The Russell Brunson Show
Drifter vs. the Driven: Breaking the Patterns That Hold You Back - Part 2 | #Success - Ep. 105
14 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next Selling Online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast. That's sellingonline.com slash podcast. What's up, everybody? This is Russell.
Welcome back to the show. I hope you guys enjoyed the last episode. If you haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, this is part of a two-episode series. So pause this and go back and listen to episode number one. Otherwise, this won't make much sense. You're kind of jumping in the middle of a conversation.
But this is the recordings from the Midnight Mastermind I did at the recent Mastermind Paradise with my inner circle and my two CCX members. And this is my process that I'm going through to help people become more successful. And I think that this is one of the few times I've ever kind of taught this stuff during a live event. It was late night with those groups, and it was really, really fun.
And so anyway, without any further ado, I'm going to jump into the second half of this session. I hope you guys enjoy it. I hope you get a lot of value from it. And with that said, I'm going to jump back into the drifters versus the driven. This is the Russell Brunson Show. So you have your drifter identity on the left-hand side. Now I want to talk about your driven identity. Okay.
Now, as I was putting this together, I had a lot of fun with this because, okay, we've got 10 different drift identities. Maybe there's like another 10 or 15 different driven identities, some of that, but as I kept cutting back layers and cutting back layers, cutting back layers, I realized that there's a better way.
Um, and there's really only one core identity that, that all driven people are using. And so we'll talk about that. So, um, First, I want to tell you guys a story. So when I was wrestling, I started wrestling in eighth grade. And eighth grade, I did all right. Ninth grade, I started doing better. And then my ninth grade year, after I finished the season, I had a chance to hire a wrestling coach.
His name is Greg Williams, one of our co-friends right here. She's friends with Greg. Greg was my wrestling coach, and he was the coach for Freestyle and Greco, which is the Olympic styles in wrestling. So during the season, you wrestle collegiate style or American style, then off-season, you do Freestyle and Greco. So my very first tournament, I met this Freestyle and Greco tournament.
Greg's my brand-new coach. I'd never really wrestled with him before or coached with him before. He'd been my coach for like two weeks, but I had this tournament. huge tournament in my bracket. There's like 30 or 40 other wrestlers. And so I'm wrestling, we're going out there and I'm winning some matches. I'm losing some matches. Um, and Greg was the first time he's ever coaching me.
I remember I was, I went on this match, I started wrestling. And then during the break, they cut, I, you have a chance to come out. He's like, Hey, um, So you're doing well, but you're standing too high. You got to lower your stance, get your elbows in, and get more motion. And it kind of really quickly explained what to do. So I was like, okay. So I got out there, and we started wrestling again.
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Chapter 2: How can adopting a learner identity help you break free from drifting?
He's like, I told you to do something, and you did it. You are so coachable. He gave me a gift that day. He gave me a new identity. Prior to that, I didn't know his culture. I didn't know anything. I was just like... And Greg said, you're coachable. And that just became an identity. I'm like, I'm coachable, okay? Then I went to practice the next day, and I was trying to move.
I wasn't very good at the move, but I wasn't upset. Instead, I was like, well, I'm coachable. I'm the most coachable wrestler I've ever met. And so I learned the move, and I got better, right? And that followed me literally through my entire wrestling career, through high school, through college. When I got into business, I started to learn business, trying to figure things out.
And I would struggle. I never thought I was dumb. I never struggled. I always knew I was coachable, right? And that was like this identity that I was coachable. And it changed my entire life. Even to this day, I still think I'm one of the most coachable people of all time. I love when Richman spoke up here. He's like, I'm going to be the best student of all time. Very coachable, right?
I've watched him. I've watched Richman grow in leaps and bounds month after month, year after year. He's growing. One of the fastest people I've seen in our community growing, growth-wise, because he's one of the most coachable entrepreneurs I've ever met in my life. Being coachable is such a huge thing.
And coachable is a great thing, but there's even a phrase I think is better for the identity that I want you guys to adopt tonight. And this is from... I had a chance to do an interview with Tom Bilyeu like three or four years when I first started writing this book. And it was just, I don't think even though I was recording, I'll probably get in trouble for me showing you this.
But I was asking a bunch of questions about how the brain works and all sorts of really cool stuff. And he went on a couple of rants that were insanely cool. And so I found two of the clips from that in the interview from three and a half, four years ago. We literally could not find the video. We found it randomly in the Zoom hard drive on my desktop. It was on my laptop. Crazy coincidence.
We found it today for you guys. And Ben edited it. We tried to get every F word out. I think we got them all. If one slipped through, it's Ben's fault, not mine.
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Chapter 3: What role do values play in creating real motivation?
