You’ve Been Lied To About Progress

Why are you not making more progress towards that passion, that goal, that thing that you enjoy? Not all change is progress, self limitation and social pressure. You forget all the times in your life you progress through difficult things. You didn't give yourself credit for them. You didn't integrate those wins into character strength. Certain things had to happen to put you in the position today. If you can accept that things have been okay so far, then why would you not believe they're gonna not only be okay, but even be better instead of self limitation mode? I can't, I can't, I can't. Can you turn it into progress mode? I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. That's progress mode, baby. Not all change is progress. Not all activity is progress. Progress is momentum toward goals that we want and that sense of satisfaction with the speed that we are traveling in and the character of who we are becoming. And when we understand that, things shift. You have a direction to go, but you have someone to become. What does progress even mean to you? What does progress even mean to you? I told you what it meant in terms of a definition earlier. It's momentum toward a goal where you feel satisfied with the speed and the choices you're making towards that goal. Okay, got, got. That's progress. But this progress of what you're going after, what you're trying to achieve, but there's progress internally. Is there something you do that when you do it, it brings higher levels of vibrancy. You come alive again, you get excited, you're passionate about it. Well, if you do, my question is, why are you not making more progress towards that passion, that goal, that thing that you enjoy? Well, it's the same thing that hit me. There's two enemies on this journey, and these two enemies actually create all the crises in your life. There's only two enemies. There's self limitation. That's the first enemy. It's the things you say to yourself, who am I? I can't. This would be too risky for me. They won't believe in me. I won't be able to figure it out. They'll make fun of me. It will be a disaster. And we start telling ourselves this, we limit ourself. It's our own internal thoughts. I know you already know this, but if you think about something that brings you alive and I say, why aren't you doing more of that? I bet there's some self limit thought in your head that's preventing you from doing that. And progress mode is going, oh, wait a minute. Progress towards that thing is more valuable to me than self doubt. Progress towards that thing is more valuable to me than self doubt loathing. Progress towards that is a much more rational choice to make than the irrational concerns I have in my brain and my self limitations. My enemies at that stage of my life sounded like this. I'm too young to quit a job and chase my passion. I'm too young to write a book. I'm too inexperienced to be a speaker on in front of people. I don't have the competency for that. I don't know that business model. I've seen other speakers, I've seen Wayne Dyer, I've seen tapes of Jim Rohn and Earl Nightingale. I've seen Zig Ziglar on stage. I'm like, I'm not like those people. So I'm not like them. I don't know how to do it. I don't have enough age and experience. So why would I keep doing this even though it makes me feel alive? Why would I keep doing this even though I really enjoy it? Because the way to kill progress mode is to talk yourself out of it, to diminish yourself, to question yourself. And you lose faith in yourself. You forget all the times in your life you progress through difficult things and all those times in your life you progress or survive through different things. You didn't give yourself credit for them. You didn't integrate those wins into character strength. They were just like circumstances you feel like you went through. Well, I just survived those things. I'm like, no, you became stronger. You might not know you did, but you did. If you gave yourself credit for still being here, you'd have more faith in yourself. More importantly, please listen. This is so important. You also lost faith in the forward push position. This means if. If you believe in your life that there's serendipity or coincidence or destiny or calling, you believe in your life, your life has actually turned out okay. Like, it could have been way worse. Your life could have been way worse if you believe that your life has turned out okay or even great. But it could have been way worse, then isn't it true certain things had to happen to put you in the position today. Certain things in the past had to have happened. They were like dominoes that fell for you that made your life okay. And there were dominoes that did not fall for you, that if they had fallen, your life had been way worse. So if that is true, then things have happened for you somewhere along the way to make your life okay today. My question to my Audience is always, why do you not believe that will be true for the future, for tomorrow and next week? See if you can flip your brain from I'm not enough, I don't know how to. And go. Actually, things have always been lining up for me, like I couldn't see them at all times. But if I'm okay now or I can see a path out, I can imagine a future and I can move in a direction. And you know what? If I'm alive and I made it this far, you know what? Odds are good things are going to line up for me, so I'll be alive again and I'll make it further. That's faith in the forward position. That in the forward position, something is being set up for you, right? If it's. If you're like. If you can take a metaphor of thinking, like in the military, how they'll put a forward deployment, right? Or in. In Silicon Valley, they'll put a forward engineer, they put something out front to set things up for everybody else to have it more safe or secure or more success that something is happening out front for you. In the military, they send in the elite team to handle the city and to secure the city, then the rest can come in. But someone's been deployed out there to handle things. Now, I'm a person of faith, so I believe that to be God. I believe that God is lining things up in the future for us, that