So hey, guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive. And the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth-based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love growth day.
Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Bouchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down. Growthday.com forward slash Ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that get your day off to the right start. He's got about $5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development.
and business in one app, and I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're gonna get a free tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well, so you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. This is the environment show.
Welcome back to the show, everybody. So this week's topic is perfect timing. So many of you asked me to talk about this. So today's topic is getting to the next level in life. And so we're going to discuss all the things that come with getting to the next level because all of us want to in our lives. And we seek this next level because we believe our lives would be different. We can impact more people. We can make a difference. We would feel different if we get to that next level. And a lot of that is really, really true. But remember this, new levels, new devils.
And so what comes with climbing in life, if we're going to be real, if I'm going to be honest with you and I've had the blessing of 53 years of climbing quite a bit, is that new levels, new devils, there's new challenges that come with getting to every single new level in life, which is why most people stop trying to climb, stop trying to improve, stop trying to grow. They say they want to grow, they say they want to get to the next level, but they don't want it as bad as when they were at the bottom.
And so we're going to discuss just the concepts today, a little bit of getting there. And my main message to you today is I want to challenge you. For many of you listening to this, it's about to go into a new year or you're in a new year. And this shouldn't just be the same year over and over again. Life is not about the same year over and over again. I remember when Max was a little boy, we would go to this car wash.
on Sundays after church and my son was a little boy and there was a man there every single Sunday. He was reading the newspaper and this guy was there when we would get there and he'd be there when we leave and later on in the afternoon I'd drive by the car wash. This guy seemed to still be there like reading the newspaper. It's kind of a grumpy guy and but one Sunday he showed some humanity. He never even looked up from the newspaper usually just grunting and grabbing at people you know and he says to me he goes, how old is your little boy? And I said, oh he's six.
And he said to me, he goes, well, enjoy the six year old because man, when they turn seven, that six year old's gone forever. And when he turns eight, the seven year old's gone forever. And any of you that are parents listening to this, you know that he's right. They change every year. It's a new little person running around. And I didn't mean to be rude to him, but reflexively, it just came out of me. I said, sir, when did that process stop for you?
He said, excuse me, I put the paper down. I said, what age did you stop doing that? Huh? I said, what age did you stop replacing yourself with a brand new person every year? And he goes, he looked at me for a minute and he said, gosh, I don't know. And I said, you know, I'm younger than you, I'm in my 30s, but to me, that's the end of happiness.
that if you're the same person every single year, you've already lived with that person for a year. You already know who they are. They've already had the same experience as the same thoughts. It's like, why be alive if you're not going to grow and change? And I say, I said, that's kind of to me, sir, like the process of slowly dying.
And every single way, you're either growing or you're dying. You all heard that before, but it's actually completely true. And I said, you ought to just look into that. And so oftentimes with my kids, I'm always telling them, now, by the way, your character, your values, those things don't change, but your experience, your thoughts, your mindset, your ability to make an impact and influence things in the world.
Your memories ought to be expanding and growing at any given time. You're constantly replacing yourself, by the way. That's nature. You're replacing your digestive tract. Your cells are replacing themselves. Even your skeleton replaces itself. Our lung tissue, we're always sort of, but that's nature. It happens automatic, but replacing our mind, renewing our mind, renewing our experiences. That takes work. That takes effort. I remember when I was turned in 40,
and we had a birthday dinner. And my daughter, I just sort of started to get more prominent on social media, become a little bit well known. And my daughter said, so daddy, what's up with the midlife crisis? And I said, what honey? She goes, yeah, dad, you know, social media, your beard, blah, blah, blah, like you're, you know, you're obviously in the midlife crisis. I said, well, I am honey. And I was in a young life crisis.
