My first life practices is to get best practices first. Somebody figured out what you think is brand new and you've been banging your head against for the last two years. And they already figured it out. Details don't derail me. In life, you fire, you go, you launch.
and then you become more ready over time. High performers recalibrate, they reset, turn back, they lock back in, and they move. Hey all, it's Brendan, and I want to make sure that you go check out growthday.com. It's an all-in-one personal development platform where you can do everything you would like to do for personal development in one place.
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Your personal development is worth a dollar a day. Your access to these people is worth a dollar a day. But you can start free right now when you go to growthday.com. My first life practice is to get best practices first. My first life practices is to get best practices first.
I never run into doing something without researching it first. I learn because, see, somebody can model the way for you. Somebody already teaches the systems, the strategies, the tactics. Somebody figured out what you think is brand new and you've been banging your head against for the last two years and they already figured it out.
You're sitting there wondering, how do I make an extra $100,000 a year or $100,000 a year? That's the interest full of education on that. What happens for most people is they just kind of wonder and then they wonder, but they never learn. I'm always like, okay, what is the best practice? I'll give an example. I had a coach in Olympic sprinter.
And I don't sprint. I sprint out on stage, but I mean, I don't sprint at those levels. I mean, that's crazy how fast they are. It's impossible to understand when you watch the Olympics, how fast these humans are moving. It doesn't even make any sense for you. It's like when you're there and you actually watch it or you try to run next them, it's this joke. They're so fast.
It's so fast how fast they are in every single Olympic sport. You can't even fathom how fast they are. It's, it's, it seems super human. Well, what am I going to say to this person? I get this big contract. Got to go down. It's on the world stage. I have to perform. I have to get this person to win gold, like pressure, pressure, pressure. They hired me to be the high performance coach, the mindset coach, right? Mental conditioning coach. Well, guess what I go down? I don't know anything about it.
But before I ever get there, I called seven other world champions, gold medalists, silver medalists, bronze medalists, and I interviewed them for an hour to understand what were their best practices in their mindset.
in how they move, and how they think, and what their coaches told them, and what their breakthroughs were. So when I showed up, while I can't run like that, I knew how to think like that. See, you model what's working, but not, I hate when people say it's the same model. I'm like, it's not modeling a person. It's not even modeling a strategy. It's modeling the best practices. You all follow?
It's why people follow me in the, you know, what we call the knowledge industry. It's like, oh, he's doing it at this level for this many years. When you're up there, you learn distinctions that are a little higher, a little more advanced. If you're trying to get healthy, don't just grab any YouTuber's idea about diets. Find somebody who teaches best practice as a dietician, who's world class, who works with the best in the world.
Second life practice. Details don't derail. Details don't derail me. In life, you fire, you go, you launch, then you adapt, and then you become more ready over time, right? This is the stuff of initiative.
Some, if you're a principal or your practice of life, I should say, if your practice of life is ready, aim, fire, some people, they won't ready themselves for five years. They're talking about writing a book and they've not written a chapter.
They'll spend five years readying themselves, learning, trying, certifying, asking, journeying, doing everything, meditating, ayahuascaing. They're like, they're waiting. I'm like, you've thrown up in a jungle, but you still haven't told your kid. You're mad at him, just tell him. What is all this getting ready? Do the thing, move.
Life is not about knowing all the answers. Even my favorite story ever, Jeff Bezos talking about how he ran Amazon, he goes, pretty much any major decision we ever make, we might have 60, maybe 70% of the information that we need to make the decision. Some of you are waiting for perfect to come into your life, perfect knowledge, perfect readiness, it's like, oh no, personal growth,
is adaptability. Evolution is that adaptive, flexible nature of who we are is trying and testing and trying to learn best practices first. Don't go into that jungle because you'll be eaten. Oh, that's a good practice. Okay. But it doesn't mean don't go into other jungles. So we have to learn like what's best practice, but we have to move. For many of you, your biggest breakthrough won't come from any more mindset work.
It will be you launch, you do the thing, you fire. Everyone say, you fire. You got to do the thing now. And then learn and adjust, go, adapt, learn. If it's part of your dream, move, fire, get in motion. Number three, surrounded,
By strivers, I'm around people who have ambition to live an extraordinary life. They're striving for an extraordinary life. They're not just an achiever who got something. I know lots of achievers who gave up and they're not trying anymore. They're actively pursuing something, something beautiful, something meaningful, something important. They're striving and they honor that struggle. Like when you look at my peer group, they're all trying hard things.
