1. Faith in the forward position

Sometimes you fall out of progress mode in life because you forgot to have faith in the forward position You forgot to believe that things will turn out well for you You got disconnected from an optimistic and exciting a compelling and fulfilling Future you forgot things are being lined up for you in the future Things are gonna go well for you in the future and what we're gonna do in this first season together of This progress mode podcast is switch your brain back into progress mode We're gonna find a new faith a new energy a new courage a New way of thinking about your career your life your relationships your health that I really believe will make a dramatic shift In your mind about who you are and what you can become in this world because if you woke up more days and you were able to switch your brain into progress mode You know life would feel different you know it would Everybody it's Brenner Shard host of progress mode and welcome to season number one This is a very different Podcasts and you probably listen to your entire life or watched because we're gonna talk about progress in your life in ways You may have never even thought about before of course. There's always progress We all want in our life. We want to progress towards our goals are you know achievements that things we want to have in our life Fitness health relationships wealth career fulfillment, but there's also progress inside Right that ability to some of the best of who we are to feel activated vibrant present in our lives and sometimes We don't have those matching up you move forward towards something, but you don't like who you're becoming or vice versa You really enjoy who you're becoming, but you're not achieving the things that you really wanted in your life There is some new wants to progress. You're gonna learn in this season and of course I'm gonna share with you some behind-the-scenes stories of my own career and the progress I've made in different ways that I would say are untraditional or non-traditional and I'm not sure That you know a lot of my path even for those long-time listeners or people have been with me long before the six best-selling books and Before the other successes in you know selling over two hundred million dollars of my online courses and my coaching and our seminar events before all of that I was in crisis mode not progress mode. I Was struggling to figure out what do I want to do with my life? I was struggling to feel emotionally connected to other people. I had a lot of Time where I would just sit and think about how crappy my life was and I know we've all been there before maybe you've been in that place where you feel like right now There's just not enough progress in your life like you're working hard and You're doing good things, but you're busy and your busy work is not your life's work and maybe there's sometimes right now You feel a lot of crisis because the money is short and the fights are long You feel like sometimes the truth is people don't get you and the ones who even pay attention They're rude. They're mean. They're judgmental. They're not empowering and So sometimes you feel like you're in shutdown mode and what we're gonna do in this first season together of This progress mode podcast is switch your brain back into progress mode We're gonna find a new faith a new energy a new courage a New way of thinking about your career your life your relationships your health that I really believe will make a dramatic shift In your mind about who you are and what you can become in this world because if you woke up more days and you were able to switch your brain into progress mode You know life would feel different You know it would because progress can feel like incredible velocity towards where you want to go progress is momentum towards a goal and A sense of satisfaction with the speed and the choices you're making towards that goal Like you're moving and we got to get you moving again in life I know there's a lot of podcasts to talk about psychology or bio hacks or something But I think this one's gonna be a little bit more about storytelling about some difficult decisions you might have coming up I Think you're gonna hear some stories here about some tough choices. I had to make some massive failures and Some unicorn companies and I've been blessed along the way to be teaching over these last 20 years of my life full Time I mean most of my progress in life has been pretty public and from you know Whether I'm on a cover or magazine or somebody's just crapping on me on the internet, you know, it's like It's been a pretty public build and a public experience in my life But I'm gonna share some things with you. You've never heard or seen about my own journey And I hope that storytelling will help you tell a different story about your own life in this next chapter Your old chapters are not gonna dictate what progress is next Where you came from who you are what your parents were like that is not defining the next chapters of your life Not if you're in progress mode progress mode has an aspirational path to it What I mean by that is when you switch to progress mode of your life You realize you are inventing a future for yourself You get that you're inventing a future for yourself and when you're in progress mode you have faith In that future at levels that most people never get to experience They're always stuck in doubt and fear and hurt and what are people gonna say about me when you're in progress mode There's courage There's faith. There's momentum. There's velocity. There's real energy Behind where you are going. There's real energy within you and I want you to have that blessing of feeling that more often Too many days Fading away into like apathy or boredom or frustration or anger or just blah. That's not your destiny You know, I really believe people make change in their life for a lot of different reasons and a lot of people only change because of demand Somebody's demanding something of them. So they just have to figure it out that they survive That's probably pretty much the the genesis of most of my life was being in crisis mode not really progress mode Crisis mode your handling things you're doing what's required Sometimes what you have to do you're meeting up somebody else's expectations Sometimes you're following a path that they've defined for you Sometimes you're doing what they say is sane or right, but you know in your heart. It's actually wrong for you You know, maybe you have some artistic impulses, but they tell you don't do that. It doesn't make a difference It's not important doesn't get you paid or Maybe you have a real truth that you wanted to share with other people But you keep holding it back because you know they're gonna judge you and they're gonna shut you down and You don't want that happening because you show yourself down enough and So we're gonna come up. We're gonna like really Overcome some of that together and I want to thank