Mashup: Teach Yourself to Eliminate Stress and Pressure From Your Life

We must learn to center ourselves amid the chaos, the stress, the struggle, the challenge, the bad day. We must, in the moment be able to flip from anger to peace. In the moment, be able to flip from stress to clarity, to ease, to freedom. We must teach ourselves to center ourselves both when we don't need it and when we do need it.

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. Your breakthrough awaits you@growthday.com now let's get to today's episode, my friends. Share this with three friends just like you who are committed to their personal growth. And also be sure to tag me or DM me on Instagram Rendon Burchard so I can say hi. Thanks again for listening. Now let's begin.

We must learn to center ourselves amid the chaos, the stress, the struggle, the challenge, the bad day. We must, in the moment be able to flip from anger to peace. In the moment, be able to flip from stress to clarity, to ease, to freedom. We must teach ourselves to center ourselves both when we don't need it and when we do need it. And I think that's what's really important. I think one of the greatest disciplines we can ever give ourselves is this topic of centering. And so we must actively train ourselves as if we. We were gonna have 10 times the pressure on us as we seek to achieve our dreams. Cause I'm sure many how many of you guys feel like the next mountain.

You climb is gonna demand so much.

More of you than the last one? Like many of you guys, you got your dreams and your eyes set on huge ambitions, huge aspirations to provide for your family, to change the world, to do something significant and important. And when you've got that big dream way up there, trust me, it will demand more of you next time. So you must start training your mind now to deal with stress. Many of you, that means it is finally time to start learning meditation. It's like you've been thinking about it. You kind of meditate once in a while and you've thought about it or you did that one retreat one time. I'm like, make it a daily part of your life. To center yourself every single day. For some of you, centering yourself, that just means closing your eyes, thinking about who you want to be, thinking about what's important, just calming your mind down. Other people centering is like, that can be just like. If you're super stressed, lay down, take a quick nap. For some of you that can mean like the important self talk. Some of you, that means meditation. Like for me, if I don't center myself every day, twice a day, actively, the next day, I know I'm gonna get short with somebody, I'm gonna let anxiousness get to me, I'll get my nerves, I'll get frustrated, I'll bow out, I'll quit. It's so clear, it's like super obvious to me that the days that I don't center end up in tomorrows that are chaotic. And so I just gotta make sure I take that time every day. That might mean you go take a 45 minute walk. Many of you guys know every single day I walk outside every day. Rain, water, snow, sleet, I don't care. I will walk 30 to 45 minutes outside every day. I don't miss because that just being out in nature and breathing and feeling the wind on my face and the sun just calms me down, gets me grounded back into the earth. And in nature it's like oh, okay, every day. So for what, 20 plus years, I meditate at least once a day. I think for the last maybe 11 years, I've meditated twice per day. Sometimes it's only five minutes, both sessions. Sometimes it's 10 minutes both sessions. And when I don't get that, I might take like a 30 minute nap in the afternoon. At some point I'll sneak away. Even when I used to have a corporate job and work for somebody else, I'd go close the door in one of the rooms, one of the meeting conference rooms, I close my eyes for 20 minutes, I meditate, take a nap, lay on the floor, do whatever I have to do to recenter my mind. Your ability to deal with stress at this stage is dictating your ability to.

Reach the next level.

And so if you're somebody who is always dealing with that negative emotional range, nervousness, anxiousness, stress, depression, some of the big issues that came up today, make sure you seek support. Go see a professional, go see a therapist, go see a psychiatrist, go see whoever your doctor recommends you to to get support in that mental health department. For those of you who aren't dealing with clinical issues, after those conversations, maybe it's time for you to finally do the things you know you need to do to calm yourself down, right? Don't look at so much social media every day because going into here is not centering you. This is reaction mode. That's all this is reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction. And every one of these swipes is firing more chaos in your brain. Like literally it's hitting more dopamine and it feels reward, reward, reward, reward, reward. But your eyes are burning, your attention is burning, you're exhausted after not reinvigorated. We need reinvigorating activities for you each day. So what are some reinvigorating activities? Reinvigorating activities for me might always start with sleep. Always include meditation, always include a walk outside. For me, always include a cold shower. I know none of you, you're going to hate the idea of a cold shower. For me, I take Adaptogens. These are stress support supplements that help me just like, okay, more able to deal with the stress because my mind is a squirrel and it's crazy. So it centers me again. That's the same product HPX optimized for me. Some of you might take supplements that you, maybe you take some like calming chamomile tea, right? That costs super cheap. Like whatever you need to do, you need a centering practice every day. Because the more you center yourself every day as a discipline, then in the moments that matter, the more you're able to lock it in. So a couple things you can do in moments that matter, right? When all of a sudden you feel yourself get angry, you feel yourself get freaked out, and that's about to win. The very first move you must do when you feel that coming on, when you're like getting whacked around and into chaos, the very first thing I want you to always remember do is is.

Center in on your breath.

I want you soon you feel like angry, start taking deep breaths from the belly. And I want you to count those breaths 20 times. Just, just start like immediately start counting your breathing. If someone's hollering and screaming before you holler and scream back and react. Breathe. The best way to center the mind and the body is through deep breathing. There's literally thousands of years research behind this in terms of both the more anecdotal to what we now know in neuroscience that deep breathing can deeply calm the mind and help you make better decisions. So just breathe.

