Motivation Mashup: Advanced Wellness Strategies

Okay, let's go. Growth Day. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are in the world, congratulations. You're working on your personal growth and wellness today. I welcome you to today's session on advanced wellness strategies for home and work. What an unbelievable topic, right? The timing is perfect because some of you, like me, you may have spent yourself and your year in a little bit of, you know, in a little bit of a quarantine in a new place. And you're trying to do your job, manage the stress, the obligations that you have with the kids or the family or the business. Try to find that sense of happiness and joy and creativity in life. But it's also a really difficult time sometimes to do all of that when the world is in total chaos and turmoil, when multi billion dollar companies are trying to steal your attention and compare you to other people. Today's topic I think you're going to find not only timely, but something that will help holistically address so many of the challenges we all face in living a vibrant, a connected and a meaningful life. If you're new to growth day, you might not know that. I always kind of talk about this triangle and this triangle that what we're all really after, after we have some security or a roof over our head or some food in the pantry, is we all want a sense of aliveness. We want that joy, that enthusiasm, that sense that joie de vie. We all want connection. And that connection is your relationships and how you feel connected to other people, connected to your family, connected to even yourself. We want meaningful pursuits, the ability to do things that matter to us, that draw our interest or our passion or our obsession or enthusiasm. And right in the middle of that old triangle, growth, which is what we are here to do today. This topic. Man, I am so happy to see so many of you here right now. This is awesome. I'm just so excited to see you guys here because this topic, a lot of people get wrong. I'm going to start with a simple statement. I'll tell you what we're going to do here today, especially for those who are new. I'm going to start with a very simple statement. I know when I talk about wellness, often people separate wellness in this little category. Oh, that means health, or that's nutrition, or that's meditation. And they kind of feel like, oh, I'll get there one day, I'll be healthy. And I'm always telling people, wellness is not separate from your workday. Wellness is not separate from your life. Wellness is not something you do once In a while or you have once in a while. Wellness is your experience of life. Wellness is your experience of life in this moment. It was your experience of life this morning. It's your experience of life the last week or last two weeks. It's not this little thing over there that once in a while you have your kale shake or you have your keto diet or you get to that gym once, three, four times a week. Those are practices. And I'm going to share with you tons of practices today that I know you will love. But it's wellness is our experience of life. And when we can look at it that way, things start to really shift in, oh, once in a while I do wellness versus how am I being, feeling and experiencing life. That's how I think of like my wellness practices or when I teach wellness to corporations or I teach it to you guys in our high performance work. It's always more of a holistic approach because I really believe we want to feel, we want to feel the day. If something is off in your life, it's because you don't feel like you're feeling the day with the emotions and the energy that you want behind it. So today I've got all my cards to share with you today. Some advanced practices that have really served me, but also the mindset of wellness, the, the experience of wellness. What does that look like? And I know, listen, as soon as you start talking about wellness, people often say, well, is this about losing weight or is he going to tell me I'm too fat? Is he going to tell me I need to get off the couch or stop eating the Cheetos? I promise, this is not a preaching session. This is a session, hopefully meeting you where you're at. I've always had to do that in my private coaching with our clients. I have to do that with you guys as our students. I have to do that with myself. There are different times in your life where wellness feels different and looks different. You know, sometimes when you are youthful and young and you just felt awesome all the time, it didn't matter if you pound down like seven tacos and four beers in one night. Okay, well, maybe it did. But you could get away with that the next two days because your classes didn't start till 11am or you had times in your life where you could get away with bad energy. You had times in your life where the energy was more abundant because that age or that health state that you were in at that time. But you and I both know there's sometimes it ain't so good. It's like you're trying everything and you feel like crap and you don't know why. You're doing what they say. You got your yoga mat, you're following this wellness person. You're doing your headspace or your calm or your tapping solution app. You're doing all the things, but you still feel like crap and you don't know why. That is the challenge of the wellness journey. I certainly know that many of you guys have been with me for a long time. I've been blessed to teach personal development now essentially for 25 years, only full time for the last, what, 17 years. And I don't know, full time last 15 years. And in that journey, I've had to be on stage teaching to hundreds or thousands of people who paid a lot of money to be there. And I would feel like crap backstage. I was tired, I was fatigued. I didn't fuel my body right. I was stressed from business, I was stressed from family and the finances and all the obligations that felt my shoulders. There's been times just like you, when you're in that roaring stage of your career where things are going great, but you don't feel great. There's also been times. Many of you guys were with me in 2011 when I had my brain injury. And that took me on a whole new wellness journey because at that point I was a high performance guy. You know, I had really gotten my mind, my body and my spirit, my work and family. I'd gotten kind