Three Transformational Events in My Life

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard. And welcome to another episode of the Brendon show.

I always like to say there's only two things that change your life. Either something new, new comes into your life. You know, new possibility, a new opportunity, a new person, new luck. You win the lottery. You know, something comes in and changes the direction of your life forever. Or something new comes from within, and you make new decisions for yourself. You set new standards, A new, deeper level of motivation or drive or hunger comes into your life. And by necessity, you decide to activate your potential again. And I think that there's been three times in my life that were completely transformed because both those things happen almost simultaneously. You know, I bet you've had things in your life you can think back to, like what psychologists call critical incidences, like moments in your life where something was so significant an event happened to you that caused you to have to change, that made you want to be better. You know, maybe you didn't want it to happen to you, or maybe it did. It was luck or it was bad luck. And from that moment of luck or bad luck, you decided to transform the quality of your life. And that's exactly what happened to me. Three times, I really think shaped me the most as a person. The first time, some of you all know, was when I was a young kid and I had a breakup with the first woman I ever loved. We'd gone to high school together. We thought we were going to get married. Then relationship fell apart. And because my whole identity was tied up into her and the relationship, then I fell apart. When the relationship broke and I became, you know, a broken young man, I fell into depression, into suicidal thoughts. And so this is one of those experiences where you did not want it to happen to you. If you ever had someone break up with you, you didn't probably want that. And it was just a really dark period of my life. And I remember in the depths of all that, though, I, as many of you know, I had a car accident. And I decided I really needed to transform. I needed to change my whole identity. I didn't need to, like, make, you know, I didn't just need a new morning routine. I needed to transform me. I don't know if you've ever been there where it wasn't like, oh, I need to change one habit. You're like, no, I need to change my. My identity. I need to become a different person. Because who I was was not someone who was, you know, fully who I really want to be. And so it's a transformation of identity. And when you make that huge shift in your life, when you say, I need to change who I am fundamentally, that is always a pivotal moment. It is always a changing day. That is like a time in your life. I bet you remember some people, it happens when they graduate high school or they get divorced or the kids leave the house or. Or they quit one job or they move from one city to another one. It's like a total transformation in their life. But what makes that work or not work is whether within they now get clarity on the identity of who they want to be, what type of person they want to become, what values are important to them, how they want their emotional quality of life to feel, how they want to treat other people. In other words, when you get that, you know, changing moment, you got to be more intentional. Like, you really have to be way more intentional. Because the first time we go through something in our life, we're kind of bumbling through and just going through the motions or reacting. But transformation begins with a greater awareness to who we really want to be and a more intentional way of living, right? At least that's what happened for me. I said, I'm going to take control of my thoughts. And I got into personal development. I started listening to, you know, Dale Carnegie type tapes or like, Napoleon Hill, reading Napoleon Hill books, or Zig Ziglar or Aug Mandino or Tony Robbins, or, you know, Wayne Dyer, Earl Nightingale. I got really dorky into the personal development world. And I also studied psychology. I started studying, like, Alfred Adler and Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and a lot of people and philosophers as well, who helped me shape how to think about life. Helped me realize life really is short, helped me realize that life is precious, helped me realize that either you are reacting in life or you taking command of the wheel and these types of things really helped support my transformation to becoming a happier and just a better man. The second time where that happened, where it was like something happened to me and I need to make a shift within, right? Something new came into my life, and I decided to activate something within at the same time. And that was when I had the opportunity to quit a job. And most people don't say they had an opportunity to quit a job, but if it was like I went to a seminar and I was sitting in a seminar and a guy was basically talking about how you could write a book and have a career as an author and that could be a real thing, and I'd been writing and I wanted to Write a book. But I didn't realize it could be a career. I thought it'd be like a hobby thing, and it made me quit a good job. I mean, I left college and, I mean, I had a good job doing work for a consulting company, one of the world's largest consulting companies at the time, but called Accenture. And I was doing, like, leadership development programs. I was working at a high level. I had