This Shift Changes How People Respond to You

There's two types of people. One type of person enters the room and goes, here I am. Another type of person enters the room, goes, there you are. We live in a world where people don't know each other. They're talking about such superficial or external things. That's why I'm trying to give you one simple social power idea here. I want you to be a there you are person from now on. They will change your entire life. How do you get the best out of people? How do you lift people up? How do you coach people? How do you inspire people? How do you lead people? Let me give you some big picture things when I'm. Let's talk about one on one real fast. So when you're with your kid, with your spouse, with one team member, I want to give you just a very simple acronym to remember. How to be awesome with other people. Okay? How to be awesome with other people. And we're going to use the metaphor of taking them into the cup of your hand. A lot of people, when you enter a social situation, because a lot of people haven't done personal development, they actually enter like this, right? They're always in defensive mode with other people. But servants, people of humility, people of caring and kindness, they enter with like, I will take you in my hands, I will care for you. Not like we're caring for little broken birds, but that we care for other spirit, that we're thoughtful, that we're welcoming them in. You're taking them into the cup of your hands as an example, okay? And I think this is so important because a lot of people just don't have any guidance when they're with other people. And so I hope that this will serve you. Let's work down this acronym, okay? First, when you're with people, you need to always remember connective questions. That's this. First the C. Okay? So your job, everyone knows, Well, I should connect with people. You connect with people by asking them questions about themselves and showing enthusiasm for the answer. If all you did the rest of your life is that we've changed the future for you socially. If all you did was I need to like cup C U P, I'm going to connect with people, but not just connect connective questions from now on, in every situation, one on one with any person, I'm always going to begin by asking them questions because remember, there's two types of people. One type of person enters the room and goes, here I am. Another type of person enters the room and goes, there you are. I want you to Be a there you are person from now on. It will change your entire life. Be enthusiastic to meet people and ask them questions. I don't care. Now here's the thing. People obsess about the questions. What should it be? I don't even care. But the question shouldn't be, you know, how's the weather? Because the weather has nothing to do with them. A connective question is not about situation. It's not about politics, it's not about the economy. It's not about no them. What's important to them? How are they feeling? What is their goal? What do they need? What are they experiencing? Like, zoom in onto them. I really believe so many people get stuck on that, asking the right questions. I'm like, just ask some questions about them. It can be simple. It can be so simple. It's like, you know, you could be at a party with someone and it's like, hey, why are you here? Who do you know here? What's happening for you? Are you enjoying this? You can do situational like that if you want. But it's about them, right? You should, like, when you walk away from a person, you should be like, I learned a lot about them. That's the tell. Did you learn a lot about them or did you literally just eat dinner with them and you talked about all these things, but you literally don't know them? We live in a world where people don't know each other. They're talking about such superficial or external things. They don't know each other. So that's why I'm trying to give you one simple social power idea here. The second part of this acronym, the you, is I want to make sure that you realize part of your goal here in life is to uplift. To uplift. You can talk to any person, any culture around the world. They want to be a positive impact on other people. They just forget, dude. So what I want you to do is like, okay, when I leave this situation, this person, I'm going to sense that the energy has been lifted. I'm going to make sure I do that. In other words, would you all write this down or even type it in the notes? Leave on a high note. Have you ever heard that phrase, leave on a high note? Like, uplift the energy? Even if you're like, brendan, this person's going through, like, hard time, I don't know how to help them. I'm not saying uplift them, like empower them. Know all the answers at all. I want you to write this down just like, I'm not just saying connect, I'm saying connective questions. I'm not just saying uplift. I'm saying uplift the energy of the space. Uplift the energy, leave it on a high note, like be that person who, when you leave that one on one interaction, it's like better energy. Could you imagine if that was your command, your self directive under social, it was just like better energy. You're going to leave the situation with better energy. I can tell you something, and again, I know yesterday it felt like maybe some tough love or I was being dismissive. I didn't mean to be that. But I do want to share just this feeling, this truth here with you. I believe, I believe a lot of people have never even tried this consistently. I also believe very few people have ever even thought of it. Honestly, I think most people, they're just trying to survive. They're in stimulus and response, they're going through, they like people, but they've never had the intention and initiative to ask can I raise the energy here? What would happen if I did? I'm here to tell you your positive ripple effect in the world starts one on one with people is are you leaving situations better than you found them energetically? You don't have to solve all their answers. But