6 Ways to Improve Your Life
8 Dec 2020 · 23 min
In this episode of The Brendon Show, high‑performance coach Brendon Burchard shares a practical framework for boosting personal vitality, emotional mastery, and productivity. He begins by describing his personal "wait‑list trigger" – a quick self‑check of physical presence and energy – and explains how consistent monitoring of vibrancy, mindfulness, and meaning can transform negative emotions into positive states through breathing, movement, and reframing. Burchard then argues that indecision fuels unhappiness, citing a Harvard Business Review study of 900 CEOs that links decisiveness to higher productivity and financial success. He urges listeners to make real, timely choices about what matters, and to commit publicly to goals. He introduces the habit of celebrating small wins daily, building a "bank account of positive emotions" that buffers against negativity. A concrete planning system is presented: write down health, career, and relationship goals, share them, and track milestones. Burchard frames the high‑performer identity as a "role‑model mindset," emphasizing compassionate, authentic communication and the responsibility to shape the energy of any environment. He then walks through his own morning routine—hydration, stretch, breath work, air squats, and third‑person self‑talk—to prime the mind for high‑output days and multiple live casts. The episode also includes a promotional segment for his HPX supplement line (nootropics, optimized formula, essential vitamins) and a call‑to‑action for his monthly coaching program, hiring opportunities, and recommended wisdom sources such as Oprah’s Super Soul Sessions. Throughout, Burchard blends instructional advice, personal anecdotes, and persuasive encouragement to help listeners level up their focus, confidence, and overall life satisfaction.
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Hey, my friends, it's Brendan Burchard and welcome to a special episode of the Brendon show. Hey, I'm Brendon Burchard and I'm honored to be your high performance coach today.
With this episode, I've spent the last.
20 years studying human behavior change and writing, coaching and training literally at the top levels on the topics of motivation, focus, productivity, confidence and more. My goal, inspired by my own personal journey, is to help you and my audience live love and matter, which means to feel more vibrant, more connected and more fulfilled in every area of your life. That's what we're doing today. If you like today's episode, grab a screenshot and share it on Instagram. Just tag me Enon Burchard so I can see you and give you a.
Shout out or a hello.
And if you want to go to another level of personal development in your life this month, be sure to join me live every month in my coaching program. Just visit hpxcoaching.com to get signed up. I teach a brand new personal development session every single month, meaning it's like a personal development seminar for you. Live every, every single month on the first of the month and then after I teach that for about 75 minutes, then we do live breakouts where you get to meet new people, network with people, set your monthly goals and establish real accountability for your growth. Listen, you know that expert guidance and real consistency and an inspiring community is critical to your growth. So join me this month on the 1st. Just go to hpxcoaching.com that's hpxcoaching.com it's time to level up, my friend. It's time to take your year back. It's time to find that focus and that confidence and that vibrancy and that vibe. Again, go to hpxcoaching.com and let me be your coach into fuller levels of high performance in every area of your life. Now, without further ado, let's jump in to today's episode.
So many of you know my trigger, my wait list trigger. That's if I'm waiting in line, I have a trigger and it just asks a simple question. It says, okay, what level am I right now in terms of my presence and physical vibrancy? And is that level for me sufficient? Can I level it up? Right? And I challenge myself to level it up, but I don't do it like once in a while or every here and there. It's a very consistent thing for me. And so if you want to feel better, you need to monitor your energy on a consistent basis and challenge yourself to pick it up. Challenge yourself to pick up your mindfulness or your awareness or your physical vitality, by the way that you move. But that's the way that you start developing greater, I'd say, proficiency in managing your emotions. See, when a negative emotion happens to me, I have so much consistency in training in developing positive emotions, I acknowledge the negative emotion, right? It's not like I'm avoiding it. I'm like, oh, I'm feeling this way right now. First, let me check on my meaning. How am I defining this? Am I defining this in a helpful, positive, constructive way? Or am I being a defeatist? So that's my first question, right? How am I defining the meaning to this emotion or this experience so that I can better gauge how I'm feeling? But sometimes the meaning is, this sucks, this isn't good, this is sad. I don't like it. That's just truth, right?
That's real life.
And so what do I do with that? Now I run all these other habits I've been telling you about to change it. Because maybe I can't change that negative experience or that negative situation, but I can change how I'm tuning right now into the world and the habit that I'm gonna run. So if I got a lot of negativity going on, I'm like, okay, is that real? Is it as bad as I really think? What would be the alternative? What's the meaning of that? How could I construe that more positively in my mind? And so that's just a meaning activity of the emotion. And whether it's positive or negative or whatever it comes out to now, I say, okay, now how do I really want to feel? That's the next question. How do I really want to feel? Well, I don't want to feel disappointed. I don't want to feel defeated. I don't want to feel sad. I want to feel positive, engaged, joyous, confident, ready to do something good. How would I do that? Well, I don't know. I feel yucky. Let me stand. Take 10 bounces. 10 deep breaths.
