11 Habits To DESTROY NEGATIVE Thoughts & Find TRUE HAPPINESS! | Lewis Howes

it's easy to be the victim it's easy to say make excuses for yourself and say well i didn't want to do this i wasn't feeling this or this thing happened or the circumstance happened but you cannot negotiate your dreams and your goals you cannot negotiate with your goals i think you've got to have a dream the school of greatness really yeah please welcome us in this video i want to talk about the 11 habits to change your life and these are really the habits to help you increase your happiness now some people like to wait and see if happiness will ever just happen to them maybe one day they'll wake up and suddenly be happy and everything will be fantastic but unfortunately that's not just how life works we all know it doesn't work like that in order to be happy we must first have to be intentional about creating a better lifestyle and that starts with habits so today i want to go over the 11 habits that have transformed my life that i believe will help you build a happier healthier more loving life for yourself as well and habit number one is to create a vision and life fulfilling goals now this is something that i talk about in my book it's one of the first principles in the school of greatness is really creating a clear intentional vision and without a clear vision you'll end up running in multiple different directions instead of staying focused on what truly matters in your life your relationships your health and your business and this can lead to your success being delayed a lot longer than it needs to be and so you really want to get clear and intentional and you can have a different vision at every different stage of your life when you're 10 years old or when you're 50 years old but it's important to have a clear vision without that you'll just be kind of wandering around and when we're wandering we feel aimless and when we feel aimless we feel like what's the point what's the purpose what's the intention for me being here and that causes a lot of stress and anxiety when we have those thoughts so in my life when i wasn't clear on my vision i was really running around and stressed out a lot i was like what should i be doing i don't know i don't feel good enough i don't feel worthy i don't feel like i matter and those thoughts really don't help me improve the quality of my life and a question someone asked me is what was your life like when you didn't have a clear vision versus when you created one for the school of greatness and for me i remember different moments in my life it was mostly in transition when one goal was finished one one dream and ended whether it be you know sports dreams or business ended it's kind of like the transition period was like well what do i do next and it's that discovery phase of the transition where you get to get clear start doing the things that you really love do the hobbies hang out with people you love to spend time with travel do the things you've always wanted to do and do them to the best of your ability when you do that you'll start to spark ideas things will start to come to you naturally and that's what i really did in between transitioning before the school of greatness into the school of greatness i was living my life i was playing sports i was being active with friends and that process i remember going through transition thinking you know i wish there was more tools when i was growing up that would help me overcome the different challenges that i'm faced with my life i wish there was a school of greatness that could teach me about all these different things and that was the spark in the transition from one business to the next on why i created the school of greatness and the mission now is to serve 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life and we do that through a lot of the things that we do in the school of greatness but i'm very clear on the vision and on the mission it's very intentional i wake up every day thinking about it and i act based on vision without that vision i would act based on well what am i supposed to do i'm not sure i don't feel good about myself i have no direction and again when we have no direction we're just kind of wandering around in a circle and that doesn't help us move forward it doesn't help us grow so have a clear vision i don't care if the vision is for one month or for 20 years have something you're working towards that will help increase the happiness and the quality of your life habit number two this is something i learned in sports early on is to have a positive attitude when things go bad now the world is filled with a lot of different negativity drama stress and sometimes it's hard not to fall victim to joining in on the negativity this is one of the reasons why my father growing up would not let us watch the news he would not let us watch commercials that talked about a lot of harmful things or the news because he didn't want us to be susceptible to hearing about things that maybe are happening in a micro level that are blown out of proportion that seem like it's happening all over the world was really only happening in a small level he didn't want us to emphasize on all this negative energy and this negative attitude so he eliminated those thoughts from our mind to support us in the positive in sports as well i would also have coaches that you know things wouldn't always go our way and i used to be so negative i used to be so reactive when i missed a shot when i dropped the ball when i messed up when something that i did was wrong or was a mistake i used to beat myself up so much or when we'd lose i was such a sore loser and such have a bad negative attitude and our coaches over the years would really teach me like that isn't helping you that isn't supporting you or your teammates around you but having a positive attitude when things go wrong will lift your teammates up we'll lift you up to help you improve for the next play in the next moment it's really all about having that positive attitude because the negative doesn't usually serve us for anything ever there are times absolutely to speak up and be a stand for when bad things are happening to you or happening to other people or around you but that's not what i'm talking about i'm not talking about that specific moment in time i'm talking about spending hours of your day thinking about yourself negatively and thinking about the world negatively around you just ruminating on how negative everything is that prevents you from showing up as the best version of yourself and i believe you're robbing yourself and your loved ones and the world of your gifts and who you truly are when you sit in that negative state so when i began to shift into having a positive attitude it really helped me in every area of my life and negative things or things that i don't like happen around me all the time but it's a practice even today and when i'm hit with these adversities or these obstacles i try to ask myself how could it possibly serve me in the future or if it's worth putting so much energy into it around a negative attitude is it really worth it is it helping me in my health is it helping me in my joy and my love for others and my love for myself by holding on to this negative energy it's usually not worth the energy so why do we do it so frequently you know there's this book called don't sweat the small stuff because it's all small stuff you know obviously there's adversity and there's challenges but when you can have the attitude around it it really shifts your life and the people around you so you've got to do the work to develop that awareness to realize that for yourself this isn't easy this took me a long time and having a positive attitude is in my opinion one of the most important things to manifesting to attracting to feeling better about yourself but one thing that i've learned from the different guests and the experts on the show in the last few years is that what's most important is getting to the root of what's causing you the stress the pain the anxiety the negative feelings that you're having because positive affirmations can only get you so far if you're not also doing the deep work on what's really going on what's underneath the trigger the anxiety the fear dr caroline leaf has been on the show a couple of times i really love her message and her expertise and she said it's like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound when you're just trying to have a positive affirmation without actually going to the root cause of what that trigger and negativity is but if you're able to get to the roots of some of the things causing you so much pain and suffering and the negative attitude that you have and then begin working to stay positive and having an abundance mindset that's when you can really start to create real change and start to see and notice the feelings of positivity notice the feelings of happiness flood into your heart into your body into your soul and that's what this is all about so habit number three is an important one it's all about giving back volunteering your time helping others mentoring coaching being of service in any way possible that you can and you might have heard me share this before but uh if you're going to be addicted to anything in life be addicted to service i believe it's you know not addicted in the negative sense but if you're going to be committed to doing something and living in intentional practice be intentional on the act of serving other people and in whatever way that works for you whatever you have to do do that for you it's been my mission since the beginning of this show and every single day i aim to show up and give back to you to people watching to people listening my friends and family my team members and anyone possible that i can and it's it's very important for me and it also brings me a lot of joy when i can know that something i did caused a positive impact on someone else's life whether it be a piece of content someone i interviewed something they said something i said a way we put it out there that connected with people that brings me so much joy it brings me so much happiness knowing that my life has had meaning on one person's life and it continues to feed and fuel my fulfillment and my soul every day and that's why i continue to be committed to habit number one which is the vision and staying true to that vision and in a new york times article by tara parker pope she wrote that several studies suggest that supporting others helps buffer our bodies against the detrimental effects of stress and a five-year study of 846 people in detroit found that stressful life events appeared to take a greater toll on people who were less helpful to others while helping others seem to erase the detrimental physical effects of stressful experiences now for me that is crazy to think that those who were more self-centered who weren't focusing outward and trying to help other people those that were only thinking about themselves not helping others had more physical pain and elements based on the stressful environment whereas those who were focusing out that started to go away and for me that says something about how service is truly important in our lives habit number four is a big one something i do all the time is to express gratitude and appreciation this may seem like so basic this may seem like the dumbest thing because it's so simple but it will transform and change your life and when we appreciate everything that we already have not focusing on the things that we don't have but appreciate the things we already have it puts us in a mindset of abundance rather than scarcity and this is huge because gratitude drowns out negativity and it brings positivity into our lives it puts us into perspective in the moment of what is meaningful what we have created what we have the people in our life right now and we can channel that positive energy into everything we're doing and we can shift that positive energy into our vision and our mission and i can't speak for everyone but gratitude has been life-changing for me it's something again that i do every day it's non-negotiable when i wake up it's on my voicemail when someone calls me i say tell me what you're grateful for and i'll get back to you in our team meetings we talk about it when we start a meeting what are you grateful for today it's just something when i go to bed at night i express three things i'm grateful for all these things help me continue to stay in the present moment not focused on the past of what i did or how mistakes i made not worry about the future but really be present and that's the key to being happy is focusing on what you have right now and the people in your life and many other psychologists that i've interviewed on this show tell me that gratitude is proven to create a happier life this isn't just some fluffy woo-woo you know personal development thing this is now science it's been researched it's been studied and proven that gratitude decreases depression increases happiness in people's lives so don't let gratitude be something you just do from time to time or once in a while or on a holiday or thanksgiving you need to find time and place to do it every single day and the more you do it the more frequently you do it the happier healthier more fulfilled you will be and it'll put your life in perspective it'll get you out of the things you don't have and focus on things you do have the simplest way to do that is just to add gratitude to the start of something you're already doing we talked about this what i do we do it before team meetings you could do it while you're making coffee you could do it right before you eat every meal you can do it when you wake up when you go to bed whenever you're about to start something have a moment it could be five seconds i'm grateful for this moment i'm grateful for this thing i'm grateful i have this and really be intentional on that spend a few minutes and um use that time wisely to express gratitude for me again i wake every morning and i express the things that i'm grateful for i really just wake up and say thank you thank you for another day thank you for my health thank you for the people in my life thank you for the challenging times that have helped me grow and improve myself i try to say thank you for it all and that really supports me in the day and you'll be able to love deeper you'll create more light for other people and you'll appreciate the little things around you more than ever i'm telling you a ritual of gratitude will change your life it's again it seems so basic it might seem like so you know this is not some crazy life hack or something in some app or something that's gonna switch something on your brain this is just going back to the basics to help you improve your happiness habit number five is to create healthy relationships with boundaries i didn't know what a boundary was until really a few years ago in in certain areas of my life and personal boundaries are essential in healthy relationships because they provide the foundation for your expectations behavior and how you communicate with others sometimes setting the