bad. Everyone at home, if you would think this is bad, imagine 17 years ago. It was way bad. I was terrible at it. It was so bad. But it started catching fire. And here's the thing. The first one didn't make any money. The first couple didn't make any money. One of them made me broke. Another one made me a millionaire. Another one made me broke. It was just like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do this. But the thing is, I kept showing up through all of it. That self discipline, that self respect that comes with, okay, today sucked. Tomorrow, a new day. Today I didn't do a good job. My video sucked. Tomorrow, new video. The willingness to reshoot the video, the willingness to fill the event again, the willingness to try new things over and over and over earned my self respect enough that I found myself. Took five years, five years from that goofy video for me to finally propose to Denise. And it took five years because I was earning my self respect. I wanted her to marry a man who respected himself, who built something in himself, who overcame those things about himself that he knew were insufficient. I wanted her to see me working on myself. Not because I needed her admiration, because I wanted that in a relationship. I wanted a relationship where both people respected themselves because they worked hard for each other and for themselves. The truth is, there were a lot of nights, as you heard, I faked it. I didn't work. And then I would see her going to work and commuting. And when I saw her sleeping under my bills, I'd found somebody to fight for beyond my own survival. If you're not engaged in life, if you're not hunting, if you're not working, if you've lost the hunger and performance edge, don't blame retirement. Don't blame the empty nest. Don't blame the economy. What has happened is you lost your focus on what to fight for. You wake up and you focus on this judgment and comparison and you forgot, what am I fighting for today? And if you don't like the metaphor, what am I fighting for? What are you loving for? I was going to fight in love for this girl. I was going to write and succeed and win and build a future for this girl. I found something to fight for. Some of you, it's for your kids, for your parents, for your grandparents, for your community, for your church, for your God, for your team, for your company, for your dream. But you better not start your day detached from that. Because when you are detached from those things, you will devolve in discouragement and defeat. Every morning, we call it a growth day. You wake up, it's a new day. Like Wayne Dyer. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Okay, what should I do today? How can I earn something today? Earn this life. Get that self respect. Build something. Some people, they'll think you are crazy. There's plenty of people I dated or I was in relationship with, they thought I was crazy. Throughout my life before Denise, she believed in me. I don't know why. I literally have no idea. Did you see these pictures earlier? Could you imagine? She works all day and comes home, honey, I gotta show you this video. And this is the video. And I'm trying to be credible enough for people to give me money on the Internet to learn from me. And that's me. She believed. I don't know why, I don't know why. She believed me through this. She believed me through this. And she married me. And. Then she believed in the dream. I said, honey, we're going to reach more people about personal development online than anyone's done. And I'm going to do events that are artful and different and we're going to make experiences for people. Because I was blessed to have experiences in my life, like the car accident, like jumping out of planes, like bankruptcies, like all these things I've been through in my life. And I thought, we're gonna do something unique. And I came up with this crazy idea, this crazy simple phrase in my life. The next level, you know what? Most people are focused on avoiding pain and running away from fear. But there are people who become ultra successful, people who ask the question, what's the next level for me? What does that look like? Now? I saw those little tiny tables and desks. I said, what's the next level look like for me? What will that look like? What will that feel like? What's that next level for me? What's the next level for you and your family? What is it? What's your next level for health? What's your next level financially? Not because you have to strive for endless means where you're never satisfied. No, you can strive satisfied. You can be completely content and happy and joyous and grateful for God for today's blessings and still work tomorrow hard to build more into his future vision or your future vision for you. There's more potential in you, that next level. There's something there for you. Stop spending the day complaining about what's here and start thinking about what can be there for you when you grow into it. What could be there for you? I'd written that first book, Life's Golden Ticket, and I'd done those little events in those little seminars. I thought, you know what? Mm, mm. I'm gonna go big. I'm gonna do something no one's ever done before. I didn't know how. I said, you know what I'm gonna do? Life's goal and ticket. It's a parable. It takes place in an amusement park. The book does. And there's a character who goes to the amusement park and has these magical experiences with these different carnies and people at the amusement park who reveal to him why he can't love and why he can't have success in life. He learns that he doesn't know how to love or have success in his life through all these different metaphors at the amusement park. I said, honey, we're going to bring