Just breathe.

The first thing is breath awareness. Second thing is body awareness. Be attentive to when you feel like we're like, how are you holding your body A lot of people get really tense in their shoulders and their neck, which is cueing their brain to go, emergency, emergency, emergency. Get out, scream, holler, fight. And what I want you to do is first, breathe. That's breath awareness. Second, body awareness. Drop those shoulders, pull that chest out, elongate that neck, put your feet shoulder width, Just stand up. Like, just be tall and stand and breathe. That's huge. If you're alone and you're feeling these things or if it's proper. I mean, sometimes I do this with my wife and she's around, all of a sudden I start feeling anxious, upset or something. I will literally drop down in a downward dog. I will breathe, I will roll around on the floor. Like, I mean, I would just go, I'm telling you what, I will just start stretching myself out right as we're in a conflict. I know I'm a child and she knows it's preaching because I'm calling myself down. Because for me, centering is a very physical thing. It really is. It's like it's a physical thing, and that's so important for me. So breath awareness number one. And I really encourage you to set an intention to count. Don't just focus on your breath count. Breathe, count, breathe count, breathe count. Second, make sure you use your body. Get body awareness. I really encourage you, drop those shoulders, straighten your neck out, open up your body. It will give you more energy. And then third, what I really encourage you to do in centering, and this is really important as you're breathing out. When you're breathing in, a lot of people think of just breathing in. I want you to breathe out and imagine yourself breathing out. And it's just dropping the energy and grounding the earth and pulling it up and grounding the earth like you're breathing out is just as important as an intention is breathing in. And if you can get in that mode, you just start noticing, you feel better. And then that third piece, though, outside of the centering into the ground, the third thing is intention. Intention, intention. For me, I train myself on the three words I want to be. And I'll remind myself, just remind myself those three words. Remind myself of those three words, Remind myself those three words. Because it's easy for me to reactive and be responsive. Instead, I want to be intentional. So know those three words that really defined you and repeat those. Like, oftentimes, if you ever see me around and I'm like this, all I'm doing is I'm kind of rocking. I'm breathing in and out deeply. I'm getting attentive to my body and my posture and, and I'm repeating my three words just to reconnect. Because I do that every day in the moment of crisis. Cause see, moments of crisis, it feels like everything's out of control.

But what can I control?

Breath, body awareness. What I say to myself. Breath, body in errors. What I say to myself. I do that over and over and over again and it really helps me lock back in. I hope this supports some of you because emotionally learning to be centered emotionally will so support you as you go to change your life.

