This week we talk with Tammi Brennan, entrepreneur, and owner of the Blueprint Process. Her mantra and motivation is “Boredom is Death”. She shares insights on how to be fascinated and inspired in daily life. Tammi also tells us how she engages people to make personal and professional changes to find their purpose through the Blueprint Process. She shares insights about how she’s Changing the Rules and how she is one of the Luckiest People In The World.
Transcription:
Kris Parsons00:01
Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too! Join us with your lifely host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.
Ray Loewe00:16
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Changing the Rules. You know, I don't know about this lively person piece that Christine keeps telling me I am, but maybe I am. Maybe we'll explore that in our with our guest today. The name of our show is Changing the Rules. There are two things that I want to comment on here. One is that life is filled with rules that we didn't come up with. And there's too many of them. Rules generally do two things, they say you can do this, or you better not do this. Right. As soon as somebody tells me that I can't do things, I get annoyed immediately. I start looking for way around the rules. One of the things that I've learned over the course of my life is that if you're going to live your own life, you have to live by your own rules. Now we do need rules. Many of the rules that we've gotten in life are great rules, and we need to keep them. But there are other rules that we need to change so that we can move on and do those exciting things that we want to talk about. One of the things that I do all the time is, I really make an important part of my life to follow is fascinating and motivating debate. When I wake up in the morning, I want to look forward to the day and say, "Wow, this is gonna be a great day, all of this stuff I'm doing, this stuff I'm excited about". It just gets me motivated. It's like these podcasts, I get to talk to great guests, and at the end of them, I am so psyched up and motivated for the rest of the week. And I have one with me today. And Tammy has been on our show before, in fact, a couple of times and she will be on again. Tammy Brandon is a coach. She is an entrepreneur. She's the inventor of the blueprint process. She has been an important part of my life. She's a fairly new addition to the people I know in my life, but she has really helped me hone in on what my purpose is and what I am trying to do. Tammy, thank you so much for doing that for me. I'm going to start you with a tagline and you're going to take off. "Boredom is death."
Tammi Brannan02:46
And that is your tagline, baby. I did not come up with that. You said that on our last call and like bells were ringing. Boredom is death. Do you remember why you said that on our last call?
Ray Loewe02:59
No, but I know when I was talking this morning about being a lively host. It's because I don't want to be bored ever. Boredom is the fastest way to get you in a rut, that is not a place a good place to be. So why did I say this?
Tammi Brannan03:17
I honestly don't remember either. But what I do want to talk about is what you just said, which is there are worst kinds of death than physical death. To me, this is a direct correlation. Boredom is the worst possible death. The reason why I think you say this, the reason why I think this is a philosophy of yours is because it fits with the luckiest people in the world. The luckiest people in the world, who as you identified change the rules, they do not want to go along with the status quo. What's usually done with the person down the street is doing, they want to make sure that what is in their life is fascinating and motivating. So as you mentioned, they're always waking up excited, energized by the projects they've got going on that day. How this relates to purpose is so fascinating to me. It is so cool to think that when you're pursuing your purpose, your God-given purpose, you are not bored. You're not obligated. You're not thinking, "Oh, I wish I I wish I had a different purpose." I had someone actually asked me yesterday, "can I borrow somebody else's purpose?"
Ray Loewe04:41
There's an idea. We can sell it to him maybe, right?
Tammi Brannan04:44
Oh, yeah, right. Maybe no, no. That's what I told him is no, it just doesn't work because your purpose is actually lined up with all the tools you have naturally been given. The beautiful thing about that is you haven't just been given the ability to follow your purpose. You been given the natural fascination and motivation to follow your purpose as well, which goes to one of the biggest tricks I use when helping people identify their purpose. That's asking them your question, what is fascinating and motivating for you? And as you've identified, that can change.
Ray Loewe05:21
Yeah, and it takes a lot some time for people to figure that out. Let me make two comments to emphasize this. I remember reading a statement from the Gallup poll a while ago. I can't believe that this is true, but it keeps coming back and coming back. And that is 80% of the people in the United States, quote, hate their stupid job. I talked to a young man the other day on another podcast. John is 91 years old. He was talking about his life as a manager for the DuPont Company. And he said, the thing that hurt him most is when people came in and talked about how they were checking off their days because it was another day that was done. So pick up on this, and let's talk about how we avoid boredom, how we do this thing. And obviously, one is to truly understand who you are, and why you're here. Then that allows you to start talking about values and then build the life that you want to build. So you're the coach, Tammy, go ahead.
