That Will Change Your Life Forever! (This hit all the right spots)

Summary

The Ed Mylett Show: "That Will Change Your Life Forever! (This Hit All the Right Spots)"
Release Date: August 2, 2025
Hosted by Ed Mylett | Cumulus Podcast Network

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Introduction

In this transformative episode of The Ed Mylett Show, Ed delves deep into the power of self-questioning and its profound impact on our emotions and overall quality of life. Joined by esteemed guests like Brendan Burchard, Ann Beiler, Phil Heath, and Rich Devini, the discussion navigates through practical strategies to harness the power of our internal dialogue, leading to emotional freedom and enhanced personal growth.

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The Power of Questions in Shaping Emotions

Ed Mylett begins by emphasizing the critical role that the questions we ask ourselves play in determining our emotional states:

"The quality of our life is really the quality of how we feel or are the emotions we have... The truth of the matter is your life is really predicated on the quality of the questions you ask yourself."
— Ed Mylett [01:41]

Ed introduces the concept that thoughts are inherently question-answer cycles within our minds. By consciously selecting empowering questions, we can reshape our emotional responses and, consequently, our lives.

Seven Transformative Questions

Ed outlines seven pivotal questions designed to shift one's emotional landscape:

1. What Does This Mean?
   Assessing the true meaning behind events can alter emotional responses.

   "What does this mean? Because if you can change the meaning, you're going to change the emotion."
   — Ed Mylett [02:00]

2. Who Loves Me and Who Do I Love?
   Focusing on cherished relationships cultivates gratitude and emotional stability.

   "Who do I love? Your great friends... give yourself that gift of asking that question."
   — Ed Mylett [12:23]

3. What Am I Paying Attention To?
   Redirecting focus from what you lack to what you possess enhances happiness.

   "Are you paying attention to what I possess or what I lack?"
   — Ed Mylett [12:30]

4. What Will This Matter in Five Years?
   Gaining perspective on the longevity of current stresses reduces their emotional grip.

   "What will this matter in five years?"
   — Ed Mylett [14:00]

5. What Can I Control and What Can't I Control?
   Distinguishing between controllable and uncontrollable factors empowers proactive responses.

   "What can I control about this and what can't I control?"
   — Ed Mylett [17:00]

6. What Is the One Catalyst Action I Could Take Right Now?
   Identifying a single decisive action can trigger a cascade of positive changes.

   "What's the one action I could take?"
   — Ed Mylett [23:00]

7. What Perspective Do I Need to Have on This?
   Reflecting on personal experiences and comparing them fosters resilience and gratitude.

   "Have I been through worse than this and I survived?"
   — Ed Mylett [24:30]

Each question serves as a tool to recalibrate one's emotional response, fostering a mindset conducive to growth and emotional well-being.

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Guest Insights: Brendan Burchard and Emotional Mastery

Brendan Burchard, a renowned personal development coach, collaborates with Ed to explore the nuances of emotional control. Together, they underscore the significance of not letting emotions dictate actions:

"Your behavior does not have to be driven by your emotions."
— Brendan Burchard & Ed Mylett [55:07]

Brendan shares personal anecdotes highlighting the transformative power of emotional regulation:

• Physical Practices for Emotional Well-Being:
  Brendan discusses the benefits of stretching, yoga, and infrared sauna sessions in achieving emotional balance.

  "When I'm stretching... my emotional well-being goes through the roof."
  — Brendan Burchard [39:35]

• Prayer and Meditation:
  Integrating prayer with meditation enhances spiritual connection and emotional peace.

  "I started adding prayer to the end of all my meditation... a better, centered, silent, peaceful place."
  — Brendan Burchard [43:33]

The dialogue highlights that emotional freedom is attainable through intentional practices and by fostering a deeper connection with one's inner self.

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The Role of High-Quality Questions in Leadership and Personal Growth

The conversation shifts towards leadership, with insights from Ann Beiler and Mark Victor Hansen, who emphasize the importance of surrounding oneself with high-caliber individuals and fostering an environment that nurtures personal growth.

Auditioning Your Inner Circle

Ann Beiler introduces the concept of "auditioning your inner circle," advocating for surrounding oneself with individuals who elevate one's personal and professional life:

"I surround myself with people that live at a higher temperature setting... leveraging their gifts to serve others."
— Ann Beiler [86:00]

This approach ensures that one's inner circle is a source of inspiration and growth rather than stagnation.

Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

Mark Victor Hansen addresses common challenges like impostor syndrome, encouraging leaders to anchor their confidence in their intentions and purpose rather than in transient achievements:

"Your intent is to serve. I hope I show up in the father circle, the business circle, the integrity circle, the faith one."
— Ann Beiler [84:12]

By focusing on service and connecting with one's purpose, individuals can build authentic confidence and leadership presence.

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Practical Applications: From Personal Challenges to Organizational Growth

The episode culminates with a discussion on applying these principles both personally and within organizations. John Gordon and other guests contribute by sharing strategies to cultivate confidence, build supportive relationships, and foster environments that encourage asking the right questions.

Implementing the Seven Questions

Ed and his guests provide actionable steps for listeners to implement the seven transformative questions in their daily lives:

1. Self-Reflection: Encourage regular introspection to assess current emotional states and underlying questions.
2. Journaling: Maintain a journal to document questions and track emotional changes.
3. Action Plans: Develop specific action steps based on the insights gained from asking these questions.
4. Community Building: Foster relationships with individuals who support and challenge one's growth.

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Conclusion

In this episode, Ed Mylett masterfully underscores the profound impact of self-questioning on our emotional well-being and life trajectory. Through the collaborative wisdom of his guests, listeners are equipped with seven powerful questions to transform their emotional landscape, enhance personal growth, and cultivate resilient leadership. The episode serves as a compelling testament to the idea that by merely changing the questions we ask, we can reinvent our emotions and, consequently, our lives.

"Your brain is going to answer whatever question you ask it, so ask the quality."
— Brendan Burchard [65:20]

Listeners are encouraged to engage with these concepts actively, embracing the power of intentional questioning to unlock their fullest potential.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "The quality of your questions gives you a thought, gives you an answer, which gives you a thought."
  — Ed Mylett [01:41]

• "What am I paying attention to? Are you paying attention to what I possess or what I lack?"
  — Ed Mylett [12:30]

• "Your behavior does not have to be driven by your emotions."
  — Brendan Burchard & Ed Mylett [55:07]

• "When you do this tool basket I've given you of the five and you start to evaluate, what meaning did I attach to this?"
  — Ed Mylett [20:15]

• "The quality of your emotions is the quality of the questions you ask yourself standing there."
  — Larry King [35:30]

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This episode is a treasure trove for anyone seeking to elevate their emotional intelligence, leadership skills, and overall life satisfaction. By integrating these seven questions into daily routines, listeners can embark on a journey of profound personal transformation.

Transcript

[Ed Mylett]

Advantage Gold is giving away a free copy of Rogoff's book to anyone who schedules a one on one precious metals appointment. You'll discover why gold is becoming the number one hedge against a global currency ship and how to move your IRA or 401k into physical gold. Tax and penalty free. Get your free copy today while supplies last. Text WIN to 85545 that's WIN 85545 or go to advantagegold.com data and message rates apply. Performance may vary. You should always consult your financial and tax professional. So hey guys, listen. We're all trying to get more productive and the question is how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down growthday.com forward/ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. Got about $5,000 $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis. And I do. So go over there and get signed up.

[Brendan Burchard]

You're going to get a free tuition.

[Ed Mylett]

Free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com forward sled that's growthday.com Ed.

[Ann Beiler]

This is the Ed Milet Show.

[Ed Mylett]

Hey everyone, welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way to today is going to be called seven questions. You can ask yourself to change the way you feel and they work and there's probably more than seven. But I'm going to give you seven things to think about today. And why do I say questions to ask yourself? Because the truth of the matter is the quality of Our life is really the quality of how we feel or are the emotions we have. And the emotions we have and how we feel is oftentimes predicated on what we think about. And most people never stop back and go, okay, so if it's true, what I think about, you know, causes an emotion, like a thought causes an emotion and a feeling, what is thinking, right? What is a thought? And the truth is, a thought is a very quick process that happens internally of asking and answering a question to yourself. So the truth of the matter is your life is really predicated on the quality of the questions you ask yourself, because the quality of your questions gives you a thought, gives you an answer, which gives you a thought. That thought creates an emotion or a feeling or sometimes causes an action that can create an emotion or a feeling. So if you go all the way back, the quality of our life is the quality of our emotions. It's actually predicated on the quality of the questions that we ask ourselves. And so when you can take control of the internal questions you're asking yourself, it can change everything in your life. And when you're feeling fearful or worried or a form of anxiety, anger, it's typically because you're lacking some of these questions or you're asking them the wrong way. And so I'm going to cover those things with you today. Because questions direct our attention, and attention is almost everything. We really get what we pay attention to, don't we? What you pay attention to, you get. And the brain is really lazy. The brain is constantly trying to conserve energy. So it loves to run patterns, it loves habits. So when you begin to build the thought loop, the habit of asking yourself a question of what am I worried about, what am I lacking, etc. Etc. Your brain constantly goes to find those things. And because you can only process so much information at once, right? Like, I'm in a very crowded room. There's wood, there's chandeliers, there's a TV over here, there's a computer. There's actually somebody doing work outside with a saw that I can hear right now. There's an ocean out there. There's all kinds of different things. There's the clothes I'm wearing. If I paid attention to everything in my life, I would go crazy. So your brain tries to conserve energy and keep you sane. And. And like, it kind of just like filters out a bunch of different things. But sometimes when we repeat a thought, it can become what I talk about often on here. Like a delusion becomes delusional thinking, and we Miss what's always been there. You know, I talk a lot about the reticular activating system in the brain, the RAs, which is basically the filter of your life. It, it reveals to you that which you truly believe or which is really, really important to you. And it sort of scans out everything else. It's sort of like a matrix. I write about it and my book, the Power of One More. And so these questions you ask yourself can direct your RAs so that you're paying attention to the things that serve you. And so we're going to go through that today. And remember this. Thoughts are really like magnets. They truly are. When you begin to think about something repetitively, you draw to you through what you're aware of. The people, places and things that actually make those thoughts real oftentimes. So you have to be careful what you think about because you'll probably attract it. And I think a lot of you know what I'm talking about, especially those of you that have become more and more successful. You've really developed the ability, the vibrational frequency, to get yourself in such a state that when you think about something regularly, all of a sudden, someone you haven't thought about in years, you're thinking about them all the time. They call you out of the blue, or you've just had a thought recently about a particular car, all of a sudden you see that car everywhere, or you know, certain message. People say, well, our phones are listening to us. You know that thing now where you're like, we got careful what you say because your phone's going to show you something from it. That's also how your brain works. Be careful what you're thinking about because your brain's going to show it to you. And so today we can change the way we feel if we can change and ask these questions. So here's the seven questions. The first question ask yourself when something's happening is, what does this mean? Step back and assess your meaning of the event. Because often times in life, and by.