Today I get to share some ideas with you on health that I have learned in my own personal journey, but also as a high performance coach for 16 years. One of the fundamental, most important things that we all want in our life is a sense of vitality. And that vitality is we want to feel, you know, mentally engaged, alert, focused, enthusiastic. We want to feel energetically, like physically energized. Right? Physically. We want to feel a sense of that health. And it is one of really the only four things that we all deeply desire. We talk a lot about it here in growth day that you can give anybody anything. But what we all really, truly want to do is aliveness. That's what I mean by vibrancy. Connection with others and with ourselves, meaningful pursuits, things that we're doing that we enjoy or see as important or contributing and growth like growing as persons. So all of that is really important. But that sense of aliveness, I always put that at the top of that little diagram because it is so important to us when we don't have a sense of aliveness, even if we have amazing relationships, when we are fatigued and wiped out, we can have the greatest marriage or partner or spouse or intimate relationship. But the zest isn't there. We can have a great job, we can have incredible opportunities to serve. We can love our passions and our hobbies. But if we are wiped out, it doesn't feel as good. I know you all know this, and that is why it is so important that we focus on our health. Now I want to do full disclaimers with you. I am not a doctor. I am not a psychiatrist. I am not a neuroscientist. I am not a health advisor, coach, or medical professional in any capacity. I am a high performance coach. This means I work with people primarily on their mindset and their habits and their relationships. And today what I'd like to share is a couple ideas. And I'll remind you, as a high performance coach, one of my fundamental jobs is to challenge my clients to a higher level. So in doing that, I will of course share my own journey and my own struggles, but I'll mostly focus on what we've learned in the science. I will also share with you the idea that I'll be empathetic about it, but also I want to be that person who challenges you in this area of your life. For 15 years, every audience I have stood in front of in my life, I have said, if this has not been the year that you have made the decision as an adult to get in the best health of your life ever, make that this year. I have said this for 16 years in front of every audience I can get in front of because I believe most of us, we look back, I was healthier when I was a kid, or maybe I was healthier when I was in my 20s or whatever. And we just don't say, you know what, this is going to be that year. But I know some of you have you said, maybe this is the year I am going to eat healthier, I am going to sleep better, I am going to work out more, I am going to pay attention to my nutrition or my supplementation. I am going to run a marathon. What you all do as strivers and achievers always blows my mind and it raises my aspiration. But I want to do the same thing for you today. I want you to raise your aspiration and your vision in your health. Even if you are struggling right now, which you can hear, we all do. Even if it has been a challenge in the past. Ok? But at some point we have to take dramatic personal responsibility for our health. If it is true that we all want a sense of aliveness, mental energy, physical vitality that pop and zest in our lives, and if that's true, then accept the challenge today. And please be aware I am offering this today in that context, knowing as we can have the empathetic conversation, but we also must have the personal accountability and personal vision conversation in personal growth. And that is my job for you today. My job is to raise that level up. That's what I do as a high performance coach. Those are my disclaimers for you today. Because as I jump into my points, some of them will feel like I'm pushing. And I know sometimes people say, oh, you know what, he doesn't understand or he thinks everybody. I'm like, no, no, no, I understand, but it is still my job. It is my job as a high performance coach to lift that higher level, to be that kind but demanding force in our lives, in my life, in your lives. If I didn't demand more from myself than how I naturally felt all the time, trust me, there would be no growth day. There would be no half billion views of my videos or 100 million downloads of my podcasts. There would be no impact. We would have never met. Because it is very easy for me not to do my daily job or my health routines, just like you. It is an easy choice not to do the things we know that are good for us. How do we get us there? We have got to set a higher standard. We have got to demand it of ourselves. So forgive me, that will be my framing today. It is not always popular, especially in the health category, to say these things, especially in the mental health category to say these things. So please understand my framing. Not a doctor high performance coach going to challenge you. And you will know that with this very first point. So here we go. My first point today is health is luck and self respect. Woo. The first time I ever said that was by accident on stage. And I heard myself ooh. And the audience kind of hushed out a little bit, oh, I'm in trouble. But here's what I mean by that. Health. We have to understand there is a evolutionary and a biological reason that you feel the way that you do. Right. It's very important to understand in both, I really believe, mental health and physical health. It is that kind of 50, 50 kind of thing when we blend it together, by the way. But there's no question that some people biologically feel more fatigued or more depressed or more anxious. We have to understand that you and me are not the same biologically in how our energy might be. And I hope that that always introduces empathy and compassion, that there's a big luck card that we get. I have friends, literally, who are born without limbs. I have friends who are born with conditions in which their brain functions in very unhealthy ways. I have friends who've died so early of cancer. I have friends who have struggled with mental health. I have friends who've committed suicide. I have friends and family who struggle constantly with. With all sorts of biological health issues that is not their fault. And it is important to realize that some of you, you feel terrible biologically, even though you're drinking all your water, you're eating all your greens, you do move