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Foreign. Welcome to the earn the right to live your dreams podcast. This is Coit Cooper and I'm ready to rock it out. What is going on? Welcome back, everybody. ETR 97. I've been kind of hiding out a little bit, just gearing up. And what I'm gearing up for is the launch of my brand new flip the script book. This has been years coming. I mean, ever since I was denied tenure at the University of North Carolina, man, I was in a tough spot. And one of the things I didn't know this was happening at the time, but I really just started to provide my brain a better option. I started to implement habits. And man, one by one, these habits started to create incredible change in my brain, in my approach, in my life. And then I started to put these things all together. And what happened is this just really amazing process and it's something I'm so excited to share. I can't wait for all of you to get the chance to read it. It'll be coming out beginning of September. But in doing that, what I wanted to do is I wanted to start coming on a consistent basis in delivering you concepts from that book so you can start to get a feel for it. But more importantly, you can start using some of it right now to create change in your life. And with that being said, what I wanted to do today is talk about five ways to flip the script in your life and pull out your potential. Okay, listen, there are different levels of this. Maybe you're really struggling right now and you're in a tough spot. I've been there. That's where I was after losing my job at North Carolina. And I needed to know how to. How to create change, right? And that's what this is for. If you're there, then this message is for you. Maybe you're doing pretty good, right? And you are going, man, I'm doing pretty good. But I just feel this urge. I want to be doing better. I'm guessing that's why you're listening to this podcast. And if that's the case, then guess what? This episode's for you. Or maybe you're a high performing leader, right? And you're kind of crushing it, but there's still some areas where you want to elevate, which I think pretty much all these different categories fits everybody on the planet, especially growth people. Well, guess what? If you're that leader, this is for you as well. Because here's one of the things I've learned from traveling around the country and talking to people all different kinds of people from different areas of life, different ages. People want better in their lives, period. There can be people absolutely at the top of their game in one area of their life, but then they're struggling in another. There can be others that are really tough spot. People want better, and I think that's a part of being a human. We want to grow, we want to get better. We constantly want to feel like we're really going out and using up our potential. That's it. You know, when I'm most happy, When I know I'm using it up every single day, when I'm using the gifts that I've been given to go out and make a difference in the world, to live really, really well. When I get to the end of the day and I say, man, I just. I did it today. I brought the best that I have to possibly offer to my day. That's a good day. And so what this episode is for is it's for that. One of the things before we do that, here's one of the reasons why I believe people don't get the change that they want. They come into their days and they're doing things the same, right? Same pattern, same habits, and they expect differently. You know, Einstein had a quote where it said, what's insanity? Doing the same thing over and over every single day and expecting a different result? Well, here's the thing. This is one of the most common things I do when I'm working with coaching clients. We want to create change. We got to have some new patterns. We got to have new habits. We got to step in and create some of the most powerful habits on the planet to where we start squeezing out that potential. And that's where this idea of flip the script comes. You know, everybody has different barriers that they're fighting, challenges they're fighting in their lives. And what I like to do is go, whoop, flip the script on those things. Get these habits in place that allow you to break through these barriers and pull out your potential. Because my belief is that, listen, all you have to do to live a really remarkable life is use your potential. Use the gifts and skill sets that you have. That's all you got to do. You don't need to be anything you aren't. All you got to do is find those things inside you and cultivate them and to go out and to be willing to take the path in front of you, to step into uncertainty and to grow yourself as you do it. And all of a sudden, you start to pull out your Potential. That's it. That's all you got to do. And I'm not trying to make you believe that it's an easy journey. I'm just saying all you need to do to create a life that is vibrant, that you absolutely love with all your heart, is to use up your gifts and skill sets in this episode, in the next 15 to 20 different episodes that surround topics in the book. They're designed to help you do that. So I hope you're listening and you're going, man, coy. That sounds really amazing. I want to do this today, man. I want to hear what you have to say today. I want to do this today, and then I want to keep showing up. And I hope what will happen is you'll keep showing up and you'll keep listening to these things and you grab a copy to the book and you'll start to dive into that and create this incredible change. Because within