This Can Dictate Your Life

We all have preferences. Watch how these have dictated how your life turned out. The problems you choose to take on in life dictate the outcomes. It's a preference, not a personality. Most of people's lives is not guided by passion, it's guided by preference. Your preference might not be serving your future. So we all have preferences. Watch how these have dictated how your life turned out. It's kind of shocking when you think about are we've all been culturally induced to believing that our personality or our past or our fears are driving our current life and our potential for the future. But those things are like way less correlative than just the preference you have in these areas of life. It's kind of wild when you start understanding this. This kind of changed my life. Let me start with, I'm going to start with the big one. These are in no particular order though. I'm just going to number them so I can reference them later for you guys, okay? Number one, your number, not number one. A big, huge preference you all have is called problem complexity. Problem complexity. Let me give you an example. One guy decides, I'm going to be, I'm going to be a realtor in my career. And what I'm going to do as a realtor is I'm going to buy and sell single family homes, okay? That's all I'm doing. Buy and sell single family homes. And I'm going to take on selling and buying single family homes in the range of $300,000 to $800,000, okay? That's so they have to solve the problem of identifying, locating and selling those single family homes. He says, I'm only going to do my town here in Nebraska, okay? The problem, find, identify, sell those homes in that town. That's a certain level of problem complexity, isn't it? Another person goes, well, actually, I'd prefer to sell apartment units. I'd prefer to sell apartment units because I like those. I'd prefer sell apartment units and I want to sell them all across the state. Now they're both doing real estate, right? You've heard of people doing real estate as a career. But see, that preference alone, does that change entirely their workflow? Does that change entirely their potential for earning, does that change entirely the amount of paperwork, rules, financing that has to happen. That one preference changes everything, doesn't it? Now notice that preference isn't necessarily tied to, is she an introvert or an extrovert? Notice it doesn't tie necessarily to, you know, how conscientious you are. Notice it doesn't tie to how much anxiety you experience. It's a preference of what to sell. Does that make sense? Let me give you another example. I'll talk about my own industry. I have people all the time. They're like, well, Brendan, my preference is, I just prefer to coach, you know, high school teachers. I just want to coach high school teachers on how to develop curriculum better. Okay, great. High school teachers. Where, how many, how big? What type of curriculum? Those questions which most people guide based on preference, not passion necessarily, just preference. I like this, I like that. We can't even call it a. Most of people's lives is not guided by passion, it's guided by preference. Let me give you another example. Extremely wealthy people will shock you at the complexity of their life. The complexity of their business. Right? The bigger the business, the more complex. We can all accept that, right? Well, guess what? When you're super broke, you don't want to take on huge complex problems you're trying to solve. Rent. That's the solve. I've been there. I'm trying to solve food. Like, when you're trying to solve one problem that's not super complex. I'm not saying it's not a hard problem. We're talking about complexity here. That preference of where to focus will change your life. That makes sense. The problems you take on in life dictate the outcomes of life. The problems you choose to take on in life dictate the outcomes. Now, please notice I'm not talking about diversity here. Some people have. Have problems happen to them. That's adversity. It just happened to me. But see, the difference maker in life is the challenges you take on for yourself. We already talked about that. Well, one way of describing that to you in a different way is the problem complexity. I work with a lot of people in faith now and it's been really fun to meet all these pastors from all around the world. And often they'll ask these questions about, you know, doing things I've never done, like planting a church or building this for their congregation stuff way above, like, way above my pay grade. That's not what I do. But they'll ask questions usually about performance or team or about leadership or building or scaling a movement or something to do online. And it's very important. Like if a person chooses, I'm going to have one church in one town. That's their preference. I like that scale, Brendan. And someone else has a preference for a bigger scale, it changes the totality of their life. It's a very different Workflow. I know you guys get this, but I have a friend, very important friend in my life, from school. I'll just share this. He hates problems. He hates them. He hasn't taken on a big problem in his entire life. He's rounding out 55 years old, doesn't have many relationships that are good at all, is really struggling financially. He just didn't like problems, didn't want to deal with them, didn't deal with the problems he did have. Never set up any in his life. His preference was an easy life free of problems, and that led to a certain outcome. It's a preference, not a personality. I know another friend who, who had a very similar personality who ended up in a very different place because he was cool with taking on problems. So I hope that helps.

