10 Questions to Reinvent Your Life

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SUMMARY

  • “Even if you don’t have the perfect days or achieve all of them, well, then every day you did do something that’s important. Every day you grew.”
  • Sometimes we want to make big changes in our lives, but we’re not sure where to start. In this episode, discover 10 powerful questions to ask yourself, in order to jump-start your next big life transformation.
  • “Your net worth is based on your network.”
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INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of The Brendon Show. Please note that this episode, like all TBS episodes, features Brendon speaking extemporaneously–he is unscripted and unedited. Filmed in one take, The Brendon Show has become one of the most viewed unscripted, direct-to-camera self-help series in the history of YouTube. It has also been the #1 Podcast in all of iTunes and is regularly in the top podcasts in the Self-Help and Health categories around the globe. Subscribe to the free motivational podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.)

1. How Can I Feel The Day More?

I was talking with my mastermind members in a chat today, and one of them, Victor – shout out to Victor if he’s watching — asked: “Brendon I don’t even know what questions to ask myself, but I’ve always found that when I get the right question, it opens up another thing.”  So what questions do you ask and how do I find them? So here’s what mine are. These are the ten questions that I ask myself that help me decide on moving,  on business, because many of you saw me reinvent one of my entire companies from our HPX coaching into GrowthDay. And I was, you know, doing my own thing. And now we’re doing GrowthDay.  We’re building a software company with over 50 employees. You know, it’s like, “whoa!” That’s a very different pivot, isn’t it, then just doing Brendon’s one-to-one coaching or Brendon’s group coaching?  I brought in other teachers because that was important to me in what I thought would be my next level of service.  Well, if I never ask “what’s my next level of service?” ; I would have never gotten a GrowthDay. So the power of a question can help you reinvent in meaningful ways. So here are my ten questions.

My first question is my favorite question to ask.  “How can I deepen my presence and appreciation of life so that I feel the day more?”  If you’re taking notes, you might just write down the phrase feel the day. Feel the day. I’m always thinking about that. How do I deepen my presence? How do I become more mindful, more present as Jonathan Fields teaches — savor the moments more? How do I level up or lift up my sense of gratitude so I can deepen my experience of life, so I can feel the day more?  I love when I go to bed at night, I’m like, “Wow, I really felt that day.” And I believe what others have shared is that when you feel like you’re just going through the motions in life, and you’re not actually feeling or experiencing the vibrancy, the pop, the depth, the gratitude, the beauty of life, and your blessings— that is where we should start.  Often when we think of reinvention, we need more and more and more. And sometimes I tell people, while reinvention often starts with deeper, deeper, deeper;  we can want more, but we can also teach ourselves to be more profoundly happy with what we have, where we’re at, who we are.

This is the stuff of mindfulness, of self-acceptance and self-love, and of gratitude. So I don’t think we ever get that answer perfectly and that’s why I love questions because it’s about asking them on a continual basis here. And so when I think about that, this first question, I find myself inspired by it on a daily basis of how I feel and reminding myself to make sure that I’m attentive to that. How can I deepen my presence and appreciation of life so that I feel the day more? Sometimes you don’t even have to get past that first question. I believe that that question I will ask for the rest of my life. I will never master it. I feel like, you know, the great teachers of mindfulness, whether in Buddhism or Daoism or in yogic work or in, you know, philosophy and cultures of the past that it was always about this question in some way or another. How can I deepen my presence and appreciation of life so I feel the day more?

2. How Can I Be a Better Role Model?

Second question: How can I be a better role model for my family, team, and community? I love to ask this question immediately after the first. The first one is all about me really feeling, experiencing, and enjoying life. The second one I love because it challenges and pushes me to remind me that I am not an island alone on this planet. I have an opportunity to influence others. I have an opportunity to stand for something, to be a good role model for my family and the people I’m blessed to work with and serve alongside; with the people who I’m blessed to interact with and serve with you. How can I be a better role model? What would that look like? How can I deepen my integrity? How can I be more vulnerable? How can I ask them more questions? How can I listen more? How can I show a visionary aspect of life? These are all subsets of asking how to be a role model. People are watching you, and I know when you’re at home or when you’re struggling, you think “No one’s watching.” Oh, they’re watching. They’re watching how you talk about difficulty. They’re watching what you complain about. They’re watching whether your complaint is matched by problem-solving and seeking solutions or just complaining. They’re watching how you talk about your neighbors. They’re watching whether you cut down people or you pull them up.  They’re watching whether you actualize your dream.  They’re watching whether you push yourself, whether you walk the top, and no one’s perfect at this.

