Best Of: The Advanced Human Drives
29 Mar 2018 · 32 min
Brendon Burchard breaks down five human drives: change, creative expression, challenge, contribution, and consciousness. He walks through self-assessment questions and goal-setting exercises to help you evaluate where you stand and what to improve next.
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, 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 going to 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. 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 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 motioning 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 strategies 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 the high performance institute and I train on that and then I do q and a and actual live coaching and 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.
So these are the baseline drives. These over here are what we call the advanced advanced Human drops. As we go into this, I want to remind you, if you already knew this framework, that's cool. Your job today is to be doing the disciplined work of evaluating yourself in each of these areas, to see how you really do and, you know, notice where you're really at in each of these areas. This one's a big one. Okay. The first advanced drop. We call these the advanced human drives, because we don't necessarily need them as much. They could be absent from our life and we'd survive. We just wouldn't ultimately be thriving. Okay, this is a great example. Number six, change. Did you experience as much personal or professional change as you wanted to in 2017, and did you manage the changes of life? Well? Right. Change is always happening, but some people don't meet the change as their highest self. So they're bemoaning it, they're fighting it. They hate the change. They fight the struggle. And every change, they meet with moaning and complaining and negative energy. And other people meet change, they're like, this is awesome. Things are changing. I like this. But ultimately, it's your mindset, and it's up to you. So how you been? How did you do? How did you manage the changes of 2017? And there's two scores I like to get people think about is the changes that you wanted and the changes you didn't want. So let's do this yourself a favor. Score yourself on 1 to 10 in each of them. How well you handled it, Meaning, did you make enough? Did you make the changes you wanted to make in 20, 2017? Did you make the changes you wanted to make in 2017 and do that? Well, 1 to 10. 1. You didn't change anything. You wanted to, but you didn't. 10. Yeah, I knew what I want to change. I changed it. I saw it through. I stuck with it. Okay. One to ten. Okay. For me, I'm very, very, you know, I'm good. I felt like I did the changes I wanted to make happen in 2017, which is why I got scores here that I'm happy with that are higher than my 2016. Okay, and how about the changes you didn't want? How did you manage those on a scale of 1 to 10? 1. You sucked at managing change that you didn't want. 10. You did a great job at that. Where are you at there? I felt like maybe I did seven. And I would say seven because, yes, sometimes I was complaining. Yes, sometimes something would change, and I just. I didn't meet it well. Like when my laptop broke right before an event. And literally I'm going into a five day event. The laptop crashes, doesn't work, can't get it fixed. I had backed up a lot of things onto a backup drive, but because whatever happened with the computer, it corrupted the backup as well and I didn't have all of it in the cloud yet. So here I am at a five day event. Have to remake the entire curriculum for the five day event from scratch. Having to start so many new things all over. And I just like I would. I literally found myself going around the house like, just like cussing, being upset, fired up, acting like an adult baby so many times. And I knew it, I knew it. I was like, why am I being such a baby? Come on, remember, it's one of my critical questions of my life. And I urge high performers, I urge you to have this, to always ask, how would my highest self respond here? What would my highest self do? And I did that sometimes, but not always. So my average nine plus seven, my average right there, I'm going to call that my degree of change. I'm going to give myself like an eight. That's about the average between the two of them. All settled there. What's your number between these two? Averaged out. Dealing with change, the human drive is to change. It is to grow, it is to develop, it is to build, it is to expand. Because that's the impulse that God and the universe gave us. Whatever you believe in, universe is expanding and so are we. At least we're supposed to. And so we want to change. How did you handle it? What did you not change in 2017 that you should have? What did you not change in 2017 that you should have? Should you have moved? Should you have fired somebody? Should you have hired somebody? Should you have started a new diet but didn't? What should you have changed in 2017 significantly. And what things did you that change was forced upon you that you could have done a better job with? Like, I could have better. I could have done so much better handling that computer crash than being a big baby. Now I know that going into the next one I'll be more conscious. Right. I know technology is a weak point for me. When technology goes bad, I get impatient. But I know