Brent Gleeson on How to Go All In on a Life That Matters | EP 700

26:22And I can imagine in your mind thinking, I'm leaving my father. He could have died while I'm gone. It's a big wake up call. When you think about your life now, two years later, how much has not drinking opened up like your creativity and more the self-awareness that you have. And it's going back to that comment. It's fascinating what you can justify through different types of addiction, not just alcohol, but other types of addiction. We, the human mind is, is a fascinating thing. And obviously you can tap into it in a very positive way, but also there's things about the human mind that are powerful that leads us down the wrong path.

26:59And we justify it every step of the way. And so for me in that given moment, I wasn't right in that moment, but I think it was about a week or two after my father's passing and leading up to his funeral where I made that decision just one day and I'm an all in, all or nothing. I don't do moderation very well. It's not about easing things back, especially if it's something that I know is important, whether it's something I'm going to start doing or stop doing. And I just made that decision. My wife reminds me that we didn't have a discussion about this prior to making that commitment. And she literally said, so we're never going to have a glass of wine together.

27:33ever again. I'm like, no, this is just till I'm dead. We just got to stay the course. But I said, no, we're not. And I know I will never deviate from this path because that would mean mission failure. And I don't do mission failure. I don't like that. Maybe there'll be hiccups along the way. There have not been at all, frankly. And I say this with a great degree of humility because I'm frankly astounded by it, but it's been one of the easiest things I've ever done. I don't know why I put a lot of that towards my faith and the strength that I've gotten from that down this path but also because of the intentionality and purpose behind it just anything we do that's purpose driven whether it's service or going into battle or eliminating drugs or alcohol from your life whatever that path is if it's purpose driven and you can emotionally connect to it that is what will drive you through any type of obstacles or adversity that might deviate you from that path but for me when it goes down to the categories i've already mentioned i looked at how is this possibly going to impact my marriage?

28:28How will this make me a more present father when I'm with my children? How is it going to make me a better leader, a better CEO, a better founder? And there was hope there. And I would imagine that, yeah, okay, from the friends that I know that had made this same choice, especially people that I respected, whether they were former operators who've done this, because studies show that alcohol also does not have a great positive impact on PTSD or traumatic brain injury. I don't know. I'm not a doctor, but pretty common sense there. But at the same time, also founders, entrepreneurs who've achieved great, let's just call it great success financially as well, who've built companies, sold companies.

29:03And I'd had some degree of success along those paths, but my curiosity was around what could I be really accomplishing by eliminating this from my life? And every single one of those categories has dramatically improved so much so that it's hard to actually articulate. My marriage is better than it's ever been. I'm much more present with my children. We justify the fact that, well, our kids are young or the younger ones don't really notice these things. They do. They notice everything. And when they're aware of things like alcohol and alcohol consumption and more than we think they are. And so also just by the nature of making that decision, I think for me probably regained, I regained respect for my wife.

29:43I regained respect for my children. Again, I wasn't a drunk in a ditch on the side of the road, but at the same time, when we're abusing alcohol or other types of bad habits, it has an impact on every area of your life. And then from an entrepreneurship standpoint, and since the SEAL teams in grad school, I've only ever been a founder. So entrepreneurship is all I know because I like deep suffering and pain and anxiety. I'm a sadist in that kind of way, but it led me to have the mental clarity and the courage to completely transform our company from old school, traditional management consulting into enterprise software, which requires a whole new strategy, requires raising a ton of capital, putting together completely new plans, new people, new talent, me learning new things.

30:27So it goes through an identity transformation process as well. And all of those areas have been astonishingly successful, I think, largely due to the fact that I made that tough decision. And well, thank you for sharing that and for being vulnerable about it, because I think it's a message a lot of people need to hear. I have so many people who ask me, you're still not drinking? What's wrong with you? And I had stopped drinking a few times before in my life, but this time when I made the decision, I said, August 1st, I am stopping. And I just stopped. But in the months that followed, I would kind of observe everywhere we went, just how much it kind of permeates every aspect of life that's around us.

31:11And one of the most impactful thing for me is I realized how many of my behaviors were, and even the environments I was putting myself in, revolved around it. And when I eliminated that, so many of the things that were taking me away from the purpose that I felt I was compelled to do went away. And it allowed me to focus on what mattered most. Yeah, completely. And where I want to go with this is when I was reading your book, a lot of people know who Marshall Goldsmith is, and they know his book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. But the book that I think is better than that is one that he wrote called The Earned Life.