if I meet somebody and they're down on their luck, clearly in a 10 minute conversation, in a photo line, I'm probably not going to transform their entire life. But if we're talking and they're in this place where they're just feeling discouraged and I can leave with just like one sense of the energy being a little more hopeful, that's a win. That's a win. If you have a fight with your spouse and it's awful and negative, but at the end, even there's a moment you can go up and like hug them, be like, I'm sorry, I want it to be better for us, I love you. And you can walk away which a little bit of prayer, just like a little, a little. It doesn't have to be a huge, just a blip. Can you get the energy up? A blip. That's not even asking a lot, but very few people have ever even tried. So I want you to uplift the energy. I want you to imagine what your life would be like if one on one with the kids, the family, the team, other people, you just thought, I'm going to ask them some questions, I'm going to make the energy a little better. If that's all you did, your life would feel radically different. Remember one of your aspirations is aliveness and connection. Your connections will go through the roof. Last idea here. One on one for you. The P stands for praise. Stands for praise. If you've been around me ever, one on one in person, out to lunch, out to dinner, you will feel praised, right? It might not always be on every zoom call I do with friends, family, team, or every FaceTime. Or it might not always be there because we're in motion or because that relationship has endurance. But in general, like, if you walked out here with me and listened in as I'm talking with my wife, I'm praising her. Like, when I'm one on one with somebody, you would know that I like them, that I'm praising them, that I'm recognizing their strength, that I'm trying to acknowledge them. I'm saying, you're good at this. I'm saying, hey, I heard you say that. Thank you. I'm trying to praise them for being a good person. I'm trying to praise them for trying. I'm trying to praise them for showing up. I'm trying to say I'm glad we're doing this together. Thank you for being here. There's a sense of praise. Not just like acknowledgement, but like praise. Like, I respect you. I see you. I appreciate this. This is cool. Isn't this rad? Isn't this fun? Like, there's some sense of praise. I don't know how to describe it other than that word. But can I tell you something I shared with you yesterday? A little about, you know, my dad and when he passed away from acute myeloid leukemia. You know, one of the biggest difficulties in my life, the first time my dad ever saw me teach, like, where I was like, Brennan, Brennan. As I always joke, I was in college and my dad came with my MA to a relationship seminar that I was teaching at. I feel like I was maybe 19 or 20 years old. This was after my car accident. So I'd been through the breakup with the first woman I ever loved. Young kid, had had the breakup, fell into suicidal ideation and depression. 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, 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 Real8 agency that you have in life. So please, go to Growth Day in the App Store. Just go to the App store, go to growthday, or go to growthday.com and get growth day. I promise you, with your seven day free trial, you'll go through 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 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 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. Had the accident knocked me in the head, made me realize I wanted to live life and I wanted love and I wanted to matter. Aliveness, connection, meaningful pursuit. I didn't have the words back then, live, love, matter. But I realized I wanted to help people, but I didn't know how. And I'm a bookish kid. So after that breakup and realizing I had a second chance at life, I said, well, I gotta get relationships better next time. And so I read all these relationship books. And throughout that year, I must have been 20 now I think about it, I had been reading all these books on relationships. So in the dorm that I lived in. I became like the friend to all the girls because they could tell me about what's going on, the relationships. And I could be like, oh, well, this book says this or this. Research says this or this. And I was like a bookish kid. Like, I had the answers almost. I could guide people. And my dad, my mom came that first seminar I ever did, it was in a dorm and I taught a Relationship 101 class. And the kids could just show up. And I couldn't believe many kids showed up and I did it. And So I was 19 or 20, I can't remember, and I taught this metaphor. Now why does that matter? Because I really believe my life turned out a certain way with unbelievable relationships because of that duration of intention of one simple metaphor. Take people in the cup of your hand. Be compassionate to them. Ask them lots of questions to learn about them. Try to leave the energy uplifted and praise people. They're going through a lot of. They try harder than you think. They're good. We are indifferent to other people. Today is one of the great cultural problems, creating the enemy, the sense of aimlessness, directionless, purposelessness, meaningfulness where we don't sense those things anymore. We don't just sense what we want. It's because so many people are indifferent. You will never be indifferent again in your life when you do this. Once you do this with people, the caring comes back, the interest comes back, the sense of adventure and relationships comes back. Like, everything changes. It's just huge. It's just huge. So I hope you will develop this. If you don't like this. Your job today in our workshop is. What is your acronym? What is your metaphor that you're going to use from now on to intentionally improve your influence with other people? What is that? Okay, so that was the one on one. Now I want to go into social power and I want to talk about what to do in terms of group or