limits can be challenging and difficult especially if you want everyone to be happy around you now raise your hands if you are a recovering people pleaser like me and you want everyone to like you you want to be you want everyone to be happy around you you want everyone to you don't want anyone to ever be mad at you for anything that's been me pretty much my entire life up until recently when i created when i learned how to create healthy boundaries and know that i'm going to disappoint people but the most important person that i'm not going to disappoint is myself and i was always abandoning myself to try to please others and i was hurting myself in the process and you should never hurt yourself you obviously don't want to hurt others but you should never hurt yourself and we often react differently when we don't get what we want or when what it is happening around us isn't what we expected when that expectation kind of hangover happens to us results in frustration or hurt feelings i know i know the feeling you expect someone to say something or do something don't do it you get let down it hurts that's why communication is so important and whether it's an intimate relationship a family member a business relationship when the boundaries we have set are not met we feel violated or for myself i felt abused taken advantage of and all these different things and that doesn't feel good i understand those feelings they don't feel good so when you create a standard create a boundary you've got to communicate and talk about your expectations in that communication process sometimes this can be extremely challenging and difficult conversations especially if you've never done in the past and oftentimes boundaries are not discussed and that can cause bitterness and resentment and if you take the proactive approach by discussing boundaries with your partner you can avoid a lot of that pain and stress and disaster so i highly encourage you to be willing to be uncomfortable in those boundary conversations and i loved this moment that i had when i interviewed nedra tawab and she said she was she's like the boundary expert and she said when we think about boundaries we think about them as something with someone else but a boundary could be a morning routine a boundary could be having some quiet time after lunch it's not just all these things that we need other people to do it's also what we need to do with ourselves and i think it's so important for us to reflect on what are the boundaries we're keeping with ourselves not about significant others or family or friends what are the boundaries of integrity you're keeping with yourself so think about that for yourself and the boundaries you want to set in the specific relationships in your life and really are any of them being crossed already what are the places in your life where you feel like boundaries are already being crossed make a list write these down and are you not respecting the boundaries yourself are you crossing boundaries that you shouldn't be crossing with someone else in your life it's a difficult thing to do especially if you've never really thought about them but when i began setting boundaries in my life as well as started to hear about the importance of them from different therapists and psychologists that we've interviewed on the show it made a huge difference in my emotional mental physical well-being as well because really when you think about boundaries you know when an emotional menstrual spiritual boundary feels crossed you almost feel it in your body i know i did i would feel tightness tension i would have like eczema flare-ups when a boundary was crossed and i didn't know how to handle it and you feel you feel the boundary being crossed emotionally and it physically manifests so this will continue to help you be happier and physically healthier when you create boundaries which leads me into habit number six which is to take care of your physical health work out eat clean physical and mental health the emotional and mental stress can can really lean into the physical damage if we don't have a clean healthy relationship with the mental and emotional side of ourselves creating boundaries and all that other stuff but taking care of your body consistently moving your body exercising is so important for your overall physical and mental health we've had so many different experts come on and talk about the research and the science of how physical movement increases happiness increases dopamine makes you feel more confident all these things being stagnant for two weeks and not moving your body will make you feel less and less confident make you feel weak and all those different feelings will create stress and anxiety in your life when you don't exercise you're not giving your body the clarity it needs it's not cleansing itself it's not moving and you've got to move in order to get you closer towards your desired goals as well so you got to think about these things what does your body need it's it's something that i've started talking about more and more as i've started to integrate this more and more in my life and i started taking boxing lessons a couple times a week six months ago and this transformed my physical and mental health you might have to reassess like are the physical activities i'm doing right now supporting me or do i need to mix it up do i need to try something new do i need a new challenge that's what i did with boxing i've been able to lift and run and and play sports my whole life but i felt like i needed something to shift me physically and boxing was something i'd never done something that was challenging it's mental it's emotional and physical and it's one of the hardest workouts i've ever done so i go early in the morning and i do that because that's been huge for me because it means i can take care of the most important and often the hardest things first which set up the rest of my day for success and when i finish a workout early in the morning and i realize well there's still a lot of people that are asleep who haven't gotten up we haven't done anything and i'm finishing one of the hardest things of the day for me that brings me joy that makes me a better human that makes me feel more confident makes me feel happier that that detox is things that i need to let go of when i do that i feel like wow what's next what is there that i need to do i can do anything bring it to me i will take on the world today and when you start the day with that momentum i really support you with your overall happiness now if you're not often physically active don't overwhelm yourself and say i'm going to do two hours a day of activity and i'm going to go crazy here and i'm going to sign up for all these classes because you'll burn out quick or you'll hurt yourself you could start as small as just going for a 10 20 minute walk around the block five days a week and really get started just get yourself moving on the process of consistency and even if you're making small progress that progress is signaling your brain of the changes that you are wanting to make and again 5 10 20 minutes a day will eventually be 30 or 60 minutes a day and it'll continue to build and compound over time so don't overwhelm yourself by thinking you have to go extremely crazy right off the bat and i'm gonna eat perfect seven days a week i'm gonna train like a machine and i'm gonna get 12 hours of sleep and all these things you're probably not gonna be able to sustain that within two weeks but getting started and being consistent is the key so anything is better than nothing when it comes to moving your body and the next thing is really to focus on your diet i know when i'm not eating clean consistently i kind of take the 80 20 approach for for nutrition and food 80 of the time i try to eat as clean and healthy and organic as possible uh 20 of the time i'm traveling the weekends i i have more sugar and desserts and things that i know aren't the best for fuel for my body but they taste good and i give myself that balance and you can work out all you want but you can't work your mouth that's for sure you cannot out work your mouth you can train for an hour and then if you're having all this cakes and cookies it's not going to do anything for you you're actually not doing any favors for yourself you might be maintaining but you're not really improving and our guests all the time talk about eating things like i've asked so many different scientists doctors and nutritionists about the top food you should be eating and they all consistently at least say blueberries foods that are high in omega-3 fatty acids like salmon and walnuts and avocado oil dark chocolate the list goes on and on from there leafy greens all that stuff but eating more of those things adding more of those things into your your your body will support you and you don't want to put in so much effort and your workout routine and then just go have you know alcohol and sugar and pizza every night that's not going to really support your growth you can have cheat meals in moderation or you can just call it balanced meals in moderation if you don't want to call it cheat meals i do the balanced 80 20 kind of percent rule and having a clean diet well not but having a clean diet will not only serve you physically in your health but also in your mental health because we've talked about so many different experts that have come on and share that the foods that actually increase your mental health and affect your mood we've had a lot of these different doctors and nutritionists come on and talk about that and when you're eating poorly it can increase the feelings of depression anxiety and stress and i believe we're starting to really understand more about how much our diet really affects us how much food really can either hurt us or heal us so for your future self it's best if you focus not only on putting your body through the workouts but also giving your body the cleanest foods possible to eat which brings me to habit number seven the power of breathing this is something that i really started to practice in sports but didn't start to really learn how to i wouldn't say i call myself a master at this but it really didn't start to learn how to master breathing until five years ago when i went to india to study for two weeks meditation and then becoming a meditation instructor and then from there meeting with wim hof and doing the wim hof breathing techniques then interviewing james nestor talking about breathing andrew huberman the famous neuroscientist from stanford who talks about breathing in the brain and how it connects to the brain and the body connection and really the deeper that i've gone down this rabbit hole of learning about the mastery of breathing and applying it to myself i've noticed incredible results and it's like i i'm i'm noticing it quicker and quicker so it's been really helping me improve my peace improve my mental health improve my mood just with breathing and that is a powerful tool you don't need anything you don't need to buy anything you don't need to eat anything you don't need to do anything different in a few moments you can change the way you feel through your breath and breathing is the number one way to give your mind a reset and to get you back into a balanced peaceful state when you're nervous stressed out feeling overwhelmed or catching yourself over thinking something or overanalyzing breathing exercises can help you get back to calm and control and that's what this is all about the power of breath is that it lets you steer your energy it lets you get back on to habit number one your vision as opposed to being distracted stressed and overwhelmed and i did this as an athlete i would do this going up for big moments in a game in football breathe slowly you know i had different sports psychologists come on and talk about how in practice you want to actually get your self up and practice like it's a game and when you're in a game time situation you want to slow down because you have so much adrenaline you want to calm and slow down so i do that as an athlete before i get on stage right before i really tried to think about how do i slow it down because i know when the lights turn on when the music gets on i'm going to be hyped i'm going to be pumped but how do i slow down so i can communicate my message effectively as opposed to being all anxious and excited about it so i want to share three steps to properly help yourself incorporate breathing into your day today number one is to bring awareness to your breath so really just think about it and bring awareness when we're breathing all the time all day long we're breathing but we're rarely paying attention to it we hardly really think about it but when we think about it by taking a moment to bring your awareness to your breath just as it is you can get out of your head and into the present moment so when you're focused on breathing and that's all you focus on and see how it feels in your body see how it feels in your mind and your heart and see how it's naturally calming your heart rate you can actually feel your heart rate go down and you put your attention on that activity for 60 seconds you can eliminate other distractions by putting attention on that and get back into a rhythm that will help you in that moment this habit is great for when you catch yourself over analyzing things stressed anxious worried uncertain about the future just turn your focus back to your breath and temporarily let go of any other stress the second part is to focus on and lengthen your exhale this is something i learned in india when i went there five years ago they take inhales through the nose and whatever the the time amount through the nose they teach you to practice twice as long exhale out of the nose so if you're taking a an inhale for two counts in the in the nose four counts out of the nose and by repeating that process it'll calm your heart rate it'll calm your mind and get you back into a peaceful state you can just repeat that process over and over again or it could be four inhale and eight out three inhale six out the exhale is just as important if not more important than your inhale so drawing out your exhale will slow your heart rate down and again bring you into a calmer state of mind and number three is to use a deliberate sigh so dr andrew huberman who's a neuroscientist from standardford who's been on the show a couple of times showed me an exercise that involves breathing with a double intake and an extended exhale so still the same extended exhale but a double intake and by doing this exercise for just two or three cycles can really help you calm down and it also expands the oxygen level in your body as well and i urge you to try it a few times during the day when you feel overwhelmed i've been doing this a lot since he taught me it's simply you breathe through the nose with a double inhale like this so a double inhale and twice as long exhale that way by doing that a few times it really opens up the oxygen level calms you at the same time so practice that a couple times throughout the day habit number eight this is huge again this is no secret this is no crazy hack it's just