Ed Mylett (21:00)
It makes you want to have another one, right? So there's actually a correlation that's between blissfulness and drive. In other words, the more blissful you are, the more driven you are. Your brain gets this hit of dopamine and you want more and more of it. What happens though, over time, if you're an achiever, is if you cheat yourself out of enjoyment and celebration during the journey, during your victories, slowly but surely you get what we call burnout. And what burnout is, is that you never get a dopamine hit in your brain, you never enjoy it, and eventually you just go, I don't want to try that hard next time. I don't want to achieve again. It's not worth it. I don't get from it what I thought I would. That's the definition of burnout, is that we stop enjoying something to the point where we don't want to do the work anymore. So it's a very dangerous recipe to, for those of you that are achieving, to cheat yourself out of enjoying and celebrating. And in fact you'll eventually burn out on it. So do not do that. You've made a mistake in doing so. In fact, there's a correlation between enjoying it and wanting more of it. I can promise you that the more dopamine you get, the more you enjoy it, the more your brain will chase the next victory, the next level, et cetera, et cetera. So that is a misnomer that somehow enjoyment steals drive. It does not. In fact, it feels feeds it, just like biting into that lettuce Wrap or biting into that steak, it will give you more and more of it and you'll seek more of it. The second type of person says, well, I'm delaying my happiness until I get something. I'll be happy when. Many of you can relate to this. I'll be happy when I find the perfect relationship. I'll be happy when I get my dream house, when I get my promotion, when I get a certain amount of money. And they delay the happiness level until a destination in the future. The challenge with that, listen to me on this is you have to bring you with you to that destination. And if you can't be happy now, if you can't find a way to love yourself and be happy now, I can promise you, you will not love yourself at that next destination. I have many, many friends who are at the destinations you think you want to get to in that dream home, at that dream income with the dream amount of money, the dream car, the dream jet. And they're no more happy than they were prior to having it because they didn't learn the tools of loving themselves now, believing in themselves now both of those are flawed thinking. A great life is someone who lives blissfully now and stays in a state of dissatisfaction and drive. So I want to talk to you about how to do that. You know, one of the things I think that's important to start out by saying is you cannot love yourself if you're not being yourself. You cannot believe in yourself if you're not being yourself. So the first step towards really enjoying happiness now, believing in yourself and loving yourself now is truly being yourself. What do I mean by that? The first step is being proud of you, acting in congruency with your standards, with your values and your character and your beliefs. The more and more you do that, the minute you begin to step away yourself by behaving in a way that's not congruent with your faith, congruent with your character, congruent with your values. The more and more you lose a little bit of yourself, the more you can't love yourself, the more you can't believe in yourself. That first step to self love, to enjoying you and your own company, is truly being yourself. The other side of that is by how other people treat you and more importantly, how you let other people treat you. See, you teach people how to treat you in your life and oftentimes we begin to lose ourselves as people treat us less than we're worthy of our co workers, our spouses, our boyfriend or girlfriend, our friends, strangers. We allow we subject ourselves to treatment that is less than who we really are. And we begin to lose ourselves in that and therefore lose the love for ourselves and the belief in ourselves. So you teach people how to treat you, begin to tell yourself that, begin to demand other people understand that about you. When you're treated in a way that is not reflective of who you are, let people know that it is not acceptable, right? Treat yourself first in a way that is acceptable. Believe in yourself, love yourself, message yourself the right things, act in accordance with your values, and you're going to begin to see more bliss in your life. Clearly, everybody talks all the time about gratitude. But if you can be grateful for the smallest possible things in your life, you just waking up in the morning, I spent the morning today at a children's hospital that I spend some time at regularly. And I can tell you that you ought to just be grateful that you're healthy. If you are, man, I'm telling you, you should be grateful for that. Something baseline like that, or that your children are healthy if they are, God willing, man. What an abundance of gratitude we can find in just the most simple things in life. And these begin to create bliss and happiness in our life. Now, I said something earlier that you are perfect in this moment. And people confuse this because men and women, you are perfect in this moment. How I know you're perfect because you've produced the moment you're in, right? You've produced this moment you get out of life, which you're deeply convinced of. So right now the hardest thing to accept is the life that you're currently living is the one you think you're worth. It's the one you think you deserve. So you are perfect for the life you have right now. You've produced it. You are getting out of life what you believe you're worth, what you believe you deserve. The way people treat you, the amount of money you have, the way you look, the way you feel is what you think you're worth. That's how it always works. We get out of life what we're deeply convinced of. So the key thing is to begin to become more deeply convinced we're worthy of more, to work on our identities, right? To work on our self worth, our self confidence, because it changes us when we do that. So I want you to think about this just for a second. If that's true, then what are the keys in changing that? Because when I tell you this, I want you to hear this very carefully, very closely, okay? You're going to always get what you're deeply convinced of in your life. And so if I'm perfect for this moment, because you are, you are perfect in this moment. Stop being so hard on yourself, stop beating yourself up. You are perfect in this moment. You've produced this moment, you've produced this life. Now see, there's this balance of accepting you, loving you, believing in you, knowing you're perfect in this moment, but also being self aware, which says I don't want to continually repeat this moment. So although I'm perfect in this one, I don't need any self loathing or self hatred or beating myself up. I'm perfect as I am. However, I don't want to spend the next 20 years in this same moment, in the same reality, with the same life. And so that will require me to change. Because I want to change the moment, I want to change my conditions. I'm perfect as I am now. I accept that I love me. Because if I don't accept me now, I won't accept me later. However, I'm also self aware and I don't want this moment forever, I don't want this life forever. I want to improve it, I want it to be better. That's the dissatisfaction part. That's why you must improve, you must grow so you can love who you are and still have a desire to grow and change. Because you want to produce a new moment, a new reality. Because you're at that time, you're going to get what you expect, your worth as well, what you're deeply convinced of. And so the key thing for me is that we love ourselves in this moment, but we know to change the moment, to change the condition, we must change us. And that's where growth comes in, that's where changing ourselves comes in. And that's why personal life strategies and reading books and working on our identity and listening to audios like this and following the right people on social media, not the wrong ones, the ones who actually have produced a great life, not the ones theorizing because they've got a microphone, but the ones who have actually produced a great existence. And so having said that, let's talk a little bit about how we can change some of those things. I want to suggest an emotion to you that's going to be very risky, but it's not talked about enough. So on social media and all these self help books, you're always going to talk about gratitude and love and self confidence and all of these great values, okay? And strength and all that. And those are all abundant values in life. Okay. There's a secret emotion, though, that's the gateway that can magnify all those other ones, and it's vulnerability. Are you willing to be vulnerable? Vulnerability is one of the most incredible qualities a person can have, because, ironically, to be vulnerable, you must have confidence. Vulnerability means you're willing to accept risk. So in a relationship, the only way to have an abundant, loving relationship is to take risk, is to be vulnerable, is to give yourself all of it. If you're in a relationship and you're only giving yourself 80% of it, 90% of it, you're holding a little bit back. You're afraid to be taking all those risks. You'll never have the abundant love, the abundant connection you think you want to have. If in your fitness, you're holding back 10% because if you gave it all you had, it's a lot of risk there. It's a lot of pain, it's a lot of discomfort. You're not willing to be vulnerable and get weaker as you work out. I can tell you you're cheating yourself out of the abundant physical body you could have in your business if you're in it. And you have a team, let's say.