[Brendan Burchard]

The way, sometimes fear is not a bad thing.

[Ed Mylett]

Fear can cause you to focus. That's hardwired into you through, you know, hundreds and thousands of millions of years potentially to protect you. So sometimes fear is like, pay attention to this. This is something you need to work on. So it's not always detrimental. Also remember this. When it comes to meaning, it's not what happens to us in life, it's how we react, it's how we respond in life.

[Brendan Burchard]

Remember that.

[Ed Mylett]

Again, it's not what happens, it's how we react and how we respond. Well, normally our response is based on what we think something means. So the first question is to ask yourself, when you're worrying about something or fearful about something or some event that's coming up that's causing you stress, what does it mean? Because if you can change the meaning, you're going to change the emotion. When you change the emotion, you've changed your entire life. And oftentimes maybe you've attached a meaning, something that doesn't serve you. And people can have two different meanings. There's this great story that I've heard many, many times about Mother Teresa, and I've told it on the show before, but Mother Teresa would say, like, let's take me or you. Usually, most people that she would say when she was present for someone's death, it was the greatest honor of her life. That's the meaning she would take from it. But I think most people, myself, probably you included, if I was present, if I went to a. There was a car accident on the road, I had to pull over, and I got out of my car and I found someone that had passed away from that car accident, and I had to take them from the car. My meaning in that event would be tragedy. Would I probably replay that video and it caused me great pain in my life. I'd replay it over and over and over again. You know, these mental images we replay. Because the meaning for me, as I was witness to tragedy, someone lost a mother, a daughter, a sister. And that would be the meaning, justifiably, by the way, that I would take from that event. Mother Teresa would say that if she was at that exact same moment, that it was the honor of her life because her belief was, oh, my gosh, I was present to watch this person's soul leave their body and go to heaven. What an honor to be present for that. And many times she loved to care for the dying because she could help them through that transition and time. So she would look at death, presence of death, being there for it as an honor. I'm giving you a very extreme case. But do you see how then she'd leave that event of someone's passing feeling blessed, feeling honored, feeling privileged that she got to watch someone's soul go to heaven, happy for that person, that they get to spend eternity in heaven, whereas most people would be at that same event, attached. Both justified a different meaning, create a totally different event. You imagine leaving that car accident go, I was blessed today. I know that sounds crazy. I was honored today. And I'm Giving you the extreme example, that's almost ridiculous. Just to illustrate the point. The point is, what does this mean? And oftentimes the reason that we've attached so much stress or worry or fear or anxiety to something is we've attached a crazy meaning to it. It's meaning something that's irrational. It's meaning something that's exaggerated, it's too much, it's bigger. And oftentimes the meaning we take is really, what are they going to think about me if this happens? What are people going to say? How are they going to feel about me? How are they going to look at me? But when you decide to take control of the meaning of something and step back away from it, get above it, think about it, and attach the meaning. Many times in my life, I'll ask myself, what would I need to believe this means? What meaning do I need to attach.

[Brendan Burchard]

To this that I can also believe?

[Ed Mylett]

It can't be outrageous, right? But what would I need to believe about this so that it would serve me emotionally? Because clearly the meaning I've attached to this is it's something horrible. You know, if you're a business person and you get a tax audit, let's just say you're in an audit of some type, right? You see, the meaning is, it's if this goes the wrong way, I'm going to lose everything and I'm going to live on the street and I'm going to go broke. And you actually begin to. You may not say that verbally, but it's like, it's tremendous, right? Like it's the worst meaning. Or you can say, listen, this is something I know we've done things that we need to be able to do. Even if it doesn't go my way, I can come back. I've come back from difficult things before. You attach a meaning to it. A lot of. As I'm recording this, so many of my friends are having their children graduate. I've got friends graduating. I had my son graduate college recently. I've got a good friend whose son graduates high school today. I saw some videos online today of kids graduating sixth grade. One of them is graduating kindergarten. And it's interesting the different meanings parents attach to those events and the totally different emotions. Like, my son graduated from college. I was proud and excited about his life and pumped up. And yet there were other parents there that were so sad because it was the end of a chapter of his life. And.

[Brendan Burchard]

And even the different kids, some are.

[Ed Mylett]

Excited to get out into the world. They've attached that many others, like, oh.

[Brendan Burchard]

My gosh, this best time of my life.

[Ed Mylett]

The fraternity, the sports are over. So it's the same event. The meaning you attach to it means everything. I've watched parents online today cry when they're sixth graders leaving sixth grade and.

[Brendan Burchard]

Now going on to, you know, depending.

[Ed Mylett]

On where you live, like middle school or. Or junior high. And others excited about it. Same event, different meaning. When you begin to ask yourself, what do I believe this means of evaluate that attach a correct meaning that serves you. All of a sudden you've changed your emotional state. That's number one question to ask yourself. Number two question to ask yourself is just when I want to change my state and how I feel. Quality of the questions, quality of our emotions, right? Who loves me and who do I love? And just stopping at any given time when you have stress in your life and just taking an inventory of that one thing. You know, people talk about gratitude exercises all the time, and I think they're wonderful. But I like simple things. And for me, it just comforts me to think for a second, no matter what's going on, the stress, who do I love and who loves me? And I can tell you, just picturing my mom just brings me a little bit more peace. Also, for some reason, for most of us, our moms, not everybody, but if you have a good mom, our moms just give us some sort of perspective on things, don't they? And what really matters in life. And so then I'll think of my children, my family, and my wife and siblings of mine, my. My sisters and my friends, many of my great friends. You know, your best friends aren't necessarily the people that you have to spend the most time with. They're the people that you have the best time with. Let me say that to you again. Your great friends don't have to be people you spend the most time with or a lot of time with. They're the people you have the best time with and begin to think about them. And those best times, it's just fair to give yourself that gift. It's okay. You say, well, we. When I got a business stress. Yeah, take a second. Who do I love?

[Larry King]

Who loves me?

[Ed Mylett]

What are some of those best times? Just give yourself the gift of it for a sec. It'll completely change your state right now.

[Brendan Burchard]

By the way, there's a bunch of.

[Ann Beiler]

Things you can do to change your.

[Ed Mylett]

State, obviously moving your physical body. We're talking about the questions today. There's a bunch of things you could do but ask yourself who Loves me? Who do I love? So, so far we've covered two things. Evaluate and attach the correct meaning to what's going on. A real one, a realistic one, a reasonable one, not some crazy one you couldn't really believe. Evaluate the meaning. That's one way to change your emotions. Number two, just take an inventory real quick of the most important things in life. Who loves me and who do I love? Picture their faces. Give yourself that gift of asking that question. Because guess what happens when you ask that question? That's what you pay attention to. And just in that second, to give yourself some perspective and to pay attention to that matters.

[Brendan Burchard]

Why?

[Ed Mylett]

Number three is about attention. What am I paying attention to? Okay. What you pay attention to is the most critical question you can ask yourself. I believe of all the questions, what you're paying attention to matters the most in your life. And at any given time, ask yourself this question. Are you paying attention to what you possess or what you lack? Ask yourself that at any given time, are you paying most attention to what you possess or what you have or what you lack or don't have? And I could tell you, for the majority of my life, I have focused on what I don't have at any given moment. I don't have the answer to this question. I don't have the money for this. I don't have the relationship for that. I don't have the whatever. It's. We are constantly looking for what we don't possess as opposed to having an appreciation and putting our attention on what we do have. Because they're two totally different perspectives. If you pay attention to what you don't have, there's a lot of what you don't have compared to what you do have. So you can just keep looking and looking and looking and looking. But when you ask yourself, if you ask yourself that question, what do I have right now? What do I possess? When possessions don't mean things necessarily. It could be a thing, it could be money, it could be a house, but it could be you're in possession of one of the most wonderful relationships in the world. You're in possession of whatever your faith is, what do you have? And when you focus on what you possess and have as opposed to what you lack, you're happy, you're more blissful. If you live a life where you're constantly focused on what you don't possess. And I'm not talking about just things, friends, relationships, emotions, money, right answers to things. You focus on what you don't have. That's a Vast space compared to the things you do have. But when you begin to change your attention, what you pay attention to is what you do have, it changes everything. And that's why, by the way, you know, so many people continue to try to possess more and more things because they're so focused on what they don't have. They're like, if I can just get more stuff, more things, more houses, more cars, more money, more success, more accolades, more attention, more whatever, more followers. And what happens is these are.

[Brendan Burchard]

When you find people, they're pos. They're.

[Ed Mylett]

They're professional possessors. They acquire things. They're really good. And you. Some of them are the people that.

[Brendan Burchard]

You might admire most in the world.

[Ed Mylett]

They're on my show. They. They've possessed Grammy awards and. And Oscars and Super bowl trophies and World Series rings and golf championships and.

[Brendan Burchard]

Tennis championships and lots of money and.

[Ed Mylett]

Beautiful houses and cars, and they're still.

[Brendan Burchard]

Unhappy because even though they have all.

[Ed Mylett]

These things, they focus on what they don't possess and need to get more.

[Brendan Burchard]

And when you live a life which.

[Ed Mylett]

Is by about 95% of people I know, this is me too, most of the time, until I've changed this.

[Brendan Burchard]

Of what I don't have or what.

[Ed Mylett]

I don't possess, man. You know, I learned this years ago at an event for, I think, Tony Robbins. He made a suggestion on that. And I have to tell you, it really shifted things for me. And in your case, I would ask you, do you focus on what you don't possess or what you do possess? Because when you begin to become grateful for what you do possess, the relationships, the cherished moments, memories, your health, whatever it might be, you live a life of real bliss. But if you have that mindset where what you're always paying attention to is what you don't have and what you want, what you don't possess, you could end up having a whole bunch of possessions. And I'm talking about just not material things. You could have great people around you, amazing relationships that you would cherish and great physical possessions and money and still be unhappy because you're paying attention to what you don't have. And that's why sometimes people get later in life and they go, I had these beautiful. This beautiful family around me, and I didn't pay attention to them. Or I had this amazing relationship, and I didn't pay attention to it. I kept chasing this or that. It's because they paid attention to what they didn't possess as opposed to what they did possess. The happiest people put their attention on what they do possess, not what they don't. It changes everything, and it is work. And that's why you have to ask yourself about the meaning of an event, number one. That's why you got to focus on who you love and who loves you. This directs your attention. These are extra questions that help direct your attention. So ask yourself this up front. Do I spend most of my time focusing on what I do possess? The relationships, the loved ones, the material things, the ideas, the thoughts, my health, my faith? Or do I spend most of my time focusing on what I don't possess and trying to acquire it? And yes, you'll be. You'll get better and better at acquiring those things, except it's not what you'll pay attention to when you get them. You'll keep paying attention because it's your thought pattern. Remember this. Your brain creates thought patterns, habits, to save energy because it's lazy and it wants to save energy. So you're really one of two people. You focus on what you do possess or what you don't, okay? And no matter what, you end up possessing you, I guess, tell you this, you will have created a pattern in your life that will never allow you to be blissful if you focus on what you don't possess. Okay, Fourth question to ask yourself. What will this matter in five years? What will it matter in five years? When you change your frame of reference, See, if something's really stressing you, just ask yourself, in five years, will this matter? Will this matter in five years? And if that doesn't work, will this matter in 50 years? And you'll change your perspective on something. Sometimes we make something such a big deal, such a big stress, but when you begin to just step back and say, is this going to matter in five years? You get a perspective on it that allows it to be reduced to its proper influence over you, right? And I know me, one of the reasons that I've been materially successful in my life is I make things a huge deal.

