There’s a guarantee on happiness if you follow the things that I’m writing about today. This is something I’m extremely passionate about because I see a lot of people who are struggling in life and they feel like their circumstances are what is causing them to be unhappy and unfulfilled in where they are in life. So, they’re pointing the finger at other things. They’re searching for things that are also going to make them happy, they’re searching for things that are external to them that they believe is going to bring them happiness.
I’m going to dispel the myth today that anything external from you is what you need to make you happy. We oftentimes hear things like, oh well, it’s not about material things. I think we just say that, to make us feel better. But many of us aren’t living that. Listen to what I just said, we often say, oh, it’s not about the material things. But we put these things on such high pedestals, and we make these things such icons in our life, that when we don’t get them, we’re so disappointed. But when in the meantime, even if we were to achieve these things and acquire these things in our life, they still won’t bring us what we’re looking for.
The reason why I’m talking about this-this week is that I just see a lot of people who are struggling. I see a lot of people who are unhappy. The reality is this, we have a choice. We have a choice in this life, you have a choice, whether you’re going to be happy or not. If someone tells me, you know what, I’m not happy, and I say, why are you not happy? Why are you not fulfilled? They say, “Well, because this happened in my life. Because I got fired. Because I didn’t make money, I wanted. Because I didn’t achieve my goal. That’s why I’m not happy. That’s why I’m not fulfilled.”
I say, “Well, why are you relying on something else outside of that to be happy? Why have you not chosen to be fulfilled no matter what happens in your life? I know that sounds crazy, but I’m just telling you what really works. We have a choice, we have a decision to be happy, and you decide every single morning when you wake up, am I going to experience happiness today? Am I going to choose to see the things that will make me fulfilled and joyful? Am I going to choose to see life in such a way that will make me feel good?
Ironically enough, here’s what’s crazy, we all want success. If I was to say anybody who wants to be successful and successfully achieve some goal in life, you have a vision of what that means, you also have a vision of what general success means. We also toss that word around. I want to be successful. I even say it in my intro. I say, hey, I help you achieve greater levels of success and fulfillment. You have a choice. I’m going to give you the keys to be fulfilled.
But we all have this thought of how we visualize success. I’m talking about happiness today. But here’s what’s crazy, if you follow what I’m talking about today, this also works just as well if you are trying to create success. I’m not just talking about temporary success, I’m talking about lasting success. I’m really talking about lasting success and fulfillment today and how you get it.
The First step is self-growth. You must become a fan of growing you. You have to be your primary investment. Listen to what I’m telling you, you have to be your primary investment in life. Because you are the common denominator of every single thing that happens to you. If I’m in the picture of everything in my life, I want to make sure that I am so self-invested, that I am making the absolute best decision and actions in my life that will help me achieve what I’m looking to achieve in life.
Here’s what I mean when I say self-growth. Really, another word just in summary for self-growth would be wisdom. Listen, wisdom has nothing to do with age. I know a lot of people who are much older than me who I would not take advice from. I know some people who are not as old as I am, who are just wise beyond their years. Wisdom has nothing to do with age, it has enough to do with being able to self-reflect and experiences that you’ve had over your life and being able to make changes.
But when it comes to self-growth, there are a few things that you have to focus on. One is gratitude. You have to be grateful and understand that things can always be worse. That is one of the things that I say, every single day when I spend time in meditation and in prayer in the morning, every day I say, “You know what? Things can always be worse.” Always, just when you think things are really bad, they can always be worse.
It’s one of those feelings, have you ever felt like you might be having a bad day? And then someone tells their story about how they have cancer and things are going bad, and they lost all their money, and then they overcame, or maybe they didn’t overcome yet. But you’re just like, man, wow, life isn’t that bad for me? But if you can understand that, all the time, a sense of gratitude is going to help you with self-growth.
The other thing you have to do when it comes to self-growth is personal responsibility. Personal responsibility, tying those two words together. Here’s what personal responsibility is. It is taking ownership of your life. It is taking ownership of not just the good and the great things that you do, the things that people praise you for, the things that people look at you and say, “Man, you’re so awesome.” But it is just as important as taking the losses and being responsible for the losses just as much as you stand there and say, you know what, I’m responsible for that win.
