Best Of: How to Evaluate Opportunities

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the Brendon show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, live, sometimes online to tens of thousands of people or live on stage where I was speaking.

On some stages across the world.

Or these might be some of my monthly training programs and highlights of those that I do every single month with our monthly students. So I know you're gonna really enjoy these because these are a little bit more of a deep dive look at some of my training as a personal and professional development trainer. You know, I focus so much on helping you find that deeper level of motivation and start practicing some of those high performance habits while, well, you hear me talk about many of those concepts in these special episodes here. These are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here on the Brendon show. So I hope you enjoyed them. Please note that as you hear me speak in many of these, you'll hear me reference something because sometimes I'll have been training live or on video or on stage or through a broadcast. So you might not be able to see something I'm suggesting or motioning to or maybe even drawing out on a flip chart or motion towards on a presentation, but you'll get the gist of it. So make sure you bust out your journal. Take some good notes here because this is really valuable insights on the mindset or the strategy that you need to adopt in order to improve your life. And if you want to go and get more content like this, but much more deeper and have more of an interactive relationship with me in this type of training, make sure you join our high performance monthly training program. That's our monthly subscription program where I go live with you and our high performance students every single month and I train on a new topic or a new piece of research that we've created from the high performance institute and I train on that and then I do q and a and actual live coaching, interactive coaching with people every single month. That's called high performance monthly and you can access it at Brendan.com monthly. That's Brendon.com monthly, B-R-E-N--O-N.com monthly to get deeper dive training similar to this.

So if you like this, you would.

Love that training program. But without further ado, let's jump in right now to one of the brendon show's best of trainings.

How do I choose between things? I've got, you know, four or five dreams I want to Go to Which one do I go to first? Or, gosh, I have one dream I'm going after. But, you know, my family, my friends and my co workers, my team, they keep interrupting my charge. They keep asking me to do things for them. And I don't know when I should say no or when I should proceed. Now, when I talk about opportunity, I'm talking about a pretty big broad definition of that word. Because at every given moment, we have choice. And when something intersects with us, we have an opportunity to either do it or to not do it. So when someone comes and asks you for something, that is an opportunity for you to stick to your own path. Or you're an opportunity to go over here, assist somebody else, come off of your path for a little while, serve them, help them, then come back to your path. So the ultimate question is, okay, given all these opportunities, because literally I think of a distraction, that's an opportunity. There's an opportunity that I could delay my dream. That is an opportunity that could derail me from my day's productivity. That is an opportunity for me to help somebody and advance somebody else's dream. But I look at everything, it's an opportunity, and I have to evaluate, do I do that and help them, or do I chase this dream or that dream? These are all things that we have to evaluate and choose. So I'm not going to pretend to.

Be here and tell you all the.