you for listening to this I think a lot of people you know need to switch into progress mode So if you could help me share the message of this story and the message of this podcast and this series and the season one I think we can do something really important together We're gonna finish this season in a different place and we began now and that's important every single month of your life There's a before picture and an after picture and we're gonna get better about getting after it and getting that after result To be in the direction and speed that we want our lives to move in. I'm excited about it It's been something I've thought about my entire life You know for those who know why I got into this career as a writer and a coach. It's what I do right I write books and I coach people online through my courses or at my events, but I think of myself as a coach and I do that because when I started Really getting the personal development in my life and in psychology in my life It did not start from a passionate drive to understand the topic. It started because I was suicidal I had broken up with the first woman I ever loved to be accurate she broke up with me and I was left at the age of about 19 to realize that your heart can be completely shattered and You don't know how to pick yourself up from it sometimes you don't have the emotional tools and You get hurt and your whole identity was tied up into one thing a relationship an old career something that has happened in your life and You can't like lift yourself out of that moment or at that identity because you didn't know how to get back into progress mode after hurt and That's how my journey began I got hurt and I didn't know how to get my life back I got hurt. I didn't know how to love again. I Got hurt. I know how to fun anymore. I got hurt. I didn't have any motivation anymore and When that element of our spirit that is called progress is turned off I mean like off That is when real sadness Real depression comes into our lives and that's what happened to me relationship ended my sense of self-ended And I began suicidal ideation and planning. And then as some of you know, I was in an accident, a car accident that kind of hit me hard, nothing the head to realize, I don't wanna die. I just don't wanna live. And some of us at different parts of our life, we have to go, I don't really know how to live life anymore. Because maybe you were living life at that moment just to be the parent and the kids leave the house. And you're like, I don't know what to do with myself. Or you move to a new city and you don't know even how to, like network and talk with other people. Or you like change jobs and you find like this weird new personality coming out at work and you're like, who am I right now? We don't really get an owner's manual of how to step into new situations in our life and turn back on progress in our life when we need to change. Because you and I both know, not all change is progress. Not all activity is progress. Progress is momentum toward goals that we want and that sense of satisfaction with the speed that we are traveling in and the character of who we are becoming. And when we understand that, think shift. You have a direction to go, but you have someone to become. And we're gonna talk a lot about that here in season one. I think about the first big moments of progress in my life like big shifts and like things that made a difference in my career. I'm holding up this book. It says the student leadership guide. And it actually looks like a pamphlet. Looks like a little pamphlet. Another fancy, 'cause I designed it in whatever pre-power point was on my computer out of your memory. This is the year 2000, like literary. My first book wrote in the year 2000. And it was basically my master's dissertation. My master's thesis on the topic of leadership. And how do you enroll people when you're not in a position of power? How do you enroll people into doing something important with you? And I'll share the story about this because this book ended up leading to six bestselling books in over 60 languages around the world. And but look at it. It's like this thin little stupid little pamphlet looking thing that honestly some of my professors did not like that I put it in this format that I wanted to be a writer. And I hadn't gone through the process of doing what you're supposed to do to become a writer. And I actually got judged by it. I'd like to tell you the story about it. And some of the nontraditional choices I made because it might open up some artistry right now in your life too. And for those who don't know the story, I think it's kind of a different angle on how to find progress in your life. So this book, The Student Leadership Guide, I'll show you the before and after. This is a book most people don't even know I wrote because I don't advertise it outside of what happened to be students, college students, right? So this is what I first made. You can hear it. It's just like a little pamphlet. And then this is like the fourth proper edition that's like a real book, you know, real paperback version. And I'll tell you the story of this. After I had that car accident, I knew I didn't know how to live my life. I like I knew it. I knew I actually didn't know how to handle emotions. I realized that I'd gotten a second chance at life when I call life school and ticket, which I'll tell you about in this season, in a story you've never heard before. And I realized the second chance I got, I needed to earn it. That life is a real blessing. And yet I didn't know how to be happy. You ever have a second chance to change, but you didn't know how to be different the second go around. Maybe like you broke up with somebody, like I'm in somebody the other day, had been married three times, this person's married three times. And they were making a joke in the second marriage. They carried the same self into that second marriage and that second marriage ended for the exact same reason, the first one did. It's like they got a second chance at marriage, but the same person showed up. That's called pain. And for me, I got a second chance at life, but there was still Brendan, the impatient, angry, bad communicator who didn't know how to handle his emotions, that led to that first breakup. When I've told this story around the world, somebody knows the story and I was not all of you, but the first one I was in love with, when we broke up, I deserved that too. Sometimes we were like, oh, that's so terrible. She broke up with me and I'm like, oh, yeah, I was there. I was part of the problem. I mean, that was truth. I didn't know how to be in a loving relationship. I wasn't nice all the time. I wasn't perfect all the time. I was a teenager in love. I was a moron, you know? And so when that relationship fell apart and I got a second chance at life surviving a car accident shortly after, guess what? I was still a moron. And the only thing I had going for me most of my life is I know I'm