Are You Building Your Ultimate Life or Burning It Down?

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Welcome to ultimate life.

Welcome to your ultimate life.

First thing I want to do is invite you to get some free stuff.

Okay?

Go to wwtimate life ca www.yourultimatelife.ca.

there's some free stuff.

Guess what it is.

It's a video series called Five Master Keys to Creating your Ultimate Life.

Now, I've spent 17 years working on this process.

In 2007, I changed my life completely.

After 30 years in one industry, I walked away from that completely at the top of my game, executive and all that.

And I did that because I wasn't happy.

I wasn't feeling fulfilled like I was doing stuff that mattered and my personal life was a wreck.

So I started over.

And in starting over, I made a commitment that has developed and grown over time to do everything I can to live a life of purpose, prosperity and joy.

A lot of times people feel like if you have purpose in your life that you somehow sacrifice prosperity.

And the only thing you get when you focus on purpose is, ooh, the joy of doing good.

And then you sacrifice making cash.

Not true.

Not true.

And here's the truth of this.

It doesn't matter how dedicated I am to my purpose.

If I don't have any resources, my ability to expand, my impact is small.

If I'm focused every day on rent or on food or on the basic necessities and I have to struggle and spend a lot of time for that, my ability to do the purpose that I have is limited.

I can do a fabulous job with co workers and people that I interact with.

And the truth is, the more resources I have, the bigger impact I can have.

I can have more reach on social media.

And all these things are true in our current day.

I'm not talking about 20 years or 50 years ago.

Today social media reaches around the world.

Today.

You can sell products and services around the world today.

You can provide consulting and coaching around the world today.

You can teach flute lessons around the world or piano or anything you want.

So our technology has allowed us to create and spread the power and value that we have around the world.

So today the episode is self sabotage or self empowerment or are you building it up or burning it down?

And this is founded on a fundamental truth.

You are creating your life.

One thought, one word, one intention, one minute, one second, one day @ a time.

You just are.

You can ignore it, you can get mad at it, you can pretend it's not true, but it's still true.

And it will be true.

And when life's over, you realize, damn, I created this and I could have created something else.

Remember the poem where a guy said, and I'm going to misquote it, I bargained with life for a penny and life would pay no more.

You know, and then he got to the end of his life and said, and I realized life would have paid any wage that I had asked.

You can create whatever you want.

Most people, and I mean by far most, 95 plus, settle in the idea of victim mindset.

I can't because it won't work, because I'm different, Because.

Well, you can live in those becauses and then they become your absolute truth.

I know because I did that for decades now.

I've also done something different.

And I'm Almost finishing my second decade, end of 2007.

I started over not knowing exactly what to do, not knowing how to do it, making mistakes along the way, fumbling, failing, adjusting my direction, but knowing that the life I had built chasing the things I was chasing wasn't happy.

It wasn't happy.

And I achieved them.

C suite and good money and all the cars I wanted and on and on vacations and all the rest.

I had it.

I had it, I had it.

And I also had misery and a lot of other things that I've talked about in other episodes.

So are you building it up or burning it down?

This starts from a fundamental understanding.

You build your life any way you want it.

You can have what you want.

And the ticket to that concert where your success story is playing is your own work, your vision, your blood, sweat and tears, the relationships you create, the daily choice of thoughts and actions, they really forge the being that you create out of yourself that you're going to present to your creator when your journey here is done.

You know, you don't take anything with you.

We came with nothing.

We leave with nothing.

And the only thing that's left is how we've served or how we've damaged others and what we make of ourselves.

Think about that.

We don't take anything with us except what we've made of ourselves.

What we leave behind is how we have served and blessed and lifted.

Lifted or how we have damaged.

And if we serve ourselves here and it's, oh, I got mine, if that's the way we live, gimme, gimme, gimme, then we leave Damage or we certainly leave undone all the things we could do or could have done if we wanted to.

Now you're not too late.

One of the things that I struggled with because I didn't make this change until I was 52.

So one of the things I struggled with is, damn, I've wasted decades, wasted a lot of time chasing the wrong wall.

I've done this wrong.

Oh, no, what can I do?

I got to hurry up and make up for all the time.

You can't.

The time is gone.

What you've done is done whatever damage I did or things I did or didn't do, that's done.

What I can do and what you can do is start today moving in the direction you choose you specify, and don't spend one minute fussing about what's past.