When you do that, you don’t put the blame on anyone else, and on anything that happens in your life. The first thing you do is you look directly in the mirror, and you say, “You know what, again, I’m the common denominator in everything in my life.” Even though it may not have had to do 100% with me with the result that happened, what could I have done better in this situation? That’s how you grow. You start asking yourself questions, how could I have done better? How can I improve from this situation? That’s personal responsibility and taking ownership of your life.
service
The third thing in terms of self-growth is self-awareness. Being aware of your decisions, being aware of how your decisions affect other people. When I think about self-awareness, somebody who is not self-aware, have you ever thought about … I’m sure you probably heard the analogy like a bull in a china shop? Just turning around knocking down stuff, not even realizing it. People who are not self-aware, they’re doing things in life, they’re hitting people, and have no idea that what they’re doing is affecting other people. They’re just thinking about themselves.
You don’t want to be that person, you don’t want to be the bull in the china shop of life where people are like, “What are you doing?” And you have no idea. So, becoming self-aware means really thinking about everything that you do. I want you to think about this, and I want you to try this to increase your energy throughout the day, to apply more energy to thinking about what you think about.
Listen to what I just said, I want you to apply more energy to start thinking about what you think about. Often during the day, we have what I call the drift, we’re just drifting in life. I want you to on your own phone today just set it for a random time. Set the alarm for a random time. When that goes off, I want you to just think, what am I thinking about? Oftentimes, you’re just drifting. Think about how many times you might be trying to focus on one task, and even when you’re trying to focus on the task, you start drifting. I’ll be praying in the morning, and I’ll be praying about one thing, then I’m thinking about something else.
So, start focusing on being very present in putting all your energy on where you are right now so that you can be more self-aware. That will help you out. That’s the first one, which is self-growth.
The second one is service. In order to be happy, you have to serve. But like I said, a lot of these principles we’re talking about today also apply to success. The more you serve, the more you serve other people, I can assure you, I can guarantee you that the more you will be fulfilled, and the more successful you’ll be.
Find a way to serve and really this is more of just having a heart of service. I might as a habit, and because through the grace of God, my parents just taught me well, I might open the door for someone, and that might be habitual. If I see someone coming and I open the door for them, that just might be habitual. But when I have a heart of service, and I’m doing things intently, with the full intention of serving other people. When I open that door and knowing that I’m trying to serve that person, but not habitually, it’s a different feeling that happens. You might be doing things for other people now, and that is fantastic. But when you start with intention, thinking about how you are serving people in everything that you do with any hat that you wear. Whether you’re wearing your hat as a spouse, wearing your hat as a parent, wearing your hat as an employee or as a business owner, or as a person who’s responsible for your health.
How do I feel like I’m serving someone if I’m working out? Listen, one of the things that pushes me to work out and be healthy is that in order for me to come and talk on this Facebook Live and do the speaking that I do, I’ve got to be healthy. In order to have my health, that is significant. I’ve got to serve as an example for my children of how to live a healthy life. Yes, I’m serving my children, I’m serving you when I go work out because I’ve got to be the best me whenever I come on here. I can’t be out here not practicing what I preach. You see what I’m saying? So I’m serving when I work out. This is how you have a heart, and a mentality of services is how can I serve in every single thing that I do?
As you start to make decisions in life, think man, how can I make this of service in some way? I’m telling you, it’s going to have a completely different transformation in your life. Because you’ll be thinking about how you’re helping others with the things that you’re doing, and you will be more willing to do them knowing that they’re in some way either directly or indirectly helping other people. Because you decided to take action, and that it will serve them in some way, shape, form or fashion. A heart of service. The more people you serve, the more people you serve, I am telling you, you will receive more than they probably will over time.
