Win the War in Your Mind with Brendon and Pastor Steven Furtick

The more you feel stuck, the more you spin in doubt. I do feel stuck sometimes in my relationships. I just feel stuck in my head. I feel stuck in my career. And a lot of people, they feel like that stuck is permanent. Doubt is not saying stop. Doubt is a signal to learn. Doubt is the entrance to the scientific process. Doubt is the entrance to faith. The story might begin in doubt, but the story doesn't stop there. Sometimes people, they're stuck is really they're just at a plateau. But there's this next level for you. Be careful about justifying all your vulnerabilities and your challenges because all of a sudden you miss the ability to move through it.

Hey guys, it's Brendan. And as you know, I rarely do sit down interviews with anybody. And so this is a special episode. I'm doing a six part series with my friend Pastor Steven Furtick talking about how you can use faith and mindset and high performance to improve your your life. This was a rare sit down interview for either of us in our busy lives. We're both New York Times bestselling authors. We both teach millions of people every single week. We have the opportunity of reaching so many people. Me with personal development and high performance training. He of course in ministry in Christianity and sharing his message as a pastor of faith and how to improve your life through a connection with God. And it was kind of a cool sitting down and coming together of these two worlds to talk about one thing, mindset and how you can become the new you.

What?

His new book is entitled do the New you. It's a six part series so I hope you'll enjoy it here. It's rare that I put anything like this on my YouTube channel because most of my channel is my keynote presentations or my live cast or replays for my courses. But you're getting an exclusive look right here in some behind the scene conversations I get to have in my life all the time. But this time we recorded. So with no further ado, please enjoy this conversation with myself and Pastor Steven Furtick, author of the new book, do the New you.

I want you to write the first one down even if you don't believe it.

Okay?

You don't have to believe this. Just get it down and then let's argue about it. Okay? Write in the comments, I'm not stuck. And just put that in the comment even though you're like, I am stuck. I'm literally stuck. I'm totally stuck. I'm something else that rhymes with stuck, but I can't say it on YouTube. I'm really, really stuck. Okay. That is a challenging paradigm for people, because if you look in the Bible, Paul and Silas seemed stuck in prison, but they praised God, and the chains broke loose. You know, Gideon seemed stuck in a winepress, but God spoke, and he became a deliverer. Moses seemed stuck as a murderer, running as a fugitive on the backside of the desert, and then this burning bush. And God had 40 more years of amazing things for him to do. And all of these people felt stuck. So I want you to tell me, what were your reflections on this first mindset? I'm not stuck unless I stop. Do you agree with it? How do you see it? How do we summon our way through that? And let's really dig into this first mindset.

I love it. I love every section of this chapter because it reminds you that everyone feels stuck. I think one of the things you did great in the book is that people see themselves in it constantly. You go, I do feel stuck sometimes in my relationships. I just feel stuck in my head. I feel stuck in my career. What am I gonna do? And a lot of people, they feel like that stuck is permanent. Like, hey, I'm working hard, but I'm stuck. So there's not lack of action for them. They're like, I'm going to work, but I feel stuck. You know, I'm working hard, but I'm not earning more. I feel stuck. And what ends up happening is the more you feel stuck, the more you spin in doubt.

Wow. And so when you're stuck, you spin. Write that down. When you're stuck, you spin.

Yeah. And people always mistake that, the signal for doubt as a signal to stop.

Tell me more about.

But doubt is not a. Doubt is not saying stop. Doubt is a signal to learn. And when you change that frame in your mind, everything changes in your life. I'm so doubtful. Doubt doesn't say, well, stop and don't learn anymore. Doubt is literally, I don't know. So the only way to actually figure it out is get in motion. Try test. Like, doubt is the entrance to the scientific process. Doubt is the entrance to faith.

Wow.

And so when you realize that, like, oh, I'm having all these doubts about this thing, the next thought should be, well, I'm gonna have to do something to discover the answer. I'm gonna have to do something to discover the truth. I'm gonna have to do something to test this hypothesis.

Let's break your flow. If I ask you something about that.

No, I love it.

Yeah. Go. Every religious person in the world is pulling up James 1 right now going, Bo. But the Bible says, let he who hath faith ask and not doubt. For he who asketh in faith shall not receive anything from the Lord. He is a double minded man, unstable in all he does. And I always thought that verse meant not, you know, don't have doubts or don't feel doubts. I thought it just meant go through the door of your doubt to get to the other side and find your faith.

Right, right. Well, I think a lot of themes of the Bible are do not be afraid or as you taught me, be strong and courageous. That presupposes some doubt.

Right.