[Brendan Burchard]

We got to get this done now, now, right?

[Ed Mylett]

I'm great at that.

[Mark Victor Hansen]

Let's go.

[Brendan Burchard]

Let's go.

[Ed Mylett]

I'm amazing at elevating the magnitude of something. And it's really served me in achievement.

[Brendan Burchard]

It's not served me in a.

[Ed Mylett]

In fulfillment because I make things a huge deal that aren't going to matter in a year. They're not going to matter in five years. And so I've lived an awful lot of my life not in the quality of the emotions that I'M worthy of because I focus on what I don't have. I've attached the wrong meaning to things. I don't spend enough time focusing on who I love and who loves me. And I sometimes don't ask myself regularly enough, is this going to matter in five years? This I'm super crazy worked up about in five years. Is it going to matter one way or the other?

[Brendan Burchard]

Now, again, as I cover these things.

[Larry King]

That doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to problems.

[Brendan Burchard]

We're going to get to that in a minute.

[Ed Mylett]

There's answers here. This isn't Pollyanna, but imagine this. What if you took this tool basket I've given you of the five and you start to evaluate, what meaning did I attach to this? Does meaning serve me? Is this meaning I've attached accurate, truthful, real? Or am I off base on this meaning I've attached to it? It's killing my emotional state. If I change the meaning, could I change me right now?

[Brendan Burchard]

And if I got really good at.

[Ed Mylett]

Always attaching the right meaning to something, could I change my life? Number two, if I started to spend more time on who loves me and who do I love, what would that do for my life? Right. Third, start to focus or pay attention to what you pay attention to. What am I paying attention to? What I lack or what I have? What I possess or what I don't possess? Right? And then a little perspective question, this is really going to matter in five years and what's it going to mean and will I be okay? Number five question to ask yourself, what can I control about this and what can't I control? It's one of the most powerful questions on earth. Because when you start to really have manic thoughts or just thoughts that don't serve you or stress in your life, you really have lost control of your thoughts. And successful people, happy people, delineate, distinguish between what can I control and what's out of my control. And this is probably something as a control freak, somebody who likes to control everything. Another one of these things I've struggled with. By the way, it's why I have this great list, because I really struggle with all seven of these. And at any given time, when I've got all seven of these clicking the right way, I have a totally different quality of life. And so ask yourself, what can I control about this? And then filter out all the things you can't control. And by the way, surrender all the things you can't control. Give them up. Give them up to God. Give them up or just give them up altogether. If you're not a believer in God, which I recommend, you believe in God, but if you don't, you just got to give them up because it doesn't serve you. You're literally worrying, stressing, obsessing over things you cannot control. By the way, here's a good one. You can't control people. You can't control other people's behaviors. You can't control other people's reactions. So if you begin to surrender all of that and just focus on what you can control, you're way ahead. Here's the other thing. It helps you figure out what number six will be in a minute, but it helps you start to move the needle on fixing something. If you've got 18 things, you're thinking about 14 of them, which you can't control at all, then the four you can control get lost in the shuffle or get watered down. But imagine if you went right into the four things you control, or the one thing you can control. All of a sudden, your ability to reduce this thing down to what it really is and maybe eliminate or fix it has increased tremendously. But we don't.

[Brendan Burchard]

In our life, we.

[Ed Mylett]

We just have all these thoughts of everything, most of which we can't control. Most people spend most of their life.

[Brendan Burchard]

Thinking about things they can't control. Is that not crazy? But. And you go, well, why do I do it? Because it became a habit.

[Ed Mylett]

It became a habit at one point, and now you've repeated it over and.

[Brendan Burchard]

Over again, and it's a delusion.

[Ed Mylett]

Like I've talked about other podcasts, but it's habitual now. It's become who you are. It's become the familiar. But the way you change something is you become aware of it. It loses its power over you, and you replace it with something new. Like, many of you know that my dad ended up, was a recovering alcoholic drug addict, ended up being sober the rest of his life. And one of the most powerful parts of that program is their idea of knowing, having the wisdom to know the difference between what you can and cannot control and surrender the rest of it.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I can tell you, when I.

[Ed Mylett]

Pray at night, I'm like, God, these are the things I can't control. I'm giving those to you. If you can please handle these, that would be great. Or at least make me stronger and help me delineate between the things and distinguish that I can control and be great at fixing those things. And so that's number five, which leads to number six. This is Real stuff here. What's the one catalyst, decision or action I could take right now that would reduce this issue the most dramatically or eliminate it? What's the catalyst, decision number six or action? What you'll find is, and I have found in my life, that there's typically one decision or one action. If you took it, it could eliminate this problem altogether. If you could just get yourself to focus on what's the one thing I could do to annihilate this issue? What's the one action I could take? What's the one thing I could do? And it's a catalyst, because if you.

[Brendan Burchard]

Do that one thing, issue 2, 3.

[Ed Mylett]

4, 5, and 6 sometimes resolve themselves. What's the one action?

[Brendan Burchard]

If I took this action, I took this one action.

[Ed Mylett]

If I made this one decision, all of these things end up falling into place for me. There is typically something in every single problem that if you made that one decision or took that one action, it knocks down like. It's almost like dominoes that just start falling if you do the one thing.

[Brendan Burchard]

But.

[Ed Mylett]

But most people, because they're so distracted with the wrong meaning, they're so distracted with not focusing on who loves them, they're pay attention to the things they don't possess. They have a flawed perspective of how important this will be in five years. They have not delineated or distinguished down what they can control because they've done none of that. They can't arrive at this decision. But if you've done those other things now you, okay, these are the things I can control. What's the one action, the one decision I could do that would go to the biggest impact on either eliminating or reducing this stress, this problem, this issue right now. And then you go about doing it, and then seven last question is, what perspective do I need to have on this? Perspective is different than meaning. Perspective is reviewing your life and asking yourself this, have I been through worse than this and I survived? What's the worst case scenario? There's nothing wrong with asking yourself, what's the worst case scenario? So I call seven the perspective question. And the perspective first is to look at the rest of your life and go, look, I've been through harder than this. I've been through worse than this. If that's true, maybe that's not the issue. Maybe you haven't been. Maybe this could be the worst thing. Then you got to ask yourself is, what's the worst case scenario? I think a lot of times we literally play these games in our head.

[Brendan Burchard]

We're like, if this happens, I'll die. I'll live on the street.

[Ed Mylett]

Probably not. Probably not. And if it is, you've been diagnosed with something that could cause that, then I think the perspective question becomes finding someone who's got it worse than you. You know, my grandmother used to tell me, she goes, eddie, no matter what you're going through, somebody's always got it worse. And sometimes it's just asking yourself, you know, and being grateful for the fact that maybe I don't have it that bad. I was having a particularly horrible day this morning, and I ended up doing an interview today with Ann Beiler. And I don't know the timing of how podcasts come out, but she was telling her life story. And when she was a young woman, she had a. Her daughter was killed on her farm accidentally by her sister in, like, a tractor accident. And she literally had to carry her daughter in the car into the emergency room. And she tells the story on the show about. She just literally dumped her body on the desk of the emergency room and just said, can you save her? And lost her child. I'm not. I'm not having that bad of a day. And then she ended up in being abused and raped by her pastor after that. I'm not having that bad a day. And so sometimes just getting a little bit of perspective for how blessed you are. And then I have these other friends that are incredible at this, that. That have had cancer diagnosis, and they'll say, eddie, I'm blessed. You know, I don't have this or that or the other thing. And so every once in a while, just giving yourself a perspective, question of, maybe you've been through worse than this, right? If that's not true, and this is the worst thing you've gone through, what's the worst case scenario? It's okay to visit that for a second. Don't be afraid of it. I think you'll find out that bogeyman's not as bad as you think. And then if that doesn't help you, then you gotta search and have some perspective on someone's probably got it worse than you or has had it worse than you. And to be grateful for the little great things you do have going in your life. And pay attention to that. And so to me, these seven things that I've shared with you help. What's the meaning you need to attach to the event? Change the meaning, you change the emotion. You change your life. Number two, focus for a minute on who loves you and. And who you love. Third, pay attention to what you do Possess not what you lack.

[Ann Beiler]

Remember that.

[Ed Mylett]

Fourth, what impact will this have in five years? Get some, some concepts, some perspective based on that, right? Number five, what can I control and what can't I control? And surrender what you cannot. Number six, once you figure out what you can control, what's the one catalyst decision, the one catalyst action that if I get that done, the dominoes are going to fall in my favor. And then seven is the perspective question. And if you have these seven questions in your tool bag, maybe you ask them all seven in that order. Maybe you need one of them at a time. Maybe depending on the situation, it's that one question of the seven you need to ask yourself. Maybe as you're listening to this, you're going, you know what? I do two and three really, really well, but man, do I screw up number five or six, and maybe there's just one of these you need to work on. The good news, I guess for you is that I need to work on a lot of it and I have worked on a lot of it and that's why I have all seven of these. I also want to give you some hope, you know, you don't have to be perfect to help people. You know, One of the reasons I think I reached so many people with my work is I. I've needed to get better at so many things. I've made so many mistakes, I've got so many things that I don't yet still have figured out and it's caused me to work on them and find answers. And one of those things has been the quality of my emotions. I've spent too much of my life as a young man and even a middle aged man living in worry and anxiety and angst and some fear. Doesn't mean I haven't had lots of great times, but there were more to be had, if you know what I mean. And one of the main things was wrong meanings attached to events definitely also paying attention all the time to what I didn't possess, what I didn't have, instead of paying attention for what I do possess, what I do have. And I think those are the biggies for me. I'm really probably pretty good at that catalyst decision thing. I had to really improve at the let go of what you can't control and focus on what you can control. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I Did with our next guest. Maybe the most perfect time ever to have the perfect person at the perfect time I have sitting across from me right now.

[Brendan Burchard]

And you know, when I got into.

[Ed Mylett]

Personal development, everywhere I would go, this man's name would come up.

[Larry King]

I'm sitting at a Dodger game with.

[Ed Mylett]

Larry King one night and I'm describing what he goes, you know, Brendan Burchard.

[Ann Beiler]

Everywhere I would go.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I thought when I heard your.

[Ed Mylett]

Name, this dude must be in his 60s, because he's a legend already. And then when I got to research.

[Larry King]

You and get to know you, I'm like, this guy's even younger than I am.

