4 Breakthroughs: Bucket List, Ritual of Happiness, Hoping for Fairness, and Overwhelm
10 Apr 2018 · 80 min
In this special "Four Breakthroughs" episode of the Brendon Show, Brendon Burchard shares four personal lessons drawn from his life while recording from a jungle‑overlook room in Bali. He begins with the importance of a bucket list and the practice of "raising necessity" – constantly reminding oneself why high performance matters – and urges listeners to write down not only what they want to achieve but also the specific "how" they will do it. He then explains that happiness is best cultivated as a daily ritual, illustrating the point with observations of Balinese cultural practices that embed gratitude and family rituals into everyday life. The third breakthrough challenges the idea of using fairness as a measuring stick; Brendon recounts how his podcast was abruptly delisted from Apple’s charts despite strong metrics, and he reflects on why fairness is an unreliable guide, preferring joy, personal satisfaction, and contribution as true metrics. Finally, he answers a listener question on overwhelm, offering three concrete strategies: pre‑emptively saying no, blocking focused time, and entering a flow state or mindful breathing to ride the feeling. Throughout, he weaves personal anecdotes about his marriage, travel, and his High Performance Habits program, reinforcing the practical frameworks he teaches.
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And so after all that work, I was just friggin heartbroken and hugely disappointed. And I don't know if you ever had those two things happen at the same time where you're both heartbroken and disappointed. And then within, you know, 24 hours, I was so angry about the situation. I literally had to just take myself away from the situation, calm myself down and remind myself that, you know what I'm in for the long term, not for the short term. Accolades. So chill out, Brendan. Hey, my friend. It's Brendon Burchard. And welcome to the Brendan Show. In this special weekly episode we call the Four Breakthroughs, I break down four lessons I've learned in my life, my own life, as I'm striving, just like you, to maintain motivation and confidence and high performance. And I share more of the personal or intimate look of what's going on in my own life. And in this week's Four Breakthroughs, we begin a new tradition. If you've not ever listened to us before, we do four parts, the Four Breakthroughs. That's why it's called Four Breakthroughs. There's four parts to the show and we're gonna start a new thing this week where the fourth part is listener questions. So this fourth part that be covering today is for the first time ever, listener questions. I used to take those all the time on YouTube, but I haven't taken them on this podcast just yet. So I think you're gonna really enjoy that. Without further ado, this week we are covering number one, why it's important to have a bucket list and why it took me 15 years to achieve one item on that bucket list, which you are now experiencing with me right now as I record this podcast in Bali. Number two, why happiness is a ritual and which rituals really matter the most. Number three, why you shouldn't hope for fairness. And if fairness is your measuring stick on your journey to success, you're going to be severely angered, frustrated, disappointed and heartbroken along the way, as I certainly was recently. And number four, our listener question, y'. All. How, Brendan, do you deal with overwhelm? Something I'm asked all the time. So I thought, well, that's the great one. To kick off the four Breakthrough episode with, for the first time ever, listener questions. Probably one of the ones I get faced with the most. How do you deal with overwhelm? So without further ado, let's jump into the Four Breakthroughs. Part one, the necessity of a bucket list. If you've been a student of mine for a while, you know, the importance in high performance of this concept we call raising necessity. What that means is high performers, throughout their lives and in many parts of their daily behavior, as well as tied to their overall identity, raise necessity, which is a practice of reminding themselves why it is necessary to perform well or with excellence in any given situation. If it's not necessary for you to succeed, you just don't. So psychologically, you need to have practices set up that remind you why you have to be on your A game, remind you who needs you to perform at your best. Remind yourself of what values or standards of excellence that you have that you want to deliver upon. It's just all the things we talk about in my book, high performance Habits in the chapter called Raising Necessity. And if you didn't know, in this podcast now, the Brendon show, we release an entire season that is the audiobook of my book, High Performance Habits. So go to the season and download this entire audiobook because we now have put that right here in the Brendon show so you can listen to that chapter. You might go to it after this episode. It's called how to Raise necessity. And it's very, very important in your life. So why do I bring that up? Because this part is about the importance of having a bucket list. I really believe that if you don't have a vision board, a bucket list, a journal with all your dreams written down, you know, a refrigerator with a bunch of dream pictures tagged onto it, or, you know, some kind of daily reminder of the things you're trying to achieve in your life, whether that's just trying to raise good kids or it's just trying to get that next promotion, or it's that place you want to go and visit in the world or that dollar amount, hey, look, whatever your goals and your dreams are, those are your goals and dreams. I don't need to know them. But you better know them, and you'd better have a daily practice of looking at them, contemplating them, busting them down into initiatives or projects that will help you get to them. And if you don't have that, then the odds of you just going through the motions each day is incredibly high. I don't say that flippantly, obviously, I say that it's part of the research. I just found that high performers worldwide in our global study, there was just no question that they had sort of daily practices of reminding themselves not only why it's necessary to achieve, but what they want to achieve and why. And I think it's important that we all have A bucket list. And if you're new to that concept, it just literally is like, hey, before I die, here's the things I'd like to accomplish, achieve, give experience in my life. And like I said, some of those are just things that maybe you want just for yourself. Maybe some of them are things you want for your family. Maybe some of those things are things you want to experience by yourself or with your family or with loved ones or friends. Maybe some of those things are things you want to give. But if you don't have that written down somewhere, then what are you doing every day? You know, I really believe that. The truth is, for a lot of people, the reason they lose motivation so often is because they don't know what they're marching toward. You know, they're just marching each day, but they're marching under somebody else's banner. Maybe they're marching each day, but they have no idea what's over the next horizon. And so instead of really marching to the beat of their own drum or to their own path or to this bucket list of things they'd like to achieve, give experience in their life, they're just kind of going through the motions. And if you were at my last High Performance Academy seminar, which, my gosh, I hope you'll attend one day, just go to brendan.com monthly we have a monthly program now for the first time ever, where you can get live high performance training from me every month. It's about two hours where I go live, but it also comes with two tickets to my High Performance Academy seminar. Now tickets to that used to be $1,000 and it still is out there if you go buy it, you know, from my website, just blankly. But if you join our monthly program, I give you two tickets to that. So people are getting into that. You know, you join your first month, you get these two tickets to this event. It's pretty amazing. And it's only 49 bucks a month, by the way. So it's an awesome, awesome deal. Brennan.com monthly I bring that up because at our last High Performance Academy, I had to help people make the distinction between all this hustle and grind, hard work mentality that has taken over social media without realizing sometimes you know what hard work just means? You're a friggin ant. You know, lots of people are just hard working. But what are you hard working for? What's the point? What are you working toward? I don't agree that hard work is the answer solely to success because a lot of people have worked very hard in their lives, and they're not successful, they're not happy, they're not fulfilled, they don't experience any sense of aliveness that each of us