Striving in Chaos: High Standards

What's up, my friends? It's Brendon, host of the Brendon show, and welcome to episode what number four of Striving in Chaos. How do we deal with this global pandemic in a way that is helpful to us and not hurtful to us? That has been what I've been talking about in this series with you. And I thank all of you for all the love, the DMs, the comments, the. The support, the cheering on that. I'm doing this series for you every single day because I just want to be here for you, cheer you on, let you know that, you know, right now it's difficult. It's hard. But the good thing is, listen, we're all experiencing it together. And usually where we're so divisive, we can choose this moment to not only come together, but to summon the greatest aspects of our own humanity right now. Because if we won't summon the best of who we are now in the face of difficulty, when are we going to do it? We won't have the same necessity when everything's, you know, peaches and roses. I don't even know if that's a saying, but you know what I'm saying. I think this is an opportunity for us to really demonstrate the values we espouse. The values we believe about kindness, the values we believe about leadership, the values we believe about people, personal development, self mastery, showing up. And I know that's difficult. I don't pretend that this is such a easy time. I just pretend that it's a necessary time. It is here. We have to accept. We have to allow. We have to experience. We have to not deny or avoid our feelings. We have to not ask other people to deny or avoid their own. However, episode four here of Striving in Chaos on the Brendon show podcast, I thought I would take on something that's, whoo, not probably gonna be super popular, y'. All. And I sorry I have to tell you that, and I recognize that. So allow me my time to make a little bit of case with you that might actually serve you because here's what I keep hearing. What I'm gonna call this episode. I'm going to call this episode. This crisis is different. This crisis is different. How many of you, you know, thumbs up, double hands up, have heard this statement, and maybe the statement has been used to justify some good behavior and some bad behavior. This crisis is different. It's different. And you know what it is? It is a very serious time. We must take this pandemic this is the greatest pandemic of our modern era. It's unprecedented. It is scary. It is something that we can all, you know, really, really overreact to. And it's something that, although we also have to take precautions to. But please note what is happening now. As we edge longer into this crisis, people start taking this crisis is different, which is a good thing at the beginning for us to recognize as humans. When you notice something is different, our brain is actually built for that, right? Literally, our neurobiological feedback sparks right on when something is different. We're supposed to notice things as we talk about neuroscience that are novel, right? Novelty really lights up the brain. Novelty tells the brain say, hey, pay attention to this. Let's summon our resources and see how we need to respond to this. That's not what we expected. Noticing novelty is what allows us to protect ourselves. Noticing what is different is something that really is an empowering thing. And being aware of something out of place that helps us stay safe. So when we say this crisis is different at first, hey, listen, that was a good thing. That was saying, hey, all this is different. This is new. Be careful, take these actions. Let's do these precautions. And it was a wonderful thing. And still some people say, hey, good leaders out there who I love you and I appreciate each of you when you say this crisis is different. Some of you are using that to say, hey, you know what? Wow, this is a moment right now. This is an opportunity for me to show the best of who I am, for me to care for my family differently, for me to show my family and my friends what I'm all about, really, right now. Because I will say it throughout this, this series on the Brendon show podcast. It's a must that we adopt a role model mindset. The kids are watching, your community's watching. Your future self is going to look back and watch and ask how you dealt with it. So adopting that role model mindset is so important that that role model mindset summons you to be better than you feel sometimes to be better than you are. And I think that's really important. Yes, you can be allowing. Yes, you can rest. Yes, you can recover. I've talked about that throughout this series and. And I hope you've tuned in. However, you know, while some leaders are taking that call of this crisis is different and they are showing up for it, other people, I'm here to tell you, are not maybe behaving so justly. And so we are seeing people use this crisis is different. And the weight of it to maybe enact some things that aren't going to serve them through this and aren't going to serve their community. So I'm going to have a list of things here that are not going to help because so much of what I've been doing on the podcast, if you've been listening to the Brendan show podcast, is cheering, encouraging, demanding, like just really like being that voice of positivity and empowerment for people. But part of that right now is I think, to recognize that, listen, just because