Here we go.
And I'll start breathing it out. I'll go on a walk, I'll put on my headphones, I'll listen to some Macklemore or some Chance the Rapper or some of my favorite music. And that'll get me in a better state of mind as I'm walking around. It'll be a 2, 3, 4 minute song and I'll come back and hit Right back at it. Meaning. I'm changing the meaning and the physical movement or vitality that I have. And that's how I'm dealing with a negative emotion. I'm not avoiding the negative emotion. I. I'm just not letting it win. Okay, next up. We made real choices about who we are and what matters in life right now. Let me say that again. We made real choices about who we are and what matters in life right now. And that's super key, right? Real choices about what matters to us. And I can't tell you how important this one is because so many people don't feel the energy they want in life because they're not making any choices that make sense. Do you want to feel real negative emotions? Stop making choices for yourself. Stop making any decisions, Stop thinking about what really matters to you. Start just going through the motions of the day and not trying to define things, not trying to make decisions, because you know who are really unhappy people, indecisive people. You know, what we know from high performance is that the highest performing leaders, and this is one of the largest studying ever done of high performing CEOs. It was published in Harvard Business Review and they found that out of 900 CEOs that the highest producing ones tended to be the most decisive, the most successful ones. And the companies that had the most success on their financial track record were more decisive. They made the decision faster than other people did, and out of that they had better productivity and better results. That same thing applies to our positive emotions. We need you making more positive decisions for yourself. You know, been waiting to make that decision about your career and you're just not making the decision. Well, no wonder you're unhappy. No wonder you're stewing in negative emotions. Your brain is going, dude, I'm gonna make you feel negative until you make this decision. That's what your brain's telling you. Your soul's saying, I am going to feel dread until you do what we know is right for us. That's your soul and your brain saying, dude, make the call, make the decision. Because all this thinking and guessing and second guessing and thinking and guessing and second guessing and worry, worry, worry without deciding, that's making you miserable. Positive people are making positive decisions for their life. Actively, they're decisive and you need to make the call. If you've just been waiting and waiting, waiting, I'm here to encourage you. If you want to change your negative emotion. It happens with choices, it happens with real decisions and commitments to get going again. It's okay to Struggle, meaning you chilled out a little bit and you believed in yourself and trusted. A lot of people's negative emotions comes from they're just so high strung and they've never integrated the success that they have. You know, they keep beating on themselves over and over and over again and they're not giving themselves any credit. And so if you feel like a lot of negativity, you probably also lack a practice of integrating the wins of taking a moment and taking a beat to celebrate what you have done. Because if you don't celebrate, how are you supposed to feel positive? And so many people don't have a practice at that. They only celebrate huge milestone achievements. But each day you can journal about what you did well that day and how you handled stress or struggle with well that day. And you can give yourself that credit. And as you give yourself more credit, it's like building a bank account of positive emotions, right? I give myself a lot of credit. You make it through more difficulty and stresses and struggles throughout the day than you give yourselves credit for. You didn't freak out with your kid today. Give yourself credit for that. Instead of feeling like a bad mom all the time, you didn't snap at that co worker who was driving you crazy today. So your relationship will be good. Give yourself some credit for that. Good job. You were patient, well done. These things, as we give ourselves more credit, we feel better for ourselves. As we feel better for ourselves and our esteem goes up for ourselves, the negative emotions don't knock us off track as much. You made plans and commitments and you publicly shared them. You made plans and commitments. Make a plan. Make a plan. Set your commitment, set your milestones, tell people what you're going to do. Execute, buddy. Get it going on. If you don't have that, you don't experience that momentum in life, and now you feel like you're just reacting or you're meandering and those who are reacting and meandering are unhappy. That's where that negative emotion comes from, is when you're just like lost in a sea of indecisiveness. But that positivity and that progress comes from having a plan. What is the plan? To take care of your health, to manage your career well, to be awesome with your family and your friends. If you just had a plan on those three things, right? Your health, your career, your family and friends, in no particular order, and you just had some kind of knowledge of what your goals were in those next days, you'd immediately just having the funny thing is, put that thing on A piece of paper, you'll immediately feel better. People, literally immediately in psychological tests, they feel better. The minute that they make a list and a set of goals, Even if they don't move towards them just having a. Just writing it down and getting it out and seeing your future there in a positive way, you will feel better. And then you take some action against this, my friend, you'll feel entirely different. You expressed yourself, listen to this. As a role model to others. If I parachuted into your life and I followed you, I took steps right behind you all day, and I was listening to how you were talking to other people. I don't want to just listen for positivity. I want to talk about, are you living