Legendary

A simple playbook for building and living a legendary life, and being remembered as a legend.

Tommy Breedlove

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781642795547
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

No one is born a Legend — but anyone can become one.

In Legendary, Tommy Breedlove provides a playbook of simple tools and strategies anyone can use to become truly Legendary in business and in life. Created from years of research, study, and practice in the areas of self-development, mindset mastery, relationship building, and business leadership, the Legendary playbook can help you:

• Achieve greater financial and business success
• Lead others with courage, conviction, and passion
• Become a master over your thoughts and well-being
• Take control of your time
• Find peace, balance, and fulfillment without compromising ambition or success
• Discover your life's purpose
• Build deep, loving, and trustworthy relationships
• And so much more!

Regardless of the obstacles you face, mistakes you've made in the past, where you live, what your background is, or how much money you make, you have what it takes to become a Legend.

The only question remaining is whether you will choose to step into your greater purpose to live a truly Legendary life.

Will you step up and do what it takes to become Legendary?

Chapter 1

Take Action

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

—Teddy Roosevelt

The first time I read this quote, I found myself asking whether I was the man in the arena or the armchair quarterback in the stands. I had just started the book Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. When I read those words, my soul knew immediately, I was more the critic than the man in the arena.

I no longer wanted to be the person who died with his dreams still inside him. I decided right then to work the rest of my life on picking up my sword and becoming the man in the arena. I knew it wouldn’t be a smooth journey. I’d fall. I’d get hurt. I’d fail, and I’d have scars. However, I was committed to doing everything I could to building the best life for myself, my family, and the world around me.

This meant leaving my lucrative job in the financial world, so I gave my notice and began what has been a nearly decade-long journey of reflection and self-improvement, along the way committing to helping myself and others build and live Legendary lives.

If there’s one thing I learned along the way, it’s the power books can have in our lives. So, congratulations! You took action to buy this book and start reading it. You’re in the arena. You have now begun the process of building and living a Legendary life.

Start Small and Dream Big

We all have big desires and dreams, especially as children. For most of us, those desires and dreams don’t last until adulthood. We’ve been taught they’re foolish or no longer attainable—both are 100% untrue. Building a Legendary life is possible if we take action—and only if we take action.

We will never achieve greatness or accomplish our dreams by only reading books. We must apply the information from those books to our lives. Without action, there will be no achievement. The secret to action, however, is to move forward by taking baby steps. Taking one small step at a time allows us to start from wherever we are and make consistent progress toward our dreams without becoming overwhelmed or frustrated.

“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

—Pablo Picasso

It’s also never, ever, ever too late to start. Whether you’re 18 or 98 years old, you still have time to accomplish your goals and deepest desires. At age 45, Henry Ford created the revolutionary Model-T car. Stan Lee created the Fantastic Four on his 39th birthday. Julia Child was 50 when she started her career as a celebrity chef. The list of people who found success later in life is long. It’s never too late to start if we keep going and refuse to give up.

There’s also no shortcut or magic pill. Nobody achieves great things in life overnight. (In fact, the faster your ascent, the harder it is to sustain it. Just ask any lottery winner.) People who achieve sustained success put in years upon years of hard work in the arena.

Will you commit to taking action toward building a Legendary life with me?

Let’s start small and dream big. Let’s just commit to starting!

Everything we discuss in this book is designed to help us take sustained action—to help develop the hard and soft skills we need to achieve greatness and push through when times get tough or things are not working as fast as we want them to.

“We automatically land in the top 10% by simply showing up and honoring our commitments to ourselves and others. Taking sustained action will put us into the top 1%. Finishing what we start will put us into the top 0.1% in whatever we do.”

We are Not Alone

Taking action toward building a better life can be scary and takes great courage. Most of us become consumed by fear when dreaming about a better future. We fear we will fail. We fear we will not have support. We fear people will laugh at us. Many of us even fear success. We fear we won’t be able to sustain the success we achieve and will fail publicly when we inevitably collapse.

Fear is often our biggest obstacle and keeps us frozen where we are.

We must know that we are not alone. We’re all afraid when we’re uncertain or when starting something new. No one is immune to it. We can combat fear only when we accept it as inevitable. I’ve found these five truths about fear from the book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers very helpful.