Answers to the things that you could or could not do in your life. But what I hope is you learn three new frameworks that anytime you have a kind of a tough decision that comes up and you're not sure exactly what to do, that just have a look at one of these frameworks. There's three different ones, and none of them is one better than the other. They're just different ways of looking opportunities that come up in your life. This first framework, framework number one, is sort of a reaction framework. That is lots of people are going to come to you and say, hey, you know, Brendan, I need something from you here. I got an emergency going on here, could you help me out? That's probably the most I face in my life, right? And so what ends up happening is people come in and they ask me to get involved in their projects. Brendan, I got this idea could really help you, but I need your support over here. And now I've got a tough decision to make, right? Because the people in your life, they need something from you. Now the question is, should you do it? Should you allow it? Should you support it here's my personal beliefs when someone suddenly comes to me with a major need or issue or concern or even a good thing. Brendan, could you support my cause? Or Brendan, could you help me with this project? Almost always I say no. Not only because now I get approached by a couple million people a week to do this kind of stuff, but also because I have my own plan. And I feel in sticking to that, I'm serving my highest good and my highest calling and gifts. And so most of the things I say no to, I just want to give you a way to think about it and to justify it in your own life. So a real need, again, there's a real action that needs to happen. There's a real deadline upon in which if it does not happen, that there are consequences. Ownership is. What is my level of ownership in that? Another word I might use here for you is your level of responsibility. Like, in other words, is this your problem or is it someone else's problem? Okay, is this your problem? Are you responsible for it? Do you have ownership in it or is it not? If I don't have any ownership in it, it's not my deal, it's not my issue, it's not my responsibility, and there's not a real need. I will always pass. I'm going to say no. I'm sorry, I can't help you with that. It's not on my plate, not something I plan for. Doesn't sound like a really big deal. I know it's a big deal to you, but I can't support it. Now, I might be artful in that reply. I might not say it like I'm saying it to you, but I'm teaching you here versus trying to give you a complete script. But I think you catch it, right? So now I got to think about the next box. What if I don't have any ownership, but it is a real need for them? It is something that they, you know, they actually do have to have and it's important for them and it makes a difference. There's consequences if we don't do it. But my ownership level is low. I'm also going to pass. Now this is where it gets difficult and we make tough choices in our lives. People hate when I say this to them. They're like, but it's important to them. How could you not help them? It's not my deal. It wasn't my responsibility. Yes, I know it's important to them now, but it's not my deal. And this is where it gets really upsetting for People, but this is how people who achieve a lot in their life. You want to accelerate your achievements, you have to stop helping everybody who has some random sudden emergency. Now, to be generous, here's what I would say. If you cannot pass, if your values or your relationship with that person says I cannot pass on this person, then here's what I encourage you do. Support and schedule. That means you say to them, okay, this does sound like something that's really important to you. Let me share with this with you. I can't carry the football on this one. Like this is your problem. You've been carrying the problem. You got a quarterback. The problem I can support. What thing can I give you? I'm really busy. If you could get one thing from me to help you with this, I can only give you one thing and I only have about 20 minutes or an hour to help you with this. What would you need from me? Let me say that again. I want you to really understand how.

To work with people in a different.

Way from now on. I tell them, look, I can't do it for you, but I do want to be able to help you because I see this is very important to you. So I only have about 20 minutes today and that's all I can help you with because this whole week is.

Already booked for me.

