How to Create Happiness

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Hey, my friends, it's Brendan Burchard. And welcome to the Brendan Show. This is a podcast about helping you reach high performance in your life, in every area of your life. It's about staying more motivated, more confident, more disciplined and on purpose. You know, the high performance experience is really about feeling more vibrant, more connected, more excellent, more fulfilled in your life. But it's also challenging you because you and I both know it's difficult to reach those levels of high performance without support, without ongoing commitment and dedication to your own personal development. So welcome to our HPX community. Thank you for joining us here on the Brendon Show. I'm super pumped for today's episode. Before we begin, I want to let you know that we have specials right now on our HPX nutrition line. If you didn't know it, I rolled out three specific products to help you with your performance. These are three specific supplements that will really give you the edge. Now, don't worry, I'm not starting an MLM or a downline. I'm not asking you to promote any of my products. And frankly, just like you, there's a lot of different companies and a lot of different products that I love and I enjoy and I'm not trying to compete with. It was specifically, I could not find three world class supplements that specifically helped me in these areas. So we've got HPX Optimize, which is a mental focus and energy product for your brain health. Then we've got Essentials, which is a functional multivitamin which we've basically enhanced for longevity, for joint health and for vitality and digestion. But what we did, instead of like making a multivitamin where they sprinkled a million different things in there that actually have no effect, we put in dosages here that you'll be amazed by. And then finally we've got HPX Organic Boost, which is the energy drink mix that I take because it's 100% organic. Organic. It's actually delicious too, I have to tell you that. So go check it out. Hpxwellness.com, everything you need to know is right there. And if you've ever wanted to know how to reach the high performance experience in terms of your biology and physiology, these products can really support you. Go to hpxwellness.com and without further ado, onto today's episode.

So let's jump into how we have developed our happiness. So much of our happiness comes from whether or not we feel fulfilled, connected, joyous, happy about our past. So let's talk about it. We know from the research, in order to get somebody to be more happier, we have to release three levers about their past. Right? We've got to activate these three levers. It's like you pull all three levers. Usually people will look to the past and they'll be more satisfied and happy about where they've been, which will make them more happy in the moment too. So let's work through some of this stuff. Now, I'm not here to do any therapeutic action with all of you. I'm not a professional psychiatrist or psychologist. I'll keep saying that. I think it's really important. However, here's what it's very important for you to know. All work of professional therapy all work of professional therapy, whether they go back into your childhood way deep, or back into last week's bad meeting with you, or back into how you felt yesterday, all outcome of professional therapy is ultimately to get the client back into the present moment to make healthier decisions and choices and have healthier relationships for themselves. Now, all therapy is to bring you back to now so that you can better make choices for yourself now that are healthier and right for you. Now that's what it's about. So for those who fear like therapy, no, it's. It's about bringing you back to now so you make better decisions for yourself. So even as I'm about to talk with you about your past, it's only so you can get back to today and then tomorrow, and then Saturday and Sunday and Monday and make better decisions for yourself. Cause you deserve more happiness.

Is this true?

Everyone say I deserve more happiness, but I'll have to create it. Power plant doesn't have energy. It generates energy. That's why we must self will the feelings we want to experience more in life. And we have to train ourselves to do that. One way that I do that is with my Sunday review, I look back to the week and I pull that first lever. That first lever of looking at the past is called acceptance. It's the hardest one, the most difficult one. If you had a bad week and you just bumble into the next week without processing that week, that stuff stores in you. It weighs on your heart. It weighs on your soul. None of my clients would I ever allow them to go into the next week without processing the previous week. So for me, part of my Sunday review is I sit down and I go, what happened this last week that I did not like that I must accept happened so I can release it and let it go. I ask that Every Sunday. What happened in this last week that I did not like that I can accept that it did happen, release it and let it go. I do this every Sunday. Imagine how many things happen in my life. You know, serving this many millions of.

People around the world, a lot of.

