Behaviors That Keep us from Our Goals
18 Jun 2021 · 24 min
Brendon Burchard identifies judgment, short-term thinking, and lack of forgiveness as the main behaviors blocking your goals. He argues that clarity about what you want and forgiving yourself are essential to reach high performance and emotional freedom.
Hello my friends. I'm Brendon Burchard, host of the Brendon show and founder of growthday.com and I'm honored to be your high performance coach today. I believe that every day we can be inspired. We can live with intention and purpose. We can bring the joy and honor the struggles of each day to push ourselves to grow, to serve, to be a role model, to lead extraordinary lives. I believe that every day is a.
Great day to grow.
That's why I started my company, growthday.com it's an online personal growth platform where you can get me and the world's best personal development teachers live coaching you every week, sharing our wisdom, keeping you motivated and accountable, encouraging you to find the aliveness and the connection and meaning of life that we're all after. If you're not a member yet, please go sign up@growthday.com and join our huge worldwide community of achievers. For less than a dollar a day, you get the world's best teachers live every week. And look, you've probably known for a long time that you needed some expert guidance and inspired community and life changing tools. So please, your breakthrough awaits you@growthday.com now let's get to today's episode. My friends, please listen closely. Maybe you take some notes so you remember these insights of personal growth and share this episode with three of your.
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Now let's begin. Judgment. You make judgments all the time and you can't help it. Immediate bias. Immediate judgment, immediate framing. Immediate good, bad. Right now, Later. Healthy. Not healthy. Safe. Unsafe. We have these immediate judgments that drive our life. Right. Move towards, move away from right approach, avoid. It's literally built within us that we make immediate spontaneous judgments. That was to protect us. That was part of that evolutionary impulse to make sure we survive. The issue is we have a bunch of judgmental brats running around the world causing havoc, spreading hate, spreading darkness. Because it's also really fun to demonstrate and portray and to publicize our judgments, right? How fun is it to go on and comment? Well, that's a stupid video. Hate your shirt. You suck. You're fat. You don't know anything. Who do you think you are? And we as a society now have become little, you know, thumb warriors, passing our judgment in comment sections all the time. Da da da da da da da. And what's happened is many people, these two things have come together to create an incredibly negative society and a negative, unhealthy life. Right? I know that's not in this community, but I know in this committee, how many of you guys know this to be true, that a lot of people judge you. The more you go for it, a lot of people judge you. The more you take a risk that they don't understand, the more people judge you when you shun this and you move towards that, right. It's difficult to be a frontrunner. It's hard to be the high performer. It's hard to be the person who raised their hand and says, I want more, I'm ready to go for it. I'd like to help more. Because people judge that. They think, well, who do you think you are? And enough people tell you, who do you think you are? Guess what you do. You shut down and you start making short term goals. Many of you grew up in incredibly critical and negative environments. And here I am to tell you, after coaching people for this many years, I have learned and seen that if there was a pattern in your youth where he was always critical, always judgmental and negative over and over and over and over again, you tend to develop an overvalued system for stability and self protection. And so what you end up doing because you think, oh well, something's wrong with me, you don't seek to build team, oh well, every time I want to do something, I get judged. You stop pursuing things that are fulfilling because you're hurt all the time. You start taking those simple pleasures to make yourself better, feel better, and you compromise your health. But I have worked with so many people who have incredibly unhealthy habits today because they never realized that they developed short term valuation strategies to protect themselves from judgment that hit them in their youth. So today they keep making short term decisions for themselves and they don't know why. It's like, I don't know why, Brenda. I can't seem to plan for the long term because you were hurt so much when you were younger. You started being protective in the short term and stopped thinking long term that you stopped thinking that you were even worth it. So why pursue things that would make you feel really happy? You don't deserve happiness because this person told you you're crap. This stuff is real and it happens for people over and over and over. I grew up in a Town where for me like even just at its physical safety level, like I grew up in a very, very anger fueled, aggressive town and city. There was a time of my dad's life when he was very, very, very strong because he was a military guy, right? Like he was a marine and so very short discipline. And it just makes you on your edge, right? And guess what? When you're on your edge to protect yourself all the time from your neighbors, the community, people around you, when you're on your edge all the time, what are you doing? You're like this short term and some people don't know, they never taken the blinders off. Like you're safe now but you're still thinking short term when you're trying to protect yourself. Make sense? A lot of people have that. They have safety now, they really do. They got great spouses, great partners, good paycheck, life is good. But they're still completely unhappy because everything is short term protection. And they don't realize those blinders for short term were put on when they were younger. And so what I have to do is bring that to your awareness to say if you've always been a short term thinker, does that stem from you protecting yourself? And that might be a good place to explore, a good place to do some personal development, a good place to talk with your coach or with your therapist about to go. Like huh, I've always been a short term thinker. Why is that? And I've just noticed that correlation personally working with really top performers who started making bad decisions in the short term. I worked with an Olympian who everyone knew was going to win the Olympics four years later and instead they completely self destruct for three years and they couldn't figure it out. Why couldn't they have a