and you do exercise. And so I'm here to say there is no preaching. We all have to take the cards we've been dealt and figure out how to care for ourselves, how to optimize the best that we can, how to improve, even if it's little bit incremental by incremental, but it starts with a biological understanding of where we are at. And this is why again, as a person who's not a medical professional, I'm like, listen, if you don't understand closely how you feel and why you feel the way that you do, please, please, please, if you've never done it, go get a full workup of every friggin health test you can as an adult, as somebody who is accountable for your health. Go get the blood test, go see the nutritionist or the dieticians, go work out with a trainer, go literally do all the genetic testing that you can do to understand what is up with you. I always tell the story of a friend of mine who is one of my partners in one of my businesses, one of my best friends in the world, who discovered at the age of 40 that every morning he always had the sniffles and his nose was running and he's clearing his throat and everything and found at the age of 40 that he was allergic to eggs. At the age of 40, didn't know, spent 40 years having these reactions that made him fatigued and blowing his nose because he was allergic to eggs. I think that's a sad thing about our society is that we're not taught or trained or honestly empowered or equipped or served with some simple health support when we were young that says, hey look, seems like you're allergic to this thing, don't eat it. I mean, how is that not part of our educational process or our healthcare system? That of course we would all find out very early on and be tested multiple stages of our life, including every new decade. What are we allergic to? What preconditions might we have? What's our genetic makeup leading us towards? So this is where I say health is luck. Health might be luck, but it's your job to be aware. Your job, no one else's, no one's going to come and save you here. You've got to do the testing and see the medical professionals and dietitians and people who can help you optimize and care for your body. I believe that has to be something we demand of ourselves. It's not served to us, at least not in the society I live in. So we have to take accountability for that. So health is luck. But here's the thing, it is also self respect and self love. What do you do when the inevitable adversity enters your life? A difficult situation, some bad News, you lose the job, the medical report comes in bad, something negative happens, something you didn't anticipate that just kind of just craps on your life. And all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, what do I do? You know, when that adversity strikes, you got to see it. Not just as, you know, this terrible moment, but perhaps a called moment, a moment in which you are being asked to rise up, a moment when you are being asked, being challenged, being brought to task, to be able to summon your real strength, to be able to summon more empathy, more love, more caring, more strength, more ambition, more go to itiveness. I don't know what is for you, but when adversity strikes, I always keep a pretty positive head on my shoulders and go, okay, this is hard. I don't pretend it doesn't suck, but I have to be able to move through it if I'm going to survive. And I know you know that as well. So what I thought I'd do is just share five big ideas with you of how to manage adversity, what to do when it strikes, how do you deal with it better than maybe you have in the past? Because I know if you're watching this or you listen to this, you know that, you know, you're a striver already. You got some basics, you've got some resilience. It's just, it's harder now because there's so many things going on for so many people. It's harder to bounce back. It really is. When everyone's juggling so many obligations, so many ambitions, so many opportunities. Man, when you stumble now, sometimes it feels like a real crash and burn. So what do you do? Number one, have confidence, my friend. Have confidence. I know that might sound silly or like some self help, motivational crap, but no, here's the deal. You got to have confidence that you're going to deal with this, that it's going to go okay, that you'll turn it around, or that you'll confidently deal with it in a way in which at least you're okay with it. Now let me qualify this. I don't mean confidence meaning like, well, negative situation. You're like, I've got this, I can handle this. Ha ha ha. It's not like that. What I mean by confidence is confidence. Real, genuine, authentic confidence, to me simply means a belief in your ability to figure things out, that's all. When the stuff hits the fan, just go, okay, Oh, I didn't want that. But I'll figure it out. That's all I want you to say. I'll figure it out. I'll handle it. Things will be okay. This is difficult. I will survive. I know that sounds so basic, but if you don't frame everything else that comes after that, it's just too hard. It's just too hard. We'll get sucked in negativity. We'll get sucked into dread or into bitterness or into sadness. We just have to immediately go, oh, gosh, okay, I'm going to have confidence. I know I can figure this out. Because you know what the reality is? You figured things out in the past that were equally as difficult or harder. Or if you haven't, if this is the biggest adversity you've ever faced in your life, guess what you're going to need to survive, my friend? Belief in your ability to figure things out. That's confidence. That's first stage. That's number one. Number two, keep perspective. And this is really important, your adversity. That seems so difficult. Two things to know. Number one, you're not the first person to be challenged with that adversity. Out of 7 billion people and thousands of collected years of recorded human history, none of us are going through anything that unique. I know that sounds mean to say, but, you know, I've always found that people who really believe that their adversity or difficulty is so different than everyone else that nobody can understand, they become bitter. You don't understand. Or they don't ever ask for help because they don't think anyone can understand them. So either they get mad at everybody else, or they push everybody else away or avoid the very thing that could serve them, which is seeking some assistance, as we'll talk about. So what I'd like you to do is keep perspective. No one is the first person to ever get cancer anymore. No one's the first person to lose a child