sleep more sleep more recover your body is going through so much every single day especially with the last 20 years with all the data and information we are consuming from our smartphones from computers we're getting so much data points every day the body needs more rest we're working harder we're trying to be more productive we're trying to squeeze the juice out of life more whether it's play work relationships we're squeezing more juice out of life and we need proper sleep to recover and we're staying up till two or three a.m and feeling exhausted from the day and anxious about tomorrow then we're gonna be in a a sleep deficit and we need to get back on track without with our sleep so here's a few ways to start getting better sleep number one stick to a sleep schedule as often as you can now this can be hard if you're traveling i get it but as often as you can try to go to bed at the same time proper sleep recovers and refreshes your mind so the next day can be stress-free but it's important to say okay i'm going to be in bed by 10 every night or 11 every night or whatever that time is for you so you have a schedule so you know you're gonna get these certain amount of hours you need number two pay attention to your diet that day try not to have big heavy meals before sleeping and also try to limit your caffeine intake after i would say 10 a.m to noon you don't really want to have caffeine after that the research has shown it's gonna make you harder for you to go to sleep at night so number three is creating a peaceful environment for your sleep it's crucial my friend sean stevenson talks about this in this book sleep smarter that you want to create a sleep sanctuary you want to make sure that your bedroom where you sleep is a sanctuary for you to shut off and go to sleep and that can be hard for some of us as we work from home we sleep at home we work we've got a lot of activities happening in the same place it's hard to really shut it off when you're used to picking up your phone in the morning or being on your phone at night watching tv in bed or doing all these other things in your sleeping space but you want to create a sleep sanctuary you want to create a routine that helps you separate yourself from the other areas of your life like taking a bath it'll help you rest and recover better so what is the routine what is the sanctuary that you're going to create the environment of peaceful restful sleep it's one of the most important things you can do and as an athlete i used to sleep a ton i knew the importance of sleep because your body would be so sore we would take naps we would sleep as much as we could i used to sleep in as long as i could to get that quality sleep as a business leader when i'm traveling i know now i'm not 21 anymore i know the importance of my sleep even if i get two or three hours less sleep than i'm used to it will affect me i'll need more caffeine you know there'll be other things you'll need to supplement so it's important to know that if you are living a high performance life if you are trying to squeeze the juice out of life if that's the season of life you're in right now you've got to make sleep a huge priority for yourself so you have the energy the focus and the clarity to move towards your vision habit number nine whoo there's a big one it's a big one because a lot of people don't like to do this is to take responsibility for yourself for your actions and keep yourself accountable now it's easy to be the victim it's easy to say make excuses for yourself and say well i didn't want to do this i wasn't feeling this or this thing happened or the circumstance happened but you cannot negotiate your dreams and your goals you cannot negotiate with your goals through circumstances or excuses that will make you unhappy it's up to you to take responsibility for your life and you have to decide today that you're going to get in shape that you're going to start that side hustle or that business if you're going to take on a new hobby whatever it may be for you you've got to decide and only you can decide to take that first step and then most importantly be consistent on those steps day after day week after week year after year but the next step that matters just as much is being held accountable for the goals in front of you that is important the accountability is so key and you need to create a habit of checking in with someone on a daily or weekly basis that can hold you accountable and call you out if you're falling short this is why we have our greatness coaching program that high performance leaders in our community are members of they have joined they have monthly accountability they've got partners they've got myself they've got a coach all these different things to help people stay accountable an accountability partner could be a friend for you could be a family member could be a co-worker could be a coach you hire could just be someone you pay as an accountability person to check on you daily whatever it is for you accountability is key and the effects of accountability are strongest when you and your partner have similar goals so you can grow together with them it's huge when you guys have that common goal just having one accountability partner can do wonders for you just one person to hold you accountable to give you checks and balances but you can also consider surrounding yourself with a team a community of people who inspire you and hold you accountable i hire lots of coaches personally i try to find the experts in every area of my life hire them to hold me accountable for what is important to me only what is important to me i have them do i don't you know if it's not important and if it's not part of your vision it's not part of your overall life plan then you don't have to do it but for me what's important i hire people i have accountability in those areas of my life fitness relationships spirituality business mental health financial health i mean i hire people in every category and i understand you may not be at a point right now where you could do that we can afford that uh but find friends find mentors find people that can hold each other accountable and if you want to improve your fitness one of the best things you can do is surround yourself with fitness-minded people so if you're hanging out with people that are lazy and on the couch and aren't working out ever then start spending more quality time with people that are getting up at 6am and doing joint runs together there's run groups in every city around the world there's different things you can do to support you so think about the accountability in your life what's important to improve right now find those people to support you and move forward habit number 10 learn to cope with tragedy and let go of regret anger and resentment holding on to our past trauma is one of the most painful things we can do for ourselves i am speaking for myself here that i held on the trauma and resentment and anger and frustration for 25 years if not more in different parts of my life and that is a recipe for suffering reaction stress painful moments all these different things so you know uh the therapist who's been on who reminded me of this guy winch talks about you know the ruminating of our past wounds and holding on to these past wounds and how to heal the broken hearts we've got that episode that you can dive in more and so many different therapists have come on and talked about this but i try to really look for the positives and what i can learn from these events and feelings and channel those feelings into growth as a person and really how can i serve others who might be going through something similar in that situation i remember hearing a story from tony robbins who said you know when i was a kid my mom used to beat me she used to pour uh soap down my mouth because she thought i was lying she used to do all these things that caused a lot of pain and trauma for me but i loved my mother because she gave me the capacity the expanded uh heart to want to help other people rid themselves from their suffering so he used the painful moment not as resentment to hold on to you know being angry at his mom but to say you know i love my mom for this you know she didn't know any better in these times she was doing her best she was also loving in other ways but those moments i'm not going to hold on to them and suffer i'm going to use them to end suffering for those around me and i think that's really powerful so really think about how you can let go of the emotional traumas this might take some work for a lot of people for me it took a long time to really learn how to do that it's one of the reasons why i started school of greatness because i wanted to interview these experts to teach me but it's created so much freedom and peace in my life and happiness in the process and habit number 11 is to eliminate things that don't make you happy and focus on what does make you happy so i asked matthew mcconaughey this and when i interviewed him i said you know what are five things that we should be eliminating in our life and he mentioned this list of these five things number one we should be eliminating bad people eliminate people that don't promote your growth and that don't bring you joy we often cling on to these toxic relationships for people because they validate us in the short term but they're very harmful in the long term so eliminate those people or at least distance yourself you know distance yourself and start spending more quality time with people that bring you joy number two to eliminate is bad places stop going to places that encourage unhealthy lifestyle behaviors like bars or fast food restaurants etc again don't go to these places if you know you don't feel good when you're there or afterwards and if a certain place continually makes you feel bad do whatever you can to eliminate or distance yourself or go there less our environment can really impact our mood in a big way it's hard to to not notice that so create those environments for yourself that are healthier number three you gotta eliminate the comparison to others uh stop comparing yourself to others and eliminate jealousy because what is it the the quote comparison is the thief of joy i think einstein said that you know when we when we're constantly comparing yourself to yourself of where you think you should be or whatever it's like always in comparison mode is not going to do anything good for your happiness number four overthinking your failures instead of dissecting all your problems start dissecting all your success all the things you've done to overcome the challenges and ask yourself how can i replicate my successes rather than how can i stop my failures and number five to eliminate is instant gratification this is a big one bite the cravings for instant pleasure and results and be okay with delayed gratification knowing that you're going to be doing the work consistently and your your future self is going to be grateful for your current self and the consistent effort you're putting in you're going to reap way bigger rewards in the future if you can delay that gratification so there you have it these are the 11 healthy happy habits to increase the overall joy of your life and set you up for a better life if you can commit to implementing these in small ways over the next couple of months i'd be curious about what would happen in your life what do you think you could create and transform in your life just by implementing a few of these things consistently for a couple months leave a comment below of one or two that you enjoy the most or one or two that you know you need to improve on in your life which one impacted you which one oh that resonated i've got to do that more or this one has been working wonders for me for years leave a comment below on youtube and let me know i'd love to hear your thoughts on that also if you haven't picked up a copy of the book the school of greatness this has more in depth on the principles of greatness the distinctions to help you improve the quality of your life to reach greatness for your life and it's all about living bigger loving deeper and leaving a legacy so if you want more you can check out the school of greatness book we'll have links below to help you further your education again leave your comment below subscribe to this podcast over on youtube on the audio on apple podcast and let us know your thoughts share this with a few friends we'll also have more content right after this to help you dissect deeper on habits and happiness in your life so thanks so much for being here you spent the last two three years researching yeah consistently constantly on how people become extraordinary yeah and i'm i'm obsessed with greatness i know you love this stuff that's why i knew this was gonna be amazing it's like we could vibe on this all day long exactly i probably haven't done the in detailed research like the scientific you know harvard-backed studies the way you have yeah so i'm excited to to tap into this and really understand why and how people can become great at anything that they want to do in their personal life their relationships financially whatever it may be their dream is and i know you've paved the way with this so i'm very excited about this but you've written three number one your time bestsellers or two three new york times bestsellers this is the sixth book and uh all all five previous books were number one on amazon or barnes or something like that so we've we've been at it and this is you know people say well you're the youtube guy or the facebook guy i'm like i'm a writer mm-hmm i only learned marketing or doing stuff like this so i could support the writing of course you've done a great job of marketing yourself you're i think one of the top what is it top 100 most followed public figures on facebook yeah how many millions of followers do you have on your personal page now uh five million on my personal page 10 million across all of our pages all pages yeah so we have pages like motivation for smart people you know which is not my face on it but that's my page correlation so yeah yeah it's it's been surprising but this is the first in-depth interview i've done in probably four years amazing and so we talked about that a little bit you know this morning at breakfast it's just like this is not what i usually do because i'm usually the guy out there teaching um and i'm learning step out a little bit more and share a little more of my personal background and stories because that really hasn't been the thrust of my books and work so that's been a big part of yeah you know wanting to do this and i love your show so much i appreciate it i was so excited for this because you're one of the few guys out there doing podcasts who's talking about holistic greatness right you know it's not a tactic or a hack here it's relationships i mean you talk about relationships you talk about making a difference and there's a lot of podcasters that never say the word service which drives me insane they never say the word love and like that's real life you know even with high performance we'll talk about some of the research behind it but a lot of people