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Bryan Dodge is one of today's most celebrated experts on personal and professional growth, with hundreds of thousands of fans across the United States and Canada. Renowned for his spirited delivery, down-home wit, and common touch, Bryan makes more than 300 appearances each year for corporate clients like IBM, Dell, American Airlines, and Bank of America. He hosts the popular “Build a Better You” radio show on Dallas WBAP, and his monthly newsletter reaches more than 20,000 people.

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THE GOOD LIFE RULES

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Contents

Chapter One

You're here to have The Good Life. That's why we're all here. That's the reason we have careers and build families and try so hard—or at least it should be. But too many people think they can't have it—that they aren't smart enough or talented enough or lucky enough, or that there isn't enough time in the day.

That's just not true.

You can have The Good Life, and I'm going to show you how. Over the course of these pages, I'm going to introduce you to the eight rules for The Good Life—a systematic combination of strategies and techniques that have been working long before you and I were on this earth. I'm just a guy who is helping deliver the message in an organized, inspirational way. I've lived these keys in my own life for more than thirty years, and I've been fortunate that thousands of organizations have trusted me with their most precious resource—their people.

Getting Ready for The Good Life

My basic message for you here is the same one that has inspired sales staffs and reassured employees whose companies were going through tough times. It's the same one my kids have been hearing from me since they could understand my words. Anybody—and I mean anybody—can have The Good Life. You just need to learn the right rules.

Are you tired of feeling like you're just putting in time at your job?

Or maybe you've got some exciting, positive opportunities in front of you, and you want to learn how to better prepare for the changes that are going to come with those new opportunities.

Do you want to feel inspired by what you do again?

Are you just starting out in a new job, and you want to begin with the right attitudes and habits so you can be successful?

Do you want to feel excited when you get home and see your family and have them be excited to see you?

Do you want your energy back?

Are you weighed down by feelings of uncertainty in your job or with your family?

All of these situations and feelings are completely normal and common in a world where our schedules are so crowded with responsibilities and obligations—both the ones we pick and the ones that are picked for us. The thought of wrestling life into a manageable system can certainly be intimidating, especially if you don't know where to start.

That's where The Good Life Rules come in.

And what are those rules? Let me give you a quick look at the map of our entire journey, chapter by chapter. When you see it, I think you'll be excited about where we're headed, and the journey won't seem so daunting. And you'll see why the first rule, the willingness to change, is the battery that makes the entire process work:

The Good Life Rules

1. The willingness to change. Recognizing the need to adapt to what's going on around you. Nothing changes until you change. Once you change, everything changes.

2. The willingness to learn. A step-by-step guide to expanding your knowledge base. Nothing new in, nothing new out.

3. Getting to the why in life: the EAT plan. Training your-self to see new opportunities and understanding how to find the inspiration behind them.

4. The diminishing intent key: getting to why. Learning to act decisively on the important things. Those who focus on the how in life always end up working for those who focus on the why.

5. Choosing to be faithful. Appreciating what you have before you lose it. Good people appreciate what they have before they lose it. Average people only appreciate those good things once they're gone.

6. Creating new habits. Breaking the cycle of bad habits and replacing them with good ones. We're not looking for New Year's resolutions. We're looking for a new way of living life.

7. Sharing knowledge. Become an effective leader in your life. Don't think you're a leader? You are if somebody's relying on you.

8. Streamlining your life. Learning how to say no. You can't grow in life until you learn to say no.

Once you have learned these rules, you need to put them all together, turning your new changes into lifelong traits. The greatest asset a company has is its people. So if the people grow, the company and the industry will become better places for us to be.

I want to make one promise to you right up front. For each one of these rules, I'm going to give you more than just a bunch of empty words. When people call me a motivational speaker, I wonder what they're talking about, because I don't think that describes me at all. I'm not here to motivate you. Take an idiot and motivate him and you've got a motivated idiot—somebody who's full of energy and activity, but none of it is directed at the tasks that are most important. My job is to inspire you and help you get to where you want to go. I promise to help you understand the why behind each of these rules and to give you concrete, specific methods for implementing the keys in your life. Focus on the how and you'll be motivated. Focus on the why and you'll be inspired.

One basic truth about change is that allowing comfort, procrastination, and fear to convince you to avoid change will leave you with less tomorrow than you have today. You can't stay still on a bicycle. You'll fall over. The easier you are on yourself when nobody is around, the harder life will be on you. The flip side is true, too. Work harder on yourself and life gets easier, and your job starts working for you instead of the other way around. You learn new skills, change the way you make choices—get The Good Life. Change where you're looking and the motivations for what you're doing. Let that anger and those grudges go, so you can grow.

Are You Willing to Change?

