From Burn To Belief

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Last week, you connected to your burn. You identified the fire that drives you. The purpose that's bigger than circumstances, bigger than excuses, and bigger than fear. But knowing your burn is only the beginning. Because if you're going to perform at your highest level, you have to give yourself permission to believe at a level you never have before. In week two, I will share one of the most powerful mental training tools I've ever taught. A proven system that's helped championship teams, Olympic athletes, Fortune 500 leaders, and high performers around the world. And start attacking their potential with conviction. This isn't about motivation, it's about building belief. Let's get to work.

The Proven Tool For High Performers

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Now that we've walked you through and helped you attach to the power of your burn, and you can feel that fire ignited inside of you. Let's dive into this first mental training tool. As I mentioned, this is a proven system that has been put to the test by some of the highest performers to ever walk the face of the earth. NCAA champions, NFL champions, hall of famers, some of the fastest growing companies in the world, some of the largest, Microsoft's the Googles. So I want us to lock in, maybe like you never have, in terms of designing how you want to live. Maybe this is the time where you finally give yourself permission as we unlock this first tool, because now you know the burn and the fuel that's going to light it all on fire. But now we dive into this first tool, attaining belief in yourself. Now, when I say that, I'm not saying to you that you don't believe in yourself. I'm talking about you finally giving yourself permission to attain that next level of belief. That permission to just go for it, that permission to no longer listen to politics and the media and the naysayers, but to believe in you like you never have. And to work like you never have. And if you have the fuel through your burn, about time we start talking about this action.

North Dakota State Winning Standard

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Little story for you on attaining belief in yourself before I teach you the five key factors of attaining belief in yourself, which came from our best-selling book, Own Your Success, back from 2012. So I'm gonna put some dates on some things so you understand I've been doing this for a long time. These aren't things that we just decided to test last week, these are things that have been proven for almost two decades of winning. And now we win together at a whole new level. Picture North Dakota State University, far go, North Dakota, one of the coldest places on earth. I had the blessing of head coach Chris Kleiman welcoming me to North Dakota State, which was my first ever opportunity to be a performance coach on the sidelines with a collegiate football team. Now, the first talk that I ever gave there, they welcomed me. It was after they had just finished winning their fourth straight national title. I'm wondering, what are you bringing me for? You already figured out what it takes to win. But Coach Kleiman is one of those individuals always looking for that extra edge, always looking, never content, never seduced by success, always knowing you can give more when you believe in yourself. And the team had an opportunity to win a fifth straight national championship, which had never been done in the history of college football. They bring me in, I give one talk, I finish the talk after an hour. Coach Kleiman bear hugs me. The team goes crazy, and they bring me on as their performance coach, and they ended up, you never saw me in the pads, but they ended up winning that fifth straight national championship. It was a blessing having that opportunity, building that relationship with Coach Kleiman, building the relationship with all those players. In our fourth season at North Dakota State, ended up being the final season at North Dakota State. We had the opportunity to compete for another national championship. It would have been our third in those four years that we worked together. I remember landing in Fargo that day, heading to Coach Kleiman's office. We've had the same routine. We've now worked together for 11 years. This will be our seventh year at Kansas State. Big part of this story. 11 years together, almost 150 games on the sideline with Coach Kleiman. And I walk into his office that day to have a conversation about preparing for the national championship that we would fly to Frisco, Texas to go win.

Integrity And The Kansas State Leap

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Sit down in Coach Kleiman's chair, just like I always do, same cadence every week, even to this day. And Coach Kleiman looks at me and he says, before you and I talk about going to win this national championship, in three weeks, we're going to be in Manhattan, Kansas, and you're going to deliver your first talk to the Kansas State Wildcats. You see, Coach Kleiman had just accepted the job as the head coach of Kansas State, following in the footsteps of legendary Hall of Fame coach Bill Snyder. Kansas State had gotten onto a track where they weren't winning as many games as they once did. The program wasn't as healthy as it once was, but they still had this amazing legendary Hall of Fame leader. Coach Kleiman accepted that job, but here's what was so amazing about Coach Kleiman. Here's a hidden lesson for all of us about integrity, doing things the right way. Coach Kleiman told the athletic director at Kansas State, I will only take the job at Kansas State if you give me the opportunity to finish the job and to win this national championship with the young men we've committed to at North Dakota State. Gene Taylor, the athletic director, agreed. And here we are sitting in Kleiman's office. And before we talked about that national championship, which we did go on to win, we finished right. We honored the commitment. Coach Kleiman said, What are we gonna talk to the guys about at Kansas State? What will the message be? We always believed in consistency of messaging, and I think that's important for you. Once we lock in on some of these principles, sometimes a burn will never change. My burn has never changed. Sometimes you may have one that does change, but I encourage you to lean in long obedience in the same direction with aggressive patience. It's not always changing, it's staying committed to the words and the action that will drive success. So he says, What's the message going to be? And he says, but before you answer, he says, keep in mind, are we crazy? I said, What do you mean are we crazy? He says, Man, everybody's telling me that we're crazy for taking this job. I'm crazy for accepting the head coaching job at Kansas State University. The team has not been winning football games. People say you cannot recruit people to Manhattan, Kansas. You're following a Hall of Fame coach who orchestrated the largest turnaround in a college football program in the history of college football. And Coach Kleiman, by the way, this is the media talking to him. This is the naysayers talking to him, but you have a choice, what you believe in life, as I said. They say the stadium is named after the coach you're replacing. Why are you taking this job? You could just keep winning national championships at North Dakota State. And Coach Kleiman looked me dead square in my eyes and said, I'm gonna ask you one more time before we talk about the messaging. Are we crazy? I said, Coach, we're not crazy. If there's anybody that I believe that can lead these men, it's you. And I said, I believe the message is pound the stone.