of like in alignment, if you will. I was in the zone for a series. I was feeling good. And then on a trip with some friends, I wrecked an atv, a four wheeler, and I rolled several times and I snapped my wrist off, broke my ribs, threw out my hip, my shoulder, and ended up with a traumatic brain injury. That opened a whole new world of learning for me to understand my brain and to heal my physical body. I know many of you have been through those situations and many of you right now you're dealing with sickness in your life or your family. You're dealing with an optimized, non optimized body and you just feel awful or you recently got hurt or sick. And listen, recovering from that, that's real. And so we'll talk about some of those recovery routines. We'll talk about some of those new ways to think about your mind, your body, your brain, your spirit. Today's a good discussion. It's a really good discussion. We're going to start with the most simple thing I want you to write in your journal and fill out which is this. Wellness to me is. What does wellness mean to you? You know, whenever I teach a topic, I always encourage the audience, like, define it for yourself. Because if you don't define it for yourself, how are we ever going to align with it, achieve it, manifest it? You know, some people say, I want to be successful, Brendan. I'm like, what does that mean? They're like, I don't know. Money. You know, it's like, what does it mean to be successful or confident? You have to define those things. What does happiness mean to you? We'll talk about that today. But wellness, what does it mean to you? I really want you to think about it. What does wellness mean to you? When you have full or holistic wellness, what does that look like? What does that feel like? Maybe what you can do in your journal right now is just wellness to me is. And then just write down some words that come up to you. Wellness to me is what? Just write down one word. Wellness to me is health, fitness, resilience, peace, purpose, happiness, aliveness. What is it for you? Just take a moment right now. I'm going to walk you through my personal definition of this and then share some ideas that maybe you can put into play your home, in your work life. So wellness to me is. Here are my keywords and my practices. Number one. Wellness to me is happiness. If I don't feel happy on a consistent basis, I know, I know I'm not on my A game in terms of my wellness practices. To me, they go hand in hand. Wellness and happiness, they're not separate. They're not different. They are the same thing in many ways. If I'm not happy, I know my wellness practices are off. So let's talk about some of these ideas for happiness. Okay? For me, for me, the first thing of my wellness practice and what makes me a happy dude, like, if you met me, you'd be like, God, that guy is annoyingly happy a lot. If you've been to my seminars before and you see me go for four days, nine hours a day, often on stage by myself, people are like, how does he have that much energy? It's because I have the ultimate secret to happiness. And we have the ultimate secret to happiness. I'm telling you, you feel well. So what is my ultimate secret to happiness? The first thing is having reverence for life and then practices that make me feel that, that make me feel that. So many of you know, 25 years ago this month, this month, 25 years ago, this Month I had the car accident that made me as a young man finally appreciate life and really want to live it and explore it and feel it and love it and connect with people. I was a broken down, super sad, unwell young man who was depressed and suicidal. And then the car accident knocked some sense in my head. And in my head it made me realize I want to live this life. I don't want to take my life from that day forward. For the last 25 years, I can tell you, I have felt happy every single day for 25 years. And my unfair advantage of that isn't because I have this perfect life and nothing bad ever happens. Omg. No. No. It's because I make myself feel happy every day by. By reminding myself of the blessing of this life. So those practices, what does that look like? Well, it's simple. Practices of in the morning, Wayne Dyer taught me, wake up, swing your legs over, Put your feet on the ground, say thank you, thank you, thank you. Another day alive. Another day alive. Another opportunity to change Another day to grow. Thank you for this opportunity to serve today. Let me live this day with intention and focus, focus and joy. Oh, please allow me to feel the sense of aliveness. And I just start the morning with a sense of joy and luck and honor and privilege to be alive to have the breath. I would say if you have reverence for life, everything else feels and looks good. When you forget the gratitude of the extraordinary blessing and the incomprehensible unlikeliness of your survival in life right now, the odds of the universe of you being here, this little speck amongst the cosmos, is so profound that when you have deep reverence, which is respect, honor, appreciation, a sense of humility and thankfulness that you are alive, everything else flows from that. People are like, you're so vibrant. I'm like, have you ever seen my mom? If you ever met my mom, she is so happy to meet you. She is so happy to be alive. She's had perspective. She's been in a war. She grew up in war in Vietnam. She was the child of a soldier who was lost. So she was in a child recovery program. She was shipped to another country where she didn't know anyone and didn't want to live separated from her family. She had to immigrate to the United States under dire conditions. She met her first husband, who was not good and was abusive. She went out and struck out on her own. She eventually met my father, who'd also been through huge difficulties in his life growing up super poor and having just Spent multiple years, three tours in Vietnam and got all shot up over there. My parents were happy people. They didn't have a lot, but they were grateful for life. Because they saw people die, they were grateful for life. And that reverence was something that was just palpable in my household. And I know I was lucky for that. A lot of people didn't luck out on getting great parents. I had good examples to that and that was good. But like I said, later on, I became depressed because sometimes when