There are a couple of exceptions to that.

If I've made mistakes, and believe me, I made plenty in the past, then you do need to do what you can to repair, to make amends, to fix things.

You do okay in order to get the weight off of your own chest and in order to be reasonable.

If I've hurt somebody, I owe an apology.

I owe what I can to fix that, and I do, and I did.

What I don't owe is forever to accept bashing because somebody stays mad and they choose either not to accept the fact that I have changed or you have changed.

They choose not to allow my efforts to make amends to succeed.

I don't care.

And that's fine.

That's their choice.

But then I don't have to carry, neither do you, the weight of that.

If I have to wait until somebody says, okay, you're forgiven, it's okay, I'm dead and so are you.

So the question today is, are you building it up or burning it down?

And I said, self empowerment or self sabotage.

That's a powerful question because other people can, quote, empower you if you don't take that empowerment and self empower.

In other words, give yourself permission, authority, take action, take accountability.

If you don't do that, I don't care what anybody gives you.

Imagine you're at work and your leader comes and says, here's your responsibility.

You're empowered to take that action, but you don't accept the empowerment and you don't do something.

So what, they gave that to you, it doesn't matter.

You own the choice to create or destroy, and we know that intellectually, but we don't live in it moment to moment.

Create or destroy, tear down or build up.

Now Those are big words.

And so you might think, well, one day it doesn't matter.

Every second matters.

If I'm apathetic and do nothing, okay, nothing happens.

If I'm a little bit negative or victim mindset or blaming others, nothing happens.

And I chip away at what I've been building.

And you're going to have days that are better than others.

But there's also tools to enter every day full of power.

That's what that whole book I wrote, Living with Purpose and Power.

So I invite you to read that Living with Purpose and Power.

It's the best book in the universe about how to create your day every day so that you're at your Olympic level performance, you're your best self and you don't have to be an Olympian or anything like that.

But you know, days when you're half mast and days when you're all in.

Days when you feel empowered and days when you don't.

And often we assign that to externalities.

Guess what?

You own that.

You can have power every day if you take it.

It's waiting and available to you every minute, every second, every day, every time.

No exceptions.

Only always.

And that's the beautiful thing.

Nobody can take away your mind.

Viktor Frankl in his book Man's search for Meaning.

And you know the name probably he's the guy that was in a concentration camp and most horrible of horrible conditions during World War II.

And his discovery was even in such terrible circumstances, we own our minds, we own our choice of being, we own who we are.

We get to aside even in those circumstances, how we show up.

And he gave examples of people who suffered and lived in the suffering.

What was me.

This is not fair.

Terrible.

And many died.

And others who were in the same suffering who chose with that choice to be voices of light and empowerment, hope, hang on, you know, that kind of thing.

Same camp, same circumstances, same starvation, same things.

Some chose one, some chose the other.

And that and many other examples read that book led him to conclude nobody can take your mind.

Your mind is the one thing no one can steal.

You own it now if you're like me.

And I struggled with depression for decades.

I had to go get help to reclaim it.

I had to realize I was busted.

I had to go ask for help and go see people and talk to shrinks and get coaches and try different antidepressants and bipolar, you know, different things to see what I could do with it.

But I was in control.

I wasn't relegating control to chemistry or pills or doctors.

I Went and consulted and thought, okay, I can try this and try that.

And then I would notice what I felt.

Did it help?

Is it working?

What else can I do?

I found that meditation worked.

I found that writing my story worked.

I found that talking to others worked.

I found that shrinks worked.

But it was all in the goal of building it up.

Building it up, not allowing it to stay burned down.

And I started at the bottom.

Like when my radical change took place in 2007.

I'd attempted suicide, but the second time a couple weeks before.

And so that's where I was.

Broken, busted, want to die, end of story, blah, blah, blah.

And then some stuff happened in August.

And you can read about it in the book Tightrope of Depression, where I wrote about my own journey and this decision and the choices that I made to do something different and the help that I got and, you know, all the rest.

So all that preamble, an initial conversation, is to emphasize a certain point.

You own your life.

You can create whatever you want.

Those are facts.

You can argue with them if you want.

And all it does is keep you stuck where you are.

You argue, you don't have control.

You'll stay where you are if you seize control of your life right now, starting this moment.

I don't care what's come before.

You matter now.

Right here, right now, you matter.

And if you search in your heart, you know that's true.

You matter now.