But that’s why I like to question it. Just asking, how can I be a better role model? And it’s up to you to decide what does that means? Because how you a role model may be to one child is different than to your other child or how you be a role model with this team is different than that. Team. But I’m always asking that question. Why? Because it demands more of me. It demands more of me. It demands that I be attentive to my impact on others. And when I’m attentive to the impact I have on others, now I can be an intentional human. Now I can be a service-based human. Otherwise, you know, in the old language of philosophy, I’m just a selfish clod. I’m sorry. I can’t remember who used that phrase. When I read that, I was like, “ooh, wow!”  This philosopher talked about how humans could be selfish clods. And I thought, what a terrible phrase. But I was like, I’ve been there. When I was a teenager, I would say I was a selfish clod.  I didn’t understand how my energy affected my classmates, how my energy affected our family dynamic, how the words I said either lifted up those around me or hurt them.

So I think this is an important one. How to be a role model. How many of you wish more of our politicians cared about being good role models? Do you know?  How many wish our leaders were more intentional and attentive to their impact on other people?  Genuinely. I do. And if you do, then demand it of yourself. Demand it of yourself if you desire it from others. Do you want other people to be more honest? You are more honest. Do you want other people to put other people first? You learn to do it. Do you want your spouse or your partner to be more loving and open and passionate? Start with you. I really believe that that is all the stuff of the role model.  If you’ve heard me teach before on this topic, I love to talk about the role model mindset, and that’s what this question is getting to. It’s about putting myself in the position and the role of a leader and asking:  “How would a great human deal with this?”  How would a great human deal with this? Because I want to be great. Who wants to be a great human? I want to be a great human. So what that means for you and me might be slightly different, but I think that aspiration to be good and to be thoughtful is important. And to me, I go, I just want to be a good human. So I ask when I’m facing difficulty, I go — how would a great human deal with this? What would their mindset be? What decision would they make here? I said, Well, I believe in reading about ethics which unfortunately we yanked out of most of the school systems around the world and why we’re having so many worldwide dilemmas. We don’t teach civics and ethics very much anymore, certainly not the levels we used to focus on those things. You know, in the graveyard of the school curriculum testing went philosophy and ethics and civics. And we wonder why we teach to treat each other so terribly. But when you read maybe a book recommendation, if you have not read anything in ethics before that you might like is to make it really accessible is a book by Rushworth Kidder and it’s called “How Good People Make Tough Decisions”.  Rush was one of the original icons of teaching ethics in the modern era. I think you’ll love the book. How Good People Make Tough Decisions. It helps me think through how a role model would consider a situation because I might not know the answer, but at least there are some frameworks there that might help you.

3. How Can I Have More Energy?

Third question: What do I need to do to take care of my health so that I have the energy, the stamina, and the drive to enjoy life and serve at my highest?  So I’m seeking energy for two reasons. One, to enjoy life because when you are tired, wiped out, exhausted, it’s hard to truly enjoy life. Those feelings and emotions and energy levels do take away from the enjoyment of life. And we’ve all been there. You know, I like many of you, I’ve had many, many, many, maybe major medical situations in my life where I was wiped out. I’ve broken most of the bones in my body. I’ve been in hospital beds on my deathbed three times. I know what it feels like not to be in good health. And that is why when I’m not in those situations, I optimize for good health because I can tell the difference. And you’ve been there before, you get sick and then you get better. You’re like,” Oh my God!”. It’s a whole difference. Well, many of us, because of our diets or our cultures, are “sick”. You know, the way that we feed ourselves or the things that we drink are poisoning our system from being optimized. I’m not here to sell or spiel anything to you, except for, as you’ve heard me teach in GrowthDay and I’ve taught in my high performance work for 15 years every year; I encourage my audiences this simple thing: if you’ve never gotten in the best health of your life in a year where you said, “This year I will get in the best year of my health”. And you actually stuck to it, then make it this year. Because once you taste the positive energy from good health, you don’t go back. Maybe once in a while. You know, you still have your cheat meals. Pizza is mine. Let’s see. Pizza and not that sushi is a cheat meal, just the volume of sushi I eat. Anyone else? I don’t know. Why can you eat so much sushi? I’m just this little person. I eat so much, but we all got our vices I’m sure. But if you constantly poison yourself with terrible food and terrible drink and you don’t move, you’re too sedentary, and you don’t breathe that is going to lead to a net emotional result that you don’t want. It’s going to lead to a net energetic level that won’t serve you in achieving your dreams. Dealing with the stress, being the role model, and most importantly, having the brain function necessary to solve complex problems that always present themselves as you strive for something extraordinary, so please take care of yourself.