you don't have good relationships, which we'll talk about in wellness, it's hard to be happy, even if you know you should. But I tell people all the time if the umbrella of reverence for life is not there, if a deep gratitude, appreciation and thankfulness for whatever you call it, for God, for life, for cosmos, for universe, for dang crazy genetic luck that you emerged and have life. If you don't have that, I promise your wellness journey will never feel vibrant. I promise you can eat all the energy, foods and supplements. You can take care of yourself. I know a lot of people who are super fit and healthy and miserable because they don't appreciate their life. They don't keep perspective that this journey is going to end super quick for them, all of us. And so wellness and the real journey to wellness begins with reverence for life. Deep gratitude, deep thankfulness, deep humility and honor for life. That's my ultimate secret. How are you so happy? I'm like, I am dead. If you are alive, oh my gosh. And you can feel that. Then you can tune into your breath and feel the sensations around your body. If you can sense and feel throughout the day all of your senses and take in the wonders of the world, even if it's like a concrete city or you're out on I happen to be on the beach, or I grew up in the mountains, or I can get outside and see some nature, or I can just remind myself of how big this earth is and how lucky I am to be one of the seven plus billion people. It's impossible to fathom your blessings. And I know when you say that to people in today's world, they're like, oh, sure, you can say that because you're privileged. You can say that because you're lucky. You can say that because you made your dreams or you have money or you are this or you are that. And what they're doing is they're casting out to the world their perspective that says, you don't understand me. So all those things you have it's unfair. And that's a real quick way to feel miserable. Which leads me to my second point. Happiness. What are my happiness practices? Well, when I told you I wake up, I feel reverence to life. I pray, I meditate throughout the day. And those little simple check ins of appreciation to God, it might be your gratitude journal. At the end of the night, you log in to growth day. You, you type in your journal all the things you are grateful for. You must consistently and on the every single day, every single day, you must capture the sense of joy, the moments that mattered, the little things and events that made you grateful or appreciative. If you don't capture them, you don't feel them. And what happens is your attention goes to everything else. So my first practice of wellness is reminding myself to be happy that I am alive. But the second one I was talking about, where it's easy for people to cast and go, oh, you're so lucky or you're so privileged. And by the way, we all are. That's part of reverence for life. I'm like, when people are like, you're so lucky, I'm like, yeah, totally. Well, you don't understand. I've been through this. I'm like, I don't understand. I haven't been through that. Tell me about it. I really believe we can learn from one another. We can understand one another's pain, we can explore relationships and conversations of empathy and compassion. And that's a practice in recognizing where people are unhappy and where they are angry and recognizing that that's okay too. And sometimes when we're most angry, we're out of our reverence for life. When we're most upset, we're, we're out of our gratitude. When we hate on other people, we lost perspective of the uniqueness of this oneness journey. We're all on where we got to breathe this morning. You know, we're gonna have some fun today. We're gonna talk about your confidence. And I am really excited to break down a framework for you and I hope in doing this help you realize where some of those dark days come from, where you lose faith in yourself. Where those dark days come from when you know you have a lot to do but you just don't feel like you can figure it out where that, you know, when you get to go out in the world again or when you're on a zoom and you got to show yourself to the world, you feel awkward or weird or insecure, that you tap back into that authentic strength that truth of who you are, and that as you go through your life, you feel confident that no matter what life is going to throw at you, you're going to learn, you're going to figure it out, you're going to develop your capabilities. And many of you are going through really hard times right now. Sometimes it's just hard to even be positive. You can be so consumed and so overwhelmed by the negativity of other things out there. You just go, oh, my gosh, this is just hard to feel good, let alone confident. I'm going to break down a framework that I hope some of you are familiar with, but today we're going to talk about it with a different lens of how to overcome insecurities and what specific daily and monthly habits you might set up for yourself to feel more strong. So this is a piece of paper. It's a framework for confidence that I have on a board in my office. See, we need reminders. We are visual humans. We need to look at something to remind ourselves of something. And so you see, I have this. I'll share this with you in a minute, but I want to get the practice in your mind. The practice in your mind is you should have instructions to yourself on a wall somewhere. So you're like, if you walked into my office and say, brandon, why do you have a framework for confidence on your wall over there? And I go, well, because sometimes I don't feel confident. And what do we do when we don't feel something? Well, when we don't feel something that we want to feel, we tend to feel not good because we're like, I don't feel this, so I feel bad about myself. Or we tend to distract ourselves. I don't like this feeling, so I don't know what to do. So let me just scroll through the Internet. So to me, what I've done is I've got a board over here and there is my framework for happiness. Do you have a framework for happiness on your wall yet? So that when you don't feel happy, you go, I don't feel happy. What's going on with me? And you can just go look at it and go, ah, I've got my checklist for happiness right there. I forgot point number three. No wonder I'm not happy. What I'm