Most of the Bible presupposes we have doubts.

Yeah. If he says be strong, I must feel weak because I wouldn't tell you to sit down. You already are.

Yeah, he didn't start the story. Gideon doesn't start the story. As you know, a mighty warrior, a champion and warrior. He starts in the winepress.

A wimp in a winepress.

Yeah. Yeah. David doesn't start the story with the sling. I mean, so you have to go, oh. Each of these stories starts in a place often of doubt or discouragement, despair, division between people. We have to cycle through that. But the thing is, I always say, well, that's why there's another verse. That's why there's another chapter. It's why there's something more. It's like the story might begin in doubt, but the story doesn't stop there. And we have to remember that in our own lives. And so what I loved about this first chapter where he's saying, I'm not stuck unless I stop, is you unlock a lot of reasons that people should not stop and realize that they can change. I love how you talk about, you know, you can defy your default.

Yeah.

That maybe your default was to stop or to do these bad, negative behaviors. But you can work your way through them. You can change, you can shift. And I think that's a hopeful message for a lot of people because they really do believe that they're stuck. And stuck is a place of permanence when what your book is teaching them stuck was a mindset. And you can change your mind. So you can change your life.

Yeah. You know, when you say stuck, you're probably thinking of all the people that you've coached who basically thought they had gone as far as they could go. You know, whether that's in their business or whether they had wrecked their personal life building their business. And part of what you do is to walk into somebody who goes, and I'VE heard you say this phrase before. I love it. You go, I've tried everything. Right? Right? And you go, oh, yeah, everything. Yeah, I've tried everything. And then walk through it because you have an exercise you make people do that I love.

Yeah, well, I tried everything. I'm like, awesome.

I'm so excited.

And I get really encouraged for them and I say, well, if you tried everything, show me the list. And they go, what do you mean? I said, well, show me the list. You tried everything. I mean, if you tried everything, then you must have kept a list really detailed of all the things you tried. Because of course you'd have to know what's mutually exclusive. You'd have to know what you tried and didn't work, and you'd have to adjust and do it over and again. So show me the list. And most often people go, well, you know, I tried once or twice and I tried the same. Well, I asked my boss for a raise on Monday. Ask him on Friday. Ask them the same way every time, all the time. But I've been asking. So you've been asking. Okay, but you haven't been adding new value. So it's like you tried one strategy and you hit it 50 times and you didn't adjust it from another way. You haven't tried everything. You tried what you knew. You need to get perspective or approach it in a different way. And I think often too, people, when they think of stuck, they think of just negative things. I'm stuck in a bad marriage. A lot of people are stuck in a very happy marriage. And what I mean by that is they don't need to leave the marriage. They have to learn to be different, try a new angle to find the happiness, the fulfillment, or the intimacy in the marriage. So what I mean by that is sometimes people, they're stuck is really they're just at a plateau. They're actually successful, they're actually doing well, things are good. And a lot of high performances are going, oh, you're just, you're doing well, you're actually high performing. But there's this next level for you. And I think that I actually got that out of the book as much as I got out of, oh, oh, I'm in despair, I'm troubled, things are bad. What I also took from the book was things are going well. But there's a new level for me when I'm in a. More in a greater connection to my faith. Speaking about plateaus, you have this great statement in the book. Don't argue for your limitations. What do you mean by that? Because I think a lot of people, they are stuck, but they're stuck in their own limitation.

I heard a motivational speaker say it one time. He said, if you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. And that convicted me because I realized how many times I do it. And I don't know if I'm arguing with God like Moses did. God, I can't speak, you know, send somebody else. I don't feel like I'm arguing with God. I feel like I'm just arguing against myself. And I realize what I'm actually agreeing with in that moment is the enemy's view of me. And I don't mean limitation. Hey, you've never picked up a basketball, but you can play in the NBA and you're 54 years old. That's not the kind of limitation I have in mind. I mean the kind of limitation that is rooted in a lie where, you know, God is calling you to be this kind of person and to make this kind of impact. Or you sense that he's giving you a glimpse and given you a step to take. And then you start building the case against yourself and gathering evidence for why there's a deficiency in you. And so the quote just blew my mind. If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. You live small, you stay in that space, you actually begin to fulfill that prophecy. Not the prophecy of God over your life, but your own prophecy. You start to fulfill the enemy's prophecy over your life that you'll never be this and your dad. Wasn't that. So what I did, I took that quote. And in the book, I take it a little further. I say, if you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. But if you agree with God about your potential, you get to grow into it.

Oh, that's good.

Grow into it.

That's good.