a dork. I knew I was a moron. And guess what? If you know that about yourself, if you know you're not equipped, then self-study becomes everything, doesn't it? So I'm in college, I have a car accident. I realize I don't know how to live life. I don't know how to be happy. So I do what you could do back then. This is like pre-internet, more or less. So I go to the bookstores and I buy a ton of books on psychology, a ton of books on neuroscience, a ton of books on spirituality, self-help, personal development, biographies of the world's great people. I'm like studying wildly. To this day, since I was 19 years old, I read a book a week every single week. So I'm always trying to understand something about myself, how to develop myself. It's why I've started all my brands of businesses around the topic of personal development. So what a lot of people don't know is, well, when college, I started applying this stuff. I started turning my mind towards becoming better. And as I turn my mind and my research towards understanding how do people become better? I realized each day, it could be a day that I could make some progress. Each day, I could study something, learn something, try something, test something. I was testing out how to talk with people, how to network with people, how to be comfortable with people, how to lead people. I was testing it all out. And yet, I was really struggling because, you ever have hope in your life and you do want to take progress, but you're broke. You have no money? I was one of those kids who went to college and had to work three jobs all throughout college and grad school. Like, I always had three jobs. I was, I was, they're an RA or working at the art, local art museums or like Moan Lons or teaching when I was in grad school. And, you know, it felt like I had three full time jobs. I mean, I don't even remember sleeping maybe five hours in college. I mean, it was just work because I had to pay for college myself. And for those who know that feeling, when you have no money, but you have tons of inspiration to change, you have tons of like hope for the future, but you are actually limited by the work hours you have and what you have in your bank account. That's when it's hard to keep that positive persistence in progress. Everyone can talk about progress. But when you're broke and you're emotionally hurt and things aren't going your way, turning progress mode on, that becomes very hard. But that's what we're gonna do in the season together. You're gonna learn how to do that psychologically. You're gonna learn to do that from a place of coaching and you're gonna learn that to do that from a place of true, like self-fulfillment so that you can fulfill your greatest self. You can fulfill your greatest destiny. Not because everything was easy, because you got in progress mode way more often. Way more often. So I was in college and I'm researching all this stuff and I'm more on. So I'm reading more and more books. The more you realize you're more on the more you end up wanting to read. It's a good thing. So I kept reading and reading and reading to gain some competence in some areas of my life. How to be happy. How to be emotionally resilient. How to talk to people. So they liked you. How to win friends and influence people. I know you read some of these books. And so I was going through all this. I was broke working three jobs. Now I'm in grad school. And I fall in love with the topic of leadership. Because I felt like if you can learn how to influence with other people, you can weigh faster progress in life. One of your ultimate teachings to yourself is to be comfortable with other people, but also to know how to build a relationship with them where you lead something. You lead you and yourself and your friends, your family, your team towards a bigger vision than you could ever even manifest or think of on your own. And that really inspired me because I wanted to get out of the town I was in. I wanted to live a bigger life. I wanted to have money. I wanted to make an impact. And I didn't have the real role models at the time that I wanted for that. So when you start studying leadership, you start meeting all these great leaders in history. And you find out they were broke. They were confused. And then something switched in their life, a level of faith or a level of progress that turned them into history makers. And everything shifted. And it would inspire me. So I start working on my master's thesis on the topic of leadership. But man, I couldn't find a lot of things I really liked. Certainly speaking to me as a student in college, a lot of it was for corporate people. I want you to listen. And ever you notice that there's not something for you that you would want that gives you the transformation that right there, that is the impulse to make something, to create something. Follow that. That's like, that's like solving your own itch, they say solving your own problem. I was like, there's not a lot of leadership books for kids. I'm like 19, 20, 21 reading these books, like these are not good. These are about a bunch of corporate people. How would a student lead on campus? How would they create a movement on campus? How would they change their life and attract or enroll other people into progress? So I get fired up. I mean, I'm writing both a master's thesis, but I'm writing like a manifesto at the same time. You ever sit at the keys and you're like typing and like your arms are almost shaking. You're so excited you can barely type. And you just see a vision and you think about your words getting out to the world and you think about a difference you can make. You think about the change could happen in people's lives and you love the artistic creative process. I bet you have an artistic creative process in your life that deserves some progress mode right now. And it was very hard. I had three jobs. I'm broke and I'm staying up late at night capturing my journey through leadership on campus, being an RA, you know, leading and lots of different student groups, improving my life, changing my life. Everyone's asking, Hey, you seem so much happier. What happened? I'm like, Oh, I've been studying the stuff on psychology. I was pretty unhappy after this breakup. And now I'm happier. How would you do it? So I'm telling them how I mastered my thoughts or tried to do anyway. And sometimes it's a great gift of making progress or change in your life to share that with other people. And so I was sharing that with other people and many people are like, You should write a book on that. You should do something to that. So at 11 o'clock, midnight, one o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning, I'm writing this little thing I'm calling the student leadership guide. And I see this vision for it that it's going to be on, you know, campuses one day and it can make a big difference. But the truth is that I wake up the next morning at 430 to go to work and try to get some work in before I would