The Fastest Way Back to a Meaningful Life

What would be the big leap in aliveness for you this year? We are not into tiny habits here. We are into leaps. For some of you, it's taking on a bigger challenge because nothing makes a human feel more alive than a big challenge. I want you to do things that make you feel alive. What you want this year is more aliveness. That's what you want. Aliveness and is presence. It's pop, it's vibrancy, it's energy in the now. That's aliveness. Aliveness might happen because you do the things that alert your dopamine. Aliveness might happen because you work out or you get the runner's high. Aliveness might happen because you have an adventure. There's novelty, there's something new. Aliveness might happen because you're just overjoyed in the spirit of life. I don't know why. Aliveness will happen for you at the next level. That's your job today. Write it down. What is my next level of aliveness? How do I generate that? Where does that come from? What is my next level of aliveness? How do I generate it? This is the most important question for your new year, in my opinion. But because so many people lost touch with the present moment, they have no sense of what Eckhart calls the power of now. There's no vibrancy physically, cellularly or spiritually for them. And when it does happen, it's luck or it's caffeine or it's nicotine, or it's a drug. They haven't learned to generate the aliveness. Right now I'm trying to generate aliveness, right? I could say, oh, I've had a busy couple months and. And you know, New Year's is so stressful with all this technology, all these people and all this. It's like, no, no, my job. I know I want to feel alive when I teach. I want to feel alive when I talk with people. I have to generate that. So your next level, I want you to write down what is going to generate your next level of aliveness. Not a little more next level. We are not into tiny habits here. We are into leaps. What would be the big leap in aliveness for you this year? Write it down. In the chat, could you comment and share what will give you a step change in aliveness? Mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually? If you're looking for a plan this year, that is the best plan for you to follow. Because if we get you feeling more alive, you crush your goals. You're way better with people. If you feel Fully alive. It's like all the meaning, sense, joy, fulfillment of life, it kind of just lands on you, you know. So for some of you, aliveness is a sense of spirit and gratitude for life. Aliveness is like stepping out into the nature to feel awe. For some of you, it's an adventure to a new country or a new city or a new trip with your family or your friends. For some of you, it's taking on a bigger challenge because nothing makes a human feel more alive than a big challenge. Flow state, baby, is aliveness. Y' all follow? It's like, okay, what's the challenge? What's the thing? It's going to shake me back to life. It's going to give you that energy and notice. I want you to hear this. Aliveness is very, very opposite than indifference. Aliveness cares. It feels, it has hunger, drive, desire, excitement, novelty, adventure, passion, emotion, experience. All of the things that we talk about in life that seem in the positive spectrum of life are really way different than not caring. You have to care again to feel alive again. Do you all follow? You must care again. If you want a step change in aliveness, you must step change your caring. You must care more for your marriage, care more for your kids, care more for life. And everyone goes, but I could be disappointed. I'm like, thank God you could be disappointed because if you were never disappointed, you would never feel anything. You'd be so comfortable that you'd fall into indifference because you have everything. No, I want you to feel that edge. I want you to put it out there. I want you to do things that make you feel alive. Now, of course other people say, but you could live. You know, you're pushing people into disappointment. Okay, guilty is charged, Brennan. But you're also, you could be pushing people into risk. I'm like, guilty as charged. I think a lot of people need to risk something again. I really do. I think a lot of people need to have higher risks because they have such low aims. They don't even know. A lot of people haven't risked anything for so long because they haven't expected anything of themselves. They haven't tried to stretch. It's okay. It's like a lot of people, they're so scared to take a risk because they're so worried about rejection. They cause they have no social influence capability. They're so like social influence is only directed at them. Oh, I feel judged, I feel rejected. They don't understand life is a two way street in the relationships and that gives you extraordinary power. You don't have to give them attention who are mean to you, but you can give attention to those who pull you up. And so I'm here to tell you, like, aliveness means different. I don't know. What does aliveness mean for you? Put it in the chat. Is aliveness passion? Is it novelty? Is adventure? Is it challenge? Is it risk? Is it joy? Is it fun? What is it for you that makes you feel that extra pop of presence and vitality, right? To me, aliveness is a complete holistic energy. It really is an alignment of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. And I'm trying to tap into each of those and condition each of those. So I'm just at a higher level of conscious feeling each day. Like, I work on all those little compartments. As my wife said, I orchestrate my mental mind, my emotional mind, my spiritual, my physical, my relational. I'm orchestrating things to elevate my aliveness in life. That is why when I hit the stage, everyone's like, whoa, where does this guy get this energy on the. Like, to fill a