You know, that's the whole sermon. Put it in the chat. Grow into it. Because growing into it means, no, I'm not it right now, like, any more than I was five, nine, when I was five. But I get to grow into it. And I think that first step of agreeing with God about your potential is to go, God, you know what's in me. I don't. And that's why I'm very wary of just the know thyself philosophy. Right? Like, know thyself is great, but how about part two? Grow thyself.

Yes.

Yeah. Because that's the, the. The outgrowth of reflection and awareness and self acceptance is that I'm going To grow into who God knows me to be. That's the message of the book. I was writing this book to myself in places going, do the new you, the you that you don't know yet, but that God already does, the one that he chose. Yeah.

And have faith in yourself as. Equally as maybe he has faith in you, which is a hard thing to grow into.

Well, think about this.

You're growing into the faith of yourself.

Which is very hard for you, of yourself. Because people will say, don't believe in yourself, believe in God. Here's the problem I have with that. Who made you? If God made me and I don't believe in me, what he called me to be, then it's Him I doubt. And that really helps me to get past this sticking point where I feel like, well, I just don't want to hype myself up and say that, you know, I can do great things. Well, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Yes.

So I think the two go hand in hand. That's why I was passionate to get this masterclass going, to get people out of and to get you out of this mindset that says, well, God is great, but I'm no good. Okay, yeah, we're all sinners. We all need Jesus, we all need forgiveness, but we've been redeemed by Him. So what does that speak of us? That he paid that price for us? That's the limitation that I want you to grow beyond this view of you that only sees you as flesh and bones and mistakes and disappointments and to grow into the image of God that you were originally created to be.

So good. I thought of when I was reading it, the angle you took on. Don't argue for your limitations. Which was also, you were saying, be careful about justifying all your vulnerabilities and your challenges and what's wrong with you, because it's easy to go, well, I'm not a good communicator because. And soon as you say, because you enter the world of either blame or self comfort to say, I'm not a good communicator because my parents were mean to me. And so I always tell people, listen on limitations, always listen for the word because I'm like this because. And you'll often add a negative thing. My parents were like this. They didn't believe in me, she mistreated me, they cheated, they stole. Or we're doing it for our own comfort because we don't believe we have empathy from the world. So sometimes when we share our limitations and Our vulnerabilities with people. What we're doing is we're reaching out. We're saying, hey, you know, I'm, you know, let me just be vulnerable with you real quick. What it's doing is, could you please see me? Can you recognize me? Because I'm not feeling like I like myself or I'm not feeling good, seen, heard, or I don't feel like the world is fair. So let me tell you this thing that's unfair for me. Could you see it and acknowledge it and say to me, oh, yeah, that is unfair, or, oh, I understand now why you are like that? And the whole conversation suddenly does something funny. It justifies and sets concrete around the limitation.

Wow.

Suddenly we have verbalized the reason, because we've verbalized the reason for the limitation and now we coalesce around it and we actually just made it stronger. And so empathy can be like that, which we don't talk about in the modern world. Sometimes overly placating to people's vulnerabilities or limitations and staying on it and stewing on it all day doesn't actually move them through. It's often the difference in my career of as we'll share the difference sometimes between a therapist and a coach, both absolutely necessary, and I'm a huge mental health guy. But there is a difference. Sometimes we'll spend more time over here in a therapeutic context, and a coach is going to try to move you through that limitation a little bit more aggressively. Not that either is right. Both can be really wrong. But I think it's just a casual way to say to people, be careful of just always talking about the limitation and arguing for it and seeking the empathy and understanding and comfort because all of a sudden you miss the ability to move through it. And I thought that the movement through the book that you took people on was so powerful because you didn't let them sit there.

Well, thank you for saying that. Because when I wrote the mindset, I'm not stuck unless I stop, I thought this could come across really callous to somebody who just found out, like, I'm never going to be able to have children, or I'm never going to be able to fulfill this dream, or I'm never going to have my health back like I did before, or this person has gone out of my life. Like, I lost my dad. And in this area of my life, I do feel like there is a limitation. Well, there is a loss, but I'm trying to get you opened up. And anytime I talk about this, I can't help but think about Moses and the children of Israel at the Red Sea, right? And they're like, okay, God, help us.

Help us, help us.

And they cried out. And Moses says, don't worry. Stand still and you will see the salvation of the Lord. Right? Next verse, God says, why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites, move on.

So it sounds spiritual.

They're crying out to God, the Lord will deliver you, and he will through you. Moving through it, right? And I love that about personal development. I love that about having a coach to help us through these things and bring our faith into motion so that we can actually see faith without works is dead, and that God promises to bring you through it.