TrueLife - Brian Biro - Narrative Consciousness

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/🎙️🎙️🎙️ Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to meet a true force of inspiration—a man who doesn’t just talk about breakthroughs but creates them wherever he goes. Brian Biro is America’s #1 Breakthrough Speaker, a best-selling author, and a master at helping people and organizations unlock their fullest potential.Brian has a gift for making everyone in the room feel like the star of the show. Through dynamic storytelling, practical wisdom, and an infectious energy that electrifies his audiences, Brian inspires individuals to believe in themselves, push past their limits, and rise to their absolute best—all while having a blast.With a foundation of excellence built at Stanford and an MBA from UCLA, Brian’s journey began as an award-winning swimming coach, leading his team to Top 10 national success and earning the prestigious United States Swimming National Coaching Excellence Award. From there, he took his leadership talents to the corporate world, where he transformed a transportation company into a revenue-quintupling powerhouse.But Brian’s true calling emerged when he combined his business acumen, coaching brilliance, and unparalleled motivational skills to become one of the most sought-after speakers in the world. His client list is a who’s who of industry giants—Starbucks, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Kaiser Permanente, and even the U.S. Army and Navy, to name just a few. With a presence that spans 15 countries and countless stages, Brian’s impact is nothing short of transformative.So, if you’re ready to dive into the world of breakthroughs, ignite your potential, and feel the spark of limitless possibility, join me in welcoming the incredible Brian Biro!https://www.brianbiro.com/about-brian/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear, Fearist through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Friday. It looks like we made it. I am so excited that everybody's here. I got a great show for everybody today. The birds are singing.

I hope the sun is shining and I hope that the wind is at your back. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to meet a true force of inspiration. A man who doesn't just talk about breakthroughs but creates them wherever he goes. Brian Beiro is America's number one breakthrough speaker, a bestselling author and a master at helping people and organizations unlock their fullest potential. Brian has a gift for making everyone in the room feel like the star of the show. Through dynamic storytelling, practical wisdom, and an infectious energy that electrifies his audience, Brian inspires individuals to believe in themselves, push past their limits, and rise to their absolute best,

all while having a blast. With the foundation of excellence built at Stanford and an MBA from UCLA, Brian's journey began as an award-winning swimming coach, leading his team to top 10 national success and earning the prestigious United States Swimming National Coaching Excellence Award. From there, he took his leadership talents to the corporate world, where he transformed a transportation company into a revenue quintupling powerhouse. But Brian's true calling emerged when he combined his business acumen, coaching brilliance, and unparalleled motivational skills to become one of the most sought-after

speakers in the world. His client list is a who's who of industry giants, Starbucks, Microsoft, Southwest, Southwest, Airlines, Kaiser Permanente, and even the U.S. Army and Navy to name just a few. With a presence that spans 15 countries and countless stages, Brian's impact is nothing short of transformative. So if you're ready to dive into the world of breakthroughs, ignite your potential and feel the spark of limitless possibilities, join me in welcoming the incredible Brian Bureau. Brian, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? I'm great, George, and you already scored points because we're ready to dive in.

We swim coaches love that kind of terminology. it's all in the language right it's all in the words we use they become our internal dialogue I'm not even sure where to start right here by but I thought maybe I gave a pretty good background of who you might be and what you got going on but you got a new book coming out and you do have this electrifying presence is that something you've always had or was that something you had to build within you you know george I've always loved people I believe that we have an incredible amount of possibility in us. My mentor, who was the greatest coach of all time, in my opinion, it was John Wooden. It's actually, if you're watching, he's on the screen behind

me back here in a picture with me. Coach Wooden sometimes said, often said, there are no overachievers. And what he really meant to say is that we have more in us than we think we did. And that's been kind of the central theme through all three of my really neat careers. My first career was a U.S. swimming coach. Even though I was coaching swimming, I was coaching people. That's what we do. It's helping to overcome those fears, those obstacles, those doubts, those things from our background that kind of become the change that hold us back. And, you know, I loved it. And really the key thing that brings me the greatest joy, because I coached 50 years ago. And as I look back on it, what brings me the greatest joy, my swimmers are still in touch with me

and what they talk about. And I still call them my kids, even though they're 60 years old, my kids. What they tell me is that it was the life lessons that they learned that really made the biggest difference. And I'm more proud of the people they've become than all the wonderful swimming results that we created. So that first career really taught me that we really are in the people business no matter what it is. The second career I started because unlike probably most people who go in the corporate world, I'm probably the only guy you know, George, when to get an MBA to get a life instead of a job. The only reason I left coaching was I had no life.

I had no balance at all. All I knew myself was as a coach. I wanted to know myself as a human being. I wanted to know myself. I wanted a family. I wanted to have a much, much richer, full life than just what I did. And I did. That's when I really got in great physical shape.

I started running and did marathons when I was going to grad school, ended up going into the transportation industry. And the funny thing is, I didn't give a hoot about it. transportation. What I loved was people. And again, what I found there was really the team-building side because when I went into my corporate career, I was a base because this is a commonality in a lot of companies. There was three groups. There's operations, sales, and the home office administration. Operations hated sales. Sales hated operations. They both hated the home office just a little bit more. And to me, that just made no sense. And so my work in the corporate arena ended up

becoming turning silos into synergy was I started doing team building events in our own company because operations people don't want to do sales. The sales people don't want to do operations. And neither one of them wants to do the home office stuff. And so we started embracing those differences instead of pushing away from each other. And that's what turned us around. It wasn't the market. It wasn't the this and that on the. It was us on the inside, learning to truly appreciate one another to pat each other on the back instead of kick each other in the tush. And it was a great, great experience. And at the peak of this incredible turnaround, I said to my wife, plenty, we're doing great.

Let's quit. I want to go do this for real. This is what I was put on earth to do. And so for 35 years now, that's been my life is being America's breakthrough speaker and actually bringing it to other parts of the world because I have this great. faith that started way back when there are no overachievers that we have more on us than we really even sometimes dream above balance. I love it. I love it. I have a background in the transportation industry and I can echo the sentiments of I'll even go as far as to say, borderline hatred for the two sides on some levels. You know, it's so, it's so

crazy in there to think that you're all on the same team, but you're just fighting each other at a level that stops productivity and its tracks. Like, I'm not going to do it. You do it. Yeah, I get so crazy. But it's amazing to see how do you get people that far apart to just stop for a minute and realize they're on the same team? You know, it comes down to probably the most important thing that I teach a law. And it's on an individual basis, but when you expand it throughout an organization,

it becomes unstoppable. And it's what I call being fully present. And what I mean by that is when you're fully present, 100% of your mind, body, and spirit is with the people you're with where they are now. Now, how many of us have ever been with somebody where you know their body's present, but the rest of them is in another county? And here's a tough but important question to ask about that. How does it make you feel when someone you wish to be fully present with you is not fully present to you?