And you can have big impact if you want to.

If you want to make a difference for yourself first and then for others, those you love.

Lots of people I talk to who come to this realization that they really want to build instead of burn down.

Then they have this yearning to help others, to serve, to say, wow, look what I discovered in my effort to grow and change.

I wonder who else I can help.

That's just sort of a natural thing, right?

Certainly happened to me, and it's happened to thousands of others that I have talked to who say, you know, when I finally took control of my own life and realized I wasn't going to abdicate anymore, I wasn't going to give control to the abuses that happened to me earlier or the addictions I had last week or last year, or that betrayal, or that rotten partner, or that this, that, and the other, I take control back.

And then when they started experiencing the freedom of owning that control, the natural step next was, wow, what a liberation, What a freedom.

What a blue sky.

I suddenly see, holy crap, I can help other people.

And I don't know, there's something about how we're built that makes us want to do that.

And so I say to you, go do, do that.

A big piece of creating that life of purpose, prosperity and joy that I talk about all the time.

The ultimate life purpose, prosperity and joy is serving.

We are built to love and serve.

So I've given you three invitations so far.

One is go to your ultimate or excuse me.

Yeah, your ultimate life.

Ca.

Yourultimate life.

Ca.

Free stuff there.

Go get it.

I've talked about one book called Living with Purpose and Power.

Living with purpose and Power.

I wrote that book to describe everything that I did and have done to own the control that we all have, but to be aware of it, to own it and do it every single day so that I don't waste any days.

I'm in control every day.

I know it and I use it to my own advantage to live the ultimate life and to serve others.

The third thing I said is the book Tightrope of Depression which talks about the journey where I was busted, the things that happened to turn it around and what choices I made then.

Those things might be of service to you.

That's why I wrote them.

Every book that I've written, every program I've created, every coaching client I have now it's about helping you realize your own power, take control of it, grab the levers and then choose what you want to create and then get creating so you can make impact in the world and create wealth by being of service.

Like there's no magic to this business, to any business.

Business is about creating wealth.

And starting next episode, I think I'm going to do a seven part episode on building business, specifically building business with a focus on your life experience and the things that have happened to you that where you have learned and taken back control of your life instead of abdicating.

But today this is just to answer this question for yourself.

Are you sabotaging yourself or are you building?

Are you building it up or burning it down?

Self sabotage or self empowerment.

All right, so now I want to talk about one big key that gets in the way of making that choice.

You might hear what I say here and say, wow, I'm going to build it.

I'm going to do the self empowerment.

Yeah, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to start tomorrow.

You know how that goes.

I'm going to go on a diet.

Start tomorrow.

I'm going to start working out.

Start tomorrow.

I'm going to improve that relationship.

Start tomorrow.

I'm going to get rid of this addiction that I have to binge watching TV or some substance or porn or whatever.

I'm going to get rid of it tomorrow.

Procrastination is the slow death of dreams.

Here's what I can promise you.

You can read a book, listen to this podcast, go to an event and hear somebody powerful just preach and give you insight, wisdom and vision.

And you go, I want that.

You can have that happen.

And then life takes over and everything sort of fades away and then sinks back down into yesterday's news.

And then after a few days, it becomes, yeah, I wish I could.

Oh, yeah, that was so cool.

And someone asks you about the event, oh, that was amazing.

Or the book or whatever.

But nothing really changes.

That's procrastination.

It is the slow death of dreams.

Because then all that inspiration and, you know, fist thumping excitement fades away.

I would bet $100 you've done that.

One, two, five, ten, a hundred times.

Books, talks, conferences, especially if you've had struggles, you felt the yearning to change, you've pounded your fist or stomped your foot and said, I'm done.

And then it fades away.

That may have happened so often that you say, ah, it won't work for me.

I had a friend who told me once, you know, I've heard all this stuff before and it's probably true, just not for me.

Well, of course that's true.

Then if you believe it's not for you, it isn't.

Because when you believe something and you say something else, your belief trumps every single time.

Beliefs are the foundation.

I call them your context straight jacket.

Okay.

And what I mean by that is you've heard people say this and that was taken out of context.

Context is the surrounding stuff that gives meaning to everything.

Right?

All right.

And I say, I describe the context as your beliefs, your definitions, experiences, expectations and perceptions.

And that acronym is BE deep.

Your be deep forms a context structure straitjacket.

If your context is against you, you're done.

