Learn For 2.0 with Brandon DeVere

In this episode:

Why it's called Learn For 2.

1The message I received yesterday.

My take on meditation.

Pro Football.

Reading with purpose.

Think and Grow Rich.

Autosuggestion.

"Vinegar & Honey”

Each summer my daughter gets the opportunity to spend a week with her cousins up in WA during her vacation.

A couple years ago, I booked her flight and in the process I declined “Trip Protection”.

Who needs that?

I had everything under control, trip protection would be a waste of money.

…or so I thought.

About a week later I find out that her 6th grade orientation was scheduled during the last 2 days of her vacation. So now, I needed change her flight.

I call the airline and tell the agent that I need to switch her flight. The agent immediately tells me that it will be $75 to change it, plus the difference in flight which was about $50.

Flight protection for $20 didn’t seem so bad at this point.

“Are you kidding me?”

I yelled into the phone.

“It would be cheaper just to buy a new flight”

My immediate reaction was to be pissed off. I didn’t let up, I kept digging at her telling her what a joke it was.

I finally hung up, accomplishing nothing but an increase in my blood pressure.

And the worst part was that it wasn’t even the agents fault. I knew better.

I let myself cool down over the next couple days and gave the airline a call back.

Thankfully, I got a different agent. I was embarrassed that she’d remember me.

With the new agent I led in with a story about how my daughter gets to see her cousins every summer but unfortunately this trip needed to be cut short.

“We found out after we booked the flight that her 6th grade orientation was scheduled at the same time”

I then proceeded to tell her how important I thought it was for her to be there.

“It’s going to be her first year in middle school, I can imagine what a difficult time in a young girl’s life this can be and I just want to make sure that the transition is as smooth as possible”.

She agreed with me and responded,

“Sir, I am going to waive the $75 change fee, you’ll just need to pay the difference of the flight”

I didn’t even ask her to remove it.

This is the power of story.

The 1st agent, I just yelled at like a jerk. I didn’t inspire her or make her feel any emotion other than hating me.

The 2nd agent likely remembered a time when she was entering something new for the first time, maybe even middle school and knew the struggle.

She felt emotion and was inspired to help a little girl during a stressful time.

Plus, we’ve all heard the saying, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar”.

Mix a little honey with a good story and you can inspire anyone.

Whether you are building your business by attracting clients or other industry professionals, there are many ways to do it.

Most of them aren’t right or wrong, but rather a preference of the individual using the strategies.

Sure, some can be more effective than others, but most can work to a degree.

One that I would say that doesn’t work well…

Is trashing someone else in order to get someone to see your value.

In my opinion, if you have to do that, you have no value to offer.1

As I chart new territories in parenting, I can relate them to growing my business.

Neither my daughter nor I have been here before, and now it is an experiment to get to do our best to get things as right as possible.

"Positive World”

I was about 14 when I first realized she didn’t know who I was anymore.

She could no longer care for herself and what words she could speak were rarely structured in a way that made sense to anyone else.

She would forget things here and there, and in some cases would see things that weren’t even there.

She was physically in our world, but mentally she was living in a world of her own.

It wasn’t until a few a few years later that I realized that the only difference between my mom’s world and OUR world was…

Her brain.

Her brain was sick, and was creating her own alternate world.

A negative world.

Things made sense to her but when she tried to explain, all that would come out was “Deh, Deh, Deh”.

I watched as my mom’s brain slowly chipped away at her life until it was no more.

As I grew older, I started to think that if your brain be so powerful that it could create a negative world, couldn’t the opposite be true?

Why couldn’t our brain be so powerful, that it could create a positive world?

Where one thing happens to us and instead of reacting negatively, we choose to respond positively.

I started thinking about this again today after reading a comment on my post from yesterday from my good friend Tiffany.

She said:

“And your positive attitude about life is one of the many reasons why we love you”

This was in response to a comment I made in regards to the car accident I was in last night.

I had 2 directions to go after that accident.

A) I could have said “why is this happening” and continued to create a negative world for me.

Or

B) Accept what happened and be grateful that I, as well as the others involved were able to walk away and go home to their loved ones.

Either way, the choice was mine, and since I believe that LIKE energy attracts LIKE energy, I chose option 2.

Why?