And I'll be in an old man crisis someday to an old life crisis. I'm in a crisis to replace myself every year. That doesn't mean, like I've said, the core things about me. But the things I say, the things I do, the things I experience, the things I feel, the things I influence, I'm in a crisis every year to replace myself because that keeps you alive. And I think so often in life because we kind of have this idea that there's this, we get comfortable with where we are, but also we know at that new level, there's going to be a new devil and we don't want to fight anymore devils. When we were younger,
or hungrier, and some of you are very young that are listening to this. But at some point in our life, we want it so bad what we have to go through is secondary, because we want to get where we're going. But then once we get a little bit more than we used to have, our desire to go through the pain and the discomfort and the growth isn't what it once was, because what we have now isn't so terrible to us.
So the first thing is the reason you need to be around people that are living life at a higher level than you and whatever that area is faith or their fitness or their money or business or family is because then you're not comfortable. You can't be around someone with 10 times more money than you if money is a priority to you and not be uncomfortable. But if the 10 people around you are worth the same or less, you become very comfortable if in your fitness.
You're a little bit out of shape right now. And your five best friends are all very fit and eat, clean, and work out five, six days a week. You won't be comfortable. But if everyone around you looks like you, it creates comfort. So we have to change the people that are around us and because, listen.
to truly be alive is to experience life. The reason I bring up this man at the car wash and I bring up the midlife crisis, because I've talked about this on the show before, is this, is that you're really never gonna know yourself if you don't keep climbing, to become fully human is to experience life.
and have new experiences and new challenges. You were born to be challenged. You were born to compete. And you may not want to compete with other people. That's okay. By the way, I think you do more than you admit. But even if you don't, it's competing against your former self. It's competing against what you're capable of.
in life. And to be fully human is to experience life. It's going to be harder than you think it's going to be. I was watching an interview of the founder of NVIDIA and they were asking him about, hey, if you knew what you knew now, what advice would you give yourself to start to build the company? He says, I would have never done it.
My advice would be don't do it. It's so darn hard. It's so difficult. Listen, as hard as you think it's going to be, it's probably going to be harder to get to the next level or make your dream come true. As long as you think it's going to take, it may even take longer than you think. But there's power in the one decision that you make. And so many things in life were held back
because of either our lack of desire or our fear to get to the next level. So here's a few things that are required. One is the decision. You're one decision away from change your life. It's deciding, I want to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive in my life. And if there's any part of your life right now that's not going away that you wanted to, I would submit to you, get a new challenge, get something you're after. Not that you have to go outside of yourself to be happy. You don't. It's all within you right now. But there is a part of you you've never met yet.
And I think you'd like her or him if you just go meet them. But that person you don't know yet is on the other side of this difficult thing you don't want to do. I don't know why the world is structured the way it is that we have to go through things to learn things, but it is. And I'm done at 53 years old trying to debate whether that's true or not. But the shame of it would be that you get to the end of your life and you never knew you.
You never knew who you could have been. You never fully got to meet yourself!
because you weren't willing to go through the difficult things to fight these new devils. And by the way, the more devils we fight in our life, the more we conclude there's a powerful God in our life that's more powerful than this devil that I'm fighting right now. So oddly, typically in most people's lives, the more they go to the next level, the more their faith grows. In my life, there's no way I am where I am right now based on me. I could just tell you that. The more that I've achieved, the more people I've helped,
The more I absolutely for sure that there's a powerful God guiding my life because I can tell you right now, I know how weak I am. I know how not so smart I am. I know all of my frailty. Well, I know a lot of them.
But I do feel like I've gotten to know myself pretty well. And I feel like most people don't know themselves. They don't love themselves because they don't know themselves. They've actually never met themselves. They've met this version that's still 18 years old. You know, the old adage that most men die at 21, we just don't bury them until they're 70 is really true. It's true for women. That's gender neutral. And so what happens is we just, we don't know ourselves because we are getting to be pushed to get to know ourselves.
And so I don't want to get to the end of my life and either to you have never met me.
And so I wanna challenge you to continue to climb seat. By the way, there's a few things you have to do to do that. And there's tons of things. There are my books around the other podcast I've done, but I'll give you a few for right now. You're not gonna get your goals. You're gonna get your standards. You're gonna have to change your standards. So goals are great. I wanna weigh 185 pounds or 130 pounds or I wanna be this or that. I wanna golf handicap of that. I want this much money saved. I want this relationship. That's all great. You should have goals. But goals without standards are empty.
