Transformation Week Day 1 - CLARITY

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to special series of the Brendon show. In this series we're playing for you our entire program called Transformation Week. Transformation Week is a program that Denise, my wife and I did to help people really understand what are the key habits that we know from science will help dramatically, I mean, really dramatically improve your life. It was an incredible video based program and online challenge that Denise and I did and we wanted to just capture it here for you in audio here on the Brendon show. So for the next seven days we'll release a brand new day of transformation week and you'll get the audio right here on the podcast. If you're somebody who loves video and you would love the resources or the tools that we recommend as an example, the downloads or some special discounts to some products we might mention, please make sure you just go to transformationweek.com that's transformationweek.com when you go there again, you'll just enter your name and email. You'll be added to our newsletter list but you'll be sent this entire series by email where we summarize each of the days. We give you the PDFs, the downloads, the research, the tools, everything you'll hear in the audio on the Brendon show. With that, I hope you enjoy the series. Happy 2020, my friends. I hope you enjoy this year and this really becomes a transformation week for you as you kick off the new decade of your life. Welcome to HPX Transformation.

I'm Brendon Burchard.

I'm Denise Burchard.

She's my wife.

We're married.

Pay attention because she's really gonna be the star of this show. I spent the last 20 years researching psychology, neuroscience and high performance studies to help you figure out how do you transform your life. I wanted to transform my life because as she could tell you, I was kind of a loser at one stage of my life and very unhappy.

Very positive self defense.

No. And I wanted to improve my life and so I started studying like personal development and all the research I could do to understand what were the actual habits and behaviors that people used to improve their lives, but not just to change, but also to become world class, the best in class at whatever they did in the world. And so I made my life doing that. And while I was doing that over the last, what, 15 years professionally, Denise was running Exercise studios in Portland, Oregon.

Yeah. And helping people find their potential and to have courage to try new things. And in talking about it, I realized that movement and exercise was just the vehicle for getting people to try new things and to explore different avenues and to believe in themselves and uncover what's there.

And so if you're kind of new to our world, she's an incredible mentor to women. She had 30 employees at the fitness studios and really grew that into a remarkable community. Myself, if you're new to our community in HPX at all. Over the last 15 years, I've been blessed to graduate 2 million students from my online courses. I've written six best selling books. We've got the Brennan show podcast, the HPX podcast. And I put out unique content every single day in personal professional development for 15 years straight, reaching millions and millions of people. A quarter billion video views. It's been a lot. And now she has sold the exercise studios and gets to participate in Transformation Week with me. So today we want to talk with you about the most important habit that we have learned from studying the world's highest performing people. Many of you guys know I am the CEO of the High Performance Institute. We ran the largest study ever been done for high performers worldwide. And what we learned is that they practice these six habits. But the most important habit that changed people's lives and helped them become extremely successful is what we want to talk with you in this very first session of Transformation Week. Because all transformation begins with self awareness. And the habit that high performers have that help them become extraordinary is they seek clarity more often than anybody else. It means they're usually asking more questions. It means they're usually doing more research. Seeking clarity means you don't just wander into the woods unprepared. You get a map. You try to understand your life, you try to be self aware. And I really believe that all transformation begins with self awareness. And the action to get self awareness is to seek clarity about who you are, what's important to you, where you're going, what your day and your month and your week is going to be like. It's your direction, it's your direction. I mean, how do you have any personal development without direction? I mean, she's known me, there's some days I lack direction.

I would say sometimes.

It does happen, we all do. And so if I don't really work hard each day to be clear and focused, I can be Captain Random, I can be distracted, I can lose my way. And so we thought we'd share with you what are the habits or the practices that you could do not just to transform your life, but literally, tactically today to get more clarity in your life.

My first thing was finding your passion and your interest in life. And I think sometimes it's hard to figure out what those things are. But if you look back on your life, like, even from when you were really small, there are probably things that you naturally gravitated towards in terms of interests or passions or things that you just kind of lost yourself in. And I would challenge you to make a list of. Just go back and think, what was I drawn to? What were the things I continue to come back to? What are the things I'm intrigued by today that were the same things I was intrigued by when I was small or growing up? And, you know, I think as we get older and older and we go into careers that we cannot, it's easy to do what we're good at, but it may not bring us fulfillment, or you're just. It lacks the other pieces in life that make life life. And you're just doing.

Doing work.

Yeah, you're just doing work.

It's work, but it's not your passion. It's like busy work versus life's work kind of stuff.

Yeah. So if you can find what you're doing, passion is just as a starting point, write down a list of things that you found that you were passionate about or gravitated towards or just lost yourself in. You know, kind of that flow where you all of a sudden find yourself effortlessly enthusiastic about something. You know, for me, I go back and I. I know, like, for me, movement was a big one. I really love animals. I'm always coming back to design. I love analyzing numbers, and I like teaching. So for me, opening an exercise studio and running a business with that was kind of combining all those things together in a really natural fit. And then we got a cat.