deserves. And so we gotta make sure that we're not just worker ants, that we're trying to build a life, and that that life has outcomes and experiences and contributions that drive us, that make us feel alive and ultimately make us feel satisfied and fulfilled for having gone towards them. And so I hope you have a list somewhere. Maybe it's, maybe you called it your goal list. Maybe you called it a dream list. Maybe you called it your vision board. Maybe it's a bucket list. I don't know what it is for you, but you gotta have it. And I highly recommend you look at it or ponder it every day. And if not every day, at least once a week as you do your major weekly review. As many of you know, I do a Sunday weekly review. That's when I look at my bucket list. The most is every single Sunday. I'm looking to, okay, what am I trying to work towards? What are my major dreams? Just kind of rekindling the magic of life by considering that bucket list. Well, right now, as I'm recording this, you're experiencing one of those bucket list items with me. I, I, I know you're not here, maybe physically, but when I do these podcasts, I pretend that I'm there with you. I'm talking with you. Maybe it's your, you're, you know, you're in your kitchen right now cleaning some stuff up. Or maybe I'm working out with you right now and I'm, maybe I'm on a walk outside with you and the dog. I don't know. I always just imagine I'm, I'm with you, and I hope that you feel like you're with, you know, obviously, I don't have a script here. I just stand up and record these sessions. Today I'm sitting down because I'm in a very small, intimate place that I just consider kind of, you're here with me. I'm here in Bali. We arrived here in Indonesia a couple days ago, and this is the first chance I've been able to disappear and do this podcast for you. And in fact, I just moved into this little room here because it's just off the deck of this beautiful, beautiful place. I'm staying where I'm overlooking the jungle in Bali, and it's spectacular. I moved inside because the sound right now of the jungle is so loud. The frogs and I don't even Know what half these noises are? I don't know if they're crickets or what they are. It's just really loud out there. And I actually tried to do the podcast for about five minutes out there, and it was so unbelievably loud. I thought, you know what, this is going to be a distraction because these episodes can be 30, 45 minutes an hour. I don't know how long this will go, but I just thought that that'll be completely overwhelming by the time it finished. So I apologize if the sound is not what you're used to from these episodes, but I literally bounced into this little room and I'm using my little portable microphone and my garage band set up here on my Apple MacBook Pro. And you're experiencing it. You're here with me. I'm in Bali, overlooking the jungle and thinking about how grateful I am that I had this on my bucket list. And actually, to be fair, this wasn't on my bucket list. It was on the bucket list of my wife. And I think that that's important too. You probably have a bucket list, but do you know the bucket list of your spouse or your family or your friends, your siblings, the people who are most important to you? Do you know what their dreams are? Have you connected with them and ever asked them? I hope that if you're married, you know your spouse's bucket list. If not, maybe take the inspiration from this podcast and sit down with them tonight and say, hey, you know, let's go over, what are our dreams? What do we want? Dreams should be a consistent conversation theme of any loving couple, and it should be a consistent communication theme of any team, of any partner, spouse, lover, friend, anyone who's really connected to you. They should know what your dreams are. Part of what we learn from high performers is that they are more consistently expressing their ambitions explicitly than underperformers. Meaning under. Performers just usually hold their thoughts, their ideas, their dreams and their needs to themselves. High performers express themselves selves more often when it re when in regard to their real thoughts and ambitions and needs. And please don't think that that's about an extrovert versus introvert thing, because introverts are just as likely to be high performers as extroverts. There is not a strong correlation between that personality style of extrovert versus introvert in high performance, though a lot of people assume that to be true. I have not found that to be true. And in over 20 years of this work and over the last 11 years of full time research, I'VE not found that to be true in both measured form in terms of doing self assessments and psychological profiles, as well as my personal work in private with tremendously overachieving introverts who are just as impressive as the famous celebrities that I've worked with, who might be known more for extroversion. But I shared that all. It's important practice for you to share. Now, my wife and I, we've been together for 10 years as a married couple. So, meaning we got married 10 years ago, but it took me five years to propose. So it's our 15th year together, our 10th year married. And when we got together, Bali was a conversation when we talked about maybe the, you know, top 10 places we wanted to go. Bali was very near and dear to her heart to get here someday. And we just are now getting here after 15 years. And it's not an issue of could we have done it sooner? Because the answer is we absolutely could have done it sooner. But, you know, sometimes it's important for you to break down your bucket lists into time periods. And we Never said, In 2018 we will go to Bali, Indonesia. It wasn't like that. It was more like, okay, you know, when we get together January 1st, my wife and I, every year, usually it's either it's right around that New Year's time, but usually it's the last day of the year or the first day of the new year. We sit down and we kind of craft out what the upcoming year is going to be for us. And if you've ever been part of my trainings, I always encourage you and your spouse or partners to get together and choose every 90 days, you know, two to 10 days, where you disappear together and you create memories together. And that could be a staycation at home for just two days, you know, or it could be, you know, you go to a local hotel for three days, or maybe you just go off the grid to a Caribbean island for five days or 10 days. I don't know what it is for you, but I really believe every 90 days, you and your partner or your spouse need to reset. And if you are individual, meaning you're not with somebody right now, than you know you're single, then, my gosh, make sure you still do this because you need a practice of going within, away from all the noise and distractions of this world. And so have that set up for yourselves every 90 days. So at the beginning of the year, you know, Denise and I sit down and we kind of go through what our 90 day trips are going to be. Sometimes we're just going to stay in Oregon, or sometimes we're going to go to California, sometimes we're going to go to different places. Just, it doesn't really matter. But it really has centered around much of our work experiences. We're both entrepreneurs, and as we've done that over the years, you know, we've gone to extraordinary, amazing places. We've done our bucket list times seven. But many of those original items hadn't been done yet. We noticed. And Bali was something very unique to us this year that we really wanted because we said, you know, it's time to go to Bali. We both felt like we wanted to have the, the spiritual grounding that this place is so well known for. We wanted to return to just a time where we could be alone on an extended vacation. And while it might seem crazy, I'm doing a podcast right now. She's getting a massage treatment right now, so don't worry, I'm not working when we're together, so she's doing that right now. And I said, I need a break as well. I had an extended nap today and I'm doing this. So we're recovering on this trip from what's been really an intense two or three year period of time in our lives. So it seemed like this lined up perfectly as a time to accomplish this thing on our bucket list. And my hope for you is that you achieve it for yourself, that you're constantly knocking off items in the bucket list and setting new ones on there too. You know, we're always thinking of new places we want to go and travel to. And I also want you to do yourself an extra favor. A lot of people write things on their bucket list and they say, I want to go do that or experience that, contribute that or give that. Let me give you a pro tip. Don't just write where or what it is you want to give or serve or experience or do or achieve what. Go. Move away from just what and where and go one level down and ask how. How do you want to do it? Let me give you an example. Why did it take us 15 years to get here to Bali? In my 20s, when I was in college, a