it to life. She says, what do you mean? I said, I'm going to rent the Ringling Brothers circus tent and we're gonna get these characters and we're gonna get people in there and we're gonna act out life's golden ticket. We're gonna bring the book to life. She's like, you're gonna get a tent. I'm like, a tent? My friends are like, how are you gonna afford a tent? I go, I don't know, but I'm gonna get a tent. So I contact Ringling Brothers and I said, I would like to partner with you to get your tent and to bring people there and we're going to do kind of like a revival, but more of like a self improvement thing. But I need all your, you know, I need your strong men and I need some, you know, people from high wires and stuff. And they're like, who are you? Can you afford to do a buyout of our Tent. I go, oh, absolutely not. But could we do something? They're like, who are you? See, the whole world's like, who are you? You're so scared they're gonna say, who are you? You're terrified you're gonna come up with this idea and someone's gonna. Who do you think you are? Everyone at every level, at all of your next levels, your next level of income, they're gonna go, who do you think you are? Your next level of work and promotion. Who do you think you are? Everyone is always going to ask that, so you better know. Yeah, who you are. I'm like, I'm the son of Mel and Christian Burchard. I'm the son of God. I am a blessed child to be here. I believe that. I, like, all of us in this room, we're children of God. I'm a person of faith, and I just believe that he precedes me and that if I've been given an idea, I'm supposed to go after it because I've been given the idea. I know not everyone believes that, but I just feel like, well, Something gave me the idea. It wasn't my brain, so I better go after it. So everyone says, no, I can't get any. I can't even. I try to rent a wedding tent, and they make fun of me, let alone a circus tent. And then one day, I'm driving down near Long Beach, California, and I look off, and the exit ramp, and there's a tent. A red and a white tent, just like in my book. Oh, my God. I hit the brakes. I go reverse on the interstate. No one said I was smart. I take the exit, I drive down. I literally get out. I run up to the gate. I'm like, can I talk to who owns this? They're like, would you like to buy a ticket? I'm like, no. Who owns this? You mean the owner of the thing? Yeah, well, he's in that thing over there. I said, I gotta talk to him. She goes, you gotta buy a ticket first. And I had no money. I said, well, I don't have any money. She's like, what do you want? I said, well, I want to rent the. She's like, well, it's eight bucks to come in. I go, I don't. I just. I was driving around. I didn't have my wallet with me. I didn't have any money. She goes, I don't know. I said, I'll wait all day. If I could just get five minutes with him. Please, please, please. And I stood out there for four hours in the sun. Four hours. Four hours. Finally, I think he came over just because he felt sad for me. I mean, he came over and says, all right. Someone says, you want to rent the tent? I said, yes. Now, this guy, amazing. He and his family had run the Mexican National Circus, and they would spend their summers coming all the way up California and all the west coast and all the way back down, and they'd make all the money for their families, and they had the whole thing. They had the Strongmans and the lions and the tigers and. I mean, they had the whole thing. Everything that I needed, everything. So I tell him about this book that I've written. I want to bring it to life and could we do something? And he says, well, how would we do something? I said, I don't know. Just like, maybe I'll help you fill it. We'll fill it for the weekend. We'll split the proceeds. He's like, well, I usually do it, and I make all the proceeds, Right? How about you have all the proceeds up to what you need normally make, and anything above that I can have. He's like, how about no? Well, how about we split it? How about we get this much what we usually make, and then anything extra will split? Yes, let's do that. And this is the Life's golden ticket. 10. Now here's what I want to tell you to do. Believe beyond your capabilities. I didn't know how to write a book, but I wrote six of them. I didn't know how to do videos, but my videos have been viewed now over a billion times. I didn't know how to shoot an online course. I've got 30 online courses that all earn over a million dollars. I didn't know how to sit down and talk with Oprah or two US presidents. I didn't know how to coach Fortune 500 fancy people or people on covers of magazines. And back then, I didn't know how to do an event in a tent outside. But knowing how should never be the obstacle. When you know who, when you know what, you will find the how. You gotta tap into what is true for you at this next level. What do you want now? What do you desire? What's the dream? Who are you now at this stage of your life, not when you were in your 20s or 30s or that first marriage or that last house. Who are you now? Who you are now is someone who wants to feel the day and express themselves again and come back to life, to bring joy and love to this world. That's who you are now, even if you can't hear it from me because you think I'm just mouthing out at you. No, you who you are. I know there's more capability in you than you know, because I spend my career doing this. I've watched millions of people take our courses and change their lives who never thought they could. Most of them only bought. Just out of curiosity, is the kid really that good? Let me see. I'll refund it in 30 days. Okay. You know, it's just like. I don't know. Let me test him out. I knew