And I’m not here to preach what that is. I’m here to hopefully inspire the decision. You can find you how, but inspiring the decision comes from this question: What do I need to do to take care of my health so that I have the energy, the stamina, and the drive to enjoy life? Remember, enjoyment is first and second to serve at my highest.

For some of you who’ve been around, and knew my brand before the pandemic, I used to do, you know, on average eight, four-day seminars a year for eleven years. So, if you’ve never been to a seminar before, they’re exhausting. They’re exhausting to attend, let alone be on the stage. And usually, I would be on the stage for about 9 hours on average a day and I would in my course in teaching because I didn’t do a lot of multi-speakers, usually with me and maybe one or two other speakers. But I quarterback the whole day, you know, usually 9 hours on stage a day because I was teaching. And so on average, I would do the physical exertion of a marathon a day, like literally strap one of those things to me and did those, you know, all those readings. Like, wow, you’re, you’re burning the calories and doing the movements of a marathon a day for four days straight and I share the story because in the first couple of years I didn’t take that seriously and I was wiped out. And you know what? I could see when I was wiped out, my teaching quality went down. Do any teachers here know that? When you’re just not energetically there,, your presence with the audience goes down. Your creativity at the moment on stage to be spontaneous and smart goes down and your motivation goes down. And tell you what, if you got to be on stage that many hours and you’re dealing with that, I could feel it, man. And I thought these people have traveled from around the world to be here with me. They’re counting on something magical happening here. And I’m showing up, wiped out and I’m getting wiped out. They deserve more than that from me. I didn’t get healthy to be able to pull that off at my seminars for a decade because I, you know, is like for me, it was other people. I was like, they deserve more from me. If it was up to me Pina Coladas all day, I don’t know. I’m sure I would fall to my vices if it was just up to me. But once you have a calling to serve, you pull yourself out of your own impulsive, reactive, or comfort, and ease into the mode of I’m willing to challenge myself to get better for them, whether them is the kids, the next generation, your audience, your team. Sometimes you need that. Sometimes you need that. So again, I’m not telling you the how, but I’m suggesting can we inspire the decision today to get better health so you have better energy, so you can enjoy life and serve at another level? Do you guys like these so far? Man, these are these I asked myself these questions so many times, I’d probably annoy you all with them, but I hope you like them. They helped me a lot.

4. What Can I Build For The Future?

Number four: what can I build, learn, or invest in now that will lead to outsized returns five to ten years from now? What can I build, learn, or invest in now that will lead to outsized returns five to ten years from now? So, I’ll walk you through a couple of different examples. When I thought about this in my business, what can I build? I’m like, you know what? I can build software. The software has outsized returns in the marketplace than just media. Right? Content has one valuation in the marketplace, the software has another. I’m going to build software around what I usually do and bring in other people because that will have more returns five and ten years later than if it was just me again. Okay, cool.