So what's the new standard that you would have to adapt? For example, let's just say that next year, one of your goals is fitness. Could one of the standards be that you drink a gallon of water a day? I have a standard of drinking a gallon of water a day. That standard could lead me. I have a standard of getting to the gym at 6 a.m. Whatever it might be. I have a standard of 100 pushups a day. I don't know what it is, but I'm saying the standard is what delivers on the goal. Goals are empty.
but standards are what we're going to inevitably in life. I say this in the power of one more. You'll eventually get your standards. And so if you want to change your life, change your standards, that's one. And going along with that is habits and rituals. So here's a power question for you since you want to go to the next level. What's the one habit you need to establish that you don't have currently? You know what it is?
You change that one habit. I call it an accelerator habit. What's that one habit? The catalyst habit that if you'd had this one habit, things would change. It would knock down 10 barriers if you had this one habit. You change, get the standards you want and the habit. And I'm telling you, you're a powerful force to get to that next level. And by the way, it could be a habit you need to get rid of. What's a habit you have that's holding you back from getting to where you want to go? But you need to be replacing.
And once you get that down, you've opened up a whole world of possibilities for the rest of your life for this year. But go into this new year, go into anything with the same standards that you haven't changed, the same habits, but a new vision and dream. That's cute. That's called a wish. So it's great to have this wish, but for it to become a dream and then to become a reality, you need to change the standard and have an accelerator habit.
And I believe having the associations of people around you could change it as well. Okay. And this is important because you don't like your, uh,
You ever had this thing with your phone where it's listening to you? I was talking about something the other day, so much strawberries out of the blue. I haven't talked about strawberries in forever. And within like an hour, I'm getting stuff on my phone for strawberries. You know, we all now know our phones are listening to us, right? What we say, this thing's listening and then gives it back to us. Am I right? We all know that. Okay. The universe is listening to you.
It's just like your phone. Now, you can call it the universe. You can call it the world. You can call it the Holy Spirit, in my case, but it's listening to you. And it's giving back to you what you're saying. You need to change your language if you're going to change your life. You have to start to speak things into existence. And this is a very real thing. See, a lot of times people say, oh, don't say universe. That's not a very Christian saying. I know exactly what I mean when I'm saying it.
Okay? That does not mean the absence of the Holy Spirit. That's not even interchangeable to me. But I'm telling you, the world is listening. There's plenty of scriptures to validate this too for people of faith. The world is listening to what you're saying, just like your phone is, and is going to give it back to you. It becomes the algorithm of your life.
And when you begin to change what you say, both inside and outside, not just your internal voice, but the external voice that you use, the world begins to conspire to validate what you're saying. I believe thoughts in many cases are prayers. And I also believe thoughts have a vibrational frequency to them as well. And you can draw to you. Thoughts are like magnets. You will draw to you that which you truly feel to be true. And when you begin to speak something, it validates it as an accelerator on the thought.
So change your language, change your habits, change your standards, change your life. That's where we're at. And you right now are fully capable of doing that in your life. You know, when I worked at my first job out of college, after my baseball career failed, my real first job after that, I'd been a bus boy, I'd back groceries at a grocery store. I was an electrician's apprentice. I did these things all through college. But my first actual career out of college,
My dad came home from his first AA meeting and said, I got you a job and I showed up the next day. And the longs and the shorter it was, I worked at a boys' home, an orphanage for boys called McKinley home for boys in California. And it changed my life. And the reason that it changed my life was I was instantly introduced to needing to be my, I worked in cottage eight. My boys were all eight, nine and 10 years old. I remember the first day I walked in there, I'll never forget it. I walked in there and these boys were,
all getting ready for school that day. And I was the new guy with the other counselor that was in there. Remember this, I have no background in psychology. I had no children of my own. And now my job is to basically be a father to these eight to 10 boys. And right when I walked in, I remember all their eyes turned and looked at me. Who's the new guy? And we're saying, hey, guys, I'm Eddie. I'm here to be with you guys. I can't wait to get to know all of you better. And they all just kind of turned away.
