The Philosophy That Changes How You Show Up Every Day

At the end of my life, how am I going to evaluate it? Well, I'm going to wonder if I lived and loved and mattered. Did you actually have a philosophy of how you wanted your life to go or you're just living in reaction? They think that they're coming for the habit, the routine, the exact strategy. And by having a philosophy and living it out, they felt like they were living intentionally and congruently. Did you actually have a philosophy of how you wanted your life to go? Did you have a philosophy of how you are living your life? Is there some sense of tradition, meaning, routine, plan, purpose? I'm going to use lots of different words here. Were you living out something or just living in reaction? Did you just go through emotions or were you living a life philosophy that you have, that you developed like life means this to me, these things are important in life to me. I want to live my life in a way that is this or that. The value of the most important things in my life are. And you live them out, or did you just show up, punch the clock, go through the day, eat, sleep, go through the motion again and again? You weren't living out a philosophy. This is probably the most transformative thing that people usually find in personal development. They think that they're coming for the habit, the routine, the protocol, the exact strategy. But I want to share something with you. What usually happens in great personal development, those moments when real personal, professional or even spiritual development happens. It happens when you step into a conscious philosophy and you start enacting it, right? It's like when some people, as an example, you know, if they become quote, unquote, born again or they find their religious lane finally, or their spiritual practice finally, finally what they're really doing is they finally said, okay, I like this philosophy, I'm going to live it out. And by having a philosophy and living it out, they felt like they were living intentionally and congruently. Did I live intentionally this year and congruently this year? That comes from a place of. I had a philosophy to align with. I was aligning with the philosophy, not just going through the motions. That's what usually happens. You know, I've spent now my entire adult life, I'm coming up on 30 years in what I would call really like a professional personal development practice. It's been 30 years since my car accident this next year and for the last 20 years it's been my full time job to teach personal development and performance around the world. And I've paid attention to the patterns of where the breakthroughs happen. And it always happens. When somebody finally gets a conscious philosophy, you finally get a philosophy of how to be in your marriage. You finally get a philosophy of how you want to feel and show up. You finally get a philosophy of what morality or character or ethics are. You finally get a philosophy of what good parenting is. Because you know what most people do, they show up to their marriage, they show up as a parent, they show up in their job, and they literally just go through survival mode. They're. They're just doing what they think they should do in a minute. There's no proof, preparation, no philosophy. I'll give you an example. I work with business owners all the time. I go, what's your philosophy of business? And they, they're like, what? They're stuck right there. They have a marketing plan. They post three times on social media. But I'm like, what's your philosophy of business? What's your philosophy of how you should take care of customers? What's your philosophy of what a good business is, what a good team is, what a good product is, what a good service is? If you don't have any ideas, plans, principles for those types of things, you don't have a philosophy. You're just quote unquote doing business. And that's why you can't scale. You're just quote unquote doing parenting. And that's why every day is chaotic. It's. You're just quote unquote showing up in the marriage, and that's why you're on your second, third or fourth one, is because there's never a philosophy of what a good one is. And you're not enacting the philosophy. And this is a really important thing. It's one of the biggest breakthroughs people will ever have in their personal, professional and spiritual development. They will finally develop their own philosophy. And some of you have been with me on my journey for long enough to know what that is and how it happened. For me, I finally developed a philosophy in my life. When I was faced with the end of my life, when I thought I was going to lose my life, I realized how precious life was. And I thought, I want to live a good life. But what did a good life mean to me? Well, I had to reflect on that a little bit. Luckily, I got hit in the head hard enough with the car accident. It kind of made me face life. I had realized I didn't know how to live life. I'd realized I'd come out of a terrible relationship. So I didn't know how to have relationships. I'd realized I didn't really feel like I was doing anything with my life. So I didn't know how to matter. And so if you heard my story before, I discovered I didn't know how to live, I didn't know how to love, and I didn't know how to matter. And so for me, life became about living and loving and mattering. Before that, I was a directionless young man. Once I had a philosophy of life, that life is so precious that we get second chances. If you're still breathing, that's the second chance. I got the philosophy of life's golden ticket, that every day is a second chance. Life's golden ticket is, you woke up this morning, you got the golden ticket today. A lot of people didn't get the golden ticket today. You got a golden ticket today. So when I wake up, I'm like, I got a golden ticket. This is a blessing, this is a gift. This is rare, this is unique. I got a golden ticket today, and I can use this ticket to live the life that I want today. That philosophy of each day is