Find HOPE in 2025 with Michael B. Clegg's Inspiring Message

Hey, good morning. Welcome to the Leadership Thought video of the week. And today we're going to dive into a topic that I'm super passionate about and that is hope. Some of you know that have been working with me for some time that I was in an accident last March of 2023 and that accident put me in a pretty crappy place. But hope played the crucial role in my recovery and growth. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that today. Now, as I experienced this life changing event last year, most of you know by now that I did a TEDx talk in April and it was just released. This is the second week that it's been and it's doing really well and I'm proud of it. But I used that platform to tell the story about the accident. You know, I was driving home from a football game. I coached high school football. It was dark one Sunday night, a gentleman jumped off the bridge in front of my truck and tragically he did not survive. I gotta be honest, it put me in a pretty low place. I was down in the dumps for several months following the accident and honestly I didn't have any energy and I didn't really know what was going on. But it really became a turning point in my life for the good and for the positive. You know, I came across and found this book by Dr. Benjamin Hardy called Being youg Future Self Now. And that encouraged me and inspired me to join his mastermind group. And now I work with him and his organization, coaching. But it really was the turning point because the moment I started focusing on my future self I started thinking about dreams and I started having energy and hope and things really started to change. Hard hope is a belief and an expectation that positive outcomes are going to happen to you in your life. And it's really hard to be hopeful when we get caught in what I call that default future or living in the day to day. And hope is a forward looking mindset that provides intrinsic internal motivation and it gives us the energy to pursue these awesome, amazing goals, impossible goals and overcome crazy challenges. So when I was down in the dumps, I didn't have energy, I didn't want to get out of bed. You know, being the leader of our family, I can't imagine how my kids and how my spouse, my wife Kelly, I don't know how they looked at me. And honestly, I think about it, it's a little bit embarrassing, but it's just where I was when I started changing and thinking about becoming my future self. This thing called Hope is what gave me energy to get out of bed, to start making changes in my life, to start pursuing a better future. As you work towards that future, self envisioning what is truly possible, it's all of the efforts that you make that will provide the fruit of your labor. And hope is a fundamental driving force that inspires resilience and optimism. And it creates this proactive behavior. When you have hope, you start seeing the possibilities in life. You start believing that the universe will conspire to make things happen for you. And it really, truly happens. And what you focus on expands. So if you have a goal to do whatever it may be, mine is to humanize 100,000 leaders in corporate America. To do that, I got to reach a lot of people. And some of that's going to be done through videos like this. Some of it's going to be done by keynote speaking, some of it's going to be done by workshops and leadership development workshops, et cetera. But I got three key messages for you today. One, what you focus on expands. You know, Dan Sullivan says it best. If you want a better present, make your future bigger. That is so profound. If you want to make today better, dream about a bigger tomorrow. Time is just a tool. Einstein proved that in his old theory of relativity. Time is a tool. The past isn't real, the future isn't real. They're tools. You can reframe your past any way you want. This time last year, that accident looked to be pretty crappy on my resume, if you will. My resume of life. Like it was not something that I thought was a good thing now, while the event itself was still awful and tragic. And I hate that someone lost their life or took their life. That's miserable to think about. But I was able to reframe that moment. That was a turning point in my life. That made me change the way that I think. That makes me want to help so many more people than I was that day prior back in March. So that's the first thing what you focus on expands. Now number two is go for impossible goals. Start reaching for something that's bigger than you. Because when you do that, you're going to impact so many people around you. You're going to change the way you do things. You're going to get out of the day to day routine that you're in. You have to. Because you can't possibly achieve impossible goals in a daily routine. You just can't do it. You have to start removing and breaking down the barriers of those daily routines. And the third thing is hope is a catalyst. I named my leadership development program Catalyst Leadership Academy. And the reason for that is everything is based around hope. Everything is based around the energy that you bring to the day, the energy that you bring to your team, the energy that you bring to your family. It intrinsically motivates you to take steps towards your dreams that you would not likely have taken. And it doesn't matter how difficult or how tough that path is for you, it will cause you to change. When I started thinking about writing about my future self, I just got this surge of energy and motivation and hope and is what pulled me, you know, as I say, pulled me out of that hole that the accident put me in. And I realized that by focusing on my future self, it changed the way that I think about everything. How I achieve goals, how I want to transform my present once again, like Dan Sullivan said, better present, choose a bigger future. And I'm choosing a bigger future. And I'm starting to choose to develop in this unique leadership program that's gonna take the 20 plus years of my experience. It's gonna take the things that I've learned through other leadership development academies. It's gonna take all those things and bundle it into a package for you guys. And that's the cool thing about it. And that excites me because I'm going to be able to give back to my community and that's really important. And I want you to find ways that you can give back to your community. Now, I've learned some great lessons from great organizations, but I have also learned great lessons from bad bosses. And I've learned what not to do. And you have to understand, this is where I've proven that microcultures really truly matter. And for those of you that are in my next gen program, we talk about micro cultures. It doesn't matter how bad or how toxic your organization around you is, you can create a great micro culture for your team inside of that toxic culture. And that's something that everyone has to believe because a leader can protect their teams from harmful exposure to that toxic environment. Now, you can't protect them from everything, but you dang sure can make them want to come to work on your team every single day. So if you've experienced trauma in your life, and the Data says that 70% of us at some point in life will, hope is what's going to get you beyond that. That I promise you, that is my commitment to you. Refocusing your energy on hope is the cure for a post traumatic world so as we move to our journal prompt focus, the first journal prompt that we have is I want you to write a letter to yourself from five years into the future. So your future self of 2029 is writing a letter to your today self. And I want you to ask yourself and point yourself in the right direction. And as you do this exercise, it's going to make you think, what are the changes that I need to make to become that future self? What are the things that are going to impact the people around me to become that future self? What are the things that I need to start saying no to in the day to day routines in order to become my future self? And number two, I want you to identify and write down what are the changes that you need to take place. Now you're going to see some common themes around these journal prompts, right? Because we've talked a lot about self limiting beliefs. What are the changes that you're going to make? What lies are you going to stop allowing to tell yourself the way the facts are? Those are lies. Those are self limiting beliefs. Those are excuses that we make as adults of why we can't achieve something. Heck no. I want you to write about those and I want you to change those. And number three, I want you to reflect on past achievements. Think about a time that you overcame something that was tough. It could have been a tough challenge, it could have been a traumatic event. It could have been anything that was difficult. Think about a time that you can write about yourself of when you overcame and you can pat yourself on the back. Now. You have to understand that hope is a powerful force. It just is. It helps you beyond your current limitations, your current circumstances. It helps you envision a better future. Remember what you focus on expands. And that's true because your actions follow your thoughts. So let's make our future bigger and and brighter by harnessing the magic of this thing we called hope. Have a fantastic week. I'll see you guys next week. We're going to start jumping into bad bosses. We're going to do an entire month of bad bosses and hopefully we'll be able to help you identify how to navigate a bad boss, but also to make sure that you are not the bad boss. So I'll see you next week. Thanks for joining in. Talk to you soon.