Tammi Brannan06:37
We both are actually, dear. You coach people how to be the luckiest people in the world, and you encourage them to do so. You do that by suggesting to them that it's a possibility. So I would say that's the 80%. I would say the bulk of the 80% when they're checking the days off on their calendar, just to say that another day is done, don't believe in hope. They don't believe that there's a possibility for a better way. Most moms, mostly because they see it around them. If 80% of the population of the working force feels this way about their job, then you can imagine that the people, most people around you that you interact with on a daily basis, friends, family, coworkers, whatever are feeling this way. So you get into this habit of thinking, Oh, this must be all there is. This must just be all I can do. I check my days off for the weekend, I checked my days off for vacation, I check my days off for retirement. So you're in a constant state of waiting and dissatisfaction.
Ray Loewe07:37
The other thing, comment that I get all the time is, when people are unhappy about their lives, they say that's why they call it work. So somewhere in here, we need to change this perception. Because you're right, I am a big believer that there are fascinating and motivating things out there. It takes a little work to find them. But when you find them, life starts to get exciting, it starts to be good. And the last thing in the world I want to do is be bored. Because every time I get bored, I get into trouble.
Tammi Brannan08:10
Right? Because you resist that death, you know, on some instinctive level that boredom is the worst possible death. So you resist that. You do that by mixing things up by changing the rules. That's what you encourage your community to do. I know we're going to be talking about your book later, but I know I've seen your book, and I know that it is a, let's call it, a pot-stirrer. It is the way to disrupt your current life, if it's in a rut, bump you out of that rut, and get you into a life that's fascinating and motivating. I so appreciate that. You've done that for the world.
Ray Loewe08:49
Okay, so let's go there. You're a coach for the day over here. Let's talk a little bit about what happens when people get bored. What can you suggest to them to do to kickstart their life to at least start a journey away from where they are to a promised land of sorts, right?
Tammi Brannan09:15
It is probably the scariest and hardest thing you'll ever do. I'm sorry. Because what you're doing is you're looking at disrupting a pattern. That always is very uncomfortable for us to change. Uncertainty is very uncomfortable. Basically what I'm asking you to do, what Ray and I are asking you to do, is jump into the unknown. There's no guarantee out there that things are going to be better. There's no guarantee that if you move from one job to the next that it will be a better job. A little bit. Something you can do to mitigate that risk is study yourself first. This is what I recommend of all my clients is to study yourself first, and not to be self-promoting, but the best process helps you do that. You actually do a better job of getting results when you have someone else helping you study yourself. But in the absence of the blueprint process, you can actually observe yourself in your current environment as boring as it is as predictable as it is. And you can identify the things that bring you energy, what people, what relationships, what tasks bring you energy. I actually have this tracker that I've put together to help people do this. I'm happy to give it to Ray's community for free. You don't actually even need the tracker, you can do this on your own. Just keep track of what drains your energy, and what charges your energy. And by self-study, you're enabled to start making some leaps outside of that rut, little small steps, little tiny experiments. You don't have to quit your job, you don't have to move across the country, divorce your spouse, you don't have to do those big major life changes. You can just do tiny little experiments. And watch what happens to the battery that is within each one of us. Is it charged? Or is it drained?
Ray Loewe11:08
Okay, let's talk about batteries. What did you mean by that? I mean, I certainly know what an Everready battery is or a Duracell. We use them every day. They do run out of fuel. That's usually at the worst possible time.
Tammi Brannan11:24
Yes. Perfect analogy.
Ray Loewe11:26
So how do you charge this battery? What are some of the activities that you can go through to juice them up?