that was fine. I knew that was. I didn't know how to do that. We went through everything I was gonna bring this life to. I'll show you some pictures. I love these pictures. That's the inside of the tent. That's the life's golden ticket tent. We had the center ring in there. We had their performers come in. That was me in the center ring. I dressed up like Henry in life's golden ticket, who's a gardener and a groundskeeper in the book. So I was dressed up like that. We had, you know, people from all over come in there and believe and, and, and, and just light it up. I did all these acting out these performances that I'd never done before. I was not a thing theater kid. I didn't know. I didn't know anything about theater. I'm acting out scenes from the book. You know, I'm taking this lady up into this Ferris wheel. Like, I'm up. I don't know if you. That's us going up. She's telling me the problems of her life. I'm coaching her as this thing is lifting up, and I'm thinking, I don't know what this thing is connected to. I, I. And remember, I was scared of heights. So I'm like, oh. I'm trying to coach her in front of all these people as it's lifting us to the top of the tent. And I don't know if it's going to work. There's only two wires, and it's kind of like this. I'm terrified. I remember I'm changing outfits. If you read the book, I'm the fortune teller and the lion keeper. I'm acting them out. I have no idea how to do any acting. I don't know how to speak. I'm making it up as I go along. And I was alive. Ladies and gentlemen, you come to life when you stretch yourself and you push yourself. I even got Denise on board of this thing. We're a couple months married and I convinced her to come down like, honey, I'm gonna act out the tunnel of love from the book. Now there's a reason Denise doesn't come to my events. She does. She's the introvert of the family. She doesn't want any of this. Like bringing her on stage is terrible. I said, honey, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put you in a rowboat and we're going to push you out in the rowboat in front of everybody and we'll hit you with a can light, we'll play this John May song and I'll come out and we'll make out. What do you think? Oh my gosh. I get my parents to come and volunteer and they're. My parents are there and we're just all believing it's going to turn out fine. We have no idea how to do it. My parents are checking people in, my dad's carrying boxes and he's down there at 5am giving everyone coffee. It's a true family event and it is terrifying every single day. First day, first night of the event, I felt, oh my God, we pulled it off, thank God. The first night. And it's a three day event. First night. Well, overnight we've never done an event before. And we leave all the gear in the tent. And a tent, you know, gathers moisture over the grass and then drips down. It dripped down all over the technology, ruined all of our sound in our video the first night. By the mid second morning, the fire marshal comes over and says, hey, because he sees the big tent, thinks there's money, comes over, says hey, I walked around here and you know your extension cord isn't six inches from the thing over here. That's a $500 fine. And then by afternoon he comes back with another city guy and says, hey, you know you only have two air conditioning units out here. You need to have three, otherwise we're going to shut you down by the end of lunch. I go to the guy, go, how much to get another air conditioning unit here? We have to have it by the time people come back from lunch. And he says, oh my God, we need another air conditioning unit. We've never needed another air conditioning unit. They're shaking you down. I go, I don't know what to do. Another air conditioning unit for that tent was $40,000. For the next two days, I have no money. I have to go and ask family and friends and other people to help me coordinate and find somebody who will give us an air conditioning unit, which they do for $15,000. We had to borrow the money just to get the thing to go on. And we're trying to pull it through. And I've got speakers coming. John Grave, who wrote Minnow from Mars, Wind from Venus, Marianne Williamson, she's coming to speak. I got big names coming to speak at this thing because there's a tent. And this kid, this nobody in the industry who no one knows he's got a tent and they got. And people are there and they're showing up and he's just. He's crazy. No one's ever done that before. You got to come down here. So they're coming and I'm just putting on Smile. Okay, here we go. This is gonna be great. Every day I feel like it's going to fail. And I was alive, you know what I'm saying? It was such a blessing having mom and dad there, you know, I remember it was the scariest event I'd ever done. It was the beginning of my career. It's what made my reputation the best selling book the courses. But this, the speakers in our industry said, whoa. He did what? I mean, I did this crazy thing. The whole audience knew I'm terrified of heights at this point. And I knew they had a high wire and they had a trapezis, you know, with a person. They swing on the ropes and they jump and they land on the other side or they fall into the net and they had this wire. And I think it was 50ft in the air, up that high, the ceiling. And for some crazy reason, on the final night, I tell the audience, if you guys rock it out with me, if we just change and everything, I will go up on the wire. And everyone's like. And everyone jumps and they want to see me die. I'm like, they get so fired up. Now I've said it. I have to commit to it. Oh, my gosh. So we take a 20 minute break. I go back with the team. I'm like, how do I do this? And the dude, first thing guy goes, he