think it's lonely at the top or they think that high performers are you know obsessive crazy maniacs what we found is high performers have extraordinarily positive emotions and positive relationships so it's a complete myth that the top you know five percent 10 15 somehow have you know are lonely or more divorced than other people or it's just not true they cared about relationships which is one reason i love your show is that i mean what would high performance or achievement or greatness be if you didn't have somebody share it with or you didn't give back but that's what a lot of the podcasters talk about it's this tactic mm-hmm or it's i'm talking about world-class performance but i'm not going to talk about marriage or relationships i'm like try to have world-class performance without a supportive spouse go for it dude it's not gonna happen yeah powerful i'm excited about this man before i kind of dive into about all the habits and the stuff you learned and what you're gonna share today i got a confession yeah confession love it um i you can't have your money back exactly no here's my confession i'm gonna be honest for a second because i don't think i've ever done this on the show uh i judged you for many years when i first learned about you and it's i think it's because i didn't meet you and i didn't hear about you from other people and i'm glad you're doing more media right now yeah and opening up and having the vlog come out here because i think cause i didn't know enough about you personally besides what you shared was like the stories the same stories yeah i was like i don't know enough about him to like feel them out to feel comfortable yet yes to have like a positive i was kind of neutral i was like i don't know if i like him or i don't like him yeah so i want to i want to say i apologize for judging you because it uh you know you're completely opposite of what i had no clue what i was thinking about in my mind for uh for for some time and uh you know everything that you've done has exceeded the expectation of so many people and you continue to serve at a high level and i think that's what's powerful to talk about as service yeah is sure we have our own stuff we're all working on all the time but you have stepped up to serve so many people and you've committed to learning the things you need to learn to reach more people with powerful messages yes and uh i usually acknowledge my guests at the end but i want to acknowledge you now for your level of commitment to putting yourself out there serving people giving great information spending two years in the dungeon to research like how to help more people yeah and yes you're benefiting me as well you run a business just like myself so we're all gonna benefit yeah but i think your level of commitment to your mission is what really stands out to me and the more i get to hang out with you and know you it's like i really enjoy our time together so i hope we get to spend more time yeah me too hope you accept my apology for judging i don't think people thought you didn't know i was doing it but i get that all the time so you know our our great example our seminars you know 2000 people from 40 countries around the world half of them show up and they're like who are you like i've watched his youtube or i've seen his facebook but i tell people i would say my most vulnerable place is usually on stage so people have seen me on stage they always go oh my god i didn't know you were like that and part of that reason isn't because um i i'm like scared of sharing my life it's because of what i do like i said my first move i'm a writer my second move is i'm a coach both of those things are kind of behind the scenes and so when it comes time when instagram came out and was like why aren't you instagram yet i'm like dude because i'm not i don't really show that part of my life or i don't have a lot of pictures with a lot of the celebrities that we work with because i sign ndas and i sign you know confidentiality agreements so i can work with them and get in their personal lives i've always been the guy who gets into people's personal lives and helps them through it never then like turn it to the selfie and say well this is what i'm going through yeah and in some ways though that was a mistake because i think i was just i've always believed in a role like mine i'm a writer i'm a coach and i'm a trainer my job is to share things that are relevant to the teaching point so it's what am i trying to teach now i'll share case studies about my life or some research but it's pretty limited towards only what i'm teaching and people sign up for me to teach a very specific thing so they're not seeing the whole picture of my life they're just learning that specific thing so i think it also left a lot of people going okay he's super successful but i don't know anything about him right right and that created try to trust people you don't know anything about yes and or you read the motivation manifesto right there is no brendan in that book the publisher turned famously turned down the book we had a two million dollar book deal i turn in the book and the editor goes what the hell is this you wrote it like it's you know 1776. you're not there's not one story of you in here your audience wants to know about you i'm like yeah but that's not what i'm writing for i'm writing for the art and so they said we can't publish and we can't this book is unmarketable so you wrote a two million dollar check back wrote it back which is painful because i already spent it but then he went and sold a million copies yeah then we went in 30 weeks uh 32 weeks on the new york times best crazy seller list after they turned it down with no publisher well i guess you had like uh yeah we went to a house yeah they supported it and distributed it did a great job on it and i love them and their community really got behind the book because they knew i wrote it for the art not for the i didn't sell out on the book it was this was my artistic my art has never been like talking about brendan my art has been i want to teach but i want to teach in a way that really hits you in the heart and gives you habits you can implement in your life but that also took me out of the picture a little bit because i didn't want to be the guru i didn't want to be you know i'm from montana we're pretty private there and one of our main sayings there is you know the time to have the map is before you enter the woods so i just wanted to hand people the map i didn't want to hand people like look at me um i also had a big influence for my high school journalism teacher and she said there's two kinds of people one who walks into room and goes here i am and the other person walks into a room and goes there you are and so i've always been more like kind of like you i want to ask people questions and curious so my focus has always been outwards and not in i think that did cost me some trust in the marketplace because people were like i just don't know him so i'm hoping with the book i added some more stories i also know the number one criticism of this book is going to be when he talks about extraordinary people really the only stories in here are about himself and i let the data and the research and the strategies speak for themselves yeah because i don't think um i even say it in the book i think if you want personal profiles of extraordinary people i'm like go listen to podcasts right you know they should listen to yours mine is more this is very strategic this is what to do and i think there'll be some criticism because i do share a lot of my uh habits in here but i also hope that gives people a little more insight into my life let's get into some of the habits what are what are some of the key habits then that you that maybe you thought were like the habits of really extraordinary people but actually they weren't them and the new ones that you're like oh i didn't realize that that was actually yeah a key habit yeah i always thought it was something else but it's actually this thing yeah uh i was wrong so background in the book this is the world's largest study of high performers ever done we have data from 195 countries we surveyed and found the data set we pulled was from first my audience um we know which is over 10 million fans and followers but also a lot of people don't know i've graduated over 2 million people have registered for my online courses or video series crazy and over 100 million video views well we scraped all of the comments scraped all the user feedback did a huge data set of just what are people struggling with what do they say works what helps them break through that gave me an initial kind of data set of like i think this is what really works i've been teaching this most of the stuff for 10 years too and i've been coaching it so i had i had my personal opinions and i had about probably 20 or 30 from that data set and 10 years coaching i was like it's probably about these 15 or 20 habits and i thought it was by the way all of them right and there's also a lot of other books about habits that yes there's stephen cubby's book there's the power of habit there's lots of books on habit so this is a whole nother thing it's like why another book on habits yes but there was always a big hole either there wasn't research into which habits empirically proven to move the needle or it was just kind of you know because it was shared from a personal perspective or it was just about how to set habits the question is which habits have proven to move the needle towards high performance over and over because high performance means succeeding beyond standard norms consistently over the long term we got to measure that to know yeah and so there's six of them and that's what this book is about there's it's split which i didn't plan on into personal habits and social habits and there's things in there and i'll get to those but to answer your question of like what i thought would be i thought things like oh this will this one will piss you off piss me off creativity is not strongly correlated with high performance and if you told me that seven years ago i would have fought with you for like two or three hours but then uh in one interview with one of the world's largest uh cto's chief technology officer he said brennan you know they're they're top 10 brand in the world so we we don't uh he said my team he said i'm not creative my team's not creative but we know how to execute and scale and execution and scale is really important to long-term high performance creativity might get you in the game but a lot of people are creative but can't work their way out of a bag and i was like i would argue that forever because i'm a crap a writer and a coach i would have never thought that um age nationality ethnicity and here's a big one compensation here's a big one personality here's a big one strengths they are not correlated strongly with high performance some of them have weak correlations and all those things by the way because if academics are listening to that they're like no he's wrong and this is tied towards high performance it's not that those aren't important those things can shape your mood they can shape you know lots of important life outcomes well-being health happiness when we're talking about high performance those are less important than these six and what i keep telling people is i'm not saying those aren't important these just happen to be more important so the six habits you want me to do sure yeah so the personal habits and these are the ones that move the needle most number one high performers you like this one high performers seek clarity more often than their peers and what that means for them is every situation they go into they're seeking clarity and setting intention and it's not like once in a while they're doing way more often it's like uh you know i've been blessed to work with oprah winfrey when she has a meeting at the start of every meeting she asks what's our intention here what's the intention this meeting not what's the agenda what do i do what's the intention that's every meeting so she's seeking clarity at the beginning of every meeting that's why she's so amazing right if you think about her whole career she was always trying to have people seek clarity on who they were so they could be themselves that's what high performers are doing they just do it more often they see clarity before they shoot that video before they have the podcast interview but specifically we found three practices help you get better at seeking clarity number one they are seeking clarity in what we call the future for so you've probably heard that successful people are more future minded it's true and specifically what they're looking at if you talk to a high performer they're more clear about um who do i want to be in this upcoming situation and by the way it's not about who i am it's about who do i want to be they're more future oriented they're more intentional about who they want to be in social situations so it's like i want to have this type of interaction with louis today that that's intentional they're more clear about what skills they need to develop to reach their next level of success right here's how you really know an underperformer open up their calendar and look for any evidence that they have planned their own curriculum for greatness if they don't have classes or courses if they if they're not actively skill building there's no chance of high performance i mean maybe they can dumb luck into it for initial success but high performance is long-term success you got to be building yourself growing constantly learning constantly growing being aware about and the last of the future for is i know the service i want to provide in the future talk to any high performers i'm sure you've interviewed they kind of know the service and the difference they want to make maybe not precisely but they're asking the question so that's some of what we know they seek clarity um and that's kind of the first practices asking questions in those areas and the other two real fastest uh when you're seeking clarity they're more clear about the feeling they want to have like an olympic sprinter who's won gold is more likely to have said before he went or she went on the track how do i want to feel out there not like just the result like when i when the foot's in the block and arms down like what do i want to feel like they're very aware of the feeling they're trying to get yeah i don't feel nervous and stressed i want to feel calm and yes clear and smooth yes and they're doing that self-talk which is seeking clarity and then the last one which is really important they're clear about what's meaningful to them now and what might be different in the future which is something i didn't know until we did a lot of the interviews or the conversations is uh a lot of people kind of know what i like now they know what their passion is but it's like what's going to be meaningful to you later like in five years they've thought about that then you know i would say they you know they've done the work so that's just the first habit and so the book kind of opens with with that story of like