as a leader? Is that a yes or a no? Are you living because either at some point we are living as a defeatist, as a complainer, or as a role model. And we can't have all. We're in one bucket or another. And high performers own that role model mindset. When they communicate with people, they're communicating as leaders. They're taking responsibility for the energy that they have and that they bring into the spaces, and that's their job. They're not leading just by asking people to do things or leading by management or. Or anything else like that. They're shaping the energy of the world by being a role model. They're being a role model energetically because they're choosing positive emotions and energy. But they're also being a role model because they're being supportive of other people. Because wouldn't you agree that role models are compassionate, thoughtful people? Well, if you agree, my question to you is this. Are you being as compassionate and thoughtful as you could with your coworkers? Are you being as passionate or compassionate and thoughtful with your wife, your husband, the kids as you could be? People start realizing that the people in their group deeply appreciate them when they speak from an authentic place and when they think from a speak from a positive, supportive place, this role model thing starts happening in the room. I don't even have to shape it. I don't even have to say the words role model. And it just happens because the way that we're sharing and so are you living your life as a role model right now? Do you have a role model mindset? Because listen to this. If we don't view ourselves as role models, how would we feel about ourselves? What's the odds that our negative emotions would take over us? Ultimately, if we don't start seeing ourselves and behaving in ways that align with the role model mindset.
Hey, it's Brendan. And I want to jump in the middle the of of this episode here real quick and tell you about something I'm really excited about and something that answers a question that many of you have for me all the time, which is, Brendan, where do you get this crazy focus and energy in your life? And the truth is, I've developed a supplement line that really helps me do that. And frankly, I needed to. I don't know about you, but sometimes when you're trying to achieve big things, a lot of stress comes along. And as you're trying to achieve bigger things, you need to be on your A game more often. You need to be mentally sharp. You need to be mentally prepared. You need to be mentally energized and productive. And not once in a while, but like every day, you. You have to be on. And sometimes guzzling more coffee isn't going to do it. You have to use what we call nootropics, which are, you know, basically supplements that help optimize your brain. And yes, we have a product for exactly that. It's called HPX Optimized, and it is our most popular product. And you can get it. It's back in stock at HPX Wellness. That's HPX Wellness.com you'll find HPX Optimize for your mental focus and energy there. You'll also find my favorite powdered energy drink that we created, this 100% organic and vegan. And you'll find my Essentials, which is my daily multi that I take that covers my energy, that covers my longevity, that covers my immunity, that covers my brain and body health that I absolutely love. And you will feel the difference. Go to HPX wellness.com right now. HPX wellness.com.
Youm took some time to listen to positive words and guidance. I hope that you are appreciating, like just having. Whether it's me or a podcast or an online course that you're taking to or a specific radio show or specific music. But what I want you to do is be listening to wisdom each day. Right? I'm really stoked right now. You guys know my friend Oprah Winfrey. Finally, she released her own podcast, Super Soul Sessions. So if you listen to that podcast, there's a lot of wisdom on there, a lot of incredible interviews with some of the most influential people in the world. But talking from a place of spirit and wisdom and soul. And I listen to that and that makes me feel better. And I'm already a pretty happy dude. But Listening to wisdom. So what I'm trying to communicate to you is all these things that we did there you can do at home. I've been on task for months, and for the past few weeks I've lost focus and cannot seem to figure it out and how to get back on task. Help. Okay, make sure you have a very diligent morning routine in which you are priming your mind for positivity and for high performance that day. So every morning I want you to sit down, ask yourself a series of questions that helps you generate gratitude and enthusiasm and excitement for the day. Then I want you to look at your goal sheet for that day, your to do list, and ask yourself this question. How do I do everything on this list today with joy and excellence? How do I do everything on this list today with joy and excellence? And to make that even easier for you, at the end of the day, it's habits, which I just told you what to do, and it's a decision which you've already made. So do what you know you need to do. How do we set goals that are out of the comfort zone and a vision that's intimidating but still attainable and, and exciting to reach or go for? Here's what I want you to do. How can I 3x that? How do I 3 times that? If you said, you know, I want to be able to run a marathon in X time, how could you train to run it three times faster? Not that you'll actually accomplish it, but the thinking through of what you would need to do to train will make your trainings better anyway. Maybe you said, I want to make $100,000 this year. Great. Next year. How would you do 300? What would it take to get to 300,000? What would that be like? Maybe you said, I want to make my relationship with my husband so much better that we're going to do a date night a month. Okay, could you do three date nights a month? And what would that be like? And how could you schedule it and make it happen? Meaning I want you to 3x everything that you did. Because even if you can't achieve it, if it becomes a little unattainable, it's still the thinking process to get there will serve