trying to suggest to you is maybe you give yourself a checklist, a framework, a set of instructions for the feelings that you really want to experience in life. And when you're not feeling it, instead of retreating into the comforts of distraction, you Go back to your instructions. You know what makes you feel good, and it's time to write that down and look at it more consistently. Here we go. This is my confidence checklist. This is my framework for confidence. I'm going to break down each of these areas. And even if you've seen this maybe before with me, what I'd love to do is break down where these grow into trouble, where these are developed and strengthened, where these can be applied in your life, financially, in your life, in your marriage, or your relationship with your partner, with the kids. So I'm going to break down each of those things, each of those areas. I'll use a card here for you. We're going to start with that very first card here. Clarity. Human beings are a goal directed species. If we don't have clarity on what we want, if we don't have clarity on who we are, if we don't have clarity on what our intentions are in social relationships, it's unnerving to us. Well, if you ever felt lost in life, you know that feeling. It's coming from a lack of a often of clarity. We'll talk about this. You just don't know who you are, what you're about, what you want anymore. And it's unsettling. When you lack clarity, it's really unsettling. You're like, ah, I don't know what I'm about anymore. And this is where midlife crises come in. Clarity is something that, it's like knowledge or a goal or an aim, but it's loosely held. What I mean by that is like, okay, that's important to me, but I can be flexible and adaptive as well. It's not this idea that you have total 100% complete certainty and you're total certain all the time. It's like, that is a adolescent dream. There is no absolute certainty in anything in life. Right. And so we have to go, oh, okay, I can have clear direction or I can be strongly committed to this thing. But lots of people who are absolutely certain about something shifts months later. So here's my question for you. On a scale of 1 to 10 in the last 60 days, how clear have you been about what you wanted in life? Did you start the day with some clarity about how you wanted to live that day, show up that day, treat other people that day, serve that day? So let's think about where sometimes you feel insecure, you're gonna go to that party or that networking function, you feel insecure about yourself. Why? Because in your mind, the insecurity in that moment, in that situation of the networking situation or the party is coming from. I don't know who I am in here. I don't know these people and who I'm supposed to be with them. I don't know where to go or where to stand or who to talk to. And so just it's unnerving. The insecurity is I don't know what to do in this situation. Now that type of confidence or lack thereof is something that psychologists call self efficacy. Self efficacy is about I don't know what to do in this situation. That's where the insecurity comes from. Positive self efficacy means I believe that I know what to do in this situation. I can handle this. Even if I don't know how yet. I believe I can handle this. I have the competence to take this on as an example. That's positive. But a lot of things in life you don't know how to deal with. You don't have self efficacy because you don't know how to handle it yet. This is a new party, you don't know anybody in it. It's a new networking event. You've never met any of these people. How do you get more confidence in that? Well, one simple thing you can do is start with clarity. Okay, I'm going to go talk to people. What's something I'd love to share about myself with every new person I meet? Oh, okay. Lock that in. Okay, got it. What's one question I could ask every new person I meet? Okay, lock that in. Okay, just those two things have been found to dramatically increase people's sense of confidence in social situations. I know what I'm going to share about myself. I have clarity on it. I know what I'm going to ask them. I've clarity, just those two simple things. The problem with clarity is it's a double edged sword. A lot of people, their clarity is I'm awful, I'm worthless, I'm no good. And they've stacked up all these experiences to strengthen that belief. And their clarity is, well, I'm a jerk, I don't deserve success, I won't have success. They've got clarity, but they got the wrong kind of clarity. See, confidence requires positive clarity, not negative, self defeating clarity. So clarity is a double edged sword. If you believe the wrong thing about yourself, that's going to hurt you too. So what's the opposite of that? Well, I'm going to start viewing myself positively. How can we do that? Well, you know what? Maybe each day for the next 10 days, I'm going to write down a strength that I have. Write down 10 positive things about yourself that every day for the next 10 days, watch what happens for you. It starts shifting your perception of yourself. Here my little framework, we're going to go from clarity now to congruence. Congruence is living in alignment with what you know is the best of you. Living in alignment with the best of who you are, living in alignment with your values. When you are not congruent with your brain logs that and what it says in that log, that log entry. Not living your word, not living your truth, not doing what you said you would do. And too many of those negative withdrawals sucks away your confidence. But here's what you need to be congruent. What do you need? Clarity. You say, okay, these are my values, these are my beliefs. This is what I think is important as a human being, as a parent, as a caregiver, as a leader. Congruence measures whether or not you're doing what you said you're going to do. And that's important. So here's the simplest fix. If you're been pulling too many withdrawals out of that bank account, it's time to put some back in. And so today might be the day you go, where have I been incongruent? Where do I say something and I don't do it? Where are you out of congruence and can you do the simple acts? Sometimes when you're out of congruence, first you just apologize to yourself. You say, you know what? Gosh, Brendan, I haven't been honest with myself. Let's make