finding what's we all have to decide who we are and what we want and how to get it at this stage of our life and when we don't know that you know reaching high performance can be really hard yeah it's all about clear vision for me it's the first chapter in my book yes the greatest leaders in the world have a clear vision love that yeah that's it and they got that vision by seeking clarity yes that was the habit that gave them the vision they were consistently seeking like how do i what do i i mean they ask themselves more questions that's one of our findings they literally are doing more of the self-talk asking more of the questions which is so important yeah awesome yeah and and you i love how you talked about this you say the world cares less about your strengths and personality than about your service and meaningful contributions then why do so many of us focus on our strengths and personality yeah that was a huge finding and i would that's another one i would have completely freaked out on anybody strength finders all these other books out there you know it's like yes we focus on our strengths and then unfortunately one that's in the history of personal development that is the greatest false dichotomy there's ever been focus on your strengths or it's like you have to do both you have to do both but what we found in our research which surprised me high performers do not report working on their strengths any more than regular people so that's not what gives them the edge uh one of the chapters opens up with this guy he wrote this email really highly successful guy and he wrote this emailed me says you know and i'd put him through all this i put him through strengthsfinder the berkman the colby the myers-briggs everything this is one of my first coaching clients ever i knew everything about him we knew all his background did all that he did all the homework had his peer review you know his 366 estimates from work and then i watched him fail for two years and he wrote me this email and he said brendan stop telling me like what successful people are like because we know my strengths i'm not getting ahead and start telling me what they do and that's what this book came out it's like what do you need to do because and in this email he wrote this which is where that finding came from he said this was so good listen this line he said as a leader i have to be honest with myself that my mission and vision should never be made to bow down to my limited human strengths i should have to rise up to my mission or vision the strengths aren't the relevant thing is the question is what is necessary for me to develop into to reach that mission it's like your strengths are great and it's like yes of course do your strengths but that's kind of like what i tell people is like uh if let's imagine you have a bear and that bear wants to go on top of this cliff over here and it's never been on the cliff and he wants to get that new honey up there right telling the bear to focus on the strengths to go somewhere that's never gone before and do something that's never done before is stupid it's like saying hey you know what just try being more of a bear all right if i just you say brent i got this big new vision i just say just try being more of lewis i mean it's a spiritual level that feels good but you and i both know you're going to develop far beyond your comfort zones and strengths are typically comfort zones yeah we got to overcome that and go next level and develop new skills and overcome certain fears and all these other things that are going to help us get to the next level yeah right yeah yeah the whole conversation of beyond the comfort zone really requires us to go beyond our strengths it really requires that is our comfort zone that is our comfort zone we already know what we're good at and the problem with the strengthsfinder and all of the strength space movement is the assumption and they're all written academically this way based on what are called innate strengths and innate strength is the assumption that you had that from birth and that those innate strengths are sure what you focus on and i'm like well if you had at birth you probably had it when you were 15 years old too so if it's a nate you had it to 15. are the strengths you had at 15 sufficient to serve you at 50. hell no you need to develop beyond what's innate and go to a whole other level and so uh i take on strengths in the book in that way because but i also say it almost doesn't matter because a lot of people have strengths and they suck at work because they're not doing these habits well i mean how many people do you i know who are amazingly strong their strengths finders are amazing and they don't do anything all day that's it yeah a lot of people i mean in the sports world there's a lot of great talented people who have the greatest gifts but they still weren't able to win yeah or they were lazy or they wouldn't you know hustle or sacrifice their body because they just relied on their talents their strengths and so they were never able to get to the championship game or get on the best teams because they said and they had all the talent in the world and you're just like if i was as gifted as this person i would be incredible yes and that's the whole thing about the talent code or a lot of new sort of newer research and performance it just says what's more important is what you do with what you got to develop into the vision of the mission you need to serve and so the book kind of lays out a lot of the science behind that and then goes into you know obviously most of it's oriented towards the six habits so in terms of clarity what is that habit that you take on on a daily or monthly basis with habit with clarity what do you think about you're like every morning what am i clear about or yeah you know how do you apply that habit to your life uh i apply in a couple ways first for me every situation i go into i'm consistently asking like what what's the feeling i want to have here if you ever see me teach it's often i always say bring the joy so i have joy triggers that i've set up in my mind that makes me more intentional about things so for example a door frame trigger whenever i walk through a door i say bring the joy so when i walk through that door right there it's like bring the joy into this room it's just it's just a mental trigger that i've set up for myself every morning in the shower i ask myself three questions and not that i shower every morning the first question i say what can i be excited about today so it forces me to be clear about what's going to draw joy enthusiasm for me number two i say what might trip me up today because usually i know what's going on today i'm like what what might mess me up what my where might i perform well what might bother me and number three i say what can i do to surprise somebody today to give a gift of appreciation or acknowledgement today and so i think through that in the morning so i think that helps me begin my day pretty clear um then when i sit down before i do work i literally look at my calendar of the day this morning and i look at whatever's going on the day and i think about it for 20 minutes it's one of my 20-minute routines in the morning i literally think about my calendar for 20 minutes a day people think that's crazy but what i'm thinking through when i'm looking to count i'm like okay i'm going to have that call what do i want to happen on that call you know what's my intention for that call what's my goal for that call what's the feeling for that call how do i want to end that call you know i'm gonna have that time with lewis like how do i want to be there and and and how can i make sure i enjoy it because it's a big deal you know i love your show i want to do a good job i want to share something good for the people even though i have no idea what you're going to ask right i want to be present for that and and make sure i i'm i'm really there even though maybe i have a head cold today you know it's like that it's like just thinking through it i think that helps me it keeps me asking questions every sunday i do a life arenas assessment that just means i think there's 10 areas of our life and i score myself in them and this is about my 11th year of doing this wow so each area of my life you know from from emotional quality to happiness to relationships to time to hobby etc i just give myself a score of one to ten and one means i suck and i was horrible in the previous week on that 10 means i did a good job and then i asked how can i do better it's my sunday routine and it just keeps me clear and it's not like i don't sometimes like everyone else you know wonder what's going on or what i'm doing but those habits those were my habits you have to establish your own for seeking clarity but when you have them you weaponize your life absolutely yeah clarity powerful thing without clarity it's hard to achieve a dream yeah it's hard to to get better it's hard to grow and be a high performer yeah no clarity no change that's it no goals no growth that's it uh the second one that i see here is energy yeah what do you mean by energy uh so in the way we peak energy high high energy all day long yeah no it's not caffeinated energy but uh uh it it's it's the habit is generate energy okay not necessarily have energy create energy create energy and what they do the way we measure that was kind of academic mental energy which is tied to your focus and your stamina and your ability to manage complex tasks without too much mental stress number two is emotional energy which is just the quality of positive emotions and number three is physical energy high performers are 40 percent more likely to work out five times per week than the rest of their peers so that means the top 15 percent most high performing people in the world tend to work out five days per week and that workout could be defined as you know 45 minute brisk walk or you know hit intensity or whatever it is but 40 percent more likely that's a huge finding and what we found is high performers just have better well-being and happiness and physical conditioning than everybody else one stunning finding was ceos senior executives and business owners they report expending as much energy as athletes who are competitive now i can imagine yeah yeah i kind of i was surprised by that i would thought you know athletes would be 10 more i mean the emotional and mental energy yeah the decision making the conversations the big deals the stakeness yeah it's a lot of energy it's a lot that's why i mean if you really want to achieve your dreams you have to care for your body yeah your mind it's why all these things you know finally resonating in the marketplace because the science of meditation or taking a break or you know uh managing your own energy sleep is everything yeah um and i think all of that is really important and we say generate energy because there's this myth that you know some people have happiness or they have it's like no you generate you don't have happiness you generally create it yeah you create it and so the quality of your energy you have to create like you and i both i mean if most of our audience knew our schedules your schedule the last five days is like how is lewis even able to focus right now and how are you able to get here and do this as well yeah but it's because we say well this is our mission show up man you know there's plenty of times i gotta imagine you walked on the field and you were like i'm spam exhausted you know i remember when you like flew down to compete and i still play yeah i still play with the usa team handball yeah team and a year ago i i flew down to i remember i did an interview in miami and then flew out from miami and then went and just went right into training camp and then played against brazil which is like you know olympic olympic qualifiers and yeah got our assets booked but it was fun you know but i had to have clarity yeah show up even when i was like oh we're gonna lose yeah like there's deer a chance yeah it was like the worst team in the nba playing like the warriors and we were just like we had no chance yeah but i had to show up and give my best and you have to set all these routine i mean you know the amount of routines tom brady has in his life so that he can generate energy it's unbelievable stuns most people it's unbelievable and that's just that's that's what it takes if you want to take that level if you don't want to be at that level you don't have to do it yeah you don't have to do it i mean everybody can just like well i'm going to go you know hit the cinnabon but it's like it's pretty good how do you want to feel at three o'clock if you want to feel amazing at three o'clock don't end lunch with a cinnabon you know it's like you have to gosh it's crazy like i'm 34 now and i would i could eat like sugar and bad food oh my gosh all my 20s right yeah and now when i go off of sugar for like a month and then i just binge for a day it's like i literally can't walk my back is like sugar oh my gosh like my whole body is exhausting inflammation so much inflammation once i cut it out and then i bring it back i'm like yeah oh i feel so old yeah and uh dude i'm the same way my seminars like i you know we do four day event and it's just me i usually have one or two big names come in but it's me 12 hours a day four days and i never sit down high energy i never sit down on stage and super high energy i mean really going for it not just the clapping the jumping butt really just spending heart you know how hard it is of course and uh i had to about the same time when i was 35 i had a a famous strength and conditioning coach backstage he works with me in usher and and he uh he's like what do you eat back here and you know another guy came in and strapped the heart rate monitoring machine he goes i'm equivalently burning uh equally working out at the marathon level every day for four days they're like you're not i was losing on average 11 pounds every and i do eight events a year so i was losing 88 pounds a year you know it was like it's horrible for your health so i had to learn how to eat i had to learn i do ice baths every night at my events which smart no one loves to do that here's the thing i used to do it every day in football like during the season yeah and we it sucks for the first month but then you start to love it yes yeah i have to do it you know what i mean it's like you just start to ah i feel so good so i feel so good after stage you know it's last 12 hours so those are no one says i want a habit of taking an ice bath at the end of the day but if i want to be high performing on stage that's the choice yeah now obviously people listening you know consult your doctor of course yeah yeah yeah um don't do it for 10 minutes don't stand for a half an hour yeah right right so but all those things you have to so what are your habits for energy and the funny thing is you sit down with high performers they know them they can tell you i do this this this this you're like man you're on your game you got it down yeah and they're always probably looking to improve it yeah totally yeah they're always but they're very aware of it