Stuff comes our way. I gotta release it, I gotta let it go. Acceptance doesn't mean you approve of it. Acceptance doesn't mean you wanted it to happen. It is just being an adult and saying it did happen and now I choose to let it go. Acceptance means you don't give it weight emotionally anymore. That's what it really means. I think if you ever met or worked with spiritual leader or specifically for me, getting to meet several times, the Dalai Lamas, I told you yesterday, I mean he was walking on air because he has a practice and one of his practices is letting things go. Like a big part of Eastern philosophies, including Buddhism or Daoism, are letting things go. It's being accepting of what happened, not approving of not okay with. One of the reasons people are scared of getting therapy is because they think, oh, they're gonna make me go back to that childhood incident and say it's okay, I'm alright with it. And they're gonna make me define a positive meaning of it. That's not always true. Sometimes it really was a difficult time, it was a bad thing, it was something you did not want to happen. And it's not just about going back and saying it was okay or now I can understand that other person's perspective. We fear that. Cause we think, well, I'm never gonna understand that that person did that to me. And so it's okay for you to have had upset about that. It is okay for you to have defined that thing as a negative thing. That is absolutely okay. If something negative happened in your past, it's okay to say that was a negative thing. That's what an adult would do. It's like that was bad. I wish that didn't happen. It's also though important to make sure that it's not negative on you now. How many follow? That's the real difficulty of traumas and challenges of our past is to ensure they're not on us now. It happened then, it's not here now. It was gone yesterday and gone the day before too. That the negative circumstances of the past, they are no longer here unless we carry them here. That person might not even be in your life anymore, but are you still carrying them that situation that might have been gone 10 years ago or are you keeping it here because we've all heard it? This too shall. I love that saying, this too shall. But one of my favorite other sayings is that that too did pass. We say, this too shall pass to deal with the difficulties of this moment. Right. It's challenging right now. I know this too shall pass. But I think we also must tell ourselves that that too did pass as well. That's gone. I let it go. I am not gonna let that weigh down on me anymore. We all have something difficult in our lives. And to be really free, we gotta let those things go and accept them. Acceptance is it happened. I accept the reality that that happened. I didn't like it, didn't want it, wish it didn't happen. Don't understand it, don't approve of it. But you know what? It ain't gonna stop me now. Ain't gonna stop me now. Because now this is a new day. This is that fresh sheet of paper. This is what I really believe. Deep in my soul is one of the most important parts of my message. That every moment is a second chance. That every day is a new blank page. You got to wake up today and choose who you're going to be. You get to choose now how you're gonna feel. And I say if you get to choose how you're gonna feel, you should bring the choice. Yeah. If we all get to choose, if we have the power of choice, which I believe is the greatest gift from on, I free will. Come on. That's pretty amazing stuff, right? That's pretty incre. If we have any amount of choice in our life, choose good for ourselves. Choose to release the pains. Choose to embrace the beauties, and life suddenly changes. Choose to release the pains. Choose to embrace the beauties. Life changes. That's what we have to do. See, you might have been mad at your parents five years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 40 years ago or. Or 50 years ago. They're not in here right now. Or if those of you who did bring a family member here, cool. But they're not the same person. How many of you feel like you've dramatically changed? Be honest. How many feel like you've dramatically. Notice the word. How many of you feel like you dramatically changed in the last five years? If that's true, would you stand up? Last five years, you dramatically changed. Go around the room. Yeah. Give a round of applause for the progress in this room, ladies and gentlemen. That's incredible. Good for you. Have a seat. So would it be possible for you to understand that other people might change too. Yeah, but here's what we are. We're skeptics. We say they weren't gonna change. But you know what? It doesn't matter if they change. I don't care if they've changed. You change. I don't care if that situation changed. Situation happened. You can't change it now. What you can change is now are you free? You must have satisfied satisfaction for the past. Two very different things, right? Acceptance of one thing. And acceptance means positive, negative, just like accepting reality for what it was. But the next level is satisfaction. High performers are striving satisfied. We think they're all dissatisfied. Never settle, never be happy. Just fight, grind, hustle, and just out compete everybody, kill the competition. It's just not true. Not worldwide, specifically. What we know is they're striving satisfied. They're actually enjoying the process. Because remember, they're fully engaged, they're joyous, and they're confident. So they're enjoying it. And it's important for you today to have satisfaction for last week. I'm not talking about satisfaction, just over your whole life. That's what psychologists like to do. Overall life satisfaction. I go, you know what? It's important for you to be satisfied for last week, for the week before, for the month before. Doesn't mean you don't recognize you could give more. But be satisfied. You were given those seven days on this planet. Be satisfied that you showed up and you survived those seven days. Be satisfied. At least you had your game on. You tried here and there. At least you were a good