Tommy Breedlove, in my opinion, leads a legendary life. He is the creator of the Choose Goodness Movement and he’s also a Wall Street Journal & USA Today bestselling author of the book, Legendary. Tommy is a business, relationship, and mindset coach who is a frequently featured keynote speaker at global events. He serves clients and audiences by empowering them to build and live Legendary Lives and to work in their zone of brilliance, obtain financial freedom, and live with meaning and balance. Tommy was featured on a previous episode of Mindfulness Mode back in July of 2017 called Choose Goodness And Meaning. You might want to check it out.

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Contact Info

• Website: www.TommyBreedlove.com/gifts
• Book: Legendary: A Simple Playbook For Building and Living A Legendary Life, and Being Remembered As A Legend by Tommy Breedlove

Related Episodes:

• Choose Goodness And Meaning; Tommy Breedlove
• Sleepwalking, Marriage, and Meditation; Gay Hendricks
• All Humans Are Connected To A Universal Energy; Julie Zuzek

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Episode Transcript

Note: The following transcript is a draft transcript, and as such, may contain computer-generated mistranslations.

Bruce Langford: How did you get this Book project, about creating a legendary life, together? Was it a bit of a struggle getting this thing to happen or what?

Tommy Breedlove: So audience, Bruce, so we were getting into this struggle cause yes, it was a struggle. Fear, perfectionism, not good enough time. All of that stuff that we all deal with as human beings got in the way. But it was so funny, Bruce, it was like, we gotta get this. And so yes, it was a struggle. A good mutual friend of Bruce and I, Tom Schwab, who's also been on this show and who Bruce and Tom I believe will be remembered as Legendary humans, which is a real compliment, but he told me three years ago that you need to get your story out to the world and you need to tell your story and you need to inspire people and hopefully give people the gift of going second, which is to be raw and vulnerable about where you've been, what you've been through and how you got through it.

Tommy Breedlove: Tom said, the world needs to hear this story, especially the business world, which I came from the world of large business and financial world. So it was three years in the writing. It was all blood, sweat and tears. The original name of the book was palmed the King, which didn't ever resonate with me in some ways I think I was going to a Game of Thrones phase. And so here we are, two years in, six months publishing deadlines facing us, lots of consultants publishing the deadlines, but also pressures from the publisher on the writing. We had some consultants involved and it just never felt like me and never felt like it had my blood and my soul and my heart. It felt forced and on some levels it felt negative and not positive. And I wanted to put light out to the world and hope and simple executable tools.

Tommy Breedlove: It also felt too deep, like it was too deep and all of these subjects that could have been books in themselves. And so one night two years and six months into this process, my wife was out of town and I had gotten the latest version back from the team and, and it's all on me. It's not on them. And by the way, there are some of the most talented people I've ever met in the world and they, once I got my blood and soul on it, they made it rise and it's become the success it's become. But one year over, my wife was traveling and I might or might not have had a little too much bourbon after reading that book and it just hit me. Write the book that you needed during your transition at 36, right? The book that literally saved your life, right?

Tommy Breedlove: The book that literally helped you become happy, successful, mindful, but also not leaving your ambition behind. Write that book that you've seen. Help yourself. And now hundreds of others that have come through your Legendary life program. And I did. And brother, when I tell you it went from two years and six months of perfectionism and insecure fight, am I good enough? Why do I hate this? To just blow three months of pure bliss riding the team was all in the publisher was all in the people that helped me make it sound better. You know, I'm from the Southeast United States, my English, sometimes it's not the best in the world. And so it just was this three-month beautiful process was a lot of hard work. People don't realize how much work goes into the creation of, it's something that you care about so much.

Tommy Breedlove: And brother as a recovering perfectionism perfectionist and as someone who always struggled with, am I good enough? I am so super proud of this book. I'm so super proud that Legendary has become a wall street journal and USA Today bestseller. I think it will change lives. I think it will be applicable five generations from now. And you talk about leaving impact, living a life of significance and ultimately leaving legacy. I feel like this book does that. And I'm not saying I am the most non-ego guy when it comes to this stuff. It was the exact opposite for years. I can't tell you how humbled and how grateful and how proud of this piece of work I am. I feel like it's my baby and I've gotten so much unbelievable feedback on it because it's simple. It's fun, it's a quick read and it's so applicable in all phases of our lives. And so thank you Bruce, for letting me talk about it. I'll stop talking about it.

