The Mindset That Holds Smart People Back From Success

Why do people fear feedback? They're fearful feedback. Because what does that say about me? My self worth, my capability? If you're a person who is not at the levels of action that you know you could be, if you're always procrastinating, overwhelmed or telling the world what's not perfect, the reality is you're scared of feedback, you're scared of what's going to say about you and you're scared about whether people like you. If you are struggling with procrastination, if you're struggling with low self esteem, if you're struggling with overwhelm, if you're struggling all the time with this concept of perfectionism, I want you to think about this. We're going to give you a new phrase and we're going to do this simple phrase. We're going to call it ship. This means we're going to go into momentum, we're going to go into progress mode. We're going to ship the things. Ship means complete it. Like ship the project. Get it done, Put it out there, put it out to sea. Like the boat can't stay in harbor forever. Ship it, get it out there. So much of life can be changed if we just complete the thing, put it out there and learn. What happened with the perfectionist mindset is we fool ourselves. We go until it's 100%, Brendan. I'm not releasing it until I have 100% information. I'm not doing the thing, I'm not taking the action. I love to remind people of this Jeff Bezos quote where when he was at Amazon, he shared that one thing that made Amazon so incredible at the time and its huge growth curve was as an executive team, they would often only have maybe 60, maybe 70% of the information to make a decision. And they made the decision anyway. They didn't wait for 100% complete. They had just enough. Could you do something that's really hard right now for all my perfectionists in the room? I, I, it's going to hurt. I just want you to write with this. It's going to be very hard. Just enough, just enough. I have just enough information to move another phrase that you're going to hate. Get ready. It's good enough. Not perfect. I'm going to ship it. It's, it's good enough. It's never going to be perfect. It's good enough. I'm going to ship it and I'm going to learn. This is all under the guise of a learning mindset. This is all under the instruction of turning From a perfectionist. Turning from perfection into iteration will change your life forever. It's the most important thing I could ever give you. Adopting the learning mindset. I'm going to ship, then I'm going to learn, then I'm going to perfect. Remember, perfectionism doesn't mean it's perfect. The root phrase of perfect is to complete or to perfect. As a verb, to perfect, right? To perfect means, oh, well, I need to do the thing right? I need to do the thing or complete the thing and then perfect it in motion. Perfect it as it gets better. If you will do this, the most radical thing happens. You start earlier. If you start earlier, you get more intel. The more you get intel and feedback, the more you can perfect and tweak and get it better. The only chance of you ever getting something too perfect, if that exists, is to ship it now and perfect it in motion. Perfection actually takes iteration. To get something close to great, you have to have like 12 versions of it. It's not the first light bulb, it's the thousandth light bulb. That makes sense. You have to ship and iterate and try and explode the light bulbs a little bit to find the answer that's so important. Your light bulb moment today is to take action sooner, get in action and become what? Flexible? Become adaptive. This is what we're trying to do. We're trying to get you into adaptive and flexible mode of operation. If we can't get you adaptive, flexible momentum in the right direction, then you're just gonna stay stuck. That's it. You'll just be stuck. I know this is obvious, but this is not people's behavior. You will say, of course, Brendan, I know that. But is it behavior? That's what we have to talk about. This is not do I know these concepts, Brendan. The question is, what's the behavior? Let me show you a very simple way to get into ship and learn. If I think of anything in my life, it's always ship and learn. It's like, do the thing, do the thing sooner, learn sooner. And that's so important. So here's your new framework, Early Action. I take this for granted when I teach it. I know you already do, too, but the truth is, like, the smartest people in the world in Silicon Valley, they have this phrase, it's like, just ship the mvp. Just like, what's the minimal viable product? Why do you have to teach engineers some of the smartest people in the world? Why do you think you have to teach an engineer about MVPs? Why do you think you have to teach an entrepreneur or founder about the value of a minimal viable product. Why? Because smart people will rationalize themselves into delay. Smart people will rationalize themselves into delay. Did you know high IQ people tend to come up with more reasons not to do something, and so they just don't. It's like, you might know really smart people, like, why doesn't she do anything? She's so smart because she's so smart. Because when you're so smart, you can rationalize all of the catastrophes oncoming. You can anticipate everything going wrong, and if there's so many things going wrong, or you can anticipate all the other opportunities that would be missed. Fomo. Oh, wait, all these things can go wrong. I can think through them. All these things will be missed. Fomo. And now you're stuck. You follow? When FOMO meets tons of possible problems, you just don't move, even though you're rational about it. The problem is you're not progressing. I know a lot of smart people who are stuck