anymore. No one's the first person to lose a limb anymore. No one's the first person to be in a car accident anymore. Other people have gone through it. So keep perspective. Realize that, you know, there's only two stories in humanity's narrative. That's struggle and progress. Lots of people struggled through what you've been through, but a lot of people have also progressed through it. So never feel alone. And realize too, with keeping perspective. Remember the times in the past, you did have some adversity. You called on some kind of strength and you summoned something. What made you help you get through it before? What helped you, you know what. What helped you break through? What Helped you deal with it. Can you remember those times? Think about that. What helped you before? What helped you before? Remember those times. It will help you keep perspective. You're not alone. You've been through some stuff before. Believe in your ability to figure this one out too. Next big number three, Schedule action. I love this one. Schedule action. What it means is when adversity strikes, so many people just go, oh my gosh, that's horrible. And they sit and they wait and they wait and they wait. Or they lay in bed and they're depressed and depressed and depressed. And they keep hoping for something to change. But there's only two things that change your life. Either new something new comes in, some new opportunity, new person, new luck, new grace. Something new comes externally in, or something new comes from within. Some new power, some new strength, some new ambition, some new beliefs, some new resolve, some new willingness to fight and make it happen. Those are the only two things that change. Either something new comes in or something new comes within. And I tell you that because you can't just wait and hope that everything gets better. Because if it's real adversity, it's going to require action. And what I tell people is, don't kind of like sometimes act to deal with it, schedule it. What are you going to do every single day? Even if it's just three goals every day, to handle that, to deal with that, to cope with that, Just three things. Sometimes those three things are as simple as take a shower. You know, sometimes just getting out of bed, taking a shower to start the day is a win. You know, I remember when I had my brain injury, it was a huge struggle. Just basic stuff. I mean, sending an email sometimes was a win. Making a call, you know, making sure I ate lunch to keep glucose coming to my brain. Like simple things were wins. But I had to schedule things because left to my own devices, I wouldn't do anything. I'd be like on the seventh season of some show or something. You know, you gotta schedule action each day, especially when it's difficult. Next idea. I kind of preface this one, but it's important to tactically do this, ask for help. And I don't mean ask for help. When you are at rock bottom, all this stuff is gone. Now you're bankrupt, now you're broke. Now awful things are happening. Most people ask for help way late. Soon as adversity strikes, ask for help. The second, if it seems in any way overwhelming, ask for help. Say, you know, ask your spouse or your partner, hey, honey, here's what's going on. I don't know exactly how I'm going to deal with it. You got any ideas or if it's a big thing, go to your business partner, go to your team, go to somebody at work and say, hey, here's a situation. Let's brainstorm some ideas of how to deal with this. That's asking for help too. If it's very, very traumatic, ask for help from a professional. Professional person in the medical or therapeutic field, psychological fields. Just get some assistance in how to think through things. Sometimes that's the greatest help we can get is, you know, even just going out with some friends or some girlfriends, sit around the table and say, hey, this thing happened on Monday. I wonder, can I tell you guys about it? Just get your perspective and just listen. Sometimes other people talking, how they're dealing with it or how they've dealt with it can truly serve you. Remember, you're not alone. You've been through stuff before, so have other people. And believing in your ability to figure things out, things will start to go okay, and then last piece, maybe sometimes the adversity sticks around for a while. Honor the struggle. Honor the struggle. If you've been with me in my High Performance Academy program or any of my seminars before, you know, this is a critical element, a critical mindset to all of success in life, is to honor the struggle. As I said at the very beginning of this video, sometimes the struggle is put there for you. Sometimes life is happening for us to get better. And it's a demand and it's challenging and that hardship can suck. But know, know that that struggle is necessary at this moment. Now you got to deal with it. You can't avoid it. You've got to face this thing and say, okay, what can I move? What can I shake? Except the fact that we can't change everything. We can't influence everything, but we can change and influence our attitude, our actions. Each day. We can figure out something to move forward in our lives and a little bit more that we get of those little things that we can move forward a little bit more. We feel confident again. The struggle is something to be honored because it's going to forge a greater capacity and character later on. So honor it. Don't hate it, because anything you throw hate at that quickly amplifies into flames of fury. Instead, have patience with it, see it and recognize it as a necessary thing at this time of your life. That's why it's been put there, even if you don't want it. Have that mentality like, okay, I'm meant to deal with this now. I didn't want to, but here it is. So how do I keep my confidence? What can I remind myself about? Perspective? Hey, it's Brandon jumping back in here again. Are you looking to go to the next level in your life right now? The next level of joy, abundance, success? Then you already know that you need to journal about your lessons learned in your life. You got to track your moods and your habits. You have to learn from the best personal development coaches and teachers in the world. And you got to stay inspired, accountable so that you can be more focused, disciplined, joyous and keep growing. That's what the Growth Day app is going to help you to do, my friend. It's the world's first all in one personal development app. It has all of the tools you need, all the coaching and the community that you need to level up to progress every week, to track your breakthroughs.