You know, how to make you feel when somebody you really want to connect with is much more interested in their cell phone while you're talking, then they are at listening. Well, for everyone I've ever known, it makes them feel worth less, makes them feel unimportant and insignificant. And our job, no matter what role we have in our lives, whether it's parents, whether it's business leaders, whether it's sales professionals, whatever we do, our job, I believe, our job is to help the people that we lead, that we serve, that we love, that we care about, to know they're important, to know they're significant.

because when people feel important, they rise to oh, yeah. And people feel unimportant, they fall to, oh, no. And so in a very practical application of this, and it's a funny story as I look back on it now, but when I was a vice president in charge of sales and marketing in this transportation company, my office was right next door to the C.O who was in charge of operations. Well, we never were in the same room together,

even though there's a little three-inch wall between us, unless we had to be in a meeting together and then he'd sit on one side i'd sit on the other side and then one day i started really getting into the things that led to the team building events and that's when i really started to understand that the greatest gift we ever give to another person is to be fully present we never talked about anything except our sides of our business so one day i walked around the corner into his office with no agenda not talking about you know the next shipment's out and i just sat down in a chair and for an hour we actually talked about life i started noticing stuff i noticed i was running marathons at the time he was a long-distance

bike rider we had that commonality of knowing what it feels like to train for something that's pretty tough um i saw the pictures of his kids and his family i never saw him before they were next door uh so we just talked about how about who we were and what was important and when we emerged from that from that little talk, I realized something that if you really pay attention to the people on your team, it's almost always the case. He wanted things to be good for the people in company as much as I did. We're just looking at it from different sides that were important, different sides to see from because together they could be unstoppable. After that one hour of sitting together, we never ever had a sales meeting without operations present. We never had an operations meeting

without sales being present. And we started kicking tail. We started doing so well. We started getting creative. We started, and it was fascinating because it was a time when our marketplace, we were the biggest company in terms of transportation to and from Alaska. And at that time, the industry was way down because interestingly, the price of oil was too low. And so there's no construction going on. And we thought, oh, we're in trouble. That's our market. Well, guess what? There's a lot of markets that we could probably do well in if we just start to think more creatively. And that's what happened. We had the most fun. We added jobs. We quadrupled our size. We became number one in our industry for customer service and

convenience. And when I left the company to do what I did, the leader of the people in our company after that was that C-O because we have taught each other how much it means to be present with each other. So if you start doing that on an individual level, what you say whenever you're present with somebody is the most important words you could ever say. Without saying them out loud, by being present, you say to him, you are important. You matter. You can't. You know, and George, I want to say this because life is about the whole person. It's the greatest gift you can ever give your children. Be fully present for your children. I call it the gift because the greatest gift I've ever received was from my two daughters. Their names are Kelsey and Jenna. They were only eight and three at the time.

And one night when I was so caught up in my work, like I was every day, and I could have been tucking them in and saying good night and being present with them and letting them know they were the most important people in the world to my wife and I was reaching for the phone like always. And they came up to me and they grabbed my heart and they shook it. And they changed everything in my life and gave me a compelling why, a passion purpose that has been my light ever since. they asked me, Daddy, do you love your phone more than you love us? I felt the blade going deep. Emerson said, what you do, screamed so loudly, I can't hear a word you're saying. And I couldn't fake it. I was living my life as if my phone was more important than my children.

From that day on, I changed my whole focus, and my number one goal was to be present. I made up my mind. I would never, ever book more than seven events a month to the speaker. No, I don't care what you pay me. I won't do it. That I would be home at least 15 days a month when I was home. I would make them breakfast, take them to school, be there after school, never miss one of their dance performances, and I lived it my whole life. And I thought I was doing it for them.

Do you know that every dimension of our life elevated with the decision to be more fully present? You don't get less done being present. You get more done because you're full out, full there. You know, my mentor, John Wooden, the guy in the picture above, ran some of the shortest basketball practices in college basketball. But every moment was fully present. There was constant movement, constant direction. Nobody's sitting around wasting that time. And as a result, his teams became legendary.

So, you know, the past is history, the future of mystery. The gift is now. That's why we call it the present. I love it. I love it. One of my favorite quotes from John Wooden is what you give in life, you get to keep, and what you fail to give, you lose forever. and everything you said is transformative and I agree wholeheartedly.

However, isn't it, do you think it's more difficult when you're coming from a place of scarcity? Like, it's so much more difficult if you live in paycheck to paycheck, if maybe you are behind in some bills. Like, do you have the time to be present? Like, if you can't call in sick because your kid needs to go, you need some tuition money or you can't call in sick because the electric bill is going to be turned off, how do you be present then? How do you be present then? You know, it's a tough question, but it's an important question because presence is, let me put it simply, five minutes of being present. It's worth five hours of taking it.

So it is actually the secret to life balance. In fact, there is no life balance. Most people think that balance in life is about equal time. Let's clear that up towards. You know what already. We ain't going to have equal time. You know, there's 48 hours of stuff to do no matter who you are and only 24 hours to did it have done it. But again, five minutes of being present with that child. Five minutes of being

present with somebody who needs you in that moment is worth five hours of faking. And then you can't fake it in. I mean, you know when somebody's present or not. And so you may not have five hours to be present. But if you really focus in on those five minutes, I called my little grandson today. He's eight years old. First thing this morning I called him. Because yesterday, my daughter sent me a video from school of him talking and speaking in Spanish. He's in a Spanish immersion program. And it was kind of like his oral exam, if you will, speaking with the teacher. And he did such a great job. And I called him up on the phone, which was kind of a cool thing. I don't think he'd had a lot of phone calls in his life at eight years old yet. And I just told him how incredible he was

and how proud we are of him. It took me one minute because I knew he was off to school. but that one minute, I think might stay with them for a long time. It'll stay with me. So that's the secret. Life balance is really about life rhythm. And the rhythm comes by putting even a few more minutes a day to being fully present for someone. If you have to do a million things, say, I'll only have a minute, but in that minute, be fully there.

And that's for most of the time, that's plenty. That's enough. They'll get it. They'll get it where it counts. And you'll start to develop that muscle until it's who you are. You know, people have looked at John Wood in forever and tried to figure out what made this guy the greatest of all time. And they miss his greatest strength. His greatest strength was, I've never met a human being who was more fully present with you.

When you were with him, you felt like the legend because he made you feel that way. He was so tuned into you. And, you know, he's really one of the people who taught me most of how powerful that is. Because the first time I sat down in this living room and talked to him for a couple hours, we became friends. When I walked out, I was interested in me. Who am I? I'm sitting across from the greatest there ever was.

But that's the way he was with everyone. And as a result, he got more done in less time and made more connection in less time, and we all can follow that, even when it's tough. You know, I have to define George that some of the most present people are the people who don't have a lot, who are in the midst of tough times. And not only are they're the most present,

but sometimes they're the happiest. Maybe there's a connection there. I think so. Yeah, I think that there is a better way to interpret time. You know what I mean by that? And it seems that our culture on some level has rewarded those who see time as transferable to, I'm not sure about the right word,

but it seems to me that time on some level is synonymous with consumption. And that's sort of true, but not really. Like, just because you have a lot of things, doesn't mean you spent your time wisely. And when we draw back to the people that may be the happiest, you know, a good anecdote is when you read biographies

about people that went through traumatic events, like World War I or World War II, they talk about all the trouble. trauma, but they go, it was some of the best times in my life. My whole family was there. We were making dinners together around this bomb shelter table. And let me tell you what we were talking about. Like, it's that time. It's the time with your family. And it's there for you if you're willing to have the courage to set aside the distractions, right? Is that sound right? Is that sound right? That sounds perfect. I'll give you a kind of a fun analogy from the swimming line.

So in a swimming stroke, there are two parts to a stroke. All right. We're talking about freestyle, LaCrawl. Underwater, when you catch the water in front of you and you pull it underwater behind you, that part of the stroke is called resistance because you're happening to resist the pressure of the water. You're moving the weight of the water behind you. Above water, once you've released the water behind you at the end of your arm, at the end of the underwater arm pole, from the time you lift your elbow above water to catch the water in front of you, you know what that's called, George? No. It's called the recovery.