we're in a pandemic, not everything gets a pass. Can I get an amen on a weekday? Right. Not every behavior gets a pass. You don't get to just because there's a situation where you're in your house away from other people or with the family or with the kids and there's new demands on you. Listen, new demands doesn't necessarily justify bad behavior. Right? We know, we still know throughout the march of time in psychology, sociology, physiology, we know in every area of human study, from philosophy all the way to politics, straight down to our daily behavior. We know what makes people happy. It's not a mystery. And some people are using this crisis is different to summon the best of themselves, to recognize the opportunity to lead, to take some time to reflect, to redefine, to. To recalibrate, to rest, to recover, to organize the house. Some people are using this time for real self introspection, real rest or real opportunities to lead and serve and be role models. Some people are using this fact that this crisis is different in positive ways. However, I bet some of you have also noticed something that I want to talk about. Cause I'm your coach. I got to keep people accountable. I got to be real. And what is happening also is some people are saying this crisis is different and they're using that to justify bad behavior, justify hate, justify complaint, justify their bad attitude that's carrying on weeks and months, justify lying, cheating, stealing, enacting irresponsible behaviors for themselves and their families, demanding things from other people in entitled and rude ways as know this is not popular. And I know, listen, I'll probably get skewered for even bringing this up. How dare somebody say that we should practice good values throughout such difficult times. What a jerk Brennan is. He, you know, he lacks all empathy. He doesn't understand that people of course, are going to burst out in anger and upset and that they're going to, you know, do these things because, you know, the stress and the overwhelms getting to people and you have to allow Them to be, you know, rude and who they are. And I'm like, ah, maybe. Maybe. Is stress real? Yeah. Is overwhelm? Yes. Is threat to our lives scary? Yes. But your life, if you're at home right now, is on average, by the vast majority of the average, I don't know, 7 billion people is not any more threatened necessarily than it was last year. Meaning last year you might have been out driving your car. Last year you might have got the flu. Last year you might have had the same incidence of heart disease, diabetes. Last year you might not have been safe too. And I'm not saying this is not different. It is different and it is scary. But listen, stress, overwhelm and all the things we are facing now, we have also faced before, right? We have also faced before and we faced bigger things before. It is not minimizing these things. What it is doing is contextualizing the fact that stress and overwhelm is not new to your life. Yes, these are new stressors. Yes. This is a new way to be overwhelmed. Yes, it's collectively heavy. Yes, it is different. But it does not justify you spreading hate. It does not justify you complaining 24 7. It does not justify you saying these people are horrible and terrible and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't justify us becoming more divisive. Does this pandemic justify anyone to become more decisive? Divisive? I'm sorry, it's like, does this give us a reason to hate groups more? I don't think so. I think this is a cause to maybe recognize we're collectively in something together. Does this justify people coming at you being rude, trying to take what's not theirs, acting from scarcity and anger and hurt to others? I don't think so. Here's my list right now that I'm seeing. Number one, people are using, using. And I mean, they're literally using it. They're not conscious of it yet, but someday it will be revealed to them as they gain higher consciousness and awareness that they're using this, this situation, that this is different as a reason to demonstrate bad attitude. Well, I can be rude. I can. I can have a crappy outlook. I deserve to have a crappy outlook. This is terrible. This is terrible. Oh, that's, that's what they're doing. They're like, my attitude that's negative is deserved because these situations, hey, your attitude could have been deserved when you couldn't pay the bills too. Your attitude could have been. Your bad attitude could have been deserved when someone treated you wrong. We've always had to choose it. And I keep talking about this over and over, over that. You know Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, where he talked about the last of the human freedoms. They can take away everything from you, but they cannot take away one's ability to choose one's own attitude. So you can't use the crisis to choose a negative attitude and justify it. Attitude. The second thing I've seen people justify is rudeness and complaint and hate. I'm going to bucket them all together because I really feel like it's like, oh, I can be rude right now. I can be demanding right now of other people. They should give me this because it's hard on me. I was like, whoa, hey, listen, it's hard on all of us. You don't get special treatment just because the context changed. There's a lot of people demanding things that are like, not real, not fair, not