that after years of doing this, I'm like, okay, I'm going to manage that change better. Still haven't mastered it. But there were times in my life when this seven was like a four. Okay, so I'm working, I'm trying to get better, you know, hopefully next year. Not that's My intention. Okay, next up in the human drives is the desire for creative expression. Creative expression, again, these advanced human drives, we don't have to have that, right? If all these are there, that's a pretty good life. If we're doing good in each of these areas, if we have this, create some more variety in our life so a little more spice feels good, but we don't have to have. A lot of people don't change, but they're still fairly happy. A lot of people don't express themselves creatively, and they're okay, but the full charge of life. To live a fully charged life, we must have higher levels of creative expression. Did you create. Did you creatively express yourself this year? Whatever outlet that was for some of you, that's painting and drawing. Some of you, that's music. For some of you, that's body work. For some of you, that is the way that you design things, the way that you think through things, the way that you create presentations, the way that you do anything related to design or visual arts. I don't know what it is for you, but do you feel like you've created express yourself? And here's the tell. It's such a simple one. If I showed up to your house and we went around your house, is it clear that you have designed this house? Is the space yours? Is your fingerprints metaphorically on the wall, where it's like you made it your own. Did you make it your own? Are you doing your career? Your way? Is the seed of your creative genius in the work that you're putting out there, in the posts that you're creating? I mean, do you feel creative in your work? Are you giving yourself time to do that? This is all part of what we call creative expression. What's your score there? I would say for me, I feel like I was like a seven there, too. And the only reason this was a little low for me is because I was so caught up in finishing academic work and data work. I spent a lot of time in my left sort of hemisphere this year of lots of data, lots of logistics, lots of financials, lots of numbers, lots of just managing a big business and multiple investments. So a lot of very logical things which are great. And there's no truth to the left brain, right brain thing, if you've heard that metaphor. I try not to use it, but I definitely felt like I had more creative capabilities to give this year. And for me, one goal of creative expression is this year. Those weekly podcasts where I do my week in review, those are Very creative and fun because I got to zero in on certain moments of my week and debrief it and have a teaching point, but make it really good storytelling. So if you go to my podcast and you look at any of those that are called my week, listen to those, because those were fun storytelling moments for me. I also feel like I want to do more vlogging, where it's kind of like follow me through the day direct to camera, but not just sitting and teaching. So that's going to be a creative thing for me. And this will be the year, finally, that I learned to play the piano. Like, I've always wanted to play the piano, and I've just never scheduled a tutor, so I don't know how to play the piano. Many of you guys know I'm not the most rhythmically inclined to, so I think I could do a better job in creative expression, and that's a little lower score than I want. Next. Human drive is challenge to push yourself. Look, you could have all these things, but if you don't sense that you are being challenged enough, you get bored. Even if you have lots of change that the world is throwing at you, but you don't feel like you are purposely challenging yourself. Meaning if the greatest challenging. If the greatest challenges you are facing in your life are the challenges that the universe just threw at you and you're dealing with now, you are not yet living a conscious life. You are reacting, not building. And there's a very big difference. Many people. The next step for you to come fully alive is to start building again, meaning purposely challenging yourself to go to the next level in multiple areas of your life. When you do that, you come alive. And you know that. That first time you got into personal development, do you remember that? Those first books, those first audios, the first times you dorked out about personal development, you came alive because you were pushing yourself to be better with other people, to be more confident, to be more real, to be more yourself. And in that expression and in that challenge, you felt amazing. I want you to push yourself this year more than 2017. Some of you feel like I pushed myself too far. 2017, I'm like, no, you didn't. Never, ever, ever, ever feel like you pushed yourself too far. You pushed yourself to the level in which your soul was asking you to push. Now the job is, listen to how much more expansive your soul wants you to be, that your next level is another level of challenge. But you must choose that challenge. Don't let life just throw it at you. And I Know that's hard. Many of you got sick this year or you lost finances, or you did try something, you did push, and it didn't work out. Keep going. Well, Brenda, I challenged myself, and I failed. Awesome, dude. Do it again. Keep pushing yourself. Failures are