31:56And I was talking to Marshall about it. And he has this framework in it that the earned life comes from aligning your value system, what you call your mind, heart, and soul. And he says with your aspirations and your ambitions. Now, aspirations are your long-term goals that you want to achieve, and your ambitions are your more near-term things. You say it's anchored by deep self-awareness of what truly matters. And where I wanted to go with this is for the past six or seven years, I've been on this deep journey of studying the science of mattering. And to me, when you intentionally use the words, what truly matters in this sentence, it's really profound.

32:40Why did you think adding that was so important? The alignment of mind, heart, and soul anchored by deep self-awareness of what truly matters. Because when we don't, we want to be careful about spending too much time in deep self-reflection. I make time for those things. I do it every morning. But at the same time, a lot of people get caught in that trap of trying to find themselves or discover their purpose. It is through action, specific strategic purposeful action that we find deeper meaning in our purpose, our why, and what truly matters in life through some trial and error, of course, not just sitting around ruminating over what is my purpose in life or what does my renewed purpose need to be to have a fulfilling purpose-driven meaningful life.

33:22But we can't really accomplish any of those things without intentionally working on our emotional intelligence and opening up certain degrees of self-awareness through coaching and mentorship and being open to feedback. The highest performers you or I know, and I'm not putting myself in that category, aren't just accepting of radical candor from trusted colleagues, spouses, friends, peers. They crave it constantly. There is a degree of healthy dissatisfaction in their life where and my friend Terry Crews, actor and former NFL guy. Yeah, he's hilarious. He's hilarious. But he said something one time.

34:01I've heard him say in interviews. He said it to me one time. I forgot what we were talking about. But he said, I want to be happy. Of course, yes. But always just a little dissatisfied. And I'm like, that's me to a T. I'm never fully satisfied with my station in life. And so having a degree of self-awareness, and some people naturally have a heightened state of emotional intelligence, and others have to work on it a little bit more. all of us have to work on it, whether you start with a solid baseline or not. And that goes to your personal and professional life. But self-awareness on strengths and developmental opportunities or weaknesses is the baseline starting point.

34:35But then having the desire and growth mindset to lean into those areas that you know you need to upskill, whether it's in your relationships or your approach to work or your personal and physical wellbeing, all those key areas once identified, you have to have enough self-awareness to be accepting of feedback, to crave constructive criticism and feedback, be willing to learn and be willing to do the work. But again, only on the things that matter. It goes back to the general philosophy around the new book, which is titled All In, The Pathway to Personal Growth and Professional Excellence. I like the counterintuitive approach, the term all in, because you're like, how do I be all in?

35:11What do I need to do? I'm like, you're only all in on the right things, the things that matter, the things that matter to connectivity with your values, the things that matter to what you want to achieve in your relationships and your career and getting rid of everything else. I don't mean just marginalizing or putting some things off to the side of being disciplined enough to learn the fine art of saying no and eliminating bad practices, bad habits, or even toxic relationships are going to stand in the way of that. We only have so much time. We don't know when the end is. And frankly, we just don't have time to just spin our wheels and wasting that valuable commodity on stuff that has no impact.

35:46Brian, I was listening to another interview you did, and you were talking about self-efficacy. And where I want to go with this is there's this theory called efficacy theory, where you're living the life you are, and then there's two different dimensions. There's the life you could be living, and there's the life that most of us end up living, which is what we feel we should be living. And in the book, you underline that aligning goals with values is key to purpose-driven action, going from that should to the could. But for someone who is in a rut, they're in all this noise around us today, and they've forgotten their core values, what's your advice to rediscover that core element?

36:32Like, how do you do it? How do you get back on that track? It's really about going back to the drawing board. And we all intellectually understand these things. We understand, I can agree that clearly defining values and purpose will lead to a more fulfilling life or help me overcome obstacles, sure. But the operationalizing of those philosophies is a totally different thing. And therefore, we have to go back to treating it just like any other project we would at work or initiative at home, whether it's cleaning the garage or raising$100 million for your business, it all requires being very specific and intentional.

