Start Your Book By Finding Your 'Why' with Chuck Hogan

Full video transcript

Super stoked to have everyone here today. I wanted to bring a good friend of mine, Chuck Hogan. Chuck is a longtime neuro-strategist with 18 years of experience working with individuals and coaching. Diving into it a little bit more, I know you’re a cancer survivor, a cancer conqueror as well, and you basically teach people, coach people, how to live a healthy, prosperous life.

Why I brought them on here for day one is I want to talk about why, you know, about why you’re doing this. It’s really a simple calling in life. I actually think there are two types of people in this world: there’s those that take energy, and those that actually utilize their gifts and talents and share them with others.

When we start to think about what is a book, what is a written piece of literature, the fact of the matter is that it’s your story, but your story isn’t yours to keep. You’ve been reading all different types of literature to our kids, why? Because that opens up the world to you. And it’s not just through when you say it as a parent to your child, but as they’ve gotten older now and they’ve created their own cultivated reading list, they’re into self-help books, or into fantasy sci-fi novels, you name it, historical, autobiographies. There’s no other substitute for that type of input.

Now why do I go there, and why do I sound so passionate about it? Because your stories are valuable, they are a legacy. And if someone only gleans one simple distinction from something that you shared with them, you may change their entire life inadvertently. The energy and the written word, and the state that you’re in when you create the languaging that you use, matters.

So it’s all about your why. Why is it so important that you’re writing this book? Why is your message so valuable to other people? Why is it that this actually holds some level of esteem or value? And it’s because it’s you, it’s a manifestation of you that you’re sharing to other people. So when we link to a strong purpose as to why, this gives us some amazing fuel.

So let’s get rid of the old formula, let’s go to this: how do you want to feel most often? This includes in writing your book and creating this masterpiece. Then when we link to the why, “oh gosh, you know, I want to feel happy, Chuck, I want to feel prosperous, I want to feel like I’m giving, partaking, I want to just leave it all on the pages,” great, then pick a direction. You need to go in what’s going to serve you feeling this way.

Man, I feel that way anytime I am sitting down and engaged, I’m in the zone. I feel that way anytime I go on the beach and I walk, and I just get filled with information, I have to make sure I have a writing apparatus with me or some way of recording all this information, because man, I am just like on fire, I’m lit. Anytime I’m engaging my body, I’m feeding my health and vitality, I’m nurturing myself, I’m praying, I’m meditating, it’s like words of wisdom come to me. Dang, that sounds like a pretty cool direction to be going in.

In fact, isn’t it interesting that when we think about this, and I’m going to just grab this glass for a moment, if you have a weak purpose, and we take that purpose away, how easy is it for someone to take it away from you? Are you really committed to your outcome and goal if you have a weak purpose, if you have a weak why? The answer is no. So understanding strong purpose direction, you with me so far?

But I’m going to give you the secret sauce, you ready for this? This is the most important one out of all of them. You have to remember who you are and what you stand for, and what you’re willing to let go of as well. This is called your state. Who are you? Who are you that’s so committed to this purpose and headed in the right direction, any direction that gets you towards your outcomes and goals? I’m strong, I’m intelligent, I’m passionate, I’m committed, I’m willing to let go of judgment, I’m willing to let go of procrastination, mediocrity, I’m willing to let go of comparing myself to everyone else’s work.

I’ll share with you a gift from when my daughter was nine, she goes, “you do you, boo boo.” You do you. But this is when it gets real. Now that I’m congruent in my purpose, my why, my direction, and who I am, and what I’m willing to let go of, now I come up with my outcomes and goals, that means your timelines, the work that you’re committed to doing. Because if you don’t schedule it, how often are you going to do something you don’t schedule? You better schedule it, or it’s not going to get done. That’s where we go ahead and we create this commitment of the mammoth action plan that we’re going to take, because when you bring this all together, you’re unstoppable.

You’re unstoppable, but it comes down to something very simple. We’ve been told a lie from the time that we were very young. And in fact, for anyone that might be a PhD in this group that has a background in psychology, your cognitive development relative to your values and rules that you follow were cultivated from the time you were zero to seven years old. So from the time you were seven years old, you already had your values as to what you value most in life already established. From the ages of seven to fourteen, you actually started cultivating what was meaningful to you in relationships.

So I’m going to ask you a very deep question: do you like you, do you honor you, do you love you, do you respect you? Here’s the ticket: achievement is nothing without fulfillment. You don’t go “oh, I feel this is the best thing,” you go “I think this is the best thing, I know this is the best thing, I feel it in my heart, I feel it in my gut, I feel it in my soul.” Most people don’t go “I feel it in my soul.” No, head dead, heart smart. The best decision you ever made was with your heart, with the benefit of intellect, not the opposite way around. This is called mental processing.

Share the largest gift that you have, the most unique thing that you own, which is you, without provocation, without hesitation, without any kind of compensatory, reconciliatory value. Just share you, your experience, who you are, what you’ve experienced, where you’re coming from, all the emotions, paint the picture, let someone else into your world. And find the greatness that comes from it. Not only will it be cathartic for you, it’ll be liberating for others.

Because as much as we like to think we are all unique and special and different, we all experience many of the same things. And there are six primary needs that we have. We all have a need for certainty, all of us. We all have a need for uncertainty, or variety. We all have a need to feel significant or important in some way, shape, or form. We all have a need to feel love and connection. Most people aspire for love, but they’ll settle for connection, we call that dating, just a technical term. And then the last two, which are really important, is we all have a need to grow, and a need to contribute. But these last two are more spiritual.

And here’s the amazing part, that’s where most of the growth comes from, that’s where most of the connection comes from, is when we’re growing and contributing. Boy, we feel like we’re expanding, we’re not contracting.

One last thing I’d love to share with you all, just as an aside, and that is: please don’t dim your light for anyone. Your words are your words, your energy is your energy, your life is your life, your emotions are your emotions, and no one should ever tell you they’re right or wrong. The human condition, and your God-given gift, the universe’s blessing to you, is that you are allowed to feel the way that you feel, how you feel it, whenever you feel it. If someone else judges it, well, maybe they need to adjust and remember who they are and what they need to let go of.

Because where most people find pain is when they start comparing: well, how does my book stack up against this other person’s book, how does my languaging, my writing, does it really matter, does it really? I’m not going to compare my writing to the Bible. Dang, I’m not going to compare it to someone who has a PhD. They haven’t lived my life, they don’t know my struggles, they don’t know my accolades, they don’t know my perspective. But they might be interested in it, because there are more people out there who are like you than you might even imagine, and people like people who are like them, I mean that’s like, you just spoke to me today, this is exactly what I needed to get this thing going.

Perfection is the lowest standard you can hold, hear me clearly, if you don’t leave with anything else other than this today: perfection is the lowest standard available to you, because perfection doesn’t exist. I get that now, for sure.