But I also remember every one of them looked me in the eye at first, and they had these eyes. I think any child has gone through any neglect or difficulty in their life. We have different eyes. And those eyes basically say, please love me. Please care about me. Please make me feel safe with you. And although I couldn't express it at the time, I had this deep sense when I walked in there.
that I was immensely qualified to help these boys because I have the same eyes. My boys were all wards of the court. Their parents were either dead, incarcerated, or had actually molested them. Their own parents. Those are who my boys were. They all lived in a house together. And I remember thinking, I'm qualified to help these boys.
I didn't have the same dysfunction as them, but I know what it's like to grow up as a little boy with my dad being an alcoholic. I knew it was like to grow up with worry and fear and angst and instability at a minimum. Their situations were much worse than mine. But I remember believing I was qualified.
And because I believed that, it was true. I actually also set it out loud over and over. I'm the perfect guy for these guys. And remember that first day I walked them all to school and some of them talked to me. One of them gave me a hug. One of the other little boys was holding my hand. I remember thinking I'm home. This is what I want to do. And I did that for a very long time. Even as my business career took off, I stayed at McKinley as long as I could. And I remember believing deeply and saying deeply that I was meant to be there.
I was qualified to help him because you're most qualified in life to help the person you used to be, as I've said many times. But not only was I've been pretty good at this career I have here. I've been pretty good as an entrepreneur, but I was great at that. And the reason I was great at that is not only did I change what I believed, I set it out loud over and over again. I told those boys I loved them. I cared about them. I believed in them. I spoke that into the world and the universe, the phone of life was listening.
was listening and those boys felt that. And the other thing I did is I had a, I knew at that time, I better change my own standards of the way that I'm conducting myself because these boys are looking up to me. So I changed my standards. And then my habit that I needed to change most in my life was the way that I spoke affection to people because I wasn't any good at it. And I decided that day that my new habit was I would speak how I felt.
And now to this day, people say that's one of their favorite things about the podcast is how I'm so engaged with the audience or the person I'm interviewing. I'm so engaged with them and I speak words of praise to them because I'm feeling it. I learned that at McKinley Hall for boys. But one of the things I learned, the reason I tell you that story about McKinley
is my boys were easily triggered. All of my boys were very easily triggered. Something would come up, they would explode or get sad immediately. And that's just like most adults. We have triggers in our life where if something happens, someone says something or, sir, it triggers us, right? You know, we feel dismissed and it triggers us, we lose our self-esteem or someone doesn't, they speak a certain way to us and we become angry or we begin to think negative thoughts about ourselves.
And so what we do in our life is we focus on the external trigger that just happened, rather the internal wound that's causing that trigger to happen. See, it's not the external thing. We could focus all day on someone's behavior. I got overlooked through promotion. Someone spoke to me a certain way. They cut me off in line. Whatever it might need, they were dismissive of me. They were rude to me. And then it's a trigger to us, right? And then we respond out loud and we're upset about the external person rather than contemplating, why does this bother me so much?
Why is this bothering me? Why is this thing that they do bothers me so much? And to take a look at whatever that wound or that trauma is in our lives. And I remember with my boys very early on going, I'm only going to have these guys for a couple of years. I've got to rewire how they respond to external things. They've got to have more internal, beautiful experiences.
so that these things don't trigger them in life. And so for most of us, the reason we're not going to the next level is we have these triggers of external things that are affecting our behavior, affecting our emotions. We keep trying to get the people, don't talk to me that way. Please make it easier. Do this, do that. I need things to fall into place rather than looking internally and say, what triggers do I need to build?
Do I need to build so that when external things happen, I operate in a way that serves me. And those external triggers are started with your standards, your habits, and the way you speak.