it is this process that I believe in to my core. Because the habits I'm teaching today and the habits I'm gonna teach moving forward are ones that took me from a point where I was dwelling on disappointment. I was facing uncertainty. I didn't know how to do. I didn't know how to go out and live to my highest potential. Well, these habits in a two to three year period took me from a point from dwelling on disappointment to pursuing purpose and passion all out and loving my life. And so you're gonna hear a lot of passion in what I'm talking about because I believe in this process. So with that being said, let's keep this consist. Here we go. Here's five steps or five ways to flip the script in your life. See these things as just kind of foundational initial steps to create really powerful change. So the first thing is this step number one, way number one, don't take patterns personally. And you may say, what do you mean by that? What I mean is this. Everybody has habits or patterns that they don't like in their lives. And one of the most counterproductive things I see from people who want to create change, they beat themselves up for them. Man, I'm eating the wrong foods. I'm such. Man, I'm such a loser. I feel so terrible at myself. Don't do that. The moment you start to look at your patterns with curiosity and to just look at them and say, well, how did I get here? How do I shift this? If you just get curious about them, that's your first step. When you're beating yourself up, what happens is you're putting yourself in a negative state and you're getting yourself to where you're almost gonna. You're going into negative, so you're gonna attract more of it. You just repeat the cycle. The way that you break it is you don't take patterns personally. Instead, you go, you know what? This isn't me. Right? It's not that I'm lazy or any of that. It's just I've established the wrong patterns. And I'm not trying to let you off the hook. I'm not trying to say, hey, it's okay for you to keep doing that. What I'm saying is, if you look at it and you go, okay, I get why I do this. There was a point in my life where I learned this, or there was a point in my life where I needed this and I didn't know any different, but now I do. You see, that's where you flip the script. You look at it, you don't take your patterns personally and you're willing to move forward and look for a better option. That's what I do when I want to create change. Listen, I don't want to waste my time. I don't want to waste my time beating myself up or feeling sorry for myself. That's time I could allocate towards identifying a new habit, a new pattern that pulls out my potential. So this starting point is for you to start looking at your habits that you want to change and start to be curious. How do I change this? How did I get here? That's it. Okay. Don't take them personally. That's a starting point. We can learn to do that now. We're not bogging ourselves down. And we have a shot to move forward and to create something different. So that's step number one. Start practicing this right now. Start to look around. Don't avoid your patterns, too. Don't avoid your negative habits. People do that as well. Seek them out and look at them and be curious and be excited to create change in your life, because you can totally do that. Which leads us to way number two. Number two is this. You've got to believe that profound change is possible. When I started to create incredible change in my life, when I started to just break down my worst habits, like eating sugar way too much, you know, those types of habits. Here's what happened. I started to believe that profound change was possible and not like grueling, grinding. Nope, I could do it in an instant. And the way I learned this is I started to study neuro linguistic programming. Which is what Tony Robbins founded his entire career on. And I started to study this and the whole concept was everything that you do in your life is habit and pattern driven, right? And the things that we have, fear, self doubt, all these kind of habits that we don't like, they were learned, and a lot of them were learned in an instant. Think about fear. Fear often comes from situations where we were hurt, we were overwhelmed, things like that. We learn fear, boom when we, when we don't handle situations right. We learn fear in an instant. But if you can learn it in an instant, then you can change it in an instant. And the one thing that has really driven incredible change in my life is I start to look at, I started to look at my brain and I started to study it and go, man, your brain is capable of so much learning. You can just do amazing things. And when you start to do it, just go search brain capacities, do all kinds of Google searches around it. You go, oh my gosh, look at all these amazing things the brain can do. And when you build that up and you start to go, wow, or capable of a lot, you'll start to go, well, why can't I? Why not me? Why can't I break these habits and patterns? And I'm not. I don't even care if they're generational type habits or generational addictions. The way that you start to create change is you start to go, man, I've got this unbelievable capacity. I was given this remarkable brain with so much potential, and it's capable of creating that change. And when you start to believe, man, I'm totally capable of change, man, now you've got the foundation. I swear, this is one of the single biggest things that once you embrace it, you're on your way. And it's not that it's easy after this, but believing that change is possible, that's huge. So many people