Let's start with the willingness to change rule, and I'll show you what I mean.

I think the word change is unsettling for a lot of people—especially in business—because it's been used as a code word for things nobody would want to hear. "Changes" in market mean we have to make some "changes" in the organizational structure. Even when the word doesn't mean the potential loss of a job, it can cause some fear. You hear that you have to change because it's good for the company, or change for your career, or change because the world is changing.

In this chapter, I will show you how to take the fear and uncertainty of change and turn it into optimism and enthusiasm. Once you embrace this new attitude, you'll understand that becoming open to change and willing to do things differently puts you in position to choose the direction of those changes. It's the difference between buying a specific ticket for a certain place at the airport and getting on the right plane, or getting shoved into a random Jetway and onto a plane that's going to a place you didn't pick—and didn't pack for.

Deciding What's Important

Let me tell you about an eye-opening experience in my own life to show you what I mean. When I was a kid, growing up in Colorado, my mother kept a house that made the Cleavers' house look completely disorganized. Everything had its place. Of course, when I got married, I just assumed that that was the way things were supposed to be. Early in our marriage, my wife and I both worked, and the kids certainly kept us busy when we got home. I wasn't the kind of dad who came home and expected everything to be done for him—I did my own laundry and the dishes, fed the animals, things like that. I just couldn't stand it when my laundry was on the floor when I got home.

One day, I got home from work and my clothes were pushed into a pile on the floor next to the bed. I just lost it. I went out back, where Margaret was playing with the kids, and I just let her have it. How many times did I have to tell her not to throw my laundry on the floor? Was it too much to ask?

You see, Margaret had gotten home from work and wanted to take a nap. The kids wanted to be with her, so they all piled into the bed. She moved the clothes so they could all fit.

After my blowup, she got tears in her eyes.

"Fine. But you have to make a choice. Do you want me to be a good mom and teach these kids The Good Life? Or do you want me to fold your clothes?" she asked quietly.

And she made me choose, right there.

At that moment, I knew I could be a single guy with a really clean house—and not understand what the Good Life is really all about—or I could have a great wife who would be a great mom to our kids and a great family because I learned to adapt to the people who were important to me.

So you see, fear and greed are what drive change. You're either so fearful of what's going to happen to you—and believe me, the thought of losing my wife and kids was scary—or you're so tempted by what you can have that you do what's necessary to get it. The question is, what are you driven by? If it's fear, be a big boy or a big girl and accept it. If it's greed—you feel like you want a bigger home or a new boat—that's fine, but you have to understand that those motivations are totally different. Fear is looking backward. Greed is looking forward. What is it that is going to inspire you to change?

Positive or negative, change is coming. Who's going to choose it for you? Being a follower is never going to be a recipe for satisfaction. You're called to be the leader of your own life. You're not called to have somebody else decide for you. It's not the government's job to dictate what you do. The number one step toward taking charge of your own life is looking in the mirror and saying, I'm changing because I want to change. I did this, and it's the reason I have a wife and three great kids.

So many "self-help" books and personal development speakers have tried to give people such easy-to-digest ways to change that the entire subject has almost become a cliché. And to be honest, most of them diminish how important change is—reducing it to some sort of superficial New Year's resolution process that will make you feel better about yourself for a few days or a few weeks.

I'm going to give you my own rules for making a successful change, but I have to stress that understanding why change has to happen is more important than the practical steps to achieving it. Becoming a why-focused person—which we're going to talk a lot more about in Chapter 3—is crucial, because that's what generates all the energy and discipline for your efforts. If you're inspired, you're going to be determined to succeed; and then, you can use the specific steps I'm going to show you here to make the process easier.

Getting in the Game

A few years ago, I was the coach of my son Jonathan's soccer team. I had two ironclad rules for the parents when they came to watch their thirteen-year-olds play. First, there was no cussing allowed. Second, you couldn't be a "bad seed" by heckling your kid—or anybody else's—from the stands.

We decided to take the kids to a big weekend tournament down in San Antonio, and it was going really well. The team got to the semifinals, and we were winning that game by two goals in the second half when something terrible happened. One of the dads from our team didn't like a call the sixteen-year-old referee made, and he just unloaded on her from the stands. I was completely shocked by it and more than a little uncomfortable.

Here we were, ready to get to the championship game, but if I let that heckling go, I'd be teaching these kids that the rules matter only if there's nothing on the line.

I walked onto the field and called the referee over. Her name was Lela. I asked her if she could go over and tell the other coach that we were going to forfeit the game. She was stunned and asked me why I'd do something like that, considering the score.

"I didn't come to San Antonio just to win a tournament," I said. "I came here to teach my kids."

I knew I was going to get a lot of grief from those parents. But I decided that I needed to take a strong leadership stand on my sideline.