So then you say, how do I change these beliefs?

Well, that's what Living with Purpose and Power is about.

And another book called the Book of Context, appropriately named.

All right, so are you procrastinating?

Sometimes we procrastinate because we say, I don't know how.

Today, in this day and age of the Internet, that excuse is only good for about an hour because you can find out how to do anything.

It's easy.

There are a thousand.

There are 10,000 people with products and services that offer to help you.

Now it's going to be up to you to pick one, try it out and see if it works for you.

That's no different than when I was dealing with mental illness brought on by my decades of, you know, depression and everything.

When I was dealing with that, I had to try lots of things.

Sometimes I had to try them in combination.

Okay.

In the book Tightrope of Depression, I talked about a lot of things that I tried and I have a list of 10 or 11 toward the end that talk about what I eventually have done.

And since that book was written now nearly 10 years ago, I have changed and modified and added to.

Why?

Because I'm always building, I'm always refining, and that's what growth is about.

If you're an Olympian, the methods that you use to train when you're a college athlete or just turn pro aren't the same when you get to the more elite and elite levels.

So as you start climbing the ladder of growth and of building things instead of burning them down, your methods are going to change, Your instructors are going to change.

The most effective things I did was, number one, a fist thumping declaration that I'm done being how I was and I'm going to change.

And that was issued without even having an idea of how it was going to happen.

I'm just going to do this.

We'll figure it out.

We're going right, and then moving forward to make it happen.

Moving forward to make it happen.

That is so key.

And you're going to have to try different things.

Procrastination is.

Well, I'll try this.

Oh, that didn't work.

Maybe I'm not supposed to try again tomorrow.

I don't know.

That didn't work.

I thought it was going to be easy.

You know, all of that story that we have, nobody got to the Olympic podium like that.

So this is an invitation for you to answer this question.

Do you really want to live your life with purpose, prosperity and joy?

Now those are the words I use to describe my dream life, ultimate life.

You have different ones, so say them.

Do you want to live your life with purpose, prosperity and joy?

Yours might be freedom, cash and happiness.

I don't know.

If you don't have it right now, there's a reason you've created the life you have.

So did I when I was in the middle of my negativity.

We've got to do something different.

And this goes to the fundamental name of the episode.

Are we burning it down or building it up?

If I'm making excuses, if I'm putting it off till tomorrow, If I'm blaming others, I'm burning it down.

If I'm waking up every day and renewing my determination to grow, to love, to create, to serve, to build, to be the best I can be, then I'm building.

Nobody's going to give you a magic formula.

The best things I did were to get good information and get good coaching.

Just like any athlete, any musician, any performer, you got to get a good coach.

You got to get that help.

I'm going to do it by myself.

Maybe you can, but it's going to take ten times as long.

I ain't promising.

Nobody ever got to their peak performance without help.

Nobody.

You need.

We all need that outside eye.

And if I can help you, you need to get a hold of me.

Because I can't reach through the lens here and see you and touch you.

I love you.

I yearn for you.

I ache for you.

I want you to create everything you want.

And I know you can't.

That power exists.

That possibility exists.

My whole life is dedicated to being in the business of helping you do that.

Not because I want to talk about it, because I've achieved it over rocks and broken glass and the hardest way possible.

So I know how.

I know how to do it and how to help people create outcomes.

Businesses, products, services, life change, relationships.

I know that.

I've done it, I experienced it, and now I now I choose to dedicate my life to serving others from that place that I now live.

So one of the things to notice, to answer the question, are you building it or burning it down?

Is what are your daily practices?

How do you get up in the morning?

Do you get up and have a daily creation process where you remind yourself of who you are?

And if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Some people call it morning ritual.

But 90% of the morning rituals, people tell me, they don't do very much and they don't do them regularly.

And they pretend they don't have time.

And they don't have time because it doesn't work very well.

So that needs to be fixed.

I've given you the recipe and the tools.

The book, Living with Purpose and Power, the best book on the planet about how to create an invincible, powerful ritual that will change your life every day forever.

Now, if you want that, you have to go get that.

Go get the book and read it and then do what's in it.

Reading won't do anything.

All right, so your language, your habits and practices, how do you talk about yourself in your private mind?

Do you talk about yourself as a divine being with infinite capability?

Do you talk about yourself as a loser who's barely getting by?