Right. Now, to me, the go, go, go, the conception, to make it happen, to do things, make it, get it done, that's resistance. That's where we're hustling, bustling, getting it done, shining, all that stuff. But here's the simple truth. You can be the greatest there ever was on resistance underwater. But if you don't have as equally effective recovery, where the goal of recovery is to let it go. is to completely relax. If you don't get as good at doing that as you are underwater,

you're going to wear out. You're going to burn out. You're going to run out. And so if you look at a great app, I always been thinking like Michael Jordan. Here's Michael Jordan, you know, flying through the air. You ever notice his tongue?

It looks like a dog's tongue. It's like hanging out and it's so loose because all that he's using is what's necessary. All right. And he's got a great recovery. to me, the times that we're present with ourselves, so that's in a quiet time when we're out going on a walk, we're doing meditation, we're praying, we're listening to music,

that part is being present with ourselves, but the recovery time in our relationships is when we're present with each other. And if you don't do that, all that underwater resistance ain't going to pay off in the end. It's going to wear you out. You'll get to the end of your life and say, why didn't I? That's what we've got to change. We've got to do it now.

The most important words I've ever written, and most people think it's just about in your personal life, but I think it's in your private life, in your professional life too. The most important words I think I've ever written say this. Say the love we fail to share is the only pain we live with. And if we don't get that right, if we don't seize this woo, which is the window of opportunity, which is now, the love you failed to share could become the only pain you leave with. And that's too late. And what I'm talking about is, seize that moment now when you can.

And there are times you can't. There's times where you've got to get somewhere. It's got to get done. But I don't think there's a human being on this earth that couldn't be a little more present who couldn't occasionally stop for a minute, recover and recover that relationship and express to somebody how much you appreciate them, how much you love them, how much they've impacted you, how much they've inspired you. So, you know, to me, that's kind of a fun little analogy.

there's resistance and there's recovery and you'll only recover when you're fully present. I love that. Thanks for sharing that. It makes me think of like Victor Frankl's moment between stimulus and response. You know what I mean? Like you have resistance and recovery, but there is that moment when your arms coming up through that water. And when you're present and you're aware of it and those distractions fall away, don't you get a real glimpse of what's important in your life? Isn't that why that moment of awareness is like, oh, or that flashed, of insight they talk about or that discovery where things are discovered like that moment right there seems to be the difference between people who resonate at a frequency that seems to make them happy versus living in that resistance all the time you know i'm just like i'm stunned because when you said

that i was just thinking about victor frankl and man search for meaning i mean i'm not kidding yeah and i'm like are you kidding me all right we're copacetic here man we're doing it right you know that is such a beautiful. For anybody who has never read the book, Man Search for Meaning, I read it at least once every three years. I've read it many times because to me it's the ultimate guide to understanding what really matters in life. So for those who didn't know, Victor Franco was in Auschwitz. He was in, he survived perhaps the worst of all, the concentration camps. And there's so many brilliant insights about what matters in life. But to me, the greatest one of all kind of to lead us right to the next place.

And that was, if you would have tried to predict which people, when they were put into the concentration camps, would make it through, the most cruelty, the most, you know, beatings and starvation, what would keep people alive? He said you would probably would have been wrong in your guess, because you would have just looked at the physical exterior of the people. He says what, what, those that survived were those that had a purpose left undone,

a purpose left undone. Whether it was children they felt they must get back to, whether it was work they felt they alone must complete. It really taught me that if you're not inspired, you're on the way to getting expired. And so, you know, and to me, the greatest truth that we can have is that inspiration is our choice. You know, too often we think about inspiration that it has to come from the outside. You know, doing what I do, I'm called a motivational speaker. George, I'm a motivated speaker, all right?

The motivation must be internal eventually or else it's not going to last. And inspiration is really about the choices that we make. You know, it really is about, and when you look at that way, one of the books I wrote was called It's Time for Joy, How to Become the Happiest Person You Know. And the whole purpose of that book was to let people know, see, we think joy happens to us. We hope it comes.

But we can create joy in our life by the way that we change. to focus on controlling our controllables. That's the starting place. You know, so often, see, who are the happiest people I know? Well, the people who focus on what they control and let go of what they don't control. They're people who are easy to impress and hard to offend. All right.

And if you live your life with that mantra, I'm easy to impress and hard to offend, you're going to have a great life and you're going to have great impact on people. You know, the easy to impress part, it means that you're looking for the best in people. You're looking for the joy. You're looking for the possibility.

And what you focus on is what you create. You know, whether you focus on the obstacle or the way around it. I'm calling America's breakthrough speaker because I've had a million people breakboards in my event. It's a great metaphor and the most incredible seminar experience of actually applying the principles of breakthrough to a real life breakthrough. But 95% of the breakthrough is not about your muscles or your colleagues. coordination, it's about where you focus. If you focus on the board, you're going to get the board. If you focus beyond the board, you're going to get the breakthrough. And so that is the first of the three, what I call controllables that can lead you to joy and possibility and success

is to focus on what you want. It's about shaking your future and knowing that what you focus on is what you create. The second, we can dive into these as we go along. Here's that swimming word again, Okay. The second is to energize and engage yourself in your team. You know, when it comes to human performance, when it comes to anything that's important, energy is such a key. And again, most people, though, think of their energy like the weather. It's like, man, I hope the weather's good for, you know, over the holidays. I hope I have enough energy to make it through this week. But our energy is a matter of choice and a very specific things we can do to elevate our energy by choice instead of chance. And the third controllable. is to build people, build teams, and build relationships. I don't care what industry you're in. You're in the same business. It's people business. It's how you grow and help others grow

that will ultimately determine how far you can go. So I think that, you know, when you get down to it, happiness is a choice, joy is a choice, energy is a choice, and then you get specific about how do you cultivate those choices. Those are three brilliant points. And I'm going to dive into it. But before we continue diving in with our metaphors, I got a few questions stacking up.

So let's come to the panel here. I got a, this is coming from Clark in Arkansas. He says, you've held countless people shatter their limits. But what's the one limit yet to overcome in yourself? What does that unresolved struggle say about the nature of human potential? Well, first of all, from Arkansas, you already know my favorite word. And that word is the word, woo. W-O-O-O.

Really fun to say, woo. Out in Arkansas, they say, Woo, Suey, all right, go bowl those razor back. But my way of woo says, window of opportunity. The woo is the window of opportunity, which is every precious moment.

And what I mean by that is, you never know if the next person you'll meet today may become your lifelong friend. I have a feeling, George Bunty's going to be my lifelong friend. Anybody who's thinking the same guy at the same time. So you never know if the next time you talk to your daughter or your son, There's something you say in that conversation.

They be so on target for what they just couldn't see with their own eyes, but you saw it and you said it because you said it their life got better. So really breakthroughs come when you seize the woo. So about me personally, what is the biggest window of opportunity I haven't made it through yet? I think that it really comes down to living more and more and more of what I just said of being easy to impress and hard to offend. For me, the easy to impress is natural for me. I've always looked for the best in people. I've always looked for the possibility rather than the limit. Maybe more in other people than myself.

I can be more critical about myself. So there's a place to also break through it. The other one is the tougher one. It's the one I've worked the most on in my life, but I'm nowhere near there yet. I want to keep going. And that is being difficult, tough, and difficult to offend. Easy to impress and hard to offend. And here's why.