And then when you have those moments, validate them and take inventory of them in your life to like a emotional bank account that you can use during difficult times. Because I'm going to tell you, I said it earlier, it's going to be harder than you think to get to the next level. You're going to have to be more mentally tough than you realize. The people that went in life, they outwork everybody, but they are mentally tougher and they're mentally tougher because they build a cocoon around themselves of the right triggers when things happen that I'm built for this.
Someone said this to me. They dismissed me. I'm going to prove them wrong. Someone was this way mistreated me. They're going to regret that someday when I go win. Rather than, yeah, that's just like how my dad talked to me. Well, that's exactly why I was that way in school. And they keep going back to these same places. And that what happens is they have the same emotional experience over and over and over again at 18 at 32 at 56. And they get out of life.
The same experience is basically they've had for the last 30 years because they didn't consciously change their life and realize the world is listening just like the phone to what you're saying. God would love to hear your prayers for where you want to go in your life. God would love to bless your life.
but you've gotta be consciously talking to him about it. Consciously talking to yourself about it, constantly changing the way you live your life and your standards and your habits and the way you speak. And when you do that, your life begins to transform. Most of us are being held back by some limiting belief. And that limiting belief more than likely happened when you were a kid.
and it's limiting you in your entire life, and it's not just limiting you financially. It's not, and it's certainly limiting you emotionally. And it's not even that's the worst part. The worst part is that belief that's not even true. It's a mind virus that you have that was injected into you by some experiences or experience as a young person. That mind virus, what it's gonna cost you is ever knowing you, ever meeting you.
I actually think the happiest people that I know don't have a lot of money, although some of them do, but that's not a requirement. The happiest people I know have two things in common if I can be candid with you. They know God. They have a relationship with God. And that is a relationship, by the way. It's not perfect.
I had a woman on my podcast recently, Bree, who I think many of you know, you know, Bree gave birth and she almost passed away during birth and then it led to her needing a classmate bag and all four of her limbs amputated and she's on dialysis, really rough experience in her life. And even in spite of all of that,
She's attempting to win in her life and attempting to have a beautiful experience. So it's not the experiences of our lives that dictate where we're going. And the reason I tell you about that is because in that interview, I asked her what's the relationship with God like and she said, well, I'm pretty mad at God right now. And I'm trying to figure that out. And I thought that's what an honest answer, that it's okay to have a relationship that ebbs and flows as long as it grows. And so the happiest people that I know have a relationship with God and they have a relationship with themselves.
I know more people that have built a relationship with God than I do that have a relationship with themselves. And I think God wants you to have a relationship with Him and yourself. And it's interesting how few people even look at themselves in the mirror more than to see whether they're
Hair is brushed correctly or their makeup's on, right? But do they see themselves? Or have they spent the majority of their life avoiding themselves, avoiding themselves in achievement, avoiding themselves in relationships, avoiding themselves in their worries and fears and in their mind?
And all I really want out of this life is that when it's over, that I've got a beautiful relationship with God, and then I know where I'm going to have on Sunday. But heck, if I'm going to spend the next 80 years with somebody, I'd like to get to know them, wouldn't you? And the only way I believe we get to know ourselves is by experiencing life and not having the same experience over and over again. You already know that person.
And you already want to get better. You already want to grow. And so if you're going to decide in your life to grow, these are the changes you need to make. And I believe that you were born to do something great with your life. When you climb to a new level in your life, you do face new devils, new challenges, new.
You know, there can be even shocking setbacks that take place or people that let you down as you climb. And I wish somebody would have just told me in the beginning because, you know, social media is so loaded with making entrepreneurship and success just look like it's just bliss. Everyone's in the Caribbean. Everyone's on the back of a boat.
No one really struggled or suffered or their struggles are in the past and I just want you to know that every new level there's going to be a new devil and that's okay as long as you know they're coming. I want you to know that fighting off those new devils is worth it and you become stronger every single time you do it.