lot of people were taking a gap year. You know, we finished high school and they would take a gap year or two and they will travel the world backpacking. And a lot of my friends asked me, you know, Brendan, you're this adventurous kid, because I was very adventurous. And they said, you're going to go backpacking. Everyone kind of assumed That I might go travel. And I said, no, I want to travel the world, but when I travel the world, I kind of want to do it in style. And now you have to imagine I was completely broke when I said this. So it was very obnoxious. And for those who think I'm, you know, some way spoiled for saying that I had never had any luxury travel in my life at that point. So when I please don't think I'm this sort of spoon in the mouth kid. I'm not. But I just thought, you know, what if I'm going to travel to a lot of different countries? What I was experiencing and seeing with my friends is, yeah, they were backpacking, but because money was an issue, they would say, oh gosh, well, when I do Europe, I don't have a lot of money. So I'm going to, you know, I'm going to hit like these seven major cities, but I'm going to have to only spend two to three days in each and I'm going to take the train between each and every. They would do like this three week crazy trip where I'm like, I'd love to go plot down my roots in a really nice hotel and spend three weeks in one city. That's my how. Now, by the way, I'm not judging their how, their how. Look, they wanted to go and experience it with backpack and they would say, well, it's raw and it's authentic and they're gonna spend, you know, three weeks or five months or six months in hostels on the cheap, you know, eating street food. And I'm like, awesome. That's their dream. That's their how. See, they had their dream, their bucket list, and they had their how. And that was important for them. And I cheer them on for my how. I thought, geez, you know, you got to remember my first job was cleaning chicken coops. Actually it was painting chicken coops, but most of the work was cleaning it and then painting it. You know, my first big job was painting a huge trucking company building. It was not a lot of fun. And I thought if I ever travel, I really want to do it on my own terms. And I also want to be able to experience the culture there from a perspective of experiencing the best of the culture where, you know, I get to spend a little bit of time there and I don't have to worry about the money part of things. So for me, a lot of my items on my bucket list came later. I said, I'm going to achieve a certain amount of wealth, and then I'm going to go do these things. Now, I know that can bring a lot of judgment because, you know, millions of people might listen to this or hear this over a period of time. And I understand that lots of people say, well, Brendan, you're spoiled and whatever, but I don't judge your. How don't judge mine. I just thought, you know, people and my friends would say, but, Brendan, it's more authentic and beautiful to experience the culture when you're broke. And I thought, huh, I wonder if that's true. People would say, well, Brennan, it's more authentic and beautiful to do it on the cheap with a backpack. And I just remember thinking in my 20s, I thought, I'm not sure that's true for me. Maybe that is for them. But I did know something. You know, I'd dream and I'd make vision boards. So when I go through these luxury travel places, I would always see how, you know, the luxury hotels were always in the most beautiful locations, and they would bring. They would team up with, like, you know, chefs in that town to make the best dishes that reflect the culture, but also have that, you know, gastronomy or whatever the fancy foodie thing is. And I always wanted to learn a little bit about food stuff because I didn't know anything about it. I'm not sure I wanted to learn how to cook it. I just wanted to experience it and eat it. You know, I thought, I'd love to. If I'm going to have some wine, I'd love to have the great wine. I'd love to experience, you know, that end of things before. Because, listen, I've experienced plenty of poverty in my life, and I've already experienced plenty of lack. I don't need to travel for that. I already had that where I grew up. I thought, I want to travel the world in style, man. Now, that was my how. So I don't know what your how is. I mean, as I'm recording this, we're at this very beautiful place in Bali. If you have not yet subscribed to my YouTube channel, please do, because I'll be releasing a vlog, kind of showing our trip here. And I think it's a beautiful trip, and we've had beautiful stays, and we've, you know, been in very difficult, challenging areas here where people are extremely happy. And we've been in very, you know, abundant sort of areas here where people are happy, too. And so it's not a matter of, to me, one or the other. I think it's important when you travel to experience as much of a culture as you can, that fits your how, not somebody else's how. And that's really important. I'm okay that, you know, my wife's how. She's not into, you know, roughing it or camping like I am. I'm more of a camper because I'm from Montana. I love the outdoors. I don't mind getting super dirty or not showering for a week. I. That wouldn't bother me at all. That would not be my wife's how. And so part of it, I think the magic of being in a great marriage or relationship or partnership is you know their bucket list, but you also know their how. So the two of you can discern what on your bucket lists become shared bucket list items versus individual bucket list items. And you design that in advance. There's a lot of things on my bucket list that my wife's. She won't experience with me. And let me give an example. One of my bucket list items was going to Fiji and doing a lot of crazy adventures with, like, best friends. And that was something that I got to do on my own. My wife wasn't there with me, but she wasn't upset about that because that was my bucket list and my how. And she's done lots of other things in her life and in her business that were her how. You see what I'm getting to here? Design your bucket list. Decide when you'll do things to the extent that you can on either a year outlook, a two year outlook, a five year outlook, a 20 year outlook, but then also bust down the how. Because you know what I've also learned? When you decide on the how, motivation increases. If you just have an item that said, you know, Bali, okay, that maybe that's motivating, but if you knew how, you were going to do Bali. Now, every little intricate detail that you include in there becomes more motivating, right? If it just says Bali, okay? But if it says Bali and you say that when you're here, you're gonna, you know, river raft the iu, or that you're gonna go on this jungle tour, or you're gonna stay, you know, at the Ritz Reserve or the Four Seasons, or you're gonna hostel it up, baby, whatever, you're gonna do, like, daydream about that, think through that, connect with that. Because motivation comes from vision. And sometimes your vision needs detail to really get the heart pulsing. Good. So, my friend, make sure you break down your bucket list. You break down your how, and you Share it with your loved ones. Part 2 Happiness is a Ritual Now I think about one of the most defining moments of my life in terms of learning was a time in my life when I was depressed. And many of you know the story, so I won't belabor it, but I had a breakup with my first high school sweetheart and we broke up and I fell into a deep depression. And part of my overcoming that depression was a car accident, which most of you know that story if you don't watch it on YouTube. But the other part of it was reading and I wanted to learn how to deal with my emotions so I turned to books. And a book I remember reading, I think it was by Barry Neal Kaufman, a book called Happiness is a Choice that was so powerful to me because it made me realize that happiness wasn't going to be something that maybe someday I'd have and I'd luck into but it would be something that I could cultivate from choice that I could, as you've heard me teach, bring the joy that I could from nothing, decide to cultivate, generate, create, transform the energy around me into happiness, into joy. And it was really important for me to learn that that's true. Happiness is a choice. The challenge is when it's just a choice, it's fleeting because sometimes you forget to make the choice and you get caught up in the world and you're so busy and you forgot to notice and appreciate and feel gratitude and you know you're doing fine, you're going through life well but you're not as happy as you want to be. And that's because you haven't yet made happiness a ritual. And this is a lesson for me this week because I was in a car. We were being transported between two different areas of Bali. It was about a 90 minute drive or so and I am just an obsessive question asker. So if you're ever around me