go to my first class. And that dream, this book is going to be on campuses. Who am I? I'm not an author. I don't have a publisher. I don't even know how that works. I literally am buying all these expensive college textbooks and like, how do these even get here? And why do they cost $300? You know, it's like, I didn't even, I had no clue about that world or that. I had no clue about that industry. And so the dream that you're working on at night can feel stupid in the morning. I had so much hope and inspiration on this thing and it felt so stupid in the morning. Well, I finished my master's thesis. It wasn't a book, just a master's thesis. I turned it in. I was proud of it. I handed to some other kids and said, I had read this. Let me know. I could get you read that. Like, this is really good. I handed it to a bunch of people around campus. I'm like, this is really good. I started getting quotes from people on campus writing me, you know, emails, hey, this is really good. I really liked this. I gave it to a couple of professors. I really liked it. And I asked them for a quote. So I could put it, you know, at the beginning of my master's thesis, hopefully, you know, so I could like graduate grad school. And I ended up after I got my master's degree, I ended up printing it out. Like this. I had a version of it that I put in a binder and left with the student leadership center there. And then I printed out like this, just a little cover on it, put the quotes of the teachers who'd give me the quotes on the back of it. I think I printed up like, I don't know, 200 copies. And at grad school, at graduation, I threw like a party. You know, you go through your graduation and then you throw a party through a party. And I had, I gave it to much of people. And some of the professors showed up and they saw it and they saw their name on the back. And I remember one of the really influential teachers who I liked was like, what did you do? You made a book out of this? I was like, well, no, it's like, yeah, I mean, I just wanted my family to have this. And I've left it to all the dorms for the students in the dorms of the RAs. I led and everything. It's like, well, who told you could do that? I go, what do you mean? So who told you could do that? Have you been there in your life where you did something and someone's like, who do you think you are? Who told you you could do that? And it kind of stunned you because you never even thought about it. I didn't ask anyone permission. I didn't say, can I make my master's thesis into a pamphlet and give it to my friends and my family and people, I didn't do any of that. I just did it. I was naive and dumb and handed out. Well, you know, and you have people's words and testimonials on here. You should have asked for that and you should go through the university and you should get it published. Don't you know there's a process for this? And this person was really upset about it. And I was like, oh, yeah, man, I know I didn't know any of that. So I ended up getting a job at a consulting company to do leadership partially because that was my degree. It was an organizational communication with an emphasis. I put my emphasis on leadership. And so I was studying how great leaders communicate. And I get the job. I go down to San Francisco where the job is and I start working this consulting job. And that book or that idea or that dream of the student leadership guide, he just kind of died in my head, to be honest, because that person said, who do you think you are? Who did you ask? Why didn't you go through the university? All this stuff. I just kind of left. Got this job. I'm doing consulting. Everything's going great. I'm working 18 hours a day for years on end. And maybe three, four years in, I got a call from university. I'll never forget. This university in the Midwest calls me and says, Brendan, we are using your book and your binder. And we're wondering, could you come out and speak to the kids? And I go, oh, I don't have a book. What are you talking about? You have wrong person who you're looking for? To like your brain in the chart. Yeah. Well, we use your book and your binder. And they told me that they had this student leadership guide. And I was like, oh, what? How do you have this student leadership guide? They said, oh, well, we were at like this career fair or this leadership development conference or something like that. And your university had it in a binder and had it printed out and we bought a bunch. And I was like, what? I'm no idea this is going on. And come out and speak. And all I hear is that someone's printing something of mine, but I don't anything about it. So I said, no, I'm sorry, I have a job. I have a job. I can't come out and speak to you of a job. They're like, oh, okay. This happens probably over the next nine months. I get a bunch of calls. We got the book, come and speak to the kids. And I'm thinking, well, I can't do that because I have a real job. And I'd get in trouble with my real job if I didn't did something like this. But I also didn't know until about nine months in that they would pay me for this. But one of these colleges calls and says, hey, we saw an email you've turned us down. But please, we have a bigger budget than most schools to bring you out. We would love to have you out. And I go, you have a budget. And they said, yeah, we'll pay most schools will only pay $5,000. We'll put you $8,000 to come out and give a speech. And I was like, I didn't just hear the 8,000. I heard all the other speeches I turned down because I didn't know they paid money. And I was like, wait, they paid money too? That's unbelief. I never even heard of that. And it got me curious enough to go and see what was happening. I went out that weekend. So I took a day off from work. I went out. I spoke at this university. And the lights came on. I loved it. I enjoyed talking with people and learning about them. I enjoyed getting a teach frameworks on stage. I didn't have a lot to teach about my life. If you read most of my books, they're actually not about me. Very, very, very, very few books have ever been written by a personal, development person with so few stories about themselves. Maybe there's a few stories about myself in high-formist habits. But pretty much it's about my clients or it's a narrative form or it's like philosophical, like motivation manifesto or it's research like high-formist habits. But there's a few, few, few, very little about myself in there. So I go out there and I discover that. I really enjoy speaking to these kids. I can make money at it. And then I find out that this enterprising person has been printing off my student leadership guide in selling them. And two things hit me. I said, "Well, wait, there's a demand for that. Two, I can get paid for this." And three progress mode clicked into my brain. And I thought, "You know what? I like my job, but I don't feel progress. I'm working so many hours at my job. I'm learning many things, but I