goes. The guy who ran the Mexican National Circus says to his son, go get the helmet. So they go get this helmet. And they come back and the first thing, he goes, you're gonna have to wear the helmet. I'm like, oh, this is already looking bad. They gave me the helmet. They connect me up. When I climb that rigging to get up there, my hands were sweating like you'd be in a sauna. And I'm so. I'M mortified. And I get up there and I look out and I mean, when you're 50ft and this thing. I don't know how long it was, but maybe, you know, definitely something like this. And I'm looking at him like I have you ever been so scared? You can't even breathe and you know you can't breathe in the very moment you're so scared. Like, I can't breathe. So I almost start hyperventilating. And I'm standing there, I'm like, oh, my God. But I have to do this. These people have come to, you know, I'm saying change is possible. All I have to do is take this step on this wire. These people have come here for this. I stood there for 15 minutes. I couldn't do it. 15 minutes. I'm just standing there, just looking. They think something else is going on. The guys are playing music. It looks like everyone's getting ready. Oh, no. I just frozen. I was frozen. And I just kept thinking how scared I was. And then I remembered, I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared. Somebody to fight for. Someone to fight for. If you can't get over your shit, you better find somebody or something to fight for. You better take your focus off your stuff that you got from your school, from your high school, from your building, from your house, from them. Those things you haven't forget. That's shame. And you better take your eyes off of yourself. We live in a culture that is a selfie culture. And you better turn it into a service culture. You better go, who needs me now? I was like, these people, they are clapping. They have come to see this. My family is down there. I gotta pay for that $15,000 stupid thing. I. They. I need. You know what? Here we go. And I just love. I just took this step and it shook. I pulled it back, shook. And I was like, well, this is just stupid. This is just not. I said, well, either way, I'm gonna fall. Either way, I'm going to fall. Might as well make it fun. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna sprint. I remember, I love this picture of the audience. The woman on the right is one of my best friends, moms. She's so terrified. She's so. Notice everyone is looking up. She won't even look up. She knows I'm gonna die. She knows it's over. And I go, bam. I fall off the thing and the cable catches me and I bounce to the thing and I get up and everyone's like, yeah, and the audience went ape crazy, Crazy. Never in my life have I had anywhere. I've spoken all over the world, biggest arenas. I've never, never had an audience. I don't know how there's a couple hundred people. Never had an ovation like that in my life. They went crazy. And I was like, oh, okay. And I didn't think about me. I was like, they needed that for them. You need to see someone put themselves out there in a new way. And in your head go, how do I put myself out in a new way? I asked you at the beginning. You had to reinvent. You gotta find a new way to do things in a different way, in a different format. Even if it's awkward, even if it's weird, even if you don't know how it's gonna go, even if you don't have the script or the outline, you just. You've got to do something new to be on the edge. On the edge. On the tightrope again. There's life beyond the comfort zone. You got to find that again. We have so many people living in their boring lives, and they complain about someone else. It's like, no, put yourself out there, stretch. Have that ambition that is beyond your capabilities. If your only goals are what you already know how to do, that's not a goal. If the only goals you have are things you already know how to do, that's not a goal. That's a task. It's a checklist item. A real goal, a real dream. You don't know how you're going to manifest that. You don't know how you're going to build it. And when other people see you do it, is a difference maker. My whole family there. This is one of my favorite pictures of my entire life. At the end of the show, For context, this is. This picture is 16 years ago when I broke through in this industry. That day, that 10, that moment I can look back and go, that's when the other speakers started opening the doors. That's when people said, holy, this kid is not joking around. When I stretched myself beyond what I knew I could possibly do, the universe opened up and said, oh, Mikey likes it. Okay. He likes the challenge. Let's. Let's see where he can go with this. Let's deliver him some opportunities that most people don't get because he's willing to go there. He's willing to stretch to get there. Sixteen years ago, that picture was. My career has been a rocket since then. I've been blessed. But my reason for that picture I told you, my mom, my dad volunteered. This would be my dad's last event. That pride, that pride. I don't know, maybe somebody in your life needs to see you do the dream. Maybe someone needs to see you do it. My dad was so prideful. He couldn't believe Brandon. All these people came. He's up first one in the morning, moving boxes and helping everybody. He did three tours in Vietnam, got all shot up, fought and fought and fought and struggled his whole life. His whole life. But he sees his kid reaching for a dream. One of my most cherished pictures. Dad and mom. Just a few short months later, nine months later, he'd be diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. On Mother's Day, he wakes up, his back hurts throughout the day, doesn't get better. Mom