It's true, because the minute I met her, I remember, like, we started dating, and I would. At the time, I had, like, a corporate job, and I would go do my corporate job, and I'd come home and she'd have a commute back home, and she would be kind of like, it was a good job, but she would come home and she'd kind of, like, from the commute, tired or out of it. She would go to this bar, method class, which is a studio she ultimately opened in Portland, but we were in San Francisco at the time, so a really long commute. And she would come home and kind of be on another planet. She would go to.

I'd literally walk in the door and I would say, like, don't talk to me. And I would change And I'd turn and I'd walk out. And then an hour later, I'd come back, and I'm like, I'm me. Hello, I'm back.

Yes. Because she went and she moved. And now all of a sudden, it's like this flowing, like, graceful goddess would walk in the house. And it's because she activated that passion of movement which was so important to her. And that ultimately became a realization that, you know what? She was as passionate about that as her other job. And so she ended up leaving the job to open up the exercise studio because that was a greater passion. So it's. But her whole life as a kid, she was a gymnast. So she realized that movement was this big thing.

Yes.

And I think that seeking clarity is exactly. She said, go back to those origins. Like, what did you love to do? And what would you do even if you weren't getting paid? And now figure out, how can that be part of your life?

Or even. We would go on different trips, and we would always find ourselves looking at design or architecture and how is a space designed? And just. It's always something that we appreciate and go back to. So, you know those kinds of things. Notice what you're doing.

Yeah.

As you go along. So write those things down as a starting point.

Yeah. So I think what we'll do today is we're gonna give you each. Give you each. I say each person. No, we're each going to give you.

Like, we're here forever.

Yes, we're gonna be here forever. We're each gonna give you three things that really helped us getting clarity. Cause maybe that will help you seek clarity in new ways and really transform your life. So her first one is obviously going back to your passions and. And revisit what were your interests in life. My first thing is to really identify what is the best of who you are and how would you describe it? And so if you've never been, like, done my research or been with me before, I would love for you to identify, like, three words that describes the best of who you are. Like three words that you say. Oh, those three words. That's me. You might just sit down and brainstorm a bunch of words out. And then I want you to go though. But which ones? The top three that describes the best or aspirational you. And what I have people do from all over the world. Every single day. I get texts about this or posts on social media. I have people actually program that in their phone as an alarm so that an alarm goes off. And when that alarm Goes off. You see on your phone, it's like, it buzzes. And then there's these three words that describe the best of you. And I have people program that in their phone. So it's like three or four times throughout the day, those words buzz. And so if you're going throughout your day, you know, if your phone rings, you look at it, and people look at it, and there's those three words, and they're like, ooh. It says, be kind, but I was just a jerk to my wife, right? As has happened to me once or twice. You know, like things that say, you know, be compassionate. And it reminds you, okay, how am I actually doing in these? So these three words are like three identifier words for you. We call them, like your clarity words. And I want you to have them maybe on a mirror or by your laptop or in your phone, so that as you are going throughout the day, it's kind of interrupting you or making you look at them. Because being intentional is part of clarity, right? And so when you are purposefully trying to be those words each day, then you are crafting your life versus just becoming somebody by accident. And I think that's where transformation always begins, with greater levels of intention and awareness. You have to have the awareness to know, like, who am I and what am I about? What's important to me? But you need the intention and the cues to trigger you to get more clear. So I think transformation really begins with clarity about who you want to be, and then reminding yourself to be that each day.

And I don't think that has to be the same every single day. Like, if you go to work for, you know, Monday through Friday and then you have a weekend off and you're with your family, how is it that you want to show up for your family? And how is it that you want to show up at your job or as a leader? And those things can change. So maybe Monday through Friday, you program certain set of words, and maybe Saturday and Sunday, you have a different one. My second idea about clarity is figuring out how to get from where you are to where you want to be. So how to move from point A to point B. And what are the skills that you need to learn or the resources you need to acquire to get there, and whether that is, you know, just so I would challenge you to come up with a list of things. Whether it's, I want to be a business owner or I want to be a really great mom, or I want to be a teacher or a coach or a leader in My community, what are the things that you need to develop, learn, and from where you are now to be able to be that person? And, like, if you're a new business owner, you want to be a new business owner, go interview people who are business owners or entrepreneurs and learn what they've learned. You know, you don't have to do it all on your own, and nobody's kind of creating anything new at this point. So leverage your resources and other people's strengths to get you from point A to point B and then come up with a plan. And I think a plan is a really big thing, which we'll talk about in another episode. But I think getting from point A to point B is the beginning of that plan. So make a decision where you want to go.