What can I learn? Oh, well, you know, when I was starting my career, I had to learn to talk, to communicate, public speaking. I wish I could say it came naturally to me. I was mortified by it. I threw up before speeches. I spent a series of years teaching myself to express myself and to talk. And for me, not an easy journey. But I knew. I knew that that skill, that one skill, that one skill could change everything. That if I could learn to communicate well, that means I could, you know, not only have good relationships, but gosh, as a skill, I could learn how to get people, you know, feeling like I hear them. I could learn how to empathize better. That one skill would help me be able to persuade and or to negotiate or to sell or get people to believe in my ideas. I could learn how to collaborate with people through conflict. I thought communication is a skill I need to learn, and I’m still teaching myself that to this day, to this day. I have a coach right now helping me learn how to communicate better through conflict. And so, I think it’s something you, these are questions that you just solve one day. These are lifelong journeys and a constant state of reinvention, learning, getting better. What can you learn?

Maybe another one for you might be marketing or sales. Maybe one for you might be how to build something specific. Another question I ask is part of this, of course, how can I build, learn or invest in something now that will leave outside returns? So early in my career, I thought, well, if I’m going to be on these platforms and building my brand on these platforms, how can I make sure that I can promote the platform and as the platform builds, I’m compensated from it? So that’s why I started promoting other platforms and tools like Kajabi. Many of you know, I was the first investor in Kajabi, now a $2 billion valued company. Well, when we started, it was like a web page built. You know, it’s tiny, but I thought: okay, I’m going to be on this thing, so how can I promote it and maybe invest in it so that as I rise, it rises and we all win? And that ended up being one of the most outstanding financial results I ever saw coming in my life. But I decided early on I’m going to invest in all these things, so I’ve invested in all these other companies that as I built on them, the platforms built and leads to outsized returns later. Just one simple thing. Other folks, you know, maybe you invest in your 401K, your index fund, you go watch the David Box sessions in GrowthDay and learn to get your finances in order so that you have outsized returns later in life. That’s powerful stuff, man. That’s powerful stuff.

5. How Can I Improve My Business?

Part of this question, the fifth question, how can I improve –  because I’m a business person, so this might not – again, you got to have your own questions. These are the ones I ask for me. I ask, how can I improve the entire customer journey in our business? From that first touchpoint to a year later and just architect that really, really well. We’re in that process with GrowthDay right now. As I’m reinventing how I used to do things learning how to run a software company is like a big question I’m always asking, like, okay, how do I get better at this? And many of you guys have given us great feedback on this point and we’re trying to get better. As I said, self-improvement is a way of life. You’re always doing it. So for me, it’s what does that communication look like and what does it feel like, and how do we keep it going? If you’re an entrepreneur, obviously that question is vital. If you’re not an entrepreneur, then, but you’re in business, then what’s the primary question you should be asking in your career to become more excellent or to grow? If you are stay-at-home and you’ve got the mission of creating a great family – the same question happens here. How can I support my children the best way through their life cycle of development at this stage or age of their life and planning and preparing for the next stage? And planning in preparing for the next stage. They’re just being strategic in how you think through the lifecycle of whatever it is that you do or whoever it is that you support.

6. What Do I Need to Start Learning?

Number six, what are the new trends that will affect my career three years from now? And what do I need to start learning? What are the trends? So, I’m always looking for trends. What do I think are the trends in the marketplace? Okay, so I think that trend is going to impact us in three years? Notice, I don’t even care about the trend now. This is … this forces me to be strategic, this question. What are the new trends, meaning the ones happening now that will affect my career in three years? And do I need to start learning them now? So, I’m always watching. I’m never reactive. I’m watching to see how it develops. I’m learning. And if anything, I’ll make the shift or the change within or at the end of a three-year period. No hurry. I’ve never been in a hurry. I’m always a strategic chess player, and that doesn’t make me right. I’ve missed some trends, but over a decade because I think in three-year blocks, I’ve outlasted a lot of people who are just trendy. And so, I feel like you ask a question in your career or your life that forces you to think in a three-year horizon is a really useful one for reinvention. Just like Mel Robbins was saying, if you’re only planning in six months, I’m going to encourage you to think in 60 months. That’s the same message I’m delivering here. It’s a longer-term vision that allows you to be thoughtful and intentional in architecting the future that you want and you’ll need to have to deal with the world.