Or as average, just, you know, some good days, some bad days, where you're free to live your life like that from now to the end, or you're free to create infinity, purpose, prosperity and joy.

Why would you settle for not even getting in the event when you.

When you can take the gold?

The beautiful thing about life is there's no limit to the number of gold medals everybody can win.

Now, this is not some hokey thing where we give out participation trophies to make people feel good for trying.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about winning.

All in exactly like you want it to.

Look, what I see is that most people aren't willing to do the work, make the choices, make the, quote, sacrifices.

Only they're not really sacrifices.

I trade this for that.

And at the moment, maybe I want this, but I realize this other road is a little rockier, but it goes where I really want to be.

Okay, Are you building it up or burning it down?

So your language, your internal language, your habits, your practices, and mostly everybody I have met needs new practices because the practices you've got brought you where you are.

So repeating the practices you've got, we all know how that works.

It's insane.

It's going to give me more of the same.

So if you say okay, all right, all right, Kellen.

But how do I create new practices?

Read the book, Living with Purpose and Power.

Get a hold of me.

We can help you create the habits and practices you need to get to your podium.

However you define that, it's there, it's available, and you can do it.

I've done it.

I've helped others do it.

But what matters is you.

Right here, right now.

My commitment this year is to help 300 million people create wealth and impact in the world using your life experience, the skills you've got, and the gifts you were given when you came here.

Every single person has that.

You have a set of skills, gifts that are natural to you.

I call them divine gifts.

Your natural gifts, and your life experience.

But if we don't use them, then obviously we don't create Jack.

So this is your invitation.

This is your wake up call.

You can ignore it, or you can say, I'm in.

Answer the call.

Take the steps.

Two questions that matter.

What is step one?

And what is the help I need to get there?

Those were critical questions for me, and it changed everything.

Now, I've talked A little bit about daily practices.

I want to talk about two other things before we're done, and that is this idea of goals.

People have an aversion to the word goals because they're used in such a phony way.

Often corporate goals and, you know, stretch goals and little goal, blah blah, blah, blah, blah.

Goals are nothing more than an expression of a desired outcome.

And we get all kinds of mythology about them.

Create BHAGs, big hairy ass goals.

Okay?

You need to create goals that motivate you because they feel like you can really reach them.

Somebody uses the acronym smart.

Specific, measurable, achievable, or I mean achievable, realistic and time bound.

That's one way to think about it.

I don't think it's adequate, but it's a good place to start.

You have to make goals, promises, objectives.

I use the word promises and I break it down to daily.

One of my statements is every day I create specific measurable promises.

And those promises are in line with my ultimate life.

You know what I really want to have?

Purpose, prosperity and joy.

And my commitment this year is 300 million people.

So are the promises I make lined up with that?

Now obviously we have my wife's mother we're taking care of and a Ukrainian family, and so there's lots of other activities.

My precious angel wife, joy.

And so there's relationship things and stuff in there too.

But the daily promises I make have to do with my march toward 300 million.

The last piece I wanted to talk about is forgiveness.

And this is so important, and I've saved it for last because maybe it's, I don't know, most important.

Because no matter what goals we set, no matter how diligent we are with our self creation, we're going to fall.

We're human.

We get distracted, we fail.

Our normal learned response when we fail is to judge.

Okay, you suck, you suck, you're behind, you didn't make it, you're not going to get there, you'll never make it.

And you know that drill where we get on ourselves bitterly and we chastise or torture or even abuse ourselves for not meeting the goal and then we judge ourselves because we didn't.

I didn't meet my goal and I'm a rotten pig because I didn't, or whatever language is your favorite go to.

None of that energy creates positive momentum.

Whenever I fall or fail in any declaration, I get up, fess up, clean it up and recommit.

That's the only energy that gets you to the finish line.

Get up, fess up, clean it up and recommit.

Forgiveness is self love.

Forgiveness is an empowering choice.

Forgiveness is making a choice to let the events of the past no longer have power in the present.

I love you.

You can create your ultimate life.

Assess yourself.

Are you building it up or burning it down?

Let me help.

Reach out.

Let's connect.

I know without any question, you're divine, you're capable, and your possibilities are endless.

As you move toward your ultimate quiet.

Open your heart.

And this time around, right here, right now, your opportunity for massive growth is right in front of you.

Every episode gives you practical tips and practices that will change everything.

If you want to know more, go to kellenflukegermedia.com if you want more free tools, go here.

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