person. You were kind of. You need to be satisfied and take satisfaction from the past. Otherwise what happens is you arrive every single day dissatisfied, and you cannot serve at a high level when you are dissatisfied. How many of you have ever been dissatisfied with your spouse and then you went on date night with them? How'd that go for you? Ever been dissatisfied with the kids and then you tried to help them with something? Begrudgingly. It is hard to serve from a state of dissatisfaction. The best place to serve is like, if you're gonna go serve your children, take a moment to be like, I'm so satisfied with her in my life. I feel so blessed, so grateful to have this child in my life. I need to remind myself of that and then go deal with it. And if that sounds just too positive thinking, then good. Cause that's what it is. Because the alternative is disastrous for you and your relationships. The alternative is being dissatisfied. Have you ever met a perfectionist who's never satisfied with anything. Maybe you know that person personally. And if you know that person personally, maybe it's time to be satisfied enough. Here's what I love to tell perfectionists. For those who identify with perfectionists, you're probably not a real perfectionist, because a perfectionist would at least honor what the real definition of perfectionism is. Right? What happens with perfectionists? I hear this all the time in my industry, right? I'm in what we call the expert industry or the thought leader industry. And in the thought leader industry, I hear this all the time. Well, Brendan, I can't release the book until it's perfect. You don't understand. I'm a perfectionist, Brendan, I would never do something like that because it's not perfect yet. And what they're really saying is I'm never going to do it. Or they're saying they're scared. It's one of the two. And what I found is for perfectionists who don't release things, I have to remind them of the definition to be a perfectionist. The root word to perfect. To perfect something requires you first release it. To perfect something requires, by definition, you first release it. You cannot perfect it until it is done. And then you keep working on it to try to perfect it, make it better. But the first requirement of to perfect something is to have it done and then perfect it from there. You gotta have the beta done, you gotta have the prototype done, you have to have the webpage up and then you perfect it. Perfection is not a completion. Perfection is a verb. You're always, you're doing it, you're tinkering to make it better, but it only happens after it's released. And so if you're like, I'm a perfectionist, I can't be satisfied. Well, no, the satisfaction will come in releasing it. Satisfaction comes. Listen to this. Satisfaction comes from contribution. If you don't release it, you have not yet contributed. You might have toiled, you might have thought, but you have not yet contributed. Finishing is the first step of contribution. Perfecting comes next. Raise your hand and follow this. It's just a different way of thinking through things. It's how I have to get my clients to change their mindset. I'm going, oh, you're a perfectionist. Oh, I thought you were a contributor. This is what you say to the big dogs. You really gotta piss em off like that before they listen and then they go, oh, that's right. Cause you gotta rewire the identity a little bit to release. And you have to rewire Your process to be satisfied. So at the end of the week, I also. Cause look, I'm just like many of you, I love to keep going and make it better and make every process just dialed in and get it better and better. And if you see me, I'm often like this. Just thinking how to make things better, you know, freaks people out. But I know many of you are like that too. So what I must have is the habit of pausing, reflecting, and finding the satisfaction. What did I do well this week? What did go well this week? What makes me happy from this week? And that little activity makes me a better performer the next week. Cause just like emotional baggage, you gotta let go. You also have to let go of those dissatisfactions all week. Because if you carry dissatisfaction in your marriage, year after year after year, all of the energy and the chemistry and the magic dies, right? Dissatisfaction disconnects. And so you have to be very, very careful of where you throw that energy and find a way to be satisfied in what is there. I'm completely satisfied with the seminar. There's so many things that have not gone right. There's so many things I'd want to tweak or change or do better next time, but I'm completely satisfied with it. You can be satisfied and still making things better. Is it true? I think the people who are satisfied, right, that old thing, whistle while you work because you actually are a better contributor when you are coming from a place of satisfaction, joy, contentment than you are when you're angry, upset, dissatisfied, right? That never enough mentality poisons you from being able to reach the next level. Arianna Huffington's next level was when she learned how to succeed and still care for herself, when she learned how to set boundaries and protect her sleep. But more importantly, to be more mindful of what's going well. Because imagine, you know, the bigger companies you work with, it's just like the more employees you have or team you have, somebody somewhere is screwing something up. And so you could be dissatisfied all the time. And that's what a lot of people struggle with. That's because we're always learning the finer distinctions of this stuff, right? Me too. We're always learning. I think the more we mature, the more we realize how important it is to take the moments to be satisfied, to take the moments to appreciate those things. So I want you to make sure that you are appreciating week after week. Because when I say the past on this slide, I don't mean just 20 years ago. I mean, how are you thinking of last week. Because how you're thinking about last week is gonna affect Monday's performance. True or false? Totally true. Game changing stuff.