Anytime you knock the devil out and anything in your life, you become stronger. And the other thing that happens is your conclusion is that there must be a God more powerful than whatever this force is that's up against me. But you're always gonna get resistance in your life. There's always gonna be resistance to get to the next place. You wanna build a leaner body, you're gonna have to face resistance. You're gonna build bigger arms, you're gonna face resistance. You wanna build a better family, you're gonna face resistance. You wanna do anything in your life, you're gonna face resistance because that resistance is what opens you up
to realizing you can't do it on your own, that there's a more powerful force in the world than you. At the same time, it's all the learning, all the insights. You know, most of the learning in life comes from experience. People say, well, do you learn more when you win or when you lose from failures or successes? I've learned a lot from both.
And you know why? They're unique experiences. So I've learned a lot from the winds in my life and the successes, and I've learned a lot from the fairs. I can't tell you that I learned more from one or the other. I mean, some people say they've got a strong opinion about that. I don't, but I can tell you this. I've learned a lot from both because they're experiences. Let me tell you where I've never learned anything. Treading water, doing nothing, existing.
average and ordinary. Remember this in life, weird, rich, normal, poor. And that is not just in money. That's in life. That's an experience. The weird, crazy, unreasonable people reading the world, change the world. Unreasonable people change their own world.
and the world of the people around them, the people that work with them in their business, their families, their friends, unreasonable people, rule and change the world, even their own little one, and weird, rich, normal, poor, where you don't learn anything is treading water, where you don't learn anything is just the average, placid, nothingness of life, the flat line of life, which is where most people live. The challenge is, is that those of you that are living this life where you're pushing through challenges and obstacles,
and having setbacks. There's this temptation to look at our friends who aren't, who live the flat line and going, that looks pretty tempting. They seem to have a lot of peace. They seem to have a lot of joy, don't they? It's very easy when you're a climber, when you're somebody who wants to go do something great with your life, when you're somebody who wants to do something awesome, to look around you at the people that are near you who aren't
and to think maybe they have it figured out because they're not going through pain. They're not going through difficulty. And every time you look at those people, listen to me, in the short term, like you take a snapshot of their life, it does look better. It does. That day, they probably had a better day than you. They didn't have tons of stress. There wasn't some traumatic thing that happened. Nothing drastic went wrong. No catastrophes. No nothing.
Right? And so on a snapshot, like on a Saturday afternoon at a barbecue, you see a flat line average human that's not doing anything in their life. They look pretty good. But if you were to follow them for a month, a year, a decade, they're miserable.
because they're not getting to know themselves. They're not growing. You were born to grow. You were born to contribute. You were born to do something awesome. And so in snapshots, the average ordinary flat line people, their life looks pretty tempting. But in the long haul, the people we admire, the people who have the juice of life, the people of the memories and the joy and the contribution, they do difficult things. They do difficult things.
If you can build the habit of chasing the difficult things in your life, you've built the habit of self-discovery. You've built the habit of self-reflection and self-awareness. And people who are in the journey of self-discovery, self-awareness and self-reflection are the absolute happiest people. They're the ones who change other people's lives. They're the ones whose lives have meaning and purpose.
And you know what? That's who you want to be, to be fully alive in your life. And so I want to challenge you that when you look at your life to not be tempted to go back to the baseline, not go tempted to be back to who you used to be, who you used to be has gone forever.
There's nothing worse than taking another journey around this earth, another hundred and three hundred and sixty-five days, exactly the same way, exactly the same experiences. God made this amazing world that we live in with unique people you still need to meet, souls you need to help, experiences you need to have, emotions you've not felt yet, memories you're destined to have that you've not had yet. And if you don't go get them, they're not going to just come to you.
Now, it's going to be easy to want to go the other way. So what I want to challenge you as we go into the new year is to be willing to fight a little bit. Get your fight on a little bit. Listen, life doesn't give us what we would like to have, what we wish for. It doesn't even always give us what we dream for. It'll give us what we're willing to fight for.
And I believe you and your life and your spirit, your journey, your existence, your story is worth fighting for. I believe the people around you who would benefit from you becoming this next best person. Those people are worth fighting for.