1. 1.The fear will never go away as I continue to grow.
2. 2.The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.
3. 3.The only way to feel better about myself is to go out and do it.
4. 4.Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.
5. 5.Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with fear.

Do any of these resonate? They sure do for me, but it feels amazing to know that we are not alone in our fears.

We’ll talk more about fear throughout this book.

Important service announcement: we must accept the only cure for fear is action. We must feel the fear and do it anyway!

“Do or Do Not; There Is No Try.”—Yoda

I once gave a small exercise to a client for shifting his mindset to achieve what he desired. He said he would try. The word try is code for “I will never do this as it is not important.” (Ultimately, my client’s lack of action cost him the results he wanted. Every time he “tried,” he failed. He—like us all—only made progress when he stopped “trying” and started “doing.”) Thank you, Yoda, for providing us with the profound quotation above.

When we say we will try, we aren’t committing to the action and therefore never reach our goals. We need to eliminate this word from our vocabulary, one of the many “good for nothing” words throughout the book.

I start this book with taking action because if you’re only going to “try” or are not ready to take even the smallest step, stop reading. Intention and desire without action is just hope, and hope is not a strategy. If you aren’t ready for action, read no further. You’re wasting your time (but thank you for buying my book). This book and I will be here when you’re ready. Leave this book in sight, however, so it will be within reach when you’re ready and willing to take action.

Nothing is Impossible

Nothing is impossible if we get started, keep going, and finish the drill. In fact, I keep this sign close by to remind myself and my team to take the word “impossible” out of our vocabulary.

Think about it: people are now working on taking humans to Mars and colonizing the Moon. Nothing’s impossible!

Let’s Climb this Mountain Together

Here’s the beautiful thing about taking courageous action and doing the work outlined in this book. It’s like climbing a mountain. As we continue to climb (or do more and more of the work), our view becomes better and better. View, in this case, is an analogy for success, happiness, peace of mind, and, ultimately, significance to life.

However, we must prepare for one problem. Most humans refuse to take action on improving their situation in life and therefore never begin climbing the mountain of all things self-improvement. Because of this, they’re never able to see what we see and feel what we feel when we ascend on this journey of building and living a Legendary life.

I’ve been climbing this mountain since I turned 36 years old, and I promise to make the commitment to you and myself to never stop climbing until my very last breath. The view many years into this journey is absolutely spectacular. If you’re ready to start climbing, know this for sure—I’ll be right next to you along the journey.

Let’s climb this mountain together.

LEGENDARY ACTIONS & REMINDERS

• •List all of your dreams, from your childhood to now, regardless of how big or small.
• •Pick your top three, and eventually narrow the list down to your number-one dream.
• •Remember to dream big but start small. Take one small step each week to begin working toward this dream. (If you get stuck, please see the “Begin with the End in Mind” section in Chapter 3.)
• •Remove the word “impossible” from your vocabulary. Ask your close friends and family to remind you of this whenever you say this filthy, nasty word.
• •Remove the word “try” from your vocabulary. Remember, anytime we say we will try something, we are telling the other person it is not a priority and we will most likely never get to whatever it is. Ask your close friends and family to remind you of this whenever you say this horrible, no good word.
• •Give yourself a moment of gratitude and love for having the courage to buy this book and taking action to build and live a Legendary life.
• •If you do nothing else, remember this:
  • 
    The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.
  • 
    Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m in unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.

P.S. Also give yourself a big hug from me!

Chapter 2

Living with Purpose

My friend Lane Beene grew up in north Texas and (in his words) lived an o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Take Action
• Chapter 2: Living with Purpose
• Chapter 3: Getting Focused
• Chapter 4: Financial Freedom
• Chapter 5: Conquering our Time
• Chapter 6: Personal Mission Statement
• Chapter 7: Our Inner Circle
• Chapter 8: Blocking Out the Noise
• Chapter 9: Mastering Our Mindset
• Chapter 10: Living the Good Life
• Chapter 11: Cultivating Unconditional Self-Love
• Chapter 12: Intimate Relationships with Others
• Chapter 13: The Power of Choice
• Chapter 14: Never Giving Up
• Conclusion
• Recommended Book List
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author