Hey, it's Brennan. I'm bopping in here real fast for you to urge you to go to hpxwellness.com and and check out our products to help you get more of that mental focus and energy. You need to stay at your best, to deliver with excellence, to feel like vibrant again. Because I know we all struggle with mental fatigue and mental focus. We all sometimes get tired and sometimes we're worried about our overall health. And so I created three specific products to help you with with that. Go to HPX wellness.com check out our nutrition line and let's get you to high performance, baby. HPX wellness.com.

Last one. You've got to generate a fondness for the past. The world's happiest people have fondness for the past. It's not just like they're satisfied or they accept it. There's nostalgia there, a beautiful kind of like gratitude and connection, right? So many of us, all we do is focus on what's wrong.

We keep returning.

And I say this in life's golden ticket. One of the big breakthroughs for the character in life's golden ticket is that he realized he'd been sort of on a loop de loop in his life. He had been returning to all the negative scenes of his life, but he never visited all those beautiful scenes. So he kept going back to the bad events, to the negativity, to the three or four or five things that he didn't like or were hurtful or caused trauma. He'd just revisit, revisit, revisit. But in the same time, there was beauty happening all around too. But he never revisited that. In the same time, there were blessings abound. He never revisited that. So where our focus is going is really important. And I would love for you in a practice maybe tonight that you sit down with your journal and you just write, what are some things that were beautiful and you have fondness for in the past. Like I have fondness for my grandma. Like I know I can focus on the pain and the hurt from her being gone from my life. Cause she was a big source of, just a reminder almost of love. But I have so much fondness for the moments I did have with her. And it makes me happy even though she's gone. When I lost my dad, who was the biggest mentor and just the biggest impact with my mom in my life, when I lost my dad, I immediately Knew that I could fall into a real depression if I didn't cultivate a fondness for the experiences. I did have a satisfaction and gratitude for the time that God did give us together. And acceptance of the fact that he is gone. And it sucks and it hurts. But I'm thankful for the time that I was here or that he was here. That made a big difference to me. And I luckily had a friend who taught me about acceptance. It's helped me a lot, losing a lot of people in the last couple years of my life. When I lost my dad, maybe three months went by after dad had passed. And a buddy of mine, some of you guys know him, Rick Frischman. Rick called me and he says, hey, kid, heard about your dad, didn't want to call you right away. And I said, thanks, Rick. And he said, I don't want to tell you what everyone else is telling you. It'll be okay. It's, you know, you've always got it in memory. He's still here. All these things, all those things everyone's told you is true. And I'm sure it's important, but I'd like to tell you something different, kid. Would you listen to me? I said, sure, I'd love to listen, Rick. And he says, well, here's what I have to tell you. It sucks. It sucks now it's gonna suck next week. It's gonna suck a year from now. It's always gonna suck. You're always gonna have that hole in the heart. Cause he is gone. He's gone. And that sucks. And it's okay that it sucks for you, that it hurts. It's okay that you feel sad about that. Cause you know what? It does suck. It totally sucks. Don't try to avoid that it sucks. Except it sucks. Like he says, I lost my dad 40 years ago. I still miss him. Like, yesterday, he tells me, he goes, it still sucks that he's not here. But I'm okay. And I've lived a happy life. And I've tried to honor his life and his message and his values. It sucks that he's not here. It's always gonna suck, kid. It sucks. And it was such. I mean, I mean, literally, it changed my mindset. The next day. I was okay. Because I was like, you know what? It's okay that it sucks he's gone. But I'm gonna be okay. I'm gonna keep honoring his values and his mission and what he has taught me. And I'll have fondness for every moment we ever had together. It's cool. But I'm still free in the moment. So I want you tonight. Maybe what are you fond for? I mean, maybe it was like you remember the first two years of your baby's life. Do you remember those first three years of that relationship? That was really amazing. Like it's okay to feel nostalgia as long as you're still free in the moment. You can look back fondly. Like, I think it's so sad that most people don't realize that this process is going to happen. If they're conscious towards the last days or minutes or hours of their life, you are going to look back and I've been there twice in my life. I've had two not, I don't call them near death experiences because people misquote me for that as if I felt like I left my body. I've been on my deathbed where they thought I might die. And I remember both times looking back. And you do remember those moments that are beautiful and you want more of them. And sometimes I've been with people in their past in their. I'm sorry as they're transitioning because I've done hospice care a lot in my life and I've been with people in the last couple minutes. And sometimes people are struggling to find and remember things that they are fond for. And I've been with people who don't have that challenge. Now sometimes it's because where they are at a mental state, because their career, they might be on chemotherapy, they might be on other drugs, other palliative care that also sometimes takes away their mindset. But to those who are conscious and I've noticed it's like developing fondness and happiness for the past. It's a practice. And the more that you do it, the more you have readily available moments of gratitude, raise your hand and follow. What happens is we forget to be fond for yesterday or the day before or the years before. And then when you say, hey, give me something to be happy for, you're like, and you can't come up with anything. And if you struggle to come up with anything, what we do is we say, ah, I must have a bad memory. No, you have a non trained memory, raise your hand and follow. That drives me crazy when people say, ah, I just have a bad memory. I don't remember any good things. I know. No, you have a non trained memory. They're very different things. Everything we know from neuroscience tells us you can improve dramatically your memory, dramatically. You can get growth, literal growth in your hippocampus cells like it's that fast that we can see it over just a series of weeks of brain training. It's unbelievable. And when you do that, then you walk around with the storage capacity of all these things to be grateful for. You're lighter, you're more able to serve. All right.