And I think what's so important about the success she's had in her life and mine as well is seeking out two things of clarity. Here is one, just the skill sets you're going to have to learn. Like, be very, very diligent and thoughtful about, like, I have to learn these things. But then don't just go out and try to figure them out yourself. Get a mentor. Like, one thing, when she was open the exercise studios, she went out and like, interview. I just remember you're like, I talked to another owner today and another owner today, another owner. She was constantly calling and interviewing other owners of business studios to go, how? How did you do what you do?

Yeah. And then there are going to be skills that you don't know that you need that arise because you're looking to acquire other skills and learning from people who have already done it.

Yeah. And I did the same thing in my career. You know, when I wanted to write books, I interviewed all these authors, and I said, how did you write the book? How did you promote the book? How did you make money and build a career from a book? When I want to do online courses, I started from the best doing online courses. When I want to do video, YouTube, podcasts, all of these things. Often, you know, I would make the mistake. I would start and just try to figure out by myself. And it take months and months and months. And then I finally go, why am I spending all this time? Let me go take a course. Let me go to a seminar. Let me call this person. Let me pay for something to learn how to do it faster. Let me watch a million YouTube videos that. Where people have already demonstrated. I think that's so important.

Yeah. And it may not get you all the way there, but it's the Springboard. And then you will constantly evolve. But it's the starting point.

Yeah. My next idea on how to get clarity in your life, to really transform your life is what I call my Sunday scorecard, which is I'd love for you to sit down and say, okay, I'm going to write out all these areas of my life, and I'm going to score myself on these areas every single week. You know, because what happens is we all get caught up in life, and we're just going through the motions, and we're doing everything we can to survive and make it and earn and. And build and grow and love and connect. And then all of a sudden, after three or four weeks or three or four months, we realize we were like, we're off. Like, we've neglected an important area of our life because, well, I'm just focused on my career right now. And all of a sudden, our relationships fall apart or our health falls apart. And what we have to do is really be diligent each week in, like, measuring ourselves and asking where we're at. Like, Denise and I developed this thing called the High Performance Planner. Forgive me as I grab at this thing, but I just want to give you an example of what these things are. And by the way, we'll make sure we post this down below this video so you can access it as well and journal on these things.

But I feel like these are like the lanes when you go bowling, that. The bumpers that keep your bowling ball heading in the right direction.

Yeah, it's like, if you're just not, like, measuring yourself or setting up some rails here, you can go off the rails. I think it's really important. But here's the 10 categories I measure myself on every week. First one is health. Second one is mental and emotional. Third one is partner and love, spouse for us. Family, friends, mission, experiences, spirit, finances, and learning. And what I do is I give myself a score of one to ten. One means I sucked. You know, it's like I was just off my A game there or didn't even pay attention. 10 is, I'm awesome in this area, and I score myself. And, you know, there's. Since there's 10 categories, I just multiply my score by 10, and that gives me a score out of 100% each week. By kind of looking at my scores, I can tell over a series of weeks and months with the High Performance Planner, I can see, oh, I was a 60% this week, or I was a 70% that week. I was a 90% that week. And Then it does that great thing in personal development, which is like, why? Why did I score that area? And just by paying attention to it and seeing a good score or a bad score, I'm learning about myself on a continual basis. And then again, in the High Performance Planner, you get to score your assessment. You get to score your habits. You get to each day measure yourself with your habits. You get to write out what you're grateful for. You can start your day in the right, you know, sort of like mindset by using this type of tool. I have to use these tools for clarity. Otherwise, I bumble through the world like a dummy. As she will tell you, kind of like I'm a nutty professor. I will just get super distracted and not pay attention to things. So the planner helps me.

Number three is to find people. If once you have that clarity and your vision of where you want to go and maybe the skill sets and also you're, you know, reassessing how you're doing in each of these categories of your life, then I would say the next level is find the people. Evaluate kind of the people that you are surrounding yourself with and whether they elevate you to that next level or to where you want to be or if there's something about them that inspires you or is aspiring aspirational to you, and continue surrounding yourself with those people or seek them out and then pull back on some of the people that are either dragging you down or are not in alignment with your mission or where you want to go as a person. Because you're going to be very similar to the people who you surround yourself with and interact with the most. So be cognizant of and thoughtful about what you do, who you surround yourself with, because it's going to have a big impact not only on you, but your mission, your life, the people around you, your loved ones. So I think this is a huge, huge thing that's not just about you. It's about the people you surround yourself with.

Yeah, that's like Clarity is getting clear on who your support network really is, and it's asking the hard questions. Like, her and I, we don't really have any friends who are like downers. We don't really have any friends who are, like, super negative or hurt our feelings or judge us, because obviously we have a very public life now, and people make judgments and mean calls. Those aren't our friends. We don't hang out with them. And we work really hard to also build the network of people that we really enjoy and like Yeah.