just learnings. That's it. Keep challenging. I want you to challenge yourself in any area that's appropriate for you. I tell my audiences at High Performance Academy all the time, I hope we'll see you at one someday. At all of my events for High Performance, I always challenge my audience to say, if you never in your adult life decided that this year is going to be the healthiest year of your life, and you take a health challenge year long, do that this year. Challenge yourself to get in the best health of your life ever. Because just the process of trying to do that, you'll learn so much about how you take care of yourself. You'll feel better. You'll be better at other people because you feel better. You'll get more done because you feel better. You'll sleep better because you feel better. And all these things start aligning up well for you. So challenge. My number one thing for most of my clients is always on their health. Challenge yourself to get healthier. You know what? If you can run three miles, try to run five. If you can run three miles, run a little faster. If you can do whatever it is that you do, like in terms of lifting or doing your CrossFit or doing your yoga or doing your Pilates or doing your barre as you're doing it, push. If you're not pushing yourself, it is very hard to ever realize the edges of your potential. And I know you know that, but, man, when you set your 2018 goals, I would love for you to be freaked about a little bit. Even if you're already a big dreamer and you're already good at this, I'm like, go another level. Push it 1, 2, 3, 4 steps bigger. You know, challenge. Did you challenge yourself in 2017? Where did you not challenge yourself? Where were you just comfortable and gliding through? And listen, this applies to your relationships too. Meaning, did you challenge yourself in your marriage to develop greater connection? Did you challenge yourself with your son or your daughter to, you know, be even more vulnerable or playful or strong for them? Did you challenge yourself in your own goals for your company to reach a different level of revenue? Like, push yourself, Never apologize. People say, well, Brendan, you're just teaching people to, you know, set big goals and, you know, be overly ambitious. I'm like, well, what a jerk. I am, you know, Yeah, I am. I want you to push. That's what a high performance is. There's another level for all of us. Let's go play in it, let's go experience it, let's push ourselves and get there. My challenge this year, man, it was a 10, I would say, because not just because I wanted it to be. There were so many challenges thrown at me that were monstrous challenges that I didn't know how to deal with this year, you know, I mean, major, major, major challenges in not just my own business. Many of you guys know I invest in lots of other companies. And the challenges in growing all these companies and the inevitable scaling challenges there, the inevitable. Just work to reach more people there. Learning new business models, learning new marketing funnels, learning new, completely new arenas of finance, Learning and being challenged in my own business just in so many great ways. I really loved it and I pushed myself hard this year. I feel like 2017. I worked harder than I'd worked any other year of my life, and I'm proud of that. I didn't overwork, but I did work harder than I've worked. And what I mean by that is, have you ever had like one hour and still one hour, but you knew that hour you worked harder than the next hour or the hour before it? Like, you had one hour. You just, like, you were so fully engaged. And you know that hour, you. So SWAT team. You work that hour harder than you usually work. That's what I mean. I don't mean I work too many hours. I'm not upset about my work life. My work life balance is always pretty good for me. I'm very, very happy with it in general in my life, because I figured that out in my 20s. I gave away my 20s to a corporate company where I just worked, worked 20 hours a day. And I said, I don't want to do that anymore. So I'm happy with my work life balance. But what I'm really happy with is I challenge myself to engage each hour. If you guys were with us at High Performance Academy this year, I would often say you have to learn to weaponize your hours. Go into your hour and work the hour hard. It's the same hours someone else has, but you're gonna work it better. That's a challenge. I challenge myself to engage my hours better than other people, and that makes a huge, huge difference. Okay. A huge difference. So that was. I'm proud of that challenge more than anything else. I challenged myself to engage the hour harder than I usually did. I Felt like I succeeded at that. It kicked my butt. I learned a lot, but that was a challenge I'm very, very satisfied with, and I hope that you are having this. So are you finding some areas to work on in your life? Okay, we got two more human drives. Let's jump into it. Number nine of a human drive is contribution. On a scale of 1 to 10 in 2017, where do you feel like you really contributed and where do you feel like you didn't? What would be your score? Okay, contribution. If you had no contributions that you felt meaningful, satisfied, joyous with, that's a one. If you felt like you gave and you gave and you gave and you were generous and you saw your work make an impact, that's a 10. Where were you in that area? Be honest with yourself. It's okay if it's high, take