Most of the time, it's not personal. If somebody's seemingly angry or whatever, it could be a miscommunication. It could be, they could have just found out a dear friend has cancer. They could have found out, all right, they could just be having a bad day. It didn't about you 90% of the time. And I know that, but my breakthrough comes when I live that more. Because I still can sometimes get, you know, get spiked and immediately lash out instead of saying. And here's a problem.

great way. I've really tried to condition this question into myself to be more difficult to offend. When I start to feel that reaction, ask myself, what else could this mean? What else could this mean? And just asking the question softens that defensive reaction. So me personally, my goal in life is to be fully present in every precious woo. Am I there yet? Nope. Will I ever get there? Probably not all the way, but I just want to keep moving in the right direction. So what a wonderful question out there. Woo! Yeah. Thanks. This one comes from Desiree. She says, if human potential is limitless, what do you think it means when someone fails repeatedly? Well, first of all, I believe that with everything, thank you,

Desiree. Where's Desiree from? Palm Desert. Palm Desert. All right. Out there, I've spoken, Palm Springs for all state insurance. All right. So, what? So, what? We're a lot. So, what? We're One of the greatest principles of breakthrough came from Napoleon Hill who wrote Think and Grow Rich. It's an old book, but it's a classic. It's a masterpiece. And one of the things he said in that book is within every adversity is planted the seed of equivalent or greater benefit. Within every adversity is planted the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. In other words, Desiree, if you think of the hardest things you've ever faced in your life, the toughest times,

The biggest failures, if you look at them as failures. When you step to the other side, if you got to the other side, weren't they often the things from which you grew the most? They weren't any fun in the middle, but, man, they will help you get to the other side and find something you never would have found. So to me, you know, if human potential is limitless, I don't know whether that's true or not. I just choose to believe it.

I choose to believe that we have more in us. Whether it's limitless or not, it doesn't matter. It's getting to our own level of potential. And to me, you know, John Wooden said this often. He says, failure is not fatal. Success is never final. So we're on a journey. All right.

And so to me, the most important thing that we can do, I often say the greatest gift we're ever given is called today. Because we get a fresh start every day. Today we have a chance to be a better mom or a better dad than we've ever been. Today we have a chance to learn something we never knew before. Today we have a chance to come up with a new idea. We have a chance to be kind to someone who at that moment needs kindness more than ever. So we have that chance every day. And I see it as a road in front of us.

And the metaphor is many times every day, sometimes very obviously and sometimes very subtly, we get to the same why in that road. One side goes off this way and it says as soon as. Now, to me, as soon as looks easy. It's well lit. It's got no potholes. The lights are shining. it's repaved. The other side is now. Now is twisty and turny. There's ice patches. Lights are out. It's got

ruts. But if you stay on the road called as soon as, it's a direct road to never. All right. So the way to deal with quote unquote failure is to say, what can I learn from it? What am I going to do now? All right? And get out of the past. Because whatever that failure is, it's one thing for sure. It's in the past. It's done. You can't change it. And if you will live that way, number one, you'll become a blame buster. Because blame kills teams, families, and lives. You know, and if you think about blame in the context of time, is blame about the past, the present, or the future. It's always about the past. So whenever you're in blame, you're in the past, which you cannot do anything. It's like trying to get where you want to go in front of you by looking in the rearview mirror. It's not where you're going. And so to me,

the key about failure is to look at it as a blame buster for yourself, okay, this didn't work. I made a mistake. I didn't do it well. What can I learn? How am I going to get better? What is the seed of that equivalent or greater benefit? One last quick piece about this.

My children are my greatest teachers. And my daughter, Jenna, my youngest daughter, if she was to say, what was the hardest thing that ever happened to her life? You can call it a failure if you want. When she was 23 years of age, a man that she was about to become engaged to, was found dead from a drug overdose. Or my beautiful daughter's heart up. And it was hard.

And she felt like a total failure. She felt she blamed herself. As her dad, I thought, I've got to fix this, but it wasn't mine to fix. So it was an incredibly difficult thing. Today, if she was on the show with us, George, we'd have to adjust the lighting because she shines so bright. And it was hard. and it was tough. But what she emerged from that horrible tragedy

was with a belief that she can handle life. That was she ever completely heal that part of her that love that man? No, it will always be there. All right. But she's learned to love more, care more, live more, and be more from an incredibly difficult thing. And there's a lot of people who face tragedy like that and give up because they keep the rest of their life locked into the past.

And it took years. I'm not kidding me. It was tough for her. But she's going to get married in 2025 to a man that she adores and adores her. And she's more loving and more kind and more and happier than she's ever been. So again, failure is not fatal. All right. And success is never final to stay on the path and keep choosing the now.

Thank you for that. That's, thanks for sharing that. It's personal, but it's meaningful. And it brings up the question. And I think you've addressed it a little bit, but I think we can go deeper. Like this question of why me, especially when it comes to, I know people who have had their children die. My son died. I know people that have lost, whether it's a parent, a child, a loved one, a job, something else.

But sometimes when these tragedies strike us that hit us just the ultimate gut punch, you find yourself in this sort of abyss. staring into this abyss and it stares back at you and you're like, why me? Like, why me? What do you say, Brian, when people find themselves in these traumatic events is, can that be an opportunity for growth? And like, what do you do in those moments? How do you find the bliss there? Wow. That's, I don't know that you're going to find the bliss immediately there for any way. Right. Right. Right. And that's the first starting place is there's a thing called empathy. There's a thing called love and caring. And with my daughter, I wanted to fix it, as I said, but it wasn't mine to fix.

You know, I didn't know what to do. But I will say, I will say this. This is probably the most magnificent lesson that came from that experience that I think you can apply to your question. Okay. For a while, after this happened, our world was dark. And my lovely daughter, who had been a joyful person and just fun to be around was bitter. and angry and she struck out at her mother and I because I think deep down inside she knew she

couldn't ever lose our love but it was tough she was mean she would tell you one day I was I was with her and I was walking on eggshells which I had never done I was the goofy dad all right I'm still the goofy dad I got the stupid dad jokes you know they only laugh because they're so bad that you're gonna you know we got to laugh we got a humor they got right right but I'm I was not that dad at that time. I was walking on eggshells. I was so scared that she might hurt herself. I was so scared that she might give up.

I was so scared that she would never be the same. And keep in mind, I'm America's breakthrough speaker. I'm the guy who teaches you to break through from fear to love. Because that's the only breakthrough there ultimately is. He breakthrough from fear to love. One day, I was in her room with her, about four months after this had happened, still in the midst of the darkness. And she looked at me and she said,

Daddy, I love you. But I can't stand you worrying about me all the time. And it just shook me because that's when I realized that everything I teach, everything I believe in, what you focus on is what you create, that we have a choice about our energy, that we can build people and build teams and build relationships by being present. I was living none of those.

I was living the exact opposite. I was focusing on the board instead of the breakthrough. And in that moment of her just powerful honesty, she grabbed my heart, she shook it, she opened my eyes, and I started being goofy dad again. And that was the best thing I could have ever done. And I'm not kidding, George. Immediately our relationship began to get better.

I mean, it wasn't like night and day. It was subtle and little inch by inch, but inch by inch, anything's a cinch. And it started going in the right direction instead of being held like being held underwater where we were just waiting to drown. Suddenly, we poked our head above water and realized there's still our air out there. And that was the beginning of the path to where she's become now. So what do you do in those moments? You love people. What do you do in those moments is you do everything you can to focus on what on on shaping your future, energizing yourself and building teams and relationships.