good right now. And you're like, whoa, you don't get to use the context to be demanding of other people. That doesn't make sense. You can make requests, you can be kindly. You can say to your spouse, hey, you know what? I need a little bit more help right now. This is really hard. I'm a little stressed and overwhelmed and sometimes I just. My day kind of. I'm losing a couple days of here. You can lean on your teams more, you can lean on friends more, but to demand it just because the context, right. How dare you not give me X? There's a pandemic going on. It's like, whoa, hold on there. I've seen people. Another thing, lying and cheating. And remember, you're talking to Brent Burchard here, who never talks about the real negative aspects of our lives. Because I'm more of the, like, I'm more of the positive psychology type of guy who's saying, hey, let's focus on our strengths. Let's build those. But I see people lying and cheating and demanding right now in ways that aren't right. They're going to companies and they're saying, hey, I bought something two years from you two years ago from you, but I need money now, so give it to me. And if you don't, I'm going to trash you online as being insensitive. Guys, I've really had that happen to me. I literally. We've had clients, people from years ago say, hey, this is hard times. I want money back from that. I'm like, do you go to Amazon and ask for money back from something three years ago? Because it's hard right now. Like we can't use the context just to get whatever we want or demand whatever we want and threaten other people when we don't get what we want. Yes, it's hard times, but it doesn't justify irresponsible behavior or poor ethical behavior. Like if we give up on our ethics now, right versus wrong truth, if we forget justice, if we forget mercy, if we forget kindness now, and we become demanding, entitled, bratty, rude, hate filled or threatening to people, what have we achieved when this moment in time we will remember? You know, all my friends right now are often reminding us of all the neuroscience, right in that in our memories or our times, in our lives, that there are these peak moments, these big dramatic moments. Like this is a dramatic moment in history right now, right? That we're going to be able to summon our recollection of how we acted then so easily. 1 year, 2 year, 5 year, 10 years. Just like you remember when 9, 11 happened, right? And where you were and how you behave people and how you treated people and remember the country coming together. Well, guess what, we're having that same thing. A year, two, three, four years from now, we're going to look back and either we're going to go, I was proud of myself or ooh, you know, I wasn't. Please don't let this, this is different. This crisis is different. Context allow you to be irresponsible, rude, you know, demanding of other people. Because guess what, they're going through hardship just like you. They're going through hardship, which is like you. What if they pushed their emotions on you right now? What if they demanded things from you that they didn't deserve or they didn't earn or they, you know, I mean, just think about it for a minute. Think about all the people right now who are choosing. You know what, I'm not gonna, you know what? This context. I can afford to do things, but I'm not gonna pay any of my bills right now, even though they can afford to. It's like, that's not gonna help our economy, that's not gonna help the world grow by being unethical and not paying the bills that you have when you can pay them. Now. I know that folks, again, I know I'm gonna get a lot of hate for this because there are some people who truly can't pay the bills. And that is why we are doing stimulus packages. That is why, you know, so many business owners and so many people are allowing or pausing payments or doing something like a lot of people are working really hard. But a lot of people are taking their train wreck that was happening months before, years before this crisis and now they're putting that train wreck on everybody else under the umbrella of the crisis. And listen, I know again I said I know this is not going to be super, you know, super positive. But I think that what we have to do is hold each other to high ethical standards always. Not when it's convenient, not once in a while. I don't think that a crisis justifies bad behavior. I don't think a crisis should allow us to make, you know, our issues, other people issues. I don't think that a crisis should allows us to lie, cheat, steal. So here's what I'm encouraging you, my friends, you are going to so remember how you acted right now. And if you take from other people right now, if you lied to get yourself out of a situation that you had already created, you're going to remember that. You're going to remember this time you go, you know what? I really did a lot of irresponsible behavior during that crisis. And you know what? Your psyche will store that up and it will degrade, degrade your character. And so what will happen, your sense of worth, your sense of value, your sense of self confidence will go down if you justify bad behavior and unethical behavior based on anything. Anything. We all can make excuses to lie, cheat, steal, be rude, spread hate. But the fact that most of us don't is why humanity is so beautiful. We can all justify. But the fact that you, my