Tammi Brannan11:33
It depends on who you are, and what your blueprint is, this is the best piece of advice I can give you. Everyone is charged and drained by different things. What's fascinating and motivating to Ray is not necessarily what's fascinating and motivating to you. Simple example I can give you, my dad loves to go fishing. His battery is charged by fishing. I, however, I get in that boat and in 2.3 seconds, I'm bored to tears. It doesn't work for me. Same thing at work, you could take this concept into your professional existence and your personal existence. I would do that. Your battery is charged and drained 24/7, 365 days a year, you can watch it and observe it no matter in what situation you're in, no matter whom you're with. The trick is to discover what does it for you. Now you can take someone like Ray, and you can ask Ray "okay, why do you get up every day? I'm fascinated and motivated and engaged in the projects that you're getting in today." He was fascinated and motivated about these podcasts that he was doing today. So you're like, Okay, I see that Ray's interested in podcasts and interviewing guests and talking to them about the luckiest people in the world. What could I do that might be similar to that? Maybe that would work for me. So maybe you start small by, you go out you find someone who's fascinated and motivating to you, interesting to you. You just have a conversation with them. You have lunch with them. Don't do a podcast, just have lunch with them. Gauge what did that do to my battery? Did it charge it? Oh my goodness, really? You got to pull up the clown nose now?
Ray Loewe13:15
Well, you weren't motivated enough to me. What can I tell you? It can be, on thinking about this while you're talking, it can be as simple as looking in the mirror. Changing your face will. We had a clown as a guest on our show when one of the things he talked about is that every time he dresses up in his different clown outfits, he feels differently. He looks for different things. And I think this is what you're saying. There are different times in our life when we need different things. I noticed one of the big times for people that we talked to a lot or this period of time when people talk about retirement. Retirement like I can't see why anybody gets excited about retirement anyway, because the word retirement means to take out of use. Who wants to be taken out of use? Who wants to think that way? Yet, I see people that leap into retirement with no thought of where they're going, no plan, and wind up being as unhappy as they were before. I see other people who don't leap in retirement, they keep going back to what they know and are afraid to change. So give us a couple of steps as to how you think about change. I mean, you were talking about this energy audit. What are some of the things that you thought about you today that would go on your energy audit, for example?
Tammi Brannan14:48
That's awesome. I love energy audits. That is a great phrase. Thank you. I'm going to borrow that. Alright, so for me what's fascinated and motivated, and by the way, this has worked for me since 2006. I've been doing what I'm doing today since 2006. So it not only was fascinating and motivating back then, it's even more so today because I've continued to study myself and refine what I do and who I spend time with. And yes, one of those people is right. So for me fascinating and motivating activities, and this is what I've been doing today is, I've been talking to people about their purpose. I've been talking to people about their spiritual beliefs, and how to use those two things and make their life better, both personally and professionally. That energizes me, it energizes me in a big way. So consequently, when I'm with people who don't want to talk about those things, I'm not that interested. I'm not that interested in the conversation. And so I don't I choose not to hang around people who don't want to talk about those things.
Ray Loewe15:56
And that's a big choice. I remember, this goes back many years. After my wife and I got married, and you meet people, and you invite them over for dinner. Then they feel like they've got to invite you back for dinner. Then you have to invite them back for dinner again. The next thing you know, you sit down one day, and you say, why are we doing this? People aren't very interesting. I think part of it is you have to be sensitive to the things that if you want to make a change, you have to actually change things. I think what you're saying is, you don't have to change big things, you can sometimes just change little things. I mean, phase-out of a relationship, if it doesn't suit you anymore. Go find a place where you're excited about the people that happen to hang out there. We started doing this about 20 years before I quote-unquote, "retired from my business", I started studying these luckiest people in the world. I started looking at what makes them who they are. I kicked myself several times, why am I doing this? Well, number one is exciting. Number two, these are people I actually thought I want to hang out with. So where are they? Who are they? How do you define that? And I find that that's one of the things that drives me a lot is the who? Not the what, it's the who? So let's talk for a minute about your blueprint process. Because I know it was helpful to me, I know the purpose of this is not a commercial. I know that you have a website. I want you to give us the name of the website.
Tammi Brannan17:45
Blueprintprocess.com.
Ray Loewe17:47
We'll put it up on our podcast. I know that you'll take a couple of minutes and talk to people who are interested in this. I think this is maybe one of the key places that we can kickstart change. You got to start a discussion with somebody, you've got to start on this idea of who I am, and why I'm here. Once that becomes clear in your mind, then it becomes easier to start moving forward. And it's not a real easy process and it's painful. Trust me, it was painful to me. But I kept coming back. So talk about where this blueprint process came from and what is your result?