No, just kidding. I think we got them all. But in this little clip is where Tom Billy talks about what I believe is the most important identity all of us can adopt if we want to be driven. So let's watch that clip right now from Tom Billy. How would you describe identity then? Is that like a phrase?
Identity is literally a statement that you say to yourself that carries a lot of baggage. It's just a shorthand way for you to remember who you are. Right. So if when I say I'm the learner, that will come to my rescue a million times. Somebody says Tom's a moron. And I'm like, oh, oh, God, talk about hitting me where I have deep insecurities. Right. So but then I go, ah, I'm the learner.
So I don't need to be brilliant. Now, if I told myself the story of Tom is the smartest person that ever lived and you point out how I'm a moron and it's a pretty convincing argument, that's devastating because it takes away my identity. So there's that.
Is that the core identity? Do you have multiple identities then?
Yeah, I mean, you could shift in and out for sure. You could say, I'm also a husband, right? I'm a husband first. And that really matters to me. And a lot of people have an identity as a dad. Some part of my identity... I mean, look, our identities are... When you get out of the... out of what I'll say is maximally useful and into the mess of reality.
So part of my identity for sure is being an entrepreneur. And part of my identity, quite frankly, is being right some amount of the time. But in terms of what I repeat to myself, the thing that I claim as my identity, that sort of
moniker that you give this phrase that you repeat about yourself to constantly orient yourself in a useful way to the world and you lived it right you know how much saying i'm a wrestler oriented you how it impacted your behavior it impacted what you ate it impacted how you trained and
You can understand how if somebody says to themselves, I'm a wrestler, or they say, I'm a world-class wrestler, even that distinction ends up altering behaviors, altering self-perception, alters where you're vulnerable, right? Because now that identity, you could still be great, but if you fail to make the Olympic team, let's say, it could all come crashing down.
So you could be one of the 10 best people in your state, right? Everyone is terrified of you, but you didn't make the Olympic team. And since you told yourself that you're a world-class wrestler, now all of a sudden it's like, who am I? You know what I mean? It all comes crumbling down. So you have to be so careful.
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Chapter 4: Why is having a definite purpose crucial for driven individuals?
Because now if somebody says you're a moron, then you go, in what way? Tell me, because now you're gonna pull the scales away from my eyes and I'm gonna learn it, right? Because I value myself for that. And you repeat it enough, because the idea behind repetition is to make it an easier thought for your brain to think. Your brain is extraordinarily stingy with calories.
You have this three-pound thing that burns 20% or 25% of your calories. Now, the reason you lose muscle mass if you don't use it is your body's like, I can't carry anything that is metabolically expensive. So we have this insane ability to gain and lose muscle. Because if you gain muscle, you better need it because you have to feed it.
So if you don't need it, boom, the body's going to get rid of it. So if your brain is that calorically active, you've got to imagine your brain is looking for ways to optimize thinking, to actually make it calorically less expensive. And so what it does is it creates these default mode networks. Neurons that fire together, wire together. They wrap them with a myelin sheath.
It makes it more efficient for the energy to travel, right? The electrical and chemical signals. So it just takes less energy. But the problem is that now you get into these hardwired patterns. but you can use that to your advantage. So I'm going to repeat shit that make me feel the way I want to feel pumped up, hyped up, whatever. I repeat that. Now it gets easier to feel that.
This is exactly why visualization works. It gets easier to feel that way. And now I've repeated to myself enough. I'm the learner that when somebody says you're a moron and I get that sting of, Oh God, that sucks. I can immediately shift my neurochemistry, right? You're having a biological experience and, All of life is about feeling good about yourself when you buy yourself. That's it.
That's the punchline. All the money in the world, not going to help you. You want to feel good about yourself when you buy yourself. So I tell myself I'm the learner enough and I hype it up with like feel good chemicals. I do that over and over and over and over and over. Now, when somebody tells me I'm a moron, it's readily available. I go, aha. but I'm okay with that because I'm the learner.
And then my brain goes, you've actually done the work. You even just saying that, like I have the chills right now, just saying that I'm the learner gives me the chills, makes me feel good. I'm like, yeah. And it's got all this baggage, right? This is a key part of why identity is so powerful. is you've loaded it with all this baggage, hopefully positive baggage.
But when I say I'm the learner, I'm like, what comes with that to me is all the people that laughed at me 20 years ago. And then I blew past them in business. And then I blew past them financially. And then I blew past them on the social scene. It's like, I knew at that moment, this is a long game.
And if I just don't quit, all the people that are way ahead of me now, I'm gonna be looking at them in my rear view mirror. So having proven that to myself, hits me, right? When I say, ah, but I'm the learner. And on a long enough timeline, I can beat anybody at anything. And the weight of my life and the number of times I've told myself that and all that just comes flooding on me.