that I work with are like, man, I want to create this change, but you know, I just can't. I'm just kind of lazy. Well, guess what? If that's your belief system, that's what you're going to get over and over again. And so if you're not there yet, what you got to do is you got to start showing up and give yourself reference points, Remind yourself of some of the incredible things you've done. Do those searches on the Internet to find out what the brain is capable of, and then don't say it's reserved for other people. Start to really build that up, give yourself enough reference points to where you believe incredible change is possible. That's way number two. Way number three, this is a really, really cool one. This is where, man, once you don't take your habits personally, once you believe that you're capable of changing them, number three is this. You come along and you do this. You be diligent about giving your brain a better option. That's it. If you learn to give your brain a better option, an empowering option, you can flip the script on your biggest negative habits and patterns that you don't like. And if you don't believe this, then, man, all you gotta do is try some of these things that I'm telling you. And I thought about this as I was preparing this episode. I'll often take some notes, so I make sure that I'm on track and I'm giving you things that you can use. But I thought about this. One of the most common things I see as I look around in our society is people who feel down, they're bummed out, they feel worn out in their days, right? And there's different reasons for it. But, you know, one of the biggest ones, people are constantly comparing to other people. They're on social media, they're seeing people's a game, they're on Instagram, they're seeing people's, you know, perfect pictures that are Photoshopped, by the way. And they're seeing all these amazing things that are people are accomplishing. And they're looking at them, they're going, man, I don't have that. And it makes them feel bad, right? And this is very, very common. But here's the thing. This is the part where we use our system that we just talked about. When you notice this feeling down is just a result of the pattern. The pattern or the habit is this. It's comparing. We learn to compare in our society. It's very, very common from a young age. Well, here's the thing. If we learn not to take that personally, instead go, yeah, I could see where I've learned that social media, you know, I came up in a household where we did that a lot. It's done in school a lot. Yeah, I could see that you're not taking it personally, right? You just see it and then you go, you know, I can change this. If I learn this pattern, I can unlearn it. And here's the part where you come in and you give your brain a better option. You want to create incredible, powerful change. Simple. Here's a yellow ball habit. All you have to do is chase this Habit. And you'll go, whoop. You'll flip the script on comparison and feeling down naturally. Here it is. Get up every single morning and do what I call baseline Blessings. This is going to be one of the chapters in my new book. And all you have to do, just every single day, write down three things you're grateful for in your life, things you feel blessed for. And here, you can't mail it in. You have to show up and legitimately, things that you're grateful for, that you feel. And if you struggle at it at first, don't worry about it. Just keep showing up and doing it. Now I get up every single morning. It doesn't matter. I can do the same three every single day. And I can get up and I can say, you know what? I'm just grateful for today. I'm grateful to be alive. There are people that don't get to do this. They don't get to do life with their family. They don't get to pursue their dreams. And I'm so unbelievably blessed to get to do this. And I feel that in my heart, in my soul. I feel it everywhere. And I say, man, I'm grateful for my family. There are people that have lost their families, man, I get to do life with them every single day. And they are so amazing. Could I focus on things they aren't sure, but, man, they're amazing, and I'm going to focus on that. The number three thing is go, man, I'm grateful for my purpose. I get to show up every single day and inspire people to live to potential. And every day, I don't mail it in, and I bring emotion to the equation, and I feel that, and it creates change in my life. The more I show up and do this every single day, the more this becomes my brain's norm. And I stop comparing, and instead I look at what I'm grateful for. And I'm gonna give you more options than that. But that's a starting point. Here's another one. A lot of times people feel overwhelmed, right? They feel overwhelmed. And you're overwhelmed. You feel like you have so much going on and. And overwhelmed is the emotion that you feel, but it has to do with this. You have too many things on your plate or your brain's learned to bounce around, or it's both. Well, once we look at that and we go, oh, yeah, I'm overwhelmed because, man, I'm focused on all the things that I have to do. And, man, you notice, like, I'm just all over the place, those are the habits of the patterns. We don't take them personally. Instead, what we do is we go, okay, what I'm going to do is get up every single morning and I'm going to set the tone and I'm going to create simplicity. I'm going to get up and I'm going to get up every single morning, and I'm going to identify my top values in life. It's family, it's work, it's vitality. And I'm going to create, you know, just a short