amazing peers and co workers. I was making good money. And yet I knew in my heart I wanted to write a book. And that opportunity, that new idea. Wait, you could do this as a career? When that got in my head, that was something new coming into my life, right? A new idea, a new strategy, a new way. And that forever changed me, because also in that moment, I decided to go within and say, I need to believe in the dream that has been sown in my heart. The adjustment I made was, you know, up to that point, I was always trying to earn a job, you know, go to college, like, get the job, like, work with this team. And I was always just, like, kind of forcing it and, like, taking the world by storm kind of stuff. But in my heart, I just wanted to be more of an artist and, you know, write a book. And I didn't know how to do it. I never got into a writing class, But I wanted to share my message with the world. And writing my book, Life's Golden Ticket, which was my first, like, big commercial success book. And I just want to tell the world, hey, you have second chances. And, you know, when you have a second chance in life, be more intentional, be more thoughtful, be more loving, be more courageous. And that's the story of what the man goes through in my book, Life's Golden Ticket. But those two things lining up, something new coming into life, a new idea for abundance and becoming an author. And like, living as an author. Oh, that's a new idea. Then activate something within. Oh, I would have to be so courageous to quit this job. I'd have to be so committed to my dream, to my art, to this belief that I can share this message. I'd have to go all in. And that's what I did. I quitted a job that was really good, had a lot of busy work, but it wasn't my life's work. And that transformed the quality of my life forever. Because the book came out and it did okay, but it forced me to learn to share a message, to communicate on video, to write blog posts, to. To do. Ultimately, years later, social media came around. It just Taught me to believe in my ability to share a message and to have a career. Doing it transformed me forever. That moment, I would say the third moment, where those two things collided, Something new comes in and something new activates within, was when I had my brain injury. Some of you were with me, actually, because I was. I've been on YouTube for a long time and doing podcasts for a long time. In 2011, I wrecked a four wheeler. It was a ATV, you know, four wheeler, and I wrecked about 40 miles an hour. I, you know, just rolled over. What happened? I just hit this little pillow of sand. I didn't see lift up the four wheeler in such a way, landed, boom, threw me off the bike. I rolled several times. Luckily, the bike did not land on me, but I snapped my wrist clean off. I threw out my hip and my shoulders. I broke a couple ribs and later ended up without knowing that I had post concussive syndrome and TBI traumatic brain injury. And it was not something I wanted. It felt like bad luck. And yet when these things happen to us, we have to ask, what am I going to do with that? I can either go within and just suffer and be sad, or I can activate something within to cope, to be better, you know, to grow. You know, that old thing you often hear sometimes of, like, some people, you know, they have post traumatic stress syndrome when something terrible happens to them. But psychologists are also finding some people also have post growth syndrome. Post traumatic growth syndrome, like, meaning after something negative happens to them, something in their mind, like, digs deep within to be resilient, to climb out, to improve, they take that bad thing as a reason to become better. And that's what I did. You know, I had a brain injury and I lost the ability to control my mind and my emotions. I was hurt physically. I was not in good health, obviously. And I said, okay, I'm going to have to take care of my health in such a way that I control everything that I can in a positive and healthy way so that I have brain health. Well, your brain is connected to your body, so. So everything you do, your body obviously impacts your brain. Your brain is part of your body, right? Often people say, like, there's this big difference between brain and body. I'm like, no, it's the same. The brain is the body, the body is the brain. And so what you eat in your mouth goes in, you know, affects your blood flow to your brain. It affects nutrients, it affects your hormones, it affects how you feel. It affects, like, everything, though, whether you work out or not. Has a dramatic effect on your, both your mental emotions, your physical vibrancy. But that's the stuff of brain. Like how you feel at any given time is operated by ultimately your brain. And so I wasn't taking care of my body enough to really recover from my brain injury faster. And so, you know, I saw all these nutritionists and these neuroscientists and psychiatrists who said, hey, here's some things that you can do to really optimize your health so that your brain heals faster. And that was transformative for me because I never really got it. You know, I never, I. Before that accident, I never really understood the brain body connection. And so those are like three times in my life when I really had to take something that was going on and change myself because I wanted to live a better quality of life. And if you're there, I would invite you right now to like write down those times in your life that were, you know, what psychologists often call critical incidents, like moments