Best Of: Becoming Your Best Self

Hey, my friends, it's Brendan Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the Brendan Show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, sometimes online, online to tens of thousands of people or live on stage where I was speaking on some stages across the world. Or these might be some of my monthly training programs and highlights of those that I do every single month with our monthly students. So I know you're going to really enjoy these because these are a little bit more of a deep dive look at some of my training as a personal and professional development trainer. You know, I focus so much on helping you find that deeper level of motivation and start practicing some of those high performance habits. Well, you hear me talk about many of those concepts that in these special episodes here. These are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here on the Brendon show. So I hope you enjoyed them. Please note that as you hear me speak in many of these, you'll hear me reference something because sometimes I'll have been training live or on video or on stage or through a broadcast. So you might not be able to see something I'm suggesting or motioning to or maybe even drawing out on a flip chart or motioning towards on a presentation, but you'll get the gist of it. So make sure you bust out your journal. Just take some good notes here because this is really valuable insights on the mindset or the strategies that you need to adopt in order to improve your life. And if you want to go and get more content like this, but much more deeper and have more of an interactive relationship with me in this type of training, make sure you join our high performance monthly training program. That's our monthly subscription program where I go live with you and our high performance students every single month and I train on a new topic or a new piece of research that we've created from the high performance Institute and I train on that and then I do Q and A and actual live coaching, interactive coaching with people every single month. That's called high performance monthly and you can Access it at brendon.com monthly that's brendon.com monthly B-R-E-N-O-N.com forward/monthly to get deeper dive training similar to this. So if you like this, you would love that training program. But without further ado, let's jump in right now to one of the Brendon show's best of trainings.