The third thing is going to be sacrifice. You probably noticed a common theme, each of these words start with the letter S. So, sacrifice. The reason I do that, by the way, is I’m serving you because I want you to remember the four words. I know that’s going to be easier for you to remember. When I’m thinking about what I’m going to talk about, I say, man, how can I serve the people that I’m talking to better? Let me give them words that will all start with the same letter so they can be a little easier for them to remember.
Again, the first one is self-growth. Second is service, the third one is sacrifice. Listen, when you sacrifice more, it means more. When you sacrifice, it’s just going to mean more. The more that you give, we oftentimes hear the more you give, the more you receive. But to me, if you add another word on that, the more you give up, the more that you give up, the more that you will receive in the end.
This is the reason why, if you’ve ever watched an award show, whether it’s the Grammys, or it could be the Country Music Awards, it could be the Hip Hop Award, it doesn’t matter. You will see someone … Really, the Oscars also, you will see someone giving a speech, and they will be crying. The reason why they’re crying is because of what it took, the sacrifice that they had to do to get there; the time, the money, the energy, the being knocked down and coming back up, the sacrifice with which it took, and the reason why you see people in the crowd who do what they do crying as well, is because they knew what it took to get there.
It is emotional. The more you sacrifice toward whatever it is that you’re going after, the more time, the more money, the more energy, the more emotion that you sacrifice, I can assure you that you in return will be more fulfilled.
And then the fourth one is spirituality. Spirituality, being able to connect with God, a higher power. For those of you who know me, you know I’m Christian. To be able to connect with God and Jesus Christ … We just celebrated Easter. Let me tell you one of the things that helps me when I feel like things are just not going well. I might be on a run of things not going well. Have you ever had a situation where things are just back to back to back not going well?
Things might even be going backwards. One of the things I think is man, to be able to have a God that cares enough for me to know what’s best for me and to always, listen to this, always have the best intention for me in mind, no matter what may be happening at that time. At that point, I’m able to say, thank you for not allowing me to be able to close that deal. Thank you for this not happening. Thank you for something that I wish so much for not happening because you know what’s best for me.
I can always rely on the fact that there is a higher power that is helping me and guiding me to be the best person that I can. It’s because sometimes I’m not doing that. So, I have to be redirected. To be able to connect with that God is significant. When we feel like we’re doing it all on our own, we put the weight far too much on ourselves, and then we’re stressed, and we’re overwhelmed because we’re trying to do too much. But the reality is, we have help. The question is, are you tapping into it, and are you able to see whenever things aren’t as good as they should be, that that’s okay. And it’s for a reason that that’s going on? Being able to reflect and say, you know, what, well, if this isn’t where I’m supposed to go, where am I supposed to go, and have some guidance.
But to always know that there is someone who has my back enough to know that man, they have my best interests in mind, God has my best interest in mind. Guys, listen, I told you whenever I logged on this morning that today was going to be a life-changing show, life-changing. What I want you to do is I want you to share this with as many people as possible. I just literally gave you the keys and the formula to be able to be happy, guaranteed if you follow these things. Follow the steps, be consciously aware of this stuff and apply it.
I don’t come on here every Tuesday because I want this to just be a feel good, 15 minutes, and then you go out and don’t do it. Apply this, write this down, take notes, save this show, share it with somebody immediately who you know is trying to be more happy. That means you should share with a lot of people because most of us are just trying to be more fulfilled.
We think sometimes it’s the money, we think sometimes it’s the fame, or it’s the credit that we get from achievement. It’s the new job, it’s the raise. We think that these are the things that are going to make us happy. But everything that I just told you about are things that are from within. These external things from our life, really are just distractions from what is really causing us, or what we can really have to be fulfilled in our lives.
At this point, I’m trying to serve as many people as I can. I can’t move fast enough in terms of the amount of people that I can serve with this information. So, make sure you share this, guys. It’s been amazing again this morning. Absolutely fantastic. This is Dr. Brad signing off, your double boarded sports medicine physician and peak performance coach. Helping you and all the successful professionals that we know spreading this thing out to make sure that you can achieve higher levels of success and fulfillment so that you can live the best version of you. See you guys next week.