[Ed Mylett]

And then we did a podcast together, which just blew up and went all over the Internet. And I'm like, I'm gonna have him back on again. So, Brendon Bouchard, welcome back to the show.

[Rich Devini]

And my Latin, it's an honor, man. It really is an honor.

[Phil Heath]

It's been so great getting to know.

[Rich Devini]

You and coming in today and seeing.

[Phil Heath]

This all put together like this, like, all right, Ed.

[Larry King]

It's pretty cool.

[Phil Heath]

Yeah, it geeks me out.

[Ann Beiler]

It's pretty cool.

[Larry King]

People listening to this say to themselves, I want to change too, but I.

[Brendan Burchard]

Would prefer not to get rattled around in a car and have to get.

[Larry King]

Near death to do it. And you said a minute ago, I.

[Ed Mylett]

Want to pick that apart a little because some people do need a dramatic moment.

[Larry King]

But if someone's listening, how does.

[Ed Mylett]

This is such a broad based question. But it's, we got two pretty good.

[Brendan Burchard]

Guys at it sitting here. We might as work on it together, right?

[Larry King]

How does one begin to change? What is the catalyst for that? How does one, in your opinion, begin to change?

[Rich Devini]

Well, you know, in the old books of personal development, always answered that by, it's either inspiration or desperation. As we know, I'm a little more, I guess, framework driven than that. I think that at some point all change. It's inspired by ambition, which is funny because people today think ambition is this bad thing. But ambition, whether you call it desire or drive or you feel like you must, or in psychology, we call it psychological necessity. Like, I feel like it's necessary. Like it's necessary now.

[Phil Heath]

There's no choice.

[Rich Devini]

There's no going back. There was a threshold. There's something. Not everyone needs. A car accident. Because, you know, how many people I've told that story to, you know, millions of people in person live on stadiums and arenas or, you know, 500 million people on video views now. You know, it's, it's. I'VE told a lot of people. Say I was in a car accident, too. You know, my car accident was even more dramatic than yours because they lost a limb or they were disabled. But I didn't change. Yes, I didn't change. Brennan, why? And ultimately comes back to psychological necessity. And we can think about it a couple different layers. One layer is that you are the way that you are because of what we all call the comfort zone.

[Brendan Burchard]

Right?

[Rich Devini]

There's comfort in who we are, how we be, how we behave. I should say, you know, our natural strengths, talents, abilities. Just who you are already, that's just your comfort zone. That's how you are. But what happens for other people, there's a layer above that, and they shift because now there's a demand zone. Circumstances demand you change.

[Phil Heath]

Yeah.

[Rich Devini]

Your dreams demand that you change. Something external demands that you change. Or you place the demand on your own shoulders because you want a different kind of life. Most people are scared to demand anything from themselves. And most people, when a demand hits them, it feels like an obligation, and they fight it. They resist it. I don't want that. You're at work. Don't give me more stuff to do. How dare my manager ask me more. They fight as soon as demand approaches them. It's a threat. Other people teach themselves because they're into growth. A demand approaches them, that's challenge. That's character development. Let me see if I can rise to that. So the approach to demand and how we view that as a threat or as a challenge is a fundamental mindset or choice of attitude. And then above that, there's another layer, which is, why don't people change? Which you. Oh, my gosh. Every episode you do, I feel like there's a masterclass on that. And that's what we call the esteem zone. Okay, Esteem zone. A lot of people have comforts and abilities. They could be remarkable. They have the natural talents. Other people have lots of demands on top of them. They still don't change. Why? Esteem how they view themselves, value themselves, express themselves, relate themselves to the world even though they have so much opportunity or so many natural talents. Because how many gifted people do we know who never potentialize that gift? So many, because their esteem, their value of themselves, their view of themselves, their belief in their ability to figure things out is so low that it doesn't matter. You could give them the greatest challenges, resources, tools, support, but no one ever cared for them, and they never taught themselves to care for themselves.

[Ed Mylett]

There you go.

[Rich Devini]

So how can they change?

[Ed Mylett]

Care for themselves? Can I Add to that, I think about your story, and I think of two things. I think of number one, the meaning you took from it. It's not the events of our lives that define us. It's the meaning we take from the events so you could have taken from that event. My gosh, thanks God. You have my girlfriend cheat on me that I went away to college with. Now I try to get a break, and my car crashes, and you almost kill me. I'm doomed. I'm doomed.

[Phil Heath]

I never thought about it that way.

[Ed Mylett]

Of course it didn't. And that's why your life is what it is. Brendan. Many people would have taken that event and said, here we go again. I'm doomed. Bad things happen to me over and over again.

[Brendan Burchard]

Tragedy.

[Ed Mylett]

My relationship crashes. Now my car crashes, now my spirits crashed. You didn't do that. What happened was, is you took a meaning from it, that it was a golden ticket. You even have a term for it.

[Larry King]

Which is a beautiful term, which, by the way, has resonated with me.

[Brendan Burchard]

And the way you got that golden.

[Ed Mylett]

Ticket, the way you took that meaning.

[Larry King]

Was the questions you asked yourself. So the quality of our life is oftentimes the quality of the questions you asked yourself standing there. Did I love? Did I live? Do I matter? Did I matter? Those are powerful questions that shaped what it meant for you and shaped what your life meant for you. And so I think both things are true. What you said is 100% true. And for people listening to this, if you want to change your life, you have to change what things mean in your life. Most importantly is the esteem thing. Change who and what you mean. Start to ask different questions about yourself, and you'll get different answers. People say, I got to change the way I think. Okay, what is thinking? Thinking is the process of asking and answering questions to yourself.

[Brendan Burchard]

That's what a thought is.

[Larry King]

And so if you can change the question, you can change the answer. You change the meaning. You have a chance to change your life.

[Ann Beiler]

And I feel like the powerful part.

[Larry King]

Of that story is, did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? Since you said that to me a long time ago, I ask myself that often, and it guides me. And so I think, if you're sitting here going, what are the questions? What am I great at? What are my dreams? Right? These are the. What are my talents? What are my proclivities? What do I enjoy doing? What emotions do I want to have? What do I deserve to have in my life? And I think if you begin to change those questions and ask them Enough times. Because the story you tell yourself currently, you've just told it a lot of times. You've asked the questions a lot of times. So it's become your narrative. You've built neural pathways literally in your mind that you've deluded yourself into believing this is who you are. But the truth is there's been many versions of you. I'm looking at you. There was this version of you that was the in love young college guy who wanted to be a landscaper.

[Brendan Burchard]

Yeah.

[Larry King]

Then he goes to college, then he's the depressed you, then he's the car accident you, then he's the live love matter you. Then you became this unbelievable speaker you. Then you became the personal development you and the coach you. And then the coach to the coaches you.

[Ed Mylett]

And now I look at you, and.

[Larry King]

Now you're like this software business mogul pioneer guy.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I think one of the things.

[Larry King]

In this world today is people need more tools, they need more resources.

[Brendan Burchard]

I think winning, and I've argued with.

[Ed Mylett]

This, even Tony Robbins and I have argued about this. But I think winning is as much environmental as it is mental. And Tony would say no, you can overcome your environment. Absolutely 100% true.

[Brendan Burchard]

But if you can create a great environment around you, then you're more likely to succeed.

[Larry King]

Sure, people have overcome their environments.

[Ed Mylett]

I did as a child. You've overcome different environments.

[Larry King]

But the fastest way to win is to be in an environment of winning. Take an average player, add them to a perennial team like the Lakers or the Yankees, they just play different with that uniform on. A good clubhouse versus a bad clubhouse.

[Brendan Burchard]

Things that have worked for me recently. And this isn't just a guy thing, but I know it's definitely a guy thing, but it's a people who lift weights thing. So when I said earlier that being physical and changing my physiology has, you know, made a huge impact on my emotional well being, my mental well being, all of that. You know, there's another thing that I realized and that my form of physicality, this a lot of you will relate to this was weightlifting. And it does a great thing of creating all the different things. The serotonin in my brain and dopamine and even adrenaline is pumping through there. And. But something far deeper happens to me.

[Ed Mylett]

Now when I treat myself physically.

[Brendan Burchard]

So just remember this, at least for me, physically working out is a big deal and it does change my emotional well being, but that is still sort of beating yourself up a little bit, literally, not just metaphorically. And so really building muscle or lifting weights is breaking something down and letting it heal. So that's a good thing for a temporary state. But what I found is if I'm.

[Ed Mylett]

Doing something physical, and I mean, this.

[Brendan Burchard]

Sounds strange coming for me, but I need to share it. Where I'm more gentle with myself and kind to myself, my emotional well being.

[Ed Mylett]

Goes through the roof.

[Brendan Burchard]

Let me tell you exactly what I mean by that. For me, if I stretch, there's something very personal with you when you're stretching that's different than lifting weights. Lifting weights is an aggressive move, right, for the most part. And it's you and this weight and there's the connection to the weight. But when you're stretching, it's you and your body only. And so whether it's yoga or stretching or some form of that, to tell you it's been transformative for my emotional state because there's a connection with my.

[Ed Mylett]

Body I don't have.

[Brendan Burchard]

When I lift weights, I'm also not breaking myself down to build myself back up. What I'm doing is being gentle and kind with myself and feel like an instantaneous connection with my body and a centering and a presence more importantly that I don't always have when I'm lifting weights with loud music on and these other things. So that's been really huge for me.

[Ed Mylett]

The other thing is when you can afford.

[Brendan Burchard]

Yeah. And you know that. I mean, I've told you that I had to by necessity because I can't lift the weights that I once lifted, at least not right now. But as I've gotten older, I've had a lot of people tell me, hey.

[Ed Mylett]

Make sure you're stretching. Make sure you do yoga.

[Brendan Burchard]

Well, about every year. This will give people hope too. Probably every year for the last six years, I've had start some sort of yoga practice on my annual goal list. And I'm pretty good. I hit most all of my goal, you know, I hit a lot of my goals.

[Ed Mylett]

I don't hit all of them. That's not true. But I had a good percentage of my goals.

[Brendan Burchard]

This is just something I've rolled onto.

[Ed Mylett]

My list six years in a row.

[Brendan Burchard]

And so last year I went, we have to attach a reason to it. We have to attach an immediate massive action to it. And I actually went to a certain form of yoga and started to take it. And I here's the reason why I never did it. It's why people don't go to the gym. I know I'm the least flexible human being I've ever seen in my life. And I knew I would Be bad at it in front of a bunch of people. And I didn't want to do something I was bad at.

[Ed Mylett]

I don't want to do something new.

[Brendan Burchard]

I don't want to embarrass myself, right? And so finally I just said so. I finally just did it and now I love it. And so I do different types of yoga that I do now. I do a lot of stretching. And it's for my.

[Ed Mylett]

Not only physically has it been tremendous.