a change. I. I think the fastest path back into congruence is an apology. An apology to yourself, an apology to other persons. It takes a lot of guts to say you are wrong. It takes a lot of guts to acknowledge you could do better. This one's fundamental. You get to decide today what to be congruent with. You get to decide who you are. And you can decide to show up and live into that third big idea. Competence. Competence. It's a collection of knowledge, skill, talents and abilities. The good news is you can increase this. So here's what I want you to do every day. Every day I want you to have clarity on what skills you are working on in your life. That's how we're going to get competence. Competence for too many people comes two years too late. Why? Because they wait too long to start developing a skill every day. I'm very clear about what I'm trying to Improve. Every day I'm learning something, but I'm learning not just casually or passively. I'm going, I'm trying to get better at this thing. I want you all to have an ambition, to have one or two or three skill sets that you're literally world class in, that you're world class in. Not because you need the ego that I am world class. No, no, no. Because you need the challenge. You know why a lot of people lack confidence? They never engage challenge. You want more confidence, engage in challenge more often. The more challenge you engage in and you incrementally improve in it, the more your brain goes, yep, there I did. I did it again. And what happens when you don't have confidence, you don't engage in challenge. When you don't engage in challenge, you don't get more competence. So you don't get that competence confidence loop. We were talking about the flywheel you all follow. So for those of you, if you're like, Brennan, I just lack confidence. Like, challenge yourself more. But you're like, but I'm lacking confidence. Like, exactly, exactly. See you going, well, I'll get confidence, then I'll do the challenging things. I'm like the other way around. You want more confidence, do challenging things more often. When you do challenging things more often, you learn. When you learn competence, confidence, connection. When you don't have a connection with yourself or others, confidence goes down. So you want to feel more confident in life, reconnect with yourself and others with yourself. That's your morning routine. Lock in that morning routine. The more you feel connected to self, the more confident you are. But you need the time to connect to yourself. Away from the email, the social media, the obligations for the kids, the family, the husbands, the spouses, the team, everything else. You need that moment where you're, like, out and connecting with yourself, with your thoughts. Your. You need time to think and to feel again. So turn off the tv, go for the walk, put down the phone, do the meditation, get away from the social thing one, you know 10 minutes earlier so you can sit in the car and just think before you go home. You need more space to be thinking and connecting with self. So build that in your life. Self connection. Second part, the most important part we know environment dramatically shapes your confidence, the connection you have with the people around you. This means be around positive people, contribute around positive people, learn from positive people. It means create great relationships in your life. I want you all to improve this one. Simple action. Simple daily, weekly, real life action. You must start sharing your real Thoughts, feelings, desires and goals with the people around you. You got to do it more often. Here's where you lack confidence in life. When you won't share your truth because you're worried what everyone else thinks. That's what high schoolers do. You don't do that anymore. You're too damn old. Now you share your truth with other people and realize most of them won't get it, won't understand why it's important, won't support you, won't care, or at least won't get in your way and say anything at all. But the less you speak your truth to other people, the more superficial your connections are with them. Number five is capability. Competence is the knowing, the knowledge, Skill, talent, ability. Capability is you can do it, you can do it every time. It is like a strength, if you will. It is something that is, you are highly capable at that thing. You are at another level of skill that it shows up every single time. But here is the truth. Capability. Capability is as much as a mindset as a competence. Let me give you an example. A lot of extremely smart people who can handle the problem don't handle the problem because they don't feel capable. It's like, yeah, I know it, but I don't do it. See, there's a difference between knowledge and execution, which is often the difference between competence and capability. See, competence is like the foundation and a stored value, but it's expressed through execution. Capability, you want to develop capability. It means you get in the mix. You do the work, you show up, you try. Capability means I know I will execute. That's what to me, confident, capabilities. I will execute. How do you do that? You have to be more consistent in your execution. You need to be way more consistent in your execution. We talked about decision earlier. Decision is great. Action is required. We've got to get you to execute more of those to do lists. You want more success, you want more joy, you want more confidence, you got to execute more of the plans. Capability is self trust to take the action. It's not just do I know how to take the action, it's I'm an action taker. I'm going to show up, I'm capable to handle this, I will do this. I trust in myself to handle this. To execute, to execute again and again and again and again and again. That's capability. And I really want you to develop that in your heart and in your soul by checking off the simplest of things each day. By if you have a list of three to do lists, if you Wrote down your three top priorities for the day. Do those first, before you do your social media, before you reply to everyone's DMs inbox, you know, voice message texts, it's like, listen, I have so many people who they spend all day just checking their email to reply to everybody else. Now that's fine if that's your job, that's customer service, do that, that's your job. But if you're