I believe the people in your life who have sacrificed for you. Maybe it's your parents. Maybe it's your grandparents. Maybe it's your ancestors. I don't know. Those people are worth fighting for. They're worth honoring with the man or woman you're becoming. And settling is not an option in our lives. Settling is such a scary thing to do. And if you've been in that mode for a while, your past doesn't equal your future. You can make a shift at any given time in your life and decide, I'm going to become a new person.
See, in your life, the truth is you're the lead character in the story of your life. You're also the author. Now, God's the producer. The whole thing is being produced by God. But at any given time, you can decide to flip the page and write a new chapter in the book of your life and to be a whole new character. You know that you can do that, by the way. If you've been somebody who maybe hasn't been very loving and kind and gracious to people,
You can write a new chapter and say, going forward, I'm going to be unbelievably kind and generous and caring. If you've been somebody whose feelings have been easily hurt in your life, you just get hurt easily. You can write a new chapter and say, I'm tougher. I'm more resilient. If you've been somebody who's quit things when they get difficult in your life, and I have done that, by the way, you can write a new chapter and say, I no longer quit difficult things. I'm a different person. I'm tougher. I'm more resilient. Anytime you can do that,
If you're a person who's let people walk all over you in your life before and take advantage of you, you can write a new chapter and say, not anymore, not this year, not this guy, not this woman, not anymore. It stops now. If you've been in a family that's had dysfunction for generations, you can be the one in your family and decide it stops with me. This generational trauma, this difficulty, this thing that just seeps through our family, it stops with me.
you can decide at any point in your life to be a new character, because you are the lead character in the story of your life. And the biggest thing is this, what holds most people back in their lives is what I call the extras of life.
the extras. See, they allow, you ever see the end of the movie, I know I've said this before for a few of you, but the end of the movie, if you watch it long enough, it goes through the lead character, the lead actor, and you know, that's supporting. But then if you stay long enough, it'll get to like cab driver number three, bouncer number two at the bar. They don't even get a name, right? But they've got this, you know, the real background characters, right? And most people allow the background characters to rule their lives.
Don't worry about what cab driver number two is going to think. Someone they've never met before on the internet is going to think. Someone who's not going to be at their funeral is going to say or do about them. And they allow these background characters to actually dictate their life because they're afraid of the heat, the feedback, the hate, the criticism, the laughter, whatever they might get from these other people that aren't even the lead characters in their life. And they allow the background characters.
the background actors of their life, the people whose names you won't even know at the end, to impact the lead character's life, or the most important characters, the people around you, your family who are the lead characters in your life as well, the most supporting characters in your life, don't allow the background actors to dictate the quality of your life, to dictate the decisions you make in your life, because I can promise you at the end of your life, it's gonna come down to you, God, and the very few leading actors and actresses of your life.
And so this week, at any time, you can grab the pen of your life for real, for real, set new standards, set new habits, speak new things into existence and begin to write a whole new chapter of your life. You don't have to play the same character again this year that you played last year or that you played for the last five years.
It could be a whole new character. It is literally starts with a decision to begin to do it. And by the way, the first day will feel awkward. The second day will feel awkward. But day 94 will feel less awkward. And then there'll be these resistances come your way. They're going to try to get you to go back to be an average nor a back to normal, back to settling, back to the former character because you've been living that character for quite a while. So it's very easy to go back into character again.
Very easy to go back, right? And you've got to resist it when you come to your nose. That is trying to get me to go back to where people walk all over me. Back to where I'm a perfectionist. Back to where I worry about the background actors of my life. I'm not going back there yet. Back to where I take things too personally. Back to where I settle. Back to where, and by the way, for a lot of you, you climb pretty high and now that you climbed a little bit, now you're like, now I can breathe. And by the way, you can breathe anytime you want.
But I'm just telling you, you're either growing or you're dying in your life. And the minute you decide, I'm no longer climbing, I'm no longer gonna grow. I'm no longer gonna help people. Not like I, and I don't want it. I mean, I want, I'd like it. You know, I'd like it, but I don't need it. You're in big trouble. You're in big trouble when you would just like something to happen. Because you know this, if you've achieved, you didn't get where you were because you'd like to have it happen. You fought for it. You battled for it. You needed it. You didn't even just want it.