37:11And sometimes going back to the basics and wiping that slate clean and looking at, okay, I'm in a rut. I've spent too much time in this rut. And yeah, maybe I've gotten some feedback and everybody's trying to tell me what I need to do. But for myself, what is going to be realistic for me to actually emotionally connect to get over this hump and start taking meaningful action so that I can climb out of this bunker of normal human emotion, which we all experience. We all experience those stages of grief, if you will, regardless of the magnitude of whatever obstacle we hit. But resilient people and teams spend less time in that emotional state and move more quickly to gathering insight, gathering data, getting some good coaching and mentorship, and then taking action, developing a plan, not a full plan.

37:58There's no such thing, but a good old fashioned 80 % plan that they can start to execute and gaining some momentum and then learning from that momentum and making some specific pivots. I heard a snippet from Jocko in a podcast that we've all heard him say things like this before, but it was about overcoming fear. And in typical Jocko fashion, his response was one word. He said, go. Yes. What does that mean? But yes. Yes. And, but what he means by that, obviously is this is along the same philosophy of taking action, like getting off your ass. And I know it's, and again, I'm not minimizing the grief or emotion of loss than the different experiences people have in their lives.

38:39But at the end of the day, we only have one life and it is about getting off your ass and taking action, finding the right mentors, surrounding yourself with the right people who are going to support you, getting rid of the people who are in that same position, unfortunately, or who are going to keep you in that same position, who do not really truly wish you well. Again, it's about eliminating relationships too. But then also finding the right resources that are going to help not just motivate you because that's fleeting, but real actual resources that are going to get you going on a new path that once you've defined, like, where do I really want to go from here?

39:15Kind of like we talked about when I lost my dad and things like that, but where do I want to go? What do I want to accomplish? Let's wipe the slate clean if need be. If we add some things back in that are fall into that continue and elevate bucket, but what do I need to stop doing? What do I need to start doing? And then putting a prioritized plan in place and also looking at what needs to go on that stop list is just as important as anything else what are the bad habits the relationships or just the things that i waste time on that add no value that are going that i'm going to commit to eliminating and just one small incremental improvement every single day seven days a week putting new routines in place but daily routines and rituals that will actually have an impact on that mission plan if you will not just thinking about it or saying yeah i'll get to some of these things but having a systematic approach and daily rituals that'll help start driving that 1 % incremental improvement each day philosophy.

40:10What you're saying is what Robin Sharma says. I love his work. I didn't initially think I would, but I've become a big fan of his. I have had him on the podcast twice now, and I always love talking to him. I always come out of that with two months of full steam on changing the way I'm operating, changing what I'm doing in the company. His book, The 5am Club was part of my initial journey. I started, I looked at it, I was like, but his writing style, especially in that book, I've read all this book, but especially in that book was, I really connected with it. At first I was like, this is a different approach, very storytelling based, but fascinating book.

40:48I know he took four or five years to write it. But the 5 a.m. club and the importance of those daily rituals and the way he presents them also influence All In. My new book, I jokingly say, not really joking, but if Robin Sharma and James Clear and some old Navy frogman had a baby, it would be All In. Three men and a baby. I guess that was an actual movie. So if we all had a baby, it would be my new book All In. In your book, one of the main things that you start with in part one, since you just brought up James Clear, and we're just talking about Robin, is relentless routines, which is something that they both talk about, which ties exactly to what you said.

41:29A lot of times when people think about the word passion struck, they think of, oh, this person has got so much passion, they're ready to conquer the world. And when I think of the word and I talk to people who I know or passion struck, whether it's been Derek Jeter or Robin or Mark Benioff from Salesforce or others, what they don't realize is that passion and pain are linked. And discomfort is the thing in between that's required for your new identity to emerge. And I think people don't realize how important this is because if you're going to change that routine, it's going to come with a lot of discomfort along the way.

42:14So for someone who's listening today, and you said this idea of you just have to start, what is the first thing that they can do to embrace that discomfort? I think it's pretty much an identical answer to when I get the question of what drives students in the first few days or weeks of BUDS or SEAL training, the ones that are successful, obviously. How do they embrace that deep, almost unimaginable degree of suffering while, and then ultimately are successful in that endeavor it's the same thing adopting a new routine or eliminating a bad habit or overcoming addiction it's doing two things simultaneously that applies to every category i just mentioned one is maintaining an emotional connection to the long-term vision of what you're trying to accomplish so what is the desired outcome or outcomes i am trying to accomplish that's why they have to be meaningful it has to be purpose driven otherwise you will not emotionally connect to them and you will fall off so if it's something that means something to you, like being a better husband, improving my marriage, being a better parent, who doesn't want to do that?