One more experience that really strikes the court of that. I had to speak on September 12, 2001. So the day after 9-11, I had to go from Asheville, North Carolina, where we lived. I was supposed to speak in Dayton, Ohio, to a whole group of. executives. I called up the University of Dayton that was putting on and said, you're not doing this argument. They said, we called all of them and they want to do it. And I went to, oh, my gosh, okay. Well, I had to drive there because there were no airplanes. And every mile I went further away from my wife and kids, the more I wanted to turn that baby around and get back to him. I didn't want to

be there. But I had a responsibility. You know, when you're a speaker, you're the show, you show up. Yeah. And I got there and I didn't pretend that it didn't happen. I didn't just go forward and teach my stuff. The first half hour of that day, it was a full day, was addressing the truth, was addressing what had happened. And it turned into one of the best days of my whole speaking career. I mean, because we said we're not going to let this define us,

we're not going to let this beat us. The worst thing we can do is give in and stop being, we want to be and going where we want to go. And it was hard that day. And boy, did I feel ready to hit the pedal to the metal to get back home to my wife and kids. But we have that within us. We still have a choice no matter how dark it is. So, you know, a fun way to put it. So we put it in a pleasant way. I told you, I told my grandson, his name is Augie. When Augie was three and a half, he was so good on a two on his tricycle. He was like evil coneeval, George, on that little tricycle. And he was so good. He'd got like five mile

a million miles an hour. He did these quick little turns. He was so good that his mom and dad thought, you know, he's ahead of the curve. Let's get him a two-wheeler bike for his fourth birthday. So on his fourth birthday, he gets a bike. Mom and dad are holding the back fender. He gets up on the little bike, puts his little hands on the handlebars, puts his little feet on the pedals, puts his little tongue out for balance. And he starts, they start pedaling. And he's pedaling, and he's wobbling and mom and dad are encouraging him in their hold of the back fender. And finally it gets enough momentum that he's doing it. He's riding the bike and they let him go.

And he's doing it. Wait, go, A-Dee! But unfortunately, right in front of him on the sidewalk that day was a great big rock. What did Aggie look at? The rock. What happens next? Wham, he nails that rock. He falls over, not part of the ground, but you're four years old.

He scrapes his little elbow up a little bit. He walks by dad. Dad, goes, Dad, I'm cool, no problem. Goes up to mom, goes mom, I'm going to die. All right. So now, but now it's two weeks later. Same little guy, same little bike. Hands on the handlebars, feet on the pedals.

No tongue out now. He got this bike-riking thing down. Whipping down the same sidewalk. Bop-di-bop-dy-pop-dy-pop-ty-pop-ty-pbap-ty-bap. Bigger rock. What happens now? It goes around it. What goes around at first?

Not the bike. His vision. his eyes. He sees the way around the rock. Now, would it have done him any good to pretend there's no rock? There's no rock. There's no rock. Eyes closed. We haven't been worse. There's rocks. There's rocks called COVID. There's rocks called losing someone we love. There's rocks called making a big mistake and wishing we hadn't done it that way. The key is don't pretend there wasn't a rock. Okay, this is what happen and then start looking around it, start looking for a better way, start learning from that experience. If we live with that principle, what it means is I don't think we'll ever be able

to get beyond feelings sadness and pain, and we shouldn't. That's humanity. That's one thing that AI will never have is human emotion. But the more we focus on it up front, we work on it, we work on it, then we'll narrow the time that we stay in the darkness. And we can start to move towards light again. I love it. I love the kid on the bicycle. You know, it speaks volumes because we're all that kid on the bicycle. You know what I mean? Like, I can't help but think about some escapades that my kid had on a bike.

One time when I was teaching her how to ride a bike, we were out in front of our yard and the same thing. She's got her hand on there. I'm holding the back of the bike. And I let go. And she goes for, you know, 30 yards. And she comes by this fire hydrant. She just loses her balance and falls over.

And she goes so upset. Brian, she picks up her, picks her backs up. throws it down. I can't do it, Dad. I can't do it. And start screaming. And I walk over to her and I'm like, stop. Look where you started at. She shifts her little head and she sees like the 30 yards that she was started at. Picks her bike up and starts going again. But like I always held that with me. Like, man, I can use this because I feel that same way so many times. And if you just stop and look where you started sometimes, it's enough. Like, okay, I am making progress. Okay, I am doing it. You know, all this imposter syndrome or all these things that we trick ourselves.

about like you're not doing it you're not good enough just stop and take a moment to celebrate the success that you've had it might be one step it might be something small but it's usually there if you look for it isn't it it truly is that's a brilliant insight and just really a fun way to put it i love it that's so great when i was going to stanford i um i volunteered at something uh where we taught um disabled children to swim and it was all volunteer program and we had kids with the extreme disabilities. We had kids who had cerebral palsy who were blind in depth, had all three of those. We had severely autistic children. We had kids with Down syndrome. And what I learned from that was what you just taught us, George. The first experience where we had to have a little

orientation. And I'm thinking, well, I'm a swim guy, man. This is going to be easy for me. And the woman who started this was a 65-year-old woman at the time who had just hustled to make this whole program possible got the pool built have to be a special pool has to be very warm and she got it all done she was feisty her name was was betty betty right and um she to teach us so we got about 20 college kids who are going to volunteer for this program we're sitting on the pool death she takes this young man who's probably 13 or 14 his name was calling i'll never forget it he's in a wheel He's got severe cerebral palsy, so he's very spastic in his movements. He is blind.

He is death. She rolls him to the edge of the pool in this wheelchair, and she dumps him in the pool. And I, as a swimming guy, I'm like, wait a him, what are you doing? And then it gets worse because I hear this incredible noise as he's in the water. Like, I'm thinking he's drowning. What are you doing? And she was so tough. She had white hair.

Then she looks and he goes, you stay on it in that. Okay. Well, after a minute, I realized what the sound was. He was doing backward somersaults. And every time his head came above water, he was laughing. This blind boy went to the bottom of this pool, which was about 12 feet deep. He knew every inch of the pool. And when he came up, I've never seen, to this day, I've never seen anybody happier than that guy was than Colin was when he was in the water.

And what Betty said was, Colin's been coming here since he was. two years old. When he was two years old, he wasn't who you see in the water today. And it hit me that we can all learn. It may take a long time. You know, it may not be easy for some of us. You know, the truth is down syndrome kids are not going to swim as well as Michael Phelps because their bodies are different. They're very dense. So they don't, they don't float, but they can swim and they can learn. And they take little tiny steps. And we may overestimate what we can do in a month. and underestimate what we can do in a year. And so when you talked about, look at what you did.

You went 30 yards. That's 90 feet. That's a big number. Right. That's when we get focused back on making that progress and realizing, well, I guess I can't. That's why I love that I have people break boards because I don't care who you are before you do it. And it's a metaphor. Everybody writes on the board something they want to break through.

And on the back of the board, and it can be something. know fear of failure procrastination on the back of the board they write down what's waiting for me when i have broken through what am i going to do be feel create having my life but i don't care who you are george when you stand in front of that board you don't know if you can do it and you may be one percent thinking i can't do it and you may be 99 percent sure you can't do it but i don't care who you are you don't know you can do it till you do it and when you do that when you step forward and what it leaves you with is what we want people to feel in their lives. Maybe I can instead of maybe I can, or I never will.

Maybe I broke that board and I wasn't sure I could do that. Maybe I could learn that language. Maybe I could heal that relationship. Maybe I could lose that weight. Maybe I could start that business. And as soon as you shift that way, just like your little girl, getting back on that bike, suddenly she goes, maybe I can instead of, I'll never do it.