you. Now, people often ask Brendan, why don't you tell people to 10x things? I say, oh, yeah, I do. When you have people 10x certain goals, they found from productivity studies that often that 10x is so unattainable, it's not motivating anymore. So we're setting something that's fairly realistic and possible. How do you prepare before a video or a stage presentation so that you can crush it? Every day, every single morning I'm going to be on video. I have my morning routine which is pretty much the same as my morning routine. Always that's I get up lots of water but I do a 20 minute stretch session. I gotta open up my body. If I don't do that, especially on a day like this where I'm doing how many live casts? I'm doing like five live casts today. Like five different ones. I cannot possibly sustain it if I don't open up my body. So physical movement and opening up the body and lungs is everything in the morning. Lots of hydration too. The second thing that I do is a lot of breath work so you can't see it. But off camera there's a room where I get ready and when I'm getting ready back there it's not, I mean it doesn't take me that long to shower and shave. What I'm doing back there is I'm bouncing in place, I'm taking lots of deep breaths. I'm doing my stretches back there, my chigongs, my movements. I'm doing a lot of air squats. So doing squatting and jumping and then I am telling myself specific things are important and for myself to have cues for video and everybody's got your own cues and you need to have what those are. You need to speak to yourself. A lot of self talk. And if you learned high performance habits, the book the best way to do that is in second or third person. Meaning you don't say, you know, I'm going to do great today. What I want you to do is speak to yourself. So you say today you're going to do great today because this person needs you. Because if you do well today you get this feeling and this output and this accomplishment that these people are counting on you for these reasons that your mission, your purpose is these things and just start talking to yourself. And yes, self talk out loud. So speak in third person. So for me it's like Brendon, you're going to do great today because you know what, it's going to be hard to do it great today because you got so many of these things. So really show up buddy. You're going to do this great today because your students are counting on you today. You're going to do great today because you know what, you know your mission. You dreamed of doing this for decades and now you get to do it. So show up today, buddy. You're gonna do great today because your team is watching and you wanna create this great culture. The people just show up and crush it. All these things. I start speaking to myself, brendan, do great today because x that helps me. I hope that motivates you and keeps you on track.
All right? Hey, my friend. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you're ready to go to another level, don't Forget, go to hpxcoaching.com Let.
Me be your coach.
Let me spend the first of each month with you giving you a personal development seminar. Let me help you get unstuck, break through your emotional blocks, find your real.
Clarity, your real passion, your real purpose.
And implement the habits that you know you need to implement. Change your life by getting a coach, getting some expert guidance. Listen, you got as far as you could get.
You're here.
You've achieved so much in your life.
You.
But to go to another level requires another level of mindset, another level of discipline, another level of direction and community and consistency. And that is what my coaching program is all about. So go to hpxcoaching.com and listen, if you're ready to go to a whole other level, I'm hiring. Please go to brendan.com hiring for our open roles. I got a big secret project that we are rolling out and you'll only find information that@brendon.com hiring we've got, I don't know, 10 or 12 open positions there. If you ever wanted to work with me, if you wanted me to be your leader, you wanted me to literally employ you and help you grow in your career and do what we do, serving this mission of helping people around the world achieve their dreams faster, helping them improve their lives. We live every day as a team to do that and we are currently hiring. We're building out a new product and we need some people to help us do that. Brendon.com hiring if you don't know how to spell my name, don't even think about it. We're looking for people who are pros. If you're interested in internship with me, don't go there. We're not hiring interns. If you're interested in starting your career with me, don't go there. We are an a team here. We've got people who are really experienced. So if you're new to personal development or you're new to marketing, you're probably not going to be the person we're looking for. We're looking for people with at least three years of professional experience in a lot of different roles because we take.
This role very seriously.
We get to change lives and millions of them every single day.
That's the work.
So we're looking for real pros, top of your game, ready to come on to an organization that reaches just as many people in the world as any other personal development influencer or trainer on the planet. And we'd be excited to have you join us in a big new initiative we're rolling out for the beginning of the year. I can't even tell you any more about that. Go to brendan.com hiring if you'd like to work with us. And if you just want to go to another level and have me as your coach, not your Boss, go to hpxcoaching.com so I can give you a brand new personal development session this month to help you set your goals, get on track, get unstuck and achieve your ultimate difference. Go to HBXCoaching.com for that. Thanks again for listening to the Brendon show. You all mean so much to me. I have so much coming out in the next couple months for you here that's gonna be unique and special and I know you're gonna love it. So keep your head up. I know it's been a hard year. Please remember, as always, you are stronger than you think and the future holds good things for you.