[Brendan Burchard]

But my emotional well being is off the charts. And it's actually now a place I can go to access that part of myself very easily. I don't have to go chase it. I can get on the floor, start doing some of those poses and positions or stretches, and I'm instantly in that state. You know, the other thing too for me is like, I'm just trying to treat myself more kindly. And so whether that's giving myself grace like you've talked about, but also like when you can afford it. I've always told anytime I get a massage, I was like, I need to do this more often. I just never do it unless I'm on vacation or something. So I've started to get regular massage, like, and that's something that not everybody can afford. But when you can, it's like such a great gentle thing you're doing for yourself. And then for me, I have to.

[Ed Mylett]

Say this to everybody.

[Brendan Burchard]

I know I'm always giving people practices and routines, but I like applicable stuff. I have an infrared sauna now, man. It's one of the greatest things for my emotional state I've ever done in my life. One I love sweating like that, where.

[Ed Mylett]

I don't have to exercise to get it.

[Brendan Burchard]

I love the state it puts me in. I love the solitude of being in the sauna. I love the fact that my phone can't come in there because it's 140 degrees. So it's me, my body and my thoughts. And I get centered in there. I find a beautiful emotional state. I like being in the sauna so much, man. I find myself like dreaming about getting in there if I've missed it in the morning. Like it's that great of a place for me emotionally. It's become like an emotional home for me. It's this little, like it's not, you know, they're not even that pricey for the most part. But even if you can't do that, like go to a sauna at your gym, something like that. But for me, it's like that's a routine now. And a practice that's helped me emotionally. And I know a lot of the.

[Ed Mylett]

Stuff I've said is physical.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I'll throw it back over to you because I know this has really transformed you recently too. Man. When I'm praying, when I'm in prayer, I tap into the most beautiful parts.

[Ed Mylett]

Of the my self, which is my soul and my spirit.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I can't be in prayer and feel stress. You know, it's very difficult for me to access these other emotions. And let me say one thing about emotions too. I don't think there are good or bad emotions. I just think there are emotions.

[Ed Mylett]

I don't think you have to label.

[Brendan Burchard]

Them as bad or good. They're just an emotion. And sometimes feeling a little melancholy on a rainy day, it's not so bad. I actually almost enjoy the melancholy on a rainy day and reflecting on that state. And then when I come out of it feeling even better if. If I was in BLISS and Joy 24 7, you know, I don't know that I would appreciate it when I find it and when I tap into it. And so I don't have to be good or bad states. But for you, I do know prayer life. You know, I'm not trying to be.

[Ed Mylett]

Overly personal, but we're very close.

[Brendan Burchard]

Like that's become a centering part of your life. I mean, it always has been, but so much more. I think the last few years. True, for sure.

[Phil Heath]

For sure. It's been. It's been a part of my life. I felt like I've done so much in the other areas. I condition my body all day long. I condition my breath all day long. I take moments of peace. I stretch three times a day because I have a bad back. So I have to. I've been doing that for 20 years. Like I do all the things, but I felt like I was lacking the consistent connection with the divine that I wanted to. And I did what a lot of people do with their emotions in my spirituality. A lot of people in emotions, they go, oh, well, I either have it or I don't. But emotions, feelings and moods are generative. We can generate them. I believe we can generate a stronger connection with the divine. And I was like, you know, I feel it, but it kind of feels like lucky when it happens. I feel like, oh, wow, God really blessed me there. Or I'm so grateful. Or it's Sunday, I'm at church. But it felt like a once in a while connection. Almost like a bad wi fi connection. It's there, but it's not powerful in streaming. I was like, I want powerful streaming. I want, you know, very strong WI fi to God. And I didn't have it. And I realized, hey, I'm the one not plugging in. I'm the one not plugging in. I'm not even trying to connect and I'm complaining about, you know, a fuzzy connection. And so I started adding prayer to the end of all my meditation. So I meditate first because I need to release the noise. And for me, I practice the release meditation technique. So my goal is to release the tension in my body and then to release my thoughts. And then I find myself come by doing that, being in a better, centered, silent, peaceful place. And then I tap in and that's when I then pray. And I feel like it's a cleaner connection, if that makes sense. And. But only recently, I would say maybe three years ago, that became much a bigger priority because I just sensed that that connection had gone a little fuzzy. And inspired by you. Yeah, really inspired by you and Furtick, I would say, were just too big.

[Rich Devini]

I was like, wow, these two men.

[Phil Heath]

I admire a lot. I love how they teach, I love who they are, and they got a stronger connection than me. I want to explore that and I'm glad I did.

[Ed Mylett]

Brendan, what a wonderful way to describe it.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I relate to what you just said. I've had better wi fi connections. I've had high speed in my life and I've had some of the dial up sessions too. I know exactly what you're talking about. I think the thing that's important too to say is I think know thyself. So I'm with you. I have to usually meditate and just sort of empty my mind and get centered and release. And then I'm. My wi fi connection is much stronger too. And by the way, I also just love the fact you have two dudes here who both meditate and pray and that we merge both those because we both do stretch and stretch. But I mean that we. Yeah, we do. But we navigate the world of, you know, energy and transfer of energy and believe in that and at the same time are prayerful men. And so you can be in both worlds, you know. The other thing I think is to know thyself. And what I mean by that too is I got to know me the last 53 years. And when I ask myself, are there even times of day where I'm tapping into the emotions I would like to experience more or less? And in my case, I found that my emotions that are most debilitating when I experience them, whether they're angst, worry, fear, anxiety, even some bouts of depression in my life are typically morning emotions for me most of the time, not all of the time, but most of the time. And so when I'm waking up in a particular brainwave state, it's usually when I awaken or even the hour before I awake and the hour after. And I mean that when I'm loosely still asleep, but not completely, I have noticed that those are the times where I'm experiencing the most anxiety, fear and worry is this is just me very early in the morning and that as I get going in my day and feel a sense of more control, I don't know if that's it or I've now worked out, I've done my routines and I'm better. It's not that I don't feel worry or fear or anxiety and 4 o' clock in the afternoon, but in my. I think it's worth everyone ask yourself, is there a time of day if you really did, you know, reeled it back that you're feeling certain things, good or bad? And for me, I was like, you know what?

[Ed Mylett]

I got to figure these mornings out.

[Brendan Burchard]

These mornings aren't what I want them to be. And if I could get that first hour kind of dialed in for myself, I think I'm off to a much better day. And so I did. And that's why, like my prayer, my stretching, my working out, my meditations are early. Not, not early time on the clock, but early for me whenever I get up.

[Ed Mylett]

And I just know myself.

[Brendan Burchard]

You, on the other hand, have said to me many times, hey, man, like, it takes me a minute to get out of my morning. And I like my best. You put your best meetings, for example, like midday, because that's when you're going, you know yourself, you're like, my best thinking is not 7am right? And so you, you've done that in that way. But I think if you're looking for the emotional freedom that we're talking about, you can create structure in your life.

[Ed Mylett]

That gives you that freedom to operate within it.

[Brendan Burchard]

And for me, I've given myself a whole lot more freedom to having a little bit more discipline early in my day to either get out of or eliminate those states early in the morning.

[Phil Heath]

I love that. I love that. I was talking earlier today about kind of a triangle of emotional freedom where, you know, the base of it is your body and your body and your breath, utilizing that to put yourself in a good place, which you and I. You teach better than anyone else, then another part of that triangle is questioning your role. You know, when you have an emotion and emotions are acute, they're usually automatic, they're reactive, they're physicalized, but they're also really short and kind of comes and goes. Feelings stay longer, moods stay longer than that. But often with emotions, it comes up, and we react to the emotion and we drive our behavior based on the emotion. And I think that's what the mistake is. Emotion is input, but it's not necessarily the accelerator. It's not the driver. And here's what I mean. I use the metaphor of, you know, if you feel the emotion of anger towards your child, you can act on that and you can scream at them. But if first you interrupt with, what's my role here? Oh, I'm a loving mother. Oh, from the frame of a loving mother, I'm not going to scream. In other words, I'm not going to accelerate from the emotion. I'm going to accelerate from the intention of the role. Just like a leader. I'm in a meeting with my team. I get super impatient and frustrated. They're doing something well. Brendan, super impatient, frustrating guy. I don't need to act from that. It's not going to be supportive, helpful. So instead of acting and accelerating for that emotion that I feel, I go, what's my role here? I'm a CEO. I don't need to act from that emotion like that. That would be immature and unhelpful. Ed, let me be intentional. How would a great CEO act here? Speak and accelerate from the intention and the role I want to play. And for those who say, well, I don't have a role, but I'm like, okay, then just adopt the role model mindset. How would the role model version of you handle this? Because you don't need to be slave to your impulses and your emotions all the time, that these things can be disconnected. You can feel, sense, honor, realize, be aware of your emotion and not let it be the driver. You can instead say, oh, I can sense the emotion. I can detach from it. If it's not helpful, I can debate it. If I want to do a little cognitive behavioral therapy on myself, and I can choose to let it drive or not, but the most important thing is I choose. And having that ability to recognize the power of sensing an emotion. But choosing an intention, I think, is how we ultimately become more conscientious, conscious, mature, and capable adults. Because we're not always acting from our emotions. Because I'm somebody who Believes. And this is where you and I might differ a little bit. I believe there are bad emotions. Here's how I know. If you and I hop into a car, there are bad emotions. When that guy cuts me off, there are some emotions that will not serve me in that moment. Now, of course, impatience is not always a bad thing, which is your point.

[Brendan Burchard]

Well, that's my point, but I think.

[Ed Mylett]

You'Ve covered one of the most important.

[Brendan Burchard]

Things ever when it comes to living a productive life. And I want to highlight it and pull it back out and talk about it. You know that on emotions, we're saying the same things. Impatience is an emotion that you can feel that can be a negative thing in one moment and another. Fear can be a terrible thing to paralyze you when you're going up to public speak, and it could protect you.

[Ed Mylett]

If someone's about to rob your home.

[Brendan Burchard]

And so you know that. I mean, based on the environment, I.

[Ed Mylett]

Just mean that I don't think getting.

[Brendan Burchard]

Angry, even all the time, is necessarily a negative thing.

[Ed Mylett]

I'll give you an example.

[Brendan Burchard]

When I played baseball, angry Ed Mylett was a much better hitter than lightweight and happy go lucky Ed Milette, right? So I would leverage that anger and that. That coach say, thanks to me in the dark, you're terrible. You're the worst hitter in baseball. Blah, blah, blah.

[Phil Heath]

Like, oh, yeah.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I'd get up there. So I would leverage the anger in that moment. You just said something, brother. There should be more work written about this, and you're probably the guy to do it, because I have seen you do this so well, even with me, when you need to tell me I haven't been doing something I need to do in our partnership or whatever, right? And it's. Here's what you just said, and I want to unpack it. Your behavior does not have to be.

[Ed Mylett]

Driven by your emotions.

[Brendan Burchard]

And to the extent that you build the habit in your life where your emotion is not the driver, but that.

[Ed Mylett]

Your choices are, the role is as.

[Brendan Burchard]

You described as, well, oh, my gosh. I don't think most people, including me when I was a young man, was even aware who was doing the driving.

[Ed Mylett]

I just thought, because I watched it.