an entrepreneur as an example, or you have a whole list of other priorities and you're just checking into other people's agendas all day to meet all their obligations, and you keep missing your key priorities day after day after day after day. Your brain doesn't feel like you're capable anymore. Even though you might be smart, you're competent, but your brain doesn't believe you're capable. Last big idea today. Contribution. You want confidence? Give more. You want confidence? Make your difference. You want confidence? Do things that matter. Why? Because a those things are celebrated in the world. Generous, giving people tend to have greater, what connections with other people. Generous, giving, caring, hard working people tend to have what? More clarity about who they are. They're more congruent these things, they feel more capable. Like generosity. Doing things that matter. Giving strengthens the whole rest of the model. The whole model drives itself. When you've got each of these pieces running right, each of these pieces touches one another. Contributions are key. It really is. Sometimes when you feel so bad about yourself, you're not going to shake yourself out of that, but what can shake yourself out of that is service. Sometimes you got to get out of your own head. And to me, what has created a great confidence and reverence for life in my life has been, I've been volunteering most of my life. When you're a volunteer, when you show up for others, when you volunteer to help out, whether it's as simple as helping a friend move, or going down to the local soup kitchen, or volunteering for that nonprofit cause that you like, or running that fundraiser even though you don't know how those contributions make a difference. Maybe your contribution is your art. Maybe your contribution is your time. Maybe your contribution is financial. Maybe your contribution is mentorship. Maybe your contribution is your content or your book or your work, whatever that is. If you can do the same thing where you can give generously to it, give to your work, be generous to that contribution. Be in the moment when you're serving someone who is in need, you get a little more spirit inside. And when that spirit of goodness is inside you can share it more, too. Today, I want to start with what we promise in growth day and what we talk about in growth day. Because we have three big themes that we're always working towards in growth day. It's this framework that I teach that I believe is really the drives that we're all after. This is something that we are going to work on together all year. Everybody wants these three things. We all want aliveness, connection, and meaningful pursuits. And these are things that I promise after you make your next 10,000 or $100,000, or you have your next child, or you move to that dream place, or you get that perfect job, or you start that new business, no matter how busy you get or how successful you get, these three things never go away. I Our sense of aliveness is our sense of being. Our sense of aliveness is that thing that we all want. Enthusiasm, zest, pop, joy, emotional vitality, right? Vibrancy, full presence. That sense of aliveness. Each day where we feel, the day, where we bring the joy. These are themes. So here's what I have to ask you. What could you do this month to feel more alive? What could it be this month? Maybe it's, you get your family together on zoom once a week just to feel like a sense of joy if you like your family. If you don't, maybe you go take an adventure. Maybe you do more of your art. Maybe you do that creative endeavor again. You go out in the garage and you build the thing. Maybe you try something new. You challenge yourself. But also, please know what's the other side of aliveness? Well, deadness. So is there anything that's in your life that you're just like, that's just. That shouldn't be in my life. It drains your life. Drains your life. An obligation, a task that you can outsource or help get some assistance with. Is there something that is just draining your energy, your good energy? If it's a person, a place, a thing, what is it? Let's think about it, okay? The last 30 days, the last 60 days here in 20, 21, is there anything that has stolen your sense of aliveness? What is it and how can you change that thing, alter that thing, outsource that thing, quit that thing? I mean, you want to feel more alive? You got to get rid of things that don't make you feel that way. But you have to do it in a responsible manner. We got to find what makes us feel alive. Maybe comedy makes you feel alive. Maybe you need to d more. Maybe it's time you Put on some music around the house. Whatever you got to do to feel more alive. That's got to be a focus of this month. Our theme is focus. What should be our focus? How alive we feel, how present we feel, how vibrant and healthy we feel. These are things that you should plan for. These are things that you should plan for. The second thing you see there is connection. We all want connection with ourselves, the world, other people, specifically, after we've had everything, one, a deeper connection with self and others, right? What is that relationship that you need to improve with yourself or others or your God or your creator? What is that relationship that you could go deeper on? As an example, some of you, you know, you should set your relationship goals on the first of the month, right? So what are your relationship goals for this month? What's your relationship goal for your spouse or your relationship goal with your son or your daughter? What's your relationship goal with your key team members? So what are some goals you could set to deepen connections with your customers, your clients, your friends, your family, your loved ones, your spouse, the kids? Like, really think about that. Last up, but certainly not least, is these meaningful pursuits. We all want a sense of meaning, satisfaction, and engagement in pursuing something, in progressing towards something, in achieving or contributing or creating something. These are your creation goals or your contribution goals, right? Your meaningful pursuits. It's your artistic endeavor, it's your hobby, it's your passion, it's your purpose, it's your mission. Whatever it is, it's something you draw meaning from just by being in the hunt, just by engaging or doing the thing. So