43:16Being a better founder and CEO and growing my business. Obviously, any entrepreneur wants to do that. So having that connectivity, but the other piece of that and doing these things simultaneously is also not just accepting the pain, the obstacles, the suffering, the anxiety, or the little voices inside our head that tell us that, hey, maybe this isn't the path and you start to justify that maybe you should dial the throttle back a little bit. Not just being accepting of the pain, but leaning into the pain, embracing the pain, because it's a critical fundamental part of going down this path. It's required.

43:52And therefore, once we shift our mindset to understanding this pain or the suffering or the discomfort that I'm feeling is absolutely part of this journey. Everybody who's gone down this same path felt the same pain and suffering lean into it use it as fuel for your journey and learn from it and then the more you have that mindset the more you lean into it those things that seem seemingly impossible or caused you deep suffering it starts to alleviate and then you can really push the boundaries further and further so that the things that used to cause you a lot of anxiety or they were caused you a lot of fear are just part of your normal everyday life and routine And therefore, okay, let's go find the next big challenge.

44:30And let's lean into that one. And you do it again and again. And I'll tell you, and I know you know this, but it's when you can really embrace that sort of philosophy and intentionality of comfort zone expansion, a lot of things in your life just seem to organically fall into place. Oh man, you're absolutely right. Something you just said made me think of Mark Devine, who you probably know. I was just starting a show a couple of weeks ago. I know he lives there in San Diego. I remember talking to Mark a couple of years ago when we happened to be talking about Bud's and how he got through, and he had three steps in it.

45:08But one of those steps was visualization. And this is something you also talk about in the book. Why is this visualization so important? It's a powerful tool. And actually, in one chapter, I start by talking about the philosophy of manifestation, which I jokingly refer to. I'm like, I can't believe I'm even writing about this. I think of sitting crisscross applesauce with gins and chanting and things like that. But really we're talking about vision, having a very clear vision of what you're trying to accomplish, which again, falls into that category of we all, yes, intellectually understand some element of why that's important, but having a very clear vision of what that outcome is that you're trying to accomplish.

45:52So let's go back to overcoming addiction. What am I actually trying to do? Yes, there's health benefits that I've heard about, or I'm not going to get yelled at by my wife as much, or whatever the outcomes, as much was a key part to that. Whatever the outcomes are, just like a business strategy or an exit strategy for your company, what does it look like? What is the time-bound nature of that goal? What does it feel like once I've accomplished that goal? Or if it's a continued state of improvement, then what are those milestones that I need to hit? What's it going to feel like when I hit them?

46:23What is my identity going to look like from the outside in and inside out when I start to achieve some of those milestones? So being really specific, very concise, and very measurable in your thinking of what does achieving that goal look like? And when I do achieve it, you know, what's next? What is that next plateau? And what is that next milestone that I'm going to set once I've achieved that goal? And so that's really what vision is all about. And we're not talking about vision boards and magazine cutouts and things like that, but to a certain degree, literally identifying and even documenting what is this outcome going to, what types of change in my life is this outcome going to impact personally, professionally in my relationships?

47:05And that's really what we're talking about because with that level of clarity, then you can operationalize it. Then you can put a plan alongside that vision who you can start to chip away at it and hit some of those milestones, those benchmarks. So there's measurable progress towards it. But just thinking about it, be like, I want to become this, or I want to do this. That's not a plan. And if you don't have a plan and it's not measurable, it ain't a goal. I'm sorry. And you will not achieve it. So we don't have time to go through a ton of the book. We've touched on aspects of it. For those who are listening, you really need to pick this up.

47:42I purposely didn't go into the remarkable results pyramid because I want you to read the book to absorb it, but it's such a good thing. Brent also goes into why high achievers plateau and how to break through that fog. It goes into long-term thinking and the importance of the long game, the purpose compass, commitment devices. There's so many crown jewels in here. And one of my favorite sections was the whole performance engine section where you reframe success, not as a willpower problem, but as a systems problem. And I think that systems thinking is so important. All that said, I wanted to come back to this topic of passion struck, because a question I love to ask all guests is, what does being passion struck mean to you?