Because I am in the process of building my…

“Positive World"

"The Big Snooze Part II”                                 

Staring at the cold, dim-lit sidewalk with my hands on my knees, I slowly look up to see the 2 stalled cars in the middle of the busy street, cars passing by.

I look to my friend and say…

“The F@cking Big Snooze”

If you aren’t familiar with The Big Snooze, it is what Jen Sincero writes about in her book "You are a Badass" to describe ego and how it can prevent you from achieving your goals.

I’ve written about it before, you can read that post here: http://bit.ly/2BTWr8A

She describes that the closer you get to your goal or transformation the more likely the Big Snooze is to show up, just to knock you off of your path.

She states:

“The Big Snooze will do everything it can to stop you from changing and growing”.

She then follows with,

“Sometimes the Big Snooze sets up emotional blocks to try and stop us, other times she gets physical”

In this case it was definitely a physical block, but I’m not ruling out some mind games to follow.

I’ve recently experienced what could quite possibly be the biggest mental growth spurt I’ve ever had, especially over the last few months.

The opportunities that I have been setting myself up for are crystal clear and within reach. Things couldn’t be going any better.

Then all of the sudden…

BOOM!

I get into a car accident.

Although I wasn’t hurt badly in the accident, there will definitely be pieces to pick up, at the same time challenging me to stay the course.

I will be tempted with every excuse there is to "take a day off”, slowly working my way off the path I have been traveling without even realizing it.

Possibly not realizing it until it’s too late.

Although this is a brief setback that will take my attention away from other things, I will embrace this experience and learn all I can from it.

Coming out a better person than I was before.

It’s not bad luck, it’s just…

“The Big Snooze”

“The Big Snooze”

---

“Hello”

“I’ve been in an accident” {Barely Audible}

“What?! Is everyone okay? Where are you?...

“I’m on my way”

As I approach the scene, I see the flashing lights up ahead. I know I can’t drive all the way up so I pull into the parking lot about a block ahead.

I throw the car into “park”, jump out and start running toward the flashing lights.

As I get closer I see the fire truck, firefighters and two smashed cars in the middle of the street that weren’t going anywhere.

I see Eva still sitting in her car, which was one of the two, and she is visibly shaken.

She had just been T-boned… car totaled.

After checking that everyone was going to be fine and no major injuries, I went back to get my car to bring it closer.

When I got back, Eva and I got into the car to wait for the tow truck to take the car away.

This was accident #2 of 3 that would happen over a 5 month period. Including being rear-ended twice while at a stoplight.

This could have been a perfect spot in our lives to say “why us” or “It’s just my luck”.

But as my luck would have it, that exact morning I just read chapter 4 of the book “You are a Badass” by Jen Sincero.

This chapter is titled “The Big Snooze”.

The “Big Snooze” or “BS”, is the idea that when you try to make major changes to your life and progress, random things will happen.

Things trying to derail you and throw you off of your path.

As we sat in that car talking about what happened all I could think about was…

This is BS. This is the Big Snooze.

I have written previously about the fact that we CAN’T always control what happens to us, but we CAN always control how we react to it.

Keeping that in mind along with just reading the “Big Snooze” chapter and knowing that everyone was going to walk away from this accident with only minor scrapes and bruises, I made a comment.

A comment that, depending on how well you know me will decide how surprised you are by it.

To lighten the mood and bring everything back into perspective, I looked to Eva and said…

“Should I give them my card”. Referring to the other couple involved in the accident.

She said “What?!”. Probably wondering what is wrong with me.

I told her, “well, I’m sure they are looking for a house with a 1-car garage now”.

She then, in full eye-roll motion let me know know what a stupid idea that was. (Possibly a Joe “Dad" Joke)

Shitty things happen to all of us, but just know that we get to choose the path that we go down after they happen.

Is it the “woe is me” path or the “I will come back stronger” path?

That day changed my perspective.

Instead of thinking, “why is this happening?”

I started thinking, “this is happening because I’m getting closer, just another challenge to overcome”.

It’s just BS.

It’s just...

“The Big Snooze”.

Why creating content will attract the right people.

Giving instead of taking.

The message I received yesterday.

Inspired by the previous episode, I decide to hit the weight-loss journey.

Andrew Luck retired and people are upset.

I watched the movie Self-Less and I'm reminded of what legacy means to me.