and they and they what i found was they get pissy if they're off it yeah of course i didn't meditate this morning and i was like you know i was kind of frustrated a little bit someone asked me when we were at our meeting today at the so house he was like how was your meditation because he knows i like to meditate and i was like you know i missed this morning i did yesterday but i miss this morning it's agitating when i miss my habits yes it's like ugh i had to get up earlier and yeah that is exactly what you just said it it it just it really agitates high performers when they're off they're energetic absolutely um the third big personal habit which by the way i've been teaching high performance for a decade uh we have the number one seminar on that and the number one online course and i was wrong i never knew this was the thing and you're gonna laugh he's like duh dude i could have sat down but i just didn't know i knew i taught it as like a subtext but i didn't always the thing and that is high performers raise necessity and what that means is they raise the necessity of performance in their mind before each performance they say i gotta do great and they give themselves reasons why so they're connected to their why but it's different than just giving like know your why is nice know your why and give yourself edge for it what do you mean let me give you an example two guys walking out on the track field who's gonna win well equal quality of experience similar times maybe they've raced before the guy at the block so i'm gonna bet on is the guy who came out and said i gotta do this for my mom they have a reason to perform at heightened levels and they have connected to that over and over now again some of this can duh brendan but the finding the research is they just do that more often than underperformers or even you know good performers they're more connected to their reasons why and they're stirring it man it's like and they do it from two angles one angle is your your like your internal standards like my values or my self expectations say i gotta crush this cause that's who i freaking am yeah like when you walk out you're like you're not gonna you know screw around on when you're playing handball you're like this is who i'm loose i'm an athlete yeah let me kick some ass here yeah it's that self expectation okay then though they pair it with external obligation like my team needs me to do this the deadline says this time there's some kind of external they don't call it pressure my family something bigger than themselves something bigger themselves yeah yeah and that's what that was another thing i was surprised by they don't say they they rarely use the word pressure because they want it like people who use pressure they don't want it but high performers i found they want they like they're connected i'm doing this for a bigger cause a bigger reason a team or yeah they're sometimes just like deadline like i'm i'm an unbelievably high performing writer when there's a deadline i'm worth a weapon right before that you know i'm i'm not always on my game so but if you have those reasons so you gotta have your internal reasons and your external reasons and then your job is remind yourself of that more often that's what's called raising necessity and we were the first ones to prove that with the data and i was pretty stunned that remember these three aren't like my opinion you might say yeah these are whatever i'm like but these ones are more important than everything else we measure really over a hundred different habits these are the ones that move the needles so if you want to move the oil in your personal life number one seek clarity more often number two generate energy with more consistency and will and number three raise necessity raise the stakes before you go into any performance situation where that's that next sales call because you know it's easy i think what high performers do because of those three things they're not going through the motions there's not there's more intentionality more exerting of will certainly more discipline that's what that's what's happening that's why there's magic starting to happen and then we compare it or combine it with the the social habits uh which we can walk through and it was like that's what makes it all coming together so what's the first social habit uh increased productivity it's kind of like no duh high performers are productive dudes um but what what the uniqueness is they've they're not just pushing more paper or checking more boxes because you know i both know a lot of people who you know their busy work isn't their life's work so they don't feel fulfilled from their productivity high performers are fulfilled from what they're accomplishing which is a big big big measure and here's what they did they identified their primary field of interest which is a big deal then they identified what we call pqo prolific quality output which is what's the outputs that matter and get recognized and rewarded the most in this primary field of interest and then they went all in at it they became almost singular focuses like you know when when jobs came back to apple and got rid of all the product lines that these are what we're doing that was prolific quality output we're gonna be prolific quality output on these things not those so it's important like for me i thought for there was this period of my life where i thought my primary field of interest was personal development and that's what most the world knows me for i i've never posted any marketing on my facebook page in terms of like marketing advice uh i teach that that's way down in my funnel my front my youtube my podcast facebook are all just personal development so i really identified with that and then i launched my first book life's golden ticket which was my life's message and it kind of bombed it hit best seller and then it died you know bam yeah and really bummed me out and i realized why i said you know what i've been thinking my primary field of interest is personal development and so i folk i did all the book i read all the books i went to all the seminars i you know studied with the gurus i became friends with you know wayne dyer and tony robbins the big names that's what i thought it was and then i had to make a shift and i shift my primary field of interest to how to share a message and it completely shift when i started learning i was like you know what my primary field of interest needs to be is how to share a message because i already got the message right and then i said well what's prolific in this area what's prolific is is what's recognized in this particular area right at that time with this 2006-7 online video was just coming in i mean youtube and facebook were young youtube was like 2004 i think yeah 2005 or something young and but what's mattering now is video and i went all in you know i've created 13 online courses because in my primary field of interest sharing that personal development message was everything so i learned how to share everything and i went from you know kind of a busted uh first book to an 18 months 4.6 million in revenue wow because i learned how to sell and i learned that sharing and selling a message was just as important because if you don't make the money you can't sustain the message i had the message but i wasn't making any money i was the poor broke writer dude and i was like so i shifted my primary field of interest and i went i got to understand marketing i got to understand business and what's going to be prolific in those in what i'm doing now and that's creating products to sell oh i got to create my products higher quality products i showed you like my brochures and yeah beautiful stuff just like super branding you know all my books uh you know i i created i did all the covers of all my books and i obsessed about i was like the the look and the feel and stuff i didn't care about before and that changed everything so what i tell people is if you want to increase don't just get more stuff done get more of the right stuff done and really go in on it i mean super obsessed about the quality and really focus you know it's that old saying the main thing is keep is to keep the main thing the main thing exactly yeah but you got you very careful what your main thing is that's tough because it you know and i especially more abundance high performers really struggle because you have i mean opportunities 50 doors and you want to take all of them but you'd have to cut yourself up into 50 places yeah so you got to really identify what that means the book helps people figure out what is that per lift what's my primary field of interest really at this stage of my life what's the prolific quality output i need to do here and that teaches them the habits during the day you know like block time like how to set intention and release tension how to know when to quit on stuff all that's in in that book as well powerful so productivity they know how to be productive on the right things yeah yeah awesome this one surprising the next habit is high performers develop influence more than those around them it's not because they're cool it's not i mean look at me i'm not getting ahead of my cool factor here ladies and gentlemen i just got these these new nikes i walk in the stores like what's your newest shoe they're like these ones i'm like i need that and they're like wow i'm like because lewis has sneaks man i got i i wear suits or like i'm either on stage in a suit or or at my you know studio kind of like you know kind of formal too sure um i was like man i gotta get some sneak peeks i said give me your newest sneak so i'm not getting ahead on the cool i don't develop influence because i'm cool it's not your personality that gives you influence it's how you treat other people and specifically the way that people high performers gain influence is is this way too much no i'm i'm you know get it how do you develop here's how you here's how you develop influence if you really want high level of influence obviously you gotta do all the basics treat people nice be kind and in the book what i do is with each habit i say here's the basics but then i go here's what the needle mover practices are the highest performing influencers what they're doing often they don't know they're doing it by the way the first thing they're doing is they're teaching people how to think a lot of your show gain influence i really believe because you're really good at teaching people how to think thank you you're shaping their mindset but high performers are really doing it uh explicitly and you do this too where you say here's how to think about that guys or high-performing leaders tell their team here's how we should be thinking about ourselves here's how we should be thinking about the competition here's how we think about the future of the company they're saying it they're explicit more often here's how to think i mean the the the what is it the seventh most read book in the history of the world is think and grow rich crazy it became that way because he taught people how to think about money we have to tell our audience how to think about things the second thing they're doing is they're challenging people and they're challenging the specific way if you listen to great orators great speaker the pros when i know i'm like oh this person studied speech before is they challenge the audience in three ways they challenge the audience's character then they challenge the audience's connections their relationships then they challenge the audience's contributions what they're giving you hit all three of those the audience is like i have to listen to her i have to listen to him because not only are they shaping how i should be thinking because maybe i was thinking wrong but now they're pushing me because you know just like a great coach the greatest coaches they're not just saying throw the ball better they're like louis you're a better man than that come on man they're saying look you're treating your team like crap they look look you're not contributing the team here that's a different challenge than just throw the ball faster or catch the you know so i studied that from them but those are the primary things and the third thing of course is role modeling you know standing i mean if i'm the bring the joy guy or i'm the honor the struggle guy or i'm the high performance guy and i'm off my game people are going to know that yeah so that's i'm always trying to role model what i do which is hard when you're talking about high performance because everyone thinks well don't you have a bad day i'm like dude i i have bad moments i wouldn't say bad days because yeah i don't want to go to bed and feel like the day was bad um but at the same time i think that's why they're developing influence and so much of this when i talk about habits i talk about a different way than other people most people talk about habits like they just want the tricks to make it easy this book is full of deliberate habits meaning you have to consciously think about these and consciously will them consistently it's not i mean this book i think will be kind of something people return to life over and over and over because it's not ever going to be i don't i didn't want to write an easy book i want to write a book that said this is the hard stuff but if you do it the payoff is there right yeah no influence is one of the most powerful things and if you can't influence or enroll people in your vision then it's gonna be hard to make the vision come to life yeah that's it so there's certain elements of how to gain that influence and how to be a role model and be effective and step up and all these different things you need to do yeah to continue to be an enrolling machine in your vision yes yes whether you're working on a team it's your business it's whatever it is it doesn't matter but you've got to be supportive and enrolling to to influence people yeah so i firmly believe that and for i mean we have a lot of friends who are listening who do social media or they're in marketing positions or they're trying to grow their business or their brand and i tell people always you want you want to make this podcast powerful look at the last six months and ask yourself how strategic have i been in telling my audience what to think how strategic have i been in challenging my audience how strategic have i been in role modeling the actions thoughts and feelings i want other people to feel and if you've been surviving and growing without that strategy you're freaking awesome and lucky now your next level of high performance is let's get more strategic that's what's going to change the game for a lot of people you know generating their influence because people like how do you have 5 million on facebook i'm like i'm strategic about those things it's a lot of like how to think a lot of challenge like i'm constantly beating those because i also want people to do that for me it's why i listen to your podcast you do that for me i listened to somebody i was complimenting you your sarah blakely interview was just outstanding and uh that inspired me to think many ways differently yeah you know and you know i