pride in that. If it's low, know that you're doing your best. Set a higher intention. So where you're at, I would say in contribution. You know, I feel like a seven. My team's gonna panic when I say that, but I feel like a 7 because in many things, I wanted to be more consistent. At I wasn't consistent where I wanted to be consistent. I also, as I shared, I didn't complete with some projects that I planned. My, you know, the high performance daily Planner, still, what. I'm almost two and a half, three months out still. I wanted that for the holidays. I didn't get that contribution out in the marketplace that I wanted to. I wanted to do more of those personal podcasts and videos than I was able to do. So I didn't contribute those as much as I wanted to. However, the reason that it is high for me, seven, I'm very proud of, because I felt like when I was on the road, I gave my entire blood, sweat, tears, spirit. I put everything on the stages I was on. This year, I pushed myself to contribute more than I've given, more than I could. I created all these online courses this year. I wrote, you know, 1500 pages of basically academic research. I mean, we built scales for measurement, we built tools, we rolled out new products. I mean, we did. We contributed so much. I'm satisfied with the contributions, but maybe not with the quantity that I wanted to hit. Now I bring this up again because in this one, people get so down on themselves, and I'm like, you should be able to give yourself a 4, 5, 6, or 7 without getting down on yourself. You should be able to be an observer of your life and just be paying attention to what's real. Not beating yourself up, not getting mad. I'm not frustrated that that's a 7 and I wouldn't have been frustrated if it's a 4 either. I would have been clear that's a 4. I know how to raise it to a 10 contributing these things. So I want you to say, like, okay, it's okay. It's truly okay if you're not the numbers that you want to be. Don't be on yourself. Just don't do that. Be caring and understanding where you're at and set those next big goals. That's all you ever have to do. Love yourself, care of yourself, set the next big goals. Love yourself, care if you set the next big goals. I say that because as I was on the road this year, I met so many people, were like, well, Brennan, you know, yeah, you get to change the world. Or, yeah, you know, I tried to contribute this and they said no, or I tried to do this and it didn't work. And it gets so down. I'm like, that's part of the process. Contributing at the next high level for you, it's gonna be hard. Honor that struggle on that journey. You contributing at a higher level, it's going to freak you out because you're not going to have the competency yet. You don't know how to do it. It's going to demand that you challenge yourself significantly. You're going to have to get control over your agenda so you have more time to do it. To contribute next level, you're going to have to be way more creative, expressive than you have been in the last couple months. To contribute to the next level, you're really going to have to care about immersing yourself in something, care about delivering something of value to other people. To contribute to the next level, you're going to have to connect with your team and the people you lead with and serve with at another level, too. So, again, all these really can work together. And I hope that you will make sure that you realize that all these things can work together well. So don't feel like you ever need to be down on yourself. It's like, improve this one a little bit and all these go up a little bit. Improve this one a bit. All these go up a little bit. They all are interacting like a great connected spider web. Last one. So important. And you guys have helped me with this in so many ways. And that is consciousness. All human beings want a higher level of awareness. We all want to be more present with the people around us. We all want to be more. Both conscientious at work, but conscious of who we are and how we're interacting with people. I want to be more conscious in how we're dealing with other people and more conscious about how we treat the planet, more conscious of how we interact with each other. And consciousness is a big one. And this one for many people, this is also where your spirituality lies. You know, this is consciousness of, like, do you feel as aware or conscious or spiritual as you wanted to in 2017, as you wanted to so score yourself there? And if you felt like you didn't know yourself or you weren't present, because presence is also here, if you didn't feel self aware, if you didn't feel connected or have a sense of a higher connection with universe, God, spirit, even with a bigger mission, whatever it is for you, that one is a great one to work on. For 2018, I think the world right now needs a whole lot more conscious approach to business, needs a much more conscious approach to how we treat our planet. We need a much more conscious approach to how we treat each other. And if we can become more conscious of how we are interacting and a higher level of intention, while at the same time realizing the connection, the unity that we all share together, we can raise the consciousness of the planet. We can raise the quality, quality of life for each other. That's consciousness, I would say for me, in this one, I was about an 8, and that was a lot of help from, honestly, the SuperSoul 100 group.