And to keep growing in every area.

Of your life consistently over the long term. So go start your transformation right now@growthday.com or just download the Growth Day app on your phone right now.

Every day. You can keep improving every day.

We are here for you. And every day is truly a great day to grow together. So let's make self improvement a way of life. Let's make that self improvement stick. Go to growthday.com right now. I call it the three E's. Okay? The three E's of a relationship. This is when I know a relationship is great and can can improve in a conflict situation. So if I'm mediating or counseling or coaching, here's what I do I watch for in those initial interactions when they're coming in and they're describing the problem. As an example to me, I watch for the three E's. First one, Empathy. Empathy. Does it look like the person, the other is listening and is caring what the other person is saying and can understand it even if they don't agree with it? Can they understand it even if they don't agree with it? That's a big one for me. Can they understand it even if they don't agree with it? Ah, that to me is empathy. They care that the other person is hurt or confused or upset about something. Like there's just empathy. Often it's non verbal. I can see that the non verbal stuff is the easiest. But often what people don't understand is a lot of times empathy looks like listening. Even if you don't agree, it can listen. Like, this can be empathy. Literally, this can be empathy. Like, you're. Like, you think they're crazy, but you're giving them the allowance to speak. It's empathizing enough. Like, we all believe that empathy is warm hugs and sunshine. But a lot of the time, empathy is allowing, turn, taking, asking a question, waiting, nodding, not arguing. Or it's saying, I heard you say this. I see it this way. Those simple notes of validation, time, openness, make all the difference. Second thing I look for, of the three E's, the first E is empathy. Second E is enthusiasm. I think enthusiasm is the master of all emotion, right? Even more than love. People are like, you're crazy. I'm like, no, no. I know lots of people who have love, but there's no enthusiasm in the relationship anymore. There's no intimacy, no pop, no vibrancy, no variety. It's just. It's like they care for each other, but there's no energy behind it. I think the energy behind things is enthusiasm. When we're excited about building our life together, or listen when we're excited about solving this problem together. I remember the first, like, I was doing a divorce referred mediation. I was in, like, grad school, and I knew this couple was gonna survive. It was like five minutes into this thing because they were just like, we are so excited to solve this thing together. And I was like, you're gonna be great. I immediately knew, and it was so easy. It was so. I'm sorry, it was not easy. It was so well resolved because there was enthusiasm, even if we don't agree. Enthusiasm for the solution, enthusiasm to move out of this crappy time. I love when people do coaching or counseling. And I've talked to therapists who go, oh, my gosh, they were so happy to finally share their hatred for each other. They were so enthusiastic to get it out and to talk about it and to start working on it. The enthusiasm to work on it, the enthusiasm to improve it, the enthusiasm to build that future together, the enthusiasm to resolve it. That is such an indicator of things. So how do you feel? Are you enthusiastic? Improve that relationship to grow it? Are you enthusiastic to go deeper? Enthusiastic to do the things for your other who just loves it? Are you enthusiastic about them and their life so important. Empathy, enthusiasm. And the third one, encouragement. The strongest relationships are built on encouragement, right? We know this from the social sciences. I know many of you guys heard me recommend for the last decade the work by John Gottman and his wife in research and relationships. I love that work. And one of the critical things that came out of that was such A simple distinction that happy couples tend to praise each other five times more than they complain or negate. And whether that ratio is true in all relationships across all cultures is not. Is probably not super validated. But what I do believe is the simple way to break that down is encourage your partner. A lot. A lot. Encourage them, cheer them, you know, they got a big day. Do something. Look, I got this on this laptop over here from Denise. I don't. Can I see that? You guys probably can't see us too. No, not gonna show up. It's just, it's a post it note that she gave me like six months ago. I still have it on my computer. It says, I love you, I appreciate you. I know you are doing big things. I love you, I appreciate you, I know you are doing things. It was just a post it note she put on my computer in a really particularly difficult week that I was having. And we're both pretty good about leaving little notes around for each other, especially when we're traveling or we'll be apart or something like that. But also throughout the day. Like she puts something over there that she likes or she does. I'm like, I love that. Good job. That's amazing. And we don't say that flippantly. Like we were like, that's great. That's amazing. Like, we cheer each other on a lot. And I think that's huge. The ability to encourage one another is so vital. So vital. Okay, so the three things, Empathy, encouragement, empathy, enthusiasm, and encouragement. I look for those, I watch for them. But listen, don't just look for them, cultivate them. Cultivate them. And if you don't know how to do it, ask your partner. Be like, hey, how can I demonstrate empathy for you more? Hey, how can I bring some enthusiasm in this relationship? Hey, do you feel like I encourage you enough? What could I do better? Because ultimately all these things we're talking about, remember, you have to do together, it's about the relationship first. It's, you're going to build this life together. The most important phrase to me, if I was, I'm advising, it was like, you're co creating your future together. Co creation. People support what they create. You create it together and you support it together. And that's everything. So it's never like, I'm mad at you for this reason. It's like, ugh, we were in that situation. Didn't seem to go good. What can we do better? It's the we story, not just the me story. It's the understanding that we Must communicate together, plan together and work together to build the ideal future together, to build the energy, co create the energy together. These things matter. But they're open dialogues and you don't have to be right. And they don't have to be right. You get a turn, they get a turn, you understand? If they're not going to agree with you, you understand? It's fluid, it's dynamic, and that's what makes a relationship great. Versus it has to be this way or it has to be that way. Where we butt heads, reveal uncertainty. This one is the opposite dynamic of how I used to think of confidence, right? We think of confident people as people are just like, you know, it's like Wonder Woman, right? Is confident. We think of Superman, is confident who just knows everything, really what it turns out to be. High performers are a lot. Listen to this. High performers are a lot less Superman and a lot more Clark Kent. That's what it turned to be in all the research with millions of data points. In all of my conversations, high performers were much more likely to reveal things like, I don't know, things like, I'm unsure. Things like, how do you think this should go? Things like, could you kind of help me with this? Like, high performers literally explicitly share that they don't know how it's going, they don't know how it's supposed to go, that they need some help, that they need some mentorship, that they need some guidance. That's confidence. Confidence is not holding back the deck of cards of your weaknesses. Confidence is a comfort with vulnerability. And when people say vulnerability, they often don't know what they mean. When we're talking about vulnerability specifically related to confidence and high performance, like measurable outcomes, the thing that we can measure and see is that high performers in group meetings, in team meetings, in social situations more often share their insecurity. They more often say, I don't know how this is supposed to go, or they'll be the person at that fruit