So please share with me. If I could do anything for you for 20 minutes, what would help you the most? It's putting the ball back in their court, saying, look, you're going to have to solve this thing yourself. But I have a little bit amount of time that I can help you with. But notice I'm telling them a specific time I can help them with. I got 20 minutes today, I got an hour today. I can help you one hour this week at some point, but I'm dictating the terms. And why do I do that? Because I look at my schedule, I go, look, I'm busy. I can't squeeze your sudden request in. Just because somebody asked you for something or you're asking me doesn't mean I'm going to drop everything. I'm a person of purpose. My schedule has been booked out for months. I'm on target, man. I can't respond to everybody else. Now, I know this sounds really hard. If you're totally a placater, you probably hate me right now. But I can also share with you this is how I've helped so many of my clients break free from a life of reaction and take their life back. So I want you to listen to the Ideas, even if they sound difficult for you. Because part of your next evolution in life and next stage of achievement is saying no more often to the random requests of life. Okay? So most often I'm a no on both of these unless I feel like I need to support them because there's a real connection there or a responsibility there in the relationship, then I say, okay, I can support you, not do it for you, but let me schedule it. And I only have this much time. I can't tell you how many hours of your life that will get back. I know this is tough. This really freaks people out. But I want you to say no more. I want you to pass more. And you'll start to find you get more momentum towards your own mission and your own service. Next Impact Builder is super simple. It's okay, we've got an idea and it's either going to have high impact in our life or low impact. It's either going to have. It's going to take a low amount of time and effort to achieve it, or it's going to take lots of time and effort to achieve it. So let's think through this. If we have an idea and we really evaluate and say, is this going to have a lot of impact in my life? And we say, it's not going to have a lot of impact, but it's going to take just a little bit of time, should I do it or not? This box is where most people sort of give away their life. They're like, it won't take that much time. I can do it. Yeah, you know, I could do that. It won't take that much time, but it also doesn't have much impact. This to me is another pass. It's a no. I look at it and go, yeah, yes. Is it simple and fast? Yes. It's low time and effort, but it also doesn't make any impact. Just because I could do it and I could do it easily doesn't mean I should do it. I evaluate everything. I say, is it going to make an impact? And the major things that are important to me and the major things that are important for me personally are, you know, my personal lifestyle and sanity and my career and my family and friends and never necessarily in that particular order, but those things are important to me. As you'll learn in this next framework, I'll help you figure out other ways to figure out impact for yourself, but basically, little time and effort, no impact. I'm not going to do it. And I think the best way thing you can do Is look at your day and say, am I doing a lot of little things that are easy to do but they're having no ultimate impact and you should probably stop doing those activities. I tell everyone everyone should do a full activity assessment once a month. Sit down on the last day of the month and say, okay, what did I do this month? How much of that was completely random, useless, no impact stuff? I gotta start saying no more to that stuff. Cause I need to move forward faster next month and you'll catch yourself going into hyper speed in your actual results. This stuff is like where, yeah, you could read a stupid magazine. Takes little time, little effort, makes no impact in your life. You don't pick up the magazines anymore, swallow. Now you're going to start making different choices for yourself. And that's what this is about, choices. Now what if we have something that's going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort but no impact? Well, hopefully by now you know that's a very simple pass. That's no, it's going to take a lot of time and effort. Give no impact. That's a simple, straightforward. No. The real challenges come up here on this quadrant is okay, it's not going to take a lot of time, but it's going to take. But it's going to give me a lot of impact. That is a this week, that is a do it look, lots of impact, little time and effort. Let's knock that off this week. This week. Let's get it done. It's not going to take a lot of time and effort. Let's get it done right. But if it's high impact and it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort, that is where we need to schedule it and that is where we're going to try to move it forward very quickly. Either we're going to try to complete it within 90 days or faster or we're just going to schedule it out and think about it in terms of 90 day blocks. I like to tell people, you know, the easiest measure of unit for all of us in our productivity is our month, right? Is one single month, right? A day. You can lose a couple days to distraction. A lot of people do. But I also like to share with you like you know, a week can go by, but you know, a whole month, you can accomplish a lot in a month. So what I like to do, if you have a long term big project, bust it down, draw yourself 12 boxes on a page and say, okay, what's going to those 12 boxes each represent one month of the year. You can say, okay, what's going to happen this month, this month, this month, this month and this month? And those 12 boxes laid out can give you guidance to what must be completed over a period of time. There's very few things in your lifetime that you might want to accomplish that you cannot do within several months or a year. Look, just to give you an idea, we went to the moon in under a decade, okay? The moon, outer space. We invented alloys, we invented minerals, we invented new things that had never even been thought of before. And. And we went to space and we came back in under a decade. So please don't give me this. You don't understand. My goals are bigger than yours. Brendan, it's going to take me a couple decades. No, I understand you don't know how to get stuff done. I understand you don't know how to get rid of distraction. Do not tell me you have things that are going to take that many years, because most often it doesn't take many years. What? It takes as many years for someone to decide to get serious. That's the difference. Most people aren't really committed to achieving what they want to achieve. It's an interest, not a commitment. Their interest is, you know, I'd like to do this someday. And someday, as you know, very rarely ever comes, it ain't going to happen. So we have to say instead, okay, what am I commit? Like, it's not until you really commit to something do you realize how much momentum you can get. Fast to give you an idea, Every major book that I have launched, every major book that I've worked on, every major project that I work on for major companies, major organizations, major celebrities. These were all projects that happened in weeks, not years and years and years and years. Now, if you are a major organizational leader, if you're a Fortune 500 company, well, that's cool, you might have an initiative that could take a year, two, three years out. You could have a total turnaround. And you have to be honest with it. If you're turning around Hewlett Packard, that is a five year journey. There's no question about it. But remember, that's dealing with hundreds of thousands of employees and billions of dollars. You and me, in most of our daily dreams and our daily goals and daily lives, we're not dealing with that kind of complexity. The reality is, what we're dealing with is a too much distraction and not enough commitment. You could achieve the remarkable in the next couple months if you decided to. And that's what I'm trying to encourage you to do. When I say schedule it, try and create a 90 day deadline for yourself or 90 day blocks of time in which you're just crushing it towards this thing. Remember, it's going to have a lot of impact. Yeah, it might take some time and effort, but schedule it out. Put it on the calendar. Can I see? On your daily calendar we're moving towards this. Your daily calendar. Not once in a while on your daily calendar am I moving towards your high impact thing or not? If I'm not, you're in a lot of trouble. Let me say that again. On a daily basis I should see something in your calendar that says you're moving towards this in some way or another, you're taking some kind of step or you've set it up as a project where you're knocking off tasks. Moving towards this. Slow but steady. If it's not on your daily calendar, it's not real. If it's not on your daily calendar, it's going to be a dead dream real fast. Because you know what sweeps away dreams faster than anything else? Easy distractions. Suddenly a day goes by, week goes.