informally, I'm so sorry, I will ask you 50,000 questions. I am the most annoying. I'm the guy who gets in a cab and asks the cab driver 1 million questions before the destination. I can't help it. It's how I learn about the world. It's how I absorb things. It's how I enjoy conversation and enjoy moments and people and be mindful around me is by asking questions. And so I was in this car, my wife and I and I was asking this driver, I said, you know, obviously there's this rumor that the Balinese are very happy. And he started laughing and I said, what is it that you think makes Balinese happy, why do you think that's true if it is true? And we had this beautiful conversation from that point and as we drove I asked more and more questions about his life and about how he approached it and about his family and about customs and you know, the Bali culture, the government, bigger picture questions, little questions, lots of, lots of questions. But one thing that really became clear to me is that a lot of what the Balinese experience in happiness isn't from what the cliche thoughts are about this part of the world. You know, a lot of people say well it's because, you know, they just, they're simple and they don't have a lot of needs and they don't want more than what they have. And part of that is true by the way. I think a big part of happiness is being satisfied with what you have, no questions asked. But you know, even in that regard my driver was sharing that his experience was that, you know, it's true that you know, Balinese that he knows his reflection of his own culture was that they don't want a lot more than they need however that when they do want they, and they get more than what they need. They use it for ceremony and use it for education of family. And I thought that was pretty interesting. And as we had conversations about those ceremonies what it really came clear to me is that happiness here is a ritual that there are so many daily rituals, so many weekly rituals, so many, you know, twice a year rituals that they practice here as part of their Hindu religion or their culture that is a grounding to a mindfulness that you know, in their religion is offering thanks or gratitude or something to their God or their deities. And for so many people around the world one of the reasons religion is something that is so important to their connection to happiness is just because that religion brings in or that practice brings in the ritual of giving thanks. I really believe that when I now I grew up Catholic and you know, by the time I was in high school I wasn't, by no means was I Catholic anymore though I in terms of the religious experience of Catholicism I was very, very deeply connected and still today very deeply connected and I do believe in God and I have a high, high sense of spirituality for myself that is important to my well being. That spirituality is a huge part of my life, a huge part of my joy and connection with other people. Part of that spirituality is the reason I do this work because I feel like I have to give back and connect and contribute to my fellow humans. Because I believe in the philosophy of oneness. And despite sharing all of that, what I realized to be profoundly important in my life and what I found earlier parts of my life that religion gave a time. It was like, hey, these times of day you're going to be mindful to what you have. You're going to surrender and recognize a higher power. You're going to pray, you're going to ask for what you want. You're going to give wishes or prayers for other people. And in that sense that was powerful about religion. And I don't know if you're, if you're a highly religious person or not, but I know that there is a difference between religion and spirituality. Religion typically carries a little bit more dogma, a lot more rules, a lot more tradition that you may or may not connect with. I don't personally have a lot of dogma to my religion. I believe in God. I have a high sense of spiritual connection to my fellow man and woman, to earth, to nature, to cosmos, to flow, to the dao, whatever you want to call it. I feel very connected and I'm very grateful for that connection. And I believe that a big part of happiness is making sure that you are connected on a consistent basis to the things that you are happy for, praying for. I believe that happiness is very connected to you wanting good things for yourself and other people and being mindful to those things is part of a ritual. Now, the Balinese have so many rituals they can't help but be happy because they're consistently connected to those things, if that makes sense. I'm not being incredibly articulate. It's late at night here in the jungle. But I hope that in some ways you instill some type of ritual to remind yourself to connect, to remind yourself to be grateful, to remind yourself to maybe slow it all down, to go inside, to connect with something outside, to remember that happiness is something that can be fleeting, but it's less fleeting if you do it and generate it and ponder it more consistently. I'll also share that happiness is a ritual that stems a lot from human connection. We know that almost nothing makes people more happy over the long term. And we also know that nothing makes people live longer than positive relationships. And so longevity is tied to positive relationships, connections, deeper connections. And so is happiness in so many ways. So I think that's one reason Balinese are happy. I did not know this until we got here and we were speaking with some folks who live here that so many generations live in a household here in, in Bali in that for most, the tradition is that a family lives together. You know, if a family has a son, the son will live up in that house and will stay in that house, stay with their parents forever. And if they have a daughter, the daughter will be there until married and then once married, will go live with the other family. But in that other family's home, again, it's, it's generation after generation. And I didn't know that that was the case. And what was interesting too was to hear how many rituals here do involve family. And that family is so core here. I think in cultures where family is more important but also family connection is more ritualized, I believe, become healthier and happier families. We certainly see that from sociology, that families that, you know, do simple things as having dinner every night tend to have a deeper connection, not always, but that families that have practices where they're connecting and they're sharing and they're learning about each other's days and dreams and desires and needs and sometimes bucket lists do become happier. Part 3 don't use fairness as the measuring stick. You know, I promise to use four Breakthroughs as a forum to share what's going on in my own life as I'm seeking to be high performing in what I do as a writer, as a coach and as a trainer. And for those who are new to the Brendon show here, I hope you're enjoying this episode and this format. It's new for me too. So if it sucks, I apologize. I'm getting used to it. So if you're listening to this four Breakthroughs episode right now, just do me a favor, please, please, please go onto itunes and your Apple podcasts and rate and review this episode or the Brendon show in general. Tell me what you think about this podcast because I'm constantly learning from this community how to do these better. And by your popular request, I did something recently and that is we just uploaded High Performance Habits as an entire season right here in the Brendon show. So go check out that season. It's High Performance Habits. It's the entire audiobook of my Wall Street Journal best selling book, My Amazon Top 3 Best Selling Book of all of last year, High Performance Habits, the whole audiobook right here in the Brendon show as a separate season. We did that for you by popular demand and by necessity, part of sharing my own journey as a writer and a coach and a trainer. I want to share you the good news, the happy things, the awesome things, but also the things that just completely get under my skin. And bother me because, listen, we all face stresses and challenges and upsets and disheartening moments in our careers. And I had one of those recently, and that is a couple weeks back, I decided to launch High Performance Habits, the podcast where basically I could use it as a forum to release a season of the entire audiobook. And I know many of you subscribe to both here at the Brennan show and to the High Performance Habits podcast. And when I announced that I had did that, things went bananas. And I know you might have heard me on a previous podcast or on my vlog talk about it, it was crazy. We launched that podcast and it went boom to number one in our category, which was the business category, immediately to number one, like, within a day. And then it went to number one across all categories on Apple Podcasts, literally across all categories, beating huge shows. It was just