7. Who Do I Want To Work With?

Next up: number seven. Who do I admire, need to learn from, or want to do a deal with? And how can I get in a room with them this year? Love this question. Love this question. Who do I admire, need to learn from, or want to do a deal with? And how do I get in a room with them this year? I’ve asked myself this question for 20 years. And everyone’s like, “how does Brendon have such an amazing network?” Because I forced this question on my brain every year. You know, it’s like, okay, I have a list of people I admire, a list of people I want to learn from, and a list of people I want to do a deal with. And I just constantly think about, okay, how do I get in a room with them? I ask my friends for introductions. I DM on social media. I cold email if I have their contact. I find out if they’re speaking at a conference, I get to that conference and try to raise my hand and ask a question or try to meet the conference coordinator to get their contact or to add a piece of value in some way.

And I’m just thinking about that because listen, like your, you’ve always heard this phrase, I just wish they taught it in school when you’re young, your net worth is based on your network and so I grew up in a place where there was no network. I grew up in a place that was economically disadvantaged, where there wasn’t any wealth on either side of the tracks. There was, you know, a difficult place to grow up. There was no network. I never even got taught to think about building my own network because I thought you had a network. No, if you are passive in life, you have a network. If you are assertive, proactive and into self-improvement in life, you build your network, you actively build it, you choose to build it. Even if you’re not surrounded by that, even if you, from where you grew up or what you look like, where you came from, what your background is, isn’t advantageous to have a network, okay? Go build one. That’s our job. To go build the network that we want. I did it through mostly volunteering. I didn’t have a network, but I found out successful people volunteer, they give back and they happen to be on the boards of nonprofits. I was like, oh, I like to volunteer. I like to meet high-end successful people in the cities and towns I lived in. So I would volunteer. I’d meet these amazing people who are on the board of the nonprofit because they’re also volunteering, painting the schoolyard with me you know, handing out the meals with me. They’re shoulder-to-shoulder, impressive human beings. I thought, wow, these people are amazing! And a lot of my network was built from just volunteering, and I’d volunteer at conferences to meet more speakers. Then, I’d volunteer, you know, for me as I got older and on different boards for six months or 12 months and meet a higher level of service people. And over the, over the while, just my network grew. And now today … I remember one year I said in front of one of my audiences, I said, “I’d sure like to meet the President and work with the president a little bit right now”. And whatever was six, seven months later I spent 3 hours at dinner with the U.S. President. Like that, I could never imagine where I came from if I just had a network versus choosing to build a network.

So I ask this question, who do I admire? Can I get a room with them? Who do I need to learn from? Can I get in a room with them? Who do I want to deal with? Can I get in a room with them? Right? And even if that means y’all a Zoom room. All right. Can I get somebody on Zoom? Can I get somebody on FaceTime? Do you know? But I prefer to be in person so that I have an opportunity to create a real connection. But a lot of it in the last couple of years was all virtual, which is still great.

8. Where Do I Want to Travel?

Okay. Where are we at? Number eight. Love this one. You guys will like this one. Where do I want to travel and how can I make it an epic trip without any work at all? This is me personally: where do I want to travel? Where do I want to go? And how can I set that up and go do that without work? Because I think reinventing our lives, that sense of aliveness sometimes comes from travel, seeing new places, experiencing the world, variety. And so I think a lot of people, reinvent their life, but they reinvent their life into the same next level of comforts and certainties. They change, but they change location in the same comfort zone. I’m like, “Oh, you want to reinvent your life?” Add a little sprinkle or bust that little circle of the boundary and insert adventure. Put a little adventure in there. There’s an adventure in your hometown waiting for you. There is an adventure in your country waiting for you. There’s adventure around the globe waiting for you. For me, my favorite adventure is traveling. I love to go travel, see new things, try new things, and in those locations, be adventurous. You know, eat the foods, meet the people, do the zip lines, get in the ocean, climb the mountain, whatever the thing is. And that sense of aliveness is spurred by me. And I think a lot of people think they have to reinvent their whole life when really, what they are is majorly hungry for a little more adventure and variety. What they really are hungry for is to see a little bit of the world. They’re bored with the same old, same old that they’ve always experienced, where they came from with the same people. And they just need a little variety and a mix of experience in different places with different cultures. I also believe that the more you travel, the more grateful you are as a human being. And I can say that after coaching people for 15 years, those who traveled more had more perspective, managed their emotions better, handled conflict with others better, made fewer assumptions with others, and they were just way more deeply appreciative of what they had.