don't feel progress." And this is important because what does progress even mean to you? What does progress even mean to you? I told you what it meant in terms of a definition earlier, it's momentum toward a goal where you feel satisfied with the speed and the choices you're making towards that goal. Okay, got that's progress. But there's progress of what you're going after, what you're trying to achieve, but there's progress internally. I didn't feel like I was growing internally, but I felt myself come to life giving this speech and talking about a book. Is there something you do that when you do it, it brings higher levels of vibrancy? You come alive again, you get excited, you're passionate about it? Well, if you do, my question is, why are you not making more progress towards that passion, that goal, that thing that you enjoy? Well, it's the same thing that hit me. There's two enemies on this journey. And these two enemies actually create all the crises in your life. There's only two enemies. There's self limitation. That's the first enemy. It's the things you say to yourself, who am I? I can't. This would be too risky for me. They won't believe in me. I won't be able to figure it out. They'll make fun of me. It will be a disaster. And we start telling ourselves this. We limit ourselves. It's our own internal thoughts. I know you already know this. But if you think about something that brings you alive, and I say, why aren't you doing more of that? I bet there's some self-limit thought in your head that's preventing you from doing that. And progress mode is going, oh, wait a minute. Progress towards that thing is more valuable to me than self-doubt. Progress towards that thing is more valuable to me than self-loathing. Progress towards that is a much more rational choice to make than the irrational concerns I have in my brain. And my self limitations, my enemies at that stage of my life sounded like this. I'm too young to quit a job and chase my passion. I'm too young to write a book. I'm too inexperienced to be a speaker on in front of people. I don't have the competency for that. I don't know that business model. I've seen other speakers. I've seen Wayne Dyer. I've seen tapes of Jim Rohn and Earl Nightingale. I've seen Zig Ziglar on stage. I'm like, I'm not like those people. So I'm not like them. I don't know how to do it. I don't have enough age and experience. So why would I keep doing this? Even though it makes me feel alive. Why would I keep doing this? Even though I really enjoy it. Because the way to kill progress mode is to talk yourself out of it, to diminish yourself, to question yourself, and you lose faith in yourself. You forget all the times in your life. You progress through difficult things. And all those times in your life, you progressed or survived through different things. You didn't give yourself credit for them. You didn't integrate those wins into character strength. They were just like circumstances. You feel like you went through. Well, I just survived those things. I'm like, no, you became stronger. You might not know you did, but you did. If you gave yourself credit for still being here, you'd have more faith in yourself. More importantly, please listen, this is so important. You also lost faith in the forward position. This means if you believe in your life that there's serendipity or coincidence or destiny or calling, you believe in your life, your life has actually turned out okay. Like it could have been way worse. Your life could have been way worse. If you believe that your life has turned out okay or even great, but it could have been way worse, then isn't it true? Certain things had to happen to put you in the position today. Certain things in the past had to have happened. They were like dominoes that fell for you that made your life okay. And there were dominoes that did not fall for you that if they had fallen, your life had been way worse. So if that is true, then things have happened for you somewhere along the way to make your life okay today. My question to my audience is always, why do you not believe that will be true for the future, for tomorrow and next week? See, if you can flip your brain from, I'm not enough. I don't know. And go actually, things have always been lining up for me. Like I couldn't see them at all times, but if I'm okay now, or I can see a path out, I can imagine a future and I can move in a direction. And you know what, if I'm alive and I made it this far, you know what, odds are good things are going to line up for me. So I'll be alive again and I'll make it further. That's faith in the forward position. That in the forward position, something is being set up for you, right? If you're like, if you can take a metaphor of thinking like in the military, how they'll put a forward deployment, right? Or in Silicon Valley, they'll put a forward engineer, they'll put something out front to set things up for everybody else to have it more safe or secure or more success. The something is happening out front for you in the military, they send in the elite team to handle the city and to secure the city. Then the rest can come in, but someone's been deployed out there to handle things. Now, I'm a person of faith. So I believe that to be God, I believe that God is lining things up in the future for us that I have faith in a forward position because I believe he precedes me. I believe he precedes all of us. I believe good things are coming. Now, not everyone believes a level of faith in terms of spiritual outing religion that way, but I do believe if you can accept that things have been okay so far, then why would you not believe they're going to not only be okay, but even be better? Why not? Your own self-limited thinking. You're zeroing in on the negative things and it's stealing that sense of progress. Instead of zeroing in, taking it personally, feeling like there's going to be progress, I need you to instead go, wow, maybe something great could happen. Maybe it's not about just self, how do I feel self-limitation, but rather something is being set up in front of me, that abundant mindset or that level of intentionality or traction that says, oh, good things are being set up. So I can proceed with faith, with speed, with courage, because I'll figure it out along the way. Isn't that true? You've already figured out so much. I've always said that confidence is the belief in our ability to figure things out. You're going to figure it out. If you figured out this far, you're going to figure out even better as you go, because you've got more intelligent, you've got more intuition, you've got more sensibility about yourself. And so could you imagine a future that's better? Could you start speaking to yourself with faith, with excitement? Can you turn your brain into progress mode? Instead of self-limitation mode, I can't, I can't, can you turn it into progress mode? I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. That's progress mode, baby. You've