like. It was like a phenomenon for, like three days. It was just out of control. We had no idea it was going to go that high for that long. Especially because I didn't do a big, you know, a huge launch. There weren't like a bunch of Facebook ads at the time for it. There wasn't like, you know, a big. There was no big video release. There was no media, no pr, no nothing. It was basically just to my community, I have with email that I said, hey, guys, I put this up as a season. I'm really excited about it. And then it went crazy. And so I appreciate all of those who made that happen more than you'll ever know, particularly because what happened afterwards, I don't know that there's a subtle way to talk about this. So I'm just going to share it. And I hope that I don't have too much edge to it because I've kind of made sure that while I was here in Bali, I released it. It's like spiritual practice. Let me make sure that I release what happened. And what happened was this. It was just a phenomenon, like I said, Top 10 in business podcasts for the whole week of its launch. Number one across all categories for a couple days. And then I hopped on a plane one day and I flew to Phoenix. Right before I got on the plane, I refreshed my podcast, you know, top podcasts in business. And there I was, number 15 of all podcasts. And I was super stoked. I thought, I can't believe this thing is still up there. Because we were doing nothing to maintain that it was just happening. That all of a sudden we were, you know, on the world stage for this sort of secondary podcast I did called high performance habits just to have a place to release my audiobook. Long story short, I land about 90 minutes later I thought, oh, I got to get a screenshot of that. So I opened my phone after we landed and I looked for the podcast and remember it was number 15 and on all across all business podcasts on Apple Podcasts. And then it wasn't there. It wasn't in the top 15 anymore. It wasn't in the top 20, it wasn't in the top 30, it wasn't in the top 50, it wasn't in the top 100, it wasn't in the top 200. It wasn't there on the charts at all. It was gone. Literally in it was number one, as it should be in a couple days. And then it was, you know, top 15 and then it was literally it was gone. And I thought, what the heck is that about? So when I got to my hotel, I pulled up my laptop, I looked at the number of downloads. The number of downloads had not decreased at all over a couple day period. Really. If you're a podcast creator, you can now go into Apple podcasts and you can log into your itunes and you can see the number of devices, unique devices accessing your podcast. I looked, it was the same number. Now, unique devices accessing your podcast is kind of a nice way to consider your subscriber count, right? And how many new. Because if you track on Monday that you have 10 unique devices on there and then on Friday you see that there's 30 unique devices. That's a good proxy for number of new subscribers, right? The number of new devices. Not always because some people have multiple phones or devices, but in general it's a good proxy. Well, the number of new devices hadn't decreased. So whatever number of devices or as a proxy for subscribers and how many downloads there were and listening time there were none of that decreased in that 90 minute period of time or over those periods of days. But all of a sudden it went from 15 to gone. Now I'd be fine if it was like 15 and now it was like 20 or it was 15 and even if it was like all of a sudden dead 100, especially if that had happened in the first couple days, you could understand Apple saying, well, hey look, this thing had a big crush of new subscribers and then it's gone. But remember, we'd been on that over a week now. We had a very solid number and track record of subscribers keeping us in that top 20 of business podcasts. And we didn't fall off a cliff. It didn't suddenly disappear. The numbers were steered there. And the only way that we can understand what happened is that Apple delisted us or disqualified us from its rankings. And this was a tough pill for me to swallow because, remember, we didn't do some big PR thing. We aren't some big, huge organization spending tens of millions of dollars or millions of dollars on its podcast. We weren't running, you know, ads and crazy things that people do. We weren't cross promoting across 50 different things. I didn't go up here on 50 different shows to promote this thing. This thing was truly a listener supported phenomenon from the get. And then to have it delisted or disqualified was disheartening. Now, of course, I couldn't believe that we'd been delisted, disqualified. I thought, that's, what the heck, what is this about? So I reached out to 10 of my friends who are amazing podcasters, and I said, have you ever heard of this happening? And they said, wait, you just fell off? Yeah, but what? They said, well, you, you know, podcasts fall off all the time. I said, yeah, but it happened in a 90 minute period of time. Like one second I was top 15, then it was gone. They said, literally in the same day. I said, yeah, so there was no decrease over a period. It was just gone. So there's a man, you got delisted, Disqualified. And then I just couldn't believe it. So I thought, you know what, maybe I'm just not having enough new subscribers or, you know, downloads or maybe I don't understand the algorithm. So I reached out to 20 major podcasters and some in that category and some in others, and I asked them what they thought about the situation. I shared with them some of the details and they're like, dude, that doesn't make any sense. And I spoke with specifically 10 other podcasters in my category of business who confirmed with me I had more downloads and more devices and more listening than they had. So now I was pretty worked up about it. So I found out how to reach out to Apple Podcasts. I said, hey, I'm just trying to understand what happened here. Here's all the facts. They replied back with a very, let's call it, stock answer, saying, well, we have a proprietary algorithm and you know, because it's proprietary algorithm, we can't quite explain it and you're not guaranteed to be on the charts. I'm like, yes, I totally understand that, but I was on the charts. And then in a 90 minute segment from the time I got on plane to landed, something changed and we were gone. It's not like we tapered off. It was like literally off. And you have to understand, in that particular category of top 200 business podcasts, there are some in that lower 200 that are not even active podcasts. You know, they haven't had an episode in a year or two or several. They're pretty much kind of what, quote unquote, dead podcasts, I guess, is the language. I didn't know what that was. Anyway, so I explained it again. They came back and said, well, you know, it's an algorithm and it's proprietary and kind of gave me the run around again with some faq. I wrote back, I said, but, no, but here, please, here's the facts. Can we run this up the flagpole? I just want to know if, hey, if we're delisted or disqualified, tell me what happened. Like, why does that happen? So that if I create another podcast in the future, that doesn't happen. And, you know, they gave me some more run around and unfortunately there is no resolution as I'm recording this today. Apple has not told us why that has happened. And as I spoke to 20 other podcasters, I heard several other stories of other podcasts that had also experienced that at some point that they were just yanked from the rankings for no reasons. Now, I did hear of some other podcasts that were yanked and that podcasters believe did have reasons. They had, you know, bots or some kind of automated ways that they were getting subscribers in other countries, or they had, you know, bad ads running that were breaking some kind of, you know, decency rules or whatever. I mean, there were lots of different stories that I heard were actually pretty fascinating, but no one could explain what happened with mine. We weren't running crazy ads at it. It was listener supported. There was no controversy of any of the episodes. The only thing that 3 out of 20 of the podcasters told me might have happened is that they believe that Apple may have thought that I didn't have the rights to the audiobook that I released. If you didn't know, it's very rare that authors maintain rights to audiobooks. Meaning when you are a major author and you sell to a publisher, you usually give them print rights, but also audiobook rights, and the publishers have the rights to the audiobook, and pretty much no publisher would ever release the entire audiobook on any podcast because then they wouldn't make money from the audiobook downloads on Audible or through other audiobook formats. Well, I Retained the rights to my audiobook so I can do whatever I want. And so there's an exchange right now happening with Apple to see, is that what they thought happened? Were they questioning my rights? And if