because they can see all the FOMO angles, all the competing interests or opportunities, and they can see all the problems, all the potential catastrophes. They're actually probably right about many of them, but they're wrong about most of them because it's distorted, rigid thinking. What we need to do is go. It's good enough and good enough ships or moves into a huge important area, which is now we're gonna get feedback. If you want to change your life, I mean, literally forever, you're going to be a person who starts really caring about getting feedback. Your fear here is compliance. Well, if I get feedback, if they don't like it, what does that mean about me? No, you don't want feedback because you want, you know, adequacy or acceptance. I want you think about it. Why do people fear feedback? They're fearful feedback. Because what does that say about me? My self worth, my deservedness, my capability? Right? And will they like me? Will I be accepted? Will I fit in? Will I belong? Will I be promoted? Will I have status? So most people have been taught to frame feedback on adequacy and acceptance. Am I good? Do they like it? Am I good? Do they like it? And that is why I'm just letting you know you probably don't ship if you're a person who is not at the levels of action that you know you could be. If you're not making progress at the levels you know you can be. If you feel stuck, if you're always procrastinating Overwhelmed or telling the world well, it's because it's not perfect. The reality is you're scared of feedback. You're scared of what it's going to say about you. And you're scared about whether people like you. I wish we could teach all teenagers this. There's a direct correlation. I want you to listen closely. If you're not shipping right, you're not finishing the book and putting it out there. You're not launching the project putting it out there. You're not making the proposal to the boss, putting it out there. It's happening because you don't have the learning mindset. You're not taking early action. Why? You're scared about the feedback, about what it says about you or acceptance. But we're gonna change your psychology for the rest of your life today. Putting something out there has nothing to do with my identity, and putting out something out there has nothing to do with do they like me? I put something out there for one cause. What's the next right action of integrity? What did I learn from shipping it? That's it. What I learned. So if I write a chapter, I'm unsure. I don't like it. Instead of beating up myself, I'm a bad writer. I'm writer's block. I'm like, I take the chapter. It's kind of crappy. I send it to three friends. I go, hey, just tell me how to progress from here. How do you think? Give me some feedback. I don't fear the feedback about me as a writer. I don't feel the feedback or the concern about the book not succeeding. I'm literally putting something out there to get the intel to make it better. Once you've adopted this in your life, everything will change. Like, everything will change. There's no fear anymore. Perfectionism when it's super distorted is that I'm not going to meet the standard they all have, or I'm not going to meet my own standard. It's an inadequacy thing. That's where that's coming from. The perfectionism is these two things. Distortion. I'm worried about my adequacy and I'm worried about fitting in. But see, that's personal, isn't it? Adequacy. Am I adequate? That's personal. Will they accept me? That's personal. Stop. Don't go into personal. Go into progress. Make sense. Is it personal or is about progress? If you start making life about progress, okay, what's the better direction here? What's the improvement? Now everything changes. Watch what Happens if now instead of personal. And again, this is am I adequate and do I fit in and we just move into. No. How do I make the next right step now? So now I'm looking for progress. What does that mean? I'm looking for direction. I'm looking for momentum, I'm looking for improvement. So I'm going to put something out earlier than I usually do because I'm not worried that it meets this crazy, perfect complete standard. Instead, I actually want to elevate it to that standard. I know the first thing I'm releasing is not up there, but I got to put the floor in before I can build the ceiling. You ever heard that? I got to put the floor, I got to build the foundation before the ceiling. Put the foundation is get the intel and build up to a high standard. See, excellence doesn't wait to get in motion. Excellence wants early action. The earlier the action I put out there, the more direction I can get from people who give me feedback. The momentum. Now I know what to do. Oh, that's the direction. I know what to do. Go. More momentum and now improvement. How do I keep iterating and step up. Step up to the standard. Your job is to step up to the standard. Oh, release the mvp. Get feedback. Find the direction from the feedback. Iterate. Improve now. Step up. That's improve. Step it up. So when I go out to speak, I know my first speeches, I knew they were going to be terrible. So I put myself in front of speeches. I'm like, wow, I'm gonna suck at this. I'm not a good speaker. All the I am stuff, right? I'm not a good speaker. I'm not charismatic, I'm not a good communicator. And I was, I was like, instead of being low self esteem about it, I was like, well, I just, I don't have the skills for those. That's why I don't get to experience them. I don't have the skill. How do I get the skill? Early action, feedback, improvement.

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, 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, 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.