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.

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App Store and get the Growth Day app right now. Second one, and this is related to my friend and this is what I call people. Hassle, frequency or depth. If you don't like to deal with people, that's going to lead to one type of life. But see, it's like we all have a preference of how many people. No more clear. In like small businesses, right? Some CEOs, you talk to them, they're like, I just prefer to have like five team members. Someone else, like, I don't want any team. Some people are like, I want to have 100 team members. Their preference for how many people to deal with, how often they have to deal with them dictates their life more than their childhood experience, more than their industry, more than their circumstances. They're just like, I like to deal with this many people. And you could say, is it because of this or this? You could say it's because of all these theories you have. It's their current adult preference. And that adult preference is either helping them attain the goal they have or it's not. If you have a goal for a certain level of business outcome, but your preference is, I don't really want to deal with people, you're not going to have that certain business outcome. Most likely, meaning it's like if you're just like anti team by preference, it's going to be hard to achieve like remarkable business success. Doesn't mean it can't happen. I'm just saying there's scale. So I sat down with a friend two months ago and he was thinking about his big New Year's and he was going through all his New Year's goals. And as we talked, I told him, I said, listen man, I've been your friend for a long time. You are a very infrequent person. When people in your life, you're infrequent with your family, you're infrequent with us friends, you're infrequent with your team Because I help coach two or three of them. I go. Your frequency with people has led to a certain outcome in your life. If you want to step change in difference, you're going to have to increase that frequency. It might not be your preference. Now here's the thing. Is he scared? Is there fear holding him back from dealing with. No, he's just comfortable at that level. It's a preference. It's like your preference might not be serving your future. Choose number three, payoff speed. How fast do you need the gratification? Are you someone who prefers you got to get paid off right off the bat, or are you somebody who can invest in time and allow things to compound? Do you play the short game or the long game? Which is your preference? What's your risk profile of payoff? Let me give a tangible example. I run a business with my team. When we do marketing or ad spend, I have a solid rule. It's been one rule. It's been a rule for 20 years of my life. And that is, guys, if we spend money, we make it back in 90 days. Now why, why do I have to make it back in 90 days? It's. Is it because of my childhood? Is it because that's my industry norm? That's a preference. That is my risk profile. That's my risk window in business. I've rationalized. That's what I like. It's a preference. Well, guess what? When I compete against other people who will run ads and will allow, you know, their cost per acquisition to have a return on investment, four months, five months, six months, seven months, 18 months later, guess what? They're scaling way bigger than I am because I'm like, no, the payoff window needs to be 90 days. But these guys, you know, like if I'm working against a SaaS company, like a software business, they're okay getting paid back in 18 months because maybe they went their preference. They love dealing with people, investors. So they went and got investors and they're willing not to get paid back on their return on ad spend for 18 months because they have investors and they're willing to solve an industry problem. Oh, I'm solving a smaller problem. I don't like investors. I don't have any. I like to run my own ship. So I run my own ship and I like my payoff. So guess what? Those preferences led to a certain size business boom. It's life changing. When you realize these preferences, by the way, are mostly arbitrary, could I change them? Sure. I just like them how they are, that's where most change has to happen in people's lives is in their preferences, not the boogeyman unconscious that might have happened 20 years ago. No, actually most people's deal right now is their current level of preferences. And once you understand that self reliance conscious will in the moment, the mind is flat. Let's rationalize, let's meet this and change it. It's game changing for people. Fourth, your level in preference called status Need. Your level of status Need. How much status do you prefer? I have friends, they love that idea of hierarchy. They want to be the CEO of, you know, tons of people. They want to be on covers of magazines, they got to be in the top 10 podcasters. Otherwise they call me crying and asking me to help them. You know, it's like that's that their ranking is very important to them. I've never cared about ranking. I've achieved them in my life. But almost like a little bit surprised, you know, it's like everyone's got different status. Like when I go into a room, you're the most important person in the room. I don't really like, I don't need the entourage. Most of the times I show up at events and they're like, where's your entourage? I'm like, that's me. How'd you get here? I ubered over from the hotel. Oh, you're staying at that hotel? Well, we could have booked you a hotel.

I'm good.

