You need to do THIS to get out of that rut you are in!
Brendon Burchard says the way out of a rut is a daily routine of envisioning and planning your future. He emphasizes reflection and goal-setting to improve leadership, health, business, and life satisfaction.
If you are struggling with purpose today, you're simply lacking a routine or practice to look at your tomorrows. I tell everybody, you want to be a better leader, you want to be a better parent, you want your day, your health together, you want to build a bigger business, you want to earn more money. You got to look at your tomorrows way more consistently. Research shows just by doing that, just literally thinking a year out, they become more hopeful, more optimistic, more motivated, and more likely to change. When we don't have a vision for next week, next month, next year, life can start to feel like we're just in, you know, kind of in the swamp and that we're just going through the motions and oh my God, I'm working so hard, Brendan. Or oh, my God, Brenda. I have all these reasons to be happy. I already have the great kids. I have a house I can afford the car payments. I mean, I have all these reasons to be happy, but I don't know, something's missing. I don't feel purpose either. It's usually a disconnect or a lack of clarity about your future. And I don't mean 10 years out or 50 years out. I mean, sometimes next month and next year, really, sometimes it's just a couple month horizon and lacking clarity and connection with just the next couple months, or in some cases, if you're a longer term, strategic kind of guy, the next year or two. I can feel that if I feel a disconnect for my next year or two, I tend to lose a connection with purpose, a connection with motivation. I feel like the intentions or the productivity of the day are kind of like, for what, you know, it's easy to go, I'm working so hard, but for what? And that, for what I know, equals vision. What is the vision of your next couple months or next couple years? No one will give you that. It's time to sit down and think about that. It's why you all know I keep a battle board over here on the wall. And my battle board is like. It's basically like a arts and crafts version of a yearly schedule. It's like a big piece of butcher paper with 12 boxes drawn on it. And the 12 boxes each represents one month of the year. And I create themes across the boxes. I write the major projects and deadlines up on the boxes, and I write a bun of my values up there. And all I do is every day I just kind of stare at it. I'm a person who is really good. Any persons here you're really good at just Living in the moment. I know a lot of people aren't good at that, but I'm really good at just being here in the moment. I've had to teach myself to do that. I'm not as good of making sure I'm connected to my vision or to a longer term plan. I'm like in the moment. I'm a happy go, lucky kid. But if I lose connection to the vision, to the future, the happiness goes down. I also see that the luck tends to go down when you're disconnected from a vision. So what do I do? I force myself. Every day when I come into this office, like in a home studio here, when I walk in, I stare at that and I force myself to just stare at it and think for five minutes. I have a little notepad next to me and I look at where everything is lining up over the next year, sometimes the next two years, and I just look at it. I mean, if you walked in, I mean, it's really not an attractive thing. I'm kind of like this, I'm just standing there, kind of dumb looking, just looking at it, like hoping something comes into the brain that day. Walking through each month, even if I saw it yesterday, I'm still going. I'm just forcing myself to look out. You know why people tend to be motivated January 1st? Because they're looking out again. And they hadn't done it for a while. They were trying to survive the holidays. So they spent October, November, December in the hustle and the grind. Finish the year strong, do the family stuff, have the holidays. Exhaust, exhaust, exhaust, exhaust, exhaust. I'm tired. And then at some point they find a nice moment, maybe with some green tea and a journal or away from the kids or just out on a drive, and they start thinking about the year ahead and what happens. They tend to get more hopeful. Research shows. It's not just more hopeful. Research shows just by doing that, just literally thinking a year out, they become more hopeful, more optimistic, more motivated and more likely to change. Despite all the stuff that we hear that people don't change, well, that's because they didn't make self improvement a way of life. They had the inciting incidents January 1st, but they didn't follow up with habits and personal development. So nothing changed 30, 60, 90 days later. No surprise there. But what we found is that act of looking out a year can truly transform how you feel about your life, make you more likely to actually take action. And so I think it's important to really connect that also with purpose, that if you are struggling with a sense of purpose today, you are lacking a routine or a practice to look at your tomorrows. Raise your hand if you got that one. If you are struggling with purpose today, you are simply lacking a routine or practice to look at your tomorrows. I tell everybody, you want to be a better leader, you want to be a better parent, you want your health together, you want to build a bigger business, you want to earn more money. You got to look at your tomorrows way more consistently. Not on January 1st or December 31st, but daily. That's why I force myself to look at a year calendar every day, because I'm not good at that, and I know that about myself. And sometimes when you're not good about something, you need to create a habit or routine that you will stick to and find some joy in. So usually before I get to that wall, that battleboard, I got a cup of green tea in my hand because I love it. I got a journal next to me because I love that. I love green tea and I love journaling. Not so good at the vision part, but I've created the routine. Just like on email, I've created a routine there that helps me go through a process that I know I need to do, but I'm not as good at. You all follow. So this is what I'm suggesting to you. If you're lacking vision, we need to practice to look at your future more often. So critical. It's why when you do that Morning mindset prompt in growth day, one of the questions asks, what's a project I should keep in mind that I'll be doing in the future that I might not be able to do today, but I just need to keep it on the dashboard of my mind. And people always ask, well, when I do this thing, it's kind of the same thing every day. I wrote down, I'm going to write a book one day and I got to write it again and again. I'm like, yes, you have to again and again and again think about your future. Even if you're not doing anything for today, you know, even if you're not taking the action, say you have to think about it. You know, right now I'm thinking I'm working on some major media projects. I'm not doing them yet, but I'm thinking about them. I take a moment to think about that project, just trying to get in the unconscious, kind of scrolling around back then to connect me to the future. Because when you feel connected to the future, especially when it's something that you are choosing to go do, to go build, to go manifest, you will feel more purposeful.