By, a month goes by, a year.

Goes by and you didn't do anything towards it. So this is about getting real focused and committed. I hope that serves you. And again, just a different way of thinking. You don't have to adopt this way of thinking. I'm just trying to give you a different ideas here. Next. This is the most important one. I'm not going to do anything that I don't find advances or lights up my personal development pd. Personal development. Some other people like to replace this word with passion. Some other people like to call it professional development. Some people love to call it psychic development, whatever you want to call it. I like to. I just call it personal development. Meaning I won't do any of this unless I believe that my growth, my personal development is going to be positively impacted by doing it. Meaning I say no to almost everything that I don't say. That seems like a passion to me. That seems like that would bring up intrinsic reward. I would have joy and pride and meaning and fulfillment and satisfaction from doing that thing. If I don't feel like I'm going to get satisfaction from doing that thing, I don't do it. Now let me really qualify this. If I put in time, energy, resource money and sanity and even if I'm going to get more than I put in and I can see it's going to impact me over the Long term. But I don't think it's going to be personally meaningful to me. The answer is no, because I don't know how you feel about it, but I think a lot of the world has compromised their soul by saying yes because they only considered this part of the equation. They only said, am I going to get something out of it and is it good for my future? Sure, I'll do it. And they bartered away their soul, they gave away their mental health, because this is what to me, without PD on here, this to me is just selling out. That's what it is to me. And a lot of people stop here. They're saying yes to things that really they should probably say no to because they see extrinsically they're going to get some kind of reward. They're like, I'm going to make some money. I'll get status, money, power, fame. And yet they stole away from their own psychological health and joy because they just wanted an external reward. So for me, this equation is absolutely necessary. We can't stop it here. We got to keep going. And then the other one, frankly, that most people just. I don't know why they don't focus on this as much. Maybe I'm weird, but I focus on this one. L. This to me means lifestyle, right? The lifestyle that is important to me, my family, those who I love. Lifestyle also doesn't just mean money, by the way. Money could be ROI or roll Future value. Lifestyle means for me, the experience I have with my family, my friends, my wife, the people who I care for. Lifestyle means do I have time for hanging out with my wife? Not just do I have a fancy house? Lifestyle means, is the relationship between me and my friends as deep as I want it? Lifestyle means do I have the ability to take a free day when I want a free day? Lifestyle means can I make the choices that are appropriate for my physical health? Right? Lifestyle health for me, do I have. If I say yes to this new opportunity, but it's going to wreck me. It's going to take all of my time and energy in such a way that it's going to destroy my physical lifestyle, my health. The answer is a no. So this is my kind of big equation for almost everything. I don't think I've had an opportunity that's come to me in several years that I didn't take through this. And this is almost my sole indicator. Those first two frameworks I showed you, they're very philosophical almost. This is very practical. Our intuition is generally pretty close about what to do. It's that we often don't listen to our intuition because we believe we have obligation somewhere else. But I think it's time and part of enlightenment is really questioning where our obligations are. Because most people feel. They feel like they're obligated to everything. Like you feel you're obligated to get through your inbox every single day. That's not a real obligation. That's a decision that you're making to say, I should get through my inbox. You're not really obligated to get through your inbox every day. It just feels like that from the world. Right, because the world's pushing pressure on you. But that's not a true obligation. So I think that people need to reevaluate a lot of their obligations. Say, is that a real obligation? And they need to come back to their intuition and say, does this opportunity really feel like I'm going to draw a lot from it over the long term? It's going to bring me intrinsic joy and meaning, satisfaction, fulfillment, aliveness. Is it going to improve my lifestyle? And if not, I don't think it's an opportunity I need to really focus on in my life right now. I'm going to table it, put it on a back burner, or say no again. You know my philosophy. Almost everything I say no to, if it's not towards the purpose that I've designed for my life, it's not that my purpose hasn't changed as I've gotten older, and I'm sure my purpose will change many times throughout my life. But overall, it's very similar. I know what I want to do with my life. I want to continue writing books and shooting courses for you. I want to continue helping other people share their own voice, their own mission. I want to teach the world to find and access that part of themselves that feels fully charged, enthusiastic, energetic, engaged. So all the opportunities that come to me that steal away from that, I say no to. I've turned down major television shows for seven years now. Seven years, because the major television show would have required daily work from me, daily production, daily showing up to a sound studio. And I thought, I don't want to do that on a daily basis because I need my days more free to experience the world, to serve my clients, to write, to create, to wander around. I don't think so. I can't be stuck behind a desk, even if it has a fancy microphone, a nice cup, and a video for me. I've said no to a lot of major opportunities by using the same thing I thought, you know, it's not going to be that much expensive to me, but gosh, it'll take a lot of sanity. I'll say no. But if I can see it's going to help me in these ways, I'll almost always say yes if these things are high enough. So I hope that gives you just new ways to think about the opportunities in your life. I know for some of you you might like, gosh, I wish you'd just tell me, should I do A or B? That's not what this is about. This is about giving you different ways to think about your opportunities. But it all comes down to the same thing. Stay focused towards being yourself and achieving your dreams. That is what personal freedom feels like and is all about. If you'll do that over and over and over again with enough consistency, enough force and enough will, you'll start realizing you're good at getting rid of distraction, you're good at staying on path and you start achieving more good in the world. Which is why we are all here. I hope this has supported you in thinking some new ways about evaluating your next few opportunities or the next few requests and needs other people have, or the next new big things that come into your life. Go out there every single day of your life. Stay focused on achieving your goals, your dreams, your highest self. And as always, every single day, live fully, love openly and go make a difference today.