in your life when something significant new came in your life, good luck or bad luck, and how you decided to respond to it. Because it really tells you a lot about who you are and how you ended up where you're at today and, and possibly where you're going to go from here. You know, I can think of all sorts of things that were significant in my life. From times I moved to times I took big risks, to times I placated, to times I was too fearful, from times you know, I wasn't nice in a relationship or I didn't do something responsible. We all have those times. But I invite you today, do the personal development of thinking through those major times in your life and ask how did I respond to them? Did I use those critical incidences as moments to be more intentional, thoughtful, kind, courageous in the next go around? Because that's where transformation comes from. We all think transformation just, you know, happens suddenly something happens to us. But I'm always like, actually real transformation happens when you take everything going on in your life and now you use it as a tool of self awareness to say, okay, what's the next level for me? Who do I want to become now? How do I want to feel about life? Energetically, emotionally? How do I want my mind to operate? How do I want to care for my body? How do I want to treat people? How do I want to spend my days? What do I want to really do with my life? How do I want to shape my day's agenda so that me and my family can, can have a Joyous, abundant, loving, connected life. These are the questions we ask when transformation is afoot. And so if you're watching this video, I ask you, make sure you go to transformationweek.com because we actually have a Transformation Week challenge going on right now. You can click the link in this post and join us in Transformation Week. What that is, is it's me and my wife Denise, we basically, throughout Transformation Week, obviously Transformation Week is a seven, six, seven day thing, right? Where we go and we give you new training every day for seven days. And we're also live in the chat role, taking on your questions and interacting with you so that you can really find where you need to transform your life. Is it like you need a significant shift in your relationships or in your career? You need a significant shift in your health, in what you're doing with your life. This is all part of Transformation Week where every single day we give you a new video that helps you develop the mindset for personal development, that helps you give you a specific habit that we know. If you implement this habit, you do increase your odds of success in life. And there's no question about that science. You do feel more confident when more happy. You do feel like your relationships improve, that you're more focused and productive, you're more influential, more courageous. These things are possible if you line up the right habits. And if you know anything about me, I've spent my entire career studying the habits of the world's most successful people. So we brought that into Transformation Week. We also give you all the tools and the resources and the community to help you grow. So if you ever loved an online challenge, you'll love this one. It's called Transformation Week. You can sign up@transformationweek.com for free. As you know, I'm always trying to give you all community and things that you can do that help you change your life. I would love for you to think about that today. What did change your life? What were the transformative moments of your life? And when they happened, did you determine, did you step back and say, how will I use this to create the best quality of life that I possibly can can? That's why, you know, I'm always here cheering you on. Denise and I, my wife, she'll be in more videos and podcasts as we go throughout creating this new HPX community for us. HPX stands for the high performance experience, right? We just believe that everybody wants to feel greater vibrancy and aliveness in their life. Everybody wants to feel a deeper connection with themselves and other people. Everybody wants to be more focused and excellence driven as they seek to make their difference in the world. So if you're into that, join our Transformation Week challenge hosted by what we call HPX Life High Performance Experience. So if you'd like to do that, go to transformationweek.com or click the link in this post to join us. I just deeply believe that your next level of breakthrough won't happen just by accident. It will happen because you're just more reflective about where you've been and what you've been through. But now you get more intentional about where you're going. If this video inspired that, please comment, please share, please make this part of, you know, your day just sharing good stuff with other people. We call you and this community now Team hpx, which we just believe it's a team of people, all of us, trying to live the high performance experience, trying to live our best life. Not always easy, but I hope that videos like this, episodes like this inspire, inspire you, my friend. Because as Denise, my wife, says in Transformation Week, over and over and over again, every single day you have a choice to transform your life. And every single day you have a choice to either go out and be average or to become extraordinary. So my friend, today, go be extraordinary. If you're ready to take your life.

To a whole new level, make sure you grab my book, High Performance Habits. 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.