The Motivation Killer
20 Jan 2018 · 5 min
Brendon Burchard argues that dread, not laziness, is what kills motivation. He explores how it shows up in work, social media, exercise, and hard conversations, and how recognizing it changes what you can do about it.
Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to another episode of the Brendon show. Dread. Dread. This is the worst. This is different than fear because there's a lot of things you're not fearful of but you dread. Really dread. How many dread doing more marketing? How many dread doing more social media? How many dread having to travel more? How many for work? How many dread, like just the process of going to the gym? Anyone dread going to the gym? You need to change that because dread is the killer of motivation. And here's the weird thing about dread. You might have dread in one area of your life. It breaks the banks into all the other areas of your life, right? One rain shower of dread can be a tsunami across all other areas of your life. You gotta be careful. You gotta shore yourself up. You gotta be very cautious when you are dreading. It can wipe out everything. It can really wipe out everything. Oh, I dread my commute today. It still stuns me. One of the basic human things I cannot get over is how many people dread their commute. Like, dread it. I go, but you do it every day. And they go, I hate it. I go, but you're an adult. And they go, yeah. And I go, you're an adult and you do it every day and you still dread it. They go, yeah. I go, well, no, then you are a child and you commute every day. Because only a child would not think, well, if I do it every day, let me find a way to at least enjoy something of it or at least use that time, right? Only a child would dread it and kick their feet every single day, right? Like every day. Like, you can't train yourself not to kick your feet every day. I'm like, you commute. If you commute every day, you gotta change how you approach that. How many people follow same thing. Look, people dread difficult conversations. They really do. I enjoy them. I really. That's why I became a coach. I'm like, I love difficult conversations. I learned so much. I find so many avenues to help people. I see so much transformation. It's only through that struggle and that strife or that conflict that we might find the right thing for everybody. I love that participative process. Let's do it. This is going to be great. Because when I was young, I dreaded it. And that's what led to bad relationships in my life because I dreaded having the conversation. So guess what? I gulped down what I needed. I didn't share with other people what I really thought, what I really felt what I really wanted of life. And so my life was caged. And then I realized I'm just dreading things that maybe I haven't developed skill at or I haven't chose to strategically engage. Many of you have more things in your life that you dread than maybe you're aware of because you're so used to them. I really want you to identify that dread in sports performance. When I work with sports athletes, we often call it the drag, meaning, you know, in emotional language we might call it the baggage. Dread is your baggage. You're trying to fly high and achieve things. Dread is your baggage. You're dreading doing those things. So you're carrying this dread with you. You can't soar if you dread going to work. You can't soar if you dread talking to people. You can't not soar if you dread the basic struggles of getting ahead. So listen to how you talk. Listen how your thinking is, because that bad thinking can really get you in trouble. How many follow this so far? Is this too much for day one? Night? Are we cool? We're good. Keep going. Okay. Pay attention to where you're dreading things. If you're ready to take your life to a whole new level, make sure you grab my book, High Performance How Extraordinary People Become that Way. It's available on Amazon right now, and when you order your copy, you're really supporting my channel and the message. And you're also getting a book that will reveal to you 20 years of my research into what is it that helps people go to a new level of success in their life? What does it really take? What habits are proven to help you reach long term success in your career, your health, your personal life, your relationships? It's called High Performance Habits How Extraordinary People Become that Way. It's available on Amazon right now.