says, let's go to the hospital, check on what's going on with you. Now he's healthy as an ox. He's playing bowling and golfing and racquetball. He's beating the kids at the Air Force base, playing racquetball as a 69 year old man. He's whooping up on me. He's fine. He goes there, gets a diagnosis. They see his spleen is enlarged, do a few blood tests. By the end of the day, they say, Mr. Burchard, you have seven days left. Maybe AML has taken your life. Cancer is everywhere. We can try, but they tried. The gunny sergeant made it through two treatments of chemo and then wasn't going to work. The next chemo would just kill him. So he said, I want to go home. So we went home. We brought him home for hospice and I got to be with my dad. They gave him seven days. You know, the old gunny sergeant, he made it 59 days. He just had to show him, you know, if you're Hoorah. He understood he had to make it in that time. I asked him a lot of questions about life and his answers were always simple. I interviewed him about life because I wanted to capture that before he was gone. I told you earlier that life is precious. It really is. And most of the things we already know. You knew it before you came in here. Everyone at home. I didn't tell you anything new today, but maybe you make a new decision today because you realize life is short and it's so simple. Doing the commonplace foundational things of showing up and finding someone to fight for and doing the work and building the self worth and respect of doing the hard stuff every day and stretching yourself for a dream beyond your capabilities. It's not hard. My dad's advice was super simple. He was a very simple man. His greatest joy was. I remember our marriage, when I got married, him and mom dancing. And you know what? They loved to dance. And you know what? They weren't great at it. But you know what? At our wedding, they were out there boogieing, dancing so much, having such a great time, just love in life, that all of our friends spontaneously, all of our friends just got off the dance floor and just let my mom and dad dance a whole song by themselves for no reason, just spontaneously. Cause he was book. Now you know where this shit comes from. You know what I'm saying? But you see me doing with joy. You see me doing it with joy. I can't even hit a beat, but I'm having the time of my life, you know what I'm saying? Oh, they were having the time of their life. The best time. On his deathbed, he told me the most simple and elegant things about life. If you want to have a good life, be yourself. So many of us have been living those fake lives that I was talking about. We haven't been ourselves. My dad already had the answer. So many of us, we're not honest about our problems, our challenges, what we're going through. So we suffer in our silence. So many of us, we know we're not doing our best because we're scared. But we keep stopping. When not knowing how is the very cause to continue. When you don't know how, that is the reason to continue, not to stop. It's why you go to learn and to grow. He said, take care of your family. Take care of your mom. Love her. Told us, you kids, when I'm gone, you love your mother, you love each other. Be there for each other. Take care of each other. My mom in this room today. Mom, are you here? I'm trying to find her. It's been so dark. Is she in the bathroom or something? She probably said, this is so long. I can't believe this son of mine. She's probably in the hallway helping some lady, knowing my mom. What I love is that we all have to find that part of ourselves, of maybe there's someone you need to care for and you need to get out of your own head. Take care of your family. My dad said, I love that one. Treat people with respect. Everyone says, what's the secret to your career, Brandon? I said, well, my dad told me to treat people with respect. I know you're going through a hard time. I'm not preaching at You. I suck, too. I know videos are hard. I suck, too. I know business is hard. I suck, too. I know you have a dream. I suck, too. I'm not preaching. I'm going. This is hard. But if we keep going and respect ourselves. He said, be a good citizen. He said, most importantly, follow your dreams. Follow your. Hi, Mama. How are you? What were you doing? Where were you at? Back there was a staff. I'm glad. You okay? You're sweating. She said, you okay? You're sweating. She says it's hot up there. It's hot up there. Hey, I was talking about you. Oh, thank you. I just want to thank you for working so hard and being there for us kids and for dad and for believing in me. I do believe in you, and I believe in all of them. They can do this. You can do this. You're so lucky to be alive. And maybe you have family who's still alive, and maybe you have kids who need to see you strive and achieve, and maybe you need somebody to believe in you. And maybe it's your time to get out of your little window, just your life, and realize there's people to care for. My mom cared for us so much. My dad worked so hard to care for us. They always believed in this. When I said I was gonna do the tent, Mom's like, that's cool. Everyone else thought I was crazy. She thought it was cool. That's cool. Life is short. If you have family, you have friends, you care for your life. I have a very simple way to end today's show. I just love to tell you something, and I've seen my mom do it, my dad do it. I've seen it make the greatest difference in people's lives all around the world. It's all the things we talked about today to overcome your own fears. But at the end of the day, the most important thing you can do is realize this life is a blessing. So earn this life. I'm Brendan. That's my mom, Christiane. Thank you guys for coming here today.