they thought I didn't have the rights to the audiobook, then why didn't they just like, you know, email me, be like, hey man, do you have the rights to this before we yank your show? But in the end, Apple has yanked my show. High performance habits, the podcast from the rankings, and we have no explanation about it, and it's a huge bummer. But I will not stop serving my customers and I will not back down from doing something that was really innovative. The reason that podcast became number one in the world, or at least I'm sorry, number one on Apple podcasts, is because we did something that people don't do. We released the entire audiobook. That act of generosity is what made that go to the top, because our listeners were stoked. They told their friends it went crazy. And I'm super happy and grateful for that. And I thought it was, you know, I was a little concerned about doing. I thought maybe, you know, this is obviously those hundreds of thousands of downloads usually I would get paid for, and I didn't get paid for those. But I thought, you know what? My community has been so amazing to me. I want to give, I want to do everything I can for this community. I'm constantly. That's why we ship hundreds of thousands of books worldwide literally at a loss. We, we, you know, give away all my books when we first launch them. We do everything. I mean, the, my business model is not something that could be sustained if it wasn't for my community supporting me in other ways beyond the books that we give away. Because you all support me with my monthly programs or with my seminars or with my online courses. And that's what my business is. That's how I survive. Because I don't do ads, I don't do sponsorships, and I try to approach this a very non traditional approach. I said, if I was a listener, what would I want? I wouldn't want ads. So I don't do ads. I wouldn't want, you know, I would want amazing things. So I issued a whole audiobook. Well, whatever happened with that ranking, maybe I'll find out. If I do find out or if, you know, anyone at Apple, let them know that this is a frustrating situation, that their communication historically with podcasters has been terrible. And that's according to 20 of their major podcast folks. So the very people on the platform are not happy with it. They're not happy with the lack of communication and transparency. And that's what happened with the situation here. I would be very, very happy if they just wrote back and said, hey man, you know what, here's what our algorithm found and here's what the situation was. And that would make sense. But we're not gaining acknowledgement of the clear facts that podcasts don't go from top 15 to off the charts of 200 in a 90 minute period without being yanked for a reason. And no reason has been provided. And that's quite upsetting. Why do I share all that? Because I actually don't care. And I know after all that buildup you're expecting some like, warrior chant from Brendan, but it's actually not going to happen. I don't care because for me, fairness is not the issue. Now. Do I feel disheartened? Do I feel sad? Do I feel upset? Yeah, I did. Because, you know, I love that my listeners were being recognized. They shared it, they made it happen. I love that it brought some attention to my team. You know, my team deserves it. They work super hard in making our business go. I think that I, I loved it because more people were learning about my book high performance habits. More people were learning about the research that I've spent and toiled and busted my butt on for so many years. And a lot of people hadn't, didn't know about that angle of my career. I was super stoked about it. But I also know that getting yanked doesn't bother me in the sense of fairness isn't my measuring stick. I know it wasn't fair what happened to me, but I don't expect fairness. And you learn that a lot in my particular industry. It's notorious as an example how the New York Times snubs so many authors from their proper ranking. This is not a unique argument, by the way, if you don't know of this controversy. Tons of authors have spoken about this. Major, major, major authors who've been snubbed. Like big name authors who deserve to be on the New York Times bestseller list. And they didn't get it. They didn't get it for no other reason than the New York Times is biased and their editors chose not to list that particular author even though bookscan numbers, which is Nielsen bookscan numbers, which is sort of the, the official de facto ratings or I'm sorry, rankings in sales of retail sales of books, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, go off of those because of the Nielsen bookscan Numbers because they're third party, they're accurate. And I've had that personal experience, by the way. I've had Wall Street Journal, bestseller and New York Times didn't give it to me. Even though when I looked at the best sellers on the New York Times and we looked at their bookscan numbers, I outsold them by like 2 to 1, 3 to 1, or 5 to 1, I still wasn't on that ranking. That's happened in my career. It's happened in tons of authors careers. It's very common conversation that the New York Times does not give fair rankings to everybody. And so you kind of get over it because let's jump outside of my career. Isn't it true that sometimes if you work for a company, the promotions aren't fair? Isn't it true that the pay for women versus men, that's not fair? Isn't it true sometimes people of different genders, ethnicities, backgrounds, origins, personalities and preferences that their recognition, reward or pay is not fair? Isn't it true the entire human story that there are incredible discrepancies between what really happened in history, that sometimes certain segments of society, their entire story has not been told fairly? Isn't it true that fairness might not be the measuring stick? That to me is a profound, practical and spiritual approach to life. I've never expected fairness. What happened to me with the delisting or disqualification with high performance Habits podcast from the rankings. I really say I'm okay with it because you know what? I also know it happened to a lot of other people. So is it fair? I don't know. It happened to other people. Is it fair? I don't know. It doesn't happen to everybody. Is it fair? I don't know. How do you actually gauge what fairness is? Is there an exacting proportionate of what fairness should be? How do you know what fair really is? And because we can't ever know that fairness is never a clean line in the sand because we never know what fairness can actually be. I don't think it's a great measuring stick. Now, having said that, I do wish for fairness in my life. I do wish for fairness of everybody. I wish it was fair. I wish everything was fair. I don't think the judicial system is fair. I don't think payment or promotions across lots of companies is fair. So because I don't think it's fair, I don't use it as my measuring stick, even though I wish it for myself and I wish it for other people. But the second that I dehooked from wanting to be treated fairly. I wasn't so upset anymore. Now, it doesn't mean that I don't fight for other people's equality. It doesn't mean that I don't wish for fairness. I just decided that the measuring stick of fairness in my own career shouldn't exist. And instead the measuring stick for my career isn't is it fair? Did I get my just due? Instead I say my measuring stick is joy. My measuring stick is personal satisfaction. My measuring stick is did I truly engage it and give my best and contribute something that I thought was excellent and good? And in those ways I did. I'm extremely happy with what we accomplished with the high performance habits podcast. It's still out there. You can search it and find it. It's just not being qualified for the rankings fairly. But to me, I'm very satisfied with it. I'm, in fact, really humbled. If you were a person who subscribed or downloaded, I want to let you know that I appreciate it that you're the ones that took it to number one. And I hope that you celebrated that if you were part of that epic run for that week that they did list us. I want to thank you for that. I'm humbled by that. And yeah, I'm satisfied by it. Even though it wasn't quote unquote fair, it was a reflection of my best work. It was a reflection of my best ideals and values of generosity. It was a reflection of my own approach to creativity and innovation. I was asking, how do I do something that nobody else has done? And so I issued an entire audiobook for free. And you know what, Just to prove a point, I'm doing it right here on the Brendon show as a full season. So Apple, if you'd like to now disqualify me from the rankings for the Brendon show as well. After the Brennan show, when it was the charge life spent a hundred weeks in the top whatever it was, 10 or 20 of self help category and sometimes the overall health category, something that's been around for what, two or three years now? If you want to delist