a ticket. Be grateful for it. Each day is a second chance. Use it. That philosophy that. Oh, okay. At the end of my life, I'm really going to evaluate my life. So how am I going to evaluate it? Well, I'm going to wonder if I lived and loved and mattered. And that became my philosophy. So what does that mean in reality? Well, that philosophy, for me personally is each day, if living, loving, and mattering is important, that's how I measure my intentionality. That's how I measure how I showed up today. Did I generate aliveness today? Did I generate love today? Did I make a difference? Generate mattering? Not did I have it meaning? Not did I have, you know, aliveness? Not that I have love and heart, not that I have a sense of mattering, but did I generate those things? Because for me, I also got into the philosophy of spirituality. I got into philosophy of a belief, of a creator. So if the universe was created, whether you think it's a big bang or crazy luck or super quantum or you feel like it was God, if there was creation at work somewhere, maybe we're supposed to take a lesson from that. And so my philosophy was, oh, creating really matters. Creating existence really matters. Okay, well, what does that mean for me? Oh, okay, well, I need to create aliveness each day. That's what I mean by generated. I need to generate that. I need to generate that sense of aliveness, Whether that's passion, enthusiasm, joy, Fun, excitement, aliveness, that sense of presence, of the magic in the moments, that sense of a spark of a higher energy happening at any given moment. That like sensing my body, sensing the aliveness and the vitality in my physical structure, sensing the aliveness in my brain and my, like, being aware of how fast my brain is going, being aware of the space that I'm in so I can feel it energetically. Feeling the aliveness of my surroundings, feeling the aliveness of self, feeling the aliveness of spirit. Like sensing that, generating that, creating that is why my life is so alive. People, like, they see me on stage, like, how are you like that? I go, I generated that. It's not like I woke up that morning in wherever I'm staying, near the hotel or in the hotel and I just felt that way. It's like, no, I got up and I started using my mind and my body to start generating a sense of energy, generating a sense of aliveness, generating a sense of gratitude, optimism, hope, passion, enthusiasm, encouragement, power. Like I started generating that. 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, brendon, 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 see 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 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 you with your seven day free trial, you'll go through a growth day. And in seven days you're gonna 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 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 your you up. Every day is a great day to grow, but you have to stay 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. So let me back up for a little bit. I had a philosophy and I generated this is what my question to you is. When you look back globally at this year, do you feel like you were living a philosophy and you were generating from it, or were you just kind of showing up and trying to survive? And people always tell me, well, Brendan, you know, a lot of people, that's, that's just their reality. They're just trying to show up and survive. Don't judge that. I go, oh, I'm not the one who judges it. They will. See, until you've worked with a lot of people, it could feel like what I'm saying to you is from a judgmental place. Oh, no, mine's from an observant place. I've worked with more people on their actual life transformation. Probably, I don't know, more than most people, I would say. It's been my career. And so what I can sense about that is that you're the one who's going to judge whether or not of you just showing up and going through the motions and surviving and winging it every day was sufficient for your own sense of respect, potential satisfaction. It's not going to be my judgment. I don't have a judgment to it. I, I just know that most people don't feel like surviving only was enough. And I think that's a fair point. I don't judge it. I could, I could be the, I could be the armchair therapist and say, no, everything is enough. That's enough. You're just living and showing up. And I'm like, yeah, we could all say it. It's just not how people Feel it's not. People judge their life and so I think it's a good thing to sense. How will you evaluate your life? I'm here to tell you you're going to evaluate. Did you have a philosophy and did you generate it? And these are your big breakthroughs in life. For me at that stage of my life, I never really sensed life before. I mean I was kind of a maybe a happy go, lucky kid sometimes, but also could be kind of polarized in the sense of happiness and sadness quite easily. And I never really understood that like oh, I can just generate my own happiness. I can choose happiness, I can summon and embody happiness. That's hard to tell a depressed, young, sad kid who's coming out of suicidal ideation. And that's where I was. But that car accident kind of reset me a little bit and go, oh, I'd better learn to get the most out of life by bringing the most of me to life. I've been waiting life. I've been waiting for life to give me something. Maybe I need to give life something. I've been waiting that one day all since life. Maybe life is right here, right now. It's vital and it's precious and it's something to be accessed and, and played with and given into versus hoping one day. That sense of presence that came into my life as a philosophy was everything. The second aspect for me was love. I thought that people loved me or did not love me and I felt like people were supposed to love me and if they didn't love me it was unfair and they were mean. In other words, a lot of people, their philosophy of love in their life is a one way street. They're receiving it in