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Chapter 5: How can you view resistance as a sign of being on the right path?
I'm a world-class wrestler. I'm a husband. I'm a father. All those identities are great, and they're useful in certain situations, but all those identities, you have the ability to destroy you at the same time. If my identity is I'm a father or I am a husband and then we get divorced, what happens?
If my identity is I'm a wrestler and then my career ends, my identity and I rip both biceps, what happens? Everything falls apart really quick. He said the powerful thing about being coachable or being the learner is anti-frazzled. You cannot break that. Someone comes to you and tells you you're dumb, it doesn't matter because you're a learner.
You start a business that fails, it doesn't matter because you're a learner. It fixes you, it saves you, it gives you the ability to move forward. I believe it is the ideal, it is the perfect, the most important identity for those who are driven. So it is the learner, okay? The learner has faith in progress, effort, and adaptability.
There's belief in growth through effort, belief in feedback over failure, belief in resilience over perfectionism, okay? And it's empowering strategies that pursues growth, relentless by embarking discomfort, curiosity, and feedback.
So what I want you guys to do right now, now that we know that you have your default drifter version identity, now I want you guys to create and write down the opposite side, which is your driven identity. So everyone got your pad of paper? Right here, we're going to write down that you are the learner. I want this to become your guys' new identity. Now, this obviously has to be your own choice.
If you don't want it to be, you don't have to, okay? But here, Tom talked about this. It wasn't just like, I'm the learner. He made it emotional. He made it real, okay? Repetition, authority, energy, over and over and over again until you saw him in the mirror. He's telling me about these things. He's like, I got chills. I'm freaking out because I'm the learner.
That's the kind of thing that has to be driven over and over and over again. Okay? That's what we talked about before. Like the way you create any kind of hypnotic rhythm is through authority, repetition, and emotion. So I am here as your authority figure right now. If it doesn't work for me, find someone else you trust and have them tell you that you have the ability to be the learner. Okay?
Anything you guys want to learn to understand, you can do it, especially in today's world. All of you are smart enough. All of you guys are good enough. Okay? You can learn anything. If you want to learn how to make a million dollars, you can do it. If you want to learn how to make a hundred million, you can do it. If you want to learn how to make a billion, you can do it.
If you want to learn how to lose weight, you can do it. Whatever it is you want to figure out how to do, you can do it. If you will just set that goal, you have the path and you have the ability. Okay? So I've given you the authority. You've heard it from me directly to you each individually. Number two now is repetition. You've got to believe that and say it over and over.
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Chapter 6: What are the essential rules and standards to maintain motivation?
I'm not going to be broken by this. I'm not going to be hurt by this because I'm a learner. It's okay. You have that space, right? And now it builds a new pattern. And this starts becoming a new pattern. Now, first, it'll be painful because you're used to going from here over and over and over again. But as you get better at stopping and in that space, say, nope, I'm okay because I'm a learner.
And you keep doing that. Eventually, this will become the new pathway. This will become the new hypnotic rhythm. You'll move forward in faith as opposed to fear every time the trigger hits. Okay? All right, so how many guys feel good about your new driven identity as the learner? Yeah. Okay.
Like I said, being a coach or being a learner, like for me, that literally transformed my entire life when I was given that one gift. And hopefully you guys will take that and turn it into your own identity because if you can, it will free you. Okay. So we talked about body. We talked about ego. Obviously the body sides and then the ego sides, not enough.
I can't remember where we brought this slide back. I can't remember. All right. So there's spirit and instinctive mind. So that's what I want to go deep on, on the fear side. Now we're going to transition over here to the faith side. This is your conscious mind. And again, in my analogy, the conscious mind, you've got two monkeys. You've got emotional monkey and you've got logical monkey.
So now we're going to go and start diving into faith. So with faith, the very first key we talked about is figuring out our identity. The identity of the driven. which is a learner. Okay, number two, we're talking about, now I want to go into values.
Okay, before we set the goal, before we figure out definite purpose, before we do all those things, next thing I want to figure out is what do we actually value? And this is something, I did this exercise two or three years ago here at Mastermind Paradise. You may have done this with me before. I've done it a couple times with my kids as well. But this is one that's really valuable.
First off, it's valuable for you to start understanding, like, what does your subconscious mind actually desire? What do you actually look forward to? Like, what are the things that you value the most? Um, prior to me doing this exercise, I'd never thought about it. I never thought about it. I knew I valued certain things, but I never really knew what those things were. And this is exercise.
One of my friends, his name is Tal Tuspany. He's the head of the Ayn Rand foundation.
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Chapter 7: How does belief impact your journey towards success?