what are you going to do this month that you're going to find meaningful, satisfying, fulfilling. And again, what are the things you got to get rid of? They're just not tasks that you find meaningful, fulfilling, satisfying, engaging. So let's talk about focus now. So if we set our goals each month around aliveness, around connection, around meaningful pursuits, and we think about how we want to grow into those things, let's figure this out. Your focus at any given time is based on what I call three states of mind. And these three states of mind are where your mind is going at any given time, consciously or unconsciously. Very few people are aware of it, but once you become aware of it, you realize how you can regain your focus. For the most part of our unconscious life, especially as we're young and striving to build something, and we're not familiar with personal development, and we're just kind of going through the motions, our mind, our mental chatter, a Lot of our unconscious thoughts are built on protecting ourselves. Our thoughts are protectionist. Right? You all call this survival mode. Your mind has that part of our evolutionary history that is very focused on protecting ourselves. And we protect ourselves not just physically, but we protect ourselves emotionally and mentally. And so what does this have to do with focus? A lot of people's focus without them even being aware of their consciousness yet a lot of their focus is always on worry, on protecting ego, on, you know, fear based thinking. All of these thoughts, this mental chatter is to protect oneself or one's things, or one relationships, or one standing and identity in the world. I need to protect my status, my ego and my standing in this community. Right. I'm embarrassed to be seen starting small because I need to protect the sense that I have strength and respect. We're protecting ourselves a lot. Why do I bring this up? Well, we're in March. You had January at your big vision New Year's goal session. We crushed it. January and February, you got these dreams out there. If you are not moving towards them swiftly with focus and discipline, it's because in your mind it's saying, be careful, don't go too fast. What if they don't like you? What if it doesn't work out? And in the way that you know you're protecting mindset, it always almost is this internal state of thought that says what if? Followed by a negative statement. What if it doesn't go well? What if I don't know what I'm doing? What if they judge me? What if there's ruin? What if there's regret? What if there's disaster? What if it was better over there and I wasted my time? What if I choose the wrong thing? That's the protecting mind. And sometimes when we don't have the focus we want during the day, it's because we're scared all the time. You know why a lot of people lack discipline? Not because they don't have things they want. It's because it's easier not to do something when you're scared. It's because it's easier not to do something when all your thoughts are saying, what if this doesn't turn out? Well, let me just disengage. It's not that you as a human lack the character trait of discipline and hard work or commitment. It's that your thoughts are betraying you. Your thoughts are on this merry go round of doubt you follow? And that doubt sounds like protective thinking, protecting the ego, the sense of security, protecting who we feel like we should be or are protecting our current bank account, protecting our current progress. I'm not here to say protecting thoughts are bad. I'm here to contextualize our conversation today about focus and discipline and drive. So if you feel like you lack focus, you probably have a lot of fear. If you feel like you lack discipline, you have a lot of doubts. If you feel like you lack drive, you have a lot of discouragement. Because every time you try something, the brain goes, well, I look stupid. I better quit. This ain't working. What if it gets worse? What if it never turns out? What if followed by a negative statement is how our mind can trick us from being focused, disciplined and driven? Now listen. Thank God our mind has that mental chatter of protecting. It's the thing that keeps you out of going down strange places where your intuition is saying, hey, don't go there. It's what helps you protect yourself in times of crises. It activates the part of you that reacts swiftly and carefully to protect your physical being. Right? It's survival mode. Sometimes survival mode is needed when you're in real threat. But I can also share with you. I thought my plane was going to crash, and I didn't allow my brain to go into threat. I heard it go there and I said, let me choose a different thought pattern right now. Let me turn my focus to something useful. If I'm and you all. I hope this doesn't sound metaphorical, because this is. This is real. If that plane is going to go down when I'm in it, I don't want my last minute or two to be focused on the terror of it. I grab my thoughts back and I start praying and giving appreciation for this incredibly blessed life. I start asking for my family and my friends to know I lived a happy life, for them to continue living a happy and a great life. Even if I'm not here. I want to be intentional with that last minute or two or three minutes, even though my amygdala is going, holy crap, this plane, the smell that's still there. But what I'm trying to encourage you is with enough time and personal development, you can override the protectionist. Things that take away from the experiences that you want in life, we can teach our brain we can override those things with enough time. I'm not here to say it's easy. I'm here to say it's required for a good life. That's the difference. I don't care if it's easy. I just go crazy when people say, well, Bren, that sounds hard or easy for you. I'm like, oh, ease is not the goal. Progress is. Ease is not the goal. Consciousness is. Is. I'm not worried about making it easy on you. I'm here to say these are the requirements of a good life. What else, where else is our brain? Often? Well, often in our day to day we're actually more in what I call a processing mind. Right, a processing mind. What does that mean? Well, a processing mind means it's your thinking mind. Right, it's your thinking mind. So what is that? Well, it's you just ruminating on things, thinking