Hey, it's Brendan. I hope you enjoyed that episode and I hope it helped you reach another level of high performance in your life, whether it's just a shift in your mindset or shift in your habits or a shift in your intention for the day. I really honor you for listening to the Brendon show and I'm deeply thankful. So could you do me a favor? Could you just go onto itunes or Apple Podcasts and rate and review this episode or any of our episodes? And also while you're there to help me, just download the last five episodes too, onto your phone because, you know, Apple really cares about the downloads and the rating and reviews.

And I've never really asked for that.

In six years of podcasting.

And finally my friends convinced me to.

Ask you to do that for me. I've never asked anything with my podcast community ever, but I really, really appreciate if you could do that. Also, if you would like some more in depth training, please don't forget that every single month I go live for two hours and teach new and original personal development, research new frameworks to my entire virtual community in our HPX coaching program. And you can just go to hpxcoaching.com that's hpxcoaching.com to learn all about the different options there. But listen, I'm live two hours every single month with literally thousands of high achievers from around the world who tune in to get these new frameworks for reaching high performance in their life. Sometimes we talk about relationships, Sometimes we talk about breaking bad habits. Sometimes we talk about achieving another level of confidence or discipline or goal attainment. But we are there every single month and I'd love for you to join us. Just go to hpxcoaching.com to see all of your options and really join us. Dedicate yourself to personal mastery. Dedicate yourself to this journey, not just once in a while with an episode here or there or a book there, but literally a program that could change your Life. It's called HPX Coaching and you can go to hpxcoaching.com until next time, my friends, Please remember every single day you can choose to be average or ordinary or just kind of go through the motions, or you can be more intentional, more disciplined, more excellence. Driven what you do, because you know you need to serve those you love and those that you lead. You can choose to be extraordinary. So my friends, go out there today and be extraordinary.