And he wrote a whole book about being happy. And the whole core thing that he talked about initially is like, you have to realize and understand what you value, figure out what you actually value. Then you can start pursuing those values and true happiness comes from the pursuit of your values. And so what we're going to do right now is we're going to do another exercise.
You guys all have your little sticky notes in front of you. Okay, sticky note exercise. Oh, will someone throw me a pack of sticky notes? I don't have one. Oh, boom, got it. Thank you. Look at that catch, my gimpy arms. Like, come on now. Give me a round of applause. Just kidding. Okay, so what we're going to do is sticky notes.
You're going to have these, and I would take your piece of paper and flip it over, do another piece of paper, whatever, I don't really care. But what we're going to do is we're going to take three minutes, and in the three minutes, I want you guys to write down, what are all the things that make you really, really, really, really happy? Okay, and the more you can write down, the better.
So if you're happy, like, old books makes you happy, and that's me. I'm like, old books make me happy. My wife, Colette, makes me happy. My kids make me happy. I've got... I like superhero movies make me happy. Like everything you can think of that makes you happy. I love going to church. I love reading about Napoleon Hill. I love, again, as many as you can do as fast as you can in three minutes.
Each one, a new thing that you love that brings you happiness and joy that fires you up. If you could just do that, you'd be pumped. The more you can get done, the better. Hopefully you can get these 20, 30, 40 done in the next three minutes. Ready, set, and go. Okay, way to wrap this up. So this is what we call your value galaxy. These are all the things that you value, okay?
But obviously for a lot of you guys, some of you guys more than others, there's a whole bunch of stuff, right? So next phase in this, now you have all the values written down. The next phase is to go and create what we call value themes. And what you're looking for is you're looking for five or six, because what's gonna happen is like, okay, all these ones right here, let's say,
Bunch of these are about my family. So you can draw a circle on your team and all your family ones you put there inside the family one. These ones are about health and then put all your health ones. And then these are about my work or my mission, the things that I'm doing. And these are about old books or faith or whatever.
And so go and create five or six value themes and then take the sticky notes that fit in those themes together and kind of plug them in. So all your things that make you happy should fit somewhere inside of a value theme. This is going to help us to shine a light on the things that your subconscious machine inside of your head loves and craves. Let's give you a minute to make your value themes.
The first time this exercise was really fun for me because I was like having fun thinking about all the things that made me so happy.
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Chapter 8: What are the six human needs that influence our behavior?
And I started moving them in. I started seeing these patterns, right? Like, oh my gosh, for me, it was like my family was a huge value that I had, right? Like half my things were all tied to my family. And then my mission, what I'm doing in my work was like a big part of it. Like old books was part of it. My religion, my faith was part of it.
My friends, like, and so it started like becoming these different themes, right? Yeah. Um, I remember the very first time I did this, I took my kids, we were on a spring break and we did the very first time and how our kids do this. It was crazy. Cause like, I've known my kids ever since they were born their whole lives. And as they did this, um, and they started doing it, it was weird.
It's fascinating to see like what things they actually were really important. And I had no idea. I was like, I didn't even realize that that was that important. Like you get like one of our sons, he was doing weird things. I'm like, these are like, he's so, I don't understand him. And then when we did this exercise, it was like, oh, cause he values like his individual out.
Like he wanted to be individual, like dress different and do things different. I was like, oh, that made, I never saw that before until we saw it here inside of his, his galaxies. It was really cool to be, or sorry, inside of his themes. And so it's really cool exercise for you to figure out really quickly where you, your family, coworkers, like the things that people value the most, right?
What you value the most. Okay. Now I and Rand who wrote Alice shrugged, She said that value is that which one acts to gain or to keep, okay? So this is in my family. It's like I'm either trying to gain a family or I'm trying to keep my family. I value it that much. I'm either trying to get it because I value it or I'm trying to keep it, okay?
And she also said that happiness is the state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values, right? Going after your values, like the pursuit of these is the thing that actually makes true happiness throughout your life. Okay, so pursuing the things you value most.
If you know these are the things that make me the happiest when you think about it, the pursuit of those is what makes you the happiest, right? And some people are not pursuing their values or they're against their values. They're doing things. We're going to talk when we get to the six human needs in a while.
You'll find that there are things you are doing that you will give up your values for different needs. And it's really fascinating how quickly people will return away from their values. The values are the things that bring the most happiness. And so it's important to have this as a guide. This is what I'm shooting towards, okay? Um, and, um, we start setting goals.
There's different levels of goal setting, right? For me, the very first, like if, again, I'm not a football player, but if you're a football player, right. And you get together the very first thing you, like the first goal you were setting is you were trying to figure out what is the hall of fame? What is the, the thing like I want to be known for someday, right? What is my legacy?
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