You needed it. You got to get to where you need to want to meet that next version of you. You need to get to know yourself better. You need to be fully alive. You need to have the full human experience. And so I want you to know in advance new levels, new deals, there's going to be things to fight.
And I'm warning you of that because so many of you are about to have the biggest year of your life. So many of you that have been in here for a long time, it's all starting to come together. All the information, all the events, all the knowledge, all the training, all the experience, all the new associations you've got. This is the year and these devils are coming and so fight them off. Then when they show up, know what they are when they show up, go, that's one of those devils.
That's one of those devils coming my way. And I'm not going to let that person derail my dream, my vision, my life or me getting to know who I'm fully capable of being. You're one decision away from changing your life. What's the decision? Who do you want to be? Where do you want to grow? What difference? Where do you want to go? What difference do you want to make? What memories do you want to have? What do you want it to feel like? And at the end of your life, if that's in two weeks or in 30 years or 50 years or 80 years from now,
Is there something about that that you want? Here's what I think. I think you'd love to know God by the end of that time, and right now, and I think you would love to know you, and I think you'd love to love you.
And I think the only way you can love you is to know you. And the only way you can know you is to experience life and to go through challenges and decline and to know it's probably going to be harder than you want. And to know it makes you special when you go through it. To know that when you get to the other side, you're going to be so darn proud of you because 99 out of 100 people quit 99 out of 100 people slow down 99 out of 100 people.
They get a little bit on the climb and they go, that's enough. I'm good now. Freeze. And they think, wow, now there's no stress in my life. Now there's no worries. Now there's no problems. That's not how it works.
That's not how it works. What you're going to get is the same problems, the same experience, the same type of worries, the same type of people until you change you. And yeah, the problems get bigger, but they get different and it's a new experience and you learn more about yourself. You know what Brie told me in the interview? Could you have a bigger challenge in your life than giving birth to your third child and in birth
You end up losing so much blood, you can't coagulate, you end up waking up and going, I have a cloth to me back and I've lost all four of my limbs and now I'm a mother of three and I'm an excruciating pain. I'm on dialysis. Can you imagine a problem bigger than that? And she says that the number one blessing from all about it, she's got to know herself better. She's working on a relationship with God, but she's got to know herself better and she's tougher and she's more proud of herself than she's ever been. And she's learned about her husband.
that you're such a better man than she even knew, right? And the people around her. And so the only way she got to know this level, the only blessing that comes from something like that is you get closer to God and closer to yourself. Now, do I want you to go through that traumatic experience? Absolutely not. But if she can go through that, you can go through whatever's coming your way.
Can't you? And that's the blessing of it. It's not comfortable. It's not easy. It's harder than you think. It's going to be take longer than you think. And on the other side of it, you're going to go, I know me, I love me, and I'm proud of me. That's what I want for you in your life. And so, yeah, there's going to be new levels, new doubles. And yes, the world is listening to what you're saying.
And you know what? You're going to fully experience your life. The ups, the downs, the ebbs, the flows, the highs, the lows, the good and the bad. And that's the full experience of life. It's so awesome when you're living life all out. By the way, the happiest you've ever been in your life, oftentimes, is the most challenging. When you're studying to get your degree in college and you had two jobs or whatever it is, or you mom's most difficult thing you've had to do. Many of you in your life is carry that baby all the way to delivery yet to get the biggest blessing in your life after that pain.
Right? Those of you that are fitting in the gym, all the suffering and the difficulty you go through in the gym to get that feeling, those endorphins, that strength, that confidence that comes from doing something most people aren't going to do in their life. There's something cool in life about doing stuff most people aren't willing to do. And the reward for that is you're going to get things they aren't going to get. My challenge to you today.
is to go for it. And I know it's the beginning of a new year from any of you listening to this. You want the same year again? You don't. Even if it was a good one, you want a different good one. And the way it becomes a different good one is you're a different good one. God, everybody. God bless you. Max out. Please share today's episode. This is the end of my show.