audience, doesn't do that. You hold yourself to a high standard that inspires me and it keeps me going. So I don't want this to feel like, oh, Brendan went off the deep end negative today. No, I'm calling a spade a spade. I'm saying let's hold ourselves to high accountable. Let's be proud of ourselves. Let's instead of adopting a negative attitude, let's adopt a positive one. Let's be role models instead of, you know, being rude to other people, let's be extra thoughtful with them instead of allowing all terrible behavior. Let's still be leaders. Let's still hold people accountable instead of spreading hate. Let's really talk about the human oneness story and share love instead of lying when it's convenient because we can put it under the umbrella of a crisis. Let's realize that lying is lying, cheating is cheating. And in any given context, years later, that will not only hurt your relationships, it will hurt your psyche and your sense of Self worth. Let's stop saying, oh, well, it's a crisis. So, you know, I'm allowed to, you know, do all these bad habits. It's okay that, you know, I'm just throwing away, you know, my discipline. I'm not going to take care of myself. I'm going to drown myself in alcohol right now. That's going to have ripple effects. Oh, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to. I'm going to let myself go for a couple weeks and that's going to have health benefits. What do we want to. What's the best response right now? Should we throw out all our bad behaviors, become overweight and addicted and terrible to people right now? Or should we say, you know what? I better protect my immune system. Boy, I'd really better get my immune system teed up. I better rest. I'd better recover. I better drink all the waters. I better really take good care of myself right now so that I can pull my family through. I'd better take care of myself right now so I can be energized to pull my family through what is going to be a very long year. So I hope that this is really serving you all because I love you and I want to share this message with you. I'm going to be that person throughout this. I said it day one. I said, listen, I don't think that I'm going to be the guy who's just going to enable every behavior here. I'll be empathetic, but not enabling. I'll be empathetic and empowering. But as a high performance coach, the whole idea is hold yourself to high standards and you get to live and experience a quality of life that most people never will because when it gets hard, they let go of their standards. And I'm not saying everything has to be perfect. I'm not saying you have to work equally as hard or do everything perfectly perfect as you used to be able to. But I'm here to say you have standards. Practice them, believe in them, stick to them. You know, maybe you don't get every day right, maybe one or two days slip away, but if. Listen, we're months into this thing. If you're keeping track already, if you've let your standards go for months, reengage. If you've been lying, cheating, stealing, being a positive or being in a negative attitude for flip that now because it's only going to carry on. We still got a long march ahead of us. We've got to learn to dress that March with honor, to show up as our best selves, to care for the guy and the gal and the people around us. Because it will continue. So let us be proud of ourselves. Please hold yourself to high standard. That is my message right now. When it is difficult, that's when you hold yourself to a high standard. When you have all the reason in the world to lower yourself, you still aim high, you still believe in good things, you still live an ethical life so that when your memory is triggered years from now, and it will be, you will look back and go, wow, you know what? I had all the reason in the world to join the liars, the cheaters, the takers, the scarcity mongers, the hate mongers. And you know what? I've distanced myself from them. You know what? Let's social distance ourself from what we could become. And instead we grow into who we were meant to be by holding ourselves to high ethical standards. That is how we will strive together well and positive and courageously and strong in chaos. That is your episode today of Striving in Chaos. I hope you enjoyed this one. Listen, my friends, if you didn't know, I'm taking the audio of all these episodes I'm doing with you that I'm calling Striving on Chaos. I'm putting them on the Brendon show podcast. So if you're not a subscriber to the Brendon show podcast, go to the link in my bio on Instagram. Click that thing. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. This is one of the most popular series I've ever done before because people need something like this to remind them of their best humanity. Not just the reasons we can all veg out, but remind ourselves of the best of humanity too. Because we can be in harmony of resting and recovering and we can be in activity of moving towards our dreams, improving our lives for our families. And let us do that together. Let's strive through this chaos and together let's do this. So please go subscribe to the Brendon show podcast right now and download all the episodes you see that say Striving in Chaos. If this serves you, I'm here for you. I honor you, I respect you, I'm proud of you and I'm holding you to a high standard. Love you all. Thanks for joining me tonight.