Pound The Stone Mental Toughness

SPEAKER_01 8:19

I had been reading a book by a dear friend of mine, Josh Medcalf, and the name of the book was Pound the Stone. And essentially, and this is so important for you when it comes to mental toughness, belief, and the action that's required and all the lessons that we're gonna walk through together with these proven tools through our proven system. Pound the stone goes back to the old tale of the stonecutter's creed. Let's say you and I are walking through the forest together. My 1,000th walk on this path, your first. And we're walking and we're talking about your burn and your fire and your vision and your passion and your belief. And all of a sudden, we pass the stone cutter. And he's got this big sledgehammer and he's pounding away at this stone. And all of a sudden, he leans back and he hammers down on this stone, and this stone splits in two. And you look at me with amazement. You say, Can you believe what we just saw? Look at the strength of this man. He just pounded that stone and it opened up on one swing. And I start laughing at you, maybe laughing with you. And I say, It's not that one swing that you just saw. I said, That's the 1,000th time I've seen that same man every walk, every day, hammer at that stone. It was the 1,000th strike, not the first. You see, when it comes down to your belief, many people aren't willing to stay in the fight long enough. They may connect to that burn. I said 30-day challenge, which is gonna turn into you connecting to it for the rest of your life, the way that I have, the way the greatest champions have. And then there's some people who test it, that's not for me, it doesn't work, and they never find out how great they can be because they stop hammering at their proverbial stone. Or you keep hammering and you keep stacking days, and one day you'll pound open your stone. I explained this to Coach Klein, he says, that's it, that's gonna be the message. So I left his office, we win the national championship, and when I got back to St. Louis after winning this title in Frisco, Texas, I went and did two things. Number one, I created this bookmark. This bookmark says pound the stone, as you can see on the image here. In addition to that, and there's some goals on the back of here that I'm gonna share with you as we unpack you attaining belief in yourself and you writing down goals that you believe in, regardless of the naysayers and people telling you that you're crazy. I also went to Home Depot with my daughter, Kennedy Rhodes. And I walk into Home Depot, I said, Where's the sledgehammer section? I get pointed over to the sledgehammer. I said, Where's the biggest sledgehammer that you have? I go and I purchase the biggest sledgehammer. Then I said, Where's your purple spray paint? Colors of Kansas State are purple. So then I knew that I was gonna go home and I was gonna spray paint the handle of this sledgehammer purple. Then we went to FedEx Kinko's and the power cat, the logo of the Wildcats, it's on the helmet, it's on the chest of that jersey. We had them made so that it would fit on the ends of the sledgehammer. That was a little bit of a risk, right? You're gonna walk in and give this first talk at Kansas State University with a sledgehammer, which is what I did. Players went crazy. Players knew about the sledgehammer. It now hangs in the locker room at Kansas State. Pound the Stone is now a Nike logo all over the campus. I should have asked for royalties, but what the players never knew was about this bookmark that I made. I didn't share it until after that first full season, before training camp the next year. You see, because of the belief that I had in Coach Kleiman, and I encourage you to make sure that the right people are on your team in your journey. Sometimes we