stadium of energy for multiple hours? There has to be a different wattage coming from me of aliveness. I know that. So I have to condition it, right? This is me being quiet Brendan speaking to a camera in a room with just my buddy Ricardo. Like, it's just like, that's it. Okay? It's a different level of energy than I might do at your kitchen table or I might do in an arena. So your aliveness can be in service to the context. So I'm not asking you to be wild and crazy all the time. Aliveness means something to you. It's authentic to you and important to you in a certain circumstance. My question, though. I'm not into just authentic aliveness. I think that's been overplayed. Because a lot of people, their authentic aliveness is actually four levels lower than what they're capable of. You need the ambition. Like, I want my aliveness to. To serve the character of who I want to be. I want my aliveness to serve the relationships I want to love in. In other words, I generate aliveness to be better in my marriage. I generate aliveness to be better for you. I don't take the aliveness I have. I generate it. Does that make sense? Otherwise, I won't have it. Just like joy. I wouldn't have joy or gratitude unless I generate them as a practice. Could you write this down? Generate aliveness as a practice. Learn to step into positivity. Learn to step into presence. Learn to step into the moment. With full command in that moment. Like, really stepping into it and feeling it and leveling up your aliveness to serve the moment, to serve the aspiration. Otherwise, it's just easy to quote, unquote, turn off all the time. This is like a lot of people, it's like, well, I just want to feel natural, Brandon. I'm like, I promise you, don't just like that whole argument, like, be yourself. I'm like, there's a lot of people who shouldn't be themselves. They really shouldn't, because who they are being is not serving their actual aspiration. And so sometimes we have to acknowledge that is who I being serving my aspiration or not. And I think that's important as a general rule or philosophy. And I'm pulling it right into your aliveness. You don't have aliveness. You are generating a certain level of it, period. It's hard when you are sick. It's hard when you're fatigued. It's hard when things aren't going right. But those are the times that you need to work it a little bit more. You need to step into conscious will a little bit more. You have to go. I know it's hard right now. And for those who are judging me about being impractical on the matter, you have to realize I spent a lot of years of my life in hospice. Hey, my friend sun is going down behind me, and I just want to thank you for watching my YouTube channel. You know, so many of my subscribers are always asking me, brendan, how do I go to another level of my life and stay consistent in my personal development and really get progress? You know, we all want to be more motivated, more productive, more confident. We want to be better leaders. We want to be better at our craft. But how do you do that on a consistent basis? Well, that's why I built Growth Day. It's an app that you can use that builds your personal growth streak. That every day you come in and you do a series of actions and you listen to some inspirational training and life strategies that advances your life. It's very hard to stay consistent in your life. I know sometimes you watch a YouTube video and you read a book here, you listen to a podcast there, but you're not developing your habits. You're not scoring yourself. You're not finding real progress and insight that kind of wows you and opens up to, I say, the awe and the real agency that you have in life. So please, go to Growth Day in the App Store. Just go to the App Store. Go to Growth Day or go to growthday.com and get growth Day. I promise, promise you with your seven day free trial, you'll go through a growth day and in seven days you'll be like totally, totally like feeling fired up. But also you'll find a new momentum because every day as you do your growth streak, you start to really discover what you're made of. And we access different parts of your brain. You're listing something inspirational. You're doing a checklist or doing a journal prompt that blows your mind. You're scoring your habits and reflecting on your day in ways you've never, never done before. We're basically taking all of personal development and putting it into a streak that you'll get like totally addicted to. You'll be addicted to that progress, that growth, that joy and energy that you deserve to feel every day. Go to growthday.com or go to the App Store and just download the Growth Day app. Start your 7 day free trial and let's level you up. Every day is a great day to grow, but you have to stay consistent. Consistent to get real progress and to really change your Life. Go to growthday.com or go to the App Store and get the Growth Day app right now. I've been with a lot of people in their last weeks and days, including my own father. And I could share with you my dad's example of going through acute myeloid leukemia. Of his last weeks alive. He chose a good attitude. He consciously willed play and a good attitude when his body was being ravaged with leukemia, when he got the worst of news from the doctors, when he went through three tours in Vietnam, when he struggled to raise us four kids. He wasn't always perfect and he lost his self control tons of times. He fought his influence tons of times. But I can show you at the end, even at the end, you can choose your attitude. You can choose a sense of aliveness even as you're about to lose it. It's not too late for you to enjoy this life. It's not too late for you to feel it again, to step in the presence and the awe of the gift of life. It's not too late. No. This year you can start again to feel alive. And here's the thing, you