That I've been blessed to be named.
Into a lot of interactions with Oprah Winfrey, her team, her influencers. Studying a lot of Wayne Dyer this year after many of you guys know, he lost Wayne in 2015. So I've studied a lot of his work, and he's been helping me become even more conscious, I hope, as a man and dealing with a lot of the challenges and struggles this year, I became more conscious of other people's issues as well. And so this was a good year for me in that regard. Now, the big tally, you tally up your scores in each of these areas, and my question is, what's your score? And I would love for you to do something simple right now. Whatever you learned going through this, as I asked all these questions and however you scored yourself, I would like you tonight to sit down with your journal, go back through each of these areas, do various of this. You can do this in 10 minutes. Identify where you are off in any of these areas. Where did you lose control? Where weren't you as competent as you need to be? Where didn't you contribute as much? Where didn't you change? Well, just identify where those weren't as good as they could have been. And then ask yourself, well, what would it have taken to do better if my highest self went back as the best of me today, as confident, as abundant, as happy, as joyous as I could. If I went back and advised myself, what would I have done to make that situation or that arena better? What would I have done to make it better? And then third question, what will I do in 2018 to improve this area? Three simple questions. Okay, where did I not do as well as I could have? Where could I have done better? Specifically, what could I have done better? And then in 2018, how will I improve? I know that might only take. You could literally do it in 10, 15 minutes. Now, some people say, well, Brendan, why don't you also focus on where we did well in these areas? Because I think that what you did well in these areas, you did innately well. Now we need discipline of improving the areas that we didn't because you'll probably do just as well next year, but you'll do innately despite your own ability and how you are. I want you to have the discipline of shoring up some of those weaknesses and setting a higher intention for 2018. So those are three homework activities tonight. Okay, very simple. Where did you struggle? What could you have done better? And what's the goal in that area? Or what could you make sure you implement in 2018? If you're wondering how to make all that stick or do better at that, please, please, please, please make sure you read my book, High Performance Habits. So you learn how to make things stick and you learn what to focus on the most. That will serve you tremendously in that regard. With that, my friends, I did as much as I could without even taking a break today. It was just like, let's go, let's get them, let's serve them. I hope that you've enjoyed this monthly check in. I hope you got fired up, you found some areas to work on and if you got one new area to work on today, we achieve the goal. If you set one new, bigger goal for 2018, we achieve the goal. It's an honor to be here with you every single month, helping you stay on track, ask the right questions, improve yourself and be part of an amazing community. I know you guys saw shout outs down below to everybody who posted questions, who participated. I'll get to some more questions. This Evening. I celebrate every single one of you for your commitment to personal and professional development. Stay committed. Let's keep learning, let's keep building this community of high performers worldwide until I see you next time. Go out there every single day of your life. Stay in high performance and as always, make sure you live fully, love openly and make your difference. Good night, everybody. Thanks for joining us.
All right, my friend, I hope that you 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 Brendan 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 brendon.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 and 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.
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