[Brendan Burchard]

Growing up, when you get angry, you lash out. Because I watched people in my life do that. When you get sad, you kind of cry. And when you get angry, you yell you. And. And I wish someone said to me and taught me what you just said 30 years ago, because as a businessman, when I did get impatient, I then would turn into condescending Ed Mylett or judgmental Ed Mylett or push people away from me, or when something didn't go right and I got angry, I just blow the whole room up and then spend the next three weeks trying to fix all of that. And we could have just fixed the original problem I was in. What it was, was an emotionally immature person and a scared person and somebody who did not build the disciplines to step back from his emotions and say, wait a minute here. How would the ideal me choose this or even in some cases, pick someone you admire? How would so and so handle this? My role model. How would they modulate their thinking? Would they speak about it? And sometimes for me, I should have just waited a day to say anything. Just let the emotions pass before I communicate or I make a decision. Most terrible decisions are made under heightened emotions. They just are. Brendan. This is a whole world unexplored. That is really the heart of living a great life and being a great mother, father, business leader, friend, human is your ability to step separate your choices and decisions and behaviors from the emotion. And most of us aren't even aware that that's entirely possible, that we think these two things are connected. And if you just step back from it, the people you admire, it isn't. Let's take Martin Luther King, for example. Most people admire him. I wrote my dissertation on Dr. King, okay? One of the things that I admired about him was his. I don't believe that Dr. King, at some point in his life, wasn't afraid for his life. He was. He was under tremendous threat most of the time in his life. I'm sure he had doubt about whether he was the man to be doing this and to be qualified to do it right. I'm sure he got angry at the obstacles he would have to face or like you said, internal people in his own team not doing what they said or turning their back on him or imagine the emotions. Yet what we admire about people like him is they took actions in spite of those emotions that served themselves and other people. And so my mother, when my dad was drinking, I have to imagine now as a grown man, and her husband was gone for a day or two, and she did. She was a homemaker. She's got four children at home, probably terrified of what's he doing? Is he going to get hurt? Is he coming back? How are we going to eat? And to know that those tremendous emotions my mother must have been experiencing of sadness and worry and fear and regret, probably that she was in that situation, and terrible anxiety and probably anger and for her to separate from those emotions. And that night, do my homework with me and love me and make dinner and put us to bed. And I never felt that she saved me. She protected me. So what do I admire about that? It was her ability to not be ruled by her emotions. And when I've made the biggest mistakes in my life, I've been ruled by my emotions. And so it's beginning to build the habit, even the awareness of who's driving right now. Is it my mind, my role, my soul, my spirit, my values? Or is it this emotional person who. I don't even know that person. I don't even believe everything they think, you know. You've hit on something so profound, brother, so huge and something I wish I'd have heard earlier in my life and to this day, something, man, if I got better, and if you got better.

[Ann Beiler]

And better at that.

[Brendan Burchard]

If anybody here got better and better of consciously choosing things not driven by their emotion, imagine the difference in their life right now. There are circumstances where the emotion of how much I love somebody compels me to want to take action for them. That's beautiful, but you guys know exactly what I'm talking about when I say it.

[Ed Mylett]

And so many of us, we are.

[Brendan Burchard]

We are ruled by our emotions. We don't have emotional freedom. We live in emotional bondage, which is the complete opposite of it. It's not consciously choosing our actions and. And our thoughts because of these emotions. Bro, you're onto something gargantuan right there. And I think you are a great example of someone who lives a good.

[Ed Mylett]

Percentage of your time.

[Brendan Burchard]

Nobody does it all the time of.

[Ed Mylett]

Choosing actions in spite of your emotions.

[Brendan Burchard]

You're excellent at that.

[Phil Heath]

Yeah, I just recognize that emotions are. They're going to happen. You know, they come up, they, they and. And good ones and bad ones, and it just. They don't all have to be expressed or justified or accelerated. And instead, what's going to be accelerated is what. What do I want to experience today? What do I want to contribute or give? I had a buddy of mine, you love this. We were on the golf course once, and I know you're a great golfer, so this is. For me, it's like three years.

[Brendan Burchard]

I am a golfer. I am not a great golfer, but go ahead.

[Phil Heath]

My last round was like three years ago. So anyway, but he said, he goes, oh, here's how do you. Here's how. Here's how you gauge a man's maturity. I said, oh, how's that? He goes, when you're hangry can you still listen to your wife?

[Ed Mylett]

Well.

[Crystal Hansen]

Wow.

[Phil Heath]

Because it's saying, hey, your biology and all your impulses, all your emotion is like freaking out to go get food. And yet can you still be present with somebody else? Because you can choose that above your biology. You can choose that above impulse. You can be there, be empathetic and be listening. Even though you need a frigging burrito. It's okay to say, I need a burrito, burrito. But can you still like, I just feel like there's, there's a sense, there's a reason we admire, you know, monks or high level athletes who can deal with the stressors at the time but find their flow and their power even almost despite it.

[Ed Mylett]

Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest.

[Brendan Burchard]

Rich Devini was a Navy seal, but.

[Ed Mylett]

He was also, and I can't say.

[Ann Beiler]

What group he was a part of.

[Ed Mylett]

But let's just call it a very.

[Brendan Burchard]

Elite group of seals without using the name. And Rich was in charge of selection.

[Ed Mylett]

Process and also human performance.

[Brendan Burchard]

So you talk about an elite, elite group like that and then understanding the attributes required to perform at that level and then the teachings.

[Ed Mylett]

And so he's also got a book.

[Brendan Burchard]

Out right now, ironically called the Attributes.

[Ed Mylett]

That Cover these very, very Things. And we're going to get in depth with it today. So, Rich, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

[Wayne Dyer]

Thank you, Ed. It's an honor to be here. So thanks for having me.

[Brendan Burchard]

I think the quality of our life and our performance is often linked to.

[Ed Mylett]

The quality of the questions we ask ourselves.

[Brendan Burchard]

And a lot of times the repetitive.

[Ed Mylett]

Questions you ask yourself were installed in.

[Brendan Burchard]

The software program of your brain by.

[Ed Mylett]

Your parents when you were very young or by some traumatic event in your life.

[Brendan Burchard]

And it's causing you to ask questions, potentially, some of which you may not.

[Ed Mylett]

Even be conscious of, that don't serve you.

[Brendan Burchard]

So you talk in the book about this as an optimal performance and a recovery technique too. So talk to a little bit about.

[Ed Mylett]

Quality questions that we ask ourselves or each other.

[Wayne Dyer]

Yeah, I mean, I say that almost verbatim because I believe it so much. What everybody has to understand is our brains are question answering machines. That's how our brains make sense of the world. Okay? It's constantly, it's usually unconscious, constantly asking questions about our environment, bouncing it off our hippocampus seeing if we've seen it before, can we relate it to something? That's what our brains do. When we lodge a question consciously into our frontal lobe, our brain has no choice but to begin to answer it. So I do this experiment with classes I teach. Sometimes I say, okay, take out a piece of paper, write down this question, how could I double my income in the next six months? I say, you have 30 seconds. Write down as anything that pops in your head, write it down. And I give them 30 seconds. Usually everybody will come up with two, three, four, or five answers. Okay? And I say, okay, the point of this is not to get your answers, although I'd love to hear your ideas. But the point of this is not to get your answers. The point of this is to explain that anytime you lodge a question, any question, into your frontal lobe, your brain's going to begin to answer it. So like you said, oftentimes we unconsciously ask the wrong questions. We say, why am I so bad at this? Why does this always happen to me? What about this sucks? Right? This is what you're talking about. You're focusing on what you can't control. If we shift that, if we consciously shift that and say, how can I grow from this? What are some of the things I learned? One of the things I fall back is, what can I control now? Um, our brains will answer those questions, too, and we will begin to come up with better answers and solutions faster. This is what I think high performers do habitually because they don't focus on those things that are disempowering and don't mean anything in their progression. Take conscious control. And I would say this. People always ask me, hey, can you, could you give me a list of questions? Right. It's obviously, as you know, it's a subjective task, but I would say if you are absent anything, okay. And you can't think of any question, here's the question you should ask. What's the better question right now? Ask that question and you will come up with questions.

[Brendan Burchard]

I love that. And by the way, to your point, your brain is going to answer whatever question you ask it, and so ask the quality. I love that, by the way. Ask. Because we do say it very similarly, But I've never said it that way before, and I've never really thought about it that way. Your brain's going to go to work.

[Ed Mylett]

On answering this question, so you better.

[Brendan Burchard]

Control what it is.

[Wayne Dyer]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Brendan Burchard]

If you don't know what the question.

[Ed Mylett]

Is, ask yourself what the better question should be.

[Brendan Burchard]

That is so freaking good. Mark Victor Hansen and his beautiful wife Crystal, join me today. I'm curious about asking for what you want. You said there's seven roadblocks. I want everyone to read the book. So we're not going to go through all seven, certainly. But we've talked a little bit about the childhood conditioning piece of it. That's certainly my jam for sure. That's the one that keeps showing up for me. But what would one more be that somebody should be evaluating? And we'll keep the other five for people to go get the book. But what is another one of these roadblocks?

[Crystal Hansen]

Well, let's just talk about what you were just talking about. That child. Childhood curiosity. This next one is naivete. And it's, we don't know what we don't know. And we tell the story in the book, Ed, about this lovely Filipina woman who came to work when our children were little. You know, the kids are 16 months apart, and she'd make all these amazing dishes from her homeland. And one day she shows up and cuts this fruit on a plate, and she goes, her, try this. And I bit into this juicy orange fruit, and I go, melda, what is this? This is the most amazing fruit I've ever tasted. And she goes, it's a mango. And I go, mango? How come I've never tasted a mango? That's bizarre. I've traveled all over Europe. How did I miss the mangoes? But, you know, I realized I'm like, I'm a girl from Idaho, grew up with a lot of potatoes but no mangoes. And it made me start to think, I really pondered that. Like, what else am I missing in my life besides the greatest fruit in the world, just because I don't even know it's available to me. I go, melda, where did you get these? Did you import them from the Philippines? She goes, no, I just. They're at the grocery store. And I thought, I'm walking by this every day. What else am I walking past? What person am I walking past? Not even notice. Not even. Even curious, because I just don't know. I'm naive, right? I might be walking past the greatest advocate I've ever had, the best friend I might have, or some opportunity I'm not aware of because of that naivete. And I think we're all naive in some way. And that is one of our roadblocks to asking. We need to look around more. We need to rekindle that childlike curiosity and wonder. Wonder about that person you are walking past. Wonder about that company, that opportunity, that thing that you haven't even stopped to inquire about, that is part of the magic of life, where life starts to unfold for you when you start to go back into that wonder. And I think if you read the fable of Michaela, where the book starts, right?

[Ed Mylett]

Unbelievable.

[Crystal Hansen]

So that is one of the places that Michaela, she starts to wonder because she's so shut down in her life. And I won't get too deep into it unless you want to talk about it.