through things. Why did she do that? Why do I feel this way? What's next? What do I need? What am I learning here? Why did that thing happen? It's the questioning, inquisitive, curious mind that's just chugging along. It's just going. And that inquisitive mind is wondering how things are going to turn out. Or it's wondering what's next. Or it's wondering. But here's something to know. Here's something to know. This is also where analysis paralysis happens. We got any over thinkers out here anyway? Just, you're always just thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, studying and studying and studying, but not always taking action. Just like you're stuck in processing all the time. Or some of you. Something happened last week and you're still thinking about it. It's gone. It should be let go, it should be forgiven. And it shouldn't be on your mental dashboard today. You got missions to serve, people to serve, things to do today, but you're still thinking about something that happened. I was in an emergency plane ride on Tuesday. I'm not feeling it or thinking about it today other than to share a lesson with you. It's not like I woke up today thinking about it. No. Instead I said, well, that's not going to be useful, me processing that a million times and running it over and over in my mind. What is that going to achieve? Okay, it happened. Cool. What's the lesson? Great, move on. And this is so important. Some of you are still feeling the same anger and emotion about something that happened a decade ago. And it's stealing from your aliveness, it's stealing from your connection with other people. It's stealing from your sense of meaning and joy. And you got to get a hold of that. If you got divorced 10 years ago and you're still processing it, get a therapist. And I mean that with not judgment, with joy to recommend professionals to you. If you're still processing something that happened when you were in high school, when she broke up with you or that person, and that negative thinking or that negative emotional reality is still here with you decades later, raise your hand and be proud about asking for help and getting a professional person to help you work through that. I'm not here to say that we should all be able to get over things quickly. If you've ever studied my work, you recognize I don't lack empathy or intelligence around how the brain works. I get it, right? I spend my life in human behavior change. I understand it takes time. I understand it needs support. I understand sometimes you don't even know what's going on. And that's why you might need a coach or a therapist or to at least even voice it for the very first time to your friends, your family, your community. But if you're still processing over and over, replaying things from the past over and over and over again in a way that's limiting your sense of aliveness, connection, or meaningful pursuits, it's time to deal with that thing. Sometimes the most powerful thing in processing is to close it down. What I mean by that, okay, that situation, I didn't like it, period. Didn't like it. Learn from it, period. And not drag all those emotions into today. Not drag all that feeling into today, right? And I'm not here to offer therapeutic advice to you. I'm a coach. But what I'm here to suggest to you is that be aware of where are you stuck on something? Where are you just in forever, processing, thinking, ruminating, because that can also spin your mind into equal deficit as much as protecting. And all of a sudden it's just like, ugh. And what I want to encourage you to do, even in those experiences, at some point, we got to shift the mind and into progressing, progressing. Okay, what's the next right action of integrity for me? What's the next thing I can do to move the ball forward? What's the next thing I can say to myself to release the past and get on with it, right? Sometimes we have to interrupt the thoughts and say, okay, what's next? Let me get this old clunky brain here into motion again. And that's what's going to give you the aliveness and the connection and the progress towards those meaningful pursuits. It's like, you got to take hold of mine and go, okay, what's the next right action of integrity? Like, let me switch my gears. That's why I have to fill out my high performance planner every morning, because my mind I'm a nutty professor. I will be in processing and thinking and analytical all day. I will. I have to go bread it. Okay, action, progress, move it forward. Otherwise, you know what? Without progress, the mind goes a little batty. It gets restless, it gets frustrated. Now you get discouraged and sad and upset. But we need a little bit of that progress to sense that momentum. And that momentum gives us more confidence, that confidence gives us more competence. Those senses give us a little more mastery and engagement of the day. But guess what? Some of you, you're in progress mode all the time and your family's like, can you take a minute to just eat your food? Can you just chill out for five minutes to be with your child? Can you just relax one night? Can you just not work till X amount? Or could you please stop putting in the hundred hour work week? Like, you know, sometimes when you're in just action, progress, progress, progress mode, we're in trouble. So all of these things, I hope you hear me saying, examples of good and bad, right? Protecting can be good, processing can be good, progress can be good. But they can also equally have their negative flip side, right? If you progress, if you're always progress, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And you don't take care of yourself, we're in trouble. So I'm hoping to draw this out, to say your focus is in one of these three buckets. Sometimes it's all simultaneous. Sometimes it's one focus. Some of you live a life in one of these buckets. Does that make sense? Maybe it's like you might go. Some of you can identify a year or two or 10 years where you were just in one of these things and you never made that shift. This can be your day for personal growth. This can be that day you committed to. You remember, you go, that was the day I got myself a kid community. I got better coaches. I committed to making my life the absolute best that I could. This is that day. Make today your growth day. Click the button on this page and sign up right now.