None of them are complaining about it. It doesn't mean they don't have bad days. It doesn't mean they're not frustrated. It doesn't mean they wish they had greater progress or support. But they're moving. The people around me, I'm like, you did what? That's crazy. You know, we live in a world where people are dreaming of going to other stars and they can manifest it. We think about how much people have achieved. And sometimes we get in our own little world and we're controlled by the little phone.
And we forget that the people that we connect with will change our lives. I was lucky. I read Brian Tracy when I was a 19 year old kid and he just said, Hey, your life is based on the books you read, the people you meet and what you choose to do of service. One of the most important life practice I have is creating psychological and mental triggers.
See, most people, they've only heard about triggers when it's negative, a trauma trigger, or something, someone says, that triggers you into being upset or uncomfortable. But no, that same psychology can be used to condition you for greatness. If you read a high-performance habits, you know about now my famous doorway trigger. Every doorway I walk through, I train myself mentally, I walk through the door, and I say to myself,
Here enters a happy man, ready to serve. Every door, I'm a happy man. I'm ready to serve. I'm a happy man. I'm ready to serve. I'm a happy man. You know how many times I've said that? I can tell you how many times. Every time I walk through a door, even the bath, oh well maybe not always the bath. I'm just saying.
You have to teach yourself. You have to trigger yourself. Maybe every time you get in your car, you say something to yourself. Maybe every time you sit down to write, you play that one song. Maybe you and your loved one, you form a routine or rhythm that you do every time and it just brings the best out of you both. See, you can set that mental conditioning. You can set those triggers way more important than how I manage Google Calendar.
is the triggers I've set up throughout the day to feel great. Because if I can feel great throughout the day, I'm more likely to do the tasks. I want you to teach yourself to feel great. So they do more tasks. The tasks that matter to you, the meaningful pursuits. You got some big dreams that you put off to week after week after week, because you don't want to feel like it. Well, when do I want some people? When do you think you're going to feel like it?
See, if I feel like it, that's nice. But if it's part of the purpose of the dream and the day's activities, it's like, okay, move into that, Brendan. Move into and do the things to put yourself in a better mood or a better place to get there. It's everything. It's everything.
Hey, are you on my text list? Did you know if you're in the West, you can text me at 1-503-212-6125. I actually have that text number on my Instagram account bio as well if you want to go check it out. It's just 503-212-6125. Literally just text me and say, hey, Brendan.
Or text me and say anything you want to say. If you want me to see it, just text me there. It's 503-212-6125. And it's my exclusive text list. And if you're not on it, it's where I share some of my most popular episodes. Or if I drop a new YouTube, I send it your way. Or if I have some kind of free thing going on the internet, I give that exclusive link out to that group.
So just go there and text me 503-212-6125. It's kind of cool. It's back and forth. This is my community text number. So tons of my community share insights about what they're learning from me or just want to chat back and forth. And I'm in there. My team's in there. We really just try to engage you on a different platform. It's super fun. And again, anytime I have something special going out, this is the first group to know about it. So just go text me at 503-212-6125.
Okay, now we've got life practices and we're gonna talk about priorities. How do I manage my priorities? I'm like, you can manage priorities all day long, but it's just shuffling paper if you don't have philosophy and principles. I think of my dad's philosophy and principles. He was so happy to be alive. He had done three tours in Vietnam. So he had a very different philosophy about life.
He was very concerned about life. It was important to him that we took care of ourselves and we were safe. His principles of life were to protect us and to care for us and build a good family. But he was also always saying things like be yourself, be honest, do your best, take care of your family, treat people with respect, be a good citizen, follow your dreams.
So those are principles too, right? Those life statements, those are principles that you guide yourself by. Being yourself is a principle of life. So let's talk about some of the priorities when you have those things. For me, one of my life priorities is my agenda first. This sounds counterintuitive to everyone who goes, but Brendan, you're the servant leadership guide.
You're the guy who helps people and says be a servant, volunteer, be responsive, be professional. I'm like, oh yeah, all that. But still it's my life agenda. I understand I've been given an agenda in life. I'll never know all of it. But my job is to be in service to him and into whatever it is that I'm supposed to because all good things work together for those who love him.
And so I know I'm working in the agenda. I don't always know what it is, but I know I'm working one. And I know that other people can tear me from my agenda. No one tears me from my agenda. It doesn't mean we don't have hardship or struggle or I don't have to reply to emergencies all the time. But if you look at the course, listen, any, you can lose a day. But if you lose a month and you lose a quarter and you lose a year, that's called negligence.