Tommy Breedlove: That's really it. I could talk all day. It's like talking about your child, right? I'm a guy who posted pictures of his child on the internet over and over again. I think my child is the prettiest child is pretty awesome.

Bruce Langford: Having a legendary life sounds fulfilling. So when did you come up with the name Legendary? When did that come to you?

Tommy Breedlove: Kind of at the end. And I'll tell you why we picked the name, Legendary and I certainly do not consider myself a legend and we live, Bruce, you and I and the world. We live in a world of constant self-promotion, especially in the social media world where everybody's Instagram fabulous or Facebook fabulous or everybody wants to seem so successful and valuable on LinkedIn. Legendary is something that if you and I and society started calling ourselves, people would laugh us out of the rooms. And Legendary is something that's given to us by society, our peers, our family, our colleagues. And it's ultimately how we will be remembered. Did we leave the people we love the people we serve in this world better than we found it. And to me that's what building and living a Legendary life means. And there's been so many horrific legends.

Tommy Breedlove: I don't even want to give them air cause there's been millions of, you know, we know them, they're still, we remember their names. There's also been so many other amazing legends and it has nothing to do with rich or fame. It has to do with impact. It has to do with serving. It happens, happens to live to people who live their life with purpose and their truth, who cultivate unconditional love for themselves, who, who have intimate relationships with other. But it's also about building financial confidence, mastery, and freedom so that you can make more impact in the world. And so to me, Legendary has given us to buy societies and I believe it's a holistic way of living our lives, building our lives and impacting others and the best that we can so that we live in this world a little bit better than we found it.

Bruce Langford: Yeah, I would agree. For sure. You talk quite a bit in the book about affirmations and how they can help you live a legendary life. Affirmations come up several times in the book and one of your affirmations is ‘I expand in love, success, and abundance every day as I inspire others around me to do the same.' And that's only one of them. But those are great affirmations. Do you ever call them mantras?

Tommy Breedlove: I like the word mantras. I like the word affirmations. Some of my community doesn't understand the word mantra. They always ask me, what does that mean?

Bruce Langford: I was going to ask you, is there any difference in your mind between a mantra and an affirmation?

Tommy Breedlove: I don't think, well, I, you know, that's a great question. To me a lot of people poopoo on affirmations. To me, a mantra would be like your war cry. Like we have a family war cry. We're small. My family is super small. My wife and I, we don't have kids. And that's a whole nother subject for a whole other time. Wasn't our choice, but one of her mantras is ‘protect and defend this fort'. And the other end is the Breedlove show up. We do show up for ourselves, for others and we serve. And so those are the mantras of our guiding lights that we go by. But I think a mantra can be an affirmation. It can be a walkway. It can be an intention. It can be attention. It can be a vision.

Tommy Breedlove: By the way, that affirmation that you like so much, that's not mine. I read that in the big leap by gay Hendricks, which is one of my favorite books of all time. And I have written down that mantra every day, almost for the last seven or eight years. That's how powerful I found that affirmation. And to me, whether it's a mantra that you meditate on, a mantra that you live by, an affirmation that you write. What a why. I believe in them so much and the reason people make fun of them. There was whole Saturday night live skit on affirmations where they teased them, but they literally rewire our hearts, our minds and our souls for self-confidence, for self-respect so that we can love ourselves so that we can become our own best friends so that we can sit in a room by ourselves and minimize that noise inside our head that says we're not good enough, that we're scared.

Tommy Breedlove: What if they know my deepest darkest desires? And the more we meditate, the more we get mindful, the more we do affirmations or practice gratitude, these simple basic steps that we can do in under 30 minutes a day. It really literally starts rewiring and builds that emotional, mental and spiritual fortress so that we're just a little bit better than we were yesterday. So I'm a big fan of mantras and a big fan of affirmation, big fan of meditation. And it's all basic skills. Cause if we don't go to the gym, we get out of shape, right? Our body starts atrophying if we don't eat right, which, you know, as we record this, it's, we're in the Cove at time. I have put on the freshmen 15 so I put on my Cove at 15 because I've been, haven't been eating like I normally do. But same thing goes with our hearts. Same things goes with our minds. So things go for our spirit and our money and all of our muscles. They need to be worked out a little bit every day so that we're a little bit stronger every day. And that's something I firmly believe in. Yeah.
Listen to the episode for more with Tommy Breedlove and how to live a legendary life.