four year view? All they had to do is look for four years out and, and have gold medal. Instead they destroyed themselves because all they've ever been doing was protecting themselves. And when all you're doing is protecting yourselves, you can't see four years from now you're trying to get through this week, man, this day, this hour make sense. Something to explore about your unconscious. I think the other element about it is we've gotten so practiced at passing judgment to other people that we have hurt relationships. You know, I think that's something that we're just, we've lost patience as a society because everything's so quick serve that our relationships have become quickly judged. And if you keep overly judging things in the short term, sometimes to protect yourself or sometimes because you have a bias. But it's that judgment that we have that tends to really hurt key relationships and, and that compromises our long term growth, fulfillment, happiness. And so all these things obviously have a dynamic that they play together. And I also have to say that sometimes it's easy to judge somebody on the short term, but what we do is we hold judgment for the long term. And when judgment is held for the long term, it always becomes like that whole relationship, that whole person, that whole thinking becomes spoiled. Like fruit left out for too long. That's what judgment is. Judgment is like that piece of fruit that's been left out so long that now it becomes poisonous. You see what I'm saying? And some of you are holding onto a judgment about somebody that happened three years ago, some people 30 years ago, you're still upset about that, that that still causes you to go into impulse control problems. Let me give you an example. Like sometimes people have judgment like something happened to them 10 years ago, and what happened to them 10 years ago is still controlling the day to day, even though that person isn't in their life. That situation is 10 years old. But they held onto the judgment about themselves and about that situation being unfair or unsafe. And so because I feel this way at that time, it's unfair and unsafe. Then guess what? I'm angry or I'm scared, or I'm unworthy. And the judgment of self perpetuated from a situation 10 years ago. And this is why some people never hit high performance. I know that sounds so weird to bring in because it feels like we're in a therapeutic conversation. I'm not a therapist. I've studied psychology for 20 years of my life. I've trained therapists in coaching situations. But I am not a therapist. And what I do understand from the work though, is that so often our old judgments slow down our speed today slow down our happiness, our joy, our abilities, our capabilities, our freedom. Some people are still caged from something that happened 10 years ago because they have not yet gotten the support they might need to overcome that judgment. That judgment against that person, that situation and themselves. Because it's always three levels deep, isn't it? It's always three things. We judge a situation, we judge the people in it, and we judge ourselves within it. And what people don't realize is often when all three of those judgments are negative somewhere in the past, I'm bad, they're bad, that situation was bad. And we don't have a long term mental strategy to overcome that. Then we go into short term Thinking again. And now we struggle to make good, healthy decisions for ourselves. And so what's the opposite of that? The opposite is what you guys probably could have guessed. It's forgiveness. It is the stuff of personal development, it is the stuff of psychology and therapy, but it is the stuff of spirituality too. And if we don't learn to let go or forgive ourselves or other people from past circumstances, then we are not free today. And when we are not free today, when we don't feel freedom today, we don't make long term decisions. It's just the way it is. The more caged somebody is naturally in any situation or conversation, the more protectionist and short term thinking they get. The more free you are, the more you're like, I mean, have you ever gone on vacation? Like back at home, you were tied to the computer 24 7, like just constantly, you're at the computer 24 7, you go on vacation, there's no computer for a day, and all of a sudden you're like, oh. And all of a sudden your mind starts flooding with thoughts about the next decade. You haven't thought about next month or the next decade for weeks or years. But you're on vacation and all of a sudden you're like looking for a piece of paper to write that big idea, or you set new goals, or you talk with your spouse about the future again, why you got a moment for your brain to breathe in freedom. And when you are in freedom, you are connected to the future. When you are trapped by old judgments, you are trapped in the short term. And so I think it's really important that if you haven't ever done the work to forgive the people in your life that need to be forgiven, not because they need to be forgiven, but because you deserve freedom. Do the work. I mean, like, well, how do I do it? Go buy some books on forgiveness. Go listen to some audiobooks on forgiveness. Go talk to your therapist, if you have one, if you don't have one. But if you know a major situation or person or event in the past is still troubling you significantly today in a way that affects your joy, your happiness, your ability to produce, get things done and move forward. Time to get a therapist. It's not intimidating, it's not scary. Type in your town, type in therapist. Schedule appointments with three of them. It's free. Usually they'll do a free first session. Go sit down with three of them, pick the one you like the best, go back to them the next week, go back to them the week after that, and Stay with them for a couple weeks or months. That's all you got to do. It's just like shopping and people like shopping. So go shop for a therapist. Go visit three. Choose the one you like. I put literally thousands of people in my life or our network into therapy because they thought, I don't need therapy. I'm like, are you moving as fast as you want to move? Is there things that upset you from the past that you still aren't over? Does sometimes you're going through the day and you get all pissed or angry or sad about something that happened years ago that you know you need to let go, then go get professional services to overcome that. You know, it's just like people. If you really want to get extremely fit, you'd go get a personal trainer. Well, if you want to get extremely mentally fit, you would go get a therapist or a coach. Right? And that's why many of you guys are here. So that you just every.
Every single month, they're like, oh, I'm.
Digging in my brain a little bit here.
I'm doing the work.