both dear friends with tony robbins and robin's made his entire career on challenging people i mean your first hour at his seminar you've been challenged more than you've probably been challenged last decade of your life sure and so you know be strategic about that if you're leaders in the room uh stop placating your people like leaders especially today they want to be so popular with their people and i say popular is good and that will come from kindness and role modeling away but challenge your people more strategically that's why i get to work with you know i work at the fortune 50 ceo level as a high performance coach those guys they don't mess around yeah when they write that check to me it's a quarter million dollars they if i don't get the result i mean in two weeks with them if i don't start shifting them i'm screwed when the first thing i do with them by the way is i come in i open up their calendar and we just start obliterating things on their calendar stuff that's not the main thing anymore and i'm constantly challenging them to return their focus to what matters i'm constantly challenging them to challenge their teams i'm constantly challenging them to be more optimistic or powerful or present whatever it takes for that pers person i get paid because i challenge people more that's it so that's what led me to be a high performance coach if i didn't and by the way that's not comfortable for me i'm from montana i mean if many of you guys listening who's been in my seminars you meet my mom there my mom's at my seminars we are like the most laid-back like happy-go-lucky family you ever saw like my mom is you know what is she 70 this year 70. and she's just she's a spark plug she's amazing the justice is amazing uh so but was super la la you know like my family would never challenge somebody i i didn't come from that i had to learn that because if i didn't do that i wouldn't have the influence i wouldn't achieve things i think we need those challenges for ourselves we need a challenge it's like kind of like in a big game you need a challenge to be able to see how how great you can become yes you need a competitor or you need something that you feel a little bit scared about or a little bit unsure about to see how you can rise up to that challenge and uh if there is no challenge we're never going to perform at the highest level yeah i think we got to constantly challenge ourselves if we want to step into something new otherwise we've developed a strength and a comfort zone of what we're comfortable with so i looked at my my quotes i was like have i written much about greatness and i found this quote um that said you know the journey to greatness often begins the moment that challenge and contribution become more important than comfort and ease that's a good one yeah that's really good and so we have to challenge ourselves but the habit here the social habit is develop influence and you develop influence teach me how to think role model away and then make sure that you are challenging people in those three hours challenge their character you got to do that delicately the book teaches you how make sure you challenge relationships because that's so important and challenge people's what they're giving and if you do that strategically enough you know part of your message in greatness is challenging people to follow their dreams you say it all the time it's one reason i love your show you're constantly challenging people to follow the dreams and not just like hey follow your dreams like hey do this yeah i love that you know i think of one of the reasons at the show so awesome thank you appreciate it appreciate it so that's the fifth one right yeah and the sixth and final sixth and final one demonstrate courage and i think all personal volume people of course you know but they actually high performers do demonstrate courage like we can measure it from peer feedback we can measure it from their self-assessments we can measure it from we have this thing called the high performance indicator assessment you take it you get scored on all six habits it's free on the internet on the interwebs but this one's peaked when we did the research and i didn't know it and it is high performers are more willing to share their ideas their thoughts their feelings what they need what they want and they do it more consistently than their peers even when there's risk or uncertainty you do a great job i know you have the books coming out for you talk about men and being vulnerable that's demonstrating courage that's yeah you know when you're not conditioned that way or you're not used to that you know that it might not seem like a big deal but it it is yeah you know um when you talked about me doing this interview that was like it might not seem like demonstrating courage to go on lewis house but it is because i admire you and i also i'm not used to sharing a lot you know you just let the work speak for itself yeah so i had to like okay i need to share you know be willing to share this in different unique ways but i think for most people it's when you're in your last meeting did you share for your ideas and fight for them do you share for yourself you share your ideas and fight for them when you wanted to post that video and you were scared to death because people are going to make fun of you did you do it and when you wanted to tell your spouse that you're not getting what you need did you say it because all those are demonstrating courage it's not just you know courage we think you're pulling someone out the river or something and that's part of it and we talk about the different kinds of courage in the book but the ones that matter the most move the needle the most is sharing for and fighting for ideas but also that vulnerability of sharing your wants needs i mean high performers really communicate what they want and you've probably seen this networking opportunities you meet somebody and they're like i'm trying to meet this person i'm trying to get that done and they're not pushy with it they're just clear they're like this is what i'm trying to do and this is what i want this is what i need the highest performing relationships and marriages we correlated marriage and demonstrating courage and they stay together longer when you're willing to tell your spouse i don't like that and work it through that's hard for people it's it's you know it's scary to put yourself out there follow your dream or start a podcast or you know start the biz that stuff is scary telling your boss something's wrong you know high performers report being whistleblowers more than anybody else because it takes a lot of courage to go my boss is doing something wrong right um so we teach how to how do you get to that without all the hype like what do we know actually moves the needle in psychological courage which has been actually measured a lot in academics i love it i love the habits and i know you guys should go get the book because there's a lot of research that backs all these and also steps and practices they can follow uh so make sure you guys are getting this book um i'm curious i want to ask you a couple personal questions yeah what's the fear you have the most right now in your life the fear i have the most um probably just you know anything ever happening to my family you know i'm a very very you know i'm a great son i hope you know i lost my dad in 2009 to leukemia and he was like my big mentor and he got diagnosed on mother's day kind of woke up and walked in the hallway and you know his back felt funny and he kind of leaned against the hall a little dizzy and mom's like what's wrong with you is that i don't know it's big just kind of swollen back here and they go the doctor and his um his spleen was enlarged which is bad news it usually means you know your body's kicking off stem cells that aren't good um so he got diagnosed with aml acute myeloid leukemia and they said you have a week to live now he made it uh 59 days wow um the most important interview in my life was i called him and i wrote down all these like 30 life questions uh and i interviewed is the first time i ever called somebody and recorded anything like it was my first interview this is my most valued interview so i called him and i asked him all these questions uh was the hospital because i was at the seminar and i didn't know can i sit down i'm going to cancel the seminar and fly with us don't just finish seminar come over wow finish this so like day two or three of the seminar i call and i interview him for you know i think 60 minutes that first night another 16 minutes and then i flew over there but i got that recording and uh it just i had such a great dad a great mom people say you know you're so lucky brendan i'm like i you know what a lot of things i didn't luck out on worked hard but i lucked out on the parent train and we grew up with nothing parents you know raising four kids um broke but we had abundance you know we had love and they believed in us and my dad uh his seven messages to me in his life which i try to share all the time actually it's my most uh shared facebook post ever um this this particular book every time i put up it's been viewed 30 million times wow and just my dad's thing he said be yourself be honest do your best treat uh i'm sorry take care of your family treat people with respect be a good citizen and follow your dreams pretty good for me like there it is so uh but losing him really made me connect with the rest of my family right and so fear is just you know family so i just wanna i don't wanna lose people that i love um you know my whole story began when i learned that i that life is precious in a car accident 19 year old kid i know you know the story but i've had uh sort of mortality motivation my entire life since i mean i was lucky 19 years old kid realizing i'm gonna die i'm standing on the hood of a car bleeding out after a car accident i got death another time in my life and it was the book i would talk about the book the charge i had a brain injury recta atv going 38 miles an hour got taken to hospital internal i didn't know if we were internal bleeding i'd snap my wrist broke my ribs throughout my shoulders massive concussion and uh which i didn't know until later caused a lot of troubles in my life with my brain and but i sat in the hospital for three hours because no one spoke any english there and i didn't speak any spanish so they couldn't when they you know the first thing when someone treats you is are you allergic to any of the painkillers right i couldn't answer the question like i don't know so i lay there for three hours this is 16 years after my first accident and i was you know laying there and the lady keeps coming in and pressing on my chest cavity that's checking for internal bleeding and i knew that and i'm like i'm thinking i'm like okay if this is if this is my time did i live and did i love and did i matter which was my intention after my first car accident and i was happy with all the answers but the number so i lived my life i was happy but the number one thing i thought about that moment was you know my wife and just family i just didn't you know so i think my it's not like i have recurring fears or debilitating fears but much i just want to lose anybody i love anymore yeah i've lost a lot of people um two two days ago um jess and i were actually here over the hotel and i got a text from your high school friend who just got diagnosed with pretty severe breast cancer and that stuff you know i just want to lose people it's tough but it's gonna happen for everyone right yeah that's the thing that's challenging yeah my dad's loss was huge that was just awful you know because it was so fast yeah and he'd been healthy but aml just you know it just takes you and so uh i'm good with it because i've so many people know my story of the second chance and they share all around the world they're like man i i was in an accident i lost somebody too and i hear all that and i'm it's it's one thing when you're hearing it and you're coaching or advising it's another one when it's your dad you know or something about it yeah what about your mission to the world what is your mission and what would you like to achieve over the next uh you know it's funny it's one of the things you said probably made you like i don't know about this guy because i'm always hammering home one message and some people are like all he has is that story i'm like it's not that all i have that story it's i tell the story because that's my message my message when i tell my car accident story the message that comes out of it is at the end of your life you're going to wonder if you live a good life and so you're going to ask yourself questions to evaluate did i live that good life my message is find out what those questions are for you that's it because if you can identify if you can think like what what would i ask how would i know if i lived a good life you'd ask yourself questions what questions would you ask because if you know your questions then you get to wake up every day and you can live intentionally so when you have to answer those questions if you have a moment of cognition before you die and you ask the questions you can answer them from a place of you know connection pride heart be like i did i am i you know i want to affirmatively answer at the end of my life i lived fully and i loved fully and i made my difference that's what that's what i asked that second time after the atv accident and so i learned i was going to ask at the first accident take my passport away well all every time i come out of the country these one of these accidents happens but i'm a little too adventurous sometimes but i i've learned that maybe sharing that message too often people go yeah yeah but i go that's it man you can't live with intention unless you know the questions you're actually going to ask at the end of your life people say well how do i know what my purpose is know how you're going to gauge your purpose at the end you got to know the questions i tell people identify four five ten questions you'd ask at the end of your life to see if you're happy and then wake up look at those dang questions and live every day so i do tonight when i go to bed it's the same thing 21 years i've never missed i go to bed my head bet my head it's the pillow i go did i live today did i love today did i matter today and it's not like i can be like hey louis every night i'm you know i'm freaking awesome and the answer is yes i mean i have bad days but enough of them are yes's that i feel pretty good about my life and so that's the message i want people to know find out what your questions are live intentionally so you're happy with them at the end hmm that's great man what are you most grateful for right now um well one tactical one i'm so happy with the book dude the best feeling right oh my god it's the best in the world oh i'm so happy the book is done um i'm super grateful that that is you know because i you know a lot of my friends and family like where did you go i mean literally three years we managed research teams the largest study ever i'm not an academic so to to put together a book like this was