choose it or you don't. Two things change your life. Either something new comes in your life and just gives you the aliveness or you choose the aliveness. Could you choose aliveness this year? Because I promise that's what you want. At the end of our lives, all we want is More and more life aliveness is a primary aspiration of the human being. So are you generating it? Second. Primary aspiration is connection. Connection. That's our desire as human beings to belong, care for and love other people. It's the sense that we want to feel connected to ourselves, connected to family, connected to friends, connected to the divinity or nature. We all want to be connected. And we are disconnected. We are unhappy, but we live in a world that is divisive. So we are disconnected. We are. Which is why there's anomie, this aimlessness, this loss of direction, this loss of meaning in life. Because everyone's perpetuating conflict and divisiveness. And that's why you need to perpetuate connection. Every level of your life shifts. When you connected better with humans, you might not have noticed that was happening. It always did. You got better at connecting with other people. You got more authentic, more. More connected, more caring, more loving. Even though that is a risk. But listen, there's a reason these connect. If you have no relationships of connection, that's why you don't feel aliveness. This is a connected thing here. So connection. How could you? I want you to just draw out a circle. And in this circle, I want you to write the names of the 10 to 20 most important people of your life. And then ask, how can I connect with them better? How can I connect with my sister better? My buddy from college better? My wife better? The kids better. The team better? The audience better? Whatever it is for you, how do you, like, take that one thing another level. Next time on date night, you don't just show up to date night, you go, right? Primary aspiration of life is connection. How do we connect here? Even if that night is not perfect, it's not a great connection. You still consciously tried. You weren't indifferent. Connection is huge. Also, we talk a lot about meaning in life. And I keep coming back to meaningful pursuits. Your meaningful pursuits this year. What is a pursuit that is going to be meaningful to you? You don't need to have a 10 year plan, but could we have one, two or three major pursuits this year? I don't need more than three. When I work with CEOs, I tell them you get three major initiatives in your company this year. Only three? I know you can choose 50 of them, but it's going to freak everybody out. You get like three. What are your major initiatives in our personal life? What's a meaningful pursuit for me this year? Right. And it doesn't have to be crazy, it's just something you're going to do meaningfully that means something to you. For example, for me this year, I'm going to golf more with friends. That means something to me. I enjoy that. There's connection there, there's aliveness. I just love the friendship time. And it's a pursuit because I suck at it. So it's going to require me to develop skills. Like, I'm terrible at golf, but I like being out there. It's a long walk ruined. Who is that? I think that was. That might have been Ben Hogan who said that golf is like. Golf is a long, beautiful walk ruined. I think it was Ben Hogan. I don't remember who it was, but you get the idea. That's a meaningful pursuit for me this year. Meaningful pursuit is riding more. I find so much satisfaction and fulfillment in riding right. So I'm going to do that more. Third, a meaningful pursuit. I'm going to go away on an adventure just by myself this year. And it's like, okay, those are three big things outside of normal work. That's going to be meaningful. That's not huge. None of that's crazy. Golfing, riding, a trip. That's it. I'm like, that's it. That's good. That's just meaningful enough now I know we could do so much more here. Meaningful pursuits. If you have lacked aliveness and connection in your life and you've been indifferent for too long, this is the 17th annual year where I've taught a New Year's broadcast special, literally, since they invented the ability to go live at scale online. And I've shared the same thing every year. And I really believe this. If you don't have a sense of meaning in your life, it's just. It's been gone. You feeling indifferent? A little bit. There's one simple meaningful pursuit that will get you back. You've got to start volunteering the fastest way back to life, to connection, aliveness and meaning in life. You got to volunteer. You got to give up your time and your service to other people in need. I don't care what style of service that is. If it's like just elevated style, like you volunteer for Junior Achievement and you're going into schools and helping kids learn about business, economy, leadership, their life. Cool. Choose that one if it's for you. No, it's service in the community for those who are hungry or in need. Great. Go to the soup kitchen. Join Rotary or Kiwanis. Great. Do it in service to those in need. That'll bring you right back. I mean, if you volunteered once a month, literally for two to four hours. Life would feel completely different for you. You got self obsessed, so you became indifferent. Get back social influence for positive good volunteership. Bam. It's like, oh, wow. That's what I was missing. Because you go all your life of achieving great things for yourself or your family. But the second you step outside with your church, the second you step outside with a volunteer organization, the second you step outside with friends to serve other people, that simple, meaningful pursuit, 1, 2, 3, 4 hours a month, and you're like, wow, life. What happened? I forgot. We forget. I promise you, volunteerism is the fastest way back into a meaningful life.