vision for what I want there, and I'm going to start revisiting it. And it's going to take some time. But if you keep showing up and saying, man, this is what I want in my family, this is what I want in work, and you show up and you feel that there's simplicity in that. And it can take some time, but eventually it starts. You feel less overwhelmed because you know your most important things, you know what you want, and you start to take action. Just don't make it a big deal. You can get the results you want, you can get the emotions you want, you can get the thoughts you want. But you have to be proactive about giving your brain an option. That's number three. The number four thing, really, really important. You gotta learn to fight for it. You must earn the right to get the life that you want. It's one thing to sit down and go, okay, I know I compare, and I need to show up and do my baseline blessings every single day. That's one thing. And even doing it for a day or two, that, you know, good for you. But it takes a lot more than that. Science shows that it's often up to 66 days to establish a new habit. 66 days. You know, a lot of times people go, oh, 66 days, man, that's too long. No, no, no. It's a bargain to create change in your life, to eliminate comparison, to get rid of feeling down because of it. 66 days is all I have to do to start creating change in my brain to create a new neural pathway to feeling blessed every day. Come on, man, show up and fight for that. Fight for it. Even when you don't feel like it. Do it anyways. Even in the days where you have those occasional times where you don't feel it, do what you gotta do to drum it up. Listen to music, dance, look at pictures of your family. Remember the times where your life was vibrant. Do what you got to do. Because, man, when it becomes your norm, your Life gets really, really, really, really amazing. Really amazing, right? And so fight for that, right? This is one of the most important things. If you do this, you're a.0001% person. Most people aren't willing to fight for it. We're in an instant gratification society. And when you take and you start showing up every single day, you're unique. And that's a really amazing thing. And I want you to go for that. And then the final thing is this. You really want to flip the script on your potential. You've got to learn to praise and reward your efforts, right? And I've thought about this a lot, because in our society, we're really good at beating ourselves up. When we fall short, we're really hard on ourselves and we remember it and we replay it. You gotta stop that. Don't do that. When you fall short. If your intentions were good, go back through this process and start working it again. And then what you need to do instead is when you follow through, even one day, praise yourself. You know, clap your hands, tap yourself, or pat yourself on the back. I don't know, do something to praise yourself. Because what you gotta do is you gotta make it pleasurable for your brain. This new thing, these new habits, they're powerful anyways, but you still need to go through and say, man, you showed up. Good for you. Awesome. You're creating change in your life. You deserve that. And it sounds crazy and I'm gonna have some really, really funky examples of this that I teach you from the book. But for now, praise yourself. Reward yourself. You go seven days straight. Love being in nature. Go for a walk. You love to eat ice cream, which you don't want to do all the time, but reward yourself. Just do something that's really, really good. And the biggest thing is learn to praise yourself when you do it. Give yourself credit. You deserve credit. If you're creating change, you're pushing to create change. You're fighting for it, you're earning it. Don't beat yourself up. Praise yourself. And what will happen is this. Your brain will start to go, man, this habit's pretty rewarding in itself, man. This is pretty cool. I feel pretty good when I do this. And when your brain starts to associate pleasure with the habits, now you've got something. Because now you're not only strengthening your ability to get to habits, you're strengthening your ability to turn into a lifestyle, which is really where meaningful change happens. So we're at 20 minutes. I'm going to shut up now. I hope this was really useful for you. Go through and start to work these five habits and get ready to flip the script in your life. You deserve better. You deserve the ability to go out and to feel like you're using it up every single day. But if you're going to do that, you got to start chunking out, you got to start flipping the script on your biggest barriers and you got to give your brain a better option. And then when you do continue to fight for it, reinforce it and just, you know, love the results that come to you. So I hope you enjoyed this. If you did, be sure to forward it to a friend. I would love it if you would do that. Help me get this out. You know, forward it via email to friends, text it to somebody, post it on social media and let's spread the word. But have an amazing day, amazing week, and I'll be back to talk to you soon. Take care. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, be sure to pass it on to other people who might need to hear the message. And if you're looking for resources to take your life to an entirely different level, head on over to coitcooper.com and download for a limited time a free copy of my brand new 10 Habits of High Performers and Impact Makers ebook and get out and establish habits that will help you crush it in your life today and in this week.