Because when you travel the world, you can’t help but see how impoverished so much of the world still is, how lacking in basic needs the world still is. And when you recognize that and you think about your Wi-Fi in your house, the food that you have a couple of blocks down the way, and the fact that you have transportation, education, health care; all of a sudden you have a different perspective at least that’s been my learning. So for those of you who just feel like you have to shake up your whole life before you have a mid-life crisis, go tour the world for two months, just pause the divorce.  Pause buying the Porsche. Pause the “I got to change my whole career” and just head over to a different country, spend two or three weeks there. Think about it. See the world, get some perspective then come back. If the decisions are the same, the decisions are the same. But it won’t hurt hanging out for three weeks to eight weeks to figure it out. And I just want to travel. I just feel like it solves so many problems. All right. Do you all like that one? Boy, you guys are lighting up there. Maybe you could share with us in the chat or the comments if you could, as you’re watching this. Where is the place that you went, if you’ve ever traveled before, that opened your mind to another level of living?  Did you ever go somewhere and it’s like, “whoa, there’s a whole other level of living”. Sometimes, you go to a place where your whole world opens to another level. I mean, I remember I thought I had thought big in the world. And then I went to Banff or I went to Glacier Park and was like “Wooow!”. I thought I understood the world. And then I was in Johannesburg and I was in Mexico, and I was in Brazil. And as I travel I gained a new mindset, I think that can be part of a reinvention.

9. How Do I Fall In Love With The City That I Am In?

Okay. Number nine. I love this so much. Number nine is how do I fall in love with the city that I am in? And I fall in love with the city I’m in. Most people actually live in an amazing place and they have no idea. They haven’t been to the little restaurants. They haven’t found the bookstores.  They haven’t found their friends they go out and have wine or tea with. They haven’t built a real community to fall in love with that town. They don’t even know their town. You know, they haven’t even ridden a bike around their town. They don’t know the cool streets or the off-the-beaten-path shops. Because of that, they don’t know the shop owner. They don’t know the librarian. They don’t know the barista. They don’t know that restaurateur. They don’t know the civic leader or they don’t know that they don’t know anything about the place they live in. And they wonder, why do I feel so displaced all the time? Why don’t I feel grounded more? Why don’t I have a community? I’m like, “You don’t know your town.” You got to know your town.

Hey, listen. Thank you, Pam. Pam says “I’m guilty of this.” You know, that’s real. I think, especially in this modern era, most people in towns above 70,000 people are guilty of this. I’ve been guilty of this. But when you make an active effort, everything changes. I remember when we lived in Portland and we were just like, “We’re going to find our places here.” And my wife had built Exercise Studios in Portland and kind of found her tribe and found her people. Even after (I don’t know how many years we lived there), like a decade, we still felt like there’s still a lot more we could do and explore here. I love that feeling. I definitely feel like that with Puerto Rico where we lived. I don’t feel like I got to explore Puerto Rico half as much as we wanted because half the time we were under COVID and so the pandemic changed things for us. But I really do believe, you know, as you live in places, you get to know them better. I remember I grew up and went to college at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana. I know every inch of that town. I mean, every inch. You could tell me a house and I could find it because I biked and rode, and jogged, and ran and hiked. I knew every inch of that town. I felt so grounded and so connected. I’m going to try to do that where we live now, too. So I encourage you to build that community. Get to know the people who are in your community.  Go out to the shops, the restaurants, and the stores. Meet the small business people. Get to know your civic leaders. Get to know the town. Sometimes we think I got to change towns. I’m like “You don’t even know your own town”. Half the people, when I ask, “What would you need to reinvent your life? Most people say I would move to a new city. The second question I ask is, “How well do you know your city now?” On a scale of one to ten — ten you deeply know every nook and cranny, one you don’t really know any of it. Most people are a level three or four in this rating They don’t even know their own town. They want to up and move, reinvent. You don’t even know your own town. The problem is you’re going to end up in a new town with the same habits of non-exploration. The problem is every new town you move to, you carry yourself with you. So the town will feel fresh and shiny and new for one year. And then there you are with the same behaviors and you’re like, “How come I moved and nothing in my life changed?”  You didn’t change your behaviors. You need to change how you engage with where you’re at. I went from one marriage to another marriage to another marriage and another marriage.  Well, the problem is you carried yourself in the same bag of tricks. You got to update your habits and your behaviors if you want a different result. Remember, you want a different result, different goals, different mindset, different habits. Keep up-leveling those for the new context you are in changes the game. 