got to turn that on. That's a switch in your brain. I said there's two enemies. One is self-limitation. Mine was, I'm too young, don't know enough who am I to be out speaking, would I have a corporate job? I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a real author. They just printed out my book. The second enemy though is social pressure. You know, I came back from the weekends of speaking at school and I told my coworkers about it. They were like, you can't go out and speak. You have a job. You're going to get in trouble. You can't be working on the side here. And they were like, you know, you should just focus here. You're on a good path. You know, a couple of years, you've been promoted. You can earn more. What do you think in? Don't risk your job. This is risky what you're doing. And I was terrified. They scared me. Has anyone ever scared you out of your dream? Has your school or your, you know, teacher or somebody you cared about a friend? Have they scared you from pursuing the thing that brought you alive? That's what happened to me. You know, look at this goofy thing. It's just like, I mean, I printed it out. I mean, this, it's like this student leadership guy is going to become something. I'm going to start speaking to kids because I want to help them have a better and easier time in school than I had. Who do I think? What do you talk about? Brennan? You're not even in college anymore. You graduated. You're like an adult in corporate America. You want to go talk to kids? What's wrong with you? And people are making fun of me. And they said to be crazy to quit my job. And I can tell you, I felt that for a long time. So people are sending some nice things even about the student leadership guide, but I just can't believe it. I don't believe them. and months go buy and I realize that these people, they have secure jobs. I have a secure job. They don't want me to leave. They don't be left behind. They don't want to see me do my own thing. And I thought about my whole life at that point was a lot, a lot like other people's lives. You grow up, everyone tells you to pay attention in school and do a good job. So you follow everyone's rules. Everyone told me, you know, you got to go to college. I only went to college because that girl that I loved who broke up with me, she was going to college. I thought, I best go there. She's going there. I wasn't ambitious about college at all. I just went because she went and they said, you're supposed to go to college. So I went to college. I worked three jobs sleeping five hours a night for six years, six years with three jobs. I know kids who went to school undergrad for six years without a job because their parents just gave money. I went six years or three jobs, five hours a night. Why? Well, I love learning, but did I think I had to be in college? Now, I just, you're supposed to do that, right? I got a corporate job at a big company afterwards. Why? Supposed to do that, right? Now, I told you there's two enemies, self limitation and social pressure. Does he not all social pressure is bad? Social pressure in which the standards are below your ambition, your aspiration, your dream, that's bad. In other words, social demand where there is lower standards than you have, that's bad. And a lot of people are pressured by people with lower standards than they have. And yet, there was one partner at this company I was working at. Their social pressure was like, this is rad. You should speak more. I was like, really? They're like, that's cool. They're getting asked to do that. What an honor. You can make a difference. Go do those. I was like, really? Their social pressure was like, you'd be a moron not to do this. Go and report back to me. Tell me how it goes. I was like, oh, no, you know, I'm a moron. And I don't know how to do this. He's like, just go do it. What did the life adventure? And he pressured me into going. So I gave another speech. It went good. And I was like, wow, this is actually working. And then I just, all of a sudden, progress mode kicked in again. Like, maybe I can make this work. And I had been through some training that corporate America where we were being taught some leadership frameworks. And we got, like, an instructor guide for this particular leadership framework. Why I had a leadership framework with my book. So I thought, well, I'm, I'll make an instructor guide. So I made an instructor guide. And I went on one of these speeches and I gave it to this person who had hired me. I said, here's the instructor guide. So a teacher could teach my book, the student leadership guide. And there's a bet. It's amazing. I'm so glad you have that. How much is it cost? And he go, how much does it cost? He was, yeah, you know, is it 500 bucks? I mean, is you charge per student or just by department? I'm like, what have you done before? And he said, oh, well, they usually charge us per student. And I said, well, did you like that? Do you? He goes, yeah, I said, well, why don't I just give you half off of that? He goes, really? I guess, yeah. So he did the math. And I'll never forget that first instructor guide. If I remember right, that first instructor guide that I sold for the student leadership guide that taught other teachers how to teach out of my book, well, I got $1,500 for it. 1,000, that might not be a lot to you. That was a bajillion dollars to me. $1,500. And I thought every school in the country needs this. And I did something that was really scary at the time. Even though I had self limiting beliefs, and even though the social pressure was not to leave this job, I did the math. Sometimes you wonder, should you do something? And I usually go, if you feel like you should do it, you probably should. Now it's just the math on timing. Let me give you an example. I was teaching recently at one of our ultra events. I do these workshops, these two-day workshops, three, four times a year. People pay $10,000 to $30,000 to be in the room. And they're like real deep-dive workshops. And I was at one recently and a person shared with me, Brendan, I've been thinking about leaving my job to go be an entrepreneur. You know, I asked my friends and I asked my parents, I've talked to these two mentors. I even hired somebody on the internet just for an hour so I could ask them. And I asked the people here in this audience all weekend and I'm asking you. And I guess I'm looking for like a blessing or a sign or a permission to make this decision because it's kind of crazy. You know, I've got health care. I need insurance. I've got stability. I've got kids. Should I leave this job? I just don't know if I should. I said, well, you asked me if I could give a blessing on it. I can't. That's that's up for God. But sometimes I believe that if you are still asking, that's the blessing. If you are still asking, that is the blessing. You've been given this impulse or this dream or this cross to bear that makes you still ask about it even when some people say you're crazy. You