punch bowl who says, I don't really know anybody here. I don't really know how to start to meet some of these people. Could you introduce me to somebody? And that's how they handle the social networking, where they're awkward. Instead of just sitting back at the punch bowl, drowning their sorrows and feeling bad about themselves, they engage the person next to them and say, hey, you know what? I feel kind of awkward here. I don't know a lot of people. Could you introduce me? That's how high performers are handling these little situations in life. They're not the most confident person in the meeting who goes, I know everything here. They're the most confident going, you know what? I don't know this. Here's my question. What do you guys think? And that is how you lead confidently. You reveal that you don't know everything. Saying I don't know is power, not weakness. But you've been trying to do too many things on your own, and that's one reason you don't have the confidence you deserve at this stage of your life. Because, see, I didn't want to start with my definition of confidence for you because I want you to be thinking about it. But I'd like to share it now that we've talked about defining and measuring it. The way I look at confidence is I think the confidence that matters the most is the confidence in one's belief in our ability to figure things out. That's what I believe confidence to be. Do I believe in my ability to figure things out? Not do I know things? Because it's not always true. There's a lot of things I don't know. But do I believe in my ability to figure things out? Now there, I'm confident. Not because I'm smart, because I'm good at asking, I'm good at saying, you know what? I don't know how to do this. What do you guys think? And I hope this is settling in for you, because sometimes your confidence is so low because you think your confidence is correlated with what you know versus what you're willing and able to go figure out by revealing that you don't know. Got it. Next big practice for you that will really help is small changes plus integration. This one comes from my wife, if you didn't know. My wife opened two exercise studios throughout her career. Very, very successful at it. Ultimately sold them. And today, literally this morning in the car, I said, okay, I'm teaching this thing on confidence. Like, what would you teach, honey? She's led lots of big teams and had an extraordinary quality of life. And I said, okay, well, tell me how. What would you say? She says, well, to gain confidence, people need to make small changes. Not always go for the biggest thing, but make small changes and see themselves making those changes and then integrate that into their identity. Integration, if you heard me talk about it, it's a big topic in high performance. It's one reason successful people often don't feel like successful people or successful people don't feel confident because they've never integrated the wins, the W I n s wins. They've had A lot of wins in their life, but they never stopped and said, wow, I really appreciate that I got a little better today. I really appreciate that I put myself out there. I'm proud of myself for trying here. You know what? I am a little stronger because I did that thing. To acknowledge that you've gained some strength is everything to confidence is, isn't it? Write it down to acknowledge that you gained some strength. Look, if you had two kids and you survived, you've gained some strength, you get a little more confidence in life. I mean, come on, what else do you have to be through if you've already made some money in your business? But it's always more, more, more, more, more. And you never stop to go, wow, I really came from nothing. I made some money here. And you never integrated the win in your identity. You, your identity stays the same level over here, even though you've actually accomplished a lot over here. And I see that all the time. It's why I see people who are the same level of confidence in their 20s and 30s, and now they're 50 and 60 leading other people, but they're completely wracked with insecurity. Every night they feel like crap. They don't know what they're doing. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, you should have so much more confidence. You should feel good about yourself. Integrate some of these wins. So what small changes could you make in, let's say, the next 30 days that you could celebrate simple, small ones, like if you just did little things, like Maybe you do five extra reps at the gym or you stay for 10 extra minutes, or at work, you decide you're going to share one new idea a week. You don't have to change the world. You don't have to innovate the world. You don't have to take us to Mars. You, you just say, okay, at work. I'm going to share one more idea every week at work, and I'm going to celebrate that every time I do it each week, by the end of the week or by the end of the month, I've shared four brand new ideas. Those are small. That's small. You can do that small. It's one thing. Little things. So think about your health. What small wins could you have in your health? Maybe next time you go to the grocery store, you just don't get the bag of chips. And that's a small win for the day because that prevents you from eating the whole bag of chips tonight or tomorrow. Nothing against chips. So don't Attack me in the. But I think it's really important that you identify in your health, as a parent, in your career, what are some small changes you can make? It doesn't have to be a big global brand change. It might be one more little thing that you do and then that one more little thing that's important for you to log it, recognize it, and integrate it so that you're getting stronger. If you don't acknowledge it, you can't get stronger. Hey, everybody, it's Brendan. Have you ever heard that advice to take risks, but you felt like, I don't want to take risks? No one likes risk, right? No one wants to say, when they wake up in the morning, I'm going to take tons of risks today. Usually risk brings about fear. We're worried that if we take a risk, we'll fail, other people will judge us, we'll look stupid, we'll feel uncertain or unsure of ourselves. And nobody likes those feelings or those outcomes. So as much as people say, take risks, it's easy for us to say, nah, I'm not into that. But we also know intellectually that we can't grow unless we take more risks, that your next level of success, that leap from this level to that level, there's going to be risk there. You know, it's from here to there, and there's that gap in between. You don't know as you take that leap, if you're going to do well, that's the risk. You might fall, you might fail, you might not do well. But if you're not making those leaps and taking those steps, you'll always be stuck where you were yesterday. And to grow, we've got to have a lot of courage to jump into those risks. So let me give you maybe a framework for how to think about taking risks. You know, I always think about three ways to think about taking risks so that I'm continually pushing and growing myself. So the first thing I think about when I look at my career or I look at my life, the first risk I want to take is I want to make whatever I'm doing harder. I know that sounds weird, but I'm like, how could I make my job more difficult? Because in the taking that risk to make it more difficult, all grow. I'll give you guys an example. Last weekend, I had the blessing to keynote a conference in New Orleans. Some of you all were there. It was at the Superdome in New Orleans, which holds like 100,000 people, but they kind of spliced it in half with a Curtain. And they had 20, 30,000 people in the audience. This was for the Beachbody convention, and it was a blast. Now I could get up and talk to 20,000 people pretty regularly in my life. I'm doing it again next weekend. It's what I do as a motivational speaker. Right. I'm used to doing that. But I could just go on stage, do my thing, and get off, and that wouldn't be serving the audience as much. And so I asked my question myself. How can I make this presentation even harder on me so that I can grow? So I text two of my friends who happen to be in that organization. Tony Horton, many of you guys know he is kind of the founder of and trainer for P90X and Shalene Johnson, who does piyo. And I text them both. I said, what's your hardest exercise move that people usually can't get? Because both those people are going to be at the