Tammi Brannan18:31
It came from my desire to not be bored. I felt like a complete misfit in my life and I didn't know why. And so it was just a matter of studying, I believe that studying has to happen first before you make any change, you have to study yourself. How you show up in places to get that kind of knowledge that mitigates the risk of change. If you don't study first, and you're just changing here changing there, changing all over the place, you end up making way more of a mess than you need to. So for me, I started to study myself so that I could figure out where to change, what to change, and how to change. And I started to do that. One of the changes I made was, oh my gosh, I really want to do this for other people too. So that's what led me to put the blueprint process together. It is primarily a study program. We're studying you and what your blueprint is so that we know what your purpose is so that we can then apply that to your life both personally and professionally. That's how the blueprint came to be. and that's what I do.
Ray Loewe19:34
Okay, unfortunately, we're coming near the end of our time period. Before we get there if somebody wants to start thinking about themselves. I think you hit us with where's your energy level, we're going to be doing an energy level audit, and find out what excites you and what doesn't; but are there any other things that people can think about on themselves? Maybe not necessarily to make the changes, but to start to understand that they need to make the changes. And if they do, if they make them, they'll be happier.
Tammi Brannan20:07
And freakin deserve it. I think one of the biggest problems with the 80% that are dissatisfied with their life is, they don't believe that they deserve it. They don't believe they have a purpose. They don't believe they deserve happiness, joy. They don't believe they deserve to be fascinated and motivated by every single day of their existence. They think that you are somehow more special than they are. Consequently, they don't even strive to make a change or to believe in a life that's better. On some level, they've accepted that that's all they're good for.
Ray Loewe20:44
So let's talk about the book that's coming out. This is my commercial now. As we've studied the luckiest people in the world for so long, I started writing stories about them. Believe it or not, most of these stories come from this podcast. You're in the book, by the way. Whether you like it or not. I think the idea is that we took people from these podcasts that have interesting stories or interesting thoughts about how do they get lucky. John Freeman, for example, puts on his clown nose and it changes his disposition for the day. It could be as simple as that. But what we tried to do is lay out a motivating frame of people, we try to get into the seven different characteristics that the luckiest people seem to have all the time. They just keep coming back, and back, and back. Then we talked a little bit about a vision and a process to getting there. I think the vision is such an important piece, and you have to visualize yourself as being happy and contented, filled. That's where it starts. So any words of wisdom that you want to impart while you're still here before we shut you off and kick you off the air?
Tammi Brannan22:06
Because that's what's fascinating and motivating to you, isn't it? So with your book and the seven characteristics, I would just encourage people to get the book. Also to go into the book, recognizing that the seven characteristics of luckiest people that Ray will be talking about in the book are not seven characteristics of the luckiest people in the world that are somehow unobtainable by you. It's not like a movie, you go watch and then you walk away and say that was a nice experience. It's a movie that you go watch, and you walk away with seven things that you can now do in your life. The seven characteristics are mindsets that people can apply to their life. Right now today, and make themselves the luckiest people in the world.
Ray Loewe22:13
That's right, Absolutely, thank you for that. Because it's not about changing anything, but the way you think. These are things you have absolute control over in life. It's I mean, I don't care what happens with COVID. I don't care what happens with a war in the Ukraine and anything else in the world. You can always change the way you think. And you control that. All you have to do is focus on them. And by the way, just for note, our book is not out yet. Nobody can get it yet. Today, we're kind of doing a bait and switch kind of thing here. We're kind of setting people up so that they have to go on out and get this later. But thanks again for your comments. Any last-minute, Tammy, comments, and then we're gonna sign off?
Tammi Brannan23:46
I would just say without the book just yet, go listen to past episodes of this podcast.
Ray Loewe23:52
Yeah and go to Tammy's website and look at this blueprint process and whether you decide to go through it or not. I think the idea of take a look at what's there and start thinking about the changes that you can make in your life just by changing your mindset. Huge. Okay, Miss Tammy Brannon, thank you for being with us. You certainly are one of the luckiest people in the world. Every time I get a chance to talk to you, I get fascinated and motivated. So thanks for being you. And Taylor, why don't you sign us off until we got another podcast guest next week.
Kris Parsons24:32
Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life, and how you can figure out how to do that too! Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.