audience. I know many of you are teachers or creators or those things that need to happen at social, cultural levels. Like, in other words, how do you make a bigger difference? Like, if you're going to grow in status or grow in recognition or grow your follower count or grow your team. What are the fundamental, most important things to do to develop that level of influence? Whether you're leading other people or selling other people or coaching other people, or being the therapist for other people or serving other people in any other way, what's that next level of influence that you get with people? Right. How do you do that? I'm going to give you just two keywords. So simple, but I want you to write them down. These might be part of your command, they might be part of your remembrance, or maybe they're just so obvious to you, but you kind of forgot. To develop next level influence with people socially, there's only two big dynamics. Number one, you need to be the provider or the instigator of insight. The insight instigator. You need to help the group gain new insight. How do you do that? What's the new insight that you are bringing to your audience? How do you instigate them? Getting an aha moment, as Oprah calls it, right? You gotta be the aha guy. You gotta be the aha girl. You gotta, like, look for the new insight, share the new research, ask the new question, help them develop the framework. Like, if you are the person that they connect to higher wisdom with, you win. You are the social leader there. They will follow you, they will buy from you, they will invest in you. They want to like. You got to be that. You are the insight instigator. How do you get them to a new level of wisdom? Thought, knowledge, some kind of insight? In my world, that's why podcasters are always sharing new research. They're always bringing you a new book author. They gain the influence. Like, literally, people who have, like, they're not that smart, but they might be the top podcasters in the world. Why? Because they're bringing you the smart people. They are the deliverers of the smart people. They're interviewing all the smart people. They're bringing new insight. Does that make sense? Think about the most influential people today. They're often just interviewing smart people for their audience. And so when you realize that's a truth, you go, oh, how do you do that for your kids? How do you do that in your family dynamic? How do you do that with your spouse? What new insight have you given the team in the last 30, 60, 90 days? Like, what's the framework? What's the insight? What's the perspective? What's the guidance? It's like, it's hard to say this, but I know a lot of people have great potential as leaders and they never attain it. They're doers, they're go getters, they're even high performers. But they never develop leadership because they don't share any insights. If you don't share insights, it's just like, people respect you. They, like, see you as an individual high performer. They don't see you as a leader. It is in the sharing of insights. That galvanizes and transforms people. And if you're that person that they go to for wisdom and insight, there's all the influence you can unlock. My question, like everything we've talked about last couple days, it's not a question of is this profound, it's is it a practice for you? Do you do that? Do you think about that? Did you do that last time you walked into your house? Did you do that last time you were with friends at dinner? Did you do that last time you were on that team call? Did you do that last time you were doing your broadcast? Was there clear and convincing evidence that you thought through delivering insight there? If not, you're good at tasks, just not leadership. Second big thing required is you must challenge. You must challenge people. When you challenge people, you turn them on. When you challenge people, you activate them. You cannot psychologically be in a flow state without challenge. At least when you look to the world's number one researcher on the topic, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow, which you all should definitely read this time of year. It's when you read that book, you're like, oh, I like in my challenge state, where I'm fully engaged trying to do something, it's a little slightly harder than I would expect. That's when I drop into flow state. That's when I'm the best. As an athlete, if there's no challenge there, as an athlete, it's a normal day of practice. When there's a little challenge, there's aliveness. Oh, wait, when there's challenge, there's more connection too. Wait, when there's challenge, there's more meaning in the pursuit. If the pursuit is too easy, there's no challenge. You don't sense meaning. It's hard to arrive at a sense of meaning without challenge. If you didn't have to do the hard work to get the payoff, the payoff feels less good, right? So if you hand everything to everybody, it's like. And you develop what, you know, Jonathan Haidt calls like the anxious generation. It's because we didn't ask anything of them. Like, if you make it easy, you develop entitled people. And they never had to earn it. They never sensed that sweet, profound victory of, like, strenuous effort. Then all the victories and all the wins and all the spoils of the world doesn't feel meaningful. If you don't feel you had to struggle to earn it a little bit, you might enjoy it, but you don't sense enrichment from it. Is there challenge in your life is central to personal development, isn't it? Well, don't you think it would be central to leadership leaders? You got to challenge your audience speakers. You got to challenge the audience teachers. You got to challenge the audience coaches. You got to push back. You got to challenge in order to lead. If I went and read your last hundred Instagram posts or your last 20 TikToks, are you challenging the audience in any way? Are you delivering insight and challenge? And when you know those subtle ways to challenge people, you can transform their lives.