People forget that life is a game. Spectators are watching, people are on the field with you, and you are responsible for your sideline—there are people who are depending on the choices you make.

You know who understood what I did, completely? The kids. Because they understand when something is consistent. They knew that they could bank on what I said. And I'd been talking about the importance of sportsmanship and respectfulness for the entire season. Who didn't understand? The parents. One dad came to me and said I'd be talking to his lawyer. Another demanded that I pay his expenses for the trip. A mom told me she had already taken a picture next to the trophy.

I had to accept the truth at that moment. If I didn't change where we were, we would repeat where we were going. If I tolerated what happened, it would only get worse at the next tournament game, because the parents would see I didn't mean what I said. I assembled the parents right then, and I said, "If you want these kids to get on the bus with me for a big tournament in Washington, D.C., then you have to show up at the next practice ready to play."

They got all excited, because they thought they were going to play the kids. They went out and bought new shoes and new shorts, and every single one of them showed up at that next practice.

After splitting the parents into teams, I told the kids that practice would be a little different that night. I said the parents were going to play a full-field scrimmage, complete with referees.

Some of the parents looked shocked and told me that this wasn't very funny.

"You're right," I said. "Where we're going with this isn't funny at all."

They started playing, and it was pretty amazing to see the kids transform into the kind of spectators their parents were. Moms and dads were running up and down the field, and you could hear one of the kids yelling, "Run, Dad!" A mom cranked a shot right at an open net and missed over the crossbar. Her son yelled, "Mom! Focus! That could have been the game winner!"

The most memorable image I have from the night is of a parent I call Tiny. He's 350 pounds, at least, and he was gasping as he ran up and down the field behind the play. His favorite thing to yell at his son was always, "Suck it up, man!" What was the first thing the kids yelled when he started to fall behind the action? "Suck it up, man!"

From that day, we never had another problem. Those parents realized that it's really easy to be critical from the sidelines—in soccer and in life—when you're not the one out there playing the game.

What does that have to do with change, you ask?

Six months later, one of the dads stopped at my house with an $8,500 Polaris four-wheeler on a trailer.

"Bryan, I went and bought this for you. I know your kids all have one and you don't, and I thought you should be able to join in," he said, moving to unhook it from the trailer.

"You're right. My four-wheeler went to college instead," I said. "Don't rub it in."

Now, I was pumped. I love my toys, and that was a big toy for me. I was very excited and very thankful. But then it happened. I became very uncomfortable with the gift, and I knew it wasn't right to take it. Temptation seems to show up pretty often when you start living The Good Life Rules. So I requested respectfully (and painfully) that he take it back.

"But wait," he said. "You haven't heard the story."

I told him I couldn't hear the story until he got the four-wheeler out of my sight. Why? Because people can't focus on the good things that come from change, because they're so concerned with what they're going to lose—the fears.

Once he took the four-wheeler back, I said, "I can hear you now."

He said, "You remember when you put me on the soccer field, and I heard my son screaming at me? I learned a lesson that night. I wasn't just screaming on the soccer field. I was screaming at home, too.

"I decided to take some of the advice you'd been giving the team, about acting on things that come into your heart with in forty-eight hours. I went home, and I told my wife that I learned a lesson, and I was going to change. She told me she had heard it way too many times, but she said she saw something in my eyes that made her willing to give me a little more time."

One of the biggest mistakes we make in life is that we lose faith and don't give it enough time. Don't lose your faith in The Good Life, and give yourself enough time to get it. That's what she did for him.

He continued his story. Six months go by, and this man and his wife went out to dinner at Three Forks, a fantastic steak house in Dallas, a couple of days before he brought this four-wheeler to my house. Before the food came, she handed him a packet of divorce papers and asked him to look at the date. It was from the day the parents played that soccer game. That was the day he came home and told her about how he was going to change, and she held off to see what would happen. She tore up the papers at that dinner, and she told him he had changed so much that she decided to live the rest of her life with him.

I didn't stop that guy on the soccer field that night and tell him he needed to change his attitude. Once he finished the game, I didn't set out a list of steps for him to get along better with his family. And I'm not the one who saved his marriage. He was just in position to finally see why change was important. He got the inspiration—and the willingness—to change. You see, I didn't write this book just for you. I wrote this book for the people who are depending on you. And if you understand that, you understand the why.

If you understand why it's important to change your life in these important ways, you're on your way to getting The Good Life. It could be a change in the way you handle your money. It could be a change in the way you deal with your kids. It could be a change in how you deal with your career. It's falling back in love with the good things you have in your life before you lose them.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE GOOD LIFE RULESby BRYAN DODGE MATTHEW RUDY Copyright © 2009 by Bryan Dodge. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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