I have friends who I think are just the most amazing people in a whole slew of different skills that I. That I'm not good at. But they're incredible, amazing people and I'm really drawn towards them and love having them in my life. So for you guys, I would say make a list of maybe you have two or three buckets and say these are the people who I don't know yet or I haven't surrounded myself with yet, but are. It's my goal to link up with them in some way or connect with them in some way. And if it's somebody you don't have access to, maybe it's just simply following them on social media or their podcast or, you know, events or wherever you do have access to them. Number two bucket. Number two would be the people who are you in your immediate vicinity who really do lift you up and rise you up and support you and encourage you and also challenge you. I think challenge is a big thing. You can't just surround yourself with. Yes. People. And then number three, people who are on the other side of that slope where you find that there may be taking from your energy, your mission, your drive, your positivity, and maybe taper that down.

Yeah, yeah. Spend less time with people who are hurting your feelings or making you feel negative about yourself because, you know, the energy of your social like community either lifts you up or pushes you down. Get clear about those people. And the ones who do lift you up, spend way more time with them. More lunches, more dinners, more hangouts where you have real conversations. My third piece about clarity is your daily schedule. I think this is so critical, especially for me. You know, as many of you all know, we run four major companies. The teams across our companies now, over 200 employees or team members, some virtual, some in offices around the country. It is very difficult and demanding. I'm shooting and creating original content all the time. I'm writing books, I coach people on the phone. We go live with our courses, with our coaching programs. It is an intense, grueling schedule. And if I don't spend the time every morning thinking through my schedule, I'm toast. And so here's what I think is important. You develop a morning routine. And whatever your morning routine is, which most people have, they've got some kind of exercise or movement they do in the morning. Maybe they read something positive, maybe they write something or journal something, but then spend 10 to 20 minutes just thinking through and planning the day. So what I do is I grab my high performance planner in the morning. And here's the deal. My day is often planned days, weeks, or months in advance. Like, oh, here's this interview, or here's this conversation, or here's this phone thing, or I'm gonna send the emails out, or I'm gonna do this promotion, whatever. So whenever I've written down my high performance planner, it might have already been planned. All right? But what I do is I look at each item on my planner and I go, okay, how could I do that with real intention and excellence today? Meaning I don't just bumble from one meeting to another meeting to another meeting. I literally, in the morning, visualize and think through for 10, sometimes 20 minutes, just staring and looking through and visualizing thinking about, kind of like daydreaming about the day of how I'll do it.

Great.

That's so more intentional than just showing up. I also. There's this whole section in the planner that helps me develop my morning mindset, and I think that's important for your daily schedule. So I ask questions like this. You know, one thing I could get excited about today is something that might stress me out or trip me up today is this thing. And the way that my. Yes, everyone loves that one.

Preventative.

So here's what it is. It literally says. It says, a situation that might stress me out or trip me up today could be this. And I describe, like, oh, this meeting or this conversation or this work effort. And then the next slide says, and the way my best self would deal with that is. And you write how you could deal with that stressor. Because I think anticipation gives extraordinary, like, benefits over the day. Because most people, they're literally bouncing from one thing to another, going through the motions, and they don't realize, why can't I become excellent? Or, why can't I break through? The breakthroughs happen through anticipation. Again, these are all things that we just call seeking or developing clarity. It's the first habit of high performance habits. And some of these things are so critical.

And if you go back to your three words and you're thinking of something that's gonna trip you up today, you can go back to those three words of how can I deal with that? With, you know, let's say your words are compassion, enthusiasm, and groundedness. Then you can pick that situation and then take your words and say, okay, how would somebody who's grounded, compassionate, and enthusiastic deal with that specific situation? And then you have a plan when you go in so you don't have to be caught off guard. And then it will be much smoother and it'll solidify that behavior for you too.

Love that. So we hope that this conversation has been helpful for you because clarifying even. Clarifying even, because transformation begins with the self awareness. It begins with you getting clarity. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Denise always says this thing about high performance that I always love.

Yeah, we were talking about it and we just came up with, you know, remember that you always have a choice every day. You can choose to be average or you can choose to be extraordinary.

So my friends, go be extraordinary. Thanks for joining us at Transformation Week. Use TransformationWeek and HPxLife so we can find you and celebrate you. Thanks for joining us on this one.

All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Transformation Week. Again, if you really love this and you want the video based resources, tools and downloads for Transformation Week, make sure you go to transformationweek.com again, that's transformationweek.com and your email there. We'll send you the entire Transformation Week series, all the videos, all the resources, all the tools you'll be able to access for free@transformationweek.com.