you know 30 pages of resources and citations to prove everything out with hardcore data analytics honestly it wasn't my strength so it was exhausting but it was what was required to serve at the next level because i wanted corporate audiences to be able to take this assessment and go this is more rigorous than anything we've ever done i wanted academics to love it i wanted people who are entrepreneurs to go i see what i can do i just there's so many moving things i wanted this book to hit on but it also exhausted me because it was just constant so i'm super proud to have that done um and and grateful for that having come to you know coming to a book i'm proud of um i'm extremely grateful for the patience and love of my family in this particular project it took me away more than anything else uh i'm actually really grateful that i've gotten to know you better and getting this to be the first like in-depth conversation with it yeah it's fun because i think that you're very talented at holding a space for people your team too about holding a space for people to just be like this is me this is what i you know about yeah um and then i would also you know i'm always grateful for the god for the second chance i got from the standing on the car like i got it like knowing that each day you get up and you it's not you know self-help psychobabble it's like knowing that life is limited and you get a second chance every morning of like showing the world more of who you are you know breathing taking that walk with your love just having that every day kind of a new beginning um i feel that in my career i'm sharing that with you now and by the time this comes out you know i'll have a new show out the brendan show i've never done that before that's a new opportunity i'm grateful for the new opportunities i think right now you and i have the ability to share our messages farther and wider than we've ever had before i'm super grateful that we're alive like right now at this time on the planet when i think our messages really need to be heard when we're you know surrounded sometimes by a culture society politics is so negative to to to have a platform to share something good right now i'm so grateful for that what's the habit that you realize you need more more work on or that you can improve on yourself um definitely raising necessity i think the challenge you have when you're good is that you're good yeah so you're like i'm doing pretty good already yeah it's easy the better you get the more expertise development you get the easier it is to show up and go through the motions yeah you don't have to prepare as much you don't have to practice as much you just yeah good results whatever you can do is good enough yeah but what happens with high performance it eats at them because they know they got more in the tank and they're like you know what that was good but i could have gotten another and it's not that they're dissatisfied we take on that myth in this book high performers are not dissatisfied so people who say never be satisfied they got to look at why they're saying that because it's not true because high performers are satisfied they're they're striving satisfied doesn't mean they're not striving for the next big thing want to become better but they're happy hyper members are happier than all of their peers i mean by significant almost double digits so it's really significant um but i think for me i need to constantly be reminding myself like okay what is the reason you need to perform really well right now and i need to be more consistent about that question um so i set up triggers in my life to do that you know um from every time i stand in line i have a line trigger i have door triggers i have phone triggers you know so when i stand in line i always say what level am i right now in terms of my presence and energy skill 110. one i suck i'm dead i'm not even alive not even feeling grateful you know 10 i'm like i'm vibrant i'm joyous here i am um and i rate myself consistently on that and it just retouches me like the knee i want to feel it's necessary to be grateful i want to feel it's necessary to be great i want to feel it's necessary to do my best but you don't get that without reminders so you got to set up alarms or triggers or some you know note cards around that whatever it is it takes for you to have that but i know for me raise after the research i didn't get how i mean i mean you're talking from every athlete to every high ceo this is what they did there and i didn't find this you'll see all the questions i asked them in the book i really had to dial in their psyche and when we found that i was like is that a thing that they'd really that's i mean but they all do and so it inspired me another i'm like i'm going to raise my necessity and i'll i'm going to practice everything in the book to get that up a little higher i like that yeah what's the first thing you're going to raise in the necessity um is your business or relationships or health or what whatever i would say i'm gonna raise necessity on probably at this point in my life sharing more and we talked about that this morning because i never it never wasn't necessary yeah i i made my whole career training here's a problem you're dealing with disappointment you're dealing with stress you had to fight with your you know lover you don't feel fully charged you don't feel connected you don't feel like you're contributing here's the answer steps one two three and four because i knew that from the research or for my coaching experience but i didn't share a lot into that yeah and i probably need to read your book mask of masculinity maybe maybe there's something there i don't know so i just didn't feel like it was necessary to share brandon so i'm demonstrating courage i hope by making a show called the brendan show because i feel like for me to be able to pull that off without feeling like i should be punched in the face i'm going to have to like demonstrate the courage of like i'm i'm going to raise a necessity to share more you're gonna own it yeah yeah um okay final question final couple questions well before i ask them is there any question you have for me or anything you wish i would have asked you so far anything wish you no man this is awesome uh now question for you which of which of those you know habits would you work on them i mean every one of them but i think courage i think it's always being courageous to say what i think to do the things that are the right things and not hold back in any way because i'm afraid of hurting someone i'm afraid of upsetting a situation or i'm afraid of looking bad or whatever it may be whatever the fear may be in that moment so i think courage stands out for me the most right now um i would say and then i think necessity would be the next one it's like constantly like challenging myself to be uh more prepared in situations because a lot of times i just go on stage and i just like i really haven't prepared anything i'm 10 minutes before i'm like what do i do and then i just i figure it out and i go because we've had so many reps yes yes you know you're way better than me on stage but it's like i've had you know eight years of reps now of training that i'm like i can do good i can do 80 and it gets a great result yeah you know yeah but then afterwards i'm like i just know i didn't give everything that i should have yeah like i got a tip for you on that one yeah uh knowing your work legacy here's your challenger back your backstage trigger every time you walk on the stage go if this footage is the last of me ever that's a good one i like that one that's a good one how are you going to show up yeah if that i do that every time what are you going to say how are you going to show up if even if because sometimes i'm not prepared just like you i mean i hit five cities but you know here's 20 000 people in this arena here's 2 000 at my event you know thousand bucks a ticket the expectation's insane so i got to be prepared for sometimes but sometimes i don't have to be prepared because you know it's something i'm doing is for somebody else uh so it's easy to show up and not give so it's like for because legacy is so important to you i'm like even if you're not prepared if it was the last footage ever boom that's good yeah you give your best you know you do your best so those would be for me um cool well final qu uh one two questions the first one is called the three truths and you've written many books already number one yorktown bestseller you've sold millions of copies you've done the brennan show now you've done everything you've ever wanted to do you've created it and this is the last day 70 years from now for you right theoretically you've done everything any dream any raising the necessity you did it achieved it and like nothing else you can do yeah you've conquered whatever you wanted to conquer and everything's been erased for whatever reason every piece of content you put out there all your followers have nothing to see of yours no books sci-fi no no photos on facebook or instagram you have a piece of paper and a pen to write down your three final truths this would be your last message to the world yes and the only thing that's recorded or what you write down is three truths back to the world i kind of have an idea what you might say but what would those three things be well i'll tell you what you know i'm gonna say yes but then i'll answer in a different way too perfect um for me it would be live love matter and it'd be something around those truths because at the end of your life what i found uh you know it's hard to give perspective this but for 20 years i've been telling people to find those questions and no matter what and i don't know if you know this but i volunteered in hospices for a decade i've been with a lot of people in their last moments weeks and months i've been i've been around a lot of that in my life because i wanted to see if what i experienced on that car was what other people experienced in some ways it was in some ways at the end we all wanted to know did i live and how that was and did i love and did i matter um but hopefully i wouldn't be erased but uh you know if it's related into greatness i say number one like the truths are knowing that you know outside of those the truth is life will never be joyous unless you bring the joy i really feel like that so many people are waiting to have happiness and they're just they're waiting to like well maybe when my boss loosens up i'll loosen up or you know when when when she's vulnerable i'll be vulnerable or it's like we're waiting for something i'm like it's not your life will never be what it is going to be unless you bring that thing you know for me i wanted to be i want to be more bold in my life that was one of my goals because i wasn't that you know i wasn't that guy who would just like go out and do the things i do now so i made gold like i was like bold is an intention i set it as an alarm on my phone my alarm would go off three times a day and bold would pop up and i conditioned myself over seven years to be more bold which is a big deal for me um and because i wanted i wanted that i had to learn how to bring that so whatever you want life you got to bring it i would say number two honor the struggle like so many people bemoan the hardship and they hate it and i would say you know anything you anything you apply hate to quickly dies you got a dream and you're hating the process you apply hate to the process the dream's gonna die you know it's like don't don't you know be very be very careful of what you put hate or things to and most people do that with hardship and i've always seen hardships like i'm gonna honor this process sort of it's a little samurai mentality you know it's like i'm gonna honor that this is difficult because that is precisely what's needed yeah and then the last truth would be you'll never feel good about life unless you serve and connect with other people because you can do the first two but if you're not serving and connecting with other people you'll never feel good about life you might have a good life right have the good life you could make a lot of money taking advantage of people people do that right but you'll never feel good about life unless you serve and connect with other people and a lot of it one of the things in encourage came to my mind that we found from the research we kept digging down about courage courage courage ultimately comes from curiosity which is such a weird thing i didn't know that either but you don't you can't courageously connect with other people unless you're like i'm curious to what they would think about this or what i'm curious about them you'll never try something new unless you're like i'm curious to how that turned out you wouldn't go for the you know the gold or the stars and she's like i'm curious if i can do it like you have to you have to wonder like is that possible and so part of i think people's next development is being more curious about what happens if you did serve at a bigger level because the truth is you never feel good about life unless you do wow there you go make sure you guys get the book high performance habits go get it on amazon barnes noble or brendan.com correct brendan.com is that the best place absolutely um brendan everywhere or brendon bouchard and brendan burchard everybody brandon bouchard if we're on social media you are taking over the world my friend and it's uh it's good to be connected and learn more about everything you're up to and i'm i'm here to support so uh final question is what is your definition of greatness and i hate that question i've heard so many of your guests do it and i was like man i'm not sure what i would would even what i would say about that um but i do think the def i wrote a little about this motivation manifesto because i was really like what is that thing and i think it's achieving your own sense of personal freedom whatever it is i define personal freedom is the ability to be oneself fully and the ability to pursue things that are deeply meaningful to you i think that's when you find freedom now that's my definition but i think when if you get the end of your life like i i lived freely you know or i loved freely or i did my thing it was like when you feel that you you're you're living your own personal freedom whatever that means i think that's magical so i don't know if i have the the answer for everybody else but you know for me it's when i feel free in life it's i'm being myself fully and i'm doing things that i deeply care about like this right now i feel free right now this is great right that's how i say if i'm being myself and i love what i'm doing right now i feel great when you show your passion about something people are attracted to energy that is passionate that is grateful that is fun that is loving that is expressive that is creative that is expansive they're not attracted to people who are closed off and guarded

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 350,577

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: _tWqIG3UTt4

Length: 116min 36sec (6996 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 16 2021