I have faith in a forward position because I believe he precedes me. I believe he precedes all of us. I believe good things are coming. Now. Not everyone believes a level of faith in terms of spirituality, religion, that way. But I do believe if you can accept that things have been okay so far, then why would you not believe they're going to not only be okay, but you can be better? Why not your own self? Limited thinking, you're zeroing in on the negative things, and it's stealing that sense of progress. Instead of zeroing in, taking it personally, feeling like there's not gonna be progress, I need you to instead go, wow, maybe something great could happen. Maybe it's not about just self. How do I feel? Self limitation, but rather something is being set up in front of me. That abundant mindset or that level of intentionality or traction that says, oh, good, things are being set up so I can proceed with faith, with speed, with courage, because I'll figure it out along the way. Isn't that true? You've already figured out so much. I've always said that confidence is the Belief in our ability to figure things out. You're gonna figure it out. If you figured out this far, you're gonna figure it out even better as you go, because you got more intelligent, you got more intuition, you got more sensibility about yourself. And so could you imagine a future that's better? Could you start speaking to yourself with faith, with excitement? Can you turn your brain into progress mode instead of self limitation mode? I can't. I can't, I can't. Can you turn it into progress mode? I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. That's progress mode, baby. You got to turn that on. That's a switch in your brain. I said there's two enemies. One is self limitation. Mine was, I'm too young, don't know enough. Who am I to be out speaking when I have a corporate job? I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a real author. They just printed out my book. The second enemy, though, is social pressure. You know, when I came back on from the weekends of speaking at school and I told my co workers about it, they were like, you can't go out and speak. You have a job. You're going to get in trouble. You can't be working on the side here. And they were like, you know, you should just focus here. You're on a good path. You know, a couple years, you can be promoted, you can earn more. What are you thinking? Don't risk your job this risky what you're doing. And I was terrified. They scared me. Has anyone ever scared you out of your dream? Has your school or your, you know, teacher or somebody you cared about, a friend? Have they scared you from pursuing the thing that brought you alive? Hey, guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter because I have a resource for you related to this episode and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way, just go to progressmo.com, click on Private group to apply to see you can get into Ultra and we can take it to the next level by getting in person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progress mode now. I told you there's two enemies, self limitation and social pressure. But see, not all Social pressure is bad. Social pressure in which the standards are below your ambition or your aspiration, your dream, that's bad. In other words, social demand, where there is lower standards than you have, that's bad. And a lot of people are pressured by people with lower standards than they have. Do you know I've had the blessing of having over 3 million people take my courses online. You know, from 190 countries around the world. We've conducted the largest scale research studies ever been done in high performance, especially related to like performance, psychology and behavior. And I have worked with people every week of my life, real people, for 20 years full time. Why'd I share that with you? Because I learned something about people along the way and that is two big ideas. Number one, they don't wake up and switch their brain into progress mode and move towards their goals at a speed and developing their character at the level they want. And number two, they forget to have faith in that forward position. They don't have faith that they could leave this thing and build this thing over here fairly quickly. I share this because one thing that really emerged with working with all those people, I have never met anybody so far in 20 years doing this at the top levels, who literally could not make a drastic and major and incredible change in their life if they went out on their calendar from today, marked it six months from now and said six months from now I am going to do this incredible thing and then reverse engineered to this day to today and said, what do I need to do today to get in progress mode to be in the direction that I desire and to make that major bold move on that date six months from now. I've worked with people who did like impossible feats. You know, they went from terrible health to running a marathon in six months. They left a bad job, left a bad relationship. Not immediately, but they spent six months planning, preparing, getting ready. Now please listen. I'm not saying at the six month mark they left the thing and they were 100% in terms of replacing the other thing. Maybe they left an abusive marriage and in six months, you know, it's not like they found love and were in a perfectly beautiful, abundant, you know, movie relationship. It just means that could they spend six months preparing to leave that relationship to find another place, find some friends, talk with somebody, find a shelter. If they gave them some time, could they plan and prepare that bold move? I think you can plan and prepare bold moves. I think you could be so stunned by a bold move you could make six months from now if you decided it. I'm here to tell you progress mode is going to call something from you. It's going to summon something from you. It's going to be uncomfortable, it's going to be unfamiliar. There will be pain with the progress, but you're going in the right direction at a new speed and achieving magnitudes of change that you probably desire in your life, and that's why you're listening to progress mode right now.