[Brendan Burchard]

Well, I want them to read the book, but it's. It.

[Ed Mylett]

To me, it's that.

[Brendan Burchard]

That's the brilliance of the book. It's the beginning. It's. We should talk about it a little bit, share a little bit of that story. But I want them to get it to me. There's a brilliance of the way this book is written, everybody, that's so enjoyable to read because you do get this sort of story in the beginning. Then it's weaved together with the points. And when you're reading it, I love reading something, and I say, that's true.

[Ed Mylett]

That's true.

[Brendan Burchard]

That's me. I know that. And it's just there's these validations of things when you read the book. So let's talk a little bit about it. You go into that a little bit.

[Ed Mylett]

As far as you want to go.

[Brendan Burchard]

Because I do want them to get the book, too. Right?

[Crystal Hansen]

Yeah. No, no. And it's good. I mean, so the fable. Michaela, Mark and I wanted to use a fable because we love stories. Stories are so relatable, and our brain thinks in patterns. So when we can share a story that's relatable, we learn so quickly. Human beings can learn so quickly from stories. So we started. I took a lot of times, we passed the writing back and forth, and I started writing this, and honestly, it was like it had a life of its own. And I just took off. I had so much joy writing this. I feel like I was downloading it, the whole story. All the characters came. And I've been fortunate enough in my life to have these amazing dreams that have guided me. Very spiritual dreams. So I kind of modified my own dreams a little bit. And Mikayla has these dreams, right. But completely different story. Of course. Of course. But just to let the listeners know. So Michaela starts off. She's lost everything in her life, basically. She's lost her mother, her father. Her home's been taken away by the bill collector. She's sleeping in a grove of trees, and her job every day as an indentured servant at a stone quarry, is to lift heavy rocks from one place to another. And I think that's how a lot of people feel in this life right now, is that their entire life is. Just feels like moving heavy rocks from one place to another, and they've lost hope. And that's where Mikayla was. So this. This story is really every woman and every man's story. But Michaela, you know, falls into an exhausted sleep and the being comes to her and he takes her on this journey. And I'm not going to tell everything, but the gist of it is he tells her, he shows her some really beautiful things, and he admonishes her to asking and never stop asking. And that's the key. And so when she wakes up, she knows already something has shifted. Because that's what happens to each of us when we have those moments, those spiritual little epiphanies. We can shift everything in a moment, absolutely everything, just with a little awareness. And so that's what happens. So she starts, little by little, Michaela's life starts shifting. She starts paying attention to the words, the dreams. And by the end of Michaela's story, she is a completely different person than she was when she started. And that is what can happen to every single person listening. We all have that in us. We all have the essence of God inside of us. We all have every possibility and potential inside of us. And so that story flowed up out of me from somewhere to really remind people, I think, of what is inside of each one of them and each one of you who's listening and to really start to ask the questions that will reveal your next step to you.

[Ed Mylett]

Yeah.

[Brendan Burchard]

I gotta tell you that Mikaela could have been an entire book. And one of the things I took from. It's weird, you know, sometimes art. Writing to me, is art. So there's teaching. This book teaches you a lot of things, but I think when something's great, it can mean different things to different people based on their life stage. And so for me, it's interesting. My takeaway was. I can tell when you were writing it wasn't necessarily for this purpose, but for me it was, and that was that. My life started to change when I realized that the quality of the questions I was asking myself was directly correlated to the quality of my emotions and my life.

[Ed Mylett]

And that I was also conditioned as.

[Brendan Burchard]

A child to ask a certain sort of questions and take certain sorts of meanings away from events in my life. And those questions were on repeat. So everyone listening to this or watching it, you're already asking some questions. But to take, to be aware, as you just said, Crystal, to take an inventory and start to ask a different question literally changes your life. And then as you're one new relationship, one new question, one new breakthrough, potentially one new emotion away from a totally different life. But if you run the same pattern of questions you're asking yourself all the time, you're going to take the same meetings away, have the same emotions and have the same life. It's just a pattern. So Mark, could you speak to that? Because you talked a little bit about conditioning in the brain. We can go that direction or not, but what about just being intentional with the caliber and quality of the questions you're asking yourself, not just other people?

[Mark Victor Hansen]

First of all, I love the way this seminar or zoom calls going feels like a seminar.

[Ann Beiler]

It's when you're doing a good one.

[Mark Victor Hansen]

Just seminar in my mind. So one of the seven roadblocks is pattern paralysis. And my teacher's teacher in graduate school, my teacher's Dr. Arbuck Minster Fuller, JDomes thousands of inventions. Fifteen doctors at Albert. But his teacher was Albert Einstein. Albert said, look, if you keep doing the same thing and expect something new, in German it's you're cuckoo, meaning you're crazy. Well, that's exactly what you just said. So what you've done with question only God gave us his ability to question everything. It changes your path, it changes your life force. And what you said, I'm going to morph it just a little bit because some people out there hanging out by their fingernails because of of COVID confinement cocoon and say the kind of question you ask determines where your prosperity, your wealth, your riches is going to be. When I 1974, when I tried to be Bucky Fuller and I can't be a good Bucky. I can be a good Markie. I can't be a good Bucky. So I went bankrupt. I check a book at the library how to go bankrupt by yourself. Because I asked, what if I go bankrupt? Subconscious doesn't get a dang what asks you what question you ask, but it magnifies it back to your saying the quantity of the question, quality of the question. But now I said, well, how do I get rich? How do I get successful? How do I get prosperous? How do I be a person of influence? Because Solomon's most important line and he was a really important guy. But Psalm 72, be an influencer of influencers. Which is what your show is all about, Ed, and your Influence is growing, which is what it's meant to. You're meant to multiply, you're meant to expand. I mean, you've taken a 98 pound weakling and turned him into a superstar strong guy, but that's what you've done with your mind and you, Your soul and your being. I hope you don't mind my teasing.

[Brendan Burchard]

No, no, I appreciate it very much.

[Ed Mylett]

Thank you.

[Brendan Burchard]

I think it's important, guys, when I'm listening to the show back, like in my mind, because it does feel like a seminar to me, like kind of a master class. The more I'm thinking about it, the more I want to stamp this. I want you to get the book. I don't say this on the show very often, guys. I just want, you know, I have authors on. I don't normally say it this firmly because I'm. I'm so convinced that we're even oftentimes oblivious to the questions. Like, for example, what question am I asking myself that causes me the fear to walk up to the hostess at the restaurant? Somewhere in there there's this question of what is she going to think about me?

[Ed Mylett]

Right?

[Brendan Burchard]

Is she going to. Is that bizarre? Like, I'm paying for a meal, she might even know who I am when I walk up there. You know, it's. But yet I still have these questions. And if you're evaluating, I've been through everything. I've listened to every show. I'm still not making a move in my life. It's probably the questions. It's the lack of questions you're willing to ask other people and it's the questions that don't serve you, that you're asking yourself, everybody. So I really want to stamp this because even in my own mind, this is a unique yet profound truth perspective about how to change the direction of your life. It's not something most people are talking about right now. And I think the timing is perfect for all of you coming out of what we've just come out of. For example, what are the questions you need to be asking yourself? And that's what I wanted to go to next. So I'm going to throw it out there if I'm trying to pivot. So I'm at a point, I'm listening.

[Ed Mylett]

To the show for whatever reason.

[Brendan Burchard]

I'm just not where I want to be physically, spiritually. Maybe I'm not in the relationship that I want. I'm working for somebody. But I want to be an entrepreneur. Where do I begin on these questions? What would you recommend my Starting point be in terms of asking questions, right?

[Crystal Hansen]

It's such a great question. And so everybody wants to know, like, what questions do I ask? We give a ton of questions in the book, you know, holding up the mirror questions, self intervention questions. So it's all about the question. You can reveal so much about yourself. You can reveal everything about yourself in your life.

[Brendan Burchard]

Crystal, let me interrupt you.

[Ann Beiler]

Can you give them.

[Brendan Burchard]

I just, I want you to keep going. Could you give them the holding up the mirror question? Just because to me, that's one of them that stood out for me. Just that one, please.

[Crystal Hansen]

Okay. So when you're having this emotional feeling like you were just about anything, say you're in a relationship, you know, and you think, oh gosh, he's doing this to me because, you know, he doesn't love me enough or blah blah, blah, all these things start to look, hold up the mirror. What. What am I feeling right now? You know, in this moment is the information that, you know, I feel like he hates me. Well, is that information true?

[Brendan Burchard]

Right?

[Crystal Hansen]

Like what? Right? So you're questioning. You're basically looking at every single thing you're feeling and experiencing and holding up in the mirror, holding up the mirror and saying, what is it about this that is causing me to feel this way? Does it have any truth? Am I responding in a way that is just programming from my old experiences? What are those experiences that seem similar to this that I am probably tagging onto this experience right now? I promise you, every single problem that couples have is, is usually that baggage from the past that we never get into, right? And so I love to tell people. So the ask yourself part, Ed, is that reflective journey, ok? And there are really three critical phases of that. The first critical phase is where am I right now? Like whatever it is, whether you are dealing with your relationships, your career, even your health and fitness, it's that moment of truth. Where am I right now? Because you can't figure out where to go until you really start to question yourself and start to understand where you are right now, really and truly, how are you feeling? Are you happy with this thing you're doing? Does it feel right? Does this career that you're doing feel like it's in alignment with you or this relationship, whatever it is, when you start to ask, where am I right now? With this, a whole bunch of questions will open up to you. Sub questions. The second sort of critical phase is where do I want to be? And it is striking to me as a transformational life coach how few people spend time with themselves asking these questions, where do I really want to be in my life? What do I really want? And we are afraid to ask the question big enough. So Mark and I always say, ask the question from the greatest place in your imagination, from the nth degree of your greatest imagination. Just don't ask how to get through the next day, but ask where do I really want to be in my ultimate state of life? Say, in my career. And then imagine your greatest career, and then start asking the questions backwards. In this greatest career of my imagination, who am I talking to every day? How am I serving? What products? What services? How are people responding to what I'm bringing? What does that feel like? Who are my top clients? And in that way, you can literally start to engineer your perfect life backwards. But you have to take the time in the questions, in the asking of those questions. And then the third critical phase of that is, what specific action steps do I need to take to move that forward? Because so often, and we say, get your asking journal. Write down everything, because you will get illuminations, you will get solutions, you will get ideas. Plans will start to form. You need to write them down and keep asking your way forward. You need to pick up the phone and call that person that came to mind. Right? Because this is all feedback from the universe, from God's perfectly divine universe. It's funny because we looked at a lot of studies when we were doing this book, and when you ask yourself a question, a different part of your brain lights up, and it's part of your brain that does critical thinking. So suddenly you're asking yourself a question, and your own brain becomes a better resource to. To you. But so few people get stuck in the problem and never ask their way out of it. They just see the problem and regurgitate it. And regurgitate it.