didn't stop asking. That's the whisper. That's the perseverance. That's the destiny call that like thank goodness. You're still getting that call internally to do the thing. That's a blessing. It didn't go away. The dream didn't go away with the first refutation or the first person to make fun of you. The dream is still calling in your brain. The blessing is you're still having the dream. This person got really emotional about it and just said that they didn't know when the timing would be right. When's the right timing to do something like? When's the right timing for you to quit something and go into progress mode in an area that's a passion or a dream? That's a hard one. And I could just share how I did it. I just did the math. I said, okay, well, I only spend weekends on this little project called the Student Leaders Guide, selling this instructor guide and trying to get gigs and speaking at colleges. Right now, it's really only equaling like 15-20% of all of the money I come in. For my salaries way up here, I'm only making 15% here on the side. But I said, wait a minute. What if over six month period of time I took all the time that I have in this job, which is 130% and I gave a few more hours over to the dream. How long would it take for that dream to get to a solid 20-25% in terms of my income? So I kept thinking about that. Then I thought, okay, if I can, you don't have to see what people make a mistake in. They believe to change something. They have to have a full replacement. Right? Oh, I'm going to leave my job. They really believe they have to have a hundred percent salary replacement. I'm like, that's not how it works. If you did something on the side and it earned you something, even in that 15-20% range, think about this. You're doing it on the side. It's earning you 15-20%. But all your time is actually over here. Well, when you leave all of this thing over here and all of this time comes and gets applied to that 20% over here, guess what? This becomes net higher than it was before because you're already putting all your time over here, but you're getting 15-20% over here. Well, all that time now applied over here, this over time becomes way higher or higher than this was. You just kind of forgot the timing of that. Do you know, I've had the blessing of having over three million people take my courses online, you know, from under 90 countries around the world. We've conducted the largest scale research studies ever been done in high performance, especially related to like performance psychology and behavior. And I have worked with people every week of my life, real people, for 20 years full time. What I share that with you, because I learned something about people along the way. And that is two big ideas. Number one, they don't wake up and switch their brain into progress mode and move towards their goals at a speed and developing their character at the level they want. And number two, they forget to have faith in that forward position. They don't have faith that they could leave this thing and build this thing over here fairly quickly. I share this because one thing that really emerged with working with all those people, I have never met anybody so far in 20 years doing this at the top levels who literally could not make a drastic and major and incredible change in their life. If they went out on their calendar from today, marked it six months from now and said six months from now, I am going to do this incredible thing and then reverse engineered to this day, to today and said, what do I need to do today to get in progress mode to be in the direction that I desire and to make that major bold move on that day six months from now. I have worked with people who did like impossible feats. You know, they went from terrible health to running a marathon in six months. They left. a bad job, left a bad relationship, not immediately, but they spent six months planning, preparing, getting ready. Now, please listen, I'm not saying at the six month mark, they left the thing and they were 100% in terms of replacing the other thing. Maybe they left an abusive marriage. And in six months, it's not like they found love and were in a perfectly beautiful, abundant, you know, movie relationship. It just means that could they spend six months preparing to leave that relationship, to find another place, find some friends, talk with somebody, find a shelter. If they gave them some time, could they plan and prepare that bold move? I think you can plan and prepare bold moves. I think you could be so stunned. By a bold move, you could make six months from now if you decided it. I work with people literally in relocation services where we had to move them across the world. And they're, you know, they're moving, they live on the west coast and we got to move them to Japan. And they're like, what, how is that possible? Like, set the date, work it backwards, that's the date you're moving. See, you need to decide more often when those bold moves are going to happen. A lot of people, they're really just going through life and they're in reaction mode. If I came into your life and I interviewed as a high performance coach, that's what I do. If I interviewed you to be your high performance coach, I would ask, tell you about the major bold moves you've made over the last five years of your life. Do you know a lot of people say they go, bro, I was just surviving. I said, okay, all five years? Yeah. You were just surviving. Yeah, tell me about that. And they'll talk about it. And I'll hear the pain in their voice as they describe. They were really just going through the motions. They made some changes, but no progress. Does that make sense? Because a change could be a bad change. Progress is about a vector, a direction. I'm choosing this direction. Then it's about velocity. I'm getting speed. There's a rate of speed towards that goal that I'm happy with. I'm making character choices that make me proud of myself as I'm moving and making that progress. It doesn't mean every day it's perfect. It just means like, I'm proud. I chose that direction and I have the discipline to move towards it today. But another part of progress is magnitude of change. Magnitude of change. Most people do not really think about that. They think about wanting things to be better. And that's one level of progress, right? Progress requires some improvement. If you think about it, progress is really about the direction, the speed, and some improvement. And improvement can be improvement relative to a base that you start. Like, what's the percentage of change I had? But improvement can also be the magnitude of change. And most people have never gone in progress mode in their life because they didn't think about magnitude of change. That is a turning point. You see, the turning point in your life is important. The progress mode in everyone's life is actually a series of bold moves. It might be a series of bold moves over five years, 10 years, 15 years. But