the way they like it or they don't and that makes life fair or mean. And that's a sad one sided philosophy of life, especially when we're talking about love because relationships require both people full on. And so I realized like oh, oh, I was unhappy with this relationship in my life and that caused suicidal ideation. That was bad year and it was a bad year because I didn't have a philosophy of what's a good relationship? How simple is that? What's a good relationship? Have you ever written it down? If you're in a marriage, what's a good marriage? Have you written down like the five principles that make a great marriage? Have you written down your philosophy? Have you shared your philosophy with your spouse? Did you wake up last week and try to live out that philosophy with your spouse? Or you hold back your Philosophy because they're living your philosophy or not. A lot of people hold back living a good philosophy in life. Well, I'm not going to be an ethical person because they're not ethical. I'm like, oof. That's not going to end up in a good place for that person. I'm not going to be loving because they're not loving, like oof. So in other words, you're holding back your potentials because you are unsatisfied with other people's expression of your philosophy. That's a terrible way to live life. That's a terrible way to live life. You need to live your philosophy, not mimic others based on whether or not they are living yours. It's a profound shift in people's life when they start generating the philosophy versus waiting to live their philosophy based on whether or not other people around them behave the same. I don't behave the way other people behave around me. I behave my philosophy. Does that make sense? We need you to have a conscious philosophy in your relationships. And you're going to enact and generate that philosophy, not just go through the motions, not just react to people. The last part of my philosophy I'll just share if this is instructive in any way was about making a difference in the world. And this one applies obviously for me in my artistic expression, my research, my work, my, my time with you guys right now. And making a difference in the world became a philosophy of mine. I could be a role model. I could help people, I could do this thing. But my immediate mood, my immediate mood will be like, I'd rather not. I don't feel like it today. But see, if you're living out your feelings and you're living out your mood versus living out a philosophy, you're in reaction mode versus conscious intention. And if you stay in reaction mode to your feelings and your mood over a period of time, I promise you, you will definitely live below your potential. And then that sense of respect goes away. That sense of potential goes away. That hope, that belief, that excitement, that ambition, that drive goes away. You will lose your drive by honoring what our default drives are, which tends to be our mood. So we have to do two things. Either A, we have to choose to generate our mood and learn to manage the conditions that create a mood, or B, when the mood is not where we want it to be, we act out our philosophy, not act out our mood. See, I don't act out my mood on my wife. When I do, I'm in trouble. When I act out my Philosophy of what a good marriage should be. Now I'm in love. Same thing in business. I don't act out my mood today because I feel like or don't feel like doing the things I'm supposed to do. I have a philosophy how to make a difference in the world, and it requires something of me, and I need to show up for that even when my mood isn't there. That's how people go. How have you created so much content, like, every day for coming up on 20 years? It's even more than that, because I think that content's going to be part of my legacy. My philosophy is content will be my legacy. My philosophy is by generating content, it forces me to think. And by forcing myself to think, I become a more rational and powerful person in the world because I can logic through problems. And if I can logic through problems, I can maybe help people with their problems, too. And if I can help people with their problems, maybe I can solve some problems in the world and make my own little dent. And so for me, I have to enact the philosophy, not the feeling. This is. Again, I'm going to share with you if all this just sounds like common sense to you. The way to really catch yourself on this is to ask globally, did I act out a philosophy this year? So I'm ending up here at the end of this year in a place I'm happy with because I showed up for that philosophy throughout the year. And if I go back to each month, was I enacting a philosophy that month when I got on stage, was I enacting a philosophy of what makes a good speech when I had that conflict in my marriage, was I enacting a philosophy or not? And I think this also tells you at the end of the year, either your philosophies, if you did act them out and you're unsatisfied, I'm here to tell you it's time to level up your philosophy. You might be enacting a philosophy that you got in your 20s and is no longer appropriate for your 50s. This might be the time, like, what is my new philosophy of life? A lot of people, when they hit midlife crisis, they didn't hit midlife crisis, they hit a reevaluation of their philosophy. That's a different way of saying it, isn't it? It wasn't a midlife crisis. They hit a point where they're reevaluating their philosophy because their philosophy that they showed up for all those years did not lead to a result that they desire anymore. So now they need to shift their philosophy to a higher level of awareness and consciousness for this stage of their life. That's the stuff of personal transformation. Personal transformation doesn't start with you taking a new supplement today. Personal transformation starts with reevaluating your philosophy and finding a philosophy that matches your nature and your potential for this stage of your life that you will generate. That's where transformation starts from philosophy.