As soon as we do that, we're moving again. And that's a great place to be. That's where momentum comes on. I love that idea. Can it ever be a burden, though? Like, I fly way too close to the sun, man. Like, I can do anything, even though I can't. You know what I mean?

Like, I believe it to a point that's almost a fault sometimes. And it's had problems in my relationship. Like, I can totally do this, but then I'll lose. And sometimes as I've gotten older, I wonder, like, our unrealistic expectations, maybe something that are driven into us at a young age so that we, can believe to become anything we want. But maybe there are some unrealistic expectations. How do you factor in this idea of unrealistic expectations? Well, you know, I would rather fly close to the sun to tell you the truth. Me too. Me too. You know, whether you can't, you know, Henry Ford said,

whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So I would much rather, you know, I believe in positive thinking, but realistic positive thinking, which means, you know, there may be bumps in the road. That's when you get back to you. there are going to be rocks. But I also want you to know everyone watching your show that, as Coach Wooden said, there are no overachievers. You know, when I was a U.S. swimming coach, we had expectations that were created by time standards. In other words, to qualify for the national championships, you had to hit a certain time.

And if you were one one hundredth of a second slower, that's less than your fingernail, you missed it. You had to hit it or be under it. So we had some of these that were actually, you could say, imposed or created for us. Because our dream was to make it to the junior nationals or the nationals. To do that, you have to go 5349 in 100 meter free stop. Well, I want to tell you this, George, I had at least 100 different kids over my career who hit the number exactly. They made their time standard exactly to the hundredth of a second.

What you focus on is what you create. What it made me think of? What if the timestatter was a second faster? I bet they didn't hit it then. So what I'm saying is there will be bumps and there will be times when you feel like, man, I wish I could have done better or I wish I had done it differently. But then use that again. Remember, within every adversity is planted the seed of an equivalent of greater benefit

and get back to going for the sun, baby. Go for it. It's still there. right and focus affirm that you are already there that's one of the most powerful ways to do it don't set goals and say i'm going to get there say i'm already there that's vital you've got to see it as if it's real and then breathe emotion into those affirmations emotion says how what it feels how excited it feels you feel how much joy it brings and that fill your affirmations with positive emotion and most of all you know the greatest human emotion

The one that really can make the biggest difference is gratitude. You know, there was a book called Power versus Force. And it's a book about a guy who measured the vibration of emotions. He spent 25 years doing this, that, you know, that we have different frequencies. Everything has a frequency. And the emotion with the highest frequency is gratitude. So that means when you're feeling gratitude, there's no way you can feel sad. there's no way you can feel angry.

Gratitude overpowers negative emotion. And so if you really live with a sense of gratitude, you're going to be, number one, you're going to be happier. Number two, you're going to have more energy in everything that you do. But it's easy to be grateful for the good stuff. Well, you've got to learn to be grateful is for the tough stuff. When I think of the holiday of Thanksgiving, we've all been conditioned to be thankful for

all the good things in our lives. And we should. Embrace them, cheer them, celebrate them. But I want to be grateful for that time with my daughter that was hard. I want to be grateful for the times I wish I would have been better. I want to be grateful for the things that were my greatest lessons that often have come from the hardest, I've been the hardest lessons. And that expansion of gratitude, not to just the stuff that makes you happy right away, but the stuff you have to learn from is a sure way to keep going towards the same. son. Keep flying toward the sun, George. Don't anybody stop you. Yeah, I can't. It's an obsession of mine. I can't help it. I'm going. Yeah. It shows. It shows. It's seen on your face. You know,

one of the people that I've most admired in my life was, I named Dr. Norman Cousins. And nobody's heard of him before. Norman Cousins wrote a book that was called Anatomy of an illness. And when he was in a... his 20s, Norman Cousins was diagnosed with a form of leukemia that was absolutely terminal, that he was given a very short time to live. But Norman Cousins like you wanted to go to the sun. And he had this belief that was just a belief. You know, nobody told him this. He believed that laughter strengthened the immune system. He believed that, you know, if you tighten up, instead of lighten up, you're not going to be healthier.

And so he got these old real to real black and white, old-fashioned silent movies, like Laurel and Hardy, you know, Buster Keaton, Charlotte Chaplin. And this was, you know, this was in the 50s. And he watched them over and over and over again. And he laughed. This guy, if he could do one thing better than anything else, he could laugh. And he laughed for months. watch it that's all he did for three months after he got the diagnosis well the terminal less than six

months to live turned into he died almost 80 years old i saw him in his 70s speaking to a group of 20 terminally diagnosed stage four cancer patients in a support group and you know what we did that those people did for that hour they laughed and and i looked at norman cousins who then was in his 70s and his face, like yours, George, goes up from the laughter, from smiling so much, and his eyes had a little flicker that went up and that is what we must recognize, is that that came from gratitude, that from gratitude of the joy of being able to just keep laughing. So to me, that's really the answer is that, you know,

we have within us the capacity for great gratitude. And whenever you're feeling down, think about you're really grateful about today. And if you can't come up with anything, make something up. All right. And you'll start to move in the right direction. Yeah, it's a great, it's a great metaphor and a great way to live your life. I think it's, you're only here for a short amount of time.

What about people that say, you know what, Brian, this is all great and all, but I don't need breakthroughs. My life's just fine. Okay. People say that, right? I've heard people say that. And that's, you know, that's, that's again where you made your choice, you know. Right. To me, though, what you're missing is my favorite word, I have this little thing I keep with me all the time is that word right there.

Humility. And anyone who's saying that may think they're humble, but they're really not because here's the key. And humility has gotten a bad rep. And it's one of my most powerful desires is to shine a light on how important it is to be humble in your life. Because people think that when you're humble, you're not confident. No way. I have nothing to do with each other. You can be very confident and very humble.

John Wooden was very humble and very confident. Because being humble doesn't mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less. Here's the answer to those people who say, I don't need anything else. I'm fine. Only those who are humble are lifelong learners. Because only those who are humble always believe there's something better there's something that I can improve myself,

that I can get better, that I could serve people better, that I could do something with more love, I could do something with more grace, I could do something. In other words, when you come from a place of humility, you're always looking to learn

and grow from everyone in every situation. Only those who are humble would rather be wrong and learn something than pretend they're always right. And only those who are humble will give credit and take responsibility. And so to me, if you're saying,

I don't need anything else. Well, that's okay. Live your life. That's fine. But you're missing out on a lot of joy if you just open up to, hey, what else can I do that could make somebody happy today? What else could I do to get in better shape? What else could I do?

And you're missing out on that forward momentum. What you're doing as you're saying, okay, I'm not going to reverse, but I'll just stay in neutral. You know? And you're probably not going to hurt anybody. But you're also probably not going to lift it very many people. So life is about lifting. Yeah.