I'm checking it out. I don't make it easy, but I do really believe it's so worthwhile. Hey, it's Brendon and I want to.
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How do you prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed because of how many goals you want to take on in the future? Every dream has a deadline. It doesn't mean it has to have an accomplishment deadline. But there are tasks that you must do to move that forward. And, and here's what I'm gonna tell everybody over and over and over and over is you must, you must go to weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly goals. They need to be written out, they need to be clear. And you need to get really focused on helping them achieve that, to help you do that and to remind this community one more time of what you got. So a couple simple things. Number one, find somebody who's already achieved that dream and ask them to break it down into five parts.
Every one of you, I want you.
To always find a mentor or find somebody who's already achieved what you want to do and say, hey, if you could break it down into five moves to achieving that dream, what were the five moves you did? Don't ask them to tell you everything at all. Don't even ask them what their opinion is about what you should do. Say, break down for me the five major things you did to go there. Then you take those five major things and you put them up on your battle board or you write them in your annual plan or your monthly, weekly, quarterly and just work it backwards and kind of work plan those five needle moving activities. You all, this is the hardest thing to tell. Especially for those who have big dreams creatively or dreams that seem out of reach. You need to set these milestone dates. If you don't set them and also set up team around them, it'll just keep getting moved off and moved off and moved off. Do you know how many people in my community in the influencer world are like, brendan, I'm going to shoot a course. And it's like months and weeks or years go by to shoot a course. I'm like, you need two weekends, man. Why didn't you take two weekends? Well, you know, this was going on. I'm like, it's a course. Set the date, go do it. Because listen, if you don't set the date, you don't create the deadline. Netflix wins. You must control the calendar. So what I want you to do is project your life one year out. Project your life one year out. And what I'd love you to do is describe your ideal lifestyle in a year from now. Like, what would the ideal lifestyle be in a year from now, not 20 years from now or 50 years from now. I believe you can do that, but let's just start with a year out. What would be the ideal lifestyle? A year out. I want you to write that down, describe that. Who would be the ideal you A year out. So ideal lifestyle, ideal you. Okay, start with those two things. Just describe it. A year out. Okay, just one year from today. Then what I want you to do is take that and say, what is currently preventing me from having that? So make your what's preventing me list. Okay. What's stopping me from having that? Okay, here's the trick. What's stopping you from having that? That's a goal list. The goal is end those things stopping you from having that. Change them, switch them, change it up. That's the short term goal list. And when I say, here's just to be really clear, a short term goal list means that's a year to me. A long term goal list is a year or longer. Some people think long term is 90 days from now because they've been trapped over here their whole life. When you have freedom, you start thinking in 10 year segments. But for most people, they've never had that kind of freedom in their life. And I don't mean financial freedom, I mean mental, spiritual, emotional freedom done by the work of forgiveness and accelerated by having a good positive support network, good health and being clear about what matters each day. So let's work it backwards. Ideal lifestyle, ideal you. What would you have to stop doing? Or what's preventing you from getting there? Put that on list. Maybe just once a month you stop one of those things. Could be that simple. Once a month I'm going to stop or change one of these things. Second side of that goal list. What I want you to do is if it's project driven or creative or a mission, there's some kind of contribution, something you need to create. Then what I want you to do is go, okay, I need to bust this out. What would be the big moves? I need to do the four huge moves, like to get there. What would be the four biggest moves? I need to do four biggest moves. And then what I want you to do, take on one and Complete it each quarter, right? There's four quarters in the year. That's why I'm having you do four. Each one, boom. Take this one, take this one, take this one, take this one. Just break it up into quarters. Too many people try to live their life ruled by the day without realizing how much you can do in a three month segment. So what I want you to do is just take that big. Take the big goal, the big dream, the big thing, bust it down every quarter, complete a major move towards it. I'll give you an example. Right now I'm writing a book this quarter. Simple major move, finish book. Next quarter, simple major move. Edit book next quarter, simple major move. Work with publisher to get it all ready. Next quarter, simple major movement. Get the planning, the marketing and the launch all prepared and then book is released, launch happens, right? So that's how I kind of think through things. Just break it down by quarter. Many people think long term means 30 days from now. We need to get you more freedom so you can see a bigger future. But start with that.
Okay, my friend. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Brendon Show. Tell some people about this episode. It's on each of us to spread positivity and empowerment during these times of chaos and negativity, right? So I'm asking you to be the dealer of hope and personal growth and education in your tribe. So take a screenshot right now and share the screenshot and this link to this episode with three of your friends today. Post it on social media. Use the hashtag growthday. That's growthday, because that's the name of my company and we're always giving away prizes to our community. If you'd like to help me personally, then please rate and review the podcasts on Apple podcasts. Give us some stars, cheer us on, leave a review. Because believe it or not, that stuff.
Actually really does help.
And I read all of them. So my last thought for today, please remember you are stronger than you think and the future holds good things for you. Tomorrow can be an inspired day. Every new morning is a second chance.
Every day is a great day to grow.
We're thankful to have you here in the growth day community. So be sure to go deeper with us@growthday.com.
Sam.