The Bookmark Goals And Environment

SPEAKER_01 12:15

have to get rid of the people that aren't right, the people who don't believe in you. And you got to step into your greatness with the right team. I believe in Coach Kleiman at such a high level, it wouldn't have mattered what program we went to in the country. I knew he would lead those players to win. So I decided to write down goals on the back of the bookmark. Remember the importance of environment. We're gonna talk a lot about that in our work together. We have to make changes to your environment, whether that's that burn that goes onto a cell phone, whether it's a journal. But your behaviors and your disciplines, sometimes it takes a visual or reading something every day. This is a bookmark. I read books every day. Even though I have the opportunity to coach with you, I still have two coaches that push me and challenge me. I'm reading books every day. So if I'm reading books every day, what does that mean about this bookmark? I see it every day. And so I wrote down these goals that I want to share with you when I left Coach Kleiman's office that day. First one I wrote down is I am the secret weapon for Kansas State football. Attack the process, pound the stone, just some words, consistency of messaging that we would share. And then I wrote down 2019, that was our first year. So remember, they had a losing season, hadn't gone to bowl games, losing season the year before. What did I tell you? The stadium is named after the Hall of Famer. You can't recruit to Manhattan, Kansas, you're not gonna win in Manhattan, Kansas. So I write down after I leave Coach Kleiman's office, go win the national championship, come home, make this very bookmark, and I write down in 2019 we would go eight and five and make it to a bowl game. Guess what our record was in 2019? Eight and five, and we went to a bowl game. Next goal that I wrote down college football playoff. This past season, we were right on the doorstep. Sometimes you gotta leave a little bit to achieve. Get Coach Kleiman to his second contract. I've always believed in having selfless goals. That goal wasn't my contract, it was Coach Kleiman's contract. All the winning that we've now done at Kansas State, I believe he's on his fourth or fifth contract. And every year that we win more than a certain number of games, they put an extra year on the back of his contract. But after one year, they actually extended and gave him a second contract. And here's a goal. And if people would have known I wrote this down and had it on a bookmark, they certainly would have told me that I was crazy. Under Bill Snyder and the long run that he had, the Hall of Fame run, he won two Big 12 championships. And I wrote down that we would win the Big 12 championship in 2021. That would have been our third year in the program. Now, I blame it on COVID. It was 2022 that we won the Big 12 championship. But I wrote it on a bookmark because I believed in Coach Kleiman. I believed in the team. And I believed that I knew the tools that I'm sharing with you that I shared with the team would help them think differently, help them believe differently and change the action that they take every day. The rings are oversized, the rings have a little bit of bling to them. You see pictures like the one behind me of Coach Kleiman holding that trophy in 2022. Many people would have thought we were crazy. But in my mind's eye, I knew it would happen. Almost to the very date. So how important is belief? How important is giving yourself permission, regardless of what the media, regardless of what financial times, regardless of what somebody might say. Maybe it's your time to step into that next level of belief and to give yourself permission. To do that, there are five steps. All these years of doing the work that I've done, there's a tremendous amount of research that has gone into these tools. And when you dive into your mental toughness playbook yet again, you'll see the five steps of attaining belief in yourself. I'm gonna walk through these with you. We're gonna put more time on the timer and we're gonna put you back to work because these are your goals, this is your belief, and it's time that you finally gave yourself permission.

Five Steps To Attain Belief

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Five steps of attaining belief in yourself. And remember, I'm not saying that you do not believe in yourself. I'm talking about elevating to the next level of your belief. Number one, you have to accept the truth about where you are and why you are where you are right now. Number two, you have to speak the truth, both good and bad. The truth about what you believe is possible, but also the truth about where you are. Maybe it's been a lack of discipline. Maybe it's been a lack of just writing down goals because you just didn't want to give yourself that permission. But you gotta tell yourself the truth and speak that truth. Number three, you have to breathe through the truth. We got to take it in, we got to believe it, we got to believe in it, and then you gotta have that willingness to start taking the steps to go for it. Number four, we must process that truth. We really need to analyze it, scrutinize it, reverse engineer it and say, why has it not happened for me yet? It might be the decisions and choices you've been making because you didn't believe big enough to understand with the right belief, bigger action and more discipline would follow. And then the last piece is to create a plan based upon the truth. Turn the page, you'll see that there's an opportunity for you. This is a page quick on your vision. This is not gonna be your entire vision. This is designed for us to hit pause again and for you to go to work to begin the process. This is not gonna happen in the 10 minutes that I'm gonna give you. This is the beginning of the process. But you'll see on this page, and I want you to read through all the elements of those five steps of attaining belief in yourself. Then I want you to write down there's a section for your burn, right? We're bringing these two elements the burn and attaining belief in yourself. We're bringing this first tool together to start elevating how you think about winning and how you believe in your ability to win. And then you're gonna see there's personal goals and professional goals. And I want you to write down personal goals and professional goals. Maybe it's the things you've told yourself you couldn't achieve because of what somebody told you. Or they're the things I could run a marathon. Oh no, I can't run a marathon. Go for it and run a marathon. You said you wanted to write a book, finally go write that first chapter and fall in love with the process of writing a book. You want to spend more time with your family? Stop saying you want to do it and go do it and watch how it shows up and gives you the ability to perform at a different level because now you understand what it means to attack all areas of your life. And I promise you we'll have a tool attached to that later.

Vision Worksheet And 10-Minute Work

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And then your professional goals. Stop making excuses and just go for it. This is one example of how I've used this process to win. I've used it in the corporate world, I've used it in the sports world, I use it personally, and now it's your turn. We're throwing 10 minutes on the clock. I want you to lock in on attaining belief in yourself. I want you to begin the process working through that vision worksheet. Put that burn down on paper, put those personal goals down on paper, put those professional goals down on paper. And then we're gonna start attacking and building the systems and disciplines to give you the highest probability of that vision becoming your reality.

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