it now after it'd been on the charts for that long, go ahead. I encourage you. I dare you. I'd love for you to do it and then explain it. Just be honest. Yeah, we're going to disqualify this show that's been on the top charts now for two years. We're going to take it off because he publicized and he released his entire audiobook. Yeah, What a jerk I am for doing that, right? How dare you release the audiobook of a best selling book that's still an active promotion for free. How dare you buck the conventions. How dare you try to do something great for your listeners? Doesn't that deserve being delisted or disqualified? So that's why I did that. So if you're wondering why the Brennan show now features an entire season that is the audiobook of High Performance habits. One, because so many people can't find it in the other one because they disqualified it, and two, to say, okay, if it's true that that's the reason why, then of course you should disqualify this one too. At least to be fair. And then maybe we'll get to the root of why that happened. But ultimately, the quest in our personal lives and our careers must be to do those very things that bring us deep meaning and joy and personal fulfillment and satisfaction. And that's what I felt I did with that audiobook release and with that podcast. And so again, I just want to say thank you to all of you who supported that. And I want to encourage you at a personal level not to expect fairness in the world, but instead do your best. And whatever comes from that, whatever recognition or reward, will probably never be enough for what you actually quote, unquote deserved. But the deserving is knowing that you gave your best that really is successful. Part 4 listener question for the first time ever, we get to listener questioners here on four breakthroughs. And the question was a simple one, a complex one, and a frequent one. How to deal with Overwhelm. Now, I'm going to approach this in a different way today because I'm on vacation, so it's not quite fair how I'm going to talk about this. But I would encourage you all if you're really interested in that too, please make sure you check out my YouTube video called how to Deal with Overwhelm. How do you avoid becoming overwhelmed too often? Now, as I teach you this one, I got four big ideas for you here. I do a lot of training on this topic. I would also encourage you to check out the Energy chapter in High Performance Habits or listen to the audiobook, High Performance habit number two, Generate energy. The world belongs to the energetic. It's part of the season now on the Brendon show where I talk about the Energy chapter and I talk about how to release tension and set intention. And that simple practice can help you deal with overwhelm so well. I mean, it's changed so many hundreds of thousands of people's lives. It's probably one of the most easy, simple practices you can do. Again, it's called release tension, set intention. It is a practice of the energy chapter, generate energy chapter in high performance habits. You can listen on the audiobook free here on the Brennan show as part of that season, or you're welcome to read it in the book. But I'd like to share three ideas of how to deal with overwhelm as I end the evening here. I'll keep them simple and straightforward. The first idea to prevent overwhelm is to preempt it with frequent nos. That is often overwhelm happens because you said yes too many times when you shouldn't have said yes. And I know you know this, and this is basic advice, but it is advanced advice. High performers must learn to say no more often because the difficulties we face is that because you're good, you know you can take on more because you're good. You're efficient, you're productive, you're amazing. You take on more because simply you can. The truth about high performers is they can actually take on a lot because they're good. But that is also what usually leads to their decline or their plateau. They got good. They kept saying yes because people relied on them or because they had skill there. And so all of a sudden, that deep skill became deep problems because they kept saying, yes, I can do that I can do. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. Just because you can, you know, solve someone else's problem doesn't mean you should, because maybe you got your own things to solve. The reality is, overwhelm can be preempted by saying no, by being very clear about the major projects that should be on your plate and being very clear about saying no up front. The worst thing is to kind of say yes and then a couple weeks later, have to waffle on it. Now you got to break your integrity or break your word and say no. And the worst thing is to now say to say yes to something now and six months later, wish you'd said no. Just say no. No one's listen when you say no. It's not like other people's worlds fall apart. We would like to be so significant, wouldn't we? We'd love to think that, oh, if I say no, there's. They're going to have no other option, they're going to be lost, everything's going to turn terrible. And that's not true. People got on in life before you, and they'll get on in their life after you or without you. And I'm such a believer in other people. I'm such a believer in self reliance and other people's ability to do remarkable things. I have no problem saying no because I believe that other people can figure things out. I figured things out. They'll figure things out. I have tremendous trust in people's just innate capabilities, but also their ability to learn. As I say, in high performance habits, everything is trainable. So if they don't have me there to rely on, I think they'll figure things out. They can get education and support elsewhere. I don't have to support everybody in the world. I can't. I'm just one dude. So I think it's important to learn to preempt overwhelm by saying no. By having clarity about what should be on your plate and having commitment to those projects that should be on your plate. Commitment to do them well. Because the more things you say yes to, the less you can do things well. So narrow it down. Get focused. Say no. Protect your free space, your free time. Because in your free space and your free time is where more creativity and insights will come to do the things that are on your plate even better than you would if you were just crammed all the time with other obligations. If you have problems saying no, please do yourself a favor and read High Performance habits. Sorry to be so self referential in this particular episode, but listen to the audiobook. As part of the season, you've got to learn to say no. I even give a script in high performance habits about how I say no and reject requests in email. You can copy it. I mean, literally tens of thousands of people now use that. It's hilarious. I see it all the time now. It's a script I give about how to say no. I'm sorry, my plate is full. And also in there I think there's a script of. I think that script is in there. If that script is isn't in there, it's on my blog. Gosh, I can't remember where I put it now. But there's also a script in there about how to find out a real deadline from someone. And this is really important. Read the Productivity chapter and High Performance Habits to understand the difference between false deadlines and real deadlines. Because most deadlines that people give you are the areas in which you are feeling overwhelmed. Isn't it true a lot of your overwhelm comes from deadlines that other people have imposed on you or that you have accepted meaning A lot of the overwhelm is stress that comes from when, when is it due, when is it necessary, when is it needed? And right now you're overwhelmed because everything feels like it's needed, right? The when of everything is now. And that's causing the stress and the overwhelm. Isn't it true? Well, you need to discern when things are really due to prevent overwhelm. First you need to decide if it's really necessary. That's the saying yes or no. But after you say yes or no, then you need to decide when and most often when is a preference not a real deadline. And so I have the script that I send to people, again, that one is definitely in high performance habits where I say, basically, hey, when is the real deadline? In which, you know, everything falls apart if you don't get it. Not your preference, but the latest possible moment, it can be turned in. Because I've got 50 other requests here in front of you, and I gotta prioritize them based on a real deadline, not a preference. So that's the mentality of preempting with no and when. Second, big idea, block time. Overwhelm happens because we leave our time to too much randomness. We do our projects at random times, hoping to squeeze in the important things in between all the distractions, the social media and the false obligations and the BS deadlines. So we put the major projects out there or randomly versus blocking specific segments of each day to do projects that matter. Overwhelm