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App Store and get the Growth Day app right now. And I stepped up from, you know, five, 10 people in a room to a class full of people, to a lunch cafeteria, to a theater, to, you know, seminar stages, conferences, to arenas. Step up, you're just stepping up in skill. But if you don't release or start, you never step up in skill. So progress begins with a very simple idea. I'm going to step up to the standard. An unfair standard is I'm supposed to be there now. A rational standard is I'll build myself up to that. I'll build the foundation, I'll build the walls, and I'll get to the ceiling. That makes sense. It will completely change your life. You will move so much faster if you don't move faster after watching this, watch it again and identify where is the problem here most often the problem. So number one was the adopt the learning mindset. Number two, most often we have to have self talk and we have to be proactive. We have to be positive and gasp, perfectionists. We have to be praising first. I really want you to self talk must be proactive. If your self talk is reactive, this is why you're stuck. Like, you do something and your brain hits you with mean words and you're like, ugh. Your brain hits you with criticism. We want to be proactive with it. We go, okay, Brendan, you're going to go on the stage, you're going to feel the nerves, you're going to feel the anxiety and that's completely normal. But what you're trying to do is get an effect out in this audience. You're trying to serve this mission, you're serving this impact. Please allow me to extend and express my strengths and my knowledge and my support and love of these people. God, please allow me, Allow me to do that and I start talking to myself proactively. It's proactive. If you're backstage and all of a sudden your mind is running amok, that's the opposite of proactive. You're just in default fear mode. You're just letting anything hit you. Don't let things hit you. You need to take conscious control of your self talk. You need to speak to yourself. And lots of people have different ways. Some people, they've learned to speak to themselves in narrative form. Like they like tell a story to themselves. Other people, they use affirmations. It's more like sentence, like short burst sentences. Affirmations. Other people, they coach themselves in their self talk. That's what I do. What should you be saying to yourself? What do you want to do? What is the focus now? It's telling yourself with words. Please notice with words. Internally, what should I focus on? What should I say to myself? Where do I want to steer myself when this negative thing happens? Because the negative thing will probably happen. You're totally going to fail. You're definitely going to fall. And when you do, look at all the learnings came from it. Look at the impression, look at the demonstration, look at you did what you said we're going to do. So I'm coaching myself. Does that make sense? And last praising. You have to praise yourself more often when you don't meet the expectation. So back to the perfectionist. If you don't meet the expectation, but real effort Was there. You got to praise that and go, you know what? I gave my best. I tried. You know what? Next time I'll be more prepared or more skilled, but. But I'm in the hunt, I'm in motion. See, one of the reasons we don't praise ourselves is we believe that praise comes with finality. We only get praise when we're done. We only get praise when we get status, possessions, awards. The good look, the good picture, the final accolade. It's like, no, no, no. The most important part of praise is praising yourself on not praising yourself for. Let me say it again. The most important part of praise is praising yourself on, not praising yourself for. It's easy. Lots of people praise themselves when they get the thing. But your job is to praise effortful diligence. Good job. Today I put in the reps. I'm not stronger now. I didn't suddenly look better in the mirror, but I put in the reps, I'm putting in the reps and I'm going to integrate that win. I'm going to integrate the effortful duties of my day. So I feel strong and capable about myself. I just know that I'm in progress and being in progress deserves its own praise. Being in progress, not achieving a thing, being in progress. A lot of people procrastinate because they've never felt good in their life until the thing was done. I don't procrastinate because I enjoy doing the thing. Does that make sense? It's destination thinking versus journey thinking. I need you to be a journeyman. A person who on the journey is praising yourself, praising other people, praising God. Let's like, we're enjoying the journey, not waiting for the end. Complete and perfect result that will never happen. I'm enjoying stepping up to the standards even though I know I'm three steps down. I'm enjoying the step up. That makes sense. I'm enjoying the skill up. I'm enjoying the service as it's happening. I'm enjoying it, not waiting for it one day. So I have more fun than other people. And the crazy thing is because I have more fun than other people, I'm in flow more than other people. And that's why I come back to this praising part on self talk. Now, this is very important and I left this off for a reason. There's another piece of your self talk, so it's proactive. Do not wait to fill your mind with conscious thoughts. Do not fill them with negative reaction. Instead, be positive even while you address what's not Right. You can say, you know, I'm going to fall off this wire and that will. But I climbed. I tried. They saw it. I could do it again. So don't pretend the negative won't be there. Instead, say, when it's there, what will I do? Same thing when I work with the marathon runners. I go, Listen, at mile 12, your knees are going to fall out your body. It's going to feel terrible. And they're like, yeah, it's probably going to be true. I'm like, okay, well. Well, you already know that difficulty is gonna be encountered. The difficulty is gonna be your knees are gonna hurt. You're not gonna feel as fluid as you wanna be. You might not have the pace and timing that you wanted. You might feel, like, really hot or uncomfortable. When those things happen, what will you say to yourself? Don't say, my knees don't hurt. It's like, well, if your knees are hurting, it's like, you know what? That shows I'm running. I can't wait to see. I can push past this and achieve something that millions of people are going to achieve today in this run. Like, literally, people are going to push past the fact that their knees kind of hurt. That's the whole point of marathon. We're going to go beyond what's comfortable. That's the point. Okay, yes, that's