[Brendan Burchard]

You're so right. I just. I'm sitting there thinking of all the applications for this wisdom that's in the book and that you guys teach. I'm thinking about it not even as an individual. If I were leading a company right now and we're in a rut. We're not moving, you said from a big place. Perhaps your job as a leader in that company is to ask a bigger and better question to your. To your leadership. What's the different question you need to be asking them? You want to change the direction of your company? Maybe you need to ask a different question of the leadership in your company, a bigger, bolder question, because they've been in this pattern of the old one. Or maybe if you want to change your family dynamic, there's a question your family's asking. You're just not conscious of it.

[Ed Mylett]

Art.

[John Gordon]

Ed, it's so great to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man. One of the questions I get, Ed, from sometimes leaders who are a bit earlier in their career and they, they're high potentials, though, you know, they've, you could tell they're, they're going to, they're going to be something, but for some reason they don't believe that yet. They lack, they either have some impostor syndrome, a lack of confidence. Maybe it's through not having enough experience. I'm not really sure. Yeah, I think this is hard, but one of the skills. If someone said, ed, I am struggling developing confidence in my earlier part of my career. I see you and you've, you've, you've done all this amazing stuff over the past couple of decades. What are some ways that someone a bit earlier in their career could create and develop confidence for themselves?

[Ann Beiler]

Great question. I have a whole chapter two, and I think three on confidence and identity, which are different things. So self confidence is the process of keeping the promises that you make to yourself. So when I meet somebody that lacks self confidence, they've not built a reputation with themselves where they keep confidence. That's one type of confidence. Now let's talk about the leadership part of it. You've got to start to surround yourself with people that live at a higher temperature setting. Your identity is like a thermostat sitting on the wall. It sets the temperature of your life. So if you're a 75 degree or of, let's say, leadership or wealth or improvement, when you begin to acquire the skills of 80, 90, 95, 100 degrees, and you're climbing the corporate ladder, but you don't change your thermostat setting, you will unconsciously find a way to cool things back down to what you believe you're worth and you deserve. That's that imposter syndrome. And so you got to work on your identity, which is who you're surrounding yourself with, with at any given time. The second thing is this. This is huge. When I was a young man, I met a guy named Wayne Dyer, famous personal development guy. And he told me, mylett, you're gonna change the world, Ed. And I said, what? He goes, you're gonna change the world. And he said, and not because you're a good teacher or you're smart or you got a great voice or whatever, because that stuff's nothing. He Said you're a good man. You intend to serve. I have a whole chapter in this book, brother, on linking your confidence to your intention. So most of you are, well, I don't know all the answers. My favorite leader goes, I don't know the answer to that, but I'll get it for you. My favorite leaders also say, this is one of the things that lacks in politics in the United States, in both parties. Hey, I was wrong. I made a mistake. My intentions were good, but I called the wrong shot here, or I handled that wrong. Forgive me. I'm going to get better next time. That's how you endear yourself to people thinking you need to know. Think about this. Henry Ford starts Ford Motor Company, right? He didn't know everything to start that company. If they know everything to get into.

[Brendan Burchard]

He didn't.

[Ann Beiler]

Who was going to fix the cars? How are they going to ship them? Where are they getting the tires? Think about what he didn't know. There's no dealerships because there's no freaking cars. Steve Wozniak is one of my dearest friends. He founded a company called Apple. They were going to be a board company. They had no idea there'd be an iPhone or iPads. You grow into these roles. What you have to link your confidence to to is your intent. My intent is to serve. My intentions are to serve people. I'm a good man or a good woman and that goodness should prevail. Remember this, as a leader, you're always making people feel something.

[Brendan Burchard]

Always.

[Ann Beiler]

So I have this in the book. You got to take control of what they're feeling. If you think they need to feel that, you're an expert all the time and you have every answer all the time. You do not understand leadership. What they need to feel from you is that you love them, care about them, believe in them, and can show them how to do a little bit better or will get them around someone or the answer for that love, care, believe and show them how to do a little bit better. You do not have to have all the answers. That's the imposter lie. You don't have to know everything. You have to intend to serve. So even when we did the show today, I've got a few more of these today. I am totally present with you and totally confident we're going to do a great job. Not because I have every answer, because I don't, but I intend to help you help these people listening today. And so I show up pretty damn confident that I know my intention is to do this. And that's where my confidence comes from. And then I've got a whole thing in there on association in that thermostat setting that'll help you as well. But that in and of itself is a huge breakthrough through for a lot of leaders.

[John Gordon]

You Write on page 87 about your inner circle, auditioning your inner circle. Can you share how we talked a little bit prior to recording about John Gordon? You know, one of those guys who's become a good friend of yours who's been on this show a few times. I remember John Calipari, when he came on the show, the coach at Kentucky talked about, you got to have your kitchen cabinet and have the importance of that kitchen cabinet, which is. This is similar, right?

[Ed Mylett]

Your.

[John Gordon]

Your inner circle. What does it mean to you to audition your inner circle and share the importance of those. Those select few people, the people that.

[Ann Beiler]

I surround myself with, live at a higher thermostat setting. To go back to that analogy in the area I need help in. So, like John Gordon, for example, was faith for me, believe it or not, not business, I'm done. My thermostat setting in business is real high. So for me, I've got Phil Knight in that circle, right? I've got some, you know, really significant business people in that circle. In my faith circle, I want to add men that are in the business world who live at a high 100, 150°, because I believe through proximity, they heat me up from 75 to somewhere to where they are. I know this is true. For example, fitness. If you're around someone who's super fit every single day and you're an not, you can't help but eventually eat a little differently, think a little bit differently, train a little bit differently. So when I'm interviewing someone from my inner circle, they don't have to have all of life figured out. They have to have the area that I need them in figured out. It could be in marriage, right? You're in the corporate world. There's all this. Maybe there's travel, there's temptation. I just had Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian on my show, be like, why'd you have Jeff on? He's hilarious. That's not why I had him on. Jeff has this thing where he says, hey, man, when I traveled for the last 30 years of my life, he goes, I know me, man. He goes, I've never cheated on my wife, but I like ladies. And the reason I've never cheated on my wife is I put myself in situations, man, where I can't so on the road, I don't go out. I get room service because I don't want to be. Because I'm fine in her bar.

[Brendan Burchard]

But I have a drink.

[Ann Beiler]

I'm all right. I have two, I don't know, three, who knows? So I don't put myself in those situations. Jeff's in that situation. Circle for me on marriage, right? I got other ones in my financial. I got other ones. My fitness. I just had Phil Heath, seven time Mr. Olympia on my show. He's in my damn fitness circle. So I want people that live. People don't have to be perfect. They have to be great in the area you want growth in. And so John Gordon is in that faith area for me, where I've traveled with John. We gone to UFC fights. We've done different things. The conversations with my circle in John's group, when you're in Las Vegas at a UFC fight, I promise you are very different than what most men are doing in Las Vegas when they go. And that's why that's so powerful for me. So I'm the real goods.

[John Gordon]

How about the, you know the old quote, how to get a great wife, deserve one. How to get a great friend deserve one. So what role do you. Because I'm sure tons of people want you in their inner circle circle. What role do you think you play for those whose inner circles you're in?

[Ann Beiler]

That's a good question. You probably would have to ask them that. I'd like to think that I show up in a lot of those circles, though. I hope I show up in the father circle, the business circle, the integrity circle, the faith one. I think that what I bring to most people is that. And I learned this from my dad. My dad would. I don't know how. I've made hundreds of millions of dollars on very limited skills, brother. But the ones that I have. See, the key to success in the corporate world or in any world is truly identifying your own gifts and using them to serve others. But here's the thing that leaders don't get.

[Brendan Burchard]

You got to identify other people's gifts.

[Ann Beiler]

You got to get great at going, wow, this is what you're great at, and then link it to the task you want them to do. Because the two or three things someone's great at, they know they are. And when you can say, hey, I see this in you, and then link it to what you want them to do. Now you're leading them. Hey, man, you care so much, or, man, your math skills or your problem solving or your intensity or your work ethic, they go, you know what? I do have crazy work ethic. That's why you're going to prevail in this company. And you link it to what you want to do. Identify the gifts. My gifts are really simple, man. I got two or three. My main gift though is my ability to read people and be present with them. Where'd that come from? When I was five, my drunk dad would come through the front door. I had three little sisters and a mom. As a five year old little boy, I'd have to read this man, which dad's coming home, Is it drunk dad? And I'd read his physiology and how he would talk. Is his tie loose? Is his hair messed up, Is he slurring? How's he walking? And this little boy at five years old, I'm studying this man. And I go, it's drunk dad. My sisters need to go upstairs. Mom should go take a shower. And then I'm going to talk to dad and change his state. Which is my second gift, my ability to communicate if it was sober dad, we'll go in the backyard and shoot some hoops. So this skill, this adversity I went through gave me this main skill in my life that in business, it's my ability to read people, identify their giftedness and communicate with them in such a way I'm really limited other than that. I have two or three other things I'm pretty good at doing. An intense dude. I'm a competitive dude.

[Brendan Burchard]

I care.

[Ann Beiler]

But I've taken my gifts that God gave me or that the world developed in me, or both and leveraged them. And you got to get good at this in leading people their giftedness. And don't make it generic. Oh, you're a superstar, man. You're a rock star. No, no, no, no. What exactly is my gift? Two or three of them link it to my career, link it to what you want me to do. And now you're leading me like almost no one else. And last thing I'll say, when you truly identify someone's gifts that work with you, you're on a list of less than three or four people in their entire life who have ever told them that maybe the only one. You become someone they revere forever when you point out the greatness in them.

[John Gordon]

Yeah. Have this mindset of like a talent scout and have always be looking out for it and making sure that they know it. I mean, the two people that come to mind immediately, my high school football coaches, Bob Greg and Ron Oliver, because they made Me believe before I believed. And I'll never, ever, ever forget that feeling of. And then you. You kind of become something. And I always point back to them. And, like, now I see the power that we can. We can do that for other people. We should really be intentional about that. I think that is a really powerful way to go about it.

[Ann Beiler]

You just worded it, brother. Most people would say it was a coach or a teacher or a parent. In the power of One more. Here I am shamelessly promoting, and here's the reason that I'm promoting this. I want you to get the book. But I say about leaders, man. There's three chapters on leadership. There's four types of people in life. One, they're not motivated at all. That's the masses. Then there's motivated people or motivating leaders. They get you to do things based on motive, which is good. Do this, you get a bonus. Do this, you get the car. Do this, you get the award. Powerful way to lead people. Low level, but it works. Third is inspirational. You move people. The root of inspiration is to be in spirit, to move people with energy, to move them in a way that's higher than just motives. And that's a great way to lead. Very few leaders get there. The fourth level is rarefied air, and that's to be aspirational, where people aspire to be like you, right? Most great leadership things are caught, not taught. They watch it in you and they see it. This is true for me as a dad as well. Your coaches were to the point where you wanted to prove them right. You wanted to be more like them. You wanted to live up to the belief they had in you. They were aspirational leaders. And that's the difference between greats and the pretty good ones. This is the Ed Miler show.