Do you think that the way we transform society is by each individual becoming the best version of themselves? Absolutely. I mean, I don't want to get into politics, but, and so I won't. Right. Don't. But, you know, at various times in my life, I've been pretty disappointed by the outcome of elections. And, but it hit me that, okay, what can I do about that? You know, I can't, I can't change.

the outcome of that election. I can't pretend it didn't happen. What can I do? I can be the best person I can be. I can live my life in the direction of the principles that I thought were most important in that election. And I can be the best example of that possibility that I can be. And that's the way that I can maybe impact the most people. And if I can impact more people, that's why I wrote the book, the most recent book is called The Lessons from the Legends. it because I believe in character. I believe that we need to refresh and get pumped about the power of human character. The things like honesty, things like generosity, things like being able to disagree without being disagreeable, things like evaluating and honoring differences rather than the

fearing differences. These things are things of character. And to me, I wrote the book to try to shine a light on those things that they actually not only are nice, they work. Because the legends I wrote about exemplified them and they were the best there ever was at what they did. And so, yeah, your question is exactly right. We, the only one, you know, we don't control anybody else, but we do have some measure of control of the way we live our lives. We don't, we can't, we don't determine what happens to us, but we do, we do determine

how we will respond to what happens. And so live your life the best way you can. Be the best example. Find the most joy and spread the most joy. And you'll make the biggest difference. You know, my favorite movie of all time is It's a Wonderful Life. It's the Christmas movie with Jimmy Stewart who thought he didn't make a difference. He thought he had never lived his real dreams. He thought he had been a failure. But he always gets me in Philadelphia. but he realized that he lived a wonderful life by doing the right things by being the best he could be in a simple way yeah i feel like when it's all stripped away that's all that's left right it is it is it is being the best version of himself it is be the best version of yourself and you never know see when we do that we don't realize we become the ultimate ultimate kind of uh generator of the ripple effect. You know, you never know if just

stopping and saying to somebody, like, I never know that this morning when I called my grandson to just applaud him for the way he did his Spanish. You know, he's going to be a little happier. He's going to maybe say something to a friend that he wouldn't have said. And that friend will say something to his sister, and his sister will say something to his mom.

And it'll keep going and going and going. And it may get to somebody at a moment like my daughter had to go through. and it may make a difference. So we never know the expanse, how far that ripple effect will go. And we don't need to. We just need to start that ripple effect. But know that eventually it'll turn into a way.

And that's what we do by living our lives the best way we know how, to be the best people we can be. Yeah. I'm often conflicted about which one's better, the written word or the spoken word. And I'm curious on your opinion. Like you go and you speak to all these people and you've helped transform lots of people with a frequency, with incredible stories. Why write a book? Like do you or maybe you can tell us about the process. Maybe you can do both.

Why write the book, number one? And number two, what is that process like? Is it just compiling some of the speeches you had or were there like, wait a minute. I have an opportunity to put pen to paper. Let me do something different with the written word than I do with the spoken word. Yeah, that's a wonderful question. Nobody's ever asked me that before. And my answer is that there are different.

It's like, you know, a lot of people don't want to see, if they read it, if they love reading a book, they don't want to see the movie. Yeah, totally. Because it won't be as good as that. But to me, I try to keep them separate. They're different, they're different, completely different things. A book can actually write down thoughts. A movie can actually create a vision of things. that you have to create yourself in a book.

So they're different. They're just different, different vibes. And so is speaking and writing. Writing a book for me, you know, it's funny because when I wrote a book, I wasn't thinking about selling it. I wasn't thinking about, I really don't know that I was thinking about that much about people reading it. I was writing it because I wanted to express the things that I love in the best way I knew

how and writing. And so the process of writing to me is really about gathering. these swirling thoughts that have always been in there, crystallizing them and riding them down in such a way that when you step back, you go, wow, you know, and so that's what, that's why I wrote my first book, because I had a lot that I wanted, that I've been teaching, and I believe in both these different mechanisms. Some people will get more from a book and some people will get more from an experience. That's the way it is. You know, as a coach, if you coach everybody the same, you are a lousy. And that's because people aren't the same. Some people learn by watching. Some people learn by listening.

Some people learn by doing. And as a coach, you know, you may have consistent systems and approaches, but if you're not paying attention to what works for that particular person, you're not going to be a great coach. Some people need a pat on the back. Some people need, you know, a kick in the tush. Some people need space. Some people need to actually get in there and do it.

So to me, writing allowed me to reach some people that I may never reach in a seminar. They may never go to an event. They may not learn that way. They love reading. Speaking an event, I'm going to reach people who are there in a different kind of way. The classic study about communication says there are three things, three elements of communication. There's the words we say. There's how we say them.

That's our tonality. And then their third element is body language. And the study done at UCLA many years ago, it's been confirmed over and over again, sought to ask the question, what is the relative importance of those three in terms of communication working? 55% of communication is body language. So it's not what we say or how we say it. It's what we're saying by our energy. 38% is tonality. It's not the words we say.

It's how we say them. And only 7% are the actual words. And so to me, you know, that 7% is more what the book is about. However, if I'm being a good writer, the energy and the, and if I'm really putting my energy and the way I would say it in a good way on those words, they're picking up all of it. It's easier in front of people, though, because here's a truth. I don't care who you are. I don't care how well you say things. People will remember that much of what you say, but they'll never forget your energy.

They get your energy before you open your mouth after you closed your mouth. To get your energy over the phone, they haven't seen your face. They get your energy the way to send emails. Email does not stand for electronic mail stands for energy mail, for goodness sake. I love it. I really admire the... I am a huge fan of language and behavior. Like, it's fascinating to me to understand the way in which our words influence our behavior and vice versa.

And it's interesting to see these dynamics play out. And you were a Stanford guy. Were you there for the prison experiments? Yes. Yes, I had. Philip Zimbardo was a psychology major. So it was kind of cool. All of our textbooks were written by our professors.

Can we dig into that a little bit? Sure, sure. I mean, you know, the prison experiment was, was, I actually sat in on a, on a, where we, they brought in students to kind of do a makeup of it, you know, to pretend that we were in, that we were the prison guards. Okay. And, you know, so you go ahead, you explain it. You, I want to you explain it. I'll jump off of it. Okay. So the Stanford prison experiment was this incredible thought exercise turned visceral where two. groups of students, well, one group of students was brought in at a point in time when there was a lot of anti-authority going on around the world. It's contagious. Like, get out of these knuckleheads, Vietnam, baby killers. You know, all this incredible energy is vibrating. You know, I think you had Timothy Leary around at those in that time. Like tune in, drop out. Woo. People, Jimmy Hendricks playing guitar. People drop in acid. Woo, things were crazy. So you have this incredible institution for higher learning. You have people really beginning to push boundaries on the ideas of behavior. And they bring in this group of students.

And they randomly assign them your criminals. You guys are officers. And they went the extra mile. They had the criminals picked up at their houses and cop cars brought into this makeshift cell stripped down. And then let's see what happens. What happens to these kids? I think that's a pretty good setup there. But maybe you could take it from there.

You were there. I've never talked to anybody that was there. I've read about, I've talked about it, I've never spoken anybody, man. So I'll jump off and let you go from there. What happened, man? What did you learn? What did you think was going on? So what it explained in the end, what they gained from it was a beginning to understand.

If you think about Nazi Germany in the 40s, people ask the question, how did these decent people go along with what was happening? How did they persecute and murder? put people in concentration camps, people who would be people like you see every day on the road. How did that get into their minds that this was okay? When you step back on the outside and then the rest of the world looks and says, it can't be real. This prison experiment explained how it's done. Through very gradual steps, they got the prison guards to become more and more and more

violent, more and more authoritative. and and you think there'd be a point would say, I'm not doing this. I'm not going to harm somebody. But because of that pathway, that way that authority worked in, these students would actually thought they were killing that person. That's how bad it was.

That's how powerful we can be led when we don't open our eyes to what's going on. So that was, you know, it really helped us understand some of the most dastardly things. How do we get from this point to this point? We didn't jump all the way to concentration camps. We did it in little steps in exactly the way they set up that experiment. It's incredible.