true. But the point is I'm going to complete this thing. I'm going to be so happy when I complete this thing. People are going to be jumping and praising and jumping and you know what? Keep going, Brendan. You're doing a good job. Everything's going to turn out right. You're strong, you're invincible. You're going to keep going. You're going to. You see, I'm praising, I'm praising. Praising. This is important. Those who fall to social compliance. And again, social compliance is you tell everyone they have to do it your way or you feel diminished if you don't do it their way. Meet their standards. In your self talk, I need you to start listening for your self talk. Is it proactive? Is it positive in terms of facing your challenges? Is it praising of self or maybe others or even God? But I think it's important that we also put this word back in. Is it pro social? Oh, this is the hard one for the perfectionist. This is the hard one for the leader. This is the hard one for the person who has to deal with other people who have different values than you. Pro social, we have to get your humanness back. We have to get Your love of other people back. We have to get your connection to the world, a sense of oneness, a sense of appreciation and gratitude and real care, compassion, love for other people. We got to get that back. You know the truth about perfectionism, the truth about low self esteem, the truth about a lot of procrastination and overwhelm is they are self centered concerns and they become self centered in such a way they're antagonistic to self, but they're also antagonistic to other people. If I do this, they're going to judge me. Why even try F them, right? Why even give an F about these people? Well, when that's your family and that's your team and that's the people you're on mission with in life, guess what? You pull out of the mission, you pull out of the team, you pull out of the conversations with people. A lot of the world self talk, your inner dialogue about other people can become social media ized. It means it can become divisive. Right? All the people on the left is this way. All the people on the right is this way. So F them. The funny thing is the higher you get in your success, the more antisocial conversation can happen. They all have no standards. They suck. They're never going to be as good as me. They don't have, you know, they don't care if you tell yourself that story, if that is going on in your head over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. That's why you don't move forward. Right? You're not overwhelmed with your tasks. You're overwhelmed with disappointment. Let me say it again. You're not overwhelmed with your tasks. You're overwhelmed with your disappointment about other people. You're not procrastinating because you can't do the thing. You're procrastinating because of your worry about other people. And it's really important to think about that. Your low self esteem isn't just because your internal angst. It's because how you think other people perceive you. Your perfectionist for your high standards isn't just your high standards. It's how you want to be perceived in pursuit of your standards by other people. And if other people are bad in all those causes and other people cause delay and problem and they suck and they're the root of the problem. And other people are just terrible. They don't have the standards or that they'll judge you. They have contempt for you. If you have this story and the self talk in your head and you believe that is true? I'm here to tell you you have distorted thinking. It is not true. Come hang out in a group of mastermind or high performers one day in your life, get around exceptional people and you'll stop this story. You're just, you're like your story about other people really matters. The problem is your story has usually been defined around the circle of influence. Just happen to be there versus make sure you're getting around lots of different types of people and you'll start to realize people are amazing. A huge part of my success in life is like, I think you're amazing. When I think about higher standards or things I'm doing, I know that you and I are on an ascendant path. I know even if you are stuck, even if you hate life, even if things have gone wrong, even if there's a lot of negativity, I know you can transform. I'm pro social. I believe in you. I believe in other people. If you actually understood the capability of change of people beyond the story that you might have had, then your optimism for the future would be so extraordinary. People are like, Brendan, how can you be so optimistic about the future? You must have lots of self confidence. I'm like, actually I guess I have self confidence. But I think people are humans and they're amazing. The human story is one of extraordinary evolution. Not just biological evolution, capability, technology, communication, scaling of our, not only our technology and our tools, but scaling of our collaborations around the world. The ability to go beyond our human impulses that make us feel terrible, to feel better, to take back conscious control of our lives, to do things that are difficult and courageous and struggling through that human aspirational story. That's your story. Even if you feel stuck. Yes, there are situations that suck. Yes, there are realities of the world that are very, very, very, very difficult. But if that's all you ever talk about in your mind, that's why you procrastinate. You're hopeless. You don't have hope, you don't have faith in other people. And almost all hope, and almost all faith in other people comes down to being. We didn't condition ourselves to honor, respect, cheer on and praise other people. The more you can honor, respect, praise, connect, collaborate, cheer on and lead other people. The more you have hope, the more you're like, we can change things. Small groups of people change the world all day the frigging time. Why not let that be you? Why not identify those people around you? Because if you are so self centered into procrastination overwhelmed. You are always in your story of, I need to get it perfect, they won't get it right. I'm not judged, I'm good enough. And you're always inside versus recognizing, like, wow, we're on this path together. And history has proven only one clear arc, and that's a growth in abundance and a growth in human collaboration, a growth in human technology, human improvement. If you can't see human improvement in yourself and other people, you will be stuck. But when you see that progress is just there, lots of people go in the right direction, lots of people want positive momentum, Lots of people really want to change. It's like, wow, you know, it's a different world.