And you'll follow? That's neglect. Now, I'm okay when you have a hard year and people always just, you're too hard on people. I'm like, good. I want to be that force, not because I want to be hard on people, but because I've seen you unlock your potential. When you work with people for 20 years, you've seen astounding results that no one would bet on. Some of you, no one's betting on you. So bet on yourself.
Some of you, everyone's just pushing stuff at you. The kids are pushing stuff at you. Your spouse is pushing stuff at it. The boss is, everyone's pushing. And you feel like you're always being pushed. That's fine. We're all being pushed. There's always pressure. The push and the pressure will never go away as long as you're part of society. However, you've got to look at the arc of your life. And you got to say, have I been living on my terms?
You know, the most popular phrase in all of personal development for literally hundreds of years often comes back to very marketable phrase, take control of your life. What they're saying is, A, you're the captain of the ship, even if the stormy seas are hitting you, yeah, you might have a stormy night, you might have a stormy season, but you still chose to get across the Atlantic, go.
You have to realize your agenda has to come first. Maybe not today. Maybe your kid threw up all over the carpet. They're staying home. You were looking forward to them going to school, but now they're staying at home. Now, listen, you lose days. That's life. The kid's the priority. Getting that staying out of your restoration hardware carpet, that's important. That stuff stains, man.
You got to cover with plants and your neighbors were like, why is that weird? You're like, well, you know, kid, I don't know. You can't, you know, this stuff half stuff happens. But if we look at that 18 year arc, you were the parent you wanted to be or not. If you look at the last decade of your business or your career, that was guided by intention and consciousness or was just kind of bounced around going through the motions of flow. Now, I'm somebody who also very much deeply believes in serendipity.
I believe gates and doorways are open all the time that I didn't anticipate. It wasn't on my priorities for the day, but you know what? It kind of matched the agenda I was after. You know, the agenda for me is my philosophy and my principles and my practices and I go, you know what? This opportunity, you know, it wasn't on the agenda, but it kind of matches those
You see, they've studied the top performers in the world and dozens of different industries. And one of the highest psychological things that they had in their journey is something that we usually just call in our industry match quality. They matched.
their purpose, they matched their skills, their talent, their desires to the right opportunities. And if they tried something and it didn't feel like it matched who they were, the sport they loved, the job that was right, it doesn't mean they didn't labor in it or spend a year or two or three or five, but they were more often quick to leave the thing to find the thing that did match them. Does that make sense?
Now, that makes sense in almost every area of life. Outside of those commitments that we said, hey, this is what I will do. This is part of my agenda, right? Today, we leave too much often in this match quality game. It's why, you know, we have such a casual, I think, experience of our relationships today. It's why so many people leave a relationship a little too quick. They're looking for match quality off the bat.
Or maybe they lose a little chemistry and they're like, oh, this one might be the match. And maybe it was match and philosophy and principles. But maybe they got to work on the passion part. That's common. But for most elite performers around the world, match quality. They found the thing that was them.
And it was like, oh, this feels like it's on my path, on my agenda. They left the beaten path for what is my path? Match quality. This matches my way of feeling, experiencing, living what I desire of my life, right? That's living your agenda first. Again,
Notice it doesn't say my day first, my preference first. It doesn't say my hour first. I'm a servant leader. There's lots of things that mess up my morning or my day or something in my life. And I never have a motive. I go, okay, that's hard. I'm gonna bring that. I'm gonna honor that. And I'm gonna engage this thing. Okay, I'll be here with this. I didn't want it, but it's here. But trust me,
Making the recalibration back to the day's priorities, my agenda is important. That's the stuff of high performance. High performers recalibrate. They reset more often than most people. They reset to what is right or to what is their agenda or what their goal is more often. They get thrown off path as much. They have as many distractions, but they turn back, they lock back in and they move.
For those who want to know how priorities happen, it's so simple in my life. On Sundays, I do my personal development and my planning. And then I set these goals for Friday. I call them Friday finishers. By the end of day Friday, these things will have happened this week. And I love that because it says, hey, during the week, something might get derailed, but by the end of day Friday, I can recalibrate and get that done. Finishing builds confidence. Doing the thing that you said you're gonna do, that,
is how you prioritize the day, not your feelings. You prioritize the day on your agenda and commitments. What did you say you're going to finish? Finish it. Be a completer. You know it's so easy to win in this world because most people don't complete anything. Who's noticed that most people suck at follow through?
Oh, it's so easy to win. Just follow through. Just reply. Just send the invoice. Will you please send the invoice? I don't have any money. Did you send the invoice? No. Start there. Get all your invoices out. Get all your bills out by end of day Friday. Get your house back in order with your finances by finishing the week strong. Can you do that, ladies and gentlemen? Let's go.