It is incredible. And I think it speaks volumes of our relationship to authority on some level. Like as long as we become, as long as we have under the pretense that I'm just doing my job. I'm just doing my job, man. I'm trying to feed my kids, man. I have to do this, you know, which leads, okay. And I think this thread leads to this idea. There's a great quote that says the difference between a leader and a manager is that a leader does the right thing and a manager does things right.

I think that that seems to be something that happens in multinational corporations. You have this top-down structure with authority telling the guy that's the middle manager that scratched his way super hard, probably an awesome person. Hey, tell these guys on the bottom, do it that they lose their job into story. Shut up. Like that is toxic. That is what leads to workplace violence. violence. That is what leads to that. But the people at the top seem to be cleared of that because they have this middle management on some level. Like how do you like how do we how do we get past

to that? That seems to be something happening is not only in companies but in countries. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's interesting. As part of it is, it's almost like folklore, if you will. And what I mean by that is, is that it's because we've created this belief that because you're the leader, you know more than I do. So to me, to me, The work that I do, I'm called America's Breakthrough Speaker, and my foundational program is called breakthrough leadership. And I almost hesitate to say it because immediately people think I'm talking about the CEOs and the CEOs that leadership is about them.

No, the message that I want to give is everyone's a leader. How do you show up every day? That is personal leadership. How do you deal with adversity, with challenge, with success? That's leadership. Most important of all, what kind of impact do you have on the people around you? Do you lift them? Do you neutralize them?

Do you knock them down? You're already a leader. So the starting place is to recognize that we are already leaders. Another place to step back and gain a viewpoint of what's important is, you know, I lived for 25 years in Asheville, North Carolina. It is a beautiful place. We loved Asheville. We never would have left Asheville. We moved a year ago.

We only left because our grandchildren moved so far north that it was just too far to go to see him. Well, as you know, in the last month, Asheville has been devastated with a horrible storm. And the challenge with it was they never saw it coming. I mean, Asheville is a place where you never thought it could happen. It's too far north. It's too far west. You just didn't think it could happen to Asheville. It's not like living on the coast of Florida.

Right. It just seemed like how could this possibly happen? I mean, entire communities have washed away. There's nothing there, not a stick left. Every one of my friends, you know, had faced severe damage to their properties. But what's happening now? Everybody's a leader. More people are coming out to do good things to step up and say, you know,

I'm not going to wait for somebody to tell me to do this. I'm going to get out there and help. I'm going to get my chainsaw out. I'm going to help rebuild some houses. I'm going to volunteer to get food out to people. It's what's happening. You know, and we saw that. For those who were around long enough,

we saw it for a while after 9-11, we were one. You know, people cared about each other. And they didn't care whether you were this side of the political aisle or that side. I didn't care if you were this religion or that religion. We just wanted to hold each other and help each other. And that only comes when we all recognize we're all leaders. And that there is that good in us. I had two friends who, when they retired from their careers, decided they would ride their

bikes across America. So they started with their rear wheels in the water in Antiquitous, Washington, near Seattle, and it ended with their front wheels in the water of the Atlantic in Far Harbor, Maine. And I asked them when they were done, what was the best part of doing this? And they both said, I asked them independently because I was really interested. And they both said it renewed our faith in humanity. Said, everybody cared about it. You know, everybody was supportive, whether they were in the city or they were in the country,

whether they were Democrat or Republican or independent, everybody was just pulling for them. And everybody was generous and thoughtful in time. That's who we are. And so the only way that we can, really, really break through that dichotomy, if you will, of there's leaders and there's managers or followers, is to recognize we're all self-leaders and to be the best self-leaders we can. That's what this whole show has been about. It's making those choices to be fully

present, to give credit instead of, give credit and take responsibility to recognize that we're our best one. We'll do more for others and we'll do for ourselves. And recognize that we all have the capacity to choose to elevate our energy, to be fully present, to really be world-class buddy thinkers, to do all kinds of things that lift the people around us. We don't have to wait for permission. And if we do wait for permission, then we're saying, I'm not at the cause of my life. I'm at, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to, I have to be told what to do. I love it. I got one more, Brian, you've been really gracious with your time. I got one more follow-up question here and it says you inspire people to live boldly but what do you think truly

defines a life well-lived when it's all said and done what will your last thought be when your time finally comes man is that an awesome question because i often i often think of this i said you know it's great to start with the end in mind you know most of us you know apply that to being a parent most of us as parents we're just making it up as we go along or we're trying to remember how we were raised, which in many cases we may not wait to be raised the same way we were raised. But if we have to start with an end in mind, we're going to parent differently. You know, and I'm really happy that I did that because when my children were little, I thought, I asked myself and my wife, I'm together and I asked, what do we want for them when we're gone?

We want them to be, we want them to be generous, joyful, all right, kind, thoughtful, happy people. Do we want to define what they do? No. Do we care about how much money they make? No. What we care about are those things. And so that's how we parented it and get to that end. It's set our GPS destination.

All right. And so I often think, okay, when my life is gone, when I've said goodbye to this flight, what are the three words I want people to remember me as? So it's kind of that same question right there. And it's kind of the words we talked about today. One is energy. I want to be remembered that I live my life with full out energy. Two is kindness.

I want to be remembered to somebody who gave without seeking to get, who love the joy of giving. And the last is present. I want to, since I believe that the way we really build people and build trust is by being present, I want to be fully present. So that to me would define a great, life, being kind, being full of energy, and being truly present. Those are fantastic words.

And I'm super thankful. We've been really gracious with your time today, Brian. I really enjoyed the conversation. I felt like we're on the same frequency and wavelength, just kind of trading back. Thank you very much for your time and putting the book out there. Before we land the plane, though, would you be so kind as to tell people where they can find you, what you have coming up and what you're excited about? Absolutely.

And I've got to come right back here. You're just a joy, man. doing a great job. You're so much fun. And I knew we'd have fun. But when you said Victor Frankel at the moment I was thinking, I'm going, is this the Twilight Zone show? No, it's the True Life podcast. So yeah, the easiest way to reach me and find out about me is to go to my website. It's just my name, Brian Beiro.com. There's kind of one fun thing on it. I love people if you have time because it's one of the videos on the screen is an actual main stage presentation I did as the opening speaker at the national speaker.

Association this summer. It's 44 minutes and 29 seconds, but it's a it's a a world record presentation because I had 700 and some odd people speakers, professional speakers, break boards in that amount of time in a very small room. Now, I've had more people break boards at events, but if you really want to get the energy, watch that video. And that's the way you contact me about speaking for your organization. I spent 34 years as a speaker to reach one million. people. My vision is to reach one million more in the next 10 years. So I just turned 70. I'm going to 80 in 10 years. By the time I'm 80, I want to reach one million more. So get to my website and book me to speak. And as far as my books go, the new book is called Lessons from the Legends.

You can get that wherever books are sold and several of my books there. So if you're an Amazon person go there, you can buy it on my website, but you can get it wherever you like to buy your Well, hang on briefly afterwards, Brian. To everyone else within the sound of my voice, I hope you're as inspired as I am on this beautiful Friday. Go out there and get it. Fly close to the sun. Be the best you can be.

And if you find yourself in a moment where you're searching for something, check out, check out Brian's website. Check out his books and just listen to this podcast again. Remember the words because you're enough. You're beautiful. And the way we get better is becoming the best versions of ourselves. That's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. We love you.

Have a beautiful day. Aloha.