I like that hotel. Like I'm so simple it's almost ridiculous. But other people, I'll tell you, they gotta have the lights. Their status is important, but the same thing in your household. How much status do you have to have in your household? How much respect, adoration, love, appreciation do you need from your partner? That's a preference. In love style it is status, we don't often use that word, but status is the desire I have to be held in good, positive, high respect of other people. And if I feel like my respect has been broken, I've lost status socially with somebody, I can feel threatened by that. Well, well I know friends who just didn't need the status and they had extraordinary success. And you can find any. It has nothing to do with personality. It's a preference like, you know, the founder of Walmart drove around a beat up old truck. It was just a preference. He didn't care about status that much. Now did he care about business goals? Absolutely. Efficiency? Absolutely. Scale? Absolutely. But personal status wasn't a huge need for him. And so you might not even know what Bill Walton looks like. Even though you've a million times gone into Walmarts. Right. It's like one of those things. You just might not ever even know the founder of a place. The founder didn't need any status. There's so many of my favorite companies, I don't even know who the founder was. It wasn't important to them. Other companies, it's that person they need that. There is no right or wrong. I just need, you know, you're guiding your life based on a preference for status and you need to know that is it serving the future or not? Sometimes you need to move towards more status and sometimes you need to like chill out bro. Okay, number five, I had to get a chill out bro at least one time in there. Okay. This one. Strenuous effort threshold. I know this feels like I'm psychologically profiling everybody, so stick with me. Strenuous effort threshold. Let me give you an example. It's so simple. This is good old fashioned personal development right here. If I asked you to jump down and do as many push ups as you can, you are going to do. Listen, I want you to listen very closely. The number of push ups you are going to do is only going to be based on preference. It's like, oh my God, my life is a result of my preferences. Yeah. Like this person, same command, jump down, do as many push ups as you can. One person will be like, they'll get to 10. It feels strenuous effort. And they're like, I'm out. My preference hit the threshold of strenuous effort that I have another person. Their preference is to push the strenuous effort threshold to the max. They're going to max out. They're going to go right. I mean they're going to the very edge of possibility. They're going to do as many push ups as they can. And then just for good measure, they're going to do 10 more. Screaming and farting. They're just going to. They're going to get 10 more. No matter what. They're going to get 10 more. Why? That's just their preference. Is it a need? No. Is it driven by childhood? No. Is it driven by their current circumstances? No. There's someone doing less right next to them. Why do they only do that many? That's what they prefer in the moment. I know this sounds like I'm saying people are fairly superficial, spontaneous, and they are outside of those with high intention who have initiative towards a specific aspirational character or goal. Most people Just go through the day at a preferential level, right? You don't have max out discipline unless you have real connection to high ambition and intention and conscious will. Otherwise you just do as many pushups until you're like, feels good, that's enough. Most people are going through their life going, that's enough. And the second it hits strenuous effort, they stop. That leads to one quality of life they're always doing just a little bit below strenuous effort. They're always just a little bit below. They're never in flow state which is engaged, challenged. Just a little above my skill, right? Flow state is like, I'm focused, I have the skill for it, but it's a little harder. So I really have to engage. I need to be fully engaged because it's kind of hard. And I have this outcome in mind. That's a flow state. Very few people ever enter that. Then there's high performance, which is another level of demand and expectation. And it's like, oh, okay, I'm really reaching up for that. So when you hit threshold for strenuousness, think about it as a spectrum, right? It's like some people no strain, other people max strain. That simple spectrum of preference explains so much about their life. Now, as we go throughout all of this, I said everything is being shaped by your preferences. Are these preferences supporting you? Because see, here's. Let me make it very simple. As we end today, before we hop in tomorrow, your preferences are either making you feel fulfilled or they are the friction. If you're thinking about a big dream up here, your preferences, the problems you're taking on, the people you want to deal with, how fast you need to pay off your status need and how.

Hard you will work, they are leading.

Up and you feel fulfilled. Your needs and your preferences are being met on your journey or your preferences are the problem. When I work with people at New Year's, I almost always have to say, your preferences are a problem. What you want to achieve, you're going to have to elevate those whole set of preferences. Most of our life is a result of our preferences. And most of our preferences are applied to goals. And those goals were our aspirations and our life arenas. We start to have a little bit of cohesive look at why we are at where we're at. It.