Stop Building Your Life on Resentment

Some of you haven't had your breakthrough yet because you're deciding in circumstance. Never limit your future vision because of your past or your current circumstances. What is the ideal we are marching towards? What have you been aligning to? Achievement is not the problem. Alignment is. Talk to successful people. They swung. Are you swinging? Some of you haven't had your breakthrough yet because you're deciding in circumstance, not aiming upward. That forward motion that would feel like passion or even some level of like positive compulsion or obsession or that, that drive, that calling, that sense, it's a way. Because you're just, you're in the muck of the now. You, you're in circumstance or worse, you're in the past because of your past or your current circumstances. They are not tied together. There's no eternal cord there that you are aware of as a human. Maybe you're making decisions stuck in your circumstances. Maybe there's a reason that your future is not like pulling you out of bed without seven cups of coffee. Maybe there's a reason you're not working out. Maybe the reason you are still in conflict with your spouse or your partner after all these years. You still fight like a 20 or 30 year old even though you're more mature. Why your vision for your future should be unmoored from today. And that is very hard for people to accept because they'll say, brendan, you're selling hope. And I always tell this group, I'm like, I hope so. I mean, we need more people propagating hope. We need more people saying, you can do this. We need more people saying, I believe in you. We need more people saying, your potential is more than where you showed up last yesterday. Your potential is so unbounded. It's just that our beliefs get in the way and then we start doing dumb stuff. Here's why you all been lied to. You've all been taught and given these little micro hopes, right? Hey, let me sell you. You know, the easiest thing to sell in the world is let me give you an atomic habit. Nothing against the book. Great book, great guy, amazing teacher, no judgment there except talk to anybody of significant success in their life. They will not say it was just the 1% things. They will not say it was just consistency. They will always tell you if you actually talk with them. And this is the difference between a writer and a coach. Someone who works on human behavior change versus someone who has ideas. And here's the difference. Talk to anyone of significant success. And when I say success, I mean it very specifically. That means you achieve Long term external measures of success. So we can measure it and you maintain positive well being. That's mental and physical health and positive relationships. So that's actually a precise measurement called high performance. And here's what we know. And this will stun you. Talk to anyone and you again, gauge me on this. Because a lot of you, you are very consistent. You are doing the small things. You are building those small habits that really matter. And by the way, that's the baseline. I am not debating that that is necessary. But talk to successful people, high performers, and they will always tell you about a few bold moves. Not just, I was so steady, I did all the right habits. I overcame all my limiting beliefs and did all. No, they were like, man, I went, let me tell you about this crazy ass thing I did. Forgive my language. That's what they will tell you. They're like, I want to tell you about this crazy thing I did. They bet, they risked, they took a bold move. Other people thought they were crazy and ridiculous. There was nothing small or insecure about it. It was like they went for it. I mean, they, they swung. Are you swinging? You know how to swing every day? We need good baseline habits, but we gotta get you swinging once in a while sometimes. Who took a big swing in your life and you know that was critical to your success, right? You wouldn't say it was a small thing, but if I asked you, you'd be so humble. You would describe the small things. Oh, you know, I just believe. Oh, you know, I just, I really like working with people and you know, I just stayed steady and I'm the guy who'll go, man, I work with too many guys and gals like you, you can't pull a wood. Tell me about when you took the swing. Some of you have been playing a game that's way too small for you and you haven't taken that swing to the future. And I'm not here the person to go risk and bet. I'm like, buy your bitcoin. I have no problem with that. What I'm trying to suggest is maybe, maybe you got more in the tank, maybe got a few swings left and the big swings, for many people, it sounds so like dramatic when I describe it that way. For some of you, the biggest swing you're going to have today is truth. Sometimes that's the big swing facing it. That's the swing. Because most people are playing an avoidant game, not an assertive game. You're either avoidant or you're assertive. You're either Avoidant, or you're in an assertive lean, you assert yourself into life. Psychologists might use the