conference. And this was a lot of their superfans. So I was like, let's go. So Tony told me, he's like, the donkey kick is the hardest one. The donkey kick is basically you do a handstand, you kick your legs out, you land back plank position, you run your leg through, like threading the needle in yoga, and then you return and you do a burpee. Okay? And Chalene said, well, the hardest one is like what she calls the piyo flip, which is like, imagine doing a bridge, right, but then going to kind of one arm. And, like, you're doing a bridge this way and one arm goes that way. I mean, it's not easy. So I decided in front of 20,000 people to do those two moves back to back in a suit. So imagine doing a handstand in a suit, kicking your legs out, threading the needle, then flipping over, doing a full extended bridge. Not easy, but I did it because it would be hard. Does that make sense? Part of the reason I got better as a speaker is because I was pushing myself. Pushing myself. I mean, I used to be. It's very comforting and easy to give a big speech and, you know, have a transcript or all these notes to read from. But I said, one day I'm going to be able to get up on stage and give a speech with no notes whatsoever. Now, that's hard. That's not comforting. It's not easy. But it's by putting challenges in front of ourselves that we grow. And that's part of taking risks. You know, I always say to people, look, if the only challenges you're dealing with in Life right now are the ones that life dealt you, then you're not living a fully conscious life yet. And what I mean by that is you're living a life of reaction. If you're not moving and put. If you're not moving towards harder and more difficult goals, if you're not giving yourself challenges, if you're not taking risks consciously, then you're just reacting to the world. You're not growing. And so challenge yourself the next time you're going to go do something, your art, your career, put yourself out there, try something, make that sales call. How could you challenge yourself to make that process even harder so you get better? Obviously, you know, you need to do that in the gym too, right? I mean, part of growing a muscle is stretching it and making it harder, making it difficult, pushing it beyond its current capabilities. That's how you grow muscle. Same thing. That's how you grow in life. The second big thing I think about is how do I do what I'm doing and take a risk by being different, Right? So think about what I've shared so far. The first way to take a risk is to make your process harder so that you grow and stretch. The second way is do something very different. Mean, maybe you're already good at something, but now you're going to completely switch up how you're doing it. Right? Now, many of you know I have a podcast about to change that podcast from something that's been very successful. You know, we had top 10 for over 100 weeks in my category. We're completely changing that up. So for those who listen to Charged Life, that's going to be switching up this weekend to the Brendon Show. And it's completely different. It's a new format. We don't need to do it. The old way worked fine. But part of taking risks is making yourself evolve, not being the latecomer to evolution, right? So think about how can you do something different? I'll give you an example. When we first started my YouTube channel back in, like, 2014, when we really started doing weekly YouTube videos, Travis had this great idea. He said, you know what? What if we did our videos in black and white? And back then, nobody was doing videos in black and white on a weekly basis as part of a show, certainly not in personal development. So we did it. It was completely different. It was a risk for us. I mean, would it work going from color to black and white in the modern era? It did. And some of those videos took off. I mean, million views, 2 million views now. Some of them entering the 3 millionth view, that that happened because we decided to take a risk and be different. So how can you be different in your category, in your career, in your field of interest, Whatever you're doing, how can you purposefully choose to evolve and do something different? Because that's a risk. And sure, not all risks are rewarded, but I'll tell you what's never rewarded. Stagnation. And then the last one. Part of taking a risk is being more personal, teaching yourself to share more, to be more vulnerable. It's hard. I get it. You know, I'm in front of a camera, in front of stage, all of my life. I shouldn't say my adult life. I mean, over the last 10 years of my life, it's been a very public journey for me. You see, if you're on with us on Facebook, you know, this is. We have 5 million fans on this Facebook page alone. Doesn't count our other Facebook pages. You know, we've just started and we're growing our Instagram channel. Hey, guys. On Instagram. I mean, this has been a journey for me of being in front of the public eye. But even me, for my next level, I'm going to have to share more about my personal life, be more thoughtful about that. And that takes a lot of vulnerability. It doesn't scare me. I just know I need to do it. And I'll give you an example, you know, when I first started my career in personal and professional development, you know, because if you ask me, Brendan, what do you do? I always say, well, I'm a writer first and I'm a trainer second. I've been blessed to train more people on the topic, motivation to high performance than anybody else in the world. Now our videos have been viewed over 100 million times, over 10 million fans across our Facebook pages. I've been blessed to reach a lot of people, but I can share with you. When I began my career, I thought I had to be Mr. Buttoned up, you know, so proper, because I came from the consulting world. You know, if you ever had a real job in organizational America and then you start doing this, it's hard not to be stiff, you know, and not share as much. But I remember the first time I ever shared with my audience back then. I shared with them about how when I started my career, I went broke. And I mean bankrupt broke. And I was in bankruptcy and I was struggling to start my career, do my own seminars. I had no idea what I was doing. You know, people were making fun of me. I'm sure people are making fun of me right now on this live cast. You get used to that part. But, you know, it was new and it was scary. And I'll never forget, though, that after I shared that, so many people would come up to me and, like, I've struggled with that, too. I've been bankrupt or I came from poverty and I worked hard and I made it, too, and people would share their stories with me and it was really inspiring and taught me that, you know, people won't believe your successes if they don't believe the struggle. You got to share where you struggled more in life and that feels like a risk. But, you know, you got to be honest. Does your family and your friends and the people you serve, do they know what you really think, what you really feel, what you really desire in life, what you're really going after, what you need? Because if they don't know that about you, that's not taking risks. Look, being quiet and avoiding difficult conversation is not taking risks and it's not the path to growth. The path to growth for so many of us is another level of personal authenticity, another level of personal sharing. And if you don't do that, then you're not risking. You're just going through the motions. So I would say that today, when you're thinking about the next level of growth for yourself, think about risk. When you think about risk, think about it in these three ways. Okay? Number one, think about how can I make my process even more difficult? How can I take on a challenge that's hard for me that would push me outside of my comfort zone? Number two, how can I do something different? I mean, even though I don't need to do something different, like really switch things up and then number three, do something more personal. Share something more personal and watch how those risks start rewarding your life. Look, we can all go from, you know, an average person to an achiever and we can all go from an achiever to a high performer. But it's going to take some new habits for you to get there. And I hope that this conversation about taking risks inspired you to think about just 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.

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