All right my friend, I hope that you enjoy enjoyed that best of episode. Was that inspiring?

Were you fired up?

Did you love it? If you did, make sure you do me a favor, go out on social media somewhere and share that episode. You know, just go out, post it somewhere, post yourself listening to it. Make sure you hashtag the Brendon show because when you do that I can look you up and we can find you on Instagram and post that on the social media. And sometimes we do all expense paid trips to people we find. We just randomly select people, we send them gifts, autograph books, swag T shirts, all expense paid trips to some of my seminars. So make sure you let us know, share what you thought about this episode out there on the social media worlds and then we can find you and celebrate you. And also I would love to invite you to join us in our high performance monthly program. So just go to brendan.com monthly, that's brendon.com monthly. That's where we do deeper dive trainings like you just heard. But we do that every single month and there's some live Q&A there. And I do some giveaways and we give students in that monthly program tickets to my seminars and some extra special training on leadership. So make sure you check it out@brendon.com monthly. I appreciate you being part of this community of so many people dedicated to finding that deeper drive of motivation and practicing high performance habits so that they can become extraordinary in their careers. In your personal life, in your health, you can live an extraordinary quality of life. And sometimes you just need a little bit more training and a little bit more nudge, a little more energy, a little bit more drive and consistency. And I'm hoping that being part of this community with the Brendon show, I'm providing that to you in some way. So thank you, my friend, for listening. I look forward to seeing you or listening with you on the next episode of the B R E N D O N show.

Sam.