word high agency, right? Other behavioral psychologists might call it autonomy. Some of you might call it even courage for the philosophy dorks in the room. That's what we're talking about here. That's what we're talking about. It's a different ethic of living. But the challenge is if your future or your now is not what it is. I promise there's been some avoidant behavior or avoidant decisions that felt good and it completely robbed you of real progress or the real swings. And so today, test me out on that. Because sometimes that's the big swing is facing the truth. Like I'm in avoiding some things. And not because you're bad or repressed, but it's because instead you lost an ideal. Because how we were raised or what our culture is like right now, it's not a movement towards higher ideals. It's not a forward or upward aim. It's coping mechanism. Always operating from what more of us, like behavioral coaches would say they're kind of operating from that place where there's an unrealistic pessimism, right? They just like, it's, it's like a, it's a pessimism that just, it just sticks. It's kind of always there. And it's like if we can't break that a little bit, there's no forward motion. But a lot of people have really ridiculous levels of pessimism. But I don't want you to drown in pools pessimism in your life. And a lot of people did. They've literally drowned in pools of pessimism. They just, they stop, they're languishing and they're not moving forward. Human nature is so profoundly creative and intelligent and able to see beyond biology, need species level comforts and build and do and create crazy things, right? None of you are struggling to do something basic. If you are, if you're in that place of depression, then please get therapy and assistance. But basic tasks, like achieving tasks is not a problem for most people. Achievement is not the problem for most people. For them to go to the next level, they already can learn, they already can do things. They're already quick. Achievement is not the problem. Alignment is.

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The central piece of my work. People fall out of alignment with things that are important. And because they're often pulled off path by things that seem more important now, they find themselves languishing, hopeless, frustrated, poor, broke, lonely. You fill in in the blank. So achievement isn't the problem. And I mean this not just at a tactical guy, because high performance, they often bucket me in with all the productivity guys, which I love by the way, because I'm a very productive guy. And I think it's more of a spiritual thing too. I think most of our challenges as humans is we fall out of alignment with spirit, right? New Agey, don't worry. Presence, centeredness, whatever you want to call it, I'm game. But centeredness and presence is an alignment to something like athletes. The mobility training you are doing is specifically for greater alignment in the performance of your sport. If you're out of alignment, and I mean that in both proportion, strength, mobility, flexibility, you're not going to perform as well on the field of whatever sport that is, right? So if you've ever worked with a sports coach or a psychology coach or performance coach like me, it's like we gotta get you in alignment mentally, physically, spiritually, intellectually, but also with an ideal that is beyond you. Because the easiest thing to do in the world is just align with the ideals of comfort, align with the ideals of the other people around us. What have you been aligning to? Because that's why you are where you are. It doesn't mean things didn't pull you off, screw you up, rip you away from progress. It just means ultimately, over time, you have the responsibility for what you align to. It doesn't mean bad people don't enter your life and throw you off path. It doesn't mean crappy stuff doesn't happen. But even when it does, even if you go there, ultimately the work is finding an alignment to what is right for you, what is healthy for you, and moving forward again. It always comes back to that. Some of you, you're like at that alignment stage where it's like crossroads you know what I mean? Like, you've been on one path for a long time, and you did good there, but now you're at a different age, and you're like, maybe that. That's not all there is. And that idea that maybe there's more is not offensive to your reality. It's not offensive to anything you've built. I work with a lot of people, and they're like, oh, I shouldn't have done this, or I have this regret. So I'm like, hey, at that time, that's what you were manifesting, right? You all manifest different things. You all build different things. Like, you know, when you're in your teenage and 20s and 30s, or when you have kids, or you build that first business or you take on that strikeout on that first path, you. You're aligned to different things. There's no. There's not gonna be any regret. Regret means you are making decisions in circumstance. If you are operating from regret, that's what you keep doing. Regret is corrosive. I'm