48:28I think we've laid a good foundation for what that means in some of our discussion already. But But being passion struck, again, goes back to clearing the path in your life, both professionally and personally, to really identify the areas that you really want to lean into, that you really want to focus on, and those areas that you care deeply about that mesh with your values, assuming you, to some degree, defined what those values are. I highly recommend that for everybody because it's tough to emotionally connect different activities or initiatives or goals to your values if you haven't defined them.

49:02We won't go into all that right now, but if I had to put it into a three-step framework, it would be identifying what your values are. And there's different tools you can do to think about when I've been most resilient in my life, what was true about me emotionally, cognitively, my behavior, when I've overcome obstacles, or when I've experienced the most joy, like what was true about me in that moment in my life. And you can start to drill down on the things that you really truly care about and then define some values and definitions and metrics for success along the lines of those values. And the second piece of that to be truly passion struck is looking at what do I want to accomplish in my personal life and professional life and only picking a few things.

49:4410 number one priorities means we have zero priorities. And so that goes into that second piece of decluttering your life. And then in my experience, once we declutter and we remove a lot of those obstacles or bad habits or relationships and lean into these other areas that we at least believe that we are passionate about or know that we are, then that passion starts to really deepen because we lean into those things without distraction. We start surrounding ourselves with people who are passionate about similar things, people that can mentor us and guide us. We start digesting content and engaging in personal and professional learning and development that aligns with those passions.

50:23And then you're laser focused and then you have a path and then you have a roadmap for being truly passion struck in the most important areas that matter to you. Awesome. And Brent, last question. People wanna learn more about you, what you're doing, your books, everything. Where's the best place for them to go? A few areas. I'm on LinkedIn. So just look me up, Brent Gleason on LinkedIn. There's a search bar there. My Instagram is Brent underscore Gleason. And then our company website, I'll just spell it out. Our company name is Accelerate, but the URL is e-x-l-r, the number eight, dot a-i. And the book is on any online retailer that you prefer, but the book title again is All In, The Pathway to Personal Growth and Professional Excellence.

51:07Awesome. Thank you, Brent, so much for coming on the show. It was such an honor to finally make this happen. I am so glad that we got to do it. You're a fascinating guy. I've enjoyed following you as well, and hopefully we can do it again. That was my friend, Brent Gleason, and what a way to honor episode 700. Brent's story is a reminder that transformation doesn't happen when life is comfortable. It happens when something important is on the line. Your identity, your integrity, your future. Here are a few truths that are worth remembering. Discipline isn't punishment. It's a promise to your future self.

51:41Comfort can turn into a slow fade away from the person you're meant to be. And becoming isn't a one-time choice. It's a daily one. If Brent's message hit home today, please share this episode with someone who's ready to move from intention to action. And again, thank you. Thank you for helping Passion Struck reach episode 700. Thank you for helping us reach number one in health and wellness worldwide on Apple Podcasts. This show is what it is because you choose to be part of it. If you want to go deeper with what you heard today, tools, practices, frameworks, join me over at the ignitedlife.net, my substack community.

52:18And if you want to help a child in your life grow up knowing they matter, visit YouMatterLuma.com or pre-order the book at Barnes & Noble. We continue the season of becoming this Thursday with Hannah Pryor talking about the power of awkwardness, why discomfort isn't a weakness, it's the doorway to confidence, creativity, and courage. A lot of us in the last five years got thrown into these hybrid workspaces, virtual workspaces. We may not see our colleagues anymore we tend to have this tendency to magnify or create a story around what it means to ask someone for help. We're not talking to them as often.

52:57So the muscle feels underdeveloped. We are not clear on what they think our capabilities are, what we think their bandwidth is to help us. So we tell ourselves a whole story about what that represents. And because of all these factors, it's harder than ever to ask for help. But amongst all of those, the biggest one is we're just not doing it as much and we've gotten out of practice. Until then, remember, becoming isn't about perfection. It's about recommitting to the person you know you're capable of being, especially when no one's watching. I'm John Miles. You've been passion struck. Now, go live like you matter.

53:45Thank you.