let me tell you what it is not. And this is important. In our culture, remember I said there's two enemies. There's self-limitation, but there's also social pressure. There has been a huge move in social pressure, even from inspirational teachers that you know what, winning a life, that's really about just 1% improvement. You know, pick a habit, pick a discipline, pick a career, work at that thing, stay so focused. Have endurance, be consistent and disciplined. And over a period of time, that habit or that focus or that career, there'll be a compounding effect. That sounds amazing. And in some ways, it's absolutely true. There are some habits and you know, some health habits and routines and some efforts of focus or faith that you could have over a period of 20 years, it compound effects into something great. Investing in the S&P as an example or saving your money in a certain way or being kind to others. These things do compound over time. That's true. However, I want you to reach for something higher in your life. I want you to be on an ascendant path, on a path of greatness, a path of true high performance over the long term. And let me share with you a stunning truth about the turning point in people's lives. That's when they realize they don't just need little progress. They need capital P progress. They don't need incrementalism more in their life. Most people have plenty of incrementalism. What most people need is a series of bold moves. They need what I call a step change in their results. You don't want to go from like, oh, I want to go from $100,000 a year to $10,000 and then $110,000 and then $111,000 and $112.00. Like real people actually go, how do I go from $100 to $200,000 to $500,000 to a million to $10,000. Now, everyone else will say, that's crazy. Just like they did to me. They said, it's crazy to leave your job. You're going to leave this corporate job and do what? Because my dream was, you know what? I think I can go be a writer. I think I can go be a speaker. I think I can go do that full time. I think I can make that switch. I think the bold rational move would be six months out. I'm going to leave this job. I'm going to go full time selling this book, these student leadership guides, and speaking on leadership to kids or programs or associations throughout the country, that's what I'm doing. Six months. It's a bold change. Quit this job, become a full time writer and teacher. Do you know how many people thought that was insane? Everyone I worked with. But you're moving up here. You're already moving up here. I'm like, yeah, but that's what I want to do over there. That was a bold move. I made that move. I went bold. I mean, I really went, I left that job to about six months to plan. Left the job and quickly did what most writers do. I went really broke. It was like, I'm trying to write another book and I'm trying to speak and I'm no steady income coming in. It seemed insane what I was trying to do. And yet because I was willing to make bold move after bold move, I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm struggling to get to all these campuses and a lot of them can't pay a lot and I'm kind of, I'm just not sure it's going to work. And I'd heard about seminars and conferences. So I said, I'm going to throw a conference for kids, for college kids. And these leadership development people who keep mind my books, I'm going to invite these leadership development people to bring out their college kids to my conference. I'm going to throw it at Walt Disney World Reserve. Yeah, I'm going to do a seminar, my first seminar at Disney. And I'm going to invite all these people out and I sell the book. I'm going to sell these two leadership guides. I'm going to try to get booked on speech. That's what I'm going to do. And you know what? I'm going to invite the best speakers out, see if they'll come out. And I'm just going to put this thing together. It was absolutely an insane decision. What I did not know was that effort would teach me about real progress mode, about swinging for home runs, about going for a big dream when everyone else thinks you're crazy, about making a major change, not just small incremental changes. It made me think, you know, this is going to be a different stage of my life. I can really build and grow. What I did not know was that thinking in step changes versus incrementality. What I did not know was choosing a direction and going boldly towards it. What I did not know would it would develop a different passion and fire and guts within me. What I did not know was I was going to go broke doing that for first time. What I did not know was people would think I was stupid. People would judge me, people would say awful things. What I did not know, I would have family and friends being like, why are you doing this? Or why are you keep asking me for money, Brennan? Because I was doing everything I could do it. What I did not know was that progress mode would bring both struggle and success. When you switch in a progress mode, when you switch into courage, when you have faith in the forward position and you go for it, you make major decisions, you plan, you prepare, you like, you're judicious about it, but you decide to go every morning, you switch your brand of progress mode. I'm going towards bigger dreams. I'm moving steadily and even though you will suck, you will be a moron. People will judge you. People will tell you you suck. People will tell you you're a moron. You will feel bad. You will doubt yourself. They will pressure you to stay. If you stay in progress mode, you will fail. You will struggle. It will be a longer path than you think. However, because of bold moves along the way, your competency, your confidence, your courage, your contributions, they explode at levels that would not be possible ever by iterative living, by tiny step living, by tiny habits living, by this idea, these little things will actually get you towards the biggest, grandest greatness and destiny that you deserve. I'm here to tell you, progress mode is going to call something from you. It's going to to summon something from you. It's gonna be uncomfortable. It's gonna be unfamiliar. There will be pain with the progress, but you're going in the right direction at a new speed, and achieving magnitudes of change that you probably desire in your life. And that's why you're listening to Progress Mode right now. If you enjoyed this first episode, please go to progressmode.com. That's progressmode.com for the newsletter, so I can keep you up to date on the next episode and this next season. In the next episode, some surprising twists about how I fell on my face and then built a global brand. I want to tell you some stories that you've never heard before and hopefully keep inspiring you to ask some of these questions. You have big dreams. Your future can be better than you ever imagined. You are stronger than you think. So tomorrow when you wake up, remember Progress Mode, baby. [Music]