starts to go away in our life when we better figure out what our project should be, break them down, and block significant periods of time to do that work with real intention and focus. And I've been teaching this now for well over a decade. This concept called block time. Now it's being popularized by a concept called deep work, which is a great book, by the way. You should read Deep Work. It's the same concept as block time and doing work with intention and focus and discipline in specific segments of time that are free from all these other distractions and interruptions, that it's easy to give those away. So what I'd love for you to do is to realize overwhelm is strongly correlated with random work efforts. Overwhelm is strongly correlated with random work efforts. If your day keeps, you know, becoming random because either you don't schedule it or you allow all these distractions or overwhelms, or you get caught up in social media, of course you're gonna be overwhelmed all the time because your time use is terrible. You are Using time to deal with things that don't matter or that take your focus away. And that's the challenge, right? So you've gotta say, okay, I gotta block time. I gotta make sure that the first part of my day is really oriented to moving forward on the projects that matter. It's why I do things like in my own career, many of you know, 90% of the time any phone call that I do for work is after lunch. Because in the morning I'm going to make sure that the most important things that have to happen happen. If I got to fight fires or deal with random crazy things, I'm going to deal with them, but they're not going to be till the afternoon. And so I don't do a lot of email and I don't do a lot of checking voice messages, texts, social media, dms, emails. I don't do a lot of that till the afternoon after. I've already done the things that move my career forward in the mornings. That's just one simple thing I do. I also block time to do things that are highly response driven versus offensive, meaning like email. I block time in the day when email is going to happen. I don't check in between things because that's those random check ins become more and more time and less and less ability to get things done that I should be doing during that time. So if you want to decrease overwhelm, increase block time, decrease distraction. My third tip for dealing with overwhelm is to learn to be in flow. What do I mean by that? Well, part of it, I mean just dude, breathe. You know, when you're feeling overwhelmed, just breathe and kind of learn a little bit to flow. Generate a higher level of mindfulness or awareness to the moment, realizing that everything is impermanent. These deadlines you feel right now that are overwhelming you, they're not really going to be an issue five months from now. Most of those things that overwhelm us, they're not going to matter in five years. They're probably not even going to be on our plate in a month or three or four. And I know that's really challenging to say, but it's true in so many parts of our life. You know, if you're in major areas of our life even, let's use a metaphor, let's say you have a two year old and your two year old is completely overwhelming you. And shout out to any moms and dads with two years old, two year olds right now, major, major ups. But listen, if you got a two year old and you're completely overwhelmed right now, guess what? That overwhelm is going to be very different or gone when they're 12 or when they're 20 or when they're 30. Now I know that might not be very hopeful when you're dealing with a 2 year old or 3 year old or 4 year old. But listen, the things that overwhelm us, right, like you know when, when you're got an infant or a newborn and you're trying to deal with, you know, just basics of feeding, you know, that's very overwhelming for a period of time. And then you catch a rhythm and you understand it and you get better at it. And things that overwhelm us at one period of our life or maturity don't overwhelm us later. Things that overwhelm us in the short term might not be things that overwhelm us in the long term. And meaning overwhelm tends to be a very impermanent, transient thing. And that should give you hope. When I'm feeling overwhelmed, I kind of ride with it a little bit and I tap into that idea of flow at a spiritual level. I breathe, I kind of go with it, I flow throughout it. Like I'm overwhelmed, but I'm like I'm aware that I'm overwhelmed. And I start to calm myself down by realizing that this overwhelm is an impermanent thing. That probably tomorrow, mid afternoon, I'll feel differently. Matter of fact, you know, in three hours when I do my meditation, I'll feel differently. That overwhelm is ultimately a perception. It is a meaning. It is a feeling that is coming up from stress that I'm defining ultimately, either unconsciously or consciously, but ultimately is something that I do have some control over. That overwhelm isn't happening to me. It is something that I am experiencing. And I can choose to ride out, I can choose to dance with, I can choose to let go, I can choose to engage or not engage. I can choose to see a positive future where it's not there. But ultimately, you know, there's practices of dealing with overwhelm, like the first two, I told you, preempt it, and then also to block time. But then there's also an in the moment practice of dancing with it and breathing through the difficulty. So maybe when you're overwhelmed, take a few deep breaths, realize that you're in more control of your life then you're probably realizing in the moment. Recognize the bigger picture, step into a sense of gratitude because remember what you're dealing with right now, at other parts of your life, you wish you had these opportunities, but you got them now. And maybe, yeah, they're overwhelming you now, maybe that two year old is overwhelming you. But you wanted the two year old, you wanted the baby, you wanted the project, you wanted the business, you wanted the career. You raised your hand at one point and said, I'd like these things. And now that you got them, they're overwhelming you a little bit. That's okay. Just means it's your time to take a breath, to reflect where you're at. Maybe get some new training, maybe get some new support, maybe look at it from a different perspective. But realize, my friend, you can handle this. Confidence is the belief in one's ability to figure things out. That's the kind of confidence that moves you through things. So even as you're overwhelmed, recognize what you're overwhelmed with is probably impermanent. Recognize if you breathe, take a few breaths in, take a moment. Perspective might serve you here. Recognize that you can train or get some support long term to handle this. But also recognize that, hey, you can handle this. You got this. Believe in your ability to figure this thing out, to work it through to make it better. Maybe it's not immediate, maybe it's not this moment, maybe it's not tomorrow, maybe it's not next week, but ultimately you'll improve. You'll figure this thing out. Trust in yourself, my friend. Have confidence you will figure this out. This concludes our episode of four Breakthroughs. I think this is officially the longest four breakthroughs I've ever done. So do me a favor, go and rate and review this on Apple podcasts just because it'd be fun to see more podcast reviews showing up there right here on the Brendon show. I'd love to hear what you think about it. And I can't continue doing this if I don't get feedback from you because I can't do it well. And if I can't do something well, I won't do it. So I would love to hear, what do you think of this? Is this a good format? Are you enjoying the Brendon show? Do you like four Breakthroughs? Are you cheering me on out there with this whole Apple podcast situation? I'd love to hear what you're thinking about this. And so as always, follow me on Instagram or on Facebook or Twitter or wherever you prefer social media. Give me shout outs, give me likes, share this important message and work. If it helped you today, maybe it could help one of your friends. So please share the Brendon Show. We're trying to grow this podcast now that this is our only one, and I'd love your support with that. Thank you all for your support over the years. It means more now than ever. I'm getting experiences Bucket list moment tonight in Bali. My wife should be finishing her massage or chakra performance massage, whatever it's called, and we're going to go have a great evening together. I thank you for being a part of this bucket list moment for us. I thank you for supporting my career throughout so many years. Now I think about this being 11 years full time, every day, researching, coaching and training on motivation and high performance. And the work that I've done here, ultimately culminating in this moment, you and me hanging out in Bali. So wherever this message finds you, out there in the world, thanks for being part of the Brendan Show. It.