like, whatever the past gave you, it was there. Whatever the past gave you, it's also back there. So I think it's important to realize, like, yeah, yeah. Sometimes things get thrown in the scene I didn't want, but over a period of time, you are directing the character. You see yourself, and you're saying, how should my self resp. Respond in that scene? How should myself respond in that scene? You're directing that. That observer, director part of your intelligence, what we would call consciousness can see and interpret your behavior separate than impulse. That's what makes us different than other animals. Consciousness and higher being. Consciousness for being and becoming beyond our biological needs. Okay, now that's a little dork territory. Let's just ask a very simple question. Are you aligning towards a certain kind of character and future? That's the question of the day. Are you aligning? If, like, I came into your house and we sat down and we talked about your last six months, could you describe to me what you have been aiming for? That's a simple way to say it right now. Most people. And I was in this category for a really long time. Most people are like, what are you talking about? I'm just. Dude, I'm just trying to survive. That's a tiny percent of the process. The bigger processes go, what is the ideal we are marching towards? What is the thing we are aiming to build within ourselves for. For our family, for our society? And that's a very simple question. I know sometimes I get lost in My little psychology mind here. But I'm trying to say, if I was at your house and I said, hey, over the last six months, what have you been aiming up for? Is it, well, I'm just going to work and do my job. You know, I'm just trying to feed the kids. Both of those, by the way, are vital. They're important. I will never take away from anyone's reality. That stuff is needed. Right. That's, though, only part of the story. And if you're only operating the part of the story that is fixing or doing the things you're supposed to do. But there is no, like, upward force that you are giving yourself or reacting to or aiming towards. That's why you're unfulfilled, even though you're frigging awesome. You know why you're not marching towards the future as hard as you could? Because you haven't even given yourself credit for the past chapters. If you knew the powers that you've already demonstrated experience or were blessed with or granted, if you knew the doors that opened up before you that you didn't even have to open, I'm here to tell you, if you knew. If you could just. If it's like, gosh, I wish it was like, as Steve Jobs said, you never know until you look backwards. You can connect the dots. I've been blessed to work with a lot of people at the end of their lives. And at the end of their lives, they look back, they start seeing all those blessings. They're like, I didn't even. I didn't even realize that happened. And then that had to happen. And that terrible thing happened. But then it led to this thing, and that awful thing happened. And then this person emerged. And then I felt down in the dumps. But then I felt a little better. And then I helped someone who was also down in the dump. I never even realized that ripple effect was happening. The whole time the doors have been opening for you. And if you can't vibe on that, you think the doors are closed on you. I tell people, why do you think the doors are closed on you? My story was, oh, well, doors are closed on me because where we grew up, we didn't have a lot of wealth. Doors are closed on me. Our schools weren't that great. Doors are closed on me. We didn't have much wealth. Doors are closed on me. You know, we grew up in a really difficult town. Doors are closed on me because of physical abuse. Doors are closed on me because we got beat up and bullied. Doors, Doors are closed on me because we moved around a lot. Doors are closed on me because I didn't learn as fast as I wanted to learn. Doors are closed on me because when I started in the industry, I was too young. Everyone was older. Doors are closed on me because technology's hard. Doors are closed on me because AI. Oh, God, AI. Part of maturity is going, what else am I going to blame before I get my stuff together and start building the future me and my family deserve? What else are you going to blame? What other doors are closed? Because here's the thing. I'm not denying the doors are closed. I'm just saying it doesn't really matter, because every generation before you had doors closed because every person of your color, your race, your background, your nationality, somebody broke through. It does not mean it was easy. It does not mean anything is fair. Again, I don't take away from the reality life is super hard, whatever your background or spirituality is. Let's not pretend that there's not difficulty or misery today that's there. But when you have that in your life, you have to put a little comma on and go, and now what? And now what is the next right action of integrity for me to move forward? That's always going to be the question.