10. What are the next five great adventures I’m going to take with my spouse? My friends and my family?

All right. Number ten. I love this one. For those who hate me so far and you just like God, I just hate you so much. You’re so annoying. I promise this question’s worth it. This one question, like “Okay, dang it. He’s good”. Here we go. What are the next five great adventures I’m going to take with my spouse? My friends and my family? Now I’ve separated them. So if in a relationship, what are the five great adventures going to take with that person? Your friends, they’re going to five separate ones, and your family, they get five separate ones. Now, you might say, “Oh my God, Brendon, that’s 15 different great adventures. I can’t even pay the rent.”  I’m not asking you to do any crazy travel around the world here. A great adventure can be a night out on the town together. You might go out for dinner. A great adventure can be, you know, you going to the park. Yeah, spend a day at the park. You learn to play that crazy Frisbee game where you all break your ankles and run around. Whatever you do. All right. You got to find out your own thing, but I love teaching people this. You and your partner or your spouse should have your own planned adventures together. It gives you something to look forward to. Do you know why a lot of people need to reinvent their lives? They haven’t given themselves something to look forward to. So they think, I’ll change my context and new things will come to me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. New goals, new mindset, new habits. “But I don’t have anything to look forward to.” That’s why you plan adventures, you know? As Denise and I, we’re like, okay, one of our great adventures might be very simple in town. Like, we want to go visit this one place we heard about up in the country. Literally, we just got to drive there. That’s the adventure. Just go there. Another great adventure is like, no, we want to go to Greece and just do Greece. Like, do it right. Never been there. Okay, cool.

Another great adventure with one of my friends is literally a fishing adventure. We’re just going to go fish. We just drive this place. We go fishing. It’s a great adventure for us. You might have crazy grand adventures. Might have little – it can be simple, but the idea is: the more you have to look forward to. that you have consciously designed, planned, and built-in your life that brings a little bit of variety or adventure in your life, the less you feel right now “I need to reinvent everything!” Do you know when you feel like you need to reinvent everything? We have nothing to look forward to. That’s when you throw out the bath, the baby with the bathwater. I got nothing to look forward to. F it! I’m changing everything. But if you actually have something to look forward to, as a couple, as a family, as a relationship, as you look forward to something, guess what? We have something to look forward to, it’s easier to deal with the muck of today. When things suck today, you can deal with it better because you’re like, yeah, this sucks, but you know what? There’s a lot of them in the tunnel because we’re going to Greece, baby. Yeah, man. Dealing with all this and moving this and this business, this thing. Oh, my gosh. But don’t worry, because in 60 days we’re gonna be on that fishing trip, because next weekend we’re going to the park. Whatever it is for you, have it and I just gave you 15 things to look forward to. Something with your partner, your spouse, something with your friends, something with your family. Promise you, change your life.

For those who really want to deepen and reinvent your life, one of the biggest needle movers here that can talk about is your friendships. We are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness because people are not reaching out and developing friendships. So please, let me remind you here on GrowthDay, we did an entire Masterclass month on friendships. So if you go into your GrowthDay app, again, pop into the desktop here. But when I go into GrowthDay and I go to Learn section. I go to the Live Events section, which is what we’re doing here, we’re doing a Live Event. These “Wednesday Wisdom” are all here. When I scroll down, I hope you can see this. When I scroll down, it says, “Watch Past Events” here. I can choose the Topics. So what do I want to learn about today? Well, I can learn about leadership, parenting, but look at this one: Creating Great Friendships. So if I click on that, here are all these teachers from different walks of life, different fields of experience, all talking about developing great friendships. And I can tell you, I know these people. They are really good at friendships. And I bring this up, one to just remind you, GrowthDay Pro members, you just come to Live Events and what you uniquely see is this Watch Past Events – you can sort it by topic or by the teacher. Pretty rad.