Oh, you're going to love this one. Brendan. I wish you could explain my Life to me on a slide. And it was just a hugely challenging thing because I mean, how do you do that? How do you tell a person, look, the outcomes you've had in your life are because these specific things, right? Obviously there's fate and there's luck and there's blessings and there's God and spirit and universe. Whatever you attribute your current results to outside of your own self determination. But what's going to really dictate the path forward for you? And how can we explain someone's behavior as it is today that relates to their success? This is a big challenge, you know, explain my life to me on a slide. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out. Like, how would we get to that psychological stuff that could really help guide people to understand why they are the way they are and more importantly, also give them maybe a framework to think about where they're about to go. So what I'm going to do is teach you these big ideas that explain the life outcomes that you have and will have. The first thing that I can use, not only to predict your success, but certainly to tell why you are where you're at right now, has a big thing to do with your ambitions. Your ambitions, right? I would say the size of your life outcomes is directly correlated to the size of your ambitions. A lot of people, you know, they just have never really visualized their life and the way that they want it. And where you're at right now probably has a lot to do with, with how much in the past you really saw, visualized, thought through how you wanted your life to be. Unfortunately, the reality is a lot of people's ambitions have been set for them too low. You know, the people around them didn't expect a lot of them. The people around them weren't role models. The people around them didn't push them, the people around them didn't inspire them. And so their ambitions were kind of like, well, I guess I'll take what I get or just, I guess I'll just keep going through the motions or I'm just doing what it takes to survive. Brendan. And while all those things are okay, you and I both know we can't accelerate your success unless we amplify your ambitions. If you want to level up in life, that begins with leveling up. What you want, what you dream of, what you desire, how you want to serve. You got to level up those ambitions, my friends. And those ambitions have to be beyond your past, your current circumstances, your current strengths, the things that you prefer no Your ambitions have to make you rise if we're going to accelerate your success. You know, I think about my lifetime. If my ambitions had not been raised beyond how I was raised, I would have never touched the realm of. Of my true potential. I mean, I was raised by two very great parents. I lucked out on the parent train. You know, I always say that, if anything, people say you're lucky, Brandon. I say you're right. My two parents loved me. I lucked out on that. I have no question. I had two loving parents. Doesn't mean they didn't have their faults and their struggles, but I had good parents, and I feel very lucky about that. But we also grew up without a lot of, you know, my parents, between the two of them, working full time. It was difficult because there was four of us kids, and we grew up in an economically depressed, you know, former Irish mining town that had been, you know, practically dilapidated for almost a century before. And it was a tough place to grow up, a place called Butte, Montana. And it was a difficult place to grow up. There wasn't a lot of opportunity for families. There really was no, you know, this side of the tracks or that side of the tracks. The whole town was economically depressed, and, you know, it was a tough place to be. I didn't grow up at that moment with an immediate circle of very ambitious, driven, motivated people, though my mom and dad were. But our community wasn't. I mean, right next door to my house was an empty lot. Behind it were some apartments that were shut down, hadn't been lived in, were shanty. You know, we had empty lots all around us. I mean, there wasn't something aspiring. There was no shiny city on the hill for us. But I do know that my mom and dad, they wanted to provide a good quality of life for us. You know, my dad wanted to be a good dad. My mom wanted me a good mom. They wanted to take care of us. And that ambition alone shaped me and gave me love in my heart, and that made a big difference. But I wouldn't be here with you here today if I never looked beyond where I grew up. You know what I mean? I had to look beyond that town. I had to look beyond my comforts. I had to look beyond what people were earning around, what they were giving around, what they were focused on. A lot of the immediate environment around us, there was a lot of drug abuse, a lot of alcoholism, a lot of people who were really struggling with basic. Just motivation, lots of mental illness around, and that was just the way it was and luckily, because my dad had higher ambition, he got a better job in another town. We moved around a little bit. We ended up in a different town. And that town was much better. It had two sides, you know, one side made a little more money than the other side, you know, but the great rivalry was between the two of them. I met a teacher, Linda Belew. She changed my life. She gave me some ambition. She said, you know, you could join our newspaper staff here. I could teach you to write and take pictures, and you could lead a team one day here at the student newspaper. And she gave me a different view of myself and life. She believed in me for some bizarre reasons. She believed in a lot of people. She took a lot of kids who didn't have any ambition, gave them hope, gave them belief. We became the number one student newspaper in the country. Tiny little school with no resources, beating the big kids, the big schools. And it was just an amazing gift. She gave me the gift of belief in myself, that I could do something more. And so did other people. One of my employers did that. Several of my employers, matter of fact, I went to a college. And when I was in college working three jobs to pay for it, I lucked out and met some people who came from different backgrounds and different experiences. For me, it broadened my worldview. I know you've had the same story, but I'm here to also say that sometimes people get into a place where they have fixed beliefs about what's possible for them, and it's been years since they dreamed. Sometimes you get good and you're on a roll, and it's been years since you had real big dreams. Because what you're living right now is better than you ever imagined. I mean, I think about my life. This is better than I ever imagined from where I came from. I mean, I've sailed beyond my highest ambitions. People say getting to live the dream, I'm like, oh, my gosh. I'm so far beyond the dream. I feel so far blessed. Beyond beyond, right? But I still have to keep leveling up my ambitions. Because as I level up my ambitions, ambition is the spark to motivation. If you don't have ambitions, you're not driven. During the day, you're just like, well, I guess it's another day. There's nothing to look forward to, right? Without ambition, there's not a deeper love in your relationship. Without ambition, you don't become a better parent for somebody. Without ambition, you can't be a better leader. You can't make more. It starts from that place, right? It's time to dream again, no matter where you're at. I work with the highest levels of people in the world, and they have to change their ambitions even as they've gotten to the top. You know, many of you know, I've been blessed to work with and train and do a program with Oprah Winfrey. And Oprah, I'll tell you. You know what? She did her show for 25 remarkable years plus, I think it was. And I mean, the top of her field, the top, the number one in the world, billionaire status. I mean, incredible. But she had to change her ambitions. Once she changed that career, she had to reevaluate. What do I want? Where do I see myself going? These things happen for us at different stages of our life, different stages of our career, and it's important to revisit. Is what you're doing right now your real ambition? If it's not, start staging, preparing, training, conditioning, learning. Because there's always another level. And it's not like there's some. You know, people talk about this rat race where you're always going to the next level just to chase the new thing. No, look, every ambition can be a good ambition, but it can also be bad ambition, right? I mean, you might want more money and you will. You're willing to compromise yourself. So ambition, I'm qualifying it, too. Because some people had big ambitions and they cheated to get there. And that's why they're not a good person. Some people had big dreams and they lied their way up. Some people had big dreams, they didn't take care of their body. They feel like crap. So it's not like ambitions are the thing. Look, we got a lot more to teach on here, my friend, but it might be a good time for you to revisit. What do you really want now? Have you dreamed for a while? Have you taken that moment?

Maybe at the beginning of this year.