But I also just want to remind you all, as I share this, that you know, that last question, can I create … you know, when you think about improving our lives, some great adventures with your friends more often will bring so much color and joy and vibrancy and pop to your life. You probably have friends. You don’t do enough with them and enough new things with them to feel alive. I would share that is the central thing I have noticed in these last two years, of course, because people deal with the pandemic. But it is real. Most people don’t leverage the beauty and the joy and the fulfillment of their own friendships, and so they think they have to reinvent everything else. But I’m like, man, if you could start with your friendships, deepen those, make those more fun, go do more things together, you will bring back the joy, the adventure, and the vibrancy in life. I promise you. And I was somebody who did not do good at making friends until I would say my late, no, I would say almost my early thirties. I had good friends, but I wasn’t making great friends. I kind of ended up with some friends in my teens and twenties, but then I’ve learned to make great friends and to build those relationships. And it significantly changed my vibe of the world.

I have so much fun in my life, and I know that sounds kind of geeky to say, but it’s true. I love that I have fun in my life and oh, you’re so lucky. I’m like, oh no, I architect the fun. The fun doesn’t just show up at your door, you got to make plans, you got to go get the fun! You got to go make the fun. You got to schedule the fun. And so I hope that if anything, if you hate me, the whole thing, this last question of creating great adventures for you, your spouse, your partner, your family, your friends, it will bring more fun into your life, which will amplify the aliveness, which will amplify the connection you have, will amplify the meaningful pursuits, the adventures you have, and that will help you grow. I know that sometimes when people talk about reinventing your life, it’s easy to go, yeah yeah, that’s easy for you guys to say. Good job, Mel and Jonathan and Brendon, all your other GrowthDay coaches and if you find yourself there, I want to share this with you: don’t be embittered by where life is put you because you can shift and you can change. You can level up your goals, your mindset, and your habits. You’ve learned a lot about that today, and you’ll learn a lot about that in this “Reinventing Your Life” series we have for you here.

I know how easy it is to get discouraged, overwhelmed, upset, angry, and embittered in life because I spent plenty of time there as a teenager. But the beauty, the beautiful thing about your life now at this stage and this moment are you get to make more conscious choices about what you want, even if you don’t agree with anything I said today, you get to choose now. You get to architect the future you want. You get to design the future that you want and move every day a little more closely towards that because you’re tracking your goals and your mindset and your habits. You’re using GrowthDay for that. You got the Journal, you got the Life Score section, and you got the Plan section. If you use that every day, you’re more on track to getting where you want to go. Is it okay that it might take you more than six months to change and a shift and arrive at the idealized life? Yeah, just like Mel Robbins talk. Might not be six months, might be sixty months. But knowing that every day you’re intentional, every day you are savoring it, as Jonathan thought, every day you’re asking yourself the questions and being honest enough to answer them. And every day you’re shaping that mindset, every day you’re tracking those habits, every day you’re planning those goals and you’re just moving towards them, even if you don’t have the perfect days or achieve all of them, well, then every day you did do something that’s important. Every day you grew, every day you grew. And the more that you grow, the more aliveness, connection, and meaning you end up with anyway.

And so I hope you enjoyed this session. I hope you’re enjoying this series on Reinventing Your Life. I want to congratulate you for making personal development a priority I always say it, but so few people in this world will actually do the work. You were here, you took notes. I hope you had some insights that helped you. If you did, please share them in the comments. Anything I share today that you thought was helpful, please let us know about it. DM me. Follow me on Instagram. Say hi and that you were on GrowthDay today. I appreciate each and every one of you. We’re building something unique here. Where do you see this level of conversation about life that you just experienced literally this day? I’m honored to get to do this work with you. I’m honored that today we all came together and we got to grow as we learned about this important topic. Thank you to our other teachers. Thank you to each of you. I appreciate all of you. Every day is a great day to grow and we did it together. Thanks, everybody.