You sat down with your journal and you just wrote 10 pages of what you want your life to look like in a decade. You know, how you want to wake up, how you want to see things, how you want to be, who's around? Do you have pets? What's the house look like? What do you do during the day? How much money do you earn? What do you contribute? Who do you love? How do you serve those questions? You know, what's your body look like? How do you feel? Vision. Allow that back in dream again. I can't believe how many people start their day without looking at any goals. Start their day without Thinking about what are these major projects I'm working on and why? Where are they taking me? What's my life going to be like? And because they're not stoking the ambition, the fire is not there. And so they only get fired up once in a while. You know, they get fired up right before that performance review at work where they got to think about how they're going to add value again. They get fired up at New Year's, they get fired up on a birthday that ends in a zero, where they got to pay attention to the next decade of their life. Ambition should be a daily check in that's going to keep you on your path, my friend. So your life is basically related to your ambitions. It's not to say it's the only thing. Look, there's more because I know a lot of people also have big dreams, but they don't do nothing. And that also explains their life. But what do you want? What do you hunger? What do you desire for? What's your vision? What's your dream? If I can know that, it says a lot about where you're at today. It says a lot about where you're going. Next up. I know you're at the level lots of people have lots of ambition, lots of competence. What takes them to the next level, but also what explains a lot about their level is this little ditty. It's called affect. What does that mean in psychology? Let's just call it emotional connection, right? Let's just make it easy. Affect is emotional connection. It really means your emotional experience that you give or experience from something. When I use it, I mean, what emotion and what emotional connection did you bring to stuff, right? Cause some people, they got a lot of skill, but they're just going through the motions. The high performers, they're bringing alertness and joy and confidence, right? There's a high level of presence and vibrancy and pop there. Not because they're naturally charismatic, because they taught themselves to be self aware. They taught themselves to be mindful and bring their full spirit, their full joy, their full love into something. Passion, baby, right there, right? Your life, how good you are, it has a lot to do with the passion that you brought in something, the emotional energy you created in your life. I've had to learn this one too. I didn't have a lot of emotional energy before my car accident. You know, I was a happy go, lucky guy, you know, maybe growing up at certain parts. But then I went through a severe bout of depression and suicidal thoughts and the car Accident changed that for me, and I decided I wanted to feel life. I didn't want to just go through the motion. I wanted to feel it. I wanted to be in heightened states. Not just to be, like, energized on caffeine, but, I mean, just, like, to notice things and to feel things, to finish the day and have had that joy of having. I put in a hard day's work today. I gave today of my heart, my spirit, my soul into something. I brought it, even though it's tiring, even though it's difficult. Look, I didn't sleep good last night. But in your moments to serve, you get your emotional connection up. If you do that, the odds are you're a high performer. If in your moments to serve, you just go with how you generally feel, well, then that's not putting all of you into life. And I think this one explains a lot of people's lives. They get trapped in this going through the motions thing. You know, they get up, they kind of kiss their spouse, hi, how you doing? They trudge around to drink the coffee or whatever, to motivate themselves or get some energy, and they just kind of go through the motions throughout the day. They. They're not really pouring themselves into something. What we know specifically, if you want to reach high performance, it's joy. It's alertness or engagement, we often call it. And confidence, right? To bring joy into situations, not hope, you take it out. Remember, the power plant doesn't have energy, generates energy. You don't have joy or confidence. You generate those just like you generate happiness. If you're waiting for the emotional reality you want of your life to land on you, it's going to be a long, mundane, and often sad life. But if you choose to generate the emotional states and emotional experiences of your life, something magical starts happening, man. Something really magical starts happening. And I've focused so much of my life on gearing up every area of my life. My psychology, my physiology, my productivity, my persuasion. You guys know all the high performance stuff. I focus to get that. I know that if I can bring the right emotion and energy to something, that something's gonna get better for me. I try to bring that to life, and life gets better. People always say, well, Bren, does that mean you're on all the time? I'm like, no, sometimes I'm not on because I'm conserving to serve. You know, if you saw me before I shot this video series today, I was like, ugh, I had a pretty rough night of sleep last night. And so for me, this morning was all about conserving energy. I'm just normal dude, going through my normal day. Nothing, you know, I wasn't super energized, wasn't super excited. So it's okay. You don't have to always be quote unquote on. But in your moments of service especially, it's time to show up. When your team is there, when your team needs you, you show up. When your spouse is having a bad day, but you had a bad day too, you show up for them. When you're about to go on that stage, I don't care how much jet lag, how tired you are, that's your moment to serve. Bring it, turn it on. What we call bring the joy. You know, it's a very important thing for you, very important thing for you to experience a better quality of life. And your life is a direct reflection of how much you've done that on a consistent basis. I know a lot of people who, you know, they're really smart, big dreams, they're going after it. I mean, they're getting it done, man, but they're not feeling life. So later on their life, they're just like, gosh, man, all I felt was stressed and angry and upset all the time. I go, no. You know, we all want to experience a higher level of flow or joy or beauty or vibrancy in our life. So I just say do that. Bring it again. Bring it for your kids, for your family, bring it in the gym. Bring it, focus, show up and everything will change. I promise you. That's the real acceleration affect.

All right, my friend, I hope that you enjoyed that best of episode. Was that inspiring? Were you fired up? Did you love it? If you did, make sure you do me a favor, go out on social media somewhere and share that episode. You know, just go out, post it somewhere, post yourself, listening to it, make sure you hashtag the Brendan show. Because when you do that, I can look you up and we can find you on Instagram and post that on the social media. And sometimes we do all expense paid trips to people we find. We just randomly select people, we send them gifts, autograph books, swag T shirts, all expense paid trips to some of my seminars. So make sure you let us know, share what you thought about this episode out there on the social media worlds and then we can find you and celebrate you. And also I would love to invite you to join us in our high performance monthly program. So just go to brendan.com monthly, that's brendon.com monthly. That's where we do deeper dive trainings like you just heard. But we do that every single month and there's some live Q and A there and I do some giveaways and we give students in that monthly program tickets to my seminars and some extra special training on leadership. So make sure you check it out@brendon.com monthly. I appreciate you being part of this community of so many people dedicated to finding that deeper drive of motivation and practicing high performance habits so that they can become extraordinary in their careers. In your personal life, in your health, you can live an extraordinary quality of life. And sometimes you just need a little bit more training and a little bit more nudge, a little bit more energy, a little bit more drive and consistency. And I'm hoping that being part of this community with the Brendon show, I'm providing that to you in some way. So thank you, my friend, for listening. I look forward to seeing you or listening with you on the next episode of the B R E N D o N show.